Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Keane, Professor of Chinese Digital Media and Culture, Curtin University

TikTok, the made-in-China, video-sharing platform beloved by youth and influencers alike, is suddenly everywhere in our new world of COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing.

The platform’s growth has been tremendous, but this has come at a cost: it has come under increasing scrutiny from politicians in the US and allies like Australia over concerns about potential breaches of data security and the platform’s perceived ties to the Chinese government.

The Trump administration is now considering banning the platform – and Australia may well follow suit.

The controversies surrounding TikTok are centred around its Chinese origins, and its potential connections or compliance with the Chinese Communist Party and its authoritarian system.

Read more: China could be using TikTok to spy on Australians, but banning it isn’t a simple fix

There are some reasons to be concerned. The platform is known to censor material deemed sensitive by the Chinese government.

Last year, for example, TikTok was accused of manipulating videos relating to Hong Kong pro-democracy protests and was forced to apologise for censoring a video criticising China’s crackdown on Uyghurs. This prompted claims of it being an arm of China’s state-run media system.

Digital security experts also point to the potential for the data TikTok collects from users to be sent to China’s servers.

But there is not clear evidence yet that TikTok poses a threat to the national security of countries like the US or Australia, or that the CCP interferes in the overseas operations of the company.

TikTok’s physical distancing from Beijing

TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based technology company Bytedance, which also operates a Chinese version of the platform called Douyin.

TikTok and Douyin are completely separate entities. They store their data in different centres and are governed by different sets of rules and business operations. TikTok is designed for the overseas market with its data stored in Singapore and the US, while Douyin targets solely the Chinese domestic market with its data stored in China.

As the pressure has mounted against the platform in the West, however, TikTok has shifted into survival mode through de-Sinicization. While users are posting videos on TikTok from the safety of their bedrooms, the company is deliberately distancing itself from Beijing.

Part of this distancing strategy involves announcing plans to move its operational headquarters outside China. According to industry reports in China this involved disbanding the Beijing-based overseas operation team, as well as cutting off the Chinese team’s access to its international data pool.

Read more: TikTok is popular, but Chinese apps still have a lot to learn about global markets

The company also announced plans this week to add 10,000 jobs in the US, following a commitment to open a transparency centre in Los Angeles earlier this year.

TikTok’s most prominent PR move has been hiring key international players in communications, entertainment, government relations, IP protection, cybersecurity and global business solutions to change the way the company is structured and run in its overseas markets.

The appointment of non-Chinese executives, such as new US CEO Kevin Mayer (Walt Disney’s former top streaming executive), illustrates its global aspirations.

Of course, bringing foreigners into the corporate tent is not a new strategy for a Chinese tech firm. Alibaba and Huawei have done this with mixed success; Huawei, in particular, has failed to convince Western governments it would not pose a security risk to their 5G networks.

But TikTok is a different kind of proposition. Unlike other Chinese tech companies and platforms (such as WeChat), TikTok does not operate in China. The platform was created to be global.

TikTok and tit-for-tat retaliations

The response to TikTok’s rise in the US comes from the Donald Trump manual of political strategy. When the trade war between the US and China broke in January 2018, the two nations engaged in a tit-for-tat series of tariffs, from steel and automobiles to pork and soybeans.

In the latest round of recriminations and political bluster, Trump suggested he was considering using TikTok as a way to retaliate against China for its handling of the coronavirus. The idea is to erect a barrier against TikTok and ask like-minded allies to do the same.

Read more: The internet is now an arena for conflict, and we’re all caught up in it

What this reaction precipitates, however, is a move toward national internet sovereignty. Some are calling this the age of the “splinternet”, rather than the internet as we know it, a borderless space.

For starters, erecting barriers against platforms offers limited effectiveness because users will find a way around them.

But banning TikTok, or any other Chinese platform, is also taking a page directly from Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “little red book” for the digital age.

The list of Western platforms and news sites now blocked in China is very long. Playing China’s game of shuttering foreign sites will only provide more ammunition for Chinese propaganda against the West – and lead to more tit-for-tat closures.

Blacklisting companies or individuals based on country of origin and citing national security concerns sets a dangerous precedent. It’s akin to going down the path of digital McCarthyism; not only will this erode online freedom, it won’t address the more significant problems of data harvesting and news manipulation — practices that are not unique to Chinese platforms.

Some critics have instead argued for more coordinated global governance of tech companies. As Samm Sacks writes in Foreign Affairs,

we need stricter rules for data security and privacy for all companies, not just Chinese ones … regardless of country of origin, [to] manage online content in an era of misinformation.

As with all user-driven platforms, content moderation on TikTok runs up against issues of freedom of speech. Censorship will continue be a concern for the platform, and TikTok’s content moderators will inevitably be tested by those who want to use it to challenge China.

In the interest of maintaining its brand credibility as a truly global company, TikTok’s smartest move would be to continue to distance itself from Beijing — and for Beijing to do the same.

– ref. TikTok tries to distance itself from Beijing, but will it be enough to avoid the global blacklist? – https://theconversation.com/tiktok-tries-to-distance-itself-from-beijing-but-will-it-be-enough-to-avoid-the-global-blacklist-143247

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Gwynne, Senior Lecturer, Health Leadership, Macquarie University

Aboriginal children in rural Australia have up to three times the rate of tooth decay compared to other Australian children.

Tooth decay can affect a person’s overall health and nutrition because it can affect how they chew and swallow. Tooth decay can also reduce self esteem because of its effect on appearance and breath. And importantly, poor oral health increases the risk of chronic disease such as heart disease.

Yet tooth decay is both preventable and treatable.

Broadly speaking, improving oral health is critical to closing the gap in health outcomes between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and Australians overall. Tackling this gap requires customised, community-led solutions.

Read more: Bulging ear drums and hearing loss: Aboriginal kids have the highest otitis media rates in the world

Our research demonstrates co-design — that is, engaging communities to design and deliver services for their own communities — is associated with significantly improved oral health among Aboriginal primary school children.

This approach may also hold the answer for closing the gap in other areas of health care.

Oral health among Aboriginal children

In the middle of last century, Aboriginal children actually had significantly better oral health than other Australian children. But today, Aboriginal children have roughly double the rate of tooth decay compared to other Australian children.

A range of factors have contributed to this recent problem, starting with colonisation — the effects of which have been compounded over time — and the shift to a highly processed Westernised diet.

Where interventions to prevent common oral diseases like tooth decay have become available to most Australian children in recent decades, Aboriginal children in rural Australia have historically had limited access to public dental services.

The disparity is compounded by the cost of basic supplies like toothpaste and toothbrushes, which may be unattainable for some families, and poor availability of cool filtered drinking water in remote communities.

What we did

We began our research in 2013 at primary schools in three rural communities in New South Wales.

We sought to reduce consumption of sugary drinks by installing refrigerated and filtered water fountains in schools and communities. We also engaged teachers to encourage students to fill up their water bottles and drink from them throughout the school day.

As well as this, we sought to increase fluoride intake (a naturally occurring mineral that helps to prevent tooth decay) by establishing daily in-school tooth brushing programs, supplying toothbrushes and toothpaste for school and home, and applying fluoride varnish to the children’s teeth once each term.

We also provided treatment for existing tooth decay and gum disease.

Read more: Antibiotic resistance is an even greater challenge in remote Indigenous communities

In 2018, we looked at the oral health and oral hygiene behaviours of children from the participating schools. Our findings have recently been published and show the project is working well.

What we found

In just four years we found a reduction in tooth decay, plaque and gingivitis (gum disease).

The average number of teeth with tooth decay per child in 2018 was 4.13, compared to 5.31 in 2014. Notably, the proportion of children with no tooth decay increased from 12.5% in 2014 to 20.3% in 2018.

There was also a dramatic reduction in the proportion of children with severe gingivitis from 43% in 2014 to 3% in 2018.

We also saw an increase in positive oral hygiene behaviour including tooth brushing, consumption of drinking water and reduced consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.

In 2014, 13% of children reported brushing their teeth on the morning they took the survey. This increased to 36% in 2018.

Collaborating with communities

Co-design means working alongside communities to establish the most effective ways to implement evidence-based strategies, and sustain these. It’s about sharing knowledge to enable long-term, positive change to complex problems.

In our project, the co-design process has been central to these outcomes:

• local Aboriginal staff coordinate the programs and dental treatment services

• clinical staff live and work locally

• we’ve established scholarships for locals to obtain qualifications as dental assistants, allied health assistants and oral health therapists

• we’ve implemented daily in-school tooth brushing, regular fluoride varnish application and drinking water programs

• the community decided on the location and installation of water fountains

• we’ve set up highly cost-effective oral health services for the communities.

Read more: Dental report card fail: half of adults and one-third of kids don’t brush twice a day

Co-design and closing the gap

We’ve now moved through all phases of implementing our co-designed programs, and are focusing on maintaining them with the support of school staff and the local Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service.

Our research shows engaging communities to design and deliver oral health services was associated with reduced tooth decay and increased healthy behaviours.

The following elements of co-design in our project could readily be incorporated into the design and delivery of health-care services for Aboriginal Australians:

1. improved cultural safety — Aboriginal people feel safe and welcome

2. co-design and shared ownership — local Aboriginal people shape the service model

3. local employment — Aboriginal people work in the service and lead local delivery

4. skills development — Aboriginal people complete qualifications that are nationally recognised

5. long-term commitment — programs are designed and delivered with sustainable and reliable funding.

The gap in health outcomes between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians remains stubbornly wide. Co-design enables much needed health-care services to be delivered in ways that strengthen communities, respect culture and build capacity.

– ref. Collaborating with communities delivers better oral health for Indigenous kids in rural Australia – https://theconversation.com/collaborating-with-communities-delivers-better-oral-health-for-indigenous-kids-in-rural-australia-141038

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

Even if the government hadn’t spent A$5.9 billion on JobKeeper and other emergency measures last financial year and wasn’t planning to spend a further $12.2 billion this financial year, its budget position would have collapsed.

The economic statement released Thursday morning shows it collected $13.2 billion less company tax than it expected last financial year, and will collect $12.1 billion less this financial year.

It collected $9.2 billion less personal income tax last financial year and will collect $26.9 billion less this financial year.

That’s assuming the present lockdown in Melbourne, the Mornington Peninsula and the Mitchell Shire lasts only six-weeks followed by a gradual return to normal and no further lockdowns.

Reality bites

Goods and services tax and excise and customs duty collections are down by $7.3 billion last financial year and down by a forecast $10.7 billion this financial year.

Tax collections from super funds held up in the financial year just ended but are expected to halve in 2020-21, collapsing from $13.2 billion to $6.4 billion.

The collapse reflects what Treasurer Josh Frydenberg called “the reality of where the economy is at”.

Business are closed, planned investment has been axed (non-mining business investment is expected to fall 19.5% this financial year after falling 9% last financial year), consumers are staying at home, and spending on housing is expected to fall 16% after falling 10%.

It has to be lived with

Most of this can’t be undone. Nor can it be offset by increasing tax rates or cutting government spending. As Finance Minister Mathias Cormann noted, that would shrink private spending further.

Net government debt, which was expected to be close to zero last financial year (0.4% of GDP) instead blew out to 24.6% of GDP and is expected to blow out to 35.7% this financial year.

The only safe way to bring it down is to ramp it up as much as is needed to ensure the economy recovers.

As Cormann put it,

the way to get on top of this debt is by growing the economy more strongly and creating more opportunity for Australians to get ahead, get into jobs, better paying jobs and get ahead, because stronger growth leads to more revenue and lower welfare payments and that is the way that we can go back to where we were

It has worked before. Australian government debt blew out to more than 100% of GDP during the second world war but then shrunk year by year in relation to GDP in the economic growth that followed.

Debt didn’t shrink in absolute terms, it shrank in relation to the government’s ability to handle it, and that’s what will happen again if economic growth can be reignited.

The government has been borrowing at annual interest rates of less than 1%. If the economy can grow by more than 1% per year, which historically it has, the payments will eat into less and less of the budget.

Finances are holding up

Next week the government’s office of financial management launches an audacious bid to lock in ultra-low borrowing rates until the middle of the century.

It will issue an unusually long-dated bond (lone) lasting 31 years. It won’t need to be repaid until 2051.

It has appointed five lead managers to sell it – ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Securities and UBS – in the hope that it can bed down low annual interest payments for a generation.

In the unlikely event the market doesn’t support it, the Reserve Bank has undertaken to step in and use created money to buy as many bonds as are needed to keep the rates low. Since it made the commitment in March it hasn’t needed to spend much at all. Government bond issues have been up to five times oversubscribed by investors desperate for the certainty of a government revenue stream and uneasy about riskier alternatives.

Best case

The forecasts for what will be required need to be seen as best case. The budget deficit is believed to have blown out from an expectation of around zero to $85.8 billion in 2019-20 and $184.5 billion in 2020-21.

Those forecasts have the unemployment rate at 8.75% by this time next year, by which time the economy will have shrunk 2.5%

Economic activity slipped 0.3% in the March quarter, is believed to have shrank 7% in the June quarter, is expected to climb back 1.5% in the September quarter and to claw its way back after that.

Read more: Budget deficit to hit $184.5B this financial year, unemployment to peak at 9.25% in December: economic statement

That’s if restrictions aren’t reimposed, state borders are reopened and there are no further “second waves” of infections.

The treasury says its estimates take into account the effect of the Melbourne outbreak on consumer confidence and activity in the rest of Australia, but assume the outbreak does not spread.

In this way the numbers are a best case. The section in the document on risks to the outlook was unusually short – only three paragraphs.

It says the pandemic is still evolving and the outlook remains highly uncertain.

It will present a fuller assessment of the risks and four years of projections in the formal budget on October 6.

– ref. These budget numbers are shocking, and there are worse ones in store – https://theconversation.com/these-budget-numbers-are-shocking-and-there-are-worse-ones-in-store-143250

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lesley Russell, Adjunct Associate Professor, Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney

This week revealed cases of coronavirus infection in a Victorian prison guard and a prisoner in quarantine on remand. Now six Victorian prisons are in lockdown.

This is not the first time there has been a positive COVID-19 test for prison personnel in Australia; three justice health staff in New South Wales tested positive earlier this year.

Public health and prison officials look fearfully at the toll coronavirus has taken on incarcerated populations around the world. They recognise Australian prisons are also at high risk for coronavirus outbreaks.

Many have pushed for proactive measures to prevent this. Now the adequacy of the implemented measures is being tested.

Read more: Coronavirus: why prison conditions can be a perfect storm for spreading disease

Why are prisons and prisoners at increased risk?

Prisons and prisoners are at increased risk of coronavirus for many reasons, including:

• Prisoners and staff (who come and go into the community) are in close contact. So it is easy to see how transmission could occur between the community and prison populations, and back again.

• Overcrowding means prisoners cannot self-isolate.

• Hygiene standards are poor and there have been reported shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) for both staff and prisoners. National Cabinet agreed in May supplying PPE to corrections facilities should be a priority “if COVID-19 cases are confirmed in the sector”, so it is not clear if this has happened.

• Prisoners have higher rates of social disadvantage and many are medically vulnerable due to lifelong difficulties accessing health care; mental health and substance abuse problems; violence; and unhealthy prison conditions.

• Indigenous Australians are significantly over-represented in the prison population. While coronavirus has been kept out of Indigenous communities, there is every reason to believe Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, like other First Nations people, are at increased risk from coronavirus infection and death.

• There is significant churn in the justice system as people are taken into custody, bailed, jailed and released.

• There is little data to assess the adequacy of health-care facilities in prisons. But prisoners have an inherent health-care disadvantage as they cannot make their own decisions about their health care, or access Medicare and medicines under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

What’s happening in prisons during the pandemic?

There is little information about what is happening to protect Australian prisons from the pandemic.

One media report in March outlined some measures individual states and territories have taken. All jurisdictions have limited prison visits and most, including Victoria, have instituted a 14-day quarantine for new prisoners.

There has been some testing in some prisons, but the extent is not known. A media report in May stated Victoria would increase testing in prisons after three inmates returned inconclusive tests that were later found to be negative.

Should we be releasing prisoners?

Australian governments have faced renewed calls to urgently release some prisoners into the community. This would cut the number of people held in prisons and other places of detention, particularly Indigenous people and others at increased risk.

Governments in some states, have responded by introducing legislation to allow for this, although we don’t yet know the extent of any releases.

Read more: For First Nations people, coronavirus has meant fewer services, separated families and over-policing: new report

However, release into the community is only a safe option if people have appropriate housing and support services. There are concerns that releases — which are based on risk to the community, the safety of victims and access to accommodation — will be culturally biased against those most likely to benefit such as Indigenous prisoners.

Many Indigenous communities are closed to visitors and no-one can return until after a 14-day isolation period. This presents difficulties for those prisoners who do not have accommodation options outside their communities.

We need to avoid what’s happening overseas

The clear lessons from the second outbreak of coronavirus in Victoria and from the disastrous situation of rising coronavirus cases in prisons in the United States is that swift, concerted actions are needed to curtail spread of the virus.

The only way to know what is happening is rapid testing of prisoners and staff, whether or not they show symptoms, and effective isolation of anyone possibly infected.

At the same time, the human rights of this vulnerable population must be protected and their physical and mental health needs addressed. Already most prisoners are unable to have visitors and in Victoria they are unable to receive needed supplies such as toiletries, books, food and clothing.

Families are reportedly “sick with worry” they will not be notified if a family member falls ill.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said that during a global pandemic, the consequences of neglecting the prison population was “potentially catastrophic”.

Read more: Coronavirus: a history of pandemics in prison

In Australia, Hannah McGlade, academic, human rights lawyer and a member of the UN Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues, said:

Prison is the most unsafe place that Aboriginal people can be in a pandemic.

The Victorian government is already on notice. A recent decision of the Victorian supreme court found it had breached its duty to take reasonable care for the health of people behind bars during the coronavirus pandemic.

It is imperative that in the days ahead coronavirus infections in prisons and other correctional facilities are accepted as a public health problem for everyone.

– ref. Why prisons in Victoria are locked up and locked down – https://theconversation.com/why-prisons-in-victoria-are-locked-up-and-locked-down-143178

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

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has announced massive budget deficits of $85.8 billion for the just-finished 2019-2020 financial year and $184.5 billion projected for 2020-2021.

Growth is set to be negative for last financial year and the current one. The government’s economic statement forecasts cuts of 0.25% in GDP in 2019-20 and a reduction of 2.5% in the current financial year.

Unemployment is expected to peak at about 9.25% in the December quarter.

Employment is forecast to fall by 4.4% in 2019-20, but recover by 1% in 2020-21.

The unemployment rate averaged 7% in the June quarter 2020, and is forecast to be 8.75% for the June 2021.

The statement shows debt levels rising markedly in the wake of the pandemic, although the government emphasises Australia still has a low level of government debt-to-GDP compared to other countries.

Net debt is estimated to be $488.2 billion in June this year. This 24.6% of GDP.

Debt is then forecast to increase to $677.1 billion at June 30 next year, which would be a rise to 35.7% of GDP.

As the government looks to the recovery, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said: “We can see the mountain ahead, and Australia begins the climb”.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said “We are in a better, stronger, more resilient position than most of other countries around the world.”

Defending the high debt level, Cormann asked “what was the alternative?”

The government admits the outlook is unpredictable, and revised numbers will come in the October budget.

“The economic and fiscal outlook remains highly uncertain,” the statement says.

One massive uncertainty is what happens in Victoria. The statement takes into account the present six weeks lockdown but this could be extended if the state does not soon get on top of the second wave of the virus.

The Victorian government on Thursday reported 403 new cases, and five deaths including a man in his 50s. There were 19 new cases in NSW.

The statement says GDP is forecast to have fallen by 7% in the June quarter, but will grow in the September quarter by 1.5%. In the calendar year of 2020, GDP is expected to fall 3.75%, but grow in calendar year 2021 by 2.5%

Earlier this week, the government announced an extension of JobKeeper and the Coronavirus Supplement that goes with JobSeeker, although both will be scaled back after September.

Despite the government announcing these increases in support, the statement stressed the goverment’s economic response to the crisis was “temporary and targeted” with measures designed to support the economy without undermining the structural integrity of the budget.

Revenue is taking a major knock from the fallout of the pandemic.

Total receipts, including earnings of the Future Fund, have fallen by $33 billion in 2019-20 and $61.1 billion in 2020-21 since the budget update last December.

Since that update, tax receipts have been revised down by $31.7 billion for the just completed financial year, and $63.9 billion for the current financial year.

“The outlook for tax receipts remains uncertain. This reflects both uncertainty around the economic outlook, and how this interacts with structural and administrative features of the tax system, such as the ability of taxpayers to carry forward losses to offset future income,” the statement says.

It says payments have increased by $187.5 billion over two years from the budget update.

They are expected to reach $550 billion for the 2019-20 year, which is 27.7% of GDP, and rise to $640 billion in the current financial year, representing 33.8% of GDP.

“This increase is as a result of the Government’s targeted responses to the COVID-19 pandemic to support Australia’s economy, as well as the impact of automatic stabilisers including the payment of unemployment benefits,” the statement says.

– ref. Budget deficit to hit $184.5B this financial year, unemployment to peak at 9.25% in December: economic statement – https://theconversation.com/budget-deficit-to-hit-184-5b-this-financial-year-unemployment-to-peak-at-9-25-in-december-economic-statement-143253

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

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has announced massive budget deficits of $85.5 billion for the just-finished 2019-2020 financial year with $184.5 billion projected for 2020-2021.

Growth is set to be negative for last financial year and the current one. The government’s economic statement forecasts cuts of 0.25% in GDP in 2019-20 and a reduction of 2.5% in the current financial year.

Unemployment is expected to peak at about 9.25% in the December quarter.

Employment is forecast to fall by 4.4% in 2019-20, but recover by 1% in 2020-21.

The unemployment rate is estimated to be 7% in June 2020, and forecast to be 8.75% by June 2021.

The statement shows debt levels rising markedly in the wake of the pandemic, although the government emphasises Australia still has a low level of government debt-to-GDP compared to other countries.

Net debt is estimated to be $488.2 billion in June this year. This 24.6% of GDP.

Debt is then forecast to increase to $677.1 billion at June 30 next year, which would be a rise to 35.7% of GDP.

As the government looks to the recovery, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said: “We can see the mountain ahead, and Australia begins the climb”.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said “We are in a better, stronger, more resilient position than most of the countries in the world.”

Defending the high debt level, Cormann asked “what was the alternatives?”

The government admits the outlook is unpredictable, and revised numbers will come in the October budget.

“The economic and fiscal outlook remains highly uncertain” the statement says.

One massive uncertainty is what happens in Victoria. The statement takes into account the present six weeks lockdown but this could be extended if the state does not soon get on top of the second wave.

The Victorian government on Thursday reported 403 new cases, and five deaths including a man in his 50s. There were 19 new cases in NSW.

The statement says GDP is forecast to have fallen by 7% in the June quarter, but will grow in the September quarter by 1.5%. In the calendar year of 2020, GDP is expected to fall 3.75%, but grow in calendar year 2021 by 2.5%

Earlier this week, the government announced an extension of JobKeeper and the Coronavirus Supplement that goes with JobSeeker, although both will be scaled back after September.

Despite the government announcing these increases in support, the statement stressed the goverment’s economic response to the crisis was “temporary and targeted” with measures designed to support the economy without undermining the structural integrity of the budget.

Revenue is taking a major knock from the fallout of the pandemic.

Total receipts, including earnings of the Future Fund, have fallen by $33 billion in 2019-20. They are projected to decline $60.1 billion in 2021, since the budget update last December.

Since that update, tax receipts have been revised down by $31.7 billion for the just completed financial year, and $63.9 billion for the current financial year

“The outlook for tax receipts remains uncertain. This reflects both uncertainty around the economic outlook, and how this interacts with structural and administratal features of the tax system, such as the ability of tax payers to carry forward losses to offset future income,” the statement says.

It says payments have increased by $187.5 billion over two years from the budget update.

They are expected to reach $550 billion for the 2019-20 year, which is 27.7% of GDP, and rise to $640 billion in the current financial year, representing 33.8% of GDP.

“This increase is as a result of the Government’s targeted responses to the COVID-19 pandemic to support Australia’s economy, as well as the impact of automatic stabilisers including the payment of unemployment benefits.” the statement says.

– ref. Budget deficit to hit $184.5 this financial year, unemployment to peak at 9.25% in December: economic statement – https://theconversation.com/budget-deficit-to-hit-184-5-this-financial-year-unemployment-to-peak-at-9-25-in-december-economic-statement-143253

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jake Whitehead, Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellow & Tritum E-Mobility Fellow, The University of Queensland

Limiting global warming to well below 2℃ this century requires carbon emissions to reach net zero by around 2050. Australian households have done much to support the transition via rooftop solar investments. Now it’s time for organisations to take a more serious role.

The University of Queensland’s efforts to reduce its electricity emissions provides one blueprint. Last week UQ opened a 64 megawatt solar farm at Warwick in the state’s southeast. It’s the first major university in the world to offset 100% of its electricity use with renewable power produced from its own assets. In fact, UQ will generate more renewable electricity than it uses.

The Warwick Solar farm shows businesses and other organisations that the renewables transition is doable, and makes economic sense.

A model for the future

UQ’s electricity decarbonisation journey started a decade ago when it installed a 1.2MW rooftop solar array across buildings at the St Lucia campus. At the time, it was the largest rooftop solar array in Australia.

In 2015 UQ launched the 3.3MW solar farm at Gatton – part of a world-class solar research facility open to researchers from around the world.

Building on this, last week UQ opened the Warwick solar farm, primarily funded through a A$125 million loan from the Queensland Government. The output – about 160 gigawatt-hours a year – is equal to powering about 27,000 homes or reducing coal consumption by more than 60,000 tonnes. This generation will more than offset the total amount of energy UQ’s sites use each year.

Read more: Really Australia, it’s not that hard: 10 reasons why renewable energy is the future

Money that would previously have been spent paying the university’s electricity bills will instead now pay off this loan, over about a decade. This shows how an organisation can redirect operating expenditure to invest in emissions reduction.

Three months ago, UQ also installed a 1.1MW Tesla battery at its St Lucia campus. As Queensland’s largest on-site battery, it saved UQ almost A$75,000 in electricity costs during the first three months of operation. It did this by buying power when it was cheap and selling it during peak demand periods, as well as helping support the grid during faults.

These projects provide a “living laboratory” for teaching and research. They also give crucial insights into how organisations can invest in renewable generation and energy storage assets today, to increase their commercial viability.

UQ has made data generated by its solar and battery assets publicly available so other organisations can learn from its efforts.

Why organisations must act

About 2,000 companies are jointly responsible for more than half the world’s emissions. In many cases, investors are now calling on companies to demonstrate how their activities are compatible with a net-zero emissions target.

Organisations generate greenhouse gas emissions in different ways. “Scope 1” emissions come from assets owned or controlled by the organisation, such as company-owned vehicles or power plants. “Scope 2” emissions come from electricity consumed, and “Scope 3” involves a wide range of indirect emissions such as staff commuting or waste disposal.

Read more: A pretty good start but room for improvement: 3 experts rate Australia’s emissions technology plan

Companies can also contribute to emissions produced overseas, but these are generally not captured by standard national emissions accounts.

A 2015 study was the first to translate global climate targets to a company level. Since then, more than 900 companies have committed to climate action through the Science Based Targets initiative.

Typically, companies are not yet evaluated in terms of their performance against climate goals. However, attention from investors on climate risk and impact is increasing. It’s only a matter of time before lagging companies will face greater scrutiny from investors, governments and the broader public. All the more reason to start acting today.

Over to you

An organisation must take a holistic view of all its activities, to fully understand the emissions it creates. From this they can develop a sustainability “action plan” which includes setting science-based targets . UQ is currently finalising a ten-year Sustainability Strategy based on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Other ways organisations can reduce emissions include:

The time for talk is over. Organisations must now actively play their part in achieving global net-zero emissions. The University of Queensland shows how it can be done.

Read more: Climate explained: could the world stop using fossil fuels today?

– ref. In a world first, Australian university builds own solar farm to offset 100% of its electricity use – https://theconversation.com/in-a-world-first-australian-university-builds-own-solar-farm-to-offset-100-of-its-electricity-use-142972

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Ratcliffe, Professor of Health Economics and Mathew Flinders Fellow, Caring Futures Institute, Flinders University

It’s often said the true measure of any society is how well it treats its most vulnerable members. By this measure, Australia is falling woefully short. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety recently highlighted shocking instances of abuse and neglect involving our most vulnerable older citizens.

The aged care sector represents a multibillion-dollar industry, predominantly publicly funded. But during the proceedings of the royal commission, it’s been characterised as a sector receiving significant underinvestment and delivering substandard care.

It has failed to keep up with community expectations and the changing needs of our older population.

Our new research, published today, suggests most Australians believe more public money should be devoted to providing higher-quality aged care – and many would even be willing to pay higher taxes to this end.

Read more: So you’re thinking of going into a nursing home? Here’s what you’ll have to pay for

Exploring Australians’ attitudes to aged care funding

The Caring Futures Institute at Flinders University recently conducted a first-of-its-kind survey — both in Australia and internationally — to assess the views of the general public on the quality of aged care and the future funding of the sector.

We surveyed more than 10,000 Australian adults not currently receiving aged care services, aged between 18 and 91, with representation from every state and territory.

There was strong recognition among the general public of the central role government funding plays in the financing of a quality aged care system. Almost 90% of our survey respondents indicated the government should provide more funding to support the delivery of quality aged care.

According to the Royal Commission’s findings, the Australian government currently allocates 4% of tax collected to Australia’s aged care system. Our respondents said on average 8% of tax collected should be spent on Australia’s aged care system (as opposed to other public services).

Some 61% of current taxpaying respondents were willing to pay an additional 1.4% per year in income tax so all Australians had access to a satisfactory level of quality aged care. Further, 55% of current taxpayers would be willing to pay an extra 1.7% in tax — equating to 3.1% additional income tax in total — to ensure equal access to a high level of quality aged care.

Most respondents indicated they would be willing to pay co-contributions (fees out of their own pocket) if they needed to access aged care services in the future. Those who have experienced the aged care system through a close family member or friend receiving care would be willing to make higher co-contributions on average than those without current experience.

Read more: Aged-care funding creates dependency and lowers well-being of residents

An overwhelming majority of respondents indicated they would prefer to remain living at home rather than enter a residential care facility if their health had deteriorated to the extent that they required an intensive level of care and support.

In general, we found younger people would be willing to pay more than older people to stay at home. In total, 72% of our survey respondents indicated they would be willing to pay A$184 per week on average, equating to almost A$10,000 per year, to remain living at home and avoid moving into a residential care facility.

What is quality in aged care?

There was a high level of agreement among our survey respondents about what constitutes quality in aged care. Characteristics consistently rated as highly important included:

• treating the older person with respect and dignity at all times

• a trained and skilled workforce providing care that supports the older person’s health and well-being, and

• the ability to lodge complaints with the knowledge that appropriate action will be taken.

In 2017-18 almost a million Australians accessed home care services and more than 200,000 people were permanently living in residential aged care. These estimates are expected to increase rapidly in the coming decades due to growth in Australia’s ageing population.

There is an urgent need for different care models to accommodate the overwhelming preference of the vast majority of Australians to remain living and cared for at home as they age.

There is an urgent need for new investment in aged care infrastructure to deliver a uniformly skilled and trained workforce to accommodate the needs, expectations and preferences of increasing numbers of older people in our society.

And finally, there’s an urgent need for stronger integration between the aged care sector and the health system to ensure all older Australians can access the care and services they need to maximise their quality of life.

Read more: Confused about aged care in the home? These 10 charts explain how it works

Our survey responses highlight that the general public recognise the fundamental importance of additional investment in the sector, including to ensure all aged care staff have the skills and training needed to provide the highest standards of care.

The findings provide an important and timely societal perspective with which to inform aged care policy and practice in Australia and in other countries which share similar values, aspirations and circumstances.

– ref. Australians want more funding for higher-quality aged care — and most are willing to pay extra tax to achieve it – https://theconversation.com/australians-want-more-funding-for-higher-quality-aged-care-and-most-are-willing-to-pay-extra-tax-to-achieve-it-143174

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Quentin Hanich, Associate Professor, University of Wollongong

A “dark fleet” of hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels has illegally caught more than half a billion dollars worth of squid in North Korean waters since 2017, according to new research that used satellite technology, on-water observations and machine learning to track the unreported vessels. The illegal catch may have driven small North Korean fishing boats into dangerous waters and contributed to the sharp decline of the Japanese flying squid.

A global problem

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing is a global problem. It threatens fish stocks, marine ecosystems, and the livelihoods and food security of legitimate fishing communities worldwide. This kind of fishing is hard for governments to address, as it is often carried out by “dark fleets” of vessels that do not appear in public monitoring systems.

However, working with a team from Korea, Japan, Australia and the US, we’ve devised a new approach to tracking clandestine fishing. We used it to identify more than 900 vessels originating from China that fished illegally in North Korean waters in 2017, and more than 700 in 2018. The research is published today in Science Advances.

Sanctions and ghost boats

Chinese vessels have historically fished the waters adjacent to North Korea. However, in 2017 the UN Security Council adopted sanctions restricting North Korea’s fisheries and seafood trade in response to ballistic missile testing. The sanctions also prohibited North Korea from selling or transferring fishing rights.

Read more: Tighter sanctions on North Korea could have a harsh humanitarian impact

Because of the sanctions, Chinese vessels fishing in North Korea after September 2017 would constitute a violation of either or both international and domestic law. Nevertheless, the South Korean Coast Guard identified hundreds of vessels of Chinese origin passing through their waters en route to North Korean fishing grounds.

Additionally, the Chinese fishing activity has displaced smaller North Korean fishing boats, many of which have been driven into illegal fishing in neighbouring Russian waters. These vessels lack the equipment or endurance for these distant and dangerous waters. Japanese coastal communities have reported hundreds of such vessels drifting ashore as “ghost boats”, empty or carrying only human remains.

Lighting up the dark fleet

Our multinational study was initiated at a technical workshop in 2018, co-hosted by the international non-profit organisation Global Fishing Watch, Japan’s Fisheries Research and Education Agency, and the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) at the University of Wollongong. The study was led by Jaeyoon Park from Global Fishing Watch and Jungsam Lee from the Korea Maritime Institute, and included scientists, engineers and policy experts from Korea, Japan, Australia and the US.

Together, the research team conducted an unprecedented synthesis of four satellite technologies, combining automatic identification system (AIS) data, optical imagery, infrared imagery, and satellite radar to create the most comprehensive picture of fishing activities in the area to date.

The research team focused on the two most common types of fishing vessels active in the area: pair trawlers and lighting vessels.

Pair trawlers travel in teams of two, dragging a net between them, and can be identified in satellite imagery by their characteristic pairs. The team used a machine learning approach called a convolutional neural network to pick out pair trawlers from high-resolution optical satellite imagery, verified with satellite radar and AIS data.

With these three technologies, the team estimated approximately 796 distinct pair trawlers operated in North Korean waters in 2017, and 588 in 2018, and traced these vessels back to Chinese ports.

Lighting vessels use bright lights to attract fish. The Chinese vessels are uniquely bright, using as many as 700 incandescent bulbs which put out as much light as some football stadiums.

To track these lighting vessels, the research team used high-sensitivity infrared imagery cross-referenced with high-resolution optical imagery and satellite radar. This analysis identified approximately 108 lighting vessels of Chinese origin operating in North Korean waters in 2017 and 130 in 2018.

These analyses allowed researchers to estimate that more than 900 distinct fishing vessels fished these waters in 2017, and more than 700 in 2018.

We also identified low-intensity lighting vessels: the North Korean fleet of much smaller boats. North Korean fishing vessels are typically wooden boats 10–20 metres long, using only 5 to 20 light bulbs.

We spotted about 3,000 North Korean vessels fishing in Russian waters during 2018. While Russia historically licensed small numbers of North Korean boats, they stopped issuing permits in 2017, suggesting this activity is also likely in violation of fishing laws.

In recent weeks, the study team has undertaken a follow-up analysis to verify if the illegal fishing has continued in the interim since the paper was first submitted for peer review. The analysis identified approximately 800 vessels from China fished in 2019 in North Korean waters, indicating that the illegal activity is ongoing.

Read more: What a tangled net: unravelling the international complications of tuna conservation

A political and ecological problem

This massive operation poses substantial implications for fisheries governance and regional politics. If the vessels are not approved by China and North Korea, they are fishing illegally in contravention of Chinese and/or North Korean domestic regulations. On the other hand, if they are authorised by China or North Korea, it is a violation of UN sanctions and illegal under international law.

In addition, the fishing is a catastrophe for regional fish stocks. The Japanese flying squid (Todarodes pacificus) is targeted by several fishing fleets and is a critical seafood for South Korea, North Korea and Japan. The lack of cooperation and data-sharing prevents accurate stock assessments and sustainable management of a fishery that has already declined by approximately 80% since 2003.

The study demonstrates the ongoing need for improved understanding of the often hidden dynamics that contribute to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Political barriers and conflicts often hinder international cooperation, data sharing and effective joint fisheries management.

Combining satellite technologies can reveal the activities of dark fleets, filling a major gap in the management of distant fisheries. But to ensure safe, legal, and sustainable fishing, regional cooperation and a renewed focus on transparency and reporting are necessary.

– ref. Chinese fishing boats took half a billion dollars of illegal squid from North Korea. Scientists used satellites to catch them out – https://theconversation.com/chinese-fishing-boats-took-half-a-billion-dollars-of-illegal-squid-from-north-korea-scientists-used-satellites-to-catch-them-out-142642

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lorena Becerra-Valdivia, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UNSW

Humans lived in what is now Mexico up to 33,000 years ago and may have settled the Americas by travelling along the Pacific coast, according to two studies by myself and colleagues published today.

It has been commonly believed that the first people to enter the Americas were big-game hunters from Asia, who arrived after the last Ice Age around 13,000 years ago. This narrative is known as the “Clovis first” theory, based on distinctive stone tools produced by a people archaeologists call the Clovis culture.

For most of the 20th century, this theory was widely accepted. However, more recent archaeological evidence has shown humans were present in the Americas before the Clovis people.

Just how much earlier, however, is unclear and a topic of intense academic debate.

Read more: Ancient DNA in lake mud sheds light on the mystery of how humans first reached America

What we found in Chiquihuite Cave

Chiquihuite Cave is an archaeological site more than 2,740 metres above sea level in Zacatecas, Mexico. Ciprian Ardelean of the University of Zacatecas has been leading excavations of the site for more than seven years. Nearly 2,000 stone tools and pieces created through their manufacture have been found.

The tools belongs to a type of material culture never before seen in the Americas, with no evident similarities to any other cultural complexes. Importantly, more than 200 specimens were found below an archaeological layer that corresponds to the peak of the last Ice Age. (Archaeologists call this peak the Last Glacial Maximum.)

During this time, between 26,000 and 19,000 years ago, ice sheets were at their greatest extent. Evidence from Chiquihuite Cave, therefore, strongly suggests that humans were present in North America well before Clovis.

Given the significance of the discovery, myself and a team of international researchers joined in the interdisciplinary study of Chiquihuite Cave. Some of us had the opportunity to visit the site following a four-hour long journey by foot, and see the evidence at first hand. Our aims were to reconstruct the environment humans lived in and define exactly when they occupied the site.

My own research at Chiquihuite Cave focused on the latter. I helped to build a chronology of more than 50 radiocarbon and optical dates.

Combined with the archaeological evidence, the results showed humans inhabited Chiquihuite as early as 33,000 years ago, until the cave was sealed off at the end of the Pleistocene period (around 12,000 years ago).

The pattern of settlement

In a second paper, I explore the wider pattern of human occupation across North America and Beringia (the ancient land bridge connecting America to Asia). This involved analysing hundreds of dates obtained from 42 archaeological sites in North America and Beringia, including Chiquihuite Cave, using a statistical tool called Bayesian age modelling.

The analysis showed there were humans in North America before, during and immediately after the peak of the last Ice Age. However, it was not until much later that populations expanded significantly across the continent.

This occurred during a period of climate warming at the end of the Ice Age called Greenland Interstadial 1. The warming began suddenly with a pulse of increased global temperature around 14,700 years ago.

We also observed that the three major stone tool traditions in the wider region started around the same time. This coincides with an increase in archaeological sites and radiocarbon dates from those sites, as well as genetic data pointing to marked population growth.

This significant expansion of humans during a warmer period seems to have played a role in the dramatic demise of large megafauna, including types of camels, horses and mammoths. We plotted the dates of the last appearance of the megafauna and found they largely disappeared within this, and a following, colder period.

However, the contribution of climate change in faunal extinctions, represented by abrupt warming and cooling, cannot be fully excluded.

Read more: New evidence that an extraterrestrial collision 12,800 years ago triggered an abrupt climate change for Earth

The first human arrivals came from eastern Eurasia, yet it looks as though there was a surprisingly early movement of people into the continent.

We think the path of earlier arrivals to these new lands was probably along the coast. Inland travel would have been blocked, either because Beringia was partly underwater or because modern-day Canada was covered by impenetrable ice sheets.

Together, the two studies and their results depart from previously accepted models, and allow us to uncover a new story of the initial peopling of the Americas. This journey, marking one of the major expansions of modern humans across the planet, will continue to mystify and spark debate.

– ref. Humans inhabited North America in the depths of the last Ice Age, but didn’t thrive until the climate warmed – https://theconversation.com/humans-inhabited-north-america-in-the-depths-of-the-last-ice-age-but-didnt-thrive-until-the-climate-warmed-142810

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Cunneen, Professor of Criminology, University of Technology Sydney

In Australia, children as young as ten can be held criminally responsible for their actions.

This means they can be arrested by police, remanded in custody, convicted by the courts and imprisoned.

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

Next week, Australia’s state and federal attorneys-general will meet to discuss raising the age of criminal responsibility.

They cannot pass up this critical opportunity to change the way we treat vulnerable and marginalised children.

How Australia compares

In Australia, the age of criminal responsibility is just ten years old.

This is seriously out of step with international standards. In 2019, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended 14 years as the minimum age of criminal responsibility.

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

Hundreds of children are locked up

There is no available, recent national data on the number of young people who appear before children’s courts, broken down in the ten to 13 age group. But several thousand children under 14 are estimated to appear on criminal matters each year, based on individual court’s annual reports and earlier figures.

Read more: Locking up kids damages their mental health and sets them up for more disadvantage. Is this what we want?

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in 2018-19, 773 children under 14 were placed on court orders requiring supervision in the community by youth justice officers.

More than 570 were placed in juvenile detention. Some 65% of these two groups were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

Why we need to boost the age

There are many well-founded and compelling reasons for increasing the minimum age of criminal responsibility in Australia to 14. These include:

• The dramatic and devastating impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, given the high numbers of Indigenous children, aged ten to 13 in the youth justice system.

Read more: In My Blood It Runs challenges the ‘inevitability’ of Indigenous youth incarceration

• Child development evidence showing children under 14 lack impulse control and have a poorly developed capacity to plan and foresee consequences.

• The disproportionate number of children coming from the child protection system into youth justice. According to a 2017 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report, three in five children aged ten at the time of their their first youth justice supervision were also in child protection.

• The high numbers of children in the youth justice system with mental health issues and cognitive impairment. A 2018 study found nine out of ten young people in Western Australian youth detention were severely impaired in at least one area of brain function. This obviously affects whether they can understand rules and instructions.

• The evidence also showing the earlier a child enters the justice system, the greater the likelihood of lifelong interaction with the justice system.

• The fact that young children in the justice system have high rates of pre-existing trauma and are “physically and neuro-developmentally vulnerable”. Unsurprisingly, criminalisation and imprisonment have a further negative impact on a child’s development. As the Royal Australasian College of Physicians notes:

Young children with problematic behaviour, and their families, need appropriate healthcare and protection. Involvement in the youth justice system is not an appropriate response to problematic behaviour.

Do we really believe ten-year-olds know what they are doing?

If we really believed ten-year-olds have the knowledge and developmental capacity to make life-changing decisions about what is right and wrong to a standard of criminal responsibility, then we would also treat them differently in other aspects of life.

We would have a much younger age for when children can engage in consensual sex, leave school, get married, sign a contract and vote.

But we don’t. We prefer to protect, assist and guide young children and adolescents into adulthood.

Community, expert pressure to act

There is a growing community campaign, calling on our leaders to raise the age of criminal responsibility to at least 14.

Kids belong in classrooms and playgrounds, not in handcuffs, courtrooms or prison cells

Through my research on youth justice, colleagues and I have interviewed youth workers, detention centre managers, magistrates and solicitors and have never spoken to anyone who thinks bringing a ten-year-old child into the justice system is a good outcome.

One of the few sites of opposition to raising the minimum age has been from some police forces, who prefer to rely on the 14th century common law protection of doli incapax. The doctrine holds that if a child is between the ages of ten and 14, they are presumed not to be capable of forming criminal intent and the prosecution are required to rebut that presumption.

Overwhelming evidence shows doli incapax does not protect young vulnerable children and is not fit for purpose.

There are other options

There is widespread agreement among legal and medical experts that we can respond to children who are in conflict with the law in a far more supportive manner.

Organisations such as the Law Council of Australia and College of Physicians have noted we need greater emphasis on support services, treatment, early intervention, prevention, justice reinvestment initiatives and community-led diversion programs, which are built on Indigenous authority and culture.

We also have the substantial experience of European jurisdictions to draw on, where welfare agencies focus on the well-being and safe development of children in situations where we would currently resort to police, courts and punishment.

Historic opportunity

In November 2018, the Council of Attorneys-General agreed to examine whether to raise the age of criminal responsibility.

After commissioning a review, they are expected to discuss the issue at their July 27 meeting. There are no clear commitments about what might happen beyond this.

This cannot be just another meeting of politicians.

It is a group of powerful policy makers with a historic opportunity to change the way we treat vulnerable and marginalised children. And in particular, to improve the way we treat Indigenous children and their development.

At a time when there is so much attention on the need to end the racism in our justice system, raising the age of criminal responsibility is more important than ever.

– ref. Ten-year-olds do not belong in detention. Why Australia must raise the age of criminal responsibility – https://theconversation.com/ten-year-olds-do-not-belong-in-detention-why-australia-must-raise-the-age-of-criminal-responsibility-142483

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, ARC Laureate Fellow, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW

We know the climate changes as greenhouse gas concentrations rise, but the exact amount of expected warming remains uncertain.

Scientists study this in terms of “equilibrium climate sensitivity” – the temperature rise for a sustained doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations. Equilibrium climate sensitivity has long been estimated within a likely range of 1.5-4.5℃.

Under our current emissions trajectories, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere will likely double between 2060 and 2080, relative to concentrations before the industrial revolution. Before that, they had changed little for millennia.

Read more: Explainer: what is climate sensitivity?

A major new assessment has now calculated a range of 2.6–3.9℃. This implies that alarmingly high estimates from some recent climate models are unlikely, but also that comfortingly low estimates from other studies are even less likely.

More warming, greater impacts

Current and future climate change impacts include heatwaves, changing rainfall and drought patterns, and rising seas. Their severity depends on how much warming takes place.

Human activities are the main determinant of future temperatures, so a world with aggressive emissions control looks very different from a world in which emissions continue to increase.

Even if we knew exactly how emissions would change in the future, the exact amount of warming that would result remains uncertain.

Our new equilibrium climate sensitivity analysis substantially reduces this uncertainty, by combining modern understanding of atmospheric physics with modern, historic, and prehistoric data using robust statistical methods.

The results indicate that substantial warming is much more solidly assured than we thought.

A matter of probabilities

In 1979, a farsighted report estimated for the first time that equilibrium climate sensitivity falls somewhere between 1.5℃ and 4.5℃. So if carbon dioxide concentrations doubled, global temperatures would eventually increase by somewhere in that range.

Read more: There are no time-travelling climatologists: why we use climate models

The width of this range is a problem. If equilibrium climate sensitivity lies at the low end of the range, climate change might be manageable with relatively relaxed national policies.

In contrast, a value near the high end would be catastrophic unless drastic action is taken to reduce emissions and draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Consequently, narrowing the equilibrium climate sensitivity range has been a key focus of climate science. While recent estimates haven’t really changed, climate scientists have learned a lot about how likely each outcome is.

For example, the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report estimated a minimum two-thirds chance that equilibrium climate sensitivity falls within the 1.5–4.5℃ range. This implies there’s a chance of up to one-third that equilibrium climate sensitivity is lower or, worryingly, much higher.

Recently, the potential for high climate sensitivities gained further attention after results from new climate models suggested values in excess of 5℃.

Our new assessment rules out low climate sensitivities, finding only a 5% chance that equilibrium climate sensitivity is below 2.3℃.

On the brighter side, we also find a low chance of it rising above 4.5℃. Constraining the precise probability of high equilibrium climate sensitivity range is difficult and depends to some extent on how the evidence is interpreted. Still, the alarming predictions of the new models appear unlikely.

We also find the chances of the world exceeding the 2℃ Paris Accord target by late this century are 17% under the lowest-emission scenario considered by the IPCC, 92% under a scenario that approximates current efforts, and 100% under the highest-emission scenario.

Why our study is different

The new assessment uses several strands of evidence. One is the recent, historical past since industrialisation, during which time temperatures have increased by about 1.1℃.

We compared this with knowledge about the natural drivers of climate over this period (such as slight changes in solar output and a few major volcanic eruptions), human-caused increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and changes to the land surface.

Second, the assessment uses data for temperature changes and the underpinning natural processes from ice ages and warm periods in pre-historic times.

And third, it uses physical laws and present-day observations to evaluate how the planet responds to change, for example by examining brief warming or cooling episodes.

Read more: Why 2℃ of global warming is much worse for Australia than 1.5℃

One conclusion is especially consistent between all lines of evidence. Unless the equilibrium climate sensitivity is larger than 2℃, we cannot explain either the warming we’ve already seen since industrialisation, the ice ages in Earth’s past, or certain aspects of how weather changes operate today.

This unequivocally demonstrates that relaxed efforts against carbon emissions will not avoid substantial warming.

This is not the final word

The new assessment is by no means the last word. It narrows the range, but we still don’t know exactly how hot it’s going to get.

Our assessment will also feed into the upcoming IPCC report, but the panellist will of course make an independent assessment. And further research may narrow the range more in the future.

While high sensitivities are unlikely, they cannot be completely excluded. But whether the temperature rise is moderate or high, the message is the same: drastic measures are needed to curb climate change.

Crucially, the new assessment clearly demonstrates that betting on low sensitivities and failing to implement drastic measures is risky to the point of irresponsibility.

– ref. The climate won’t warm as much as we feared – but it will warm more than we hoped – https://theconversation.com/the-climate-wont-warm-as-much-as-we-feared-but-it-will-warm-more-than-we-hoped-143175

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Mclaughlin, PhD Candidate, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle

What do bike paths and walk-friendly streets have to do with economic recovery from a pandemic-induced recession? How could removing a car parking space benefit a local business? Instead of considering such questions, building roads for cars is often seen as the obvious answer to “kick-start” the economy.

In this article, we explain how cycling and walking infrastructure is a better investment for recovery. Every kilometre walked or cycled has an economic benefit by reducing traffic congestion and vehicle operating costs, improving health and the environment, and saving on infrastructure spending. It’s estimated every dollar invested in cycling infrastructure may reap up to five dollars’ worth of benefits.

In Australia, however, walking and cycling only receive between 0.1% and 2% of transport budgets.

Read more: Cycling and walking are short-changed when it comes to transport funding in Australia

A sustained lack of investment is one reason only 5% of trips to work in Australia are by foot or bicycle. Yet the majority of city journeys are short enough to walk or cycle for most people.

With people now shunning public transport, our roads are becoming even more congested. In a win-win scenario, walk-friendly and bike-friendly design can improve driving conditions, because fewer vehicles clog the roads. So instead of just building roads, is now not the time also to invest in proper walking and cycling infrastructure?

Read more: Cars rule as coronavirus shakes up travel trends in our cities

Road building versus path building

Road building is typically depoliticised and so is widely seen as a legitimate way to stimulate economic growth. But simply building more roads may not reduce traffic or speed up journey times in the long term.

Road building leads to more traffic through induced car use and car dependence. If the default option for short journeys is driving, congestion ultimately gets worse as the population grows.

Australians make three-quarters of all trips to work by car. Most have no passengers.

Yet more than half of car journeys in cities are shorter than 5km. These trips would be well suited to walking and cycling. Safe and enticing walkable streets and cycling paths are key to inducing this swap.

Australia has already committed billions of dollars to road-building projects as well as community infrastructure to “grow out of the COVID-19 recession”. Ultimately, though, if we want less traffic, we need to invest more of this money in walkable streetscapes and safe separated bike paths.

This investment will increase walking and cycling, leading to the many benefits that flow from these behaviours. And enticing people out of their comfy cars for short journeys will result in fewer trips by car.

Read more: Do the sums: bicycle-friendly changes are good business

What transport budgets tell us

Comparing Australian budgets to other countries’ investment in active transport modes, we’re not doing well. Budgets would have to increase at least tenfold to achieve the United Nations recommendation that 20% of the transport budget be invested in “non-motorised transport”.

And many countries have moved rapidly to commit major investments to cycling and walking since COVID-19. For example, Ireland recently committed billions of euros to walking and cycling infrastructure, equivalent to 20% of its transport budget.

Considering our lack of investment, it’s easy to see why Australia is car-dependent. This is despite Australia having both great weather and wide roads to accommodate increased space for cycling and walking.

Read more: Physical distancing is here for a while – over 100 experts call for more safe walking and cycling space

An equity issue

Many Australians, for reasons of disadvantage, disability or age, may not have access to a car. The typical cost of owning a car is A$300 per week. Increasing spending on walking and cycling infrastructure will therefore improve equity by helping low-income earners and others who need inexpensive mobility.

Poor active transport infrastructure disproportionately disadvantages women. They cycle less than men and report a need for the safety of separated cycleways among other infrastructure.

Read more: Own a bike you never ride? We need to learn how to fail better at active transport

Poor infrastructure also limits children, older adults and people living with a disability from accessing the services they need. Many older Australians depend on public transport and on the quality of the walking environment around their homes and their most common destinations.

On average, three people a day die on Australian roads. Fewer car trips would help reduce the road toll. Similarly, increased investments in separated spaces for cycling and walking, as well as lower speeds on local streets, will reduce collisions between cars and bikes, as well as pedestrian-motorist conflicts.

COVID-19 provides a unique opportunity

COVID-19 has led to a boom in bicycle sales, reduced speed limits, wider footpaths, pop-up bicycle lanes, increased walking and new cyclists. Some of this has come about following calls for “Space For Health”.

Read more: We can’t let coronavirus kill our cities. Here’s how we can save urban life

We should “grow out of the COVID-19 recession” by building back better through investment to sustain this increase in walking and cycling. Our call to action is therefore:

While Australia’s cities have invested in walking and cycling during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s less than some other countries have invested. For example, Paris has accelerated the installation of 650km of cycleways by removing 72% of its on-street parking. Scotland is proposing to “Walk Back Better” from COVID-19.

It is good to see investment in Australian cities increasing. But now is the time to help kick-start our COVID-19 recovery by investing more in walking and cycling, and to reap the many benefits for the Australian community.

– ref. Cycling and walking can help drive Australia’s recovery – but not with less than 2% of transport budgets – https://theconversation.com/cycling-and-walking-can-help-drive-australias-recovery-but-not-with-less-than-2-of-transport-budgets-142176

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

Gone are the days when economic policy was adjusted once each year by the government in the budget and fine-tuned once each month at meetings of the Reserve Bank board.

The coroanvirus means we haven’t had a budget in more than a year. What the Reserve Bank has done to interest rates means its monthly board meetings matter less.

Governor Philip Lowe reaffirmed this week that monetary policy was on hold for the foreseeable future. The bank’s cash rate is as low as it can go (actually well below its 0.25% target) and the bank will only intervene in the bond market if it has to in order to keep bond rates low (which it doesn’t — the demand for even the rush of new bond issues is much bigger than the supply).

It has lobbed the ball to Frydenberg’s side of the court.

The only situation in which it might be brought back into play is if the government ran into funding problems, of which there is no sign whatsoever.

Holding the racket

The treasurer’s problem is sequencing, and we will are likely to get hints on how he’ll play it in the economic statement to be released today.

The first challenge was to limit the damage to the economy from the initial shock near the start of the year — to stop a vicious cycle of weaker spending, plummeting investment and soaring unemployment.

These self-reinforcing crises required a circuit breaker.

The emergency stimulus provided through Jobkeeper and Jobseeker has been a great success at putting a floor under incomes and demand.

The government ensured a basic income for people whose jobs were axed or at risk, kept hundreds of thousands attached to their jobs and bolstered household incomes despite a massive loss of activity. It gets a tick.

But these emergency measures will not get the economy going again once the crisis has eased.

Some argue they will stand in the way of a recovery if they keep people ensconced on benefits or attached to firms without futures.

A tricky transition

Phase two will require genuine fiscal stimulus: not a security blanket of the kind we have had, but a direct injection of money that will spark a new wave of investment and employment.

The trick is to sequence it properly.

The announced tapering of JobKeeper and JobSeeker will cut incomes and cut jobs as firms pay people less and realign staff levels in line with lower subsidies.

The government believes it has got it right, but it is forecasting an 80% drop in JobKeeper payments between September and the end of the year. It might not be a cliff but it is still a very steep slope that will need to be matched by a sharp recovery in economic activity.

It needs to be ready to revise the timetable as needed. Its current projections look like a best case scenario.

An unknowable stage two

The second stage will involve a good deal of spending on infrastructure. But, especially without certainty about immigration, it is hard to tell what will be needed.

The pandemic will have changed the way we work and play. It is not yet clear whether people take advantage of remote working and move out of congested cities. it is not yet clear what it will mean for digital health, digital education and digital shopping.

An even-harder stage three

The final stage will involve structural reforms; alterations to tax settings, regulations and industrial relations. Which is where it gets really hard. It will require not only sequencing but getting agreement across the political divide.

No civil society can base its economic and social structures on the mere desire for efficiency. Fairness and social justice matter just as much, and they can best be guaranteed if the measures are pulled together as a package with trade-offs that protect the values that matter to Australians.

That’ll be Frydenberg’s biggest challenge. The future doesn’t need to be rushed out this week, or in the October Budget, but in the months to come it’ll have to take shape.

– ref. Frydenberg’s three-stage economic recovery is abominably hard to get right – https://theconversation.com/frydenbergs-three-stage-economic-recovery-is-abominably-hard-to-get-right-142841

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Deakin University

Marcus Aurelius was no stranger to pandemics. For 16 years of his reign as Roman Emperor (161-180 CE), the empire was ravaged by the Antonine plague, which took five million lives.

It was during this period that the philosopher king penned a series of “notes to himself”. Unpublished during his lifetime and found untitled with his mortal remains, this work has come to be called his Meditations.

Described by philosopher and biblical scholar Ernst Renan as “a gospel for those who do not believe in the supernatural,” the Meditations is a series of fragments, aphorisms, arguments, and injunctions. They were written at different moments in the final years of Marcus’ life.

As its opening book makes clear, Marcus had been converted to the philosophy of Stoicism at a young age. Like its great ancient competitor Epicureanism, Stoicism was more than a set of doctrines explaining the world and human nature.

Stoicism also demanded from its students a transformed attitude to life. Many Stoic texts prescribe practical exercises to reshape how a person responds to adversity and prosperity, insults, illness, old age, and mortality.

This practical dimension to Stoic philosophy underlies its extraordinary global rebirth in the new millennium, even before COVID-19. So, what can Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations tell us today, in our time of pandemic?

Read more: Stoicism 5.0: The unlikely 21st century reboot of an ancient philosophy

A kind of lockdown

The Meditations comprises over 400 fragments, divided into 12 books. These disparate fragments are shaped by a few core philosophical principles. At the basis of these principles is the fundamental Stoic distinction expressed most clearly by the emancipated slave turned philosopher, Epictetus, whom Marcus greatly admired: that some things depend upon us and others do not.

In fact, of all the things in the world, we can only directly control what we do, think, choose, desire, and fear.

Everything else, including everything our society tells us that we need to “get a life” – riches, property, fame, promotions – depends on others and on fortune. It is here today and gone tomorrow, and it is usually distributed unfairly.

So to pin our dreams on achieving such things makes our happiness and peace of mind a highly uncertain prospect.

The Stoics propose that what they call “virtue” is the only good. And this virtue consists above all in knowing how best to respond to the things that befall us, rather than fretting about things we cannot control.

For Marcus, all those “goods” that markets trade, and our contemporary advertisements hawk, are “indifferent”. It is what you do with the pleasurable things, and with the difficulties you face, that shapes how happy or unhappy you will be.

It is almost as if Stoicism asks of us a kind of “virtual lockdown”, anticipating the actual one some of us are currently experiencing. The inability to go swimming, or to the football, gym, or movies, is for the Stoic regrettable. But it isn’t devastating. For s/he has weighed such preferable external things at their relative value.

“Wherever it is possible to live, it is possible to live well”, Marcus affirms.

None of us chose the pandemic. But each of us can strive to exercise courage in facing it, generosity in helping others, and resilience before the challenges it presents.

‘Only the present’

“Things do not touch the soul,” Marcus writes: “our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within”. And our opinions can, with hard work, be reformed. For they depend upon us.

This is the Stoic “good news”. Pandemics, bullies, and mischances really can rob us of our money, our jobs, our reputations. If they are malign enough, they affect our physical health. But they cannot change our minds. They cannot make us commit evil actions. They are powerless to even compel us to think resentful or hateful things about our fellows.

If it becomes clear, for instance, that someone has back-stabbed you, Marcus advises:

Pronounce no more to yourself, beyond what the appearances directly declare. It is said to you that someone has spoken ill of you. This alone is told you, and not that you are hurt by it.

If what your insulter has said is true, then change. If what they have said is false, it does not merit your being upset by it. If they have betrayed your trust, the shame and the fault lies with them.

“The best revenge,” Marcus counsels, “is not to become like the wrongdoer”.

Yes, we might reply, but what about truly enormous situations like COVID-19, or the end of a life-shaping relationship, or the illnesses of loved ones?

The Stoic principle of focusing only on what depends upon us operates here too. Worries carry our minds away into the future. Unless we watch ourselves, we can quickly find ourselves imagining the worst – the death of friends and family, a second great depression, the end of a career …

All of these things may come to pass. Or they may not. But, just now, we cannot immediately avert them. What depends on us right now, always, is what we think and do. And there is, for the Stoic, a comfort in this. As Marcus reminds himself:

Do not disturb yourself by thinking of your whole life. Don’t let your thoughts all at once embrace all the various troubles which may … befall you: but on every occasion ask yourself: What is there in this which is intolerable and past bearing? For you will be ashamed to confess. Next, remember that neither the future nor the past pains you, but only the present.

The parallels between this attitude and other spiritual traditions, notably Buddhism, are clear. For Marcus, the inner life of the wise person will be as serene as an open sky, even under fire.

He is content with two things: to accomplish the present action with justice, and to love the fate which has been allotted to him, here and now.

Does this mean then, that we should just accept the worst, rather than struggling to prevent it?

No: we each have a small range of things we can do and influence at any time. We can increase our understanding, start new initiatives, form or join groups, advocate and persuade others to the best of our powers.

But Marcus asks us also to recognise this: however great and urgent the causes we take up, any positive change will always consist of a lot of small decisions, each taken in the present moment.

And each of these decisions is more likely to be efficacious if we can calmly and clearly assess what is possible, rather than giving way to anxiety, fear, hatred or despair.

A soul’s secrets

Unlike much philosophy, the meditations of Marcus are mostly easy to grasp. The philosopher-emperor writes beautifully, with an honesty that can be affecting.

The difficulty lies in really applying these simple, often striking ideas to our lives.

It is (alas) somewhat easier to see why it is right to serenely bear misfortunes and forbear others’ flaws; to remember that “we are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids”; and not to fear death but embrace life in full awareness of one’s mortality, than to do these things in the heat of the moment.

This is why the traditional title, Meditations, is telling.

Readers who go to this classic expecting an ordered, linear philosophical argument will be quickly disillusioned. There are many repetitions and seeming hesitations. Many key Stoic ideas, and Marcus’ own preoccupations (for instance, with how to respond to schemers, and accept his own death) return multiple times. He reformulates his ideas in new ways, striving to find their most compelling expression.

Indeed the Meditations, as scholar Pierre Hadot has argued, need to be seen as an exemplar of a particular Stoic exercise, explicitly prescribed by Epictetus. This involved writing key precepts down as a means to later recall them and to deeply internalise them as philosophical aids to call upon at need.

All this makes the Meditations the singular classic that it is. Or, in Hadot’s moving words:

In world literature one finds lots of preachers, lesson-givers, and censors, who moralise to others with complacency, irony, cynicism, or bitterness; but it is extremely rare to find a person training himself to live and to think like a human being …

We feel “a highly particular emotion”, Hadot continues, as we witness Marcus trying, as we each do, “to live in complete consciousness and lucidity; to give each of our instants its fullest intensity; and to give meaning to our entire life”.

“Marcus is talking to himself”, Hadot observes, “but we get the impression that he is talking to each one of us”.

– ref. Guide to the Classics: how Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations can help us in a time of pandemic – https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-how-marcus-aurelius-meditations-can-help-us-in-a-time-of-pandemic-142659

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

The reintroduction of restrictions in Victoria in response to its COVID second wave will reduce national growth by $3.3 billion, or about 0.75% of GDP, in the September quarter, according to estimates in Thursday’s economic statement.

Despite Scott Morrison’s determined note of optimism, the statement will confirm a highly confronting economic future.

This has been compounded by the uncertainty about Victoria, which on Wednesday recorded a record 484 new cases and two more deaths. Premier Daniel Andrews said people were being slow in being tested and failing to isolate while waiting for the result.

Read more: Two weeks into Melbourne’s lockdown, why aren’t COVID-19 case numbers going down?

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said on Wednesday the economic statement would contain “eye watering numbers”. The deficit would be “very big”.

A combination of massive government spending and a big hit to revenue will produce the largest deficit since the Second World War.

Frydenberg said: “This is, without doubt, the biggest economic shock this country has ever faced.

“It’s affected not just the spending side … but also the revenue side has been badly hit because businesses are not turning the usual profits and therefore paying tax, and people are not in as many jobs as they were previously and therefore not paying as much tax.”

The statement will show company tax receipts expected to fall by more than $25 billion over two financial years, with declines of $13.2 billion in 2019-20 and $12.1 billion in 2020-21. Company tax receipts in 2018-19 were $93.7 billion.

Business investment is forecast to decline by 6% in 2019-20 and 12.5% in 2020-21. But mining investment is expected to be positive, for the first time in seven years – expected to increase by 4% in 2019-20 and 9.5% in 2020-21.

The government has already announced its continuation of JobKeeper, but scaled back, at an extra cost of $16.6 billion, and of the Coronavirus Supplement, at a reduced level, at a cost of $3.8 billion.

Read more: Victoria hits bleak record of 484 new cases, NSW at a critical point — if you feel sick, get tested then stay home

The economic statement will give forecasts for two years rather than the four year forward estimates. The latter will come in the October budget. The statement, which will cover the outlook for both the domestic and international economies, will show the expected peak in unemployment. This will be above the current rate of 7.4%. The government puts the real level of unemployment at 11.3% when adjustments are made for those on JobKeeper working zero hours and those who have left the workforce.

The government says the budget’s structural integrity has been maintained with more than 99% of its $289 billion COVID economic response being spent in 2019-20 and 2020-21. This means the spending won’t be “baked in” structurally, it says.

The fiscal policy measures are estimated to have kept down the unemployment rate by about five percentage points, preventing the loss of about 700,000 jobs, according to the government.

Deloitte’s Chris Richardson has predicted the deficit for 2019-20 could be up to $100 billion and for 2020-21 up to $200 billion.

Frydenberg, who comes from Melbourne, told 3AW that when in Canberra he was “confined to my office, other than when I’m going up and back to the Press Gallery. … I’m wearing a mask outside my office.”

– ref. Victorian COVID crisis to deliver $3.3 billion hit to nation’s growth in September quarter – https://theconversation.com/victorian-covid-crisis-to-deliver-3-3-billion-hit-to-nations-growth-in-september-quarter-143197

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

A group of Nationals has won a fight to prevent the government appealing against a court judgment finding Labor’s 2011 suspension of live cattle exports to Indonesia was unlawful.

Attorney-General Christian Porter had favoured an appeal because of fears the decision could set a precedent limiting ministerial power.

But after a strong campaign spearheaded by Nationals senators, cabinet decided against appealing.

Scott Morrison was key to the outcome, wanting to ensure that Nationals leader Michael McCormack, whose leadership has been fragile, did not face a revolt over the issue.

In a statement on Wednesday, Porter said that as Morrison had said, live cattle exporters had been treated “egregiously” by the Gillard government. “The Coalition government will not jeopardise the outcome they have won in this case,” he said.

Former resources minister Matt Canavan, an instigator of the Nationals’ push, said in response to the decision, “You bloody beauty. It’s a great outcome”.

In his statement, Porter made clear his deep concern about the legal judgement, saying the government disagreed with some of the principles applied by the court.

“The court’s reasoning in this matter represents a departure from existing legal principles governing both the validity of delegated legislation and the tort of misfeasance in public office.

“The government reserves its right to press its view of the relevant legal principles if an appropriate case arises in the future,” he said.

But “while the decision raises some important issues of legal principle, they are far outweighed by the very real pain and hurt that the live export ban inflicted on our cattle industry”.

A letter signed by the party’s Senate leader, Bridget McKenzie, and other Nationals senators, had asked Porter to take into account not just the law but also “the hurt and pain a previous commonwealth government’s decision inflicted on the hard-working men and women of our live cattle industry.”

– ref. Noisy Nationals score a win over Attorney-General Christian Porter on court appeal – https://theconversation.com/noisy-nationals-score-a-win-over-attorney-general-christian-porter-on-court-appeal-143212

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

Geoff Kitney fell into a career in journalism, and rose from reporting the local footy in Western Australia to covering many of federal politics’s biggest stories and serving as a foreign correspondent based in Berlin and London.

Arriving at parliament house in 1975, Kitney reported on the dramatic Dismissal. Later, the relative decorum of the Canberra press gallery contrasted with the danger and adventure of war reporting.

During the Kosovo war, he was sent to Belgrade, travelling there in a bus with a crowd of Serbians.

“It was very, very strange bus trip because we’d passed houses with MiG fighters parked in the driveways … [Slobodan Milošević] was trying to stop NATO destroying his airforce. So he put the MiG fighters next to people’s houses so that they wouldn’t hit them, which meant that he couldn’t use them, but at least he still had them.”

In Kitney’s new book, Beyond the Newsroom, based around his decades of reporting and analysis, he also has some sharp observations about what’s happened to the media.

“Advertising started shifting to social media. Newspaper budgets got tighter and tighter. Staff started being cut. We’ve now had years of redundancies.”

“We had specialist reporters covering all sorts of issues, digging down, getting out into the bureaucracy … finding what’s really going on. Now …there aren’t enough people to do that.”

“And the pressure, for Twitter for example, is to be noticed. And it seems to me that people think the best way to get noticed, and probably this is true, is to have strong opinions that people react to. And so opinion becomes more important than actual information.”

Additional audio

A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Geoff Kitney on a life in journalism and the contemporary media landscape – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-geoff-kitney-on-a-life-in-journalism-and-the-contemporary-media-landscape-143202

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vasso Apostolopoulos, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Research Partnerships, Victoria University

Fourteen days after Melbourne was put back into lockdown, the latest daily tally of 484 new cases in Victoria makes for dispiriting reading. Why have the numbers stubbornly refused to go down, despite Melburnians being confined to their homes for all but non-essential trips?

Read more: Victoria hits bleak record of 484 new cases, NSW at a critical point — if you feel sick, get tested then stay home

The first lockdown, imposed nationwide in March and April, was largely successful in containing the coronavirus. However, the subsequent relaxing of restrictions, a lack of adherence to social distancing and a breach in hotel quarantine led to a second wave of infections in Melbourne. Lockdown conditions were reintroduced on July 9 after the daily case count rose to 191.

Addressing the media today, Premier Daniel Andrews said a “dramatic improvement” was needed in aspects of the public’s behaviour, pointing the finger specifically at people who had not self-isolated between developing symptoms and getting a COVID-19 test.

Melbourne’s second lockdown – the story so far

After a brief lockdown of specific postcodes beginning on July 1, the whole of metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire were put into a second lockdown from July 9, for a minimum of six weeks, in a bid to suppress the continued high rates of new cases.

The “stage 3” restrictions, covering roughly 5 million residents, require people to stay at home unless shopping for food and supplies, travelling for care and caregiving, exercising, or commuting to study or work if they can’t be done from home.

From midnight tonight, face covering is also mandatory when outside the home.

Read more: A $200 fine for not wearing a mask is fair, as long as free masks go to those in need

Why haven’t case numbers dropped?

These lockdown measures have now been in place for 14 days – the upper limit of the coronavirus’s incubation period in most cases. So why haven’t the case numbers tapered off? There are a few reasons.

First, this second wave has a much larger proportion of cases that have arisen via community transmission with currently almost half of all local cases having an unknown contact or still being under investigation. These are harder to control because the source of infection is unknown, which makes the process of testing, tracing and isolating known contacts of confirmed cases harder.

While in the first two weeks we will see a decline or at least stabilisation of the numbers of cases in each known cluster, those untraced contacts and asymptomatic individuals may continue to spread the virus and start up new clusters.

Second, the current restrictions still allow significant movement of people between suburbs and to work. Face-to-face teaching in schools is still permitted, and there is no limit on the number of people in supermarkets and shopping centres.

Third, the virus has mutated and the new mutated form spreads much faster. This could be a factor in this second wave, although this is far from certain.

Fourth, some people still may not grasp the full seriousness of the situation and the need to help stop the spread – perhaps having been persuaded by misinformation on social media.

Fifth, each renewed measure of restriction increases the fatigue in the population, meaning more people may struggle to stick to the guidelines.

Read more: Coronavirus spike: why getting people to follow restrictions is harder the second time around

Finally, new evidence suggests COVID-19 is more severe in colder months than warmer ones, and that dry indoor air may encourage the spread of the disease. Again, it’s not clear how strong a factor this is in Melbourne.

For these reasons, we believe the current interventions are not sufficient. However, the impact of the added facial covering requirement will not be immediately apparent, and is hard to distinguish when combined with all the other measures.

What further measures are available?

Melbourne temporarily imposed a stage 4 lockdown of nine public housing blocks, under which residents were not allowed to leave, and had to rely on deliveries of food and medicines.

Similarly, New Zealand’s level 4 lockdown in March and April included strict stay-at-home requirements and the closure of all non-essential businesses and educational facilities. These strict measures were lifted on April 27, and the government declared COVID-19 eliminated from New Zealand on June 8.

Read more: New Zealand hits zero active coronavirus cases. Here are 5 measures to keep it that way

Arguing for Melbourne to achieve elimination, researchers led by Tony Blakely of the University of Melbourne recently published a list of recommendations to increase restrictions during the city’s current six-week lockdown. Suggested measures include:

• continue with the present restrictions and hygiene advice

• close all schools

• tighten the definition of essential shops that can remain open.

• tighten the definition of essential workers and essential businesses

• restrict travel only to essential businesses

• require correct mask-wearing

• further strengthen testing and contact tracing

• extend the suspension of international arrivals into Victorian quarantine.

These enhanced measures should ideally stay in effect for at least 4-6 weeks, to allow cases to fall to almost zero and remain at that level for at least two weeks.

Besides reducing infections, hospitalisations and deaths, this approach could also foster a greater sense of safety among the community, potentially allowing a faster economic recovery once restrictions are lifted.

Currently Australia is pursuing a suppression strategy which heavily relies on the compliance of the population with the restrictions imposed. This strategy allows for low levels of cases in the community, which in turn brings a continued risk of renewed outbreaks.

The prospect of ongoing, repeated lockdowns would take a toll not only on the economy but also on the mental and physical health of the population.

What are the criteria for ending or renewing a lockdown?

There are no hard-and-fast rules, so ultimately this is a question of political judgement. In May, the federal government published a three-step roadmap to easing restrictions, but left the precise criteria and timelines to the discretion of state and territory leaders.

Similarly, the World Health Organisation’s list of key considerations for lifting restrictions are broad and generic. For instance, countries must ensure coronavirus transmission is “controlled”, but there is no formal definition of this.

In Germany, which is not pursuing an elimination strategy, the threshold for imposing a new lockdown is set at 50 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants accumulated over seven days. However, for an elimination strategy this threshold would need to be set at zero new cases for two weeks, as was done in New Zealand.

Read more: Eradication, elimination, suppression: let’s understand what they mean before debating Australia’s course

What is clear is that Melbourne’s six-week lockdown is not having the desired effect so far. While it may be painful in the short term, we think the best strategy will be to impose even stricter measures for the next six weeks in a bid to eliminate COVID-19.

– ref. Two weeks into Melbourne’s lockdown, why aren’t COVID-19 case numbers going down? – https://theconversation.com/two-weeks-into-melbournes-lockdown-why-arent-covid-19-case-numbers-going-down-142990

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

Federal parliament’s Speaker Tony Smith and Senate President Scott Ryan have agreed to chair a proposed bipartisan working group on how parliament can meet safely during the pandemic.

Labor put forward the working group plan after Scott Morrison cancelled the two-week sitting that was due to start August 4.

The group would comprise the leader of the house and manager of opposition business and their Senate counterparts. The ALP suggested including the chief federal and ACT medical officers but Smith and Ryan said they should be called on as needed.

The group would not decide whether the next sitting, scheduled to begin August 24, goes ahead. The government determines the House sittings, and the Senate (where the government is in a minority) is in charge of its own meetings.

Smith and Ryan said in a letter to Labor: “At the outset, we believe the six parliamentarians should receive a joint briefing from the Commonwealth and ACT Chief Medical Officers regarding the discussions to date, and risks that need to be mitigated.

“Following this briefing, we will be in possession of all relevant facts, and in a position to discuss specific options.

“We will call upon the resources of the chamber departments and the Department of Parliamentary Services as necessary to address issues raised.”

The presiding officers pointed out they had previously engaged with the opposition about the operation of parliament during COVID.

– ref. Speaker and Senate president agree to chair working group on pandemic-safe parliament – https://theconversation.com/speaker-and-senate-president-agree-to-chair-working-group-on-pandemic-safe-parliament-143098

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Debra Stokes, Lecturer in Environmental Science, Southern Cross University

A teenager in New South Wales recently died after a fatal shark bite, adding to four other unprovoked shark-related deaths this year. These tragic events send shockwaves through the community and re-ignite our fear of sharks.

They also fuel the debate around the best way to keep people safe in the water while minimising impacts on marine wildlife. This was the aim of a five-year trial of shark-mitigation technology – the Shark Management Strategy – which finished recently.

The NSW government created this initiative in response to an unprecedented spike in shark bites in 2015, particularly on the north coast of NSW.

Among the various technology trials, drones were investigated for their potential to scan the surf for sharks and keep beach-goers safe. Increasingly, lifeguards are now operating drones. And our recent survey found this idea has public support, as it not only protects humans but helps keep sharks safe too.

Lethal strategies are still in play, but not supported

The media has in the past sensationalised calls for shark culling, but public support has waned. Yet the use of lethal strategies at various sections of the NSW and Queensland coastlines is ongoing.

Read more: Tide turned: surveys show the public has lost its appetite for shark culls

For example, the shark netting program in NSW includes 51 beaches between Newcastle and Wollongong. In Queensland, more than 26 shark nets and 350 drumlines are stationed between the Gold Coast and Cairns.

Drumlines catch (and kill) sharks using baited shark hooks suspended from large plastic floats, whereas shark nets aim to catch and entangle passing sharks. Shark nets also often accidentally catch – and kill – other marine wildlife, such as rays, turtles and dolphins.

Shark nets were among the trials in the NSW Shark Management Strategy. But community support was low as they were considered ineffective, outdated and destructive.

Low-impact technology

The program predominately tested and promoted emerging technologies considered non-lethal. Alongside drones, this included SMART (non-lethal) drumlines, helicopter surveillance, shark listening stations, shark barriers, buoys that detect sharks through their movement patterns, and personal shark deterrent devices that people can add to their surfboards or other gear.

Our recent research found the NSW beach community mostly supported the use of drones.

Unlike other shark mitigation technologies, drones require little infrastructure. They can also provide other beach safety services, such as monitoring rips and assisting with search and rescue.

So far, shark surveillance drones have operated on over 18 beaches, in collaboration with NSW Surf Life Saving.

Lifeguards manually fly drones throughout the day within their line-of-sight, and scan the live-streamed video feed for sharks. If they spot a shark, the pilots decide whether it threatens public safety, and whether sounding the drone’s alarm and evacuating the people from the water is required.

Read more: Shark nets and culls don’t necessarily make Australian beaches safer

During the trials involving Surf Life Saving NSW between October 2018 and April 2019, 350 sharks were spotted, which led to 48 beach evacuations.

Fitting drones with new tech

Drones can also be further developed as new technology becomes available, such as customised sensors to improve detection reliability.

And the latest scientific drone trial, which finished at the end of the Easter school holidays this year, saw artificial intelligence technology tested on five beaches to improve shark detection rates and species identification.

Species identification is important because not all sharks are considered potentially dangerous to swimmers and surfers. Misidentification or uncertainty can also result in unnecessary beach closures and disruptions, which can reinforce our fears around sharks. AI could assist lifeguards with drone surveillance as early as next summer.

Backed by beach-goers

Of all the shark safety measures, drones were by far the most preferred option with NSW beach communities. The next most popular choice was “other aerial surveillance”.

We surveyed 439 people, and found 88% either support or strongly support the use of drones as a shark-bite mitigation measure. Many said they consider it an excellent, inexpensive tool for the safety of people and sharks.

However, 22% of respondents said they either weren’t sure or didn’t want to see drones on their beaches. Some had privacy concerns, and others (less than 10%) had issues around drone operational conduct and its ability to really “see” sharks. This illustrates the importance for drone surveillance operations to be transparent and particularly sensitive to privacy issues.

Interestingly, one in five people seemed more willing to accept personal risk when entering the ocean, selecting public education, “nothing” or the use of personal shark deterrents as their preferred options.

The best available approach

In facing an uncertain economic future and a growing ecological emergency, strategies to boost beach safety in NSW must be cost-effective, ecologically benign and acceptable to the beach community.

However, no strategy can claim to be 100% effective for keeping beach-goers safe from sharks. Drones too have their limitations. For example, the ability to see through the water is limited when its turbid or in low light.

Still, drones appear to provide the best available and most publicly acceptable approach as the NSW government moves beyond its five-year shark management program.

Read more: Not just nets: how to stop shark attacks without killing sharks

For its long-term deployment, in NSW or elsewhere, we need continued community education, more research into improving detection and identification tools, and strong guidance and training for drone operators.

With this in place, drones can be a valuable asset to add to the beach-safety toolkit throughout Australia, and provide increasing safety from sharks with minimal impact.

– ref. Lifeguards with drones keep us (and sharks) safe, and beach-goers agree – https://theconversation.com/lifeguards-with-drones-keep-us-and-sharks-safe-and-beach-goers-agree-142721

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nina Papalia, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science, Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health (Forensicare), Swinburne University of Technology

As Australia’s landmark Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and other cases have shown, the impact of child sexual abuse is devastating.

Adverse mental health outcomes are the most recognised and researched effects of abuse. These can include post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and feelings of guilt, shame, anger and low self-esteem.

Re-victimisation, or the likelihood that child sexual abuse survivors will experience further sexual abuse later in life, is a particularly tragic consequence that is rarely mentioned or considered.

To prevent this cycle of victimisation, we must understand the scope of the links between child sex abuse and re-victimisation later in life, why it exists and which survivors are most vulnerable. Our research aimed to answer some of these questions.

Read more: What parents need to know about the signs of child sexual abuse

What we already know and what our research did

Previous studies have confirmed a strong relationship between child sexual abuse and adult sexual re-victimisation. A 2017 review of research on these links found that about half of child survivors have been sexually victimised later in life.

Previous studies, however, have been limited since they typically:

• ask adults to recall their experiences of child sexual abuse, which many find difficult to remember accurately or to disclose

• have asked people to recall experiences of both abuse and re-victimisation at the same time, which doesn’t provide a picture of these relationships over time

• consider only female survivors, meaning we know little about re-victimisation in men who have been abused as children

• do not explore factors that make re-victimisation more or less likely to occur.

We attempted to remedy these limitations in our research by re-analysing data of 2,759 Australian boys and girls who were medically confirmed to have been sexually abused between 1964 and 1995. The files were drawn from children examined by independent medical practitioners from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine as part of legal investigations.

To determine whether they had been re-victimised later in life, we then traced their contacts with police as victims of crimes as adults (to an average age of 35) – and considered the lifetime frequency and types of crimes they were victims of.

We compared these findings to a sample from the general population not known to have been sexually abused in childhood. This is what we found:

Re-victimisation is not limited to sexual offences or just women

Overall, most (64%) child sexual abuse survivors in our study were not re-victimised later in life. This percentage was consistent with the control group (67% were not victims of crimes).

Unfortunately, though, child sexual abuse survivors were much more likely than those in the control group to be re-victimised in what are considered medium and high harm personal injury crimes.

For instance, they were five times more likely to have been victims of sexual assault later in life, twice as likely to be victims of physical assault, four times as likely to be threatened with violence and twice as likely to be stalked.

We also found the increased risk of re-victimisation was not just experienced by women. For example, male survivors of child sex abuse were seven times more likely to be the victims of a further sexual assault than the men in the control group.

Read more: Be careful with photos, talk about sex: how to protect your kids from online sexual abuse

Why child sex abuse survivors are more vulnerable

The reasons why child sexual abuse is linked to re-victimisation are not well known. Nor are the factors that determine which survivors are more vulnerable to crimes later in life.

Prevailing theories suggest re-victimisation is not the result of any one factor. Rather, it is the combination of different factors in survivors’ lives – some having to do with personal characteristics and experiences, others having to do with their environments.

We investigated the role of certain personal factors in whether child sex survivors were re-victimised later in life.

Specifically, we studied the impact of three things: gender, the characteristics of the child sex abuse (such as the age when it occurred, type, frequency), and different types of mental illness. Three overall patterns emerged:

First, female survivors were more likely than male survivors to experience sexual re-victimisation. In contrast, male survivors were at greater risk for being the victims of non-sexual violent crimes and non-violent crimes, such as property crimes.

Second, the age when child sexual abuse occurred played a significant role in predicting later re-victimisation. Survivors who were younger than 12 when they were abused were more likely to be the victims of both sexual and violent crimes later in life.

Third, and perhaps most concerning, child sex abuse survivors who developed mental illness were more vulnerable to re-victimisation.

How mental illness factors into re-victimisation

The links between mental illness and re-victimisation, however, were complex.

Child sex abuse survivors who developed personality disorders or anxiety disorders, for example, were roughly twice as likely to be victims of all types of crimes as adults compared to survivors who did not develop these conditions.

Other mental illnesses were linked to some forms of re-victimisation, but not others. Post-traumatic stress disorders, for example, were linked with higher rates of sexual re-victimisation. Mood disorders were linked to violent re-victimisation.

And survivors who developed substance abuse issues were more likely to become victims of both violent and non-violent crimes later in life.

There are at least two explanations for these links.

First, symptoms of mental illness may impair a survivor’s capacity to recognise and respond to risky situations and people. Offenders are also more likely to target child sex abuse survivors because of their vulnerability.

Second, survivors who suffer re-victimisation later in life may be more prone to serious mental health problems due to the cumulative impacts of repeat abuse. That is, mental illness may be a consequence of, not a contributor to, this continuous cycle of abuse.

The truth is that both explanations likely contribute to the relationship between mental illness and re-victimisation.

Read more: What schools can do to reduce the risk that teachers and other educators will sexually abuse children

Meeting the needs of survivors

It is difficult to establish a direct causal link between child sexual abuse and re-victimisation over one’s lifespan. But it’s clear that for some survivors, victimisation is an ongoing problem rather than just an isolated event.

Victoria’s Royal Commission into the Mental Health System has highlighted the barriers trauma survivors experience in accessing appropriate support services. The strong links we found between mental illness and re-victimisation support further integration of mental health and victim services.

More research into why child sexual abuse is linked with re-victimisation – and which survivors are most at risk – may help to better focus prevention and treatment efforts.

A final word about resilience

Despite the odds, most abuse survivors are not re-victimised later in life, according to our study. However, we understand that many people who are victims of child sex abuse – likely including some in our control group – do not report these crimes. As such, our estimates of re-victimisation are doubtless conservative.

We mustn’t lose sight of the strength and resilience shown by survivors in the face of adversity. Understanding how this process of resilience occurs may provide useful insights about how to support other survivors to lead positive and fulfilling lives – without being re-victimised.

More resources for parents are available via Bravehearts and at esafety.gov.au.

If you believe your child is the victim of grooming or exploitation, or you come across exploitation material, you can report it via ThinkuKnow or contact your local police.

If you are a child, teen or young adult who needs help and support, call the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

If you are an adult who experienced abuse as a child, call the Blue Knot Helpline on 1300 657 380 or visit their website.

– ref. Child sex abuse survivors are five times more likely to be the victims of sexual assault later in life – https://theconversation.com/child-sex-abuse-survivors-are-five-times-more-likely-to-be-the-victims-of-sexual-assault-later-in-life-142384

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mitch Goodwin, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne

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

My ten-year marriage came to an end on the cusp of lockdown. It was amicable – we were “saving the friendship”, we were “taking care of each other” – but it was gut wrenching all the same. We have a beautiful 8-year-old daughter, and little did I know back in early March, but we were about to spend 12 long weeks apart. You see, the in-laws have a property in Portland on the far-flung south west coast of Victoria. Perfect refuge from the plague.

And so, after much discussion, it was decided. They bundled up and got outta Dodge and I moved into one of those concrete cubes in the sky on the outer rim of the city.

I’m also one of your “vulnerable community members”. Not just because I’m an arts academic, but because I have a co-morbidity.

Back in 2006, I was doing a lecturing stint in the UK when I was struck down by an acute case of pneumonia. I spent 13 days in ICU in a Birmingham hospice with an abscess the size of a tennis ball in the burrows of my left lung. They killed off the infection and atomised the Slazenger with a fierce dose of drip-fed antibiotics. All I remember was the endless coughing of men – they were all men – many decades my senior, and the horrid stench of ammonia and piss.

I fully recovered and got on with it. But complications occurred in 2012 when the scar tissue from the abscess ruptured and became septic. I was on research in New York, coughing up rancid blood with a stench akin to yesterday’s meat. Two weeks later I had a chunk of lung removed at the Royal Melbourne. Doctors assured me I would have a full and unencumbered life but to this day I require an annual cocktail of jabs to ward off the nastiest of flu variants.

Enter COVID-19.

Read more: Art for trying times: reading Richard Ford on a world undone by calamity

Dylan, wicked jester

If we are going to tip our hat to cultural markers for 2020, this article should be about Bob Dylan. Plague, pestilence, the idiocy of men, playing the minutia of life against some ancient stereoscopic vista. That’s his bag. Dylan, the wicked jester of mortality and love.

His 17-minute song Murder Most Foul, which appeared as if by magic during the depths of Lockdown 1.0, is a genius work of reflexive historical authorship. It spoke perfectly to the perverse conspiracies of our times but also proffered a way out through art and muse. While any Dylan scholar might well cite the lilting dread of Not Dark Yet as perhaps COVID-19’s most ominous theme songs.

But Dylan sets heavy in the bones, catches you second guessing things; as with all good art, he makes you gulp hard. Like a mad uncle he weasels into your thoughts, skipping about in his pointy leather boots; that joker’s grin. I just can’t do that now. I’m too close to the edge.

What I need now is space. Sometimes you just need some room to fill in your own maudlin lyric. For me, right now, it feels necessary to tap out my own eulogy to the “time before”.

Enter Belfast boy, David Holmes. DJ, band leader, producer.

Soundtrack to an alternative present

The setting is a somewhat obscure science fiction film from 2003 by the prolific Michael Winterbottom. Code 46 is one of those uncanny dystopias – a familiar not-too-distant future – a dream perhaps of an alternative present. Its design consists of a mash-up of locations, from Shanghai to Dubai to Rajasthan, slithers of silver reaching into the sky, interiors framed by neon and chrome, dusty cars sprinting across the savanna.

I won’t go into the plot machinations: themes of surveillance, statelessness and bio-ethics abound. Suffice to say that Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton are perfectly cast in a story that could be the Lost in Translation of genetic engineering.

My key takeaway however is the soundtrack.

On the eighth floor, in my concrete cube, I have been listening to plenty of electronica and lo-fi lately – Tycho, Boards of Canada, Eno, Aphex Twin – they’re all in my COVID well-being playlist, Calm the f..k down.

It is Holmes’ work on Code 46 (under the moniker the Free Association) that resonates the most. It pings off the blank, bleach-white walls and adds a certain shimmer to the quiet brooding of the city beyond.

From the opening moments it is both mournful and redemptive. The rhythmic elements are compulsive, evoking escapist thoughts, while mercifully pushing others away. Like the looping hours of quarantine, memories appear, fade and repeat. At once you are riding the sustained echo of a synth progression and then rescued by a melodic chime or a spiky guitar line.

Oh, how I need that room to breathe. To go there and just be, without tracing the progression or measuring the gaps.

David Holmes has form. His sophomore album from 1997, Let’s Get Killed, with its in-your-face field recordings from the streets and clubs of New York city, mixed with crack instrumentation and frenetic break beats is an absolute classic of the genre.

His bold, brash, instrumental remix of U2’s Beautiful Day and his reworking of Rodriguez’s Sugarman are indicative of his fearless alchemy at the mixing desk.

But Code 46 is that rare compositional work of ambient luminosity. Perhaps I am sentimental, knowing that it tracks the seductive themes of state conspiracy and forbidden love.

And it might be playing to my weaknesses during a time when there is no time. Days seeping into nights like the slow fade of celluloid. A car cuts a course across the desert, the door flings open, a stranger awaits. Sometimes you just have to get in.

– ref. Turning to the Code 46 soundtrack: bearing solitude in a time of sickness – https://theconversation.com/turning-to-the-code-46-soundtrack-bearing-solitude-in-a-time-of-sickness-142711

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Lockwood, Associate Professor Implementation Science, University of Adelaide

After midnight tonight, wearing face masks will be mandatory for people in Melbourne and Mitchell Shire when they leave home. It’s also recommended in New South Wales when physical distancing isn’t possible.

This means many Australians will be wearing a face mask for the first time.

Yes, wearing a mask can be uncomfortable or frustrating, especially if you’re not used to it. People who wear glasses, those anxious about being able to breathe properly, or who wear masks for extended periods of time face particular challenges.

But health workers, who have long used face masks as part of their everyday work, have developed a number of useful workarounds we’d like to share.

Read more: Victorians, and anyone else at risk, should now be wearing face masks. Here’s how to make one

How do I stop my glasses fogging up?

For people with glasses, wearing a mask can lead to their lenses fogging, reducing their vision. As you breathe out, your warm breath shoots upwards out the top of the mask. When it hits the colder lens, it cools down, forming condensation, or fogging.

Having to keep on taking off your glasses to wipe them clear, and putting them back on again, is an infection risk. So preventing or minimising fogging is the key. Here are some tips:

1. Soap and water — wash your glasses with soap and water (such as regular washing up liquid), then dry them with a microfibre cloth. This type of cloth typically comes free with each pair of glasses. You can also buy cheap microfibre cloths from most optometrists. Facial tissues may leave lint, which attracts moisture to the lenses. Soap reduces surface tension, preventing fog from sticking to the lenses.

2. Shaving foam — apply a thin layer of shaving cream to the inside of your glasses, then gently wipe it off. The residual shaving cream will protect the lenses from misting up.

3. De-misting spray — you can use a commercial de-misting spray that dries clear. But make sure this is compatible with your lens type or existing coatings on your lens. You can buy demisting spray online or from your optometrist.

4. Close the gap on surgical masks — mould the nose bridge at the top of your surgical mask to your face to reduce the gap that allows warm moist air up to the glasses.

5. Twist ties and pipe cleaners — if you make your own cloth mask, add a twist tie (for instance, from a loaf of bread) or pipe cleaner to the top seam of your homemade mask and mould that to your nose for the same effect.

6. Tape — some health professionals apply a strip of tape that’s specially designed for use on skin to the top edge of the mask to close the gap. You can buy a roll online or at the pharmacy.

7. Damp tissue — slightly moistening a tissue, folding it and placing it under the top edge of the mask also does the trick.

8. Nylon stocking — Victoria’s health department says you can also get a snug fit across the cheeks and bridge of the nose by wearing a layer of nylon stocking over a face mask.

Sadly, there is no magic trick, such as putting the mask or glasses on first that will stop fogging. Improving the fit around the curve of the nose and cheeks is the best approach.

I feel anxious about wearing a mask. What can I do?

Putting on a mask may make you feel anxious or you may find it hard to breathe normally, especially if you’re new to wearing a mask.

Fortunately, the World Health Organisation and others say there is no evidence a face mask will cause either a drop in blood oxygen or an increase in blood carbon dioxide levels for normal everyday activities.

If you do feel anxious about wearing a mask, here are some tips:

9. Practise at home — take a few minutes before leaving the house to get used to the feel of wearing a mask. Slow your breathing, breathe gently, with a slower, longer inhale and exhale while focusing on the fact that air is getting to your lungs, and safely out again.

10. Try another mask — if you still feel breathing is difficult, try a different mask, use a commercially available design, or use different materials in your next home mask project.

Read more: Which face mask should I wear?

What can I do to stop my ears hurting?

Once you have been wearing a face mask for several hours, you may notice discomfort around the ears as the ear loops can chafe the skin. Here’s what you can do:

11. Wear a headband with buttons… — one solution is to wear a headband with two buttons sewn onto it. Sew the buttons so they sit behind the ears. Rather than looping the mask around your ears, loop it around the buttons instead. This takes the pressure off the skin, increases comfort and helps you keep the mask on longer.

12. …or a paper clip — unfold two paper clips and wrap them around a headband, again positioning them behind the ears. Leave enough paperclip exposed to hook your earloops over, then press down to clamp down the loops in place.

13. 3D printing — freely available 3D printer templates allow you to print your own ear shields.

It’s worth getting this right

It may take a few attempts to get used to wearing a mask. But with a bit of trial and error, your glasses should remain fog-free, your ears comfortable and any anxiety about wearing a mask should reduce.

Wearing a mask in public is another thing we can do to help keep ourselves and the community safe, alongside social distancing and hand hygiene.

Read more: ‘Kissing can be dangerous’: how old advice for TB seems strangely familiar today

– ref. 13 insider tips on how to wear a mask without your glasses fogging up, getting short of breath or your ears hurting – https://theconversation.com/13-insider-tips-on-how-to-wear-a-mask-without-your-glasses-fogging-up-getting-short-of-breath-or-your-ears-hurting-143001

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Household Finances, Grattan Institute

At A$1,500 a fortnight, JobKeeper has been nothing but a help to the people on it.

The rules required those who had previously been paid more than JobKeeper to stay on their old wage, with the rest topped up by their employer. Those who had previously been paid less (one quarter of them) got a pay rise.

It’ll be less rewarding from the end of September. That’s when it’ll fall to $1,200 per fortnight for people who had previously been working 20 hours or more hours per week, and $750 per fortnight for people who had previously been working less than that.

Read more: Bowing out gracefully: how they’ll wind down and better target JobKeeper

At the same time, the temporary coronavirus supplement paid to Australians on JobSeeker and other benefits will fall from $550 a fortnight to just $250.

Those receiving only the full-time JobKeeper rate can expect their incomes to fall by 20%. Those on the part-time rate can expect their income to halve.

But the good news is that at least some will be able to top up their incomes by applying for JobSeeker.

JobKeeper and JobSeeker

Many will be able to apply to recieve both.

They will need to satisfy the assets test for JobSeeker, which is being re-imposed from September 25. It will deny JobSeeker to single homeowners with assets of more than $268,000 in addition to their home, and to single non-home owners with assets of more than $482,500.

They would also need to wait for a reimposed liquid assets waiting period of between one and 13 weeks, depending how much money they have in their bank accounts.

Their partners would need to earn less than $3,068 a fortnight, or roughly $80,000 a year.

And they will be required to make at least one phone or online appointment per week with an employment services provider.

Up to $554 on top of JobKeeper

Our calculations suggest that under the new rules from late September, such a person on the part-time JobKeeper rate of $750 a fortnight should be able to claim up to an extra $554 in JobSeeker – taking their total income to $1,304 per fortnight – only $196 per fortnight less than they got when JobKeeper was $1,500 per fortnight.

It gets better. Even people getting the new lower full-time JobKeeper rate of $1,200 per fortnight will be able to get some JobSeeker if they fit through the hoops.

Our calculations suggest they will be eligible for up to $284 per fortnight JobSeeker top-up, taking their total income to $1,484 for fortnight, only $16 per fortnight less than they are receiving now.

It gets better still. If they pass through the hoops, they will also become eligible for other benefits such as a Commonwealth Health Care Card, Family Tax Benefit part A if they have kids, and rent assistance if renting.

The treasury believes 245,000 Australians will be on both JobKeeper and JobSeeker by the end of the year.

You’ll have to apply

One of the virtues of the original JobKeeper was that, from the point of view of the recipient, it was automatic. Once their employer decided to apply for it, there was nothing else they needed to do.

As JobKeeper is phased down and JobSeeker returns to its traditional role of supporting Australians on low incomes, there will be a lot more they need to do.

Some won’t bother, and some won’t succeed, but at least until the end of the year it’ll be possible for some Australians on JobKeeper to get more or less what they were getting before.

It’s less good for those pushed out of work

It’s worth sparing a thought for those that will lose their jobs as JobKeeper winds down.

In October, employers wanting to stay on JobKeeper will have to be retested and approved, and in January retested and approved again.

Read more: JobSeeker supplement cut from $550 to $250 a fortnight after September

Many will miss out. Retesting is expected to reduce the number of workers on JobKeeper by 60% over the last three months of this year and by a further ten percentage points over the first three months of next year.

If those whose lose JobKeeper also lose their jobs — and many will — they’ll have to make do with the much lower JobSeeker payment of about $825 a fortnight, not much more than half of the $1,500 a fortnight they had.

Treasury expects 1.5 million people to be on JobSeeker by the end of the year.

It expects some 245,000 to recieve both JobSeeker and JobKeeper. That will leave around 1.25 million to get by on the lower JobSeeker alone.

– ref. How to get both JobKeeper and JobSeeker – https://theconversation.com/how-to-get-both-jobkeeper-and-jobseeker-143109

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

Too many people are going out while experiencing COVID-19 symptoms or while awaiting test results, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said on Wednesday, after the state hit a bleak new record of 484 new cases. The state’s previous worst daily case number was 428 last Friday.

It’s always a shock to see a new record number, and certainly these numbers are bigger than we would have hoped. While it’s a psychological blow, it’s not cause for panic. Thankfully, we are not seeing a doubling or tripling of case numbers, which really would ring alarm bells.

Read more: A $200 fine for not wearing a mask is fair, as long as free masks go to those in need

Too many people going out while sick

Andrews chastised people for taking too long to get tested after first experiencing symptoms, which include fever, cough and sore throat. He said:

From 3,810 cases, which are the cases between July 7 and July 21, I’m very unhappy and very sad to have to report that nearly nine in ten – or 3,400 cases – did not isolate between when they first felt sick and when they went to get a test […]

That means people have felt unwell and just gone about their business. They have gone out shopping, they have gone to work, they have been at the height of their infectivity and they have just continued on as usual […] The one and only thing that you can and must do when you feel sick is to go and get tested. Nothing else is acceptable.“

He also said 53% those 3,810 cases “did not isolate, that is, did not stay at home and have no contact with anybody else — between when they had their test taken and when they got the results of that test.”

Unless people stay home when unwell and isolate while awaiting test results, the case numbers will continue to climb, Andrews said.

The premier noted self-isolation would leave some people with no income, and urged people in that situation to call 1800 675 398 to apply for an emergency A$1500 payment.

It’s good to see the premier acknowledge income as one of the major drivers for these behaviours; people may not always have the financial flexibility to do the right thing.

Hopefully, making more people aware of the emergency payment option will help counteract this.

The government may have to work harder to ensure people know to self-isolate, and that the emergency payment is available, and I suspect this will be promoted more widely.

NSW at a critical point

In New South Wales, Premier Gladys Berejiklian said there were 16 new cases in the 24 hours to 8pm last night, all traced to known clusters. She called on people to avoid crowded places, wash hands, stay home if unwell and get tested if they have even mild symptoms.

Berejiklian said from Friday, NSW businesses breaking rules on COVID-Safe registration, and breaching caps on group bookings, would “be fined — worse than that, if you breach again you will be shut down”.

NSW is on especially high alert. Despite this, it’s somewhat reassuring to know the state’s new cases can be traced to known outbreaks. However NSW residents are not out of the woods yet.

Speculation is rife that further lockdowns might be on the way in NSW. While nothing should be off the table, it doesn’t appear NSW is anywhere near this point yet. The state has more than enough capacity to bring things under control from where the numbers sit now.

Read more: Vaccine progress report: the projects bidding to win the race for a COVID-19 vaccine

Today’s news serves as a grim reminder we must all follow the golden rules of pandemic management: get tested if you experience even mild symptoms, stay home if unwell or awaiting test results, wash your hands often, physically distance from others, limit social gatherings, and wear a mask if you can’t physically distance (face-coverings will be mandatory for residents of metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire as of midnight Wednesday).

As to where things move from here, much of that is in our hands as individuals. Each of us, by doing everything we can to prevent the spread of the virus, can make a massive contribution to saving lives and defeating COVID-19.

The silver lining is that we know what’s needed. What we’re being asked to do is not easy, but we do know how to bring this coronavirus pandemic under control. We’ve done it before and we can do it again.

– ref. Victoria hits bleak record of 484 new cases, NSW at a critical point — if you feel sick, get tested then stay home – https://theconversation.com/victoria-hits-bleak-record-of-484-new-cases-nsw-at-a-critical-point-if-you-feel-sick-get-tested-then-stay-home-143172

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Long, Strategic Professor in Palaeontology, Flinders University

Why can’t humans grow wings? Christina, age 9, Beijing, China.

Hi Christina! Great question.

Humans are animals that have backbones. This means we’re in a group called “vertebrates” – along with fish, amphibians (such as frogs), reptiles, birds and mammals.

A long time ago, humans weren’t around. We actually came from 500-million-year-old fish that had no arms, legs or jaws. But slowly, from one fish parent to the next, they changed. Some started to grow arms and legs, eventually leading to humans as they are today.

These very slow changes happen to all animals over millions of years, in a process we call evolution. Every part of the human body, and every other animal, evolved in this way.

Read more: Curious Kids: how do scientists know evolution is real?

Two arms, two legs: a basic vertebrate body plan

Fish were the first vertebrates to have pairs of limbs. For humans, these are our arms and legs. Fish have pairs of fins at their front and back.

A long time ago, some fish evolved bones in their fins that would later become human fingers. This pattern of having pairs of two limbs (four in total) resulted in the bodies vertebrates have today.

All vertebrates today have the same body plan: two arms, two legs, a head with two eyes, two nostrils, a mouth with teeth, and so on.

However over the course of evolution, some animals didn’t quite follow this plan exactly. Their bodies needed to be different to suit their lifestyle – whether this was swimming or flying. This is how wings came about.

How animals started to fly

Wings of flying vertebrates, such as birds, are simply modified arms that help them fly.

You may have heard of pterosaurs – the (sometimes huge) flying creatures that lived at the time as dinosaurs. Pterosaurs also slowly formed their wings over many, many years. They did this by growing one long finger connecting a thin layer of skin called a membrane to the rest of their body.

One group of dinosaurs evolved into birds about 160 million years ago.

This happened well after dinosaurs first gained feathers to help keep their bodies cool or warm as needed. Then, from one parent to the next, they slowly gained longer front arms to eventually make wings.

Why didn’t humans evolve to have wings?

Now let’s look at why humans can’t grow wings.

All living things, including vertebrates, have genes. These are like little instruction booklets inside our bodies that decide how we grow and what our bodies can do. We can’t change what our genes do. For example, your genes are the reason your eyes may be black, or brown, or blue – but you can’t control this.

We also have genes called “hox genes”. These make sure our bodies grow a certain way as we get older. For instance, while you might grow taller thank your siblings, hox genes make sure you only grow two arms and two legs – and not eight legs like a spider. In fact, a spider’s own hox genes are what give it eight legs.

So one main reason humans can’t grow wings is because our genes only let us grow arms and legs.

What if we did have wings though?

Even if humans did have wings, we wouldn’t immediately be able to fly.

To fly, we would also need the right body size and metabolism. Metabolism is our body’s ability to use fuel (such as from the food we eat) to make energy, which helps us move.

Birds have very higher metabolisms than us. A hummingbird’s heart can beat up to 1,200 times per minute, while a human athlete’s heart might only go as fast as 220 beats per minute. This means hummingbirds can burn energy better than humans.

Flying birds also have much lighter bones that help them breathe better, feathers that help lift them while flying, and powerful lungs that keep oxygen pumping through their bodies.

Unless humans had all of this, we wouldn’t be able to fly even if we did have wings. Dinosaurs also only evolved to become birds by making their bodies much smaller and lighter over time.

Read more: Curious Kids: are humans going to evolve again?

What about dragons?

While we know dragons aren’t real, some imaginary dragons have bodies close to real-life vertebrates.

Dragons such as Smaug in the movie The Hobbit have wings and legs only. So if Smaug was real he might actually have been able to fly, as long as he was light, had a high metabolism and a membrane to form his wings.

On the other hand, the dragon Night Fury from How to Train Your Dragon has arms, legs and wings. In real life, this would be like having two legs and two pairs of arms.

Night Fury breaks the basic rules of evolution as no vertebrate has ever evolved to have this combination of arms and legs. Insects can, but they don’t have backbones so they’re not vertebrates.

So if Night Fury was real, scientists may have to call him an insect.

– ref. Curious Kids: why can’t humans grow wings? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-cant-humans-grow-wings-142654

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

A new cold war with China is coming and it will be just as dangerous, expensive and pointless as the last one.

The difference will be how much more New Zealand is involved.

Steering an independent course in these dangerous seas will be very difficult: our Five Eyes security partners will want us to jump one way, our largest economic partner the other.

This fine line was visible this week when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke at the China Business Summit in Auckland. New Zealand has “different perspectives on some issues”, said Ardern – to which China’s New Zealand ambassador Wu Xi replied:

Pursuing a zero-sum game and portraying others as adversaries or enemies will lead to nowhere and will only harm its own interests.

The Hong Kong crisis

The latest flashpoint is China’s decision to pass a new security law for Hong Kong. The New Zealand government has ordered a review of all policy settings, despite Foreign Minister Winston Peters having already criticised the law and being told by Beijing to stop interfering in Hong Kong’s and China’s internal affairs.

Read more: China is becoming increasingly assertive – security law in Hong Kong is just the latest example

But New Zealand is right to be concerned about the new law. Designed to combat political dissidence, it covers serious but ill-defined crimes and imposes heavy penalties through opaque justice systems.

It also breaches the spirit of the 1997 Basic Law, which established the principles for the British handover to China.

Some might argue it’s a price worth paying if it brings stability and prosperity back to Hong Kong. After all, some of the key 1997 promises were never implemented, and China has quite properly taken the initiative.

Moreover, the Basic Law was going to lapse in 2047. What is happening now was going to happen anyway, just sooner than planned.

The new law may be repugnant to those who believe civil liberties enjoyed in Western democracies should be universal. But it is not unique within communist China, where social and economic progress has been achieved at a price of minimal dissent.

New Zealand is already out of step

Self-interest might have had other powers turning a blind eye in the past. But the new geopolitics have seen the security law become a line in the sand.

America is ready to impose sanctions on China over Hong Kong and Uyghur human rights. Australia is increasing its military spending by 40% over the next ten years, as part of a more assertive approach to China with less reliance on the US.

Read more: Hong Kong activists now face a choice: stay silent, or flee the city. The world must give them a path to safety

Britain wants to offer citizenship to 3 million Hong Kong residents. Citing security risks, it has also mandated that all Huawei 5G technology be removed from British networks by 2027.

Following India, US President Donald Trump is pressing for a ban on the popular Chinese social media app TikTok due to security concerns.

Amid all this, New Zealand is increasingly out of step. Our criticism of the new security law was clear, but it wasn’t coordinated with the Five Eyes partners, nor did it employ the kind of language that has seen Hong Kong described as a “bastion of freedom”.

New Zealand has also announced it won’t follow Britain’s ban on Huawei and has avoided discussions about military build-ups or sanctions.

This is wise. There is no military solution to this problem and our economic relationship with China only complicates matters.

China is New Zealand’s largest trading partner in goods and second-largest overall including trade in services. Since the ground-breaking 2008 Free Trade Agreement, two-way trade has increased to NZ$30.6 billion per year, more than half of that in New Zealand’s favour.

Towards a new independence

In an ideal world, these problems would be resolved calmly through a rule-based order of law or arbitration.

Unfortunately, the chances of China consenting to a third party resolving any dispute over what it sees as its sovereign rights are near zero. When such a resolution was attempted over its island building project in the South China Sea, China put the unfavourable ruling in the bin.

Read more: Huawei’s window of opportunity closes: how geopolitics triumphed over technology

The question, therefore, is how New Zealand positions itself in the new cold war if all sides are angry and there is no clear middle ground. The announced policy review offers the best way forward.

The review needs to consider the tone and independence of our foreign policy voice. It should ensure our trade relations comply with the human rights standards we profess to value. And it should require free trade never comes at the expense of free speech.

Of course, we will have to measure the costs and benefits of elevating human rights goals in our foreign policy. If countries we disagree with can’t change, we need to articulate what our bottom line is.

Most critically of all, we must now learn to navigate for ourselves in what will be the most difficult foreign policy challenge the next government will face.

Because whether we like it or not, we are sailing into a new cold war.

– ref. The dangerous new cold war brewing with China will test New Zealand even more than the old one – https://theconversation.com/the-dangerous-new-cold-war-brewing-with-china-will-test-new-zealand-even-more-than-the-old-one-142893

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Francesco Paolucci, Professor of Health Economics, University of Bologna, University of Newcastle

As we reach the two-week mark since the reinstated restrictions for Melbourne, and are yet to see a decline in new daily cases, it is not surprising the Victorian government has now made face masks mandatory.

From midnight tonight, residents in metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire must wear a face covering whenever outside the home, or face a A$200 fine. The state government has also ordered 1.37 million reusable masks for public distribution, and says schools will be among the first to receive them.

With some people arguing the measures will unfairly penalise poorer Victorians, Health Minister Jenny Mikakos has pledged to provide more information about which groups will also be receiving free masks.

Will mandatory masks help stop the virus?

There are certainly many benefits to wearing masks or similar face coverings in reducing the spread of coronavirus, especially in closed or confined environments. With rising case numbers and a growing recognition that the coronavirus can be transmitted even without symptoms, numerous health advisory bodies – including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organisation – now recommend masks for the general public.

When it comes to mandatory enforcement of mask wearing, the benefits have to be weighed against other questions, such as whether everyone will be able to obtain masks, and whether the fines unfairly discriminate against people with less money.

Given that even low rates of mask-wearing can deliver significant benefits, it would be tempting to conclude there is no need for mandatory enforcement. Not all members of the public are likely to embrace the use of face masks equally, so it might make sense simply to rely on those who are more willing.

However, the fact that face masks are cheap (or can be given out for free) and highly effective means the corresponding public health benefits are huge. According to one US estimate, each additional cloth mask worn by a member of the public would lower the death risk enough to save US$3,000-6,000 in reduced health costs.

Put simply, the more people wear masks, the faster we can potentially resume normal activity. It thus becomes easier to justify stringent measures to deliver universal mask-wearing. The low cost and high effectiveness of masks means even a harsh fine of A$200 becomes justifiable, given the crucial need to suppress COVID-19.

How much do masks cost?

The Victorian government has mandated that any type of face-covering material is suitable, meaning residents could potentially minimise their expenses by making their own masks at home.

One sensible option would be to give free masks to people living in hotspots or who have less financial means – Melbourne’s public housing towers would tick both of these boxes. Free masks could also be given to people who are more likely to use public transport, or who work in jobs that necessitate close contact with the public.

For those buying their own, disposable masks retail for about A$1 each, meaning someone who works five days a week would need to spend about A$30 on masks during the six-week lockdown.

Another prudent move would be to prevent stockpiling or profiteering by capping the price (as South Korea did) or the number of masks that can be purchased at one time (as in Taiwan, which limited purchases to ten masks per person every two weeks) instead of relying on retailers to apply restrictions.

So why the outrage?

Some Australians have reacted with anger to the mask mandate, despite widespread community support for other, arguably more disruptive, measures such as social distancing, travel bans and quarantines.

As is clearly evident in the United States, it seems there is something unique about face masks that has many people up in arms. As one Australian Twitter user wrote:

Like a good citizen, I’ve stayed home. I’m more than willing to wear a mask publicly indoors but I take my kids for a walk/bike to the park once a day for “FRESH AIR” to relieve some anxiety and stress at government shambles, now he takes the air we breathe?

After weeks of social distancing and hand sanitising, are face masks simply the straw that broke the camel’s back for some people? One theory, called the strength model of self-regulation, suggests the more behavioural changes an individual is required to make (such as quitting smoking or refraining from touching their face) the less success they will have at each.

There are many possible explanations for mask refusal: physical discomfort, inconvenience, denial of the benefits, mixed messaging, lack of role modelling, fear of judgement or stigma, or a desire to rebel against authority. But there is little published research on why people might be more willing to accept one disease prevention tactic over another.

Read more: Coronavirus spike: why getting people to follow restrictions is harder the second time around

Public health measures work best when they balance the needs of individuals with those of the public at large. Providing free masks to those who can’t afford them, and trying to understand the points of friction that might make some people less likely to wear them, will both increase the overall levels of mask-wearing.

Mandates and punishments, although justified by public health objectives, can only work for so long. In all likelihood, we will be living with COVID-19 until a vaccine is developed. This means we need sensible and pragmatic strategies to help everyone fight this and future pandemics together.

– ref. A $200 fine for not wearing a mask is fair, as long as free masks go to those in need – https://theconversation.com/a-200-fine-for-not-wearing-a-mask-is-fair-as-long-as-free-masks-go-to-those-in-need-142988

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tania Sourdin, Professor, Dean of Newcastle University Law School, University of Newcastle

An online app called Amica is now using artificial intelligence to help separating couples make parenting arrangements and divide their assets.

For many people, the coronavirus pandemic has put even the strongest of relationships to the test. A May survey conducted by Relationships Australia found 42% of 739 respondents experienced a negative change in their relationship with their partner under lockdown restrictions.

There has also been a surge in the number of couples seeking separation advice. The Australian government has backed the use of Amica for those in such circumstances. The chatbot uses artificial intelligence (AI) to make suggestions for how splitting couples can divide their money and property based on their circumstances.

But although such tools offer advantages such as convenience and reduced emotional distress, their applications remain limited. And over-relying on them could be a slippery slope.

Read more: Coronavirus: how the pandemic has exposed AI’s limitations

How it works

According to Amica’s website, it “considers legal principles and applies them to your circumstances”. In other words, the software draws on mass data (collected and embedded by its designers) from similar past cases to make suggestions to users.

Amica demonstrates AI’s potential in solving legal problems in family disputes. Interestingly, it’s not the only tool of this kind in the legal field. There are a range of AI-powered family legal services used in Australia, including Penda and Adieu.

Penda aims to help victims of family violence by providing free legal and safety information. Its AI chatbot provides online legal advice and information without requiring a face-to-face meeting with a lawyer.

Adieu enables couples to achieve amicable financial and parenting agreements via its AI chatbot component “Lumi”, which can refer couples to mediators, counsellors, lawyers or financial advisers if required. Lumi also has a one-click disclosure tool designed to save time and money by using AI to analyse the financial records of both users.

Advantages of legal AI tools

Australia’s family law system is overburdened, resulting in long delays for families in the court system. Court proceedings are also expensive, and complex family law cases can cost each party more than A$200,000.

AI tools such as Amica and Adieu enable couples to resolve problems themselves and avoid the slow and expensive court process. This is especially true for couples who have commenced or are considering the separation process now, amid coronavirus restrictions.

Our evaluation of Adieu involved reviewing literature on justice apps and interviewing professionals including mediators, lawyers and financial advisers. We also surveyed 37 Adieu users to find out who would use such an app and how comfortable people were with them.

We found by giving couples dominion over the separation process, they were less likely to be emotionally stressed. Although our survey sample was relatively small, 76% of participants reported not feeling emotional distress. Of those who did, most said this was the result of existing circumstances.

One participant said:

I’m pretty new to apps but am learning. They’re not so bad, but don’t really replace people. On the plus side, they’re neutral and don’t judge you!

Disadvantages and limitations

Despite a number of advantages, AI tools for settling legal disputes (much like many other AI tools) come with setbacks.

For instance, they’re not helpful in many cases. Amica’s designers highlight the platform is only suitable for “amicable” separating couples with no complex situations involved, such as family violence. This is because at its current development level, AI-powered chatbots can only generate a relatively simple response from the information they’re given.

According to a 2016 survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, around 5.8 million Australians had experienced physical or emotional abuse from a partner.

Read more: Does your AI discriminate?

Further, Australian courts are required to consider each child’s best interests when deciding on a family case. There are legitimate concerns that parenting and financial suggestions from AI-powered tools may ignore the needs of children, and only reflect the interests of parents.

There are also concerns around the use of AI in legal family cases more generally. For example, access to online platforms requires a certain amount of digital literacy and accessibility.

This disadvantages people without access to the internet, a smartphone or computer. Also, people may not have the technological skills needed to use apps such as Amica or Adieu.

A tainted past

Apart from family disputes, AI has also been controversially used in criminal cases for sentencing purpose. The COMPAS tool has come under fire on numerous occasions for its use in the US. Its risk assessment algorithms supposedly predict how likely a criminal is to reoffend.

Australia’s robodebt saga also showed how AI can contribute to problematic administrative decision making. In that debacle, welfare payments made on the basis of self-reported fortnightly income were cross-referenced against an estimated income, taken as an average of annual earnings reported to the Australian Tax Office. This was then used to auto-generate debt notices without human checks.

Read more: From robodebt to racism: what can go wrong when governments let algorithms make the decisions

It’s clear AI comes with the potential for embedded bias. As the use of AI-powered technology continues for matters traditionally handled in the courts, a government strategy such as the European Commission’s AI White Paper is needed to address the general challenges.

Along with this, an ethical framework with input from Australia’s legal industry should underpin AI use in the legal sector.

– ref. People are using artificial intelligence to help sort out their divorce. Would you? – https://theconversation.com/people-are-using-artificial-intelligence-to-help-sort-out-their-divorce-would-you-142731

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, in significant parts of its coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, has become a clear and present danger to the welfare of Australian society.

Aping the worst of the American media – notably Murdoch’s Fox News – it rails against science, ridicules the measures being taken to suppress the outbreak, and tries to politicise a germ.

It also propagates hate speech, vilifying ethnic and religious minorities in whose suburbs, schools and housing towers clusters have broken out.

In all these ways, it drives divisions in Australian society and sows doubt in the minds of an anxious population about the need for lockdowns and other precautions.

Read more: Coronavirus is a huge story, so journalists must apply the highest ethical standards in how they tell it

This critique is directed primarily at its opinion articles and television commentaries, rather than at its news coverage.

The news coverage has been extensive, has included many voices, and has kept its audiences up to date with what is going on. It has also been vigorous in holding governments to account for their mistakes, which is exactly what the media should do.

But the racism, ridiculing of science and ideological warfare that has disfigured much of the commentary have nothing to do with holding governments to account or providing the community with essential information.

On Sky, Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff, Peta Credlin, launched an attack on Muslims and South Sudanese people over Melbourne’s second wave of COVID-19 that was a toxic mixture of vitriol and ignorance.

She blamed South Sudanese people living in Coburg for a cluster of 14 new infections, which she said were triggered by a feast to mark the end of Ramadan, the Muslim season of abstinence.

The Society of South Sudanese Professionals pointed out to her that more than 90% of South Sudanese in Victoria are Christian, not Muslim. Moreover, very few of them live in Coburg and the cluster did not consist of South Sudanese people.

For those errors of fact, Credlin apologised. But her fairmindedness did not extend to an apology for a nasty rhetorical question about the character of South Sudanese immigrants in general, linking well-worn tropes about gangs, unemployment and alleged inability to speak “Australia’s national language”.

Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun and Sydney’s Daily Telegraph was onto the same immigrant-bashing exercise. He noted that three of the worst COVID-19 hot spots in Melbourne were the Flemington towers, the Islamic Al-Taqwa College and the Cedar Meats abattoir.

Here was a trifecta for divisiveness: African immigrants, Muslims and a meatworks that, according to Bolt, employs many immigrants and donates money to the Labor Party.

Most recently, as mask-wearing was made compulsory in Victoria, Bolt and Alan Jones turned their attacks against that too. That represented a significant change and was based on new data.

In June, The Lancet, one of the oldest and most respected medical journals in the world, published an article based on a meta-analysis of 172 observational studies and 44 comparative studies into the efficacy of physical distancing, mask-wearing and eye protection as ways of reducing the risk of COVID-19 infection.

It found face mask use could greatly reduce risk of infection.

The breadth and authoritativeness of the study persuaded health experts in Australia and elsewhere that mask-wearing was now a more important part of the armoury against COVID-19 than had been previously thought.

Bolt likened this to a kind of political backflip. Jones called it “alarmism”.

They might do well to recall the remark of economist John Maynard Keynes:

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

Jones proclaimed on Sky (July 20) that he had a pile of medical data stating that mask-wearing was ineffectual. He said he had done some research of his own over the weekend to support this proposition.

He went on to declare that government responses to the pandemic were shafting ordinary hard-working Australians.

Bolt stated he no longer trusted what Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said about coronavirus. Like Jones, Bolt questioned the medical basis for the decision to make mask-wearing compulsory.

There has also been a party-political dimension to the News Corp coverage.

This has been evident in the contrast between The Daily Telegraph’s coverage of the Ruby Princess debacle (Coalition government in New South Wales) and the Herald Sun’s coverage of the hotel quarantine debacle (Labor government in Victoria).

My analysis of 464 articles in the Telegraph on the Ruby Princess showed the coverage was extensive, quoting many voices trenchantly critical of the way the government handled the case. However, the newspaper itself made no direct personal attack on Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

A similar analysis I undertook of 411 articles in the Herald Sun about hotel quarantine and subsequent second wave likewise showed extensive coverage quoting many voices trenchantly critical of the government. But there was an additional dimension: direct personal attacks on Daniel Andrews, which has become a speciality of Credlin’s.

While the Murdoch organisation’s approach stands out as systematic and sustained, Channel Nine has also made episodic contributions to this dark side of Australia’s media performance.

Its Today program has twice disgraced itself. First it gave Senator Pauline Hanson a platform from which to make a racist attack on the people in Melbourne’s public housing towers. Then Today hosted an extreme right-winger, DeAnne Lorraine, from the United States, who says COVID-19 is a conspiracy to change the world.

Her stream of consciousness in support of this proposition included a reference to the Caduceus, symbol of medicine since time immemorial.

Fake science. And look at the snake. The snake is their logo. That should tell you everything you need to know, right there.

Whether the motive is to chase ratings, as with Nine, or to prosecute ideological and cultural warfare, as with Murdoch’s News Corporation, the consequences for Australian society are dire.

The coronavirus pandemic has created well-founded anxiety in people for their health and economic well-being. In times like these, there is always a tendency in human nature to look for scapegoats or to deny reality.

Read more: Media have helped create a crisis of democracy – now they must play a vital role in its revival

Media coverage of the kind described here exploits that anxiety and feeds those natural human impulses, leading to social division and resistance to medical advice.

Both these consequences work against suppression of the virus. That is why it represents a clear and present danger to society.

– ref. Whether a ratings chase or ideological war, News Corp’s coronavirus coverage is dangerous – https://theconversation.com/whether-a-ratings-chase-or-ideological-war-news-corps-coronavirus-coverage-is-dangerous-143003

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liam Petterson, Assistant Editor, Health + Medicine, The Conversation Australia

The race is on to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. There are now more than 140 vaccines being tested around the world, according to the World Health Organisation.

Australian researchers are leading several major clinical trials that might help bring an end to the deadly disease.

We asked the lead investigators of trials around Australia to tell us about their vaccines: when the trials are being held, how they work, and how they might kill or impede the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

What you need to know

Kylie Quinn, RMIT

Vaccine development normally progresses through a series of steps that enable researchers to collect all the data needed to approve a vaccine for the clinic. Initially, vaccines are tested in the lab, using cells in culture and animals that mimic human disease, to determine whether the vaccine is safe and worth developing further.

Promising vaccines are then evaluated in clinical trials with human volunteers, where researchers ask:

1. Is the vaccine safe, and what dose should be used? (Phase 1)

2. Can the vaccine generate an immune response? (Phase 2)

3. Can the vaccine protect from infection or disease? (Phase 3)

With SARS-CoV-2, researchers are speeding up this process by running one trial while simultaneously recruiting for the next phase. This uses lessons learnt during the Ebola epidemic, when a vaccine was developed in a record time of just five years.

Despite this acceleration, many researchers’ best guess is that it will be at least early 2021 before a vaccine might be approved (and the next challenge is to manufacture enough of it). This may seem like a long time, but it is lightning-fast for a vaccine.

But it isn’t a sure thing yet. One concern is that when people recover from infection with other human coronaviruses, immunity can wane relatively quickly. It seems vaccines will have to do much better than this “natural immunity”.

Fortunately, early data from human trials suggests vaccines can generate stronger responses than natural immunity. Our next questions are: how long will these responses last, and will they protect us?

The waiting game continues.

Read more: Immunity to COVID-19 may not last. This threatens a vaccine and herd immunity

Here are some of the leading vaccine candidates so far:

‘Molecular clamp’ vaccine (University of Queensland)

Professor Paul Young, University of Queensland

The University of Queensland team began developing a vaccine against COVID-19 on January 10 – the day the genetic sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was first made public. We didn’t need access to the virus itself, just details of its genetic sequence, from which we identified the gene that encodes the “spike protein” used by the virus to infect human cells.

Read more: Revealed: the protein ‘spike’ that lets the 2019-nCoV coronavirus pierce and invade human cells

As part of our rapid response vaccine program we were able to engineer this protein to include the “molecular clamp”, a UQ technology that is designed to hold the protein in the form that appears on the surface of the virus, with the aim to make a better vaccine by design. This clamped version of the spike protein can then be manufactured using established methods from the biotechnology industry. We also think this is a potential advantage of our platform: while it takes slightly longer to get out of the blocks, the path for mass production exists with existing global expertise and infrastructure.

The manufactured protein is also combined with an adjuvant – an ingredient that helps stimulate a stronger immune response, enabling efficient protection from the virus. We are using technology from CSL/Seqiris which is used in vaccines for influenza and has an excellent track record of patient safety.

We have spent the past few months carrying out crucial preclinical work in animals, confirming the vaccine induces this strong immune response, is safe, and is able to protect animals from challenge with the live virus. We have also been developing the processes for manufacturing the vaccine at large scale with our commercial partner CSL.

Now these studies have been carried out successfully, we have begun clinical trials in humans. The phase 1 trial began on July 13 with volunteers receiving the first dose. The trial will involve a total of 120 volunteers. We will monitor safety and immune responses in these individuals and should have preliminary data in the few months. If this first trial is successful, the next phase of clinical trials will be conducted over the remainder of 2020 and early 2021 to determine how effective the vaccine is at preventing virus infection.

Novavax vaccine (tested in Melbourne and Brisbane)

Professor Paul Griffin, University of Queensland

In late May, US biotechnology company Novavax began phase 1 human trials of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate via Nucleus Network, a clinical research organisation. The trials, in Melbourne and Brisbane, involve about 130 healthy volunteers aged 18-59.

Novavax has a history of making protein-based vaccines for a number of other infections. What this means is they manufacture the antigen from scratch in the laboratory to resemble part of the surface of the infectious agent. This then hopefully generates an immune response in humans that will protect from infection without the need to be exposed to any actual virus.

Like several other current vaccine candidates, this trial vaccine is designed to trigger an immune response by mimicking the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Given this protein is found on the surface of the virus and is used to invade human cells, an immune response against it should help to prevent infection.

Novavax said it expects preliminary results to show how safe it is and how well it works in July 2020. The phase 2 portion of the study will begin promptly after phase 1, assuming it is successful.

BCG vaccine (tested by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute)

Professor Nigel Curtis, MCRI

The Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine has been around for nearly 100 years and is designed to protect against tuberculosis.

Read more: Could BCG, a 100-year-old vaccine for tuberculosis, protect against coronavirus?

However, the BCG vaccine also has “off-target” effects on the immune system which provide protection against a range of other infections. This happens because BCG elicits something called “trained immunity” — a boosting of the innate immune system, the body’s first line of defence.

Previous small trials suggest BCG vaccination might protect against respiratory infections in general, not just tuberculosis. In Guinea-Bissau, BCG vaccination reduced neonatal deaths from all causes by 38%. In South Africa, BCG vaccination reduced respiratory infections in adolescents by 73%. Therefore, BCG vaccination might provide a means of protecting health-care workers and other vulnerable individuals from COVID-19.

As reported in The Lancet, our team at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute is conducting trials to assess whether BCG vaccination reduces the rate or severity of COVID-19 in health-care workers. We are currently recruiting 10,000 health-care workers in Australia, Europe and Latin America.

BCG vaccination is not going to be a silver bullet that provides perfect protection against COVID-19 or any other pandemic illness. However, we may find it provides some level of protection. If so, it will be a readily available to bridge the gap and protect health-care workers and other vulnerable individuals until a specific COVID-19 vaccine is developed.

The CSIRO is testing two vaccines

Professor S.S. Vasan, CSIRO

In 2019, CSIRO scientists at the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness had been preparing for the next major epidemic dubbed “Disease X”. We were developing animal challenge models for rapid evaluation of candidate vaccines and therapies.

When Disease X turned out to be COVID-19, we were the first to show ferrets were susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, and used this disease model for preclinical evaluation of two vaccine candidates selected by the global Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

The first candidate is from the University of Oxford. Oxford scientists have inserted the SARS-CoV-2 genome into a defective adenovirus, which can begin an infection in human cells but cannot replicate to grow the infection. As the key coronavirus proteins are expressed, immunity is developed against future SARS-CoV-2 infection.

We are evaluating this vaccine as an injection into the muscles, as envisaged by the University. At CSIRO, we are also exploring whether delivering through a nasal spray could confer better protection against COVID-19.

The second vaccine candidate is from a US company, Inovio Pharmaceuticals. It is an exciting new technology – no vaccine of this type has been approved for human use yet.

It consists of a small circle of DNA containing the genetic code for a particular protein from SARS-CoV-2. When it is administered as an injection, using a special “electrophoresis” device, it stimulates our cells to produce this protein themselves, meaning our body can then produce antibodies that will help prevent the actual virus from infecting our cells.

We are now at the final stages of the study. Our team is analysing very large amounts of data and samples generated by the preclinical trials. The results will be shared with regulators and through peer-reviewed publications following internal and external review, quality assurance and a compliance audit.

We have also been keeping track of how this virus is mutating, to ensure that the vaccines and the animal models used to evaluate them, are not impacted.

Vaxine and Flinders University researchers

Professor Nikolai Petrovsky, Flinders University

Alongside researchers from Flinders University, Australian biotechnology company Vaxine has created a vaccine aimed at protecting against SARS-CoV-2 infection. The vaccine, called “COVAX-19”, is based on a synthetic protein produced by growing it in insect cells which is designed to mimic the spike protein on the outside of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that it uses to attach to human cells.

The vaccine was based on the company’s earlier SARS-1 coronavirus vaccine that successfully protected against infection in animal models and also induced strong antibody and T cell responses against COVID-19 in animals (as we explore in studies soon to be submitted for publication).

The vaccine entered human clinical trials on July 1, being the first Australian-developed vaccine to achieve this milestone. The phase 1 trial is being performed at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and involves 40 healthy individuals aged 18-65. Thirty random participants are receiving two doses of the vaccine three weeks apart; the remaining ten get a placebo.

The primary purpose of a phase 1 trial is to show vaccine safety but the study will also allow a preliminary assessment to be made of its ability to induce an appropriate immune response against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Plans are already underway for phase 2 and 3 trials, which will likely involve recruitment of thousands of people in Australia and overseas, to confirm the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing infection.

The aim is to complete the full clinical trial program by the end of 2020. Manufacturing scale-up is already underway with the aim to produce millions doses of vaccine, using multiple manufacturing sites around the world.

International

Oxford vaccine

Professor Katie Flanagan, University of Tasmania and Professor Magdalena Plebanski, RMIT

Researchers at the University of Oxford have just published encouraging results of their SARS-CoV-2 candidate vaccine called “ChAdOx1 nCoV-19”. It was tested in a joint phase 1 and 2 trial of 1,077 people aged 18-55.

This vaccine uses a chimpanzee virus called an adenovirus to carry SARS-CoV-2 genes into human cells, which then become factories for making the viral proteins. The body recognises the proteins as foreign, and mounts an immune response. Human adenoviruses circulate in the population and are known to be largely safe. Using a chimpanzee (rather than human) adenovirus has the advantage that the human system has not seen this virus before, so there is no pre-existing immunity that could clear out the vaccine before it can work.

The Oxford vaccine induced neutralising antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, as well as T cells, which might make it more effective. Some T cells can kill cells when the virus is hidden inside them and is replicating, and other T cells help B cells produce the neutralising antibodies, sustaining immune responses over time.

The good news is that neutralising antibodies were induced by two weeks after vaccination and lasted for at least 56 days. The vaccine also induced T cells to the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2. Importantly, the vaccine was safe over a 28-day monitoring period using standard safety assessments. The Oxford group previously found in a small study in monkeys that their vaccine induces anti-viral antibodies within similar timelines, and protects against SARS-CoV-2 infection by decreasing viral replication and damage in the lung in animals.

The encouraging results so far, together with other supportive data such as the monkey trials, have supported progression to multinational large-scale efficacy phase 3 trials to determine whether the vaccine protects against COVID-19 in humans. These further trials will also allow researchers to determine how different populations and subgroups, for example young and old adults, respond to this vaccine.

CanSino vaccine

Professor Nigel McMillan, Griffith University

Chinese vaccine company CanSino Biologics has released its phase 1 clinical trial results for a vaccine to SARS-CoV-2, as reported in The Lancet. In the trial, 508 people were given two different doses of the vaccine and monitored for 28 days.

This vaccine uses adenovirus technology to deliver part of a SARS-CoV-2 protein to the immune system. The researchers reported good induction of B- and T-cell immunity, which are important for a strong overall immune response. They showed that the strong antibody responses were able to protect against virus infection in a lab animal model. Safety was good, with the usual and expected side effects of redness, fever, headache and swelling — although 9% of patients had a more serious fever and muscular or joint pain.

Overall, this is an important step forward in the vaccine development pipeline. The next phase will be to vaccinate larger groups of people to further examine safety, but more importantly this should be undertaken in areas with high virus load to test whether there is any protection against disease. The other important step will be to keep following these phase 1 patients to see how long the vaccine responses last as this will be critical in developing our long term response.

This article is supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.

– ref. Vaccine progress report: the projects bidding to win the race for a COVID-19 vaccine – https://theconversation.com/vaccine-progress-report-the-projects-bidding-to-win-the-race-for-a-covid-19-vaccine-141412

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tiffany Morrison, Professorial Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University

Some places are considered so special they’re valuable to all humanity and must be preserved for future generations. These irreplaceable gems – such as Machu Picchu, Stonehenge, Yosemite National Park and the Great Barrier Reef – are known as World Heritage sites.

When these places are threatened, they can officially be placed on the “List of World Heritage in Danger”. This action brings global attention to the natural or human causes of the threats. It can encourage emergency conservation action and mobilise international assistance.

However, our research released today shows the process of In Danger listings is being manipulated for political gain. National governments and other groups try to keep sites off the list, with strategies such as lobbying, or partial efforts to protect a site. Australian government actions to keep the Great Barrier Reef off the list are a prime example.

These practices are a problem for many reasons – not least because they enable further damage to threatened ecosystems.

What is the In Danger list?

World Heritage sites represent outstanding socioeconomic, natural and cultural values. Nations vie to have their sites included on the World Heritage list, which can attract tourist dollars and international prestige. In return, the nations are responsible for protecting the sites.

World Heritage sites are protected by an international convention, overseen by the United Nations body UNESCO and its World Heritage Committee. The committee consists of representatives from 21 of the 193 nations signed up to the convention.

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

When a site comes under threat, the World Heritage Committee can list the site as in danger of losing its heritage status. In 2014 for example, the committee threatened to list the Great Barrier Reef as In Danger – in part due to a plan to dump dredged sediment from a port development near the reef, as well as poor water quality, climate change and other threats. This listing did not eventuate.

An In Danger listing can attract help to protect a site. For example, the Galápagos Islands were placed on the list in 2007. The World Heritage Fund provided the Ecuadorian government with technical and financial assistance to restore the site’s World Heritage status. The work is not yet complete, but the islands were removed from the In Danger list in 2010.

Political games

Our study shows political manipulation appears to be compromising the process that determines if a site is listed as In Danger.

We examined interactions between UNESCO and 102 national governments, from 1972 until 2019. We interviewed experts from the World Heritage Committee, government agencies and elsewhere, and combined this with global site threat data, UNESCO and government records, and economic and governance data.

We found at least 41 World Heritage sites, including the Great Barrier Reef, were at least once considered by the World Heritage Committee for the In Danger list, but weren’t put on it. This is despite these sites being reported by UNESCO as threatened, or more threatened, than those already on the In Danger list. And 27 of the 41 sites were considered for an In Danger listing more than once.

The number of sites on the In Danger list declined by 31.6% between 2001 and 2008, and has plateaued since. By 2019, only 16 of 238 ecosystems were certified as In Danger. In contrast, the number of ecosystems on the World Heritage list has increased steadily over the past 20 years.

Read more: Explainer: what is the List of World Heritage in Danger?

So why is this happening? Our analysis showed the threat of an In Danger listing drives a range of government responses.

This includes governments complying only partially with World Heritage Committee recommendations or making only symbolic commitments. Such “rhetorical” adoption of recommendations has been seen in relation to the Three Parallel Rivers in China’s Yunnan province, the Western Caucasus in Russia and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (explored in more detail below).

In other cases, threats to a site are high but attract limited attention and effort from either the national government or UNESCO. These sites include Halong Bay in Vietnam and the remote Tubbataha Reefs in the Philippines.

A 2004 amendment to the way the World Heritage Committee assesses In Danger listings means sites can be “considered” for inclusion rather than just listed, retained or removed. This has allowed governments to use delay tactics, such as in the case of Cameroon’s Dja Faunal Reserve. It has been considered for the In Danger list five times since 2011, but never listed.

Case in point: The Great Barrier Reef

In 2014 and 2015, the Australian government spent more than A$400,000 on overseas lobbying trips to keep the Great Barrier Reef off the In Danger list. The environment minister and senior bureaucrats travelled to most of the 21 countries on the committee, plus other nations, to argue against the listing. The mining industry also contributed to the lobbying effort.

The World Heritage Committee had asked Australia to develop a long-term plan to protect the reef. The Australian and Queensland governments appeared to comply, by releasing the Reef 2050 Plan in 2015.

But in 2018, a national audit and Senate inquiry found a substantial portion of finance for the plan was delivered – in a non-competitive and hidden process – to the private Great Barrier Reef Foundation, which had limited capacity and expertise. This casts doubt over whether the aims of the reef plan can be achieved.

Real world damage

Our study makes no recommendation on which World Heritage sites should be listed as In Danger. But it uncovered political manipulation that has real-world consequences. Had the Great Barrier Reef been listed as In Danger, for example, developments potentially harmful to the reef, such as the Adani coal mine, may have struggled to get approval.

Last year, an outlook report gave the reef a “very poor” prognosis and last summer the reef suffered its third mass bleaching in five years. There are grave concerns for the ecosystem’s ability to recover before yet another bleaching event.

Political manipulation of the World Heritage process undermines the usefulness of the In Danger list as a policy tool. Given the global investment in World Heritage over the past 50 years, it is essential to address the hidden threats to good governance and to safeguard all ecosystems.

Read more: Australia reprieved – now it must prove it can care for the Reef

– ref. New research reveals how Australia and other nations play politics with World Heritage sites – https://theconversation.com/new-research-reveals-how-australia-and-other-nations-play-politics-with-world-heritage-sites-142918