Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Revell, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Physics, University of Canterbury

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

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

This week, Climate Explained answers two similar questions.

If humans had not contributed to greenhouses gases in any way at all, what would the global temperature be today, compared to the 1800s before industrialisation?

and

My question is what happens when all the greenhouse gases are eliminated? What keeps the planet from cooling past a point that is good?

Earth’s atmosphere is a remarkably thin layer of gases that sustain life.

The diameter of Earth is 12,742km and the atmosphere is about 100km thick. If you took a model globe and wrapped it up, a single sheet of tissue paper would represent the thickness of the atmosphere.

The gases that make up Earth’s atmosphere are mostly nitrogen and oxygen, and small quantities of trace gases such as argon, neon, helium, the protective ozone layer and various greenhouse gases – so named because they trap heat emitted by Earth.

The most abundant greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere is water vapour – and it is this gas that provides the natural greenhouse effect. Without this and the naturally occurring quantities of other greenhouse gases, Earth would be about 33℃ colder and uninhabitable to life as we know it.

Changing Earth’s atmosphere

Since pre-industrial times, human activities have led to the accumulation of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen from about 280 parts per million (ppm) before the first industrial revolution some 250 years ago, to a new high since records began of just over 417ppm. As a result of continued increases, the global average temperature has climbed by just over 1℃ since pre-industrial times.

Read more: Climate explained: why carbon dioxide has such outsized influence on Earth’s climate

While these long-lived greenhouse gases have raised Earth’s average surface temperature, human activities have altered atmospheric composition in other ways as well. Particulate matter in the atmosphere, such as soot and dust, can cause health problems and degrades air quality in many industrialised and urban regions.

Particulate matter can partially offset greenhouse gas warming, but its climate effects depend on its composition and geographical distribution. Climate in the southern hemisphere has also been affected by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which led to the development of the Antarctic ozone hole.

If people had not altered the composition of the atmosphere at all through emitting greenhouse gases, particulate matter and ozone-destroying CFCs, we would expect the global average temperature today to be similar to the pre-industrial period – although some short-term variation associated with the Sun, volcanic eruptions and internal variability would still have occurred.

Read more: What is a pre-industrial climate and why does it matter?

In a world that is about 1℃ warmer than during pre-industrial times, New Zealand is already facing the environmental and economic costs associated with climate change. The former head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Christiana Figueres, argues that with trillions of dollars being spent around the world in economic stimulus packages following the COVID-19 pandemic, we need strong commitments to a low-carbon future if the world is to limit warming to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels.

What needs to happen

Greenhouse gases have long lifetimes – about a decade for methane and hundreds to thousands of years for carbon dioxide. We will need to reduce emissions aggressively over a sustained period, until their abundance in the atmosphere starts to decline.

When New Zealand entered the Level 4 coronavirus lockdown in March 2020, almost two weeks passed (the incubation period of the virus) before the number of new cases started to decline. Waiting for atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to decrease, even while we reduce emissions, will be similar, except we’ll be waiting for decades.

It is very unlikely that we could ever reduce greenhouse gas concentrations to the point that it becomes dangerous for life as we know it. Doing so would involve overcoming the natural greenhouse effect.

Recent research into greenhouse gas emission scenarios provides guidance on what will need to happen to stabilise Earth’s temperature at 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels. A rapid transition away from fossil fuels toward low-carbon energy is imperative; some form of carbon dioxide capture to remove it from the atmosphere may also be necessary.

Short-term and scattered climate policy will not be sufficient to support the transitions we need, and achieving 1.5℃ will not be possible as long as global inequalities remain high.

– ref. Climate Explained: what Earth would be like if we hadn’t pumped greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-what-earth-would-be-like-if-we-hadnt-pumped-greenhouse-gases-into-the-atmosphere-141194

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Lorrey, Principal Scientist & Programme Leader of Climate Observations and Processes, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research

Brewster Glacier in New Zealand’s Southern Alps lost 13 million cubic metres of ice between March 2016 and March 2019 – almost the equivalent of the basic drinking water needs of all New Zealanders during that time.

Simultaneously, seasonal extremes for Auckland – New Zealand’s largest city – swung from the wettest autumn on record to one of the most severe multi-season droughts.

Water is arguably the most precious resource in New Zealand. These contrasting extreme events in two very different regions highlight the critical importance of long-term observations as we confront water security challenges.

Water extremes

2017 became the wettest autumn on record for Auckland when an “atmospheric river” drenched the city for several days. Within a month, ex-tropical cyclones dumped even more extreme rainfall.

Exceptionally high autumn rainfall (more than 200% higher than normal for many sites) during 2017 saturated soils and produced numerous slips. Sediment hampered water treatment for regional reservoirs that provide about 75% of the city’s water supply.

Fast forward to 2019, when one of the most significant multi-season droughts since the early 20th century started unfolding. Four Auckland sites we monitor show it was the driest summer in recent memory. The drought has continued, and water restrictions are currently in place.

The big wet versus the big dry in Auckland only three years apart gives us a taste of New Zealand’s water future – a higher likelihood of more frequent water extremes with stronger impacts.

Shrinking ice

The Southern Alps tell a different story arising from climate extremes, where recent changes have been rapid, widespread and exceptional. The National Institute of Water and Atmosphere end-of-summer snowline mission – which has run nearly unbroken since the 1970s – provides valuable “time capsules” of glaciers and snowlines through a changing climate.

Read more: A bird’s eye view of New Zealand’s changing glaciers

The long-term permanent snowline – the boundary between exposed glacial ice and recent snow – must sit below the mountain top for a glacier to exist. The 2018 Tasman Sea marine heatwave drove snowlines off the top of many peaks. Then, 2019 produced a second marine heatwave around northern New Zealand. Some small glaciers sustained so much damage during these extreme years that they are now on a path to extinction.

As if this wasn’t enough, ash and dust from Australian bushfires blanketed Southern Alps glaciers during the 2020 summer and increased the potential for seasonal melt.

New photogrammetry techniques that produce digital elevation models with annual glacier photos help to define the impacts from extreme years like the last three. We are extending these techniques to our historic image archive to construct a 4D vision of ice volume, which brings us closer to quantifying water volume loss and gain for individual glaciers.

The recent ice loss from Brewster Glacier is only a small part of the frozen water volume stored in New Zealand’s Southern Alps. Since the first New Zealand glacier survey in the late 1970s, there’s been a long-term trend of glacial retreat through climate warming.

Southern Alps glaciers are estimated to have lost more than 30% of their volume – about 16 billion cubic metres of ice, or the equivalent of about 200 litres a day for each New Zealander over 40 years.

Read more: New Zealand’s Southern Alps have lost a third of their ice

While water loss from vanishing glaciers is deeply troubling, it is a reminder that more severe and immediate concerns can arise from long and intense seasonal droughts and changes to rivers in a warming world.

Past and present observations help prepare for the future

Long-term environmental observations help to inform national water security policy and water resource management. Our observations also underpin weather forecasts, seasonal climate predictions and climate change projections that cover a spectrum of advance warnings for extreme weather and climate impacts.

We need to grow environmental observations, but making and archiving them can be costly and difficult. Global support for their long-term stewardship once they are gathered is also at risk. As a result, small countries like New Zealand confront hard choices about which observations to make, what sites they come from, and how they are continued.

Amid the many COVID-19 announcements was an increase in funding for nationally significant databases and collections. This boost is a welcome signal for maintaining valuable scientific resources, including environmental observations, for future generations.

But ongoing support is needed to reduce attrition of our comprehensive evidence base. It would be even more risky to abandon long-term water and climate observations, and simply fly blind into an uncertain future.

– ref. Why long-term environmental observations are crucial for New Zealand’s water security challenges – https://theconversation.com/why-long-term-environmental-observations-are-crucial-for-new-zealands-water-security-challenges-141123

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Marshman, Honorary Principal Fellow, Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne

One objective of the government’s recently announced funding changes for universities is to increase the number of graduates in areas of expected employment growth – such as teaching, nursing, agriculture, STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) and IT.

The education minister said student fees in these degrees would drop. But what he didn’t say is universities would also receive less funding for these degrees, because the government had assessed they are currently over-funded.

We have modelled the shortfall in guaranteed base funding to universities for degrees in areas of employment growth, and others, using the latest 2018 domestic student enrolment data.

To educate 584,346 domestic full-time bachelor students, the government will save A$769 million per year. Students will be charged an extra A$476 million per year and universities will have reduced funding of A$293 million per year.

The reduced rate of funding to universities (of up to 17%), per place, for national priority courses sends perverse messages to universities. They will be receiving a lower rate of funding when they are expected to expand domestic enrolments.

It’s not as it seems

The basis for the government’s funding decisions is a Deloitte Access Economics report on transparency in higher education spending.

The reform package sees substantial reductions for student fees in certain national priority degrees – 21% for science and engineering to 62% for agriculture and mathematics.

As the table below shows, the government contribution for four of these courses (teaching, nursing, agriculture and mathematics) has increased.

But universities won’t be fully compensated for the student fee reduction for any of these courses.

The funding reductions for universities, per place, of between 6-17% will be a barrier to the minister’s objective of seeing more enrolments in these courses.

In sharp contrast to the STEM courses, humanities and social sciences students (except those in languages and English) will have to contribute much more of the cost, and the government significantly less.

As the below tables shows, universities can expect to receive increased funding, from 15%-55% for courses in languages, English, humanities and social sciences, law, economics, management and commerce.

But the government’s pricing signals are designed to redirect students from humanities and social sciences to courses of national priority. If these signals succeed – meaning fewer students will be studying humanities, and therefore paying the fees – overall university levels of funding for humanities will decline.

Does the government now expect universities to subsidise STEM subjects from humanities and social science domestic student fees in the same way they have cross-subsidised research and research training from international student fees?

As part of the reform package, the table below shows university funding, per place, for ten fields of study (including engineering, nursing and teaching) will reduce, and increase for 11 (including health, creative arts, and society and culture).

The level of funding reductions for national priority places, and in environmental studies (with a decrease of nearly $10,000 per place), are most significant.

What signal does the government seek to send about the importance of the environment for Australia’s future social well-being?

The government’s package indicates much of government savings ($769 million per year) will be redirected to rural, regional and Indigenous programs. This outcome will be of marginal benefit to metropolitan universities.

Issues for universities

The focus on national priority courses in government’s reform package raises some important issues for universities.

Overall, universities will receive less funding per student place than they currently do. This is at a time when universities are experiencing a massive shortfall in the billions in international student fee revenue.

Universities could, within their internal budget allocation models, restore funding for national priority courses by redirecting income from humanities and social science programs. But this would be counter-productive, divisive and inefficient for universities, as it involves budgetary opaqueness and removes incentives for revenue growth.

The reform package encourages universities to reallocate places across disciplines to reflect changes in student demand. If universities respond to desired changes in student demand by increasing places in national priority courses through reallocation from other disciplines, a fixed level of government funding will result in fewer places becoming available. For example, a student in engineering ($16,500) will attract 15 times the level of government funding than a humanities student ($1,100).

An issue for government will be whether the discipline-based changes in funding places will lead to gaming by universities, which may seek to redefine subjects to secure higher funding rates.

In humanities, the incentive will be to have subjects coded as English and languages. Environmental studies will receive increased funding if coded as agriculture. Legal studies may be presented as education. Costs will increase if this occurs.

Thirty two universities participated in the 2019 data collection for the Deloitte report the government’s funding decisions is based on. Of these, 13 universities were unable to supply detailed activity-based costing data.

The validity of the new discipline-based funding model will depend on whether the Deloitte report reflects true costs of university teaching.

Universities are already predicted to lose billions of dollars in international fee revenue in 2021 and beyond. A further financial impost would severely affect their capacity to maintain high quality teaching programs and undertake internationally competitive research.

– ref. The government is making ‘job-ready’ degrees cheaper for students – but cutting funding to the same courses – https://theconversation.com/the-government-is-making-job-ready-degrees-cheaper-for-students-but-cutting-funding-to-the-same-courses-141280

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dennis Altman, Professorial Fellow in Human Security, La Trobe University

When Disney releases a film version of the musical Hamilton on July 3, it will be 11 years since Lin-Manuel Miranda performed an early number at a White House evening hosted by the Obamas.

Watching the musical in the fourth year of the Trump administration is to be jolted back to a very different America. The optimism that accompanied the election of the first black president has given way to the grief and anger of Black Lives Matter.

Hamilton is a musical drama built around the story of Alexander Hamilton, one of the founders of the American Constitution. Sung in a mix of hip hop, rap and pop, it has won 11 Tony Awards, a Grammy and a Pulitzer. Disney reportedly paid US$75 million (A$108 million) for the rights to screen it.

From the White House to Broadway, [Hamilton] is a musical entwined with politics. This seems radical, but is true to the tradition of the American musical, namely an interrogation of the American Dream.

Rap and opera

Like opera, [Hamilton] is sung throughout, rather than being constructed around detachable songs intended to live as popular hits. The use of rap means Hamilton is more information dense than most musicals, spinning seamlessly across several stories which lead to Hamilton’s dying acknowledgement of “America, you great unfinished symphony”.

Miranda not only wrote the lyrics and music, he starred in the original production, which was marked by the casting of non-white actors to play icons of the American Revolution. Shortly after the election of Donald Trump, Vice President-elect Mike Pence attended a performance of the show. Miranda addressed him directly during the final curtain calls, which Trump later labelled as “rude”:

We, sir — we — are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights … We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.

A musical tradition

Cole Porter’s first attempt at a musical in 1916 was called See America First. The 1927 Kern and Hammerstein musical Show Boat made racial conflict central to its story.

Throughout the 20th century, the musical was a form that aired politically difficult subjects. In 1937 Mark Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock was a Brechtian expose of corruption and corporate greed. In 1949, Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein spotlighted American racism in South Pacific.

Hammerstein also wrote the lyrics and book for 1943’s Carmen Jones, which transposed Bizet’s opera to an African American setting.

Like Gershwin before him, Hammerstein was Jewish, and Jewish themes run through several well-known musicals including Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret and The Producers.

Nor are Washington politics unusual in the American musical. There is a precursor to Hamilton in Sherman Edwards’ 1969 musical 1776, an account of the Continental Congress that declared independence from Britain. The show won the Tony Award for the best musical, beating the more subversively political Hair.

Read more: Hollywood onstage: why are so many musicals adapted from movies?

The dream

If Hamilton is innovative in its music and staging, its politics are in line with the dominant American myth that anyone can find success.

Alexander Hamilton was a poor orphan from the West Indies who became George Washington’s right-hand man, a co-author of the Federalist Papers that inspired the US Constitution, the first Secretary of the Treasury and the leading exponent of a strong national economy. In 1804, he was killed in a duel with then Vice President Aaron Burr.

For Miranda, the attraction of Hamilton was the capacity of the outsider to make it in the United States: “Just like my country” sings Hamilton “I’m young, scrappy and hungry”.

On slavery

In his 1973 novel Burr, Gore Vidal describes Hamilton as “a strange wild little boy thrust by his bastardy outside society, forced to rely on his beauty and wit to get himself what he wanted, usually from older duller men”.

Vidal distrusted Hamilton, just as he distrusted his nemesis Thomas Jefferson, for their vision of an American Empire. While Hamilton was opposed to slavery, he accepted its continuation as the price of union.

Through its musical styles and casting, Hamilton claims the American Dream for those who were excluded, just like Martin Luther King or indeed Frederick Douglas in his famous 1846 speech:

Americans! Your republican politics are flagrantly inconsistent. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie.

But there are no words as pointed in Hamilton and it has come under fire from critics and historians.

Read more: From Louisiana to Queensland: how American slave owners started again in Australia

The greatest?

In making politics the theme of musical theatre, there will inevitably be omissions and distortions.

Evita is hardly a definitive picture of Argentina under Peron, nor is Les Misérables a reliable guide to the Parisian revolts of 1832.

The hype around Hamilton is as much a product of the American belief system as it is of the extraordinary mix of words, music and story. One Washington critic claimed it as the greatest musical ever written, because it recognises

the American Revolution … is ongoing even today, and there are Founders of America being born even as we speak.

Australian audiences, watching from home with stages empty and streets full of protesters, may respond with slightly less desperation to believe in this American origin story.

– ref. Watching Hamilton today – musical drama can be radical, just don’t believe all the hype – https://theconversation.com/watching-hamilton-today-musical-drama-can-be-radical-just-dont-believe-all-the-hype-139322

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

The July 4 byelection in the highly marginal NSW Labor seat of Eden-Monaro is shaping up to be “very close”, according to participants in focus group research conducted by the University of Canberra.

Climate change, job creation, the federal government’s response to the bushfires, and health care were most frequently nominated when people were asked to choose, from a list of 13, the issue that would be extremely or very important in informing how they would vote.

Climate change was nominated by six of the 16, with job creation chosen by three, followed by the government’s response on bushfires and health care (each nominated by two people). The government’s response to COVID-19, support for tourism and action on the high cost of living received one nomination each.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Labor Party’s dirty linen on display at bad time for Anthony Albanese

Most participants believed the summer fires would have a negative impact for the Coalition, and that this might make a difference in a close election.

On Tuesday Scott Morrison campaigned in Bega, with a $86 million package for the forestry industry, wine producers and apple growers hit by the bushfires and the effects of COVID-19. While the money is not confined to Eden-Monaro, its target is winning votes there. Anthony Albanese visited the pre-poll booth in Queanbeyan.

The three online focus groups, totalling 16 participants, were conducted by Mark Evans and Max Halupka of the university’s Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis. People were drawn from various parts of what is a very diverse electorate. Two group were done last week and the other on Monday. Participants included Coalition, Labor and Green supporters, with a mix of firmly aligned and swinging voters.

Participants were asked their voting intentions and their responses suggested a Labor victory. Swinging voters seemed to have moved to Labor but hard Coalition and Labor voters are remaining loyal.

But it should be stressed focus groups are not predictive of the result, but rather tap into attitudes at a point in the campaign.

Asked about management of the COVID-19 crisis, NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian was seen as the best performer, followed by Morrison and the Chief Medical Officer, Brendan Murphy, who were equally regarded.

Albanese – who has campaigned extensively in Eden-Monaro – was seen as having a low profile throughout the pandemic crisis. In the words of one Labor swinging voter this was attributable to “his lack of a platform”. As another participant observed, “Crises are a great advantage for government”. Participants were luke warm about how good a job Albanese was doing in holding Morrison to account over the management of the COVID-19 crisis.

When asked who they listened to most when looking for guidance on COVID-19, people pointed to Norman Swan and the ABC.

Participants’ trust in Morrison has marginally increased as a result of his handling of COVID-19, but from a low level following the bushfire crisis. One man, a strong Coalition supporter, said the PM “needed to learn and has learned”.

A female Coalition swinging voter attributed Morrison’s improvement to “the national cabinet. He was given some good lessons in leadership and the group kept his tendencies under control.”

Discussing issues, people thought the federal government’s handling of the bushfire crisis suffered from poor federal leadership, inadequate preparation, and insufficient collaboration between federal and state governments.

Critics of the Morrison government’s handling of the fires included most of the hard Coalition voters – although it was not enough to change their vote.

There was also a perception the federal government had lost interest in the bushfire recovery process. “It makes sense to tackle the problem in front of you and that’s the virus,” said a Coalition supporter.

In the discussion, most participants saw a link between the bushfire crisis and the need for action on climate, and said their views on the importance of the climate issue had sharpened significantly over the past six months. There were some exceptions: “Older people don’t go with the mantra of climate change, though they know something is going on,” said a middle aged male Coalition voter.

Coalition voters were more focused on local issues – economic issues, better infrastructure and improved access to health care, education and transport. “The Coalition has the track record to get the economy back on track,” said one man.

People generally thought Australia was more resilient than most other countries to bounce back from the COVID-19 crisis. But they were worried about Australia’s economic vulnerability, particularly its dependence on China.

Participants wanted politicians to be more collaborative and less adversarial in a post-COVID-19 world and for experts to have a greater say in decision making. An older female Labor supporter said, “We need politicians to behave better and take community issues more seriously”, while a male Coalition voter opined, “we need more adult politics as the national cabinet has shown us”.

Read more: Coalition gains Newspoll lead as Labor ahead in Eden-Monaro; Trump’s ratings recover

There was some concern the old politics would resume. “[The national cabinet] started well but it already seems to be falling apart,” said a hard-Labor voter.

In a field of 14 candidates, this is a Labor-Liberal battle, and both major parties are running female candidates with good local credentials. The Liberals’ Fiona Kotvojs, who pushed the former MP Mike Kelly close at the 2019 election, has a background in teaching, science, farming and small business; Labor’s Kristy McBain has most recently been mayor of Bega.

The focus group participants thought the two women were strong on credentials but low on having high constituency-wide profiles, suggesting voters would be likely to vote on party lines rather than for personalities.

But some participants noted the Liberals were spending a lot on Kotvojs’ campaign and predicted this was likely to increase in the time remaining.

– ref. Eden-Monaro byelection will be “very close”, according to participants in focus group research – https://theconversation.com/eden-monaro-byelection-will-be-very-close-according-to-participants-in-focus-group-research-141307

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren O’Donovan, Senior Lecturer in Administrative Law, La Trobe University

Public pressure is growing for a royal commission into the controversial robodebt scheme.

After calls from the Greens this week, Labor also demanded an inquiry.

As Opposition leader Anthony Albanese said: “how can we ensure that a debacle like this never happens again?”

Read more: Government to repay 470,000 unlawful robodebts in what might be Australia’s biggest-ever financial backdown

But Prime Minister Scott Morrison quickly shot down the idea, telling reporters it wasn’t necessary, “because we’re fixing the problem”.

The tide has turned on robodebt

In the past few months, the campaign against robodebt has enjoyed a series of unprecedented wins.

Last November, the Federal Court declared the robodebt of Melbourne woman Deanna Amato was “not validly made”.

Then last month, the Morrison government announced it would repay $721 million worth of robodebts. Earlier this month, Morrison also told parliament

I would apologise for any hurt or harm in the way that the government has dealt with that [robodebt] issue.

Meanwhile, a class action, seeking interest and damages on behalf of about 600,000 Australians, is scheduled for trial on September 21.

Given all that is happening, however, we still need the power of a royal commission.

Unanswered questions

As an administrative law researcher, myself and my colleauges have watched the robodebt scandal play out for four years now.

In this time, we have seen blocked freedom of information requests and unanswered questions. I have sat with some of my own students devastated by life-changing, inaccurate debts.

Only a royal commission can bring real change to Centrelink, as it could ensure every unlawful debt is accounted for and fixed.

Read more: From robodebt to racism: what can go wrong when governments let algorithms make the decisions

Importantly, any potential class action settlement may not account for everyone who had an unlawful debt. For one thing, we know debts prior to June 2015 are excluded from the class action due to legal time limits on suing for damages.

Despite claims it is “fixing the problem”, the federal government is so far refusing to take any practical action to find, refund or compensate this unknown number of people.

We have also yet to see due diligence applied to debts raised solely from people’s bank statements.

These debts are raised by turning net received income amounts into gross fortnightly earnings. This is a complex process, which raises further legal questions. Again, a royal commission is needed to ensure everyone who was harmed by defective administration is recognised and compensated.

History cannot repeat

A royal commission is also needed because it has the capacity to make sure robodebt never happens again.

Robodebt is an unprecedented failure of governance in an institution – Centrelink – that potentially touches the lives of every Australian.

At the institutional level, what has been done to people and the federal budget and since the scheme began cannot go uninvestigated.

For example, we do not know when the government first learned that the scheme was unlawful.

It is also not clear why it did not challenge multiple adverse Administrative Appeal Tribunal decisions about the robodebt scheme.

Questions about budgetary processes

Robodebt also raises troubling questions about Australian government budget processes.

In early 2015, the government proposed removing existing compliance safeguards, telling Centrelink staff to stop gathering payslips directly from employers before raising debts.

Just four months later, more than one billion dollars in estimated savings had already made its way into the federal budget. The program eventually grew to a projected $3.7 billion.

It may now result in a net cost to the taxpayer. On any objective measure, that requires an independent inquiry.

Centrelink needs to learn by listening

Robodebt is a reminder for academics, the media and the public that where we focus our attention is a form of power.

A royal commission would give a platform to people who are frequently talked over, talked about or placed on hold by those in government.

Read more: After Robodebt, it’s time to address ParentsNext

It’s not just consultants and politicians who have ideas about the government, everyday Australians have ideas, too. For four years, the people who knew the truth about robodebt were not listened to.

When they hear the word “robodebt”, Australians should not see politicians or even court victories. We need to reshape the system around the working mum or dad, on the phone, two kids at their feet – who tried to accurately report their earnings to the government, only to be told they owed a crudely averaged debt.

No wonder an estimated 55% of Australians already support the idea of a royal commission into robodebt.

– ref. The ‘problem’ is not ‘fixed’. Why we need a royal commission into robodebt – https://theconversation.com/the-problem-is-not-fixed-why-we-need-a-royal-commission-into-robodebt-141273

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Adelaide

Joel Schumacher, who has died aged 80 in New York, never won an Oscar.

He began drinking aged nine and spent the last years of his life apologising for having made Batman and Robin (1997). He was once described in The Village Voice as a “well-oiled toxic-waste machine”.

And yet Schumacher’s body of work is profound, and his influence on contemporary Hollywood cinema indelible.

Hitmaker

A glance at his back catalogue is testament to his talent, range, and his innate ability to spot a hit movie.

In Flawless (1999), he coaxed mighty performances from Robert de Niro and Philip Seymour Hoffman. He introduced the world to Matthew McConaughey in A Time to Kill (1996), Colin Farrell in Tigerland (2000) and Joaquin Phoenix (previously credited as Leaf Phoenix) in 8mm (1999).

Cate Blanchett has rarely been better in Veronica Guerin (2003), nor Julia Roberts in Flatliners (1990) and Dying Young (1991).

To understand Schumacher’s vast contribution, we need to go back to the start of his extraordinarily eclectic career, and his costume designs for Woody Allen’s Sleeper (1973).

Read more: Seams, dreams: the hands behind classic Hollywood costumes

A sci-fi caper, in which Allen’s character awakens 200 years in the future and gets involved in bringing down a police state, is now largely overlooked, but Schumacher’s costumes remain unforgettable: inflatable onesies, the tuxedos topped with metal hats.

Here was someone with a sense of humour, sensitive to the camp excesses of genre cinema, and to how films might subvert and entertain in equal measure. This touch would serve Schumacher well – he went on to tap into longstanding entertainment trends like 70s disco, 80s Brat Pack and 90s “event” films.

Talent spotter

He shifted to screenwriting, penning the blue-collar musical Car Wash (1976) and The Wiz (1978), Sidney Lumet’s raucous Motown update of The Wizard of Oz, with Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow and Diana Ross as Dorothy.

It wasn’t long before he moved behind the camera, debuting The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981) with Lily Tomlin. It received a rave review from critic Roger Ebert, and kickstarted a two-decade string of commercial success.

1985’s St Elmo’s Fire set down the template for American coming-of-age dramas, full of characters struggling to adapt to post-college lives of responsibility and conformity.

Schumacher tweaked that formula two years’ later in The Lost Boys, another coming-of-age tale, only this time with vampires in sunny California. It is easy to forget the film’s immense cultural impact: it brought vampires into the Hollywood mainstream years before Buffy and the Twilight series.

The cast for the two hit films included Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, Corey Feldman and Corey Haim. One of Schumacher’s most important contributions will remain his extraordinary ability to spot talent.

In the crowded early-80s film scene, stars were discovered via TV roles or moved westward from New York theatre and Schumacher’s casting nous was exemplary. Names like Keifer Sutherland, Ally Sheedy and Rob Lowe form the Rosetta Stone of 1980s American movie culture, and Schumacher fought hard to cast them all.

And then there was Batman

Film history is full of directors who shuttled across assignments, content not to leave any discernable authorial “mark”, but simply just to work, to pay bills, to collaborate with fresh-faced actors, to explore new forms. Schumacher is part of that exalted company.

Tigerland was shot in less than four weeks, and is now regarded as one of the most searing depictions of the Vietnam War. Schumacher’s adaptations of John Grisham’s The Client (1994) and A Time to Kill (1996) are benchmarks of novel-to-film transitions and foregrounded his ability to weave complex, multi-character stories in a brisk, non-ostentatious manner.

Even later films, such as The Phantom of the Opera (2004) and the Jim Carrey vehicle The Number 23 (2007) blend showmanship, schlock and glitz-and-glamour. Schumacher thus fits neatly alongside contemporaries such as Ivan Reitman and Rob Reiner. He flitted nimble from genre to genre, but he was no hack.

And then there is Batman. To look at Batman Forever (1995) and Batman and Robin (1997) now is like peering through a cracked kaleidoscope. What were they thinking?

Nowadays, Batman is Christian Bale, broodingly directed by Christopher Nolan, weighed down with existential angst. But Schumacher’s versions – both enormous box-office hits at the time, despite the critical brickbats – arguably do something with the Batman extended universe that neither Tim Burton before, nor Nolan and Zack Snyder afterwards, were prepared to countenance: make them fun.

These are garish, hyperactive superhero films, full of fridge-magnet colour schemes and camp villains (Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, Tommy Lee Jones as Two Face). Schumacher replicates the kapow-shazam goofiness of the 1960s Batman TV series in a knowing way.

Realising he had been hired by Warner Brothers to shift the franchise in a more child-friendly direction, Schumacher duly obliged, and spent the rest of his career issuing mea culpas.

Read more: The Joker’s origin story comes at a perfect moment: clowns define our times

Roll credits

There was the inevitable tailing off, as there always is with directors who become unwell, or who find themselves out of step with the financial demands of billionaire studio conglomerates. But still he kept working.

Phone Booth (2002) was as high-concept as anything Hollywood commissioned at the time – what would you do if you were trapped in a street-corner telephone booth, with an assassin’s gun trained on you?

Perhaps it’s most fitting to remember him by reflecting on Falling Down (1993), with Michael Douglas as a recently fired defence worker who becomes a one-man vigilante after escaping a Los Angeles traffic jam. The film feels both of its time (Schumacher began filming the day the LA Riots broke out) and overwhelmingly modern.

Schumacher once said:

It’s very hard to realise you have a calling and realise you’re not gifted. I wanted to be a director all my life, and when I finally got the chance, I was so miserably untalented.

When we reflect on his contribution to modern cinema, we see how wrong he was.

– ref. Vale Joel Schumacher – the Hollywood legend who brought us brat packs, teen vampires and Falling Down – https://theconversation.com/vale-joel-schumacher-the-hollywood-legend-who-brought-us-brat-packs-teen-vampires-and-falling-down-141278

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ross Hendy, Lecturer in Criminology, Monash University

The recent killing of a police officer and the wounding of his colleague in West Auckland will inevitably change police attitudes to their jobs.

Firstly, it will affect how they interact with the public. Such tragedies offer a direct challenge to the democratic conventions of policing in New Zealand, particularly the important idea of policing by consent.

Secondly, the death of Constable Matthew Hunt will inevitably lead to a reexamination of police firearm policies.

And finally, the incident will change the way police officers perceive risk and read risk factors during routine vehicle stops.

Renewed calls for routine arming

As ever when an officer is killed in the line of duty, the debate over permanently arming front-line police resurfaces. While patrol vehicles carry firearms in New Zealand, these are not routinely worn by officers.

Surprisingly, though, there is little international research comparing the nature of routinely armed and routinely unarmed policing.

One study of the temporary arming of Norwegian police suggested there is genuine mental strain associated with not carrying firearms. Officers reported being worried about the risks of unexpectedly confronting dangerous situations. They also said this negatively affected their ability to formulate effective tactical plans.

This doesn’t necessarily represent a universal desire to be armed, however. During my earlier research into the Norwegian Police in 2011, one officer told me he preferred to remain routinely unarmed due to a previous encounter with an armed offender. His life had been spared, he suggested, precisely because he was not carrying a firearm.

This perspective was shared by many of my colleagues during my time on the front-line. But recent officer surveys have shown an increasing preference over time for routine arming. This latest death will not alter that.

Read more: Defunding the police could bring positive change in Australia. These communities are showing the way

Would Armed Response Teams have made a difference?

The death of Constable Matthew Hunt came only weeks after the Armed Response Team (ART) trial was abandoned, so it is reasonable to ask whether this would have made a difference.

Given the Auckland incident has been described as a routine vehicle stop, however, and unless it had been an ART unit that made the original stop, it seems unlikely such a deployment would have changed anything.

Until more detail is available it is impossible to estimate whether the deployment of an ART vehicle would have reduced callout times compared with the conventional Armed Offender Squad units that did respond.

Trust in the public will decline

As a former constable and sergeant with New Zealand Police, I know firsthand how police fatalities shape one’s behaviour. The 2002 shooting of Detective Constable Duncan Taylor changed my awareness of personal safety and was always in the back of my mind during my operational policing career.

The deaths of another three officers in 2008 and 2009 markedly affected my risk perception. When my colleague Sergeant Derek Wootton was killed it raised my awareness of the risks of deploying road spikes when apprehending fleeing drivers. And the deaths of Senior Constable Len Snee and Sergeant Don Wilkinson reinforced the need for adequate firearms on police operations.

These deaths not only shaped my perception of risk, they affected the trust I had in others when assessing my own safety.

Perception of risk will change

Beyond questions of trust, the Auckland incident will shape both formal and informal practice and policy. Police training will include lessons from the incident. Just as importantly, individual officers’ subjective perception of risk and how it affects their decisions will change.

Read more: Black Lives Matter outrage must drive police reform in Aotearoa-New Zealand too

Research confirms it is the perceived level of threat that informs decision making. Studies of officer risk assessment during police vehicle stops show the importance of environmental and social factors.

Unarmed English officers treated traffic stops quite differently to those from Venezuela – perhaps not surprisingly, since the latter were accustomed to having grenades thrown in their direction.

In short, officers perceive risk based on their personal experience and exposure to resistance.

Read more: 5 reasons police officers should have college degrees

Apprehension and arrest are inherently dangerous

The Auckland incident again highlights the difficulty associated with one of the most dangerous aspects of police work.

My research into front-line policing in New Zealand and South Australia revealed the real danger for officers during the live investigation phase of police encounters, such as responding to family violence incidents or stopping vehicles.

Apprehending someone involves the most frequent use (and longest duration) of physical control behaviours. Officers can employ verbal control techniques – questioning, directions or commands – but there is no getting away from the fact that arrest requires the physical custody of a person.

While police might expect resistance, they trust that citizens will ultimately consent to their actions and that their lives will not be placed in jeopardy.

This latest police death will naturally cause many in the police to question that trust. The challenge for policy makers will be to balance the desirable elements of New Zealand policing with the practical need to ensure officer safety.

– ref. Trust, risk and routine arming: the killing of a frontline officer challenges New Zealand police practice – https://theconversation.com/trust-risk-and-routine-arming-the-killing-of-a-frontline-officer-challenges-new-zealand-police-practice-141191

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Graves, Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University

Two small studies published recently suggested most men hospitalised with COVID-19 are bald, generating headlines around the world.

While this may sound strange, science does offer a plausible explanation.

Male pattern baldness is associated with high levels of male sex hormones called androgens. And androgens seem to play an important role in the entry of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, into cells.

So it’s possible high levels of androgens might increase the risk of severe infection and death from COVID-19.

This hypothesis is important to identify people at risk and raises the possibility of new treatment strategies for COVID-19.

Read more: Why do more men die from coronavirus than women?

Men suffer more than women from COVID-19

It’s been obvious from early in the pandemic. Men are at greater risk of severe infection and death from COVID-19 than women.

There are several possible factors at play here. For one, men are more likely to suffer from chronic conditions known to pose a higher risk of serious illness from COVID-19. These include heart disease and diabetes.

Another is that men’s immune systems are not as good as women’s at warding off the severe effects of viral infections.

These factors are indirectly influenced by sex hormones. Now it seems sex hormones might also have a direct effect on SARS-CoV-2’s ability to enter our cells and establish infection.

Baldness and COVID-19

In one study of 122 male COVID-19 patients admitted to hospitals in Madrid, 79% were bald — about double the population frequency.

Another small study in Spain observed a similar overrepresentaton of baldness among men hospitalised with COVID-19.

Read more: Starting to thin out? Hair loss doesn’t have to lead to baldness

Male pattern baldness is strongly associated with a higher level of dihydrotestosterone (DHT), a more active derivative of testosterone, and one of the androgen family of male sex hormones.

Confirming this correlation between baldness and susceptibility to COVID-19 with larger samples, controlling for age and other conditions, would be significant. It would suggest a higher DHT level could be a risk factor for severe COVID-19.

How does this link make biological sense?

SARS-CoV-2 enters human lung cells when a protein on the virus’ surface (the spike protein) latches onto protein receptors (ACE2 receptors) embedded in the cells’ surfaces.

How does this work? Recently scientists discovered that an enzyme called TMPRSS2 cleaves the SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein, enabling it to bind to the ACE2 receptor. This allows the virus to enter the cell.

The gene that encodes TMPRSS2 is activated when male hormones, particularly DHT, bind to the androgen receptor (a protein on the surface of cells, including hair cells and lung cells).

So the more male hormone, the more androgen receptor binding, the more TMPRSS2 is present, and the easier it is for virus to get in.

A preliminary, non-peer-reviewed study which correlated the androgen levels of hundreds of people in the UK with COVID-19 severity supports this theory. Higher androgen level was associated with susceptibility to and severity of COVID-19 in men (but not women, who have much lower androgen levels in their blood).

The same researchers showed that inhibiting androgen receptors reduced the ability of SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein to bind to ACE2 receptors on stem cells in culture.

Androgen disruptions are linked to different diseases

Over- or underproduction of androgens in the body causes a variety of conditions in both men and women.

For instance, men with benign prostate enlargement overproduce androgen, as do women with polycystic ovary syndrome.

Many such conditions are treated with androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), which inhibits the production or effect of androgens. For instance, prostate cancer, in which cancer cell growth is fuelled by androgens, is routinely treated with ADT.

Conversely, some people have low androgen production, or mutations that affect the binding and action of androgens — such as women with androgen insensitivity syndrome caused by mutations of the androgen receptor.

It will be important to find out whether, as the androgen hypothesis predicts, patients with over- or under-production of male hormones are at greater — or lesser — risk of COVID-19.

Read more: How can I treat myself if I’ve got – or think I’ve got – coronavirus?

A potential treatment option?

If the androgen link holds up, this would encourage exploration of anti-androgens as a way to prevent and treat COVID-19.

Many anti-androgens are already approved for the treatment of other conditions. Some, like baldness treatments, have been used safely for years or decades. Some, like cancer treatments, can be tolerated for months.

A study which looked at men hospitalised with COVID-19 in Italy showed the rate of infection was four times lower in prostate cancer patients on ADT than in untreated cancer patients.

Perhaps a single dose given to someone who tests positive to SARS-CoV-2, or has just been exposed, would suffice to lower the chance of the virus taking hold.

But we need research to confirm this. Several androgen-suppressing drugs are now undergoing clinical trials to determine whether they reduce complications among men with COVID-19.

It will be important to verify that anti-androgen treatment works in the lungs as well as the prostate, and is effective in cancer-free patients. We’d also need to find out what dose is effective, and when it should be administered.

Anti-androgen treatments have several side effects in men, including breast enlargement and sexual dysfunction, so medical oversight is a must.

A promising new direction in COVID-19 research

The androgen link could go a long way to explaining why men are more susceptible to COVID-19 than women. It also may explain why children younger than ten seem very resistant to COVID-19 because, until puberty, boys as well as girls make little androgen.

The more we know about who is at heightened risk from COVID-19, the better we can target information.

The androgen link also opens up an avenue for the discovery of drugs which might mitigate some of the impact of COVID-19 as it continues to sweep the globe.

Read more: COVID-19’s deadliness for men is revealing why researchers should have been studying immune system sex differences years ago

– ref. Coronavirus and sex hormones — baldness may be a risk factor and anti-androgens a treatment – https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-and-sex-hormones-baldness-may-be-a-risk-factor-and-anti-androgens-a-treatment-140340

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sean Williams, Senior Lecturer, Flinders University

Writing is a pastime best conducted on your own — or so common wisdom would have it. Yet writing teams exist, and in many realms they are expected. Take television, where the writers’ room is the norm. Or the academy: one physics paper has 5,154 authors.

In literature, collaborations are more common than you might realise. For every superstar Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett team-up (Good Omens), there might be an F. Scott Fitzgerald and his uncredited wife Zelda, or a “James S. A. Corey” (The Expanse) being the pseudonym for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.

Although new writers such as the Brontë siblings may collaborate, the practice seems to fall away with age, perhaps because writing relationships can be as fraught as familial ones, with as many pitfalls to navigate.

Add to this a collaboration nearly always proves to take as long as a solo work and any monies might have to be divided among the contributors. Why would anyone willingly share their art with someone else for little to no benefit?

Read more: 10½ commandments of writing

In my experience, collaborating can be creatively stimulating, educative, motivating, productive, and revitalising. Plus, it’s great to have a friend to keep you company on a publicity tour.

Here are six techniques to help would-be co-writers take their first steps in this direction.

1. The chain

This is the simplest method, one of two that require first settling on what your story will be and then breaking the writing of it into bits completed separately, in chronological order.

There are many ways to serially tackle the discrete tasks that will combine to form a glorious whole. Some teams might choose to write alternate scenes, chapters or sections; others might alternate whole drafts, giving each participant long stretches of time to work on solo projects.

Whichever way you tear it down, every member of the team has a professional obligation to deliver. Break one link in the chain and it falls apart.

2. Parallel processing

The second way to devolve an outline requires trust and communication beyond that required of ordinary collaborative relationships.

In parallel processing, you divide characters among authors, so one provides the voice of X, another Y, and so on. Each arc is written separately, then edited together when complete. If X or Y diverge too much from their expected paths, plotting and structural problems can arise, but the powerful juxtaposition of distinct voices can outweigh the risk.

3. The hothouse

An extreme version of serial collaboration, this method used to require being physically in the same room as your writing partner(s). One starts writing and keeps writing until they get stuck. They then tag in the next writer, who takes over. Repeat until done. Food and sleep are optional.

The benefit of this method is the words are guaranteed to keep coming.

These days the “in person” requirement is greatly relaxed. Google Docs is just one platform allowing writers to work on the same document at the same time, no matter where they are.

4. The undertakers

Brainstorming what a story will contain is, for many collaborators, the fun part — providing they can agree on a final project.

One method of achieving this agreement is by giving one of the co-writers a veto to be exercised when consensus can’t be reached.

Another method requires every element of the final project must be agreed to by every collaborator. This can be time-consuming to achieve but avoids any lingering resentment if someone is outvoted or overruled.

More generally, every shared undertaking should have a binding agreement in place before serious work commences, covering issues such as whose name goes first, which agent will sell the work, how any resulting IP will be divided, and so on.

It is much better to have these agreements in place and not need them than the other way around.

5. The Marxist Manifesto

Collaborators should have common ambitions but complementary skills, otherwise you might as well work alone. The way roles are divided in the working relationship can reflect those skill sets – which might, of course, lie in non-writerly areas such as business or marketing.

To some, the perfect collaboration is one in which every participant’s weaknesses are covered by strengths in their fellows. Everyone contributes and everyone learns by example.

6. Resurrection of the dead

Finally, the easiest and safest way to audition a potential co-writer is to give them a failed draft and see what they accomplish with it. If it’s a success, great: the original author gains a new collaborator and a finished work.

Should this (or any of these methods fail) the author is no worse off.

They can just revert to writing alone – for some their natural habitat.

– ref. Collaboration made easy: 6 ways to build a writing relationship – https://theconversation.com/collaboration-made-easy-6-ways-to-build-a-writing-relationship-132348

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

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has expressed concern about Google’s proposed acquisition of fitness tracker company Fitbit.

The acquisition will let Google add years’ worth of Fitbit users’ data to its already unequalled consumer data collection. This could reduce competition in certain health services and other markets in Australia.

Google revealed its plans to acquire Fitbit Inc. for US$2.1 billion last November. But the deal will only go ahead if it gets clearance from competition regulators around the world.

While the ACCC is the first regulator globally to announce its concerns, the European Commission and US Department of Justice are also evaluating the deal. Both will likely take an interest in the ACCC’s views, for which submissions are being accepted.

Collective concern is called for

With more than 28 million people using Fitbit wearable devices, many have raised concerns about Google adding Fitbit’s sensitive data to its already extensive tracking of consumers.

Google has left many questions unanswered about how it would use the data. Consumers have reason to be sceptical about Google’s privacy promises, and the competitive effects of the merger.

Sharing your intimate details

Fitbit collects highly personal information, including sleep patterns, heart rate, active minutes, height and weight, date of birth, food logs, mobile number, biography and precise location data.

For those using Fitbit’s live coaching services, it also collects wellness plans and goals, calendar events, and communications with a coach. If you’re a woman using “female health tracking”, data can also include your periods, fertile times, ovulation days and health symptoms.

The ACCC regards Fitbit data as having “unique attributes”, noting that datasets from other wearable devices are “not as voluminous, reliable or broad”.

Read more: The ACCC is suing Google over tracking users. Here’s why it matters

Google’s privacy reassurances are not binding

Last November, Google and Fitbit were quick to reassure consumers that “Fitbit health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads”. A Google spokesperson told The Conversation:

Similar to our other products, with wearables, we will be transparent about the data we collect and why. And we do not sell personal information to anyone.

However, the ACCC points out Google is not bound by its commitment to not use the data in its advertising businesses. As the competition watchdog’s Chair Rod Sims said:

It is a stretch to believe any commitment Google makes in relation to Fitbit users’ data will still be in place five years from now.

When Google acquired online advertising business DoubleClick, it reassured users it would only combine personal data from the two businesses if users opted into this combination. Eight years later, Google simply deleted this promise from its privacy policy.

It’s also worth noting Google has not promised to refrain from using Fitbit data in its non-advertising businesses. This could include health services or, in future, health or life insurance. Google would not need to “sell” your data to use it for these commercial purposes.

Google’s huge data advantage

Google already has the most extensive collection of consumer data on the planet. This includes data from Google search, YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Nest, Android and Google devices – as well as consumer data collected from millions of third-party websites using Google’s services such as Google Analytics, Google Ads and reCAPTCHA.

The ACCC acknowledges Google already uses its pervasive data collection to create unique profiles of individual users. It points out acquiring Fitbit would give Google “one of the largest and most detailed existing fitness and health datasets, as well as another avenue through which it can continue to gather consumer data”.

The ACCC is particularly concerned the proposed acquisition could substantially reduce competition between Fitbit, Google and others in “data-dependent health services” such as those supplying:

• tailored digital advice based on individual health signals to users of Fitbit and other wearables on how to improve their health or manage a medical condition
• insights to insurance companies or employers wishing to compile risk profiles, reduce costs or enhance productivity
• diagnostic tools for medical institutions and doctors to determine early indicators of chronic disease and
• insights or raw data for health researchers.

If Google acquires Fitbit’s user data, it could gain a significant advantage over other suppliers of these services and prevent them from accessing the dataset.

According to the ACCC, it could also have an incentive hinder rivals such as Apple, Samsung and Garmin, by removing their access to Google Maps, Google Play Store and Wear OS (a Google operating system for wearables).

Read more: Amazon, Facebook and Google don’t need to spy on your conversations to know what you’re talking about

Entrenching Google’s power in digital advertising

Google makes most of its annual revenue (more than US$100 billion) from online advertising services. Privacy advocates have criticised the ad tech industry, including dominant players like Google and Facebook, for creating a “data free for all” where consumers’ intimate information is exchanged between hundreds of companies engaged in targeted advertising.

The ACCC says it is concerned that by acquiring Fitbit’s datasets, Google could entrench its market power in certain ad tech markets. For example, it could “even more effectively target advertising to consumers with health-related issues”.

What can the ACCC actually do about it?

The ACCC plans to announce its final stance by mid-August on whether Google’s merger with Fitbit would contravene Australia’s competition legislation. If it decides the merger is likely to substantially lessen competition, it could seek orders from the Federal Court to prevent the merger.

But practically speaking, regulators will likely try to coordinate their response internationally, with the overall outcome decided in larger markets such as the United States and European Union.

The European Commission is expected to release its ruling in July. And past events indicate the commission could impose conditions, or prevent the merger going ahead internationally – even if the US Department of Justice gives it the green light.

– ref. Every step you take: why Google’s plan to buy Fitbit has the ACCC’s pulse racing – https://theconversation.com/every-step-you-take-why-googles-plan-to-buy-fitbit-has-the-acccs-pulse-racing-141052

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Saddler, Honorary Associate Professor, Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, Australian National University

Amid the urgent need to slow climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency makes sense. But as Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel last week warned, we’re not “anywhere close to having that nailed”.

Energy efficiency means using less energy to achieve the same outcomes. It’s the cheapest way to cut greenhouse gas emissions and achieve our climate goals. Improving energy efficiency is also vital to achieving so-called “energy productivity” – getting more economic output, using the same or less energy.

But Australia’s national energy productivity plan, agreed by the nation’s energy ministers in 2015, has gone nowhere.

It set a goal of a 40% improvement in energy productivity by 2030. But my analysis, based on the most recent official data, shows that in the three years to 2017-18, energy productivity increased by a mere 1.1%.

Clearly, there is much work to do. So let’s take a look at the problem and the potential solutions.

Energy efficiency: a low-hanging fruit

Better energy efficiency lowers electricity bills, makes businesses more competitive and helps manage energy demand. Of course, it also means less greenhouse gas emissions, because fewer fossil fuels are burnt for energy.

Business, unions and green groups recognise the benefits. Last month they joined forces to call for a sustainable COVID-19 economic recovery, with energy efficiency at the core, saying:

In Australia, a major drive to improve the energy efficiency of buildings and industry could deliver over 120,000 job-years of employment […] Useful upgrades could be made across Australia’s private and public housing; commercial, community and government buildings; and industrial facilities.

The group said improvements could include:

• more efficient and controllable appliances and equipment, especially for heating and cooling
• improved shading and thermal envelopes (improving the way a building’s walls, ceiling and floors prevent heat transfer)
• smart meters to measure energy use
• distributed energy generation and storage, such as wind and solar backed by batteries
• fuel switching (replacing inefficient fuels with cleaner and economical alternatives)
• equipment, training and advice for better energy management.

Read more: Homes with higher energy ratings sell for more. Here’s how Australian owners could cash in

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has suggested other measures for industry and manufacturing, such as:

• installing more efficient electric motors
• switching from gas to electric heat pumps
• more waste and material recycling.

And in transport, the IEA suggests incentives to get older, less efficient cars off the roads and encourage the uptake of electric vehicles.

Governments’ sleight of hand

In 2018 the IEA observed:

the power sector will be at the heart of Australia’s energy system transformation […] International best practice suggests that both energy efficiency and renewable energy are key drivers of the energy transition.

Since then, renewable energy’s share of the electricity mix has increased. But energy productivity has stalled.

To understand how, we must define a few key terms.

Primary energy refers to energy extracted from the environment, such as coal, crude oil, and electrical energy collected by a wind turbine or solar panel.

Final energy is the energy supplied to a consumer, such as electricity delivered to homes or fuel pumped at a petrol station.

Read more: Coronavirus is a ‘sliding doors’ moment. What we do now could change Earth’s trajectory

A lot of energy is lost in the process of turning extracted primary fuels into ready-to-use fuels for consumers. For example at coal-fired power stations, on average, one-third of the energy supplied by burning coal is converted to electricity. The remainder is lost as waste heat.

Until 2015, Australia and most other countries used final energy as a measure of how rapidly energy efficiency was improving. But the national productivity plan instead set goals around primary energy productivity – aiming to increase it by 40% between 2015 and 2030.

This has made it possible for governments to hide how badly Australia is travelling on improving energy efficiency. I analysed national accounts figures and energy statistics, to produce the below table. It reveals the governments’ sleight of hand.

Over the three years from 2014-15 to 2017-18, final energy productivity increased by only 1.1%, whereas primary energy productivity increased by 3.5%.

The reduced primary energy consumption is mostly due to a large increase in wind and solar generation. The efficiency of energy used by final consumers has scarcely changed.

A sustainable future

The lack of progress on energy productivity is not surprising, given governments have shown very little interest in the issue.

As Finkel noted in his address, Australia’s energy productivity plan is absent from the list of national climate and energy policies. The plan’s 2019 annual report has not been released. And those released since 2015 have not monitored progress in energy productivity.

What’s more, the plan makes no mention of previous similar agreements, in 2004 and 2009, to accelerate energy efficiency with regulation and financial incentives. Since 2013, almost all Commonwealth programs supporting those agreements have been de-funded or abolished, and many state programs have also been cut back.

Read more: Switch off your engine, it’s not hard: how to cut your fuel bill, clear the air and reduce emissions

The IEA’s sustainable recovery plan, released last week, outlined what a sustainable global economic recovery might look like. In particular, it said better energy efficiency and switching to more efficient electric technologies will deliver triple benefits: increased employment, a more productive economy and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

In this carbon-constrained world, relatively easy and cheap opportunities such as energy efficiency must be seized. And as Australia spends to get its post-pandemic economy back on track, now is the time to act.

– ref. Australia has failed miserably on energy efficiency – and government figures hide the truth – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-failed-miserably-on-energy-efficiency-and-government-figures-hide-the-truth-123176

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Fischetti, Professor, Pro Vice Chancellor of the Faculty of Education and Arts; Dean/Head of School of Education, University of Newcastle

Federal education minister Dan Tehan in recent days announced an overhaul of the fee structures for undergraduate degrees – and the courses based in those degrees – to direct students towards ones it believes are more likely to get them a job.

Student contributions for degrees in teaching, nursing, clinical psychology, English and languages will fall by 46%; agriculture and maths by 62%; and science, health, architecture, environmental science, IT and engineering by 20%.

But the student contributions for law and commerce will increase by 28%, while for the humanities, they will more than double (up by 113%).

Read more: Fee cuts for nursing and teaching but big hikes for law and humanities in package expanding university places

Universities exist to expand knowledge and create a civil society. They allow us to understand, challenge, collaborate, inquire, discover, create, design, confront and imagine.

The implications of the government’s announcement are about more than incentivising the career trajectories of students. They are a direct assault on the premise of universities.

What’s a university for?

The first modern university in the West was founded in Bologna, Italy, in 1088. It became a widely respected school of canon and civil law.

It also became a model for other universities such as the University of Paris and Oxford. The initial faculties were of theology, law, medicine and the liberal arts.

The University of Sydney, founded in 1850, is the oldest university in Australia. William Charles Wentworth is noted as proposing the idea of Australia’s first university, imagining “the opportunity for the child of every class to become great and useful in the destinies of this country”.

The university’s motto is a beacon – Sidere mens eadem mutato – which translated means “the stars change, the mind remains the same”. The broad evolving mind remains the raison-d’etre for universities, more than the fad of the day.

The evolution of the modern university, funded increasingly over time by governments, moved the focus from promulgating religious tenets to values that are civic-minded, and centred on knowledge transmission accessible to all citizens – not just the wealthy.

Read more: Universities have gone from being a place of privilege to a competitive market. What will they be after coronavirus?

Of course, work still needs to be done to improve diversity. But the overarching purpose of the university was to advance human discovery, promote diversity of thinking and enhance the common good.

The library – solemn with books – was the hub of a university education. As knowledge evolved, libraries grew into subject departments.

The physical library and its virtual equivalent still form the foundation of the student academic experience.

The government is overstepping the mark

Government support for public universities was intended to come with few strings. If we agree the purpose of universities is to disseminate knowledge and advance society, we cannot allow a political agenda to diminish academic freedom and equitable student choice.

And yet, the trend in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia is for conservative-leaning governments to see their role as shaping universities to match their agendas.

This is counter to long-held beliefs universities should operate independently to shape knowledge. Public engagement and social impact are the overall goals for higher education.

In stating its plan expands job preparation and promotes economic growth, the government is overstepping its charge, undermining the notion of choice and opportunity for all.

These fee changes will have most effect on working class families. Wealthy families who are not price sensitive will be able to choose across the current array of offerings without financial worries.

This inequity may price some Australians out of their dreams of a liberal arts education because they can no longer afford it.

What is the danger in that?

Degrees in humanities, society and culture, and communications are singled out as not preparing graduates for the jobs of the future.

Yet the skills fostered in these degrees are in high demand. Critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, strong writing prowess and people skills are valued as future-focused “human” skills that translate across the employment sector.

Read more: If the government listened to business leaders, they would encourage humanities education, not pull funds from it

With many people getting their information from an increasingly narrow bandwidth of social media influences, the role of a university education is even more important. It’s there to teach students to question, seek evidence and think independently.

A university education promotes open mindedness and the pursuit of knowledge across a diverse set of disciplines, especially those that have now been marginalised.

Students across all disciplines need these attributes to help advance humanity and address the global challenges we face.

It remains to be seen whether the plan minister Tehan has put forward to steer undergraduate students into certain degrees will be successful in promoting “jobs and growth”.

What is clear is this move oversteps the government’s role and function by dictating to Australians and their universities what the priorities should be for building a fair, civil and just society.

The government proposes we engineer our way to the future, rather than think, collaborate and imagine our way forward.

– ref. The government’s funding changes are meddling with the purpose of universities – https://theconversation.com/the-governments-funding-changes-are-meddling-with-the-purpose-of-universities-141133

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

As we emerge from the lockdown phase of the pandemic, there are many lessons to learn. One is that when given credible warning of an existential threat, it is better to act early and risk doing too much than to delay acting and face a much bigger and harder to solve problem when the warnings turn out to be correct.

While the pandemic will pass, one way or another, the problem of global heating, and its many consequences, is going to be with us for the rest of our lives, and those of our children and grandchildren.

Already the world has had decades of warnings, and has done little to heed them.

To hold the increase in global temperatures to 2⁰C, the world needs to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 25% over the next decades, and cut them to zero by 2050.

Read more: To get out of this well we are going to have to think like central planners

Current commitments are inadequate to achieve this.

In Australia’s case, the unjustified use of “carryover credits” means the government is actually proposing an increase in emissions over the next decade, with even larger increases likely in the future.

Quite simply, there is no way of prevent catastrophic climate change unless we stop burning coal to generate electricity, and do it sooner rather than later.

We need to switch 20-25,000 jobs

As of 2020, coal-fired electricity generation is the only major use of carbon-based fuels for which we have a well-developed and affordable alternatives.

For most other uses of carbon-based fuels, alternatives rely on using electricity, as in the case of electric vehicles and “green” hydrogen.

These alternatives are helpful only if the electricity that powers them is coal-free.

Read more: Australia listened to the science on coronavirus. Imagine if we did the same for coal mining

But in Australia, any move to break with thermal coal runs up against the claim that jobs in coal mining and coal-fired power are essential for workers and for communities.

It is a claim I examine in a new report published by the Australia Institute entitled Getting off coal: Economic and social policies to manage the phase-out of thermal coal in Australia.

It finds that a transition from thermal coal mining could be managed fairly, without significant job losses and while protecting coal-dependent regions.

25,000 is not a big number

Contrary to widespread perceptions, thermal coal mining is not a major employer, and most workers in the industry are not miners in the ordinary understanding of the term.

According to the latest Labour Force Survey, in February 2020 coal mining employed about 43 300 people, down from a peak of 60 000 in 2012.

Since Australia’s coal output is roughly evenly divided between coking and thermal coal, it seems likely that about 20-25,000 are employed producing the thermal coal that is used for heating and electricity generation.

This compares with a Bureau of Statistics estimate of about 26,850 in renewable energy. A successful transition to a decarbonised electricity sector would require at least a doubling of the current growth rate of renewables, implying more than 26 000 new jobs.

Many of the jobs are transferable

Many of the people employed in coal mining in February 2020 were not miners in the ordinary sense of the term. About 14% worked in white collar (managerial, professional and clerical) jobs.

A large portion of the remainder, such as carpenters, truck drivers and labourers, worked in trades not tied to mining.

The exception is the category known as Drillers, Miners and Shot Firers, which accounts for about 20% of total mining employment. If the same proportion applies in coal mining, there would be around 5,000 specialist drillers, miners and shot firers in producing thermal coal.

A transition program for these workers could be funded for less than the government’s recently announced HomeBuilder.

The wages high, but the conditions are bad

Advocates of coal mining point out that coal mining generally pays higher wages than other industries, including the renewable energy industry. This partly reflects high levels of unionisation, which could be encouraged more broadly.

More significant is probably its reliance on socially destructive fly-in, fly-out working arrangements, which necessitate high wages to offset family separations.

An indication that the wages earned by workers in the mining industry represent compensation for poor conditions can be derived from evidence on workforce turnover.

The mining industry is characterised by annual turnover of 20% to 30%, substantially higher than that for the labour market as a whole.

And much of the employment isn’t local

Largely because of fly-in, fly-out, the number of communities that depend on coal as the primary source of their local employment is small.

Moreover, in many cases, these communities, such as those of the Bowen Basin, are well endowed with solar and wind resources.

With appropriate planning (instead of the current chaos in electricity policy) these communities could be given priority in the development of utility-scale solar and wind generation, along with the necessary transmission links.

The result might be be a net gain in local employment.

Read more: Interactive: Everything you need to know about Adani – from cost, environmental impact and jobs to its possible future

On Monday the Minerals Council of Australia announced a Climate Action Plan, proclaiming the need for action to reduce the risks of human-induced climate change and expressing support for “world-wide decarbonisation”.

What it did not do was suggest that the 25,000 or so Australians who work in coal mining could be switched to other industries.

That has been the conventional wisdom for some time – that a switch of 25,000 jobs from one industry to another would be too much for Australia to handle.

Yet when the coronavirus hit, we shut down industries employing three million Australians overnight, and dealt with the economic consequences impressively.

We have demonstrated our capacity to do the same for the much more dangerous, if less immediate, risk of catastrophic climate change.

– ref. If we could design JobKeeper within weeks, we can exit coal by 2030. Here’s how to do it – https://theconversation.com/if-we-could-design-jobkeeper-within-weeks-we-can-exit-coal-by-2030-heres-how-to-do-it-141178

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary Frances O’Dowd, Independent Scholar, Ethical Citizenship & Racism Studies, CQUniversity Australia

Colonisation is invasion: a group of people taking over the land and imposing their own culture on Indigenous people.

Modern colonisation dates back to the Age of Discovery in the 15th century, as European nations sought to expand their influence and wealth. In the process, representatives of these countries claimed the land, ignoring the Indigenous people and erasing Indigenous sovereignty.

Laws and policing were significant tools of dispossession and oppression. Indigenous people were brutalised, exploited and often positioned as subhuman. As Jean-Paul Sartre described colonisation:

[…] you begin by occupying the country, then you take the land and exploit the former owners at starvation rates […] you finish up taking from the natives their very right to work.

Colonisation is more than physical. It is also cultural and psychological in determining whose knowledge is privileged. In this, colonisation not only impacts the first generation colonised but creates enduring issues.

Decolonisation seeks to reverse and remedy this through direct action and listening to the voices of First Nations people.

Seeking independence

The word “decolonisation” was first coined by the German economist Moritz Julius Bonn in the 1930s to describe former colonies that achieved self-governance.

Many struggles for independence were armed and bloody. The Algerian War of Independence (1954- 1962) against the French was particularly brutal.

Read more: What Mandela and Fanon learned from Algeria’s revolution in the 1950s

Other struggles involved political negotiations and passive resistance.

While the exiting of the British from India in 1947 is largely remembered as nonviolent resistance under Gandhi’s pacifist ethic, the campaign started in 1857 and was not without bloodshed.

The quest for independence is rarely peaceful.

Justice

Decolonisation is now used to talk about restorative justice through cultural, psychological and economic freedom.

In most countries where colonisers remain, Indigenous people still don’t hold significant positions of power or self-determination. These nations are termed “settler-colonial” countries – a term made popular in the 1990s by academic Patrick Wolfe, who said “invasion is a structure not an event”.

Another word that is useful in understanding decolonisation is “neocolonial”. It was coined by Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, in the early 1960s to refer to the continuity of the former coloniser’s power through economic, political, educational and other informal means.

In these neocolonial or settler-colonial countries, advocacy for the rights of Indigenous people is not always matched by action. The voices of Indigenous people for treaty and truth in culture, politics, law and education resound while practice lags.

Read more: It will take critical, thorough scrutiny to truly decolonise knowledge

True decolonisation seeks to challenge and change White superiority, nationalistic history and “truth”.

The Rights of Indigenous people was adopted by the United Nations in 2007. It says:

Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

It lists several important rights in the process of decolonisation, including:

• the right to autonomy and self-government, including financing for these autonomous functions
• freedom from forced removal of children
• protection of archaeological and historical sites, and repatriation of ceremonial objects and human remains
• the right to provide education in their own language
• state-owned media should reflect Indigenous cultural diversity
• legal recognition of traditional lands, territories and resources.

Read more: Who owns the bones? Human fossils shouldn’t just belong to whoever digs them up

Ways to support decolonisation

Decolonisation must involve challenging both conscious and subconscious racism. Non-Indigenous people in settler-colonial societies can start by asking:

• whose Country do I live on – what nation?
• if my land was stolen, my culture and sovereignty denied, what rights would I want, need and expect?
• who on Country must I listen to and work with?

To engage with decolonisation you can:

• value Indigenous knowledge and scholarship. In Australia, this can mean listening to Indigenous people on their knowledge about bushfire management
• encourage and insist on teaching about Indigenous people and cultures in schools
• support restitution efforts, such as programs which are revitalising Indigenous languages
• call on institutions – including across education, the arts, media and politics – to hire Indigenous people throughout the organisation and in positions of leadership
• look for ways people in your workplace might face discrimination and unconscious bias, and speak up against these structures
• fight for justice arising from Indigenous guidance, by walking alongside Indigenous people at rallies and placing their voices front-and-centre at events.

Read more: Explainer: what is systemic racism and institutional racism?

Racism injures, chokes and kills unless challenged.

Racist structures make the victim the problem.

We might kneel to remember those murdered. But we need to call on institutions to enact required reforms for decolonisation. We need to support people in organisations who speak out against racism. We need to question whether colonisation taught us to stand, in institutional uniforms of the mind, and passively watch the choking.

– ref. Explainer: what is decolonisation? – https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-decolonisation-131455

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kcasey McLoughlin, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Newcastle

An investigation commissioned by the High Court of Australia has found six former court staff members who were judges’ associates were sexually harassed by former High Court Justice Dyson Heydon.

In a strongly worded statement, Chief Justice Susan Kiefel said that the findings were of extreme concern to her and other members of the court, and they were “ashamed that this could have happened at the High Court of Australia”.

Read more: High Court apologies for Dyson Heydon’s sexual harassment of six associates

Importantly, Kiefel offered a personal apology to the young women and stated in clear terms that the women had been believed. She further acknowledged the difficulties the women would have had in coming forward:

We have made a sincere apology to the six women whose complaints were borne out. We know it would have been difficult to come forward. Their accounts of their experiences at the time have been believed. I have appreciated the opportunity to talk with a number of the women about their experiences and to apologise to them in person. I have also valued their insights and suggestions for change that they have shared with the Court.

An investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald uncovered further allegations of Heydon’s predatory behaviour, including an allegation from a judge who claims that he indecently assaulted her.

In a statement through his lawyers to the SMH, Heydon denied any allegations of predatory behaviour or breaches of the law. The statement also said

our client says that if any conduct of his has caused offence, that result was inadvertent and unintended, and he apologises for any offence caused.

In response to the inquiry commissioned by the High Court, his lawyers have further emphasised this process was an internal administrative inquiry conducted by a public servant and not by a lawyer, judge or a tribunal member.

Sexual harassment is endemic within law

The inquiry’s finding that a retired High Court judge sexual harassed judges’ associates certainly reflects poorly on the court, and the legal profession more broadly.

It reinforces wider and ongoing concerns about the effectiveness of legal responses to sexual harassment. These concerns point to systemic issues within the profession that are significant beyond individual behaviour. This is not to diminish the experiences of the young women complainants. Rather, their experiences speak to the wider consequences of feeling unsafe at work — one complainant left the profession and another abandoned plans of becoming a barrister.

Working in law, particularly in the courts, is a prestigious and hierarchical profession. In fact, the kind of power imbalances that shape working relationships in law create additional hurdles in holding people to account for their actions.

The International Bar Association’s Us Too? Report provided confirmation about the extent to which bullying and sexual harassment are rife in the profession, finding that one in three female respondents and one in 14 male respondents had been sexually harassed in a workplace context.

Closer to home, the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Respect@Work Sexual Harassment Inquiry confirmed that 33% of people who had been in the workforce (not just in law) in the previous five years said they had experienced workplace sexual harassment.

The report noted that hierarchical workplace structure, such as the legal profession, can increase the risk of sexual harassment. Workplaces that were (or are) dominated by men also tend to see a greater prevalence of sexual harassment.

Might this be the tipping point?

That the chief justice acknowledged the difficulties that victims of sexual harassment have in coming forward is significant. There are all kinds of disincentives in bringing a formal complaint in sexual harassment, and these have been examined in the numerous reports and inquiries interrogating the deficiencies in the current legal framework, and devising strategies for reform. Fear of not being believed. Fear of being branded a troublemaker. Limiting career and employment prospects.

Most recently, the 2020 Respect@Work inquiry identified significant deficiencies in the Australian legal framework for combating sexual harassment.

Legally, sexual harassment is an unwelcome sexual advance, unwelcome request for sexual favours, or other unwelcome conduct of sexual nature in the circumstances that the person who was harassed would be offended, humiliated and/or intimidated.

Noting that most people who experience sexual harassment do not report it, the Human Rights Commission in its report identified the need for a new approach. This would be based not on individual victims bearing the onus of bringing a complaint, but on imposing duties on employers to create safe places of work free from sexual harassment.

Read more: Workplace sexual harassment is a public health issue and should be treated as such

The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 does not currently impose a positive duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment. The Respect@Work inquiry recommended that a positive duty be imposed on employers to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate sex discrimination, sexual harassment and victimisation, as far as possible.

Sexual harassment can happen in any workplace. The High Court’s response, including setting out the steps it has taken to create a safer place of work, is a move in the right direction.

Yet, the fact sexual harassment has been able to go largely unchecked for so long, speaks to the need for more widespread change. One important shift is holding employers to account through the imposition of a positive duty, rather than placing the onus on the very individuals who have been subjected to it.

– ref. Dyson Heydon finding may spark a #MeToo moment for the legal profession – https://theconversation.com/dyson-heydon-finding-may-spark-a-metoo-moment-for-the-legal-profession-141212

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

An investigation commissioned by the High Court has found former judge Dyson Heydon sexually harassed six young female associates who worked for him when he was on the court.

In a statement late Monday, Chief Justice Susan Kiefel said: “We’re ashamed that this could have happened at the High Court of Australia”.

Heydon served on the court between 2003 and 2013. He came to national political attention when then prime minister Tony Abbott appointed him as royal commissioner to investigate trade union governance and corruption.

Kiefel said the court had acted immediately to commission an independent inquiry after receiving last year the allegations of sexual harassment. The investigation was done by Vivienne Thom, a former Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.

Kiefel said the court had “made a sincere apology to the six women whose complaints were borne out. We know it would have been difficult to come forward.

“Their accounts of their experiences at the time have been believed. I have appreciated the opportunity to talk with a number of the women about their experiences and to apologise to them in person.” She said she had also valued their suggestions for change.

The Sydney Morning Herald, which published late Monday the result of its own investigation, said Heydon’s predatory behaviour had been an “open secret” in legal and judicial circles.

The Herald reported that Heydon in a statement through his lawyers Speed and Stracey had denied the allegations in the High Court inquiry.

“In respect of the confidential inquiry and its subsequent confidential report, any allegation of predatory behaviour or breaches of the law is categorically denied by our client,” the statement said.

“Our client says that if any conduct of his has caused offence, that result was inadvertent and unintended, and he apologises for any offence caused.”

The law firm Maurice Blackburn is representing three of the women, including Rachael Collins and Chelsea Tabart.

The investigation was instigated after Josh Bornstein, principal lawyer with Maurice Blackburn, then representing two of the women, wrote to the chief justice and the court’s chief executive in March last year with allegations of the harassment. Bornstein also raised concerns about inadequate procedures within the court for dealing with judicial misconduct.

Bornstein said in a statement on Monday the investigation had unveiled a pattern of predatory behaviour and sexual harassment over many years towards young female associates Heydon employed. When the harassment occurred Heydon was “in his 60s, a conservative judge, a prominent Catholic and a married man”.

“The women he employed were in their early 20s and often straight out of university. He was one of the most powerful men in the country, who could make or break their future careers in the law,” Bornstein said.

“There was an extreme power imbalance between Mr Heydon and the young women he preyed on. The fear of his power and influence meant that the women did not feel able to come forward until recently,” he said.

He said the investigation “also found that the associates employed by the High Court were largely on their own in trying to protect themselves and manage Mr Heydon’s behaviour.

“The Court did not have a clear procedure which permitted a complaint of mistreatment by a judge to be aired.

“As a result, outgoing female associates felt a duty to try and warn incoming female associates of Mr Heydon’s behaviour and to give advice about how to try and protect themselves,” Bornstein said. A number of the women had abandoned legal careers after these experiences, he said.

The Herald reported that a current judge had told it “Mr Heydon slid his hand between her thighs at a professional law dinner not long after he joined the High Court bench.”

It quoted the unnamed judge, who was a barrister at the time of the incident, as saying, “He indecently assaulted me. I have no doubt it was a crime and he knew I was not consenting.” She told the Herald Heydon was too powerful to complain about, saying he “was a giant of the profession”.

Kiefel said the investigation had made a number of recommendations that the court had acted on. These were to

• develop a supplementary HR policy to cover personal staff of justices

• review the induction of associates to ensure it covers material relevant to their role

• identify an appropriate person to form a closer working relationship with associates. The person would liaise with associates and provide support if required

• clarify that the requirements for associates to observe confidentiality related only to court work

• make clear to associates they were not obliged to attend social functions .

• consider canvassing current associates to find out more about their experiences while working at the court.

“We have moved to do all we can to make sure the experiences of these women will not be repeated,” Kiefel said. “We have made sure there is both support and confidential avenues for complaint if anything like this were to happen again.”

Law Council of Australia president Pauline Wright said: “The attrition rate of women lawyers is high, and experiences of sexual harassment are a key reason why women leave the law”.

– ref. High Court apologies for Dyson Heydon’s sexual harassment of six associates – https://theconversation.com/high-court-apologies-for-dyson-heydons-sexual-harassment-of-six-associates-141215

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Esterman, Professor of Biostatistics, University of South Australia

On Sunday, Victoria recorded 19 new COVID-19 cases for the preceding day. Only New South Wales (5) and Western Australia (1) also had new cases.

Reports indicate in the 24 hours since, Victoria can count another 16 infections.

This continues a spike that has now spanned several days. Victoria accounted for 83% of new cases across the country over the past week (up to June 21).

Of the 116 new cases recorded in Victoria over this period, 29 (25%) were returned overseas travellers whose infections were detected while in quarantine. The remaining 87 cases were primarily acquired in the community.

Read more: Coronavirus: what causes a ‘second wave’ of disease outbreak, and could we see this in Australia?

As a result of the increase in community-acquired infections, the Victorian government at the weekend announced a tightening of restrictions — including reducing the number of visitors allowed in homes to five.

While the easing of some restrictions planned for today, such as the reopening of gyms, have gone ahead, others, like increasing the number of people allowed to dine in restaurants, are on hold.

What’s behind this spike?

Cases among returned overseas travellers are expected, and with quarantines in place, they’re not a major threat. However, there’s still a 1% chance someone could be infectious beyond the mandated 14 days of quarantine.

But it’s the community-acquired cases that are of greatest concern to public health officials. They indicate there are sources of infection in the community that health authorities don’t know about, making it difficult to control the epidemic.

According to the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, most of these community-acquired infections have occurred during family gatherings. They suggest some people have not followed the advice to limit the number of people invited to a home, nor physical distancing or appropriate hygiene within this setting.

Even if this is correct, why aren’t we seeing a similar problem in other states? Could Victorians have more or larger family gatherings, or be less likely to maintain social distancing and hygiene than residents of other states? We don’t have answers to these questions, and probably never will.

Read more: Planning a snow holiday? How to reduce your coronavirus risk at Thredbo, Perisher or Mount Buller

Is this the start of a second wave in Victoria?

If we regard this level of cases as a wave, Victoria now appears to be on its fourth wave. The second and third occurred in early May and early June, respectively.

The current wave is about at the same level as the one in early May, but could well grow rapidly. It’s causing significant concern because the epidemic appears to be dying out in all other jurisdictions.

It’s unclear why Victoria is getting these repeated waves, unlike the other states, which, apart from a few minor blips, have only had one major peak.

Victoria’s situation is a threat to other states and territories

The Northern Territory, ACT, South Australia and Tasmania have just about eliminated COVID-19.

The remaining states are on the same path, although New South Wales is still recording a few community-acquired cases.

Any state that allows travel to and from Victoria, particularly without quarantine, runs the risk of restarting the epidemic.

Queensland chief health officer Jeannette Young has declared all 31 local government areas (LGAs) in Greater Melbourne, as well as five bordering LGAs, to be COVID-19 hotspots.

This means anyone who has spent time in one of these hotspots within the last 14 days must self-quarantine for 14 days upon entering Queensland (unless the travel to Queensland is for a limited number of essential purposes).

Read more: Heading back to the gym? Here’s how you can protect yourself and others from coronavirus infection

What can Victoria do?

Victoria is already doing the right things to try and flatten this new outbreak. The reimposing of restrictions on family gatherings should work, provided people stick to them.

Victoria currently has the highest rate of testing of all states and territories, with roughly 10% of the population tested so far. Testing, especially in hotspot communities, is one of the best ways to locate and control community-acquired infections.

Six Melbourne local government areas have been identified as coronavirus hotspots. These are Hume, Casey, Brimbank, Moreland, Cardinia and Darebin.

The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC) has advised against travel to and from these areas until community transmission is under control.

Even if the Victorian government elects to impose stay-at-home restrictions in these areas, it will be impossible to seal them off completely from the rest of the state.

But it’s clear the Victorian health department needs to focus testing in these areas, and conduct an information campaign explaining to residents why adhering to restrictions is so important.

How worried should we be?

Is it likely to get worse? Potentially, yes. If it does, the Victorian government will need to rapidly expand its contact tracing and testing. South Australia is already sending contact tracers to help.

There’s still a good chance the Victorian government can gain control of the situation before it gets out of hand — but it will have to move fast.

Other states and territories should insist all visitors from Victoria undertake mandatory quarantine.

Finally, we must all realise further outbreaks could occur anywhere in Australia, and it’s up to all of us to continue to follow social distancing rules.

Read more: 4 ways Australia’s coronavirus response was a triumph, and 4 ways it fell short

– ref. Victoria’s coronavirus hotspots: not quite a second wave, but still cause for concern – https://theconversation.com/victorias-coronavirus-hotspots-not-quite-a-second-wave-but-still-cause-for-concern-141193

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Centaine Snoswell, Research Fellow Health Economics, The University of Queensland

The expansion of telehealth services was a deliberate strategy to help reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission between practitioners and patients, so is it working?

According to our analysis, the answer is that telehealth is indeed reducing the risk. Since March 2020, more than 7 million MBS-funded telehealth consultations have been reported, with the vast majority (91%) being done by telephone.

Read more: What can you use a telehealth consult for and when should you physically visit your GP?

On March 13, the federal government added new telehealth items to the Medicare Benefits Schedule, to allow health-care providers to offer both telephone and video consultations.

Before then, only Australians living outside major cities were eligible for Medicare-funded telehealth consultations, via video only. This was limited largely to medical specialist services and a very small number of GP and allied health services.

In response to COVID-19, the federal government increased Medicare-funded telehealth services, including making telephone consultations available for the first time. They removed geographical constraints and increased the range of telehealth services available.

At first these expanded services were only open to vulnerable patients, such as older Australians and those with a chronic illness. But by early April, these restrictions were lifted, meaning all Australians could access Medicare-funded telehealth.

Tracking telehealth

We have been tracking the increased uptake of Medicare-funded telehealth during COVID-19. We have collected information on six different health-care discipline groups, and also compared the rates of telephone versus video consultations.

During the first six weeks after access to telehealth was expanded on March 13, 7 million consultations – or 22% of the services we examined – were delivered by telehealth.

This represents 7 million avoided face-to-face interactions between patients and health service providers, thus reducing the risk of transmission and infection.

We also found:

• GP appointments accounted for 80% of all consultations examined. During April, GP telehealth activity was largely done by telephone but accounted for 36% of all GP consultations. This was associated with a slight reduction in face-to-face consultations – from an average of 10.5 million consultations per month before the outbreak, to 8.3 million consults in April.

• The proportion of specialist consultations delivered via telehealth increased tenfold in March, from 0.7% in February to 7% in March. When all eligibility criteria were lifted in April, this proportion rose to 37%.

• Although psychiatrists have provided videoconference consultations to Australians since 2002, the coronavirus outbreak prompted a steep decline in face-to-face consultations and an increase in telehealth consultations. Prior to coronavirus, around 4.5% of all consultations each month were via telehealth, this rose to 26% in April this year.

• Mental health services provided by non-psychiatrists (including sessions provided by psychologists) showed an increase in telehealth (50% phone, 50% videoconference), and a 50% reduction in face-to-face consultations.

• Telehealth consultations for allied health services and nurse practitioners were very limited before the pandemic. But in the six weeks from March 13, roughly 29,000 allied health and nursing telehealth consultations were reported through Medicare. Most allied health services involved video consultations, whereas nursing consultations were mainly by telephone.

Are Australians using health care more?

Is the rise in telehealth the result of patients switching from face-to-face consultations to telehealth, or are people simply accessing health care in greater numbers amid the COVID-19 pandemic? The answer varies between different parts of the health system.

Our data suggest the total number of specialist, allied heath, psychiatric and mental health consultations has stayed roughly the same. This suggests face-to-face consultations were simply being replaced by telehealth.

But for GPs and nurse practitioners, the total number of consultations rose significantly, from 10.8 million in February to 12.9 million in April. Around 90% of these telehealth consultations were delivered by phone, so the increase in activity may partly be due to the ease and simplicity of using the telephone. Alternatively, the increase may have been due to more people having health concerns amid the pandemic.

It remains to be seen whether the increase in GP and nursing consultations will continue after the pandemic, or whether it is purely related to COVID-19.

Are phone consultations adequate?

According to Medicare guidelines, telephone consultations should be offered only when video conferencing is not available. There is little doubt telephone consultations are effective in some scenarios, but we don’t yet know if they are as effective as video consultations. For this reason it has been suggested phone consultations be limited to no more than half of a practice’s telehealth provisions. This issue is one we are keen to research further.

A small survey conducted by the Consumer Health Forum found 80% of patients offered a telehealth option accepted, and 68% of patients found it better or equivalent to an in-person consultation. Public awareness of telehealth has increased rapidly, and it is likely that this awareness will help drive the continuation of telehealth.

Read more: Coronavirus has boosted telehealth care in mental health, so let’s keep it up

Telehealth is not new, but its uptake had been slow and fragmented until COVID-19 came along. The sudden telehealth switch has prompted an overnight shift in the way health care is delivered in Australia, and shown (again) that telehealth is feasible and relevant to patients’ needs. The challenge now is to make it a sustainable and routine part of health care into the future.

This is a complex task. The health workforce will need telehealth training and education; the health system will need systems to promote, refer, document and remunerate telehealth appropriately; and everyone, including patients, will need to be encouraged to view telehealth not as a stopgap or emergency option, but as an integral part of health care.

– ref. Telehealth in lockdown meant 7 million fewer chances to transmit the coronavirus – https://theconversation.com/telehealth-in-lockdown-meant-7-million-fewer-chances-to-transmit-the-coronavirus-141041

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Raynor, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Transforming Housing Project, University of Melbourne

In a Conversation article a year ago we applied negotiation theory to changes to the Victorian Planning and Environment Act. The changes were designed to support local councils in negotiations with developers to secure affordable housing. A council may now negotiate with a developer to deliver or fund affordable housing as part of a development approval or planning amendment process.

We wrote that these arrangements were likely to be ineffectual. Our survey of almost 150 affordable housing stakeholders now suggests we were right about this system of voluntary negotiations.

Tellingly, a majority of each class of stakeholders – developers and financers, local government and non-profit providers – would prefer to have consistent mandatory affordable housing requirements applied to all developments.

Read more: If it’s voluntary for developers to make affordable housing deals with councils, what can you expect?

What’s the incentive to negotiate?

We argued in our 2019 article that negotiations are shaped by stakeholders’ interests, the potential for mutual gains, and access to information. Our survey has since found one of the key barriers to successful affordable housing negotiations is a lack of incentives to be involved.

Respondents also identified the lack of capacity to enforce affordable housing contributions as a key issue, as the table below shows.

Even when affordable housing is agreed upon, the development might not be completed for many years. Over that time, council staff may change many times. And things can slip through the cracks if no one is championing affordable housing delivery.

Researchers have identified a similar trend of non-compliance and under-compliance with sustainability requirements in building codes.

The other key barrier is a lack of effective mechanisms to give developers and councils incentives to engage in time-consuming and potentially costly negotiations.

Floor area uplift or density bonuses (allowing a developer to build more dwellings than would otherwise be permitted) are commonly offered as an incentive to build affordable housing. However, it is only effective in areas where being able to increase density is a valuable asset to a developer and doesn’t greatly add to construction costs.

Read more: Ten lessons from cities that have risen to the affordable housing challenge

How is information (ab)used?

We also found a lot of distrust in the industry. Developers referred to a “complete lack of understanding of […] commercial reality” in councils. Other respondents accused developers of looking for ways to “wriggle out of their obligations”.

Across sectors, respondents felt it was almost inevitable developers would manipulate information and operate unfairly in negotiations. Developers felt this way about local councils.

Large variations in the skills and knowledge held by individuals across sectors add to this lack of trust. These information and skill discrepancies affect power relations in negotiations.

Private developers reported substantial knowledge of development feasibility. But they typically don’t understand the affordable housing sector or relevant legislation well.

State and local government representatives report having lower levels of skill in development feasibility. And they also have lower confidence in leading negotiations. These patterns are also reflected in the amount of formal training different sectors have received in development feasibility.

Mandatory systems are preferred

One of the key problems with voluntary negotiations is a lack of consistency in affordable housing expectations. Each agreement is negotiated on a case-by-case basis.

In other parts of the world affordable housing contributions are mandatory. Developers buy land and make development decisions on the assumption that 10%, 20%, 40% or even 50% of the dwellings will be sold or rented at below-market rates. This mechanism is often called inclusionary zoning.

Read more: England expects 40% of new housing developments will be affordable, why can’t Australia?

It works because affordable housing expectations are established in the developer’s initial feasibility analysis. These expectations are applied consistently across all sites in the area from the outset. In other countries, these requirements are often tied to financial support from multiple levels of government.

The survey revealed an almost unanimous preference for an inclusionary zoning approach in Victoria. The current system of voluntary negotiations was ranked third of four policy approaches.

Progress falls well short of meeting needs

Despite these limitations, negotiations are happening to a modest degree in Victoria. These arrangements are producing some new affordable housing.

For example, Women’s Housing Limited bought seven units for low-income women at a discounted rate in Box Hill. And in Glen Eira the provision of land for affordable housing was a key factor in a planning scheme amendment for East Village.

These outcomes should be celebrated as an example of changing expectations in the development industry. They are a step forward in generating affordable housing using the planning system.

However, Victoria still has a huge gap between the need for and supply of affordable housing. The state falls well short of international best practice.

Read more: Public land is being sold exactly where thousands on the waiting list need housing

We continue to argue that the right mechanisms are not yet in place in Victoria to ensure affordable housing negotiations are efficient, equitable and transparent.

The research team are seeking people involved in the affordable housing and development sectors with experience in affordable housing negotiations to participate in interviews for ongoing research. To be involved or to find out more, please email affordable-housing@unimelb.edu.au

– ref. ‘Confusing and not delivering enough’: developers and councils want new affordable housing rules – https://theconversation.com/confusing-and-not-delivering-enough-developers-and-councils-want-new-affordable-housing-rules-139762

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giorgia Alù, Associate Professor, Department of Italian Studies, University of Sydney

Aridly undulating to the horizon in hillock after hillock, comfortless and irrational, with no lines that the mind could grasp, conceived apparently in a delirious moment of creation.

This is the description of a scorched, unruly Sicilian landscape – both protagonist and spectator of the story of its people – in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard.

The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) is one of the greatest Italian literary works of the 20th century. Since its publication in 1958, it has been regarded as a classic of European literature. Written by a Sicilian nobleman and set in the 19th-century during the Risorgimento – the movement for Italian Unification – it recounts the decline and fall of Sicily’s aristocracy.

Rosary, macaroni, faded grandeur

The action begins in 1860 when Italian general and patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi and his thousand volunteers land in Sicily to take the island from the Bourbons. They aim to unify the Kingdom of Naples – also known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies – with the Italian peninsula under the monarchy of Victor Emmanuel II. Events in the novel mark the passing of feudalism and the advent of modernity.

Yet everyday activities foreground the novel: daily recital of the Rosary, evening readings around the fire, faded grandeur of meals where “monumental dishes of macaroni” are served among massive silver and splendid glass, a walk and hunting expedition in the sunburnt Sicilian countryside, a magnificent ball.

The central character of the story is the irascible and reclusive Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, an aristocratic landowner and lover of astronomy, faithfully accompanied by his Great Dane Bendicò.

His family’s ancestral coat-of-arms shows an African serval or ocelot (mistakenly translated as leopard). The prince’s favourite nephew, the impoverished ambitious and frivolous Tancredi Falconeri, opportunistically supports the unification efforts of Garibaldi.

Tancredi falls in love with the beautiful Angelica, leaving a cousin who loves him devastated and his aunt distraught. Angelica is the daughter of Don Calogero Sedàra, a member of the merchant class ascending to power.

The novel’s main tension lies in class struggle: between the falling elites represented by the house of Corbera and the climbing middle class represented by the unscrupulous Sedàra. The national unification led by Piedmont in Northern Italy – and by statesman Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour – will mark the end of the aristocracy’s as well as of the church’s privileges in Italy.

Don Fabrizio reluctantly realises the only way to ensure the career of his nephew, who aims to become a diplomat, is to give his blessing to Tancredi’s marriage with Angelica. The union will provide Tancredi with the money he will need to succeed in the new regime. It will also bestow a title of nobility on Angelica and her parents. By the book’s end, set in 1910, the prince has died and his line has ended.

Read more: Guide to the classics: Tacitus’ Annals and its enduring portrait of monarchical power

Rejected at first

The manuscript was initially rejected in 1956 and 1957. Important Italian publishers such as Mondadori and Einaudi thought it ideologically deficient, reactionary for its representation of an immobile history, and structurally weak. It also failed to align with the mainstream Italian literature of the time.

The manuscript was subsequently reviewed by writer Giorgio Bassani and published for Feltrinelli in 1958, a year after its author’s death.

Generally classified as a historical novel, The Leopard became a bestseller both in Italy and abroad, with 52 editions printed in the first four months. It won the prestigious Strega literary prize in 1959.

But critical debate erupted. The book appeared during an economic boom and when Italian intellectual culture was strongly politicised. Leftist intellectuals saw it as a backward, conservative portrayal of Sicilian elites written by a little-known man with no sense of progress.

After a few years, initial objections waned and the novel came to be appreciated for its writing and modern narrative structure.

With supple and ornate language, the book has an introspective storyline and alludes to the works of Shakespeare, Sterne, Tolstoy, Baudelaire, Keats, Proust and Stendhal. The narration is characterised by stylistic shifts that reflect both Prince Salina’s varying points of view and the unnamed but all-knowing narrator’s perceptions of history.

In 1963 director Luchino Visconti recreated The Leopard’s opulence in an unforgettable screen adaptation starring Burt Lancaster.

Meditations on history and humanity

Although The Leopard is a representation of 19th century Sicilian aristocracy, it is also a contemplative and ironic distancing from this same world. It is, above all, a novel that provides a profound meditation on transition and historical causality.

Besides, The Leopard is an ambitious political book. Critical interpretations of the novel have divided on whether the author was bemoaning the decline of the traditional ruling class, mercilessly critiquing it, or reflecting on the limits of political reforms.

In the plot, we can find similarities between the Bourbons’ supremacy and fascism, between Garibaldi’s conquest and the allied occupation at the end of the second world war. The book foreshadows political life in the newly unified kingdom and economic transformations that paved the way for corruption and criminal organisations in post-1945 Italy.

Read more: Looking back at Italy 1992: the rise and fall of King Midas

As journalist and author, Luigi Barzini, once said, the book “made all us Italians understand our life and history to the depths.”

The most memorable – and misread – line in the book is

If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.

Spoken by Tancredi, it references Sicilian society’s resistance to change. It is also the narrator’s rumination on modern Italy with its various paradoxes and divisions.

The Leopard is a family saga, a psychological novel, a meditation on death and on the loss of collective memory. It has been read as a lyrical and prophetic contemplation on the experience of modernity and on the risks that it involves, such as ambition, and loss of beauty and traditions.

A solitary, melancholic man, author Tomasi di Lampedusa was deeply aware of his own mortality. The Leopard was his only novel that, together with a collection of short stories and literary studies, was published posthumously. His book would sell more than 3.2 million copies, be translated into more than 37 languages, and rightly honoured as an “immortal” masterpiece.

– ref. Guide to the Classics: The Leopard – https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-leopard-133443

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robin Smit, Adjunct associate professor, University of Technology Sydney

The transport sector is Australia’s second-largest polluter, pumping out almost 20% of our total greenhouse gas emissions. But everyday drivers can make a difference.

In particular, the amount of time you let your car engine idle can have a significant impact on emissions and local air quality. Engine idling is when the car engine is running while the vehicle is stationary, such as at a red light.

A new Transport Energy/Emission Research report found in normal traffic conditions, Australians likely idle more than 20% of their drive time.

This contributes 1% to 8% of total carbon dioxide emissions over the journey, depending on the vehicle type. To put that into perspective, removing idling from the journey would be like removing up to 1.6 million cars from the road.

Read more: We thought Australian cars were using less fuel. New research shows we were wrong

Excessive idling (idling for longer than five minutes) could increase this contribution further, particularly for trucks and buses. When you also consider how extensive idling may create pollution hot spots around schools, this isn’t something to take lightly.

Pollution hot spots

Reducing idling doesn’t just lower your carbon footprint, it can also lower your fuel costs up to 10% or more.

Drivers simply have to turn their engines off while parked and wait in their vehicle. Perhaps crack open a window to maintain comfortable conditions, rather than switching on the air conditioner.

Some idling is unavoidable such as waiting for a traffic light or driving in congested conditions, but other idling is unnecessary, such as while parked.

Read more: Transport is letting Australia down in the race to cut emissions

When many cars are idling in the same location, it can create poor local air quality. For example, idling has been identified overseas as a significant factor in higher pollution levels in and around schools. That’s because parents or school buses don’t turn off their engines when they drop off their kids or wait for them outside.

Even small reductions in vehicle emissions can have health benefits, such as reducing asthma, allergies and systemic inflammation in Australian children. In 2019, Australian researchers identified that even small increases of exposure to vehicle pollution were associated with an increased risk of childhood asthma and reduced lung function.

Anti-idling campaigns make a difference

Overseas studies show anti-idling campaigns and driver education can help improve air quality around schools, with busses and passenger cars switching off their engines more frequently.

In the US and Canada, local and state governments have enacted voluntary or mandatory anti-idling legislation, to address complaints and reduce fuel use, emissions and noise.

The results have been promising. In California, a range of measures – including anti-idling policies – aimed at reducing school children’s exposure to vehicle emissions were linked to the development of larger, healthier lungs in children.

Read more: Australians could have saved over $1 billion in fuel if car emissions standards were introduced 3 years ago

But in Australia, we identified almost no anti-idling initiatives or idle reduction legislation, despite calls for them in 2017.

However, “eco-driving”, as well as a promising new campaign called “Idle Off” is poised to roll out to secondary school students in Australia.

What about commercial vehicles?

Commercial vehicles can idle for long periods of time. In the US, typical long-haul trucks idle an estimated 1,800 hours per year when parked at truck stops, although a significant range of between 1,000 and 2,500 hours per year has also been reported.

Read more: Electric car sales tripled last year. Here’s what we can do to keep them growing

Fleet operators and logistics companies are therefore in a good position to roll out idle reduction initiatives and save on operating (fuel) costs while reducing emissions.

In fact, fleet operators overseas have actively sought to reduce idling emissions. This is not surprising as fuel costs are the second-largest expense for fleets, behind driver wages, typically accounting for 20% of a trucking fleet’s total operating costs.

Various technologies are available overseas that reduce idling emissions, such as stop-start systems, anti-idling devices (trucks) and battery electric vehicles.

But unlike other developed countries, Australia doesn’t have fuel efficiency or carbon dioxide emission standards. This means vehicle manufacturers have no incentive to include idle reduction technologies (or other fuel-saving technologies) in vehicles sold in Australia.

For example, the use of stop-start systems is rapidly growing overseas, but it’s unclear how many stop-start systems are used in new Australian cars.

Emission reduction technologies also come with extra costs for the vehicle manufacturer, making them less appealing, although cost benefits of reduced fuel use would pass on to consumers. This situation probably won’t change unless mandatory emission standards are implemented.

In any case, it’s easy for drivers to simply turn the key and shut down the engine when suitable. Reducing idling doesn’t require technologies.

Reducing your carbon footprint

If reducing emissions or saving money at the fuel bowser is not enough incentive, then perhaps, in time, exposing children to unnecessary idling emissions will be regarded in the same socially unacceptable light as smoking around children.

Read more: Cities must act to secure the future of urban cycling: our research shows how

And of course, there are other measures to reduce your transport carbon footprint. Drive a smaller car, and avoid diesel cars. Despite their reputation, Australian diesel cars emit, on average, about 10% more carbon dioxide per kilometre than petrol cars.

Or better yet, where possible, dust off that push bike, or walk.

– ref. Switch off your engine, it’s not hard: how to cut your fuel bill, clear the air and reduce emissions – https://theconversation.com/switch-off-your-engine-its-not-hard-how-to-cut-your-fuel-bill-clear-the-air-and-reduce-emissions-135316

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Wallace, Program director of Interior Architecture, University of South Australia

“What will it take to encourage much more widespread reliance on working at home for at least part of each week?” asked Frank Schiff, the chief economist of the US Committee for Economic Development, in The Washington Post in 1979.

Four decades on, we have the answer.

But COVID-19 doesn’t spell the end of the centralised office predicted by futurists since at least the 1970s.

The organisational benefits of the “propinquity effect” – the tendency to develop deeper relationships with those we see most regularly – are well-established.

The open-plan office will have to evolve, though, finding its true purpose as a collaborative work space augmented by remote work.

If we’re smart about it, necessity might turn out to be the mother of reinvention, giving us the best of both centralised and decentralised, collaborative and private working worlds.

Cultural resistance

Organisational culture, not technology, has long been the key force keeping us in central offices.

“That was the case in 1974 and is still the case today,” observed the “father of telecommuting” Jack Nilles in 2015, three decades after he and his University of Southern California colleagues published their landmark report Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff: Options for Tomorrow. “The adoption of telework is still well behind its potential.”

Read more: 50 years of bold predictions about remote work: it isn’t all about technology

Until now.

But it has taken a pandemic to change the status quo – evidence enough of culture resistance.

In his 1979 article, Schiff outlined three key objections to working from home:

• how to tell how well workers are doing, or if they are working at all

• employees’ need for contact with coworkers and others

• too many distractions.

To the first objection, Schiff responded that experts agreed performance is best judged by output and the organisation’s objectives. To the third, he noted: “In many cases, the opposite is likely to be true.”

The COVID-19 experiment so far supports him. Most workers and managers are happy with remote working, believe they are performing just as well, and want to continue with it.

Personal contact

But the second argument – the need for personal contact to foster close teamwork – is harder to dismiss.

There is evidence remote workers crave more feedback.

Read more: Informal feedback: we crave it more than ever, and don’t care who it’s from

As researchers Ethan Bernstein and Ben Waber note in their Harvard Business Review article The Truth About Open Offices, published in November 2019, “one of the most robust findings in sociology – proposed long before we had the technology to prove it through data – is that propinquity, or proximity, predicts social interaction”.

Waber’s research at the MIT Media Lab demonstrated the probability that any two workers will interact – either in person or electronically – is directly proportional to the distance between their desks. In his 2013 book People Analytics he includes the following results from a bank and information technology company.

Experiments in collaboration

Interest in fostering collaboration has sometimes led to disastrous workplace experiments. One was the building Frank Gehry designed for the Chiat/Day advertising agency in the late 1980s.

Agency boss Jay Chiat envisioned his headquarters as a futuristic step into “flexible work” – but workers hated the lack of personal spaces.

Less dystopian was the Pixar Animation Studios headquarters opened in 2000. Steve Jobs, majority shareholder and chief executive, oversaw the project. He took a keen interest in things like the placement of bathrooms, accessed through the building’s central atrium. “We wanted to find a way to force people to come together,” he said, “to create a lot of arbitrary collisions of people”.

Yet Bernstein and Waber’s research shows propinquity is also strong in “campus” buildings designed to promote “serendipitous interaction”. For increased interactions, they say, workers should be “ideally on the same floor”.

Being apart

How to balance the organisational forces pulling us together with the health forces pushing social distancing?

We know COVID-19 spreads most easily between people in enclosed spaces for extended periods. In Britain, research by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine shows workplaces are the most common transmission path for adults aged 20 to 50.

Read more: As coronavirus restrictions ease, here’s how you can navigate public transport as safely as possible

We may have to get used to wearing masks along with plenty of hand sanitising and disinfecting of high-traffic areas and shared facilities, from keyboards to kitchens. Every door knob and lift button is an issue.

But space is the final frontier.

It’s going to take more than vacating every second desk or imposing barriers like cubicle walls, which largely defeat the point of open-plan offices.

An alternative vision comes from real-estate services company Cushman & Wakefield. Its “6 feet office” concept includes more space between desks and lots of visual cues to remind coworkers to maintain physical distances.

Read more: Vital Signs: rules are also signals, which is why easing social distancing is such a problem

Of course, to do anything like this in most offices will require a proportion of staff working at home on any given day. It will also mean then end of the individual desk for most.

This part may the hardest to handle. We like our personal spaces.

We’ll need to balance the sacrifice of sharing spaces against the advantages of working away from the office while still getting to see colleagues in person. We’ll need new arrangements for storing personal items beyond the old locker, and “handover” protocols for equipment and furniture.

Offices will also need to need more private spaces for greater use of video conferencing and the like. These sorts of collaborative tools don’t work well if you can’t insulate yourself from distractions.

But there’s a huge potential upside with the new open office. A well-managed rotation of office days and seating arrangements could help us get to know more of those colleagues who, because they used to sit a few too many desks away, we rarely talked to.

Read more: Goodbye to the crowded office: how coronavirus will change the way we work together

It might just mean the open-plan office finally finds its mojo.

– ref. The death of the open-plan office? Not quite, but a revolution is in the air – https://theconversation.com/the-death-of-the-open-plan-office-not-quite-but-a-revolution-is-in-the-air-140724

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kurt Sengul, Doctoral Researcher, University of Newcastle

The Conversation is running a series of explainers on key figures in Australian political history, looking at the way they changed the nature of debate, its impact then, and it relevance to politics today. You can also read the rest of our pieces here.

Pauline Hanson and her party have only achieved modest electoral successes. Yet, she is undoubtedly Australia’s most successful populist politician and has had a profound impact on the way the country talks about issues like multiculturalism and immigration.

Hanson’s entire political career can be seen as a denial and rejection of the realities of whiteness in Australia – that is, the unearned benefits and privileges afforded to white people in settler-colonial countries.

Hanson has benefited from – and helped to shape – the normalisation of racism and xenophobia in Australia. She has pushed the boundaries of what can be “acceptably said” in public discourse and has had a disproportionate influence on the national debate.

In doing so, she has also created the political space for other far-right figures like Fraser Anning to emerge and become more a part of the political mainstream.

The birth of One Nation

Hanson first emerged on the political landscape in 1996 when she was disendorsed as the Liberal Party candidate for Oxley following racist comments she made about Indigenous people in a letter to the Queensland Times.

She contested the election anyway, running as an independent on a self-described nationalist, populist and protectionist platform, and won the seat with a large swing against the Labor incumbent.

In her maiden speech to the House of Representatives, Hanson claimed to speak on behalf of “mainstream Australians” and promised a “common sense” approach to politics.

Most controversially, Hanson warned Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians”, called for the abolition of multiculturalism and railed against Indigenous rights, so-called “political correctness” and “reverse-racism”.

The times suited Hanson. After 13 years of Labor government, John Howard and the Liberal Party looked to exploit a sense of resentment and grievance on the issues of multiculturalism and immigration, which arguably opened up the space for Hanson and helped to legitimise her views.

Indeed, in a 1996 speech delivered to the Queensland Liberal Party, Howard celebrated the idea people felt able to speak a little more freely and could do so

without living in fear of being branded as a bigot or racist.

Hanson’s One Nation party was formed the following year and performed well at the 1998 Queensland state election, winning 11 seats.

Hanson’s downfall and political resurrection

One Nation’s initial success, however, was short-lived. Hanson failed to win the newly redistributed seat of Blair at the 1998 federal election. Her party then began to suffer from internal divisions, poor leadership and Hanson’s personal and financial scandals.

She was subsequently convicted of electoral fraud in 2003. (It was later overturned on appeal.)

After a number of failed federal and state campaigns (including under the rebranded Pauline’s United Australia Party), Hanson finally succeeded in being elected to the Senate in 2016, along with three other One Nation candidates.

This represented a high point for the party at the federal level and gave it considerable influence over government policy.

Read more: Henry Parkes had a vision of a new Australian nation. In 1901, it became a reality

Hanson’s populist, nativist beliefs

Hanson can best be described as a populist radical right politician, alongside such figures as Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orbán.

For populist figures, politics are seen as a struggle between everyday, ordinary people and a corrupt, illegitimate and out-of-touch elite.

But more importantly, the populist radical right also uses the language of “us-versus-them” and portrays immigrants and refugees as existential threats to the safety, security and “culture” of a particular society.

In Hanson’s view, non-natives must either assimilate and embrace “Australian culture and values” or “go back to where they came from”.

Hanson has consistently drawn on a sense of grievance and victimhood – in particular, white victimhood. She has espoused a belief in the existence of so-called “reverse-racism” or “anti-white” racism since the outset of her political career.

Hanson has even gone so far as to claim the

most downtrodden person in this country is the white Anglo-Saxon male.

The mainstreaming of the far-right

Hanson’s resurgence in 2016 occurred in a very different political climate than her first stint in parliament in the late 1990s.

Political scientist Cas Mudde refers to the 21st century as the “fourth wave of the far-right”. It is a time when far-right ideas are becoming increasingly tolerated, debated and normalised in the mainstream and the boundaries of what can be said are shifting.

Emboldened by years of normalised Islamophobia in Australia and the electoral successes of far-right parties globally, Hanson’s maiden Senate speech warned Australia was now

in danger of being swamped by Muslims, who bear a culture and ideology that is incompatible with our own.

She called for a “Trump style” immigration ban, a Royal Commission into Islam and the “banning of the burqa”.

Hanson’s resurgence has clearly cemented Muslims as the new “dangerous other”, though her racist attitudes towards First Nations people and Asian immigrants have also remained a constant.

Her claims of “anti-white racism” have also gained traction in the mainstream. For example, when Hanson put forth a Senate motion declaring “it’s OK to be white” in 2018, a surprising number of Coalition members voted for it and later defended it on Twitter.

It was only later, after a vocal outcry, that the Coalition backed down and claimed the votes were made in error.

The media have played a key role in the mainstreaming of Hanson and One Nation by consistently giving them a platform to voice far-right ideas.

Hanson’s legacy and impact on society

There are a couple of ways to think about Hanson’s legacy and impact on society.

The first is to gauge her direct influence on government policy through her role as a parliamentarian. There’s no doubt she has wielded considerable influence as one of a number of senators to hold the balance of power in recent years.

Yet, despite some success in influencing legislation and her recent appointment as deputy chair of the family law inquiry, Hanson has been largely unsuccessful in seeing her signature policies realised.

Read more: How Julia Gillard forever changed Australian politics – especially for women

And while acknowledging Hanson’s role in mainstreaming far-right ideas, it’s important to note these ideas have existed before her maiden speeches and will exist well beyond her time in politics.

Exclusively focusing on Hanson’s individual acts ignores the systemic nature of racism and the role of the mainstream political class in reproducing and upholding these racist structures.

When assessing Hanson’s legacy, it may be comforting to view her as an aberration and reflection of a bygone era, but she remains very much a product of the Australian settler-colonial story.

It’s perhaps more accurate to think of Hanson as a symptom of racism and xenophobia in Australia, rather than its cause.

– ref. Pauline Hanson built a political career on white victimhood and brought far-right rhetoric to the mainstream – https://theconversation.com/pauline-hanson-built-a-political-career-on-white-victimhood-and-brought-far-right-rhetoric-to-the-mainstream-134661

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Director, Health Program, Grattan Institute

The COVID-19 pandemic forced us all to change the way we live. The lockdown altered fundamental aspects of our lives, not only to protect our own health but also the health and lives of others.

Just as Australians have shown a remarkable ability to adapt to a world with COVID-19, so too has Australia’s health system. In a report released today, the Grattan Institute outlines seven key lessons that can help make the health system more effective, efficient and equitable, and better able to deal with future crises.

Lesson 1: telehealth works

Since mid-March, Australians have been able to consult their GP or a specialist from the comfort of their own homes, via phone or video (known as telehealth). Although face-to-face consultations are sometimes still necessary, the pandemic has shown the enormous potential for telehealth to provide more efficient care in many instances, such as for routine appointments or mental health check-ups.

During the pandemic, telehealth was a no-brainer to protect patients and health professionals from getting sick or making others sick. But given its widespread adoption and success, it is also a no-brainer for telehealth to become a permanent fixture of health care in Australia.

The federal government should revise the temporary telehealth Medicare items to ensure they promote continuity of care and make them more appropriate for the longer term, couple them with e-referrals (to replace the museum-era fax machines), and introduce rules to prevent rorting.

Read more: Coronavirus has boosted telehealth care in mental health, so let’s keep it up

Lesson 2: out-of-hospital care also works

Alongside telehealth, the pandemic prompted a rapid expansion of hospital-in-the-home care, including new “virtual hospitals”. Many people with chronic health conditions, or who are in rehabilitation or residential aged care, can be monitored by health professionals and given health advice without face-to-face contact, using technologies such as telemonitoring.

Commonwealth and state governments should fund further expansion of these services.

Read more: The ‘hospital in the home’ revolution has been stalled by COVID-19. But it’s still a good idea

Lesson 3: Australia needs new funding arrangements for general practices

Australia’s rigid primary care funding model, in which doctors are paid on a fee-for-service basis, made it hard for GPs to set up new practice models during the pandemic – such as quickly establishing COVID-19 testing clinics or making outreach calls to vulnerable patients.

Governments should remove barriers in the Medicare system to allow for different models of care.

Read more: 4 ways Australia’s coronavirus response was a triumph, and 4 ways it fell short

Lesson 4: public and private systems should be more integrated

The pandemic showed the potential for public and private health-care systems to work better together. Private hospitals were set up to deal with the overflow from potentially overwhelmed public hospitals. At the same time, private hospitals effectively came to a halt when governments suspended non-urgent elective surgeries, to free up resources to tackle the pandemic.

Now there is a huge backlog of patients who need elective surgeries. Clearing this backlog should not be a business-as-usual matter. The pandemic provides an opportunity for Australia to move away from the current inconsistent wait-list process, to a standardised, efficient, equitable process with a single wait-list priority system to properly manage elective surgeries.

State governments should also consider negotiating long-term contracts with private hospitals for extra help.

Read more: Elective surgery’s due to restart next week so now’s the time to fix waiting lists once and for all

Lesson 5: there are gaps in Australia’s pandemic preparedness

Despite Australia’s largely successful response to the pandemic, our preparedness regime was not totally up to scratch. Australia had not contemplated a crisis of this scale, and as a consequence the early response was characterised by reactive policy-making and mixed messages to the public.

Future pandemic planning should include a workforce strategy to support the rapid expansion of health-care capacity; provide a national surveillance approach to quick and accurate reporting of disease data; and ensure that secondary health effects such as mental health problems and domestic violence are built into the plan and managed in the longer term.

Read more: What are the characteristics of strong mental health?

Lesson 6: the health system needs a stronger supply chain

During the pandemic, health workers had to cope with inadequate supplies of testing kits and personal protective equipment (PPE) such as face masks. Problems with Australia’s supply chains hampered ready access to supplies, and the global surge in demand forced Australian health departments to join the global bidding for fast-tracked supplies from overseas.

Australian governments need to strengthen local supply chains, by drawing on a diverse set of suppliers and increasing product standardisation to enable easier substitution of products. The National Medical Stockpile also needs to be reviewed, because it did not have sufficient supplies.

Read more: Supplies needed for coronavirus healthcare workers: 89 million masks, 30 million gowns, 2.9 million litres of hand sanitiser. A month.

Lesson 7: Commonwealth and state governments can better coordinate primary care

The creation of the National Cabinet improved national coordination in response to the pandemic, as the old fractured federal relationships were temporarily set aside.

Renewed cooperation through primary care agreements, and strengthened Primary Health Networks, could reduce – or, better still, end – the overlap in services provided by the Commonwealth and states, and improve primary care delivery.

Read more: The national cabinet’s in and COAG’s out. It’s a fresh chance to put health issues on the agenda, but there are risks

The new normal can be better than the old

Australia’s health care must not “snap back” to the old order. The pandemic has shown us a better way. Now reform is needed to transform these temporary improvements into long-term successes.

But reform and a “new normal” won’t just happen automatically. Consumers and clinicians should be engaged now to build on what went well during the pandemic, to ensure our health system is better than it ever was before the pandemic.

– ref. 7 lessons for Australia’s health system from the coronavirus upheaval – https://theconversation.com/7-lessons-for-australias-health-system-from-the-coronavirus-upheaval-141122

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Judith Brett, Emeritus Professor of Politics, La Trobe University

Because we are rich in coal and gas, Australia has been plagued with two decades of wars over climate policy. The wars have claimed three prime ministers: Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Malcolm Turnbull. They have also, in the words of journalist Alan Kohler,

ruined Australia’s ability to conduct any kind of sensible discussion about economic policy and to achieve consensus on anything.

The response to the pandemic shows that consensus and effective, evidence-based policy are not impossible for Australia’s politicians. Faced with a crisis of life and death, they can put aside ideology and stare down vested interests.

The optimists among us hope they can do this with the life and death crises humanity is facing as the planet heats, and that the terrible fires last summer will have convinced our leaders climate change is real, and effective action urgent. So far, the calls for urgent action are louder from business than from political leaders. Innes Willox, the chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, has linked restoring growth after the pandemic to the achievement of net-zero emissions by 2050.

The federal government, by contrast, is championing gas as a “transition fuel” between coal and renewables. Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s handpicked chair of the National COVID-19 Co-ordination Commission, Nev Power, has strong links to the gas industry.

Calling gas a “transition fuel” at least admits the need for a transition. But gas also contributes to the planet’s heating, and the federal government has no plausible plan to meet Australia’s Paris target, nor to ramp it up, which must be done for a safe future.

Read more: A single mega-project exposes the Morrison government’s gas plan as staggering folly

The grip that coal and gas has on our political elites goes back to the 1960s, when minerals replaced wool as the mainstay of our commodity exports. Iron ore and coal led the way.

About the same time, mining’s social licence was being challenged by Indigenous Australians, who objected to mining on their traditional lands, and by environmentalists concerned about mining’s destructive impact on natural habitats. The miners’ response was a concerted public relations campaign to align their interests with the national interest by convincing Australians their prosperity depended on mining and should not be curtailed.

In this, the miners have been spectacularly successful. First, in the 1980s, they stymied the implementation of the Hawke Labor government’s plan for uniform land rights legislation, which would include protection of sacred sites, the right to royalties and a veto over mining on Indigenous land.

In Australia, unlike other common law countries, the Crown owns the minerals, so the veto would have given Indigenous owners more rights than freehold owners. Miners launched a furious public campaign centred on the argument that Indigenous Australians should not have special rights.

A decade later, after the High Court determined in the Mabo and Wik judgements that forms of native title had survived European settlement, the miners fought again to make sure the resulting legislation did not include any veto over mining; and it didn’t.

Second, they have delayed effective government action on climate change. At the end of the century, as pressure mounted for a reduction in the burning of fossil fuels, Australia’s coal producers organised to prevent the federal government from signing international agreements to reduce carbon emissions. Their core argument was that mining underpinned Australia’s wealth, but they also spread scepticism about climate change amongst conservative elites, turning it into an identity marker for the Australian right.

Under John Howard, fossil fuel advocates gained extraordinary access to government decision-making on climate and energy policy. This access was not given to environmental non-government organisations (NGOs) or climate scientists. So much for balance.

The power of the fossil fuel lobby was weaker after Howard lost the 2007 election. Later, it was unable to prevent the Gillard government from implementing a price on carbon and establishing a series of agencies to advance action on climate change.

But with Tony Abbott as prime minister, the industry’s power was back. Scepticism about climate science spread to science and expertise generally, undermining the federal government’s commitment to innovation and research. The fossil fuel lobby is not solely to blame for the Coalition’s philistinism under Abbott, but it bears some responsibility for its self-interested spreading of climate scepticism.

Read more: Morrison government dangles new carrots for industry but fails to fix bigger climate policy problem

The mining lobby’s third success has been to capture the National Party and turn it into the party of coal and coal seam gas, even when extracting these destroys the good agricultural land on which our food security depends. This is an astonishing achievement.

In March 2019, on Network 10’s The Project, Waleed Aly asked Nationals leader Michael McCormack

Could you name a single, big policy area where the Nats have sided with the interests of farmers over the interests of miners when they come into conflict?

Off the top of his head, McCormack could not name one. Mining has so successfully aligned itself with perceptions of the national interest that the National Party now champions the jobs of miners more energetically than the livelihoods of the farmers it once regarded as the heart of the nation.

The biggest lesson from the pandemic is that governments are our risk managers of last resort. Ours, both state and federal, have been prepared to inflict massive economic pain on businesses and individuals to protect our health, and we are grateful.

As we face the much larger but more slow-moving crisis of the heating planet, governments must stare down the fossil fuel industry and its supporters, for all our sakes, even if this inflicts on them some economic pain.

If they can do it for the pandemic, they can do it for climate change.

Judith Brett’s Quarterly Essay, The Coal Curse, is out today.

– ref. Australia’s devotion to coal has come at a huge cost. We need the government to change course, urgently – https://theconversation.com/australias-devotion-to-coal-has-come-at-a-huge-cost-we-need-the-government-to-change-course-urgently-140841

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Larissa Schneider, DECRA fellow, Australian National University

This month, federal authorities finally announced an upcoming ban on mercury-containing pesticide in Australia. We are one of the last countries in the world to do so, despite overwhelming evidence over more than 60 years that mercury use as fungicide in agriculture is dangerous.

Mercury is a toxic element that damages human health and the environment, even in low concentrations. In humans, mercury exposure is associated with problems such as kidney damage, neurological impairment and delayed cognitive development in children.

Read more: Australia emits mercury at double the global average

The ban will prevent about 5,280 kilograms of mercury entering the Australian environment each year.

But Australia is yet to ratify an international treaty to reduce mercury emissions from other sources, such as the dental industry and coal-fired power stations. This is our next challenge.

A mercury disaster

Mercury became a popular pesticide ingredient for agriculture in the early 1900s, and a number of poisoning events ensued throughout the world.

They include the Iraq grain disaster in 1971-72, when grain seed treated with mercury was imported from Mexico and the United States. The seed was not meant for human consumption, but rural communities used it to make bread, and 459 people died.

In the decades since, most countries have banned the production and/or use of mercury-based pesticides on crops. In 1995 Australia discontinued their use in most applications, such as turf farming.

Despite this, authorities exempted a fungicide containing mercury known as Shirtan. They restricted its use to sugar cane farming in Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

According to the sugar cane industry, about 80% of growers use Shirtan to treat pineapple sett rot disease.

But this month, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority cancelled the approval of the mercury-containing active ingredient in Shirtan, methoxyethylmercuric chloride. The decision was made at the request of the ingredient’s manufacturer, Alpha Chemicals.

Shirtan’s registration was cancelled last week. It will no longer be produced in Australia, but existing supplies can be sold to, and used by, sugar cane farmers for the next year until it is fully banned.

Workers and nature at risk

Over the past 25 years, Australia’s continued use of Shirtan allowed about 50,000 kilograms of mercury into the environment. The effect on river and reef ecosystems is largely unknown.

What is known is that mercury can be toxic even at very low concentrations, and research is needed to understand its ecological impacts.

The use of mercury-based pesticide has also created a high risk of exposure for sugar cane workers. At most risk are those not familiar with safety procedures for handling toxic materials, and who may have been poorly supervised. This risk has been exacerbated by the use itinerant workers, particularly those from a non-English speaking background.

Further, in the hot and humid conditions of Northern Australia, it has been reported that workers may have removed protective gloves to avoid sweating. Again, research is needed to determine the implication of these practices for human health.

To this end, Mercury Australia, a multi-disciplinary network of researchers, has formed to address the environmental, health and other issues surrounding mercury use, both contemporary and historical.

Australia is yet to ratify

The Minamata Convention on Mercury is a global treaty to control mercury use and release into the environment. Australia signed onto the convention in 2013 but is yet to ratify it.

Until the treaty is ratified, Australia is not legally bound to its obligations. It also places us at odds with more than 100 countries that have ratified it, including many of Australia’s developed-nation counterparts.

Australia’s outlier status in this area is shown in the below table:

Mercury-based pesticide use was one of Australia’s largest sources of mercury emissions. But if Australia ratifies the convention, it would be required to control other sources of mercury emissions, such as dental amalgam and the burning of coal in power stations.

The three active power stations in the Latrobe Valley, for example, together emit about 1,200 kilograms of mercury each year.

Time to look at coal

If Australia ratified the Minamata Convention, it would provide impetus for a timely review and, if necessary, update of mercury regulations across Australia.

Emissions from coal-fired power stations in Australia are regulated by the states through pollution control licences. Some states would likely have to amend these licences if Australia ratified the convention. For example, Victorian licences for coal-fired power stations currently do not include limits on mercury emissions.

Pollution control technologies were introduced at Australian coal plants in the early 1990s. But they do not match state-of-the-art technologies applied to coal plants in North America and Europe.

Read more: Why won’t Australia ratify an international deal to cut mercury pollution?

Australian environment authorities have been examining the implications of ratifying the convention. But progress is slow.

The issue of mercury emissions does not attract significant public or political attention. But there is a global scientific consensus that coordinated international action is needed.

The pesticide phase-out and ban is an important step. But Australia still has a way to go.

– ref. Ban on toxic mercury looms in sugar cane farming, but Australia still has a way to go – https://theconversation.com/ban-on-toxic-mercury-looms-in-sugar-cane-farming-but-australia-still-has-a-way-to-go-140596

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Forde, Director, Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University

The federal government’s announcement they will more than double the cost of humanities and communications degrees for university students has taken the sector by surprise – not least because it goes against increasing evidence that these programs are the key to our nation’s future success.

Read more: Fee cuts for nursing and teaching but big hikes for law and humanities in package expanding university places

If the government wants to support university courses that lead to jobs, they’d do well to listen to their business leaders who have been quite clear, in recent years, about the sorts of graduates they’re looking for.

Business leaders call for humanities

Chief Executive of the Business Council of Australia, Jennifer Westacott, said in a 2016 speech all 21st century successful leaders would need “some form of humanities perspective and education”.

I argue this because I believe our economic and technological success has not been matched with a constant orientation towards a better human condition.

She said the humanities produce people who can “ask the right questions, think for themselves, explain what they think, and turn those ideas into actions”.

She went further to say the key skills required by industry and business were nested in the humanities: “critical thinking, synthesis, judgement and an understanding of ethical constructs”.

Another valued industry body, Deloitte Access Economics, reported in 2018 that humanities and communications graduates delivered 30 technical skills hugely sought-after by employers.

Their analysis was based on graduate outcomes and employer satisfaction surveys, coupled with wide-ranging consultations with global business, public sector agencies and researchers.

They found 72% of employers “demanded” communication skills when hiring, but only 27% of potential hires actually had those skills.

They also found transferable skills, such as as teamwork, communication, problem-solving, innovation and emotional judgement, “have become widely acknowledged as important in driving business success”.

The report concluded

[…] humanities education and research has a fundamental role to play in understanding how our society and economy can adapt to these changes, in creating future value, and in helping individuals gain rewarding employment.

If our purpose is to incentivise programs that lead to jobs, which will equip the nation for the future, and will elicit innovative and creative responses to complex problems, then we must encourage broad study in the humanities and social sciences.

Our society calls for humanities

Most of us working in these fields can explain with great conviction the richness our disciplines bring to students, and ultimately to the societies they live in.

They bring an understanding of the world, of past mistakes and future threats, of current failings we can try to solve, and of medical, social and environmental challenges that confront us.

Our ability to understand the impact of the current global pandemic or migration, the environmental crisis, social cohesion, poverty and its many side-effects, domestic violence, the effects of social media and politics are daily concerns in the humanities.

And increasingly, we are aware the scale of these problems and the failure of our current institutions to deal with them – the often-discussed “crisis of trust” – cannot be solved by science, mathematics, engineering and technology alone.

It is the contribution of the humanities and social sciences to the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) disciplines that may ultimately lead us to some real and applied solutions to the crises we face.

It’s therefore curious the education minister Dan Tehan is encouraging humanities students to add a “job-ready” edge to their studies by doing (soon-to-be much cheaper) courses in technology, science and maths.

And at the same time, he is actively discouraging students of technology, science and maths from being able to take some humanities courses as part of their degree because of the prohibitive higher cost.

Read more: Humanities graduates earn more than those who study science and maths

“So if you want to study history, also think about studying teaching. If you want to study philosophy, also think about studying a language. If you want to study law, also think about studying IT”, Tehan said in his National Press Club address.

Interdisciplinary knowledge, and combining humanities and social science with the STEM disciplines, is a strong concept. We already do it in many of our communications and arts degrees.

But to suggest this should only be one-way traffic is highly problematic.

Microsoft president Brad Smith and head of Microsoft’s AI division Harry Shum recently wrote that lessons from liberal arts would be “critical to unleashing the full potential of AI”.

They wrote

[…] skilling-up for an AI-powered world involves more than science, technology, engineering, and math. As computers behave more like humans, the social sciences and humanities will become even more important. Languages, art, history, economics, ethics, philosophy, psychology and human development courses can teach critical, philosophical and ethics-based skills that will be instrumental in the development and management of AI solutions.

Leading universities around the world are increasingly combining core study in engineering and IT with humanities study. They acknowledge the communication, interpersonal and adaptable skills gives a much longer “shelf life” to the technical skills learned while at university.

And let’s not forget world leaders with Arts degrees

The Academy of Social Sciences reports two out of three CEOs of Australia’s ASX200 listed companies have a degree in the social sciences. There are similar proportions of government senior executives, and federal parliamentarians holding social science degrees.

And of course, the roll call of important world leaders of the 20th and 21st century with a humanities or social science degree – Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and Indira Gandhi among them – tells us our messages now must be around the importance of the humanities, not the reverse.

Read more: University students aren’t cogs in a market. They need more than a narrow focus on ‘skills’

So I return to the start. There is increasing confirmation, in Australia and across the world, that humanities, social sciences and communication are key to a viable future.

On what evidence, then, has the federal government proposed these changes? We have to trust this is not an attempt to muzzle critical thought and new ideas in our universities – but rather, a misguided attempt that needs a little more work.

– ref. If the government listened to business leaders, they would encourage humanities education, not pull funds from it – https://theconversation.com/if-the-government-listened-to-business-leaders-they-would-encourage-humanities-education-not-pull-funds-from-it-141121