National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop has vowed that NCDC has the municipal mandate to protect public interest and manage the best interests of the Papua New Guinea capital Port Moresby, reports PNG Post-Courier.
He made these remarks in a statement while he was present with onlookers at the city’s controversial Jack Pidik Park armed with an excavator to tear down a fence erected by the developer company TST adding a new twist in this land row.
“Today we have taken back Jack Pidik Park,” declared Parkop.
“It is public recreational land as far as we are concerned and shall remain that way until the commission decides otherwise.”
He said that TST had not received approval or power to “unilaterally” develop the land.
“Even if it is commercial land, it can’t be developed without our approval,” Parkop said.
“It has not complied with the orders it got from the National Court.
Developer ‘acted illegally’ “It has acted illegally and this cannot be allowed to continue.”
He said: “We assert NCDC power as the municipal government for our capital city to plan and manage our city for the benefit of all our people – individuals, corporations, churches and NGOs.
“Under the NCDC Act and vested with powers delegated to us by the Physical Planning Act and exercised through the NCD Physical Planning Board, we alone decide the type of development in the city,” he said.
NCD Governor Powes Parkop … “Those who seek to do [lands development] by default or deceit will not succeed.” Image: The National
Parkop said the NCDC had been fair in discharging its duty to protect public and private interests.
“We have defended public interest in public recreational areas like Ela Beach, Unagi Oval, Gerehu Sports Oval, Apex Park, Nature Park and other smaller parks in the city,” he said.
He cited other land that had been developed in the city, saying: “We have sold most of Sea Park land, for example, to raise money to complete the historic Sir Hubert Murray Stadium.
Responsible, ethical actions “We have signed a memorandum of agreement with Kumul Training Institute to lease a park at Tokarara to operate its training center while continuing to serve the public,” he said.
“We will continue to maintain this approach as it is the most responsible, ethical and legal thing to do.
“Those private residents in the city or our country, be they individuals or corporate, who wish to access public land must respect this policy, importantly to see our cooperation and support to develop such land or facilities. So it is a win-win outcome.
“Those who seek to do it by default or deceit will not succeed.”
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage. Click here to subscribe to Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup and New Zealand Politics Daily.
Autocorrection, or predictive text, is a common feature of many modern tech tools, from internet searches to messaging apps and word processors. Autocorrection can be a blessing, but when the algorithm makes mistakes it can change the message in dramatic and sometimes hilarious ways.
Our research shows autocorrect errors, particularly in Excel spreadsheets, can also make a mess of gene names in genetic research. We surveyed more than 10,000 papers with Excel gene lists published between 2014 and 2020 and found more than 30% contained at least one gene name mangled by autocorrect.
This research follows our 2016 study that found around 20% of papers contained these errors, so the problem may be getting worse. We believe the lesson for researchers is clear: it’s past time to stop using Excel and learn to use more powerful software.
Excel makes incorrect assumptions
Spreadsheets apply predictive text to guess what type of data the user wants. If you type in a phone number starting with zero, it will recognise it as a numeric value and remove the leading zero. If you type “=8/2”, the result will appear as “4”, but if you type “8/2” it will be recognised as a date.
With scientific data, the simple act of opening a file in Excel with the default settings can corrupt the data due to autocorrection. It’s possible to avoid unwanted autocorrection if cells are pre-formatted prior to pasting or importing data, but this and other data hygiene tips aren’t widely practised.
In genetics, it was recognised way back in 2004 that Excel was likely to convert about 30 human gene and protein names to dates. These names were things like MARCH1, SEPT1, Oct-4, jun, and so on.
Several years ago, we spotted this error in supplementary data files attached to a high impact journal article and became interested in how widespread these errors are. Our 2016 article indicated that the problem affected middle and high ranking journals at roughly equal rates. This suggested to us that researchers and journals were largely unaware of the autocorrect problem and how to avoid it.
As a result of our 2016 report, the Human Gene Name Consortium, the official body responsible for naming human genes, renamed the most problematic genes. MARCH1 and SEPT1 were changed to MARCHF1 and SEPTIN1 respectively, and others had similar changes.
An example list of gene names in Excel.
An ongoing problem
Earlier this year we repeated our analysis. This time we expanded it to cover a wider selection of open access journals, anticipating researchers and journals would be taking steps to prevent such errors appearing in their supplementary data files.
We were shocked to find in the period 2014 to 2020 that 3,436 articles, around 31% of our sample, contained gene name errors. It seems the problem has not gone away, and is actually getting worse.
Small errors matter
Some argue these errors don’t really matter, because 30 or so genes is only a small fraction of the roughly 44,000 in the entire human genome, and the errors are unlikely to overturn to conclusions of any particular genomic study.
Anyone reusing these supplementary data files will find this small set of genes missing or corrupted. This might be irritating if your research project examines the SEPT gene family, but it’s just one of many gene families in existence.
We believe the errors matter because they raise questions about how these errors can sneak into scientific publications. If gene name autocorrect errors can pass peer-review undetected into published data files, what other errors might also be lurking among the thousands of data points?
In 2012, JP Morgan declared a loss of more than US$6 billion thanks to a series of trading blunders made possible by formula errors in its modelling spreadsheets. Analysis of thousands of spreadsheets at Enron Corporation, from before its spectacular downfall in 2001, show almost a quarter contained errors.
A now-infamous article by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff was used to justify austerity cuts in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, but the analysis contained a critical Excel error that led to omitting five of the 20 countries in their modelling.
In biomedical research, a mistake in preparing a sample sheet resulted in a whole set of sample labels being shifted by one position and completely changing the genomic analysis results. These results were significant because they were being used to justify the drugs patients were to receive in a subsequent clinical trial. This may be an isolated case, but we don’t really know how common such errors are in research because of a lack of systematic error-finding studies.
Better tools are available
Spreadsheets are versatile and useful, but they have their limitations. Businesses have moved away from spreadsheets to specialised accounting software, and nobody in IT would use a spreadsheet to handle data when database systems such as SQL are far more robust and capable.
However, it is still common for scientists to use Excel files to share their supplementary data online. But as science becomes more data-intensive and the limitations of Excel become more apparent, it may be time for researchers to give spreadsheets the boot.
In genomics and other data-heacy sciences, scripted computer languages such as Python and R are clearly superior to spreadsheets. They offer benefits including enhanced analytical techniques, reproducibility, auditability and better management of code versions and contributions from different individuals. They may be harder to learn initially, but the benefits to better science are worth it in the long haul.
Excel is suited to small-scale data entry and lightweight analysis. Microsoft says Excel’s default settings are designed to satisfy the needs of most users, most of the time.
Clearly, genomic science does not represent a common use case. Any data set larger than 100 rows is just not suitable for a spreadsheet.
Researchers in data-intensive fields (particularly in the life sciences) need better computer skills. Initiatives such as Software Carpentry offer workshops to researchers, but universities should also focus more on giving undergraduates the advanced analytical skills they will need.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
On September 1, the Family Court of Australia will merge with the Federal Circuit Court. The Morrison government says this will “help reduce delays and backlogs in the family law courts”. However, the merger has been strenuously opposed by legal and family violence experts, who note Australia will be without a specialist, stand alone family court for the first time since the 1970s.
This is an edited extract from Broken, a new book by media academics Camilla Nelson and Catharine Lumby that explores the family court system.
In the early 1980s, the newly established Family Court of Australia — “born in hope”, and ideals of conciliation — was hit by a series of violent attacks in Sydney.
A judge was shot dead outside his home, and a string of lethal bombings followed.
One injured a judge and two school-age children while they slept, demolishing almost half of their quiet suburban home. Another killed a judge’s wife when she opened her front door. A third bomb exploded outside the family court building in Parramatta, and a fourth detonated inside a church hall, killing a member of the congregation, and seriously injuring 13 others, including children.
The murders and bombings remained unsolved until 2015, when Leonard Warwick was finally charged. His murderous rampage followed a legal dispute with his ex-wife over care of their five-year-old daughter.
His attacks on the family court indicated a fiercely held belief in his “right” to control his family. In sentencing Warwick, Justice Peter Garling acknowledged the political dimensions of the crimes, saying it “cannot be viewed as anything other than an attack on the very foundations of Australian democracy”.
Yet, after the bombs went off, commentators of the day did not condemn Warwick’s violence, but the court instead. Elizabeth Evatt, then chief justice of the family court, explained,
They said, “The Court has been bombed, what’s wrong with the Court?”
Successful terrorism
The family court bombings were remarkable in that they were successful as acts of terrorism. Although commentators at the time readily acknowledged the murders were wrong, many made excuses on behalf of the perpetrator.
Black Inc.
In the media, the violence was rationalised as the actions of a man who had been treated unfairly — of a man who, as The Sydney Morning Herald reported, was “extremely distressed by a decision of the court”. The paper called for a “fundamental reappraisal” of the new court, opining, “There must be something seriously wrong with the Family Court system for such an outrage to occur”.
According to The Bulletin, the family court was “too much of a revolution” and the bombings had “exposed serious flaws in our divorce machinery”. Warwick’s rampage was explained in much the same way as domestic abuse is explained: as the inevitable reactions of a “distressed” man who had been driven too far. The Australian said, “No wonder the man often feels a sense of rage.”
Almost immediately, then Attorney-General Gareth Evans sent a letter to activists in the nascent men’s rights movement, offering them a seat at the policy-making table by asking them what changes they would like to see to the court. This willingness of the Hawke Labor government to take the bomber’s “message” on board set the scene for the hijacking of family law that would reach its apogee under Liberal prime minister John Howard.
By the time the Howard government took office on a “family values” platform in 1996 — with a campaign brochure that featured a pastel-coloured drawing of a house with a white picket fence — the stage was set for a reform agenda that effectively elevated the claims of perpetrators above domestic abuse victims’ claims to safety. It would irrevocably change the culture of the court, so the court’s founding ideals would seem like a distant memory.
Howard era changes
Of Howard’s changes to the family court, one of the least discussed was the creation of the Federal Magistrates Court in 1999, renamed the Federal Circuit Court in 2013. This week, it becomes the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, following the abolition of the standalone family court. The Federal Magistrate’s Court was designed to be “a lean, cost-effective court” — imposing a technocratic, financially rationalised form of justice on affected families.
Cases were to be solved swiftly and easily, often brutally. And this new managerialist behemoth progressively took over 90% of the family court’s caseload, transforming the practice of family law beyond recognition. Federal Circuit Court cases are rapid and hectic, with minimal transparency.
In 40% of family law matters, one or both parties will be self-represented. Studies show the most common reason for parties to self-represent is that they cannot afford escalating legal fees.
In a recent study by Jane Wangmann, Tracey Booth and Miranda Kaye, one lawyer described the Federal Circuit Court as a “zoo”, in which everybody struggles to understand what is going on because “there’s so many people and it’s so noisy and it’s so confusing”.
One self-represented litigant told researchers that judges “push to settle”. They say,
Just get it out of my court room, I don’t want to deal with this, get it out.
Another self-represented litigant said the judge asked her, “Why haven’t you settled, why haven’t you settled this yet?” The judge added:
I’m sick to death of people who won’t negotiate. Get out there and negotiate or I’m just going to flip a coin.
‘An absolute fantasy’
It should be unsurprising that parties to these proceedings frequently conclude that justice has not been served.
Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie — for all her populist, political complexity — seems to be one of the few politicians who has recently stepped inside one of the nation’s hyper-rationalised lower-tier courts.
Independent senator Jacqui Lambie has blasted the family court merger. Mick Tsikas/AAP
She tried to convey the sense of shock in an excoriating speech to parliament in February 2021 as the Senate debated the bill that would ultimately secure the courts merger.
Maybe you’re thinking of a system where the bad guys get locked up and the good guys are quickly let go. In the back of your mind, you possibly have an idea that everybody has a high-powered lawyer in an expensive suit — and, my goodness, are they expensive. … If that’s what you’re thinking, you aren’t alone; that’s how I used to think our court system worked as well. Oh dear. It’s funny when you have life experience of something … nb small cut to quote here
In reality, judges are overworked and under-resourced, and therefore — as Lambie put it — forced to “churn through [family law matters] as though they’re on a production line”. In a memorable image, she likened the work of the judiciary to flipping greasy meals like “someone in a burger joint”.
The 2006 reforms included funding for already existing family support services, such as Relationships Australia, and the establishment of a new network of Family Relationship Centres. After this, separating parents increasingly began to turn to mediation to settle their differences, rather than the courts, reaching negotiated agreements through intermediaries.
This turn to non-legal mediation and non-adversarial settlement has been pronounced, creating emotionally better, more affordable outcomes for families, although funding for the sector has dwindled dramatically and fails to meet demand.
At the same time, domestic abuse has become the central issue in the cases that continue to be brought before the family courts.
A ‘Rolls Royce’ system for the rich and another for everyone else
In Australia, 97% of separating families do not go to court, although 16% use mediation, counselling and lawyers to settle their disputes.
The remaining 3% of separating parents who are compelled to use the courts as their main pathway to making children’s arrangements are predominately families affected by domestic abuse, child safety concerns and complex risk factors, including drug and alcohol abuse and mental health issues.
Up to 85% of litigated family law matters involve domestic abuse. This figure includes 54% of families reporting physical violence, 50% reporting safety concerns, and 85% reporting emotional abuse. There are no reliable figures for financial abuse, but this is a frequent feature of all domestic abuse cases.
If family law matters do go to court, most involve domestic abuse. David Crosling/AAP
One of the many glaring problems in the courts is that the law has been written with less troubled families in mind.
It is a little-known fact that 49% of cases before the “specialist” Family Court are property matters. In practice, outside specialist lists — such as the Magellan list for “serious” child abuse — and the hearing of appeals, cases are commonly transferred from the allegedly “less specialist” Federal Circuit Court to the allegedly “more specialist” Family Court because they involve complex decision-making around taxation, superannuation, or companies and trusts.
Effectively, this means affluent families have their cases heard in what has long been dubbed the “Rolls Royce” system of the family court. And the less affluent — including domestic abuse cases with aggravating factors such as drug and alcohol addiction or mental illness — are more frequently heard by commercially trained judges in the hyper-rationalised Federal Circuit Court.
This includes judges with little specific family law experience. Or as Lambie put it in her speech,
Here is the divide between the rich and the poor.
The court merger will do little to change any of this.
Broken is released on August 30, via Black Inc.
Camilla Nelson receives funding as EG Whitlam Research Fellow at the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University.
Catharine Lumby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Since the rise of the more infectious Delta variant, we’ve seen reports of more cases in children than with previous strains of the virus.
Many parents are becoming more concerned about COVID in kids. One question many are asking is whether kids can get “long COVID”, too, where symptoms persist for months after the initial phase of the illness.
I’m a paediatrician and infectious diseases expert, who cares for children with COVID-19, and have been following the research in this area.
Children can get long COVID, but it seems to be less common than in adults. And they tend to recover quicker. Let’s go through the data.
What is long COVID?
There’s still no standard definition of long COVID, and the syndrome itself is quite variable.
Even though there’s no one form of it, three broad types of symptoms frequently occur:
cognitive effects, such as slowed thinking or “brain fog”
physical symptoms, including fatigue, breathlessness and pain
mental health symptoms, such as altered mood and anxiety.
Having symptoms that persist for more than 28-30 days following the onset of COVID is increasingly being labelled as long COVID in the medical literature.
The cumulative effect of long COVID symptoms can have a profound impact on sufferers’ ability to function in their daily life, work or schooling.
Long COVID probably does occur in children but it is likely less common than in adults.
Two Australian studies are useful here. In one study of adults and children, researchers found 20% of over 2,000 COVID cases in New South Wales had persistent symptoms at 30 days. By 90 days, this had reduced to 5%. The youngest age group (0-29 years) were more likely to recover quicker than older age groups.
In a study from Victoria that looked at children only, 8% of 151 children with mostly mild infections had some persistent symptoms for up to eight weeks. However, all had fully recovered by 3-6 months.
The most comprehensive study to date was a large study in children aged 5-17 years with mild COVID from the United Kingdom. Of 1,734 children, 4.4% reported persistent symptoms 28 days after the start of their illness.
In these children, the number of symptoms at 28 days was fewer compared to that in the first week of their illness.
The study found 1.8% of children has symptoms at day 56. Headache, fatigue and loss of smell were the main issues.
Three-quarters of the children with persistent symptoms went on to report a full recovery. However, a quarter were not followed up, so it was unclear how many among this small group may have had longer-term problems.
The same study observed children who had other viral illnesses, not COVID. It found 0.9% showed persistent symptoms at 28 days. This suggests a “background rate” of non-specific symptoms like headache and fatigue occurs in children, which is important to consider — although the rate in children following COVID was considerably greater.
Some studies of COVID in children, for example, from Italy and Russia, have found persistent symptoms to be more common.
But these studies looked at variable populations, such as only those who were hospitalised or had moderate to severe illness, or collected data retrospectively.
Also, the children were infected during the first wave of COVID in Europe and the overall societal impacts may have contributed to some of the ongoing problems reported in children, like fatigue and insomnia.
This variability between studies makes it hard to compare them to work out the real rate of long COVID in children. Taken together, there seems to be a relative increase of persistent symptoms in teenagers compared with younger children.
What about Delta?
These studies were done before the effects of new variants of concern, most notably Delta, which has shown an increase in the number of COVID infections in children.
Both adults and potentially children who get more severe COVID in the initial (“acute”) stage of their illness seem to be at increased risk of long COVID. But if Delta isn’t causing more severe illness in kids, it’s reasonable to expect Delta won’t increase the risk of long COVID in children either.
Scientists need to agree on a consensus definition of long COVID, and a standardised way to measure it.
Given the non-specific nature of many long COVID symptoms, research also needs to include a control group of kids who haven’t had COVID to really determine the COVID effect.
Do persistent symptoms occur following other viral infections?
Yes. Common examples include the glandular fever virus, also known as Epstein Barr virus, and Ross River fever virus.
Studies report up to 10-15% of children and adults with these infections report chronic symptoms including fatigue, pain, slowed thinking and altered mood.
What actually causes persistent symptoms following viral infections, including COVID, remains a major focus of researchers. Persisting infection itself is not likely.
Major theories include chronic inflammation, blood flow disturbances or nervous system damage.
What should I do if my child has had COVID?
Some children do have persisting cough and fatigue around the four-week mark.
Parents are understandably concerned, but should be reassured most children will fully recover. If there’s a pattern of improvement, that’s a reassuring sign.
If symptoms continue beyond four weeks, it’s sensible to stay in touch with your GP or paediatrician.
In terms of persistent symptoms following other infections, we do know what helps to promote recovery. Things to consider are:
aiming to have your child gradually return to normal activities
where fatigue is an issue, use rest well, in short periods and after doing activities.
Returning to normal activities may require planning, including liaising with teachers around school return, which is especially important in the context of online learning.
Aim for incremental gains, remain optimistic about recovery, and always seek help if you’re not sure what to do.
Philip Britton receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Commonwealth Department of Health and NSW Ministry of Health.
This article is part of the “Who would win?” series, where wildlife experts dream up hypothetical battles between predators (all in the name of science).
America’s most-loved bird versus a scrappy Aussie scavenger. In a clash that might rival Crocodile Dundee in New York City, here we’ll pit two iconic birds of prey against one another: the wedge-tailed eagle and the North American bald eagle.
As a disclaimer, this exercise is well and truly hypothetical. Wedge-tailed eagles are native to Australia and would never encounter a bald eagle, which has a range covering most of North America, in the wild.
This is probably why they can both exist in the healthy numbers on both continents: their similar niches would likely result in high levels of competition for resources such as food and nesting sites, especially sites close to the ocean.
In fact, wedgies, Australia’s largest raptor, have such few competitors, they’ve actually taken on the role played by vultures and condors in the rest of the world: that of scavenger. While bald eagles will also scavenge large prey, their speciality is fish.
So before we get into the details of the fight (and, potentially, a diplomatic incident), let’s learn more about these two enormous birds of prey.
The bald eagle is the national emblem for the US. Alvaro Postigo/Unsplash
Their fan base
Both species are thankfully doing well in terms of numbers, which is great news for humans because they play important roles. They clean up carrion and keep numbers of rapidly reproducing small mammals in check — think rabbits, mice, rats.
They are both also very important in the culture of Indigenous people on both continents. In Australia, many Aboriginal Dreaming stories include the wedge-tailed eagle, especially in depictions of Bunjil the creator, and some have even associated constellations with it. In native North American cultures, bald eagle feathers are highly esteemed, symbolising bravery, strength and holiness.
Wedge-tailed eagles are scavengers, and are often seen feasting on road kill. Shutterstock
The birds’ sheer size means they are easily recognised in their native ranges, making them apt emblems.
Of course, the bald eagle has the honour of being the United States’ national bird, appearing on its coat of arms. The wedge-tailed eagle is an emblem in the Northern Territory, and appears on the Royal Australian Air Force badge.
Each country also has one professional football team named after the respective birds: The Philadelphia Eagles in the US, and the West Coast Eagles in Australia’s AFL.
While both eagles are part of the same family group (Accipitridae), they are not very closely related, belonging to different genera.
The wedge-tailed eagle (Aquila audax) fits in a group sometimes referred to as “true eagles”, which also holds some of the most widespread eagles in the world, such as the golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos).
Bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), on the other hand, belong in the Haliaeetus genus, a group of predominantly fish-eating birds of prey that includes Australia’s own white-bellied sea eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster).
Thus, it may seem like the odds are already stacked: what chance would a bird that eats fish as its main meal have against a bird that eats just about anything – alive or dead?
Bald eagles predominately prey on fish. Shutterstock
A close match
Well, they are in fact well matched in terms of potential fighting ability.
Both average about four to five kilograms, with almost identical wingspans of between 1.8 and 2.3 metres. Both have large, curved, strong beaks for tearing meat off the bones of their prey.
What opponents need to most be wary of, however, are the legs and talons.
Both species have strong feet with which to grab prey of the ground (or water) and carry it away to eat in peace. Neither have natural predators. It would indeed be a close match.
AFL/NFL official logos
So, let’s say — hypothetically of course — that a wedge-tailed eagle and a bald eagle are in the same place at the same time, vying for the same prey.
It’s likely the bald eagle would be perched on a nearby clifftop, and the wedgie would be circling in the skies, high above. A poor, unassuming rodent (perhaps of unusual size, making it highly prized) is minding its own business on the ground below.
Both predators see the rodent as well as each other with their excellent vision — eagles generally have the best eyesight of all known vertebrates. A speedy downwards dive by both, up to 160 kilometres per hour, would signal the fight has commenced.
Before hitting the ground, the rodent, or each other, they’d flap their wings to slow down, revealing their legs and talons. These would reach out towards the opponent and, depending on where each bird grabs, might signify the end for the other. It would likely be quite the grapple and possibly even a trial of endurance.
Wedge-tailed eagles have a wingspan of over two metres. Shutterstock
The verdict?
My money, however, is on the wedge-tailed eagle.
While wedge-tailed eagles are a similar size to bald eagles, they’re able to kill slightly bigger prey. Bald eagles tend to feed on fish and small mammals (as well as reptiles, and carrion to an extent), but they rarely target anything bigger than, say, a racoon or beaver.
While wedge-tails regularly eat similarly sized mammals such as rabbits, they will also attack kangaroos, koalas and even goannas.
This might make them more accustomed to targeting diverse, large prey.
Bald eagle vs Donald Trump.
But the real tests that clinch my decision are odd encounters these birds face in the real world.
Recently, numbers of bald eagles have increased such that their range now overlaps with the common loon in North America, a diving waterbird with a sharp beak. And it appears that loons are able to stab bald eagles trying to obtain their young as prey, killing them. Canada 1: USA 0.
Not a great look for the majestic baldie.
Compare this to the wedge-tailed eagle, which is the only bird in the world known to actively attack paragliders and hang gliders , as well as drones. They do this because they likely see them as threats, and are attempting to defend their territory.
Therefore, in terms of motivation and sheer boldness when taking on an opponent, my bets are placed firmly in the talons of the wedgie.
Who would win in a fight between a scorpion and a tarantula?
Dominique Potvin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Sean Turnell, an Australian who became a trusted economic adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi, has been in a Myanmar prison for more than six months.
The economics professor was arrested on February 5, four days after the military coup that put a stop to the nation’s slow path towards full democracy and unravelling the economic corruption entrenched by decades of junta rule.
I spoke to him between the coup and the arrest. He was remarkably calm and dedicated to the welfare of the Burmese people despite the situation.
He awaits trial on charges he violated the country’s immigration and official secrets acts by trying to leave the country after the coup with sensitive financial information.
Those familiar with the situation are optimistic he will be released after the trial of Suu Kyi, who is also facing charges widely considered to be trumped up. The judge overseeing that trial has said it should be complete by the end of year.
An economics star
I have known Turnell as a family friend and colleague for many years. But it was not until I travelled to Yangon in 2017 that I really saw him in his element.
I had spent the week interviewing prominent Australians in Myanmar for my podcast The Airport Economist. They included Australia’s then ambassador Nicholas Coppel, Austcham Myanmar chief executive Jodi Weedon, lawyer Chris Hughes (founder of the independent law firm SCM Legal) and Alison Carter (founder of Three Good Spoons, which teaches Burmese women cooking and other skills to improve their employment opportunities.
But among all these distinguished speakers, the highlight was definitely Turnell’s presentation at a conference organised by the Australian Myanmar Institute (the brain child of Christopher Lamb, a former ambassador to Myanmar).
Sean Turnell and Tim Harcourt at the Australian Myanmar Institute’s conference in Yangon in 2017. Tim Harcourt, Author provided
Turnell explained the Myanmar economy comprehensively, from macroeconomic conditions to microeconomic reform. He drilled down in great detail into fiscal and monetary policy, industrial development and infrastructure needs, financial markets, trade and tourism and, most importantly, education and human capital.
After the conference was formally closed, students milled around Sean like he was a celebrity — a rock-star economist.
Life before Myanmar
Turnell grew up in the working-class suburb of Macquarie Fields in south-western Sydney. Showing brilliance from an early age, he gained his bachelor’s degree economics at Macquarie University in north-western Sydney. Then a PhD. He ended up an associate professor at the university.
“Macquarie is everywhere in both our lives and careers,” his sister Lisa Brandt told me. She also studied economics at Macquarie University and is now a senior manager at the Macquarie Group.
After his undergraduate degree, Turnell worked for the Reserve Bank of Australia. There he was a popular and hard-working member of the central bank’s economics department.
Colleague Sean Aylmer, who went on to become a finance journalist, rising to editorial director at Fairfax Media, remembers Turnell for being both a good applied economist and an extrovert. “Which is most welcome at a place like the RBA,” he told me during a conversation for my podcast.
Professor David Throsby, former chair of the Macquarie University’s economics department, told me he believed Turnell could have been anything at the RBA. “But he was culturally more suited to academia and more at home in a university environment.”
Turnell joined the Macquarie University’s economics department in 1991. He excelled in academia. He wrote a PhD with a brilliant dissertation on John Maynard Keynes. He was also a “Hamiltonian” well before the musical. His deep interest in the life and times of Alexander Hamilton, the first US Secretary of the Treasury, drew him to Washington DC to spend many hours in the national archives and museums looking into the details of his hero.
Working for Aung San Suu Kyi
But it was Myanmar that became the centre of Turnell’s professional life, with his research increasingly focused on that country’s political economy and economic history.
He met Aung Sung Suu Kyi in the 1990s, and their professional relationship firmed from there. In 2001 he established the Burma Economic Watch, a blog providing reliable economic data and commentary to make up for the paucity of information available under the military junta.
When democracy was partially restored in 2011, Turnell got to work as a technical economist, covering all aspects of the Myanmar economy. His commitment to this work was shown in his presentation to the Australian Myanmar Institute conference. Though he continued to live in Sydney, he visited Myanmar regularly.
Then came the military coup on February 1. His arrest on February 5 made him the first foreign national arrested by the junta as part of the coup.
There is no reason for his detention. He has done nothing wrong and has only devoted his time and energy to improving the welfare of the Burmese people.
The Australian government has called for his immediate release. So has the US Congress and others.
Awaiting his return to Australia is his family and wife Ha Vu, also an economist at Macquarie University and dedicated to development economics.
Even with Myanmar back under the control of a corrupt and incompetent junta, Sean’s knowledge of the Myanmar economy can still be put to good use, helping to improve the lives of the Burmese people and the rest of South East Asia.
Tim Harcourt no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.
For Australia’s habitually-abused financial consumers it’s Back to the Future (minus the DeLorean).
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg appears to have thrown the most important findings of the banking royal commission under a bus, in glorious double-speak.
On Thursday he issued a direction to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission through what is known as a statement of expectations.
It is very different from the previous such statement, issued in 2018.
This one includes an entirely new clause, placed right at the top.
The government expects ASIC to:
identify and pursue opportunities to contribute to the government’s economic goals, including supporting Australia’s economic recovery from the COVID pandemic.
It’s an odd role for a corporate cop, on its face inconsistent with the way ASIC itself describes its function in the “our role” tab on its homepage.
Perhaps not yet updated to take account of the guidelines, ASIC’s description says it is a regulator whose job is to “take whatever action we can, and which is necessary, to enforce and give effect to the law”.
From ‘why not litigate’…
It’s how the royal commission saw ASIC’s role. In his final report, Commissioner Kenneth Hayne was scathing about how ASIC carried out those duties, saying it was too ready to negotiate, and not keen enough to litigate.
Financial services entities are not ASIC’s ‘clients’. ASIC does not perform its functions as a service to those entities. And it is well-established that ‘an unconditional preference for negotiated compliance renders an agency susceptible to capture’.
Negotiation and persuasion, without enforcement, all too readily leads to the perception that compliance is voluntary. It is not.
Hayne said the first question ASIC should ask whenever misconduct was identified was “why not litigate?”.
Frydenberg’s new statement of expectations turns that on its head.
…to ‘why not capitulate’
Rather than “why not litigate,” it reads as “why not capitulate” — justified by the need to identify opportunities to contribute to Australia’s economic recovery.
The statement says the government expects ASIC to “act independently” but also says it should “consult with the government and treasury in exercising its policy-related functions” — a requirement not previously expressed in those terms.
It should “minimise regulatory burdens” (including presumably those that require regulated firms to act in the best interest of their customers).
It should ensure any guidance it offers to financial service providers is not “unduly prescriptive”.
The banks have not earned leniency
Granted, these are conditions that could be interpreted positively if ASIC was charged with supervising an industry that had demonstrated its trustworthiness and its commitment to putting its customers first.
Royal Commissioner Kenneth Hayne believed the banks had not earned out trust. AAP
But after the evidence that was ventilated before the Hayne Royal Commission no one – not even the Australian Banking Association makes such a claim.
Indeed, the damage done by more than a decade of financial industry misconduct, fraud, criminality and venality, committed on an industrial scale, is yet to be fully quantified.
Colleagues at the University of Melbourne estimate the full cost at north of A$200 billion, affecting approximately 54% of the population.
Frydenberg’s solution appears to be to put the needs of industry first. Separately, he is trying to scrap responsible lending laws.
From somewhere, to nowhere
What will the upshot be of a newly enfeebled ASIC? In light of the demonstrable failure of banks, super funds and insurers to act with integrity after the royal commission, the upshot will be more of the same.
Indeed, as reported in The Klaxon in November, the almost one million customers in Westpac-BT’s “retirement wrap” umbrella fund had been gouged as much as $8 billion over the past decade, thanks to exorbitant fees.
Between mid-2018 and mid-2020 returns to members were close to zero (0.1%).
According to Australian Prudential Regulation Authority data, had the performance of the Westpac funds been merely average, its customers would have been $5 billion better off.
The matter was reported to ASIC on November 23 last year. All ASIC has done since is “review” the situation. In that time fund members might have lost a further $1.5 billion relative to the industry average.
A better way to support a post-COVID economic recovery would be to give customers confidence that the laws meant to protect them were being properly enforced. It isn’t the road the treasurer has taken.
Andrew Schmulow is the founder & CEO, Clarity Prudential Regulatory Consulting, Pty Ltd, he is an Associate Partner, Senior Advisor & Thought-Leader on Financial Services to DB & Associates, a joint Australian-South African Consultancy, he is a member of the Independent Committee of Experts convened by the South African National Treasury for the drafting of the Conduct of Financial Institutions Bill, a Secretariat member for the All Party Parliamentary Group for Personal Banking and Fairer Financial Services, House of Commons House of Lords, a member of the European Banking Institute (EBI) research work-stream on EU financial supervisory architecture, and an independent consultant to Luis Silva Morais/Sérgio Gonçalves do Cabo – Law Firm, for the jurisdictions of Australia and South Africa. He has received funding from various universities, associations and think tanks, most notably CGAP (a division of the World Bank) and the Banking Association, South Africa. He is affiliated with ACAC and the Accountability Round Table. He serves on the Boards of two charities.
In 2020 when people talked about “living with COVID” it was code for letting the virus rip. It was really a plan for many to “die with COVID”.
Thankfully our political leaders listened to experts.
In general, Australia managed the pandemic’s public health and economic challenges better than most countries. The glaring exceptions were, of course, our vaccination strategy and our quarantine arrangements.
With vaccines we didn’t buy a properly diversified portfolio of vaccines, didn’t act with a sense of urgency — “It’s not a race,” said the Prime Minister and other ministers — and didn’t have an effective plan for getting jabs into arms quickly.
With quarantine arrangements we failed to build fit-for-purpose facilities akin to the one in Howard Springs outside Darwin. Instead we relied on poorly ventilated hotels in the heart of our biggest and most densely populated cities.
Now, with the roll-out of high-efficacy vaccines against COVID-19, we are beginning to have a national discussion genuinely about how to live with COVID.
It is vital that during that discussion we don’t repeat the mistakes of 2020.
Those mistakes all sprang from false economies.
The federal government thought we could save a few bucks by gambling on vaccine purchases. It favoured vaccines that could be made locally more as a back-door industry policy rather than strategic supply-chain management. It thought using hotels as quarantine facilities could help financially support the hospitality sector.
Pinching pennies cost us. Big time.
It is imperative we don’t fall into the trap of false economies again by opening up too soon, before what is needed to stay open is in place.
Vaccination milestones
The national plan about when Australia will “reopen” is pegged to vaccination milestones.
We’re still in the first of the four-phase plan. We will move to Phase B (the “vaccine transition phase”) when 70% of eligible Australians over the age of 16 are vaccinated. At 80% we move to Phase C (the “vaccination consolidation phase”).
At this 80% threshold the plan is for only “highly targeted lockdowns”, the end of passenger caps for vaccinated Australians returning home, and restarting outbound travel for vaccinated Australians.
There are important epidemiological debates about whether 70% and 80% are the right thresholds. I’m just an economist, so I’m not going to get into that here.
But if we accept, for the sake of argument, that 80% is the practically relevant threshold for moving to Phase C of the national plan, then we should at least insist on getting the arithmetic right.
On this, there are two key questions.
80% of what?
The first is about the vaccination rate. Moving to Phase C calls for 80% of the “eligible” population to be fully vaccinated.
Rather, it’s 80% of the population aged 16 and over — about 16.6 million people, or 64% of the population.
If the national plan is changed to make it 80% of the population aged 12 and over, that would be about 17.6 million people, or 68% of the population.
To paraphrase the United States politician Everett Dirksen, a million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real numbers.
There are two points here.
First, the much-touted 80% threshold is really only 64% of the whole population. Yet herd-immunity levels — where outbreaks die out — are typically expressed as a proportion of the entire population. Given the basic reproduction rate of the Delta variant and current vaccine effectiveness, the actual herd immunity vaccination threshold could easily be north of 85%.
Second, the longer that lockdowns continue, the stronger the temptation for politicians to shift to targets that are easier to achieve. Though this might be politically convenient, it would be disastrous.
So if the government is going to stick to the spirit of the national plan, we really should be waiting until two weeks after 80% of the 12+ population has been vaccinated.
Again, there will be a big political temptation to reopen the day of the “threshold” second jab, rather than when it really becomes effective.
Don’t fall at the final hurdle
Australians have put up with a lot since early 2020. A devastating virus, lockdowns, uncertainty, isolation from loved ones, economic pain, and differing degrees of government competence.
It is essential we finish this race properly. We must not let our political leaders reopen too early by redefining the targets they have signed up for. It would be the ultimate false economy.
Richard Holden is President-elect of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.
The central theme of new Netflix drama The Chair is timely and gets a lot right about racial politics in modern American academia. Smart, incisive, nicely written and acted, it’s a genuinely rewarding binge watch.
As senior academic women ourselves, we were excited to see how aspects of our own professional lives might be reflected in the show, and we could relate to much of it. In particular, the deft commentary on the increasing commercialisation of academic life resonates strongly.
The drama revolves around Ji-Yoon Kim (played by Sandra Oh) who has just been appointed chair of a stuffy academic English department and is struggling to be heard by nearly all her colleagues.
She’s also struggling with her own complicity in a system rigged heavily in favour of older white men and against women — especially younger women of colour. As Kim quickly discovers, it can be lonely at the top.
Tensions ring true
Without giving too much away, Kim’s first choice for a distinguished lectureship is a fellow woman of colour, but her decision is overridden in favour of inviting a celebrity with supposedly greater student appeal — and potential commercial dividends for the university.
The tensions between faculty and students also ring true. With university courses packaged into products and sold to students as paying customers, the relationship between staff and students has undergone a dramatic transformation.
The show clearly demonstrates how course instructors of all levels and employment types are now subject to a battery of evaluations, including public reviews by students.
We also see how students are quick to record and share out-of-context excerpts of lectures to social media, where snap judgments are made with far-reaching consequences. Video recordings of lectures became standard even before COVID required the rapid transition of campus courses to online “offerings”, increasing the risk for teachers.
In reality, though, the true nature of work and life in the modern neoliberal academy is far more difficult, complex and brutal than in The Chair. It has become a place where managerialist and PR concerns trump academic ones, where academics are encouraged, if not coerced, to publish in journals that allow universities to claim world rankings, irrespective of whether they’re reaching the right audience.
It’s also a place where scholars are held accountable to numerous metrics that are demonstrably faulty and work against women, people of colour or working-class academics; where we are encouraged to limit our research to areas that can bring in “alternate revenue” sources, which often means not doing research with poorer communities.
It’s a place where we are encouraged to “engage the public” but cautioned not to be too controversial; where promotion increasingly rests on remaining ideologically mainstream enough to bring in large amounts of money; where we spend large chunks of our time-poor lives competing fiercely with each other for fewer grant opportunities.
And it’s where work of cultural and social value is rendered largely useless if it is not quantified, packaged and taken to market, including the growing private health, education and welfare markets; where there’s growing pressure to “find what the funders are looking for” or risk future contracts.
There’s also no mention of class inequality in The Chair, but this still pervades the academy. There are no references to the poverty so many university students face, especially international students, whether from expensive tuition fees, exorbitant rent, low wages from casual jobs, or food insecurity — all evident in the US and Australia.
Nor is there any discussion of the casual employment of the vast majority of academic staff, which effectively gives them little or no say in university governance and subjects them to levels of financial and professional precariousness that is damaging to their well-being.
And there is barely a nod to the fact that across the higher education sector the mantra of “cost-effectiveness” is applied to all requests for teaching and research funding, while vast sums are paid to vice chancellors and their entourages, including their many consultants.
As if all this isn’t enough, teaching has become more treacherous. Classes in The Chair are depicted as intimate and manageable, but our reality is a far cry from that. First-year courses commonly have upwards of 700 enrolments, making it impossible to forge the relationships of trust needed to discuss difficult and confronting ideas.
Student anonymity and their customer-reviewer status mean staff can be policed (rightly or wrongly) for their teaching content, physical appearance and presentation. Opening up spaces for critical discussion can be difficult, if not downright scary.
For all of its humour and clever lines, we came away from The Chair feeling dispirited. In part this is because the show lays bare the huge challenge of effecting real change in the face of hard-to-swallow compromises and lack of solidarity.
But it’s also because, as sad as it sounds, the series depicts a version of modern academic life that is far more positive than our reality. Even with its problems, we’d still take The Chair’s version over its real-world counterpart, notwithstanding that it’s far from the “good university” we’d like to see.
Las personas firmantes no son asalariadas, ni consultoras, ni poseen acciones, ni reciben financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y han declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado anteriormente.
Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train has sold 23 million copies, and the film adaptation was a box office smash.DreamWorks Pictures/Universal Pictures via AP
Along with Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (2012), Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (2015) helped establish the flawed anti-heroine as the rising star of psychological suspense fiction.
These novels are the most prominent examples of the growing genre of “domestic noir”. Focusing on the moral chaos of modern life, these psychological thrillers, written largely by — and for — women, expose the secrets, lies and betrayals at the heart of intimate relationships and family networks.
As a writer and a psychotherapist, I’m fascinated by human nature, and I love reading about the problems of ordinary women. But, too often, domestic noir fiction aligns female aggression with madness, death and terror.
Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train and many other books of the genre prioritise unhelpful stereotypes over more subtle psychological states. They fuel assumptions about the proximity of women to emotional breakdown, feeding the exploitative mythologising of women’s mental health problems in the name of entertainment.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking for happy endings. I just prefer a more sophisticated scenario in which the dark fantasies and troubled emotions of heartbreak and trauma do not become the fuel for psychosis. A thriller where women don’t all hate each other; where the only way out isn’t to murder someone.
Surely there’s more to be done with a flawed anti-heroine than that?
The penny seems to have dropped for Hawkins. This month sees the publication of her latest book, A Slow Fire Burning, another twisty murder tale addressing the impact of trauma on women’s lives.
Like its predecessor, the book’s female protagonists are emotionally scarred and full of rage. But while The Girl on the Train’s Rachel Watson was defined by mental instability, Hawkins’ new characters are powerfully angry women whose fury leads them past the point of personal collapse.
Into the domestic noir
British author Julia Crouch coined the phrase “domestic noir” in 2013 to distinguish her own novels from the broader sweep of crime thrillers. These books are now big business in the publishing world.
Film adaptations of both novels — together with prestige television productions of books such as Little Fires Everywhere, Big Little Lies, The Undoing and the forthcoming Anatomy of a Scandal — are all part of the genre’s success.
Flynn and Hawkins are joined by authors like Celeste Ng, Christobel Kent, Liane Moriarty and Jean Hanff Korelitz. These writers interrogate the false security of nuclear households and suburban communities, exploring the cultural conditions that lead people into difficult situations.
In their novels, women get angry. They stand up to abusive men and treacherous friends, they fight for their families and children, they challenge the law.
Struggling with dangerous environments, they take on the role of vigilante in the name of self-defence and self-preservation.
Occasionally, they kill.
In Moriarty’s Big Little Lies (2014), Bonnie saves her friend from a violent husband by inadvertently pushing him to his death. In Kent’s What We Did (2018), Bridget is trying to protect herself when she accidentally kills her former childhood abuser.
These women aren’t mad. They aren’t paranoid, sociopathic or delusional. They’re not drunk or on drugs. They have been violated and traumatised, and are triggered in the face of an oncoming threat. Some of them are terrified. All of them are angry.
The appeal of domestic noir’s anti-heroines lies in their bad behaviour. They don’t care about pleasing others or being nice.
But what happens when they lose their minds?
The women who go mad
Some of the novels in this genre might better be described as “girl gone mad” melodramas. In Gone Girl, Amy Elliott Dunne is a homicidal narcissist who frames her husband for her own murder and attacks herself with a broken bottle to make a false rape claim.
In The Girl on the Train, Rachel Watson is a compulsive liar and an alcoholic with a tenuous grasp on reality, who ends up driving a corkscrew into the neck of her abusive ex-husband.
After the release of these books, both characters divided opinions. The authors were criticised for portraying women as disempowered and destabilised by marital breakdown. Instead of becoming independent from their cruel and cheating husbands, Amy and Rachel each go thundering off the tracks.
In response to such critiques, Flynn told The Guardian she “doesn’t write psycho bitches”.
“The psycho bitch is just crazy — she has no motive, and so she’s a dismissible person because of her psycho-bitchiness,” she said.
But does a “motive” justify the damaging stereotype of Flynn’s depictions of crazed female fury?
Whether you see them as riotous feminist icons or pitifully reliant on men, one thing seems clear: the only way for Amy and Rachel to get angry is to forego their sanity.
It is all very well for Flynn to say her women aren’t “psycho bitches”, but in our society, anger is considered to be unfeminine and socially unacceptable. In Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger (2018), a journalistic exploration of the history of women’s fury, Soraya Chemaly argues the angry woman is perceived as “hostile, irritable, less competent, and unlikeable.”
No wonder so many girls learn to become passive aggressive when outbursts of female anger are judged as crazy. Arguably more damaging in the long term, it seems safer for women to quietly seethe.
Instead of challenging these ideas, “girl gone mad” dramas reinforce them.
The women who get mad
Some of the best domestic noir novels, in contrast, tackle the psycho bitch problem by dispensing with violence altogether.
Instead, their anti-heroines respond to what author Harriet Lane calls “the tiny little cruelties and apparently benign interactions that we so easily inflict on each other”.
Each of Lane’s own protagonists — Frances Thorpe in Alys Always (2012) and Nina Bremner in Her (2014) — is psychologically impacted by the stuff of dysfunctional family life. Frances is sick of being sidelined and uses a stranger’s death to better herself. Nina blames a teenage friend for her parents’ divorce and seizes an opportunity for revenge.
Both women are jealous and resentful, bitter and blaming. But instead of becoming unhinged by murderous obsessions, they execute careful and intricate plans without spilling a drop of blood.
Equally powerful, Sarah Vaughan’s bestselling legal thriller, Anatomy of a Scandal (2018), continues the #MeToo conversation by re-framing the victim as a gutsy agent in her own recovery. Deceitful, brave and morally questionable, sexual offence prosecutor Kate Woodcroft holds onto her mental clarity while risking her career — and her fragile emotional state — for an outcome she cannot predict.
These painful stories show how vulnerable women are prone to misdiagnosis, social neglect and sexual exploitation. They highlight the need for an improved understanding of trauma, especially within our medical and legal systems where the physical and psychological symptoms of such conditions can be overlooked or misdiagnosed and sufferers treated inappropriately.
In these books, women get mad but don’t go mad. Trauma is something they live with — often messily, often while making mistakes — and it shapes their flawed humanity.
A nuanced picture
Hawkins’ new novel, happily, is more aligned with this style of domestic noir narrative: presenting a nuanced picture of the female psyche.
A cleverly crafted whodunit beginning with a brutal killing, A Slow Fire Burning revolves around an interconnected cast of damaged individuals. Among these are Laura Kilbride, unpredictable and prone to aggressive outbursts; and Miriam Lewis, a mistrustful, eccentric 50-something who lives on the margins of society.
Both women are angry and disturbed, but instead of depicting them as “mad”, Hawkins uses their complicated situations to pose questions about society’s treatment of complex trauma.
For years, Laura has been told by psychologists her issues are due to brain damage from a hit-and-run accident when she was ten. But she’s smart enough to know the context and circumstances of the accident are just as much to blame.
Miriam, meanwhile, is ostracised and regarded with scorn, but her eccentric lifestyle lets her go under the radar. She cleverly uses this to claim retribution for the horrific assault she suffered in her teens.
Satisfyingly, Hawkins’ new characters refuse to be intimidated by authority, finding ways to be resourceful and aggressive instead of becoming compliant.
Troubled women don’t lend themselves to happy-ever-afters, and none of these more involved novels finish on a neat and tidy note. It wouldn’t be convincing if they did. Instead, the characters manage to navigate their way through psychological pain and emotional danger without descending into psycho-bitchiness.
They take control of their lives, seizing their opportunities and shaping their own destinies — even as they make terrible mistakes. They may be unlikeable and unreliable, but by staying sane they are also uncomfortably relatable.
As author Jill Alexander Essbaum says: “you may not like her, but you can’t look away because you recognise a little sliver of yourself in her.”
This cannot be said about Amy in Gone Girl or Rachel in The Girl on the Train. The best sellers of the genre, with their focus on the stereotypical “madwoman”, invite the reader to view misery salaciously from a distance.
The bystander appeal may be comforting — there but for the will of god — but it raises the spectre of schadenfreude. There’s something disturbing about a story that tracks a character’s mental and emotional decline for thrills.
When I turn to domestic noir, I hope to find an anti-heroine who doesn’t succumb to her predicament. I want her to transcend it. This kind of character isn’t a rampaging hysteric. She is a complicated, difficult, vengeful woman who gets angry without going mad. A hot, smart mess, readers can both identify with, and live through vicariously.
On the page, what could be more thrilling than that?
Liz Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Josh Frydenberg is Scott Morrison’s house guest at The Lodge – sharing, in Canberra’s lockdown, microwaved meals and watching “Yes, Prime Minister”.
As he recounted domestic life with Scott, the treasurer was inevitably asked whether he’d measured up the curtains.
Among the ministers, Frydenberg and Health Minister Greg Hunt have carried the frontline burdens during the pandemic. For Frydenberg – the biggest-spending federal treasurer in the nation’s history – the experience can be viewed as a test for future leadership.
Although there’ve been mistakes – JobKeeper had design flaws which led to serious waste – he has come through credibly in extraordinary circumstances.
Frydenberg, who is also deputy Liberal leader, has never hidden his ambition and is hungry for the top job. But he is also loyal. Morrison knows that, unlike prime ministerial predecessors Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, he doesn’t have to look over his shoulder, even in the bad times. Morrison marked three years as PM this week, and there has been no white-anting.
There’s more than one path to the prime ministership for Frydenberg. If Morrison loses the election, Frydenberg would be favourite to become leader of the opposition. But that’s the start of a very rocky road; hard work and high hopes can be dashed, as Bill Shorten found.
An alternative path is to be well placed vis-a-vis your internal competitors and inherit the post when it becomes available, one way or another.
If the Coalition is re-elected next year, would Morrison serve a full term, or is it possible he might leave triumphant after a couple of years, not risking the gamble on a third election “miracle”? Frydenberg knows Morrison’s moving on in a smooth transition would be his best prospect.
The prime minister this week was in full campaign mode for the March or May election and we had a glimpse of the formidable fighter we saw in 2019.
In a week when the NSW government lost control of COVID, the state’s daily new cases rising above 1,000 and hospitals under severe strain, and with Victoria on the brink, Morrison made a dramatic pivot to focus on opening the country.
Embattled NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian was firmly in step, making it clear she’s determined to move when the 70% vaccine target is reached (meanwhile announcing some minor easings).
It seemed incongruous that as the third wave deepened and with only a third of eligible people fully vaccinated, Morrison simply left the bad news behind and headed for the ground on which he wants to stand. In his Thursday news conference, for example, he began by hailing “another day of hope”, based on the latest vaccination numbers.
Morrison, backed by research, judges most voters have had enough of lockdowns and blocked internal travel.
A poll published by Nine this week showed 54% believed Australia could not completely suppress COVID, and more than six in ten favoured opening up once the target vaccination thresholds were reached. In the second year of the pandemic, public opinion appears to have swung from preoccupation with the health response to a strong desire to return to more freedom.
While Morrison pivots when in political trouble, Anthony Albanese this week looked to be lumbering. With the PM accusing the opposition leader of undermining the national cabinet’s exit plan, Albanese knew he had to get himself out of that corner. He stressed support for the plan, but his demeanour was that of a man on the back foot.
The defiant premiers of Queensland and Western Australia are in an easier short-term position. WA’s Mark McGowan, in particular, with his stratospheric popularity, can tell Morrison to go jump, as in effect he did this week. After the PM invoked “The Croods” film to say we must emerge from the cave, McGowan played heavily to West Australians’ parochialism and angst towards the east.
“This morning the prime minister made a comment implying Western Australians were like cave people from a recent kids’ movie. It was an odd thing to say,” McGowan wrote on Facebook. “I think everyone would rather just see the Commonwealth look beyond New South Wales and actually appreciate what life is like here in WA.
“We currently have no restrictions within our State, a great quality of life, and a remarkably strong economy, which is funding the relief efforts in other parts of the country.
“West Aussies just want decisions that consider the circumstances of all States and Territories, not just Sydney.”
Ragardless of the national plan to which they agreed, McGowan and Annastacia Pałaszczuk have the constitutional and political authority to handle their states’ transitions as they see fit. But they can’t get away from the fact they’ll have to make the journey, relaxing border restrictions, at some stage.
As New Zealand is now finding, a zero-COVID position, however assiduously pursued, seems an impossible dream over the longer term.
Without the sharp motivators of big outbreaks, WA and Queensland have vaccination rates lower than the national average, and health systems that haven’t been stress-tested under maximum COVID pressure. WA, self-sheltered for so long, would be especially vulnerable if there were a big outbreak.
At the national level, one political unknown is what the public reaction will be in the difficult transition period ahead. Will sentiment change again when there are more hospitalisations and deaths as we reopen, albeit with some continuing safeguards?
With the length of the current extensive lockdowns unknown, it is not clear whether by election time we’ll have had, or have escaped, another recession. We know this September quarter will be negative but the December quarter could go either way.
Two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth (the economy shrinking) is taken in technical terms to be a recession. AMP economist Shane Oliver says there is a 45% chance of negative growth in the June-quarter figures, which will be released next Wednesday. If that happened a recession would be certain.
At the election the economy and fiscal policy will be central issues. If we are as “open” as the prime minister foreshadows, the government will need to have plans for when and how it would start fiscal repair.
For Morrison and Frydenberg, this will be another pivot point. Many will be watching carefully how much agility the treasurer can show.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
While covid-19 case numbers are still rising in New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the lockdown is having an obvious impact in the fight against the delta variant outbreak.
Ardern and Director of Public Health, Dr Caroline McElnay, provided the latest update on the government’s covid-19 response today.
The number of community cases rose by 68, taking the total to 277.
But Ardern said the first sign that the lockdown was having an effect was the fact that health authorities had not seen a spread beyond Auckland and Wellington, where there was a known link to the Auckland outbreak.
“If it wasn’t for lockdown, I’m sure we would have seen cases spread further,” Ardern said.
The second factor could be seen in the locations of interest, which were not growing at the same rate that the case numbers were.
“That’s because people are staying at home.”.
There have been an additional 20 new locations of interest since the last covid-19 update, although just three were added today.
Ardern said across the locations of interest reported on the ministry’s website, 13 currently had generated additional cases.
Ardern warned that the country still needed to be incredibly vigilant, especially with the delta variant.
Watch the covid-19 update here:
‘Lockdown is having an impact’ – NZ PM. Video: RNZ News
With delta, today’s numbers were not necessarily unexpected, she said.
“With delta, people are infectious much sooner and they appear to give it to a lot more people.”
Nothing was unexpected at the moment but “New Zealand does need to be incredibly vigilant”.
“Delta has changed the rules of the game, that’s why we’ve changed our game plan.”
We should be able to see the impact of delta being in our community for a week or more for a time to come, Ardern said.
The elimination strategy recommended by experts was the best strategy to have at the moment and vaccinations “provide everyone with their own individual armour”, she said.
The government’s plan was not to use lockdowns forever.
Get vaccinated, says PM To avoid lockdowns, get vaccinated, Ardern said.
He said in the afternoon briefing yesterday those people would now be contacted within 24 hours, but admitted the decision to contact people was not made until after RNZ News started making enquiries about it.
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins called the delay “regrettable”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A Fiji opposition political leader has accused the government of a “transition to a police state” with middle of the night arrests of critics.
“Fiji’s transition to a police state is well under way,” said National Federation Party leader Professor Biman Prasad after a former Fiji surgeon was arrested during the curfew on Tuesday night and following the detention of nine political dissenters last month.
“This is evidenced by the late-night arrest of Dr Jone Hawea in Lautoka and his immediate transfer to Suva for questioning,” Dr Prasad said.
Dr Hawea was being arrested and intimidated because his views on vaccination did not conform with government policy.
“This is just the same as the detention of NFP MPs and activists last month because we disagreed with [the iTaukei Land] Bill 17,” Dr Prasad said in a statement today.
“These middle-of-the-night arrests happen regularly now. Charges are never laid.
“Arrested people are accused of ‘breaching public order’ but everyone knows this is not true. In fact, despite repeated provocations by the FijiFirst government, our people have remained peaceful and calm.
‘Nothing’ on human rights “And we hear nothing from our alleged human rights champion, Mr Ashwin Raj.
“We hear nothing from the government’s chief legal officer, Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.
“He is the one who coined the now-mocked phrase ‘true democracy’.
“Why is he, as a leading lawyer, not standing up for the democratic right of free speech?
“We are now a democracy in name only. We can only hope that the FijiFirst Party does not interfere with our rights to vote at the next election. Because most of us cannot wait to exercise those rights and throw them out.”
Fijivillage News reports that Dr Hawea is still in police custody and would be questioned again today.
It has received confirmation that Dr Hawea was being questioned for allegedly sharing “misinformation” about the covid-19 virus.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
AAP/Mick Tsikas
A Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted August 17-21 from a sample of 1,607, gave the Coalition 40% of the primary vote (up two since August), Labor 32% (down three), the Greens 12% (steady), One Nation 2% (down two) and independents 10% (up three).
Resolve is not publishing a two party estimate, but analyst Kevin Bonham
estimated a 50-50 tie, a two-point gain for the Coalition since July. Given the continuing COVID lockdowns in NSW and Victoria, this poll is bad for Labor.
The last Newspoll in early August was 53-47 to Labor, and the last Morgan, in early to mid-August, was 54-46. Either there has been a shift back to the Coalition in the last week or so, or this poll is an outlier. There should be a Newspoll on Sunday night.
A plausible reason for a Coalition rebound is that the vaccination rollout pace has increased, particularly in NSW. In the UK, once there was some good news on vaccinations early this year, the Conservatives went from a near-tie to a high single digit lead that they have not yielded. The Coalition is also pushing for an end to the lockdowns once vaccination rates are above 70%.
Criticisms of Resolve poll
The Resolve poll can be criticised for only giving primary votes and not a two party estimate. While two party figures can be calculated from the primary votes by analysts, the media will focus on the primary votes. Australia uses preferential voting, not first past the post. Resolve should conform to our electoral system.
Another criticism is the very high vote for independents (10% in this poll). At the 2019 federal election, independents won 3.4% of the vote. With Resolve offering independent as an option in all seats, voters who are unsure who they will vote for are likely to park their votes with independents.
46% thought Scott Morrison’s performance in recent weeks was good and 46% poor. After rounding, his net rating was -1, unchanged since July. Anthony Albanese’s net rating dropped three points to -19. Morrison led Albanese by 46-23 as preferred PM (45-24 in July).
The Liberals and Morrison led Labor and Albanese by 44-19 on economic management (41-25 in July). On COVID, the Liberals led by 37-22 (37-25 previously). This is the biggest Liberal lead on the economy since May.
By 62-24, voters wanted political leaders to stick to a national cabinet deal to ease COVID restrictions once vaccinations reach 70% and 80% targets of all Australians aged over 16. By 54-27, voters did not think we would be able to completely suppress the virus again. 12% (down nine since July and down 17 since May) said they were unlikely to get vaccinated.
Essential and Morgan polls
In last week’s Essential poll, 8% (down three since early August) said they’d never get vaccinated, and a further 24% (down one) said they’d get vaccinated, but not straight away. By 75-10, voters supported mandatory vaccination for workers in occupations with high COVID transmission risks, such as hospitals and education.
The federal government had a 41-35 good rating for its response to COVID, up from 38-35 good in early August, but down from 58-18 in late May, before any lockdowns.
The NSW government’s response was rated good by 42%, down five from early August and 27 since early June. Despite the current lockdown, the Victorian government’s good rating rose two points to 56%. Queensland and WA have been rewarded for keeping COVID out, with Queensland’s good rating up six to 66% and WA’s up five to 87%.
A Morgan poll, conducted August 7-8 and 14-15 from a sample of over 2,700, gave Labor a 54-46 lead, a 0.5% gain for Labor since late July. Primary votes were 37.5% Coalition (up 0.5%), 37.5% Labor (up 0.5%), 12.5% Greens (steady) and 3.5% One Nation (up 0.5%).
Victorian Labor increases lead in Resolve poll
In a Victorian state Resolve poll for The Age, Labor had 40% of the primary vote (up three since June), the Coalition 35% (down one), the Greens 10% (up one) and independents 9% (down three). Bonham estimated a 56-44 Labor lead after preferences, a two-point gain for Labor.
This poll would have been conducted with the federal July and August Resolve polls from a sample of 1,106. Incumbent Daniel Andrews led Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien by 50-24 as preferred premier (49-23 in June).
Labor’s increased lead in Victoria comes despite strict lockdowns that have still failed to contain the current Delta outbreak of COVID. It appears voters will support lockdowns until we reach the 70% fully vaccinated target.
However, the 62-24 national support for easing restrictions once vaccination targets are met indicates the federal government is on a winner with this strategy.
Biden’s ratings slump after Afghanistan withdrawal
I wrote for The Poll Bludger on Monday that US President Joe Biden’s ratings have slumped after the Afghanistan withdrawal. In the FiveThirtyEight aggregate, his ratings are now 47.6% approve, 46.9% disapprove (net just +0.7%). Biden had a +10 net rating in late July and +6 before Afghanistan.
Also covered: Canadian PM Justin Trudeau calls an election for September 20, two years early. And the Social Democrats surge in Germany, ahead of the September 26 election.
Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Selwyn Manning, Dr David Robie, and Dr Paul G. Buchanan during the live recording of A View from Afar podcast.
A View from Afar
PODCAST: Pacific Instability and Political Trends + Afghanistan Deadline Looms - Buchanan + Manning + Robie
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A View from Afar: In the first half of this week’s podcast Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan are joined by Dr David Robie to examine instability in the Pacific’s Polynesian region – specifically to identify what’s going on in: New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa. In the second half, Buchanan and Manning analyse the latest on Afghanistan and consider whether the USA’s humiliating withdrawal suggests an end to liberal internationalism.
Specifically the first half of this episode looks at:
New Caledonia where there’s the third and final referendum on Kanaky independence;
In Samoa there’s a new government but only after the old guard attempted to resist democratic change, a move that caused a constitutional crisis; and
Fiji, to add to its Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama’s politics headache, is the question of how Fiji gets its NGO and aid workers out of Afghanistan.
THEN, in the second half of this episode Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning dig deep into the latest from Afghanistan. The deadline for western personnel to have withdrawn from Afghanistan is looming. The Taliban leadership states it will not extend the negotiated deadline of August 31, and United States president Joe Biden insists the US will not request nor assert an extension. But Biden has instructed his military leaders to prepare for a contingency plan.
But what does this humiliating withdrawal indicate to the world?
Is this the realisation of a diminishing United States, a superpower in decline?
Can the US reassert itself as the world’s Police, or does Afghanistan confirm the US is in retreat and signal an end of liberal internationalism?
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As New Zealanders wait to hear if a nationwide level 4 lockdown continues beyond midnight on Friday, our latest modelling shows that the current Delta variant has spread much faster than last August’s outbreak, when around 90 people had been infected before it was detected.
Daily case numbers have continued to climb this week, with 68 new cases reported today, bringing the total to 277 cases. This rise is to be expected as contact tracers cast a wider net than before to work their way towards the edges of the fast-moving Delta clusters.
We now know that several superspreading events occurred before the outbreak was picked up, with a large number of people becoming infected at a church service on August 14. Incorporating data from contact tracing and testing makes it likely there were upwards of 200 people infected before New Zealand went into strict lockdown on August 18.
Given the scale of this outbreak, it’s likely that at least Auckland will need several more weeks at alert level 4 to stamp out community transmission.
The lockdown will have started to reduce transmission immediately but the lag time between being infected and getting a test means it takes time for the effect to filter through to reported case numbers.
Cases reported today are telling us about transmission seven to ten days ago. But we expect to see daily case numbers starting to level off over the next week.
During earlier outbreaks, the goal for contact tracing has been to reach 80% of contacts within 48 hours to get people into isolation and break any chains of transmission. This hasn’t changed for Delta, but it is much more challenging for contact tracers, who now face thousands rather than tens or hundreds of new contacts each day.
This is why the rapid move to alert level 4 was so important to minimise the number of interactions between people so that contact tracing can catch up.
Delta is a formidable enemy
Data from around the world show that once someone in a household has Delta, almost everyone else in their household will get infected. This wasn’t the case with earlier variants of the virus, and means we may see case numbers remain high for a longer period than with previous outbreaks.
Exactly how long we’ll have to stay in lockdown depends on the R number — the average number of people an infected person passes the virus on to. We need alert level 4 to push the R number below 1 to see case numbers starting to drop.
In the March-April 2020 outbreak, we estimated the R number under alert level 4 to be around 0.4.
But as Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield explained, dealing with the Delta variant is like dealing with a whole new virus. In the absence of control measures or immunity, Delta’s R number is estimated to be at least 6, more than twice that of the original strain.
After accounting for vaccination coverage, alert level 4 restrictions and other measures like contact tracing will need to reduce transmission by at least 80% to see case numbers decline. If the R number stays close to one, case numbers will be slow to fall.
Once there is enough data from this outbreak, we’ll be able to estimate how effective alert level 4 is against Delta. This will allow us to gauge what it will take for Auckland to stamp out community transmission.
Regions with no cases aren’t out of the woods
Although regions with no known cases may see a drop in alert level announced tomorrow, we still need to remain cautious. We know the outbreak spread to Wellington and close contacts of known cases have been identified from many parts of the country, including in the South Island.
There may well be other contacts who haven’t been identified. The lack of detection of the virus outside of Auckland and Wellington in either waste water or community testing has been encouraging.
But today’s positive waste water sample from Christchurch adds to the uncertainty. Hopefully further testing from around Christchurch will identify if this was due to cases in MIQ rather than in the community.
This outbreak started when the virus was transported from New South Wales and leaked out of our MIQ system. Cook Strait is a much narrower neck of water than the Tasman Sea and we don’t have any quarantine for travellers between islands.
So while there is a large active outbreak in Auckland, there’s still a risk the virus could slip into other parts of the country.
Elimination remains the best strategy
The elimination strategy is still the best option for New Zealand, simply because the alternatives are grim.
Nearly 24% of New Zealanders are now fully vaccinated and a further 18% have had one dose. This level of vaccination may reduce the R number by 15-20% nationally.
New Zealand’s vaccine rollout has accelerated over past weeks. We are now vaccinating around 1% of the population every day. But full protection from the vaccine only kicks in several weeks after the second dose.
Our vaccination programme is helping, but it won’t be fast enough to control this outbreak unless it is combined with an effective lockdown.
Once our vaccine coverage is higher, we will have more options for dealing with an outbreak like this. But at the moment, our only option to bring major outbreaks under control is with a strict lockdown.
If we don’t use alert level 4 to eliminate the virus, we will either need a prolonged lockdown like New South Wales currently has or our hospitals will be rapidly overrun. Our best option is to throw everything we have at this outbreak in the coming weeks.
There is every reason to be optimistic we can eliminate this outbreak. The swift move to level 4 after the first positive test has undoubtedly prevented the outbreak from growing far bigger. Prospects for elimination are much better than if the government had sat on its hands for a few days.
New Zealand’s alert level 4 has been effective in the past and, more importantly, public support and adherence to the restrictions remain high. This means the opportunities for the virus to spread are greatly reduced and most transmission chains are stopped in their tracks.
The lockdown is working but we need to stay the course for a while longer.
Rachelle Binny is affiliated with Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research and has received funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and Te Pūnaha Matatini, New Zealand’s Centre of Research Excellence in complex systems.
Michael Plank is affiliated with the University of Canterbury and receives funding from the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and Te Pūnaha Matatini, New Zealand’s Centre of Research Excellence in complex systems.
Shaun Hendy is affiliated with the University of Auckland and has received funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and Te Pūnaha Matatini, New Zealand’s Centre of Research Excellence in complex systems.
Siouxsie Wiles is affiliated with the University of Auckland and Te Pūnaha Matatini, New Zealand’s Centre of Research Excellence in complex systems.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic Dwyer, Director of Public Health Pathology, NSW Health Pathology, Westmead Hospital and University of Sydney, University of Sydney
KYDPL KYODO/AP
SARS-CoV-2 has caused the greatest pandemic of the past 100 years. Understanding its origins is crucial for knowing what happened in late 2019 and for preparing for the next pandemic virus.
These studies take time, planning and cooperation. They must be driven by science — not politics or posturing. The investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 has already taken too long. It has been more than 20 months since the first cases were recognised in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.
This week US President Joe Biden was briefed by United States intelligence agencies on their investigation into the origins of the virus responsible for COVID-19, according tomedia. Parts of the investigation’s report are expected to be publicly released within the next few days.
An early report from the New York Times suggests the investigation does not conclude whether the spread of the virus resulted from a lab leak, or if it emerged naturally in a spillover from animals to humans.
While a possible lab leak is a line of inquiry (should scientific evidence emerge), it musn’t distract from where the current evidence tells us we should be directing most of our energy. The more time that passes, the less feasible it will become for experts to determine the biological origins of the virus.
Six recommendations
I was one of the experts who visited Wuhan earlier this year as part of the World Health Organisation’s investigation into SARS-CoV-2 origins. We found the evidence pointed to the pandemic starting as a result of zoonotic transmission of the virus, meaning a spillover from an animal to humans.
Our inquiry culminated in a report published in March which made a series of recommendations for further work. There is an urgent need to get on with designing studies to support these recommendations.
Today, myself and other independent authors of the WHO report have written to plead for this work to be accelerated. Crucial time is disappearing to work through the six priority areas, which include:
further trace-back studies based on early disease reports
SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody surveys in regions with early COVID-19 cases. This is important given a number of countries including Italy, France, Spain and the United Kingdom have often reported inconclusive evidence of early COVID-19 detection
trace-back and community surveys of the people involved with the wildlife farms that supplied animals to Wuhan markets
risk-targeted surveys of possible animal hosts. This could be either the primary host (such as bats), or secondary hosts or amplifiers
detailed risk-factor analyses of pockets of early cases, wherever these have occurred
and follow up of any credible new leads.
Race against the clock
The biological feasibility of some of these studies is time dependent. SARS-CoV-2 antibodies emerge a week or so after someone has become infected and recovered from the virus, or after being vaccinated.
But we know antibodies decrease over time — so samples collected now from people infected before or around December 2019 may be harder to examine accurately.
Using antibody studies to differentiate between vaccination, natural infection, or even second infection (especially if the initial infection occurred in 2019) in the general population is also problematic.
For example, after natural infection a range of SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies, such as to the spike protein or nucleoprotein, can be detected for varying lengths of time and in varying concentrations and ability to neutralise the virus.
But depending on the vaccine used, antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein may be all that is detected. These, too, drop with time.
There is also a need to have international consensus in the laboratory methods used to detect SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies. Inconsistency in testing methods has led to arguments about data quality from many locations.
It takes time to come to agreement on laboratory techniques for serological and viral genomic studies, sample access and sharing (including addressing consent and privacy concerns). Securing funding also takes time — so time is not a resource we can waste.
Moreover, many wildlife farms in Wuhan have closed down following the initial outbreak, generally in an unverified manner. And finding human or animal evidence of early coronavirus spillover is increasingly difficult as animals and humans disperse.
Fortunately, some studies can be done now. This includes reviews of early case studies, and blood donor studies in Wuhan and other cities in China (and anywhere else where there was early detection of viral genomes).
It is important to examine the progress or results of such studies by local and international experts, yet the mechanisms for such scientific cross-examination have not yet been put in place.
New evidence has come forward since our March report. These papers and the WHO report data have been reviewed by scientists independent of the WHO group. They have came to similar conclusions to the WHO report, identifying:
the host reservoir for SARS-CoV-2 has not been found
the key species in China (or elsewhere) may not have been tested
and there is substantial scientific evidence supporting a zoonotic origin.
Teetering back and forth
While the possibility of a laboratory accident can’t be entirely dismissed, it is highly unlikely, given the repeated human-animal contact that occurs routinely in the wildlife trade.
Still, the “lab-leak” hypotheses continue to generate media interest over and above the available evidence. These more political discussions further slow the cooperation and agreement needed to progress with the WHO report’s phase two studies.
The World Health Organisation has called for a new committee to oversee future origins studies. This is laudable, but there is the risk of further delaying the necessary planning for the already outlined SARS-CoV-2 origins studies.
Dominic Dwyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The first chart shows the three largest western countries: United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. The solid line plots represent quarterly average rates of excess death. It is clear that the United Kingdom copped Covid19 very early and very hard. The mid-June peak represents the period from mid-March to mid-June. It is important, however, to acknowledge the rapid fall in British deaths, after that peak. The United States had a much lower peak, and, for that same period, Germany hardly registers. The main issue here was the different abilities to protect the population aged over 80 from the ravages of the pandemic.
For Europe’s second wave, which represented the United States’ third wave, Germany was nearly as badly affected as United Kingdom; and slightly earlier, reflecting the continental European event that was most likely caused by late-summer tourism from the United States. (The later second peak in the United Kingdom reflects the Christmas New Year holidays; likewise, the United States whose peak was slightly earlier due to thanksgiving.)
The impact of the Delta variant barely shows on this chart, though we should note that Delta became predominant in the United Kingdom by 1 June (75% of cases), and by 1 July (just over 50% of cases) for Germany and the United States. The United Kingdom has lower deaths than the others in the most recent mortality data, probably due to more vaccinations, and despite rather than because of Delta.
The filled dots represent overall excess deaths, commencing with 24 May 2020, based on an assumption that the pandemic (outside of China) started to register in the death statistics from around 24 February 2020. And the unfilled dots represent annual average excess deaths; the first unfilled blue dot represents average excess mortality in the United States from mid-January 2020 to mid-January 2021.
We see that annual pandemic excess mortality is easily highest in the United States, due to its prolonged period of high Covid19 infection and death.
While overall excess deaths remain higher in United Kingdom than Germany, we see that annual excess deaths are now lower in the United Kingdom than Germany. Indeed Germany’s 2021 Covid19 outbreak, which roughly coincides in time with India’s big outbreak, is considerably more fatal than Germany’s first wave a year earlier. Germany’s 2020 outbreak – as shown through available excess death data – is too soon to be indicative of Delta.
Chart by Keith Rankin.
The second chart, of the same type, shows Sweden and New Zealand. It uses the same scale as the previous chart. The timing of Sweden’s first peak is the same as that for the United Kingdom, though deaths in Sweden were fewer, more confined to the oldest age group. Covid19 had no direct impact on excess deaths in New Zealand. Sweden’s second peak, while lower than Germany’s, was identically timed. It would appear to be derivative from the wave of covid cases that first appeared in Europe’s prime tourist destinations around August 2020.
While Sweden continues to have more excess deaths than New Zealand over the whole pandemic period, this has not been true for annual excess deaths for the year to the end of June 2021. Projecting these data forward, it is quite plausible that Sweden’s overall pandemic-period mortality impact may prove to be less than New Zealand’s by December 2022.
Some of New Zealand’s excess deaths may be indirectly related to Covid19. We might also note that New Zealand has some unusual demographics which may be showing an overstatement of excess deaths. Sweden, on the other hand, a neutral country in World War Two, almost certainly shows a more conventional population pyramid, at least for people aged over 60.
New Zealand and Sweden represent opposite ends of the policy spectrum, when it comes to addressing Covid19. The ideal policy is probably to take the best of both country’s approaches. There is no doubt that Sweden’s initial strongly non-interventionist approach was a failure; in particular in its initial refusal to test for Covid19 except for people already hospitalised, and in its unwillingness to at least have a ‘circuit-breaker lockdown’. However Sweden paid much more attention to the need to have a well-immunised population, with immunisation coming from a mix of natural and artificial (ie vaccination) means. Sweden, with much higher vaccination rates than New Zealand, falls considerably short of United Kingdom vaccination levels.
Chart by Keith Rankin.
The final chart shows quarterly excess mortality for people aged 65-to-74 (my age group) for six countries, including New Zealand. In principle this age group catches a mix of those who are older and hence more vulnerable and those who mix and mingle in the community. This is the classic ‘boomer’ age group. For the countries given, New Zealand has the third highest boomer excess mortality, after Spain and Austria. We note that Austria was affected by the same early summer third wave of Covid19 that affected Germany. And we note that Spain, while never coming close to its original peak mortality, has been largely living with Covid19 ever since then.
Two of the other three countries – Sweden and Denmark – have had consistently negative excess mortality for the boomer age group in 2021. Further, for this age group, excess mortality has been higher in New Zealand than in Sweden for the last twelve months. While New Zealand may have a faster growing age 65-74 cohort than Sweden, Sweden has a considerably lower base mortality for this age cohort (ie Sweden has a higher life expectancy than New Zealand). So, the two sources of possible bias in the data somewhat cancel out. Denmark, which had a bigger per capita caseload than Sweden in their second covid waves, has consistently lower excess mortality for 65-74 year-olds than either New Zealand or Sweden. And Denmark was more adversely affected by World War Two than was Sweden. Denmark’s demographic idiosyncrasies for births in the years 1940 to 1955 are likely to be few; or at least something of an average between Sweden’s and New Zealand’s.
Finally, the United Kingdom, the only one of the six countries whose shown Covid19 death rates could have been influenced by Delta, had the lowest incidence of boomer deaths in the three months to mid-July 2021. This most likely reflects the prolonged (albeit easing) England lockdown, and will probably not be sustained. (I am guessing that we will see quarterly excess deaths in England hover at around plus five percent for the remainder of the year.)
______________
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, school closures meant more than 90% of the world’s learners had to study virtually or from home. The internet, already an invaluable educational tool, has therefore become even more important for students. One of students’ most common internet activities, both in schools and in home schooling, is online searching.
This means teachers, and those parents currently standing in for teachers, need to help students develop skills for searching online. So what can parents do to support their children when tasks sent home from school require them to search for information online? And what can they do to extend such work for gifted students or when the work sent home runs out?
Focus on ‘learning to search’ as well as ‘searching to learn’
Making the “invisible” processes behind searches more visible improves the online information-seeking of both teachers and students. In this way, educators (be they temporary or professional) should design activities that foreground the search process itself. This makes students more aware of what goes on “behind the scenes” of a search and of their ability to affect these processes.
How might you do this? In one Queensland study, students were asked to sort 12 picture cards. The cards were designed so three “categories” – animals, transport modes and countries – were obvious at first.
Just like picture cards can be categorised in different ways, so can online search content. Images: Shutterstock
Students easily sorted the cards into these categories. But they were then challenged to recognise any other sorting options, much like Google does every second of every day. When “kangaroo” was removed from the “animals” pile and placed alongside “Australia” instead, for example, students were quick to assemble the remaining cards in a similar fashion.
This activity encouraged discussions about just how many different ways not 12 but 200 million cards – or websites – could be sorted. It’s a reminder of how important it is to clearly specify what you want from Google, helping it to sort its 200 million websites.
Educators sometimes set tasks that are too broad for students and likely to return millions of search results. Many will probably be irrelevent or inaccurate. Teachers may also set tasks that encourage students to use Google as a mere encyclopedia, which requires only passive lower-order learning.
If we instead want students to engage in higher-order thinking, greater structuring of search tasks is needed.
Educators can start this by setting specific requirements for the results students work with. Perhaps ask them to find one website from Australia (try adding “site:.au” to the end of queries) and one from England – this could be particularly interesting around the time The Ashes are played. Perhaps students are told to find some sources from before the year 2000 and others from the previous 12 months (select “Tools” then “Any time” in the dropdown menu).
Asking students to purposefully find websites with conflicting information and to describe how they decided which to believe requires that they compare, evaluate and analyse.
The number of results a search engine returns can help indicate the quality of your query and make finding reliable information more efficient. In school, students report that they typically don’t consider the number of results returned and have little experience in limiting or increasing these results. In Australian home-schooling too, parent-educators and students rank “limiting/expanding searches” as one of the hardest steps in search.
The confidence in the skills of ‘digital natives’ may be misplaced as parents often have stronger search skills. Shutterstock
Now that students know a little more about how Google must sort websites, ask them to alter their query to rearrange the top five or ten results returned. Challenge them to reduce the (likely millions of) results returned to just 10,000, 1,000 or even ten.
Students explain that when it is only the final product or outcome of searching that “counts” or is graded, their focus is upon that and never the search process itself. This changes when tasks are more structured and specific requirements and guidance are given. Students then focus more upon gathering quality information.
Shift your thinking about search
Attitudes have proven more important than available resources or even teacher skill when it comes to increasing students’ authentic technology-enabled learning. Many limiting attitudes about search need to be turned around to ensure students get the most out of Google.
We can start switching attitudes about what to search for and how by using the tips above. But what if your child doesn’t want to listen to you during search? This is commonly reported.
Students don’t always see their teachers as good information sources during search either. And it’s true, some teachers and parents still have much to learn about using Google.
However, my study, which tested the “generational digital divide” concept among Australian home-schoolers, found the parent-educators (the older generation) were stronger searchers than their kids, the so-called “digital natives”. Perhaps students can learn more about search from their parents.
The answer is unlikely to be forcing your children to recognise your strengths and their weaknesses. Instead, shifting young people’s attitude to search, and encouraging them to realise it is sometimes hard and frustrating, can help.
When it comes to schoolwork, data from over 45,000 students in 12 countries tell us internet research is “by far the most frequently recorded use of ICT”. Educators who focus upon “learning to search” as well as “searching to learn”, who encourage critical use, and begin to challenge attitudes about Google will be better placed to help students capitalise on the unprecedented educational opportunities online search can provide.
Wybalenna, Flinders Island: the Aboriginal settlement 1847. Courtesy of Libraries Tasmania
Review: Fatal Contact: How Epidemics Nearly Wiped Out Australia’s First Peoples by Peter Dowling (Monash University Publishing)
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images and names of deceased people.
As Peter Dowling reminds us in his introduction to this book, violence on the colonial frontier accounted for many thousands of deaths among the First Peoples — a truth unremembered in a process of historical amnesia labelled the “great Australian silence” by anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner.
Australia’s sense of its past in collective memory, Stanner said in his famous 1968 Boyer lectures, was:
a view from a window which has been carefully placed to exclude a whole quadrant of the landscape […] a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale.
A great deal has shifted in our understanding of the past since Stanner shocked the historical profession into a halting engagement with the truth of Australia’s settlement.
Yet, as historian Billy Griffiths pointed out in the anthology Fire, Flood and Plague, a key part of the “great Australian silence” has been our continued willingness to see pandemic disease that eliminated the great majority of the First People as “inevitable and apolitical”.
In the face of the current pandemic, playing out on a global stage, Griffiths writes, we can observe that “it is not only about microbes; it is also about culture, politics and history”. The radically different consequences of this pandemic as experienced by different peoples has shown us we cannot blithely assume spread of disease is without responsibility.
This is what Dowling would have us understand in his timely and meticulous account of “the greatest human tragedy in the long history of Australia”. He examines the recurring outbreaks of fatal epidemics of smallpox, measles, syphilis, influenza and tuberculosis (TB), which “nearly wiped out Australia’s First Peoples”.
Catastrophic impact
At the time of colonisation, these diseases were so endemic in Britain that a high degree of immunity existed in the population, as well as medical strategies to control epidemic spread. But in the virgin-soil communities of Australia’s First Peoples, everyone was susceptible, with no-one spared. So there was no-one to provide basic needs for the sick.
The impact was catastrophic, as illustrated in the multiple accounts of the smallpox outbreak at Sydney Cove in 1789. This is widely known about now, but a wave of epidemics, including smallpox, continued to decimate the First Peoples well into the 20th century.
West view of Sydney Cove taken from the Rocks, at the rear of the General Hospital, 1789. Courtesy of Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.
Alongside smallpox, syphilis also reached epidemic proportions in the Sydney region in the first few decades of settlement, gradually extending into every corner of the continent.
The scourge of syphilis was apparent in the early colony in Tasmania and a major contributor, along with influenza, to the rapid mortality that had all but eliminated the peoples of the south-eastern quadrant of the island by 1830.
Women and children at Corranderk in Victoria. Courtesy of State Library of Victoria.
It was in Victoria where the magnitude of the disease was most apparent. In 1839, a cohort of Aboriginal Protectors were appointed to various districts across Victoria. They all reported overwhelming syphilis infection, accounting for as many as “nine out of ten” of the many sick and dying.
One reported of the First People in his district “the most extensive ravages […] will render them extinct within a few years”.
Another despairingly complained “no medicine has been placed at my disposal”.
Worst in camps
Epidemics reached into isolated First People’s communities well out of sight of authorities — the Spanish Flu of 1918 managed to spread its deadly tentacles into communities of the Western Desert. However, outbreaks were much more likely in the government-supervised camps, reserves, missions and stations, where dispossessed First Peoples were forcibly relocated.
Uniformly, these places of concentration had overcrowded and inadequate housing, low nutritional diets and bad water supply, combined with individual distress and depression — conditions favourable to the incubation and spread of diseases.
The First People’s high susceptibility to disease, Dowling argues, was probably a consequence of chronic untreated TB among those forced into camps and settlements.
He examines the settlement on Flinders Island in Tasmania between 1832 and 1847, which became infamous for its horrendous death rate, mythologised by the colonists who had expelled these people simply due to their “pining away”.
The records examined by Dowling show these people actually died of either TB itself or an associated respiratory illness worsened by TB’s immunosuppressant effects.
TB was also known to have been an efficient killer in the Victorian settlements at Lake Hindmarsh and Coranderrk: the attributed cause of more than 30% of recorded deaths in those places between 1876 and 1900. At these same settlements, a measles epidemic in 1874-5 killed 20% of people.
A group of Aboriginal men at Coranderrk Station, Healesville. Courtesy of State Library of Victoria
It is no coincidence this was the same story as at the notorious concentration camps for dispossessed Boers the British created in South Africa at the end of the 19th century, where various epidemic diseases were allowed to rage.
As I write, I am acutely aware most communities of First Peoples have the lowest vaccination rates in the nation — even though the government has assured us repeatedly vaccination for these most vulnerable communities was their highest priority.
In despair, I repeat the mantra: the past is not even past.
Cassandra Pybus receives funding from the Australia Council
Last week Qantas became the first major Australian public company to declare it would require all its staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
“Having a fully vaccinated workforce will safeguard our people against the virus but also protect our customers and the communities we fly to,” said Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce.
All the airline’s “frontline” workers — meaning its cabin crew, pilots and airport employees — must be fully vaccinated by November 15, and the rest by March 31 2022. There will be exemptions for those unable to be vaccinated for documented medical reasons. They will be accommodated with measures including social distancing, masks and testing.
Qantas’ announcement follows similar policies declared by Queensland regional air operator Alliance Airlines and Victorian fruit-canning company SPC Australia, which has said it will mandate vaccines (with medical exemptions) for all employees, contractors and visitors.
SPC’s chairman, Hussein Rifai, has said he is “obliged under Australian law to provide the safest workplace I can for my employees”. But his plan may be stymied by legal action by the Australian Manufacturers Workers Union, which has criticised the lack of consultation.
Qantas is on firmer ground, having determined the majority of employees support its move. But it might still face a legal storm if its policy is tested before a tribunal or court. Here’s why.
Legally the clearest way for employers to insist on vaccinations is where this is provided for by law, normally via state-based public health orders.
Four states — Queensland, Western Australia, New South Wales and South Australia — have introduced such orders for quarantine, transport, airport workers and certain health care professionals. States and territories have also agreed to similar orders for residential aged-care workers.
Without public health order, the validity of any employer mandating vaccination depends on assessing their right to issue “lawful and reasonable directions”.
Is is reasonable?
The Fair Work Ombudsman’s latest advice says the following circumstances ought to be considered to determine if mandatory vaccination policy is reasonable:
the nature of the workplace — for example, the extent to which employees interact with the public, whether social distancing is possible and whether the business provides an essential service
the extent of community transmission of COVID-19 in the location where the direction is given
the effectiveness of vaccines in reducing the risk of transmission
work health and safety obligations
each employee’s duties and the risks associated with their work
whether employees have a legitimate reason for refusing vaccination (for example, a medical reason)
vaccine availability.
These considerations essentially align with three Fair Work Commission rulings in unfair dismissal cases involving employees refusing influenza vaccinations.
Four tiers of work
The Ombudsman’s advice also refers to four “tiers” of work for applying the reasonableness test:
Tier 1 work, where employees are required to interact with people with an increased risk of being infected with coronavirus (for example, hotel quarantine employees).
Tier 2 work, where employees are required to have close contact with people who are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of coronavirus (for example, health or aged-care employees).
Tier 3 work, where there is likely interaction between employees and customers, co-employees or the public.
Tier 4 work, where employees have minimal face-to-face interaction with others.
The advice notes an employer’s direction to Tier 1 or Tier 2 employees is “more likely to be reasonable”. Conversely, a direction to employees in Tier 4 is “unlikely to be reasonable”.
For employees in Tier 3, where no community transmission has occurred for some time in the relevant location, a direction to vaccinate is less likely to be reasonable.
Where do Qantas and SPC fit
If Qantas’ policy is challenged before a court or tribunal, it may well be found to be reasonable for front-line workers, including flight crew and pilots.
This is because they are likely to interact with travellers and fellow employees in environments with a higher risk of COVID-19 transmission and where social distancing is impossible.
But looking to apply a “blanket” policy to all its employees, rather than specific subsets of workers in high-risk settings, is problematic. The Qantas workforce is likely to have a significant “mix”, with some performing “Tier 4” work in low-exposure settings.
So too SPC. Like Qantas, SPC’s management has argued the vaccination policy is necessary to discharge its statutory duty of care to the health and safety of its employees, most of whom work in close proximity of each other.
But an employee may argue there are other ways, short of vaccinations, to do this. This may include using personal protective equipment, testing and varying work patterns and procedures.
Another important consideration will be vaccine access, noting that, in some states, certain employees may not yet have access to an ATAGI-approved vaccine for their age group.
A court or tribunal may also consider if the employer has provided adequate support, imposed reasonable deadlines, met consultation requirements or allowed alternative work arrangements for unvaccinated employees.
While the risk of transmission of COVID-19 remains high there is a good argument vaccination is an inherent requirement of all jobs involving face-to-face interactions. But regardless of the tier of work performed by employees, whether a vaccine mandate is reasonable needs to be assessed case by case.
Giuseppe Carabetta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
We like to think our purchase decisions are based on rational calculations and facts, but we know they are often driven by emotions, too. When we splurge on nice food, clothes or electronic gadgets, are we really thinking in terms of cost and benefit, or are we responding to stress, frustration, happiness or excitement?
The same can be asked of financial markets. The famous “efficient markets hypothesis” argues that stock prices are driven by rational calculations. But traders are human and humans are affected by emotions. Do these emotions feed through to the stock market?
Studying this question is difficult because people’s emotions aren’t observable. While emotions do manifest in observable actions, many such actions (aggressive behaviour or language, for example) are not captured by any data.
But what if there was a way to measure the overall mood of a country and relate that to the behaviour of financial markets? In the age of Spotify, this has become a real possibility.
Our research, published in the Journal of Financial Economics, uses the music people listen to as a measure of national sentiment affecting market behaviour. It builds on the concept of a “mood congruence” — that people’s music choices reflect their mood (sad songs at funerals, happy songs at parties and so on).
Spotify provides aggregated listening data across a country, as well as an algorithm that classifies the positivity or negativity of each song. Using these inputs, we calculate “music sentiment” — a measure of a country’s sentiment as expressed by the positivity of the songs its citizens listen to.
Rational or emotional? The trading floor of New York Stock Exchange. Shutterstock
How is sentiment usually measured?
Investor sentiment is often defined as the general mood among investors regarding a particular market or asset. While this definition is widely accepted, it’s challenging to construct a pure measure of mood that isn’t complicated by economics.
Many natural measures – consumer confidence, GDP growth, unemployment, coronavirus cases and deaths – have direct economic effects. So, for example, if a high consumer confidence index sees the stock market rise, this doesn’t necessarily suggest emotions directly affect the stock market.
Rather, the rise could be a rational response to an improvement in the business and employment conditions the index is based on. One alternative, then, is to look for other “mood proxies” as viable indicators of national sentiment.
Previous research on investor sentiment has used shocks that affect the national mood but not the economy, such as the results of major sports tournaments.
However, other factors may affect mood – a country could lose a sports game but also enjoy falling COVID cases. Hence our proposed alternative way of capturing the mood of individuals using national Spotify data.
Using music to measure sentiment
One concern with music listening data is that people may choose music to neutralise their mood rather than reflect it — listening to upbeat music to cure a downbeat mood, for example.
We show this is not the case. Music sentiment is more positive during sunnier and lengthening days. Research has already shown these to be high mood periods, as are those times when COVID restrictions are lifted.
The novelty of our study, therefore, lies in finding a measure that reflects national mood. A citizen’s music choices reflect their mood regardless of what caused it — soccer results, COVID cases or anything else.
Indeed, Spotify listening data have been shown to predict consumer confidence more accurately than standard consumer confidence surveys.
Music and markets collide: the New York Stock Exchange celebrates the IPO of streaming music service Spotify in 2018. Shutterstock
Stock markets overreact to sentiment
Linking our sentiment measure with the stock markets, we find that higher music sentiment is associated with higher returns to a country’s stock market during the same week. It also leads to lower returns the next week, suggesting the initial reaction was a temporary one driven by sentiment.
One might argue these results show only a spurious correlation, similar to the “Superbowl effect” where the identity of the Superbowl winner predicts US stock markets, even though there is no rational or behavioural reason for that.
But we show our result holds across 40 countries and is not driven by a couple of outliers skewing the data. We also show the result is robust across asset classes. While our main results consider stocks, we also find high music sentiment is associated with greater purchases of equity mutual funds.
High music sentiment is also correlated with lower returns to government bonds, indicating that investors switch out of safe bonds into risky stocks.
Why music sentiment matters
The point of our study is not to uncover a profitable trading strategy. We do not suggest investors should calculate music sentiment and use it to predict the stock market.
Instead, using a novel measure that reflects national sentiment and is available in 40 countries, we want to show emotions affect the stock market. This suggests investors should be wary of their own emotions when making investment decisions.
Our findings also imply that sentiment rather than fundamentals could drive rising stock prices – of electric vehicles or artificial intelligence products, for instance. Therefore, investors should be wary of buying into a bubble or selling in a crash.
Moreover, this study demonstrates the power of big data to reveal aggregate ongoing sentiment. Unlike sporting events, which are infrequent, music is enjoyed everywhere all the time. Being a universal language, music enables us to construct a comparative measure of national sentiment, in real time, around the world.
Ivan Indriawan receives funding from Auckland University of Technology, Faculty of Business, Economics and Law Research Grant (RP-2020).
Adrian Fernandez-Perez, Alex Edmans, and Alexandre Garel do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The shocking scenes at Kabul airport — reminiscent of the images of the fall of Saigon in 1975 — highlight the desperate situation many Afghans face following the unexpectedly quick Taliban victory.
In the 1970s, the Fraser government responded generously to the plight of the Vietnamese people seeking refuge in Australia, taking 15,000 refugees a year. In contrast, last week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Australia will take in 3,000 Afghan refugees.
This comes from our existing annual intake of 13,750 humanitarian visas a year.
Our new research shows the government’s reluctance to take a more generous approach to Afghan refugees is not rooted in evidence about how they settle once they get to Australia.
Our research on Afghan refugee families
We have been doing a three-year study of recent refugees, examining what happens to them once they come to Australia. We followed Afghan, Syrian, and Iraqi refugee families who settled in metropolitan and regional NSW, Queensland and Victoria between 2018 and 2020. Most arrived in 2016 or 2017.
Since the fall of Kabul last week, Australia has been conducting rescue flights out of Afghanisatn. Department of Defence/AAP
In this article, we present the results for the Afghan group, which involves 33 families. Many were Hazaras who fled persecution by the Taliban and many were in large, single female parent families who had arrived on women-at-risk visas.
Adults and young people aged five to 18 were interviewed and surveyed three times over three years.
They were asked a range of questions about their experience and life in Australia. This included how difficult it was to find accommodation, work, make friends, speak and read English, access good schools, and how they felt about their lives.
Feeling happy and safe
Overall, the adults we surveyed were optimistic and positive about their lives in Australia and felt welcome in their communities.
Just over half had no difficulty finding accommodation, while more than 70% said they found it “easy” to make friends. By 2020, 100% of respondents agreed they had access to good schools and felt safe in their neighbourhoods.
Some still struggled with English language ability, though this improved year on year. By 2020, more than half (55%) said they understood English “well to very well”.
At least 86% of respondents were “mostly to very happy” with their lives, over the three years of questioning. As a 20-year-old female respondent exlained:
Australia has given us safety, security, education, so we have to work for Australia’s improvement […] The Aussie people, they are very good […]Though our cultures are really different, but they respect us.
In addition to feeling safe, there was a recognition of equality:
Everybody is having the equal life. The biggest thing I can find here is equality. Here we cannot find any difference between girls and guys.
At least 96% were “mostly to very confident” about their children’s future. Meanwhile, 100% agreed Australia was a good place to raise children.
Finding a job
A significant improvement was seen in employment, although there is still room for more growth.
One of the biggest concerns Afghan adults mentioned in the first year of the study was getting a job and just 8% had paid work. By year two, this was up to 35% and then back to 26% in year three, when COVID hit.
A number of factors created barriers to employment, including a protracted work history due to war and moving from country to country seeking safety. Once in Australia, the immediate need to focus on learning English and the need to understand a new job market also delayed getting a job.
Opportunities to volunteer or take up internships helped break the catch-22 of “no job if you don’t have Australian employment experience”. While English language fluency created barriers to employment, employment was also key to learning English:
Yes, my English is getting better. Yes, working is good because I’m using English — people talk and I listen. Yes, that’s how I get better.“
‘Real Aussies’
As part of our research, we also spoke to young Afghan refugees. They were markedly positive about their lives in Australia. By 2020, 100% replied “very good to excellent” when asked how they were finding school or TAFE. One 13-year-old told us:
I have made lots of friends at school. I don’t go one day, I miss all of them.
They were also very confident about their English ability — 100% rated their speaking and listening at “very good to excellent”. More than 80% rated their reading and writing as “very good to excellent”.
More than 92% said they felt safe in their neighbourhoods and as though they belonged. As one 17 year-old boy said:
I do play soccer. Yes, I do play for the school team […] Do I do swimming? I do. Yes, I’ve become a real Aussie boy.
One 15 year-old respondent also described her work and study program, illustrating the ambition and work ethic of this young cohort.
There was a scholarship — it was from UQ [Queensland University]. Finally, I got accepted and it pays for four years of uni. Yes [I got a part-time job] […] Twelve hours a week. I’m also [a] Toowoomba regional youth leader.
Compelling practical reasons
Beyond the humanitarian and moral arguments for accepting more Afghan refugees in Australia, our research shows there are compelling practical reasons to increase our intake.
It demonstrates how Afghan refugees can overcome settlement challenges and achieve strong outcomes in terms of education and employment and belonging. This confirms findings of earlier research with Hazara boat people who set up successful businesses in Adelaide, many in partnership with those they met in detention centres.
This also ties with our current research with Syrian and Iraqi refugee families, which demonstrates their resilience and determination to create a better future in Australia for their children.
Jock Collins receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a Linkage Project with Industry Partners Settlement Services International, Multicultural Australia, Access Community Services and AMES.
Carol Reid receives funding from The Australian Research Council for a Linkage Project with Industry Partners Settlement Services International, Multicultural Australia, Access Community Services and AMES.
Dimitria Groutsis receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Katherine Watson and Stuart Hughes do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vasso Apostolopoulos, Professor of Immunology and Associate Provost, Research Partnerships, Victoria University
Colder weather has long been associated with coughs, colds and other respiratory illnesses. Seasonal influenza and common colds peak throughout the winter months in both hemispheres – usually around August in Australia.
Given many common colds are caused by coronaviruses, it seems logical that cases of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, would be driven upward as temperatures decline.
But while there are plausible biological explanations for why this occurs, we can’t be certain of the effect of temperature on SARS-CoV-2. There is too little data to make solid conclusions.
Behavioural factors, such as spending more time indoors where viruses are more easily transmitted, are also at play.
What does the data say?
COVID case numbers in Australia are at their highest now and were at their second-highest levels 12 months ago, in winter:
Australia’s COVID-19 daily case numbers have been highest in August. Our World In Data
But this is not true for other countries, especially those in the Northern Hemisphere. In the United Kingdom, for instance, cases peaked last winter, and then again in summer with the Delta variant:
Cases in the UK peaked in January 2021 and again last month. Our World In Data
Why do cases often rise in winter? Biological explanations
Coronaviruses survive longer in environments of decreased sunlight, lower temperatures and lower relative humidity.
So the amount of active virus in the environment might be greater during the winter months, and in cold, dry climates.
In environments with low humidity, there is less water vapour in the air (in other words, the air is dry), and when a COVID-19 positive person coughs, aerosolised particles stay suspended for much longer in the air. This increases the potential exposure and transmission to other people.
One study from 2020 reported a link between COVID-19 and lower humidity. The researchers noted a 1% decrease in humidity could increase the number of COVID-19 cases by 6%.
Another recent study from the United States and China found higher temperatures and higher relative humidity potentially suppressed COVID-19 transmission.
In Sydney, humidity is lowest in winter, particularly in August, and highest in summer. The same is true for most coastal areas in Australia.
The virus can spread from an infected person’s mouth or nose in small liquid particles when they cough, sneeze, speak, sing or breathe. These particles range from larger respiratory droplets to smaller aerosols.
These aerosols can remain suspended in the air for up to 16 hours.
So, it’s the shared air that spreads the virus, and that’s why face masks are important.
Behavioural explanations
A range of other factors which coincide with winter are likely to have a greater impact on transmission than how the virus behaves in cold climates.
As the colder winter months arrive, we flee the outdoors, instead opting for indoor activities. Some indoor spaces – including shops, restaurants, homes – are poorly ventilated, allowing colds, flus and other respiratory illness such as COVID to spread more easily.
Respiratory illnesses spread more easily indoors. Shutterstock
In the northern hemisphere, winter also coincides with the holiday season, which sees significant amounts of travel, both international and domestic, and a significant uptick in large social gatherings. In the United Kingdom in January this year, this caused a significant increase in COVID-19 transmission.
It’s unlikely due to vitamin D
Another potential factor in COVID-19 transmission centres on the seasonal change in population-wide vitamin D levels. But so far, this isn’t backed up by evidence.
Vitamin D has received significant attention throughout the pandemic for a potentially protective effect against COVID-19. This was after a number of observational studies identified poorer outcomes in geographical areas with high levels of vitamin D deficiency.
Other initial studies also showed lower levels of vitamin D in those diagnosed with COVID-19. This was theorised to be due to the effect of vitamin D on the immune system, preventing some of the severe inflammatory impacts of the disease, and potentially improving the ability of the individual to combat the infection.
However, larger studies where one group was given vitamin D supplements and another weren’t have thrown doubt on these relationships, particularly in those who were not deficient.
Social distance and masks matter most
While there does seem to be an increase in COVID-19 cases in the winter months, the cause of this is multi-factorial.
While certainly something for health care and policymakers to be aware of, the effect of weather and climate on COVID-19 is unlikely to have significant impact overall, and is readily countered by control measures.
Importantly, social distancing and mask use help to limit other winter viral infections such as the seasonal influenza, which was drastically reduced in winter 2020.
Paying close attention to the public health advice, particularly when indoors, should counteract any increase in COVID-19 activity in the colder months.
Vasso Apostolopoulos’ COVID-19 research has received internal funding from a Victoria University research grant and from philanthropic donations
Jack Feehan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqueline Lau, Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University
There’s no shortage of evidence pointing to the need to act urgently on climate change. Most recently, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirmed Earth has warmed 1.09℃ since pre-industrial times and many changes, such as sea-level rise and glacier melt, cannot be stopped.
Clearly, emissions reduction efforts to date have fallen abysmally short. But why, when the argument in favour of climate action is so compelling?
Decisions about climate change require judging what’s important, and how the world should be now and in future. Therefore, climate change decisions are inherently moral. The rule applies whether the decision is being made by an individual deciding what food to eat, or national governments setting goals at international climate negotiations.
Our research reviewed the most recent literature across the social and behavioural sciences to better understand the moral dimensions of climate decisions. We found some moral values, such as fairness, motivate action. Others, such as economic liberty, stoke inaction.
Those who prioritise economic liberty may be less willing to take climate action. Shutterstock
Morals as climate motivators
Our research uncovered a large body of research confirming people’s moral values are connected to their willingness to act on climate change.
But which moral values best motivate personal actions? Our research documents a study in the United States, which found the values of compassion and fairness were a strong predictor of someone’s willingness to act on climate change.
According to moral foundations theory, the value of compassion relates to humans’ evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel and dislike the pain of others.
Fairness relates to the evolutionary process of “reciprocal altruism”. This describes a situation whereby an organism acts in a way that temporarily disadvantages itself while benefiting another, based on an expectation that the altruism will be reciprocated at a later time.
Conversely, a study in Australia found people who put a lower value on fairness, compared to either the maintenance of social order or the right to economic freedom, were more likely to be sceptical about climate change.
People may also use moral “disengagement” to justify, and assuage guilt over, their own climate inaction. In other words, they convince themselves that ethical standards do not apply in a particular context.
For example, a longitudinal study of 1,355 Australians showed over time, people who became more morally disengaged became more sceptical about climate change, were less likely to feel responsible and were less likely to act.
Our research found the moral values driving efforts to reduce emissions (mitigation) were different to those driving climate change adaptation.
Research in the United Kingdom showed people emphasised the values of responsibility and respect for authorities, country and nature, when talking about mitigation. When evaluating adaptation options, they emphasised moral values such as protection from harm and fair distribution of economic costs.
Moral reasoning helps shape climate beliefs, including climate scepticism. Joel Carrett/AAP
Framing climate decisions
How government and private climate decisions are framed and communicated affects who they resonate with, and whether they’re seen as legitimate.
Research suggests climate change could be made morally relevant to more people if official climate decisions appealed to moral values associated with right-wing political leanings.
A US study found liberals interpreted climate change in moral terms related to harm and care, while conservatives did not. But when researchers reframed pro-environmental messages in terms of moral values that resonated with conservatives, such as defending the purity of nature, differences in the environmental attitudes of both groups narrowed.
Indeed, research shows moral reframing can change pro-environmental behaviours of different political groups, including recycling habits.
In the US, people were found to recycle more after the practice was reframed in moral terms that resonated with their political ideology. For conservatives, the messages appealed to their sense of civic duty and respect for authority. For liberals, the messages emphasised recycling as an act of fairness, care and reducing harm to others.
Reframing of messages can help encourage habits such as recycling. James Ross/AAP
When moralising backfires
Clearly, morals are central to decision-making about the environment. In some cases, this can extend to people adopting – or being seen to adopt – a social identity with moral associations such as “zero-wasters”, “voluntary simplifiers” and cyclists.
People may take on these identities overtly, such as by posting about their actions on social media. In other cases, a practice someone adopts, such as cycling to work, can be construed by others as a moral action.
Being seen to hold a social identity based on a set of morals may actually have unintended effects. Research has found so-called “do-gooders” can be perceived by others as irritating rather than inspiring. They may also trigger feelings of inadequacy in others who, as a self-defense mechanism, might then dismiss the sustainable choices of the “do-gooder”.
For example, sociologists have theorised that some non-vegans avoid eating a more plant-based diet because they don’t want to be associated with the social identity of veganism.
It makes sense, then, that gentle encouragement such as “meat-free Mondays” is likely more effective at reducing meat consumption than encouraging people to “go vegan” and eliminate meat altogether.
Looking ahead
Personal climate decisions come with a host of moral values and quandaries. Understanding and navigating this moral dimension will be critical in the years ahead.
When making climate-related decisions, governments should consider the moral values of citizens. This can be achieved through procedures like deliberative democracy and citizen’s forums, in which everyday people are given the chance to discuss and debate the issues, and communicate to government what matters most to them.
Jacqueline Lau is affiliated with WorldFish—an international, not for profit research organization and part of the CGIAR that seeks to deliver research for a more food secure world, particularly for societies most vulnerable women and men. This research was supported by the ARC Centre for Excellence in Coral Reef Studies, and the CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-Food Systems.
Andrew Song receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Jessica Blythe receives funding from the Social Science Research Council (SSHRC).
This is beginning to sound really weird coming from a former prime minister, especially one who has spent over two decades in the top seat of Samoa’s government, and is supposed to be cognisant with how democratic governments function or are supposed to function before and after a general election.
However, we’ve grown accustomed in recent weeks to how Tuila’epa has been reacting to his party’s defeat in April’s general election, and his caretaker administration’s removal from office by the Court of Appeal last month.
And his finger pointing has been spectacular to say the least: starting with the judges of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal to the Chief Justice, His Honour Satiu Sativa Perese; to the former Attorney-General Taulapapa Brenda Heather-Latu and her husband and lawyer George Latu; and the former Head of State, His Highness Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Efi.
But the latest one, with Tuila’epa accusing the head of a foreign government of plotting his government’s downfall based on a feminist agenda to install Fiame Naomi Mata’afa as Samoa’s first female prime minister, takes the cake.
Appearing in a TV1 programme on Sunday night, the former prime minister said he always had suspicions about the involvement of New Zealand, and its leader Jacinda Ardern, in Samoa’s election.
“The government [of New Zealand] has been heavily involved,” he said during the televised programme.
“It got me thinking about a lot of the things that have happened recently.
“It looks like the New Zealand Prime Minister wanted Samoa to have a female prime minister.
“Which has blinded her [Jacinda Ardern] from seeing if it’s something that is in line with our constitution.”
Tuilaepa’s evidence? Ardern’s congratulatory message to Fiame immediately after the Court of Appeal ruling last month, which happened too fast for the 76-year-old veteran politician’s liking.
“The proof is, as soon as the decision was handed down, the Prime Minister of New Zealand immediately sent her congratulatory message.
“The way I see the whole scenario, it looks like a concert they have worked on for a long time.
“The fact that she quickly sent Fiame her well wishes makes me think that they had planned all of this.”
So did the New Zealand Prime Minister have to wait a day, a week or a month before sending Fiame her congratulatory message?
In fact, with Samoa in recent months engulfed in a constitutional crisis — a result of Tuilaepa’s illegal actions supported by various state actors — the timing of Ardern’s congratulatory message was perfect.
At that time esteemed members of the judiciary were under attack, and the former Prime Minister and his cronies were on the verge of usurping the powers of the courts, and thus creating a case for the international community to intervene.
Therefore, the recognition of Fiame and the Court of Appeal’s ruling that installed her Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) government was critical, in order to assure Samoan citizens and the world that the rule of law would prevail despite the months-long trepidations.
And Ardern’s congratulatory message did just that: it restored confidence in the judiciary and the rule of law in Samoa.
So did Tuilaepa conveniently forget that his party doomed themselves at April’s polls by bulldozing through draconian laws that restructured the judiciary last year despite public opposition; opted to endorse multiple candidates under the party banner; chose to overlook the significance of social media-focused campaigning; and downplayed the campaign strategy of the FAST party?
Hence there is much more to the congratulatory messages from the New Zealand Prime Minister and other world leaders and international organisations, following the court’s installation of the FAST government.
It is an acknowledgement by the international community of the evolution of Samoa’s democracy, noting that while there could be bumps along the way, but with functioning institutions of governance such as a robust justice system we have the ability to pick ourselves up and continue the journey.
Accordingly, the claim by the former Prime Minister of a plot against him by a group of feminist leaders, can be added to the growing list of conspiracy theories Tuila’epa himself has concocted since his exit from power.
But the problem with conspiracy theories is they continue to be spread and if repeated become validated.
The fact that the senior membership of the HRPP has stood by and watched, without lifting a finger to question Tuila’epa’s misinformation, says a lot about the current state of the party.
In fact the 42-year-old party’s failure to censure its leader makes them equally responsible and complicit for the spreading of misinformation, relating to April’s general election and the crisis that followed.
And lest we forget the caution against misinformation by the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw: “Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
Samoa Observer editorial on 26 August 2021. Republished with permission.
Fiji police have confirmed the arrest of former surgeon Dr Jone Hawea, a critic of the country’s covid pandemic response, from his Lautoka home during curfew hours.
Police spokesperson Ana Naisoro said Dr Hawea was taken in for police interrogation on allegations of allegedly sharing misinformation about covid-19.
“We confirm the arrest of Dr Hawea by our officers last [Tuesday] night,” Naisoro said.
“He is currently being questioned at the CID Headquarters in Suva.”
Dr Hawea was arrested in Lautoka and transported to Suva by police officers.
Ravindra-Singh said he had been informed by his client at 3am yesterday morning that police had taken him straight to Suva.
‘Whisked out of homes’ “It is a serious concern that people get to be arrested in the middle of the night, to be whisked out of their homes amid these covid restrictions,” he said.
“What has happened to safety protocols?
“I am representing Mr Hawea and I have not been able to access him because all of these took place during curfew hours.
“He has been denied justice and his human rights.”
Police spokesperson Ana Naisoro had not yet commented on the concerns raised by Ravindra-Singh.
Several senior political figures and human rights advocates were detained by police last month for criticising the government’s strategy to address the pandemic and their rejection of the controversial iTaukei Land Act.
Fiji now has 18,916 active cases in isolation and the death toll is at 453, with 451 of them from the April outbreak.
Luke Rawalaiis a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage. Click here to subscribe to Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup and New Zealand Politics Daily.
Stone arrowheads (Maros points) and other flaked stone implements from the Toalean culture of South Sulawesi.Shahna Britton/Andrew Thomson, Author provided
In 2015, archaeologists from the University of Hasanuddin in Makassar, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, uncovered the skeleton of a woman buried in a limestone cave. Studies revealed the person from Leang Panninge, or “Bat Cave”, was 17 or 18 years old when she died some 7,200 years ago.
Her discoverers dubbed her Bessé’ (pronounced bur-sek¹) — a nickname bestowed on newborn princesses among the Bugis people who now live in southern Sulawesi. The name denotes the great esteem local archaeologists have for this ancient woman.
She represents the only known skeleton of one of the Toalean people. These enigmatic hunter-gatherers inhabited the island before Neolithic farmers from mainland Asia (“Austronesians”) spread into Indonesia around 3,500 years ago.
Burial of a Toalean hunter-gatherer woman dated to 7,200 years ago. Bessé’ was 17-18 years old at time of death. She was buried in a flexed position and several large cobbles were placed on and around her body. Although the skeleton is fragmented, ancient DNA was found preserved in the dense inner ear bone (petrous). University of Hasanuddin
Our team found ancient DNA that survived inside the inner ear bone of Bessé’, furnishing us with the first direct genetic evidence of the Toaleans. This is also the first time ancient human DNA has been reported from Wallacea, the vast group of islands between Borneo and New Guinea, of which Sulawesi is the largest.
Genomic analysis shows Bessé’ belonged to a population with a previously unknown ancestral composition. She shares about half of her genetic makeup with present-day Indigenous Australians and people in New Guinea and the Western Pacific. This includes DNA inherited from the now-extinct Denisovans, who were distant cousins of Neanderthals.
In fact, relative to other ancient and present-day groups in the region, the proportion of Denisovan DNA in Bessé’ could indicate the main meeting point between our species and Denisovans was in Sulawesi itself (or perhaps a nearby Wallacean island).
The ancestry of this pre-Neolithic woman provides fascinating insight into the little-known population history and genetic diversity of early modern humans in the Wallacean islands — the gateway to the continent of Australia.
Sulawesi is the largest island in Wallacea, the zone of oceanic islands between the continental regions of Asia and Australia. White shaded areas represent landmasses exposed during periods of lower sea level in the Late Pleistocene. The Wallace Line is a major biogeographical boundary that marks the eastern extent of the distinctive plant and animal worlds of Asia. The Toalean cave site Leang Panninge (where Bessé’ was found) is located in Sulawesi’s southwestern peninsula (see inset panel). Toalean archaeological sites have only been found in a roughly 10,000 km² area of this peninsula, south of Lake Tempe. Kim Newman
Toalean culture
The archaeological story of the Toaleans began more than a century ago. In 1902, the Swiss naturalists Paul and Fritz Sarasin excavated several caves in the highlands of southern Sulawesi.
Their digs unearthed small, finely crafted stone arrowheads known as Maros points. They also found other distinctive stone implements and tools fashioned from bone, which they attributed to the original inhabitants of Sulawesi — the prehistoric “Toalien” people (now spelled Toalean).
A Toalean stone arrowhead, known as a Maros point. Classic Maros points are small (roughly 2.5cm in maxiumum dimension) and were fashioned with rows of fine tooth-like serrations along the sides and tip, and wing-like projections at the base. Although this particular stone technology seems to have been unique to the Toalean culture, similar projectile points were produced in northern Australia, Java and Japan. Shahna Britton/Andrew Thomson.
Some Toalean cave sites have since been excavated to a higher scientific standard, yet our understanding of this culture is at an early stage. The oldest known Maros points and other Toalean artefacts date to about 8,000 years ago.
Excavated findings from caves suggest the Toaleans were hunter-gatherers who preyed heavily on wild endemic warty pigs and harvested edible shellfish from creeks and estuaries. So far, evidence for the group has only been found in one part of southern Sulawesi.
Toalean artefacts disappear from the archaeological record by the fifth century AD — a few thousand years after the first Neolithic settlements emerged on the island.
Prehistorians have long sought to determine who the Toaleans were, but efforts have been impeded by a lack of securely-dated human remains. This all changed with the discovery of Bessé’ and the ancient DNA in her bones.
Toalean stone arrowheads (Maros points), backed microliths (small stone implements that may have been hafted as barbs) and bone projectile points. These artefacts are from Indonesian collections curated in Makassar and mostly comprise undated specimens collected from the ground surface at archaeological sites. Basran Burhan
The ancestral story of Bessé’
Our results mean we can now confirm existing presumptions the Toaleans were related to the first modern humans to enter Wallacea some 65,000 years ago or more. These seafaring hunter-gatherers were the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians and Papuans.
They were also the earliest inhabitants of Sahul, the supercontinent that emerged during the Pleistocene (ice age) when global sea levels fell, exposing a land bridge between Australia and New Guinea. To reach Sahul, these pioneering humans made ocean crossings through Wallacea, but little about their journeys is known.
It is conceivable the ancestors of Bessé’ were among the first people to reach Wallacea. Instead of island-hopping to Sahul, however, they remained in Sulawesi.
But our analyses also revealed a deep ancestral signature from an early modern human population that originated somewhere in continental Asia. These ancestors of Bessé’ did not intermix with the forebears of Aboriginal Australians and Papuans, suggesting they may have entered the region after the initial peopling of Sahul — but long before the Austronesian expansion.
Who were these people? When did they arrive in the region and how widespread were they? It’s unlikely we will have answers to these questions until we have more ancient human DNA samples and pre-Neolithic fossils from Wallacea. This unexpected finding shows us how little we know about the early human story in our region.
A new look at the Toaleans
With funds awarded by the Australian Research Council’s Discovery program we are initiating a new project that will explore the Toalean world in greater detail. Through archaeological excavations at Leang Panninge we hope to learn more about the development of this unique hunter-gatherer culture.
Excavations at Leang Panninge cave, Mallawa, South Sulawesi. Leang Panninge Research Team.
We also wish to address longstanding questions about Toalean social organisation and ways of life. For example, some scholars have inferred the Toaleans became so populous that these hitherto small and scattered groups of foragers began to settle down in large sedentary communities, and possibly even domesticated wild pigs.
It has also recently been speculated Toaleans were the mysterious Asian seafarers who visited Australia in ancient times, introducing the dingo (or more accurately, the domesticated ancestor of this now-wild canid). There is clearly much left to uncover about the long island story of Bessé’ and her kin.
¹The “bur” syllable is pronounced as in the English word “bursary”. The “k” is essentially a strangulated stop in the throat, akin to the “t” in the Cockney “bo’ol”, for bottle. (With thanks to Professor Campbell Macknight).
Adam Brumm receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Adhi Agus Oktaviana is a PhD candidate in Place, Evolution and Rock Art Heritage Unit, Griffith University, Australia.
Akin Duli receives funding from Universitas Hasanuddin and Universiti Sains Malaysia. He is affiliated with Archaeology Department, Universitas Hasanuddin.
Basran Burhan is a PhD student at Griffith University
Selina Carlhoff receives funding from the European Research Council and the Max Planck Society.
Cosimo Posth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University
Spoiler alert: we are not winning the global war on terror. If the past 20 years of fighting terrorism by military means have shown us anything, it is that going to war makes things worse.
The direct costs in terms of human suffering – lives lost, societies destroyed and trillions of dollars spent – are multiplied by unintended consequences and cascading problems.
Invading Iraq in 2003 created a vacuum quickly filled with violent insurgencies that led directly to the rise of Islamic State and indirectly to a devastating decade of civil war in Syria. It did not make sense at the time and it certainly does not make sense now.
Launching a military campaign in Afghanistan weeks after the attacks of September 11, however, started out looking like a sensible response. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda had planned and directed the attacks from the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
It was there in the late 1980s, during the struggle of the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet military, that al-Qaeda – “the base” – had been formed to support foreign mujahideen. The mission was to further radicalise and equip them to take jihad to the world.
The initial US special forces operation, which then Prime Minister John Howard insisted Australia join, had the goal of capturing or killing bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership. It also aimed to deny al-Qaeda a safe haven in Afghanistan to launch further attacks.
The Taliban regime that had come to power in Kabul five years earlier chose to protect al-Qaeda and suffered the consequences. Mullah Baradar and other Taliban leaders yielded power in Kabul in November, much more quickly than anyone had anticipated. They then staged a strategic retreat to insurgent mode.
In 2002, mission creep saw an international coalition doing what many said should have been done a decade earlier when the Soviets left. For a moment, nation-building seemed to be working, but then attention turned to invading Iraq.
Some nation-building seemed to be happening in Afghanistan after September 11. Then came the invasion of Iraq. John Moore/AP/AAP
Even without the distraction of marching on Baghdad and sinking into a rapidly expanding quagmire of our own making, pretty much every mistake in counter-insurgency and nation-building that could be made in Afghanistan was made. A brittle, corrupt, incompetent and highly centralised government in Kabul presented opportunities on all fronts to the Taliban insurgency.
Even after a massive military surge early in the second decade of the 21st century that saw 140,000 International Security Assistance Force NATO troops enter the conflict, the patient Taliban remained. Then, after the sharp drawn-down of international troops in 2014, the Taliban insurgency expanded.
Long story short, the war on terror, and fighting terrorism by military means, has been a largely unmitigated failure. Even in Africa, where failing states and jihadi insurgencies have demanded military responses, victories have been short-lived. At best, as in Somalia, they have resulted in costly stalemates.
Military interventions have been costly and counter-productive
This is not to say the struggle against global terrorism has been completely without result. Elaborate terror plots targeting cities around the globe, first by al-Qaeda and then by IS, have been defeated and prevented on an impressive scale. But this has been achieved primarily by police-led counter-terrorism intelligence operations, working with communities, intercepting communications in terrorist networks and disrupting plots.
Military successes, such as the destruction of the IS caliphate in Syria and Iraq, have come not only at enormous cost, but also as corrections to problems created by military interventions.
Not only that, the original success in defeating jihadi terrorism is also at an end, with the return of the Taliban and the success of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan project.
Developments in Afghanistan will be significant for at least three key reasons.
First, the triumph of the Taliban after two decades of struggle against the combined forces of NATO and the US is being seized on as evidence of divine approval for the global jihadist cause.
Ironically, although declaring a global war on terror proved to be a monumental mistake, jihadi movements such as al-Qaeda, the Taliban and IS are defined by their commitment to what they claim to be a holy war. That is why the success of Taliban, after 20 years of struggle, resounds around the world. And that is why, for all of their post-victory rebranding and social media information campaign, the Taliban, as a jihadi movement, remains bound to al-Qaeda.
Second, the mountains of Afghanistan will once again become home to mujahideen from across Asia and around the world. Jihadi camps in Afghanistan will return to making a significant contribution to the recruitment, radicalisation, training and networking of new generations of jihadi fighters and movements in South-East Asia.
The mountains of Afghanistan will again become training grounds for jihadi terrorists from around the world. AAP/Australian Department of Defence handout
The Taliban regime in Kabul (or Kandahar) will, despite the Taliban’s existential commitment to global jihad, likely seek to distance itself from such camps. It will exploit plausible deniability, as it focuses on rehabilitating and reinventing its international reputation and securing the long-term viability of the Islamic emirate. This will potentially have the not insignificant benefit of restraining the Taliban from some of the brutal excesses of the past, particularly with respect to the oppression of women and the persecution of minority groups like the Hazara.
But it will also contribute to a third, more insidious challenge. As world powers like China and Russia, neighbours like Iran and Pakistan, and Muslim nations like Indonesia and Malaysia seek to engage with the emirate in order to moderate the Taliban regime, local Islamist groups will exploit the opportunity to push the boundaries of the permissible in South-East Asia. This is already on display with statements congratulating “our brothers the Taliban” from radical Islamist political groups such as the Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS).
The threat in southeast Asia
Over the past two decades, jihadi extremism with origins in the Afghan alumni – mujahideen trained and radicalised in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s, and groups formed in Afghanistan such as Jemaah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf Group – has been foundational to violent extremism in our region. This was amplified by a new generation of South-East Asian mujahideen returning from Syria and Iraq.
The stage is set for a new era of terrorist growth in South-East Asia and around the world. The IS motto of “remaining and expanding” rang hollow in the wake of the destruction of the caliphate.
Now, as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is set to eclipse the caliphate in scale and longevity, the jihadi catch-cry appears to have been met with divine vindication.
Greg Barton receives funding from the Australian Research Council. And he is engaged in a range of projects working to understand and counter violent extremism in Australia and in Southeast Asia that are funded by the Australian government.
In just five years, greater gliders — fluffy-eared, tree-dwelling marsupials — could go from vulnerable to endangered, because Australia’s environmental laws have failed to protect them and other threatened native species.
Our new research found that after the greater glider was listed as vulnerable to extinction under national environment law in 2016, habitat destruction actually increased in some states, driving the species closer to the brink. Now, they meet the criteria to be listed as endangered.
Despite this, the federal government has put forward a bill that would further weaken Australia’s environment laws.
If Australia wants to ditch its shameful reputation as a global extinction leader, our environmental laws must be significantly strengthened, not weakened.
Why is the greater glider losing its home?
At about the size of a cat, greater gliders are the largest gliding marsupial in the world, and can glide up to 100 metres through the forest canopy. They nest in the hollows of big old trees and, just like koalas, they mostly eat eucalypt leaves.
A dark morph greater glider in a patch of old growth forest in Munruben, Logan City, south of Brisbane. Josh Bowell
Greater gliders were once common throughout the forests of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. However, destructive practices, such as logging and urban development, have cut down the trees they call home. The rapidly warming climate and increasingly frequent and severe bushfires are also a major threat.
For our new study, we calculated the amount of greater glider habitat destroyed in the two years before the species was listed as vulnerable under Australia’s environment law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) Act. We then compared this to the amount of habitat destroyed in the two years after listing.
In Victoria, we measured the amount of habitat that was logged. In Queensland and NSW, we measured the amount of habitat cleared for all purposes, including logging, agriculture, and development projects.
What we found
The amount of greater glider habitat logged in Victoria remained consistently high, with a total of 4,917 hectares logged before listing compared to 4,759 hectares after listing. And of all forest logged in Victoria after listing, more than 45% was mapped as greater glider habitat by the federal government, according to our research paper.
State-owned forestry company VicForests is responsible for the lion’s share of native forest logging in Victoria. The Conversation contacted VicForests to respond to the arguments in this article. A spokesperson said:
There are 3.7 million hectares of potential Greater Glider habitat in Victoria under the official habitat model. The most valuable areas of this habitat are set aside in conservation reserves that can never be harvested.
The total area harvested by VicForests in any year is around 0.04% of this total potential habitat.
A small bulldozer used for tree ‘thinning’ in Queensland, May 2017. WWF-Australia
In Queensland, habitat clearing increased by almost 300%, from a total of 3,002 hectares before listing compared to 11,838 hectares after listing. The amount of habitat cleared in NSW increased by about 5%, from a total of 15,204 hectares to 15,890 hectares.
We also quantified how much greater glider habitat was affected by the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires, and found approximately 29% of greater glider habitat was burnt. Almost 40% of this burnt at high severity, which means few gliders are likely to persist in, or rapidly return to, these areas.
As a result, earlier this year — just five years after listing — an assessment by the Threatened Species Scientific Committee found the greater glider is potentially eligible for up-listing from vulnerable to endangered.
A greater glider found in burnt bushland, Meroo National Park, NSW, December 2019. George Lemann, WWF-Australia
Why was habitat allowed to be cleared?
Development projects can take decades to be implemented after they’ve been approved under the EPBC Act. Therefore, a lot of the habitat cleared in NSW and Queensland was likely to have been approved before the greater glider was listed as vulnerable, and before the 2019-2020 bushfires.
Once a project is approved, it is not reassessed, even if a species becomes vulnerable and a wildfire burns much of its habitat.
This means the impact of clearing native vegetation can be far greater than when initially approved. It also means it can take many years after a species is listed until its habitat is finally safe.
This young greater glider was displaced by clearing near Chinchilla on the Darling Downs, Queensland. It was rescued by a fauna spotter/catcher who was present. Briano, WWF-Australia
In Victoria and parts of NSW, the forestry industry is allowed to log greater glider habitat under “regional forest agreements”. These agreements allow logging to operate under a special set of rules that bypasses federal environmental scrutiny under the EPBC Act.
The logging industry is required to comply only with state regulations for threatened species protection, which are are often inadequate.
In 2019, the Victorian government updated the protection measures for greater gliders in logged forests. However, these still allow logging of up to 60% of a forested area authorised for harvest, even when greater gliders are present at high densities.
The spokesperson for VicForests said the company prioritises live, hollow-bearing trees wherever there are five or more greater gliders per spotlight kilometre (a 1 kilometre stretch of forest surveyed with torches). But this level of protection is limited and is unlikely to halt greater glider decline, as the species is highly sensitive to disturbance.
Recently logged native forest from the Central Highlands, Victoria. Darcy Watchorn
In May 2020 the Federal Court found VicForests breached state environmental laws when they failed to implement protection measures and destroyed critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum and greater glider habitat.
Despite this, earlier this year, the Federal Court upheld an appeal by VicForests to retain their exemption from the EPBC Act. This ruling means VicForests will not be held accountable for destroying threatened species habitat, even when it is found in breach of state requirements.
The spokesperson for VicForests said the company takes sustainable harvesting seriously.
VicForests operations are subject to Victorian laws, and enforced by the Office of the Conservation Regulator (OCR) and Victorian courts when necessary. The recent federal court appeal decision has not changed that fact.
They add that VicForests surveys show greater gliders continue to persist in recently harvested areas, under its current practices.
VicForests has not seen any evidence that even a single Greater Glider has died as a result of our new harvesting approach.
The government isn’t learning its lesson
The EPBC Act is currently undergoing a once in a decade assessment that considers how well it’s operating, with a recent independent review criticising the EPBC Act for no longer being fit for purpose. Our new research reinforces this, by showing the act has failed to protect one of Australia’s most iconic and unique animals.
And yet, the federal government wants to weaken the act further by implementing a streamlined model, which would rely on state governments to approve actions that would impact threatened species.
For one, state environmental laws operate independently, and don’t consider what developments have been approved in other states. Cutting down trees may seem insignificant in certain areas, but without considering the broader impacts, many small losses can accumulate into massive declines, like a death by a thousand cuts.
As a case in point, despite the devastation of greater glider habitat from the Black Summer fires in NSW, the Queensland government have recently approved a new coal mine, which will destroy over 5,500 hectares of greater glider and koala habitat.
What needs to change?
The greater glider is edging towards extinction, but there is still no recovery plan for this iconic marsupial. Adding to this, new research suggests there are actually three species of greater glider we could be losing, rather than just one as was previously thought. Significant effort must be invested to create a clear plan for their recovery.
Because Australia has such a rich diversity of wildlife, we have a great responsibility to protect it. Australia must make important changes now to strengthen — not weaken — its environmental laws, before greater gliders, and many other species, are gone forever.
Darcy Watchorn receives funding from the Hermon Slade Foundation, Parks Victoria, the Conservation and Wildlife Research Trust, the Ecological Society of Australia, the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council, and the Geelong Naturalists Field Club. He is a member of the Ecological Society of Australia and the Society for Conservation Biology Oceania.
Let’s face it, none of us actually enjoys wearing a mask. And it’s even harder when you’re a parent trying to get your kids masked up, as well as yourself.
There is ampleevidence showing masks help keep children and young peoplesafe. Plus, unlike the earlier stages of the pandemic when kids weren’t contracting or transmitting the virus as much as adults, we are now seeing many cases in children of the Delta variant. Although, thankfully, serious disease among young people is still rare.
Here are five things you can do to encourage your kids to wear a mask.
1. Model wearing one
One of the best things you can do to encourage your kids to mask up is to model mask wearing. Show your child it is OK to wear a mask; it is “normal”.
Show your child it’s normal, and not scary to wear a mask. Shutterstock
2. Empathise with their feelings
If your child is reluctant to wear a mask, you can empathise with their feelings. Nobody likes wearing masks. Children rely on facial gestures to communicate, and many have sensory issues that can make wearing masks uncomfortable. Reflecting back to your child that you know this is hard for them helps them feel understood.
Find out why they don’t want to wear a mask. It might be they get sore ears or a headache. If so, masks that tie behind the head can be helpful. If it’s fogged glasses, a better fitting mask, or a mask clip, may help.
The internet is full of mask hacks to help make masks more comfortable. Some are as simple as using hair clips in the loops to extend the length of the mask.
Kids may be more willing to wear a mask if they understand why they need to. When children understand why a behaviour is important to their health, they are more likely to comply. Older children may be interested in the science of mask wearing.
There are many resources — including easy to understand YouTube videos — that can help.
You could get your kids to watch a video, like this one.
Remind your kids that doing things they want, like seeing their friends at school, relies on them wearing a mask.
4. Make it a game
Younger children may be helped by making the mask wearing a bit of a game, which can include making up silly poems about wearing masks. Or you could encourage your child to see themselves as a superhero protecting others by wearing a mask.
Younger children can imagine they’re a superhero helping others.
You could also give your child the chance to choose a mask or decorate their own, turning it into a craft activity. This will make the child comfortable with the mask and give them a sense of ownership over it.
Children require good fine motor skills to put on, and keep on, a mask. If you want your child to be wearing a mask at school, you could talk to the teacher, teacher aide or guidance officer to see if they can help.
Teachers can make sure the mask is on properly, and help your child to adjust the mask as needed.
Making it a game or making it fun may also work for these children. And there’s evidence that tolerance training, where you gradually expose your child to mask wearing providing praise when the child is able to complete a step, can help.
But it may be impossible to force compliance and it may be dangerous in some circumstances. There are exemptions for people who have any medical condition that makes wearing masks unsuitable.
You could ask a teacher to help your child wear their mask properly at school. Shutterstock
Lastly, ask yourself these questions
If your child isn’t legally required to wear a mask, but you’re still wondering, ask yourself these questions:
are there high levels of virus in my community?
is my child going to be indoors with poor ventilation and lots of people?
does my child have a medical condition that might make COVID-19 more risky for them or are they going to be around people who have a medical condition that makes them more susceptible to COVID-19?
If the answers to any of these questions are “yes”, that would lend weight to encouraging mask wearing.
If the answers to any of these questions are “no”, this would lend weight towards not requiring mask wearing.
But if your child is under 12, or has a developmental or another kind of disability, it’s also important to consider whether they can put the mask on and take it off safely by themselves, and whether you or someone else can supervise them while they are wearing a mask. If not, it may be better they don’t wear one.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
There’s a revolution under way in commerce. Within five years, the consumer data right will have transformed competition and simplified the way we live.
Yet most of us know little about it, or think it is restricted to banking.
It’s the brainchild of former Productivity Commission chief Peter Harris and Scott Morrison when he was treasurer.
The Productivity Commission was asked to inquire into the use of big data.
It made all sorts of recommendations about how the government could use data better, but only after first delivering an overarching recommendation that would deliver ownership of consumer data to the consumers who provided it.
Productivity Commission, Data Availability and Use, Final Report 2017
The recommendation would give consumers and businesses not just theoretical ownership of the data they gave to other businesses, but also practical access in the form of machine-readable code that they could take to a competitor or a firm that would help them pick a better service provider.
On request, firms such as Spotify would have to hand over your history to competitors.
It’s easy to see how it will work for music streaming.
A customer might want to switch to another service, but would find it hard because the one they were with had years of their data — favourites, playlists etc.
Under the legislation that flowed from the report, the old provider would have to provide the information in machine-readable code to the new one to make the transition effortless.
Or the consumer could take their data to a service which would analyse their listening history and determine the right provider for them.
The right has first been rolled out to banking, where it is called Open Banking.
Since July 2020 bank customers have been able to give permission to accredited third parties to access their savings and credit card data.
Since November customers have also been able to give permission to accredited third parties to access mortgage, personal loan and joint bank account data.
It’ll help customers search for better deals and keep track of their finances.
Firms will no longer own customers data
Historically, banks thought of this information as their data, inside knowledge about their customers that gave them an edge on the competition.
Progress has been slow for two reasons, both of them good ones.
One is that the government is insisting that industry determines the standards on which the regime will run. This will help. Government-mandated standards don’t often work well.
The other reason, learnt the hard way from the less than perfect introduction of My Health Record is that data reforms need to be done right, the first time. If there are data leaks, from one provider to another, trust will evaporate.
The choice of banking to start the rollout has clouded the message.
It has meant that where people know about the new right at all, many think it is limited to banking. But in time it will apply almost everywhere — to energy, communications, superannuation among other services.
To my mind energy provides an even better example of the power of the reform than banking. I pay too much for my electricity, yet every time someone rings to offer me a better energy plan, I say no. I am usually too busy and it would take time to compare the offers.
Switching providers might be as simple as a click
But once the consumer data right is in place, I won’t have to do that maths. I will be able to simply click on a button on a website or email to direct my data to the other supplier. That supplier will be able to set out what I am paying today against what I would be paying if I switched. The same with mobile phone plans.
I won’t even need to contact my old provider to switch. This will deny my old provider the opportunity to reclaim me by offering a better deal when I call to cancel my contract. It will be too late. My current provider will be forced to treat me fairly upfront – or risk losing me.
Firms might have treat their customers well
Banks today routinely offer new customers better terms than existing customers.
Thirty years ago most Australian businesses thought charging existing customers more than new customers was unfair. Those standards have fallen away.
In many contexts, the consumer data right will bring them back.
It’s a work in progress, but it is set to improve our lives and the services we use for decades to come.
Ross Buckley receives funding from the Australian Research Council Laureate Program to research a wide range of data-related topics, including this one.
The Fountain Gate foxymorons with their partners and Kim’s second best friend at their movie premiere in 2012.Paul Jeffers/AAP
Our writers nominate the TV series keeping them entertained during a time of COVID.
In our household, watching comedy in the evenings has been a crucial part of our lockdown survival strategy. We powered through a lot of comedy series last year, and watched some more than once. (I’m looking at you, Schitt’s Creek). Stuck in lockdown for the foreseeable future, I suggested we might re-watch those Fountain Gate foxymorons, Kath and Kim, and my 12-year-old daughter’s eyes lit up.
She’s not alone. When Netflix added Kath and Kim to its service in 2019, it introduced the show to a generation born well after its early 2000s heyday. Its renewed popularity has spawned Tik Tok challenges and Instagram fan accounts. The resurgence of 80s fashion (especially so-called “mum jeans”) means many Gen Z’s share Kath’s fondness for a “foot-long fly” and acid wash denim.
A suburban sitcom about Kath Day, that “high maintenance” foxy lady, her “hornbag” daughter Kim, and Kim’s “second best friend” Sharon Strezlecki, Kath and Kim remains one of Australia’s best loved comedy series. Premiering in 2002 on the ABC, it was the top-rating series on television in 2003-2004.
Creators Jane Turner and Gina Riley moved to Channel 7 for the show’s final season in 2007, and produced a telemovie, Da Kath and Kim Code (2005) and a feature film, Kath and Kimderella (2012).
For decades, Australian television comedy typically relegated women to the sidelines, as objects to ogle or as sidekicks to male characters. Kath and Kim was an amazing showcase for Riley, Turner and Magda Szubanski. The male performers (Peter Rowsthorn and Glenn Robbins) are terrific but the women are the stars.
The trio were popular cast members of the late 1980s Channel 7 comedy series Fast Forward, revealing a talent for parodying media culture, precise observations of Australian women’s speech, and an utter lack of vanity. Kath, Kim and Sharon’s characters first appeared in a series of sketches called “Kim’s Wedding” in their comedy series Big Girl’s Blouse, which ran for a single season in 1994.
Big Girl’s Blouse was ground-breaking because it emerged from a female, even feminist perspective. In Midweek Ladies, a brilliant “documentary” about the leadership turmoil in a ladies tennis club, the trio parodied the self-seriousness of men’s political machinations on the national stage, while also hinting at smaller but no less meaningful dramas playing out in women’s lives across Australia.
Female-centred satire
Australian culture has a long history of satirising, or looking down on, suburbia. From Robin Boyd’s Australian Ugliness to Barry Humphries’s Mrs Edna Everage, many of these critiques were created by men.
Riley and Turner understood the broad appeal of poking fun at suburbia, the place where so many of us grew up. Their humour is broad and specific (or “pacific”, as Kath would say) at the same time, but it always emanated from a keenly observed, female perspective. Only women of a certain age and class could make a joke about Kim being a “Country Road size ten”.
Among the bigger comedic moments (Kath’s wedding, any scene featuring Kath and Kel’s dancing) were dozens of small, well observed details: the squeaky back door of Kath’s house, or Kath sneaking extra rubbish into her neighbour’s bins.
Kath and Kim has endured partly because of its quotable scripts and catchphrases. Most of us like to imagine we’re more sophisticated than we really are, and it is this gap between self-perception and reality that fuels Kath and Kim’s malapropisms.
Kath announces her engagement by telling Kim that “Kel and I have decided to make our beautiful, sensual relationship a mere formality”; Kim decides she will spend some time “sowing her rolled oats” rather than return to her husband, Brett.
As an historian, I find the show fascinating for its commentary on what Hugh Mackay called the “dreamy period” of the early 2000s, when a combination of increasing prosperity and anxiety about security meant
Australians […] disengaged from the issues that had been preoccupying them; they shut down, or at least went into retreat.
When Kath and Kim was at the peak of its ratings success in 2003, it was jostling with renovation reality shows, The Block and Backyard Blitz. It was also the era of Big Brother and Australian Idol, and the last gasp of tabloid magazine culture before it was swallowed up by the internet.
Class and ‘effluence’
Kath and Kim were true to the spirit of the Howard era in their aspirations to be, in Kim’s words, “effluent”. As she tells her daughter,
you are effluent, Kim. I mean look at what you’ve got, a Hyundai to hightail it round in, a half share in a home unit, a DVD player, a mobile. I mean, what else is there?
Yet the series not only poked fun at “aspirationals”, but at the wealthy as well. Prue and Trude, the grey-bobbed homewares store employees, with “jojoba leftover from October”, highlighted the myth of Australia’s “classless” society.
In 2021, with our horizons reduced by COVID lockdowns and more time spent at home, perhaps the tiny domestic dramas of Kath and Kim (“that was my last fat-free fruche, Sharon!”) are a little more relatable than they used to be.
Certainly, my daughter and I have had time to work on our Kath and Kim impersonations. That’s noice, different, unusual.
Kath and Kim is streaming on Netflix.
Michelle Arrow receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
The early NAPLAN results for 2021 released today suggest the average impact of COVID school closures on literacy and numeracy in 2020 has been relatively small.
This was the first NAPLAN test since students moved to remote learning, and involved 1.2 million students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9.
The results show the national average for literacy and numeracy in 2021 has held up fairly well despite last year’s disruptions. There has been little change in the NAPLAN average results in 2021 compared to 2019 in all states and territories, including Victoria, which had the longest period of remote schooling in 2020.
To understand how well children are doing at school, it is important to look at the progress of students’ learning over time, not just where they are at any one point in time.
According to our student progress metric for NAPLAN, Victoria’s progress in literacy and numeracy is generally in line with the national average over 2019-21. We can also see progress at a national level for 2019-21 was similar to historical rates of progress.
These results are a testament to the hard work of students, parents, teachers and school leaders around the country. But it is too early to claim victory.
We will have to wait until the full NAPLAN data is released in December to understand what the impact has been on vulnerable students, in particular.
It’s also important to remember that NAPLAN only tests literacy and numeracy. Gaps that may have emerged in other parts of the curriculum, such as science and the humanities, aren’t picked up in this data.
Nor do these results help us understand the impact of school closures on broader students’ social development and mental health.
They don’t change the fact governments should be carefully planning how to get kids back to class safely, and as soon as possible.
Disadvantaged students may have fared worse
Students around the country missed a significant amount of school in 2020, especially in Melbourne where some students missed around 21 weeks of school. In New South Wales, schools were closed for around seven weeks.
Many disadvantaged students are likely to have found remote schooling harder than other groups. Our 2020 report estimated the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students widens at up to triple the rate when kids are trying to learn at home rather than in regular class.
Students most likely to be impacted by remote learning are those from low socio-economic families, Indigenous backgrounds or remote communities, as well as those with poor mental health, disabilities and special learning needs.
Students in the early years who are still developing foundational skills in reading and writing are also at risk of falling behind.
Emerging international data suggests COVID school closures have had significant negative impacts on student learning in some countries and that disadvantaged students have suffered most. The findings of different studies vary, but one study from Holland estimates learning loss is 60% greater for struggling students.
Given the potential negative impacts for vulnerable students, the NSW and Victorian governments made significant investments in newtutoring programs to help these students catch up. These programs have been in place since the start of 2021.
Opening schools safely should be a national priority
The early NAPLAN data is promising, but our leaders need to stay focused on getting children back to school.
For disadvantaged students in particular, there may be other negative impacts on learning we don’t yet know about.
Academic performance aside, there are broader implications of sustained school closures. There are real concerns about the potential impacts on students’ mental health and social development.
Nor is it clear what the cumulative effects of school closures may be on students or teachers. As remote schooling continues in Victoria and NSW and now the ACT, fatigue is setting in.
Fatigue is setting in for many students learning from home. Shutterstock
The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute has shown closures are associated with increased harm to children’s physical and mental health – and welfare – due to social isolation, increased anxiety, neglect, or even abuse. These findings are reinforced by growing overseas evidence.
The COVID pandemic continues to upend the daily school routines for millions of young Australians, interrupting their learning, development and friendships.
The NAPLAN results give us reason to hope that with hard work from students, families and teachers – along with targeted supports when schools reopen – we can keep students’ learning on track, despite the odds.
But we must ensure the students who have struggled the most get the help they need to remain engaged in school and to keep progressing in their learning. Getting all children back to school, safely, should be a national priority.
Grattan Institute received funding from Origin Energy Foundation to support our report Covid catch-up: helping disadvantaged students close the equity gap.
Julie Sonnemann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
A View from Afar: In the first half of this week’s podcast Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan will be joined by Dr David Robie to examine instability in the Pacific’s Polynesian region – specifically to identify what’s going on in: New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa. In the second half, Buchanan and Manning analyse the latest on Afghanistan.
Specifically the first half of this episode will look at:
New Caledonia where there’s the third and final referendum on Kanaky independence;
In Samoa there’s a new government but only after the old guard attempted to resist democratic change, a move that caused a constitutional crisis; and
Fiji, to add to its Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama’s politics headache, is the question of how Fiji gets its NGO and aid workers out of Afghanistan.
THEN, in the second half of this episode Paul Buchanan and I will dig deep into the latest from Afghanistan. The deadline for western personnel to have withdrawn from Afghanistan is looming. The Taliban leadership states it will not extend the negotiated deadline of August 31, and United States president Joe Biden insists the US will not request nor assert an extension.
But what does this humiliating withdrawal indicate to the world?
Is this the realisation of a diminishing United States, a superpower in decline?
Can the US reassert itself as the world’s Police, or does Afghanistan confirm the US is in retreat and signal an end of liberal internationalism?
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One consequence of the escalating COVID outbreak in New South Wales has been increased political tension around the “national plan” for COVID reopening.
The prime minister has argued that states signed up to the plan – albeit “in principle”, whatever that means – and they should do whatever the plan says, whenever the plan says to do it.
Some premiers are now pushing back, arguing the Doherty Institute modelling was based on certain assumptions which no longer hold true so the previous agreement no longer stands.
There are three distinct questions at issue here. Is the Doherty Institute modelling still applicable? How does the national plan stack up? And what should happen next?
1. Is the Doherty Institute modelling still applicable?
The Doherty Institute was given a very specific remit. It was asked “to define a target level of vaccine coverage for transition to Phase B of the national plan”, where lockdowns would be “less likely, but possible”.
In identifying the vaccination coverage target for the transition to Phase B, Doherty’s experts assumed that testing, tracing, isolation, and quarantine (TTIQ), would be central to maintaining lower case numbers.
They highlighted two scenarios in terms of testing-tracing-isolation-quarantine capacity – an “optimal” scenario and a “partially effective” scenario – summarised in the table below.
Doherty Institute modelling outcomes
TTIQ = testing, tracing, isolation, and quarantine. This assumes an all adults vaccination allocation strategy. Doherty Institute
While these numbers may look acceptable, the assumptions underlying them are now hanging by a thread.
We assume that once community transmission becomes established leading to high caseloads, TTIQ [testing-tracing-isolation-quarantine] is less efficacious than the optimal levels observed in Australia because public health response capacity is finite.
This tells us that given our current high case numbers, we can probably only assume, at best, “partially effective” testing-tracing-isolation-quarantine capacity.
It’s also important to note the Doherty modelling did not incorporate scenarios where the virus was in uncontrolled spread after target vaccination levels are achieved.
But it now seems unlikely that NSW – and maybe even Victoria – will be able to suppress COVID down to zero before any vaccination target is reached.
If lockdowns are eased according to the modelled targets, while there is still substantial community transmission, testing-tracing-isolation-quarantine is unlikely to be enough to suppress further spread sufficiently, potentially resulting in higher numbers of hospitalisations and deaths than initially modelled.
2. How does the national plan stack-up?
The federal government used the Doherty Institute report’s findings as the basis of the “national plan” it put to National Cabinet.
But it glossed over the options, scenarios, and caveats in the Doherty modelling, and assumed the most optimistic testing-tracing-isolation-quarantine scenario: that everything would be rosy if Australia started opening up once 70% of adults (equivalent to only just over half the population) are vaccinated.
The transition to Phase C, where lockdowns would be targeted and vaccinated people would be exempt from restrictions, was also optimistically adopted at 80% adult vaccination, despite the lack of modelling for this scenario in the Doherty report.
In a bid to make it appear convincing – but also realistic, given all the uncertainty – a veil of vagueness was cast over the national plan. The document is full of weasel-words and caveats, which means it is impossible for anyone to be held to account.
But the severity of the New South Wales outbreak has forced some of our leaders to take off the rose-coloured glasses and adopt a more realistic view. Premiers are now saying they did not sign up to high death tolls.
According to Doherty modelling, deaths could reach 1,500 within six months of implementing Phase B. Agreeing to such a scenario is politically untenable for states that currently have zero cases.
3. So, what should happen next?
With states divided over the national plan, and the modelling potentially out of date, it’s time for National Cabinet to come back with a new approach. We need a revised national plan – one that all states can sign up to, one that is not full of caveats and conditions.
This should include a realistic plan for scaling up testing-tracing-isolation-quarantine capacity so that it can manage in a feasible way when each infected person could have at least ten new contacts per day.
And it should include a plan to protect primary schools and childcare centres while a vaccine remains unavailable for younger children.
But our model was about Phase D – what Australia needs to do to avoid obtrusive restrictions such as lockdowns altogether – which was not modelled by the Doherty Institute.
We argued that it is only safe to open the borders, to lift restrictions, and to manage without lockdowns and use only unobtrusive measures such as masks on public transport, if we vaccinate at least 80% of the total population and continue the vaccination rollout to 90% throughout 2022.
Recent modelling from other academics has come to similar conclusions, with some even suggesting a slightly higher threshold for safe re-opening.
Governments cannot keep making unrealistic promises about easing restrictions at 70% and 80% adult vaccination, a plan that relied on optimistic scenarios in the first place, and one that now bears little relation to the real world. It is irresponsible to build public momentum and hope around targets that are unlikely going to be enough.
Australia needs the National Cabinet to come clean and accept that the changing circumstances require a change in the plan.
Grattan Institute began with contributions to its endowment from each of the Federal and Victorian Governments, BHP Billiton, and NAB. In order to safeguard its independence, Grattan Institute’s board controls this endowment. Grattan Institute also receives funding from corporates, foundations, and individuals to support its general activities as disclosed on its website.
Anika Stobart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Last year in the COVID-19 pandemic, children were not catching or spreading the virus much. The main focus was on protecting our elderly and vulnerable.
But the Delta strain has changed things. Children around the world are contracting Delta in high numbers and some frontline doctors believe they may also be getting sicker from this strain.
Many parents and schools have concerns about how to best protect children from COVID-19. There’s also the worry children will catch the virus at school and take it back to their families and communities.
While many children are now well-accustomed to washing and sanitising their hands, this is simply not enough to tackle the spread of COVID-19, especially now we know the virus is airborne. We need a whole toolbox of strategies.
There are three key areas to focus on that we believe are evidence-based, easy to implement and will help protect our children: masks, ventilation and vaccination.
Meanwhile, Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton has recommended children aged five and up wear masks in the face of rising Delta transmission among children.
As GPs, parents often ask us if it’s safe for children to wear masks. While we understand concern from parents, we reassure them masks have been found to cause no harm in children over the age of two. When children wear masks it doesn’t affect their breathing or reduce their oxygen levels.
Importantly, when worn properly, masks are effective at reducing the spread of COVID-19, for adults and children alike.
A few quick tips. Fabric masks should be treated like underwear: wash them regularly, ensure they cover everything, and don’t share. These are a better option for the environment.
Label fabric masks like school hats — they will go missing!
Surgical/disposable masks are single use. Like using a tissue to blow your nose, make sure it goes in the bin once used and then wash your hands.
And masks should fit snugly — the less gaps there are the better they will work.
Like anything new, getting used to masks can take time. Children may initially be anxious, especially if their parents are too. Though most kids adapt really quickly (much quicker than adults, in our experience).
While the majority of children will adapt quickly there will be some who have specific and legitimate concerns, for example disabilities and sensory issues. GPs and paediatricians can help work out what the safest approach is for these children.
2. Ventilation
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can float in the air like smoke. If you’re inside in a small enclosed room with other people and the ventilation is poor, it will only be a matter of time before you’re all breathing in each other’s air.
Ventilation is something schools can and should address. Some simple strategies include:
get outside as often as is practical. Call children into the classroom only once the day has started. Hold some lessons outside the classroom. During breaks and lunch time children should be outside whenever possible too
check the air with carbon dioxide monitors. This is occurring overseas.
Why do we care about CO₂? Well, we breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO₂. In confined spaces with lots of air that has been “breathed out”, monitors will detect higher levels of CO₂.
All that “breathed out” air could be full of viral particles, so if the monitor is measuring high, airflow needs to be improved immediately by opening a door or window.
In stuffy rooms, or rooms that measure high for CO₂ (indicating the ventilation is poor), a longer-term plan to clean the air should be considered. What’s encouraging is that the technology already exists to address this.
Air cleaners, also known as air purifiers, scrubbers, or HEPA filters, can actually help to “clean” the air we breathe. Lots of schools around the world are now actively improving ventilation systems and air quality monitoring.
Improving the air quality in schools may also prevent some of the other colds and flus kids pick up at school, and reduce asthma and allergy symptoms.
New Zealand GP Dr Sarah Hortop shared this photo of her daughters who received their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine recently. Sarah Hortop, Author provided
We know the vaccines work well in this age group and just like in adults, there is very close monitoring of adverse events from these vaccines in children. It’s reassuring to see very few serious reactions, and even those that are (for example myocarditis — inflammation of the heart) are treatable.
Vaccine trials are under way in children under 12 in the US (for Pfizer and Moderna), and once we have the safety and efficacy data we can start making decisions around vaccinating them too.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kyla Raby, PhD Candidate researching the role of consumers in eradicating modern slavery in supply chains, University of South Australia
Kyodo/AP
When the Australian government introduced its Modern Slavery Bill to parliament in 2018, it heralded it as the start of a “race to the top”.
But it has turned out to be less a race than a meander.
The bill required companies with annual revenues greater than $100 million to report on action they take to ensure their supply chains are free of slave labour. The premise was that transparency and accountability were enough to drive reform.
“Business feedback indicates the primary driver for compliance will be investor pressure and reputational costs and benefits,” a government spokeswoman said at the time. “This will drive compliance more effectively than legislated penalties and encourage a business-led race to the top”.
That bill was passed in December 2018.
But so far, according to research published last month by the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, most companies are engaged in a “race to the middle”, disclosing only the minimum and not wishing to reveal more than their key peers.
Could more be done?
Yes — but the possibilities and pitfalls are shown by a private member’s bill that passed the Senate this week.
It passed the Senate on Monday with support from the Labor Party, the Greens and One Nation senators. But Coalition senators voted against the bill. This was despite it reflecting the recommendations of a inquiry chaired by Liberal senator Eric Abetz, who said Patrick’s bill was “worthy of consideration and support, in principle”.
Without government support the bill won’t pass the House of Representatives to become law. Nonetheless, it is worth considering why senators as disparate as the Greens and One Nation have backed it. Despite the Modern Slavery Act, there’s much more to be done before Australians can be confident the goods they buy are free of slave labour.
The call for a stronger approach
Patrick began with less expansive ambitions, introducing a bill in December 2020 to ban the import of goods from China produced by Uyghur forced labour.
This was in response to mounting evidence of the Chinese government’s detention of more than a million Uyghurs (and other ethnic minorities) in the western province of Xinjiang, forcing them to work making goods sold by Western companies.
A 2018 satellite image shows detention camps built near the Kunshan Industrial Park in China’s Xinjiang region. Planet Labs/AP,
Patrick’s bill was referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, chaired Abetz. After considering about 60 submissions, in June the committee recommended (among other things) amending the Customs Act and other legislation “to prohibit the import of any goods made wholly or in part with forced labour, regardless of geographic origin”.
The committee endorses without reservation the objectives of the bill. The state-sponsored forced labour to which the Uyghur people are being subjected by the Chinese dictatorship is a grave human rights violation. It is incumbent on the government to take steps to ensure that Australian businesses and consumers are not in any way complicit in these egregious abuses.
Slavery is all around us
Patrick’s revised bill reflects this sentiment.
While the Chinese government may be detaining up to a million Uyghurs, the anti-slavery organisation Walk Free Foundation estimates globally about 4 million people are forced to work by state authorities, with further 21 million people exploited in private supply chains.
The foundation estimates each year goods worth more than US$350 billion (about $A480 billion) imported into G20 countries are at at-risk of having been produced, at least in part, by forced labour.
Anti-Slavery Australia
No country or industry is untouched. The estimate for imports into Australia is US$12 billion (about A$16.5 billion) a year. It’s highly likely at some stage you’ve bought something that has been made with exploited labour.
Australia’s Modern Slavery Act has been part of international moves to make companies accountable for the conditions of workers in the global supply chains from which they profit. This law requires reporting entities to submit an annual “Modern Slavery Statement” to a public register.
The law, however, has been criticised for lacking any real bite. There’s no real penalty for noncompliance. Instead it relies on the fear of being “named and shamed” — and as the research from the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors suggests, this doesn’t seem enough.
How did the government respond?
So why didn’t the government support Patrick’s bill?
In the words of Abetz, speaking in the Senate on Monday, “my heart says yes to this bill but my head says not yet”.
The government’s hesitancy is understandable. If passed, the law will require every Australian company — not just the big ones — to prove that any goods it imports are slave-free. That’s a huge leap from what is currently required.
Some large corporations are already struggling with how to adhere to the spirit and less strenuous requirements of the Modern Slavery Act. Many small- and medium-sized enterprises and not-for-profits may also not have the expertise or resources to comply.
But even if this particular bill isn’t right, the issues with Australia’s current response to modern slavery cannot be ignored. The enslavement of human beings shouldn’t be an issue where a progressive, but painfully slow, approach is accepted.
Senator Patrick’s bill may not become law. But it has helped shine a light on the deficiencies with the current law and shown there is broad community support for stronger action.
As the famous abolitionist William Wilberforce said: “You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”
Kyla Raby is affiliated with the Australian Red Cross
Katherine Christ has previously received funding from CPA Australia.
