Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Hamilton, Visiting Fellow, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

JobKeeper was always quick and dirty. Its design was far from perfect, with shortcomings I and others cautioned against.

These were forgiven in the face of an impending calamity, but the health interventions have worked so well the generosity of the economic interventions is being reconsidered.

In light of a report the treasury is reevaluating the design of JobKeeper, it’s worth setting out where the scheme falls short and how it could be tweaked.

The fixed per-worker subsidy was a bad idea

The big flaw in JobKeeper is that it is paid as a fixed amount per worker, regardless of the hours worked or wage earned.

The COVID-19 economic crisis stems from businesses losing money and laying off workers due to a lack of customers – either voluntarily or by government fiat.

The ideal response would be to replace that lost revenue on the condition that businesses maintain their workers’ hours and wages.

Read more: That estimate of 6.6 million Australians on JobKeeper, it tells us how it can be improved

With that condition, there would be no need to tie the amount of the subsidy to the number of workers on the payroll.

Doing so will save some firms and their workers’ jobs. But those with low margins and large fixed costs such as rent will be undercompensated, and others will be overcompensated.

Forcing firms to pay the entire subsidy to their workers (even where it means giving them a pay rise) limits their ability to use it to offset other costs. And it leads to all sorts of inequities among workers.

If the scheme must be tied to payroll, there are far better ways.

It could instead cover a portion of total payroll up to a ceiling with some additional support for non-payroll costs, of the kind offered in the United States and other countries.

To ensure no business got too much, the entire payment could be capped so the business made no more under JobKeeper than it did before the crisis.

Pay it up front and tax it back later if need be

Most businesses are eligible for JobKeeper if they expect turnover to fall by at least 30% in the coming quarter (or month if turnover is more than $20 million).

If things go better than expected and they end up not needing that much JobKeeper, they get to keep what’s been paid to them for the entire quarter, as long as their expectation was genuine.

As the advice from the Tax Office puts it:

We will accept your assessment of these turnovers, unless we have reason to believe that your calculation of your projected GST turnover was not reasonable.

But reasonable expectations are hard to police.

A better approach would be to pay businesses up front some proportion of total payroll for the same time period in the previous year.

Then, after the fact, what they are eligible for could be calculated based on actual payroll.

Any difference could be reconciled through the ordinary tax return process. Anything overpaid could be taxed back and any extra due could be paid out.

This would be simpler, clearer and better targeted, and solve the cash-flow problems businesses are complaining about.

Six months won’t be long enough for some

The scheme is set to end after six months on September 27 regardless of economic conditions.

Some businesses in some sectors are already back at work and others will come back soon. But some, such as those affected by the international travel ban, will be out of action until next year.

For those businesses that recover quickly, the turnover test will cut off support automatically. But for some others, the maximum six-month time frame will be too short.

A better approach would be to tie the duration to objective benchmarks tailored to particular sectors (such as the end of the international travel ban, for instance).

Extend it to workers who have missed out

Short-term casuals, most temporary visa holders, workers at certain foreign-controlled businesses, and employees at most universities were left out despite many of them working in the hardest-hit industries.

The reported underspend on JobKeeper makes these omissions all the more puzzling.

Read more: Why temporary migrants need JobKeeper

There was never a good reason – morally or economically – to exclude these people, and the budgetary constraint has turned out not to be an issue.

If changes to JobKeeper are to be made, they should be offered it immediately.

The Treasurer could fix all this, but he should wait

The JobKeeper legislation is merely a shell, with the detail stipulated in regulations imposed at the behest of the Treasurer.

This gives him discretion to make whatever changes he sees fit.

But whether he should make changes is a tough call.

There are clear flaws in the current system, and for many businesses it could be wound up earlier as the outlook has changed somewhat for the better.

Read more: JobKeeper is quick, dirty and effective: there was no time to make it perfect

But the government made a clear commitment to these millions of businesses and workers to maintain a certain level of support for the full six months.

The last thing anyone needs right now, when the confidence of consumers and businesses is more critical than ever, is to have the government pull out the rug it extended.

While there’s a lot the treasurer could do, there’s also a good case for leaving things for now.

– ref. How to tweak JobKeeper, if we must – https://theconversation.com/how-to-tweak-jobkeeper-if-we-must-138321

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Victoria Plekhanova, Lecturer, Massey University

The New Zealand government’s recently announced NZ$50 million subsidy package to support local media was necessary and urgent – even if it came too late to save the Bauer magazine titles from closing.

But the injection of government cash did not address the underlying cause of the decline of New Zealand’s media, which predates the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the internet has created new opportunities for media and audiences alike, those opportunities have come at a price. Traditional media organisations now compete with giant digital platforms, not only for the attention of readers, but also for the advertising revenue that was once their lifeblood.

Adding insult to injury, the digital platforms compete for audiences’ attention partly by distributing the news content that was first created and published by those now-struggling media organisations.

This not only damages the media and public discourse, it is harmful to taxpayers.

A carefully designed digital service tax (DST) could redress the balance and help level the playing field for the New Zealand media. Such a tax would compensate New Zealand for revenue lost by its failure to tax the profits of non-resident tech giants operating in its territory.

Rules forcing the likes of Google and Facebook to compensate the creators of the media content they carry – as has been introduced in Australia – could also be helpful. Both options could be applied quickly if there was the political will.

Read more: No more negotiating: new rules could finally force Google and Facebook to pay for news

The challenge of taxing the tech giants

The New Zealand market for internet advertising services is dominated by two multinationals – Google and Facebook. Unlike the local media, these giants do not pay income tax in New Zealand proportional to their local advertising revenues.

In 2015 Google, Facebook and Amazon accounted for 69% of digital ad revenues outside China. By 2018 their share had risen to 86%. But this growing share of global ad revenue is not matched by the income tax these firms pay in New Zealand.

Due to the complex way the digital giants report their finances, New Zealanders are left guessing how much ad revenue they generate. And yet, just across the Tasman, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the equivalent of the NZ Commerce Commission, has forced Google and Facebook to disclose their Australian targeted ad revenue for 2018.

The ACCC estimates Google generated around A$3.7 billion (NZ$3.9 billion) from ads placed on its own search pages and on third parties’ websites. Facebook’s ad revenue was around A$1.7 billion (NZ$1.8 billion).

Based on this data and the similarities between Australia and New Zealand, it is reasonable to conclude that in 2018 Google might have earned about NZ$720 million in New Zealand, and Facebook about NZ$349 million from targeted advertising only.

A disproportionately small tax take

Changes to reporting standards [made in 2014] mean Facebook isn’t required to file financial statements in New Zealand, so its 2018 tax bill is not public information. In 2018 Google NZ Ltd (an entity of Alphabet group) paid income tax of NZ$398,341 – about 0.055% of the estimated gross ad revenue “extracted” from the New Zealand market.

In Australia Google paid income tax A$26.5 million in 2018 (already a minimal amount), meaning Google New Zealand paid 66.5 times less income tax than its Australian equivalent for the same period. Given the New Zealand economy is about a seventh the size of Australia’s, this is an extremely wide disparity.

Read more: Attention economy: Facebook delivers traffic but no money for news media

New Zealand has been reluctant to unilaterally adopt a DST, possibly to avoid conflict with the US. However, with many OECD members introducing a DST – including France, Italy and the United Kingdom – further delay is difficult to justify. The more countries that put a DST in place the more costly it will become for the US to retaliate.

The New Zealand government has said it prefers “an internationally agreed solution through the OECD” to the tax challenges of digitalisation. The OECD has agreed to find a “solution” by the end of 2020.

With rising tensions between Europe and the US over taxing highly digitalised multinational businesses, that timeframe is looking increasingly unrealistic.

NZ can’t go it alone

The COVID-19 pandemic has further slowed the process. The delay favours the tech giants but not New Zealand and the other countries where they operate and pay little tax. These countries need to move quickly to stop the erosion of their tax bases.

New Zealand is unlikely to move without Australia on board, but Australia now seems more interested in other mechanisms to correct its relationship with the global tech giants.

The ACCC is developing a mandatory code of competitive conduct that will require Google and Facebook to pay news media for the use of their content. There are similar developments in France.

Such codes target anti-competitive conduct, whereas a DST involves compensation for the loss in revenue caused by outdated international tax rules. To some extent a DST is a charge for the dominant market position of multinational digital services firms.

The ACCC’s code is not a substitute for a digital services tax, but New Zealand could do worse than consider a similar scheme. In the end, both a DST and enforcing payment for content will be necessary if New Zealand wants its local media to survive, let alone thrive – and not just at the expense of taxpayers.

– ref. Google and Facebook pay way less tax in New Zealand than in Australia – and we’re paying the price – https://theconversation.com/google-and-facebook-pay-way-less-tax-in-new-zealand-than-in-australia-and-were-paying-the-price-137075

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Winnifred Louis, Professor, Social Psychology, The University of Queensland

The coronavirus restrictions are slowly being eased but the pressures on families at home still probably lead to many tears of frustration.

It could be tensions about noise and clutter, keeping up with home schooling and mums and dads torn between parenting and their own work duties.

So to make sure our memories of being locked in with our families are as positive as possible, here are some evidence-based tips for calming down, preventing conflict and dealing with any sibling rivalry.

Take a deep breath

If you feel yourself getting angry at something, breathe in while counting to three. Then breathe out slowly counting to six (or any patterns with a slower out breath). If you do this ten times you should notice yourself becoming calmer.

Read more: As restrictions ease, here are 5 crucial ways for Australia to stay safely on top of COVID-19

If you’re too agitated to breathe slowly, put your hands on your heart and simply wait until you feel more relaxed. Try counting to ten or 100 before you react.

Leave the room and take a break. Plan to deal with the niggle another time. When you’re on break, do something to distract yourself like make a drink, listen to music, look at a beautiful picture or play a video game that is absorbing.

Call a friend or professional helpline to help you get another perspective, especially if you feel scared or hurt.

Read more: Parents, you don’t always need to entertain your kids – boredom is good for them

Different strategies work for different people, so try them all. Encourage your kids to keep trying if they don’t initially succeed. You need to practise any skill to make it feel natural. For younger children, taking a break may be simpler to master.

Ease the tension before things blow

It’s good to calm down from explosions but it’s even better if you can reduce the build-up in the first place.

Take time to share some of the problems upsetting people and see if as family you can negotiate a solution.

It’s likely everyone in your family is more tense because of the COVID-19 crisis. Many aspects can’t be easily fixed, like lost work or money stress, but others can, such as creating new routines or sharing space, resources or chores.

Work out different ways to get exercise indoors, like games or apps. Plan ahead for the times that need extra care, like when people are tired, or if difficult tasks need finishing. Let others know what to expect.

And importantly, lower expectations for everyone. What used to be easy might now be hard, and that’s okay.

Control the emotions

Help everyone work on managing their emotions. Just because you are experiencing extra distress doesn’t mean you should snap at your loved ones.

Read more: 5 tips to help parents navigate the unique needs of children with autism learning from home

You need to grow your toolkit of things that make you feel calmer and happier when you’re under pressure.

It could be spending time talking about what is going right and what is okay, working with your hands, meditation or prayer, time with your partner, reading or learning something new.

Every day, take time do something from your toolkit to chill out.

Talk to each other

When the tension is lower, quiet family conversations can help by naming any stresses. Naming things like “this is a stressful time” or “I’m a bit grumpy about work today” helps children process emotions.

It’s important to actively listen to others and celebrate strengths.

Listening and repeating back what others say makes people feel heard, and so does acknowledging shared feelings (“I miss my friends too”). When parents calmly talk about how some things cannot be easily changed, it builds acceptance.

Over time, the most powerful thing to prevent explosions is to notice when anger is building so you can deal with it before things escalate.

It’s useful to reflect on questions such as “Will this matter in 20 years?” and “Am I taking this too personally?”

You can help children by exploring what might really be bothering them. That argument about a toy might be about feeling sad. Try to listen for the deeper message, so they feel understood.

Calm that sibling rivalry

If sibling rivalry is driving you to distraction, the good news is it does not mean there is something wrong. Low-level sibling bickering is common during times of tension and boredom.

But you should step in when the volume goes up with nasty name-calling or physical contact.

Read more: ‘Iso’, ‘boomer remover’ and ‘quarantini’: how coronavirus is changing our language

Acknowledge emotions, help the kids express what they feel and encourage empathy. Try to help them decide what’s fair, instead of imposing your view.

More serious incidents require you to stop the interaction. If there is harm, separate the kids, care for the hurt child and consider a consequence. Use time-outs to calm things down, not for punishment.

But like all conflict, prevention is better than punishment. Does one child need more attention, exercise, stimulation or structure? Do certain toys need to be put away, or shared?

Depending on the age of your children, you can help older kids to learn to react gently to provocation. Praise children when they take steps to manage their stress.

Remember, these are stressful times for many families around the world. If we can use this time to stay patient, manage tension and act with goodwill towards our loved ones, our families will be better equipped to weather COVID-19, and many other storms that will follow.

For more help and information see our website or go to 1800Respect and No To Violence.

This article was co-written with help from Tori Cooke at No To Violence, Peter Streker at Community Stars, Carmel O’Brien at PsychRespect, and the University of Queensland’s students Ruby Green and Kiara Minto.

– ref. How to stay calm and manage those family tensions during the coronavirus lockdown – https://theconversation.com/how-to-stay-calm-and-manage-those-family-tensions-during-the-coronavirus-lockdown-137166

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katja Lee, Lecturer, Communication and Media Studies, University of Western Australia

If you need confirmation of how much the world has changed, consider this. Finally I have a thing or two to teach Matthew McConaughey about performance.

McConaughey may have acted in more than 50 movies. He may have, among his accolades, two Golden Globes and an Oscar for best actor. He may be a professor of practice in television and film at the University of Texas.

But he’s just as much a newbie when it comes to Zoom, House Party and the like as the rest of us. It’s a performance reality many of us are not really ready for, despite video chat being nearly two decades old.

Whether it’s a games night, a wine with the gang, your new virtual classroom or boardroom, video conferencing is how many of us are maintaining a semblance of our old connections to loved ones, colleagues and community.

“I’m learning about this, a little bit,” McConaughey told late-night TV chat host Stephen Colbert after he hosted bingo over Zoom for Texan seniors.

“I was on a Zoom conference the other day and one of my friends in particular looked just sensational. He was uplit, he looked just like a czar! And I texted him: “What’s your Zoom game, bud?”

His friend’s game was to have considered video-conferencing as a stage, and then setting that stage using the elements used on any television or film set: lighting, sound and scenery.

What I want to talk about, though, is not the stage but what happens on it: performance.

Staging and performance

Performance is what I study in its broadest social sense as a researcher in persona studies. My speciality is celebrity persona. How celebrities strategically create and maintain public personas is the subject of my new book featuring famous Canadian women (including Margaret Trudeau, mother of Canada’s prime minister, and pop singer Shania Twain).

Persona comes from the Greek word for the mask worn by an actor to depict a character. It involves performance, though not acting in the usual sense. It is instead, in the words of leading persona scholars P. David Marshall, Christopher Moore and Kim Barbour:

A strategic public identity that is neither the true individual nor a false individual. It is an identity that is used to navigate the social world and only exists to manage collective connections. It is a performance of the self for strategies to be used in some public setting.

Who are you when you’re in public or interacting with others? How did you create that impression? Persona researchers investigate questions like these in a broad range of contexts – from relationships with family or colleagues to interacting through online video games and social media.

Just think of McConaughey, the good ol’ Texan boy and his development of his signature catchphrase – “alight alright alright”. It’s not false, but nor could it said to be true. It is persona.

Though it is often amplified in celebrities, everyone has a public persona. More than one, in fact.

How we present in a formal meeting is likely to differ to how we interact one-on-one with a close colleague. How we are with friends, and even different groups of friends, might be different again. So too with different family members.

We develop and cultivate these personas over a long period. We become so acclimatised to performing them that they feel “natural”.

Hide Self View

Video conferencing radically changes the conditions under which we interact with others.

As McConaughey’s Zoom mate recognised, it is a shiny new stage on which we’ve been thrust. What makes it different is that it enables (and requires) us to watch ourselves as we perform. This hyper-awareness of how we look and behave can be exhausting, and stressful. It’s not something even most actors ever need to do.

Which is why the “Hide Self View” option is so important.

When you enable this option, you are still performing your persona. You just don’t see it. It’s a little bit more like real life and the other “stages” we’re used to performing on.

Like audio-only phone calls. Here is a “stage” that is deeply familiar and provides some reprieve from the self-surveillance of video-conferencing.

So give yourself, and others, a break from video-conferencing if and when necessary. If you find it exhausting, there’s a good reason. The only real fix is to “switch off”.

That’s a hot tip even for Matthew McConaughey.

– ref. Hide self: one tip on video conferencing good enough for Matthew McConaughey – https://theconversation.com/hide-self-one-tip-on-video-conferencing-good-enough-for-matthew-mcconaughey-136609

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

Australians have been told they can no longer be “heroes” and go to work if they have a cold.

During Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s press conference last week announcing plans to re-open the economy, workers were firmly instructed to stay home if they were sick.

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said:

Everybody stays home when they’re unwell, no matter how mild your cold or your cough, stay home when you’re unwell, and please get a COVID test. That’s the best way we’ll find these hidden cases of the virus in our community … No more heroics of coming to work with a cough and a cold and a sore throat. That’s off the agenda for every Australian for the foreseeable future. Please.

In response, ACTU secretary Sally McManus pointed out that many workers do not have the luxury of paid sick leave and called for “paid pandemic leave”.

Nobel Prize-winning immunologist professor Peter Doherty tweeted his agreement, noting:

that’s a really important idea …The worst economic scenario is to open up, then have to shut down again.

There is also parliamentary support for greater pandemic leave.

Labor says the government must deal with the “core issue” of helping people stay home if they are sick. On Tuesday, the Greens introduced a bill to the Senate for 14-days of paid leave for “all workers”.

Almost 37 per cent of Australian workers don’t have paid sick leave

As we pointed out in March, Australia’s lack of sick leave is a major barrier for many workers who need to stay home.

According to our analysis of 2019 Australian Bureau of Statistics data, 24.4% of Australian employees were casuals without any access to paid leave. Adding in the self-employed, the proportion of all Australian workers without paid sick leave is close to 37%.

This share will have gone down since the start of the pandemic, because casuals are much more likely to have lost their jobs. But those seeking to go back to work in coming months are highly unlikely to be offered permanent jobs, so the share of employees without paid leave is likely to increase even more.

It is also worth noting that casual workers have less ability to work from home. Our ABS data analysis also shows about 30% of employees with paid sick leave were able to regularly work from home, compared to 10% of those without paid sick leave.

What leave do casuals already get?

In early April, the Fair Work Commission temporarily amended 99 modern awards to give all workers access to two weeks of unpaid “pandemic leave” and the flexibility to take extra annual leave at half pay.

But this leave is unpaid and casual workers are not entitled to annual leave.

There are sickness provisions under the JobSeeker payment. But as Labor argues, this does not pass the “pub test”, if people need to interact with Centrelink’s administrative processes in order to access a payment at short-notice.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Paul Kelly on the risk of a COVID-19 second-wave

We need an immediate payment for sick casuals

If Professor Murphy’s strong recommendations are to be followed, then we will need an immediate payment – without a waiting period – that is enough to keep people who should be self-isolating away from work.

We will also need to think about how to support people without paid leave who live in the same household as others who need to self-isolate.

In the short-term, only the federal government has the capacity to foot the bill so that workers stay home during coronavirus.

But there are a number of ways in which sick leave payments could reach casual workers.

The payment could come either directly from government or through employers, with the government reimbursing employers for the costs.

Existing payments show how it can be done

For example, we already have the $550 fortnightly coronavirus supplement that sits with the JobSeeker payment and is paid through Centrelink.

The JobKeeper payment – aimed at keeping workers connected to businesses who are struggling due to coronavirus – is roughly equivalent to the full-time minimum wage. It is paid by employers with reimbursement from the Australian Taxation Office.

Similarly, we already have other programs, such as the paid parental leave scheme, which can be paid either by Centrelink or by employers who are then reimbursed.

However, there are significant gaps in coverage for both the JobSeeker and JobKeeper payments, as they excluding short-term casuals and many temporary visa holders.

Even for those eligible, the administrative processes are too cumbersome to provide short-term sickness support.

We need to keep thinking outside the box

The simplest approach would be to build on our current employer-provided schemes. This would see employers pay their casual workers when sick, and then be reimbursed by the government.

The cost of this is unlikely to be particularly onerous, unless we have a large second outbreak of the virus (which this measure is designed to avoid). It would be available only to a subset of workers for a limited period.

Read more: It’s hard to know when to come out from under the doona. It’ll be soon, but not yet

Checks and balances could be built in.

Employees might be required to provide some health evidence. This could vary over time and across region, depending on the risk profile and the availability of services. But given the push to expand testing, asking people to have a virus test might be entirely feasible and desirable.

This would mean them being off work until they received their results, but this is the strategy we need for a COVID-safe nation.

The federal government has already shown an impressive ability to adapt existing social security support to the unprecedented challenge of this pandemic.

A little more thinking outside the box may be needed if Australia is to successfully negotiate the next stages of re-opening the economy.

– ref. If we want workers to stay home when sick, we need paid leave for casuals – https://theconversation.com/if-we-want-workers-to-stay-home-when-sick-we-need-paid-leave-for-casuals-138431

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Dane, Lecturer, University of Melbourne

Australia’s literary journals are produced in a fragile ecosystem propped up by a patchwork of volunteer labour, generous patrons and, with any luck, a small slice of government funding.

The Sydney Review of Books, the Australian Book Review and Overland were among a group of publications who sought four-year funding from the Australia Council in 2020 but were unsuccessful.

These publications join the ranks of many others – among them Meanjin and Island – defunded by state or federal arts funding bodies in recent years.

Read more: The Meanjin funding cuts: a graceless coup?

These magazines are vital for today’s publishing industry. For many authors literary magazines provide the first opportunity for publication. For editors and arts administrators, they provide a training ground for life-long careers in Australia’s creative sector.

The past decade has seen a steady decline in arts funding going to individuals and organisations. According to Chairman of the Copyright Agency and former media executive, Kim Williams, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald:

[…] if funding for literature had been maintained as in the mid-70s, considering inflation and population growth, it should be at $12 million, at least. Today, it stands at just $5 million (compared with $4.2 million 30 years ago).

The list of defunded writing-focused organisations in the most recent multi-year funding round is stark. Those losing their multi-year status include Artlink, Eyeline, Art Monthly, the Australian Script Centre, Playwriting Australia, Sydney Writer’s Festival, The Wheeler Centre and Brisbane Writers Festival.

Without securing medium-term support, these organisations face an uncertain future.

Vital discourse

In response to the 2020 funding announcement, editor of Australian Book Review, Peter Rose, stated the decision demonstrates

little understanding of [the magazine sector’s] contribution to the literary ecology, and no appreciation of the dire consequences for readers, authors, contributors and publishers.

The cultural discussions within the pages of literary journals set the agenda for the more higher-profile but slower-moving institutions such as publishers, prizes and festivals.

Literary magazines are often the first place authors are published. Against the backdrop of an industry largely staffed by white, middle-class people, small magazines are at the forefront of bringing more Australian writing to the surface from writers of colour, First Nations writers, disabled writers, trans writers and working-class writers, challenging those who hold power at the top of the sector.

Read more: Express Media is unique and young people need it

Writing in 2015 about the position magazines such as Island or Overland occupy, Emmett Stinson noted these publications:

[…] are essential to contemporary literary culture: they showcase new and emerging writers; […] offer more extended literary debates and discussions than the broadsheets; comprise a venue for journalism that contains views outside of the liberal mainstream; serve as rallying points for different communities of readers and coteries of authors […]

Ben Etherington’s essay about the parallel lives and deaths of Mudrooroo and Les Murray, Cher Tan’s exposition and critique of taste production on the internet, and Blak Brow – which was written, edited, illustrated, curated and performed by First Nations creators – are among countless examples of the ways literary magazines carve out space for critique, expression, consideration and reflection.

In shifting funding away from small magazines, we lose the place for these discussions.

Not a competition

Uncertainty, instability and fragility are perhaps the defining characteristics of small magazines.

The decisions to not fund literary magazines not only have a significant impact on the individual publications, but also to Australian cultural discourse.

What gets published within the pages of these magazines can entertain us, it can inspire us to critically examine the world around us, and can help us understand culture that moves us.

Vibrant discussion about culture, society and the arts does not happen by accident. It must be carefully nurtured and requires financial support.

The Australia Council make extremely difficult decisions about what gets funded and what doesn’t.

Not every organisation and publication and festival can receive funding. Those who don’t secure funding are no more or less worthy than those who do. Reduced financial support for Australia’s creative endeavours encourages artists to turn against one another in judgement of what should and should not receive funding.

Australian artists entertain us, challenge us and allow us to see things from different perspectives. Fulfilling a capitalist desire for competition, however, only distracts from the importance of Australian artists and the contribution the creative sector makes to our lives.

– ref. Literary magazines are often the first place new authors are published. We can’t lose them – https://theconversation.com/literary-magazines-are-often-the-first-place-new-authors-are-published-we-cant-lose-them-137900

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By C Raina MacIntyre, Professor of Global Biosecurity, NHMRC Principal Research Fellow, Head, Biosecurity Program, Kirby Institute, UNSW

As Australia’s coronavirus restrictions are gradually lifted, we may well see an upswing in cases of COVID-19. The World Health Organisation has warned of the need for “extreme vigilance” in countries that are now emerging from lockdown.

A vaccine remains the best possible tool to guard against the virus. But with a vaccine still months or even years away, we will have to rely on other epidemic control measures, of which there are five key pillars.

Read more: Australia starts to re-open, but the premiers have the whip hand on timing

1. Finding every new case

We need to find and isolate every new case of COVID-19, to prevent transmission. Testing is the way we identify cases. Because even people without symptoms can transmit the virus, the testing regime should include high-risk, asymptomatic people.

Read more: To get on top of the coronavirus, we also need to test people without symptoms

Expanded testing criteria in some states allow any doctor to order a test if they suspect COVID-19, but national criteria still do not recommend testing of high-risk people (such as family contacts) who do not have symptoms.

In closed settings where COVID-19 cases have been identified – such as an aged care facility, cruise ship or household – everyone exposed should be tested, as there is a high rate of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infection that would otherwise be missed.

This was not done aboard the Ruby Princess cruise ship, where only those with symptoms were tested. This may have resulted in missed infections and further outbreaks. It is vital to avoid further incidents like this as we move out of lockdown.

2. Rigorous contact tracing

Every person who has come into contact with a known COVID-19 case needs to be traced and quarantined for two weeks. Ideally, they should be tested. Using the COVIDSafe app will help identify all contacts more thoroughly.

3. Continued social distancing

Extreme social distancing measures such as home lockdowns are now coming to an end in Australia. But we should keep practising lesser measures, such as maintaining a distance of 1.5 metres from other people.

4. Ongoing travel bans

Travel bans prevent infections being imported from countries with severe epidemics. In Australia, more than 60% of cases up to May 12 were imported through travel. Keeping the borders closed will allow further lifting of restrictions within Australia.

It is also important to continue quarantining return travellers, and testing Australians arriving home from high-risk countries. The Emirates airline has gone further, announcing COVID-19 testing for all passengers.

5. Face masks

Everyone in the United States has been advised to wear a face mask, because peak transmission occurs in the two days before symptom onset or on the first day. This can help flatten the curve, even if mask use is only modestly effective, especially if combined with social distancing.

It is not a recommendation at this stage in Australia, but masks can also help ease restrictions safely, and may be something to consider in the coming months in crowded public places.

Know your enemy

Besides on-the-ground tactics such as widespread testing and contact tracing, we also need a clear understanding of infectious disease epidemiology, and defined criteria to alert us when we may be heading into an epidemic period.

In countries that have flattened the curve and achieved low incidence of COVID-19, such as Australia and New Zealand, there has been talk of “elimination” of the disease.

Read more: We may well be able to eliminate coronavirus, but we’ll probably never eradicate it. Here’s the difference

But because of the low total infection numbers in these countries, most people remain susceptible to COVID-19. This means fresh outbreaks are possible in the 12-24 months or longer until we have a vaccine.

The concepts of “elimination”, “eradication” and “control” arose from vaccination programs. Eradication is global, whereas elimination is national or regional, and “control” is a goal when elimination is not possible. For measles, outbreaks may still occur during elimination, usually imported through travel, but do not lead to sustained transmission.

The World Health Organisation criteria for the elimination of measles include:

• low incidence with an R0 below 1 (meaning each person with the disease infects less than one other)

• high-quality surveillance

• high population immunity.

But with no vaccine for COVID-19, low incidence and high population immunity are mutually exclusive propositions. For a novel disease with no vaccine, it is premature to talk about eradication.

Ideal infections for elimination and eradication have no presymptomatic transmission and no animal host – for these reasons, eradication of COVID-19 is unlikely.

Read more: We may well be able to eliminate coronavirus, but we’ll probably never eradicate it. Here’s the difference

This means for the time being at least, we need to aim for “control” of COVID-19 – keeping the disease at a manageable level. For this, we need to differentiate between sustained community transmission and sporadic, non-sustaining outbreaks.

Widespread testing is the key to this. It will tell us how much infection is present, and if it is increasing. A stark reminder of the consequences of failure to test is the case of the United States, where the growth of the epidemic was not detected until it was too late.

How do we distinguish between sustained and non-sustained outbreaks? One possible definition of a sustained outbreak would be a certain number of generations of transmission from an original case. Another would be demonstrating ongoing community transmission over a defined period of time (such as three months), or a rise in the R0 value, a measure of how strongly the outbreak is growing. Contact tracing will clearly be vital to assessing this.

Detection of a sustained outbreak would be a warning sign that we are potentially heading into another epidemic period. This might therefore signal the need for increased testing, stronger social distancing, and other measures.

It is likely we will face alternating epidemic and non-epidemic periods, and will need to continue to manage COVID-19 with intermittent returns to stronger restrictions. That is, until we have a vaccine, at which point we can begin working towards bringing the COVID-19 crisis to a genuine close.

– ref. As restrictions ease, here are 5 crucial ways for Australia to stay safely on top of COVID-19 – https://theconversation.com/as-restrictions-ease-here-are-5-crucial-ways-for-australia-to-stay-safely-on-top-of-covid-19-138000

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elek Pafka, Lecturer in Urban Planning and Urban Design, University of Melbourne

The coronavirus pandemic has left many people questioning the relationship between urban density and healthy cities. After all, physical distancing has been the most common measure to contain the spread of the virus. But this doesn’t mean higher-density cities are necessarily more vulnerable and lower-density cities more resilient to the pandemic.

Some say high density is a key factor. Others argue it is unrelated. Evidence invoked on both sides has often been anecdotal. Advocates of lower densities choose cities such as New York or Madrid as examples of the perils of high density, while advocates of higher densities point to Hong Kong or Seoul.

Much of the time such debates are blind to the differences between various kinds of urban densities. Too little attention is paid to what urban density actually means. Density in cities takes on a broad range of meanings, such as density of buildings, residents or jobs.

Read more: Urban density matters – but what does it mean?

There is often confusion between internal densities within buildings, which vary widely with wealth, and the external densities of street life, which we share. To complicate things further, each of these concepts can be applied to a range of scales, from a building to a neighbourhood to a metropolis.

High internal densities linked to spread

So what kind of density is relevant for the spread of coronavirus? It has become increasingly clear COVID-19 is mainly transmitted through extended close contact, particularly in enclosed spaces, where droplets and aerosols accumulate. The density that matters is internal population density – generally measured as square metres per person.

Thus, high-risk places can include dormitories, open-plan offices, churches, hospitals, public transport, planes and cruise ships. The evidence to date points to much less transmission through casual contacts in outdoor spaces such as streets or parks.

Read more: Who’s most affected on public transport in the time of coronavirus?

A well-documented study of an outbreak in Seoul illustrates the micro-spatial logic of COVID-19. Of the 131 infected people, 94 were working in a crowded open-plan call centre on a single level of a high-rise building. Despite a high density of people on the site, only three other people in the building were infected.

The infected workers also transmitted the virus to 34 family members within their homes located in various parts of the city. Again, the internal densities are what matters for these infections.

Why do other densities matter less?

Neither gross residential densities of suburbs or neighbourhoods nor overall metropolitan densities necessarily reflect conditions at the scale of human encounter that determines transmission risks. There are two main reasons for this.

First, densities at the street or walkable neighbourhood scale can differ vastly from metropolitan or postcode averages. A local main street or transit node, for instance, can be dense when the average is low.

Second, a short physical distance between people is not the same thing as social encounter. The density of quarantine accommodation (such as a hotel) may be much higher than that of an aged-care facility, but we have seen the latter can be quite lethal.

Internal densities are geared to wealth. This means some people live and work under conditions where they can adapt to this virus and some do not. If we look at the densities in New York, for example, we find COVID-19 cases so far do not correlate with the density of Manhattan. Instead, cases are concentrated in the outer suburban areas of Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and The Bronx.

What does this mean for our cities?

So what does this all mean for the design and planning of a healthy city? Some might be tempted to propose “pandemic-safe” urban forms similar to the anti-urban utopias of the early 20th century. But if urban form is solely conceived to distance people, to eliminate the friction of social interaction, it will also eliminate urban buzz, reduce economic productivity, sociability, walkability and ultimately public health as well.

Read more: What makes a city tick? Designing the ‘urban DMA’

Instead, we should use this crisis as an opportunity to rethink urban resilience from a broad and nuanced public health perspective. How do we design a more adaptable city that maximises capacities for change in both its architecture and urban design? How do we undo the rigidities of the “master plan”?

As urban sociologist Richard Sennett put it, how to design a city that works like an accordion – where people can spread out when necessary and vice versa? What we need to do is design a more equitable city without the internal densities that have proven so deadly.

– ref. As coronavirus forces us to keep our distance, city density matters less than internal density – https://theconversation.com/as-coronavirus-forces-us-to-keep-our-distance-city-density-matters-less-than-internal-density-137790

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Slonim, Professor of Economics, University of Sydney

It’s 18 days since the government launched its digital contact-tracing app COVIDSafe. The latest figure we have for downloads is 5.4 million, on May 8, about 29% of smartphone users aged 14 and over.

My own mini-survey suggests that in Sydney and Melbourne the takeup could already be 40% – a figure the government has mentioned as a target – while in other places it is much lower.

Oddly, it’s information the government isn’t sharing with us.

Total number of COVIDSafe app users (millions)

The importance of downloading and using the app is growing day by day as we relax restrictions. We are able to see what has happened in countries such as South Korea that have relaxed restrictions and then experienced a second wave.

5.4 million Australians after 13 days is a promising start.

As can be seen in the above graph produced by my colleague Demetris Christodoulou and me, 5.4 million downloads represents about 28.7% of Australians with smartphones.

Read more: Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy predicts more than 50% take-up of COVID tracing app

It compares favourably to the 22.4% of Singaporeans with smartphones who downloaded their app within 13 days of its launch.

But the government is only making public a single figure indicating “total” downloads. It would be far more useful if it provided disaggregated community, city and state level data, and below, I attempt to fill the breach.

Letting us know more about which communities are downloading the app would help with health, motivation and transparency.

Health

Knowledge about potentially-dramatic variations in where the app was being downloaded could help guide policy.

Hypothetically speaking, if 70% of Melbourne’s smartphone users had downloaded the app but only 20% of Adelaide’s users, this could have distinct implications for the ability to successfully trace COVID-19 outbreaks in the respective cities and for the right amount of easing of restrictions in each city.

It could also help residents of those cities make more informed decisions about their own safety, such as whether and how to shop and whether to wear a mask.

Motivation

While COVIDSafe originally generated more than 500,000 daily downloads, the number has fallen to less than 100,000, suggesting that new efforts to motivate more downloads is urgently needed.

Providing geographical details could energise downloads in three ways.

First, people often feel enormous pride when their community steps up to help others. Knowing how well the community is doing is likely to motivate more people to help.

Read more: COVIDSafe tracking app reviewed: the government delivers on data security, but other issues remain

Second, knowing how well other communities are doing can be a powerful incentive to catch up; few people want to be in the community that isn’t doing its part.

Third, if state leaders make decisions about relaxing restrictions partly on the basis of local downloads, community members will see a direct connection between downloading the app and the freedoms that will be available to them.

Transparency

The government’s appeal to download the app is built around trust.

It has asked us to trust it by downloading the app. In return it should trust us with better information.

People in Adelaide, Alice Springs, Brisbane, Cairns, Canberra, Darwin, Geelong, the Gold Coast, Hobart, Launceston, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth, Sydney, Townsville, Wollongong, rural communities and other places deserve access to information the government already has that could help them make better choices.

The sort of data authorities are keeping to themselves

Given the lack of transparency to date, I conducted my own online survey among 876 residents of Sydney, Melbourne and regional communities with less than 50,000 people.

My survey results, run with a sample of people using the online survey platform PureProfile, indicate the proportion of people who had downloaded the app by May 11 was 50.5% in Sydney, 44.0% in Melbourne and 36.1% in less populated communities.

Controlling for age and gender, there was no significant difference between downloads in Sydney and Melbourne. Both were significantly higher than rural communities.

Read more: Contact tracing apps: a behavioural economist’s guide to improving uptake

Restricting the responses to people who have a mobile phone that is capable of downloading the app, the proportion of downloads increases to 53.8% in Sydney, 47.8% in Melbourne and 41.2% in less populated communities. An extra 7.2%, 6.9% and 5.7% of respondents said they would either definitely or probably download the app in the next week.

This survey evidence indicates that there are stark regional differences in the downloads, and that although the national level of downloads is about 29%, some locations such as Sydney and Melbourne may have already surpassed (or will soon supass) the 40% government stated target.

Of course the government shouldn’t rely these survey results, because it’s got the actual information. It is time it shared the detailed download information it has with us, both to reciprocate our trust and let us make more informed decisions.

– ref. In some places 40% of us may have downloaded COVIDSafe. Here’s why the government should share what it knows – https://theconversation.com/in-some-places-40-of-us-may-have-downloaded-covidsafe-heres-why-the-government-should-share-what-it-knows-138323

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Baerbel Koribalski, Senior research scientist, CSIRO

A team of US and South African researchers has published highly detailed images of the largest X-shaped “radio galaxy” ever discovered – PKS 2014-55.

Notably, they’ve helped resolve ongoing confusion about the galaxy’s unusual shape.

The spectacular new images were taken using the 64-antenna MeerKAT telescope in South Africa, by an international research team led by Bill Cotton of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Zooming in on a cosmic giant

Our research team also took detailed images of galaxy PKS 2014-55 last year, as part of the Evolutionary Map of the Universe project led by astrophysicist Ray Norris. We used CSIRO’s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope in Western Australia, which just completed its first set of pilot astronomical surveys.

Thanks to its innovative “radio cameras”, ASKAP can rapidly map very large areas of the sky to catalogue millions of objects emitting radio waves, from nearby supernova remnants to distant galaxies.

The prominent X-shape of PKS 2014-55 is made up of two pairs of giant lobes consisting of hot jets of electrons. These jets spurt outwards from a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s heart.

The lobes emit electromagnetic radiation in the form of radio waves, which can only be detected by radio telescopes like ASKAP. Humans can’t see radio waves. But if we could, from Earth PKS 2014-55 would look about the same size as the Moon.

Read more: What the universe looks like when viewed with radio eyes

What makes a radio galaxy?

Typically, radio galaxies have only one pair of lobes. One is a “jet” and the other a “counter-jet”.

These jets expand into the surrounding space at nearly the speed of light. They initially move in a straight line, but twist and bend into many marvellous shapes as they encounter their surroundings.

Centaurus A, seen below, is an example of a giant elliptical galaxy with two prominent radio lobes.

Galaxy PKS 2014-55’s giant X-shape, with two pairs of lobes emerging at very different angles, is highly unusual.

What makes the lobes?

To understand why having two pairs of lobes is unusual, we first need to understand what creates the lobes.

Nearly all big galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their centre.

In an active galaxy, powerful jets of charged particles can emerge from the area around the supermassive black hole. Astronomers believe these are emitted from near the poles of the black hole, which is why there are two of them, and they usually point in opposite directions.

When the black hole’s activity stops, the jets stop growing and the material in them flows back towards the centre. Thus, what we see as one lobe of a radio galaxy is made up of both a jet spurting out, and the backflow material.

A mystery solved

In the past, there were two major theories for why PKS 2014-55 has two pairs of lobes.

The first suggested there were actually two massive active black holes at the galaxy’s centre, each emitting two powerful jets.

The second theory suggested the supermassive black hole had undergone a spin flip. This is when a rotating black hole’s spin axis has a sudden change in orientation, resulting in a second pair of jets at a different angle from the first pair.

But the recent observations from the South African MeerKAT telescope strongly suggest a third possibility: that the two larger lobes are the fast-moving particles zooming out from the black hole, while the two smaller lobes are the backflow looping around to fall back in.

The MeerKAT team achieved high-resolution images ten times more sensitive than our ASKAP pilot observations conducted here in Australia last year.

A cosmic wonder

Using CSIRO’s ASKAP telescope, our team observed the “purple butterfly” of PKS 2014-55 to be an enormous cosmic structure. It spans at least five million light years – about 20 times the size of our own Milky Way galaxy.

PKS 2014-55 is located on the outskirts of a massive cluster of galaxies known as Abell 3667. It was discovered more than 60 years ago using the Mills Cross Telescope at CSIRO’s old Fleurs field station in New South Wales.

The galaxy’s first detailed radio picture was taken by Ron Ekers in 1969.

Read more: A brain transplant for one of Australia’s top telescopes

ASKAP

The ASKAP telescope we used to capture PKS 2014-55 is an array of 36 radio dishes laid out in a pattern six kilometres in diameter. Together, the dishes make up a large radio telescope that uses Earth’s rotation to produce sharp images of astronomical sources near and far.

Each dish is 12m wide and equipped with new technologies developed by CSIRO and industry partners. ASKAP is a fast survey machine, taking radio images over very wide areas of the sky. Several surveys of the entire sky are expected to start next year.

We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji as the traditional owners of the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory site.

– ref. Experts solve the mystery of a giant X-shaped galaxy, with a monster black hole as its engine – https://theconversation.com/experts-solve-the-mystery-of-a-giant-x-shaped-galaxy-with-a-monster-black-hole-as-its-engine-138205

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Renwick, Professor, Physical Geography (climate science), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

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

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

Earth had several periods of high carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and high temperatures over the last several million years. Can you explain what caused these periods, given that there was no burning of fossil fuels or other sources of human created carbon dioxide release during those times?

Burning fossil fuels or vegetation is one way to put carbon dioxide into the air – and it is something we have become very good at. Humans are generating nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year, mostly by burning fossil fuels.

Carbon dioxide stays in the air for centuries to millennia and it builds up over time. Since we began the systematic use of coal and oil for fuel, around 300 years ago, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has gone up by almost half.

Apart from the emissions we add, carbon dioxide concentrations in the air go up and down as part of the natural carbon cycle, driven by exchanges between the air, the oceans and the biosphere (life on earth), and ultimately by geological processes.

Natural changes in carbon dioxide

Every year, carbon dioxide concentrations rise and fall a little as plants grow in spring and summer and die off in the autumn and winter. The timing of this seasonal rise and fall is tied to northern hemisphere seasons, as most of the land surface on Earth is there.

The oceans also play an active role in the carbon cycle, contributing to variations over a few months to slow shifts over centuries. Ocean water takes up carbon dioxide directly in an exchange between the air and seawater. Tiny marine plants use carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and many microscopic marine organisms use carbon compounds to make shells. When these marine micro-organisms die and sink to the seafloor, they take the carbon with them.

Collectively, the biosphere (ecosystems on land and in soils) and the oceans are absorbing about half of all human-emitted carbon dioxide, and this slows the rate of climate change. But as the climate continues to change and the oceans warm up further, it is not clear whether the biosphere and oceans will continue absorbing such a large fraction of our emissions. As water warms, it is less able to absorb carbon dioxide, and as the climate changes, many ecosystems become stressed and are less able to photosynthesise carbon dioxide.

Earth’s deep climate history

On time scales of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, carbon dioxide concentrations in the air have varied hugely, and so has global climate.

This long-term carbon cycle involves the formation and decay of the Earth’s surface itself: tectonic plate activity, the build-up and weathering of mountain chains, prolonged volcanic activity, and the emergence of new seafloor at active mid-ocean faults.

Most of the carbon stored in the Earth’s crust is in the form of limestone, created from the carbon-based shells of marine organisms that sank to the ocean floor millions of year ago.

Carbon dioxide is added to the air when volcanoes erupt, and it is taken out of the air as rocks and mountain ranges weather and wear down. These processes typically take millions of years to add or subtract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Read more: Climate explained: how volcanoes influence climate and how their emissions compare to what we produce

In the present day, volcanoes add only a little carbon dioxide to the air, around 1% of what human activity is currently contributing. But there have been times in the past where volcanic activity has been vastly greater and has spewed large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air.

An example is around 250 million years ago, when prolonged volcanic activity raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels dramatically. These were volcanic eruptions on a vast scale – lasting for around two million years and causing a mass extinction.

In the more recent geological past, the past 50 million years, carbon dioxide levels have been gradually dropping overall and the climate has been cooling, with some ups and downs. Once carbon dioxide concentrations became low enough (around 300 parts per million) between two and three million years ago, the current ice age cycle began, but the warming our emissions are causing is larger than the natural cooling trend.

Read more: Climate explained: why we won’t be heading into an ice age any time soon

While Earth’s climate has changed significantly in the past, it happened on geological time scales. The carbon in the oil and coal we burn represents carbon dioxide taken up by vegetation hundreds of millions of years ago and then deposited through geological processes over millennia. We have burned a significant proportion within a few centuries.

If human emissions of carbon dioxide continue to increase through this century, we could reach levels not seen for tens of millions of years, when Earth had a much warmer climate with much higher sea levels and no ice sheets.

– ref. Climate explained: what caused major climate change in the past? – https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-what-caused-major-climate-change-in-the-past-137874

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grace Russell, PhD Candidate, Southern Cross University

We set off from Fremantle Harbour at 6 am – a ridiculous hour university students aren’t usually accustomed to – and sailed to Perth Canyon, 120 kilometres away.

A fellow volunteer and I were constantly on watch, too nervous and excited to take our eyes off the horizon in case we missed the tell-tale spray of a pygmy blue whale blow.

We searched for hours with nothing to show for our efforts. My eyes began playing tricks on me. Was that white dot in the far distance the blow of a blue whale? Was the crest of that wave more than just white water?

In the early afternoon, finally, a magnificent spray of white water. Fully visible at 9 metres above the ocean surface, the sign of a pygmy blue whale. We surveyed about six blues that day, as well as a pod of bottlenose dolphins.

The behaviour of whales and dolphins means some species, including blue whales, spend little time at the surface. So despite their overwhelming size, they can be hard to find and tough to study.

Read more: My team uses crossbows and drones to collect bacteria from whales – and the results are teaching us how to keep whales healthy

That’s one reason we need to rely on drones. My research will use drones to collect video footage of humpback and pygmy blue whales in Australian waters. From this footage, we can extract still images to take measurements along the length and width of the whale.

These measurements will let us calculate the size and volume of a whale, and using this we can determine an individual’s body condition – an indication of its health.

Using drones for marine science

Advancements in drone technology have allowed them to be used in a variety of research projects, particularly in marine science, such as marine fauna abundance estimates, habitat use and behavioural studies. This is because drones are relatively cheap, accessible and easy to use.

Drones became a widely used marine scientific tool in 2015, and became more popular in 2018. Before then, researchers used manned aircraft to assess body condition from birds-eye view images of whales.

But manned aircraft can be expensive – think plane hire cost, fuel, pilot hire and airport fees – and pose extra risks to researchers on board.

The drones I’ll be using will be around 20 m above the water, capturing video footage of the whale for ten minutes.

But this can be tricky – whales are great swimmers and can move in all different directions, arching their back, rolling over or even twisting to one side. We need the whale lying flat near the surface of the water to measure it.

Using a statistical software program, the focal length of the camera and the altitude of the drone, I can turn measurements of its total length from pixels to absolute metres.

From there, I can calculate its volume to determine whether it’s in good nick, comparing it to other whales from its population.

Read more: Australian sea lions are declining. Using drones to check their health can help us understand why

Sizing up whales

Humpback whales can weigh up to 40,000 kg and grow to about 13 to 18 m, with females usually the larger of the two. The blue whale, the largest animal on Earth, can reach 24 to 30 m in length, weighing in at a whopping 190,000 kg.

My research links the condition of a whale’s body to the timing of its migration. Understanding this relationship is important because it’ll hopefully increase our understanding about what trade-offs whales make during their migration.

Read more: Why are whales big, but not bigger?

For example, humpback whales rely on stored energy during their annual migration from their feeding grounds in Antarctica to their breeding grounds in the north west (Camden Sound) and eastern (Great Barrier Reef) waters of Australia. This means they don’t eat during this time.

So, their body condition will determine how long they can physically spend in these breeding grounds. In other words, the more energy stores they have, the more time they can go without feeding.

While on the breeding grounds, whales also compete for breeding opportunities and calving. The most energetically demanding of these is calving, as the energy a mother passes onto her calf will influence her calf’s growth rate and survival.

Climate change threatens food supply

Humpback whale numbers have been bouncing back since commercial whaling for humpbacks in Australia stopped in 1963.

More globally, many whale populations, including blue whales, are slowly recovering since the International Whaling Commission moratorium on commercial whaling started in 1986. But climate change adds new, and possibly unknown, threats to whales.

Read more: Why Iceland is set to resume whaling despite international opposition

In particular, climate change – including changes in sea temperatures, ocean acidification, reduction in sea ice, primary productivity and changes to ocean currents – can threaten the main prey of whales: krill.

Whales must consume large amounts of food per day to survive. And whales with reduced fat reserves have less chance of reproducing successfully. If their main food source is no longer there, they may not get enough food to make these long migrations, or to give enough energy to their calves for survival and growth.

Females may skip a reproductive cycle to ensure they have enough energy reserves for future pregnancy. Males may also spend less time on the breeding grounds if they don’t have sufficient energy reserves, decreasing their breeding opportunities.

Declining krill stock in the Southern Ocean plays a big role, but so do other stressors in their environment from shipping, oil and gas production, and other increased human activities in the ocean.

Read more: We need to understand the culture of whales so we can save them

So until we better understand these mysterious and enigmatic creatures, I’ll forgive the early morning starts. I’ll embrace the wind in my face and the salt in my hair, knowing the welfare of whales around the world is everyone’s responsibility.

– ref. I measure whales with drones to find out if they’re fat enough to breed – https://theconversation.com/i-measure-whales-with-drones-to-find-out-if-theyre-fat-enough-to-breed-135684

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne

Time has finally caught up with Alan Jones. Time as measured in years, but not time as measured by social and attitudinal change.

It is remarkable that his recipe of nostalgia, bullying and reactionary politics, all delivered in a ranting, hectoring style, is as successful today as it has been for the whole 35 years of his career in radio broadcasting.

Two hundred and twenty-six ratings wins in the highly competitive Sydney breakfast radio market is testament to that.

And power. Former Prime Minister John Howard, said in a tribute that Jones had been the most influential radio broadcaster during his time in politics, a period of 33 years.

In the early 2000s, Jones was for a time a de facto member of the NSW state cabinet. In 2001, when Premier Bob Carr was about to appoint Michael Costa as the new police minister, he told Costa to go and see Jones at his home and talk about policing policy with him.

Read more: It will be money, not morality, that finally turns the tide on Alan Jones

Only a year earlier, Jones had come out badly from what was called the cash-for-comment inquiry. The inquiry found he and other talkback hosts had taken money from big companies to spruik their virtues, while making it look as if it was their own honestly held opinion.

Yet within weeks, Jones was hosting an event for Howard, who was then prime minister and had become a fixture on the broadcaster’s program.

It invites the question, why?

There are many answers, but one is overwhelmingly more important than the others: the climate of fear and resentment created in certain sections of society by economic dislocation and the threat to security represented by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.

In 2006, the Australia Institute produced a webpaper by Clive Hamilton that described the characteristics of Jones’s audience based on extensive demographic and attitudinal data from Roy Morgan Research.

It showed Jones draws his audience largely from an older generation in lower to middle income brackets. His listeners are more religious than other Australians, more socially conservative, more likely to believe that the fundamental values of Australian life are under threat and more likely to favour heterosexual families in which children are disciplined and taught respect for authority. They were also reported to feel less safe than they used to.

If we reflect on the tectonic shifts in society since Jones embarked on his radio career in 1985, it is possible to see how an audience like this might find the Jones recipe appealing.

The late 1980s were years in which the Hawke-Keating governments opened the Australian economy to global competition. Many manufacturing jobs were lost overseas. Blue-collar workers, many trained for one job only, were suddenly on the economic scrapheap.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that long-term unemployment in Australia reached an unprecedented peak of 366,000 persons in March 1993, representing 38% of the unemployed. The previous peak (31% of total unemployment) occurred in February 1984. Older men had been particularly affected by this trend.

Nobody had asked them whether they thought this was good policy. They felt disenfranchised and their resentment was to surface in a variety of ways: dislike of Asians, contempt for Aboriginal people and more lately, fear of Islam and asylum-seekers.

These attitudes were discovered in much social research during the ensuing decades. An example was a report for the Melbourne University Social Equity Institute on attitudes to asylum-seekers in 2016.

It noted that many of the fears and resentments underpinning attitudes to asylum-seekers were similar to those behind the rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party in the mid-1990s.

The promise by Howard in 1996 to make Australians feel “relaxed and comfortable” turned out to be a successful election strategy, and for the 11 years of his prime ministership, Howard was a fixture on the Jones program.

It was symbiotic. The people Jones referred to as living in “Struggle Street” became “Howard’s battlers”.

The election of Kevin Rudd in 2007, with its focus on climate change, was calculated to make Australians feel anything but relaxed and comfortable.

Jones read this unerringly and became a relentless climate denier, offering his own version of comfort to an audience confronting an existential threat for which the science was both irrefutable and incomprehensible.

It was over climate change that in August 2019 Jones uttered his infamous entreaty to Scott Morrison that he should shove a sock down the throat of the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern.

Read more: Shoving a sock in it is not the answer. Have advertisers called time on Alan Jones?

Powerful women were often his target. His proposal in 2011 that Julia Gillard, then prime minister, should be taken out to sea and dumped in a chaff bag, was also provoked by his anger at her government’s climate-change policies.

This may or may not have resonated with his ageing audience, but at any rate they stayed loyal to him.

He has been accused of racism, particularly in respect of Middle Eastern people and Muslims generally.

In 2009, the New South Wales Administrative Decisions Tribunal found Jones “incited hatred, serious contempt and severe ridicule of Lebanese Muslims” during on-air comments in April 2005.

He had described them as “vermin” who “rape and pillage a nation that’s taken them in”.

These insults were unleashed at a time of racial tension in Sydney that culminated in the Cronulla riots, when a confrontation between men of Middle Eastern appearance and Anglo-Australian lifesavers provoked a violent retaliatory response a week later.

Multiculturalism and feminism have been two of the most enduring forces for social change in Australia over the past five decades. Jones has been a crude and vocal campaigner against both. Coupled with economic dislocation and the threat of terrorism, they have reshaped the contours of Australian society.

The times have suited him, but in many fundamental respects time has also passed him by.

His outbursts have generated social and commercial backlashes recently that were unthinkable just a few years ago, powered by the new force of social media.

For his latter-day employer, Nine Entertainment, he was high-risk. The withdrawal of 19 big advertisers from his program after the attack on Ardern came only a few months after he had cost 2GB $3.75 million in defamation damages, plus costs, for a baseless and relentless campaign in which he blamed a family of quarry owners for the deaths of 12 people in the 2011 Grantham floods.

It may be no coincidence that his retirement comes as his contract with Nine approaches its end.

– ref. The times suited him, then passed him by: the Alan Jones radio era comes to an end – https://theconversation.com/the-times-suited-him-then-passed-him-by-the-alan-jones-radio-era-comes-to-an-end-138420

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

Speaking as an expert in epidemiology, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly is candid about the prospects of a second-wave of coronavirus in a society that hasn’t developed herd immunity.

“There is a very large risk of a second wave. We need to do this very carefully,” he says, as Australia starts to roll back restrictions.

“We are potentially victims of our own success here because we have been so successful in minimising the first wave of infections, the vast majority of Australians have not actually been exposed to this virus in a way that could develop immunity in people or herd immunity in the population”.

“There is that sense that people want to just get back to doing what what they did before. But it’s going to be a new normal. We have to decide as a society, what does a COVID-safe society look like? And there will be changes…”

“This is a big change in the way we’re going to live. I think we’ve seen that in human history. The changes that pandemics have brought, back to [how] the 1918 flu changed the world. The HIV/AIDS pandemic has changed the world. And this one will change the world.”

Kelly, in his role as an adviser to the government, praises Australia’s response to the virus as one of the most effective in the world – comparable to the successes of Taiwan and New Zealand. But he also acknowledges the marked difference in policy between the Tasman neighbours.

“New Zealand very early on decided that they could and wanted to eliminate the virus altogether as a public health issue. And so they’ve gone very hard with their social isolation policies and so forth…they really are on a path to not having any virus in the country at all.”

“On our side of the Tasman, we went for a suppression approach, which meant that we didn’t go quite as hard with the lockdown measures that have been introduced, on the basis that the economic and social impacts of that were not proportionate to the threat of the virus.”

If, as both governments would like, a trans-Tasman “bubble” is established for travel, Kelly agrees that, in terms of risk, it would be the New Zealanders who’d have to be more careful about inviting Australians in rather than the other way around.

“But I think it’s definitely achievable. ”

Describing himself as a glass half-full person, Kelly says: “So with my glass half full, I will hope that sometime in 2021 we’ll be talking about vaccines. And then our challenge will be getting enough of them available to the people that need them, not only in Australia but throughout the world and particularly in the poorer nations of the world, so that we can have an equitable distribution of something that could change a lot of people’s lives.”

Additional audio

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

Image:

Lukas Coch/AAP

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Paul Kelly on the risk of a COVID-19 second-wave – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-paul-kelly-on-the-risk-of-a-covid-19-second-wave-138432

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

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is being tested for COVID-19 and staying in isolation after having a major coughing fit in the House of Representatives while delivering his statement on the impact of the coronavirus on the economy.

Frydenberg gulped water from a bottle as he tried to stop coughing and regain his voice. Later he was present in question time.

During the afternoon he issued a statement saying that while making his speech “I had a dry mouth and a cough”.

“After question time I sought the advice of the deputy Chief Medical Officer,” who had advised “that out of an abundance of caution it was prudent I be tested for COVID-19.”

“Following receipt of that advice I immediately left Parliament House to be tested and will await the result in isolation. I expect the result of my test to be provided tomorrow”.

This is the second time Frydenberg has been tested for the virus. The other was when he had flu-like symptoms after he returned from a March G20 meeting in Saudi Arabia. The result was negative.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton had COVID-19 after his return from a US visit.

The ABC tweeted that Frydenberg would not be able to appear on 7.30 from isolation.

Labor Stephen Jones, shadow assistant treasurer, tweeted he hoped Frydenberg had had the app on.

The speech, which Frydenberg was able to finish, was delivered to a chamber with a limited number of appropriately distanced MPs in it.

The official medical advice is that anyone with respiratory symptoms should be tested.

– ref. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg tested for COVID-19 – https://theconversation.com/treasurer-josh-frydenberg-tested-for-covid-19-138437

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Carson, Senior Lecturer, Creative Industries Faculty, QUT, Queensland University of Technology

Ah, Hydra! This is an island possessed of “wild and naked perfection”, wrote American author Henry Miller after sailing into Hydra on the eve of the second world war.

With a population of around 2,500, Hydra is a small island in the Saronic Gulf only two hours from Athens. The Hydra Town harbour, a natural amphitheatre with grey and white stone houses set into the hills overlooking the waterfront, has featured in many books and films – think Sophia Loren in Boy on a Dolphin (1957).

Polly Samson’s A Theatre for Dreamers, a fictionalised account of the summer of 1960, is the latest addition to the corpus of Hydra-inspired novels. In it we meet Australian writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston and poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen and his lover Marianne Ihlen as they all work and play in a seeming paradise.

While the married couple Clift and Johnston are in financial and emotional disarray, Cohen and Ihlen are young, beautiful and at the start of their now famous relationship.

Read more: ‘A woman ahead of her time’: remembering the Australian writer Charmian Clift, 50 years on

The expat dream

The expatriate clique of Samson’s novel exemplifies groups attracted in the 1960s to the picturesque island where artists could live and work cheaply. The novel includes fulsome accounts of the raging arguments and creative and sexual jealousies that beset the Clift-Johnston inner circle, Cohen and Ihlen and visiting friends.

A Theatre for Dreamers conjures up an appealing picture of a Hydra which, at least in physical terms, has changed little since then. There are still no cars on the island and donkeys continue to do all the haulage up and down the steep streets from the port.

Samson has faithfully rendered the landscape of winding stone-flagged streets and white-washed houses. It is a pity therefore that the novel plays into the narrative of sexual transgression and self-indulgence that continues to dominate works about this community. The novel is narrated by a young English traveller, Erica, whose relationship with her boyfriend Jimmy predictably goes awry in this heady climate.

Heightened levels of drug-taking, drinking and sexual adventure were indeed a part of many expat lives at the time but the continuing focus on this discourse, which of course makes for good copy, has the unfortunate effect of undermining the impact of major work produced by foreign and Greek artists and writers in this era.

Samson has researched the topic for some time and knows the life of this island well. Sometimes the research is a distraction as when the author’s prose mingles strangely with the original writing of one of the expatriates.

Readers who know Clift’s writing will recognise her voice in the dialogue. Samson acknowledges that she was given permission by Clift’s estate to quote from Peel Me A Lotus (1959), Clift’s travel memoir about her life on Hydra from one February to October. The effect is rather an odd seesaw between two genres as Clift’s lines pop up in a scene in Samson’s novel.

But readers who have never been to Hydra and know little about life there in the 1960s will enjoy the breezy romance and imagining the tumultuous relationship of Marianne with her then husband, writer Axel Jensen, and the adventures of the Johnston family.

Hydra’s legacy

Samson is an enthusiastic supporter of Clift’s writing. Channeling her in this novel, Samson makes a great contribution to Clift’s legacy as most of her work is now out of print. One hopes readers will be inspired to search out copies of Clift’s work.

There is of course no need to further promote Leonard Cohen’s work, which has assumed an afterlife of its own, including a renewed interest in Cohen’s life on Hydra.

Today many people on Hydra would not know the Clift-Johnston history but Cohen is even more firmly part of the island’s fabric. In 2015 a tribute concert to Cohen on the Hydra waterfront appeared to attract most of the town’s residents, young and old, and visiting his house in Hydra Town is part of an annual pilgrimage. By 2017 there were guided walking tours to Cohen’s island haunts.

Clift and Johnston are known to a smaller audience although they were once big fish in the Australian literary and journalistic cliques. Those who want to explore their story further can find an account of many of the characters in Samson’s novel in Nadia Wheatley’s meticulous biography, The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift (2001). In addition, The Broken Book (2004) by Australian novelist Susan Johnson is a rewarding and imaginative recreation of Clift’s life that goes beyond the wild Hydra cliché.

Read more: Friday essay: a fresh perspective on Leonard Cohen and the island that inspired him

– ref. Book review: Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson mixes real stories with romance – https://theconversation.com/book-review-theatre-for-dreamers-by-polly-samson-mixes-real-stories-with-romance-136714

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maximilian de Courten, Professor in Global Public Health, Victoria University

Many people in the community are wearing face masks and gloves in an attempt to protect themselves against the coronavirus.

They might put on these items to go to the shops, or perhaps when taking a walk through the neighbourhood.

The evidence on whether these measures will actually protect against coronavirus is mixed and largely inconclusive.

But you’re even less likely to get protection if you don’t take care when putting on these items, while you’re wearing them, and when you take them off.

Read more: Should everyone be wearing face masks? It’s complicated

Are masks recommended?

In Australia, the Department of Health states you don’t need to wear a mask if you’re well.

People self-isolating with symptoms suspected to be COVID-19 are advised to wear a surgical face mask when other members of their household are in the same room.

This is in line with recommendations from other countries and the World Health Organisation.

Some countries, particularly those with higher rates of COVID-19 than Australia, provide different advice. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States recommend the use of masks, or cloth face coverings, more widely.

In Hong Kong, face masks are obligatory for everyone taking public transport.

Read more: Do homemade masks work? Sometimes. But leave the design to the experts

So do masks protect against COVID-19?

We should first separate the two distinct functions of a face mask: protecting others from being infected by a wearer, and protecting the wearer from infection.

SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is transmitted via droplets that fly out of our mouths or nose: most commonly when when we cough or sneeze, but also when we speak.

Most of these particles range in size between 0.3-10 micrometers. They can be directly inhaled or land on a surface where we pick them up on our hands before touching our face.

The current thinking is face masks worn by an infected person can protect the people around them by filtering at least some of these particles, particularly larger ones. This constitutes the former of the two functions, and is known as “source control”.

Read more: Coronavirus: how worried should I be about the shortage of face masks? Or can I just use a scarf?

Regarding the latter – protecting the wearer from infection – there’s some research on this, but not for COVID-19 specifically.

Evidence has shown the use of masks among health-care workers can reduce their infection with various other coronaviruses – so masks are an important element of PPE.

But for people in the community who appear to be healthy, we need more research before we can draw firm conclusions on the benefits of masks.

Are you doing it wrong?

Whatever the state of the science, some people appear to be doing things that could defeat the purpose of wearing a mask. Examples include pulling the mask under their chin for a “breather” or to make a phone call; or touching the mask while wearing it.

Through these actions, you can transfer the virus directly from your hands or your mobile phone to your face, increasing your risk of being infected.

The WHO has published some dos and don’ts for wearing face masks, summarised here:

What about gloves?

Gloves prevent the transmission of germs if used properly, and are an integral part of PPE for health-care workers.

If you’re suspected or confirmed to have COVID-19 and you’re isolating at home, Australian guidelines recommend anyone wanting to clean your room should put on a mask and gloves before entering.

However, gloves have not been recommended as a precautionary measure against COVID-19 for the average citizen. That’s largely because of the evidence we have about how the disease is, and isn’t, transmitted.

The virus is not absorbed through skin, so you can’t contract COVID-19 through touch alone. To acquire coronavirus through touch, you would have to touch a contaminated surface and then touch your face.

Although it is possible, scientists believe a much smaller proportion of infections happen this way, as compared to when an uninfected person inhales virus-carrying droplets emitted directly from an infected person.

Read more: My skin’s dry with all this hand washing. What can I do?

In the US where there are much higher rates of COVID-19 than in Australia, the CDC also suggests the use of gloves only in two coronavirus-related scenarios:

Wear them right

While there’s no evidence to suggest wearing gloves in the community will protect you, if you do choose to wear them, there are some things you should consider.

Importantly, if you still touch your face with your gloved hands – or even touch your mobile phone – this renders the gloves useless.

And if you’re not careful, you can also contaminate your hands when you put on or take off gloves.

So follow these steps when removing gloves to reduce the risk of contaminating your hands in the process.

– ref. Are you wearing gloves or a mask to the shops? You might be doing it wrong – https://theconversation.com/are-you-wearing-gloves-or-a-mask-to-the-shops-you-might-be-doing-it-wrong-137393

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamie Pittock, Professor, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University

A major independent review has confirmed freshwater flows are vital to maintaining the health of the Murray River’s lower lakes, striking a blow to demands by New South Wales that seawater flow in.

The review, released today, was led by the CSIRO and commissioned by the Murray Darling Basin Authority. It examined hundreds of scientific studies into the lower lakes region of South Australia, through which the Murray River flows before reaching the ocean.

The review recommends managing the lakes with freshwater, not seawater. More importantly, it highlights how climate change and upstream farming is reducing the flow of water for the environment in the lower lakes.

These findings are critically important. They show the severe health threat still facing the river system and its internationally important wetlands. They also cast doubt on whether the A$13 billion basin plan can achieve all its aims.

A barrage of criticism

The Murray Darling river system runs from Queensland, through NSW, the ACT and Victoria. In South Australia the River Murray discharges into two large lakes, Alexandrina and Albert, before flowing into the 130 kilometre-long Coorong lagoon, through the Murray Mouth and into the ocean.

Since 1940 five low dams, or barrages, have stopped seawater flowing into the lakes from the Murray Mouth and Coorong, and raised the lakes’ water level.

NSW wants the barrages lifted to allow seawater back into Lake Alexandrina, to free up freshwater for agriculture upstream.

Read more: 6,000 years of climate history: an ancient lake in the Murray-Darling has yielded its secrets

In December 2019, NSW Nationals John Barilaro said: “I refuse to let regional communities die while we wash productive water into the Great Australian Bite (sic), 1000km away”. Irrigation advocates have backed his calls.

Victoria has also questioned whether the lower lakes can continue to be kept fresh, given the water scarcity plaguing the entire river system.

But today’s review confirmed the lower lakes were largely a freshwater ecosystem prior to European occupation. It said removing the barrages would cause significant ecological and socioeconomic harm, and would not lead to water savings if the basin plan targets are to be met.

The Murray Mouth is choking

The review cited research we published this month, which concluded it was impossible to achieve the basin plan target to keep the Murray Mouth open 95% of the time.

This is because Murray Darling Basin Authority modelling did not factor in the power of the Southern Ocean to move sand into the Murray Mouth, which is now choked. Dredging will be required most of the time to keep the Murray Mouth open and maintain the ecology of the Coorong.

The Coorong and Lakes Alexandrina and Albert are a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention.

The review found removing the barrages would significantly change the freshwater character of the site, which we have an international obligation to maintain for the sake of waterbirds, fisheries and threatened species.

Read more: Damning royal commission report leaves no doubt that we all lose if the Murray-Darling Basin Plan fails

This is becoming harder during periods when freshwater inflows are scarce. In the Millennium Drought for example, lake levels fell exposing highly acidic mudflats. In other areas, the waters became more salty.

After the basin plan was adopted in 2012, the condition of the lower lakes improved when the Millennium Drought broke and environmental flows were delivered, sustaining the system in the current drought. But very little of those flows enter the sea, except during floods.

The system of barrages in the lower lakes consist of 593 gates. Using official data, we calculate that for 70% of the time since 2007, fewer than ten gates have been open to the sea. For one-third of the time, none were open, indicating there is insufficient water to sustain fisheries and flush salt to the ocean.

Our research concludes that without the barrages the sand banks will reduce the volume of water flowing through the Murray Mouth. The tides would not be strong enough to keep the lakes flushed so water quality would decline. No barrages means lower lake levels and exposed mudflats, generating sulphuric acid.

An uncertain future

The review reinforces the South Australian government’s position that the lakes should be maintained with freshwater. It also obliges the federal government to implement the basin plan in its current form, despite NSW’s demands for changes.

The final report also highlighted how climate change will make management of the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth “increasingly challenging” and said adaptation options were needed for the entire river system.

By the end of this century, rising seas may flow over the barrages. Maintaining freshwater inflows and the barrages buys us time, but we need a serious national conversation about how to manage this challenge.

Read more: Australia’s inland rivers are the pulse of the outback. By 2070, they’ll be unrecognisable

The federal and South Australian governments recently announced a Coorong Partnership to enable local communities and groups participate in programs to improve management of the lagoon. This is timely and should be expanded to cover the broader Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth regions.

Freshwater flowing from the headwaters to the sea is vital for the health of the Murray-Darling Basin as a whole. Today’s report should be the start of the national discussion on shoring up the health of Australia’s most important river system in the face of an uncertain future.

– ref. It’s official: expert review rejects NSW plan to let seawater flow into the Murray River – https://theconversation.com/its-official-expert-review-rejects-nsw-plan-to-let-seawater-flow-into-the-murray-river-138291

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Sanderson, Professor and Inaugural Judith Neilson Chair in Architecture, UNSW

Many commentators have speculated on how the coronavirus pandemic will alter cities and the ways they are planned and used. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has tweeted: “There is a density level in NYC that is destructive […] NYC must develop an immediate plan to reduce density.”

Articles about disease and cities have reported on how past pandemics led to civic improvements, such as public health pioneer John Snow’s use of cholera maps, an early form of health-data gathering, to combat cholera in 19th-century London.

But these stories relate to cities in richer countries, which have enough funding and the political will to make changes. It’s hard to see how the COVID-19 pandemic will lead to any better outcomes for the close to a billion or so people who live in fast-growing, low-income, informal settlements, or slums, that cram cities throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific. These settlements are some of the densest and most poorly serviced places on Earth.

Read more: Coronavirus an ‘existential threat’ to Africa and her crowded slums

Density, the good and the bad

Despite Cuomo’s statement, density for cities is good on the whole. The world’s population is rocketing, with most of this growth happening in cities. Where else would we put all these people?

Density is good for innovation, socialising, economies of scale, fuel efficiency and economic growth. Density, though, is good only when managed and planned. New York’s governor may have a point if he was talking about de-densifying slums in Dhaka, Cali or Freetown. Slum density can be grim.

In these dense settlements, heat stifles, ventilation is rare, light is sparse and families share one room and basic services (thereby worsening the spread of respiratory disease). Density that prevents fire trucks reaching fires, or that lacks adequate drainage, sanitation or piped water supply, is not good.

Health services in cities across the world have ramped up in anticipation of the inundation of coronavirus patients. This has been based on modelling of health data across respective populations, much as Snow did for London. Combined with lockdown and other social distancing measures, there is evidence this has so far mostly worked well (though not a cause for relaxing).

Health risks in slums, however, have been awful for decades. We have little data on the health of slum dwellers, and health care is often out of reach for those who are sick. The paltry numbers of ventilators in African countries attest to the shortage of equipment and support – what chance if you’re poor?

Read more: ‘How will we eat’? India’s coronavirus lockdown threatens millions with severe hardship

Disasters come and go for slum dwellers

Will coronavirus have a lasting impact on urban planning and how we use cities? Perhaps.

Businesses might be asking why they spend so much on office space when employees have shown they can work from home. Many hitherto-polluted cities have enjoyed much cleaner air during lockdowns. Several European cities are considering lasting zoning regulations to reserve streets for cyclists.

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

But again, for people living in slums, it may well be business as usual. The coronavirus will be just one more tragedy for many who live in slums.

Take the Ebola outbreak of 2014-16, which killed over 11,000 people across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Dense, poorly serviced slums with people living cheek by jowl were particular hotspots. Ebola had devastating impacts on economies, lives and health-care systems.

Yet evidence of post-Ebola improvements in urban planning are hard to find. When three-quarters of a country’s urban population, such as Sierra Leone’s, live in slums and confront other pressing matters of poverty and recent conflict, de-densifying and replanning slums equates to nirvana, at least in the short term.

Residents of Freetown in Sierra Leone have no reason to believe this pandemic will lead to any more improvements than previous disasters did. Slum Dwellers International/Flickr, CC BY

Read more: A novel idea: integrating urban and rural safety nets in Africa during the pandemic

Skin in the game

As the coronavirus pandemic has shown, self-preservation is a great incentive to action. Lockdown requires individuals to consent for it to work.

Post-disease urban improvements also correlate to self-interest. London’s infamous “Great Stink” of 1858 of untreated sewage floating in the Thames led to the world’s largest sewer system. But it only happened once the smell reached the House of Commons. Something had to be done!

Unlike the Great Stink, which didn’t waft further than the capital, the coronavirus is a global concern. The world has shown it can mobilise resources as never before to tackle a threat.

Now is the time to add slum improvements to our post-pandemic agenda. The need is great – the number of people living in slums may double to 2 billion by 2050. Given the world community’s demonstrated indifference to such places, even the confronting experience of COVID-19 might not be enough to lead to improvements.

– ref. So coronavirus will change cities – will that include slums? – https://theconversation.com/so-coronavirus-will-change-cities-will-that-include-slums-137072

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Seth Lazar, Professor, Australian National University

Last week the head of Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency, Randall Brugeaud, told a Senate committee hearing an updated version of Australia’s COVIDSafe contact-tracing app would soon be released. That’s because the current version doesn’t work properly on Apple phones, which restrict background broadcasting of the Bluetooth signals used to tell when phones have been in close proximity.

For Apple to allow the app the Bluetooth access it requires to work properly, the new version will have to comply with a “privacy-preserving contact tracing” protocol designed by Apple and Google.

Unfortunately, the Apple/Google protocol supports a different (and untested) approach to contact tracing. It may do a better job of preserving privacy than the current COVIDSafe model, but has some public health costs.

And, importantly, the requirement to comply with this protocol takes weighty decisions away from a democratically elected government and puts them in the hands of tech companies.

A difficult transition

Both COVIDSafe and the new Apple/Google framework track exposure in roughly the same way. They broadcast a “digital handshake” to nearby phones, from which it’s possible to infer how close two users’ devices were, and for how long.

If the devices were closer than 1.5m for 15 minutes or more, that’s considered evidence of “close contact”. To stop the spread of COVID-19, the confirmed close contacts of people who test positive need to self-isolate.

The differences between COVIDSafe’s current approach and the planned Apple/Google framework are in the architecture of the two systems, and to whom they reveal sensitive information. COVIDSafe’s approach is “centralised” and uses a central database to collect some contact information, whereas Apple and Google’s protocol is completely “decentralised”. For the latter, notification of potential exposure to someone who has tested positive is carried out between users alone, with no need for a central database.

Read more: The COVIDSafe app was just one contact tracing option. These alternatives guarantee more privacy

This provides a significant privacy benefit: a central database would be a target for attackers, and could potentially be misused by law enforcement.

Protecting COVIDSafe’s central database, and ensuring “COVID App Data” is not misused has been the task of the draft legislation currently being considered. However, if the Apple/Google framework is adopted as planned, much of that legislation will become redundant, as there will be no centralised database to protect. Also, since data on users’ devices will be encrypted and inaccessible to health authorities, there’s no risk of it being misused.

Read more: The COVIDSafe bill doesn’t go far enough to protect our privacy. Here’s what needs to change

For COVIDSafe to comply with the new Apple/Google framework, it would need to be completely rewritten, and the new app would most likely not be interoperable with the current version. This means we’d either have two systems running in parallel, or we’d have to ensure that everyone updates.

Less information for contact tracers

The Apple/Google approach strictly limits the amount of information shared with all parties, including traditional contact tracers.

When a user’s “risk score” exceeds a threshold the app will send them a pop-up. The only information revealed to the user and health authorities will be the date of exposure, its duration, and the strength of the Bluetooth signal at the time. The app would not reveal, to anyone, precisely when a potentially risky encounter occurred, or to whom the user was exposed.

This, again, has privacy benefits, but also public health costs. This kind of “exposure notification” (as Apple and Google call it, though proximity notification might be more accurate) can be used to supplement traditional contact tracing, but it can’t be integrated into it, because it doesn’t entrust contact tracers with sensitive information.

Benefits of traditional methods

As experts have already shown, duration and strength of Bluetooth signals is weak evidence of potentially risky exposure, and can result in both false positives and false negatives.

COVIDSafe’s current approach entrusts human contact tracers with more data than the Apple/Google framework allows – both when, and to whom, the at-risk person was exposed. This enables a more personalised risk assessment, with potentially fewer errors. Contact tracers can help people recall encounters they may otherwise forget, and provide context to information given by the app.

For example, the knowledge that a possible close contact happened when both parties were wearing personal protective equipment might help avoid a false positive. Similarly, learning that someone who tested positive had a close contact with a user, who was with friends who weren’t running the app at the time, might enable us to alert those friends, and so avoid a false negative.

In addition, just having the message come from a human rather than a pop-up might make people more likely to actually self-isolate; we only control the spread if we actually self-isolate when instructed. And, by providing all this data to public health authorities, COVIDSafe’s current approach also grants experts epidemiological insights into the disease.

The two approaches are also supported by different evidence. Apple and Google’s decentralised exposure notification method has never been tried in a pandemic, and is supported by evidence from simulations. However, app-enhanced contact tracing akin to what COVIDSafe does (except using GPS, not Bluetooth) was road-tested in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, with promising (though inconclusive) results.

Who should decide?

So, should the Australian government comply with Apple and Google’s privacy “laws” and design a new app that’s different from COVIDSafe? Or should Apple update its operating system so COVIDSafe works effectively in the background? Perhaps more importantly, who should decide?

If Apple and Google’s approach achieved the same public health goals as COVIDSafe, but better protected privacy, then – sunk costs notwithstanding – Australia should design a new app to fit with their framework. As we’ve seen, though, the two approaches are genuinely different, with different public health benefits.

If COVIDSafe were likely to lead to violations of fundamental privacy rights, then Apple would be morally entitled to stick to their guns, and continue to restrict it from working in the background. But the current COVIDSafe draft legislation – while not perfect – adequately addresses concerns about how, and by whom, data is collected and accessed. And while COVIDSafe has security flaws, they can be fixed.

Read more: The COVIDSafe bill doesn’t go far enough to protect our privacy. Here’s what needs to change

Decisions on how to weigh values like privacy and public health should be based on vigorous public debate, and the best advice from experts in relevant fields. Disagreement is inevitable.

But in the end, the decision should be made by those we voted in, and can vote out if they get it wrong. It shouldn’t be in the hands of tech executives outside of the democratic process.

– ref. Contact tracing apps are vital tools in the fight against coronavirus. But who decides how they work? – https://theconversation.com/contact-tracing-apps-are-vital-tools-in-the-fight-against-coronavirus-but-who-decides-how-they-work-138206

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Norman Gemmell, Chair in Public Finance, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

May 14’s budget will surely be remembered as the “pandemic budget”. It might seem like the worst possible timing – economic uncertainty rages, Treasury has had to abandon its usual economic “forecasts”, and the pandemic’s viral economic spread is far from over.

On the contrary, this may be very good budget timing. With the government’s swift lockdown and border actions, we all hope coronavirus will soon be “eliminated” in New Zealand. The government also rightly took immediate action to support an economy forced into hibernation.

So now the budget arrives just as we are ready to move into phase two of recovery – when government spending and tax policies need to change from preventative medicine to patient care.

So what budget action is needed? Despite some clamouring for a new “pandenomics” to guide policy, there is nothing different in principle about the post-elimination recession about to hit New Zealand, even if it turns out to be bigger than the unprecedented recession caused by the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC).

Time to end universal subsidies and support

Negative economic shocks can be supply-driven, demand-driven or both. Each requires different policy responses.

The current crisis started as a (self-imposed) supply shock: firms had no choice but to scale back output while their costs persisted. This is why the government’s supply-side wage subsidies and small business support were the right call (even if reasonable people can argue over their size and detail).

Read more: The ghosts of budgets past haunt New Zealand’s shot at economic recovery

But as firms come out of hibernation, widespread wage subsidies should be mostly withdrawn. The government cannot possibly provide current levels of wage support for the next one to two years of economic fallout. Nor would it be desirable, as the economy adjusts to a longer recessionary phase. Keeping unsustainable businesses going through this would only undermine the needed adjustments.

Looking ahead, weak demand is more likely as unemployment rises, some businesses fail during this second phase and real wages fall. That is why this budget’s timing is helpful. It is time to pivot away from sensible but unsustainable supply-side support, to combating the expected demand contraction and its consequences.

This doesn’t depend on Treasury forecasts. We already know that output has dropped massively, with more to come. So preparation for stimulating fiscal policy – such as expanding some government spending programmes (though much of this will happen automatically as tax revenues fall and welfare spending rises). Looser monetary policies should help, with the central bank injecting more liquidity into the economy.

This year’s pandemic budget should, however, look to redirect spending towards immediate support for those businesses and households that will now suffer most. Since total spending will inevitably rise, cutting back longer term and low impact projects needs to form part of this.

A good place to start would be the Provincial Growth Fund, the result of little more than expensive political horsetrading among the government’s coalition partners. But somehow I doubt this option is what finance minister Grant Robertson meant last week when he signalled that certain pre-COVID-19 budget priorities will be “put on ice”.

Stay flexible and plan for steady debt repayment

In my view, two guiding principles should inform budget initiatives.

First, flexibility. Uncertainty around who will be worst affected, for how long and how severely, suggests that flexible support packages make more sense than widespread, predetermined handouts. Let’s see where the economic recession bites, with packages in place to respond quickly, rather than trying to predict where the worst effects will be.

Direct government-to-business loans, for example, that can be applied for and granted subject to conditions, would ensure more targeted support. And with interest rates set close to government borrowing rates, they are a relatively low risk, low cost option. Those needing short term help and are able to recover will repay in due course. Those without a long term future would not be well served by delaying the inevitable at taxpayer expense.

Read more: Past pandemics show how coronavirus budgets can drive faster economic recovery

Secondly, plan a future debt trajectory. Much current debate surrounds the eventual taxpayer cost of massive public debt increases, perhaps rising from 20-50% of GDP. As with the post-WWII debt response, this will need to be brought back down, but more slowly than after the GFC, for example.

Public debt increases are global, and New Zealand will not look like a bad international credit risk for the foreseeable future. Plus, with interest rates almost certain to remain low for years, the government’s debt servicing costs have never looked better. Nevertheless, a credible plan towards lower debt is essential if we are to be well prepared for the next crisis – as we were for this one.

Some are suggesting this year’s budget initiatives will be pivotal for the economy. Maybe. Mostly, budgets are like yesterday’s news. Who remembers the 2019 budget beyond the slogans? It was the “hacked budget” (which wasn’t actually hacked, but prematurely revealed due to Treasury slip-ups). Or the “Well-being Budget” (the official title that was little more than political spin with a smiley cover photo; what were Bill English’s social investment budgets about if not well-being?).

So, good luck Mr Robertson – we hope your pandemic budget (or “recovery budget” as you are calling it) delivers more than a catchy strapline.

– ref. The pandemic budget: moving New Zealand from critical care to long-term recovery – https://theconversation.com/the-pandemic-budget-moving-new-zealand-from-critical-care-to-long-term-recovery-138294

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Podger, Honorary Professor of Public Policy, Australian National University

The past few months have shown us the importance of public servants making public statements as well as limits involved with this.

The limits have been most clearly demonstrated by Victoria’s deputy chief health officer, Annaliese van Diemen, who recently created controversy when she posted a tweet comparing Captain Cook’s voyage to Australia with the coronavirus pandemic.

Public servants are required to be apolitical.

Last week, Victoria’s public service watchdog found van Diemen did not breach the Health Department’s code of conduct. But she was nonetheless counselled about her social media use.

Free-ish speech

Public servants are also citizens and have the right to participate in the democratic process, including the right to free speech. But these rights are constrained by their obligations.

The High Court last August clarified those constraints in the Banerji case. In a unanimous decision, it found the 2013 dismissal of then immigration department employee Michaela Banerji for her social media activities was lawful.

The decision emphasised the constitutional role of the public service and its values: in particular, being professional, apolitical and impartial.

In his judgment, Justice James Edelman helpfully identified six factors that should be considered in deciding whether public comments are acceptable. These are:

1. the seniority of the public servant

2. whether the comment concerns matters for which the person has direct duties, and how the comment might impact those duties

3. the location of the communication on a scale from vitriolic criticism to objective and informative policy discussion

4. whether the person intended, or could reasonably have foreseen, that the communication would be widely disseminated

5. whether the person intended, or could reasonably have expected, that the communication would be associated with the public service

6. what the person expected, or could reasonably have expected, an ordinary member of the public to conclude about the effect on the public servant’s duties and responsibilities.

Read more: Will the High Court ruling on public servant’s tweets have a ‘powerful chill’ on free speech?

Similar reasoning would surely apply in Victoria. While van Diemen’s most recent tweet is not directly partisan, it does confirm the anti-Coalition views demonstrated in her earlier tweets that were still visible last week on her Twitter account.

The counselling of van Diemen was clearly warranted; I am surprised she was not found to have breached her department’s code of conduct.

She would be in trouble on almost all the Edelman factors.

The value of public servants speaking to the public

More positively, we have seen over the past six months that public servants can play a critical role through public statements and a public profile.

The most impressive examples are Shane Fitzsimmons, who was until recently NSW Rural Fire Service commissioner, and Georgeina Whelan, the ACT Emergency Services Agency commissioner.

Both contributed greatly to public safety and confidence as they kept people informed and exercised the authority they were given during the bushfires. Their political leaders stood beside them but allowed them to take the lead.

The Commonwealth’s chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, and his deputies have played broadly similar roles during the COVID-19 crisis, as have the state and territory chief health officers.

However, theirs has been a more ambiguous role than that of the fire commissioners. They do not have direct authority to make decisions – they advise their ministers who are the decision makers.

The political leaders nonetheless need to be seen to be relying heavily on the professional expertise of these public servants to ensure public confidence and widespread compliance with the behaviours needed to limit the spread of COVID-19.

The difficulty for public servants is to stick strictly to their professional advice and not to feel it necessary to directly support the decisions their political leaders have taken.

Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy is taking a lower profile. But his public statements, including to the parliamentary committee monitoring the COVID-19 response, have been important in providing expert explanation of the context of government decisions and the likely impact on employment and the economy, reinforcing community trust.

Read more: To restore trust in government, we need to reinvent how the public service works

The Morrison government’s recent reliance on public service advice, and its determination to be seen to do so, contrasts sharply with its attitude up until Christmas.

Directly after the election, Prime Minister Scott Morrison instructed departmental secretaries to concentrate on the implementation of government policies. Hopefully, his new-found appreciation of expert public service advice will continue.

Old questions with new complexity

Whether, when and how officials speak publicly are not new questions, but the dilemmas involved have become more acute.

On the one hand, public servants’ anonymity has long gone, since the advent of parliamentary committees, the Freedom of Information Act and other administrative laws that provided public access to information and rights to review public service (and ministerial) decisions.

On the other hand, the professionalisation of politics has led to closer control of government communications. This often demands clearance of speeches and publications by ministers or their staff and constraining open engagement between public servants and external stakeholders and the public.

In 2009, the Australian Public Service Commission’s guide on social media comments explicitly encouraged involvement by public servants in robust, professional conversations online in a practical and flexible way.

The current guide only lists the risks to be managed. Under Kennedy’s leadership, Treasury officers have taken the positive approach, for example in publicly opening up Treasury’s latest modelling of retirement incomes to academic scrutiny. However, it is clear some other departments are too cautious.

The challenge for public servants is to get the balance right. For their own professional development and the quality of public service advice and administration, they need to publicly engage.

Read more: View from The Hill: Morrison won’t have a bar of public service intrusions on government’s power

There is also public interest in public servants providing background analysis that explains the context and impact of government policy.

But public confidence is essential so that officials can serve governments of any persuasion. A lack of it can only lead to staffing based on political sympathies rather than merit, destroying the institution that is the professional public service.

– ref. The balancing act: how much free speech should our public servants have? – https://theconversation.com/the-balancing-act-how-much-free-speech-should-our-public-servants-have-138118

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Larkins, Professor Emeritus and Former Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of Melbourne

Australia’s researchers have answered the call to help with urgent pandemic clinical trials and other research needs, placing other work on hold. Experts across a broad range of disciplines are crucial to our health, mental health and economic well-being.

And yet the COVID-19 pandemic has posed one of the most significant threats in history to Australia’s national research sector, and well beyond the medical sciences.

We were lead authors on a report for the government’s National COVID Coordination Commission through the Chief Scientist’s Rapid Research Information Forum (RRIF). We answered the question:

What impact is the pandemic having and likely to have on Australia’s research workforce and its capability to support our recovery efforts?

Our report shows Australia’s research workforce will be severely impacted by the pandemic, with the effects likely to be felt for years, if not decades.

The universities sector estimates its revenue will drop by at least A$3 billion in 2020 due to the pandemic, and the decline could be as high as A$4.6 billion. This drop is likely to be worst for research-intensive universities.

Early and mid career researchers and recent graduates will be disproportionately affected due to the highly casualised and fixed-term nature of the university research workforce. This may also be the case for women, who more commonly than men have additional childcare and other home commitments.

Journals are already seeing that since the COVID-19 crisis began, submissions from women are underrepresented, especially articles authored solely by women.

Australia’s research spending

We canvassed and compiled evidence from across Australia’s universities, publicly and privately funded research institutes and agencies, and the private sector.

The Australian government provides support for the research workforce through grant funding and tax transfers to industry, paying the salaries of researchers in government agencies and departments, and providing grant funding through research councils and block funding to universities.

In 2019–20 this was budgeted to be a total of A$9.6 billion. Of this

• A$2.1 billion went to industry
• A$2.1 billion went to government research activities (including CSIRO, the Australian Institute of Medical Scientists, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and Defence)
• A$3.6 billion went to universities
• A$1.8 billion went to medical research institutes and other sectors like agriculture and energy.

Australian spending on research (from all sources, including government and industry) has flatlined over the last few years, and declined overall.

Investment increased from A$6,667 million in 2007-08 to A$10,072 in 2011-12. But it steadily declined from its peak of A$10,072 million 2011-12 to a low of A$9,396 million in 2018-19 (apart from a one-off A$10,285 million spike in 2017-18).

Government funding is steady at its budgeted A$9.6 billion this financial year. But given business spending on research and development dropped 3.1% during the global financial crisis, it is expected to drop precipitously due to the pandemic.

Read more: Australian universities could lose $19 billion in the next 3 years. Our economy will suffer with them

In Australia, industry is responsible for 86% of experimental development (where physical experiments are used to test a hypothesis). And small to medium enterprises (which comprise the vast majority of Australian businesses) are unlikely to have spare cash to invest in research and development.

Universities perform around 43% of all applied research (aimed at solving real-world problems) in Australia. This means industry sectors relying on universities and research institutions for research and development may be less able to collaborate, innovate and create new sources of employment.

Almost half of Australia’s 164,000 researchers are academic staff and postgraduate research students. Universities expect to lose up to 21,000 full-time equivalent staff over the next six months, of which an estimated 7,000 could be research-related.

Postgraduate research students work in research while earning their higher degree. They’re 57% of the university workforce and 6,000 could lose their jobs.

In medical research institutes, around 3,000 jobs are projected to go. There is widespread concern the diversity crucial to innovation will be lost along with these jobs.

International student revenue

The university sector supplements government research funding with income from full-fee paying international students. This represents an average 26% of individual universities’ total revenue.

Around A$4.7 billion is spent on research from university discretionary funds, the majority of which comes from international student fees (although it also includes donations and investment returns).

In 2018, 37% of PhD students in Australia were international students. And 75% of those were performing research in science, technology and engineering subjects.

Read more: COVID-19 increases risk to international students’ mental health. Australia urgently needs to step up

Many international postgraduate students have limited options to extend their stay to make up for research interruptions. Some have already returned to their country of origin.

These factors, together with likely future travel restrictions, mean we can anticipate more than 9,000 international research students may not be able to resume their research programs in 2020.

Australia’s university research capacity has arguably taken a bigger blow than any other country because of our higher proportion of overseas students.

The overall loss of research capacity doesn’t just affect the creation of new knowledge. It will significantly affect Australia’s future potential for economic growth.

An opportunity for Australia

Corporate-sponsored research enables Australian industries – such as health, advanced manufacturing, transport and renewable energies – to be competitive. This subsequently creates new employment opportunities and supports economic growth.

Labs in medical research institutes not working on COVID-19 research have been closed. They have effectively paused much of Australia’s medical research including in cancer, heart disease, motor neurone disease and diabetes.

This will seriously impact Australia’s capacity to pick up when it is safe to re-open these laboratories

During the global financial crisis, the government recognised the threat to research and its capacity to pull Australia through. It injected an additional $1 billion in funding into academic research between 2008-09 and 2013-14.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian government has invested about an extra A$13 million into the Medical Research Future Fund to support COVID-related research.

Read more: For most universities, there’s little point to the government’s COVID-19 assistance package

The UK government has recognised the need to support research-led economic recovery. As well as establishing a research sustainability taskforce, it’s just announced it will bring forward £100 million of quality-related research funding for providers into this current academic year as immediate help to ensure Britain’s research activities can continue during the crisis.

The funding is paired with guarantees to protect tertiary student places and PhD student grants.

The Australian government also has the opportunity to show visionary leadership by investing to support the broader research and development that will be vital to the nation’s economic recovery.

The report this article is based on was produced by the The Rapid Response Information Forum, a group of 35 research sector organisations and science leaders. The forum is chaired by Australia’s Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel, and its operations are led by the Australian Academy of Science.

– ref. More than 10,000 job losses, billions in lost revenue: coronavirus will hit Australia’s research capacity harder than the GFC – https://theconversation.com/more-than-10-000-job-losses-billions-in-lost-revenue-coronavirus-will-hit-australias-research-capacity-harder-than-the-gfc-138210