At last, the government and the Reserve Bank are singing from the same song sheet. Both say they will keep supporting the economy (the government with big deficits, the Reserve Bank with ultra-low interest rates) until the unemployment rate is well below 5%.
Australia’s leading economists back them.
Of the 60 leading economists surveyed by the Economic Society ahead of the budget, more than 60% wanted stimulus until the unemployment rate was below 5%.
One in five economists wanted stimulus until the rate was below 4%. Five wanted a rate below 3%.
The official unemployment rate is currently 5.1%. We’ll get an update on Thursday.
How much lower we can push it without creating increasing inflation is in large measure a technical question, one myself and colleague Jenny Lye have attempted to estimate using 50 years of data on variables including union membership and unemployment benefits between 1967 and 2017.
Union power and the level of unemployment benefits help determine how low unemployment can go before employers are forced to increase wage rises.
Power and benefits
Union power is important because the greater is union power, the higher is the rate of unemployment required to keep union-driven wage inflation in check.
Unemployment benefits are important because they contribute to the attractiveness of unemployment and thus to the difficulty employers face to prevent employees walking.
The more people are paid in unemployment benefits, the higher the rate of unemployment needs to be to keep employer-driven wage inflation in check.
We call the minimum rate of unemployment consistent with non-increasing wage inflation “umin”. An unemployment rate above “umin” means the rate of wage increases will remain steady. If it’s below “umin”, wage increases will start to climb.
That estimate — that Australia could have a 3.3% unemployment rate without increasing wage inflation — is lower than the 4.5% estimate by researchers at the Reserve Bank and the 4.75% estimate adopted by the Treasury.
It is also much lower than the 5% unemployment Australia achieved pre-COVID.
umin estimates, Australia 1967-2017
umin is the minimum rate of unemployment consistent with non-increasing inflation. Upper and lower estimates = 95% confidence level.
Taken together, our series of estimates suggest that since 2012 we could have achieved much lower unemployment than we have without troubling inflation.
Whether umin has edged higher or lower since our most recent estimate in 2017 depends in part on the size of subsequent changes in union power and unemployment benefits.
An advantage of our estimates is that they help explain why umin has varied over time.
By contrast, the Reserve Bank and Treasury estimates shed no light on causes. They derive from statistical relationships between unemployment and wages which have changed over time without an explanation of why tat has happened.
Our estimates quantify the impacts of union power and unemployment benefits.
In 1975, when 51% of the workforce was unionised and unemployment benefits were as high as 28% of male after-tax average earnings, we estimate umin at 5.7%.
Since then union membership has fallen to 17%, and unemployment benefits have fallen to 23% of male after-tax earnings.
One or both of them would need to fall further to get umin down to the 2% we used to have.
We can reach 3.3% but perhaps not 2%
When umin was 2% between 1967 and 1971 unemployment benefits were lower than they are today, averaging 14.7% of male after-tax average earnings.
Our estimates suggest that with union membership where it is today, unemployment benefits would need to fall a further 5 percentage points (from 23% to 18% of male after-tax earnings) to get umin back down to 2%.
It is important to realise that cutting umin would not automatically cut the rate of unemployment to umin.
The government would need to stimulate the economy in order to get it there, as it now says it is willing to do.
The gains to well-being of cutting unemployment to umin are substantial, especially for those at the end of the job queue and new entrants to the labour force, such as young people. Our calculations suggest there is little to be lost from trying to achieve them.
But it would be wise to tread carefully. Jeff Borland of Melbourne University laid out a reasonable approach in his response to the Economic Society survey.
He said if we get the unemployment rate down to 4% and find that inflationary pressures are not present, we should “try to push lower”.
Ian Martin McDonald has received funding from the Australian Research Council.
Part of the joy of a musical is that song and dance can occur anywhere and everywhere. Not just on the stage but in the bedroom, to the Wild West and on the streets of New York.
Classic musicals set in New York often take dancing to the streets.
In On The Town (1949, based on the 1944 stage musical), Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly (who also choreographed the movie) play sailors on shore leave in the big city. In West Side Story (1961, based on the 1957 stage show) two rival gangs, the white American Jets and the Peurto-Rican Sharks play out the story of Romeo and Juliet on the Upper West Side, dancing to Jerome Robbins’ choreography.
This is also the case with In The Heights, an adaptation of the 2008 stage show written by Lin-Manuel Miranda (the creator of the Broadway-smash Hamilton) and Quiara Alegría Hudes.
Set in the largely working class Latinx neighbourhood of Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan, all the characters wish for a better life: Usnavi plans to move to the Dominican Republic to set up his dad’s old beachside bar; Vanessa dreams of becoming a high-end fashion designer downtown; Nina carries the weight of the neighbourhood expectations at Stanford University in California.
And throughout all of this, they dance and sing.
Miranda’s songbook draws on references from Latin, to hip-hop and rap, and Christopher Scott’s choreography also traverses a wide range of styles from breakdancing and popping, to ballet and Jamaican dancehall.
They both extensively reference classical musicals, too.
Busby Berkley’s water ballet
Spontaneous song and dance is the most enjoyable part of many movie musicals, and a defining element of early examples of the genre.
In the classical Hollywood period from the 1930s to the 1950s, the film musical was in its prime. Musicals brought large crowds to the cinema, drawing on stage musicals, vaudeville, cabaret and operettas, melding them together with camerawork and editing to wow audiences.
The energy of Broadway choreography was enhanced by camerawork that allowed the audience to get up close with the dancers. One of the major choreographers and directors of this era was Busby Berkeley.
Berkeley’s work was designed to be filmed from above, with his dancers creating beautiful kaleidoscopic choreography.
During In The Heights’ number “96,000”, the whole block performs in a water ballet at the local pool, reminiscent of Berkeley’ Million Dollar Mermaid (1952).
“96,000” is quite the technical feat. It took director Jon M. Chu three days to shoot with 700 extras in New York’s public Highbridge Pool. He also had to deal with thunderstorms and New York City restrictions on drone photography which required the use of a crane.
West Side Story won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture — the most of any film musical — and was lauded for Robbins’ incredible choreography.
Robbins used dance as an integral part of the storytelling to express the simmering tensions between characters. In In The Heights, choreography is again used to express the excitement of budding romance, frustration and grief.
During “The Club”, Usnavi competes for Vanessa’s attention with male club-goers who all want to dance with her. Scott’s snappy Latin choreography echoes “Dance at the Gym (Mambo)” from West Side Story, where building tension between the two gangs is expressed through their fight over space on the dance floor.
Fred Astaire’s defiance of gravity
Nina and Benny’s final emotional farewell number, “When the Sun Goes Down” takes them up the side of a building in a nod to Astaire dancing on the walls in Royal Wedding (1951).
The couple start on the balcony looking at the George Washington Bridge dominating the skyline. As the song swells, their love for each other helps them defy gravity to spin and twirl up the apartment block to the roof thanks to special effects.
Astaire’s original number, “You’re All the World to Me”, required the set to be built in a revolving barrel with the camera mounted in place.
The whole neighbourhood in joy
There is a sense of spontaneity to the musical numbers in In The Heights. They appear to be immediate, unfiltered outbursts of emotion.
In the opening eight minutes, the sounds of the block — gates closing, Usnavi jangling his keys, a man hosing the streets — is all rhythm and music for the opening number. Even the piragua man selling his shaved ice dessert on the street (played by Miranda himself) joins the chorus.
An entire neighbourhood joining in on a number is a typical gimmick of the film musical. It is such a trope it is often referenced in non-musical films, like when Joseph Gordon Levitt’s good mood inspires a crowded park of people to dance with him through the streets in 500 Days of Summer (2009).
In In The Heights, during a heat wave at the height of a neighbourhood blackout, Daniela gets the block back up on its feet and celebrating their culture. Everyone joins in on “Carnaval del Barrio”, in joyous community celebration.
The spectacular energy and vibrancy of this number is what musicals ultimately aim for in the audience: to get them up and dancing on the street.
Phoebe Macrossan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Over the weekend in London, the stars aligned in the most remarkable way. On the 50th anniversary of Evonne Goolagong Cawley’s first Wimbledon win, Ashleigh Barty claimed her first Wimbledon title.
I just hope I made Evonne proud.
The 25-year old becomes just the second Indigenous women to win Wimbledon and breaks a long drought for Australia at what is widely regarded as the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world.
To put it in context, Australia hasn’t won a singles title at the All England Club since 2002, when Lleyton Hewitt became the men’s champion. The last time an Australian woman took out the title was over 40 years ago, when Goolagong Cawley won her second title in 1980 (this time also becoming the first mother to win Wimbledon in 66 years).
But the win is also an historic moment for First Nations people and for Australian women in sport. It presents an opportunity to both celebrate and learn from this achievement.
Barty breaks the mould
Barty’s success is a particularly significant one for First Nations Australians. She is one of only a handful of Indigenous women who are both sporting champions and household names — such as Goolagong Cawley, Cathy Freeman and fellow Olympic medallists Nova Peris and Sam Riley.
Australia has always seemed to struggle with celebrating Indigenous sporting success, particularly when it happens overseas. Achievements like Patty Mills’ magic 17 points to help secure the 2014 NBA championship for the San Antonio Spurs, Chad Reed’s legendary status in motocross and Jesse Williams’ 2014 Super Bowl ring have largely flown under the radar.
But Barty breaks this mould. She has long cited her Indigenous heritage and relationship with Goolagong Cawley as an inspiration. Yes, it is Barty’s tennis success that has made her famous. But it is her grace negotiating Australia’s uneasiness with its past and present relationship with our Indigenous peoples that makes her a true champion.
Her victory also followed by a significant hip injury in June. Although seeded number one for the tournament, even those in Barty’s camp were nervous about her chances.
Barty said,
The stars aligned for me over the past fortnight. It’s incredible that it happened to fall on the 50th anniversary of Evonne’s [Goolagong Cawley] first title here too.
As First Nations people would say “the Old People” — her Ancestors — had intervened.
A NAIDOC week victory
Apart from the parallels with Goolagong Cawley’s win, the timing is also special as it comes at the end of NAIDOC week. This year’s theme has been “Heal Country”. As Indigenous people continue to be marginalised in so many areas of Australian life, Barty’s success is all the more a powerful testament to her strength and talent.
We know there are high barriers to Indigenous women participating in sport and exercise, at both grassroots and elite levels. These include racism and the high costs of participating. A frequently cited statistic (based on 2012 data) is about 23% of Indigenous women were physically active or played sport in the past 12 months, compared to 67% of non-Indigenous women.
Jemma Mi Mi is the Super Netball league’s only Indigenous player. Albert Perez/AAP
Even in sports with high Indigenous participation, such as netball (where about 4% of participants are Indigenous), this still hasn’t flowed through to the professional level. There have only ever been two Indigenous players to represent the national team — and none since 2000.
Last year, Queensland Firebirds midcourter Jemma Mi Mi, a proud Wakka Wakka woman, sat on the bench during Super Netball’s Indigenous round. Netball Australia says it is working to improve the culture but change is slow.
Sexism and Australian sport
Sport is a significant part of our national identity, and we have a deep love for our sporting heroes. Yet for women in sport, we know the road is harder than for men. It wasn’t that long ago that champion race horse Black Caviar was named Australian sportswoman of the year by the Daily Telegraph.
In my recent research with female AFL players, women talked of their gratitude for being included in the sport at a professional level. This is despite low pay and the high pressures and workloads. As I argued, this attitude is a double-edged sword for professional sportswomen, as it can make them vulnerable to exploitation.
Looking at professional elite athletes in Australia, the top earners are predominantly men. For example, in the 2019 AFR sports rich list, Barty ranked eight and was the only woman in the top 20. A top seven rich list compiled by Fox Sports in June 2021 only featured men.
We also know that women in sport also cop abuse, sexism and harassment — as well as discrimination in terms of how seriously their involvement is taken.
Uneven playing field
So while we celebrate #YesAsh and enjoy the #BartyParty, we must also be honest about the realities for women in sport, and in particular for Indigenous women in sport.
For those of us who have enjoyed the pride and excitement of Barty’s win, let’s pledge to work harder on removing structural barriers to participation at grassroots and elite levels. It is time to acknowledge how uneven Australian sporting fields can be.
Adele Pavlidis receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Marcus Woolombi Waters does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Four in five primary school students eat a packed lunch every day, costing parents around A$20 a week. That’s almost 10 million lunchboxes across Australia every week.
But nine in ten of these contain so-called “discretionary foods” such as cake, chips, muesli bars and fruit juice. These foods are not necessary for a healthy diet, and are often high in saturated fat, sugar and salt, and low in fibre. 40% of energy in an average lunchbox comes from these discretionary foods.
Busy parents need to find replacements for these discretionary foods, which are not only healthy, but also easy, cheap and tasty. Our research shows parents can make healthier swaps, without costing them more.
Generally children should have a variety of foods from the five core food groups: vegetables and legumes; fruit; grain foods (mostly wholegrain and those high in fibre); lean meats and poultry, fish, eggs, tofu, nuts and seeds; milk, yoghurt and cheese (or alternatives).
Depending on their age and sex, children should consume somewhere between 4,500-7,000 kilojoules per day. But it’s also important where they get that energy from. It’s recommended children limit their intake of saturated fat, salt and added sugar.
A healthy recess would mean, for instance, children eating one serving of fruit or vegetables, some yoghurt and a few rice crackers. At lunch, children could eat a simple sandwich, wrap or roll, or leftovers made from core food group ingredients such as veggie-loaded wholegrain pasta.
How to replace junk foods with healthy ones
Parents have told us they want convenient and cheap foods to pack, that their children want to eat. So, we developed a healthy lunchbox program called SWAP IT. In this program, we provide simple ideas for swapping unhealthy foods kids might like to healthier ones comparable on cost, taste, texture and preparation time.
Shapes for rice crackers. This will mean 159 less kJ, 77% less saturated fat and 39% less sodium
chips for popcorn. This is 176 less kJ, 57% less saturated fat, 56% less sodium
cake for pikelets means 464 less kJ and 63% less sugar.
Perhaps one of easiest things you could do is to try ensure your kids stick to drinking water.
Calculations are made based on the serving sizes. (Shapes 25g, rice crackers 20g, Smith chips 19g, popcorn 13g, slice of cake 75g, 3 pikelets 75g) Author provided
Our research found SWAP IT supported parents and students to reduce energy from discretionary foods by 600kJ per week. Research suggests a small reduction of 600kJ per week is enough to meaningfully impact population levels of obesity.
But a barrage of unhealthy foods are promoted to parents and children, often disguised as healthy choices. Parents and children see as many as ten junk food adverts per hour. And more than half of parents report their child’s “pester power” influences what they pack in their lunchbox.
Parents told us they wanted easy to access information when they were in the supermarket. So we got parents to sign up to SWAP IT via their school’s usual communicationapp.
Around two-thirds of primary schools used such apps.
We prompted parents with swap ideas each week by sending push notifications to their phones. We found 84% of parents liked having the messages sent directly to their phones.
Example notification from the SWAP IT school lunchbox program. Author provided
Research shows four in five primary school principals agree it is a school’s role to support parents to pack healthy lunchboxes. We found SWAP IT could be rolled-out to schools through their communication apps at a cost of less than A$1,800 per school.
Investment in promoting a healthy diet is cost-effective, as less people end up in hospital and productivity is improved.
Lunchbox swap ideas for Monday to Friday that are cheap, simple, healthy and tasty.
Schools across Australia can register their interest in the SWAP IT program. In the future, schools could choose to sign up to SWAP IT, in a similar way to signing up to other programs such as Crunch & Sip.
Matthew ‘Tepi’ Mclaughlin is affiliated with the International Society for Physical Activity and Health, the Australasian Society for Physical Activity and Newcastle Cycleways Movement.
Luke Wolfenden receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, The NIB Foundation and The Heart Foundation.
Rachel Sutherland receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council, NSW Ministry of Health.
Alison Brown and Jannah Jones do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Federal, state and territory disability ministers met on Friday to debate a proposal to introduce independent assessments into the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
In the face of sustained opposition, the federal government agreed not to make any legislative changes to the scheme and committed to consult on any future amendments.
Remind me, what are independent assessments?
Independent assessments were proposed as a new way of determining the functional level of an individual with disability, which would then be then used to inform what level of funding that person would receive.
Under the current system, people demonstrate this by gathering evidence from their own specialists.
The government has argued this is not fair, because those with greater means can bypass waiting lists in the public system and see private specialists. They also believe professionals known to an individual may be affected by “empathy bias”, resulting in their clients ultimately being awarded larger funding packages.
Independent assessments would instead have seen people assessed by a government-contracted allied health professional unknown to them in a three-hour interview. This short assessment would have been used to determine what level of funding that person was entitled to.
While the government argued independent assessments were not about cost-cutting, leaked government documents suggested this system would lead to smaller funding packages “on average”.
Discussions about the introduction of independent assessments started under the previous NDIS minister, Stuart Robert.
The proposal attracted strong backlash from the disability community who argued the assessments were dehumanising and would lead to inappropriate plans, with a significant risk of traumatising participants.
The NDIS Joint Standing Committee received more than 320 submissions on the issue from a range individuals, advocacy organisations, academics and more – the vast majority of which were highly critical of the proposed assessments.
On taking over the NDIS portfolio in April, Linda Reynolds announced she intended to pause the rollout of independent assessments until further piloting was completed and evaluated, and she had an opportunity to consult with stakeholders across the country.
The NDIS provides support to Australians with disability, but it’s not without controversy. Shutterstock
Trialling independent assessments
The National Disability Insurance Agency has recently been piloting independent assessments (the NDIA is the independent agency responsible for implementing the NDIS).
It asked for volunteers to undertake an assessment, offering to compensate participants with a A$150 payment.
The NDIA Research and Evaluation Branch this week released its interim report on the independent assessment pilot.
The evaluation sought to understand the experience of participants through the independent assessment process, including whether the report accurately reflected both what they told their assessor and their functional capacity.
A second aim was to get feedback on the independent assessment tools used in the process, and whether these tools were collecting the right information.
Depending on the age group and disability type there are eight tools which can be used in various combinations. An example of one these tools is the WHODAS (World Health Organisation Disability Assessment Schedule), which explores how well an individual has been able to do certain activities with or without support (such as self-care and mobility).
While there are just under 450,000 NDIS participants, the pilot included a very small number of these.
Some 3,759 people across Australia took part in the pilot assessments, but of those, only 948 participants and support people provided survey responses which were analysed in the report.
More than 100 pilot participants were interviewed. And the evaluation also included surveys and interviews with assessors.
When we drilled down into the figures from the survey, we found some concerning results. Less than half of respondents reported:
their experience of independent assessments was excellent or very good (46%)
their assessor seemed to know a lot about the participant’s disability (49%)
the independent assessment report they received was an excellent or very good reflection of their meeting (48%)
the results of the independent assessment were a very good or excellent reflection of their functional capacity (42%).
Assessors were not overly positive about the experience either. Only 39% rated their training as very good or excellent and some wanted more practical training.
Many rated the assessment tools poorly including concerns about accuracy and relevance of the selected tools, echoing the concerns of Occupational Therapy Australia in its submission to the Joint Standing Committee.
None of this makes a compelling case for such a significant reform. But the most serious problem is this does not constitute a full and rigorous evaluation of independent assessments.
The pilot program doesn’t give us the full picture of whether independent assessments would result in good outcomes for people with disability. Shutterstock
Are independent assessments fit for purpose? We don’t really know
The NDIA has attempted to be more transparent with its evaluation and commissioned a University of Sydney team to provide independent validation of their findings.
On the surface, this looked like a step forward for transparency. But this “validation” largely involved checking the way the NDIA analysed the data – they were not asked to critique the design of the evaluation.
The key question the disability community needed answering was whether independent assessments could be used to deliver funding packages that enabled participants to purchase reasonable and necessary services and supports that enabled them to live “ordinary” lives.
But this evaluation merely explored the experience of taking part in independent assessments; it didn’t answer this question. No participant was given a budget based on their results. No participant outcomes were measured.
If we did want to know whether independent assessments created fairer funding decisions, we would need to compare funding allocations and participant outcomes between a group who received independent assessments and a control group who did not. Without that, we simply don’t know if independent assessments are fit for purpose.
This piece is part of a new series in collaboration with the ABC’s Saturday Extra program. Each week, the show will have a “who am I” quiz for listeners about influential figures who helped shape the 20th century, and we will publish profiles for each one. You can read the other pieces in the series here.
Deng Xiaoping could lay claim to being the most significant political leader of the latter part of the 20th century, and one whose legacy continues to expand.
His record is remarkable.
It is at least arguable, if not certain, that had it not been for Deng’s force of personality and his willingness to take political risks, China would not have embarked in 1978 on an accelerated process of economic development.
If the Chinese economy had not achieved staggering rates of economic growth of 10% annually on average in the decades following Deng’s political re-emergence in 1977, the world would be a very different place.
In other words, one man of diminutive size — he was barely 1.5 metres tall — has had an outsize impact on world economic history.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meeting with Deng Xiaoping in Beijing on the eve of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. Boris Yurchenko/AP
Deng’s rise, fall and rise again
Born to a landowning family in Sichuan province in 1904, Deng gradually progressed through the Chinese Communist hierarchy as a committed Marxist-Leninist and a tough field commander and political commissar.
Mao Zedong may have prevailed in a bloody revolutionary war against the Nationalists, but it was his one-time protégé who propelled a country containing one-quarter of the world’s population into a new era.
Deng Xiaoping visiting a factory in the city of Wuhan in 1958. Wikimedia Commons
History will be a lot kinder to Deng than it will be to Mao, who brought enormous grief to his country in highly destructive political campaigns, culminating in the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76.
Deng himself was a victim of these campaigns. He was banished from the Chinese leadership early in the Cultural Revolution until he was rehabilitated in 1973 by his patron, then-Premier Zhou Enlai. He was purged a second time after Zhou died in 1976.
Mao’s death not long after Zhou’s and the arrest of the Maoist acolytes known as the “Gang of Four” enabled Deng to assert himself in a series of stunning political manoeuvres that ruled a line under years of revolutionary upheaval.
Deng was, without question, an authoritarian figure who believed in the absolute power of the Chinese Communist Party. His legacy will be forever stained by his authorisation of force against the pro-democracy demonstrators on Tiananmen Square in 1989, in which hundreds are believed to have died, and many more were incarcerated.
Without excusing the excesses of the Tiananmen crackdown, however, the totality of Deng’s contribution to his country’s transition from economic laggard to modern superpower cannot be overstated.
Deng’s extraordinary achievements are too many to list here, but three dates stand out in his efforts to set his country on a path, as he put it, of “reform and opening”.
The fact he used both words — reform and opening — summed up his approach to wrenching his country from its revolutionary past to chart another course.
In modern Chinese history, this event is seen as the starting point for the massive shifts that would loosen up China’s economy and dismantle what was known as the “bamboo curtain” that had shielded it from the outside world.
1980: In a speech whose importance is sometimes lost in historical accounts, Deng laid down the “Great Tasks” facing China in the last two decades of the 20th century and beyond.
Among those tasks was the quadrupling of gross national product by 2000, an aspiration that was initially scoffed at. Under the Deng-initiated reforms, which included the de-collectivisation of agriculture and the unleashing of an entrepreneurial business class, China achieved that goal in a canter.
1992: Deng, then 90 and in bad health, embarked on what was described as a nanxun, or southern inspection tour, in which he re-energised the reform process after it had fallen into the doldrums following Tiananmen.
The fallout from the massacre included the purging of reformist leader Zhao Ziyang, who was general secretary of the Communist Party and a former premier. A ruthless Deng elected not to protect his protégé.
Historians may well come to regard Deng’s nanxun as not simply his last hurrah, but his most enduring contribution to China’s surging power and influence.
Deng Xiaoping meeting delegates of the Communist Party Central Committee in Beijing in 1992. AP
In all of this, it is important to remember that in 1978, China’s economy was about the same size as Italy’s. In 2021, China’s economy on a nominal GDP basis is the world’s second largest behind the United States, and should surpass the US in the next few years. At the same time, China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty. Never before in human history have we seen anything quite like this.
Of course, Deng did not achieve all of this by himself, but he was prepared to embrace what Mao had sought to suppress in a single-minded desire to maintain control over party and country. This was the extraordinary energy and enterprise of the Chinese people.
Deng’s various slogans, such as “to get rich is glorious” captured the moment, and indeed helped to unleash the full potential of the Chinese people.
Deng is celebrated in China today as the chief architect of the country’s reform and opening up. Shi Donghong/AP
Biding its time no more
None of this is to suggest Deng’s legacy will be untroubled, or that China’s surging power and influence will continue to build without impediments.
The country’s continuing economic transformation resembles a high-wire act as China’s leadership seeks to maintain its footing in a world in flux as American power recedes. China’s economy is far from having reached a plateau in which consumer demand provides a buffer against ups and downs in its export markets. These are challenging times for the post-Deng leadership in Beijing.
This was born of his own experiences at the hands of a tyrannical Mao. In that speech, Deng had emphasised collective leadership in the knowledge that untrammelled power corrupts.
What has certainly been left astern is Deng’s advice that China should “keep a low profile” or “bide its time” – tao guang yang hui — as its power and influence grows. The use of this phrase has been variously interpreted over the years as either a warning from Deng that China should avoid throwing its weight around or a ruse in which Beijing stealthily accumulates power without making it too obvious.
Under Xi’s brand of Chinese nationalism, the tao guang yang hui approach has been discarded. This may have been inevitable as China becomes more powerful, but it is at least debatable whether a shrewd Deng Xiaoping would have countenanced an approach that risked antagonising much of the rest of the world.
Tony Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University
ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock
“Wherever I look I see not just bad conduct but illegal conduct, improper conduct, unacceptable conduct and it permeates the whole organisation,” Ray Finkelstein, the royal commissioner into Crown Resorts’ Melbourne casino said this week.
That was when Xavier Walsh, Crown Melbourne’s chief executive, was in the stand. Then came his boss, Crown Resorts’ chief executive Steve McCann, who started his role only on June 1. He reportedly almost burst into tears during questioning.
But a far more revealing performance was to come — from Crown Resorts’ executive chair, Helen Coonan, the former federal minister who has been on Crown’s board since 2012.
A litany of bad behaviour
Revelation after revelation has flowed from Victoria’s royal commission into the casino.
Before this week, evidence from Crown staff and submissions by counsel assisting had revealed shocking inadequacies in “responsible service of gambling” (RSG) practices. This included the case of a woman who gambled for four days without leaving the casino, napping at the poker machines.
Crown Resorts reduced its tax bill by hundreds of millions of dollars by claiming the cost of freebies to gamblers in its poker machine loyalty scheme.
It breached the Casino Control Act by allowing credit and debit cards to be used to buy casino chips.
On top of this, ABC’s Four Corners program this week reported that five former inspectors with Victoria’s gambling regulator, the Victorian Commission for Gambling & Liquor Regulation, believed their attempts to investigate criminal activities and money laundering at Crown had been thwarted by the regulator.
All of this, and more, comes after the NSW casino inquiry headed by Patricia Bergin revealed extensive money laundering and criminal infiltration of Crown’s existing operations. This evidence was sufficient for the NSW regulator to find Crown not suitable to operate its new Barangaroo casino.
On Tuesday McCann said he wasn’t informed of the tax avoidance issue until he had been in the job for a week. He is yet to complete probity checks, but assured Finkelstein he had a track record of “turning things around”.
Coonan told the commission that until February, when the NSW casino inquiry published its report, changing Crown’s culture was very difficult. Even though she was the board’s chair, she reported being blocked in her attempts to override the combative approach Crown took to inquiries into its operations.
In answer to questions from counsel assisting, Adrian Finanzio SC, Coonan said the board lacked independence, and pushing back against the company’s “defensive” strategy would have involved leaving it.
It was the “wrong course”, she said, but the legal advice was that changing strategy was not advisable.
Management also, apparently, failed to disclose all necessary information to the board, which became clear only after May 2019, when the Victorian gaming regulator provided the board its draft report into the arrests of 19 Crown staff in China in 2016 for allegedly illegally promoting Crown’s casinos. Yet even after media reports in mid-2019, the board did not pursue any independent investigations into the issues raised.
A ‘personal’ commitment
Between late December 2020 and the start of the royal commission in mid-May, Coonan said she met with officials from the Victorian gaming regulator five times to improve their relationship. At the first meeting, Coonan said she conveyed her “absolute commitment” to a more cooperative approach.
But that commitment, she explained to the commission yesterday, was “personal”.
When the regulator subsequently prepared a statement of factual information on the China arrests, Crown responded in January 2021 with a combative 31-page rebuttal signed by Coonan.
Blaming ‘the old regime’
That response, she told the commission, was symptomatic of the “old Crown”.
It wasn’t easy to turn around a board or a senior management team, she explained. The royal commission provided a great opportunity to get to the bottom of things.
Commissioner Finkelstein asked whether it might not have been better for directors to acquit their duties and scrutinise, explore and be curious – in other words, to do the job they were meant to perform.
Coonan agreed that might be the case in “textbook terms”. But in practice the “old regime” prevented this, via legal advice, a lack of transparency, and the stance of the company’s management.
Irresponsible service of gaming
Coonan also agreed Crown Resorts’ approach to its responsible-service-of-gaming obligations “needs further enhancement and attention”.
Until last month Crown argued its approach was “world leading”. This ceased after Crown Melbourne’s general manager for responsible gambling, Sonja Bauer, admitted to the commission this was not so.
After extraordinary revelations from the royal commission about the company’s lack of care — including examples such as a patron being allowed to gamble for 34 hours straight without a break — Crown announced changes to its policies.
Yesterday Coonan said that, having not been on the company’s responsible gambling committee until recently, she had not previously pursued information about these issues.
Old Crown, new Crown
To this point Coonan’s evidence was the “Old Crown” was gone. The “New Crown” would acquit its responsibilities properly. She said she wanted to vacate her seat by the company’s annual general meeting in October, having put that “New Crown” into effect.
Yet less than two weeks ago, on July 2, Crown’s law firm, acting for the directors of Crown Resorts, wrote to the Victorian Government seeking a meeting. The letter stressed it was “not in the public interest for Crown to fail”.
Commissioner Finkelstein suggested yesterday the intention behind the letter was “to avoid a particular finding that the commission might make”. Coonan denied this, saying she was only “trying to look after the broader interests of the company”.
The royal commission’s final report will certainly make interesting reading.
Charles Livingstone has received funding from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the (former) Victorian Gambling Research Panel, and the South Australian Independent Gambling Authority (the funds for which were derived from hypothecation of gambling tax revenue to research purposes), from the Australian and New Zealand School of Government and the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, and from non-government organisations for research into multiple aspects of poker machine gambling, including regulatory reform, existing harm minimisation practices, and technical characteristics of gambling forms. He has received travel and co-operation grants from the Alberta Problem Gambling Research Institute, the Finnish Institute for Public Health, the Finnish Alcohol Research Foundation, the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Committee, and the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand. He was a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council funded project researching mechanisms of influence on government by the tobacco, alcohol and gambling industries. He has undertaken consultancy research for local governments and non-government organisations in Australia and the UK seeking to restrict or reduce the concentration of poker machines and gambling impacts, and was a member of the Australian government’s Ministerial Expert Advisory Group on Gambling in 2010-11. He is a member of the Australian Greens.
A mega diamond of a staggering 1,174 carats was recently recovered from the Karowe mine in Botswana, making it one of the largest natural diamonds ever recovered.
More remarkably, the stone was found alongside several other similar diamonds weighing 471, 218 and 159 carats — suggesting the original diamond could have had a weight of more than 2,000 carats when it first formed.
The latest discovery is hot on the heels of another mega diamond of more than 1,000 carats which was recovered from the Jwaneng mine, also in Botswana, only a few weeks ago.
Why are we seeing a sudden rush in the recovery of these mammoth gems?
Botswana Vice President Slumber Tsogwane, on the left, holds the 1098 carat diamond unearthed in Botswana in June. This one has now been replaced by a larger one. EPA
Are diamonds really ‘rare’ as they’re said to be?
In 2020, global diamond production amounted to 111 million carats or just over 20 tonnes of diamond. However, a small proportion of this production is of high-quality gemstones. The vast majority of diamonds are small, at less than one carat.
Australia’s Argyle mine, famous for its pink diamonds (and once the world’s largest diamond mine by volume) ceased its operations late last year since it was no longer economically viable. This is because most of the diamonds extracted were small, and therefore only useful for industrial applications.
These small diamonds are so common that a diamond-tipped scribe tool can be purchased for less than the price of a tank of petrol.
Large gemstone-quality diamonds, on the other hand, are extremely rare. To understand why, we need to look at how diamonds are formed, as well as how they are mined.
Natural diamonds are billions of years old. They’re formed deep in the Earth where temperatures and pressures are high enough to squash carbon atoms into a dense, crystalline structure.
So we have to make do with the relatively tiny fraction that make it to the surface. Diamonds near the ground’s surface are typically thought to have hitched a ride via a deep-source volcanic eruption.
These violent events need to be fast enough to deliver the diamonds to the surface and, at the same time, the diamonds can’t be exposed to extreme heat, shock or oxygen. It’s a narrow Goldilocks scenario.
Most diamonds are found within igneous rocks called Kimberlite. Kimberlite “pipes” are carrot-shaped columns of rock, often just tens of metres across, at the very top of deep-source volcanoes.
But only a small percentage of all known Kimberlite deposits contain diamonds. And only a handful of these are rich enough with diamonds to warrant being mined.
The ideal conditions are very difficult to find. Only particular regions of a continent can host diamonds as the crust has to be thick enough to have hosted a deep volcanic event. It also needs to be stable and ancient — characteristics which are common in parts of Australia and Africa.
Moreover, despite its reputation for being indestructible, diamond is a brittle material. This is a property that must be taken into account when polishing diamonds into gems. At regular atmospheric pressures, diamond is not even the most stable arrangement of carbon atoms.
A crushing task
Large natural diamonds that manage to survive the tortuous path to the surface often get destroyed by the very process of us finding them. In most diamond mines, ore is blasted with explosives and then crushed into fragments to search for diamonds.
But new technologies are allowing mines to process ore with the aid of X-ray ore-sorting technology. This is specifically targeted for “mega diamond recovery”.
Although the diamond world is notoriously secretive about specifics, we do know the latest diamond from the Karowe mine was recovered using these newer techniques. And it’s likely more of these mega stones will be discovered in the future.
Advances in diamond mining techniques, coupled with the inherent rarity of mega diamonds, is a boon for Botswana, where diamonds constitute a significant portion of the country’s GDP.
Diamonds in the lab
Diamonds are getting bigger in the laboratory too. For decades, artificial diamonds were manufactured using high-pressure equipment that mimics the extreme physical conditions deep in the earth.
Now, new technology employing low-pressure conditions and carefully controlled chemistry can make perfect diamond discs as large as a dinner plate.
This chemical approach is being used commercially to manufacture gem-quality stones for jewellery. But making diamonds in this way requires patience. To grow one millimetre of diamond takes the best part of a day, meaning mining will likely play a key role in the diamond industry for some time.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison appeared to have made a “captain’s call” yesterday by encouraging people in New South Wales outbreak areas to have their AstraZeneca booster closer to eight weeks after their initial shot rather than wait for the generally recommended 12 weeks.
We would be encouraging the eight to 12-week second dose be done at the earlier part of that period […]. That is consistent with medical advice […] and given the risks to people from the outbreak in that area we believe it is important they get that second dose of AstraZeneca as soon as possible.
The official health advice from ATAGI, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, remains most people have their booster shot at 12 weeks for optimal COVID protection, but under certain circumstances that can go down to four weeks. Those circumstances include imminent travel or if there’s a risk of COVID-19 exposure.
ATAGI’s concern, and that of some other vaccine experts, is if you have your booster shot earlier than 12 weeks, your body won’t develop enough immunity to reliably protect you from serious disease.
Confused? Here is what we know so far.
What’s the official advice?
The evidence underpinning the recommended 12 week gap between the first and second AstraZeneca shots comes from a study published in the Lancet.
The study found leaving less than six weeks between the initial shot and the booster gave 55.1% efficacy (protection from symptomatic disease). Leaving 6-8 weeks between shots increased efficacy to 59.9%, and waiting 9-11 weeks, efficacy was 63.7%. However, if the gap was 12 weeks or longer efficacy jumped to 81.3%.
So to get the best protection from the AstraZeneca vaccine, you need at least 12 weeks between your first and second shot.
Now we find ourselves with an active outbreak of the highly transmissible Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 in Sydney. So we need to ask ourselves whether aiming for the highest level of protection is best, or whether we need to aim for a reasonable level of immunity as quickly as possible.
The Lancet paper didn’t include data on the Delta variant as it wasn’t widely circulating at the time, but this is fast becoming the dominant variant globally.
Yet we do know two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine protects against serious COVID-19 after infection with the Delta variant, whereas one dose doesn’t.
What’s the evidence for 8 weeks to protect against Delta?
Morrison’s call for some people to have their AstraZeneca booster shot from around eight weeks hasn’t come completely out of the blue. It’s an approach the UK has been using to get ahead of the infectious Delta variant, the same variant circulating in NSW.
We know leaving less time between AstraZeneca shots generally reduces vaccine efficacy. But what about that in the context of the Delta variant? This is where things get a bit tricky if we actually want to put a figure on precisely how much vaccine efficacy reduces.
A study published in Nature reported a single dose of AstraZeneca vaccine induced essentially no Delta virus-neutralising antibodies.
However, two doses induced a neutralising antibody response in 95% of people, albeit at a significantly lower level than with the Alpha variant (which originated in the UK).
Still, neutralising antibodies against Delta were there in the vast majority of people after two shots, antibodies that could mean the difference between a mild illness and hospitalisation with severe disease.
There are some limitations with this study. First, it did not directly assess vaccine efficacy (you need to conduct a clinical trial for that). Second, it used a range of intervals between first and second shots, so we cannot definitively say the precise protection from the Delta strain at eight weeks versus 12 weeks.
However, assessing the capacity of vaccinated peoples’ antibodies to neutralise viruses in the lab is a good indicator of the quality of vaccine-induced protection — and this study really highlighted the need for a booster shot for protection against the Delta variant.
So with infection numbers in Sydney looking more ominous by the day, coupled with the knowledge one vaccine dose is all but useless against the Delta virus, it is clear getting two doses into the arms of as many people as possible as quickly as possible, is the strategy.
Two doses, even at eight weeks apart, while not providing the highest possible level of protection, will still protect many from severe disease.
What else do I need to think about?
A drop in immunity is not the only thing to consider when weighing up the pros and cons of having your AstraZeneca booster shot early.
We’ve just heard more Pfizer shots are on their way sooner than expected. If a Pfizer booster shot is made available to people who have already had two shots of AstraZeneca (and this is a big if), this could be a game changer.
In this case — and remember this mix-and-match approach has not been officially sanctioned — it might not matter too much if an early second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine gives you sub-optimal immunity. The Pfizer booster would lift your immunity instead.
However, it remains to be seen whether such a major policy shift would happen in time to protect people currently in lockdown in NSW.
Take-home message
The Delta variant is highly transmissible. So weeks do matter, and with Australia still heavily reliant on the AstraZeneca vaccine, for now it does makes sense to reduce the time between the first and second jab.
This is clearly preferable to remaining unprotected for an extra month, particularly if you are at higher risk of infection and/or severe disease.
Nathan Bartlett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
With the prospect of a lengthier lockdown looming over Sydney, the idea of “living with the virus” has resurfaced.
NSW’s health minister, Brad Hazzard, raised the prospect of abandoning the lockdown and accepting that “the virus has a life which will continue in the community” at a press conference on Wednesday. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Prime Minister Scott Morrison have rejected that idea, but many voices in the media have been pushing it.
As with pandemic policy in general, much of the discussion of the Sydney outbreak has framed the problem as one pitting health against the economy. In this framing, epidemiologists and public health experts are seen as the advocates of saving lives, while economists are seen as the advocates of saving money.
In reality, the great majority of Australian economists support policies of aggressive suppression or elimination — that is, keeping case numbers close to zero, and clamping down when an outbreak threatens.
Broad agreement
As with epidemiologists, that broad agreement encompasses a range of views about the appropriate response in any particular case.
Some economists, and some epidemiologists, supported the NSW government’s decision to delay a lockdown, while others wanted earlier action. But only a minority in either group support the idea of ending restrictions and waiting for herd immunity to protect us.
Unfortunately, as we have already seen in the case of climate change, many media outlets thrive on conflict. It is more interesting to present a debate between a pro-lockdown public health expert and an anti-lockdown economist than to present a nuanced discussion of the best way to suppress the virus, taking into account insights from a range of disciplines.
Understanding exponential growth
Why have economists endorsed the policy of suppression with more enthusiasm than, for example, political and business leaders?
First, because economists understand the concept of exponential growth.
While economics’ stress on growth is rightly contested, its centrality to economic concepts means related concepts from epidemiology, such as the reproduction number (R), are immediately comprehensible to us.
Once you understand how rapidly exponential processes can grow, the idea that lockdowns are “disproportionate responses to a handful of cases”, as The Australian has editorialised, loses its superficial attraction.
A clear majority of economists surveyed by The Conversation in May 2020 (after the end of the national lockdown) supported strong social distancing measures to keep R below 1. Most of those who disagreed felt alternative measures could hold R below 1 at lower costs. Only a handful supported a “let it rip” strategy.
Second, economists understand counterfactuals — that is, the need to specify what would have happened under an alternative policy.
It is easy to make the point that lockdowns are both economically costly and psychologically traumatic. But the counterfactual is not a situation where the economy is unaffected and everyone is happy. Living in fear of the virus, and watching family and friends suffer and die from it, is psychologically traumatic.
As regards the economic costs, the steps people take to reduce their exposure to risk are themselves costly, as is the need to allocate medical resources to treat the sick.
Third, and most importantly, economists understand about trade-offs.
There are always trade-offs within the space of policy choices. Should we lock down at the first sign of an outbreak and risk unnecessary costs, or wait until later and risk a longer and harsher lockdown? Should we incur the costs of purpose-built quarantine facilities, or accept the greater risk of leakage from hotel quarantine?
Economists also understand that not all choices involve trade-offs. Sometimes one policy is unequivocally worse than another, on all relevant criteria. While there are always trade-offs somewhere in policy space, it’s often the case that, of the live options, one dominates the other in all important dimensions.
On the central question of suppression versus herd immunity, there was no trade-off, as countries like Sweden found out.
The evidence points strongly to one conclusion. Allowing the virus to spread uncontrolled would have done more economic damage than temporary lockdowns, as well as causing thousands of avoidable deaths and tens of thousands to suffer severe, and possibly long-lasting, illness.
Risk and uncertainty
Finally, economists understand the complexities of risk and uncertainty.
One implication is the benefit of diversification by “backing every horse in the race”, as opposed to “putting all your eggs in one basket”, or even a few.
The federal government’s vaccine policy relied heavily on a limited range of options — primarily AstraZeneca, and the University of Queensland’s vaccine venture — both of which ran into problems. If we had followed the logic of diversification, we would be much better placed than we are now.
Economics doesn’t have all the answers. No one knows that better than economists. Dealing with the pandemic requires insights from a range of disciplines. But lazy stereotypes, pitting one profession against another, don’t help.
Richard Holden is President-elect of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
John Quiggin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Paddy Nixon discuss the week in politics.
This week Michelle and Paddy discuss what the government is doing to assist Syndeysiders in lockdown, the recent allegations made by former Liberal MP Julia Banks, and Scott Morrison’s announcement that the vaccine rollout will be speeding up.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Positive future for the British Isles? Chart by Keith Rankin.
Analysis by Keith Rankin.
Positive future for the British Isles? Chart by Keith Rankin.
The latest excess mortality data shows all the countries of the British Isles, and the United States, have fewer excess deaths than New Zealand in the three months to the end of May 2021. England/Wales was looking particularly good in the three months to June. (Excess mortality data for the United Kingdom is more up-to-date than for most countries.)
England, Wales and Scotland. Chart by Keith Rankin.England, Wales and Scotland. Chart by Keith Rankin.
In England in particular, Covid19 vaccination is highly advanced, and the unvaccinated young population has high levels of immunity from the disease, due to their substantial contact with it. Currently (ie over the last week), the United Kingdom has the tenth highest reported per capita caseload of Covid19 in the world. (Those with higher rates last week are: the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, Mongolia, Fiji, Cyprus, Namibia, Tunisia, Colombia, and Kuwait.) Yet, when it
`comes to recorded covid deaths, the United Kingdom is ranked well down, at 91st.
Unlike South America, which continues to be the worst affected continent in the world this year, the United Kingdom is riddled with the dreaded ‘delta variant’. South America has barely been touched by this variant. [Refer https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases, choose ‘Delta variant (share)’ metric.]
Boris Johnson is correct. If the United Kingdom is to abandon its covid restrictions, now is the best possible time. It is mid-summer, and the United Kingdom has achieved herd immunity, mainly through its vaccination programme. Further, the United Kingdom is advantaged by having had robust academic conversations about Covid19; and about its context, which is the global history of respiratory epidemics. In the United Kingdom, the SARS-COV2 virus is now starting to take its place – among the many other viruses with interesting though little-known histories, including other coronaviruses and RSV – as a ‘common cold’ virus.
Boris Johnson’s unbelievable political nous (and gamblers’ courage) – both with respect to Brexit and Covid19 – has made Britain ‘great’ (or at least ‘relevant’) again, while also rendering his domestic political opposition completely ineffective. (Will he be referred to in future histories as ‘Boris the Great’, just as his Viking predecessor of exactly 1,000 years ago is sometimes known as ‘Cnut the Great’? Cnut’s achievement was the unification of England.)
For the United Kingdom, the danger is not over, however. The coming critical issue of political management will be the need for a winter rollout of Covid19 booster vaccinations. The United Kingdom vaccinated early; by the northern autumn, immunity amongst Britain’s older population may be seriously on the wane.
—————
Note 1: New Zealand and Scandinavia
New Zealand was completely correct to go for a cautious approach, a tight quarantine; though I am very concerned that people with soon arrive from Sydney without going through enforced quarantine. Sweden was mistaken to allow the coronavirus to run rampant through Stockholm at a time when there was almost no information about Covid19 as a disease.
Nevertheless, if we look at excess deaths for the year to 6 June 2021 (ie taking weekly averages), the data are as follows:
New Zealand: 2.40%
Finland: 2.39%
Denmark: 2.35%
Sweden: 2.19%
Norway: minus 2.49%
All these Scandinavian countries had substantial and multiple Covid19 outbreaks in 2020, so Covid19 infections contributed significantly to their mortality rates over the past year. Yet all had lower excess mortality rates than New Zealand, and that’s from a base where all of these have had many years of higher life expectancy than New Zealand.
Observers in New Zealand may have noticed that New Zealand’s public health establishment – so eager in the most part to attach itself to Saint Jacinda’s coattails – has been markedly absent on the matter of the current RSV epidemic, and on the other (non-covid) reasons for the high rates of hospitalisation, death, and mental trauma among people currently resident in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Note 2: Fiji
For reported cases of Covid19, our associate nation, Fiji, is 4th in the world for reported cases (2nd if we exclude countries with fewer than 100,000 people); and it’s 20th in the current rankings for recorded deaths. It’s always easy for the chattering classes to blame another country’s political establishment for an epidemic, without understanding that a poor country like Fiji has fewer degrees of political freedom; unlike Aotearoa so far, Fiji’s politicians cannot effectively command the epidemic to go away. But Fiji’s authorities are doing their best to roll out Covid19 vaccines; and I believe that Fiji will get over this – more successfully than, say, South America (where, as in Argentina, there were many lockdowns but little effective quarantine) – and that vaccination will prove to have been the key to such future success.
There is a deafening silence regarding household food insecurity in Australia, particularly when it comes to children. Food is a basic human right and the government’s response has been dismal and could even be considered a crime.
Food insecurity is the inability to access adequate amounts of safe, nutritious, and culturally acceptable food.
Australia does not specifically track childhood food insecurity, despite the lifelong impact it can have on children. The United Nations estimates, however, that 16% of Australian children under the age of 15 lived with an adult who was food-insecure in 2017.
Alarmingly, the West Australian 100 Families Project found 58% of children living in families with entrenched disadvantage were themselves food-insecure.
Using the Australian government’s own data, our research found that food insecurity is higher among single parent families and those receiving government financial assistance. We also found that 43% of food-insecure households seek help from welfare or community organisations.
While the statistics are sobering, they only tell part of the story. What if children could tell us directly about the impact food insecurity has on them?
As part of a new research project, one of the first of its kind in Australia, we interviewed 11 South Australian children aged 10–13 years to better understand how young people cope with food insecurity.
The findings were shocking, but not surprising. Many came from families with complex living arrangements who were dealing with issues like overcrowded housing, poverty, parents who were unemployed or holding down multiple jobs, disabilities, and poor health. Some children were being raised by single parents, others lived with blended and extended families (step- and half-siblings, other relatives).
The children all understood financial hardship and were acutely aware that not everyone has enough food. As some of them told us:
I’m scared that we’re not going to have enough money to buy more food. […] sometimes [Mum] doesn’t have any money because she paid the bills, and then we don’t have any groceries, and our bills keep going higher and higher and higher.
Dad will dish up everyone else and then if there’s any leftover, he’ll have it. And if there isn’t enough then he’ll either miss out because he’s not hungry or he’ll make some toast if there’s any bread.
Saddened by the fate of others, the children’s solutions to food insecurity addressed the root causes of the problem.
I think [it’s important] to help all people who need the money or food. […] Maybe, start off with a small amount of job and then try and like get a different job that pays more. I think the government should hear this.
Uncoupling the policy response
These children need more than just food. Families struggling with severe disadvantage need adequate and ongoing financial protection, otherwise their children grow up in precarious and traumatic circumstances.
Policymakers should consider food insecurity a form of trauma, an emotionally painful experience that often has long-term mental and physical consequences. Childhood food insecurity is associated with missing school, emotional and behavioural issues, and poor physical and mental health in the longer term.
Australia’s COVID-19 response revealed what experts in public health and social services have known for years — that a liveable income frees families from food insecurity.
Charities have provided food relief for Australian families for over 200 years, but these services do not address the root causes of food insecurity.
The time for action
The government has conducted countless consultations on this issue, but piecemeal funding arrangements and a lack of a clear strategy means nothing changes. Food insecurity is a complex problem, but it’s time for action.
We can predict food stress, for instance, to pinpoint families who are at risk of food insecurity and target solutions for them.
And to move people out of food insecurity, we can action the recommendations proposed by the collaborative WA Food Relief Framework or the 2020 parliamentary inquiry on food pricing and food security in remote Indigenous communities. These focus on:
monitoring food prices, supply and consumption
improving supply-chain logistics
developing a national food and nutrition security strategy.
But, to be effective, this strategy must address the underlying causes of food insecurity. Food is not the only answer to food insecurity.
The Canadian government has monitored the financial constraints that prevent people from accessing food over many years, and its findings show that solutions must target insufficient income. Subsequent reforms to social assistance programs almost halved the prevalence of food insecurity in two provinces from 2007 to 2012.
This is the type of reform urgently needed in Australia. As Nelson Mandela once said, “there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children”. It is time to listen to the children, learn from the past, and realise our shared aspirations for a food-secure future.
Christina Pollard is a Director on the Board of Foodbank WA and has volunteered in that capacity for a number of years, Vice President (Development) of the Public Health Association of Australia.
Stefania Velardo is the South Australian Branch President of the Australian Health Promotion Association. She has volunteered in this capacity for several years.
Sue Booth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The major storm surge and coastal flooding in Wellington earlier this month was another reminder that the sea is now lapping close to a lot of New Zealand’s front doors. The ominous question is: who will pay when it crosses the threshold?
But that’s not a question worrying insurance companies. They’ve made their position clear — they won’t be paying for it.
Insurance is based on uncertainty and is reevaluated annually. When the chance of damage rises beyond what an insurance company is prepared to bear, it withdraws.
This leaves at-risk homeowners with no insurance, either private or through the state’s Earthquake Commission. In the meantime, homeowners will likely continue to pay rising premiums, possibly unaware of the tenuous nature of their coverage.
The latest research tells us coastal properties will start to lose insurance cover within the next ten years, if not sooner. Technically, if your property has a 1% chance of coastal damage with today’s sea level, you’ll likely lose all private insurance once the chance rises to 5% — anticipated to be less than 25 years away.
That means potentially more than 30,000 residential properties – currently valued at more than NZ$17 billion – are expected to be uninsurable within the next few decades.
Furthermore, these timelines don’t account for the latest predictions of polar ice sheet tipping points: major sea-level rise is on its way.
Who will pay?
Domestic and international precedent suggests the central government might compensate some property owners. But there’s a significant caveat: the New Zealand government has so far followed a UK model for coastal property compensation. Called “Flood Re”, this only covers UK homes built before 2009.
Minister for Climate Change James Shaw has said the challenge for New Zealand lies in defining where the line falls. He also said developers of coastal properties today are doing so “with their eyes open”.
This is significant and suggests the government might be positioning itself to abandon more recent coastal developments.
It’s hard to argue with such a policy. Can we expect taxpayers and the government to pay such a massive bill? More pointedly, should the government be compensating for decisions made now when local councils should at least be aware of the risks?
We’re still building by the coast
While the total rateable value of exposed residential property is approximately $17 billion, $2.6 billion of that was built after 2009, according to our analysis.
Even today, local councils are continuing to grant consent for development in these immediately exposed places. The Christchurch City Council – already with one of the highest exposures to coastal hazards – has just announced a 65-home development in New Brighton, an area current modelling suggests is prone to coastal flooding.
At the same time, advice from the Ministry for the Environment suggests councils should be taking a risk-informed approach to land-use planning, and asks whether councils or investors can afford to write off these investments in future.
This guidance is not mandatory, however, and many councils do not have the resources or expertise to take a risk-based approach. Aside from the financial threat, there are the associated physical upheavals and mental health issues facing residents.
The new Strategic Planning Act (one of the three pieces of legislation replacing the old Resource Management Act) should put an end to further development in at-risk places. But this still leaves the complex financial and ethical question of what happens to existing property owners.
Simply to say these residents knew the risks when they developed and should therefore be left on their own is not an acceptable long-term, compassionate strategy. Other solutions will be needed.
Government guidance is vital
We need to be wary, however, of local communities demanding sea walls or other protections to allow them to remain. Recent research indicates such structural defences can inadvertently raise long-term risk and exposure.
A more sustainable approach proposed in Hawkes Bay involves charging ratepayers $30 a year for a coastal defence or managed retreat fund. Initially lauded as the country’s most sophisticated engagement process and strategy, it has since stalled due to councils being unable to agree which rates bill it should be on.
Another solution might be the creation of a government-managed coastal bond or insurance scheme. This would ensure the premiums paid by coastal residents stayed in the local economy to support them. Naturally, such a scheme should include conditions that limit or prevent development in risk zones.
The related idea of a “revolving loan program” is being discussed in California. Essentially a creative buyout scheme, this would involve councils or communities buying vulnerable properties and renting them out to pay off the loan until the property is no longer safe.
Regardless, storms like those witnessed in Wellington should remind us of the need for clear guidance and support at government level. The proposed Climate Change Adaptation (or Managed Retreat) Act will hopefully provide this guidance, but this is possibly three years away at best. With coastal development still happening, it’s clear we need it sooner.
In the meantime, those who are aware of the risks will be tempted to sell their vulnerable property to those who aren’t. That is no solution. New Zealand will still have vulnerable citizens in vulnerable places — regardless of whether or not they bought with their eyes open.
Tom Logan receives funding from the New Zealand MBIE-funded Resilience to Nature’s Challenge NSC. He is co-director of the risk consulting firm Urban Intelligence.
Research Checks interrogate newly published studies and how they’re reported in the media. The analysis is undertaken by one or more academics not involved with the study, and reviewed by another, to make sure it’s accurate.
Your first time having sex and when you have your first child are memorable moments in life.
But what influences the timing of these? One research team set out to discover whether our genes play a role.
A study, published last week in Nature Human Behaviour, found hundreds of regions of our genetic code associated with how old we are when we first have sex and have our first child.
This research was always going to get lots of media attention. We’ve seen provocative headlines such as:
When you lose your virginity may be written in your GENES.
Media attention is partly placed on the role of genetics on the loss of virginity, which is a controversial social construct with a lot of cultural significance.
The researchers did find some significant and robust genetic associations.
But the contributions are relatively weak, and don’t override obvious social and cultural influences.
The real message is how old you are when you first have sex and have your first child is controlled by a little bit of nature and a lot of nurture.
From evidence provided by this study we certainly can’t say “my genes made me do it”.
How was the study conducted?
The research project is robust and performed by competent scientists using modern technology and access to well curated patient tissue banks and databases.
This study looks at some of the genetics behind the age at which you first have sex, and separately, the genetics of when you have your first child (for both men and women).
The study is an impressive piece of research, where the authors undertook a very large “genome wide association study”. This is where researchers scan the entire genomes of many different people to uncover genetic variations associated with particular outcomes, like a disease or behaviour.
They looked at the age people first had sex in 387,338 people from the UK Biobank, which contains genetic information from hundreds of thousands of people in the United Kingdom. Then they looked at when people had their first child across 542,901 people from 36 individual previous studies they combined. These were all samples from people of European ethnicity.
They applied comprehensive data analysis techniques to ensure the associations they identified were unlikely be due to chance.
They also looked at the relationship of these genetic outcomes by sex or across socioeconomic and historical contexts. This is a well-established research approach that’s required to address complex behavioural traits. This type of study and approach has contributed to thousands of valuable research studies globally.
What did the researchers find?
They found 371 differences within gene sequences, known as gene variants, linked to these two traits. A total of 282 gene variants were linked to how old people are when they first have sex, and 89 were linked to how old people are when they have their first child.
Some truly interesting and plausible genes were associated with these two traits, along the lines of what you might intuitively expect to influence or underpin these complex behaviours.
Researchers found 89 gene variants associated with how old people are when they have their first child. But the influence all these genes have on any one person is small. Shutterstock
Many of the genes associated with the age at which people first had sex were related to reproduction. Also, many were associated with behavioural and psychiatric traits, including those relating to risk seeking behaviour, sociability, anxiety, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), addiction and early smoking.
However, when these gene variants are combined into what is known as a “polygenic score”, they were only able to explain a small percentage of the variance of these genetic traits. That is, 5.8% of age at first sex and 4.8% of age at first birth.
What are the shortcomings?
As with all genetic studies to analyse complex behavioural traits, the findings need to be taken with a grain of salt and put into context.
These are not the same types of gene variants or mutations we see in clinical genetics, linked to diseases such as inherited breast cancer, Huntington’s disease or cystic fibrosis.
While the study found interesting and robust associations, the amount of influence one (or all) of these gene variants have on any given individual is small.
And these genetic associations are not causal. Each has a minor effect, and none are enough by themselves to cause behavioural change.
There have been a number of gene association studies of this type taken out of context over the years, where association has been confused with causation, or where there has been extrapolation to non-European populations. Misinterpretation of these types of studies has caused confusion and offence.
This study may have uncovered some interesting biology. For example, the authors mention results relevant for improving teenage and late-life health, and mechanisms of infertility. But the results are mainly just interesting from an academic perspective and aren’t likely to impact diagnostic tests or new therapies. — Andrew Shelling
Blind peer review
The review gives an accurate lay summary of this complex paper.
The study is based on analysis of enormous UK datasets that allow correlation between genome sequence and life traits, including age at first sexual contact and age at first birth. It identifies genes that may have an influence. Among a long list are many with known functions in reproduction or behaviour.
The reviewer was careful to state correlation does not necessarily mean causation.
The reviewer is correct in pointing out a relatively small amount of the variation in these traits can be attributed to genetic differences: about 22% for both traits. This is a proportion that nearly doubled between 1941 and 1965. This suggests, to me at least, relaxation of social pressures constraining sexual behaviour.
This collapses into a “polygenic score” of only about 6%, taking all factors into account. Indeed, as the reviewer notes, you can’t blame your genes.
The reviewer is a bit sceptical (as am I) of the authors’ claim the results of this study will guide both medical and social policy. However, the results are relevant to health of young people (early sex correlates with bad outcomes) and old (late sex correlates with longer and healthier life). — Jenny Graves
Andrew Shelling receives funding from Health Research Council of New Zealand, University of Auckland, and various Cancer Charities within New Zealand. I’m also on the Board of Breast Cancer Cure.
Jenny Graves receives funding from The Australian Research Council.
Hundreds of dead turtles continue to wash ashore in Sri Lanka, almost two months after a newly built container ship caught fire while anchored off Colombo’s port.
The X-Press Pearl was carrying 1,486 containers and burned for two weeks. It then sunk in early June, causing one of Sri Lanka’s greatest environmental disasters.
Chemicals contaminated waters, killing marine life and destroying breeding grounds. The contaminants include nitric acid, sodium dioxide, copper and lead, and tonnes of plastic nurdles (pellets) which can take centuries to decompose.
Local communities entirely dependent on fishing for their livelihoods have been ordered not to fish. Now, the environment faces the threat of an oil spill, which authorities, with international assistance, are desperately trying to contain.
Local police have launched a criminal investigation. Meanwhile, the Centre for Environmental Justice has filed a fundamental rights petition in the Sri Lankan Supreme Court.
In the wake of the disaster, many commentators have sought to explain what went wrong. But these have largely missed a broader, though crucial, issue this disaster exposed: the tension between economic development and environmental protection. This makes shipping a realm of ultra-free trade distant from, and sometimes untouched by, regulations.
I’ll help unravel what went so drastically wrong, and how we can try to prevent similar disasters in future.
When cargo ships catch fire
It is believed the leakage of properly declared, but inappropriately or incorrectly packed or stowed nitric acid caused the X-Press Pearl fire. Nitric acid is a corrosive, toxic and flammable liquid — and the X-Press Pearl was carrying 25 tonnes of it.
Nitric acid is an essential component of ammonium nitrate — a popular fertiliser around the world and a raw ingredient in explosives manufacturing. Impounded ammonium nitrate is what triggered the 2020 explosion that obliterated the Port of Beirut.
Any fire on board a ship is a clear risk to the lives of the crew and the environment. Yet, container vessel fires occur frequently. Insurers are notified of fires about once every two weeks and major fires every 60 days.
The source of these fires is changing. Fires once emanated from engines, but they are now just as likely to originate in the cargo itself, with incorrectly packaged or misdeclared chemicals the second-most prevalent cause of fire after charcoal.
In fact, data indicate the possibility of more than 150,000 annual cases of undeclared or misdeclared dangerous goods capable of causing fires. The incidence may be higher depending on the shipping route.
Another fire risk has to do with competition between shipping companies, which is based on carrying capacity and efficiency. This has forced an exponential growth in container ship sizes, which escalates the probability of a fire. It also makes detecting a fire difficult, if not impossible, until it is well advanced.
Fire safety on ships could be improved with better training to promote best practice in protecting and preserving the integrity of cargo.
SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea) regulations govern on-board firefighting. But these are outdated, having come into force in 1980. They need to be amended to suit the current era of large and ultra-large vessels, like X-Press Pearl.
Organisational procedures, such as those of the American Bureau of Shipping, promote earlier fire detection and more efficient methods of fire suppression. They’re better suited to the design and operations of ships in modern maritime industries.
A tale of two ports
The nitric acid leak aboard the X-Press Pearl was discovered at Hamad Port in Qatar, which refused the ship’s request to discharge the container. The ship made the same request later to Hazira Port in Gujarat, which was also denied.
Hamad sea port in Qatar. Shutterstock
The disaster at sea could have been avoided had either port offloaded the container. Why did they refuse? And what were their obligations in these circumstances?
It’s unlikely their actions will be examined in the official investigation, which will focus on the causes of the fire and actions of the crew. However, these answers reveal the hugely problematic conditions of shipping operations.
Both ports claimed they lacked the manpower and equipment to discharge the leaking container. But it’s hard to imagine such recently built, state of the art, and well-resourced facilities — according to their corporate websites — lacking the means to deal with a nitric acid leak.
Ports may be reluctant to accept hazardous vessels because they lack emergency and contingency plans and preparedness. It’s one thing to adopt hazard and environmental policies, but quite another to actually implement them. This would require providing the training, and maintaining the necessary equipment, to address potential threats.
Port services are just as competitive as shipping companies. Ports aim to maximise the moving of containers through terminals. This makes the physical investigation of the contents of containers impossible, and any processing delay unaffordable.
Nevertheless, efficiency and profitability don’t mean quality services should be sacrificed. There are three ways to begin addressing this issue:
rigorous enforcement of the International Maritime Dangerous Goods regulations, which control their handling and stowage
better training for supply chain workers who apply these regulations
stronger sanctions issued by states where cargoes originate, and by shipping companies.
Could the crew have sought shelter?
The investigation into the X-Press Pearl disaster will reveal whether the crew sought a priority berth for shelter while the ship was engulfed in flames at Colombo port.
Arguably, ships in distress have traditionally enjoyed the “freedom of ports” to seek shelter in the territorial waters of nations if they are facing the total loss of the vessel and its cargo, or the lives of its crew.
But states may deny ships entry if, for instance, they pose a serious threat to the environment or the safety or security of its people. Given the increasing size of vessels and the uncertain nature of the threat they pose, refusal of entry is the norm.
In 2003, following several high-profile incidents, the International Maritime Organization adopted resolutions creating “places of refuge” for vessels in distress.
These are sheltered waters, and not ports with the infrastructure to counteract serious problems on board. So while refuge may address the threat of fire, it does not avert the far greater risk of environmental pollution.
Places of refuge have assuaged some concerns, but they are not an international obligation. They also tend to be concentrated in developed maritime regions, and are virtually nonexistent where they’re most needed — where substandard vessels carrying illicit dangerous cargoes ply their trade.
It’s important we do not let the X-Press Pearl settle into the background as another spectacular story about a ship ablaze at sea. It should spark change, and serve as the cautionary exemplar of what happens with alarming frequency when we want our goods cheap and now.
Claudio Bozzi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris James, ARC DECRA Fellow, Centre for Hypersonics, School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, The University of Queensland
Over the next fortnight, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson will take off into space, because they can, on spaceships designed by their respective companies.
It’s a big moment for the private space industry. But the question comes to mind: who has the smarter plan?
A billionaire’s space race
On May 5 Blue Origin, owned by former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, announced it would fly its first crew of astronauts into space on July 20 — the Apollo 11 Moon landing’s 52nd anniversary.
After 15 successful test flights, this will be the first crewed flight for Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship. One seat will be occupied by an undisclosed winner of a charity auction, who reportedly paid US$28 million for the privilege. Two more seats will be taken up by Bezos and his brother Mark.
A fourth seat will go to Wally Funk. The 82-year-old pilot was a promising candidate in the 1960s Mercury 13 women’s astronaut training programme, but wasn’t able to go to space because of her gender.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule. Blue Origin
It wasn’t long after Bezos announced his plans that Sir Richard Branson also joined in, setting a launch date of July 11 — nine days before Bezos’s departure.
Branson will travel as part of a six person crew on Virgin Galactic spaceplane VSS Unity. It will be the fourth time the VSS Unity, the specific SpaceShipTwo spacecraft, has been flown to space, but the first with a full crew.
Both flights will be short, and based on different definitions of where “space” begins.
Bezos’s Blue Origin has chosen to define this as the internationally recognised Kármán line at 100 kilometres altitude. The peak of the New Shepard’s trajectory will be just past this limit.
Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic has chosen the US Air Force’s definition of space at about 80km altitude. Their SpaceShipTwo generally reaches a peak altitude of around 90km during flight.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard
Blue Origin’s New Shepard is a fully autonomous rocket (with no pilots) which takes off almost fully vertically from its launch site in remote West Texas.
It is powered by a BE-3 liquid-fuelled rocket motor, which burns for around two and a half minutes until the spacecraft reaches 55km of altitude, at a speed of 900 metres per second. With its almost vertical trajectory, this is enough altitude and momentum to reach space.
Once the rocket motor stops burning, the booster holding the rocket motor and fuel separates from the crew capsule and returns to Earth.
New Shepard Booster landing after an uncrewed test flight. Blue Origin
The whole flight will only last ten minutes, with astronauts experiencing weightlessness near the peak altitude, before their capsule re-enters the atmosphere and drifts back down to Earth. Parachutes will help with deceleration.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo spaceplane will be carried up to 15km altitude by a carrier aircraft, the WhiteKnightTwo. At this point it will launch itself into space, starting above the thick lower atmosphere.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo shown attached to its carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, outside Spaceport America in New Mexico, the world’s first commercial spaceport. Virgin Galactic
SpaceShipTwo will detach from WhiteKnightTwo and start its hybrid rocket motor engine which burns for a minute, giving the spaceplane enough momentum to reach its 90km peak altitude.
Similar to the New Shepard, passengers will experience several minutes of weightlessness before re-entering the atmosphere.
Due to its low speed upon re-entry, SpaceShipTwo will perform a “feathered re-entry”, where it will rotate its wings up and use them to keep stable, like a shuttlecock, as it falls down to 15km altitude.
It will then once again become a spaceplane and glide back to the ground under the control of pilots, ready for re-use.
Virgin Galactic’s planned flight path based on earlier test flights. Virgin Galactic
A rocket versus a spaceplane
There are several differences and similarities in the companies’ approaches.
Both will have short flights, allowing them to make use of suborbital launch trajectories. This means they will achieve the right altitude to reach space, but won’t go into orbit. This approach requires much less fuel than an orbital flight.
Suborbital trajectories also make re-entry significantly slower, so the heavy heat shielding that would be required when returning from orbit won’t be needed. Also, both aim to re-use their spaceships to lower the costs of operation over time.
View from space during one of Blue Origin’s uncrewed New Shepard test flights. Blue Origin
Beyond that, however, their approaches are quite different.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard is essentially a large “sounding rocket” These are small research rockets which perform suborbital hops so science experiments can be performed during brief trips to space.
It also uses a liquid rocket motor which, while harder to design, is generally safer since it can be throttled during operation (and even shut off if required).
New Shepard, which has performed 15 successful uncrewed test flights, is overall a simple spacecraft. This will likely make it cheaper and safer in the long run.
In contrast, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo is much more advanced. It is launched mid-air and is rocket-powered — an approach that hasn’t been properly explored since NASA and the US Air Force’s X-15 program in the 1960s.
For a successful flight, SpaceShipTwo must be launched while being carried by a carrier aircraft, must ignite its rocket motor in the air, stow its wings for re-entry and then un-stow them again to glide home. This complicated procedure has already come unstuck multiple times.
A recent SpaceShipTwo flight was aborted due to a computer malfunction after its rocket motor ignited. It landed safely but didn’t reach space.
And in 2014, the accidental activation of the feathered re-entry system during ascent to space led to destruction of the first SpaceShipTwo model, the VSS Enterprise, tragically killing the co-pilot.
VSS Unity in space during a test flight, with its wings stowed away in preparation for feathered re-entry. This specific model has completed 21 successful test flights, with three reaching space.
Diversity versus simplicity
While the costs of a seat on both spaceships will be eye watering, only Virgin Atlantic have announced an official price tag: US$250,000 per seat on a SpaceShipTwo flight. It’s expected Blue Origin’s New Shepard will be priced similarly.
The simplicity of Blue Origin’s system means it will probably be better equipped to reduce costs over time. But simplicity may also be its downfall. Meanwhile, SpaceShipTwo is a more complex spacecraft with pilots. This could prove more attractive to customers.
The rocket-powered ascent to the edge of space during Virgin Galactic’s first SpaceShipTwo test flight.
Chris James does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
I have been in Taiwan since April as a visiting fellow. During this time, there are two questions I’ve been consistently asked. What’s happened to Australia’s relationship with China? And what does it mean for Australian support for Taiwan?
The Australia-China relationship I can explain somewhat. I can chart the causes of the downward spiral of relations. I can say why it’s unlikely to improve anytime soon. The 2021 Lowy Institute poll shows how deep the negative sentiment now runs, with only 16% of surveyed Australians expressing trust in China compared with 52% just three years ago.
But how to answer what level of support there is for Taiwan in Australia?
New poll: what do Australians and Taiwanese think?
The Lowy poll last asked Australians this question in 2019. Given the most compelling scenario — where Chinese invades and the United States decides to intervene — only 43% of respondents supported deploying military forces.
With the deterioration of the Australia-China relationship and the talk of war, would we expect this to go up or down?
To try to answer this, I worked with the Australia Institute to survey both Taiwanese and Australians citizens (asking more than 600 people in each country with a 4% margin of error) about each nation’s security and relationship with China.
A China attack?
The results are surprising on two fronts.
First, the degree of threat felt by Australians surveyed is striking. A similar number of Australians think China will launch an armed attack on Australia (42%) as on Taiwan (49%). I don’t think I could find a military planner in the world that would agree with this.
Despite Australia’s distance from China, Australians and Taiwanese have a similar threat perception. Both see China as being a very aggressive country (62% and 65%). Given the great differences of geography and history, this convergence is noteworthy.
Australians support Taiwanese independence but not necessarily to the point of sending the Australian military. Darren England/AAP
Second, more Australians (13%) than Taiwanese (4%) think a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is likely sometime soon. Perhaps Taiwanese think it more likely that China will continue to use “grey zone” coercive tactics rather than attack. Certainly they are not in imminent fear.
Taiwanese are very clear they want independence, with 73% surveyed preferring independence if peaceful relations with China could be maintained. This is in line with other polls.
About half still want independence, even if this leads China to attack. Only 14% of Taiwan’s citizens think they could defend themselves unaided. And only 26% of Taiwanese think the US would commit its armed forces to fight a war against China in defence of Taiwan. But they still want independence. That’s the depth of feeling.
The importance of support for Taiwan
Taiwan has an overriding fear of abandonment. It doesn’t want its security and independence to be seen as something for China and Taiwan to “solve by themselves”. So it is highly relevant whether other countries would come to Taiwan’s aid.
Clearly, Australians are sympathetic to Taiwanese aspirations for independence. Two thirds of those polled agreed Taiwan should still become a new country, even if China decides to attack after Taiwan declares independence.
But in a crisis, could Taiwan rely on Australia? With these polling numbers, I’d advise Taiwanese to be very cautious.
Taiwan is on high alert after an increase in Chinese military activity in Taiwan’s air zone. Ritchie B Togo/EPA/AAP
Only 21% of Australians agreed the Australian people are prepared to go to war to help the Taiwanese people gain their independence from China. A further 40% were against and 39% were undecided. When we asked the question as “if China incorporated Taiwan, do you agree Australia should send its defence forces to Taiwan?” 37% agreed, 29% were against and 34% were undecided.
While neither is directly comparable to the Lowy poll result (where 43% supported deploying the military), the response is consistent with a relatively low level of support. By contrast, 80% supported using the military to stop a government from committing genocide and 77% to restore law and order in a Pacific nation in the 2019 Lowy poll.
These results suggest that the number of people who support military involvement in Taiwan may even have decreased in the last two years as there has been more talk of war. In the 2021 Lowy Poll, 57% of Australians said in the event of a military conflict between China and US, Australia should stay neutral.
The trouble for Taiwan
Some of the recent tough talk about China from Canberra (think “drums of war”) might give the Taiwanese the impression they can rely on Australia. But Australia should not give Taiwanese false hope.
Whether Australia would decide whether to become involved in a crisis in the Taiwan Strait would depend on a host of factors, including political and public opinion. Yet the high number of undecideds in the polling figures suggest it would be unwise to assume it would be an easy or popular decision.
Taiwan would be unwise to count on Australia as things currently stand.
Melissa Conley Tyler is in Taiwan as a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, funded by a Ministry of Foreign Affairs Taiwan Fellowship.
COVID-19 has affected many facets of our lives. Public health measures to stop the spread of the virus have impacted the way we work, connect with others and socialise.
The pandemic has changed the way we’ve been able to celebrate milestones in our lives, and, importantly, the way we’ve been able to grieve losses.
Border restrictions, both domestic and international, have meant some people have been unable to travel interstate or overseas to be with loved ones at the end of their lives, or to attend their funeral.
Others may have been able to be at the funeral, but the way it was conducted might have been different, whether remotely or with limited mourners.
Further, people with loved ones in hospital or aged care at the end of life may have not been able to visit as much as they wanted to, or at all.
I’ve seen both patients in my work as a psychologist and people in my personal life who have been affected in these ways.
As well as making the experience of losing a close friend or family member harder than it already is, not being able to be with loved ones or attend the funeral can make it more difficult for people to deal with and adapt to their loss. This can take a toll on their mental health.
When grief is acute, a person is likely to experience a range of intense emotions such as sadness, despair and helplessness. They will also be preoccupied with thoughts and memories of their deceased loved one.
In most cultures, the grieving process is facilitated by rituals that enable the bereaved person to connect with their lost loved one. These include being with the person at end of life moments, planning and attending the funeral, and talking to and being with others who were also close to the person.
These rituals help people to experience and manage challenging emotions, understand and accept their grief, and establish a connection to their memories of the lost person.
With time, most people come to accept their loss, and adapt to the reality of their life without the person.
What if you can’t be part of this process in person?
When someone experiences the death of a loved one and is unable to be with them or attend the funeral, this can compromise their ability to grieve or process their loss.
There are a number of things you can do when the pandemic or other circumstances limit opportunities to participate in traditional grieving rituals in person.
1. Get in touch with the memories of the person you have lost
Take the time to think about memories of the person (both good and bad). Look at photos, videos and other materials you have that help you remember them.
You could even create a space dedicated to the person where you put pictures or other sentimental objects. This could be in your home or another place of significance.
If you do this, try to have others around you when you watch it who can offer support.
Traditional rituals help with the grieving process. Shutterstock
3. Connect with others who also knew the person
Talk about memories of the person. Again, you might need to do this virtually, but being with others who are going through a similar experience can help you accept the loss.
4. Normalise and accept the frustration of not being able to be there
You will likely feel intense emotions like frustration or anger about not being able to be with your loved one to say goodbye, or with other loved ones who are also grieving the loss.
You are best served by accepting these feelings as normal and inevitable. This can help to minimise the degree to which they get in the way of the pain of your loss.
5. Prioritise self-care
During these times, self-care is particularly important. This includes things like maintaining good sleep, nutrition, social connectedness, exercise and avoiding risky substance use.
6. Access professional help if you need to
Intense emotions are a normal part of grief and in most cases, they pass with time. But if these feelings are persisting and you feel you’re not coping, professional support can be helpful.
One option would be grief therapy with a psychologist. Grief therapy involves helping the bereaved person accept and cope with the loss while simultaneously assisting them to adapt to life without their loved one.
Glen Hosking does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Trees have always been a point of conflict between colonisers and Indigenous people.
At the very beginning of European-Indigenous interactions, skirmishes broke out because colonisers were ignorant of protocols and the desecration of important Indigenous sites and habitats. In the 19th century, as frontiers pushed west into the Country of Wiradjuri, colonists were indifferent to the sanctity of marked trees.
As a news article from the Daily Advertiser in 1941 reported:
The only carved tree […] unfortunately fell victim to the advancing tide of civilisation and was cut up and converted into railway sleepers that now possibly lie somewhere along the line between Yanco and Hay, or Leeton and Griffith.
Most recently, the binary difference between Indigenous and non-Indigenous systems were in the spotlight as Djab Wurrung custodians and activists fought to prevent the desecration of Djab Wurrung sacred trees. Dozens camped to protect a 350-year-old Djab Wurrung Direction Tree, and a Grandmother Tree estimated to be 800 years old.
This conflict showed it is not necessary for a tree to be modified for it to be considered sacred. It also showed us this failure, centuries old, is one born from a conflict of ideas and beliefs between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
This year’s NAIDOC theme “Heal Country” asks all Australians to take stock of the ongoing threat and desecration of Indigenous heritage — including sacred, cultural trees. This heritage not only holds value for Indigenous Australians, but for all Australians as a cornerstone of our national identity.
Wiradjuri scar tree located on the outskirts of Narrandera, NSW. Rob Williams, Author provided
Sentinels in ceremony, birthing and burials
Aboriginal ontology captures the relationship between all worldly and spiritual phenomena, and relationship to Country.
Aboriginal people view the landscape and all things within it not as inanimate places or objects, but as sentient landscapes and entities with agency and metaphysical properties.
Sacred trees are pivotal points in a nexus of interpersonal relationships between person-animal-plant, in person-person kinship, in identity and connection to place. They hold our ancestor stories, they are a direct link to our old people.
Trees transcend simple economics and sit at the centre of the sacred — they are sentinels in ceremony, birthing and burials.
In Wiradjuri Country, carved trees marked ceremonial grounds and burials. Burial trees were decorated with distinct diamond and scroll motifs, unique and powerful, and faced those buried.
Economically, trees provided generations of Indigenous people with shelter, fibre, tools, food and material for canoe-making.
The common thread in Indigenous tree use is its sustainable practice. Rarely would a tree be felled purely for economic gain because its inherent value is realised for spiritual and broader ecosystem health.
Importantly, people-tree beliefs systems are very much alive in Aboriginal societies of southeast Australia.
Scarred trees are still commonly made by Wiradjuri people. Species of eucalypt, particularly red gum, yellow and grey box are carved and, when their bark is soft, removed to make coolamons (wood or bark carrying container) and canoes. Red gums are manipulated while young, their branches interwoven. Commonly called ring trees, they are said to mark boundaries and line the banks of the Marrambidya (Murrumbidgee River).
Wiradjuri women still perform the ancient birthing ceremony of returning a child’s gural (placenta) to Country. My daughter’s gural was returned to Country and buried at the base of river red gum sapling on the banks of the Marrambidya.
This is her place now, she is connected to this sapling. It will grow as she grows, and she will return to this spot for the rest of her life.
A practice coolamon cut with my daughter and partner. Lillardia Briggs-Houston, Author provided
The threat of public indifference
Sacred trees also stand at the intersection of Aboriginal heritage and environmental protection, activism and politics. Economic- and wildfire-driven deforestation represent omnipresent threats to sacred trees and Indigenous heritage more broadly.
But even more insidious is the threat of public indifference. It’s a sickness that has spread through our nation’s institutions and political systems.
This sickness shows a lack of respect for Indigenous culture and our humanity. Its symptoms take the form of ongoing desecration of our heritage and incessant dispossession of Indigenous people.
Binyal (River Red Gum) ring tree boundary marker. They are often found along the Marrambidya Rob Williams, Author provided
Unless there’s mainstream appreciation of Aboriginal culture and heritage, episodes like the destruction of Juukan Gorge, Djab Wurung and Kuyang will continue, and the public conversation will remain divisive.
The Riverina’s last sacred trees
In a small township called Narrandera situated along the Marrambidya (Murrumbidgee River), sacred Wiradjuri trees still survive. They represent a living continuum between the old ways and the new.
Most of this country along the Murrumbidgee has been consumed by Australia’s unquenchable appetite for land and water. Almost everywhere you look, there are expanses of land cleared to make way for intensive crop cycles. Miles of irrigation fed by the Marrambidya deliver water to thirsty crops and livestock.
The land clearing and deforestation in this part of Australia is staggering, and it doesn’t surprise me that our abysmal record qualified us as the only developed nation on the World Wildlife Fund’s global list of deforestation hotspots.
Murrumbidgee Valley is the Riverina’s only koala habitat. Shutterstock
One exception where communities of old trees still stand is in the Murrumbidgee Valley Regional Park, which hugs the Marrambidya and provides a corridor sanctuary for flora and fauna.
It’s the most important ecological habitat in this part of Bidgee country, not only because of its remarkable biodiversity value (this is the Riverina’s only koala habitat) or heritage value, but more so because of its scarceness.
Here, some of the region’s last sacred trees and important Aboriginal cultural sites survive.
The two photos below show a shield tree and a stone core. These were both found in the same stretch of the Murrumbidgee Valley Regional Park.
A Wiradjuri shield tree located in the Murrumbidgee Valley National Park. Rob Williams, Author provided A stone core identified on a exposed surface in the Murrumbidgee Valley National Park. These are stones from which usable flakes, similar to a knife, are struck. They have distinct impressions made from these strikes. Rob Williams, Author provided
Sacred trees used to be common throughout the Riverina, but are now found only in a handful of state forests, national parks, or in vegetation reserves hugging the region’s highways. Extrapolating beyond the fence line into farmland, one could presume they were once common throughout this territory prior to colonisation.
A future for sacred trees
We must ask ourselves some tough questions. What will the next two centuries of unrestrained economic and infrastructure growth mean for Aboriginal heritage? Will your grandchildren have the same opportunity to visit and sit with sacred trees on Country — to listen to them, to speak to them and to appreciate them?
The ongoing desecration of Aboriginal heritage and Country, particularly our waterways, directly traumatises Aboriginal people. When we are denied access to Country and our heritage is destroyed, it leads to poorer health, well-being and social outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
This is not just an Indigenous issue, or only about Indigenous struggle. Indigenous heritage is an asset all Australians can enjoy, celebrate, and advocate for greater protection and sustainable management. Once gone, it can never be replaced.
I acknowledge the Wiradjuri and all Indigenous people, their ancestors, elders, and youth, and advocate for their ongoing connection and right to access and protect Country.
I also acknowledge Lillardia Briggs-Houston, Wiradjuri, Gangulu and Yorta Yorta woman, for her advice and contributions to this piece.
Rob N. Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Robert Menzies established a ‘buffer body’ between government and universities.Shutterstock
Universities struggle to understand why the government doesn’t love them.
Since COVID, universities have lost billions of dollars and shed over 17,000 staff. The government excluded them from Jobseeker, which threatened their viability for teaching and research.
Universities train everyone from primary teachers to corporate bankers. Until recently, universities were the country’s third largest exporter. Their research underpins economic innovation and COVID recovery.
So why has the government been letting them suffer?
It may be as simple, journalist George Megalogenis argued in the most recent Quarterly Essay, as a harsh dating maxim. The government is just not that into them.
It was this problem that led the founders of Australia’s higher education sector to build institutions to protect the truthfulness of academic research, the rigour and openness of scholarly debate and the standards applied to learning and teaching. They were not perfect, but it is worth understanding them.
Why does the government hate universities?
Some, like Megalogenis, believe the Morrison government identifies its job as being re-elected rather than governing. And so politicians see universities as ideological opponents rather than manufacturers of ideas and educated workers.
Debates around free speech and religious freedom suggest Morrison may have little personal sympathy for the values associated with secular institutions committed to academic freedom.
The free speech issue is based on claims some conservative ideas are being “cancelled” on campus. One of these was sex therapist Bettina Arndt’s lecture series, which attracted student protests when she argued, contrary to reports, that women are not in fact at risk of rape on campus.
After these protests, in November 2018, The Morrison government asked former High Court chief justice Robert French to lead an inquiry into free speech on university campuses.
Menzies protected unis from government
It was Liberal Prime Minister Robert Menzies — who served his second term from 1949 to 1966 — who created a funding system for universities. In fact, his reforms shaped Australian higher education.
He insisted there should be some protection for universities from political interference.
In the middle of the Cold War, which began as the second world war came to a close, university independence was a key distinction between democracies and authoritarian countries. Cruel and unethical Nazi science and false and misleading Soviet research had revealed the risk of leaving university funding in the hands of politicians.
The inquiry Menzies commissioned in 1957 wrote in its report that even at “inconvenient moments”:
a good university is the best guarantee that […]somebody, whatever the circumstances, will continue to seek the truth and make it known.
The result was the Australian Universities Commission. This was a statutory body which made recommendations to the Commonwealth government for funding to individual institutions. It was known as a “buffer body”, intended to protect higher education from capricious politics.
Menzies saw non-democratic universities overseas were a disservice to their nation’s agricultural systems, cultural and literary traditions and political-economic agility.
It was not that Australian politicians in the 1950s were particularly averse to universities. But the risk of political interference was clear in the heightened global climate, and Menzies was determined to put in a structure to promote “democratic freedom”.
The ALP dismantled the protections
In the 1980s, Bob Hawke’s Labor government minister John Dawkins expanded higher education as the foundation for economic reform. This led to an overhaul of the underlying structure, and financial support that was established in the 1950s.
Hawke government minister John Dawkins dismantled the university buffer body. Wikimedia Commons
Among these reforms was the dismantling of the buffer body. Bureaucratic leaders like Peter Karmel warned Dawkins at the time this was dangerous.
But Dawkins did not think it mattered, likely imagining other politicians, like him, would want a good university system.
Universities have no buffer now
The Dawkins reforms pushed universities to increased commercial behaviour. Academic leadership was replaced by corporate-style management. In time, university leaders earned CEO-level salaries and bonuses. Although these were based on levels of productivity achieved by very low wages paid to casual academics, governments believed these salaries showed universities had money to spare.
Such beliefs have allowed politicians to behave ungenerously towards universities. With no buffer body to stop them, politicians are free to take out petty grievances such as increasing the cost of some humanities degrees. They are also free to appease small interest groups, like adherents of far-right conspiracy theories who believe cultural Marxists are destroying Western civilisation.
This risks the integrity of the higher education system Robert Menzies built. He wanted universities to be democratic institutions.
In the Cold War context, Australian universities were built to be relatively immune to the vagaries and vested interests of political leaders. They were not perfectly protected, as generations of left-wing scholars found. Nevertheless, it was harder than it is today to impede higher education’s work towards the research and training we need.
Hannah Forsyth has received funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a member of her local Branch Committee of the National Tertiary Education Union.
Geoffrey Sherington does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
There’s an idea in economics that policy makers need at least one tool for each target at which they are aiming. Fewer tools than targets will mean not achieving all goals.
This is known as the Tinbergen Rule (named for the famed Dutch economist Jan Tinbergen, who shared the first Nobel prize of economics in 1969). It has particular resonance when considering the plight of Philip Lowe, governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Lowe and the RBA are implicitly or explicitly responsible for an array of economic policy targets. I count at least five: inflation; unemployment; GDP growth; residential property prices; and the global value of the Australian dollar.
Some of these targets overlap (such as unemployment and GDP growth), some are instrumental in serving the others (such as the level of the dollar), and some are self-imposed (such as residential property prices). But it’s clear all of these things factor into RBA thinking about monetary policy.
Historically the RBA has only had one available policy tool — short-term interest rates (the “cash rate”) — to deal with all these policy targets. That makes the central bank governor’s job hard, and frustrating at times.
For example, before the “Frydenberg pivot” at this year’s budget, Lowe had been pleading with and pushing the federal government to use fiscal policy more aggressively — that is, by spending more on important areas.
This led to tensions between the central bank and the government — significant enough to warrant a kind of summit in May 2019 to project an image of cooperation. Even if it did have the feeling of a North Korean hostage video.
It’s not just what they do, but what they say
Central banks have gained another policy tool with the advent of so-called “quantitative easing” — whereby they they can influence longer-term interest rates through buying longer-dated bonds.
It has also long been appreciated that what central bankers say is also important. Their statements inform the public and move markets. So credibly conveying information provides another policy instrument.
But there’s a wrinkle here. It’s hard for central bankers to communicate what they know credibly.
Why? Suppose a central banker says something that is both credible and precise. Markets will believe it, and know what it means for future policies.
But this very fact gives the central bank a reason to lie, to move markets in ways consistent with its goals. Identifying this “time-consistency problem” helped Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott win the 2004 Nobel prize for economics.
The tension often leads to central bankers being almost comically vague. Alan Greenspan, the US Federal Reserve chair from 1987 to 2006, made this into an art.
Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan before a US Senate Banking Committee hearing on February 16 2005. Evan Vucci/AP
An exercise in ‘forward guidance’
Yet in the past year Lowe has tried to be anything but vague. In a number of statements he has said clearly the RBA won’t raise the cash rate until 2024.
Why has he done this? Because he wants to affect “inflation expectations” and hence actual inflation. Keeping rates low increases the likelihood of inflation. If folks think higher inflation is coming, that will affect how they act now. It could lead, for example, to demands for higher wage rises, which in turn would lead to higher inflation.
So Lowe is trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. He wants higher inflation, in line with the bank’s target range of 2-3%.
Imagine there are two equilibria: one where everyone thinks inflation will be 1%, act like it, and inflation turns out to be about 1%; and another where everyone thinks inflation will be about 2.5%, act like it, and it turns out to be so.
What Lowe is doing is known as “forward guidance” — telling the market what he plans to do for the next few years in order to shift from the lower equilibrium to the higher one.
A dangerous game
In one sense that’s very clever. In another, it’s pretty dangerous.
For one thing, it could lead to inflation higher than the bank’s target. This happened all too often in the 1970s and 1980s.
But perhaps the greatest danger facing Lowe is that by telling markets definitively what he plans to do until 2024 he risks the RBA not adapting to changing circumstances, or undermining his credibility.
We saw that tension at play this week in the aftermath of the RBA’s Tuesday board meeting.
The direct outcome of the meeting itself was uneventful. The cash rate remained unchanged and the RBA’s bond-buying program was ever so slightly wound back.
But then Lowe took the highly unusual step of holding a press conference. At it he was a lot less definitive, noting the economy’s recovery had “widened the range of plausible scenarios for the cash rate”:
This means that probabilities have shifted and the decision to adjust the approach to the yield target reflects this shift in probabilities.
This underlines the difficulty with forward guidance.
Can a central banker really tie themselves to the mast and set the tiller to a fixed course? As famous US baseball manager Casey Stengel once said: “I always heard it couldn’t be done, but sometimes it don’t always work.”
Clear enough?
Richard Holden is President-elect of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
St Kitts-born Archibald Burt pictured beside sugar cane growing in his Perth garden in 1862. Burt, a former slave owner, became chief justice of Western Australia.State Library of Western Australia 6923B/182
As countries around the globe struggle to come to terms with the legacies of their imperial and colonial pasts, much debate about truth-telling focuses on how we remember individuals. The statues and street names honouring the achievements of eminent white men are now often seen as monuments to their privilege, secured at others’ expense.
This public focus on individuals is not surprising. Today, biography is one of the most popular forms of history. Tracing an individual life helps make the past seem more tangible and accessible. Stories of prominent individuals allow people to vividly imagine historic processes such as slavery, exploration and colonisation.
However, the focus on individuals does carry risks.
People taping a banner over the inscription on the pedestal of the toppled statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, England, last year. Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
The eminent historian Greg Dening once suggested we seek reassurance by demonising historical figures such as Captain Bligh, popularly remembered for his theatrical brutality during the Mutiny on the Bounty. Our cartoon-like stereotype of Bligh, he wrote, makes “a comfortable sort of villain” for the modern observer.
Creating monsters of historical figures serves the dual purpose of allowing us to feel both comfortingly distant from troubling historical practices, as well as morally superior to the past.
Some find this tendency to take down (literally and figuratively) eminent colonial and imperial figures personally discomfiting. Australians are enthusiastic about genealogy, and sometimes deeply invest in their family histories. It can be confronting to find unpleasant evidence about our forebears, or to see them criticised.
Yet we have known for a long time that although acts such as the Pinjarra Massacre were evil, the individual perpetrators of those acts are not always recognisable as monsters. This is the banality of evil, in the words of political philosopher Hannah Arendt: in describing Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust, as “terrifyingly normal”, she argued for his disengagement from the impact of his actions on others, as he simply followed the rules of his regime.
So we must be clear about how we interpret individual lives. Their experience gives us powerful insight into historical processes. When we acknowledge the bad as well as good in historical figures, we create a more complex sense of the past, which allows for moral choice.
But historical processes such as enslavement, conquest and colonisation are larger than the individual leaders we tend to focus on — and responsibility for their legacies should be collective.
Group of prisoners in neck chains, Wyndham, Western Australia, circa
1898-1906. State Library of Victoria
Tracing movements
When Britain legislated to abolish slavery in the British Caribbean, Mauritius and the Cape Colony in 1833, it awarded the equivalent of £17 billion in compensation to slave owners ($A31 billion). Detailed records documented how individual claimants were awarded compensation for their “property”. This information is now digitised in a database hosted by the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College, London.
Building on this data and other sources, our research project applies a biographical method to trace the significant movement of peoples, funds and practices from the Caribbean, where slavery was practised for hundreds of years, to the new Australasian colonies. It reveals a re-orientation of the empire, as imperial families implicated in Atlantic slavery looked for new colonial vistas.
Slaves in the British colony of Antigua digging holes for sugar cane in an 1823 painting. Wikimedia Commons
Each of the Australasian colonies was shaped to some extent by the capital, ideologies and personnel of Britain’s Atlantic slave system. In the wake of emancipation, some West India merchant houses re-oriented their businesses from the Caribbean to the Antipodes.
The most significant example so far identified is the Bristol firm of Miles, Kington and Co. Senior partners, Philip John Miles and his nephew, Thomas Kington, were UK-based financiers and slave owners. They derived tens of thousands of pounds from compensation claims for enslaved people, relating to multiple estates in Jamaica and Trinidad.
After emancipation, Miles, Kington and Co. expanded to Melbourne and Lyttleton in New Zealand, dispatching members of the next generation as “resident members” of new branches during the 1850s.
These included Kington’s son, Philip Oliphant Kington, who was elected to both the committee of the Melbourne Cricket Club and the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce, when he arrived in Victoria in 1855.
From the Caribbean to Swan River
Established in 1829, in the immediate lead up to slave emancipation, Swan River in WA was the first free Australian colony to be funded by private capital. Stirling was just one of those with connections to slavery who helped found it. Others arriving on the WA “first fleet” included Charles Dawson Ridley and James Walcott and their families.
They had journeyed from Demerara, now part of Guyana, back to England, before embarking for Swan River. The mainstay of Demerara’s economy was sugar, grown on plantations hacked out of tropical rainforest by enslaved people, under a regime harsh even by contemporary Caribbean standards.
Ridley and Walcott sold their Demerara property before 1833, perhaps because they knew slavery was coming to an end. Or perhaps, they left because of the bloody 1823 Demerara rebellion, which involved more than 10,000 slaves and galvanised the British abolitionist debate.
Ridley and Walcott were business partners and almost certainly brothers-in-law. They were among the first large land grantees in WA, awarded prime allotments on Wadjuk Noongar Boodjar (Country), on the Swan River. Their substantial capital gave them their pick of the land grants within the fledgling colony, occupying sites directly opposite the governor himself.
Map showing early allotments awarded to Ridley and Walcott on the Swan River opposite Stirling’s property known as Woodbridge. S234- cons3844 010, 012. State Records Office of Western Australia.
Today, one can visit the National Trust-managed property Woodbridge, which Stirling named after his wife Ellen’s family home in Surrey, England. Eating lunch in the riverside café, or standing on the pontoon below, one gazes across the water to Ridley’s and Walcott’s former acreage, now occupied by vineyards and wedding venues.
Panorama looking across the Swan River from Woodbridge. Jane Lydon
As colonists spread eastward into the Avon Valley, Ridley and Walcott took up land here too. Walcott was granted 4,860 hectares south of York, which became known as the “Walcott Estate”. But he overextended and was forced to auction off his holding in 1839.
Ridley also took up land near York in 1838, and began to advertise for wheat and “hands” to clear land and plough at his Baylie Farm. By 1840, this land was judged among the best sheep and grazing “runs” in the district. In 1843 Ridley first proposed an export trade in a timber known to Noongar as jarrah. He then drove the sandalwood trade, which boomed until local supplies were exhausted in 1848.
Barbados-born Ridley also urged the cultivation of sugar cane, not as a staple product, but merely to supply the colony with sugar, syrup, molasses, rum, vinegar, and conserves. Based on his Caribbean experience, he argued that Perth’s climate could be managed to grow this crop successfully.
So did St Kitts-born Archibald Burt, who came to Perth in 1860, becoming chief justice of the Supreme Court of Western Australia. At the time of abolition, he was awarded compensation of around £86 for three estates on St Kitts with ten enslaved people, including Sarah, a washerwoman aged 40; John, a house servant aged 12; and a one-year-old baby. Burt retained West Indies interests throughout his life.
But the great problem for colonists aspiring to become landed gentry was a lack of labour, desperately needed to clear and work the land. Free men would not willingly do this work. Among the “big York farmers”, Ridley was a prime mover in the district’s Agricultural Society, which promoted a variety of labour schemes. They sought to put Noongar to work, driving an increasingly harsh regime of Aboriginal discipline.
Ridley was also secretary in May, 1833, when the society announced an “apprenticeship” scheme. One of the earliest British child migration programs, it brought out juvenile offenders known as the Parkhurst boys, and is considered a prelude to convict transportation. Ridley died in 1845, but a few years later, against the wishes of most colonists, the rich York pastoralists succeeded in making WA a penal colony. The first two ships carrying convicts arrived at Fremantle in 1850.
We might see Ridley’s and Walcott’s role in Swan River as a translation of their Caribbean experience, in their exploitation of land and its resources, and their greed for cheap labour. Learning from WA’s example, as abolition loomed, British entrepreneur Edward Gibbon Wakefield codified slavery’s commodification of land and labour in his influential principles of “systematic colonisation”. For the first time, Indigenous Country was sold — not given to colonists — at a price so high non-whites and the working-classes were forced to work for the rich.
Other colonies and slave compensation
After 1833, numerous other families connected to the slavery business turned to the settler colonies in the context of intense imperial re-organisation. Further colonies were founded within a few years of WA — South Australia in 1835, Victoria (the Port Phillip District) in 1836, and New Zealand in 1841.
Some of their earliest settlers, too, had received British government compensation for emancipated slaves.
London-based merchant George Fife Angas, for example, provided much of the capital required to colonise SA, drawing on compensation funds. Angas had followed his father into coach-making, ensuring a supply of slave-produced mahogany from British Honduras by establishing his own shipping business in 1824.
Sketch of George Fife Angas made in the mid 19th century. Wikimedia Commons
After abolition, he collected around £7,000 on behalf of Honduran slave owners. The new colony enjoyed a monopoly on investment conferred by the Bank of South Australia and Union Bank of Australia, both established by Angas. His South Australian Company provided crucial investment in land and infrastructure.
Other beneficiaries moved to the longer established colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land. As Emma Christopher has discovered, pioneers of Queensland’s sugar industry brought capital, but also their knowledge of sugar cultivation and experience of using forced labourers.
Louis Hope, for example, who established the Ormiston sugar plantation, was the grandson of Sir John Wedderburn, a wealthy Jamaican planter and importer of slaves, but played down his connections to slavery. Hope procured indentured Pacific Islander labourers to work at his property, and helped craft Queensland’s Polynesian Labourers Act of 1868, introducing a clause borrowed from the Caribbean to tie labourers to their employer’s estate.
Many other settler colonisers — and their descendants — hid their connection to Atlantic slavery, although not all were so shy. Sir Samuel Osborne Gibbes, was compensated for more than 300 enslaved people in Barbados and St Vincent before emigrating to New Zealand, where he spent eight years in the colony’s Legislative Council and named his new estate Springhead — after his former Barbados plantation.
Judging the past
Individual life stories can bring the past to life and reveal the dark side of colonial achievements such as frontier violence.
In this way, certain individuals have come to symbolise the trauma of frontier conflict and exploitation for Aboriginal descendants, explaining why it is hurtful for them to see such figures celebrated uncritically.
A memorial to the Pinjarra Massacre in WA. Wikimedia Commons
But just as some Britons — like Thomas Clarkson and Hannah More — devoted much of their lives to overturning slavery, some colonists, such as missionary Joseph Orton, perceived their impact on Aboriginal people and sought to protect Indigenous people and their rights.
These different reactions challenge the argument that we should not judge the past on our terms, by demonstrating that many people in the past shared our sense of justice.
Colonisation was enacted by all those who came to Australian shores, rich and poor, willing or reluctant, and the inevitable effects on Indigenous people resulted from this collective and continuing process.
Colonial legacies such as white privilege and Indigenous disadvantage — exemplified by the Stolen Generations and appalling Aboriginal deaths in custody statistics — are therefore a collective responsibility all Australians must shoulder.
This is the first in a series of articles The Conversation will be publishing exploring legacies of slavery in Australia.
Jane Lydon receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Zoë Laidlaw receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
New Caledonia has elected its first pro-independence Kanak president.
Louis Mapou was elected today in Noumea after months of negotiations between the two main pro-independence Kanak political groupings UNI and UC FLNKS.
Australian journalist Nic Maclellan, a longtime writer on New Caledonian politics, says it is a significant victory for the Kanak people.
“For the first time in nearly 40 years the government of New Caledonia will be led by a Kanak independence leader,” Nic Maclellan said.
“Particularly since the signing of the Noumea Accord (a framework agreement that governs New Caledonia’s politics) in 1998, governments of New Caledonia have been led by an anti-independence leader,” he said.
Maclellan also pointed out that Louis Mapou’s presidency comes at a crucial time for New Caledonia.
“The French government unilaterally has set the date of December 12 this year for the next referendum on self-determination,” he explained.
Third and final referendum The referendum in December is the third and final plebiscite under the Noumea Accord. The results of the last two polls have been narrowly in favour of remaining with France.
In 2018, the result was 56.4 percent for maintaining the status quo and 43.6 percent in favour of independence.
In 2020, margin was reduced slightly with 53.26 percent voting to stay with France and 46.74 percent percent for independence.
FLNKS supporters wave the Kanak flag of New Caledonia on the night of the second independence referendum in October 2020. Image: RNZ Pacific/AFP
Maclellan said having Louis Mapou in power ahead of the third and final referendum would give the Kanaks more momentum going into the vote.
“Obviously the presidency is an important position in terms of setting the government’s agenda, in terms of liaising with the French government,” he said.
Maclellan said it would also allow them a stronger regional voice at the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).
“One would presume that Mapou will be asking the Forum for more active engagement in the decolonisation process and monitoring of the referendum in December. It (the presidency) is a crucial position in any government and will set the tone for actions,” he said.
The president-elect Louis Mapou is a longtime independence activist in the Southern Province where the capital Noumea is based.
He is a member of the party of Kanak Liberation PALIKA which within the Parliament is a member of the UNI (National Union for Independence) parliamentary group.
“He has been a leading figure in the independence movement in the south and is a fairly key player within the FLNKS, the umbrella body that unites a number of parties,” Maclellan said.
According to Reuters, Mapou sits on the board of directors of France’s Eramet (ERMT.PA), which runs nickel mines, the Doniambo ferro-nickel plant near the port of Noumea, and a refinery that produces a type of nickel that can be used in electric vehicle batteries.
He also worked as the director-general of New Caledonia’s Rural Development and Land Development Agency from 1998 to 2005.
Speaking in French shortly after his election, Louis Mapou was quoted by local media as saying: “It is an honour and a heavy responsibility.”
The plot twist Louis Mapou’s election to the presidency came after a five-month deadlock with fellow pro-independence MP Samuel Hnepeune.
Maclellan said a surprising development was that Samuel Hnepeune had announced he would be stepping down from the collegial government.
Head of the UC-FLNKS list, nationalists and Oceanian Awakening bloc Samuel Hnepeune … stepping down from the collegial government. Image: RNZ Pacific/AFP
Head of the UC – FLNKS list, nationalists and Oceanian Awakening, Samuel Hnepeune.Photo: AFP or licensors
Next inline to fill his spot on the UC list is a member of the Pacific Awakening Party who missed out on a place in government during the election.
The party, which represents mainly people originally from Wallis and Futuna, has usually been the king maker in government, but missed out on a spot this time round courtesy of some strategic voting by the anti-independence groups.
Maclellan said there was now a possibility they could get back into government.
“That would not only maintain the majority of islanders within the government. It would also open the way for a pro-independence speaker of the Cational Congress,” he said.
“So it looks like this consensus which has brought Mapou to the head of the government will also involve changes within the Congress and within the provincial assemblies.”
Louis Mapou is expected to be officially sworn in as president of New Caledonia in the coming days.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Veteran journalist and former chairman of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) Jose Jaime “Nonoy” Espina has died after battling liver cancer, his family has confirmed.
Espina was 59 years old, and died yesterday at their home in Bacolod.
“Nonoy passed on peacefully, quietly surrounded by family tonight, at 9:20 pm,” his sister, journalist Inday Espina-Varona, said on Facebook.
Espina “survived a severe infection of covid-19 and was able to return to the bosom of the family. His death was due to liver cancer,” said Varona.
Press freedom champion Espina had just turned over the NUJP to a new set of officers early this year, but even amid health problems he shepherded the union through challenging times for the Philippine press.
Under his chairmanship, the NUJP led rallies in support of media organisations which were harassed by the Duterte government – the closure order by the Securities and Exchange Comission of Rappler in 2018, and the franchise kill of ABS-CBN in 2020.
“Nonoy was among the loudest voices at rallies in support of the renewal of ABS-CBN’s franchise, leading a march in Quezon City in March 2020 and later joining similar activities in Bacolod City, where he was based,” the NUJP said in a statement.
“He was a tireless champion for the freedom of the press and the welfare of media workers,” said the NUJP.
Espina was among the founding members of the union, and a member of the directorate for multiple terms until his chairmanship from 2018 to 2021.
“He led the NUJP through waves of attacks and harassment by the government. For his defence of colleagues, he was red-tagged himself, and, alongside other members of the union, was made a target of government propagandists,” said the NUJP.
Espina “was also among the first responders at the Ampatuan Massacre in Maguindanao in 2009,” said the NUJP, referring to the worst attack on Philippine media in the country’s history, where 32 journalists were killed when a powerful political clan ambushed the convoy of its rival who was on his way to file a certificate of candidacy.
At the tail end of his chairmanship, the NUJP led the campaign for justice for the 58 victims of the massacre up to the historic conviction in December 2019 for the principal suspects.
Media welfare Speaking to Rappler in 2019 about the Ampatuan case, Espina discussed the need for the Philippine media to galvanisxe and fight for workers’ rights, saying the situation “has worsened” since the massacre.
“Community media aside, even the mainstream especially broadcast, there are more and more contractual workers, there’s no security of tenure, no benefits – that’s harsh,” said Espina.
This is true to Espina’s character.
“A former senior editor for news website InterAksyon, he advocated for better working conditions for media despite himself being laid off from the website, a move that he and other former members of the staff questioned before the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC),” said the NUJP.
“They won that fight and Nonoy has led many other journalists to join the bigger fight for a more independent and freer press,” said the NUJP.
Active in the ‘mosquito press’ Espina was a musician known to journalists for his signature singing voice, “but he was first and foremost a journalist,” said Varona.
Espina had been a journalist from high school to college, editing UP Visayas’ Pagbutlak. Espina was a recipient of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines or CEGP’s Marcelo H. Del Pilar Award, the highest honour of the guild.
“He was later part of community media group Correspondents, Broadcasters and Reporters Association—Action News Service, or COBRA-ANS, which was part of the “mosquito press” during the Marcos dictatorship,” said the NUJP.
He also served as editor for Inquirer.net.
“NUJP thanks him for his long years of service to the union and the profession and promises to honour him by protecting that prestige,” said the union.
“Nonoy leaves us with lessons and fond memories, as well as the words he often used in statements: That the press is not free because it is allowed to be. It is free because it insists on being free,” the NUJP said.
Despite some questioning about a military man being in charge of the vaccine rollout, when it comes to communicating, Lieutenant General JJ Frewen is a refreshing change from the pollie-speak and fudges we hear all the time.
At a Tuesday news conference, after his virtual meeting with the states and territories, Frewen answered questions directly and briefly.
He was distinctly “forward leaning”, indeed pre-empting the content of the roundtable Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and he were to have with business representatives the following day.
Frewen sounds like a man who knows what he’s doing. Coming days will tell whether that’s the reality. (You can find a touch of scepticism in certain state quarters.)
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is naturally inclined to put faith in the military, especially after his Sovereign Borders experience. But bringing in Frewen was also a response to what was becoming a desperate situation. It was a call to Triple Zero. He’s now very impressed with the general and relying on him heavily.
While critics baulk at the “men in uniform” pictures (Frewen flanked by colleagues), a degree of concern is also being expressed from quite another quarter. Some defence sources are wary of the danger of politicising the military.
The Australia Defence Association tweeted this week: “Relying on the ADF to head emergency efforts (not just assist the civil community) risks dragging a necessarily non-partisan institution into #auspol controversy”.
The ADA referenced the 2007 Northern Territory intervention over child sex abuse, when the seconded general heading a multi-departmental operation was targeted in a highly politicised environment.
At the moment, however, Frewen has more immediate worries. The general has landed on the beach, reworked the maps, and is marshalling available forces. But his advance is hampered by the shortage of fit-for-purpose fuel.
As each day goes by, the limited quantities of Pfizer and the absence of any other currently available alternative to AstraZeneca (which is subject to restrictive health advice) is being highlighted more starkly.
The fact this will change later (we are assured) doesn’t help when the here-and-now is urgent, as the Sydney outbreak and the extension of the lockdown there underline.
It’s a time-gap that so far Australia has not been able to significantly narrow.
We’re hearing about vaccine transfers abroad – for example, Israel is providing doses to South Korea, to be repaid later.
But it is hard for a country like Australia, with relatively few cases, to make a plea. Morrison was asked why we haven’t been able to use our “special relationship” with the US to get some of its surplus doses. Unsurprisingly, others have greater needs or better arrangements.
Announcing on Thursday a liberalising of the COVID disaster payment to assist in the Sydney outbreak, Morrison also said the state would be provided with 300,000 extra vaccine doses next week, equally divided between Pfizer and AstraZeneca. This won’t affect what other states receive (on the per head of population formula), and NSW’s numbers will be smoothed out later.
Somehow the federal government has rustled up a small number of additional shots of Pfizer, apparently from higher than forecast allocations. Morrison claimed he couldn’t give details for commercial-in-confidence reasons.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said on Thursday: “I’m increasingly confident that we will have additional supplies arriving on shore in August, and we’ll have confirmation in the coming days. But we’re quietly working behind the scenes every single day to ensure that, and that’s beginning to bear fruit.”
The supply problem came through strongly when Frydenberg and Frewen spoke after Wednesday’s business meeting.
The roundtable canvassed workplace vaccinations. Frydenberg said there were a lot of offers. Virgin Group CEO Jayne Hrdlicka said, “Big employers have the ability to stand up vaccination programs very quickly and would welcome the opportunity to be able to vaccinate as much of the workforce as quickly as possible”.
According to Treasury sources, when the rollout was being prepared, Treasury put forward the view that employers should be used as a channel, as with the flu vaccine. But up to now, we’ve heard little from the government about such an obvious way to boost rates. And, among other things, that goes back to supply.
If we had more Pfizer, there is no reason why this could not have been happening now. (Except where there’s lockdown and work from home!) But employers can’t be in the thick of the rollout when the supply problem means the younger people in their workforces could not be given the vaccine preferred for them. The workplace sites will be for later in the year.
If there had been more Pfizer, the under 40 cohort could have been brought into the general rollout program much earlier – these people are still waiting, unless their job or health puts them into a special category, or they choose AstraZeneca.
And with adequate Pfizer supplies the PM wouldn’t have needed to encourage younger people to consult their doctor about taking AstraZeneca.
The extension for another week of the Sydney lockdown further removes the special status NSW has claimed – and has been accorded by the federal government – as the gold standard for handling COVID without having to resort to extreme measures. The virus again has proved itself the great leveller.
NSW’s decision would be especially disappointing to Morrison. But there is a tone of greater tolerance towards his home state than he displayed to Victoria, in its recent troubles, when he held out for some days before announcing assistance. (In fairness, the Delta outbreak in Sydney is particularly bad.)
“We’re working very cooperatively and positively together [with NSW] because let me be clear – what is happening in Sydney just doesn’t have implications for Sydney,” he said.
“What is happening in Sydney has very serious implications not only for the health of Sydneysiders but also for the economy of Sydney, but also the economy of NSW and indeed the national economy.”
At the moment, one in three eligible people in Australia has had a first vaccine dose, and one in ten has received both doses.
The government has been foreshadowing for a while that by year’s end, all eligible Australians will have had the opportunity of a first jab. On Thursday, Morrison pointedly said this was the government’s intention “based on the advice of Lieutenant General John Frewen that that will be possible”.
That’s assuming “the supply lines hold”.
The PM said this would mean the vaccination program would be only two months behind the schedule the government had when it talked about an October deadline.
No pressure, JJ.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The agent for a ship carrying two covid-19-infected fishermen says New Zealand officials jumped the gun in announcing all its crew would be taken into managed isolation.
The mariners were in a group of nine sailors who arrived in Auckland on Monday without having to quarantine and were immediately driven to New Plymouth to board their deep sea fishing vessel.
Yesterday, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said the Viking Bay was returning to New Plymouth where all 15 crew would be taken into managed isolation.
However, last night that was rejected by the port, which said it would put staff at risk.
As of last night, the Ministry of Health said it was now unclear where the ship would dock. The ministry declined to be interviewed today on RNZ Morning Report.
The vessel’s agent when it was at Taranaki, Bill Preston, told Morning Report the ship appeared to be in international waters.
Preston said there had been a lack of communication.
‘Jumping the gun’ “Announcements have been made without collaboration with the port or anybody. So I think everybody is jumping the gun a bit.”
He said the first he had heard of the situation was when the port’s chief executive called him to confirm the news, after Dr Bloomfield’s announcement in the weekly vaccine update yesterday.
“I said [to the port’s chief executive], ‘no, there’s been no decision around what the vessel is going to do at this stage’.”
Dr Bloomfield’s announcement was also the first time that the port had heard of the news too, Preston said.
Since then, he said he had seen communication with the ministry overnight, about making a plan of what the ship would do.
Maritime Union national secretary Craig Harrison said the port should reverse that decision on humanitarian grounds.
“Taranaki could let the vessel pull on site and tie up and not let anyone off but get them close to medical health in case something happens.”
Port’s ban ‘harsh’ Harrison said the port’s decision was “harsh”.
“We really feel for the crew now … this crew has got nowhere to go and you can guarantee that any foreign port that’s close to us now won’t let them in their waters… they won’t want to touch them,” he said.
“Unfortunately, I think New Zealand will have to do something about it.”
He said preventing the virus spreading to other crew on the cramped vessel would be difficult, with closed ventilation on the ship and only one galley.
“I feel really sorry for the crew that are out there, because you can imagine that what’s going through their minds is sooner or later are they going to get covid-19. It’s a terrible situation to be in and I think time is of the essence.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Fiji’s FEMAT field hospital at Laucala Bay in the capital Suva has begun its transition into a covid-19 dedicated hospital as the country’s health authorities reported 791 new cases and three deaths in the past day.
Health Secretary Dr James Fong highlighted this in his covid-19 update last night.
Dr Fong said the ministry had set up an emergency number 165 for people with severe covid-19 symptoms to contact if they could not get to a hospital themselves.
“Sadly, we continue to see people with severe COVID-19 dying at home or coming to a medical facility in the late stages of severe illness and dying within a day or two,” Dr Fong said.
“Severe COVID-19 is a medical emergency and a delay in receiving appropriate medical treatment may result in a higher risk of death,” he said.
Dr Fong said Fijians need to know the severe symptoms of covid-19, which include:
Difficulty breathing;
Persistent pain or pressure in the chest;
Severe headache for a few days;
New confusion, inability to wake or stay awake; and
Pale, gray, or blue-coloured skin, lips or nail beds.
“If you or a loved one have any of these symptoms please go immediately to your nearest medical facility or call 165 if unable to get to a medical facility.”
He announced 791 new cases and three deaths in the last 24-hour period ending at 8am yesterday.
Dr Fong said that 40 of the deaths were recorded during the outbreak that started in April this year.
“We also have recorded 19 covid-19 positive patients who died from the serious medical conditions that they had before they contracted covid-19,” Dr Fong said.
He said there had been three more deaths of covid-19 positive patients.
“However, these deaths have been classified as non-covid deaths by their doctors.
“Doctors have determined that their deaths were caused by serious pre-existing medical conditions,” Dr Fong said.
At a glance as at July 7, 2021:
37 new recoveries reported since the last update
6,524 active cases in isolation
7,870 cases during the outbreak that started in April 2021
7,940 cases in Fiji since the first case was reported in March 2020, with 1,355 recoveries.
Talebula Kate is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.
The FAST Party in Samoa has filed an application with the Supreme Court to have it recognise an impromptu swearing-in ceremony of elected members of the new political party.
At the beginning of last week the court ruled the ceremony illegal as the Head of State was not present.
But it said Parliament must sit by this Monday or it could reconsider the previous swearing conducted in a tent in the parliament grounds after newly elected members were locked out of Parliament.
At the time the Fast Party leader Fiame Naomi Mata’afa described the open air ceremony on May 24 as a legal option, applying the principle of necessity, because all other avenues were blocked.
On Sunday night the Head of State went on television to defy the court ruling and push the convening of Parliament out by another month.
On Monday, the rival Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) wrote to police to lay a complaint over the impromptu swearing in, saying they wanted it investigated as a potentially criminal event.
The police commander, Fuiavailili Egon Keil, has set up an investigating committee.
Chief Justice branded ‘incompetent’ The HRPP has labelled Chief Justice Satiu Simativa Perese as incompetent in an official complaint.
The complaint allegedly follows recent decisions by the Supreme Court where some acts of gift giving have been allowed as being culturally accepted.
The Samoa Observer reports the complaint was made in a letter from HRPP secretary Lealailepule Rimoni Aiafi to the Judicial Services Commission.
It said the Chief Justice appears to be incompetent in the handling of HRPP cases since the beginning of electoral petitions.
The letter added that his rulings did not appear to be in accordance with the law, basic legal principles and well established precedent.
It said Satiu was unlikely to be familiar with the express exclusion of fa’asamoa and giving money during the elections to voters.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Militiamen join Afghan security forces during a gathering in Kabul last month. Together, they are trying to stem the tide of the latest Taliban gains.Rahmat Gul/AP
Afghanistan is teetering on the brink of an almost unimaginable disaster. The withdrawal of US and allied forces, scheduled by President Joe Biden to be completed by September 11, threatens to precipitate the unravelling of the most pro-Western government in Southwest Asia.
It also endangers the entire framework of the Afghan state that has been built up since the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001.
Should this occur, the most likely results would be the establishment of a theocratic regime in Kabul, the collapse of swathes of the country into a civil war (with a distinctly transnational dimension), and attempts by millions of refugees to flee the country.
In May 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged to a visiting delegation of Afghan women that
We will not abandon you. We will stand with you always.
Yet abandoning the Afghans who relied on such commitments is exactly what the US has now done. When pressed about his approach last week, Biden angrily cut off a questioner by saying “I want to talk about happy things”.
Afghans at this point are finding it very hard to identify happy things to discuss.
Why the psychology of the public matters
The mass psychology of the Afghan public will be key in determining how events evolve in the country. And this is something American political leaders have shown little sign of understanding.
When regimes change in Afghanistan – as with the collapse of the communist regime in April 1992 or the Taliban regime in November 2001 – it is typically because key players deem it prudent to shift away from powerholders whose power appears to be decaying.
While the Afghan government has left many people disappointed and disaffected – it is over-centralised, debilitated by patronage networks, and often extractive in character – the Taliban are anything but popular among Afghans. A careful 2019 survey conducted by the Asia Foundation found 85% of respondents had no sympathy at all for the Taliban.
But in Afghanistan, it does not pay to be on the losing side. And there is a grave danger that a spreading perception the Taliban are poised to take over could lead to that very outcome by triggering a cascade of defections from the government and army.
With dozens of districts falling to the Taliban in late June and early July, this could happen quickly. US intelligence estimates that it could take two or three years for the country to fall under Taliban control appear dangerously sanguine.
Immediate responsibility for this tragic situation lies with the US. The bulk of foreign forces were actually withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. The US thereafter played a much smaller, but absolutely critical, role in supporting the Afghan government.
The US did this in three ways: by providing air power to complement ground operations carried out by the Afghan army, by supplying intelligence, and most importantly, by steadying the nerves of vulnerable Afghans who accepted the US as a true partner in confronting brutal practitioners of terror, such as the Taliban and Islamic State.
This US approach was sustainable and relatively inexpensive. And while it did not hold out the prospect of a “Berlin 1945”-style victory, it did serve to avoid the consequences of a catastrophic defeat.
All this came unstuck under the Trump administration, which bypassed the Afghan government and signed a deal with the Taliban on February 29, 2020. This was called the “Agreement for the Bringing of Peace to Afghanistan”.
In reality, it was simply an exit deal for the US. And it killed off the prospects of meaningful negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban – allegedly its main dividend – by giving the Taliban all they really wanted at the very outset of what was supposed to be a “peace process”.
The Taliban – hardly able to believe their luck – simply escalated their attacks on democracy advocates, civil society actors, and the media.
Biden’s decision to adopt the Trump approach as his own amounted to a dagger in the heart for those Afghans who had hoped the new US administration would show more judgement and sensitivity than the old.
Pakistan’s intervention now key
While immediate responsibility for the current debacle lies with the Trump and Biden administrations, Pakistan is even more to blame. The Pakistan government had godfathered the Taliban in the first place and resumed its support for the group when US attention drifted to Iraq in 2003.
The dangers to which this gave rise were obvious. In a leaked November 2009 cable, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, retired Lieutenant-General Karl Eikenberry, wrote:
More troops won’t end the insurgency as long as Pakistan sanctuaries remain. Pakistan will remain the single greatest source of Afghan instability so long as the border sanctuaries remain, and Pakistan regards its strategic interests as best served by a weak neighbour. […] Until this sanctuary problem is fully addressed, the gains from sending additional forces may be fleeting.
Despite compelling advice, even from the former Pakistan ambassador to the US, as to how dangerous the sanctuary problem was for US objectives in Afghanistan, successive US presidents shrank from addressing it directly. Instead, they allowed the problem to fester.
If the situation in Afghanistan is to be salvaged, this will require more than just promises of support or offers of money.
Almost the only tool that remains to address the psychological despair in Afghanistan is immense and effective pressure on Pakistan to strike at Taliban sanctuaries, ammunition supplies, and logistics systems on Pakistani soil.
Being a sovereign state involves not just rights, but also duties. One is to prevent one’s territory from being used to mount attacks on other states.
Reportedly, the Pakistan army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, and intelligence chief, Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, recently briefed lawmakers in Pakistan that “well-trained Afghan Taliban militants were present across Pakistan” and that the army “could launch an offensive against the group immediately”.
If the Pakistan army can “launch an offensive” against the Taliban “immediately”, the US and its allies should immediately pressure it to do so. But one wonders whether the Biden administration has the gumption to demand this.
William Maley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Australia, New Zealand and many other countries are losing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue each year by not adequately taxing the profits of digital giants doing business in their jurisdictions.
Australia has opted not to impose a digital services tax (DST) on the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Uber and Airbnb. Meanwhile, New Zealand has been sitting on the fence. But things may be about to change.
On July 1, 131 countries – including Australia and New Zealand – agreed in principle to a tax scheme negotiated under the auspices of the G20 and OECD.
More detail may emerge from a meeting of the G20 finance ministers on July 9-10. If approved, the scheme will be finalised next year and implemented in 2023.
The scheme is designed to “create a single set of consensus-based international tax rules” to address the problem of multinational companies moving profits to low-tax jurisdictions — a practice known as “base erosion and profit shifting” (BEPS).
Specifically, such a BEPS scheme would target 20% to 30% of the net profits (above a 10% sales margin) of large multinationals engaged in automated digital services and the direct sale of goods across international borders.
This tax base would then be divided proportionately among the individual countries in which the multinationals have their customers. Local company income tax rates would then apply.
In exchange for a new right to tax the profits of the digital giants, however, countries would give up any unilateral tax measures they might already have in place — or might have been considering imposing on such firms in the future.
Unanswered questions
The most popular alternative to the BEPS scheme is a digital services tax imposed by individual countries directly on firms with annual revenue of more than €750 million (about A$1.2 billion), a threshold first suggested by the OECD and used in most DST legislation.
Usually set at 3%, such DSTs provide relatively small but easy to monitor tax revenue streams.
Like most taxes, a DST is imperfect. But would the BEPS scheme be better? The New Zealand and Australian governments haven’t released impact assessments of the scheme on their domestic businesses, national economies and tax systems. This leaves several unanswered questions:
will a BEPS tax scheme improve or undermine the competitiveness of Australian and New Zealand suppliers of automated digital services?
what would its other likely impacts be on domestic businesses and national economies in the short, medium and long term?
how much will it cost to introduce and administer?
how much tax revenue would it actually generate?
how would that compare with a unilateral tax measure such as a 3% DST?
As currently drafted, it appears the BEPS scheme would generate considerably less revenue than a 3% DST. The exact difference would depend on the total and domestic annual sales revenue and profits of the business in question, as well as the country’s corporate income tax rate.
But let’s assume, for example, the total net profit of a large multinational firm is A$15 billion, and 1% ($1 billion) of the firm’s $100 billion sales revenue comes from Australia.
Under the BEPS scheme, the Australian portion of the firm’s profits would be just $10 million. Taxed at Australia’s corporate rate of 30%, that would generate $3 million.
By comparison, a 3% DST on the firm’s $1 billion of Australian sales would generate $30 million — ten times the tax revenue of the BEPS scheme.
When Australia and New Zealand discussed introducing a DST in 2018-19, business and advisory groups in both countries criticised the idea. In particular, it was argued such a tax earns too little revenue relative to the cost of implementation.
And yet, the new BEPS tax scheme would generate even less revenue while still requiring a complex system of rules. This complexity risks imposing high compliance costs on countries, creating opportunities for avoidance and increasing tax disputes.
Ideally, a BEPS scheme should at least promise more tax revenue than a 3% DST. The portion of profits allocated to individual market jurisdictions should be increased, and efforts made to ensure low margin but profitable giants such as Amazon don’t escape paying tax where they do business.
Compensation for personal data
Finally, a BEPS scheme should account for the free use of data extracted from local internet users by these digital giants.
The common assumption that personal data and attention have no (or trivial) economic value is wrong. Google might claim it charges customers for access to its infrastructure and algorithms, but these are often of little value without the personal data they process in the first place.
Uber wouldn’t exist without access to data about passengers and drivers. Facebook couldn’t generate multi-billion dollar revenues without the information exchange and attention of its millions of users.
Personal data and attention are key resources for the provision of automated digital services. An adequate tax on those service providers is fair compensation.
More importantly, any final international agreement on a BEPS scheme should be conditional. Countries need an opt-out provision allowing them to switch to a DST (or other unilateral measure) if the new system fails to generate sufficient revenue.
This would both protect national interests as well as create a disincentive for the big multinational firms to avoid paying their fair share of tax wherever they make a profit.
Victoria Plekhanova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe, recently published a book titled Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate. This book offers a dramatically different account of the social, spiritual and economic worlds of Australia’s First Peoples “before conquest” to what is presented in the acclaimed work by Yuin writer Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu.
The debate Sutton and Walshe seek to have is whether farmers or hunter-gatherers is the right way to describe my maternal ancestry, the people who lived in Australia before colonisation by Europeans.
Sutton and Walshe want to strip the debate of any contemporary meaning, and return our thoughts to the facts of what went on before their own ancestors arrived on the scene to record, in English using foreign concepts, the truth about what they want to call hunter-gatherer societies or now, the “Old People”.
The central debate between these books is the characterisation of Aboriginal worlds at 1788.
Pascoe draws on colonial archives and actively and creatively offers a different interpretation to colonial bias to tell the story of Aboriginal peoples’ farming and associated practices. Sutton and Walshe, meanwhile, reject the label agriculture or “farming”. Instead, they prefer the descriptor “hunter-gatherers-plus” in relation to who they refer to as the “Old People”.
Rather than organising Aboriginal worlds along a spectrum weighted according to their agricultural development and progress, Sutton and Walshe argue there was a far more complex system that involved modifications to one’s environment and its resources, as well as elaborate spiritual work to keep it all going. This system was at least as complex as gardening or farming.
Characterisation of Aboriginal peoples as hunter-gatherers or farmers/agriculturists is a long running and shifting debate among anthropologists and archaeologists.
These characterisations and classifications seem to hinge on definitions and interpretations established by the academy. It would be unsurprising if anthropologists critiqued these labels, one another’s field work and conclusions almost entirely in the absence of Aboriginal people.
Sutton and Walshe state their intention to “avoid identity politics and racial polemics”, instead claiming to offer their critique in the spirit of debate.
However, they are clearly on the side of academic anthropology and archaeology — and the past — while Pascoe’s work is focused on the history of the present. Even with this claim, debates over interpretations of the past shape the politics of Aboriginal recognition today.
Agriculturists or hunter-gatherers?
In his book, Pascoe crafted a persuasive account of Aboriginal people and the way they lived, largely unknown by a nation still viewing this land and First Peoples through a foggy colonial lens. Through his writing and speaking appearances, Pascoe has made the deep ancient past and the present intelligible and imaginable for a wide audience.
Dark Emu’s case for appreciating First People as agriculturalists has proven remarkably popular and is critically acclaimed. Dark Emu was named book of the year and won the Indigenous writers’ prize in the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.
In 2018, Pascoe received the Australia Council award for lifetime achievement in literature. His work has also attracted careful and considered, and not always supportive, reviews and articles in the academic sphere of peer-reviewed journals.
Now, Sutton and Walshe seek “to set the record straighter”.
Sutton and Walshe’s critique of Dark Emu at times comes across as churlish and pre-occupied with the historically dominant position of anthropologists in their claim to know Aboriginal people. With statements such as “Pascoe is some 50 years behind the scholarly discussions” and “a garden by definition is not wild”, we are reminded repeatedly that Western definitions and labels are supreme.
Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? is occasionally scathing of the use of archival sources in Dark Emu, suggesting they have been misquoted, selectively deployed, and excluded large areas of relevant scholarship. The text provides numerous examples: some are significant omissions, others do not change the meaning Pascoe conveys.
Sutton and Walshe assert Pascoe’s conclusions about village life and population numbers, among other points, are flawed. Elsewhere, they deem Pascoe’s use of sources in Dark Emu to be correct. Some of this critique seems unnecessary and exceeds the authors’ declared concern for fact, scholarship, countering the popularised mythology of history, and truthfulness.
Sutton and Walshe’s book is interesting for the account of how they arrived at the label of First Peoples as “hunter-gatherers-plus” or “The Old People”.
They detail the complexity of classical Aboriginal life: including mental and aesthetic culture, intricate webs of kinship, ritual performance, visual arts and land tenure systems.
Rather than farming, the authors highlight how spiritual propagation, magic and Dreaming were maintained by human reverence and direct action — despite the introduction of gardening and agricultural methods by the invading settlers being consciously resisted.
Sutton and Walshe’s overarching criticism is that Dark Emu does not engage with these non-physical complexities and instead “places high value on technological and economic complexity as a standard of a people’s worth”.
This, as Sutton and Walshe state, is the gap in the book. However, this feedback also explains its audience appeal because it is largely confined to material economic behaviour and “separated from meaning, from intent, from values, from culture, from the spiritual, and from the emotional.”
Constructive critical debate should serve First Peoples’ futures
With only a few exceptions, anthropologists working in Australia have long fixed their gaze north, to the peoples who Sutton and Walshe are enamoured with and sometimes refer to as “before conquest”, on the “other side” of the frontier.
Anthropologists rarely canvas the adjustments that Aboriginal peoples made after European invasion, especially as this hallmarks survival in southeastern Australia.
Sutton and Walshe offer several examples from the 1960s and 1970s of anthropological work that engaged public interest and some key and comprehensive texts. One example they cite is Catherine and Ronald Berndt’s seminal anthropology work, The World of the First Australians.
They offer these examples as a critical counterpoint to the claim in Dark Emu of a pervasive and wilful ignorance of the complexity and sophistication of Aboriginal worlds.
My experience teaching undergraduate students more closely aligns with Pascoe’s observations – students continue to arrive at their studies with little intellectual depth or appetite for engaging in debates over Aboriginal worlds or futures. They cite repeat viewings of popular films as the extent of their school curriculum.
The legal recognition of Aboriginal land tenure may have dispensed with the myths of nomadism, yet rejection of the rightful place of First Peoples in the national political discourse attests to the need for more effective communication with the public, which includes popular and relatable texts.
This is the sweet spot in the public imagination that works such as Dark Emu have appealed to. However, constructive and critical debate should accurately represent the history of First Peoples and, importantly, comprehend and better serve our present and future.
This weeks marks the commencement of the annual NAIDOC celebration with the theme “Heal Country”. This should hopefully lead to consideration of landscapes and all our relationships to them, before 1788, since, and into the future.
Heidi Norman receives funding from the Australian Research Council and NSW Government.
Buchanan and Manning on Nuclear deterrence in 2021.
A View from Afar
PODCAST: Buchanan and Manning on Nuclear Deterrence + Risk + First Strike States
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A View from Afar: Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan present this week’s podcast, A View from Afar, where they analyse:
Revelations that the People’s Republic of China has further developed missile silos in its north-west desert. How does this fit with proliferation of nuclear silos in the west?
How do great powers enforce their nuclear deterrence dogma and strategy in 2021 compared to when the first Cold War was chilling the world’s expectations of longevity?
And what of new nuclear powers like Israel, North Korea and others – with their lack of ability to sustain a total annihilation attack, do they pose a real first-strike threat? And, if so, is nuclear deterrence rendered an obsolete strategy?
And what of Aotearoa New Zealand, does its nuclear-free position, placing it independent of so-called ‘protections’ of the United States’ nuclear umbrella keep us safe from becoming a target? Or has the weaponising of space, the practice where RocketLab sends payloads of US military-tech into orbit, bring New Zealand into scope?
WE INVITE YOU TO PARTICIPATE WHILE WE ARE LIVE WITH COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS IN THE RECORDING OF THIS PODCAST:
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Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.
When a COVID cluster includes people who are vaccinated against the virus, we inevitably hear rumblings of complaint from people who wonder what the point is of vaccination.
But when you read past the headlines, you usually see the answer: in most cases, those who were vaccinated and contracted COVID-19 didn’t die, didn’t develop severe symptoms and didn’t need to be hospitalised.
For unvaccinated Australians in their later years, the chance of dying from COVID is high. For unvaccinated people in their 80s, around 32% who contract COVID will die from it. For people in their 70s, it’s around 14%. (For unvaccinated people in their 60s, it drops to around 3%. And for under-50s, it’s less than 1%.)
The good news is both Pfizer and AstraZeneca are very effective at preventing severe disease and death from COVID-19, even from the more virulent Delta strain.
So how effective are our vaccines?
Preliminary data from the United Kingdom shows after your first dose of either Pfizer or AstraZeneca, you’re 33% less likely than an unvaccinated person to contract the Delta variant.
Two weeks after your second dose, this rises to 60% for AstraZeneca and 88% for Pfizer. This data is for any form of COVID-19, from mild to severe.
But when you look at how much the vaccines reduce your risk of developing severe illness that requires hospitalisation, the coverage is high for both. Pfizer and Astrazeneca vaccines are 96% and 92% effective (respectively) in preventing Delta variant hospitalisations.
Why do some people still get COVID after being vaccinated?
Vaccines aren’t magic barriers. They don’t kill the virus or pathogen they target.
Rather, vaccines stimulate a person’s immune system to create antibodies. These antibodies are specific against the virus or pathogen for the vaccine and allows the body to fight infection before it takes hold and causes severe disease.
However, some people won’t have a strong enough immune response to the vaccine and may still be susceptible to developing COVID-19 if exposed to the virus.
How a person responds to a vaccine is impacted by a number of host factors, including our age, gender, medications, diet, exercise, health and stress levels.
It’s not easy to tell who hasn’t developed a strong enough immune response to the vaccine. Measuring a person’s immune response to a vaccine is not simple and requires detailed laboratory tests.
And while side effects from the vaccine indicate you’re having a response, the absence of symptoms doesn’t mean you’re having a weak response.
It also takes time for the immune system to respond to vaccines and produce antibodies. For most two-shot vaccines, antibody levels rise and then dip after the first dose. These antibodies are then boosted after the second.
But you’re not optimally covered until your antibody levels rise after the second dose.
The PCR tests we use to detect SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are very sensitive and can detect a positive case even if you have low levels of the virus in your system. This means a person can test positive for SARS-CoV-2 but still not have symptoms of COVID-19.
But vaccinated people who develop COVID-19 will likely have a lower viral load than unvaccinated people, meaning they’re less likely to spread the virus.
One study estimated those who were vaccinated with either Pfizer or AstraZeneca were 50% less likely to pass it on to an unvaccinated household contact than someone who wasn’t vaccinated. This transmission will likely reduce again if both household members are vaccinated.
But if you’re not vaccinated and contract COVID-19, you’re much more likely to spread the virus.
What about future variants?
So far, the preliminary data (some of which is ongoing and/or yet to be peer reviewed) shows our current vaccines are effective at protecting against circulating variants.
But as the virus mutates, there is increasing chance of viral escape. This means there is a greater chance the virus will develop mutations that make it fitter against, or more easily able to evade, vaccinations.
Scientist are closely monitoring to ensure our current and/or future vaccines are effective against the circulating strains.
To help the fight against COVID-19 the best thing we can do is minimise the spread of the virus. This means get vaccinated when you can, ensure you maintain social distancing when required and get tested if you have any symptoms.
Lara Herrero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, PhD Candidate, School of History, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University
James Ross/AAP
Political memoirs in Australia often create splashy headlines and controversy. But we should not dismiss the publication of former Liberal MP Julia Banks’ book, Power Play, as just the latest in a genre full of scandals and secrets.
There is a long tradition of female parliamentarians using memoirs to reshape the culture around them. Banks — whose book includes claims of bullying, sexism and harassment — is the latest to push for equality and understanding of what life is like for women in Canberra.
But there is something enduring about memoir. Sales figures aside, the political memoir can be a significant event. The inevitable round of media interviews, book tours and literary festivals can allow an author to stamp their broader ideas onto the public debate and shed light on the culture of our institutions.
They also have the advantage of usually being written when women have left parliament, and no longer need to place their party’s interests ahead of all others. Indeed, Banks tells us that her story is that of “an insider who’s now out”.
It started with Enid Lyons
In 1972, Dame Enid Lyons (the first woman elected to the House of Representatives and wife of former prime minister Joe Lyons) published Among the Carrion Crows.
In her memoir, she offered a compelling insight into how she dealt with the male-dominated environment of parliament house. She recalled feeling like a “risky political experiment”, as if the very “value of women in politics would be judged” by the virtue of her conduct. She joyfully described how her maiden speech had moved men to tears.
In that place of endless speaking … no one ever made men weep. Apparently I had done so.
She also recorded key moments when she had vigorously presented her views in the party room and the parliament. She asserted the right of women to stand — and more importantly, to be heard — in parliament.
Encouraging women, challenging men
Since Lyons, women have continued to use autobiographies to promote women’s participation in politics and challenge the masculine histories of political parties.
When the ALP celebrated its centenary in 1991, it was the male history that was celebrated. Senator Margaret Reynolds (Queensland’s first female senator) “decided that the record had to be corrected”.
Former education minister Susan Ryan wanted to encourage other women to go into politics. Lukas Coch/AAP
Reynolds’ writings on Labor women occurred alongside the ALP’s moves toward affirmative action quotas in the early 1990s. As well as a memoir, she wrote a series of newsletters called Some of Them Sheilas, and a book about Labor’s women called The Last Bastion. In it, she recorded the experiences and achievements of ALP women over the past 100 years.
In her 1999 book, Catching the Waves, Labor’s first female cabinet minister Susan Ryan acknowledged there was “a lot of bad male behaviour in parliament”. But she argued this should not “dissuade women from seeking parliamentary careers”. Importantly, Ryan saw her autobiography as a collective story about the women’s movement and its “breakthrough into parliamentary politics” in the 1970s and 1980s.
While Labor women like Reynolds, Ryan and Cheryl Kernot were publishing their memoirs, few Liberal women put their stories on the public record. Former NSW Liberal leader Kerry Chikarovski’s 2004 memoir, Chika, was billed as the story of a woman who
learnt to cope with some of the toughest and nastiest politics any female has ever encountered in Australia’s political history.
In 2007 Pauline Hanson published an autobiography called Untamed and Unashamed, telling journalists, “I wanted to set the record straight”. But these were exceptions to the rule.
Julia Gillard’s story
Following the sexism and misogyny that disfigured her prime ministership, Julia Gillard’s 2014 memoir My Story helped revitalise the national conversation about women and power. Hoping to help Australia “work patiently and carefully through” the question of gender and politics, Gillard promised to “describe how I lived it and felt it” as prime minister.
Julia Gillard released her memoir in 2014, the year after she lost the prime ministership. David Moir/AAP
Importantly, she held not only her opponents but also the media to account for their gender bias. Critics like journalist Paul Kelly derided Gillard’s version of history as “nonsense”, but the success of her account suggests otherwise. My Story sold 72,000 copies in just three years.
In her 2020 book, Women and Leadership co-authored with former Nigerian finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Gillard interviewed eight women leaders from around the world, further showing how gender continues to shape political lives.
The risks of writing
A political memoir can be fraught, however. After a decade in parliament, Democract-turned-Labor MP Cheryl Kernot published her memoir Speaking for Myself Again in 2002.
She had hoped it would argue the case for Australian women “participating fully” in politics to promote “their own values and interests and shift the underlying male agenda”.
Former MP Cheryl Kernot’s memoir release was overshadowed by controversy. Julian Ross/AAP
But the release was quickly overshadowed by revelations of an extra-marital affair with Labor’s Gareth Evans (which were not in the book). Her book tour was halted amid the fallout. Kernot later despaired journalist Laurie Oakes — who broke the story — had managed to “sabotage people’s interest in the book”.
Others, such as Labor’s Ros Kelly, have told their stories in private or semi-private ways. Kelly’s autobiography was privately published as a gift to her granddaughter, but she also gives copies to women in politics, many of whom “have read it, and sent me really nice notes”.
Power in numbers
In the past five years, several women from across the political spectrum have published life stories.
In her memoir, An Activist Life, former Greens leader Christine Milne argued that women should perform feminist leadership rather than being “co-opted into being one of the boys”. In Finding My Place, Labor MP Anne Aly, showed women of non-Anglo, non-Christian backgrounds belong in parliament too. Independents Jacqui Lambie and Cathy McGowan used their memoirs to show female MPs can thrive without the backing of the major parties.
Most recently, former Labor MP Kate Ellis published Sex, Lies and Question Time, which includes reflections on the experiences of nearly a dozen other women in parliament.
For fifty years, Australia’s female politicians have used their memoirs to assert the equal rights of women in parliament, party rooms, and the media. Drawing on that lineage, Banks is the latest to help reveal and disrupt the sexism and misogyny in political life.
This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.
The Fiji government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic outbreak is an utter failure, but it is not too late to follow New Zealand’s lockdown example, an opposition leader says.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told media her advice was that the lockdown strategy had saved lives.
Fiji’s deputy opposition leader Professor Biman Prasad told RNZ’s Nine to Noon programme that the government’s strategy had been a complete failure and needed to change.
“Change the strategy now. It’s about life and death now. It’s about fixing the health public health emergency right now, which will also be good in the long term for the economy.”
“The stupid, stubborn, ego-driven policies of this government and the leadership of this government has been utter failure, you know, complete nonsense.”
He said people were fearful and anxious, and the government was putting all its eggs in one basket – vaccination.
‘People are dying’ “Vaccination is important, we’re encouraging people to get vaccinated. But right now we are having a public health emergency – people are dying, our health systems are giving up.”
It was not too late for the country to follow the examples of New Zealand and Australia and lock down, he said.
“If there is a proper planned lockdown with appropriate provision of support such as food rations, etc, for people in the lower income categories I think a lot of people will understand why the government would do that.”
Ardern told New Zealand media this afternoon it was up to the Fiji government to make its own decision, but offered some advice.
“Lockdown, for us, has saved lives and it’s also benefited our economy. But these choices are for governments,” she said.
NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern … “Lockdown, for us, has saved lives and it’s also benefited our economy.” Image: Dom Thomas/RNZ
“Our help and assistance will be there regardless of what strategy they adopt, they’re our neighbours and I think no one wants to see any country suffering under the full effects of an outbreak.”
Ardern said she had spoken to Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama last week and offered wide ranging support, having already provided NZ$40 million in aid, plus protective equipment, specialists, and offered future vaccines.
“Acknowledging that they of course have the right to make their own decisions.”
Fiji should seek more help Dr Prasad said the government should seek more help from Australia and New Zealand to help with testing.
“People are dying, you know, on arrival to the hospitals because the health system cannot cope … if the cases continue to rise – and more and more people seek medical attention – any health system is gonna give up,” he said.
“I’m afraid that’s what is happening right now in Fiji.”
Dr Prasad said he suspected the government was ignoring advice, and its messaging had been contradictory.
“It’s very, very clear that this government has completely lost the plot.”
“They need to convince the people … they haven’t explained very clearly as to what and why they’re doing what they’re doing right now.”
The people of Fiji were grateful for the assistance from Australia and New Zealand, he said, but the Fiji government should ask for more help in the form of support for those who may be unable to care for their children and put food on the table.
Donations to help Fiji could also be sent to non-government organisations that were already providing help, he said.
Civil society groups in Fiji have urged the government to release data to help them provide an effective response to the crisis.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Fiji’s fight against the covid-19 pandemic seems to have no light at the end of the tunnel after the Pacific nation has recorded 636 cases and six deaths in the past day alone.
Yesterday’s number makes 5776 people battling the virus in total while the Health Ministry expects more cases in the coming days.
Fiji, with a population of about 900,000, is fighting the delta variant (originally from India) of the virus that has crippled its healthcare system in just less than four months.
The outbreak began in April at a funeral attended by more than 500 people and among the crowd was the carrier of the virus who worked as a maid in a quarantine facility in Nadi.
In early May, Health Secretary Dr James Fong said the second wave of the virus would be the greatest test of Fiji’s healthcare system that it has ever faced.
“Lives are at stake, sacrifices must be made, and every Fijian’s commitment is needed. The virus is insidious, it is unrelenting. All it takes is one unknown case in our community to spark an explosion of cases across the country,” he said.
He made the comments after two of Fiji’s doctors contracted the virus from a patient who displayed symptoms of the virus but had refused to be tested for covid-19 (he later tested positive), just days after the virus entered local communities.
‘Red flag for widespread transmission’ “From a statistical standpoint, ICU cases –– like the one we now have –– may be a red flag for widespread transmission. Essentially, it tells us that there are likely many more cases of the virus out there,” Dr Fong said.
Fiji has locked down some parts of Viti Levu for more than once as a drastic measure to contain the virus. It also has a 6pm to 4am curfew for the capital Suva and Nausori corridor where the cases are surging and an 8pm to 4am curfew in other parts of the country.
This month, the virus is in the country’s Center for Disease Control, Correction Service, various government ministries including Health, Economy, Agriculture, Defence and even police to name a few.
Some members of the public have called for a “28 days of straight lockdown for the whole of Viti Levu” — Fiji’s main island. However, the government said this would be an economic loss.
Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama told Fijians last month: “It is easy to call for a lockdown if you don’t work at a factory that might permanently leave Fiji if they must shut down completely for 28 days; the garment factories and call centres that cannot serve overseas clients will lose those contracts –– and the jobs they support –– forever.
“And businesses, large and small, that thrive because of this economic activity could shut forever as well.
“Our plan is reasonable, it is tolerable and it is built for the long-haul. And we will stick with that plan. Rather than subject the nation to a far more severe socioeconomic situation, we will continue to care for those in-need with the resources we have.”
Average cases increase In a statement last night, Dr Fong said the seven-day average of new cases per day has increased to 429 cases per day or 485 cases per million population per day.
“We continue to see people with severe COVID-19 dying at home or coming to a medical facility in the late stages of severe illness and dying within a day or two,” he said.
“Severe covid-19 is a medical emergency and a delay in receiving appropriate medical treatment may result in a higher risk of death.
“As expected, with the increasing case numbers we are also seeing increasing numbers of people with severe disease and more deaths in the Suva-Nausori containment zone.
“There have been 31 new recoveries reported since the last update, which means that there are now 5776 active cases in isolation. There have been 7079 cases during the outbreak that started in April 2021.”
The country has recorded a total of 7149 cases in Fiji since the first case was reported in March 2020, with 1,318 recoveries.
The death toll for covid-19 patients has increased to 39 from 33 ending at 8am yesterday.
More cases expected With more cases expected in the future, Fijians have turned to home remedies as a preventative measure and cure from the deadly virus — one being steam inhalation therapy.
“Steam inhalation therapy (kuvui) is commonly used as a home remedy to provide relief from congested nasal passages, and symptoms of cold or inflamed sinuses, or other mild COVID-19 symptoms,” said Dr Fong.
“However, steam therapy is not a treatment for severe covid-19. Severe cpvid-19 is a medical emergency, and relying completely on home remedies can delay urgent medical treatment.”
Fiji’s only hope in dealing with this outbreak is the AstraZeneca vaccine donated by Australia and New Zealand.
Dr Fong said 324,462 adults in Fiji had received their first dose of the vaccine and 54,737 had received their second doses.
Percentage-wise this means that 55 percent of the target population has received at least one dose and 9.3 percent are now fully vaccinated nationwide.
“Because of vaccines and because we now know more about covid, the world’s fight against this virus has changed, and so must our strategy,” Bainimarama said.
“We will get through this current ordeal by an intelligent and targeted application of measures to contain the spread until we get enough of us vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.”
The only hope right now for Fiji is to vaccinate 80 percent of its population before some restrictions are relaxed.
Josefa Babitu is a final-year student journalist at the University of the South Pacific (USP). He is also the current student editor forWansolwara, USP Journalism’s student training newspaper and online publication. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has published a gallery of grim portraits — those of 37 heads of state or government who crack down massively on press freedom, reports RSF.
Some of these “predators of press freedom” have been operating for more than two decades while others have just joined the blacklist, which for the first time includes two women and a European predator.
Nearly half (17) of the predators are making their first appearance on the 2021 list, which RSF is publishing five years after the last one, from 2016.
All are heads of state or government who trample on press freedom by creating a censorship apparatus, jailing journalists arbitrarily or inciting violence against them, when they do not have blood on their hands because they have directly or indirectly pushed for journalists to be murdered.
Nineteen of these predators rule countries that are coloured red on the RSF’s press freedom map, meaning their situation is classified as “bad” for journalism, and 16 rule countries coloured black, meaning the situation is “very bad.”
The average age of the predators is 66. More than a third (13) of these tyrants come from the Asia-Pacific region.
“There are now 37 leaders from around the world in RSF’s predators of press freedom gallery and no one could say this list is exhaustive,” said RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire.
“Each of these predators has their own style. Some impose a reign of terror by issuing irrational and paranoid orders.
Others adopt a carefully constructed strategy based on draconian laws.
A major challenge now is for these predators to pay the highest possible price for their oppressive behaviour. We must not let their methods become the new normal.”
The full RSF 2021 media predators gallery. Image: RSF
New entrants The most notable of the list’s new entrants is undoubtedly Saudi Arabia’s 35-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who is the centre of all power in his hands and heads a monarchy that tolerates no press freedom.
His repressive methods include spying and threats that have sometimes led to abduction, torture and other unthinkable acts. Jamal Khashoggi’s horrific murder exposed a predatory method that is simply barbaric.
The new entrants also include predators of a very different nature such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whose aggressive and crude rhetoric about the media has reached new heights since the start of the pandemic, and a European prime minister, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, the self-proclaimed champion of “illiberal democracy” who has steadily and effectively undermined media pluralism and independence since being returned to power in 2010.
Women predators The first two women predators are both from Asia. One is Carrie Lam, who heads a government that was still democratic when she took over.
The chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region since 2017, Lam has proved to be the puppet of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and now openly supports his predatory policies towards the media.
They led to the closure of Hong Kong’s leading independent newspaper, Apple Daily, on June 24 and the jailing of its founder, Jimmy Lai, a 2020 RSF Press Freedom laureate.
The other woman predator is Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s prime minister since 2009 and the daughter of the country’s independence hero. Her predatory exploits include the adoption of a digital security law in 2018 that has led to more than 70 journalists and bloggers being prosecuted.
Historic predators Some of the predators have been on this list since RSF began compiling it 20 years ago. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, were on the very first list, as were two leaders from the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko, whose recent predatory inventiveness has won him even more notoriety.
In all, seven of the 37 leaders on the latest list have retained their places since the first list RSF published in 2001.
Three of the historic predators are from Africa, the region where they reign longest. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 79, has been Equatorial Guinea’s president since 1979, while Isaias Afwerki, whose country is ranked last in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index, has been Eritrea’s president since 1993.
Paul Kagame, who was appointed Rwanda’s vice-president in 1994 before taking over as president in 2000, will be able to continue ruling until 2034.
For each of the predators, RSF has compiled a file identifying their “predatory method,” how they censor and persecute journalists, and their “favourite targets” –- the kinds of journalists and media outlets they go after.
The file also includes quotations from speeches or interviews in which they “justify” their predatory behaviour, and their country’s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index.
RSF published a list of Digital Press Freedom Predators in 2020 and plans to publish a list of non-state predators before the end of 2021.
Asia Pacific Report and Pacific Media Watch collaborate with the Paris-based RSF.
Until recently it was thought neutron star mergers were the only way heavy elements (heavier than Zinc) could be produced. These mergers involve the mashup of the remnants of two massive stars in a binary system.
But we know heavy elements were first produced not long after the Big Bang, when the universe was really young. Back then, not enough time had passed for neutron star mergers to have even occurred. Thus, another source was needed to explain the presence of early heavy elements in the Milky Way.
The discovery of an ancient star SMSS J2003-1142 in the Milky Way’s halo — which is the roughly spherical region that surrounds the galaxy — is providing the first evidence for another source for heavy elements, including uranium and possibly gold.
Around our galaxy, the Milky Way, there is a ‘halo’ made up of hot gases which is continually being supplied with material ejected by birthing or dying stars. Only 1% of stars in the galaxy are found in the halo. NASA
In our research published today in Nature, we show the heavy elements detected in SMSS J2003-1142 were likely produced, not by a neutron star merger, but through the collapse and explosion of a rapidly spinning star with a strong magnetic field and a mass about 25 times that of the Sun.
We call this explosion event a “magnetorotational hypernova”.
Stellar alchemy
It was recently confirmed that neutron star mergers are indeed one source of the heavy elements in our galaxy. As the name suggests, this is when two neutron stars in a binary system merge together in an energetic event called a “kilonova”. This process produces heavy elements.
Binary star systems have two stars orbiting around a common centre of mass. A neutron star merger is a type of stellar collision that happens between two neutron stars in a binary system. This process can produce heavy elements. NASA
However, existing models of the chemical evolution of our galaxy indicate that neutron star mergers alone could not have produced the specific patterns of elements we see in multiple ancient stars, including SMSS J2003-1142.
SMSS J2003-1142 was first observed in 2016 from Australia, and then again in September 2019 using a telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
From these observations, we studied the star’s chemical composition. Our analysis revealed an iron content roughly 3,000 times lower than the Sun’s. In other words, SMSS J2003-1142 is chemically primitive.
The elements we observed in it were likely produced by a single parent star, just after the Big Bang.
Signatures of a collapsed rapidly spinning star
The chemical composition of SMSS J2003-1142 can reveal the nature and properties of its parent star. Particularly important are its unusually high amounts of nitrogen, zinc and heavy elements including europium and uranium.
The high nitrogen levels in SMSS J2003-1142 indicate the parent star had rapid rotation, while high zinc levels indicate the energy of the explosion was about ten times that of a “normal” supernova — which means it would have been a hypernova. Also, large amounts of uranium would have required the presence of lots of neutrons.
The heavy elements we can observe in SMSS J2003-1142 today are all evidence that this star was produced as a result of an early magnetorotational hypernova explosion.
And our work has therefore provided the first evidence that magnetorotational hypernova events are a source of heavy elements in our galaxy (alongside neutron star mergers).
What about neutron star mergers?
But how do we know it wasn’t just neutron star mergers that led to the particular elements we find in SMSS J2003-1142? There’s a few reasons for this.
In our hypothesis, a single parent star would have made all the elements observed in SMSS J2003-1142. On the other hand, it would have taken much, much longer for the same elements to have been made only through neutron star mergers. But this time wouldn’t have even existed this early in the galaxy’s formation when these elements were made.
Also, neutron star mergers make only heavy elements, so additional sources such as regular supernova would had to have occurred to explain other heavy elements, such as calcium, observed in SMSS J2003-1142. This scenario, while possible, is more complicated and therefore less likely.
The magnetorotational hypernovae model not only provides a better fit to the data, it can also explain the composition of SMSS J2003-1142 through a single event. It could be neutron star mergers, together with magnetorotational supernovae, could in unison explain how all the heavy elements in the Milky Way were created.
David Yong receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D).
Gary Da Costa has received funding from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D).
British runner Albert Hill winning the 800-meter run at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics.Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, EI-13 (727)
Since the global pandemic began, debate has raged over whether Tokyo should go ahead with the Olympic Games, now set to open on July 23.
The same heated debates were heard the last time an Olympic Games were staged following a global pandemic — the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) strongly believed the Olympics would help bring the world back together — not just after the devastating Spanish Flu pandemic that killed at least 50 million people, but also the tumult of the first world war.
Only six months after the armistice that ended the conflict — and in the midst of the pandemic — Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics and president of the IOC, called an extraordinary IOC session to award the 1920 Olympics to Antwerp in recognition of Belgium’s suffering.
Despite the IOC’s enthusiasm, worries about the resurgence of the Spanish Flu stalked the competition. Although the last wave hit Europe in the spring of 1920, newspapers still reported on rumours of new outbreaks in the weeks leading up to the games.
Though a number of Olympic athletes died from the flu in the years leading up to the games, historical records show the virus had no direct impact on the event itself. Nonetheless, planning an Olympics in the aftermath of both a war and pandemic was far from easy for the under-resourced and overstretched Belgians.
Spanish flu outbreak in Boden, Sweden, taken in 1918. Wikimedia Commons
An Olympic farce?
The Antwerp Games followed closely after the Inter-Allied Games, held in Paris in 1919, which brought together soldiers from the Allied powers who were stationed in France and Belgium and had yet to be demobilised.
The popular event saw large crowds, despite concerns about the flu, and provided greater impetus to move ahead with the even more ambitious Olympics. British Olympic officials said in a letter to The Referee newspaper in Sydney,
By renewing her claim to this Olympiad, she [the city of Antwerp] says to her tyrants of yesterday, ‘You thought you had broken my spirit and ruined my fortunes. You have failed.’
The Belgian Olympic Committee refused to invite athletes from the Central Powers who fought in the war — Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire. The newly created Soviet Union also declined to attend.
The British-winning tug of war team at the 1920 Games. Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, EI-13 (727)
This intrusion of politics on the games proved challenging for the IOC. During the first world war, de Coubertin had avowed Olympic neutrality, and was quoted in the Italian newspaper La Stampa in 1915 as being open to Germany hosting the games the following year. (The 1916 Berlin Olympics were ultimately cancelled due to the war.)
But not everyone was supportive of the idea that “Olympism” could promote peace in the wake of the war. The UK assistant under-secretary for foreign affairs, Eyre Crowe, decried the Olympics as “an international farce” and joined a chorus of government officials arguing against funding a British Olympic team.
The Belgian Olympic Committee, and the athletes themselves, explicitly connected the games to the war, as well.
At the opening ceremonies, the organisers released doves into the air, but also held a religious service in memory of the Allied athletes who had been killed. Military officials also played a key role in organising and staging events: the American team only arrived in Europe, for instance, thanks to a last-minute military transport.
Few fans and a financial failure
Just like the Tokyo Games, De Coubertin and the IOC were under considerable pressure to ensure the Antwerp Olympics went ahead, despite the challenging circumstances.
After an eight-year break following the 1912 Olympics, de Coubertin realised that hosting Olympics in 1920 was essential to defending their position as the world’s premier international sporting competition.
He was aware that alternative games were being organised, including the 1921 Women’s Olympiad in Monte Carlo, which was planned, in part, because of the unwillingness of the Olympics to allow a full range of women’s events.
On August 14, 1920, the Antwerp Games opened with more than 2,600 competing athletes. Several achieved remarkable success, including the Hawaiian-American swimmer, Duke Kahanamoku, who won gold and set a world record in the 100-metre freestyle. But overall, the quality of competition had dipped significantly.
Olympic swimming champion Duke Kahanamoku at the Antwerp Olympics in 1920. Wikimedia Commons
The war was the cause: many star athletes died or returned injured and unable to compete. The British team, for instance, lost several track and field stars — Gerald Anderson, Kenneth Powell and Henry Ashington — all from Oxbridge sporting clubs.
The number of fans were also lower than organisers expected: many locals were unable to afford the high cost of tickets. The low local interest resulted in a loss of 600 million francs for Belgium, and within three years, the Belgian Olympic Committee had gone bankrupt.
The rush to host the games could only partially explain its financial failure. The Belgian government set aside 4 million francs to fund the competition, but quickly ran out of money and was forced to scrape up money through local fund-raising drives and by selling memorabilia.
American, British, and French Olympic committees similarly faced difficulty raising funds to send athletes to Belgium. In the wake of the war, amid a global economic recession, few governments had money to spend on sport.
The opening of the 1920 Olympics. Wikimedia Commons
‘We were heartsick when we saw it’
Cash-strapped Belgium was hardly ready to welcome athletes, let alone large numbers of fans. Walker Smith, an American track and field athlete, described sleeping on cots “without mattresses” in dormitories housing 10 to 15 men per room.
Aileen Riggin during the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp. Wikimedia Commons
The food situation was similarly bleak, with athletes given only a roll, coffee and “one little sardine” for breakfast. They were forced to buy their own food — Belgium was still receiving aid because of food shortages.
Sporting facilities, too, were in shambles. The Olympic Stadium was barely finished when the games began — the track was incomplete and many of the races were conducted in muddy conditions.
Swimmers faced even tougher circumstances: the Belgians had not built a pool but instead constructed a wooden frame in an existing waterway.
Aileen Riggin, the gold medallist in the women’s three-meter springboard event, remembers diving into a canal, part of the city’s ancient defences, and into water being shared by all the nautical sports.
We were heartsick when we saw it. […] A 50-meter pool was not asking too much, but of course Belgium did the very best they could. This was right after the war.
It was so cold that many swimmers had to be rescued from hypothermia. They were unconscious, and some of them were really in a bad way and had to be dragged out.
Swimming competition in a canal at the Antwerp Olympics. (Duke Kahanamoku is in lane 5). Wikimedia Commons
Antwerp’s legacy
Despite these hardships, Belgians reported a successful Olympiad. The IOC’s report called the games a noble cause, but admitted that “for Belgians the success was relative”.
According to the IOC, one of the lessons they learned was
how expensive it was to host the games [and] that it is imprudent to undertake them without having the necessary capital in hand.
In the rush to host the 1920 games, the IOC, local organisers, and other national committees made avoidable and costly mistakes.
Unfortunately, as the long history of politicised and costly Olympics has shown, some of these mistakes were doomed to be repeated.
Keith Rathbone ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
