Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Corinna Di Niro, Lecturer/Creative Arts Researcher and TEDx Speaker, University of South Australia

Why do we tell stories, and how are they crafted? In this series, we unpick the work of the writer on both page and screen.

Adelaide-born, award-winning playwright Stephen House has created many plays, exhibitions and short films. He usually directs and performs his work. Although writing poetry came to him early, he has only recently, in middle age, compiled his best poems in his first collection, real and unreal (2018).

In it he offers a unique journey into worlds and ways that are not often written about. Self identifying as a “queer-nomad”, House describes himself as “definitely not straight”.

While real and unreal doesn’t set out to shock, it deliberately opens doors that are mostly left closed. The poems are frank in their exploration of male queerness and raise social justice issues: the plight of the underclass (as House calls it), and the effects of homophobia, domestic violence, abuse, exploitation, sex work, poverty and discrimination.

Take his poem “who we are”, for instance:

a young man and woman jog together towards us
pass us at the water’s edge
fucking faggots he sniggers
disgusting she adds
they keep running on their way

he lets go of my hand
it hurts
more than their abuse did

An observational tone

The collection has an observational tone. There is often a sense House is on the outside looking in. He shares the world in which he lives matter-of-factly, whether it be chaotic, calm or an adventure down a dark alleyway.

House left school at 15, worked in a factory and then travelled around for years living in the back of a car, doing odd jobs and working for short stints.

he lives in an ragged tent amongst coastal gums i sleep in an old car moulded into sand-hill bush

i cry
i’m not sure why

at my camp i make a driftwood fire
cook my food
warm my body

write a poem
about a driftwood mountain that changed my life

(excerpt from “driftwood mountain”).

While forging a career as a playwright for 20 or so years, House was also writing and performing monologues. Although he hasn’t dropped theatre completely, he now tends to write poetry because of his growing fascination with glimpses of situations rather than full stories, and because poetry fits in better with life on the road.

alone
with nature
and self

finally free
from where I was
before

(excerpt from the poem “self”).

House’s poems usually begin with an idea that grows as he wanders along, taking in the environment around him. From there the scrawling starts; dot points and scribbles in a cafe or bar, alone. Then a process of refinement until the piece tells him it’s finished.

He steers away from traditional forms of poetry, avoiding typical poetic conventions and rhyme unless it occurs naturally in sections. Just as he takes risks in life, he does so in his work: blurring forms and often swaying into prose poetry.

once I think
maybe twice

i’m not sure where and when

i order a long black
he looks at me
man on man gaze

(Excerpt from the poem “where and when”).

Despite limited education or knowledge of literature, House has developed a unique, succinct voice. There is no single rhythm and no one structure in his work. The vivid world in which he lives and its translation into poetry is based on a flow of consciousness – and he works until, as he puts it, he knows it feels right.

A spontaneous method

His method is never the same – like his life, it is spontaneous. In the poem “when i write”, House opens up about his habits and thoughts on writing.

Real work occurs in a kind of way that is sober and steady.
Though still unmeasured and unplanned,
it has the comforting foundation of safe and calm.

Drinking writing never comes under the title
of writing properly; though I got that bizarre piece
(about my appalling behaviour in “Paris”) down on paper,
major drinking bender and all, so who the fuck knows…

Conversely, sometimes his life is very scheduled, offering a program for his writing to occur:

wake up
pray to Lord Ganesh
chant to Lord Shiva
write
yoga in lounge room
breakfast in kitchen
write
coffee in cafe
write
swim at beach
write

(excerpt from “write”).

House’s work is not entirely autobiographical. Although he writes in the first person, a few of the poems are imagined stories. “Mummy” is the experience of a man confronting his homeless mother in a park, about the abuse he suffered as a child. When I interviewed House in Adelaide, he said he was told this true story, but when he tried to put it down impersonally, he felt it lost the immediacy. So he made it his own:

I clutch the image and drift into what I was and live;
grip tighter at her grimy claw. She murmurs.
“What did you say, Mummy?”

real and unreal is gritty, moving, dark and full of experiences that shock, sadden and entertain. The poems can be read as a collection, or individually in any order.

… and if you’ve never jumped on a train
of indulgent destruction
to find out who you are
and lost almost everything
to a washy game of anarchy
punctuated with humiliating dysfunction
you can never understand
about coming back
slowly and gradually

(Excerpt from the poem “reflection”)

– ref. Inside the Story: writer and ‘queer nomad’ Stephen House on the gritty lifestyle of an artist – https://theconversation.com/inside-the-story-writer-and-queer-nomad-stephen-house-on-the-gritty-lifestyle-of-an-artist-111187

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Brooks, Scientia Professor of Evolutionary Ecology; Academic Lead of UNSW’s Grand Challenges Program, UNSW

Compared with our closest relatives, the common chimpanzee and the bonobo, humans are pretty good at focusing exclusively on one mate at a time.

Just how exclusively, however, is the subject of endless tabloid gossip, culture-war sabre-rattling, and scientific debate. The answer seemed to be that most people are exclusive most of the time, but new evidence has thrown the question wide open again.

Recent research has revealed that among the Himba of northern Namibia, nearly half of all children were fathered by someone other than their mother’s husband. This is by far the highest rate of “extra-pair paternity” ever documented by reliable research, but for the Himba it is an accepted part of life.

What’s more, the phenomenon doesn’t seem to cause serious problems for the Himba, thanks to their particular social norms. For men, these include a scrupulous sense that biological and non-biological children deserve equal treatment.

Read more: What are the chances that your dad isn’t your father?

How common is extra-pair paternity?

Some years ago, I looked at the oft-quoted estimates that between 9% and 30% of children are sired by somebody other than the guy who thinks he is the father.

At that time, the best-designed genetic studies showed we could put the sensationalist estimates of 10-30% aside; the best studies suggested extra-pair paternity rates between 1% and 3%. That number gels with evidence gathered in the intervening years from studies of historic rates of extra-pair paternity in Belgium and South Africa, and contemporary estimates from the traditional Dogon society in Mali.

So you can imagine the surprise in the scientific community when a paper in Science Advances published, using a very thorough protocol, an estimate of 48% extra-pair paternity among the Himba. More than that, 70% of married couples with children had at least one child sired by a man other than the mother’s husband.

Welcome to Namibia

The Himba are pastoralists who live in the arid plains of northwestern Namibia. UCLA anthropologist Brooke Scelza, who led this new research, has travelled regularly to Namibia for more than a decade and learned much about Himba culture, marriage and parenting.

Himba parents arrange marriages for their children, and the groom’s family pays a bride price of a small number of livestock. But many, perhaps most, married adults have extramarital relationships.

These are not furtive affairs, infused with stigma and the threat of destructive jealousy. Himba call children conceived in these relationships “omoka”, but their mother’s husband is still considered their father in all important social ways.

The relatively relaxed sexuality of the Himba is related to how they make their living. A husband often spends long periods away from home, seeking out grazing and water for his cattle, sheep, and goats. During these periods of separation in particular, both wives and husbands consort with other lovers.

Mothers and fathers are both very good at discerning which children are omoka, getting it right for 73% of children. Their errors in attribution were much more likely to be false positives, that is to say mistakenly believing that an omoka child is a genetic descendent.

Hey jealousy

Where our promiscuous ancestors – the ones we shares with chimps and bonobos – weren’t much chop as fathers, humans have evolved both the tools to focus on a limited number of mates and the capacity to be excellent dads.

Questions of spousal exclusivity expose all sorts of insecurities, particularly in societies with high fidelity and low rates of extra-pair paternity, like the ones most readers of The Conversation inhabit. These are the places where a child who does not bear their father’s DNA is often seen as the product of “cuckoldry” or “cheating”. Such children experience dramatically higher risks of neglect and violence.

Individual men invest more in their wives and children when they are confident they are the children’s genetic father. The more women depend on men’s investments, the more they lose if the relationship breaks down. As a result, in couples where the man’s economic contribution is large, both parties are likely to hold strong anti-promiscuity views.

Read more: Economic dependence promotes prudishness

A separate study of 11 societies led by Scelza found societies where men spend a lot of time and effort caring for children also tend to be places where women and men react with strong jealousy to scenarios depicting emotional and sexual infidelity.

Despite their relatively low levels of jealousy, Himba dads fall in the middle of those 11 societies on the paternal care scale. They don’t hold, groom, or play with their small children very much. But they do provide indirect care, ensuring the children have food, helping them receive an education, giving them livestock, and paying “bride price” for their sons.

When a Himba man dies, he passes most of his wealth, in the form of cattle, not to his own or his wife’s sons, but to those of his sister. This is not an unusual custom among pastoralist societies. It makes solid Darwinian sense for Himba fathers, given the likelihood of extra-pair paternity.

Himba dads

In a paper published today, University of Missouri anthropologist Sean P. Prall, together with Scelza, shows that Himba fathers hold strong norms against favouring genetic children over their non-genetic (omoka) children.

Himba parenting seems to work, despite the high rates of extra-pair paternity, because of these norms. There is a strong sense that the social father of a child plays an important role irrespective of the child’s genetic paternity.

Children, regardless of their paternity, are useful and important members of a household. Himba children perform useful work around the home, and older boys help care for livestock. Beyond that, being a generous father who is fair to his omoka and genetic children alike, earns a man prestige. Men are especially likely to treat their children equally in the most visible forms of parental investment, like bride price.

What of human monogamy?

The new papers about Himba parenting challenge the view that humans are, if not monogamous, then mostly “monogamish”. Himba extramarital relationships are too common and too prominent to conform to our idea of furtive, opportunistic transgressions.

Omoka are not the issue of cuckoldry, but rather a different kind of socially acceptable mating arrangement. More than that, Himba fathers don’t drop their bundle at the first hint that a child doesn’t have “their eyes”. They stick around, and mostly treat those kids the same as everybody else.

– ref. The deep evolutionary links between monogamy and fatherhood are more complicated than we thought – https://theconversation.com/the-deep-evolutionary-links-between-monogamy-and-fatherhood-are-more-complicated-than-we-thought-132660

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elisa Hill, Researcher in Enteric Neuroscience and Autism, RMIT University

Many people will associate autism with traits including atypical social interactions, repetitive behaviours, and difficulties with speech and communication.

But perhaps lesser known is the fact people with autism are more likely to experience gastrointestinal disorders than the general population.

One review found children with autism were four times more likely to report gastrointestinal symptoms than children without a diagnosis. A number of studies in the review reported the prevalence of gut problems was the same among boys and girls.

These symptoms can include constipation, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, bloating, reflux and vomiting.

Gut problems like these hinder quality of life for people with autism and their families, further affecting sleep, concentration and behavioural issues.

Read more: What causes autism? What we know, don’t know and suspect

For a long time we thought this was due to the way the brain controls the gut. Think of the “butterflies” you get in your stomach, or the need to rush to the toilet when you’re really nervous.

While the brain does influence gut function, this is only part of the story. Newer research is showing gastrointestinal symptoms in autism may be due to differences in the gut itself.

The mini brain of the gut

The gut contains its own dedicated nervous system, called the enteric nervous system, which co-ordinates digestion and the absorption of food and nutrients.

The enteric nervous system is a complex integrated network of neurons that extends along the gastrointestinal tract.

While structurally quite different, it contains about the same number of cells as the spinal cord and uses many of the same neurochemical messengers, receptors and proteins as the brain.

Autism has a strong genetic component. More than 1,000 gene mutations are associated with the disorder. Many of these gene mutations alter how neurons communicate in the brain.

We hypothesised some of these gene mutations may also cause neuron wiring to go awry in the gut, resulting in gastrointestinal issues in some people with autism.

Read more: We need to stop perpetuating the myth that children grow out of autism

Our research

To test this theory, we studied patient records of two brothers with autism, who have a single gene mutation associated with autism that affects neuron communication. We also studied mice.

Mouse models with this specific mutation, called neuroligin-3, have previously shown behaviours relevant to autism, such as altered social interactions, reduced communication and repetitive behaviours.

We found this mutation also affects the enteric nervous system of the gut in mice. Mutant mice exhibited altered gut contractions, and the speed at which food moved through their small intestine was faster than the speed for mice without the mutation.

Meanwhile, both brothers have gut issues including esophagitis (inflammation of the esophagus) and diarrhoea.

So our work shows a gene mutation associated with autism, previously only studied in the brain, could affect the gut too.

The gut microbiota

We also found mice with the mutation had differences in their gut microbiota compared to normally developing mice.

The gut microbiota is the community of microorganisms (including bacteria, fungi and viruses) that live within the gastrointestinal tract. The largest amount of microbiota are found in the large intestine, where they digest some of the food we eat.

Read more: Can a gut bacteria imbalance really cause autism?

The mice we studied with the neuroligin-3 mutation had what’s called an altered Firmicutes:Bacteroidetes ratio.

Scientists have found this ratio is altered in people with a range of conditions including type 2 diabetes, obesity and inflammatory bowel disease.

Why is all this important?

Now that we’re beginning to understand more about the link between autism and the gut, scientists are investigating whether changing the gut microbiota could affect autism behaviours. One way we can alter the gut microbiota is using faecal transplants.

One recent study took faeces (microbiota) from boys with or without autism and transplanted the faeces into mice. The researchers then studied how the offspring of these mice behaved.

The offspring of mice that received microbes from boys with autism showed behaviours that could be relevant to autism (they buried more marbles in their cage bedding, potentially an indication of repetitive behaviour), compared to mice who were transplanted with microbes from typically developing children.

Another recent study assessed gut problems and behavioural traits for two years in people with autism after they received a faecal transplant. This study reported improvements in gut symptoms and behaviour. But the researchers only studied a small number of people, and didn’t control for placebo effects.

Other studies have tested if changing gut microbes by treating patients with prebiotics (food for the bacteria in your gut) or probiotics (helpful bacteria) can affect autism behaviours. But a review of these studies showed no consensus – in other words, some studies showed an effect, while others didn’t.

Read more: Essays on health: microbes aren’t the enemy, they’re a big part of who we are

What does this mean for people with autism?

Many of the studies looking at the gut in autism so far have been conducted using mice. We need more research in humans to confirm the results can be extrapolated.

We need to continue to build our understanding of how gene mutations in the nervous system influence gut microbes. In the future, tweaking the gut microbiota might be one way to manage behaviours in people with autism.

This would not reverse gene mutations leading to autism, but it might tone down the effects, and improve quality of life for people with autism and their families.

In the meantime, clinicians treating people with autism should consider assessing and treating gut problems alongside behavioural issues.

– ref. Science continues to suggest a link between autism and the gut. Here’s why that’s important – https://theconversation.com/science-continues-to-suggest-a-link-between-autism-and-the-gut-heres-why-thats-important-118914

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Blair Trewin, Climate scientist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology

The World Meteorological Organisation today published a definitive climate report card showing concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to rise, and the last five years were the warmest on record.

The Statement on the State of the Global Climate also confirmed that the ongoing drought and recent bushfires in Australia were a globally significant climate event.

The report is an annual, comprehensive overview of the latest information from the world’s meteorological services and other key institutions. We are among the many authors who contributed.

It’s an important record of the magnitude and speed of changes to global climate, drawing on the latest data from across the fields of climate science.

A record year

Global average temperatures in 2019 were 1.1℃ above pre-industrial levels. Only 2016 was hotter, but that year came at the end of an extreme El Niño, which typically has a warming influence on global temperatures.

The last five years were the world’s five warmest on record. Areas which were especially warm, with temperatures in 2019 more than 2℃ above average, included parts of Australia, Alaska and northern Russia, eastern Europe and southern Africa. Central North America was the only significant land area with below-average temperatures.

Human-driven climate change is predominantly caused by increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, the three most potent greenhouse gases, have continued to grow and are now, respectively, 147%, 259% and 123% of pre-industrial levels, measured in the year 1750.

Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels reached a record high of 36.6 billion tonnes, of which about half is absorbed by vegetation and oceans.

The Antarctic ozone hole was its smallest since 2002, after an unusually early spring breakdown of the Antarctic polar vortex following a sudden warming in the polar stratosphere.

Read more: The air above Antarctica is suddenly getting warmer – here’s what it means for Australia

Many other indicators of large-scale climate change continued their long-term trends in 2019. These include the heat content of the global ocean – an important indicator because around 90% of warming generated by greenhouse gases from human activities is taken by the oceans.

In 2019, ocean heat content reached the highest levels since instrumental records began. Global mean sea level also reached new highs in 2019, while Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent was well below average.

Glacial mass declined for the 32nd consecutive year. In Switzerland, for example, glacier loss over the past five years has exceeded 10%, the highest rate of decline in more than a century.

Australia’s fire and drought

The report confirms the ongoing drought in Australia and exceptional fire weather conditions late in the year were among the most significant global climate events last year.

2019 was Australia’s warmest and driest year since national records began – the first time both records have been broken in the same year.

In December, the monthly accumulated Forest Fire Danger Index – an indicator of severe fire weather – was the highest on record for any month in Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and the ACT. Some fires burned for longer than two months.

In January and February 2019, a dry summer in Tasmania contributed to fires in the normally moist western and central parts of the island – the second time in four years that fires burnt regions where historically such events were extremely rare.

Read more: The world may lose half its sandy beaches by 2100. It’s not too late to save most of them

The drought was strongly influenced by a very strong positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole – an oscillation of sea surface temperatures which affects the climate in Australia. A strong negative Southern Annular Mode – a climate driver which originates in Antarctica – brought westerly winds and dry conditions to the eastern states from September.

Australia was not the only nation affected by drought in 2019 – southern Africa, southeast Asia and central Chile were also significantly affected. In the Chilean capital Santiago, rainfall was more than 70% below average.

Heatwaves and cyclones

Two exceptional heatwaves affected Europe in the summer. France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom all had their highest recorded temperatures. Belgium and the Netherlands both reached 40℃ for the first time, and Paris reached a high of 42.6℃.

Australia had extreme heatwaves both early and late in the year, and in South America, temperatures exceeded 30℃ as far south as Tierra del Fuego.

Read more: Rain has eased the dry, but more is needed to break the drought

Tropical cyclones are amongst the most destructive weather phenomena in most years, and 2019 was no exception. The most severe cyclone impact was in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, when Cyclone Idai hit in mid-March, killing more than 900 people.

Hurricane Dorian, one of the strongest ever to affect land in the North Atlantic, caused massive destruction in the Bahamas, whilst Typhoon Hagibis led to exceptional flooding in Japan, and daily rainfall of more than 900 millimetres. The North Indian Ocean also had its most active cyclone season on record.

Looking to the future

Global climate projections show that under all scenarios, temperatures will continue to warm – and years such as 2019 will become the norm this decade.

The report is intended to inform decisions around the world on adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change.

– ref. It’s official: the last five years were the warmest ever recorded – https://theconversation.com/its-official-the-last-five-years-were-the-warmest-ever-recorded-133056

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sally Male, Researcher in Engineering Education, University of Western Australia

For the past two years, Melbourne’s Victoria University has been delivering its bachelor degrees using a block model, where students study one unit at a time rather than four units at once. Each unit, or block, is four weeks long and the study year is broken into ten blocks – four in each semester and optional winter and summer blocks.

Victoria University’s figures show 87% of its first-year students passed their units in 2019, the year after the block model was introduced, compared with 74% in 2017.

The university says student attendance has been at 90% compared with around 40% before the block model. Other benefits include more high distinctions, and increased pass rates for students of low socioeconomic backgrounds.

But an anonymous letter by a student recently published in literary journal Overland protested against the block model. Among the many complaints were that students didn’t have time to let material sink in and were effectively “cramming” information.

I led a study, from 2015 to 2017, into intensive mode teaching of which the block model is an example. We found intensive mode worked well for all courses. Students and teachers reported many benefits of the model, as long as it was carefully planned to mitigate risks, such as student and staff burnout.

How intensive mode works

Our study involved a survey of 105 academics in charge of intensive units at 26 Australian universities.

We also studied eight intensive units and three matched traditional units in engineering and business at four universities. This involved workshops or focus groups with students and follow up surveys, and interviews with teaching staff.

Commonly, university students complete about four units at the same time per semester. Lectures, tutorials and laboratory sessions are dispersed throughout the weekly timetable during a full 12 or 13 weeks of a semester.

In intensive mode, students attend classes for longer per day, and on fewer days, than in the traditional mode. Most Australian universities teach some units using intensive mode, especially in health courses and in postgraduate business and law courses.

In Victoria University’s model, students complete a whole unit, including assessment, in four weeks. Students can complete four units in a semester, in four separate blocks. Students also attend classes on only three days a week.

Other examples of intensive models involve two full days of classes, a full week of classes, and a full day of classes each week for seven weeks.

Why use the block model?

The most common reason survey participants gave for using intensive mode was to allow students and teachers to take on activities between classes. With longer classes on fewer days, students and staff have more days available to study, gain practical experience, work or complete research.

Students can also take intensive units in summer or winter blocks to catch up. And universities use the model to bring guest speakers in from industry.

Many academics – across science, engineering, maths and humanities – in our study said they enjoyed using intensive mode in their subjects. But they said the model would not work for subjects different from theirs that were, for example, in some way more technical or more project-based.

But this was only an assumption, and it was inconsistent with the diversity of units taught by survey participants.

University teachers and students told us long classes in intensive mode provided opportunities to bond and for extended practical activities. They also enjoyed the retreat-like focus on one or two units.

Problems with the intensive model

The intensive study model could be a problem for students who would rather study part time due to commitments such as care, work or needing to access health services. Students with difficulties such as disability or weak English could also suffer under the block model as they may need more time to learn than others.

These groups of students are unlikely to have the option of part-time study in a block model such as offered across undergraduate courses at Victoria University.

To see if students could grasp difficult concepts in intensive mode study, we focused our research on the hurdles they need to overcome in a unit.

Students said that, in the long classes in intensive mode, they could learn about a concept, apply it and face and overcome difficulties all in one day. This only happens if the student tries to apply the difficult concepts early in the unit, therefore tackling the most challenging learning during class time where guidance is available.

We recommend academics structure the unit and assessments to ensure students progress through these particular aspects of the course early and are supported to learn together in the long classes.

Read more: Why block subjects might not be best for university student learning

Academics should also design programs with connected units to ensure students revisit these particular hurdles, as is necessary in any mode.

In our study, many students did not understand the intensive mode until they were already behind. Students who fall behind in intensive mode have little time to catch up.

So they need to be warned their block model workload should be equivalent to the workload they would normally give a unit over a full semester. They need to know to work intensively from the first day.

Students also reported burning out if they took too many consecutive intensive units, so sufficient breaks need to be structured in between.

Students told us they can become overloaded when block models are combined with other models. And we found academics can struggle in intensive mode to provide feedback on time and have students apply it. Assessment design and marking resources must allow for timely feedback to students.

Careful design is important to overcome difficulties. Good teaching is especially important in intensive modes to mitigate the risks and take advantage of the opportunities.

– ref. Studying one uni subject in four weeks has benefits – but students risk burnout if it’s not done right – https://theconversation.com/studying-one-uni-subject-in-four-weeks-has-benefits-but-students-risk-burnout-if-its-not-done-right-132973

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alessandro Ossola, Research Coordinator – Smart Green Cities, Macquarie University

Australia just experienced the second-warmest summer on record, with 2019 being the hottest year. Summer temperatures soared across the country, causing great economic and human loss. The good news is we can do something about this in our own backyards. We have found trees and vegetation can lower local land temperatures by up to 5-6℃ on days of extreme heat.

Our newly published research into a summer heatwave in Adelaide suggests that a simple solution to extreme heat is literally at everyone’s doorstep. It relies on the trees, the grasses and the vegetation in our own backyards.

Read more: Out in the heat: why poorer suburbs are more at risk in warming cities

What did the study show?

During a three-day heatwave that hit Adelaide in 2017, AdaptWest took to the skies to measure land surface temperatures from an aircraft. Our analysis of the data collected on that day suggests urban trees and grasses can lower daytime land temperatures by up to 5-6℃ during extreme heat.

The largest temperature reductions were in the hottest suburbs and those further away from the coast. These significant reductions were mostly achieved thanks to backyard trees.

So this benefit that urban trees provide has two key aspects:

• maximum cooling happens when needed the most – during days of unbearable heat.

• maximum cooling happens where needed the most – close to us, the people, in the communities where we live.

Our analysis also shows the humble home garden more than pulls its weight when it comes to reducing extreme urban heat and its harmful effects. Although yards and gardens cover only about 20% of urban land, these private spaces provide more than 40% of the tree cover and 30% of grass cover across western Adelaide. This is comparable to what can be found in many other Australian cities and towns.

In fact, private tree canopy cover is considerably greater than that of typical urban parks or public green areas. This means these private green spaces are a vital yet often overlooked resource for fighting extreme heat.

Read more: Our land abounds in nature strips – surely we can do more than mow a third of urban green space

Planning climate-ready cities

Climate models and projections predict extreme heat days and heatwaves will become more frequent and intense. Penrith reached 48.9℃ on January 4 this year, making Western Sydney the hottest place on Earth that day. Given that heatwaves are already considered Australia’s deadliest climate-related disaster, the forecast temperatures pose an urgent threat to human livelihoods.

Urban planning is increasingly having to take extreme temperatures into account. For instance, the City of Sydney recently announced an ambitious policy to increase urban green cover to 40% by 2050 for climate change resilience. Currently, this level of green cover is found in only a handful of suburbs in cities like Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide.

Read more: How do we save ageing Australians from the heat? Greening our cities is a good start

To achieve such ambitious and life-sustaining goals, our results point to the need to retain, protect and enhance urban greenery in our own yards. As our cities become increasingly dense, people’s trees and yards can play an invaluable role in adapting to climate change.

Most council, state and federal policies to date have neglected yards and their trees when thinking about climate change adaptation. When envisioning how Australian cities should grow, develop and thrive, more attention has to be given to the spaces where our yards and trees can help reduce the catastrophic effects of a warming climate on people and communities, right at our doorstep.

Climate change is causing a social, cultural and political revolution. It calls for bold, decisive and immediate action. This is a lifetime opportunity for smart and proactive planning, policy-making and community action. This work needs to begin now.

Urban forests don’t grow quickly, however. We need to be encouraging low-water-use grass and shrub covers as a fast interim strategy for urban cooling.

This is a stopgap measure until a large army of climate-ready tree soldiers, that we can decide to plant today, take over the job of fighting climate change and extreme heat in our future cities.

Read more: Our cities need more trees, but some commonly planted ones won’t survive climate change

You can find more information and updates at Macquarie University’s Smart Green Cities and Adelaide’s AdaptWest.

– ref. A solution to cut extreme heat by up to 6 degrees is in our own backyards – https://theconversation.com/a-solution-to-cut-extreme-heat-by-up-to-6-degrees-is-in-our-own-backyards-133082

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

The problem now and going forward is making sure that sick workers stay home. That means not forcing employees to choose between penury and working while coughing.

That’s the conclusion from an editorial in last week’s New York Times that notes that one in four American private sector workers are not entitled to paid sick leave.

“They face a choice between endangering the health of co-workers and customers, and calling in sick and losing their wages and perhaps also their jobs,” it says.

The people least likely to have paid sick days, and so most likely to work through illness, are low-wage service workers such as restaurant employees and home health care aides. In the United States, they are also less likely to have health insurance and so less likely to seek assistance.

The editorial suggests that paid sick leave be mandated, and that the US government meet some of the cost, by for example providing big businesses with a one-off tax credit and providing smaller companies with direct support.

Not much better than the United States

In Australia we like to think we have a better social safety net than in the US, and in the case of health coverage, we do. But in other ways we are just as as unprepared.

In Hobart on Sunday health authorities said a man infected with coronavirus ignored instructions to self-isolate while he waited for his test results because he didn’t want to miss his casual shifts at Hobart’s Grand Chancellor Hotel.

The Bureau of Statistics Characteristics of Employment Survey shows that in 2019, 24.4% of Australian employees were casuals without any access to paid leave.

Adding in the self-employed, the proportion of all Australian workers without paid sick leave would be 37%.

As the chart shows, Australians without paid sick leave are over-represented in some of the sectors with the greatest degree of personal contact with members of the public.

63% of people working in the accommodation and food services sector have no paid sick leave, and 45% of sales workers and 42% of community and personal service workers.

Proportion of workers in each industry without paid leave

Casual workers also have less ability to work from home.

About 30% of employees with paid sick leave were able to regularly work from home, compared to 10% of those without paid sick leave.

Permanent employees are entitled to at least 10 days per year of paid sick and carer’s leave at their base rate of pay and usual hours.

Separately, all employees – including casuals – are entitled to two days unpaid carer’s leave or compassionate leave. But given that it is unpaid, it doesn’t deal with the financial problems that sick and potentially infectious casual workers will face.

Sickness allowance is simply inadequate

What support does Australia have for those people not entitled to paid sick leave?

Not much at all.

People who can’t work in their job because of illness can currently apply for Sickness Allowance – which will be phased out starting on March 20 and subsumed into a broader jobseeker payment with similar conditions.

Sick claimants face a waiting period of one week, plus an extra waiting period of up to 13 weeks if they have readily available financial assets of $5,000 or more.

(The government has announced its intention to increase the waiting period to up six months for people with more than $18,000 in savings.)

With such tight eligibility conditions, it isn’t surprising that few people claim sickness allowance; only 5,000 in June 2019.

It is paid at the same rate as Newstart – less than 40% of the minimum wage, which even taking into account assistance with housing costs, turns out to be the lowest level of income replacement for an unemployed person in the OECD.

If that person’s spouse is working, the income test might lead to them receiving no payment or a much-reduced payment.

What could be done?

The government has indicated that it is not planning to increase the inadequate rate of Newstart, probably in order to avoid a long-lasting boost to government spending. However, it might make one-off payments to people receiving income support – an approach supported by the Australian Council of Social Service.

It could also lift Newstart and associated benefits on a temporary basis. People on these benefits make up about 12% of part-time workers and are highly likely to be casuals. The Council of Small Business Organisations wants waiting periods waived.

In addition we could do what the New York Times proposes in the US.

Encouraging employers to provide sick pay to casual workers would be in keeping with our long history of employer-provided sickness benefits. The government could reimburse employers for large chunk of the costs.

Read more: The costs of a casual job are now outweighing any pay benefits

We already have a model for it. The paid parental leave scheme introduced in 2011 provides eligible working parents with up to 18 weeks of taxpayer-funded leave at the national minimum wage, whether they are full-time, part-time, casual, seasonal, contract or self-employed.

We could do it only temporarily, during the coronavirus crisis, while we consider more permanent support for our growing casual workforce.

The appropriate response to a pandemic is in one important way quite different to the response to a recession. The aim in a recession is to keep people attached to the labour market and allow their employers able to continue to trade. The aim in a pandemic is to support people to stay away from workplaces.

The way to do it is an immediate sickness payment, without a waiting period, that is big enough to keep people who should be quarantined away from work.

– ref. When it comes to sick leave, we’re not much better prepared for coronavirus than the US – https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-sick-leave-were-not-much-better-prepared-for-coronavirus-than-the-us-133231

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Libby Sander, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Bond Business School, Bond University

Imagine your employer asking you to work from home until further notice.

As COVID-19 continues to spread, this seems an increasingly likely scenario. “Everyone who can work from home should work from home,” said Harvard epidemiologist William Hanage this week.

In China and neighbouring countries, millions are doing so for the first time.

In the United States, companies readying staff to work remotely include Twitter, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and JP Morgan.

This week, NASA’s Ames Research Center in California joined them and declared a mandatory telework policy after an employee tested positive to COVID-19. NASA sites across the country have been testing their work-from-home capabilities.

In Dublin last week, Google sent 8,000 workers home for a day to trial an extended remote-work scenario after one employee came down with flu-like symptoms.

In Australia, Clayton Utz, Cisco and Vodafone temporarily closed offices last week as a precautionary measure.

The likelihood of extended workplace shutdowns seems increasingly likely. So what do we know about the pros and cons of working from home?

How common is working from home?

Perhaps not as common as you might think.

In Australia many companies now offer flexible work arrangements, but that doesn’t necessarily mean employees can work from home. Even those permitted to work from home may only be allowed to do so on a limited basis.

As the list of tech companies mentioned may indicate, it is easier to do a job from home if you need only an internet connection and a telephone line.

Read more: A short history of the office

In building a case for the national broadband network in 2010, Australia’s Gillard government set a target of 10% of the workforce teleworking half the time. This was up from an estimated 6% of employed Australians having some form of regular teleworking arrangement.

Consultancy Access Economics predicted this could save A$1.4 billion to A$1.9 billion a year – about A$1.27 billion of that being the time and cost savings of avoided travel.

Teleworking has many benefits

Governments since Gillard’s have been less focused on the idea, to the the extent we lack reliable contemporary statistics for telework in Australia.

But with increased commuting times, caring responsibilities and the stress of modern workplaces, the research says most employees highly value being able to work from home. In fact, a 2017 US study found employees valued the option at about 8% of their wages.

Research has also highlighted benefits including increased productivity, rated by both the employees and supervisors. One study showed a 13% increase in performance for employees working from home.

Part of this may be due to an increased ability to focus and less distraction. My research shows employees who can’t focus to complete their work are less likely to perform well.

Working from home usually means employees have greater autonomy over how they do their work, including the hours and conditions of their work, and how they manage their lives and other responsibilities. These benefits of teleworking have been shown to lead to greater job satisfaction, lower absenteesim and turnover, increased commitment to the organisation and, importantly, reductions in stress associated with work.

Work-from-home arrangements may also gives organisations access to a greater talent pool.

But there are downsides as well

That said, there are challenges associated with working from home that organisations and individuals often do not plan well for.

Studies have shown working from home for extended periods can leave employees feeling socially and professionally isolated.

When we work from home, we have fewer opportunities to interact and acquire information, which may explain why remote workers can feel less confident than their office-based counterparts.

Read more: It’s not just the isolation. Working from home has surprising downsides

This reduction in interaction and knowledge sharing is a key barrier to the take-up of working from home.

According to a meta-analysis of 46 studies involving more than 12,000 employees, working from home more than 2.5 days a week could negatively affect relationships with coworkers as well as knowledge transfer.

Further, resentment could arise if teleworking was not widely available.

Employees who work from home have also perceived negative consequences for their career. Out of sight can sometimes be out of mind. Research published last month, however, suggests telecommuters are promoted as much as office-based colleagues.

Another significant issue is maintaining boundaries with home life. It can be hard to switch off, particularly when we don’t have a dedicated home office. Telecommuters often work longer hours, with 48% of employees increasing their work hours in one study.

How can we make it work?

Organisations can increase the success of working from home. Regular communication, particularly using video conferencing, can help ensure tasks are coordinated, knowledge is transferred, and social and professional isolation is reduced.

For organisations used to managing based on visibility and presence, letting go of traditional ideas of how to manage and focusing on outputs will be required.

If schools are also closed, employers will need to be sensitive to the challenges employees face working from home with children to care for and online schooling to incorporate.

Finally, employees need to establish boundaries between work and home life. Being able to switch off at the end of the day is important for both physical and mental health.

With no end in sight to COVID-19, many businesses are developing or implementing work-from-home policies to ensure business continuity. If employees and employers can get the balance right and enjoy the benefits of well-planned telework, this coronavirus outbreak could prove to be the tipping point for remote work arrangements to become the norm.

– ref. Coronavirus could spark a revolution in working from home. Are we ready? – https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-could-spark-a-revolution-in-working-from-home-are-we-ready-133070

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anita Archer, Research Coordinator, ERCC Research Unit, University of Melbourne

The recently released The Art Market 2020 report provides a timely insight into how COVID-19-related disruptions are likely to impact growth and sales in the global art market.

The report estimates global art market sales in 2019 were worth US$64.1 billion (A$97 billion), down 5% on 2018.

This drop reflects the decline in global economic growth driven by increasing geopolitical tensions and the trend toward trade protectionism led by the United States.

In 2020, measures to control the spread of coronavirus through government restrictions on travel and large social events are already having a dramatic impact on the international art market.

In the last six weeks, multiple art fairs have announced either postponement or cancellation, including Jingart Beijing, Art Basel Hong Kong, Miaart Milan, Art Paris, Art Berlin and Art Dubai.

The European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht went ahead, but reported a 27% drop in attendance of VIPs at the opening, when many major sales are traditionally made.

The growing art fair market

As in previous years, 2019 art market sales were highly concentrated in three major hubs. The United States, the United Kingdom and China collectively accounted for 82% of the total value of sales.

The Art Market report identified a growing shift away from public auctions toward private sales. The overall auction sector (including public auctions and private sales by auction houses, online and offline) represented 42% of total market sales in 2019.

The overall dealer sector (including dealer, gallery and online retail sales) represented 58% of total art market sales in 2019, with the value of sales increasing by 2%.

Read more: Friday essay: The Australian art market has flatlined. What can be done to revive it?

Within this sector, dealers with turnover of more than US$1 million (A$1.5 million) experienced a much larger growth of 20%. These dealers are the fastest-growing sector and the most reliant on art fair sales.

Almost half of all sales in the dealer sector were made at art fairs in 2019, amounting to US$16.5 billion (A$25 billion) – 26% of all sales made in the global art market.

This concentration of sales at the top end of the dealer market is perhaps the art market’s Achilles heel when considering potential fallout from the impending COVID-19 pandemic.

Dealers in this turnover bracket attended twice as many art fairs as smaller dealers, with international fairs (as opposed to local fairs) contributing to more than half their total art fair sales.

For dealers with turnover of more than US$10 million (A$15.1 million), international art fairs represented a staggering 70% of their art fair sales.

An unwelcome ‘distraction’

Besides the sales generated at art fairs, dealers have become increasingly dependent on fairs for expanding client lists and developing their businesses.

The unfolding COVID-19 pandemic represents an immediate threat to this business model. One dealer quoted in The Art Market report noted the undesirable impact disruptions from outside the art world can have on art market demand:

2020 will be a challenging year, but rather than major political dramas having a direct financial impact, their main danger for us is to distract people’s attention. Distractions and anxieties can take people away from buying art, even if the economy is booming and they’re still in a position to spend.

While this dealer was more likely referring to topical political issues, such as Brexit or trade sanctions, the COVID-19 outbreak has the potential to provide a far greater “distraction” for art buyers.

The impact of COVID-19 on the long-term health of the art market remains to be seen.

Art fairs had already been struggling due to multiple economic headwinds in the latter part of 2019, with increasing numbers of retractions and cancellations worldwide.

In 2019, Art Basel Hong Kong featured 242 galleries from 35 countries and was attended by 88,000 visitors over five days. This was a pivotal event on the regional calendar and its loss to the 2020 art market will be sorely felt.

The global footprints and nimble business structures of international auction houses may help these businesses weather this storm, as they have done in the past. But the picture is worrying for commercial galleries.

Artists and galleries prepare for months in advance of fairs and exhibitions.

In a survey of the impact of the coronavirus on the art market in China, 73.8% of respondents in the visual arts industry reported their businesses will not survive for longer than three months if the current containment situation continues.

Creative initiatives are emerging, such as Art Basel Hong Kong’s online viewing platform. But with uncertainty about how long it will be until this pandemic is under control, the future health of the global art industry is yet to be determined.

– ref. Travel bans and event cancellations: how the art market is suffering from COVID-19 – https://theconversation.com/travel-bans-and-event-cancellations-how-the-art-market-is-suffering-from-covid-19-133161

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samara McPhedran, Director, Homicide Research Unit/Deputy Director, Violence Research and Prevention Program, Griffith University

Immediately after the Christchurch massacre in 2019, the New Zealand government pledged dramatic gun law changes.

A year later, amid an ongoing elevated terror level, the government has quietly dropped its promises the laws will prevent future mass shootings. It has shifted instead to platitudes about never wanting to see repeats of such horror, and vague assurances about making people “feel safe”.

The government aimed to have more gun laws in place before the first anniversary of the massacre, but it is unclear whether its bill – which focuses on creating a national gun register, substantially altering requirements around legal firearm ownership and making numerous other administrative reforms – will pass parliament.

Read more: Will the New Zealand gun law changes prevent future mass shootings?

The opposition National Party does not support the bill. It has raised serious concerns that many proposals ignore evidence about what does, and does not, work to reduce firearm violence.

Even the NZ First Party, which is in coalition with Labour, is voicing doubts – including about whether police are fit to administer the laws.

This marks a major shift from the almost unanimous passage of laws banning “military style” and many other semi-automatic firearms less than a month after the Christchurch shootings.

Political appetite for extensive gun law change appears to have diminished considerably – but why?

There are three key issues that help to explain this.

Questionable policy efficacy

Similar to Australia’s response following the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, New Zealand implemented an amnesty period and compensation scheme (“buyback”) to facilitate newly prohibited firearms being handed in to police.

When that program ended in December, about 56,000 firearms and over 190,000 parts had been handed in, with more than NZ$100 million paid out.

Estimates about the total number of now-prohibited guns in circulation in New Zealand before the buy-back have varied wildly, from a remarkably convenient 56,000 to a far more awkward 300,000.

The figure commonly bandied about in the media is 170,000, suggesting a compliance rate of under 30% (similar to – or even lower than – Australia’s estimated compliance rate).

Challenging government statements that the amnesty and buyback scheme have been a success, opponents highlight the prospect the same black market that appeared in Australia following the 1996 laws is now going to occur in New Zealand. They also cite international research showing hand-in programs are ineffective at tackling crime.

Drawing on Australian and Canadian evidence, the National Party has further

• highlighted the prevalence of gun crime involving unlicensed offenders and unregistered firearms

• challenged the government to back up its claims that gun registration will reduce gun-related crime and

• called for full costings to be released.

In response, the government says it has “got to be a good thing” there are fewer guns in the community. It also cites public opinion polls showing support for strengthening gun laws.

However, it has been unable to provide credible evidence to support its belief the laws will have a direct effect on firearm misuse.

Perceived lack of transparency

Police issued the perpetrator of the Christchurch massacre with a gun licence shortly after he arrived in New Zealand, and were seemingly aware of the firearms he owned.

It has been suggested he was not properly vetted and if he had been, he would not have been issued a licence. Police deny this, but the allegations have not been independently investigated.

Read more: A national amnesty will not rid Australia of violent gun crime

Was there a failure to enforce existing laws prior to the Christchurch shootings? It would be hoped not, but what we know about Australian mass shootings suggests New Zealand cannot ignore this possibility.

The royal commission into the attacks may consider this issue, but its terms of reference are somewhat open to interpretation.

Moreover, its report is not being released until late April. The government has been pressing hard to get its new gun laws passed before then, giving the impression it expects findings that could run counter to its policy positions. Whether or not that turns out to be true, it is not a good look.

Irregularities in process

There were raised eyebrows when, during the first round of gun law reforms, the select committee process was shortened to just one week.

This has been followed by questions about the committee considering the second tranche of proposed laws. The bill was not sent to the Justice Committee, where firearm matters most logically sit. Rather, it was sent to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, which focuses on economic and fiscal policy, taxation and related matters.

Read more: FactCheck Q&A: did government gun buybacks reduce the number of gun deaths in Australia?

Sending a bill to that committee greatly improves the chances of findings favouring the government. Unlike other committees, which tend to have an even split of members from opposing sides of the floor, the 13-member Finance and Expenditure Committee has a majority of members from the Labour-NZ First coalition.

The committee recommended a small number of what are essentially “cosmetic” rather than “substantive” changes to the bill. Nevertheless, the overall impression is the government is more focused on a scoring a “political win” than on carefully considered legislative development.

What else is going on?

The government and its supporters have tried hard to characterise criticism as nothing more than “gun lobby pressure”. This simplistic response seeks to deflect and delegitimise reasonable analysis of whether the proposed measures are really going to achieve their stated outcomes.

It also makes the government look fearful of being questioned and unable to provide arguments that withstand serious scrutiny.

Recent polls provide further insight. Labour is facing a battle to retain power in this year’s general election. And critics have cast it as inept and struggling to perform on a range of domestic policy issues.

Some commentators also speculate Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is less interested in handling domestic matters than in positioning for a future UN role. Others say her party is too quick to embrace symbolic but poorly thought-out measures.

Read more: One year on for Ardern’s coalition government in New Zealand

Against this background, it would be naive to believe the government is not trying to use gun laws to boost its re-election hopes. Again, this mimics Australia, where political parties use gun policy to signal their moral and law and order credentials.

Yet, in one regard, the two countries diverge. In Australia, tactics such as sloganeering, deflecting close examination of policy, shifting goalposts and discrediting those who ask unwelcome questions have been meekly accepted.

Based on the bipartisanship in New Zealand immediately following the Christchurch shootings, there can be no doubt New Zealand’s government expected an equally smooth run. Instead, it is being held to account and seems affronted by that.

Inevitable political horse-trading may still see the laws pass. But rather than unifying the country, it appears government overreach has instead paved the way for distrust and division. And when it comes to that, sadly, New Zealand and Australia are again in step.

– ref. In an election year, gun reform has become political in New Zealand and Jacinda Ardern is losing her support – https://theconversation.com/in-an-election-year-gun-reform-has-become-political-in-new-zealand-and-jacinda-ardern-is-losing-her-support-132757

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Spoonley, Pro Vice-Chancellor, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Massey University

In the hours after the Christchurch mosque attacks on March 15 last year, I wrote that I hoped New Zealand would finally stop believing it was immune to far-right extremist violence. A year on, I’m not sure enough has changed.

I’ve researched far-right extremism for decades – and I would argue it remains a high-level threat in New Zealand, not just overseas.

My assessment is that there are about 60 to 70 groups and somewhere between 150 and 300 core right-wing activists in New Zealand.

This sounds modest alongside the estimated 12,000 to 13,000 violent far-right activists in Germany. But proportionate to population size, the numbers are similar for both countries. And it only takes one activist to act out his extremism.

In the past year, there has certainly been greater investment by New Zealand’s security agencies in monitoring extremist groups and activists. There has been more media coverage. The government moved quickly to ban assault weapons and further controls on the use and possession of arms are underway. Other initiatives, including a royal commission of inquiry, are pending.

But I also feel there is a tendency to see the Christchurch attacks, which killed 51 people, as a one-off or an aberration – rather than something we still need to guard against.

Read more: Christchurch mosque shootings must end New Zealand’s innocence about right-wing terrorism

New Zealand’s home-grown extremists

New Zealanders should now be more aware than a year ago of the presence of local right-wing extremists. There has been plenty to remind them.

In June last year, Philip Arps, who has been involved in white supremacist activities in Christchurch for some time, was sentenced to 21 months in jail for sharing video of the Christchurch shootings. I am puzzled by the limited public awareness that the imagery on the side of his van – a reference to 14/88 and Nazi signage – was a clear indicator of his extremist views.

Arps was released early in January this year under strict conditions, including a GPS monitor that alerts authorities if he goes near a mosque.

Even though the white nationalist group Dominion Movement folded after the mosque attacks, one of its leaders, a soldier in the New Zealand defence force, was arrested in December last year for “accessing a computer for a dishonest purpose” and disclosing information that “prejudiced the security and defence of New Zealand”. He had been active since 2011 on the neo-Nazi site Stormfront and attended a free speech rally in Wellington in 2018 along with another extreme-right activist.

He also appears to be a member of Wargus Christi, a group formed in September last year by a self-described neo-Nazi, Daniel Waring. It is a “martial-monastic” group of body builders who are homophobic, anti-Semitic and Islamaphobic.

Another group new to New Zealand’s extreme right is Action Zealandia. Their slogan is “building a community for European New Zealanders”. Apart from their online presence, their main public activity is placing stickers in public spaces highlighting their ultra-nationalism.

Read more: Why overhauling NZ’s gun and terrorism laws alone can’t stop terrorist attacks

Confronting NZ’s place in a global web of hate

Information from agencies such as the Southern Poverty Law Center or the Anti-Defamation League in the US shows a significant increase in extremist activity since 2016.

What has been most concerning is that the rise in online hate speech has real-world implications. Research shows an increase in online hate speech will be accompanied by hate crimes in a region or locality. Internet outages reduce both.

Read more: A year from the Christchurch terror attacks, NZ intelligence records a surge in reports

In the aftermath of the Christchurch attacks, it was good to see rapid action on limiting automatic weapons. And the Christchurch Call – Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s initiative to stop people using social media to promote terrorism – certainly helped put pressure on online platforms such as Facebook to monitor and remove objectionable material.

But we could move to ban right-wing organisations and put restrictions on individuals who breach agreed thresholds of speech and action. We still do not have clear guidelines for what constitutes hate speech, apart from s61 of the Human Rights Act and the Harmful Digital Communications Act.

I do worry that we don’t have sufficient resources and skills locally to adequately monitor what is happening, even if agencies have been working together more closely internationally.

It would be good to know more from the agencies that have oversight. The New Zealand Security and Intelligence Service (NZSIS) refers to the threat value, but often in relation to international threats.

More openness about their concerns and the extent of local groups and activists would help: for instance, something like Tell MAMA in the UK or the reports other security agencies provide.

It was refreshing to see the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) provide its annual threat assessment in February this year. It assessed the terrorist threat in Australia as probable but the possibility of a right-wing extremist attack as low in terms of capability.

But it acknowledged that advances in technology are “outstripping our technical capabilities”, which must be a concern everywhere.

Read more: ASIO chief’s assessment shows the need to do more, and better, to prevent terrorism

One thing is certain. The Christchurch mosque attacks have become part of the lexicon whenever white supremacist terrorism is discussed. The events on March 15 have become something of a guide – and, unfortunately, an inspiration to other right-wing terrorists.

It is challenging that many of these extremists, the alleged Christchurch gunman included, are self-radicalised, ideologically motivated, and with a small or no digital footprint. Often there is no prior warning of an attack.

One year on from the attacks, my report card for New Zealand is that we’ve made progress on greater awareness and action. But we still need to do more, including on keeping the public better informed that the problem hasn’t gone away. Just ask those who continue to be targeted.

– ref. Far-right extremists still threaten New Zealand, a year on from the Christchurch attacks – https://theconversation.com/far-right-extremists-still-threaten-new-zealand-a-year-on-from-the-christchurch-attacks-133050

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

The government will unveil on Wednesday a package of coronavirus health measures, including a network of respiratory clinics, a new Medicare item for tele-consultations, and a communications campaign.

The package, which comes as the number of Australian cases reached 100, will cost A$2.4 billion, which includes $500 million announced last week to help states with their costs on a matching 50-50 basis.

Read more: Morrison government pledges funds to help states with health burden of COVID-19

The health measures precede the government’s multi-billion stimulus to address the hit the virus will deliver to the economy, which threatens to push Australia into recession.

Up to 100 “pop up” fever clinics will be established across the country, in a program costing $205 million.

These “one stop shops” will test people worried they may have the virus. They will supplement the work of GPs and state respiratory clinics.

As people become increasingly fearful about the virus, many are seeking tests, even though they fall outside the guidelines recommended for testing.

In Melbourne on Tuesday people queued outside the Royal Melbourne Hospital. In Perth there was a queue even before a new clinic opened at the Royal Perth Hospital’s Ainslie House, despite the clinic supposedly being for those at higher risk. In South Australia a “drive through” clinic has opened.

Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said that in the last few days there had been a “significant surge” in the number of people requesting testing.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy on COVID-19

Partly this had been sparked by some misinformation in the media suggesting everyone who had flu-like symptoms should be tested, he said. “We’re not saying that at the moment.”

Murphy said those who should be tested are returned travellers who develop acute respiratory symptoms or people who have been in contact with confirmed cases who develop acute respiratory symptoms.

The aim of the pop up clinics in the federal package is to deal with people with milder symptoms, taking the load off hospitals’ emergency departments and GPs, so that hospitals are only presented with the more serious cases.

Each clinic, staffed by doctors and nurses, would be able to see up to 75 patients a day over six months. They could operate as dedicated medical centres.

Health authorities and medical bodies will identify practices in regional, rural and urban areas. Some 31 Primary Health Networks will receive $300,000 to assist in identifying and setting up the “pop up” clinic sites and distributing protective equipment.

Up to an initial $150,000 will be given to help clinics start and offset losses from normal business.

The new Medicare item for telehealth will enable those who are isolated due to the virus to access medical services from home by audio or video. This will reduce risks of transmission from people going to doctors’ surgeries (and the inconvenience of consultations in car parks as doctors keep them out of surgeries).

The telehealth service, starting on Friday, will be bulk billed and available for medical, nursing and mental health medical staff to deliver services over the phone or through a video conference (including FaceTime, Skype, WhatsApp). The new item will cost $100 million and run for six months, when it will be reviewed.

The telehealth services will be available to

• people isolating at home on medical advice

• those aged over 70

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders aged over 50

• people with chronic health conditions or who have compromised immune systems

• parents with new babies and pregnant women.

The telehealth arrangements will also mean health practitioners who are themselves in isolation will be able to continue to provide services, so long as they are fit enough to do so.

Read more: ‘Fever clinics’ are opening in Australia for people who think they’re infected with the coronavirus. Why?

The planned national communications campaign about COVID-19, including information on how to guard against the virus and what to do if you get it, will start within days and cost $30 million.

A wide range of platforms will be employed, and particular audiences targeted. It will use television, radio, print, digital, social media and displays on public transport and at shopping centres, as well as putting material in doctors waiting rooms. Market research and tracking will be used to refine the campaign.

Scott Morrison said Australia is “as well prepared as any country in the world” to deal with the virus, and the health package “is about preventing and treating coronavirus in the coming weeks.”

– ref. Morrison government funds ‘pop up’ testing clinics and tele-consultations in $2.4 billion COVID-19 health package – https://theconversation.com/morrison-government-funds-pop-up-testing-clinics-and-tele-consultations-in-2-4-billion-covid-19-health-package-133368

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

With 100 domestic cases as of March 10, federal and state governments and health authorities face daunting challenges posed by COVID-19 in coming weeks and months – securing a workforce of nurses and doctors to treat the sick, ensuring enough testing facilities to meet a rapidly growing demand, and stemming the spread of the virus, to the maximum extent possible.

As Chief Medical Officer for the federal government, Professor Brendan Murphy is confident about maintaining enough health staff, including in nursing homes.

“You can find a health workforce if you look hard enough, and if you can fund the surge. So I think we will find them.”

Murphy is also optimistic the present self-isolation period of 14 days can be shortened at some point, as the incubation period of virus is now thought to be “probably around five to seven days”.

When will the virus peak in Australia? Murphy says: “If we had widespread and more generalised community transmission, I would imagine that would be peaking around the middle of the year, in the middle of winter. … But that’s really our best guess of the modelling at the moment. And it’s very, very hard to predict.”

Murphy re-iterates that only people in certain categories need to be tested; in the last few days there has been a “significant surge” of people with flu-like symptoms but outside these categories who have been seeking testing, placing pressure on facilities.

With eyes on Italy’s lockdown, could a single region of Australia be locked down?

“It’s potentially possible, absolutely. If we had a city, a major city that had an outbreak of some thousands, and the rest of the country was pretty unaffected, we could very easily consider locking down a part of or a whole town or city.”

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy on COVID-19 – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-chief-medical-officer-brendan-murphy-on-covid-19-133362

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rohan Fisher, Information Technology for Development Researcher, Charles Darwin University

The tropical savannas of northern Australia are among the most fire-prone regions in the world. On average, they account for 70% of the area affected by fire each year in Australia.

But effective fire management over the past 20 years has reduced the annual average area burned – an area larger than Tasmania. The extent of this achievement is staggering, almost incomprehensible in a southern Australia context after the summer’s devastating bushfires.

Read more: I made bushfire maps from satellite data, and found a glaring gap in Australia’s preparedness

The success in northern Australia is the result of sustained and arduous on-ground work by a range of landowners and managers. Of greatest significance is the fire management from Indigenous community-based ranger groups, which has led to one of the most significant greenhouse gas emissions reduction practices in Australia.

As Willie Rioli, a Tiwi Islander and Indigenous Carbon Industry Network board member recently said:

Fire is a tool and it’s something people should see as part of the Australian landscape. By using fire at the right time of year, in the right places with the right people, we have a good chance to help country and climate.

Importantly, people need to listen to science – the success of our industry has been from a collaboration between our traditional knowledge and modern science and this cooperation has made our work the most innovative and successful in the world.

A tinder-dry season

The 2019 fire season was especially challenging in the north (as it was in the south), following years of low rainfall across the Kimberly and Top-End. Northern Australia endured tinder-dry conditions, severe fire weather in the late dry season, and a very late onset of wet-season relief.

Despite these severe conditions, extensive fuel management and fire suppression activities over several years meant northern Australia didn’t see the scale of destruction experienced in the south.

This is a huge success for biodiversity conservation under worsening, longer-term fire conditions induced by climate change. Indigenous land managers are even extending their knowledge of savanna burning to southern Africa.

Burn early in the dry season

The broad principles of northern Australia fire management are to burn early in the dry season when fires can be readily managed; and suppress, where possible, the ignition of uncontrolled fires – often from non-human sources such as lightning – in the late dry season.

Traditional Indigenous fire management involves deploying “cool” (low intensity) and patchy burning early in the dry season to reduce grass fuel. This creates firebreaks in the landscape that help stop larger and far more severe fires late in the dry season.

Essentially, burning early in the dry season accords with tradition, while suppressing fires that ignite late in the dry season is a post-colonial practice.

Savannah burning is different to burn-offs in South East Australia, partly because grass fuel reduction burns are more effective – it’s rare to have high-intensity fires spreading from tree to tree. What’s more, these areas are sparsely populated, with less infrastructure, so there are fewer risks.

Read more: The burn legacy: why the science on hazard reduction is contested

Satellite monitoring over the last 15 years shows the scale of change. We can compare the average area burnt across the tropical savannas over seven years from 2000 (2000–2006) with the last seven years (2013–2019). Since 2013, active fire management has been much more extensive.

The comparison reveals a reduction of late dry season wildfires over an area of 115,000 square kilometres and of all fires by 88,000 square kilometres.

Combining traditional knowledge with western science

The primary goals of Indigenous savanna burning projects remain to support cultural reproduction, on-country living and “healthy country” outcomes.

Savanna burning is highly symbiotic with biodiversity conservation and landscape management, which is the core business of rangers.

Ensuring these gains are sustainable requires a significant amount of difficult on-ground work in remote and challenging circumstances. It involves not only Indigenous rangers, but also pastoralists, park rangers and private conservation groups. These emerging networks have helped build new savanna burning knowledge and innovative technologies.

Read more: Our land is burning, and western science does not have all the answers

While customary knowledge underpins much of this work, the vast spatial extent of today’s savanna burning requires helicopters, remote sensing and satellite mapping. In other words, traditional burning is reconfigured to combine with western scientific knowledge and new tools.

For Indigenous rangers, burning from helicopters using incendiaries is augmented by ground-based operations, including on-foot burns that support more nuanced cultural engagement with country.

On-ground burns are particularly important for protecting sacred sites, built infrastructure and areas of high conservation value such as groves of monsoonal forest.

Who pays for it?

A more active savanna burning regime over the last seven years has led to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of more than seven million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Read more: Savanna burning: carbon pays for conservation in northern Australia

This is around 10% of the total emission reductions accredited by the Australian government through carbon credits units under Carbon Farming Initiative Act. Under the act, one Australian carbon credit unit is earned for each tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent that a project stores or avoids.

By selling these carbon credits units either to the government or on a private commercial market, land managers have created a A$20 million a year savanna burning industry.

What can the rest of Australia learn?

Savanna fire management is not directly translatable to southern Australia, where the climate is more temperate, the vegetation is different and the landscape is more densely populated. Still, there are lessons to be learnt.

A big reason for the success of fire management in the north savannas is because of the collaboration with scientists and Indigenous land managers, built on respect for the sophistication of traditional knowledge.

This is augmented by broad networks of fire managers across the complex cross-cultural landscape of northern Australia. Climate change will increasingly impact fire management across Australia, but at least in the north there is a growing capacity to face the challenge.

– ref. The world’s best fire management system is in northern Australia, and it’s led by Indigenous land managers – https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-best-fire-management-system-is-in-northern-australia-and-its-led-by-indigenous-land-managers-133071

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Haskell-Dowland, Associate Dean (Computing and Security), Edith Cowan University

Australia should work towards adopting a mandatory age-verification system for gambling and pornography websites, according to a recommendation from the federal parliamentary cross-party committee on social and legal issues.

The recommendation follows the committee’s inquiry findings, released last month as a report titled Protecting the age of innocence. It identified high levels of concern, particularly among parents, about underage access to pornography and gambling sites.

The committee has asked Australia’s eSafety Commissioner and Digital Transformation Agency to work towards implementing the system.

But as the UK’s recently aborted effort shows, delivering on this idea will mean overcoming a host of technical and logistical hurdles, including identity fraud and the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) or anonymising browsers such as Tor.

Read more: Is that porn your child is watching online? How do you know?

Like most developed countries, Australia has long had laws that restrict underage access to adults-only products. Attempting to buy a bottle of beer will quickly prompt a request for proof of age.

But for as long as there have been rules, people have looked for ways to break them. Would-be underage drinkers can attempt to find a fake ID, a retailer willing to ignore the law, or simply an older friend or relative willing to buy some beer for them.

Just like alcohol, access to gambling and pornography have been age-restricted by law for some time. This used to be relatively easy to enforce, when the only way to access such items was through a retail store. But everything changed when these things became available on the internet.

Pornography and gambling represent significant proportions of web searches and traffic. According to one recent estimate, pornography accounts for up to 20% of internet activity.

According to the committee’s report, the average age of first exposure to pornography is now between 8 and 10 years:

It’s now not a matter of “if” a child will see pornography but “when”, and the when is getting younger and younger.

The report also warns that adolescents are increasingly exposed to gambling advertisements:

Adolescents today are increasingly exposed to gambling marketing… alongside increased accessibility and opportunities to gamble with the rise of internet and smart phone access.

In an era where age-limited content is available for free to anyone with a web browser, how do we enforce age restrictions?

Age verification legislation for online pornography has already been tried in the UK, when it introduced the Digital Economy Act 2017. But by 2019 the attempt was abandoned, citing technical and privacy concerns.

No easy task

It seems simple in principle but is fraught with difficulty in practice. Given the global scale of these industries, it is almost impossible for the government to even generate a list of applicable websites. Without a definitive list, it will be difficult to block access to sites that do not comply.

The situation is complicated further by the fact that many sites are hosted overseas, meaning they may have to provide different age-verification mechanisms for users in different jurisdictions.

Credit card verification has become the default solution, as there are global platforms to verify credit cards. But while it is possible to verify a card number, there are various ways to obtain such details.

A minor could potentially use a parent’s credit card, or even fraudulently obtain their own. Other ID options such as driving licences could potentially be used instead, but this may not be a popular option for legitimate users because of the risks of identity fraud or privacy breaches. This would also pose logistical challenges: imagine a US-hosted pornography site having to verify Australian driving licence details.

Workarounds already exist

Even if a technical solution is found, there are already established ways to evade the rules. Consumers are increasingly turning to VPNs to bypass regional restrictions on media content.

A VPN allows a user’s internet traffic to appear to originate from another location. Often referred to as “tunnelling”, it effectively fools systems or services into thinking you are in another part of the world, by swapping the users’ local IP (internet) address with another address. Some VPN providers now explicitly advertise their product as a solution to the regional restrictions of streaming companies like Netflix and Amazon.

It’s not hard to imagine that many consumers would turn to VPNs to dodge any verification procedures implemented here in Australia.

Consumers concerned about privacy are also likely to use the Tor browser.

Tor works in a similar way to a VPN. While it still hides the location of the user (potentially looking like they are in another country), Tor also ensures that traffic is bounced between multiple points on the internet to further obscure the user (and thus their age).

Read more: New laws are not necessarily the answer to counter the real threat pornography poses

The committee has acknowledged this but vowed to press on regardless, arguing:

While age verification is not a silver bullet, it can create a significant barrier to prevent young people — and particularly young children — from exposure to harmful online content. We must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

It is still early days, and there is much work for the eSafety Commissioner and the Digital Transformation Agency to do. It is also clear there is both government and public pressure to identify and implement solutions to safeguard children and vulnerable individuals. But unfortunately, human nature will inevitably render any developed solution as more full of holes than a block of Emmental.

It would be easy to say we shouldn’t bother, or that parents should take responsibility. The reality is that implementing any solution will protect at least some of the vulnerable population and will form part of a layered approach. With widespread support, targeted education and age-verification, there is, perhaps, the potential for success.

– ref. Restricting underage access to porn and gambling sites: a good idea, but technically tricky – https://theconversation.com/restricting-underage-access-to-porn-and-gambling-sites-a-good-idea-but-technically-tricky-133153

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rae Kaspiew, Senior Research Fellow, Australian Institute of Family Studies

As Family Court Chief Justice Will Alstergren said late last year, when people separate, it can be “a shocking time in their lives”. This is particularly so when parents face each other in court.

Australia’s family law system has been the subject of many inquiries and studies. Just last year, the government announced another one.

One of the most exhaustive studies was the Evaluation of the 2012 Family Violence Amendments, published in 2015 by the Australian Institute of Family Studies and funded by the Attorney-General’s Department.

Our research found that, although discussions about the system are often framed in terms of “who wins” out of mothers and fathers, the biggest challenge is actually parent and child safety.

What do parents think of the family law system?

Our research was part of the Evaluation of the 2012 Family Violence Amendments and included a number of studies, including a synthesis report, and an experiences of separated parents study.

The latter study was based on two surveys, taken before and after the 2012 amendments. In each survey, we interviewed about 6,000 separated parents.

We asked these parents how they sorted out their parenting arrangements after separating. We found most (about 70%) had worked out their parenting arrangements through informal discussions, with little or no reliance on the formal family law system. Another 10% let their arrangements “just happen”.

Read more: Separated parents and the family law system: what does the evidence say?

So, a large majority of separated parents sorted out their parenting arrangements informally. The great majority of these parents also said they were satisfied with the result.

The remaining fifth of parents reported using one of three formal family law pathways. In order of use, these were:

• family dispute resolution (a form of mediation)

• negotiation through lawyers

• litigation in the courts

Of the formal pathways, family dispute resolution was the most widely used (by 10% of separating parents within 18 months of separation) because it is by far the least expensive and most accessible option.

Behind family dispute resolution came negotiation through lawyers (used by 6%) and then the courts (3%).

Do mothers and fathers have different views of the system?

It is in parents’ assessments of the formal pathways, particularly of the courts, where the differences between fathers’ and mothers’ views become apparent.

There were clear differences between fathers’ and mothers’ assessments of the courts from a child-focused perspective (meaning they felt the child’s needs were adequately considered). Three-quarters of mothers rated the courts positively on that count, compared to just 57% of fathers.

Read more: In the Family Court, children say they want the process explained and their views heard. It’s time we listened

From an adult-focused perspective (the process “worked” for the adult participant), the parents’ assessments of the courts were much closer, but satisfaction levels were lower, with only 52% of mothers and 49% of fathers satisfied.

These lower rates of satisfaction may be because a decision by a judge creates the perception one party has lost and the other won.

In contrast, family dispute resolution had significantly higher satisfaction levels, with 89% of mothers and 85% of fathers saying they were satisfied from a child-focused perspective, and 77% of mothers and 70% of fathers satisfied from an adult-focused perspective.

Are we doing enough to protect parents’ and children’s safety?

In many respects, our findings are reassuring. But our research reveals that for many of the people who rely on formal family law pathways, the system has significant problems.

We found the people who are the most reliant on the family law system are often the most affected by family violence, child safety concerns and other issues. In our interviews, 21% of parents who used family dispute resolution, 27% of parents who used lawyers and 38% of parents who used the courts reported a suite of complex issues, often including safety concerns and family violence.

And the complex nature of their needs, in particular their safety concerns, are not receiving enough attention.

Read more: First act of the family law review should be using research we already have

When asked whether the family law system protects children’s safety, as it is required to do, barely half of mothers (53%) and fathers (48%) agreed. Ratings were particularly low (less than 40%) among parents who had safety concerns either for themselves and their child, or for their child only.

These people typically use difficult, expensive formal pathways only because discussions, informal or mediated, are not an option. This is often because of family violence and safety concerns. And many of these people told us the system was not working for them.

Consistent with the conclusions of two recent family law inquiries (by a parliamentary committee and the Australian Law Reform Commission), these findings point to the need for the system to sharpen its focus on parent and child safety.

The discussion about family law reform ought not to be about winners and losers, but about how to protect the vulnerable parents and children who are forced to rely on it.

– ref. To fix the family law system, we need to ask parents what really works – https://theconversation.com/to-fix-the-family-law-system-we-need-to-ask-parents-what-really-works-126508

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Niall Edwards-FitzSimons, PhD Candidate in Ethnomusicology, University of Sydney

Since its launch in 2016, the online video sharing platform TikTok has grown at an astonishing rate. The app has been downloaded more than a billion times, and more than 700 million people around the world (most of them quite young) use it every day.

TikTok’s design brings together music, video, dance and viral challenges to create one of the most energetic nodes in the web of popular culture in 2020.

Part of the explanation for the platform’s meteoric rise may lie in the science of the mind – in particular, the science of what happens when we imitate another person’s movement. By making it easy to create, share and copy dance routines, TikTok may be taking advantage of the brain’s systems for building human connection.

Read more: Most adults have never heard of TikTok. That’s by design

What is TikTok?

Perhaps the first real demonstration of the power of TikTok was the rise of Lil Nas X’s country-rap hit Old Town Road.

Released in late 2018, the song received little attention until it spawned a dance routine that went viral on TikTok. The catchy tune became unavoidable in 2019, selling 10 million copies and spending a record-breaking 19 weeks at number one on the Billboard charts.

Now TikTok has become a vital component of the pop culture machine. The youth-oriented online videogame Fortnite recently ran a TikTok-based competition to create a new dance routine for player avatars. The New York Times publishes in-depth investigations of who really created popular routines. In Vietnam, a dance challenge demonstrating correct handwashing procedures is synced to the Ministry of Health’s pop song informing citizens about coronavirus precautions.

Content from TikTok is also establishing a feedback loop with more traditional channels. Pop star Doja Cat’s song Say So became popular in part due to a dance featuring the song by TikTok user @yodelinghayley. Doja Cat responded by releasing the song as a single complete with a video clip that included the dance and its creator.

What makes TikTok special?

As TikTok has pushed its way into the ranks of global social media giants, its rise has been accompanied by some anxiety in the West due to its origin in China and popularity among children and teenagers.

However, the app has largely avoided scrutiny by billing itself as a “creative platform” rather than a social media site. It is designed so its key features to users are playfulness and performativity.

Users can easily add music to the platform’s 15-second videos, which has meant that dance routines feature prominently on the site. Popularity on the app is often based on the inventiveness, skill, and entertainment value of the original dance routines created by users.

Every so often a dance routine becomes a viral hit, and other users of the platform post their own versions copying the original user. Imitation, and particularly the imitation of posture and movement, is an ancient behaviour at the heart of how humans learn from and connect with each other.

Why is imitation so powerful?

Scientists believe imitation functions through a system of “mirror neurons” which are thought to exist in the brains of all primates. As we watch another person perform an action, mirror neurons fire throughout the motor cortex to map that movement onto our own bodies. This happens whenever we see (or hear) human movement, whether it’s an acrobat, a yoga teacher, or a teenager dancing on TikTok. (Although the mirror neuron effect appears to be weaker when we watch video of a person moving rather than seeing it in the flesh, it is still present.)

In studies on unconscious imitation, researchers have found that strangers who subconsciously mirror one another’s body posture and gestures during their first meeting also report more mutual positive feelings. This “likability boost” also exists for people engaged in synchronous movement entrained to the same beat (in layman’s terms, dancing together), who report “liking each other better, remembering more about each other, [and] trusting each other more”.

Read more: Imitation and imagination: child’s play is central to human success

Activities involving synchronised movement can create powerful feelings of unity, and these practices are often the focus for feelings of group solidarity (think the Māori haka, a country line dance or a marching band, or indeed a marching army).

On TikTok, the mass grouping of people together in space is replaced by a more subtle form of togetherness through imitation and synchronised movement. These dancers are separated through time and space, but they create solidarity and positive feeling by moving together, mediated by the structure of the platform.

With the mass imitation of synchronised movement in the viral dance routines, TikTok and those seeking to exploit it are tapping into the deep-seated psychology of how we connect.

– ref. The secret of TikTok’s success? Humans are wired to love imitating dance moves – https://theconversation.com/the-secret-of-tiktoks-success-humans-are-wired-to-love-imitating-dance-moves-133057

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Ghezelbash, Associate Professor, Macquarie University

Asylum seekers with legal representation are seven times more likely to succeed before the government tribunal tasked with reviewing refugee cases than those who represent themselves.

Where refugees come from and which individual member is reviewing their case on the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) may also significantly influence their odds of success.

These are some of the major findings from our research into the decision-making patterns of the overburdened AAT in refugee cases.

The data, obtained from a freedom of information request, cover 18,196 cases decided by the AAT between January 2015 and December 2019. Our research only looked at asylum seekers who arrived by plane and had access to a review by the AAT.

The analysis is part of larger project, run in collaboration with my research student, Keyvan Dorostkar, collating and studying quantitative data at all stages of Australia’s asylum process.

How the visa approval and review process works

For refugees and asylum seekers applying for protection visas in Australia, the process is lengthy and arduous.

The initial assessment of a protection visa application is carried out by the Department of Home Affairs. If this is denied, the options for review then depend on how they arrived in Australia.

Those who arrived by plane can seek review at the AAT, where they are given a fresh hearing assessing the merits of their claim for protection. Those who arrived by boat without authorisation can only access a much more limited form of review before the Immigration Assessment Authority (IAA).

Read more: Refugees without secure visas have poorer mental health – but the news isn’t all bad

If the asylum seeker’s claims fail at the IAA or AAT, they can then seek judicial review at the Federal Circuit Court, but only on the very narrow grounds of there having been some serious legal error.

Overall, we found asylum seekers received favourable outcomes before the AAT in just 13% of cases. This includes instances where a visa has been granted or the matter was sent back to the department for reconsideration.

In the remaining 87% of cases, the original decision to refuse a visa was affirmed by the AAT or the application was withdrawn.

Why legal representation matters

Our analysis of the data reveals much more about the factors that tend to lead to a successful or unsuccessful review.

One of the most striking findings relates to the potential influence of professional migration advice from a lawyer or migration agent.

We found that only 4% of unrepresented applicants were successful at the AAT. This figure rose to 28% when an asylum seeker had legal representation.

Read more: We don’t know how many asylum seekers are turned away at Australian airports

These statistics suggest the government’s decision to restrict public funding for free legal advice services may be severely disadvantaging applicants who cannot secure representation.

This is all the more concerning given our data show that just over half (52%) of all applicants do not have representation when they appear before the AAT.

Country of origin plays a huge role in success

There are also stark differences in the success rates of applicants from different countries.

Of the countries that had 20 or more applications during the period we studied, applicants from Libya (91%), Afghanistan (76%), Ethiopia (61%), stateless individuals (43%), Iraq (53%) and Iran (47%) were the most likely to succeed with their reviews.

While some variation is to be expected in these cases, the very high rates of decisions being overturned for certain countries raises concerns about the quality of the initial decisions being made on visas by the Department of Home Affairs.

Why is the department getting it wrong 90% of the time for Libyan applicants? Or more than 75% of the time for applicants from Afghanistan?

Read more: Sri Lankan asylum seekers are being deported from Australia despite fears of torture

At a time when the AAT is facing a record backlog of applications, it’s vital to understand why this is happening so that some of the pressure might be alleviated.

At the other end, the success rates for visa reviews for those from Ireland and Tonga were 0%, followed by Taiwan and South Korea (1%) and Malaysia (3%).

The Malaysian applicants are significant as they made up more than one-third of the entire caseload for the period (6,488 applications). The large numbers and low success rates among this group significantly skew the overall data. When the Malaysian applications are removed, the success rate for all asylum seekers increases from 13% to 19%.

A parliamentary inquiry found that people smugglers and illegal labour hire companies may be bringing workers into the country on travel visas and then applying for protection visas. This concern was raised particularly with respect to Malaysians.

However, there is no strong evidence that backs up claims around the systematic involvement of people smugglers and organised crime.

Regardless, the only incentive to put in an unmeritorious asylum claim is that it can buy you more time living and working in Australia.

If exploitation is a concern, the best way to ensure the integrity of the system is to reduce delays and invest more resources to boost the capacity for high-quality decision-making at both the department and AAT.

Which tribunal member hears the case also matters

In our research, we also found significant differences in the success rates for refugee visa reviews, depending which tribunal member hears the case.

We only examined members who had decided 50 or more cases to ensure the sample is large enough to be statistically relevant.

Two members did not find in favour of a single asylum seeker applicant, and another 16 had approval rates of less than 5%.

At the other end, one member decided in favour of the asylum seeker in 86% of cases, while another three members had approval rates over 40%.

Read more: There’s no airport border ‘crisis’, only management failure of the Home Affairs department

It is important to caution against drawing inferences as to the cause of this variation.

While this could be a result of the individual preferences or biases of tribunal members, it could also be explained by the way cases are allocated. Members generally have expertise in specific types of claims from specific countries, which influences the cases they are assigned.

In response to questions about this, the AAT said

to construct any meaningful comparison concerning the variation of outcomes across individual members, there should be more analysis of the nature of the reviews undertaken by those members sampled.

For instance, the country of origin of applicants and the nature of the claims made by those applicants are generally the most significant factors in determining the outcome of a review.

We will examine these factors in more detail in future research.

The AAT is under enormous pressure with its record backlog of cases and associated delays.

We believe making data on decision-making patterns publicly available for analysis can lead to better ideas for improving the efficiency and fairness of the process. And this would be in the interest of both refugees and the government.

Macquarie student Keyvan Dorostkar provided research assistance for this article.

– ref. How to succeed in refugee review cases: new research reveals the factors that matter – https://theconversation.com/how-to-succeed-in-refugee-review-cases-new-research-reveals-the-factors-that-matter-131763

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tereza Hendl, Research Associate, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

In an age of gender-reveal parties, baby bumps on Instagram, and hyper-gendered toys and clothing, learning about a baby’s sex is big news.

But having a boy rather than a girl, or vice versa, makes some people sad. Some label this “gender disappointment”.

Our research looked at what’s behind this sadness and whether gender disappointment is a mental illness, as some people say.

What’s ‘gender disappointment’?

In many societies, an ideal family is still a very gendered project. We see people wanting the son or daughter they’ve dreamed of or being congratulated for a “gender balanced family” with at least one boy and a girl.

Parents who do not achieve this ideal can feel they failed at something important. And some parents want to use IVF to choose their child’s sex.

Gender disappointment is often portrayed as a mental illness, similar to depression, in the media and on online forums, where prospective parents discuss their desire for, or experience with, sex selection.

Parents who have been interviewed about choosing the sex of their baby via IVF have also described gender disappointment as a mental illness.

Read more: Choosing children’s sex is an exercise in sexism

What’s behind this phenomenon?

Our research found no evidence gender disappointment is a mental illness.

Instead, we argue that at the heart of many testimonies is the belief only children of a certain sex can do certain things, or have particular traits. The problem with such “gender essentialism” is there’s no strong evidence for it.

Contemporary research challenges the idea there are two distinctly different male or female brains, personality types, behaviours or “natural inclinations” towards particular activities.

But there is mounting evidence of how society creates, fixates on and reinforces gender differences.

Read more: What’s the point of sex? It frames gender expression and identity – or does it?

Parents reporting gender disappointment also seem to confuse sex with gender.

Sex refers to the various biological and physiological bodily characteristics, whereas gender relates to the socially constructed characteristics and roles associated with individuals of a particular sex. And both sex and gender are less binary, more diverse traits than commonly thought.

When parents speak about gender disappointment, they say they’re sad about missing out on particular activities, relationships or experiences with their child, not physical attributes associated with sex.

Yet, there is no guarantee an individual child will identify with the gender assigned to them at birth or develop the desired attributes. There are also no reasons to believe the parent couldn’t have the desired experiences with any child.

Could parents be overreacting?

Some people might argue parents’ anguish is an overreaction, a disproportionate response to the news of their baby’s sex, a failure in some sort of psychological process.

But is there a process specifically concerned with adjusting to the sex of your child that is somehow faulty in people who speak about gender disappointment? Not likely.

Read more: Monday’s medical myth: you can control the sex of your baby

What seems more plausible is the distress parents experience is a form of depression or adjustment disorder, which a psychological examination could address.

But if there is no unique cause of the “disease” or unique treatment for parents’ distress, it is hard to see the point of classifying it as a unique mental illness.

Read more: We’re overdosing on medicine – it’s time to embrace life’s uncertainty

What can we do about it?

So, we’re back to the issue of how parents who speak out about gender disappointment tend to overestimate the role of biology and underestimate the role of society in the process of acquiring gender roles and attributes.

With society being so gendered and gender essentialism so widely shared, such a view among parents is hardly surprising.

Read more: It’s not just the toy aisles that teach children about gender stereotypes

If society gave up those beliefs, parents might also stop assuming their parenting experience will be vastly different based on their child’s sex. The associated disappointment should then also disappear.

But overcoming ingrained societal beliefs is a long-term struggle. In the meantime, what can we do to help parents in distress?

Counselling to dispel some of the beliefs underlying their suffering would be a good start. Should parents have depression, or think they might have, their GP can help. But someone doesn’t need to be labelled with a mental illness for their distress to be addressed.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

– ref. Sad about having a boy not a girl? Your distress might be real but ‘gender disappointment’ is no mental illness – https://theconversation.com/sad-about-having-a-boy-not-a-girl-your-distress-might-be-real-but-gender-disappointment-is-no-mental-illness-131300

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicky Wright, Research Fellow, Australian National University

Weather-wise, 2019 was a crazy way to end a decade. Fires spread through much of southeast Australia, fuelled by dry vegetation from the ongoing drought and fanned by hot, windy fire weather.

On the other side of the Indian Ocean, torrential rainfall and flooding devastated parts of eastern Africa. Communities there now face a locust plague and food shortages.

These intense events can partly be blamed on the extreme positive Indian Ocean Dipole, a climate phenomenon that unfolded in the second half of 2019.

Read more: Why drought-busting rain depends on the tropical oceans

The Indian Ocean Dipole refers to the difference in sea surface temperature on either side of the Indian Ocean, which alters rainfall patterns in Australia and other nations in the region. The dipole is a lesser-known relative of the Pacific Ocean’s El Niño.

Climate drivers, such as the Indian Ocean Dipole, are an entirely natural phenomenon, but climate change is modifying the behaviour of these climate modes.

In research published today in Nature, we reconstructed Indian Ocean Dipole variability over the last millennium. We found “extreme positive” Indian Ocean Dipole events like last year’s are historically very rare, but becoming more common due to human-caused climate change. This is big news for a planet already struggling to contain global warming.

So what does this new side-effect of climate change mean for the future?

The Indian Ocean brings drought and flooding rain

First, let’s explore what a “positive” and “negative” Indian Ocean Dipole means.

During a “positive” Indian Ocean Dipole event, waters in the eastern Indian Ocean become cooler than normal, while waters in the western Indian Ocean become warmer than normal.

Warmer water causes rising warm, moist air, bringing intense rainfall and flooding to east Africa. At the same time, atmospheric moisture is reduced over the cool waters of the eastern Indian Ocean. This turns off one of Australia’s important rainfall sources.

Read more: Dipole: the ‘Indian Niño’ that has brought devastating drought to East Africa

In fact, over the past century, positive Indian Ocean Dipoles have led to the worst droughts and bushfires in southeast Australia.

The Indian Ocean Dipole also has a negative phase, which is important to bring drought-breaking rain to Australia. But the positive phase is much stronger and has more intense climate impacts.

We’ve experienced extreme positive Indian Ocean Dipole events before. Reliable instrumental records of the phenomenon began in 1958, and since then a string of very strong positive Indian Ocean Dipoles have occurred in 1961, 1994, 1997 and now 2019.

But this instrumental record is very short, and it’s tainted by the external influence of climate change.

This means it’s impossible to tell from instrumental records alone how extreme Indian Ocean Dipoles can be, and whether human-caused climate change is influencing the phenomenon.

Diving into the past with corals

To uncover just how the Indian Ocean Dipole has changed, we looked back through the last millennium using natural records: “cores” taken from nine coral skeletons (one modern, eight fossilised).

These coral samples were collected just off of Sumatra, Indonesia, so they’re perfectly located for us to reconstruct the distinct ocean cooling that characterises positive Indian Ocean Dipole events.

Corals grow a lot like trees. For every year they live they produce a growth band, and individual corals can live for more than 100 years. Measuring the oxygen in these growth bands gives us a detailed history of the water temperature the coral grew in, and the amount of rainfall over the reef.

In other words, the signature of extreme events like past positive Indian Ocean Dipoles is written in the coral skeleton.

Altogether, our coral-based reconstruction of the Indian Ocean Dipole spans 500 years between 1240 and 2019. There are gaps in the timeline, but we have the best picture so far of how exactly the Indian Ocean Dipole has varied in the past.

How unusual was the 2019 Indian Ocean Dipole event?

Extreme events like the 2019 Indian Ocean Dipole have historically been very rare.

We found only ten extreme positive Indian Ocean Dipole events in the entire record. Four occurred in the past 60 years, but only six occurred in the remaining 440 years before then. This adds more weight to evidence that positive Indian Ocean Dipole events have been occurring more often in recent decades, and becoming more intense.

Read more: Is Australia’s current drought caused by climate change? It’s complicated

But another finding from the reconstruction surprised – and worried – us. Events like 2019 aren’t the worst of what the Indian Ocean Dipole can throw at us.

Of the extreme events we found in our reconstruction, one of them, in 1675, was much stronger than anything we’ve seen in observations from the last 60 years.

The 1675 event was around 30–40% stronger than what we saw in 1997 (around the same magnitude as 2019). Historical accounts from Asia show this event was disastrous, and the severe drought it caused led to crop failures, widespread famine and mortality, and incited war.

As far as we can tell, this event shows just how extreme Indian Ocean Dipole variability can be, even without any additional prompting from external forces like human-caused climate change.

Why should we care?

Indian Ocean Dipole variability will continue to episodically bring extreme climate conditions to our region.

But previous studies, as well as ours, have shown human-caused climate change has shortened the gaps between these episodes, and this trend will continue. This is because climate change is causing the western side of the Indian Ocean to warm faster than in the east, making it easier for positive Indian Ocean Dipole events to establish.

In other words, drought-causing positive Indian Ocean Dipole events will become more frequent as our climate continues to warm.

In fact, climate model projections indicate extreme positive Indian Ocean Dipole events will occur three times more often this century than last, if high greenhouse gas emissions continue.

Read more: The world may lose half its sandy beaches by 2100. It’s not too late to save most of them

This means events like last year will almost certainly unfold again soon, and we’re upping the odds of even worse events that, through the fossil coral data, we now know are possible.

Knowing we haven’t yet seen the worst of the Indian Ocean Dipole is important in planning for future climate risks. Future extremes from the Indian Ocean will act on top of long-term warming, giving a double-whammy effect to their impacts in Australia, like the record-breaking heat and drought of 2019.

But perhaps most importantly, rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions will limit how often positive Indian Ocean Dipole events occur in future.

– ref. A rare natural phenomenon brings severe drought to Australia. Climate change is making it more common – https://theconversation.com/a-rare-natural-phenomenon-brings-severe-drought-to-australia-climate-change-is-making-it-more-common-133058

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Munro, Professor, Faculty of Education and Arts, Australian Catholic University

One of the most influential phenomena in education over the last two decades has been that of the “growth mindset”. This refers to the beliefs a student has about various capacities such as their intelligence, their ability in areas such as maths, their personality and creative ability.

Proponents of the growth mindset believe these capacities can be developed or “grown” through learning and effort. The alternative perspective is the “fixed mindset”. This assumes these capacities are fixed and unable to be changed.

The theory of the growth versus fixed mindset was first proposed in 1998 by American psychologist Carol Dweck and paediatric surgeon Claudia Mueller. It grew out of studies they led, in which primary school children were engaged in a task, and then praised either for their existing capacities, such as intelligence, or the effort they invested in the task.

Researchers monitored how the students felt, thought and behaved in subsequent more difficult tasks.

The students who were praised for their effort were more likely to persist with finding a solution to the task. They were also more likely to seek feedback about how to improve. Those praised for their intelligence were less likely to persist with the more difficult tasks and to seek feedback on how their peers did on the task.

These findings led to the inference that a fixed mindset was less conducive to learning than a growth mindset. This notion has a lot of support in cognitive and behavioural science.

What’s the evidence?

Psychologists have been researching the notion of a mindset – a set of assumptions or methods people have, and how these influence motivations or behaviour – for over a century.

The growth mindset has its roots in Stanford University psychologist Alan Bandura’s 1970s social learning theory of a positive self-efficacy. This is a person’s belief in their ability to succeed in specific situations or to accomplish a task.

Read more: Protecting your kids from failure isn’t helpful. Here’s how to build their resilience

The growth mindset is also a re-branding of the 1980-90s study of achievement orientation. Here, people can adopt either a “mastery orientation” (with the goal of learning more) or a “performance orientation” (with the goal of showing what they know) to achieve an outcome.

The idea of the growth mindset is consistent with theories of brain plasiticity (the brain’s ability to change due to experience) and task-positive and task-negative brain network activity (brain networks that are activated during goal-orientated tasks).

The growth versus fixed mindset theory is supported by evidence too – both for its predictions of outcomes and its impact in interventions. Studies show students’ mindsets influence their maths and science outcomes, their academic ability and their ability to cope with exams.

People with growth mindsets are more likely to cope emotionally, while those who don’t view themselves as having the ability to learn and grow are more prone to psychological distress.

But the theory has not received universal support. A 2016 study showed academic achievements of university students were not associated with their growth mindset. This could, in part be due to the way it is understood.

People can show different mindsets at different times – a growth or fixed – towards a specific subject or task. According to Dweck

Everyone is actually a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets, and that mixture continually evolves with experience.

This suggests the fixed and growth mindsets distinction lies on on a continuum. It also suggests the mindset a person adopts at any one time is dynamic and depends on the context.

What about teaching a growth mindset?

The theory has been evaluated in a range of teaching programs. A 2018 analysis reviewed a number of studies that explored whether interventions that enhanced students’ growth mindsets affected their academic achievements. It found teaching a growth mindset had minimal influence on student outcomes.

But in some cases, teaching a growth mindset was effective for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds or those academically at risk.

A 2017 study found teaching a growth mindset had no effect on student outcomes. In fact, the study found students with a fixed mindset showed higher outcomes. Given the complexity of human understanding and learning processes, the negative findings are not surprising. Dweck and colleagues have noted that a school’s context and culture can be responsible for whether the gains made from a growth mindset intervention are sustained.

Read more: Growth mindset interventions yield impressive results

Studies show the mindsets of both teachers and parents influence students’ outcomes too. Secondary science students whose teachers had a growth mindset showed higher outcomes than those whose teachers who had a fixed mindset.

And a 2010 study showed the perceptions primary students had of their potential for improvement were associated with what their teachers’ thought of the children’s academic ability. In another study, children whose parents were taught to have a growth mindset about their children’s literacy skills, and to act accordingly, had improved outcomes.

It exists on a spectrum

Mindset theory seems to conflate two separate phenomena, both of which need to be considered in teaching: a person’s actual capacity such as intelligence, and how they think about it.

Students should be aware of what they know at any time and value it. They also need to know this may be insufficient, that it can be extended and how to do that. Educators and parents need to ensure their dialogue with their children does not imply the capacity is fixed. The focus of the talk should be on: what you will know more about in five minutes?

When I teach, in both schools and university, I encourage students at the end of a teaching session to identify what they know now that they didn’t know earlier. I ask them to explain how their knowledge has changed and the questions they can answer now.

In the early stages of a teaching session, I encourage them to infer questions they might expect to be able to answer having learnt the content. These types of activities encourage students to see their knowledge as dynamic and able to be enhanced.

– ref. You can do it! A ‘growth mindset’ helps us learn – https://theconversation.com/you-can-do-it-a-growth-mindset-helps-us-learn-127710

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Maund, Research Affiliate, School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle

With more than 3,500 homes destroyed by disastrous bushfires, the willingness of government and community to work together to find ways to house people has been heartwarming. Australians showed great concern for people who were unable to return home. Responses to help find housing while they rebuild their lives and homes, which might take years in some cases, have been fast and innovative.

But what about the many more people who were homeless before the bushfires? On the 2016 Census night, 116,427 were homeless. If the same government and community effort went into helping people who are homeless for reasons other than bushfires, some innovative solutions might be found.

Read more: Homelessness soars in our biggest cities, driven by rising inequality since 2001

The desire to help people who lost their homes to the fires was evident in the breadth of collaboration and range of housing options made available. These ranged from emergency accommodation and rental housing assistance to initiatives such as open homes, spare caravans and vacant holiday houses.

Planning can adapt rapidly in a crisis

Town planning processes, and changes to these processes, are generally slow. However, the acceptance of options outside “typical” planning practice to house bushfire-affected people was impressively fast.

The New South Wales government rapidly eased planning controls. These changes allowed people to stay in a caravan park or camping ground or install a movable dwelling, such as a caravan, on land for up to two years without requiring council approval.

Many councils made large public spaces – such as showgrounds – available as “primitive” camping grounds or emergency evacuation centres. The planning rule amendments gave councils flexibility to modify the usual conditions if necessary to house people who’d lost their homes.

These actions were not controversial or disputed by most because the urgent need to house displaced people was clear.

Government and community involvement in housing bushfire-affected people has been wide-ranging, led to innovative ideas and allowed for rapid changes to approval pathways and planning controls. This “helping people in a crisis” thinking has created an environment of seeking and accepting new housing options.

Read more: ‘I didn’t want to be homeless with a baby’: young women share their stories of homelessness

Room for innovation in housing the homeless

The number of dwellings available is only one aspect of homelessness. However, increasing affordable housing options would surely help a great many people. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, about 2.1 million adults were classified in 2010 as having been homeless at some time in their lives.

Of course, not all housing options for bushfire-affected people would suit or be relevant to Australians who are homeless. But we can certainly learn from the bushfire examples of innovation in planning to solve a crisis. This sort of thinking across government and community could have impacts on the supply of housing options and on overall rates and perceptions of homelessness.

Read more: Carelessly linking crime to being homeless adds to the harmful stigma

Previously proposed planning options to increase the supply of affordable housing include subsidies and planning bonuses for developments that include affordable housing, as well as mandated targets. However, to ensure success, planning approaches to housing need to be coupled with local community engagement.

Community plays a key role

Community involvement and acceptance are particularly important when we are talking about innovative housing options. Without community support such ideas would likely not be accepted and could lead to conflict.

The Planning Institute of Australia stresses the need for community consultation:

A surer bet would be affordable housing targets developed in consultation with the community … As well as boosting supply, housing targets backed by good design standards would improve the quality of our built environments and help alleviate the twin problems of diminished social capital and growing economic inequality.

Community involvement and local context have been identified as essential elements of successful innovation in planning. Canada provides one example of a successful community-led initiative to reduce homelessness through collaboration between community, agencies and government.

This article does not provide solutions; it highlights what can be achieved if we work together. Many people in need of housing have very limited means. They struggle to meet their housing needs by themselves, incrementally and often informally.

If governments, community members and academics work together to develop policies that match the realities of the crisis of homelessness, then significant innovation in planning is possible. If we accept homelessness and the overall need for affordable housing as a crisis, and are willing to adapt our collective thinking to solve urgent problems – as we have for bushfire-affected communities – then imagine what we could achieve.

Read more: 5,800 defence veterans homeless in Australia – that’s more than we thought

– ref. We’re innovative when housing bushfire victims. Why not all the homeless? – https://theconversation.com/were-innovative-when-housing-bushfire-victims-why-not-all-the-homeless-132268

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Raja Junankar, Honorary Professor, Industrial Relations Research Centre, UNSW

The world economy is teetering on a knife edge: the Chinese and Indian economies were slowing even before the COVID-19 Coronavirus, and as Australia was recovering from one of its worst bushfires.

Share markets around the world collapsed at the end of February and haven’t recovered. Business and consumer confidence has been shattered.

The national accounts for the December quarter tell us that business investment was falling throughout 2019, at a time when budget forecasts said it would climb.

Last week Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy said the coronavirus would take “at least half a percentage point” off economic growth in the present March quarter, on top of a loss of the best part of 0.2% as a result of the bushfires.

Read more: Economic growth near an end as Treasury talks of prolonged coronavirus downturn

Given that the most recent growth figure (for the December quarter) was 0.5%, that’s likely to mean negative growth – less being produced and earned than the quarter before, which is literally a going backwards, a recession.

Global ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has identified Australia as one of six Asia-Pacific countries along with Japan and Korea that are about to “enter or flirt with recession”.

What is a recession?

In Australia a recession is usually defined as what happens when there are at least two quarters of negative economic growth in a row.

The United States does it differently. There, the National Bureau of Economic Research assembles a committee that makes a judgement about whether or not the US is in recession based on a number of cretiria including worsening incomes, worsening employment, worsening production and wholesale retail sales.

The usual Australian definition would suggest we haven’t had one for 29 years.

The American definition would suggest that given what happened to unemployment (and especially long-term unemployment) during the global financial crisis we probably had one then.

Once a recession starts, it can feed on itself with unemployment rising rapidly, which is why it’s important to stop it straight away.

How do we avoid one?

The traditional (Keynesian, and also post-Keynesian) economic prescription when an economy is facing a downturn or recession is to massively boost public investment, cut taxes for low income earners (who have a higher propensity to consume) and boost social security benefits.

It’s what Labor did during the global financial crisis, except that it delivered cheques to low and middle earners after taking advice that payments would be more effective than tax cuts, and less costly long-term.

Even though interest rates are at historic lows, the business sector is understandably scared of investing.

Read more: Support package gains shape as GDP turning point swamped

Uncertainty about government policies on energy and climate change, the US-China tariff war, and disrupted and uncertain supply chains because of the coronavirus have frozen its “animal spirits”.

The Coalition hopes to get around this by offering incentives for businesses to invest, on the theory the incentives will work where low interest rates have failed.

I’m not so sure. Here’s what I propose, which has the added benefit of fixing a number of problems that need to be fixed anyway.

A 10-point plan:

• invest in low-cost housing for low-income and homeless families

• invest in public sector aged care homes

• invest in better medical facilities in remote areas for indigenous people

• make an immediate cash payment of A$2,000 to everyone on Newstart and related allowances

• make an immediate cash payment of A$2,000 to all volunteer firefighters who worked during the bushfire emergency

• increase the minimum wage from $19.49 per hour to, say, $20.65 ($785 per week)

• increase Newstart and linked allowances from $279.50 per week to at least $375, and index them to climb in line with wages afterwards

• increase the wages of public sector auxiliary hospital staff, teachers in child-care centres and staff in aged care homes

The prime minister says his plan will be “scalable”. It’ll need to be. Australia is facing its most serious economic crisis for twelve years, if not three decades. The consequences of not acting quickly or strongly enough will last for a long time.

– ref. This is more than a health crisis: here’s a 10-point plan for avoiding recession – https://theconversation.com/this-is-more-than-a-health-crisis-heres-a-10-point-plan-for-avoiding-recession-133073

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University

Who deserves our compassion and medical care? Does a person who has used drugs deserve a liver transplant … and then a second? What if she’s 24 years old and a mother of small children? What if she had been prescribed the drugs initially for a mental health condition? What if she started showing mental-health symptoms after she was sexually assaulted and then mercilessly bullied? Would she be more deserving then?

These are some of the questions raised by Wild butterfly, the story of Claire Murray, who died in 2010 at just 24 years old after complications from a failed liver transplant. Her search for a second liver was the subject of scathing media coverage. “They had a poll on her life,” Claire’s mother says in the documentary. “[It asked] ‘Do you think she deserves to live or die?’”

The documentary also raises questions about how she was treated by some health professionals and the general public on social media, treatment that was underpinned by prejudice about people who use drugs and a lack of understanding about problematic use and relapse.

More broadly, it’s also a story of stigma and discrimination and a reminder of what can happen when the media mine trauma and drug use for clickbait.

More to the story

Claire was subjected to trial by media, portrayed as an ungrateful “junkie” who wantonly wasted her first transplant opportunity. Reports from the time said Claire “admitted taking drugs after the first transplant” and was prevented from returning to the transplant waiting list by rules “that forbid persistent substance abusers from being eligible for donor organs”. In fact, the film tells us she had a rare clotting disorder that led to the rejection of her first liver.

The film describes how she was sexually assaulted at 12 years old while on a camp, and then subjected to unrelenting bullying and stalking, which led her down a path of drug use.

Exposure to trauma in childhood is linked to a range of psychological, social, developmental and medical problems right through to adulthood.

We now know neglect and abuse in childhood permanently rewires the developing brain. Emotional dysregulation is the primary feature among people who have experienced trauma, and many people turn to alcohol or other drugs to help regulate these negative, often unbearable, emotions.

A large percentage of people who have experienced physical, sexual or other abuse as children or adults use alcohol and other drugs to try to dampen the constant feelings of fear, anxiety and depression; and a large proportion of people in treatment for alcohol or other drug problems have a history of abuse.

We can never know someone’s circumstances or their motivations. Wild Butterfly is a sad reminder of how much additional damage can be done by people making assumptions and judging those who use drugs.

Blame culture

This film balances the sensitive and nuanced issues without doing further harm. It explains the issues of drug use and trauma, without laying blame on people who use drugs or their families – and it does it with humanity. In my view, this sense of empathy and humanity is too often absent from mainstream reporting on people who experience problems with alcohol and other drugs.

Wild Butterfly tells the story of Claire largely from her parents’ point of view. It was her dying wish to set the record straight. You can feel their pain and it’s heartbreaking. What if it was your child? What would you do to ensure they had a chance at recovery? The parents’ story also demonstrates that families of people with alcohol and other drug problems need support.

It’s the people who judge others on their drug use who really need to watch this film and, sadly, they probably won’t. The film is a reminder that there’s more to people and their circumstances than meets the eye.

There are opportunities for reflection on the part of the media, the health profession and the general community. There are media guidelines on reporting on drug and mental health issues available from AOD Media Watch and Mindframe.

We have come a long way in our understanding about other common mental-health disorders, like depression and anxiety, but we still have a long way to go when it comes to empathy and compassion for people who use alcohol and other drugs.

If you need information or support, contact the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015.

Wild Butterly is screening in cinemas nationally.

– ref. Wild Butterfly film review: Claire Murray’s story gives a human face to trauma, drug use and blame culture – https://theconversation.com/wild-butterfly-film-review-claire-murrays-story-gives-a-human-face-to-trauma-drug-use-and-blame-culture-132596

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

Scott Morrison will urge big businesses to display “patriotism” as Australia grapples with the coronavirus crisis, which he warns could hit the economy harder than the global financial crisis.

Addressing a business audience in the run up to this week’s stimulus package, Morrison will say large companies have “a huge role to play”, telling them to hang onto staff, and support workers including casuals with paid leave when they need time off because of the virus. They should also pay small business suppliers ahead of time in coming months.

Describing the crisis as “one of those national interest moments”, in which we confront a “hydra-headed and rapidly evolving challenge”, Morrison will spell out seven principles underpinning the stimulus package.

Speculated to be worth about $10 billion, it will be directed particularly to keeping people in work and maintaining the cash flow of small and medium-sized businesses.

Measures canvassed include subsidising wages and training, an investment incentive, and support for the beleaguered tourist industry. Changing the deeming rate for the pension is being considered, which would help some retirees. Cabinet will discuss the package on Tuesday.

Attorney-General Christian Porter meets employer and union representatives on Tuesday to discuss workplace issues and measures. The ACTU is especially concerned about casuals without sick leave entitlements.

The government, already facing the prospect of a negative March quarter – with the virus and the bushfires taking an estimated 0.7% off growth – is desperate to avoid the economy going into recession. A recession is defined as two quarters of negative economic growth.

Read more: Morrison government pledges funds to help states with health burden of COVID-19

Westpac on Monday forecast that before taking into account the stimulus package the economy was likely to contract by 0.3% in the June quarter.

Meanwhile the Australian stock market plunged on Monday, driven by an oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia and the COVID-19 crisis.

The difficulty for the government is to get stimulus money spent quickly, without resorting to the “cash splash” approach it has previously criticised.

If more stimulus is needed there will be a second opportunity in the May budget. But this would be too late for the June quarter.

In his speech to the Australian Financial Review’s business summit, released ahead of Tuesday’s delivery, Morrison says the COVID-19 crisis is different from the GFC – “a biological contagion not a financial one” – and “in our response we must be careful to solve this problem, not the last one”, including avoiding mistakes made then, especially in terms of having “a clear fiscal exit strategy”.

But while COVID-19 is a global health crisis “it will also have very real and very significant economic impacts, potentially greater than the global financial crisis for Australia,” he says.

“The epicentre of this crisis is much closer to home.

“The GFC impacts were centred on the North Atlantic and back then China was in a position to cushion the blow.” In contrast, the first outbreak of COVID-19 was in China, where consumers stayed away from shops, many workers stayed away from work and manufacturing output fell sharply.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Can Scott Morrison match Kevin Rudd in keeping Australia out of recession in a global crisis?

Morrison says the possible economic outcomes in Australia of the coronavirus crisis “will depend on the spread, severity and duration of the health crisis and its interaction with demand-side and supply-side effects.

“That means, to fix the problem, our health response must be our primary response”. The financial and economic effects would be worsened if the virus significantly hit the health of the Australian workforce – “something that we are working very hard to prevent”.

The government’s fiscal response aimed “to keep people in jobs, keep businesses in business and ensure we bounce back stronger on the other side.

“It’s about supporting community confidence, employment and business continuity. This means boosting domestic consumption, reducing cash flow pressures for vulnerable businesses, and supporting new investments to lift productivity”.

The seven principles on which Morrison says the package is based are

• measures must be proportionate to the economic shock and the impact on the economy
• they need to be timely and scalable – that is, able to be adjusted as needed
• the response must be targeted to specific issues, support those most affected, and delivered where it will be most effectives
• the response has to be aligned with monetary policy and other governments’ responses (Morrison points out the government is working closely with the Reserve Bank, which cut interest rates last week)
• where possible, existing means of delivery should be used, rather than rushing out new programs as in the GFC
• measures must be temporary and have an exit strategy – not “baked into the bottom-line for years … keeping the budget under water”
• measures lifting productivity must be favoured, to promote stronger growth.

“By following these principles we will protect the structural integrity of the budget and maximise the impact of our measures to protect the livelihoods of Australians and our economy. … When the economy bounces back, our budget will also bounce back.”

In his forthright message to big business, Morrison says: “We need your perseverance, planning and enterprise. We need your common sense, calm and commitment. And we need your patriotism.

“We need you to support your workers, by keeping them employed. Hold onto your people, you will need them on the other side. Wherever possible, support them – whether full-time, part-time, or casual – including with paid leave if they need to take time off due to the virus.

“We need you to support your small business suppliers by paying them promptly. Pay your suppliers not just in time, but ahead of time, especially now, ” he says.

“If you are a large business, go back to the office today and pay your supplier invoices and commit to pay them even faster for the next six months.

“That is what sticking together looks like.

“How you support your customers, suppliers and employees during the next six months will say more about your company, your corporate values and the integrity of your brand than anything else you could possibly do otherwise.

“We also need your investment, looking ahead to the opportunities on the other side. Take the opportunity to invest in the skills of your workforce or the capital projects that will provide the pathway for a new season of growth,” he says.

“This is a Team Australia moment.”

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Read more: Economic growth near an end as Treasury talks of prolonged coronavirus downturn

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Morrison stresses both the strength of Australia’s health system, and the strength of its fiscal position, as it confronts the shock – although the earlier projected budget surplus for 2019-20 is generally considered to be unachievable.

– ref. Morrison tells big business to show ‘patriotism’ as COVID-19 threatens to hit harder than GFC – https://theconversation.com/morrison-tells-big-business-to-show-patriotism-as-covid-19-threatens-to-hit-harder-than-gfc-133255

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sunanda Creagh, Head of Digital Storytelling

Are we alone in the Universe? The expert opinion on that, it turns out, is surprisingly consistent.

“Is there other life in the Universe? I would say: probably,” Daniel Zucker, Associate Professor of astronomy at Macquarie University, tells astrophysics student and The Conversation’s editorial intern Antonio Tarquinio on today’s podcast episode.

“I think that we will discover life outside of Earth in my lifetime. If not that, then in your lifetime,” says his fellow Macquarie University colleague, Professor Orsola De Marco.

And Lee Spitler, a Senior Lecturer and astronomy researcher at the same institution, was similarly optimistic: “I think there’s a high likelihood that we are not alone in the Universe.”

The big question, however, is what that life might look like.

Read more: The Dish in Parkes is scanning the southern Milky Way, searching for alien signals

We’re also hearing from Danny C Price, project scientist for the Breakthrough Listen project scanning the southern skies for unusual patterns, on what the search for alien intelligence looks like in real life – and what it’s yielded so far.

Read more: ‘The size, the grandeur, the peacefulness of being in the dark’: what it’s like to study space at Siding Spring Observatory

New to podcasts?

Everything you need to know about how to listen to a podcast is here.

Additional audio credits

Kindergarten by Unkle Ho, from Elefant Traks.

Lucky Stars by Podington Bear, from Free Music Archive

Illumination by Kai Engel, from Free Music Archive

Podcast episode recorded and edited by Antonio Tarquinio.

Lead image

Shutterstock

– ref. We asked astronomers: are we alone in the Universe? The answer was surprisingly consistent – https://theconversation.com/we-asked-astronomers-are-we-alone-in-the-universe-the-answer-was-surprisingly-consistent-132088

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Harvey-Smith, Professor and Australian Government’s Women in STEM Ambassador, UNSW

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics, collectively known as STEM, are vitally important for keeping Australia competitive in a technology-driven world.

But despite STEM’s importance, we are not training enough people with skills in vital areas such as digital technologies and engineering to make the most of these business opportunities. In particular, there are extremely low numbers of women engaging in these fields.

Read more: Women in STEM need your support – and Australia needs women in STEM

The lack of women in essential STEM jobs exacerbates the national skills shortage and dampens Australia’s potential to lead the way in transforming our current industries and creating new ones. To compete on the world stage, we need a diverse and fully engaged workforce.

As the Australian government’s Women in STEM Ambassador, I work on a national level with all sectors to drive gender equity in STEM. My role is to catalyse systemic change that will make the STEM sector more inclusive, strong, diverse to support Australia’s economic growth and global competitiveness.

Are current efforts succeeding?

Organisations and individuals across the country have been trying to increase the participation of women and girls in STEM for years. The Australian Academy of Science has identified at least 331 separate initiatives across Australia designed to increase the participation of women and girls in STEM studies and careers. These include educational programs, work and industry experience, mentoring schemes, and many more.

We’re spending millions on initiatives, but are they having a positive impact?

The trouble is, we don’t know. That’s because most programs are not properly tested or evaluated.

Evaluation was one of the main recommendations of the Women in STEM Decadal Plan, released in April 2019. By using data and measuring outcomes, we can target our efforts and scale up programs that are effective and proven to work.

Read more: Gender diversity in science media still has a long way to go. Here’s a 5-step plan to move it along

To evaluate our actions effectively we need to engage scientific principles. We start by defining the outcomes we want. What does success look like, and how do we measure it? The key is to adopt a data-driven approach.

With that in mind, and to mark International Women’s Day, federal science minister Karen Andrews yesterday launched the Advancing Women in STEM 2020 Action Plan.

What’s the plan?

The new plan follows the priorities already outlined in the decadal plan, with a focus on the areas of data collection and analysis, evaluation, and changing institutional practices. It aims to ensure action on STEM gender equity is evidence-based and effectively targeted.

To help with this, my office is developing an evaluation framework to assist organisations in taking a more scientific approach to their STEM engagement programs. This will help the people who run programs designed to promote a more inclusive STEM environment.

We’ll pilot the evaluation guide with recipients of the federal government’s Women in STEM and Entrepreneurship grants program, before making it more widely available. This will help us learn which programs are making a difference and where we can upscale for even greater impact.

My office will also conduct an Australian peer-reviewed trial of anonymous assessment of research funding proposals. Removing names and gender pronouns from applications can work well to combat gender and cultural biases. NASA has tried a similar approach in allocating time using the Hubble Telescope, with successful results.

In NASA’s system, the names of reviewers and scientists were made known to each other only after the review was complete. For the first time in 18 years, proposals led by women had a slightly higher success rate than those led by men.

We are implementing this method in Australia in a structured scientific trial, removing names and pronouns from applications to use large Australian research facilities.

The trial will do two things. First, it will provide important data on the effectiveness of anonymised review and provide a strong evidence base for the STEM sector to take action on more equitable processes in future.

Second, if international experience is anything to go by, it will immediately reduce gendered and cultural biases that exist in such decision-making processes.

Measuring success

How will we know if all this work is making a difference?

To help answer that, the federal government has also launched a STEM Equity Monitor, an interactive portal that will collect and track data on a range of indicators including: girls’ attitudes to STEM in schools, engagement rates, qualifications and workforce participation, pay rates and working conditions.

It is free for anyone to use and will enable our community to measure progress towards a society that provides equal opportunity for people of all genders to learn, work and engage in STEM.

– ref. Australia has hundreds of programs to get women into science, but are they working? Time to find out – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-hundreds-of-programs-to-get-women-into-science-but-are-they-working-time-to-find-out-133061

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Signe Ravn, Senior lecturer in Sociology, University of Melbourne

Concern about the popularity of “sexting” – the sending and receiving of sexually explicit text messages and photographs – among young people has been a frequent point of discussion in recent years.

The media and some academic studies often draw attention to issues of risk, danger, and the often-gendered negative outcomes of sexting.

These include concerns sexting can lead to sexual harassment, such as receiving unwanted “dick pics” and pressures for women, in particular, to send their own nude images.

Read more: Bringing pleasure into the discussion about sexting among teens

Another frequently mentioned concern is the potential legal implications of possessing or circulating such images electronically.

Such negative consequences are serious and need our attention. However, this focus is often at the expense of a more nuanced understanding of sexting and how it is part of young people’s lives.

Young men value respect in sexting

Our own sociological research, drawing on ten focus groups of undergraduate male students in Melbourne, provides some important insights into this.

Our study differs from previous studies on sexting in a couple of ways.

First, our sample of participants was slightly older (aged 18-22) than those in other studies. Furthermore, all our participants were men, which may seem somewhat unusual. But this group is very rarely heard in research on this topic and we need to understand how young men view sexting if we are to address the negative consequences mentioned above.

As in other studies, one of our most important findings is that sexting is a normalised part of young people’s romantic and sexual lives.

Read more: ‘Sexting’ teens: decriminalising young people’s sexual practices

Among our participants, who all had some experience with romantic relationships, sexting is a way of flirting and forming new relationships, as well as developing an ongoing relationship with an existing partner.

Sexting was also clearly distinct from harassment, which for our participants was characterised by one-way communication and the crossing of boundaries. In contrast, sexting was almost uniformly understood as reliant on consent and mutuality.

As one participant said,

It is transactional in the sense of, I’ll give you this much, and they’ll give you this much, but you give them X, and they give you X plus one, and then you’ll give them X plus two. […] I think that’s where the mutuality comes into it, you both are getting a thrill out of, ‘Oh, what are they going to do next?‘

And in another focus group, a participant described why consent is important:

Well yeah, because [then] you know where the other person stands. Otherwise, you could definitely say that it’s harassment. I would genuinely class it as sexual harassment.

These are positive findings and suggest notions of respect and mutual engagement are paramount to young people who engage in sexting.

Not wanting to be seen as a ‘creep’

There are several more complex points to unpack, though. Our participants repeatedly mentioned the importance of not “crossing the line” when sexting. This means not transgressing the boundaries of the other person and making sure the sexting is an “escalating, mutual thing”, as another participant said.

However, participants also described an element of self-interest in moderating one’s behaviour while sexting. The following quote from a focus group discussion illustrates some of these complexities (names are pseudonyms):

Moderator: But why would you stop? If you feel the other person is uncomfortable?

Matt: You don’t want to be seen as weird.

Tim: You don’t want to creep them out.

Liam: Well, given that you’re trying to get some sort of sexual connection with this person, you wouldn’t want to compromise your chances further, by having them think that you’re some massive creep.

Karl: Or compromise your chances with other people.

Liam: Yeah, true, because they could pass on that information.

So, while making sure to not “cross the line” is partly based on respect for the other person, it would also be detrimental to building a “sexual connection” with that person, or with others in the future.

Why asking for consent can ‘ruin the vibe’

Our research also highlighted the gendered differences and double standards at play in sexting, as depicted from the perspectives of the young men.

Pictures of young women’s bodies and body parts (breasts, vaginas) were seen as having more value, and being in higher demand, than men’s body parts. But women were also seen to be exposed to greater risks than men when engaging in sexting, including the risk of “slut shaming”.

This is in line with what international studies have found.

While our participants were often aware of these gendered differences in terms of how “sexts” from men and women are perceived, this was seen as a problem at societal level and not something they could change.

As a result, it did not mean that they stopped sexting. In that sense, sexting can be seen as involving greater risks for women than men.

Read more: Sexting: technology is changing what young people share online

Our participants were generally aware of the need, and benefits, of asking for consent before sending a sext. But they also described how this was difficult, because explicitly asking for consent would either “ruin the vibe” or reveal their lack of expertise in sexting.

Indeed, our participants described an almost mythological belief that every young person knows how to sext, which they felt was far from their own reality. Learning how to sext was “learning by doing”, on your own and without advice from others.

Similarly, establishing consent had to happen in subtle ways. As a result, they mentioned feeling insecure and often nervous about sexting “well”.

What young people need to know and educators need to assist with

Sexting is a normalised part of contemporary young lives. Because of this, learning the “skills” of appropriate and respectful sexting is something that should be part of the sex education curriculum in schools.

Rather than trying to tell students to simply abstain from sexting, we should support them to do it in respectful ways.

Translating the findings of this research into tangible strategies in sex education is an important task for educators. By assisting young people to “sext” in appropriate ways, for instance by identifying alternative ways of establishing consent and avoiding “victim-blaming”, we can take one step towards destigmatising the practice.

– ref. Young men on sexting: it’s normal, but complicated – https://theconversation.com/young-men-on-sexting-its-normal-but-complicated-131759

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gerard Fitzgerald, Emeritus Professor, School of Public Health, Queensland University of Technology

The Western Australian health minister has announced “fever clinics” are to open this week for people who think they have coronavirus symptoms.

And in NSW, the chief health officer has advised hospitals set up “respiratory clinics” to deal with a potential spike in COVID-19 cases.

Other states are set to open their own versions, particularly if transmission of the virus from person to person becomes more established in the community.

So what are these clinics? And why are people being advised to use them rather than seeing their GP or going straight to the emergency department?

Read more: It’s now a matter of when, not if, for Australia. This is how we’re preparing for a jump in coronavirus cases

What are ‘fever clinics’?

Fever clinics are dedicated facilities to assess, test, treat and reassure people, and where necessary, to triage them through the healthcare system.

In the absence of substantial community transmission of the virus in Australia, it’s expected most people who’ll use these clinics will be:

• people worried they’re sick but aren’t showing symptoms (the “worried well”)

• people who think they may have been in contact with an infected person

• people with other illnesses who want reassurance.

The idea is to divert people concerned they may be infected away from emergency departments and general practices.

Not only does this reduce demand for these traditional services, it potentially limits the spread of disease among vulnerable populations, such as the sick and elderly.

Read more: How do we detect if coronavirus is spreading in the community?

General practices have open waiting rooms and while they can ramp up their infection control measures, not all practices can do this effectively.

Similarly, emergency departments are not well structured to isolate large numbers of potentially infectious patients.

By contrast, fever clinics can assess and treat potentially large numbers of people with appropriate levels of infection control. They’re also staffed by people dedicated to this one task. So expertise is concentrated in one location.

Fever clinics are part of a broader emergency health response to the coronavirus. And different states give them different names. For instance, in NSW their official name is “pandemic assessment centres”.

Where are these clinics?

Fever clinics may be set up in new facilities or by repurposing existing ones, such as community health centres or dedicated general practices.

They need to be somewhere with good public access (and parking), preferably away from existing crowded major health facilities to avoid congestion.

They may be possible in heavily populated areas but less so in rural areas as they require enough patient numbers (to make them viable) and access to enough staff.

Staff – such as doctors, nurses and laboratory staff – will generally come from the existing health service, potentially leaving these services short. And staffing may be an issue in rural and remote areas that are already under-resourced.

Read more: Worried about your child getting coronavirus? Here’s what you need to know

People who attend these fever clinics, who require higher levels of care, will need to be referred to specific health facilities. So arrangements for referral and safe transfer are needed.

Fever clinics are also only part of a broader health system response and can never replace other sources of care.

Severely ill patients will still call for an ambulance and need to be in hospital. Many patients will choose to see their regular GP.

So the broader health system needs to be supported if we are to mount an effective health response against the coronavirus.

Read more: There’s no evidence the new coronavirus spreads through the air – but it’s still possible

Do fever clinics work?

There is surprisingly little published research about people’s experience with fever clinics. Few outbreaks have had enough patient numbers to justify setting them up.

During the swine flu pandemic of 2009, Australians were keen to use one clinic when it was located within an emergency department. More than 1,000 people with flu-like symptoms attended in one month.

However, it is difficult to find any evaluation of how well fever clinics work across health systems, either in improving health outcomes or reducing costs.

What’s the take-home message?

People have a right to be concerned, but not unduly alarmed, about the outbreak of COVID-19.

Recent data suggest the disease is highly infectious although 80% of people have a mild-to-moderate disease, 20% a severe/critical illness and 2-3% die.

People who are at greater risk are those who are older or have other illnesses.

Read more: Why hand-washing really is as important as doctors say

The best thing people can do is to take reasonable precautions: avoid crowded places, wash your hands regularly and avoid touching your eyes and mouth.

Fever clinics may well have a role in providing a single source of assessment, advice and treatment. However, we still need enhanced infection control procedures across the healthcare system and to access other sources of medical care.

– ref. ‘Fever clinics’ are opening in Australia for people who think they’re infected with the coronavirus. Why? – https://theconversation.com/fever-clinics-are-opening-in-australia-for-people-who-think-theyre-infected-with-the-coronavirus-why-132599

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Helene Nolan, Postdoctoral research fellow, Western Sydney University

The drought in eastern Australia was a significant driver of this season’s unprecedented bushfires. But it also caused another, less well known environmental calamity this summer: entire hillsides of trees turned from green to brown.

We’ve observed extensive canopy dieback from southeast Queensland down to Canberra. Reports of more dead and dying trees from other regions across Australia are flowing in through the citizen science project, the Dead Tree Detective.

Read more: Drought and climate change were the kindling, and now the east coast is ablaze

A few dead trees is not an unusual sight during a drought. But in some places, it is the first time in living memory so much canopy has died off.

Ecologists are now pondering the implications. There are warnings that some Australian tree species could disappear from large parts of their ranges as the climate changes. Could we be witnessing the start of ecosystem collapse?

Why are canopies dying now?

Much of eastern Australia has been in drought since the start of 2017. While this drought is not yet as long as the Millennium Drought, it appears to be more intense. Many areas have received the lowest rainfall on record, including long periods of time with no rainfall. This has been coupled with above-average temperatures and extreme heatwaves.

The higher the temperature, the greater the moisture loss from leaves. This is usually good for a tree because it cools the canopy. But if there is not enough water in the soil, the increased water loss can push trees over a threshold, causing extensive leaf “scorching”, or browning. The extensive canopy dieback we have observed this summer suggests that the soil had finally become too dry for many trees.

Are the trees dead?

Brown or bare trees are not necessarily dead. Many eucalypts can lose all their leaves but resprout after rain.

Many parts of eastern Australia are now flushed with green after rain. In these areas, it will be important to assess the extent of tree recovery. If trees are not showing signs of recovery after significant rainfall, they’re unlikely to survive. In some cases carbohydrate reserves – which trees need to resprout new leaves – may be too depleted for trees to recover.

The drought may also hinder post-fire recovery. Most eucalypt forests eventually recover from bushfires by resprouting new leaves. Some forests also recover when fire triggers seedlings to germinate.

But it’s likely that some forests now recovering from fire were already struggling with canopy dieback. So these two disturbances will test how resilient our forests are to back-to-back drought and bushfire.

Trees recovering from drought and/or fire may also enter the “dieback spiral”. The new flush of leaves following rain can make a particularly tasty meal for insects. Trees will then attempt to grow more foliage in response, but their ability to keep producing new leaves gradually declines as they deplete their carbohydrate reserves, and they can die.

Dieback spiral has led to extensive tree loss in the past, including in the New England area of NSW.

Should we be worried?

The capacity of eucalypts to resprout makes them naturally resilient to extended drought. There are some records of canopy dieback from severe droughts in the past, such as the Federation Drought. We assume (although we don’t know for sure) the forests recovered after these events. So they may bounce back after the current drought.

However, it’s hard not to be concerned. Climate change will bring increased drought, heatwaves and fires that could, over time, see extensive losses of trees across the landscape – as happened on the Monaro High Plain after the Millennium Drought.

Read more: Are more Aussie trees dying of drought? Scientists need your help spotting dead trees

Australian research in 2016 warned that due to climate change, the habitat of 90% of eucalypt species could decline and 16 species were expected to lose their home environments within 60 years.

Such a change would have huge consequences for how ecosystems function – reducing the capacity for ecosystem services such as carbon storage, altering catchment water resources and reducing habitat for native animals.

Where to from here?

Landholders can help bush on their property recover after drought, by protecting germinating seedlings from livestock and collecting local seed for later revegetation. Trees that appear dead should not be cut down as they may recover, and even if dead can provide valuable animal habitat.

Most importantly, however, we need to monitor trees carefully to see where they’ve died, and where they are recovering. A citizen science project, the Dead Tree Detective, is helping map the extent of tree die-off across Australia.

People send in photos of dead and dying trees – to date, over 267 records have been uploaded. These records can be used to target where to monitor forests during drought, including on-ground assessments of tree health and quantifying the physiological responses of trees to drought stress.

There is no ongoing forest health monitoring program in Australia, so this dataset is invaluable in helping us determine exactly how vulnerable Australia’s forests are to the double whammy of severe drought and bushfires.

– ref. Entire hillsides of trees turned brown this summer. Is it the start of ecosystem collapse? – https://theconversation.com/entire-hillsides-of-trees-turned-brown-this-summer-is-it-the-start-of-ecosystem-collapse-126107