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

News of four new positive cases of COVID-19 in Melbourne’s northern suburbs has prompted renewed discussion about the vaccine rollout.

The Victorian department of health is urging people to get tested if they have any symptoms at all, check in at venues and wear a mask on public transport. In a statement it said it is “regularly exploring options for new vaccination centre locations and has previously said that further locations will open.”

But if a person has been infected with coronavirus and is in an early stage of incubating the virus – would a vaccine confer any protection to that person?

The short answer is we don’t know yet for sure. But many vaccines do work in that way and when vaccine supplies are limited, targeting contacts for vaccination could be worth trying. This approach is sometimes called post-exposure prophylaxis, or PEP.

As I argued in The Lancet Infectious Diseases in March this year,

many vaccines are effective as post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), including those for measles, hepatitis A, and smallpox, and the long incubation period of SARS-CoV-2 means vaccines might work as PEP, and that we should be doing studies to test the effectiveness.

When vaccine supplies are limited, contact tracing and prophylactic use may be the most efficient use of limited doses.

Read more: COVID is surging in the world’s most vaccinated country. Why?

This approach has helped with other viruses

Many vaccines work to reduce infection and transmission in cases where people are vaccinated after they have been exposed to a virus (or become a contact).

However, the vaccine is sometimes less effective in this scenario than it would be if given to a person who has not been infected (also known as primary prevention).

In the case of smallpox, the vaccine was 95% effective for preventing primary infections but about half as effective in reducing disease among those who had already been exposed to the virus (and possibly in the early stages of infection).

In other words, the smallpox vaccine can be given to contacts of infected people and it will be half as effective as it would be if it was given to non-exposed people – but that is still effective enough.

In fact, contact tracing and vaccination of contacts became the mainstay of smallpox eradication in India, the last stronghold of smallpox.

With measles, vaccinating the contacts of positive cases is also highly effective in preventing further transmission.

This approach is more likely to work with diseases that have a longer incubation period — and SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is one that does.

Australia is in a good position to study this, as we are not dealing with a large burden of COVID-19 on our health system. Outbreaks prior to vaccine availability could be compared to outbreaks where contacts are vaccinated.

This can even inform an approach whereby we vaccinate returning Australians before they board a plane to come home.

Mass vaccination – and getting the space between doses right

In the end, the best protection is mass vaccination and ensuring as many people as possible are fully vaccinated as quickly as possible. For speed, the spacing between doses matters because the longer it takes to be fully vaccinated, the more vulnerable we are during outbreaks.

The United Kingdom is seeing a surge of cases linked to the B16172 variant. One recent study found being partially vaccinated was only 33% protective against symptomatic disease with B16172 three weeks after the first dose. The protection went up to over 60% for AstraZeneca and 80% for Pfizer after two doses.

Unlike the US, where people got doses of a mRNA vaccine within three weeks or the one-dose Janssen vaccine, the UK chose to space vaccine doses (for both Pfizer and AstraZeneca) by three months. That is a long time during a pandemic.

Despite both countries making a flying start with a high proportion of people who received one dose, the proportion of fully vaccinated people is much lower in the UK than the US.

In Australia, the Pfizer vaccine is given with a three week gap between doses but there is a 12 week gap between doses for the AstraZeneca vaccine to ensure best protection. Like the UK, Australia could also look for ways to reduce the time between doses for the AstraZeneca vaccine, but there would be a trade off with reduced efficacy.

A 12 week gap between doses of AstraZeneca is for best individual protection, which is fine while we do not have sustained community transmission. But this leaves us vulnerable if an outbreak takes off (especially if caused by a variant of concern). In the UK, they are moving to offer the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine at eight weeks to reduce the time between doses and speed up full vaccination.

Australia would be best protected with a higher proportion of the population fully vaccinated as soon as possible.

Read more: I’m over 50 and hesitant about the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine. Should I wait for Pfizer?

– ref. Four cases in Melbourne’s north as vaccine push rolls on but what if I’ve already been recently exposed? – https://theconversation.com/four-cases-in-melbournes-north-as-vaccine-push-rolls-on-but-what-if-ive-already-been-recently-exposed-161417

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Baka, Adjunct Fellow, Olympic Scholar and Co-Director of the Olympic Research Network, Institute for Health and Sport, Victoria University

With just 60 days to go until the start of the Tokyo Olympics, there are more questions than answers about how such a massive event will take place as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage in many parts of the world.

Japan itself is struggling to contain a fourth wave, with a seven-day average of new cases briefly topping 6,000 earlier this month. Hospitals are overrun in the city of Osaka and a state of emergency has been extended in Tokyo and other areas.

The vaccine rollout, meanwhile, continues to lag behind most other major economies, with just 4% of the population having received one or two doses.

The key Olympic stakeholders are all sporting a brave face, insisting they are receiving the best possible advice from Japanese health authorities and the World Health Organisation and putting in place the proper protective measures.

The games will likely go ahead, but they will be more watered down compared to the spectacles of years past. This is what a very compromised Olympics could look like.

No sightseeing or sex (though condoms are on offer)

The second version of the Tokyo 2020 Playbook was recently released, with a third draft expected by June. This spells out clearly and in great detail what is expected in terms of COVID testing and restrictions.

For example, although a vaccination will not be compulsory, everyone will be tested extensively both before and during the games. Attendees will only be permitted to eat in designated settings and allowed limited movement and social interaction in Tokyo. Sightseeing and using public transportation is strictly forbidden.

Significantly, each delegation will also have a “COVID liaison officer” to ensure all the rules are being followed, which includes keeping tabs on athletes seemingly at all times.

Within the Olympic Village, interactions between athletes will also be greatly restricted. The rules say no hugging, high-fives or sex, though confusingly, the organisers still plan to distribute 150,000 condoms. (This is at least far less than the Rio Games, when a record number of 450,000 condoms were on offer!)

Read more: Olympic athletes speak up: current COVID plans aren’t enough to keep them safe

Ensuring compliance of the rules will be a herculean task. The organisers warn that athletes who violate the rules will not be allowed to compete, will have their accreditation cancelled and must depart the Olympic Village. Yet, it’s likely some athletes will try to beat the system, particularly once their event is over.

Another concern is the 78,000 volunteers, the majority of whom will not be vaccinated and will have limited protections in the way of basic cloth masks, hand sanitiser and guidelines on how to socially distance.

It seems a strange oversight there is not a specific “playbook” for volunteers, just a brief pamphlet on prevention measures.

A sterile atmosphere — and a financial hit for Japan

International spectators will not be permitted. And there is no certainty Japanese fans will be allowed to attend, either. A final decision is expected in June.

So, what will the atmosphere be like without large flag-waving crowds? And if those able to attend are prohibited from cheering, singing or whistling? (Clapping is acceptable.)

The opening and closing ceremonies will no doubt be more subdued affairs, with perhaps no spectators, reduced team sizes and even the possibility of only a flag bearer for each nation marching in the stadium. A decision is expected in June.

Read more: Should Japan cancel the Tokyo Olympics? It may not be able to

During a normal Olympics, the host city is always abuzz with many non-sporting attractions, as well, such as the popular Olympic hospitality or partner venues set up by various nations and specialised groups.

In 2016, there were 52 of these in Rio, with 24 open to the public. The other 28 were restricted venues for national Olympic committees and their athletes, officials and sponsors, but they were nevertheless an important sideshow.

Most of these have been cancelled in Tokyo, leaving one less avenue for the Japanese public and athletes to interact during the Olympics.

One of the most popular of these venues is Heineken House (affiliated with the Dutch Olympic Committee and its beer sponsor), but this iconic “party house” will not be found in Tokyo. It hosted 4,000 visitors a day in Rio.

Traditionally, major sponsors and other companies also offer extensive corporate hospitality programs for visitors. Coca-Cola, for instance, brings in thousands of guests – many from overseas – who receive complimentary event tickets, flights, accommodation, and food and beverages.

The absence of all of these crowds and amenities will certainly diminish the Olympic spirit in Tokyo. It will be a money-loser for the hosts, too.

One study estimated staging the Olympics without spectators will result in a US$23.1 billion loss for Japan — both in terms of direct spending linked to the games, and indirect economic effects from household consumption and tourism.

Has drug testing been compromised?

Another concern is the absence of drug testing in the lead-up to the games, due to the pandemic. Mack Horton, an Australian swimming gold medallist, said he wasn’t drug tested for nine months during the worst of the pandemic last year, though out-of-competition has reportedly picked up again at the start of 2021.

Drug testing has been, at best, inconsistent during the pandemic. Well-resourced countries with strong national anti-doping agencies have kept up their rigorous testing procedures, while other countries reliant on regional agencies have not.

However, the International Testing Agency, an independent body that will handle the anti-doping program at an Olympics for the first time, has pledged a robust approach in the weeks leading up to the games.

It has already performed a risk assessment of athletes likely to take part in the games and issued 26,000 testing recommendations to anti-doping organisations around the world. This is 17 times the pre-games testing recommendations issued before the Rio Games.

The World Anti-Doping Agency has also said it will trial a new form of drug-testing at the games themselves using a small amount of blood from a pricked finger.

Can the Olympic movement survive the setback of the pandemic and the prospect of a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games due to rising concerns about human rights in China? The games are indeed at a crossroads. What happens with the Tokyo Games may well set the direction for the future of this elite competition.

– ref. The Tokyo Olympics are going ahead, but they will be a much compromised and watered-down event – https://theconversation.com/the-tokyo-olympics-are-going-ahead-but-they-will-be-a-much-compromised-and-watered-down-event-160104

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

A recent Resolve poll of New South Wales voters for The Sydney Morning Herald has given the Coalition 44% of the primary vote, Labor 28%, the Greens 12% and the Shooters Fishers and Farmers 4%. This is the first nonpartisan poll of NSW state voting intentions since the last election.

At the March 2019 election, primary votes were Coalition 41.6%, Labor 33.3%, Greens 9.6% and Shooters 3.5%.

No two-party estimate was provided by Resolve, but analyst Kevin Bonham estimates this means 56-44 to the Coalition, compared with 52-48 at the election. The poll was conducted with two federal Resolve polls in mid-April and mid-May from a sample of 1,228.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian led Labor leader Jodi McKay as preferred premier by a massive 57-17 margin. Half of those polled thought Berejiklian likeable, while 17% were negative. Meanwhile, 13% thought McKay likeable, while 21% were negative (this includes don’t know and neutral responses).

Nationals easily win Upper Hunter byelection

There was a byelection in the state seat of Upper Hunter on Saturday. With 84% of enrolled voters counted, the Nationals defeated Labor by a 55.7-44.3 margin, a 3.1% swing to the Nationals from the 2019 election. Primary votes were 31.2% to the Nationals (down 2.8%), 21.3% to Labor (down 7.3%), 12.3% to One Nation, 12.0% to the Shooters (down 10.1%) and 12.9% for two independents combined.

The total vote for the major parties fell 10.1% to 52.5%, but with a large field of candidates, the National and Labor candidates were certain to finish in the top two after preferences, especially given NSW’s optional preferential voting system.

The Shooters won three seats at the last state election, but will need to come to an agreement with One Nation not to contest the other party’s target seats at the next election.

Read more: Little change in post-budget Newspoll; Liberals win Tasmanian majority

This is the lowest primary vote for the Nationals in what was a safe Nationals seat before the rise of the Shooters and One Nation. For Labor, it is their second lowest primary vote, beating only the 17.9% at the 2011 Labor annihilation.

Overall preference flows from all third party candidates were 20.5% to Labor, 16.3% to the Nationals and 63.2% exhausted. Including exhausted ballots, two party vote shares were 39.0% Nationals (down 0.9% since 2019), 31.0% Labor (down 5.0%) and 30.0% exhausted (up 5.8%). That’s the lowest Nationals share by this measure.

The byelection was caused when former member Michael Johnsen was accused of sexually assaulting a sex worker — he denies any wrongdoing. Other factors that would normally be expected to drag the Nationals vote down are the loss of Johnsen’s personal vote, having a federal government of the same party, and the ten-year age of the current NSW Coalition government.

Read more: Has a backlash against political correctness made sexual misbehaviour more acceptable?

The byelection result and the Coalition’s big lead in the state NSW poll are both dire for NSW Labor. And it’s another example of sex scandals not impacting actual votes.

At the last election, the Coalition won 48 of the 93 lower house seats, one more than the 47 needed for a majority. They have lost two members to the crossbench, so winning this byelection still puts them in minority government with 46 seats. The Coalition is in no danger of losing a confidence vote.

Federal Resolve poll

In the federal Resolve poll for the Nine newspapers, conducted April 12-16 from an online sample of 1,622, primary votes were 39% to the Coalition (up one since April), 35% for Labor (up two), 12% to the Greens (steady) and 2% to One Nation (down four). From these primary vote figures, Bonham estimates Labor is in front, 51-49, a one-point gain for Labor since April.

It is likely One Nation’s large drop reflects Resolve adopting Newspoll’s methods on the One Nation vote, and they are now only asking for One Nation in seats they contested at the 2019 election.

Read more: Great approach, weak execution. Economists decline to give budget top marks

More than half (53%) gave Prime Minister Scott Morrison a good rating for his performance in recent weeks, and 38% a poor rating; his net +15 rating is up three from April. Labor leader Anthony Albanese was at 32% good, 45% poor, for a net of -13, down seven points. Morrison led Albanese by 48-25 (compared to 47-25 in April).

On economic management, the Coalition and Morrison led Labor and Albanese by 46-20 (43-21 in April). On handling COVID, the Coalition led by 46-20 (42-20 in April).

Resolve had far stronger approval for the budget than Newspoll. More than half (56%) rated it good for the country and just 10% poor (for a net +46). Meanwhile 35% rated it good for their personal finances and 17% poor (net +18). Treasurer Josh Frydenberg had a +31 net rating, while Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers was at -3.

Newspoll and the budget

In additional Newspoll questions, released last Tuesday, more voters trusted a Coalition government led by Morrison over a Labor government led by Albanese to guide Australia’s COVID recovery (52-33 voters, compared to 54-32 last October).

Of those surveyed, 60% of voters thought the government was right to stimulate the economy despite increased debt, while 30% said it should do more to rein in spending. During Labor’s last period in government, the Coalition ranted about debt and deficit, but now 71% of Coalition voters support increased debt.

The Newspoll also found many voters thought Labor would not have delivered a better budget (46-33). Bonham says the 13-point margin is typical by recent standards after the 49-33 result following the 2020 budget.

– ref. Coalition has large lead in NSW as Nats easily hold Upper Hunter at byelection – https://theconversation.com/coalition-has-large-lead-in-nsw-as-nats-easily-hold-upper-hunter-at-byelection-161273

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya Hill, Honorary Fellow of the University of Melbourne and Senior Curator (Astronomy), Museums Victoria

On Wednesday evening, May 26, the Moon will slip into Earth’s shadow, creating a total lunar eclipse. No matter where you are across Australia, you’ll be well placed to see it.

Lunar eclipses are one of the most marvellous and also one of the easiest astronomical events to see. There hasn’t been a lunar eclipse visible from Australia since 2018.

Read more: Explainer: what is a lunar eclipse?

As we watch the bright full Moon slowly disappear, it’s a majestic reminder that we live on a planet moving through space and that our planet can affect another object in the sky: our Moon.

The eclipse occurs early in the evening so it’s a great opportunity to see it play out. No special equipment is needed, either — just a good view of the Moon, plus optional extras such as a comfortable chair, perhaps a warm blanket, a cup of hot chocolate, and good company to share it with.

What will we see?

It takes more than an hour for the Moon to gradually sink into darkness as Earth’s shadow appears to creep across it at a leisurely pace.

Once the entire Moon is encased in shadow, an amazing thing happens: the Moon turns a deep red. Many cultures, including some Indigenous Australian communities, saw this as a bad omen and associated it with death or blood.

Read more: Fire in the sky: The southern lights in Indigenous oral traditions

This period, known as totality, will last 15 minutes before the Moon re-emerges with vivid brightness.

Where to look?

During a lunar eclipse, the entire night side of Earth can see the eclipse at the same time. However, local timings vary across Australia due to the different time zones.

The eclipse begins with the Moon in the east and climbing higher as the event progresses.

For Western Australia, the eclipse will start just after moonrise, so the Moon will be low in the sky and you’ll need a clear view of the eastern horizon. But by the time of totality, the Moon will be higher and easier to see.

If the weather doesn’t cooperate in your local area, you can also follow the eclipse via live streaming by Slooh, the Virtual Telescope, or timeanddate.com.

Western Australians will notice the Moon rising in the east just after the Sun has set in the west. Or, in other words, the Moon and Sun are in opposite parts of the sky.

This only happens during a full Moon and it explains why a lunar eclipse can only happen during a full Moon, too.

With the Sun and Moon on opposites sides of Earth, it becomes possible for Earth to cast a shadow on the Moon.

The reason we don’t see an eclipse every full Moon is that the Moon’s orbit is tilted by 5 degrees relative to Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

So most of the time, the full Moon passes above or below Earth’s shadow, but about every six months the Moon’s orbit takes it through the shadow and a lunar eclipse occurs.

Using the Moon to see the Earth

As the Moon enters (and exits) Earth’s shadow, you can see the shadow cast on the Moon is curved, as if a bite is being taken out of the Moon.

Every lunar eclipse always produces a curved shadow. The Greek philosopher Aristotle noted more than 2,000 years ago that this can only happen if the shadow is cast by a sphere.

So by watching the lunar eclipse, you can see for yourself that Earth is round.

Blood Moon rising

Once the Moon slips into totality, instead of disappearing into a dark, black shadow, the Moon turns red. This is because sunlight still manages to reach the Moon by first travelling through Earth’s atmosphere.

The atmosphere both reddens the light (by scattering away the shorter wavelengths or blue light) and also bends the path of the light, directing it towards the Moon.

If the atmosphere is clear, the Moon will turn a bright orange-red. If there’s a lot of dust or particles in the atmosphere – such as generated by dust storms, volcanic eruptions or bush fires – the Moon can turn a deep, dark red.

What we see will depend on Earth’s atmosphere at the time.

Catch it while you can

During this eclipse, the period of totality is relatively short. It lasts only 15 minutes. Back in 2015, there was a lunar eclipse with just five minutes of totality, but usually totality continues for about an hour.

If we map the Moon’s path through Earth’s shadow, it becomes clear this eclipse is relatively “shallow” – the Moon only just makes it into full shadow.

Whenever the Moon’s path is more central, passing right through the middle of Earth’s shadow, it creates a deeper eclipse and totality lasts longer.

Furthermore, there’s a lot of buzz about this eclipse happening during a “supermoon”, when the Moon is slightly closer to Earth than on average. Since the Moon follows an elliptical orbit, it’s distance from Earth can vary by about 10%.

But when we see the Moon in the sky it is really hard to distinguish any difference in size between a supermoon and a normal full moon.

It’s also possible that being a supermoon has its disadvantages too.

A supermoon occurs when the Moon is at “perigee”, its closest approach to Earth. However, objects that move on elliptical orbits, travel faster when they are at perigee due to conservation of angular momentum (or Kepler’s Second Law).

This means the Moon will spend about a minute less in shadow compared to an eclipse that occurs during “apogee”, when the Moon is at its most distant from Earth and therefore travelling a little slower.

In truth, both supermoon effects (slightly larger and slightly faster) aren’t particularly rare or impressive. On the other hand, a total lunar eclipse is an amazing sight regardless. So don’t miss the opportunity to experience this marvellous event.

– ref. How to watch Wednesday’s total lunar eclipse from Australia – https://theconversation.com/how-to-watch-wednesdays-total-lunar-eclipse-from-australia-160262

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tiziana Ferrero-Regis, Senior Lecturer, Study Area Coordinator, Fashion, Queensland University of Technology

Australian Fashion Week, which starts next Monday, is touting itself as one of the first live fashion shows since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Runway shows will feature labels Romance Was Born and Zimmermann as well as younger designers.

For decades, journalists, editors, buyers, celebrities and taste-makers would descend twice a year on Paris, New York, London and Milan to attend the famous fashion weeks, where global and emerging designers present new collections in runway shows. Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul and Moscow have joined these four global fashion centres, along with Australian cities.

Fashion shows began in the early 1900s. Their primary purpose has always been about promoting and selling new product. (The fundamental rule of fashion is endless change and newness.) The pandemic has changed things, forcing them online. But the world of high fashion had already been experimenting with technology on the catwalk — from launching handbags and frocks attached to drones to presenting a digital show beamed to viewers with 3D glasses.

Read more: Friday essay: how New York Fashion Week came to be

In the early 2000s, runway shows were grand spectacles. In 2005, Chanel began using Paris’s Grand Palais as a set on which Karl Lagerfeld envisaged grandiose installations recreating microcosms of everyday life. They included a supermarket; an airline desk; a beach, complete with sand and water; and a library.

In 2008-2009, at the height of the financial global crisis, one runway became a giant merry-go-round, carrying oversized pendants, bags and pearl bracelets.

Other luxury brands such as Dior and Dolce & Gabbana organised shows in exotic locations, such as Marrakesh, Mexico City, Capri and Hong Kong, flying visitors in at great expense.

Digital collections and social distancing

Then came COVID-19. It has had a huge economic impact, highlighting fashion’s environmental and ethically unsustainable practices. Brands that have survived moved to digital presentations of their collections with the pandemic forcing designers to think in fresh ways.

Valentino’s Pier Paolo Piccioli, for instance, dealt with rules of social distancing by setting 15 models on pedestals up to 5 metres high and creating elongated silhouettes of white couture dresses. Textile patterns and colours were then projected on these silhouettes.

In September 2020 in Milan, Jeremy Scott, Moschino’s designer, created a COVID-safe fashion show that eliminated both models and audience. Forty miniature marionettes, 76 centimetres tall, walked the runway between two rows of puppets replacing the audience.

In the first row, a puppet version of Vogue editor-in-chief and fashion power broker Anna Wintour stood out.

In October, Chanel returned to a live show with an audience to present the ready-to-wear Spring/Summer 2021, but a new COVID lockdown in Paris prevented any further live shows in 2020. Its 2020/21 Haute Couture collection was a digital show streamed from a chateau in the Loire region.

Drones and 3D

Still, some major global brands had already been presenting digital alongside physical shows, or toying with technology.

Read more: Why STEM subjects and fashion design go hand in hand

In February 2010, Burberry experimented with live streaming its womenswear collection digitally in 3D in five locations. Journalists and celebrities were invited to private screening spaces in Paris, New York, Dubai, Tokyo and Los Angeles where they watched the show with 3D glasses. The show took inspiration from the popularity of James Cameron’s film Avatar (2009).

In 2014, Fendi sent three drones down the runway to film a show. The move created excitement, but also raised concerns related to hyper-surveillance.

In February 2018, meanwhile, Dolce & Gabbana showed their new bag collection attached to drones. Small drones glided down the runway and over the heads of the audience before vacating the stage for models.

Given models are often also celebrities, embodying the designer’s concept for the collection, or even brand, this was a startling move. Will real models be dispensed of in a near future? Will they be replaced by drones, robots or holograms?

In the same year, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, fluttering clothes were sent on the runway attached to drones, producing a ghost-like effect. The show prompted outrage on social media. Organisers explained it was about adding novelty. However, it was the first time a fashion show had been opened to an audience of both men and women, instead of just women. This change may have prompted the use of drones.

Fashion is a major industry commanding 2% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product annually. Runway shows are marketing devices and here to stay.

In-person audiences will be allowed during Paris Fashion Week in July, and in June in Milan, for the menswear collections. The British Fashion Council is also preparing to hold COVID-safe, smaller, in-person events. Still, brands will continue to experiment with technologies in the name of novelty.

– ref. 5-metre pedestals, an Anna Wintour puppet… COVID-19 changed fashion shows but the runway will survive – https://theconversation.com/5-metre-pedestals-an-anna-wintour-puppet-covid-19-changed-fashion-shows-but-the-runway-will-survive-161001

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonine Jancey, Academic and Director Collaboration for Evidence, Research and Impact in Public Health, Curtin University

Despite their widespread reputation as a “safer” alternative to cigarettes, e-cigarettes (also known as electronic cigarettes or vapes) are far from harmless, particularly for adolescents, whose developing brains may suffer lifelong adverse effects from nicotine-containing products.

Yet vaping and e-cigarettes are widely promoted on social media by the industry and influencers, using advertising tactics that were outlawed for tobacco in Australia in the 1980s for traditional media. This blatant promotion is not tolerated offline, so why is it happening on social media?

On Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, e-cigarettes are frequently depicted as a safe and healthy alternative to cigarettes. This is at odds with the opinion of health authorities such as the Office of the Surgeon General, the Federal Health Department and the World Health Organization (WHO). There is substantial evidence e-cigarettes have adverse health effects but because they are relatively new (they were first introduced to the US market in 2007) their long-term effects are less clear.

Yet e-cigarettes are touted online as a harmless recreational activity. Vape juice (which may or may not contain nicotine) is available in flavours such as gummy bear, chocolate treat and cherry crush, while social media influencers demonstrate fun vaping tricks or ways to customise e-cigarette devices. There are even online vaping communities offering social support and connectedness.

There is no Australian federal legislation that directly applies to e-cigarettes. Instead, several laws relating to poisons, therapeutic goods and tobacco apply. Across Australian states and territories, it is illegal to sell nicotine-containing e-cigarettes but users can legally import them through a “personal importation scheme” if they have a doctor’s prescription.

Those that do not contain nicotine can be sold in some parts of Australia, provided there are no therapeutic claims. Our research found that despite Australia’s restrictions, the internet is facilitating peoples’ access to nicotine and vaping products. An estimated three-quarters of e-cigarette purchases are done online.

Where on the web is vaping promoted?

To find this content, all you need is a smart phone and a few relevant hashtags such as product names, or related terms such as: #vape, #vapelife, #vapesale and #ejuice.

Images from Instagram, Twitter and TikTok display a mixture of modern advertising techniques and advertising tropes used for decades by the tobacco industry. There are images of scantily dressed women with e-cigarettes, details of tempting vape juice flavours, and discount offers. The scope of this content is alarming.

This promotion, coupled with the product diversity and allure, ease of online purchase and lack of appropriate age verification, supports the growth of e-cigarettes, particularly among young people. Young people are the biggest users of social media, and they are being directly targeted.

E-cigarette use has been described as an “epidemic among youth”. In Australia, since 2013, the lifetime use of e-cigarettes has significantly increased — doubling in 14-17 year olds (4.3% to 9.6%) and almost tripling in those aged 18-24 (7.9% to 26.1%), while rates of cigarette smoking have declined.

This increased e-cigarette uptake by young Australians is particularly worrying. While promotion and advertising of this product are tightly regulated offline, with age restrictions that are relatively easy to enforce, posing as an adult online is often simply a matter of ticking a box.

Despite the dangers of e-cigarettes, many adolescents have positive opinions about them. Surveys have revealed young people consider e-cigarettes to be a healthier and less addictive alternative to cigarettes, with fewer harmful chemicals and fewer health risks from second-hand vapour.

Tobacco companies have a tradition of infiltrating youth-friendly media. Almost all Australians aged between 18 and 29 use social media, for more than 100 minutes a day on average. The high visibility of e-cigarettes available on social media can foster awareness, encourage experimentation and uptake, and change social norms around vaping.

Social media platforms do have their own policies on tobacco advertising. Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram stipulate:

Advertisements must not promote electronic cigarettes, vaporizers, or any other products that simulate smoking.

This policy has now been extended to all private sales, trades, transfers or gifting of tobacco products. Any brand that posts content related to the sale or transfer of these products must restrict it to adults 18 years or older. Whether this is even possible on social media is still open to question.

Twitter’s policy on paid advertising “prohibits the promotion of tobacco products, accessories and brands globally”. But this does not extend to the content of individual accounts.

TikTok’s advertising policy states:

Ad creatives and landing page must not display or promote tobacco, tobacco-related products such as cigars, tobacco pipes, rolling papers, or e-cigarettes.

But on social media, where “influencer” content is king, the boundaries between truly organic content and paid product placements is blurred.

In 2012, Australia tried to counter this emerging online situation by introducing legislation making it an offence to advertise or promote tobacco products on the internet, unless compliant with existing advertising laws. But that legislation doesn’t ban online sales of tobacco products, including vaping products, and can do very little about advertisements from overseas websites.

It is unclear whether health authorities and regulators are aware of the scale and explicitness of e-cigarette content on social media. It seems clear that more should be done to counter it.

Australia, along with close to 170 other countries, is a signatory to the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control , which calls on nations to outlaw all advertising for tobacco products, including e-cigarettes.

Action is required. Australia, and other nations from which this content originates, need to prioritise public health. There needs to be improved surveillance, monitoring and the curtailing of content that glamourises e-cigarettes, as well as improved age verification practices.

– ref. Vaping and e-cigarettes are glamourised on social media, putting young people in harm’s way – https://theconversation.com/vaping-and-e-cigarettes-are-glamourised-on-social-media-putting-young-people-in-harms-way-159436

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

Alarm bells rang internationally last week when Taiwan announced it was moving to its second highest COVID alert level after a recent surge of cases.

The country last year recorded zero cases of community transmission for eight straight months.

The recent increase in cases has led many people to wonder: what happened to Taiwan’s COVID success story?

One part of the answer is a very slow vaccine rollout. Australia should take heed.

How serious is Taiwan’s current outbreak?

On May 9, Taiwan recorded zero new community cases of COVID-19 (there was one imported case in quarantine). But only five days later, new local cases had risen exponentially to 29, and then to a peak of 333 on May 17. And on Saturday, the country’s health department retrospectively added an extra 400 cases to the previous week which were not included in earlier reports.

Although these numbers are still very low in comparison to many other countries, the fact that these new cases were spread across many cities and counties alarmed health officials. Previously, when Taiwan had its first peak — in March 2020 with 27 new cases — almost all cases were from overseas and were successfully isolated. Now the opposite is happening, with almost all new cases spreading in the community.

Read more: How Taiwan beat COVID-19 – new study reveals clues to its success

The current alert level three mandates wearing masks outside the home and limits people gatherings to five indoors and ten outdoors. This falls short of establishing a lockdown.

Taiwan is also temporarily barring any non-residents and transit travellers from entering the country. And there are restrictions on attending public venues, as well as sporting, entertainment and recreational events.

Level four, the highest level of the country’s restrictions would include the country’s first mass lockdown. This would only be triggered after 14 consecutive days of more than 100 cases, with 50% or more being of unknown origin.

Taiwan’s recent COVID surge

What went wrong?

Until now, Taiwan was able to prevent the virus from spreading in the community, and contain it to a few imported cases, by its extensive public health infrastructure. This includes quarantine in a government facility or at home for incoming travellers, and quarantine of close contacts of positive cases. This infrastructure was established before COVID and enabled the country to respond quickly and in a coordinated manner to it.

Taiwan’s effective methods for isolation and quarantine were aided by using digital technologies for identifying potential cases, and widespread use of face masks.

This previous COVID success might have led to the government to focus on other priorities rather than investing in resources for mass COVID testing. Indeed, in Taiwan it hasn’t been seen as cost-effective to roll out mass testing without many (or any) cases.

Now, Taiwan has ramped up its testing capacity over the past week as much as possible, but still falls short in comparison to Australia, which conducts far more tests per 1,000 population.

Taiwan’s success also may have led to its people having less of an urgency to get vaccinated.

Where does Taiwan stand on COVID vaccinations?

Only about 1% of the population was vaccinated against COVID when this outbreak started.

Taiwan’s government invested early in developing a local vaccine, which has yet to come to market. This could be one explanation for why Taiwan came late to ordering vaccines from international suppliers, and is still awaiting further shipments from overseas.

Only last week did a second shipment of the AstraZeneca vaccine arrive in Taiwan through the global COVAX facility. However, this contained only 410,400 vaccine doses. Taiwan’s population is 23 million.

This is a warning sign for Australia

Whatever the reasons for the slow rollout of vaccines so far, for the time being and months to come, neither Taiwan nor Australia are even close to herd immunity against COVID.

Testing, tracing and isolation are still going to be important long into the future for both countries.

In saying that, even countries with the highest per capita vaccine rollout can suffer a new wave of the virus, for example Seychelles.

Read more: COVID is surging in the world’s most vaccinated country. Why?

There may be outbreaks in places where not enough people have been vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, or where variants of the coronavirus are resulting in less protection in those vaccinated against the original strain.

Nevertheless, short of attempting to eliminate the virus by strict isolation (not only of cases but of the whole population from abroad) and severe quarantine or lockdown measures, getting everyone vaccinated as soon as possible is the best approach to a lasting COVID-free world.

Taiwan’s COVID surge demonstrates this virus has the capacity to break through isolation and quarantine barriers at any time, in any country. Many countries need to be better prepared.

The current situation in Taiwan should be a warning to other countries that you can’t let your guard down anywhere yet.

– ref. COVID is surging in unvaccinated Taiwan. Australia should take heed – https://theconversation.com/covid-is-surging-in-unvaccinated-taiwan-australia-should-take-heed-161341

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deepika Mathur, Research Fellow, Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University

Installing solar panels is an easy way to lower your carbon footprint and cut electricity bills. But our recent research found there are many incentives to remove them prematurely, adding to Australia’s massive waste problem.

Researchers predict Australia will accumulate 1 million tonnes of solar panel waste by 2047 — the same weight as 19 Sydney Harbour Bridges.

But this number is likely to be higher, as we found people often choose to remove panels after just 10 to 12 years of use. This is much earlier than their estimated end-of-life age of 30 years (and potentially older).

Unfortunately, recycling is just a small part of the solution. So why is this happening, and what can we do about it?

Australia’s shocking ‘material footprint’

Australians have heeded the call to increase renewable energy. The installed capacity of panels across Australia has increased dramatically from 25.3 megawatts in 2007 to 77,078 megawatts in 2017. Likewise, the rooftop solar market capacity has almost doubled between 2014 and 2018.

Australia has committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goal of using fewer resources. And this requires us to use products (like solar panels) efficiently, with less waste. But Australia’s 2020 progress update shows our per capita material footprint is increasing. In fact, it’s one of the highest in the world, at 70% above the OECD average.

Read more: There’s a looming waste crisis from Australia’s solar energy boom

To help lower our growing material footprint and keep e-waste out of landfills, we need to ensure solar panels are sustainable in life, as in death.

It is assumed the primary reason why people remove solar panels is due to technical failures, such as when they’ve reached their expiry after 30 years, or breaking due to extreme weather or during transport. But failing to generate electricity doesn’t explain why many are thrown away prematurely.

So, we interviewed solar panel installers, recycling organisations, advocacy groups and local government waste managers across the Northern Territory. And our resulting qualitative research found social and economic incentives for removing solar panels.

Out with the new, in with the newer

We found a whole system of panels gets removed when only a few panels are damaged, as the new panels must have similar electrical properties to the old.

If the panels are still under warranty, the manufacturer often pays to replace the whole set, even when only a few are faulty. This means working panels are removed alongside the faulty panels, prematurely turning into waste.

Solar panels have also become a commodity item. Many of us dump old phones and cars when newer technology becomes available, and solar panels get the same treatment. After recovering the investment in solar panels through reduced electricity bills, some people are keen to get newer, more efficient models with a new warranty.

Read more: Indonesia can earn US$14 billion from old mobile phones and other e-waste in 2040

Our research also suggests government incentives aimed at rolling out more solar panels have caused consumers to replace their entire solar array. This is because previous rebates didn’t cover the replacement of only one or a few panels.

Finally, the life of solar inverters is usually 10-12 years, much shorter than the 30-year life span of the panels themselves. Some people use this as an opportunity to install a new set of solar panels when they change their inverters.

So why can’t we just recycle them?

There’s currently little research on what we can do with panels when they’re removed for reasons other than technical failure.

Researchers often put forward recycling as the preferred option for removed panels. But sending the growing number of working panels to recycling facilities is a tremendous waste of resources, and increases the burden for panel recycling, which is still in its nascent stages.

Read more: A type of ‘biodegradable’ plastic will soon be phased out in Australia. That’s a big win for the environment

Managing waste is the responsibility of states and territories, and they align their waste strategies with the federal government’s National Waste Policy.

But there’s no directive yet at the national level on solar panel disposal, specifically. This means there’s a patchwork of policies across the states and territories for managing this waste.

Victoria, for example, has identified solar panels as the fastest growing waste stream in the state’s overall e-waste flow, and the state government has banned them from landfills.

But such measures wouldn’t work for the Northern Territory, given its lack of processing facilities and the distance to the recycling centres in southern Australia, which are at least 1,500 kilometres away. With ample open land, they’re more likely to end up dumped illegally.

What do we do?

Australia needs clear guidelines at a national level on collecting, transporting, stockpiling and disposing solar panels. A lack of clear policy hampers state, territory and local governments from managing this waste effectively.

By proposing recycling as preferred option to manage this waste, we risk excluding other important options in the waste management hierarchy, such as reducing waste in the first place by making solar panels that last, extending their life.

The federal government has also touted “product stewardship” as a potential solution. This is where those involved in producing, selling, using and disposing products share the responsibility to reduce their environmental impact.

But this model wouldn’t effectively service regional and remote areas, as collecting and transporting goods from remote locations comes at a very high financial and environmental cost.

It’s worth noting some panels do undergo a kind of “second life”. There’s a unique demand for secondhand panels from people who can’t afford new systems, those looking to live off-grid, small organisations keen to reduce energy bills, and mobile home and caravan owners.

But with a number of massive solar farms proposed across northern Australia, it’s more important than ever to explore new strategies to manage removed solar panels, with clear policies and creative solutions.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Robin Gregory from Regional Development Australia, Northern Territory to this article.

– ref. Stop removing your solar panels early, please. It’s creating a huge waste problem for Australia – https://theconversation.com/stop-removing-your-solar-panels-early-please-its-creating-a-huge-waste-problem-for-australia-160546

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simone Dennis, Professor of Anthropology and Head of School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that women are underrepresented in leadership roles in many industries. This has led to a proliferation of women-only mentoring programs designed to challenge industry standards for female participation. The idea is to normalise women’s participation at all employment levels, especially senior ones.

However, our year-long prize-winning international study focused on university mentoring programs has discovered women-only mentoring programs are not all they seem. Surprisingly, they can perpetuate the gendered hierarchies they attempt to remove. Through mentoring, women who have succeeded on male terms set other women on the same path.

Read more: No change at the top for university leaders as men outnumber women 3 to 1

This might not be so surprising if you think about Homer’s Odyssey – the original story of mentoring. In this myth, the figure of Mentor cares for the young boy Telemachus while his father, Odysseus, is away at war. But the guidance that Mentor provides to Telemachus is designed to keep things just as they were in Odysseus’s absence, ensuring the system of power is maintained.

We found a similar thing happens in the modern university. Our study found that, without meaning to, female mentors and mentees participated in the conditions of their own domination, thus keeping male bias and advantage firmly in place.

Our study collected detailed data from mentors and mentees from a range of academic disciplines in universities across the Western world, including several in Australia. These programs typically work by matching the specific career goals of junior women with senior women who have already achieved them. In doing so, women who have risen to the top of the university, despite its gender bias, give structural support to junior women so they can make it to the top, too.

Having made it into the senior roles of professor or associate professor, dean or pro vice chancellor, these exceptional women advise their juniors on how to replicate their actions. The junior women can then follow a tried and tested pathway to success. Senior men often lend their support to these programs, too, making sure women are afforded equal opportunities.

However, by replicating the actions of the mentors, junior women are merely trained how to navigate a system that favours men. For instance, women can calculate the time and effort they could not put into research while pregnant or caring for their children. This is taken into account when their applications for research funding are considered.

Read more: The fatherhood penalty: how parental leave policies perpetuate the gender gap (even in our ‘progressive’ universities)

That sounds like it ensures equity, but it reveals women have to explain the reasons for not producing as much as the standard male figure would. Instead of asking why women were compared against a male standard, mentors often gave advice about how to navigate the system.

For instance, male colleagues accused some woman in our study of “playing the baby card” to excuse research outputs lower than their own. Mentees were often advised about how best to play the baby card to make them look like they were outperforming men, rather than excusing themselves from doing research. Whether a woman is made to look worse or better than her male colleagues, she is still judged against a male standard that our research participants rarely questioned.

Read more: Forget the ideal worker myth. Unis need to become more inclusive for all women (men will benefit too)

Playing by the existing rules

Because women in our study genuinely wanted to help junior women to make it, they did not see these kinds of problems. In fact, their very generosity contributes significantly to perpetuating the patriarchal system. When senior women generously give their knowledge, junior women become indebted to them. One mentee said:

“I always feel a combination of being thrilled and feeling guilty when I have an appointment with [my mentor] because I know there’s a zillion things she could be doing instead […] I know how much I owe her […] I pay her back by being successful.”

When they pay their mentors back, they do so in the same gender-biased terms in which they were mentored; and so it continues for generations of women. Meanwhile, the female participation rate in the top positions in universities remains low.

Our research showed mentoring practices can conceal power relations and their effects. That’s because they teach women how to work within, rather than change, a system biased against them.

Read more: How COVID is widening the academic gender divide

So does this mean we should abandon mentoring programs? Not at all. But to really achieve gender equity, programs must stop helping women to succeed on existing male standards. Standards are hardly fair if they’re biased to begin with.

Institutions can do this if they stop making junior staff into replicas of successful senior members.

It is difficult to abandon current programs because we’ve so thoroughly accepted what success is supposed to look like. And it’s hard to level criticisms at well-intentioned programs established especially for women. But it’s necessary so we can make sure they actually are good at eliminating gender bias, especially in light of growing awareness of how women have been treated more broadly, including in our own parliamentary system.

Approaches to mentoring need to change so they can really change things for women in universities and beyond. If they don’t, the impact women can make on what we know about the world might never be realised – and it if isn’t, we can expect gender bias will continue.

Read more: My partner or my degree: a choice that exposes how students battle gender inequity

– ref. Why mentoring for women risks propping up patriarchal structures instead of changing them – https://theconversation.com/why-mentoring-for-women-risks-propping-up-patriarchal-structures-instead-of-changing-them-157965

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Household Finances, Grattan Institute

Victorian treasurer Tim Pallas’s three-pronged strategy to raise an extra A$2.7 billion in property taxes over the next four years is a case of two out of three ain’t bad.

Land tax ✅

First, Pallas will raise $1.5 billion over four years by lifting land taxes on landholdings worth between $1.8 and $3 million by 0.25%, and by 0.3 percentage points on landholdings worth more than $3 million.

This is a good move. Taxes levied on the value of landholdings are among the most efficient states can impose. And land taxes offer a more sustainable and less-volatile tax base than stamp duties on property transactions.

Windfall gains levy ✅

Second, developers and landowners who reap windfall gains when their property is rezoned will be hit with a 50% levy if the gain is $500,000 or more, with the tax phasing in from windfalls above $100,000. The new levy will not apply to growth-zone land where developers already pay the Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution charge.

Again, this is a good move. It should reduce incentives for corruption when planning applications are decided.

As a tax, collecting unearned windfall gains is extraordinarily efficient, so efficient it shouldn’t even be called a tax but a charge for a change in allowable land use, which is what it is.

The new re-zoning charge won’t raise much in the short term: just $124 million over four years.

Read more: Our states are crying poor. They wouldn’t if they charged for rezoning

But the next time there is a major rezoning — think of the bonanzas that have flowed to land holders from previous rezonings in Melbourne’s Fisherman’s Bend and the Docklands — it will deliver taxpayers hundreds of millions if not billions.

The property lobby has been quick to claim that charging for rezoning windfalls will deter higher-density development in Melbourne, or increase prices. Both claims should be ignored.

Capturing a share of rezoning windfalls won’t deter developers. Instead it could make it easier to solve Melbourne’s housing crisis while reducing incentives for corruption in planning decisions.

Planning rules make it hard to build more housing in inner suburbs. Zoning for higher density is necessary, but unpopular. Local residents partly object because they think developers are getting a free kick.

The Victorian treasurer’s decision to make the winners pay for some of their winnings will make the process fairer and less divisive.

It’s a myth that charges for changes in land use raise home prices. Australian evidence suggests those lucky enough to own land before it is rezoned pay the charges rather than pass them on to eventual homebuyers, which might be why they object.

And future developers will pay less for their land, because the expectation of windfall gains won’t be built into the price.

The ACT Government has charged 75% for land value uplift for three decades without scaring away developers.

But the third prong of the Pallas plan — lifting stamp duty from 5.5% to 6.5% on properties that sell for more than $2 million — is a step in the wrong direction.

More stamp duty ❌

Stamp duties are among the most inefficient and inequitable taxes Australia has.

They discourage people from moving to housing and cities that better suit their needs, and they are inequitable discourage people from moving to better jobs.

And the revenue they provide is volatile: any slowdown in property sales — as happened during COVID took hold – punches a big hole in state budgets.

Few Victorians will be affected by this tax hike: less than 5% of all Melbourne homes (and just 0.5% of regional Victorian homes) went for $2 million or more last year, according to Corelogic.

Read more: Abolish stamp duty. The ACT shows the rest of us how to tax property

Someone buying a $2.5 million home will pay just an extra $5,000 in stamp duty.

But Pallas should be looking to replace stamp duty with broad-based land taxes, as NSW is planning to do.

Tax hikes are rarely popular. But they will become increasingly necessary as states try to repair their budgets after the COVID crisis.

In the quest for a better tax system, Pallas has just taken two steps forward, and one step back.

Read more: Like a high-wire act, Victoria’s budget is a mix of hard work, luck and optical illusion

– ref. The lesson for Australia out of Victoria’s property tax hikes: two out of three ain’t bad – https://theconversation.com/the-lesson-for-australia-out-of-victorias-property-tax-hikes-two-out-of-three-aint-bad-161353

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter McNeil, Distinguished Professor of Design History, UTS, University of Technology Sydney

In this series we pay tribute to the art we wish could visit — and hope to see once travel restrictions are lifted.

Along a dusty path on the outskirts of the Château de Versailles lies my favourite destination: Queen Marie-Antoinette’s private bedroom and boudoir in the Petit Trianon (small trianon). Built for King Louis XV and his mistress Madame de Pompadour in 1768, it was gifted to the new queen of France by Lous XVI and refurbished after 1774.

It was already an extremely beautiful cuboid design by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, the height of neo-classical French taste. Its reconfiguration and that of the surrounding grounds by the queen saw it embody a raft of new ideas concerning everything from the education of children to what women should wear.

The bedroom and boudoir were rooms in which the queen retreated from the formality and etiquette of the main palace of Versailles to spend time with women friends. She assembled aristocrats such as the Princesse de Lamballe as well as famed portrait painter Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun.

Here the group wore a wardrobe not possible at formal assemblies: loose, tubular muslin dresses secured with a high sash, similar to juvenile girls’ clothes worn in England and the practical Creole summer dress they knew of from the French colony Louisiana.

The clothes were considered so scandalous that Vigée-Lebrun’s painting of the queen in such attire had to be taken down at the public Salon exhibition. The queen looked like she was in her underwear, the pose was too informal and the superfine muslin was likely imported from India. It was replaced by another portrait by Vigée-Lebrun of the queen in French silk, one of the many luxury trades that bolstered the French economy.

Read more: Friday essay: what is it about Versailles?

Boudoir to jardin

Leaving the formal apartment the ceilings suddenly lower. Framed by two large corner picture windows are views from the boudoir of the garden outside. But this is no ordinary garden.

French formal architecture had been characterised by geometrical designs in which trees and other plantings were clipped into axial vistas, often leading to sculptures or fountains indicating the status of the king, aristocrat or grandee who commissioned the work. The garden at Versailles was an abstraction in which viewing positions and plantings were subject to order, the ultimate act of control. Enormous canals mirrored the sky, unifying heaven and earth under the spell of their creator, Louis XIV.

From Marie-Antoinette’s window we see a simple landscape in which a large tree on the side anchors the “composition”. This was the new jardin anglais (English garden), claimed to embody ideas of liberty and freedom rather than French absolutism. Such gardens were anchored by asymmetrical lakes, elegant, classical pavilions as well as “ruins” (faked old structures, in which hermits sometimes resided) evoking melancholy and Romanticism.

Marie Antoinette’s private view looks rather like the wings of a theatre. Rather than a painting, we look out at nature, reframed by a set designer and man-made for wandering and thoughtful contemplation.

Read more: The great movie scenes: Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette

Magic mirrors

Light pours into the boudoir from several directions. It falls onto delicate wall panelling and a beautiful set of calcified, white gessoed furniture in the most advanced taste by Georges Jacob. The perfectly cubic space is small, accommodating only about four people comfortably, a contrast to court levées or assemblies for hundreds.

As evening comes, a miracle happens. From the basement kitchen-floor below, as directed by the queen, come two large glaces volantes (flying Venetian mirrors) to fill the window panes, raised by a series of weights and pulleys. The engineer Mercklein received 12,500 livres tournois (later francs) for this innovation (overall per capita income was about 250 per year); his system is now electrified.

The room goes from day to night. Views of a garden, perhaps on a gloomy day in autumn, are replaced by the sparkling reflections of mirror. Large expanses of mirror glass could only be made in Venice until industrial espionage brought the technology to France. Mirrors perform important cultural work as they can infer vanity, falsehood or indeed show the truth. Animated guests were doubled and conversed like shadowy ghosts.

The queen and her circle could not be observed. Privacy, a new social conception that comes to govern middle-class life in the 19th century, now reigns. What a contrast to the Hall of Mirrors at the palace, where a sense of infinite repetition was created in a 73-metre-long gallery with 17 enormous windows and where hundreds of people thronged.

A reputation for scandal

Marie-Antoinette’s domain at Versailles was dominated by her frustration with a rigid court and her desire to embrace contemporary ideas. In her adjacent farmlet (the hameau), farm buildings were built to look shabby. Simulated wooden buckets of the finest porcelain by Sèvres lined the farmhouse stairs.

Following the educational ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Marie-Antoinette encouraged her children to plant seeds and dig the earth. She did not, as many believe, play at being a shepherdess or farmer. The woman who was erroneously claimed to have said of the hungry peasantry “let them eat cake” (this translates as brioche or sweet bread and was likely uttered by someone else), was simply trying to be a good mother as advocated by contemporary thinkers.

And what of the female friends? The queen was accused of running a tribadic or lesbian household. These scurrilous claims were designed to discredit her circle. Similarly, the bedroom shows no evidence to back the claim in an 18th-century English travel guide that Marie-Antoinette slept in a suspended bed-basket of roses.

Read more: If I could go anywhere: Boughton House, ‘the English Versailles’ and its shimmering treasures

Later generations were not much interested in the queen’s motivations. She became an index of the profligate spending and obscene luxury of the old regime. She and her husband, as well as the Princess de Lamballe, were executed by the guillotine or in massacres between 1792 and 1793.

The mirrors were lowered, the furniture auctioned and the domain went to sleep until Empress Eugénie turned it into a museum honouring the queen.

A Swiss luxury brand has recently restored the rooms. They allow us to imagine a spirited woman married off from Austria aged 14, stripped of her foreign clothes at the French border, who became a lover of the latest French design and manufactures — rather than the debauched queen image we have inherited from the post-revolutionary period.

Wandering through the spaces I didn’t see ghosts. I did see the queen’s modern dress echoed in the brilliant white wall panels. She wandered a little in the distance towards the “temple of love” in her up-to-date garden. Her cracked mirrors are now nicely restored for the tourists.

– ref. If I could go anywhere: Marie Antoinette’s private boudoir and mechanical mirror room at Versailles – https://theconversation.com/if-i-could-go-anywhere-marie-antoinettes-private-boudoir-and-mechanical-mirror-room-at-versailles-160599

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

Despite overwhelmingly endorsing the general stance of the 2021 budget, only a few of the 56 leading economists surveyed by the Economic Society of Australia and The Conversation are prepared to give it top marks.

Asked to grade the budget on a scale of A to F given Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s objective of securing Australia’s economic recovery and building for the future, only three of the 56 economists surveyed gave it an ‘A’.

But a very large 41% awarded it either an A or a B, up from 37% in last year’s October COVID budget.

The economists chosen to take part in the Economic Society of Australia survey have been recognised by their peers as Australia’s leaders in fields including macroeconomics, economic modelling, housing and budget policy.

Among them are a former head of Australia’s prime minister’s department, a former member of the Reserve Bank board, a former OECD director and two former frontbenchers, one from Labor and one from the Coalition.

Of the panel members who commented on the historic stance of the budget — expanding the size of the deficit beyond what it would have been in order to drive down unemployment — all but three offered enthusiastic endorsement.

Emeritus Professor Sue Richardson of the University of Adelaide commended the government for at last turning its back on a “debt and deficit” mantra, that was “never justified”.

Read more: Exclusive. Top economists back budget push for an unemployment rate beginning with ‘4’

Professor Richard Holden praised the “watershed”. In due course there should be increased attention paid to the structure and quality of spending, but for now we should applaud the “Frydenberg Pivot”.

Saul Eslake said the strategy of providing further stimulus to push unemployment down to levels not seen consistently since the first half of the 1970s was the right one. It meant the Reserve Bank and the treasury would no longer be working at “cross purposes” as they had been for most of the past two decades.

But Eslake said the budget fell short in the A$20 billion it devoted to tax concessions for small business in the mistaken and unfounded belief it is “the engine room of the economy” and in housing measures that failed to heed warnings from history about the risks of ultra-high loan-to-valuation ratios.

Rebecca Cassells of the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre said the claim that 60,000 jobs would flow from extending the temporary loss carry back and full expensing tax concessions was “a stretch,” with the connection quite tenuous.

Bucks, but not the biggest bang

Consultant Nicki Hutley said a bigger boost to the JobSeeker unemployment payment would have achieved much more than the $7.8 billion one-year extension of the “lamington” low and middle income tax offset.

Economic modeller Janine Dixon said while spending more to get more people into work was the “right setting for the times,” Australia had to ensure its workforce was ready to supply the extra aged care and child care and disability services it had funded by delivering the right training, especially in the absence of migration, which has traditionally been used to address workforce shortages.

Labour market specialist Elisabetta Magnani said measures to boost wages in the caring occupations could have achieved the double bonus of drawing more workers into those occupations and shrinking the gender pay gap, given that more than 80% of the workers in residential aged care are female.

Little for net-zero

Michael Keating, a former head of the prime minister’s department, said restoring high wage growth would require big investments in education and training, which sits oddly with the cuts in funding for universities. The extra funding for apprentices and trainees only makes up for past cuts.

Professor Gigi Foster said the $1.7 billion spent on childcare subsidies was only “surface-level fiddling with the sticker price”.

“Where is the supply-side intervention required to make childcare services sustainably accessible and of high quality?” she asked. “Childcare should be viewed as social infrastructure. Instead, when we heard infrastructure, it was mainly code for transportation.”

Read more: Fewer hard hats, more soft hearts: budget pivots to women and care

Margaret Nowak of Curtin University said a budget that really “built for the future” would not have focused on the “infrastructure of the past”. Professor Richardson lamented that most of the infrastructure spending was on traditional “roads and ports” when the future was net-zero emissions.

“There is little in the budget that supports this transformation,” she said. “It is an extraordinary lost opportunity.

Nicki Hutley said retooling the economy for zero emissions would have brought forth “more jobs, higher wages, more growth and private sector co-investment”.

Some concern about debt

Former OECD director Adrian Blundell-Wignall said a much-greater investment in vaccinations would have helped “get the economy back to work and the borders opened sooner which, in turn, would have saved unemployment benefits, tourism, aviation support and the need for the extension of temporary measures”.

And he was concerned that a jump in US inflation might cause international interest rates to rise faster than expected, forcing Australia to cut its projected budget deficits in order to stabilise net debt.

Read more: Frydenberg spends the bounty to drive unemployment to new lows

Former International Monetary Fund economist Tony Makin, a critic of government spending during the global financial crisis, described the budget spending as a “knee-jerk primitive Keynesian reaction” to the COVID recession.

Unease about going into debt to keep and create jobs aside (and very few of the economists surveyed shared Makin’s unease) the criticisms of the economists surveyed relate to execution and details. If Frydenberg had been judged on his approach, most would have given him an A.

– ref. Great approach, weak execution. Economists decline to give budget top marks – https://theconversation.com/great-approach-weak-execution-economists-decline-to-give-budget-top-marks-161347

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbara Etschmann, Research officer, Monash University

Almost 60 years after British nuclear tests ended, radioactive particles containing plutonium and uranium still contaminate the landscape around Maralinga in outback South Australia.

These “hot particles” are not as stable as we once assumed. Our research shows they are likely releasing tiny chunks of plutonium and uranium which can be easily transported in dust and water, inhaled by humans and wildlife and taken up by plants.

A British nuclear playground

After the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, other nations raced to build their own nuclear weapons. Britain was looking for locations to conduct its tests. When it approached the Australian government in the early 1950s, Australia was only too eager to agree.

Between 1952 and 1963, Britain detonated 12 nuclear bombs in Australia. There were three in the Montebello Islands off Western Australia, but most were in outback South Australia: two at Emu Field and seven at Maralinga.

Besides the full-scale nuclear detonations, there were hundreds of “subcritical” trials designed to test the performance and safety of nuclear weapons and their components. These trials usually involved blowing up nuclear devices with conventional explosives, or setting them on fire.

The subcritical tests released radioactive materials. The Vixen B trials alone (at the Taranaki test site at Maralinga) spread 22.2 kilograms of plutonium and more than 40 kilograms of uranium across the arid landscape. For comparison, the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki contained 6.4 kilograms of plutonium, while the one dropped on Hiroshima held 64 kilograms of uranium.

These tests resulted in long-lasting radioactive contamination of the environment. The full extent of the contamination was only realised in 1984, before the land was returned to its traditional owners, the Maralinga Tjarutja people.

Hot potatoes

Despite numerous cleanup efforts, residual plutonium and uranium remains at Maralinga. Most is present in the form of “hot particles”. These are tiny radioactive grains (much smaller than a millimetre) dispersed in the soil.

Plutonium is a radioactive element mostly made by humans, and the weapons-grade plutonium used in the British nuclear tests has a half life of 24,100 years. This means even 24,100 years after the Vixen B trials that ended in 1963, there will still be almost two Nagasaki bombs worth of plutonium spread around the Taranaki test site.

Plutonium emits alpha radiation that can damage DNA if it enters a body through eating, drinking or breathing.

Read more: Dig for secrets: the lesson of Maralinga’s Vixen B

In their original state, the plutonium and uranium particles are rather inactive. However, over time, when exposed to atmosphere, water, or microbes, they may weather and release plutonium and uranium in dust or rainstorms.

Until recently, we knew little about the internal makeup of these hot particles. This makes it very hard to accurately assess the environmental and health risks they pose.

Monash PhD student Megan Cook (the lead author on our new paper) took on this challenge. Her research aimed to identify how plutonium was deposited as it was carried by atmospheric currents following the nuclear tests (some of it travelled as far as Queensland!), the characteristics of the plutonium hot particles when they landed, and potential movement within the soil.

Nanotechnology to the rescue

Previous studies used the super intense X-rays generated by synchrotron light sources to map the distribution and oxidation state of plutonium inside the hot particles at the micrometre scale.

To get more detail, we used X-rays from the Diamond synchrotron near Oxford in the UK, a huge machine more than half a kilometre in circumference that produces light ten billion times brighter than the Sun in a particle accelerator.

Studying how the particles absorbed X-rays revealed they contained plutonium and uranium in several different states of oxidation – which affects how reactive and toxic they are. However, when we looked at the shadows the particles cast in X-ray light (or “X-ray diffraction”), we couldn’t interpret the results without knowing more about the different chemicals inside the particles.

To find out more, we used a machine at Monash University that can slice open tiny samples with a nanometre-wide beam of high-energy ions, then analyse the elements inside and make images of the interior. This is a bit like using a lightsaber to cut a rock, only at the tiniest of scales. This revealed in exquisite detail the complex array of materials and textures inside the particles.

Much of the plutonium and uranium is distributed in tiny particles sized between a few micrometres and a few nanometres, or dissolved in iron-aluminium alloys. We also discovered a plutonium-uranium-carbon compound that would be destroyed quickly in the presence of air, but which was held stable by the metallic alloy.

This complex physical and chemical structure of the particles suggests the particles formed by the cooling of droplets of molten metal from the explosion cloud.

In the end, it took a multidisciplinary team across three continents — including soil scientists, mineralogists, physicists, mineral engineers, synchrotron scientists, microscopists, and radiochemists — to reveal the nature of the Maralinga hot particles.

From fire to dust

Our results suggest natural chemical and physical processes in the outback environment may cause the slow release of plutonium from the hot particles over the long term. This release of plutonium is likely to be contributing to ongoing uptake of plutonium by wildlife at Maralinga.

Even under the semi-arid conditions of Maralinga, the hot particles slowly break down, liberating their deadly cargo. The lessons from the Maralinga particles are not limited to outback Australia. They are also useful in understanding particles generated from dirty bombs or released during subcritical nuclear incidents.

Read more: Friday essay: the silence of Ediacara, the shadow of uranium

There have been a few documented instances of such incidents. These include the B-52 accidents that resulted in the conventional detonation of thermonuclear weapons near Palomares in Spain in 1966, and Thule in Greenland in 1968, and the explosion of an armed nuclear missile and subsequent fire at the McGuire Air Force Base in the USA in 1960.

Thousands of active nuclear weapons are still held by nations around the world today. The Maralinga legacy shows the world can ill afford incidents involving nuclear particles.

– ref. We sliced open radioactive particles from soil in South Australia and found they may be leaking plutonium – https://theconversation.com/we-sliced-open-radioactive-particles-from-soil-in-south-australia-and-found-they-may-be-leaking-plutonium-161277

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, La Trobe University

It’s been well documented that there’s a significant level of vaccine hesitancy in the Australian community at the moment. This appears to be a particular issue among adults over 50 concerning the AstraZeneca vaccine, for which this group is now eligible.

Hesitancy over the AstraZeneca vaccine, likely to be stemming largely from the very small risk of blood clots, is leading some people to ask: can’t I just wait and get the Pfizer vaccine later?

It didn’t help things when federal health minister Greg Hunt said yesterday there will be enough supply of the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) later in the year for anyone concerned about the AstraZeneca shot. Hunt has since pedalled back on his remarks.

Despite the mixed messaging, you shouldn’t wait for a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine later. There are a number of benefits to getting the AstraZeneca jab now.

Thinking about the blood clot risk

Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), an unusual blood clotting disorder, has been associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

It’s important to emphasise it’s not unreasonable to have concerns about the risk of a potentially serious side effect from the AstraZeneca vaccine, or any other vaccine. The challenge is in understanding the magnitude of this risk, putting this risk into perspective, and then weighing up the risks versus the benefits before making a decision.

The difficulty is your brain plays a variety of tricks on you when you try to make sense of risks like this. For example, we have a tendency to perceive the risks of very rare adverse outcomes (such as TTS) as being greater than they are.

We also tend to be more concerned about negative consequences that may arise as a result of our actions than our inactions. That is, we’re generally more worried about a potential adverse outcome from taking a vaccine than any adverse outcome that may result from not taking it. This of course isn’t logical, but is another one of the errors we make in processing risks.

Read more: I’m over 50 and can now get my COVID vaccine. Is the AstraZeneca vaccine safe? Does it work? What else do I need to know?

In terms of assessing the risk of TTS associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine for over 50s, we’ve always known the risk is very low.

In Australia it’s estimated this syndrome occurs in six per million people vaccinated, on average, with the risk even lower for those over 50. This is about the same as your risk of serious injury from being struck by lightning in a year in Australia.

Importantly, as we’ve got better at detecting and treating this condition, the likelihood of severe outcomes from TTS have come down considerably. So the rare risk of serious illness from this syndrome looks to be even rarer than we first thought.

To put TTS into perspective, it’s also useful to note we see around 50 blood clots unrelated to TTS every day in Australia.

Weighing the risks against the benefits

The benefits of getting the AstraZeneca vaccine are considerable for over 50s, from both an individual and a community perspective.

When opting to get a vaccine, you’re protecting yourself against the future risk of infection and possible severe illness. For over 50s who contract COVID the risk of severe illness and death is very real. We’re also learning many people who get COVID-19 suffer with ongoing and sometimes debilitating symptoms, a phenomenon called “long COVID”.

Another factor which may be driving hesitancy around the AstraZeneca vaccine is the perception the Pfizer vaccine works better. But the most recent data suggest any difference in the performance of these vaccines may be smaller than we originally believed.

Although phase 3 clinical trial data indicated the AstraZeneca vaccine had an efficacy of around 70%, new real-world data from the United Kingdom tells us it could be as much as 85%-90% effective in protecting against symptomatic COVID-19.

This is positive news and not far off the 95% figure for the Pfizer vaccine seen in clinical trials and in the real world.

And apart from effectively protecting against severe illness and death from the original strain, the AstraZeneca vaccine appears to work almost as well in protecting against more severe outcomes for variants of concern, such as the UK variant. Early signs also suggest the vaccine is working quite well to reduce transmission of the virus.

It’s also important to understand — and this applies to all age groups — that we’re getting vaccinated for the health of the community as a whole.

Although a great deal of the success or failure of the vaccination program has been framed in terms of reaching herd immunity, we don’t need to reach a certain threshold for the community to reap benefits. Every vaccine delivered makes a difference as the greater the proportion of the population vaccinated, the more difficult it is for the virus to spread.

As we’ve seen in Taiwan in recent weeks, being complacent about COVID is flirting with danger.

Even though we don’t have community transmission of COVID in Australia now, and we may feel safe and secure in this climate, we need to remember things could change very quickly.

Read more: A balancing act between benefits and risks: making sense of the latest vaccine news

Get the jab

There’s really no logical reason for someone over 50 to wait for an alternative to the AstraZeneca vaccine, like Pfizer or Moderna. If you do choose to wait, there’s no guarantee when any alternative might be available, and in the interim you risk leaving yourself vulnerable.

By stepping up to get your vaccine as soon as you can, you protect yourself against severe COVID and make a significant contribution to putting this pandemic behind us, including getting Australia closer to opening up international borders.

– ref. I’m over 50 and hesitant about the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine. Should I wait for Pfizer? – https://theconversation.com/im-over-50-and-hesitant-about-the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-should-i-wait-for-pfizer-161283

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Davis, Senior Lecturer in Wildlife Ecology, Edith Cowan University

It’s the smell that hits you first. The scent of urine and decomposing bodies. Then you notice other signs: scuttles and squeaks, small dead bodies leaking blood, tails sticking out of hubcaps.

If you’ve lived through a mouse plague, you’ve seen this, and smelled the stench of mice dying of poison baits.

As a desperate measure to help combat the mouse plague devastating rural communities across New South Wales, the state government yesterday secured 5,000 litres of bromadiolone. This is a bait that’s usually illegal to roll out at the proposed scale.

This is a bad idea. While bromadiolone effectively kills mice, it also travels up the food chain to poison predators who eat the mice, and other species. And these predators, from wedge-tailed eagles to goannas, are coming out in droves to feast on their abundant prey.

When your prey is everywhere

Animal plagues in Australia are fuelled by the “boom and bust” of rainfall.

We have natural, flood-driven population explosions of the native long-haired rat, with accompanying booms of letter-winged kites, their predator. We also have locust plagues when the conditions are right, leading to antechinus or mice plagues which eat the locusts.

Since at least the late 1800s, we’ve had terrible plagues of the introduced house mouse (Mus musculus). But rarely has it been this bad, with conditions currently seeming worse than the last plague in 2011, which caused over A$200 million in crop damage alone.

High numbers of birds of prey — nankeen kestrels, black-shouldered kites and barn owls — are often reported feasting on plague mice.

Snakes, goannas, native carnivores such as quolls, and feral cats and foxes, also take advantage of the abundant food. Pets, especially cats and some dogs, are highly likely to consume mice under these conditions, too.

Poisoning the food web

Laying out poison baits is one way people try to end mouse infestations and plagues. So-called “anticoagulant rodenticides” are divided into first and second generations, based on when they were first synthesised and the differences in potency.

Second generation anticoagulant rodenticides have higher toxicities than first generation, and are lethal after a single feed. First generation rodenticides, on the other hand, require rodents to feed on them for consecutive days to be lethal.

But mouse-eating predators are highly exposed to second generation rodenticides. For most animal species, the lethal doses of rodenticide aren’t yet known.

A scientific review from 2018 documented the poisoning of 31 bird, five mammal and one reptile species. Second generation aniticoaugulant rodenticides were implicated in the death of these animals.

Our research from 2020 found urban reptiles are highly exposed to second generation rodenticides, too. This includes mouse-eating snakes, called dugites, which had up to five different rodent poisons in them.

We also found poisons in frog-eating tiger snakes, and in omnivorous bobtail skinks which eat fruit, vegetation and snails. This is even more concerning because it shows how second generation rodenticides can saturate the entire foodweb, affecting everything from slugs to fish.

Bromadiolone is particularly dangerous, even to humans

The NSW government secured bromadiolone baits as part of its $50 million mouse plague support package for regional communities.

Five thousand litres of the poison can treat around 95 tonnes of grain, and the government will provide it for free to primary producers once federal authorities approve its use.

Bromadiolone is usually restricted to use in and around buildings. But given the widespread impacts on wildlife, using bromadiolone at the proposed scale will do more harm than good.

Past research on bromadiolone has shown residues persist for up to 135 days in the carcasses of voles (another rodent species). In international studies, bromadiolone has been found in the livers of a host of birds of prey, including a range of owl species, red kites, sparrowhawks and golden eagles.

And it’s not just a problem for wildlife, humans are also at risk of exposure. For example, we can get exposed from eating eggs from chickens that feed on poisoned mice, or more directly from eating other animals that may have ingested poisoned mice.

A 2013 study looked at chicken eggs for human consumption, and detected bromadiolone in eggs between five and 14 days after the chicken ingested the poison. It’s not yet clear how many of these eggs we’d have to eat for us to get sick.

So what are the alternatives?

There are highly effective first generation rodenticides that provide viable solutions for managing mouse plagues. They may take a little longer to kill mice, but the upshot is they don’t stick around in the environment. A 2020 study found house mice in Perth didn’t have genetic resistance to first generation rodenticides, which suggests they’re effectively lethal.

Another approach has been to use zinc phosphide, a poison which is unlikely to secondarily poison other animals that eat the poisoned mice. However, zinc phosphide is still extremely toxic and will kill sheep, cows, pets and even humans if directly eaten.

Rolling out double-strength zinc phosphide may be the lesser of the evils in causing secondary poisoning, but only if used very carefully.

And another way to help control the mouse plague is to limit food resources for mice on farms. Farmers can minimise grain on ground, and Australia should invest in research for grain storage facilities that are less permeable to mice.

Mouse plagues are a regular cycle in Australia. Natural predators not only help create healthy, natural ecosystems, but also they help with mouse control. Second generation rodenticides will only destroy and weaken the predator populations we need to help us combat the next plague.

– ref. Mouse plague: bromadiolone will obliterate mice, but it’ll poison eagles, snakes and owls, too – https://theconversation.com/mouse-plague-bromadiolone-will-obliterate-mice-but-itll-poison-eagles-snakes-and-owls-too-160995

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laini Burton, Senior Lecturer, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University

From its humble beginnings in 1956, when just seven nations participated, Eurovision has grown to epic proportions.

Known for its kitschy mix of Euro-pop, bizarre choreography and hammy performances, an estimated 182 million viewers tuned in to watch the competition in 2019. This year, 39 acts seek international glory.

Although the competition centres on the music, the costumes rival for attention. They are a kind of language, embodying the cultural values and the expressive agency of the artist. The Eurovision costume is a performer in its own right, and so here are ten of the best (or most head-scratching) costumes from Eurovision history.

Conchita Wurst in gold

Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst won the coveted prize in 2014, wearing an elegant gold brocade, floor-length bodycon gown teamed with a perfectly manicured beard and glossy, long hair.

In choosing a dress which hugged to her curves, Wurst reached the high glamour of performers such as Celine Dion (who won Eurovision for Switzerland in 1988), while the juxtaposition of the beard announced her status as a genderqueer artist.

On the world stage, Wurst was seen to break ground for others to fearlessly follow in her footsteps.

The demonic Lordi

The demonic costumes and corpse-like masks worn by Finland’s heavy metal band Lordi were wholly embraced by the crowds, resulting in them taking out the 2006 title.

The ghoulish prosthetics and Kiss-inspired costumes included fur, studs, chains, claws and horns, capturing the spirit of heavy metal — it also catered to Finland’s healthy appetite for the music genre which thrives in the country.

Silver star Verka Serduchka

For even unsuccessful contestants there is the opportunity for costumes to leave a lasting legacy.

Ukrainian performer Verka Serduchka did just that in 2007, donning a disco ball skullcap, matching tie and metallic trench while shadowed by silver-clad backup dancers.

Like Conchita Wurst, Verka Serduchka is a drag persona: Andriy Mykhailovych Danylko’s flamboyant middle-aged woman, where a full-bosom was as much as the costume as a headpiece topped by a gigantic silver star.

Read more: A song to unite? The gender politics of Eurovision still divide

Aliona Moon’s shifting canvas

Moldovan singer, Aliona Moon, stood on a rising platform in a five metre long gown on which projections transformed the fabric from cosmic nebula to a flaming pyre.

The dress itself was fairly unremarkable, but the use of digital projection recast Moon’s costume from dress to canvas. The projections shifted with the song’s tempo, adding drama and suspense as it reached a crescendo.

A very messy Wig Wam

For their 2005 entry, Norwegian outfit Wig Wam presented a bewildering vision of glam rock meets camp cowboy.

The lead singer’s costume gave a clear nod to music icons of the 70s and 80s: think Suzi Quatro’s Can The Can, David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust or Alice Cooper’s School’s Out. The crotch-hugging silver spandex suit flared hard at the legs and scooped low on the chest, bearing the requisite rocker’s hairy chest.

Luckily for Wig Wam, all eyes stayed on the lead singer, since his fellow band member’s costumes were an incoherent, incomprehensible mix of rock fashion genres and decades.

The sexy Svetlana Loboda

Ukraine’s 2009 artist Svetlana Loboda performed in a burlesque costume as she was flipped around the stage by buff, gyrating, scantily dressed gladiators.

Burlesque, known for its eroticism and use in cabaret, was the perfect match for Loboda’s song “Be My Valentine (Anti-Crisis Girl)”, but Loboda and her gladiators were flanked by two statuesque Marie Antoinette-meets-Lady Liberty figures in silver lamé — perplexing bookends to a performance that was nothing short of chaotic.

Buranovskiye Babushki’s traditional dress

Eurovision is not just a competition for the young and sequinned. In 2012, Buranovskiye Babushki endearingly sang a mixture of folk and pop in traditional Udmurt dress.

The Udmurt people are an ethnic group from central Russia, and their traditional dress combines detailed embroidery with vibrant red fabrics in a tradition that reaches back centuries.

Over the course of Eurovision’s history, the Buranovskiye Babushki were perhaps the most faithful example of national dress — and their costumes remained unchanged by their Eurovision fame.

Dschinghis Khan is not Mongolian

The implied connections to Genghis Khan from Germany’s cringe-worthy 1979 entry, Dschinghis Khan left the audience scratching their heads.

It only becomes more bizarre when you realise the costume approximates nothing close to Mongolian dress.

Instead, Dschinghis Khan wore a bolero-style jacket covered by a golden cape and matching pants, topped by a rhinestone crown. A discerning eye might also catch the cavalier boots carrying the singer around the stage — another unlikely item of dress in the early Mongol empire.

The baffling Dustin the Turkey

Representing Ireland in 2008 was Dustin the Turkey. Almost improbably, the DJ — a Muppet-like bird with a large beak and a sequined jacket – was upstaged by the dancers’ deeply confusing assemblage of lamé, feathered headdresses and loincloths.

The only relationship you could glean from this frankly baffling arrangement was the colours of Ireland’s national flag.

The best of 2021: TIX

So far, the 2021 competition has not disappointed. Norway’s artist TIX combined enormous feathered wings with neck-to-toe sequins, headband and aviator sunglasses — in addition to an array of chains, a beastly dance crew of horned devils, pyrotechnics and the obligatory light show.

Whether you consider Eurovision a cultural cringe or you remain an unabashed die-hard fan, after 65 years it remains a true costume spectacle.

Read more: Australia is out of Eurovision but don’t write off filmed performances: they could make for a greener, more global contest

– ref. Much more than music: 10 Eurovision costumes that stole the show – https://theconversation.com/much-more-than-music-10-eurovision-costumes-that-stole-the-show-161186

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Billingsley, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, UNSW

While details are sketchy, Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire. That is good news for everyone involved. The dying can hopefully end and further destruction be avoided — at least for now.

Both sides can also claim victory. Hamas can claim to have defended the interests of Palestinians in Jerusalem in contrast to its rivals in the Palestinian Authority, while Israel’s embattled prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, can claim significant military and political achievements.

But that is about as far as the good news goes. As the smoke clears, the vast devastation of Gaza becomes apparent and the slow and frustrating process of rebuilding must resume.

The economy of Gaza has long suffered under an Israeli blockade and has been struggling to rebuild after the last war between the two sides in 2014.

The devastation caused by the current Israeli air attacks has added massively to Gaza’s infrastructure problems and vast amounts of foreign aid will be necessary over the coming years. It is not clear who will provide the funding. The Gulf states, especially Qatar, can be expected to provide considerable assistance, but aid from the European Union and elsewhere is more problematic.

Peace process on ice

Equally as important, there seems to be no interest in reviving a peace process that has been effectively moribund since the Clinton administration in the US in the late 1990s.

The fighting does not seem to have inspired any desire on the part of the Israelis or their steadfast allies in the US to break the stalemate and pursue a solution to this long-standing problem.

The Biden administration has continued the approach of its predecessors in working to monopolise and control any attempt to promote a settlement of the dispute. Its goal is to prevent other actors, including the UN Security Council, where Russia and China have a voice, from playing a part in helping Israelis and Palestinians to establish a basis for cohabitation.

Read more: Biden’s plan to revive Iran talks could calm the Middle East – but on Israel he and Trump largely agree

The US still enjoys a significant military, economic and political advantage over Russia and China in the Middle East based on its long engagement with the region, though its standing has been in decline in recent years. And Israel, in particular, is suspicious of the motives of the other states.

As a result, the US remains the only power capable of bringing change to the current stalemate. This makes Biden’s approach both disappointing and puzzling.

Despite Netanyahu’s bravado in publicly defying Biden’s requests for an end to the fighting, the sudden achievement of Israeli objectives in Gaza underscores the continued and significant influence the US has over Israeli governments.

No one is suggesting the US will abandon its solid support for Israel.

But the nature of Biden’s response to the fighting has been effectively to endorse Netanyahu’s approach, which has been to promote the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and refuse to contemplate any solution to the dispute, be it one state or two states.

Biden’s handling of this latest outbreak of violence has effectively seen the US treating Netanyahu’s and Israel’s interests as the same. While the US does not want to interfere directly in Israeli politics, its close identification with Netanyahu does little to encourage hopes for progress.

Hamas’s appeal likely strengthened

It should be remembered violence had been roiling the West Bank for weeks — including Jerusalem — before spilling over to Gaza.

The ceasefire seems to ignore that aspect of the current crisis, which could be reignited when the Israeli Supreme Court eventually releases its decision on the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.

West Bank Palestinians may be powerless to prevent the evictions and Hamas may be less inclined to intervene again for some time, however, the frustrations and tensions have not gone away and can be expected to boil over again.

While the Americans have designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, it is seen quite differently in Palestine. It comfortably won the last Palestinian elections in 2006 and was expected to win again in the elections scheduled for this month before they were cancelled by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Read more: Israel-Palestinian violence: why East Jerusalem has become a flashpoint in a decades-old conflict

Hamas had just conducted internal elections in preparation for the national vote and, despite the pain and suffering of this latest conflict, it has reinforced the organisation’s image among Palestinians as the one group that understands their concerns and is ready to defend their interests.

Hamas’s strength extends to the West Bank and to Israeli Palestinians. It reflects the great desire for change among young Palestinians and their frustrations with the leadership of Abbas and his party, Fatah.

One of the consequences of the ill-fated Oslo Accords was the Palestine Authority pledged to maintain security in the areas it controlled, which is currently limited to parts of the West Bank.

As a result, the authority is seen by many Palestinians as working for Israeli interests rather than the concerns of Palestinians. It is also seen as deeply corrupt.

A ceasefire … but for how long?

The unrest inside Israel over the past week highlights how Israeli Palestinians are equally frustrated with their status, a concern that has grown with Netanyahu’s promotion of the Jewish nature of Israel — as they see it, at their expense.

The shock to Jewish Israelis of the widespread violence between the two communities in many Israeli cities, as well as the violence in the occupied territories, highlights the need for a serious commitment by all parties to come together to seek a solution to the relationship between Palestinians and Jews.

Such a prospect remains possible, albeit quite dim at this point. When then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, began working toward a peace deal in the 1990s, they inspired dramatic changes in attitudes among Israelis and Palestinians. Suddenly, peaceful coexistence seemed possible.

Circumstances have, of course, changed dramatically since then, but that is no reason to abandon hope and do nothing.

Like previous ceasefires between Israel and Hamas, however, this one will hold as long as it suits both parties. And there is nothing to suggest the agreement contains any more substantial elements which might lead to a settlement of their long-term conflict.

The 2014 ceasefire lasted seven years but during that time, nothing was done to build on it. We can expect a similar lack of action this time and without such action, it is only a matter of time before violence breaks out again.

Read more: As the Palestinian minority takes to the streets, Israel is having its own Black Lives Matter moment

– ref. Israel and the Palestinians celebrate a ceasefire — but will anything change? – https://theconversation.com/israel-and-the-palestinians-celebrate-a-ceasefire-but-will-anything-change-161348

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Toole, Professor of International Health, Burnet Institute

The opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics is about nine weeks away. And yet many of the world’s athletes are not satisfied with the COVID-19 precautions organisers have planned.

The World Players Association has identified a number of measures the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has proposed it says fail to meet best practice standards.

For example, athletes are concerned they would have to share small, poorly ventilated rooms, and demanded a review and modification of ventilation systems.

The athletes were responding to the IOC’s second “playbook”, a guide for athletes and officials on how to have a “safe and successful Games”.

Athletes also criticised plans to use daily saliva antigen tests for athletes rather than PCR tests of nose and throat swabs to test for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Several evaluations of these antigen tests have revealed they sometimes give a “false negative” result, meaning some infected people are not diagnosed.

Read more: For now, the Tokyo Olympics will go ahead. But at what cost?

Other problems the athletes identified included: the lack of sport-specific measures, such as for team sports; athletes having to sign risk waivers and the provision of inadequate insurance; the requirement athletes bring their own masks; insufficient detail about how infected athletes would be treated; no mention of mental health-care provisions; and lack of precise physical distancing measures in dining areas, gyms and locker rooms.

The IOC’s playbook stresses athletes need two approved tests on two separate days within 96 hours of departure, one of which needs to be within 72 hours of departure. All athletes are tested on arrival and daily while in Tokyo using saliva antigen tests.

It then emphasises physical distancing, mask wearing and hygiene. Athletes must not use public transport. All athletes will have a nominated COVID-19 liaison officer, who will receive pre-Games training.

Athletes and officials do not have to be vaccinated. The IOC president has said he expects 80% of athletes will be fully vaccinated, although the source of that figure is unclear.

This still leaves potentially thousands of unprotected participants, more than enough to fuel transmission. Some countries such as Tanzania, whose long-distance runners have won medals in the past, have not vaccinated a single person.

Read more: Even if Olympians are jumping the COVID vaccine queue, that’s not necessarily wrong. A bioethicist explains

Will the Olympics be safe?

In early February, I wrote an opinion piece that said holding the Olympics “defies public health logic”. I have not changed my mind.

Challenges include a surge of COVID-19 cases in Japan, the likelihood many athletes, officials and media will be unvaccinated, and the Japanese public is against it.

Japan is experiencing its fourth wave of infections — the most severe since the pandemic began. The current seven-day moving average of 5,655 daily cases is 145 times higher than when the Games were postponed in March 2020. The host city is reporting almost 1,000 cases a day.

Japan’s coronavirus testing rate is one of the lowest in the OECD so the official figures may be underestimates. Only about 107 per 1,000 people in Japan have been tested compared with 689 per 1,000 in Australia.

Some hospitals, such as in Osaka, are overwhelmed with severe cases and critical care beds are full.

‘Lockdown lite’ and slow vaccine rollout

There are two main reasons why this wave of COVID-19 infections may not be controlled by July. The first is the “lockdown lite” approach taken by the government and the second is the slow rollout of vaccines.

Although much of Japan, including Tokyo and Osaka, is under a state of emergency, there are constitutional constraints to the government imposing a national lockdown. The country relies on voluntary restraint rather than mandating restrictions. Restaurants and bars are asked to close at a certain hour but this cannot be enforced by law.

Only 4% of people in Japan have received one vaccine dose and just under 2% are fully vaccinated. While the pace is picking up, it is unlikely more than 10% of the Japanese population will be fully vaccinated by the Games.

Although there will be little mingling between athletes and the public, there may be a high risk of the virus spreading among Japanese spectators in stadiums and public transport. That’s if spectators will be allowed to attend.

Finally, one of the strongest arguments against going ahead is that the Japanese public is against it. The latest opinion poll shows only 24% support the Olympics and Paralympics going ahead this year.

In one of the strongest statements so far, the 6,000-member Tokyo Medical Practitioners Association called for the Olympics to be cancelled in a letter sent to the prime minister, Tokyo governor, and the head of the Olympics organising committee.

About the best we can expect is a series of events in silent, empty stadiums, disrupted team-sport events and isolated athletes locked in their dormitories.

The worst would be a super-spreading event in the athletes’ village and spikes of cases in many countries when athletes return home.

Read more: Why are Japan’s leaders clinging to their Olympic hopes? Their political fortunes depend on it

– ref. Olympic athletes speak up: current COVID plans aren’t enough to keep them safe – https://theconversation.com/olympic-athletes-speak-up-current-covid-plans-arent-enough-to-keep-them-safe-161268

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ran Porat, Affiliate Researcher, The Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University

Despite some conspiratorial claims to the contrary, long-serving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not looking or hoping for a major conflict with the Palestinians to help him hold onto power.

To the contrary, over the past few years he has attempted to soothe Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, European Union and other powers. While warning Hamas not to test Israel’s resolve, Netanyahu never tried to remove it from power in Gaza.

Instead, he made sure Israel maintained the set of unofficial agreements with Hamas (known in Hebrew as “hasdarah”) that have led to relative quiet. Netanyahu also allowed Qatar to transfer money to Gazans for infrastructure projects and, until the recent conflict broke out, limited the Israel Defence Force’s responses to the never-ending trickle of rockets fired from Gaza.

As tensions started escalating in Jerusalem in recent weeks, Netanyahu even warned his political ally, extremist national religious leader Itamar Ben Gvir, that his provocative makeshift “parliamentary office” in the flashpoint neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah could result in rockets from Gaza.

It is true that before the current outbreak of violence, Netanyahu’s political future was looking very bleak. He was unable to form a coalition after the March 23 election, when he failed for the fourth time in two years to garner enough votes for his party, Likud, and allied right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties.

An ideologically diverse group of parties opposing Netanyahu — the no-Bibi camp — looked to be progressing slowly but surely towards a government supported by Ra’am (United Arab List), a conservative Islamist Arab party.

But the massive rocket barrages from Gaza — along with the Israeli airstrikes and mob violence that ensued in several Israeli cities — pushed the already fragile relations between the Zionist and non-Zionist elements of the no-Bibi camp past the point of no return.

While Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas has called for reconciliation and sought continued coalition discussions to support a no-Bibi governing coalition, others in his party pushed for a negotiations freeze.

The final straw for the no-Bibi camp’s hopes was the decision by the head of the right-wing Yamina party, Naftali Bennett, to back away from a Ra’am-supported government.

Yamina immediately resumed consultations with the Likud, and Netanyahu will now try and win over Ra’am and/or persuade a few parliament members in the no-Bibi camp to defect to his ranks. On the other side, leader of the no-Bibi camp is still trying to at least block Netanyahu’s attempts at forming a government.

At this stage, another round of elections is a likely outcome.

Rallying behind Bibi (and Gantz)

And so it happened the conflict has played into Netanyahu’s hand. Being the seasoned and skilled politician he is, Netanyahu is certain to manoeuvre the changed political situation for his own benefit.

In times of war and instability, the Israeli public tends to rally behind a strong leader. Netanyahu is projecting such an image when he promises Hamas will pay a huge price for attacking Israel.

Read more: When it comes to media reporting on Israel-Palestine, there is nowhere to hide

Both Netanyahu and his defence minister, former coalition partner and bitter rival Benny Gantz, gave the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) the green light to execute a detailed and extensive attack plan that has been years in the making.

Militarily speaking, the army’s tactics have been resoundingly successful. Many high- to mid-level commanders of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) group have been eliminated. Widespread damage has also been done to Hamas’ attack tunnels, weapons depots, naval forces, bases and more.

Casualties on the Israeli side have been relatively low, thanks to the Iron Dome defence system intercepting 90% of rockets from Gaza. The cost to the Palestinians due to the disparity in power between the two sides, however, has been tremendous. More than 200 people have died, including women and children, and there has been wide-scale destruction of houses, services and infrastructure.

The Zionist Israeli public are cheering the IDF, with the expectation the campaign will leave Hamas reluctant to initiate another round of conflict anytime soon. Many of Israel’s Arab citizens — about 20% of the population — on the other hand strongly protested against the military operation in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s staying power is also partially explained by the rightward shift among many Israelis in recent years, fuelled by their disillusionment over the perceived failure of the Oslo peace process.

Many believe the bold attempt at peace went down in smoke in the second intifada in the early 2000s, when terrorists from various Palestinian factions committed suicide bombings of a previously unthinkable scale, killing more than a thousand Israelis. More than 3,000 Palestinians were also killed in the violence.

No end game in sight

Despite a ceasefire, the tragedy is neither side presents an end game to work towards. Israel’s next government will likely be right-wing, either under Netanyahu or someone else. Over the past few decades, such governments have leaned towards managing, not resolving, the conflict.

On the Palestinian side, everyone is waiting for the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, 86-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, to exit the stage. Seen as increasingly corrupt and with no legitimacy to govern, he offers no vision for a solution of the conflict.

Read more: Israel elections: Netanyahu may hold on to power, but political paralysis will remain

Hamas, PIJ and their allies remain staunchly committed to fundamentalist religious ideologies that reject Israel’s right to exist, with zero willingness to compromise.

The best both sides may strive for is another set of precarious understandings on the limits of mutual harm. Gaza will need years and heavy investments to recuperate from the damage. Psychological wounds on both sides are deep and bleeding. Healing is a long way off.

– ref. Benjamin Netanyahu was on the brink of political defeat. Then, another conflict broke out in Gaza – https://theconversation.com/benjamin-netanyahu-was-on-the-brink-of-political-defeat-then-another-conflict-broke-out-in-gaza-161087

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Johan Lidberg, Associate Professor, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University

When the Australian Federal Police (AFP) raided journalists and media organisations two years ago, it showed the balance between national security and journalism is severely out of whack in Australia.

To address this, a Senate inquiry into press freedom was launched. Its report, released this week, made 17 recommendations — many of which go much further than previous inquiries into media freedom.

This week’s report acknowledges, across party lines, the imbalance between national security and public interest journalism in Australia.

The ABC reported this week the Senate inquiry found “government agencies should have to prove ‘real and serious’ harm caused by the publication of classified intelligence and information before a criminal investigation can be launched”.

The Senate inquiry’s report said:

Without such a requirement, the provisions would be susceptible to overuse, misuse or even abuse. In particular, the absence of an express harm requirement can lead to circumstances where a journalist is prosecuted for a very minor or trivial ‘dealing’ with classified information.

When giving evidence to the inquiry, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) was asked to provide any examples of when a publication had demonstrably harmed Australian national security. ASIO could not produce a single example.

The report acknowledges the attorney-general is reviewing the powers granted to our intelligence and security agencies and the effect they have on media coverage of national security.

But that’s not all. The report also acknowledges a point made by several submissions that Australia stands out in the international community when it comes to the powers granted to its intelligence and security agencies.

It quotes a submission from myself and Denis Muller, a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, asking why Australia is the only country among mature liberal democratic countries

[…] that sees a need to equip its security and intelligence agencies with powers that extend to issuing and executing search warrants against individual journalists and media organisations justified by hunting down public interest whistleblowers in the name of national security?

More pointed and urgent language

This week’s Senate inquiry recommendations follow a similar report handed down last year by the powerful Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS). That committee also recognised, across party lines, that an imbalance between national security and media freedom — favouring security and secrecy — had grown since the 2001 September 11 terror attacks in the United States.

However, the PJCIS report recommended what some committee members described as the bare minimum to address the imbalance.

This week’s Senate inquiry report is different. It takes into the account the PJCIS recommendations, but its language is more pointed and urgent.

Read more: Security committee recommends bare minimum of reform to protect press freedom

Freedom of Information and ‘a culture of transparency’

The report points out that Australia’s federal Freedom of Information (FOI) laws don’t deliver on their objective of facilitating independent access to government-held information.

It recommends the government works with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) to promote a culture of transparency.

It’s a noble sentiment. The problem is consecutive federal governments, since 2013, have starved the OAIC of resources. There was money in the recent federal budget for a separate freedom of information commissioner operating out of the OAIC. However, overall OAIC resources remain too small to enable them to do their transparency advocacy work properly.

It would also help if our intelligence and national security agencies were actually covered by the FOI Act, which they currently are not. This is another way Australia sets itself apart compared with most other mature liberal democracies.

A well-functioning FOI system would also make journalists less dependent on whistleblowers.

The report focuses considerable attention on the plight of whistleblowers. Instead of being thanked for their courageous disclosures of corruption and maladministration, our current legal framework allows governments to pursue and threaten them with disproportionately long jail terms and fines.

The report recommends thorough reforms of our public interest disclosure laws to achieve what they were supposed to do (but currently do not): protect whistleblowers properly.

Dissenting views and a proposed Media Freedom Act

The government’s senators who joined this inquiry appended a dissenting view pointing out they could not agree with all the recommendations, given some of them were already being acted on based on the PJCIS report.

The Greens appended a section suggesting a Media Freedom Act. This act was suggested by a number of submissions to the inquiry.

The act would address the lack of a Bill of Rights in the Australian Constitution safeguarding freedom of expression and media freedom. It would work as a counterbalance when the government considered any legislation that would impede media freedom and independence.

It’s a pity the committee could not agree on this recommendation across party lines. It would have been the most effective and comprehensive way to deal with the issues at hand.

Read more: Australia needs a Media Freedom Act. Here’s how it could work

A somewhat jaded view

It was good to see some relative newcomers submitting and giving evidence to the inquiry. However, old-timers like myself and many colleagues who have been making the same points for the past 20 years hold little hope that federal governments led by any of the major parties will walk the talk.

This somewhat jaded view is aptly justified by revelations that in 2018-19, about half of FOI requests for non-personal information were not finalised within the time limit. Despite that, Home Affairs department secretary Michael Pezzullo described the FOI section’s efforts as “commendable”.

There remains a troubling imbalance between government secrecy and journalists’ ability to do their job as independent watchdogs.

The federal government now has a comprehensive blueprint on how to become more open and transparent on all levels, including national security.

It’s time to walk the talk — but I’m not holding my breath.

Read more: Explainer: what did the High Court find in the Annika Smethurst v AFP case?

– ref. It’s time for the government to walk the talk on media freedom in Australia – https://theconversation.com/its-time-for-the-government-to-walk-the-talk-on-media-freedom-in-australia-161342

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

Michelle Grattan discusses the week in politics with University of Canberra Associate Professor Caroline Fisher.

In the wake of last week’s budget, this week the pair discuss the April unemployment figures, the latest in the vaccine rollout, and the coronavirus situation in India – and the Australian citiziens stranded there.

Also discussed is the government’s plan to build a $600 million gas power plant, and how that accords with Liberal philosophy and the Hunter by-election.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on vaccine hesitancy, international borders, and unemployment – https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-vaccine-hesitancy-international-borders-and-unemployment-161346

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bartos, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

You can tell a lot about a country by the way its government budgets.

The New Zealand budget was delivered on 20th May. In terms of overall economic policy settings it mirrors Australia’s.

New Zealand has remained largely free of COVID-19, with no major outbreaks.

The Lowy Institute believes New Zealand has done better at containing the pandemic, but, like Australia, experienced major economic disruptions and a big increase in government debt as a result of its fight against the pandemic.

Like Australia, New Zealand’s unemployment rate grew rapidly following lockdowns and restrictions but has now fallen to 4.7%, taking it even lower than Australia’s 5.5%. The budget forecasts are strong.

Both countries are investing in a vaccine rollout.

So on the surface there are similarities. The differences emerge in how the budgets are framed and what they try to deliver.

Wellbeing is an explicit goal

This is New Zealand’s third “Wellbeing Budget”, explicitly framed around improving the wellbeing of New Zealanders.

Much of Treasurer Grant Robertson’s budget speech was devoted to this theme.

It has become of central importance to budgeting in New Zealand, required by legislation.

There is plenty of room for debate about whether New Zealand has chosen the best ways to improve wellbeing, whether targets are being met, or whether key priorities such as children’s wellbeing or mental health are being addressed adequately.

What framing the budget around wellbeing does is encourage such conversations.

In Australia there is debate about the economic impact of budget measures.

Read more: NZ Budget 2021: women left behind despite the focus on well-being

In New Zealand that happens too, but there is also debate about the impacts of budget measures on wellbeing.

A good case can be made that the increased spending on children and on mental health in New Zealand’s 2021 budget is in part due to public discussion about these aspects of wellbeing following previous budgets.

From goals flow decisions

Both the Australian and New Zealand budgets deliver a large economic stimulus through increased government spending.

The difference is in New Zealand the stimulus comes largely from a massive increase in benefit payments.

By contrast, in Australia the budget resisted calls to increase social security payments above the poverty line, toughened eligibility tests, and confirmed that last year’s increase in JobSeeker would not continue (to be fair to the government, it had always said the increase would be temporary).

Read more: The true cost of the government’s changes to JobSeeker is incalculable. It’s as if it didn’t learn from Robodebt

To some extent the difference is explained by politics — New Zealand has a Labour government, Australia a conservative-leaning Coalition government.

But it’s not the whole reason — a wellbeing frame for a budget will inevitably lead to a focus on improving social welfare payments, because this is where the greatest gains in wellbeing can be made per dollar of spending.

This is straightforward maths — the same amount of money will deliver a much greater percentage benefit if sent to people in poverty than it will if it is sent to people who are already well off.

Payments matter

Income is not the only driver of wellbeing, but it makes a difference.

As the apocryphal quote attributed to various US entertainers goes “I’ve been rich. I’ve been poor. Rich is better”.

Lifting people out of poverty goes a long way to improving wellbeing.

The same applies to investment in addressing entrenched disadvantage. In a striking contrast to Australia, the New Zealand budget targets Maori disadvantage.

The Australian treasurer’s budget speech did not mention Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. The New Zealand treasurer’s speech not only included numerous references to Maori and Pacific people but in parts incorporated phrases in te reo, the Maori language.

Being First Nation matters

Cross country comparisons are dangerous — mostly differences arise not from politics but history and institutions.

In New Zealand the influence of the Treaty of Waitangi is profound, and New Zealand has a far larger Maori population as a percentage of the total than Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have in Australia.

Nevertheless, if Australia had a New Zealand-style wellbeing approach to budgeting there would be a greater focus on addressing First Nations issues for the simple reason that the needs of First Nations peoples are acute.

Read more: Comprehensive Indigenous health care in prisons requires federal funding of community-controlled services

As usual, there are programs and announcements about First Nations peoples in Australia’s budget but they have nothing like the centrality that concerns of Maori people have in New Zealand’s Budget.

If we were to take a lead from New Zealand and apply a wellbeing lens to the Australian budget, how would it stack up?

Measured by New Zealand standards…

In many respects Australia would fare well.

Spending on aged care, improving mental health, childcare and preschool were big ticket items. They are all major contributors to improving wellbeing.

Other measures like tax cuts, a gas fired recovery or strengthening mutual obligation requirements; perhaps not so much.

The New Zealand budget identified three goals for the government’s term of office:

• keep New Zealanders safe from COVID-19

• accelerate recovery and rebuild

• tackle “foundational challenges”, in particular, housing affordability, climate change and child wellbeing

The first two would not have looked out of place in Australia’s budget. The third is unfamiliar territory.

The solutions offered will differ considerably depending on the government in power. However, New Zealanders appear to be up for debating them. Earlier this year Australia’s treasurer Josh Frydenberg scoffed at the idea of a wellbeing budget.

Read more: A question for the treasurer: how do you treat mental health without measuring well-being?

In light of the success of New Zealand’s approach in getting on top of fundamental problems and delivering real improvements such as an unemployment rate of a 4.7%, he might want to reflect on the merits of such an approach here.

– ref. Australia vs New Zealand. You can tell a lot about a country by the way it budgets – https://theconversation.com/australia-vs-new-zealand-you-can-tell-a-lot-about-a-country-by-the-way-it-budgets-160766

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Curtin, Professor of Politics and Policy, University of Auckland

Finance Minister Grant Robertson called this a recovery budget for “all New Zealanders”. But was it an inclusive budget? Specifically, what did Budget 2021 offer those women who were significantly affected by the job losses resulting from COVID-19?

The budget priorities included an objective to “support into employment those most affected by COVID-19, including women and young people”. Yet in the budget speech, Robertson announced no explicit initiatives for women workers.

Indeed, as was the case in 2020, the focus was on physical infrastructure — building hospitals, schools, houses, roads, rail and a refurbished Scott Base. Around 221,000 jobs are projected to result, some of which are linked to this capital investment of NZ$57.3 billion dollars over four years.

Such spending initiatives are not gender neutral. Our highly gender-segregated labour market means this investment is likely to generate many more jobs for men than women.

Despite the extension of the Training Incentive Allowance to higher qualifications, and targeted programmes such as Tupu Aotearoa for Pacific peoples, there was no mention of support to increase the number of women in trades.

Some initiatives are already in place, but evidence shows desegregating labour markets is no easy task. Often it is a heavily lopsided process. Women are encouraged into male dominated occupations, but not vice versa.

A focus on building need not preclude investment in the care economy. The latter is just as likely as construction to result in economic growth. Research also shows women need child care to support their labour market participation, and increasing child care places increases jobs (usually for women).

Budget 2021 offered little in this regard. It provided funding for just 3,300 additional places in Out of School Care.

Australia is doing better for women

The lack of a gender lens makes New Zealand a laggard compared to the conservative government of Australia. Scott Morrison’s federal budget, handed down two weeks ago, was accompanied by an 81-page Women’s Budget Statement. New spending initiatives focused on women’s economic security, safety and health and well-being.

The statement included a raft of statistical evidence underpinning the government’s decision to invest in social infrastructure. In addition, new money was allocated for women to enter STEM careers and to fund more services for women taking up work in trades.

Alongside this, frontline services for victims of family domestic violence received an injection of money, and A$16.6 million was committed to support a National Women’s Health Strategy (over four years).

Read more: NZ Budget 2021: billions more for benefits, but one eye on the bottom line

Obviously, Morrison’s was an election budget. To go to the polls later this year, and to secure a win, he has to ameliorate an anticipated backlash from women voters horrified by the allegations of sexual assault, bullying and discrimination within his own party.

Women were also critical of the fact they were largely overlooked in the 2020 budget, which focused on growing male-dominated industries.

Morrison may not be comparable to Jacinda Ardern in terms of his feminist leanings, but his minister for women, who is charged with championing the Women’s Budget Statement, is Senator Marise Payne, Australia’s Foreign Minister and a liberal feminist.

Some Australian commentators argue the budget offerings for women have not gone far enough. But it certainly appears to be more gender responsive than what we witnessed in New Zealand on Thursday afternoon.

Gender should be central to planning

So what do Ardern and Robertson need to change to ensure our progressive well-being approach accounts for women?

Mainstreaming gender analysis across all portfolios, so the budget process becomes more responsive to the needs of different groups of women and men, would be a good place to start.

Key international organisations, including the OECD, IMF and the United Nations, promote the economic and social value of gender responsive budgeting. Canada, Iceland and a number of other OECD countries have made significant progress in embedding gender analysis across all aspects of new and existing expenditure.

Read more: Wage restraint aims to lift the lowest-earning public servants, but it won’t fix stubborn gender and ethnic pay gaps

Three elements are required for successful implementation. First, a high-level strategy to ensure analysts take account of gender in their everyday practice across government (including budgeting).

Second, providing tools, training and disaggregated data to support this analysis (like our own “Bringing Gender In” tool and the Integrated Data Infrastructure). Third, working with parliament and civil society organisations to foster collaboration and accountability.

However, implementation of a gender-responsive budgeting process also requires political will to ensure public servants embrace this work. The adoption of a well-being approach, using Treasury’s Living Standards Framework and He Ara Waiora, represents a good first step. But to ensure budget outcomes are equitable, and resources shared with all New Zealanders, gender analysis is essential throughout the budget process.

International evidence suggests implementation is not always easy. However, without gender-responsive budgeting, the gendered nature of public expenditure will remain invisible. This will be detrimental to the well-being of the economy and to reducing inequality.

– ref. NZ Budget 2021: women left behind despite the focus on well-being – https://theconversation.com/nz-budget-2021-women-left-behind-despite-the-focus-on-well-being-161187

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanne Gray, Lecturer in School of Communications, Chief Investigator Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology

The massive digital platform market has until recently been dominated by a handful of US-based companies such as Facebook and Google. However, as foreign governments and competing platforms try to erode this domination, platforms are becoming a new sphere of geopolitical manoeuvring.

The European Union wants to gain more control over international tech companies and achieve more independence in the digital arena. India has banned 177 Chinese apps on the grounds they are “prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India”.

And in 2020, the then US President Donald Trump spent months attempting to ban the Chinese-made video-sharing platform TikTok or force its sale to an American owner. While some claimed Trump was piqued by a supposed prank against him by teenage TikTok users, a look at statements from US government officials over the course of the year shows geopolitical concerns were the main driver.

If governments are continue to be driven by “digital nationalism”, the US-based big tech companies are likely to continue to dominate.

TikTok is the first major non-US platform

TikTok is the first social media platform born outside the United States to become a significant rival to Silicon Valley incumbents such as Facebook and Instagram. The short-form video platform rose to prominence in 2019 and, by early 2020, was the most downloaded app globally.

Since its rise, TikTok has come under intense criticism from governments around the world, who question whether ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, sufficiently protects users’ data against access by the Chinese state.

However, the way TikTok treats user data is not very different from what its US counterparts do. There is little to suggest the platform poses any singular national security threat.

Read more: TikTok is popular, but Chinese apps still have a lot to learn about global markets

The company releases transparency reports similar to those of Google and Facebook. A CIA assessment reportedly concluded there was no evidence the Chinese government had intercepted TikTok data.

TikTok’s Chinese origins can be used to oversimplify the platform’s actual territorial connection to China. ByteDance was founded in China but it is incorporated in the Cayman Islands and operates as a multinational with subsidiaries in Australia, the US, the UK and Singapore.

Platform geopolitics

The backdrop to Trump’s stance towards TikTok was an intensifying contest between the US and China over the strategic value of the digital environment. Who gets to extract economic value from the platform economy? Who gets to exert ideological influence through vast sociotechnical systems? Who enjoys strategic advantages from control over and access to data and infrastructure?

Read more: The internet is now an arena for conflict, and we’re all caught up in it

As today’s global tech platforms have developed, they have largely mirrored the shape of classical geopolitics: the US has dominated. Recently, however, Chinese technology firms have flourished, expanding China’s economic and strategic capacities.

Trump’s TikTok challenge

TikTok teens may have successfully pranked Trump, but his actions and rhetoric fit within a geopolitical agenda articulated by others within the administration.

On June 24, 2020, US national security advisor Robert O’Brien spoke publicly on the topic of the Chinese government’s “ideology and global ambitions”. He warned China posed a threat to US citizens and explicitly implicated TikTok.

Two weeks later, on July 6, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested TikTok should be treated like Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications company that is effectively banned in the US.

On July 31, 2020, Trump announced he was planning to ban TikTok.

Several days later, Microsoft released a statement explaining that its representatives had spoken to Trump directly regarding the acquisition of TikTok. When questioned about his talks with Microsoft, Trump stated:

[…] it can’t be controlled, for security reasons, by China. Too big, too invasive, and it can’t be.

On August 5, 2020, the US Department of State announced an expansion of its Clean Network program, which has the stated objective of “guarding our citizens’ privacy and our companies’ most sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party”.

Expansions to the program included five policies aimed at reducing the presence of China in the US. These policies limited the use of Chinese telecommunication carriers, applications sold in app stores and pre-installed on devices, cloud services and undersea cables.

The following day, Trump issued an executive order forcing the sale of TikTok to a US company on the grounds that TikTok posed a threat to “the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States”.

Ultimately Trump’s executive orders were blocked in the courts and the ban and forced sale never implemented.

The rise of digital nationalism

TikTok provides welcomed competition to the platform incumbents. If real competition in the sector were to increase, requiring the incumbent platforms to compete for users, we might see further innovations in the platform market and a less concentrated tech sector.

So far, however, the US government has explicitly focused on the geopolitical implications of the rise of a Chinese platform. Whether the Biden administration will continue this approach remains to be seen.

Read more: ‘Digital sovereignty’: can Russia cut off its Internet from the rest of the world?

Both the US and China have a long history of shielding strategically important industries. For those concerned with increasing competition and diluting the concentrated power of the dominant technology firms, the rise of digital nationalism is a new obstacle.

Moving forward, policymakers may need to overcome nationalistic impulses if they are to increase global competition in the international platform market. And both US and Chinese rule must be rejected if we are to decentralise power within the digital environment.

– ref. TikTok and geopolitics: how ‘digital nationalism’ threatens to entrench big tech – https://theconversation.com/tiktok-and-geopolitics-how-digital-nationalism-threatens-to-entrench-big-tech-160919

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

From an ethics perspective, it has been a bad couple of weeks for media coverage of COVID-19.

First, there was a highly questionable story in The Australian about China allegedly weaponising coronavirus, with the headline “‘Virus warfare’ in China files” splashed across the front page.

The author of the article, Sharri Markson, claims a document written by Chinese scientists and Chinese public health officials in 2015 discussed the weaponisation of a SARS coronavirus.

According to the article, the document was headed “The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons”.

Markson reported the US State Department had obtained the document in the course of investigating the origin of COVID-19. In her article and others that followed, there was talk of a third world war in which biological weapons would be deployed.

However, Chengxin Pan, an associate professor at Deakin University, offered a different explanation for the document’s origins. He said in a tweet the document Markson cited was in fact a book, the contents of which could be found on the internet or at a Chinese online bookstore.

Dominic Meagher, an economist at the Lowy Institute with an extensive China background, tweeted the book was

pretty clearly an idiotic conspiracy theory about how the US and Japan had introduced SARS to China.

The ABC program Media Watch raised these questions and more about the article’s credibility.

Markson has replied that the Chinese Foreign Ministry and Global Times newspaper viewed the document as legitimate and not a conspiracy theory. She said while none of the critics quoted by Media Watch were bioweapons experts, she had interviewed multiple high-level specialists in biological weapons compliance.

The ethical problems here are twofold. First, there are clearly questions about the provenance of the article. Was the document uncovered by a US State Department investigation or is it a book available for public sale?

It is a basic fact that colours the entire article, and the questions are not resolved by Markson’s response.

Second, the way the story is framed as revealing Chinese weaponising of biological material is highly alarmist. This generates further public anxiety about COVID-19 and adds to the climate of Sinophobia in Australia. The justification for doing so is, on the available evidence, highly questionable.

In a pandemic or any other emergency, the first ethical duty of the media is to report accurately and soberly, and specifically not to induce unjustified anxiety or panic.

Read more: Before coronavirus, China was falsely blamed for spreading smallpox. Racism played a role then, too

Naming and shaming

In another major ethical lapse, the Australian Financial Review ran a story that named and shamed a Sydney man who had tested positive for the virus. To make it worse, the newspaper put his photo on the front page.

This was wrong and irresponsible for several reasons.

The man had visited several barbecue shops across Sydney while unknowingly positive. When this became known as part of the media’s general contact-tracing publicity, he was dubbed “Barbecue Man” by the Sydney media.

So he was already a figure of fun when the Financial Review identified him. Its excuse for naming him? He was a financial analyst doing due diligence on the Barbecues Galore chain. The AFR’s editor-in-chief, Michael Stutchbury, claimed this meant it was in the public interest to identify him as carrying COVID.

That is absolute drivel. There is no rational connection between the man’s health and the health of the barbecue business.

Other media, including the Daily Mail and news.com, jumped on the bandwagon and named him, too. Both outlets even ran a photo grabbed from Facebook of the man and his wife. No moral compass whatever.

If the media go on doing this, it will discourage people from coming forward for testing. Who wants to see themselves plastered over the front page and given names like Barbecue Man? That is where the irresponsibility lies.

The Age was guilty of something similar a couple of months ago when it published a map of the weekend movements of a young man who was unwittingly COVID-positive and wrote an article holding him up to ridicule.

This kind of media behaviour is mediaeval: like putting people in the stocks and chucking rotten tomatoes at them. And it is a gross breach of privacy. A person’s health is among the most private classes of information that exists. To breach it for the sake of a cheap laugh is indefensible.

Read more: The ebb and flow of COVID-19 vaccine support: what social media tells us about Australians and the jab

Avoiding misleading information

These weren’t the only problematic reports. On May 13, the Australian Press Council found a subhead in the Herald Sun saying “Six People Died During Pfizer Trial” was misleading because it implied the vaccine caused the deaths, when in fact the deaths were not related to the vaccine.

Four of the six deceased had been given a placebo during the trial, and the other two deaths were not related to the vaccine.

The Herald Sun defended the subhead on the basis the story said the US Food and Drug Administration had been told about these deaths because they occurred during the period of the trial.

That is materially different from implying – as the headline clearly did – that the vaccine caused the deaths.

The press council said that newspapers needed to take more than usual care to avoid misleading the public in the midst of a pandemic. And by failing to do so, the Herald Sun had breached two of the council’s principles — one concerning accuracy and the other concerning fairness and balance.

Read more: Just the facts, or more detail? To battle vaccine hesitancy, the messaging has to be just right

In an atmosphere where there is already a degree of resistance to being vaccinated, the Herald Sun subhead was clearly a beat-up with the potential to harm the public interest.

So, in the space of a couple of weeks elements of the print media have sought to capitalise without justification on public anxieties about China and the safety of COVID vaccines, and have pilloried an innocent man while at the same time committing a gross breach of his personal privacy.

In an age when the public must rely increasingly on the mass media for reliable and responsible information — since social media has shown itself to be unreliable and irresponsible — these newspapers have abrogated their first duty to the public.

– ref. Alarmist reporting on COVID-19 will only heighten people’s anxieties and drive vaccine hesitancy – https://theconversation.com/alarmist-reporting-on-covid-19-will-only-heighten-peoples-anxieties-and-drive-vaccine-hesitancy-161170

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Corke, Associate Professor of Medicine, Deakin University

Advances in medical technology have dramatically altered the process of dying. It’s now possible to prolong life, with the frightening reality that this may simply extend our dying process.

Advance care planning is designed to empower us to retain some control over the last stages of our life by communicating our wishes about what we want, or don’t want, in terms of medical treatment. Generally this planning is done in well in advance of a medical crisis, while people are well.

However, evidence suggests these plans may not work as intended in a crisis, because the message the patient thought to be crystal clear appears unclear to doctors and family.

Read more: Only 25% of older Australians have an advance care plan. Coronavirus makes it even more important

Let’s go through an example

The following is a mix of several similar real world patients, but names and some specific details have been altered to avoid identifying any particular case.

“Doug Jones” was a 75-year-old man with severe Parkinson’s disease that was making it increasingly difficult for him to manage at home, even with lots of help.

Doug’s swallowing had became progressively more difficult due to his disease, to the extent that Doug’s doctors had advocated for placement of a PEG feeding tube. This would be a tube through his tummy wall directly into his stomach, so he could be fed without swallowing. Doug had declined this on the grounds that eating and drinking were “about the last pleasure I have”. He recognised the risk of choking to death, but didn’t care.

Weeks later Doug was admitted to hospital after choking on a piece of orange. The orange had totally obstructed his airway, resulting in severely low levels of oxygen in the blood and cardiac arrest. It was over 30 minutes before the piece of orange was able to be removed.

On arrival in hospital, tests suggested Doug had suffered profound brain damage due to very low oxygen delivery. However, at this early stage, while it was reasonable to have grave concern, it was not possible for doctors to be certain about the outcome.

Well before all this happened, Doug had written an advanced care directive. This is a document that states Doug’s preferences for future medical care, should he lose the capacity to make decisions. In this he stated:

I do not want to be any worse than I am now; I do not want heroic treatment and I never want to go into a nursing home.

Read more: End-of-life care: no, we don’t all want ‘whatever it takes’ to prolong life

After reading the advance care directive, the doctors explained they could not predict with certainty how things would turn out. They explained Doug would need to be kept on life support for some days, to give him “the best chance” and to “see how things go”.

As days passed it became clear Doug had suffered profound brain injury. He did start to breathe for himself but required hoist transfers and assistance with all activities of living, including turning, bathing and toileting. He remained non-verbal and was fed through a nasogastric tube. Occasionally he appeared to understand what was being said to him.

After six weeks, Doug was discharged from hospital to a high level nursing home.

When we reviewed what happened, the doctors who had looked after Doug agreed this outcome was, in all probability, exactly what Doug feared and wanted to avoid. They felt it was very sad.

Why didn’t Doug’s advance care directive work?

Like so many, Doug had stated outcomes he didn’t want. He said “I do not want to be any worse than I am now. I would never want to go into a nursing home”.

However, as Doug’s doctors pointed out, they could not be certain when they first saw him exactly what the outcome would be (though it was very likely to be bad).

When asked if, when they first saw Doug, they had thought there was any real chance he would return to his previous level of function, they were unequivocal. None of them thought he would.

So how can we explain these conflicting answers?

The initial thought process the doctors applied focused on whether there was certainty of a particular outcome, but certainly is something that’s impossible to predict with absolute confidence. In contrast, risk is much easier to recognise. Had Doug asked doctors (and family) that he did not want to take the risk of an unacceptable outcome it would have made it much easier for them

Read more: Do you want to be resuscitated? This is what you should think about before deciding

A second problem is that, like many patients, Doug stated things he “does not want”. There are lots of things in life we don’t want, but that we endure. The important question is not what we don’t want, but what we won’t accept and wouldn’t consent to.

Doug also wrote his plan a bit like an instruction. A lot of people do this thinking an instruction will be more convincing, but it doesn’t work like that.

Instructions written well in advance of the event, before all the circumstances are known, can be very unreliable. Most doctors can cite many examples of patients who have totally changed their mind when faced with a crisis.

Here are some tips when writing yours

Doctors and family members feel very uncomfortable faced with instructions from someone who is no longer able to explain their reasoning. This disquiet makes them question whether the instructions are well informed, adequately thought through, applicable to the situation, and firmly held. An emotional request generally inspires more confidence.

Doug might have had more success had he written something like:

If my doctors think that it is unlikely that I will be able to return to my current level of health, or that it is likely that I will require full time nursing home care, then I would not want to consent to life-saving or life prolonging treatment.

I know it won’t be easy, but I ask my family and doctors to respect my wishes should they have to decide about treatment for me.

Focusing on unacceptable risk and lack of consent, as well as adding an appeal for wishes to be respected, speaks to the heart and creates the sort of confidence doctors and families need to make difficult decisions.

– ref. Choosing the care you’ll receive at the end of your life doesn’t always go to plan. Here are some tips to make sure it does – https://theconversation.com/choosing-the-care-youll-receive-at-the-end-of-your-life-doesnt-always-go-to-plan-here-are-some-tips-to-make-sure-it-does-160983

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Davis, Senior Lecturer in Wildlife Ecology, Edith Cowan University

It’s the smell that hits you first. The scent of urine and decomposing bodies. Then you notice other signs: scuttles and squeaks, small dead bodies leaking blood, tails sticking out of hubcaps.

If you’ve lived through a mouse plague, you’ve seen this, and smelled the stench of mice dying of poison baits.

As a desperate measure to help combat the mouse plague devastating rural communities across New South Wales, the state government yesterday secured 5,000 litres of bromadialone. This is a bait that’s usually illegal to roll out at the proposed scale.

This is a bad idea. While bromadiolone effectively kills mice, it also travels up the food chain to poison predators who eat the mice, and other species. And these predators, from wedge-tailed eagles to goannas, are coming in out in droves to feast on their abundant prey.

When your prey is everywhere

Animal plagues in Australia are fuelled by the “boom and bust” of rainfall.

We have natural, flood-driven population explosions of the native long-haired rat, with accompanying booms of letter-winged kites, their predator. We also have locust plagues when the conditions are right, leading to antechinus or mice plagues which eat the locusts.

Since at least the late 1800s, we’ve had terrible plagues of the introduced house mouse (Mus musculus). But rarely has it been this bad, with conditions currently seeming worse than the last plague in 2011, which caused over A$200 million in crop damage alone.

High numbers of birds of prey — nankeen kestrels, black-shouldered kites and barn owls — are often reported feasting on plague mice.

Snakes, goannas, native carnivores such as quolls, and feral cats and foxes, also take advantage of the abundant food. Pets, especially cats and some dogs, are highly likely to consume mice under these conditions, too.

Poisoning the food web

Laying out poison baits is one way people try to end mouse infestations and plagues. So-called “anticoagulant rodenticides” are divided into first and second generations, based on when they were first synthesised and the differences in potency.

Second generation anticoagulant rodenticides have higher toxicities than first generation, and are lethal after a single feed. First generation rodenticides, on the other hand, require rodents to feed on them for consecutive days to be lethal.

But mouse-eating predators are highly exposed to second generation rodenticides. For most animal species, the lethal doses of rodenticide aren’t yet known.

A scientific review from 2018 documented the poisoning of 31 bird, five mammal and one reptile species. Second generation aniticoaugulant rodenticides were implicated in the death of these animals.

Our research from 2020 found urban reptiles are highly exposed to second generation rodenticides, too. This includes mouse-eating snakes, called dugites, which had up to five different rodent poisons in them.

We also found poisons in frog-eating tiger snakes, and in omnivorous bobtail skinks which eat fruit, vegetation and snails. This is even more concerning because it shows how second generation rodenticides can saturate the entire foodweb, affecting everything from slugs to fish.

Bromadiolone is particularly dangerous, even to humans

The NSW government secured bromadialone baits as part of its $50 million mouse plague support package for regional communities.

Five thousand litres of the poison can treat around 95 tonnes of grain, and the government will provide it for free to primary producers once federal authorities approve its use.

Bromadiolone is usually restricted to use in and around buildings. But given the widespread impacts on wildlife, using bromadiolone at the proposed scale will do more harm than good.

Past research on bromadialone has shown residues persist for up to 135 days in the carcasses of voles (another rodent species). In international studies, bromadiolone has been found in the livers of a host of birds of prey, including a range of owl species, red kites, sparrowhawks and golden eagles.

And it’s not just a problem for wildlife, humans are also at risk of exposure. For example, we can get exposed from eating eggs from chickens that feed on poisoned mice, or more directly from eating other animals that may have ingested poisoned mice.

A 2013 study looked at chicken eggs for human consumption, and detected bromadialone in eggs between five and 14 days after the chicken ingested the poison. It’s not yet clear how many of these eggs we’d have to eat for us to get sick.

So what are the alternatives?

There are highly effective first generation rodenticides that provide viable solutions for managing mouse plagues. They may take a little longer to kill mice, but the upshot is they don’t stick around in the environment. A 2020 study found house mice in Perth didn’t have genetic resistance to first generation rodenticides, which suggests they’re effectively lethal.

Another approach has been to use zinc phosphide, a poison which is unlikely to secondarily poison other animals that eat the poisoned mice. However, zinc phosphide is still extremely toxic and will kill sheep, cows, pets and even humans if directly eaten.

Rolling out double-strength zinc phosphide may be the lesser of the evils in causing secondary poisoning, but only if used very carefully.

And another way to help control the mouse plague is to limit food resources for mice on farms. Farmers can minimise grain on ground, and Australia should invest in research for grain storage facilities that are less permeable to mice.

Mouse plagues are a regular cycle in Australia. Natural predators not only help create healthy, natural ecosystems, but also they help with mouse control. Second generation rodenticides will only destroy and weaken the predator populations we need to help us combat the next plague.

– ref. Mouse plague: bromadialone will obliterate mice, but it’ll poison eagles, snakes and owls, too – https://theconversation.com/mouse-plague-bromadialone-will-obliterate-mice-but-itll-poison-eagles-snakes-and-owls-too-160995