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

Australians of Indian heritage are not just trying to get back home — many are attempting to go to India.

Scott Morrison revealed on Wednesday that since April 23, more more than 1,000 people had sought to travel there. “Now we haven’t let them go — for obvious reasons,” he said.

The government declined to provide a breakdown of the reasons given for wanting to travel. Officials will be quizzed at Senate estimates early next week.

We can presume, however, that a significant proportion sought to leave on compassionate grounds — family illnesses and funerals. This week we received news of two more Australian deaths in India – middle-aged men who were there for compassionate reasons.

These are absolutely legitimate reasons for people trying to travel. They aren’t some indulgence. And our system should be up to dealing with people caught in family crises.

As things stand, those facing such situations don’t have a hope. The only exemptions currently being considered for travel to India are in three categories: critical workers providing assistance in the pandemic there; people travelling in Australia’s national interest (diplomats and the like); and anyone seeking urgent medical treatment that’s not available here (which would be no one, you’d think).

Morrison and his ministers display less emotion than you might expect in their comments about those Australians desperate to cope with illnesses or deaths of loved ones far away. They do not seem able to walk in their shoes.

It’s a similar story with the children stranded in India.

A Senate committee recently heard there were some 173 minors who were not in a family group.

Surely some children could be flown to Australia in a charter, accompanied by Australian officials. An Australian-based parent could then be taken into quarantine with them.

Such an emergency arrangement could be put in place by Foreign Affairs Department officials and Australia’s High Commissioner in India, Barry O’Farrell, who as a former NSW premier has plenty of experience in organising things.

The India issue is just one of the sharp edges of the increasing debate about Australia’s international border. Attention was focused on returnees from India when the government imposed its controversial temporary ban (now lifted). The wider issue of when the border should be opened flared after last week’s budget assumed it would stay basically closed until mid-next year.

What’s dubbed “Fortress Australia” is objectively driven by the slowness of the vaccination rollout, which has Morrison under pressure, not least because it holds back the economy. But politically, the shut gate suits Morrison, because polling and premiers’ electoral experience tell him the public strongly support closed borders.

This week’s Newspoll showed 73% agreeing “international borders should remain largely closed until at least mid-2022, or the pandemic is under control globally”, and this included 78% of Coalition voters.

Only 21% agreed “international borders should open as soon as all Australians who want to be are vaccinated”.

This mightn’t be an unexpected result, but it is a remarkable one. Australians are saying they are willing to be cut off from the world even when we can expect the COVID risk to be much reduced.

Unsurprisingly, in the vanguard of those pressing for the border to open sooner rather than later are the business groups and individual companies.

Virgin CEO Jayne Hrdlicka was criticised by Morrison for an “insensitive” comment after she said this week: “COVID will be part of the community. We will become sick with COVID and it won’t put us in hospital, and it won’t put people into dire straits because we’ll have a vaccine. Some people may die, but it will be way smaller than with the flu.”

Obviously businesses, especially airlines, have commercial interests at stake in the border opening (although this isn’t across the board – some businesses are advantaged by the present situation).

But, more significantly, the health experts are now talking about the transition to a more open Australia.

Nick Coatsworth, a former Commonwealth deputy chief medical officer and a specialist in infectious diseases, said in an address last week to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons: “At a point in the future when a significant majority of our community is vaccinated, there will be pressure to open our borders. We must not resist that. In fact, when the time is right, we should be leading the calls for it.”

Coatsworth isn’t saying the border should be open tomorrow but that the conversation needs to shift to how we live with some COVID circulating.

This is back to the days when Morrison used to talk a lot about “living with the virus”.

But at that time Morrison did not expect Australia would go beyond “suppressing” community transmission to more or less eliminating it. And this success has changed community expectations.

What medicos like Coatsworth are saying is that you can’t forever have the gold standard we have now.

Morrison not only wants this until the election – at the moment he does not want to jump the conversation forward.

His message is the government has plans – such as for vaccinated people to have guaranteed interstate travel (vaccine passport) and for selective arrivals – but he doesn’t want to go into detail yet.

It’s a stark contrast to those detailed colour-coded spreadsheets for lifting lockdown restrictions he flourished last year.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is anxious for more ambition, urging both a faster vaccination rollout and an earlier international opening.

At the centre of the issue is the shambles with the vaccine program. The rollout has two central problems: its tardiness from the start (with supply shortages and implementation glitches), and then the big hiccup of “vaccine hesitancy”. People became wary of the AstraZeneca vaccine following advice that in rare cases it caused blood clots.

Morrison dismissed a poll published in Nine newspapers this week that showed about three in ten people said they were unlikely to get vaccinated. He said he preferred to focus on the other seven in ten and “get on with them”.

But the hesitancy could remain a major difficulty at least until people can access more choice of vaccine later in the year, and it hampers returning to normality and increases the danger of outbreaks. The president of the Australian Medical Association, Omar Khorshid, has argued giving people a date for opening the international border would encourage more to get vaccinated.

Khorshid is blunt, telling the ABC: “When we open those borders, we’re going to get both of those viruses [flu and COVID]. … We’re going to get a bad flu season. Plus, we’ll get a certain number of people who get sick from COVID. And we’ve got to make sure our [hospital] system is ready to cope with that and our public understand that this is part of our pathway towards getting back to normal.”

A few months ago there was much haste in federal circles to map out Australia’s international reopening and announce it. The AstraZeneca issue derailed that plan. Now there’s not even an effective communication strategy, just a bland information push for eligible people to get the jab.

Australia’s dilemma is that it has effectively achieved local elimination and (so far) maintained it, but it is stumbling in the vital follow-up — rapid mass vaccination. Morrison seeks to turn this weakness into a political strength but is running into headwinds, albeit not from the public.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Morrison locked Australia’s border gate and now he’s hiding the key – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-morrison-locked-australias-border-gate-and-now-hes-hiding-the-key-161284

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah-Catherine Rodan, PhD candidate, University of Sydney

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) is considering rescheduling psilocybin and MDMA from their current classification as Schedule 9 prohibited substances to Schedule 8 controlled substances.

This would allow psychiatrists to use these drugs in combination with psychotherapy for the treatment of conditions such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Here’s why we believe that would be a good idea.

Read more: Mind molding psychedelic drugs could treat depression, and other mental illnesses

A bit of background

On February 3, the TGA announced an interim decision to retain psilocybin and MDMA as Schedule 9 drugs.

The TGA cited limited evidence of therapeutic benefit, safety concerns, potential for abuse, and lack of suitably trained psychiatrists.

But the final ruling, which was expected on April 22, has now been delayed while the TGA seek independent expert advice on the “therapeutic value, risks, and benefits to public health” of the change.

The case for MDMA and psilocybin

Research on psychedelic substances such as LSD and psilocybin first began in the 1960s.

The number of clinical trials involving psilocybin or MDMA has increased steadily in the past decade, with more than 70 studies completed since 2010.

Around 60 trials are underway in Europe and the United States involving MDMA or psilocybin.

Read more: The real promise of LSD, MDMA and mushrooms for medical science

The results of completed studies are very promising.

For example, last month, a study of 59 patients with major depression showed just two sessions of psilocybin-assisted therapy was as effective as a six-week course of the antidepressant escitalopram. The proportion of patients who no longer qualified for a major depression diagnosis after treatment was twice as high in the psilocybin group.

This month saw results of one of the largest trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD published. The phase 3 study used MDMA-assisted psychotherapy to treat 90 patients with severe, chronic PTSD. After three sessions, 67% of participants no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis, compared to just 32% of participants undergoing therapy alone.

These latest studies add to a growing number of trials from around the world showing the therapeutic benefit of psilocybin or MDMA in depression, PTSD, anxiety associated with terminal illness, obsessive-compulsive disorder, alcohol and tobacco dependence, and social anxiety in adults with autism.

Scientists are now investigating the use of psilocybin in other conditions for the first time, such as anorexia nervosa, general anxiety disorder, and opioid and cocaine dependence.

Are MDMA and psilocybin safe?

Unlike many Schedule 8 medicines, psilocybin- or MDMA-assisted psychotherapy treatments are not taken regularly. The substance is usually used just two or three times with trained specialists as part of a psychotherapy program.

Despite the safety concerns cited by the TGA, there haven’t been any serious adverse reported events due to psilocybin or MDMA from dozens of clinical trials. Less serious effects can include temporary anxiety, paranoia, fear, nausea, post-treatment headaches, or mild increases in blood pressure and heart rate.

Of course, these trials use pharmaceutical-grade drugs administered by a doctor.

However, one of the most comprehensive studies of the harms of commonly used illegal drugs found even illicit forms of psilocybin and MDMA are among the least harmful. In fact, “mushrooms” containing psilocybin had the lowest overall harm score, while illicit forms of clinically-used Schedule 8 substances like cocaine, cannabis and ketamine were all more harmful than psilocybin or MDMA.

We don’t know what dose of psilocybin would be lethal to humans, but it’s estimated to be about 1,000 times greater than the therapeutic dose. No overdose deaths due to psilocybin toxicity alone have ever been reported.

Use of illicitly manufactured MDMA — which often contains other drugs or impurities — has occasionally caused deaths. An estimated 600,000 Australians use illegal MDMA each year, and an average of about three deaths per year since 2000 have been associated with MDMA toxicity alone.

But illicit use of MDMA of unknown dose and purity is much more dangerous than administration of pharmaceutical MDMA under medical supervision in a clinical environment.

A growing field

In recent years, respected academic and medical institutions around the world have launched dedicated centres for psychedelic and MDMA research, including Johns Hopkins University and Imperial College London.

And research into the therapeutic effects of psilocybin and MDMA has recently started in Australia. St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne is conducting a clinical trial using psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy to treat anxiety and depression in terminally ill patients. A clinical trial at Monash University is looking at psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for generalised anxiety disorder and MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD.

The Australian government recently announced A$15 million in funding for research into the medical potential of psychedelics and MDMA.

Read more: Psychedelics to treat mental illness? Australian researchers are giving it a go

It’s hard to reconcile the TGA’s interim decision to retain Schedule 9 for substances with demonstrated benefit in several mental health conditions and fewer safety concerns than many existing Schedule 8 medicines.

The US medicines regulator recently granted MDMA and psilocybin “breakthrough therapy” designation; a special status for highly promising drugs that speeds up their path to the clinic.

The down-scheduling of psilocybin and MDMA could have enormous medical benefit for Australian patients, especially when Australia spent A$10.6 billion on mental health between 2018-2019.

– ref. Why the TGA should reschedule MDMA and psilocybin for the treatment of mental illness – https://theconversation.com/why-the-tga-should-reschedule-mdma-and-psilocybin-for-the-treatment-of-mental-illness-160276

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Crowley, Associate, Grattan Institute

Victoria’s budget shows a Treasurer engaged in a high-wire balancing act: ensuring a job-rich economic ‘soft landing’ on one hand, while trying to improve the state’s long-term fiscal position on the other.

The budget partly delivers on both goals but, like any difficult circus act, it is part hard work and skill, part luck, and part optical illusion.

The balancing act

Last year, the brief for federal and state budgets alike was simple: spend to support the economy.

Australia was in the grip of the COVID recession, and nowhere was this more acute than in Victoria.

The economic conditions required targeted and effective stimulus, and Victoria delivered in spades.

This year’s test is a little more complicated.

The recovery is going well – Victoria’s jobs have returned to pre-crisis levels, a remarkable turnaround given the hit to the employment from the second lockdown – but unemployment is still elevated.

The challenge for fiscal policy is now to “stick the landing” by quickly getting unemployment as low as possible so wages can grow again.

The federal government made a reasonable attempt at meeting this challenge last week when it delivered a budget focused on creating jobs, particularly in the care sector — even if the quality of its spending fell short and the outlook for wages growth remains poor in the short-term.

But the federal government has one big advantage: for the time being at least, the low cost of debt has given it breathing space on the fiscal position.

This is not true to the same extent for Victoria.

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

Victoria’s cost of borrowing is still low – the government can borrow for 10 years at an interest rate of less than 2%, only slightly higher than the Commonwealth’s.

But credit ratings agency Moody’s recently downgraded the state’s credit rating from AAA to AA1 and cut its outlook to “negative”.

That brings the health of the balance sheet into slightly sharper focus.

And this means a treasurer walking the tightrope of more spending to support the economy while at the same time making sure that he reins in future deficits.

The hard work: taxes and spending are up

For the budget balance, the Victorian government has made some difficult decisions to raise more revenue. The budget includes more than $5 billion in new taxes over the next four years.

The new property “windfall profits levy” and the increase in land tax are two significant steps forward in building a more efficient tax base, even if the accompanying increase to inefficient stamp duties is a step backward.

And the significant extra spending on mental health is partially offset by a new Mental Health Levy on payroll tax for businesses – 0.5% for payrolls over $10 million and another 0.5% for payrolls over $100 million, raising $2.7 billion over four years.

This will slightly increase the inefficiency of the progressive payroll tax base, but should not be a major drag on growth.

But the overall focus on revenue is warranted.

It carves out a point of difference between Victoria and the federal government, which studiously avoided the “revenue question” in last week’s budget.

To support the economy, the additional revenue from these measures is more than offset by new spending – more than $12 billion over four years.

The centrepiece of the Victorian budget is the mental health package. The government claims it will create 3,000 jobs in the sector in addition to improving the quality and availability of care.

There are also additional skills initiatives and spending on health and child protection services.

The good luck and illusions

The housing market has done its bit for the treasurer’s success delivering a windfall $5 billion over the three forward years, primarily driven by big uplifts in stamp duty and land tax.

The other very helpful change, this time to accounting practices, delivers $6.5 billion over three years in “other administrative variations”.

The removal of the “capital assets charge” is consistent with other states, but it’s a one-off sweetener for the bottom line.

Landing the trick

On the key indicators of performance, things are heading in the right direction, although not as fast as we might hope.

Unemployment is coming down and the numbers look much rosier than the treasury’s previous estimates in November. However, it is still expected to be elevated over the next four years.

Whereas the federal government is forecasting nationwide unemployment of 4.5% in 2024-25, Victoria projects 5.25% by that date, and unemployment above the 2019-20 level of 5.4% for at least two years.

And wages growth for Victorians is expected to be subdued, and will go backwards in real terms in the next financial year.

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

Budget balances have improved by several billion over the next four years, although the government still expects a deficit of $2.5 billion in 2024-25.

Net debt is expected to reach 26.8% of gross state product by 2024-25, with interest costs estimated at 0.8% of gross state product by that date.

The result by the end of the four year projections period is a return to the size of government before the crisis – albeit a level that was high by historical standards.

There’s no playbook for state treasurers coming out of a pandemic recession.

Victoria’s treasurer Tim Pallas is trying to walk the tightrope of strong recovery and fiscal responsibility.

It looks as if he’s pulled it off without too many major stumbles, with a bit of help from the stronger than expected recovery, the housing market, and a change in accounting standards.

– ref. Like a high-wire act, Victoria’s budget is a mix of hard work, luck and optical illusion – https://theconversation.com/like-a-high-wire-act-victorias-budget-is-a-mix-of-hard-work-luck-and-optical-illusion-161103

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Zylstra, Adjunct Associate Professor at Curtin University, Honorary Fellow at University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong

The Black Summer bushfires burned far more temperate forest than any other fire season recorded in Australia. The disaster was clearly a climate change event; however, other human activities also had consequences.

Taking timber from forests dramatically changes their structure, making them more vulnerable to bushfires. And, crucially for the Black Summer bushfires, logged forests are more likely to burn out of control.

Naturally, the drivers of the fires were widely debated during and after the disaster. Research published earlier this month, for example, claimed native forest logging did not make the fires worse.

We believe these findings are too narrowly focused and in fact, misleading. They overlook a vast body of evidence that crown fire – the most extreme type of bushfire behaviour, in which tree canopies burn – is more likely in logged native forests.

Crown fires vs scorch

The Black Summer fires occurred in the 2019-20 bushfire season and burned vast swathes of Australia’s southeast. In some cases, fire spread through forests with no recorded fire, including some of the last remnants of ancient Gondwanan rainforests.

Tragically, the fires directly killed 33 people, while an estimated 417 died due to the effects of smoke inhalation. A possible three billion vertebrate animals perished and the risk of species extinctions dramatically increased.

Much of the forest that burned during Black Summer experienced crown fires. These fires burn through the canopies of trees, as well as the undergrowth. They are the most extreme form of fire behaviour and are virtually impossible to control.

Crown fires pulse with such intense heat they can form thunderstorms which generate lightning and destructive winds. This sends burning bark streamers tens of kilometres ahead of the fire, spreading it further. The Black Summer bushfires included at least 18 such storms.

Various forest industry reports have recognised logging makes bushfires harder to control.

And to our knowledge, every empirical analysis so far shows logging eucalypt forests makes them far more likely to experience crown fire. The studies include:

• A 2009 paper suggesting changes in forest structure and moisture make severe fire more likely in logging regrowth compared to undisturbed forest

• 2012 research concluding the probability of crown fires was higher in recently logged areas than in areas logged decades before

• A 2013 study that showed the likelihood of crown fire halved as forests aged after a certain point

• 2014 findings that crown fire in the Black Saturday fires likely peaked in regrowth and fell in mature forests

• 2018 research into the 2003 Australian Alps fires, which found the same increase in the likelihood of crown fire during regrowth as was measured following logging.

The combined findings of these studies are represented in the image below:

Crown fires take lives

The presence of crown fire is a key consideration in fire supression, because crown fires are very hard to control.

However, the study released last week – which argued that logging did not worsen the Black Summer fires – focused on crown “scorch”. Crown scorch is very different to crown fire. It is not a measure of how difficult it is to contain the fire, because even quite small flames can scorch a drought-stressed canopy.

Forestry studies tend to focus more on crown scorch, which damages timber and is far more common than crown fires.

But the question of whether logging made crown scorch worse is not relevant to whether a fire was uncontrollable, and thus was able to destroy homes and lives.

Importantly, when the study said logging had a very small influence on scorch, this was referring to the average scorch over the whole fire area, not just places that had been logged. That’s like asking how a drought in the small town of Mudgee affects the national rainfall total: it may not play a large role overall, but it’s pretty important to Mudgee.

The study examined trees in previously logged areas, or areas that had been logged and burned by fires of any source. It found they were as likely to scorch on the mildest bushfire days as trees in undisturbed forests on bad days. These results simply add to the body of evidence that logging increases fire damage.

Read more: I’m searching firegrounds for surviving Kangaroo Island Micro-trapdoor spiders. 6 months on, I’m yet to find any

Managing forests for all

Research shows forests became dramatically less likely to burn when they mature after a few decades. Mature forests are also less likely to carry fire into the tree tops.

For example during the Black Saturday fires in 2009, the Kilmore East fire north of Melbourne consumed all before it as a crown fire. Then it reached the old, unlogged mountain ash forests on Mount Disappointment and dropped to the ground, spreading as a slow surface fire.

The trees were scorched. But they were too tall to ignite, and instead blocked the high winds and slowed the fire down. Meanwhile, logged ash forests drove flames high into the canopy.

Despite decades of opportunity to show otherwise, the only story for eucalypt forests remains this: logging increases the impact of bushfires. This fact should inform forest management decisions on how to reduce future fire risk.

We need timber, but it must be produced in ways that don’t endanger human lives or the environment.

Read more: ‘We know our community better than they do’: why local knowledge is key to disaster recovery in Gippsland

– ref. Native forest logging makes bushfires worse – and to say otherwise ignores the facts – https://theconversation.com/native-forest-logging-makes-bushfires-worse-and-to-say-otherwise-ignores-the-facts-161177

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Tregear, Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana is one of only a handful of 20th century classical concert pieces that can claim to have become embedded in popular culture. Its opening movement in particular has featured in epic film battle scenes, coffee, beer and cologne commercials, dancefloor hits and even inspired an internet meme about misheard lyrics.

Both the origins of the work and its composer are, however, much less known. Born in Munich in 1895, Orff’s lasting musical contribution outside composition was in the field of music education.

What we know today as Orff Schulwerk is an approach to teaching music that encourages children to explore and develop their musical creativity through singing, improvisation, movement, and rhythmic play.

Orff Schulwerk became influential across the West in the years after the second world war (and helped make percussion instruments in particular part of the standard kit of the school music room) but Carmina Burana — the sound of which reflects some of the vocal and percussive interests of the Schulwerk approach — dates from just before the onset of that war.

Premiering in June 1937 at the Frankfurt Opera, its compositional history therefore also intersects with aspects of the racial, cultural and aesthetic cultural policies the Nazi Party introduced across Germany after its rise to power in 1933.

An earthy manuscript

The title simply means “Songs from Beuern” in Latin. Beuern is a variant of the German word for Bavaria, Bayern, but here it specifically refers to a village south of Munich at the foothills of the Bavarian Alps.

The village was home to a Benedictine monastery founded in 733. When it was dissolved in 1083, its library was transferred to the Court Library at Munich.

There, in 1847, a modern edition was made of perhaps the most remarkable work in the collection: a beautifully illuminated manuscript of secular poems in both Latin and Middle High German. These “Carmina Burana” soon became well-known across Europe.

In the mid 1930s Orff asked the German poet and jurist Michel Hofmann to organise 24 of those poems into a libretto for what he envisioned as a kind of secular oratorio with staging elements. The original poems had been preserved with their own melodies, but Orff was not aware of their existence when composing his own settings.

The full title — Songs of Beuern: Secular songs for singers and choruses to be sung together with instruments and magical images — reminds us the original performances were more than concerts. They were envisioned as theatrical events.

The famous opening chorus, O Fortuna, velut Luna (O Fortune, like the moon) refers to the Wheel of Fortune and the vagaries of fate. Returning in full at the end, the chorus gives the work a dramatic and musical frame.

Inside that frame, Orff and his librettist placed three groups of poems that deal with, respectively, the transient joys of springtime (Primo Vera), the tavern (In Taberna), and erotic love (Cour d’amours).

Much of the pleasure I suspect we receive from Carmina Burana comes not just from the high literary quality of these poems but also from the fact they concern themselves with topics far from what we might imagine were the usual interests of a benedictine monastery. They can be punchy, earthy, funny — and sometimes surprisingly confronting.

I would challenge any carnivore to hear the extraordinary twelfth movement Olim Lacus Colueram (“Once I lived on lakes”) which gives voice to a roasting swan, and not be drawn to contemplate – if only for a moment – vegetarianism.

But is it fascist?

In his book The Twisted Muse (1997), musicologist Michael Kater asserts that Orff was a central figure in what he describes as a “School of Nazi modernism” which also included composers Werner Egk, Boris Blacher, Gottfried von Einem and Rudolf Wagner-Régeny.

A popular and critical success from its first performance, Carmina Burana was performed regularly in Germany throughout the second world war. The subject matter certainly appealed to Nazi sensibilities that sought to legitimise the Third Reich through association with past empires, particularly the Germany of the medieval era.

But what about the music?

Being approved by a fascist regime does not in and of itself make something fascist. And, in any case, it is notoriously difficult to try and define what a fascist music might be as we are more wont to do in the case of, say, architecture.

As I have suggested elsewhere, we could be forgiven in fact for concluding that Nazism (and fascism more generally) is something which happens to music and musicians, and not something with which a musical work can be complicit in a uniquely musical way.

Read more: How the Nazis used music to celebrate and facilitate murder

Yet I do think it is possible to explore such a possibility — albeit with due caution. Hannah Arendt, who spent a great deal of her later life trying understand how Germany had descended into fascism, described in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism one tell-tale characteristic of fascism as being the “emancipation of thought from experience”: a kind of willed stupidity.

Can a piece of music encourage or mimic such thinking? Can it foster a kind of of “stupid” listening? Well, as far as Carmina Burana is concerned, we might note its heavy reliance on the repetition of small musical motives does lend the work a sense of unquestioned (or, at worst, unquestionable) ritualistic force which might lead us to think something similar.

A visual parallel might be Albert Speer’s infamous Cathedrals of Light, the array of spotlights he used to monumentalise the Nazi Party rallies in Nuremberg around the same time as Orff was composing Carmina Burana. Here we are certainly presented with an effect without just cause – the awe-inspiring vista (also achieved in no small part by the sheer blunt force of repetition) overwhelms us without encouraging us to reflect on whether that response is actually merited by what the spotlights accompany.

The deployment of artistic effects without legitimate justification is, however, not just a property of fascist aesthetics. It is also a commonly asserted property of kitsch. Should we be surprised, then, to find that the opening chorus of Carmina Burana also now pops up in concerts by the so-called King of Classical kitsch, André Rieu?

Read more: André Rieu gives his audience exactly what they want: entertainment

The frequent use of this opening chorus as an advertising jingle is also, I think, revealing. A famous Carlton and United advertisement for draught beer declared to its audience that they were watching, simply, “a big ad.”

Here, the ad-makers themselves seem to have recognised, named, and exploited the empty grandiosity some would say indeed lies at the heart of the music.

That opening chorus has also made an appearance in the soundtracks of numerous feature films, most notably 1981’s Excalibur, where the shared medieval fantasy elements no doubt made some dramatic sense. But it has also been frequently applied to subject matter far removed from medieval topics; and often for comic and ironic effect.

In a 2001 essay for the New York Times the renowned musicologist Richard Taruskin went as far as to suggest that Orff’s music “can channel any diabolical message that text or context may suggest, and no music does it better”.

He continued “it is just because we like it that we ought to resist it”.

Nevertheless, as another commentator subsequently noted, Taruskin’s description of the work’s effect is also “almost the definition of a guilty pleasure.”

Maybe that’s the best place for us to start our engagement with the work today. Let’s continue to enjoy and be impressed by Carmina Burana — but also let’s not forget to ask ourselves why we might find it so enjoyable and impressive in the first place.

The Sydney Philharmonia Choir performs Carmina Burana this weekend and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra will perform it in July.

– ref. Decoding the music masterpieces: how Carmina Burana, based on Benedictine poems, travelled from Bavaria to a beer ad – https://theconversation.com/decoding-the-music-masterpieces-how-carmina-burana-based-on-benedictine-poems-travelled-from-bavaria-to-a-beer-ad-159057

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By George Newhouse, Adjunct Professor of Law, Macquarie University

Geoffrey Robertson is one of Australia’s most acclaimed international jurists and human rights advocates. His latest book, Bad People – and How to Be Rid of Them, explains the history of international human rights law and acknowledges its failings.

Bad People is not a textbook; it is aimed at anyone with an interest in the international human rights framework and its enforcement mechanisms.

Most importantly, it is a call to action for Australians and others in democracies to demand the introduction of “Magnitsky laws”.

Magnitsky laws are named after a Russian whistleblower, Sergei Magnitsky, who was tortured and died after exposing a massive tax fraud scheme involving Russian officials. These laws seek to combat human rights abuses by naming, blaming and shaming individuals, denying them the right to enter democratic nations, stripping them of ill-gotten funds, and barring them and their families from local schools and hospitals.

The US was the first country to pass such laws in 2012 to sanction Russian officials and Chechen warlords, sending a strong signal to the Kremlin that action could and would be taken for human rights breaches.

Since then, the US has used the Global Magnitsky Act to impose sanctions on more than 200 individuals and entities from two dozen countries, including Saudi Arabia, China, South Sudan, Myanmar, Iraq and Cambodia.

Robertson’s response to the failure of the international human rights framework is to promote powerful Magnitsky laws as a “plan B” to coordinated international action.

How international courts have been weakened

Robertson charts the rise of human rights immediately after the horrors of the second world war, and then despairs of the growing trend of nations retreating from the jurisdiction of international courts or refusing to comply with their rulings.

Robertson describes how the United Nations succeeded in establishing a coherent human rights regime, but failed to carve out effective accountability mechanisms to enforce breaches. Instead, enforcement relies on individual nations’ leaders being motivated to legislate human rights into their domestic laws.

Although the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been broadly accepted, punishment for war crimes and crimes against humanity has been inconsistent and complex.

Consequently, Robertson argues the International Criminal Court (ICC) does not serve as a deterrent to perpetrators of most human rights abuses.

Eroded confidence in international law

The book provides a useful history of the ICC and the way the US, China and Russia have limited its operations by using their veto powers when legal action is proposed against them or their allies.

In the past four years, for instance, Russia has vetoed ICC action 14 times, China five times and the US twice. Robertson suggests the mere threat of a veto by superpowers behind the scenes have seen other initiatives withdrawn.

As a result, Robertson laments the once-powerful ICC is now confined to punishing rebel warlords and leaders of pariah countries.

More than 70 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the growing threats of isolationist foreign policies and anti-democratic regimes are pulling at the threads of our international human rights framework. Shifting geopolitical balances and the populist politics of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign have eroded confidence in a global system of law and order.

Read more: Australia must do more to ensure Myanmar is preventing genocide against the Rohingya

Australia is not immune from this trend. In February 2020, the ICC prosecutor described Australia’s offshore detention regime as “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment”.

But, the ICC decided not to prosecute the Australian government, despite saying its actions appeared “to constitute the underlying act of imprisonment or other severe deprivations of physical liberty” forbidden under international law.

The problem with Magnitsky laws

Robertson’s solution is to impose sanctions against individuals, corporations and other entities.

He argues Magnitsky laws are not an alternative to coordinated international criminal justice, but an assertion of the fundamental values that countries insist should be respected by other nations.

The problem is these types of sanctions can be abused for political reasons. We have already seen the tit-for-tat actions of nations that bring sanctions against the citizens of their enemies, such as the Russian counter-sanctions against US citizens in 2013, including former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.

Read more: Canada’s growing challenges with economic sanctions

Among democratic nations, it is unlikely Magnitsky laws would ever be used against friendly allies. Can you imagine any of Australia’s allies sanctioning an Australian official for a First Nations’ death in custody or for the over-representation of First Nations people in the country’s criminal justice system?

If enforcement of human rights breaches is seen as political or inconsistent, then Magnitsky laws may not be the universal panacea Robertson suggests. However, this doesn’t mean the push for individual accountability is not justified. As he writes,

human rights are not rights in any meaningful sense unless they are capable of enforcement.

Robertson leaves us with a sensible pathway to a better world through laws that hold individuals accountable for their evil deeds. Magnitsky sanctions might, at least, make murderers, crooks and abusers think twice before implementing their plans.

Geoffrey Robertson will be speaking across Australia in the coming weeks, with engagements in Melbourne on May 22 and Sydney on May 25 and 26, to be followed by Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.

– ref. Book review: Geoffrey Robertson makes the case for naming and shaming human rights abusers – https://theconversation.com/book-review-geoffrey-robertson-makes-the-case-for-naming-and-shaming-human-rights-abusers-160985

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Whyte, Deputy Director, Centre for Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology, Queensland University of Technology

As behavioural scientists, we have a keen interest in how people make decisions, and particularly how these decisions incorporate a range of emotional, cognitive and psychological factors.

Choosing a life partner is arguably one of the most important decisions a person can make. And research has shown the most common way to do this these days is to go online.

As increasing numbers of people wade cautiously through the digital dating market, many still subscribe to stereotypical ideas about what men and women find attractive in a partner.

Our latest research, published today in PLOS One shows the truth, as ever, is more nuanced.

Using survey data from 7,325 heterosexual users of dating websites, aged 18 to 65, we show there is no absolute difference between the preferences of men and women when it comes to choosing a mate. Both essentially desire the same qualities, but prioritise them slightly differently.

The democratisation of dating?

Dating in the 21st century is a truly unique experience. For millennia, the human search for companionship had been constrained by access, distance and resources. Most people had to find a partner through close or extended family, or religious, cultural or social organisations.

Today, online dating allows seemingly unrestrained and “nonsequential” decision-making.

Imagine if you met someone at a bar and told them to wait around for two hours, just in case you managed to find someone better. It sounds bizarre, but that’s what online dating allows. You can search through thousands of people and never have to make a decision.

This is good news for researchers of human behaviour. With such a vast and growing pool of data, we can study mating choices in a way we never could before.

Pressure to play the evolutionary game

Obviously, a huge part of sexual attraction comes down to personal preference regarding what makes someone “sexy”. That said, there are many stereotypes relating to what heterosexual men and women find sexy.

It’s often assumed women favour more emotional, personality, intelligence and commitment-based traits in men, while men are often said to prefer physical attractiveness.

From an evolutionary psychology angle, these stereotypes aren’t unfounded. In the game of life, the main aim is to pass on your genes — and once you do, to ensure your offspring achieve the same success.

Naturally, men and women play different roles in the reproduction process. From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense for women to seek a man with traits that will benefit her offspring in both the short and long term, as women bear a bigger reproductive cost than men.

They have internal gestation for nine months and then must successfully give birth, all while facing discomfort and risk. They will then continue to nurse and care for the child.

Men, at its simplest, need only to invest time into copulation to have offspring. Theoretically, then, the specific selection pressures on men and women to pass on their genes should be observable in the characteristics of the mates they choose.

Many of these assumptions fall under a school of thought called “parental investment theory”, developed in the early 1970s by evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers.

More recent theories in gender studies and social and evolutionary psychology have countered the notion of absolute differences. They demonstrate men and women are far more similar in their preferences than previously thought.

Our research reinforces one such theory, referred to as “mutual mate choice”. We found both men and women essentially desire the same qualities in a partner, differing only in the relative emphasis placed on each trait at different life stages.

Read more: Should I stay or should I go? Here are the relationship factors people ponder when deciding whether to break up

If men are from Mars, women are too

We asked survey participants to rate from 0 to 100 the importance they placed on nine traits when looking for a mate. They fell into three categories:

• aesthetics, such as age, attractiveness and physical features
• resources, such as intelligence, education and income
• and personality, such as trust, openness and emotional connection.

Both genders rated aesthetics as highly important, along with all three personality traits, while income was much less important.

Women, however, rated factors including age, education, intelligence, income, trust and emotional connection about 9 to 14 points higher than men. Men placed relatively more emphasis on attractiveness and physical build.

Importantly, the way both genders prioritised traits changed with age. Both cared less about physical attractiveness as they got older, whereas emphasis on personality increased. This makes sense, considering we require different things from a partner at different life stages.

Our findings reinforce that both men and women tend to give similar emphasis to certain traits, depending on their individual needs at a particular stage in life.

Men and women can both be very picky

One interesting revelation came when we grouped participants’ preference data together.

Of those individuals who said one specific trait was very important to them, it turned out the majority of traits were very important to them. On the other hand were respondents who said they didn’t have a strong preference for any particular trait at all.

So while some people were happy to go with the flow, many of the participants actually cared a lot about a lot of different factors. For men, the likelihood of having such stringent preferences was most common between ages 20 and 40. Among women it was more likely between the ages of 35 and 50.

Personal circumstance and preference is key

The bottom line is there is no single unified theory of mate choice. Attractiveness matters to everyone to some extent. Resources and intelligence matter to everyone to some extent.

Beyond human biology and evolution, it’s likely our individual personal constraints — such as employment, education, family and social circle — still have a huge impact on how we choose a mate, even if we are dating online.

While dating apps and websites may come with an element of “cognitive overload”, they are ultimately just conduits for human communication. They let people search far and wide for a mate who will help them achieve their own relationship goals.

And our relationship goals, just as is the case with the importance we place on our preferences, change over time.

Read more: The One: could DNA tests find our soulmate? We study sex and sexuality — and think the idea is ridiculous

– ref. Men are from Mars, women are from… Mars? How people choose partners is surprisingly similar (but depends on age) – https://theconversation.com/men-are-from-mars-women-are-from-mars-how-people-choose-partners-is-surprisingly-similar-but-depends-on-age-161081

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Annabelle Lukin, Associate Professor in Linguistics, Macquarie University

As lethal violence kills ordinary people in Gaza and Israel, news outlets across the globe are constructing versions of events that will keep eyeballs on their content.

After all, war is the most compelling news story of all. And given many people who care about this situation have no direct experience of it, they depend on media reports to form a view.

But when reporting on something as terrible as political violence, journalists face an impossible choice.

While professional ethics of journalism demand “objectivity”, language just won’t come to the party. This is because language has no neutral mode. Once you step into the process of saying anything about the violence in Gaza, language makes you take a side.

There are essentially two main modes for reporting on geopolitical violence. The first and dominant mode is typical of mainstream news reporting. It strives for objectivity by presenting selective factual events devoid of context. It briefly summarises complex events, while not allocating blame or responsibility.

While the effects of events on ordinary people can be reported on, these are typically presented as an unfortunate but unavoidable byproduct of something otherwise official, rational and purposeful.

Read more: Why is accountability for alleged war crimes so hard to achieve in the Israel-Palestinian conflict?

This style is susceptible to the favoured tropes of militaries and, therefore, to inadvertently reproducing official narratives. Destructive and lethal violence becomes obscured by terminology like “operations”, “campaigns”, “offensives”, “strategies”, “targets” and “phases”.

This language construes the violence as if it has a higher purpose. The particularly eager journalist will report the official name of an “operation”, as in this example, where the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent tells readers Israel has named its operation “Guardian of the Walls”.

And they will expound on the types of weapons technology being employed, as if the make and model of the plane and the bombs it unleashes have any real bearing on these events.

The problem with this mode of reporting is that violence is objectified and dehumanised. Objectifying violence means it is construed as if it happens by itself, without reference to either the political masters who order it, or those tasked with enacting it.

And dehumanised, because it fails to put front and centre the most important perspective of these events: those killed, injured, bereaved and traumatised by the actions of (usually male) leaders, who refuse alternative means of resolving differences.

Here’s an example of this “objective” style from a recent report on the BBC’s website. The violence, referred to as a “conflict”, as “rockets and air strikes” continuing, as a “concentration of militant rocket fire”, as “Israeli air strikes”, is all divorced from the human agents of this violence.

And the dead Israelis are killed “in rocket attacks”, while the scores of dead Palestinians are simply a “death toll”.

An obvious and often conscious effect of this style is to treat two sides as if they are equal participants in this violence. This is the effect of journalistic shorthand, such as the “Israel Gaza conflict”, or the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.

These formulations avoid allocating blame to one side or the other. The BBC report shows a scrupulous formulation so that “rockets and air strikes” appear side by side, even when the syntax of this formulation doesn’t make sense. In their phrase “rockets and air strikes have continued”, while “airstrikes” can continue, “rockets” themselves can’t.

And the “they said while the others said” structure keeps up the illusion that this violence is symmetrical.

I don’t want to minimise the horror for ordinary Israelis of suffering rockets fired by Hamas foot soldiers. I can’t begin to imagine the fear that I could lose a child to this kind of horrendous violence.

But the numbers of dead and scale of destruction belie this false equivalence. Just ask yourself: where would you rather be?

Herein lies the alternative mode of reporting this violence. When the violence you are reporting on is illegitimate, you naturally strive for language that fails the “objectivity” test.

You will focus on the brutal and inhumane consequences of the violence. You will make the perpetrators of the violence visible, and you will demonise them. You will emphasise the scale of the violence and its devastating effects on families and communities.

Read more: Many questions, few answers, as conflict deepens between Israelis and Palestinians

We can see these linguistic features in the reporting by The Electronic Intifada.

The style goes against everything in the standard journalism textbook. But its crowning, remarkable achievement is that, of everything that is going on, the killing of children is at the heart of this news report.

While we like to believe that what we politely call “war” is used as a last resort, this quantitative history of war shows that, as time goes on, human societies have been more addicted to war, that what we think of “civilisation” appears to correlate with more and more lethal wars.

For the journalists who report this violence on our behalf, there is nowhere to hide. There is no neutral, objective mode. Your choice is to stand so far back from the “conflict” that you obscure its brutal irrationality and, in so doing, unwittingly or otherwise, put your support behind the most powerful belligerents.

Or you can come in close and show mutilated and traumatised children, and suffer the journalistic ignominy of “biased” reporting.

– ref. When it comes to media reporting on Israel-Palestine, there is nowhere to hide – https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-media-reporting-on-israel-palestine-there-is-nowhere-to-hide-160992

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Breen, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

It has been a confusing couple of weeks for public sector employees. They started with the government announcing what looked like a three-year pay freeze for public servants but ended up with a “lift/adjust/hold” approach to public sector pay.

Employees earning under NZ$60,000 a year can now expect a pay increase, while those earning more will see an adjustment only in “exceptional circumstances”, or not at all.

The government took the chill off its pay restraint policy by agreeing to index pay against the cost of living and to review the system after one year rather than three.

The stated aim of the policy is to improve the relative lot of the least well paid. But the furore over pay restraint has obscured the deeper problem of gender and ethnicity pay gaps in the public sector.

Women are still paid less

In the background sits the government’s wider Public Sector Workforce Policy. This prioritises fair and equitable employment within a diverse workforce, while also calling for pay expectations and other increases to be balanced against the cost of the COVID response and recovery.

In an effort to tackle systemic inequalities, the policy aims to build on the gains so far to further reduce the gender and ethnic pay gaps.

It’s true progress on those fronts has been made, but public service employment statistics – as a subset of public sector employment – reveal some stubborn disparities.

Read more: NZ’s second ‘Well-being Budget’ must deliver for the families that sacrificed most during the pandemic

As of 2020, women made up 61.7% of public service employees, a record high. While the overall average annual salary was $84,500, the average for men was $89,900 but $81,200 for women.

At 9.6%, this gap between what men and women earn is at its smallest since 2000. But this is complicated by the fact that gender pay gaps within the public service vary greatly due in large part to occupational segregation — meaning women are more likely to be working in lower-paid jobs.

Pay rates still reflect ethnicity

Similar dynamics are at work in the ethnic pay gap. European public service employees are, on average, paid more than other ethnicities.

Only male Europeans exceed the average annual salary. European women, on average, earn just under that amount. The salaries of Māori, Asian and Pacific workers, on average, fall well short of the overall average annual salary.

The Māori pay gap (the difference between average pay for Māori and non-Māori employees) was 9.3% in 2020, a decrease from 9.9% in 2019. Similarly, the Pacific pay gap was 19.5%, a drop from 20.1% in 2020. Again, ethnic pay gaps are influenced by Māori, Pacific and Asian public servants being more likely to be working in lower-paid jobs.

Read more: Why NZ’s public sector wage freeze ignores the lessons of history

Compounding this, women within those ethnic groups earn less, on average, than their male counterparts. Wāhine Māori earn more than Pacific men but less than European men and women, and Māori and Asian men.

Pacific women have the lowest average salaries in the public service, despite having had the largest increase in average salaries over the past year (5.6% or around $3,600). What we see here are gender and ethnic disparities working in combination.

Can discrimination be justified?

Clearly, there is much to be done. But if we are going to talk about COVID response and recovery, pay restraints and inequality all in the same breath, we also need to include wage subsidy payments.

The bulk of those payments went to private sector male employees. Breaking the payments down by ethnic group, Asian workers were the highest recipients, European workers were second, with Pacific and Māori workers third and fourth respectively.

Ideally, then, public sector “pay restraint” needs to take the gender and ethnic make-up of the workforce into account. This is a tricky balancing act, underpinned by New Zealand employees’ right to be free from discrimination on grounds of sex, race and ethnicity, even where there is no discriminatory intention.

Read more: If New Zealand can radically reform its health system, why not do the same for welfare?

Unpalatable as it might be, the government could argue that any discriminatory fallout from pay restraint is justifiable or there is a good reason for any unintentional discrimination, such as on the grounds of helping the COVID recovery.

Similarly, New Zealand’s international legal obligations under the prohibition of employment discrimination require any justification for differential treatment to be reasonable and objective on the grounds it is:

• legitimate
• compatible with the obligation to ensure women in particular are guaranteed equal pay for equal work
• solely for the purpose of promoting the general welfare in a democratic society.

The aim of the measure must be proportionate, in a “clear and reasonable” way, to its effect. A country’s lack of available resources is not an objective and reasonable justification unless every effort has been made to address and eliminate the discrimination as a matter of priority.

The immediate controversy over pay restraint may have passed but the question of inequality remains. Any pay increase for the public sector’s lowest-paid workers is to be welcomed, but it’s only a partial solution to the over-representation of women and ethnic minorities in those roles.

– ref. Wage restraint aims to lift the lowest-earning public servants, but it won’t fix stubborn gender and ethnic pay gaps – https://theconversation.com/wage-restraint-aims-to-lift-the-lowest-earning-public-servants-but-it-wont-fix-stubborn-gender-and-ethnic-pay-gaps-160763

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Kaufman, Research Fellow, Vaccine Uptake Group, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

Yesterday, we heard from a nurse at one of Victoria’s mass vaccination clinics who said she’d administered just one vaccine in an eight-hour shift. She said vaccine hesitancy was a factor in people not turning up to be vaccinated.

So how do we handle people’s questions or concerns about the COVID-19 vaccines, to address vaccine hesitancy? How do we do this and boost the vaccine rollout, beyond the almost 3.2 million doses delivered in Australia to date?

GPs and practice nurses are ideally placed to answer specific questions about people’s personal health and vaccine eligibility. However, not everyone has a regular GP or wants to get vaccinated at a GP clinic. GPs are also being swamped with questions to address in limited time.

That’s why it’s essential to encourage other people in the community to be vaccine advocates.

Why is this a good idea?

People’s willingness to have a vaccine is influenced by social norms — what they think others are doing, and what they think trusted or influential people want them to do.

We have been regularly delivering vaccine communication training seminars, based on communication and behavioural science, to people in all kinds of roles. These include cultural, faith and First Nations community leaders; health-care support staff, such as medical receptionists; and office and industrial workers.

These people don’t need all the answers. But if they have a role where people know and trust them, and might come to them with vaccine-related questions, these people can provide reputable information to increase vaccine acceptance or even help people book in to get the vaccine.

Here are a few strategies for these vaccine champions to help build vaccine confidence in their organisations or communities.

1. Share your story

When everyone knows a few people who have been vaccinated, vaccination starts to become the norm. Countries that had high hesitancy at the start of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout have generally seen hesitancy go down as vaccination rates go up.

If you’ve decided to get vaccinated, or if you’ve already received your vaccine, talk about your experience. Share your reasons for deciding to get vaccinated. For instance, what are the good things you think will come with vaccination? Post photos on social media (but avoid scary needles) to normalise the experience.

We know from our current research many people are concerned about side-effects. Talk about how you manage side-effects, if you get them, or if you needed some time off work to give people a sense of what to expect.

Read more: Why telling stories could be a more powerful way of convincing some people to take a COVID vaccine than just the facts

2. Work together with other vaccine advocates

Find other people in your organisation who are willing to share their vaccination stories and work with them to brainstorm vaccine promotion strategies. For example, you can discuss what’s worked to promote flu vaccines in the past.

If you work in an office, make sure there are vaccine champions representing all levels of your organisation, not just managers. If you’re working in a diverse community, try to find and highlight vaccine champions of different genders, disability status and cultural background.

Read more: From Elvis to Dolly, celebrity endorsements might be the key to countering vaccine hesitancy

3. Help people find answers

It can be difficult for people to find answers to their questions about the vaccines and the vaccine rollout process.

We know people with lower levels of health literacy often have poorer health and say they are less likely to get vaccinated.

Amid the whirlwind of information the pandemic has unleashed, people with lower levels of education and those who speak languages other than English are often left behind. These groups are also less likely to plan to get vaccinated.

So if you feel confident finding reliable information, you can offer to help other people find answers. Understanding risk is hard; visual elements, such as pictograms, may help. Another option is to organise to bring in an expert to your work or place of worship for a live question and answer session.

You can also help people understand where to go to find out if they’re eligible for the vaccine, or how to book an appointment.

Read more: How can governments communicate with multicultural Australians about COVID vaccines? It’s not as simple as having a poster in their language

4. Address vaccine misinformation

Misinformation and conspiracy theories flourish in times of uncertainty, like the pandemic.

But before you jump in to correct every myth you hear someone share, it’s a good idea to consider if this myth is being shared widely, or if it is affecting behaviour. If it is, there are some strategies you can use to address misinformation without getting into a debate.

First, try and talk privately. Ask questions and acknowledge the emotions driving a person’s belief in misinformation. Offer to look for the truth together. And before you share information yourself, make sure it’s reliable: “verify before you amplify”.

Read more: Religious concerns over vaccine production methods needn’t be an obstacle to immunisation

5. Encourage vaccination

Not everyone will be comfortable or able to take a leadership role in building vaccine confidence. But even everyday conversations with friends and family can have an impact. So can recommending vaccination.

A recommendation to vaccinate from a health-care professional is particularly powerful. Encouraging people in your network to vaccinate is also likely to have an influence. But this needs to be handled with respect and not done in a coercive or domineering way.

A simple phrase like “I hope you will get vaccinated” can make a big difference.

– ref. From faith leaders to office workers: 5 ways we can all be COVID vaccine champions – https://theconversation.com/from-faith-leaders-to-office-workers-5-ways-we-can-all-be-covid-vaccine-champions-160454

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Minglu Chen, Senior Lecturer, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

I was making small talk with a medical technician during a health check a few months ago. After hearing I was a senior lecturer teaching Chinese politics at the University of Sydney, she commented: “It must be very hard for you.” My first thought was that she meant it must have been hard to teach online during the pandemic lockdown. But then she asked: “How do you manage to overcome your bias?”

I am an academic of Chinese background in Australia. So am I necessarily biased in my approach to Chinese politics? Is it indeed possible that my upbringing in China has made me a blind supporter of the Chinese system? Or has my embrace of liberal values turned me into a militant “China basher”?

These questions had occurred to me before, of course. But against the background of the recent souring of China-Australia relations, they have become more acute than ever before.

Read more: Why the Australia-China relationship is unravelling faster than we could have imagined

In November 2020, for the first time in ten years of teaching, a student who described themselves as a “Chinese patriot” accused me of being a “Taiwan independence supporter”. The reason was my comment in class that, after the election of Joe Biden as US president, issues such as Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan were likely to cause tensions between China and the United States. On the same day in the same class, a non-Chinese student protested that, while wishing to avoid turning academic analysis into a moral judgment, I should have remembered that “authoritarianism is evil”.

Teaching the topic of Chinese politics is becoming more challenging in a world increasingly divided by ideas, beliefs and interests. Of course, our own values and experiences always influence and even drive inquiry and the extension of knowledge. But if students come to class with pre-existing rigid mindsets and refuse to engage with different opinions and viewpoints, then education simply fails in its purpose.

“We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports,” Chinese leader Mao Zedong said in a 1939 interview. Taken out of context (Mao was describing the rivalry between the Chinese Communist Party and the Japanese puppet government in Nanjing) this sounds one-sided and superficial. But if we succumb to nationalistic emotions, moral values and political ideology, then this perspective is exactly how we see the world.

Read more: Students in China heed their government’s warnings against studying in Australia

Understanding China – and ourselves

In the study of politics in China, I have endeavoured to teach students that things are often not as clear-cut and absolute as many expect. In other words, nuance is the key to understanding China.

It is valid to question the legitimacy and stability of any system, particularly if the system may rely on censorship and coercion. But over the years, all the predictions of the system’s collapse have proved wrong. China’s one-party rule has been firm and strong to this day.

We need to consider the question of what explains the resilience and prosperity of the Chinese system. Before we criticise it for its lack of liberal democratic values, it is important to first understand what the system is and how it operates – that includes its economic drivers, its sources of legitimacy, its historical legacy and its developmental trajectory.

Why is it important? Such understanding will help us better cope with a world where China is a significant power and will likely remain so in the foreseeable future.

We have seen the rise of a new generation of patriotic Chinese “wolf warriors” who aggressively defend the state’s positions. But it is equally important for them to engage with different opinions and perspectives.

Read more: Pro-China nationalists are using intimidation to silence critics. Can they be countered without stifling free speech?

For one thing, when defending China against Western countries’ frequent “attacks” on “sensitive issues”, they need to understand that such issues might reflect the inherent problems of China’s system. These problems include economic inequality, ethnic tensions, vulnerable property rights, lack of individual freedom, and many more. Moreover, they could benefit from a self-recognition of the origins of their own strong feelings of pride and loyalty to the Chinese nation as a result of how it constructs their identity and sense of belonging.

Research versus parroting the official line

Returning to the question of how I manage my bias when teaching Chinese politics, I guess my identity as a Chinese immigrant will always have an impact on my understanding of the Chinese system. For all of us, our perceptions of the world reflect the values and beliefs associated with our identities and experiences.

Just like my students, some readers of this article might think I am too critical of China. In the eyes of others I might appear not critical enough. This is understandable: my opinions have been informed by my own experiences, as well as by my analysis of primary sources, engagement with many academic thinkers and communications with researchers, policymakers and business owners.

I try to expose students to the complexity of Chinese politics through such a research-driven approach. This approach is largely missing in public debate about China in Australia. Yet it is a difficult but important task.

If we fail in this task, in the quest for knowledge and understanding based on careful evaluation of opinions and facts, our discussions would be reduced to nothing more than an indiscriminate acceptance and simple repetition of official discourses or media coverage, whatever their source. My students in the class reflect the views of their home societies. In the current environment, that’s making it more difficult than ever to engage in productive analysis and discussion.

– ref. Teaching Chinese politics in Australia: polarised views leave academics between a rock and a hard place – https://theconversation.com/teaching-chinese-politics-in-australia-polarised-views-leave-academics-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place-157886

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Mclaughlin, PhD Candidate, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle

Five Australian states and territories are trialling or planning 30km/h speed limits and zones. However, some people question if 30km/h speed limits are actually urgent and necessary, or are instead a so-called “nanny state” policy or revenue-raising activity.

Low-speed streets are about much more than road safety and increasing fine revenue. By building safer streets, governments and cities around the world are creating more liveable cities. The benefits include low crime levels, more physically active citizens, greater social connectedness, increased spending in local businesses and less pollution.

Read more: Getting people more active is key to better health: here are 8 areas for investment

Research shows 30km/h speed limits on local residential streets could reduce the Australian road death toll by 13%. The economic benefit would be about A$3.5 billion every year.

Learning from other countries, it will be important to run public education campaigns to inform communities and opinion leaders. Another key to success is finding a strong political champion of lower speeds in residential streets.

Leadership is needed to counter myths about 30km/h speed limits that are misinforming public and political opinion. As part of the Streets for Life campaign for Global Road Safety Week, the United Nations has busted international myths surrounding 30km/h. In support of domestic demands for 30km/h speed limits, in this article we bust five common myths about 30km/h speed limits in Australia.

Myth #1: 30km/h limits don’t make a difference

Road trauma is the number one cause of death in school-aged children. More than 1,100 Australians die on our roads each year.

The evidence is very clear: the chance of a pedestrian surviving when hit by a car skyrockets when the car’s speed is reduced. The chance of survival jumps from just 10% at 50km/h to 90% at 30km/h.

Speed is the most common contributor to road trauma – more common than alcohol, drugs and fatigue.

To reduce serious injury risk, 40km/h speed limits aren’t low enough. The chance of survival when hit by a car improves from 60% at 40km/h to 90% at 30km/h. Reducing speed limits to 30km/h in urban areas such as high pedestrian zones, school zones and local traffic areas is urgently needed to reduce deaths and severe injuries.

Two-thirds of all crashes in New South Wales occur in metro areas. In these areas, 60% of fatal crashes are on local and collector streets (leading to arterial roads) with 50-60km/h speed limits. To achieve road safety targets and goals of zero road deaths, a 30km/h speed limit is crucial.

Read more: Delivery rider deaths highlight need to make streets safer for everyone

Myth #2: 30km/h limits aren’t popular

How supportive would you be of reducing speed limits in neighbourhood streets to help create safer and more liveable streets for people? Well, according to a recent nationally representative poll, about two-thirds of Australians say they want lower speed limits on local streets.

The introduction of 30km/h speed limits around the world shows the popularity of these limits grows rapidly after they take effect and local residents begin to appreciate the multitude of benefits from safer streets.

Read more: London is proposing 20mph speed limits – here’s the evidence on their effect on city life

Myth #3: 30km/h limits increase journey times

In urban areas, journey times are affected by more than the speed limit. Key factors include traffic congestion and time spent waiting at traffic signals. One study that considered a reasonably typical 26-minute journey to work calculated the difference between a 50km/h and 30km/h speed limit is less than a minute.

Safer and more liveable streets can decrease our reliance on the private car. By shifting private car trips to active and sustainable forms of transport, such as cycling and walking, we can reduce congestion and improve population and environmental health.

Research from Transport for London has indicated that 20mph (32km/h) zones have no net negative effect on emissions due to smoother driving and less braking.

Read more: Climate explained: does your driving speed make any difference to your car’s emissions?

Myth #4: 30km/h limits are anti-motorist

Reduced speed limits are not anti-motorist and are not about banning cars or the ability to drive. A 30km/h limit is a win-win-win for street users, businesses and motorists – and major motoring groups agree.

Lower speed limits can lead to fewer car crashes, in turn reducing insurance costs and time delayed in traffic by those crashes.

Main road speed limits will remain faster. However, residential streets, shopping streets and streets close to public transport will be slower, to create a more economically vibrant and safer city. That’s because children, older people and people living with disabilities feel safer when going to local schools, shops, services and parks.

Myth #5: 30km/h limits are about revenue-raising

Speed limits are a low-cost tool in the governments’ toolbox against road deaths. Of course, not everyone obeys speed limits – two-thirds of Australians admit to speeding. Speed enforcement and street design changes may be needed in some cases to reduce driver speed and improve conditions for all street users.

Read more: Cycling and walking can help drive Australia’s recovery – but not with less than 2% of transport budgets

Enforcement works and ensures credibility, because no single solution will work alone. For best results, state and territory governments will combine multiple tools to reduce speed, such as speed limits, public education, driver training, speed enforcement and street design.

Learn more

Not convinced? More myths to bust? Check out the Australian campaign 30please.org and the global United Nations Road Safety Week campaign #Love30 happening this week.

Introducing 30km/h limits is one of a suite of measures available to governments to bring about six compelling co-benefits to society: road safety, physical activity, air quality, liveability, equity and economic benefits.

All Australian states and territories should urgently introduce 30km/h speed limits to create streets that are safe, accessible and enjoyable for all.

– ref. Busted: 5 myths about 30km/h speed limits in Australia – https://theconversation.com/busted-5-myths-about-30km-h-speed-limits-in-australia-160547

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Malcolm Whyte, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Science, Australian National University

Success in the Olympic Games is usually focused on medals, especially gold ones, and countries are usually ranked in terms of the number of medals won, and sometimes as medals per million of population or gross domestic product.

Examining individual countries this way yields some clues as to what is associated with success, but other striking insights emerge when the countries that won medals are divided into groups.

I’ve divided the 88 countries that won medals in the 2016 Rio Games into four large groups ranked by population (one group contains the 22 most populous nations, the next group 22 which are the next largest bloc, and so on) and also into four large groups ranked by total wealth.

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

Looking at the results this way, as if there were four and not 88 medal-winning participants, reveals that the least populous bloc won far more medals per 100 million population, by a factor of about 12, both gold and total, than the most populous bloc.

On its face, this is surprising. The group of countries with the largest populations have the largest number of potential athletes to choose from and win the largest overall numbers of medals.

Just as strikingly, and just as surprisingly, the least-wealthy bloc of countries won far more medals per US$ trillion of wealth than the wealthiest bloc.

Similar patterns emerged in the results of the 2016 Paralympics, the 2018 Commonwealth Games at the Gold Coast and the 2012 London Olympics.

If these results are driven by wealth rather than population (the two move together) they might flow from the things that tend to be associated with wealth, among them less exercise, more labour-saving devices and a less-healthy diet.

People in smaller and less-affluent countries might be more physically active and perhaps in better shape to become elite athletes.

Per dollar, the richest nations do the worst

Whatever the reasons, it seems clear that on an aggregate basis (not an individual basis) the ability to spend more money winning medals doesn’t translate into more medals per capita or more medals per unit of wealth. It does the reverse.

Other things matter. In 2004 Imad Moosa and Lee Smith from La Trobe University analysed the Sydney 2000 medal count and found it positively related to both expenditure on health as a proportion of GDP and the number of athletes representing each country (which is only loosely related to its population).

Read more: How much are we prepared to pay for international sporting success?

On an individual basis, the medal count may well be related to the amount of resources actually invested in winning medals (as opposed to the country’s total resources) and we often talk as if it is.

Here’s a headline about the Rio Olympics from Australia, one of the countries that invests the most in elite sport along with Korea, Japan, France and Canada:

Is Australia’s disastrous Olympic campaign really $340 million well spent?

Another Australian newspaper report about Rio went as far as purporting to calculate the average cost to taxpayers per medal, which it said was A$20 million, “a price most of us seem prepared to pay”.

Read more: Better than gold: the real value of the Olympic Games

The medal count appears to matter for national pride, and arguably for broader participation in sport and wider health benefits (although an independent review for the Australian government failed to find such a link) but the path to getting medals appears to depend on more than what we are able to spend to get them.

Which makes the results of the games surprising, as they should be.

Now for the Tokyo Games, hopefully to be held later this year!

– ref. Dollar for dollar, the winning nations at the Olympic Games seem to be the poorest – https://theconversation.com/dollar-for-dollar-the-winning-nations-at-the-olympic-games-seem-to-be-the-poorest-158760

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Director, Health Program, Grattan Institute

Since 2015, the share of younger people (aged 20 to 39) with private health insurance has dropped from 24% to 22%.

People in this age group contribute more in insurance premiums than they claim in pay-outs. So this decline ends up pushing prices up for the 44% of Australians with private insurance.

And new private health insurance coverage data shows this trend continuing.

Our latest Grattan report outlines a four-step plan to stop this trajectory and fix the private health insurance system. The first step is preventing insurers increasing premiums if they cannot demonstrate the policy offers value for money.

What’s the private health insurance ‘death spiral’?

An ageing population, increased use of health services, and rising health-care costs are driving up the benefits insurers have to pay out each year.

As pay-outs increase, insurers raise premiums, to recoup these costs.

Rising premiums make health insurance less affordable and less attractive — particularly to younger and healthier people.

Read more: How do you stop the youth exodus from private health insurance? Cut premiums for under-55s

As younger, healthier people drop their insurance, the insurance “risk pool” gets worse; people who hold insurance are older and more likely to use their benefits and use them to a greater value.

This increases the cost of premiums, younger people drop out, and the death spiral starts again.

What does the data say?

The chart shows the overall trends in private health insurance over the past six years.

Over this time period, the number of people with private health insurance over 65 — who are likely to draw on their health insurance, receiving more in benefit pay-outs than they pay in premiums — has increased dramatically.

At the same time, the numbers in all other age groups is declining, albeit with a slight uptick in the September quarter of 2020, possibly associated with people being allowed to defer premium payments during the COVID crisis.

The picture is particularly stark for 20 to 39-year-olds. People in this group make the pool of people insured less risky overall.

So far, policy tweaks have failed

In 2017 the federal government announced several rearrangements of private health insurance deckchairs to make the product more affordable or to encourage young people into insurance.

This included:

Read more: Premiums up, rebates down, and a new tiered system – what the private health insurance changes mean

But these initiatives have failed to entice young people into private health insurance.

What are the solutions?

Our report proposes four key changes to:

1. Address premium increases, which are currently too great and too frequent.

Over the past 20 years, private health insurance premiums have grown faster than inflation, faster than health-specific inflation, and faster than wages. If people want to keep their same level of insurance, they have to fork out more and more.

Insurers that won’t or can’t offer their customers value for money should not be allowed to raise their premiums.

A new private health industry plan could reinforce the incentives for insurers to improve their claims ratios. This is the proportion of premium revenue returned to members in the form of benefits.

The health minister could also require funds to provide additional justification for a proposed increase if the proportion of their premiums returned to members is worse than the average claims ratio.

2. Reduce private hospital costs.

Unnecessarily long stays and examples of low- or no-value care are more common in private hospitals than in public ones. This drives up the cost of private hospital care.

Read more: Hospitals have stopped unnecessary elective surgeries – and shouldn’t restart them after the pandemic

A new private health industry plan should create incentives for private hospitals to become more efficient. One way to do this would be for insurers to pay private hospitals in a similar way to how government funds public hospitals. This would mean insurers pay private hospitals for the patients they treat, not for how long patients stay in hospital or the other services hospitals provide.

Improving private hospital efficiency and reducing low- or no-value care could reduce premiums by 5%.

3. Reduce out-of-pocket costs.

Out-of-pocket costs on medical bills are often in the hundreds of dollars, and sometimes in the thousands. In 2019-20, the average medical out-of-pocket cost was $544, and the average hospital out-of-pocket cost was $411.

Out-of-pocket costs are a major source of people’s dissatisfaction with private health insurance, and astonishingly high billing by a minority of doctors is a major cause of these costs.

Read more: Greedy doctors make private health insurance more painful – here’s a way to end bill shock

Comprehensive, public information on fees and costs would help. But even that is unlikely to significantly reduce the size and prevalence of out-of-pocket costs, because patients face an inherent power imbalance when dealing with doctors.

A new private health industry plan should include the structural reform required to reduce surprise out-of-pocket payments. This may come about through downward pressure on medical bills, or with more deals between doctors and insurers to bridge the gap.

4. Reduce the price private insurers pay for medical devices.

Surgically implanted medical devices include hip and knee replacement devices, cardiac stents and pacemakers. Currently, medical device manufacturers and importers, and private hospitals charge more than twice as much for these as public hospitals, a nice gravy train which they lobbied health minister Greg Hunt to retain.

This year’s budget revealed the minister backed down on a plan to reduce the cost of health insurance premiums by stopping medical device rorts. The budget announced yet another process of investigation and analysis, rather than making the tough decisions to end the excess charging, which would allow cuts in private health insurance premiums.

Read more: We can cut private health insurance costs by fixing how we pay for hip replacements and other implants

– ref. 4 ways to fix private health insurance so it can sustain a growing, ageing population – https://theconversation.com/4-ways-to-fix-private-health-insurance-so-it-can-sustain-a-growing-ageing-population-161171

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arjuna Dibley, Visiting Researcher, Climate and Energy College, The University of Melbourne

The Morrison government today announced it’s building a new gas power plant in the Hunter Valley, committing up to A$600 million for the government-owned corporation Snowy Hydro to construct the project.

Critics argue the plant is inconsistent with the latest climate science. And a new report by the International Energy Agency has warned no new fossil fuel projects should be funded if we’re to avoid catastrophic climate change.

The move is also inconsistent with research showing government-owned companies can help drive clean energy innovation. Such companies are often branded as uncompetitive, stuck in the past and unable to innovate. But in fact, they’re sometimes better suited than private firms to take investment risks and test speculative technologies.

And if the investments are successful, taxpayers, the private sector and consumers share the benefits.

Lead, not limit

Federal energy minister Angus Taylor announced the funding on Wednesday. He said the 660-megawatt open-cycle gas turbine at Kurri Kurri will “create jobs, keep energy prices low, keep the lights on and help reduce emissions”.

Experts insist the plan doesn’t stack up economically and may operate at less than 2% capacity.

But missing from the public debate is the question of how government-owned companies such as Snowy Hydro might be used to accelerate the clean energy transition.

Australian governments (of all persuasions) have not often used the companies they own to lead in clean energy innovation. Many, such as Hydro Tasmania, still rely on decades-old hydroelectric technologies. And others, such as Queensland’s Stanwell Corporation and Western Australia’s Synergy, rely heavily on older coal and gas assets.

Asking Snowy Hydro to build a gas-fired power plant is yet another example – but it needn’t be this way.

Read more: A single mega-project exposes the Morrison government’s gas plan as staggering folly

The burning question

Globally, more than 60% of electricity comes from wholly or partially state-owned companies. In Australia, despite the 20-year trend towards electricity privatisation, government-owned companies remain important power generators.

At the Commonwealth level, Snowy Hydro provides around 20% of capacity to New South Wales and Victoria. And most electricity in Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia is generated by state government-owned businesses.

But political considerations mean government-owned electricity companies can struggle to navigate the clean energy path.

For example in April this year, the chief executive of Stanwell Corporation, Richard Van Breda, suggested the firm would mothball its coal-powered generators before the end of their technical life, because cheap renewables were driving down power prices.

Queensland’s Labor government was reportedly unhappy with the announcement, fearing voter backlash in coal regions. Breda has since stepped down and Stanwell is reportedly backtracking on its transition plans.

Such examples beg the question: can government-owned companies ever innovate on clean energy? A growing literature in economics, as well as several real-world examples, suggest that under the right conditions, the answer is yes.

Read more: The 1.5℃ global warming limit is not impossible – but without political action it soon will be

Privatised is not always best

Economists have traditionally argued state-owned companies are not good innovators. As the argument goes, the absence of competitive market forces makes them less efficient than their private sector peers.

But recent research by academics and international policy institutions such as the OECD has shown government ownership in the electricity sector can be an asset, not a curse, for achieving technological change.

The reason runs contrary to orthodox economic thinking. While competition can lead to firm efficiency, some economists argue government-owned firms can take greater risks. Without the pressure for market-rate returns to shareholders, government enterprises may be freer to invest in more speculative technologies.

My ongoing research has shown the reality is even more complex. Whether state-owned electric companies can drive clean energy innovation depends a great deal on government interests and corporate governance rules.

For example, consider the New York Power Authority (NYPA) which, like Snowy Hydro, is wholly government owned.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has deliberately sought to use NYPA to decarbonise the state’s electricity grid. The government has managed the company in a way that enables it to take risks on new transmission and generation technologies that investor-owned peers cannot.

For instance, NYPA is investing in advanced sensors and computing systems so it can better manage distributed energy sources such as solar and wind. The technology will also simulate major catastrophic events, including those likely to ensue from climate change.

These investments are likely to contribute to greater grid stability and greater renewables use, benefiting not just NYPA but other electricity generators and ultimately, consumers.

Such innovation is nothing new. Also in the US, the state-owned Sacramento Municipal Utility District built one of the first utility-scale solar projects in the world in 1984.

The way forward

More could be done to ensure Australian government-owned corporations are clean energy catalysts.

Clean energy technologies can struggle to bridge the gap from invention to widespread adoption. Public investment can bring down the price of such technologies or demonstrate their efficacy.

In this regard, government-owned companies could work with private technology firms to invest in technologies in the early stages of development, and which could have significant public benefits. For instance, in 2020, the Western Australian government-owned company Synergy sought to build a 100 megawatt battery with private sector partners.

But many problems facing state-owned companies are the result of ever-changing government policy priorities. The firms should be reformed so they are owned by government, but operated at arm’s length and with other partners. This might better enable clean energy investment without the politics.

Read more: Australia’s states are forging ahead with ambitious emissions reductions. Imagine if they worked together

– ref. Government-owned firms like Snowy Hydro can do better than building $600 million gas plants – https://theconversation.com/government-owned-firms-like-snowy-hydro-can-do-better-than-building-600-million-gas-plants-161180

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Hepburn, Director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University

Even if every country meets its current climate targets, Earth’s temperature will still rise by a dangerous 2.1℃ this century, according to sobering findings from a new International Energy Agency report.

The IEA found the route to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 was “narrow and extremely challenging”, and electricity grids in developed economies such as Australia must be zero emissions by 2053. The IEA was abundantly clear: no new fossil fuel projects should be approved.

The report couldn’t come at a worse time for the Morrison government. This week, it announced A$600 million for a major new gas-fired power plant at Kurri Kurri in New South Wales, claiming it was needed to shore up electricity supplies.

The IEA’s findings cast serious doubt on this decision, and put even more pressure on Australia ahead of crucial international climate talks in Glasgow in November. So let’s take a look at the report in more detail, and see how Australia measures up.

What the report said

The IEA report sets out a comprehensive roadmap to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The good news is this is still achievable. But it’ll take a lot money and enormous effort.

There must be what the report describes as a “total transformation of the energy systems that underpin our economies”. Put simply, the world’s energy economy must be grounded in solar and wind — not coal, gas and oil.

The report works from a basic principle: even if the climate pledges countries have made under the Paris agreement are fully achieved, there will still be 22 billion tonnes of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2050.

This is well short of net zero.

So the IEA set out more than 400 milestones to achieve the global energy transformation. And these absolutely must be complied with if we’re to stop catastrophic global warming and limit temperature rise to 1.5℃.

The milestones include:

Massive investment in electricity networks

Enormous amounts of money are needed to shift away from fossil fuels and meet the global electricity demand doubling over the next 30 years. Existing networks took 130 years to build — we need to build the same again in about one-sixth the time. This includes investing in hydrogen and bio-energy (energy made from organic material), which the report calls a “pillar of decarbonisation”.

Read more: The 1.5℃ global warming limit is not impossible – but without political action it soon will be

Transport

Electric vehicles need to rapidly expand to 65% of the global fleet by 2030, and 100% by 2050. This will require an enormous increase in public electric vehicle charging units and hydrogen refuelling units. To facilitate this shift, petrol and diesel will be phased out. Many countries around the world, including the United Kingdom and Japan, have already introduced a ban on new fossil fuel cars by 2030.

Building and industry

We need to urgently retrofit homes and buildings to make them more energy efficient. Steel, cement and chemical industries, primary emitters, must shift to carbon capture and sequestration and hydrogen.

But the biggest take-home message for Australia is there must be no new development in fossil fuel beyond 2021.

No new fossil fuel development

The report states:

Beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development in our pathway, and no new coal mines or mine extensions are required.

Global demand for oil peaked in 2019, and has declined since then, largely due to COVID-19 lockdowns. Under the roadmap, this decline will continue and reach 75% by 2050. Any growth in demand during this period will be met by growing emergent markets in renewables, green hydrogen and bio-energy.

And of course, the report states no new coal plants should be financially supported unless equipped with carbon capture and sequestration. Inefficient coal plants must be phased out by 2030.

If the roadmap is followed, renewable energy will overtake coal by 2026, and oil and gas by 2030.

For this to happen, annual additions of 630 gigawatts of solar and 390 gigawatts of wind power will be required by 2030. This means the world needs to install the equivalent of “the world’s largest solar park roughly every day”, according to the report.

Australia, are you listening?

Australia’s gas-fired recovery plans are directly inconsistent with the IEA roadmap. The government has argued expanding fossil fuel supply is critical for energy security.

Not only did the federal government just announce over a half a billion dollars for a new gas-fired power plant in NSW, it’s also spending a further $173 million to develop the Beetaloo basin in the Northern Territory, another gas reserve.

Read more: Paying Australia’s coal-fired power stations to stay open longer is bad for consumers and the planet

Experts, advisers and Energy Security Board chair Kerry Schott have all disagreed with these moves. They argue, in line with the IEA report, that cheaper, cleaner alternatives to gas generation, such as wind and solar, can easily provide the dispatchable power required.

The government’s stubborn fossil fuel funding will make it more difficult than it already is to stop global warming beyond 1.5℃.

Australia must immediately stop investing in new fossil fuel projects. While this may be a difficult transition to accept given the enormous scope of gas reserves in Australia, there’s no point spending vast amounts of money on new infrastructure to extract a resource that will be commercially unviable in a decade.

Australia is ignoring the economic and environmental imperatives of transitioning to a low carbon framework. This is reckless, and unfair to other countries. We have the resource capacity and economic strength to transition our energy sector, unlike many developing countries. But we choose not to.

A national embarrassment

John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate, says the next round of international climate talks in Scotland is the “last best chance the world has” to avoid a climate crisis.

But Australia’s investment in new gas development stands in stark contrast to the increasingly ambitious energy commitments of other developed countries. We shouldn’t come empty-handed, with no new targets, to yet another international climate summit.

Read more: Spot the difference: as world leaders rose to the occasion at the Biden climate summit, Morrison faltered

US President Joe Biden has vowed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52% compared with 2005 levels. He has banned new oil and gas leases on federal land, removed fossil fuel subsidies and plans to double wind capacity by 2030.

Likewise, the European Commission seeks to stop funding oil and gas projects. Denmark recently implemented a ban on future gas extraction in the North Sea. And Spain has done the same.

Australia is ignoring its global responsibilities. As a result, we’ll be hit hard by the so-called “Carbon Border Adjustment” policies from the US and European Union, which tax imported goods according to their carbon footprint.

Ultimately, our actions will leave us economically and environmentally isolated in a rapidly emerging new energy world order.

Read more: The EU is considering carbon tariffs on Australian exports. Is that legal?

– ref. New International Energy Agency report reprimands any new fossil fuel development. Guess what Australia did next? – https://theconversation.com/new-international-energy-agency-report-reprimands-any-new-fossil-fuel-development-guess-what-australia-did-next-161178