Every year, the Australian Taxation Office releases a report that includes the highest earning occupations in Australia. These are mostly in the medical, legal and financial sectors.
This information is commonly used by school career advisers, together with other career development material, to help teenagers make career choices.
But the nature of work is changing rapidly under the fourth industrial revolution. This is driven by disruptive technologies such as automation, artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning and digitalisation.
The change is expected to lead to the complete loss of some jobs (such as those in repetitive, production-line manufacturing), the need for significant re-skilling in other jobs (such as pilots and radiologists) and the creation of completely new ones (such as robot trainers and big data analysts).
So, what should career guidance counsellors be doing to ensure today’s children have the skills for jobs of the future, not of the past?
What teenagers want
A recent OECD survey showed teenagers’ career expectations were concentrated in ten so-called “20th century” careers. These include doctors, teachers, lawyers and business managers.
These choices have remained unchanged for almost two decades. For girls, they have become even more popular since 2000. This suggests a significant gap between teenagers’ career knowledge and choices, and the reality of the rapidly changing nature of work.
It’s estimated on average, 14% of jobs across OECD countries are prone to becoming automated and another third could face substantial changes in how they are performed. Nearly half of the jobs in OECD countries are at significant risk of being automated over the next ten to 15 years.
Careers related to how humans and machines or computers complement each other will provide new employment opportunities across different sectors. Commercial passenger airliner pilots, for instance, will steadily adjust to new supervisory roles due to autonomous flight.
While most of the top ten jobs (such as in the health care, law enforcement and education) in the OECD survey are at low risk of automation, other nominated jobs outside this list (such as those in production manufacturing, office support and sales) are at higher risk.
The report characterises “jobs with a future” as those having higher growth prospects with a low risk of automation. In addition to those above, these include jobs in technology such as software engineers, data analysts and supervisors of automated operations.
In the Australian part of the survey, about 35% of jobs selected by teenagers are at risk of automation. This suggests teenagers and career advisers in Australia aren’t fully aware of how the market is shifting and what the “jobs with a future” are.
This misalignment between educational and career aspirations is most pronounced among young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Around 6% are more likely to select jobs more at risk of automation than their more advantaged counterparts.
Also, teenage Australian boys are more likely to select careers in science and engineering. Paradoxically, they are 8% more likely to select jobs at risk of automation than girls of their cohort who are more likely to choose health sector professions.
What should be done
The fourth industrial revolution is already having an impact on current jobs. Despite young people generally completing more years of formal education than their parents, many are struggling to find relevant and consistent employment.
Governments are increasingly worried about the mismatch between what societies and industries demand versus what education systems supply.
Jobs in production line manufacturing are likely to disappear in the next 15 years.Shutterstock
The OECD calls for a partnership between employers and school career advisers. Guidance that starts early, challenges stereotyping (based on gender and socioeconomic status), is well informed and delivered in the workplace in partnership with employers will be most effective. Successful career guidance results in better economic, education and social outcomes.
The Australian government developed a National Career Education Strategy in 2019, after working with the state and territory education, business and industry, and career education groups. This aims to support school students to make better informed future study and career choices.
While this is a good first step, we need better support for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially those in regional, rural and remote locations – as well as male students interested in participating in science, technology and engineering jobs.
The OECD study found countries like Austria and Germany, which had much lower concentration of 20th century careers, had high-quality vocational education and training (VET) programs available for people from a young age. This reinforces research findings and policy reviews that call for closer collaboration between the Australian VET sector and industry.
It also shows the importance of higher government investment in the sector in terms of training and developing skills relevant for disruptive technologies.
Exposing school students to relatively simple and low-cost career development activities, like attending job fairs, has been shown to significantly increase awareness of different occupations and reduce career concentration.
There isn’t a consensus among employers on how disruptive technologies will impact on their organisations. And they are wary of investing heavily in specific skills and training.
But they still have a pivotal role in preparing students with the skills to succeed in the future. The OECD study actively encourages employer engagement in education. Suggested activities include careers-insight talks, subject talks, enterprise competitions, mentoring, workplace visits, job shadowing and short work placements.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Pawson, Professor of Housing Research and Policy, and Associate Director, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW
Despite two years of housing market cooling in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia stayed near the top of the global unaffordability league in 2019. And with prices rebounding in our two largest cities, that status is likely to be reinforced in 2020. Australia’s 30-year housing affordability decline has been among the worst in the developed world.
This problem is fundamentally structural – not cyclical – in nature. Yes, periodic turbulence affects prices and rents. And yes, market conditions vary greatly from place to place. Australia-wide, though, there is an underlying dynamic that – over the medium to long term – is driving housing affordability and rental stress in one general direction only: for the worse.
Certain key factors in Australian housing woes are, of course, far from unique. As we argue in our new book, neoliberal policy dominance and the financialisation of housing have damaged housing system performance in many other countries as well. Similarly, cheap debt has supercharged house prices globally, not just here. And ours is not the only comparable nation where coping with rapid population growth is part of the policy challenge.
But, as we show in our book, over the past 30 years across 18 OECD countries, our market has had the third-biggest fall in house price affordability – and the largest of any major OECD nation.
Even from a narrow “cost to government” perspective, the Australian government should treat current housing system trends as a serious budgetary concern because of impacts on future public spending.
As we argue in our book, housing policy needs to be much more broadly conceived. It’s about much more than “housing programs”. Indeed, housing outcomes in Australia over the past 25 years have been driven far more by policy on tax, finance and regulation – activities rarely controlled by any department with housing in its title – than by explicit spending on housing or subsidies.
Because housing is a system, any serious attempt to improve housing outcomes must recognise the need for system-wide analysis and transformation.
Micro-measures have been the preferred approach of most Australian governments over the past 25 years. But these often generate minimal net benefit or are even counterproductive.
A national housing strategy is long overdue. And only the Commonwealth can lead this. The Commonwealth and its agencies – not the states – control key instruments driving housing outcomes, especially tax and social security settings, as well as financial regulation.
As national governments recognised in the early 1990s and from 2007-10 – and indeed exemplified by the Turnbull government’s 2018 National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation – the constitutional designation of state and territory responsibility for housing and planning is no bar to this.
A key goal must be to discourage speculation in land and housing. This would include a phased restructure of tax settings that incentivise unproductive housing over investment. For example, most housing economists agree investor landlord tax concessions should be wound back and a broad-based land tax should gradually replace stamp duty on housing sales.
The strategy must also aim to increase diversity in the housing market. Expanding the scale of government and non-profit housing provider activity can boost the capacity to better house disadvantaged groups. It will also reduce vulnerability to damaging market volatility arising from the overwhelming reliance on for-profit developers building for individual buyers.
To repair the hollowing-out of housing policy-making capability within governments, the plan should include institutional reform and capacity-building. Both levels of government should have a dedicated cabinet-level housing minister to champion the housing cause across departments. We also need an enduring national agency like the US Department of Housing and Urban Development or the former UK Housing Corporation.
Our insistence on system-wide analysis and reform might seem utopian, especially given the current state of Australian politics. There are parallels here to the challenges of climate change: many might ask how much worse things have to get before active policy action becomes irresistible as a bipartisan commitment.
In the absence of immediate system-wide action on housing, we can also point to initial reforms that Australian governments could easily adopt with minimal direct budgetary impact.
State and territory governments could, for example, follow many comparable countries in adopting planning system rules that set minimum levels of affordable housing that must be built within market housing developments.
In the realm of tenants’ rights, other states could follow Victoria in rebalancing residential tenancy laws away from their typically in-built landlord advantage. “No grounds evictions” should be outlawed.
The Commonwealth could restore the pre-1996 rules of its longstanding National Housing Agreement with the states and territories which largely ringfenced federal funding to supply and improve social housing. All governments could commit to delivering a substantial proportion of affordable housing within residential developments on ex-government land. Many industry stakeholders advocate a 30% target.
We see scope for a phased approach: first-step measures could be implemented while building the political consensus needed for more far-reaching actions. To improve affordability and moderate the rising inequities within and between generations, Australia’s housing system must be fundamentally reformed. There is no responsible “business as usual” option.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Diane Kraal, Senior Lecturer, Business Law and Taxation Dept, Monash Business School, Monash University
So worried is the government about the meagre income it is getting from gas during the middle of Australia’s biggest gas export boom that it asked an independent advisor to chair a review and is getting the treasury to run the ruler over his recommendations.
Australia gets paid for gas mined from under its waters by the “petroleum resource rent tax” set up by the Hawke government in 1988.
But payments peaked at around A$2.5 billion in 2000-01. They are now less than half that, and much lower still as a share of the economy and as a share of gas exported.
The government’s December budget update predicts petroleum resource rent tax revenue of just $1.15 billion this financial year, revised down from the $1.4 billion expected in the May budget.
It has pencilled in only $1.15 billion for each of the next three years.
The weak performance of the petroleum resource rent tax is all the odder because it has been held up as the gold standard for resource taxation.
The 2009 Henry Tax Review wanted to apply the model to iron ore and other minerals, which the Rudd government attempted to, announcing a resource super profit tax in 2010.
The Gillard government cleaved it to what became the milder minerals resource rent tax, before it was abolished by the Abbott government in 2014.
The petroleum resource rent tax collects a share of the profit made from mining gas instead of charging a fixed royalty of the kind imposed by state governments for other minerals.
But the “profit” depends on the choice of the price at which the gas is “sold” from one part of the entity that mines it to another before it is processed and turned into liquid for export.
It’s not as good in practice
There is a regulated method to calculate the true “transfer price” for the purpose of determining the tax payable. If it produces too low a result (as it seems to have) too little profit will be recorded and too little tax will be charged.
The Turnbull government was concerned enough about what was being charged to set up a petroleum resource rent tax review headed by former treasury official Mike Callighan in 2016.
Callahan identified four reasons for dwindling reported profits at a time of record production: declining oil and gas prices, declining production from older projects, the massive expenses involved in setting up new mega projects, and transfers of spending between projects for accounting purposes.
He also recommended an examination of the transfer pricing formula.
In 2018 Treasurer Josh Frydenberg tightened some of the provisions and asked the treasury to lead a review of the formula that is due to report mid-year.
So large are the potential revenue gains that The Australian newspaper has reported that they could keep the budget in surplus.
We calculate the price of gas strangely
To determine the transfer price at which gas from Commonwealth waters is transferred from the part of the entity that extracts it to the rest of the entity, the Australian government uses a method used nowhere else in the world, and certainly not by Australian states in the calculation of their royalties on minerals.
It adopted the method on the recommendation of accounting firm Arthur Anderson in 1998, a few years before it was disgraced in the Enron scandal in the United States and stopped using that name.
The method averages two prices – the “net-back” price, which is used elsewhere, and a bespoke “cost-plus price” which is used nowhere else and purports to be a measure of the cost of mining the gas, but which oddly excludes both the cost of exploring for the gas and the cost of the gas itself.
The more commonly-used (and usually larger) net-back price is calculated by working backwards from the price at which the product is sold to the end-user, subtracting the costs involved in getting it to that point.
Modelling I have conducted for a article co-authored with Machiel Mulder and Peter Perey in the UNSW Law Journal finds that if the net-back price alone was used (as it is elsewhere) the big gas exporters would pay the government A$15.5 billion over the years between now and 2030, instead of the presently-expected $5.5 billion.
We shouldn’t value gas at zero
There is no obvious reason for the Australian government to value the gas itself at zero. The idea that its only value comes from the equipment, labour and technical know-how used to extract it wouldn’t be accepted in the United States or in any other place that charges for resources extracted and demands payment promptly upon extraction.
Fortunately, the government of Queensland continues with royalties for onshore gas and the government of Western Australia continues with royalties for North West Shelf gas.
If the treasury’s review of gas transfer pricing results in only fine-tuning the existing regulations it will miss the chance to get us a proper return on our resources. We own them and they are worth something.
Australians have a right to be paid what their resources are worth and to use that money to build government services or a budget surplus.
Listen to Dr Kraal discuss petroleum resource rent tax at Monash ‘Thought Capital’
It was an historic moment. Parasite is the first non-English-language movie to win a Best Picture Oscar, earning it an eminent place in the 100-year history of Korean film.
Bong has an abiding interest in social issues of Korean society. He began to attract attention with his first major feature film, Memories of Murder (2003), based on the true story of several unsolved murders in the 1980s that plagued a small Korean rural community.
His other masterpieces include monster film The Host (2006), drama Mother (2009), sci-fi Snowpiercer (2013) and the ecological drama Okja (2017).
The director is well-known for his topical depictions of social and environmental issues, including corruption, injustice and the class gap inherent in Korean society. Parasite is a culmination of Bong’s interests and style, blending suspenseful drama with black comedy.
Its success lies in this genre-bending approach, evident in a large number of contemporary Korean films.
Sudden shifts
Korean cinema, as we know it today, started in the late 1990s. Filmmakers began exploring new directions that often included sudden shifts in genre and tone.
Early examples are The Quiet Family (Kim Ji-woon, 1998), which fuses horror and comedy, and the megahit Shiri (Kang Jae-gyu, 1999), which combines Hollywood action blockbuster with Korean melodrama.
A string of trans-genre films followed, each of which uses the apparent forms of various genres for different purposes: My Sassy Girl (Kwak Jae-yong, 2001) is an off-beat romance which embeds parodies of samurai film, sci-fi and tragic love story; Welcome to Dongmakgol (Park Kwang-hyun, 2005) smashes together war film, rural idyll, comedy and heroic tragedy; and Bong’s own The Host.
In Parasite, Bong explores serious issues through a blend of tense drama with dark comedy.
Parasite involves a familiar contrast between two families who inhabit extreme social echelons – the poor Kim family and the rich Park family.
Bong’s interest in ideas is complemented by his penchant for metaphor. The gap between rich and poor is visually and metaphorically expressed in the contrast between the Kims’ semi-basement hovel and the Parks’ architect-built, luxurious house located high on a hillside. The house is so large its owners are unaware there is a bunker deep beneath it.
When the Kims’ father, Ki-taek, finds refuge in the bunker, Bong confirms this space as a metaphor for the gap between rich and poor and the lack of any prospect for the poor to move upward in society. Their best option is to be parasites upon the rich, imaged by the father creeping out of the bunker to steal food when he thinks the house is empty.
In the film’s final scene the son fantasises he has worked to become rich, but viewers are soon returned to the reality of the despair and empty futures of society’s underclass.
The appeal of the film to a global audience is its darkly comic exploration of the universal gap between the haves and have-nots.
An experienced and accomplished acting team also contributes to the success of the film. The highly regarded Song Kang-ho, in particular, has appeared in over 30 South Korean films, including three earlier films directed by Bong (Snowpiercer, The Host, and Memories of Murder). Song, regarded as an actor’s actor, is dedicated to the South Korean film industry, refusing work in television and commercials and declining invitations from Hollywood.
Films about society
The Korean film industry has been steadily increasing the number of films released each year, passing 1,000 in 2018, and socially aware drama is prominent and celebrated.
Burning (Lee Chang-dong, 2018), shortlisted for the 2019 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, shares with Parasite a concern with the problems of young adults who lead precarious lives in an unequal society where unemployment is high.
Other examples that address social and legal shortcomings are Train to Busan (Yeon Sang-ho, 2016), Silenced (Hwang Dong-hyuk, 2011), Socialphobia (Hong Seok-jae, 2015), The Wailing (Na Hong-jin, 2016), and Han Gong-ju (Lee Su-jin, 2013).
Korean films have been winning awards at international film festivals since Kang Dae-jin’s The Coachman (1961) was awarded the Silver Bear Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.
My Sassy Girl (2001) heralded the start of an international breakthrough for Korean cinema and was released in ten countries across Asia. Major films that gained screen time beyond Asia were A Tale of Two Sisters (Kim Ji-woon, 2003), the first Korean horror film to be screened in American theatres, and Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy after it won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004.
But the awarding of four Oscars to Parasite is a unique triumph for South Korea’s dynamic film industry. It can be expected to garner a large audience, inspiring viewers to watch many of the other excellent films produced in South Korea – and inspiring cinemas to make space to screen them.
An Australian family on the average wage typically spends close to A$6,000 out of pocket per year on child care, a new analysis from the Mitchell Institute shows. This is more than the average cost of sending a child to a private primary school.
Unlike the school sector, families don’t have the option to choose a low cost publicly delivered childcare service.
If quality early learning delivers public benefits for the country as well as private benefits for families, then there’s a strong case for Australian governments to carry a greater share of the cost.
Over the past ten years, families’ investment in early childhood services has grown even faster, by about 150%.
Governments contribute a far lower share for early learning than what they contribute to schools. A two-parent, one-child Australian family on an average income of A$85,000 will typically spend around A$6,000 a year on childcare fees, with the government contributing about the same amount.
If that child then goes to a public primary school, the government contributes close to A$12,000, with minimal costs imposed on the family. Even a private primary school would typically cost the family less than they spend on child care, thanks to almost A$10,000 per child in government funding.
The early years of life are the most critical period for brain development. Yet Australian governments are under-investing in early learning, preferring to spend millions remediating gaps once children reach the government-funded school system.
Investing in parental workforce participation
About half of the increase in Australia’s investment in early childhood services can be explained by the increase in children attending them. Since the early 1990s, the number of children in childcare has increased five-fold. Our analysis shows since 2008, participation in childcare has increased by around 80%.
Changing family structures have fuelled this rise in demand. In the 1980s, most two-parent families had only one adult in the paid workforce. Now, more than one in five Australian families with young children have both adults in full-time work.
It’s not feasible to say this is a private choice, and that the costs of childcare should therefore be borne by the family. For many Australian families, costs of living can only be met by both parents working, and accessing childcare as cheaply as possible.
The impact of childcare costs is greatest for Australia’s most vulnerable children and families. Low-income families are likely to spend a much bigger proportion of their discretionary income on childcare than high-income families – meaning less is leftover for other family essentials.
In Australia, most families have both parents in full time work.Shutterstock
The Australian government recognises that helping families balance work and family life is a worthwhile investment. The childcare subsidy is designed to make it easier for families to work, especially working parents on lower incomes.
More money to families also enables childcare providers to charge more. Education minister Dan Tehan has acknowledged the benefits of the 2018 change to the childcare subsidy on costs for families have been swallowed up by fee increases. This suggests Australia needs to invest in early learning more wisely.
Investing in children
A smarter investment in early childhood education and care focuses on the benefits for children’s learning. This kind of investment ensures all children gain access to quality early childhood services, regardless of what their parents can pay.
This investment logic is similar to schools: goverments pay, children learn, and the economy and society benefits. Parents can pay extra if they choose, but every child is guaranteed a quality education.
Few people would question this logic for schools, but the Australian government is still holding back from funding preschool long-term. This instability creates inefficiencies. Many preschool staff are on short-term contracts and families are unable to plan their investment in their child’s early learning.
A shift from private to public investment is possible even in early childhood systems more similar to Australia. In Canada, a major review of early childhood funding concluded free preschool from age 2.5 was the fairest solution, above all other options.
The review also found tax deductions (a solution proposed in Australia) favoured middle-income families, but left low-income families behind. This is because they wouldn’t earn enough for tax credits to cover the costs of quality education and care.
Whatever the solution, something has to change. As annual government investment in early childhood approaches $10 billion, and families still struggle under the burden of costs, the longstanding “barbecue stopper” of childcare costs needs to become an evidence-based debate about smarter investment.
Experts have warned that a slate of sweeping deregulation planned by the Indonesian government could prove disastrous for the environment and create even more conflicts over land and resources.
The administration of President Joko Widodo is preparing to submit to Parliament two bills containing more than 1200 proposed amendments to at least 80 existing laws.
The government says these provisions are all aimed at easing the investment climate in Indonesia in a bid to boost economic growth beyond the 5 percent pace it has been stuck at since 2014.
But the so-called omnibus bills threaten to dismantle already tenuous protections for the environment, while the process of drafting them has been opaque and rushed, according to Hariadi Kartodihardjo, a forestry researcher at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB).
“The process [to discuss] the substance [of the bills] is still long,” he said. “But it seems like the politicians want it to be fast. I hear the omnibus bills will be passed in May or June by Parliament.”
– Partner –
President Widodo’s ruling coalition controls three-quarters of seats in Parliament, making it likely that any bill introduced by the government will pass relatively unchanged. The government says it expects the bills to pass within 100 days of submitting them.
But rushing through so many deregulatory provisions in such a short time leaves virtually no room to consider them properly and still maintain some semblance of environmental regulation, according to Laode Muhammad Syarif, the executive director of the NGO Kemitraan Partnership.
“How do you make a law in 100 days? Impossible,” he said. “If officials at the government support that, where did they go to school?”
Hariadi said that when legislation is rushed, risks arise.
“And who will bear the risks? It’s actually investors themselves,” he said.
End of environmental assessments One of the most contentious points in the bills is the easing of requirements for businesses and developers to carry out an environmental impact analysis, known locally as an Amdal. Under current law, an Amdal is required to obtain an environmental permit from either the environment ministry or local authorities, depending on the scope of the project.
The environmental permit is itself a prerequisite to obtaining a business permit, which will then allow the project to go ahead.
The omnibus bills call for revising or revoking 39 existing articles on environmental permits, including articles in the 2009 law on environmental protection and the 1999 law on forestry.
In effect, environmental permits will no longer be a prerequisite for a business permit. And the environmental impact assessments that underlie them will only be required for projects deemed high risk, according to Bambang Hendroyono, Secretary-General of the Environment Ministry.
“Amdal is only [needed] if [the projects] are heavy and have a large impact on the environment,” he said. “[In that case], it will need public communication.”
He said environmental protections would remain robust despite this because companies were, as a principle, considerate of environmental conservation.
“So there’s nothing to be worried about because Amdal is a moral message,” he said. “In businesses, environmental principles have to be paid attention to.”
High risk criteria Another ministry official said the government was still discussing what kinds of projects would be designated as high risk and therefore still required to have an environmental impact assessment.
Even then, companies will still be able to obtain a business permit before carrying out the assessment, according to Mahfud MD, the coordinating minister for legal and security affairs. He said the safeguard to ensure their projects were environmentally sound would be an audit carried out after they had both secured the business permit and carried out the Amdal.
“If the permits are issued after the Amdal, it’s going to take a long time,” Mahfud told local media. “People will run out of money [before the permits are issued].”
Forestry researcher Hariadi said revoking the requirements for an impact assessment and an environmental permit, all for the sake of facilitating investment, would be disastrous for a country that is already prone to natural disasters.
He cited the floods and landslides at the start of the year that hit Jakarta and surrounding areas, killing at least 67 people and displacing more than 173,000.
Environmental activists have attributed the severity of the disaster to deforestation and environmental damage in upstream areas. These include residential and commercial developments built in flood plains and water catchment areas, in violation of zoning and environmental regulations.
Hariadi said things could get even worse if the omnibus bills discount environmental protections entirely, noting that many such protections were in place for good reason.
‘You can’t get rid of wheels’ “What about the articles that indeed prevent investment in certain sectors for environmental reasons?” he said. “The problem is you can’t throw these articles away.
“Let’s say you want to make a car. The car has to have wheels, but the wheels are expensive. If you get rid of the wheels, then you won’t have a car, right?”
Hariadi said the current high cost and long wait for an Amdal to be carried out and environmental permit issued was not because of onerous requirements for due diligence and scientific surveys, but rather because of the myriad opportunities for corruption in the process by bureaucrats.
He cited a study carried out by his university that identified at least 32 stages within the process that could either be abused by officials to solicit bribes or gamed by applicants to bypass regulations.
Henri Subagiyo, former executive director of the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL), said another factor was the lack of environmental data, such as the carrying capacity of the country’s rivers.
Each time a company wants to set up a factory near a river, for example, it has to collect its own data from scratch to determine how much waste it can discharge safely into the river.
“Environment data can’t be made in an instant, it has to be measured over a long period of time,” Henri said. “But the problem is that these data are often not available because our government doesn’t have them.
“We never know how much waste we can discharge into rivers, and yet permits keep being issued.”
A gold mine tailing pond near Mandor in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Image: Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Not an investment roadblock Subagiyo also said environmental protections, including the requirement to carry out an Amdal, should not be seen as a roadblock to investment. Instead, it’s an integral part of safeguarding investors against future uncertainty, he said.
“Amdal isn’t merely an administrative document. It’s guidance for businesses to protect the environment,” Subagiyo said. “If it’s ignored, then there will be environmental risk for the businesses themselves. Amdal actually protects businesses from legal threats.”
He noted that similar requirements were in place in other Southeast Asian countries seen as friendlier to investors, indicating it was not the environmental regulations keeping them away from Indonesia.
Mas Achmad Santosa, a maritime expert from the Indonesia Ocean Justice Initiative, said Indonesia risked being an outlier among its peers in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
“Environmental impact assessments are practiced universally, especially in developed countries,” he said. “All 10 ASEAN countries require it and the trend is actually toward strengthening it, not weakening it.”
A map of Indonesia shows at-risk areas for landslides in red. Image: National Disaster Mitigation Agency/Mongabay
There are other worrying provisions in the bills being drafted, Hariadi said. One crucial amendment is the scrapping of criminal charges for businesspeople who commit environmental violations. The proposed maximum punishment will instead be a revocation of their business permits.
Conflicts over land, resources The bills also call for limiting public participation in the permit application process, as a means of speeding up their issuance. Hariadi said this would prevent the public from being properly informed about projects that affect them, and could trigger conflicts over land and other resources.
“In order to issue permits swiftly, all [public] participation will be stopped as long as [the projects] are in line with zoning regulations,” he said. “There will be [environmental and zoning] problems of such big magnitude, but public participation will be limited. Won’t that create conflicts? Instead of the quality of public participation being improved, it’s being ditched just like that.”
The Environment Ministry’s Bambang said the public would still have a chance to participate — but again only in the case of high-risk projects.
Another proposed amendment is to curtail the process by which an area is designated a forest area. This would be an important change, as forest areas are currently off-limits to oil palm plantations, one of the leading drivers of deforestation in Indonesia. As with the limiting of public participation, this change in designating forest areas also has the potential to spark land conflicts, Hariadi said.
The designation process currently requires the approval of indigenous and forest communities, but will bypass these largely marginalised groups if the government has its way. The subsequent mapping process will be carried out electronically, using satellite imagery to speed up the process, Bambang said.
Hariadi said this would only deepen the divide between the forest communities, on one hand, and the government and businesses eyeing their land, on the other, who would be more likely to have access to the technology for drafting the electronic maps.
Most of the existing conflicts over land in Indonesia center around disputed boundaries, and communities without access to electronic maps would be hugely disadvantaged in staking their claim to the land, Hariadi said.
“Just imagine them having to rely on the local government and the private sector, who have possession of the electronic maps,” he said. “An area has social and cultural functions, it’s not just a commodity on paper.”
Forest areas amendment Also related to forest areas is a proposed amendment to scrap a requirement for all regions to maintain a minimum 30 percent of their territory as forest area.
Muhammad Iqbal Damanik, a researcher with the environmental NGO Auriga Nusantara, said this would allow mining and plantation companies currently operating illegally inside forest areas to whitewash their crimes. The companies, under the proposed change, would be able to request that the forest status of the land be revised to non-forest area, thereby legalizing their operations, Iqbal said.
“So the perspective [of the omnibus bills] is exploitation,” he said. “There’s no conservation perspective.”
Anggalia Putri, a researcher at the NGO Madani, said the government should actually be pushing to increase the threshold above 30 percent, especially for regions like Papua in Indonesia’s east, which still has a lot of intact natural forest.
Maintaining minimum forest area in Papua of 30 percent would effectively greenlight a massive spate of deforestation, she said.
Despite the significance of the changes being proposed in the omnibus bills, the public still has not been able to see the drafts.
President Widodo in December ordered his officials to make the drafts available to the public for the sake of transparency. That still has not happened, prompting labour unions to stage protests against the bills amid speculation about sweeping cuts to worker welfare and job security regulations.
Ombudsman left out of loop The office of the national Ombudsman has also been left out of the loop; when it requested a meeting with the office of the chief economics minister to discuss the bills, it was rejected.
Ombudsman Ahmad Alamsyah Saragih said this was the first time his office had been denied a meeting by a government institution. Instead, the minister’s office told the Ombudsman to submit a written recommendation about the bills.
“How can we give a written recommendation if we’ve never received the drafts?” Alamsyah said. “We’ve also seen NGOs [ask for a meeting with the minister’s office] and receive the same response.”
Laode from Kemitraan Partnership, who until recently served as a commissioner with the national antigraft agency, the KPK, said the lack of transparency indicated the omnibus bills were ridden with problematic articles.
He likened them to the controversial anticorruption bill drafted by the government and passed by Parliament in similarly lightning fashion last year, with the KPK left out of the deliberations.
While the government insisted the bill would strengthen the agency’s fight against corruption, the reality is that, once passed, the law has severely curtailed the KPK’s ability to carry out investigations.
In the cases of both the anticorruption law and the omnibus bills, the deliberations have been carried out behind closed doors, civil society groups have been shut out, and the government has pushed for speedy passage. If the government has nothing to hide and the omnibus bills truly serve the greater good, then why the secrecy, Laode asked.
‘What’s being hidden?’ “What’s being hidden such that the drafts aren’t being shared [with the public]?” he said.
Hariadi also called on the government to be more transparent about the bills.
“Don’t limit participation,” he said. “Don’t let the bills become legal and yet illegitimate by failing to involve the public in the deliberations.”
He said public participation was important because neither the bills nor prevailing legislation adequately addressed the real problems hindering greater investment in Indonesia, including corruption and land conflicts.
“The roadblocks [for investors] are actually caused by abuse of authority,” Hariadi said.
“The government and lawmakers have to see the facts on the ground in order to solve the problems that the omnibus bills are supposed to solve. The problems on the ground are so many and they’re very complicated. They can’t just be simplified.”
If anything, he said, the bills are a potential minefield for investors, threatening to create more of the problems — environmental degradation and land conflicts, among others — that already deter investors from coming to Indonesia.
Bills ‘actually counterproductive’ Dzulfian Syafrian, an economist with the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF), agreed that the bills “are actually counterproductive in attracting investors.”
He said loosening environmental protections would harm investors because environmental damage would lead to more problems.
“From the economic perspective [businesses and the government] are looking for short-term gain and profit,” Dzulfian said. “They don’t see sustainability as something important for the development of their businesses.”
The kinds of investment that would be encouraged by the bills are those in hydrocarbons, he added, which won’t serve Indonesia’s emissions reduction goals or its long-term plans for sustainable growth.
“With the relaxation of environmental regulations, these businesses will be happy,” Dzulfian said. “But investors who are pro-environment will have doubts.”
Banner image: Gold mining tailing pond near Mandor in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
This article is republished from Mongabay under a Creative Commons licence.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
Dr Bryce Edwards.
Does money buy policy in New Zealand politics and government? Based on the ongoing political finance scandal involving New Zealand First, which comes hot on the heels of the Serious Fraud Office charging four people in relation to donations to the National Party, New Zealanders have every reason to doubt the integrity of the electoral process. It’s no wonder there are growing calls for reform of a broken political finance system.
The ongoing leaks about the donations received by NZ First, and what look like attempts to at least circumvent political finance laws, saw the Electoral Commission refer the matter to the Police, who have now passed the scandal onto the Serious Fraud Office for investigation. At question is the role of the NZ First Foundation, which Winston Peters argues is separate from the party, but which appears to have been used to collect the donations in a highly questionable way.
This has the potential to damage to the reputation of not just NZ First , but the Government as a whole, and could have a significant influence on the election year.
This article details some of the many donations made by those in the racing industry that were given to the party in a way that meant they weren’t made publicly available. And although the article stresses that the law may not have been broken by these donations, it links them to policy decisions by this government.
Here’s the key part: “In this government’s first Budget in May 2018, Peters announced $4.8 million would be spent over four years for tax deductions to be claimed for the costs of acquiring ‘high quality’ breeding horses. Then in the 2019 Budget the government repealed the betting levy. That meant that a 4 percent levy on betting profits – which previously netted the Crown about $14 million a year – would not be paid to the government, but would be redirected to the racing and sports sectors. Peters signed off on the move despite the opposition of Treasury”.
Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that racing industry donors bought these policy decisions. But the lack of transparency, and the apparent attempts made to hide the donations, are enough to raise suspicions about the democratic process. The article quotes Otago University’s Andrew Geddis about the importance of the public knowing who funds parties: “Unless we’re able to see who was putting money into the system, and then see who’s getting benefits out of the system – you simply aren’t able to draw those connections and ask, you know, is there a problem?”
Geddis is also quoted in another article by RNZ’s Espiner and Newton, saying information about donations is “very important for the public to know” in a democracy “where we’re entrusting political parties and their representatives with a great deal of public power” – see: Wealthy and powerful NZ First Foundation donors revealed.
This article also provides further details of how the mysterious NZ First Foundation raised more than $300,000 in the 2017-19 period in the form of donations of around $15,000 or just under. The $15,000 figure is the threshold for when donations have to be made public. Espiner and Newton point out that “in some cases, multiple such donations were made by related entities or individuals during a year”. The possibility exists that larger donations might have been broken into smaller donations to evade the law.
Winston Peters hit back, doing a Facebook Live Q+A on Wednesday night in which he argued that “donors to the New Zealand First Foundation are entitled to keep identities secret” if the sums involved are under the threshold – see Derek Cheng’s Winston Peters says donors are entitled to anonymity. Peters added that such donations are necessary “if we don’t have such a system of public fundraising, taxpayers would have to pay and we’re diametrically opposed to that”.
In terms of the Government’s racing industry reforms, Peters said: “no one is buying any policy here” because as Minister of Racing he had simply implemented an independent racing policy. And he’s been backed up by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who says accusations on this are “not fair”. She has said: “Racing policy, decisions, bills, as with any decision we make, as a Government, goes through considerable scrutiny – no one policy is ever decided by one party, they go through all of us.”
National’s finance spokesperson Paul Goldsmith has called for some reassurance that money isn’t buying policy: “We have New Zealand First ministers making large decisions about large spending and all New Zealanders want to be assured about the integrity of the decision-making” – see Jo Moir’s Winston Peters on Foundation donations: ‘I did not receive any money’.
In this article, Shane Jones is reported as arguing that the controversy is just a witch hunt against the party, and denies racing or fisheries policy is for sale: “No, I think that’s really petty to talk to like that… I’ve been a recipient of Sealord’s and the Dalmatian leadership in terms of fisheries, and I resent any suggestion that decisions or statements I make about fisheries are driven because of donations.”
Some defence of the arrangements are also found in Barry Soper’s column yesterday – see: Winston Peters’ Trumpian moment. He relays Peters’ point about why he’s helping the racing industry: “he’s fought for the survival of the industry for the last 30 years, he told us. Significant changes to it last year came from a review of it by an overseas, independent advisor who said it needed urgent reform and would be irreparably damaged if it wasn’t carried out.”
Soper points out that other political parties also take donations from sectors that expect policy wins – for example, “the significant support of the trade union movement for Labour. And they don’t do that for nothing, neither does the racing industry for Winston Peters or big business for the National Party which gets the lion’s share of donations.” He concludes that party donations “should be seen for what they really are, paying for the sympathetic ear of a lawmaker.”
Jacinda Ardern has also defended NZ First’s connection to the racing industry on the basis that is “no secret to anyone in New Zealand that Winston Peters has a strong knowledge, understanding and long-standing connection to the racing industry”.
In response to this, National-aligned blogger David Farrar says: “Yes she is defending NZ First having massive secret donations from the racing industry and in return delivering huge financial windfalls to the racing industry with taxpayer money” – see: Has Jacinda read her own coalition agreement?
Farrar also makes the point that NZ First cared so strongly about their racing policies that they demanded them be installed as part of the coalition agreement: “Jacinda needs to read the Labour and NZ First Coalition agreement. It requires Labour to ‘Support New Zealand First’s Racing policy’. There is no other portfolio which has the agreement requiring the Government to support one party’s entire policy. This shows how massively important it was that NZ First could guarantee to its funders their policies would be implemented.”
Newsroom editor Bernard Hickey says the public should take these racing industry financial connections seriously: “Winston Peters is Racing Minister and has pushed through reforms to the NZ Racing Board and the industry that are expected to see the TAB sold off to Australian betting companies in a way that breeders and trainers want. He has also cut levies paid by the industry” – see: Winston Peters should stand down as Racing Minister.
He argues therefore that “Winston Peters should stand down as Racing Minister, at the very least, while those donations are being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.” Furthermore, “the Government should put its Racing Industry Bill, which is in the select committee stage after its first reading in Parliament last month, on hold.”
Hickey is also interviewed on the whole connection between money and politics in another article, in which he says the lack of transparency that appears to exist in the current arrangements in political finance law means that “the scrum is screwed, if you like, by people who are wealthier than the rest of us and can ask for special favours, and have influence over a project larger than they would have if they were just another citizen who was voting in an election. One of the ways to protect yourself is to make sure everyone knows who’s donated what to whom” – see Alexia Russell’s New Zealand First in party donations furore.
Finally, for the best dissection of the NZ First leader’s eight-minute appearance on Facebook in which he promised to tell the “truth about the NZ First Foundation”, see Ben Thomas’ So many questions as Winston Peters goes live on Facebook.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Norris, Associate Professor, Programme Director (Composition), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
After a week-long controversy, New Zealand’s public broadcaster Radio New Zealand (RNZ) has withdrawn a proposal to axe its classical music station RNZ Concert.
But despite the sudden backtrack, RNZ Concert isn’t safe yet. Whatever the final outcome of RNZ’s rethink, it is clear the board and management placed little value on the significant role the station plays in New Zealand musical culture.
RNZ Concert now needs a compelling new strategic direction to create a redefined – rather than eviscerated – station that is central to a more diverse 21st-century artistic vision in New Zealand.
But this was merely the bleak endgame to a managed decline of RNZ Concert over the past 20 years. During this period, it lost its flagship studio (to make way for government buildings that never eventuated), and had to sell its grand pianos to stay afloat.
On a budget of only 7% of RNZ’s total annual expenditure, it nevertheless attracts almost 22% of its total audience — despite there being virtually no advertising of the station.
No broadcaster has done as much to both record and promote New Zealand music as RNZ Concert. Many regard the station as a “cultural taonga” (treasure).
With a new mandate, and a revised strategic direction, it could be central to supporting a “broadening of horizons” currently underway in classical music. Orchestras and ensembles worldwide are finally beginning to understand the need to address systematic imbalances of generational, gender and cultural representation in their programmes to ensure their continued relevance.
In New Zealand, this is evidenced by the number of ambitious cross-cultural, cross-genre and cross-generational projects in recent years. In 2019, soul singer Teeks headlined a collaboration with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra in a series of songs arranged by Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper. This concert was recorded and broadcast by RNZ Concert.
Several Sistema-style groups are now training a new generation of Māori and Pasifika in orchestral playing skills, some of which have resulted in packed-out public performances alongside Orchestra Wellington. These are also recorded and broadcast by RNZ Concert.
My own composition Mātauranga (Rerenga), premiered by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in 2019, features traditional Māori musical instruments (taonga puoro). Once again, RNZ Concert recorded this, just one of a number of new works featuring these once-suppressed instruments that are being nurtured back to life by artists such as Richard Nunns, Horomona Horo, Ariana Tikao and Alistair Fraser.
At the heart of the arts
RNZ Concert is uniquely positioned to lead a more representative arts experience in a way no other radio station in New Zealand is equipped to do. It is an active partner in a number of collaborative projects such as Resound, which is responsible for amassing a treasure trove of live concert videos of New Zealand music, hosted on YouTube and Vimeo.
It produces documentaries and interviews, presents educational programmes, and has recently expanded its coverage to include musical practices that defy the dominance of mainstream commercial pop – such as jazz, Māori music, experimentalism, sonic art and non-Western music. While these are currently only a small part of Concert’s programming, they could expand and flourish.
Having had a stay of execution, RNZ Concert now deserves a new kind of strategic leadership that can develop an innovative, exciting brand of musical diversity. It needs a new vision to set it at the heart of 21st-century music-making in Aotearoa.
The secretary of the Prime Minister’s department, Phil Gaetjens, has criticised “significant shortcomings” in Bridget McKenzie’s decision-making in the sports rorts affair, while outlining his argument that her allocation of grants was not politically biased.
Gaetjens has made his first public comments in a submission to the Senate inquiry set up to investigate the affair, which cost McKenzie her cabinet job and the deputy leadership of the Nationals.
The government has been under intense pressure to release his report, commissioned by Scott Morrison, which was used to determine McKenzie’s fate. Gaetjens, a one-time chief of staff to Morrison, exonerated her from any breach of ministerial standards on the substance of her decisions but found she had breached them by not disclosing membership of gun organisations.
While his report remains confidential Gaetjens has set out his findings in detail, which were at odds with the Audit Office conclusion the allocation of grants had a political bias.
At a bureaucratic level, the sports affair has become something of a head-to-head between the Auditor-General and the country’s most senior bureaucrat.
Gaetjens says in his submission his advice to Morrison was based on information from Sports Australia, McKenzie, and her staff.
He says there were “some significant shortcomings” in McKenzie’s decision-making role, as well as in the way Sport Australia administered the assessment process.
These included “the lack of transparency for applicants around the other factors being considered, and the disconnect between the assessment process run by Sport Australia and the assessment and decision-making process in the Minister’s Office”.
“This lack of transparency, coupled with the significant divergences between projects recommended by Sport Australia and those approved by the Minister have given rise to concerns about the funding decision-making,” he says.
“The discrepancy between the number of applications recommended by Sport Australia and the final list of approved applications clearly shows the Minister’s Office undertook a separate and non-transparent process in addition to the assessment by Sport Australia”.
Gaetjens says McKenzie informed him her approvals were designed to get “a fair spread of grants according to state, region, party, funding stream and sport, in addition to the criteria assessed by Sport Australia”.
He rejects the Audit claim McKenzie’s approach was based on the much talked about spreadsheet of November 2018 that was colour coded according to party, and says she told him she had never seen that spreadsheet.
“The ANAO Report … asserts that the Adviser’s spreadsheet is evidence that ‘the Minister’s Office had documented the approach that would be adopted to selecting successful applicants’ before funding decisions were made. However, there is persuasive data that backs up the conclusion that the Minister’s decisions to approve grants were not based on the Adviser’s spreadsheet,” Gaetjens writes.
The evidence included the significant length of time between the spreadsheet and the approvals. Also, 30% of the applications listed as successful on the adviser’s spreadsheet did not get funding approval .
“So, on the evidence available to me, there is a material divergence between actual outcomes of all funded projects and the approach identified in the Adviser’s spreadsheet. This does not accord with the ANAO Report”, which found funding reflected the political approach documented by McKenzie’s office.
Gaetjens says had McKenzie just followed Sport Australia’s initial list, 30 electorates would have got no grants. In the final wash up only five missed out (no applications had come from three of them).
“I did not find evidence that the separate funding approval process conducted in the Minister’s office was unduly influenced by reference to ‘marginal’ or ‘targeted’ electorates. Evidence provided to me indicated that the Adviser’s spreadsheet was developed by one member of staff in the Minister’s Office, using information provided by Sport Australia in September 2018, as a worksheet to support an increase in funding for the Program.
“Senator McKenzie advised me in response to a direct question that she had never seen the Adviser’s spreadsheet and that neither she nor her staff based their assessments on it.
“Her Chief of Staff also told the Department of the Prime Minster and Cabinet that the Adviser had categorically stated she had not shown the spreadsheet to the Minister.”
Rejecting the Audit Office conclusion of a bias to marginal and targeted seats, Gaetjens says “180 ‘marginal’ and ‘targeted’ projects were recommended by Sport Australia, and 229 were ultimately approved by the Minister, representing a 27 per cent increase. This is smaller than the percentage increase of projects recommended (325) to projects funded (451) in non-marginal or non-targeted seats which was 39 per cent.”
“The evidence I have reviewed does not support the suggestion that political considerations were the primary determining factor in the Minister’s decisions to approve the grants”. So he had concluded she did not breach the section of the ministerial standard requiring fairness, Gaetjens writes.
The secretary of the Prime Minister’s department, Phil Gaetjens, has criticised “significant shortcomings” in Bridget McKenzie’s decision-making in the sports rorts affair, while outlining his argument that her allocation of grants was not politically biased.
Gaetjens has made his first public comments in a submission to the Senate inquiry set up to investigate the affair, which cost McKenzie her cabinet job and the deputy leadership of the Nationals.
The government has been under intense pressure to release his report, commissioned by Scott Morrison, which was used to determine McKenzie’s fate. Gaetjens, a one-time chief of staff to Morrison, exonerated her from any breach of ministerial standards on the substance of her decisions but found she had breached them by not disclosing membership of gun organisations.
While his report remains confidential Gaetjens has set out his findings in detail, which were at odds with the Audit Office conclusion the allocation of grants had a political bias.
At a bureaucratic level, the sports affair has become something of a head-to-head between the Auditor-General and the country’s most senior bureaucrat.
Gaetjens says in his submission his advice to Morrison was based on information from Sports Australia, McKenzie, and her staff.
He says there were “some significant shortcomings” in McKenzie’s decision-making role, as well as in the way Sport Australia administered the assessment process.
These included “the lack of transparency for applicants around the other factors being considered, and the disconnect between the assessment process run by Sport Australia and the assessment and decision-making process in the Minister’s Office”.
“This lack of transparency, coupled with the significant divergences between projects recommended by Sport Australia and those approved by the Minister have given rise to concerns about the funding decision-making,” he says.
“The discrepancy between the number of applications recommended by Sport Australia and the final list of approved applications clearly shows the Minister’s Office undertook a separate and non-transparent process in addition to the assessment by Sport Australia”.
Gaetjens says McKenzie informed him her approvals were designed to get “a fair spread of grants according to state, region, party, funding stream and sport, in addition to the criteria assessed by Sport Australia”.
He rejects the Audit claim McKenzie’s approach was based on the much talked about spreadsheet of November 2018 that was colour coded according to party, and says she told him she had never seen that spreadsheet.
“The ANAO Report … asserts that the Adviser’s spreadsheet is evidence that ‘the Minister’s Office had documented the approach that would be adopted to selecting successful applicants’ before funding decisions were made. However, there is persuasive data that backs up the conclusion that the Minister’s decisions to approve grants were not based on the Adviser’s spreadsheet,” Gaetjens writes.
The evidence included the significant length of time between the spreadsheet and the approvals. Also, 30% of the applications listed as successful on the adviser’s spreadsheet did not get funding approval .
“So, on the evidence available to me, there is a material divergence between actual outcomes of all funded projects and the approach identified in the Adviser’s spreadsheet. This does not accord with the ANAO Report”, which found funding reflected the political approach documented by McKenzie’s office.
Gaetjens says had McKenzie just followed Sport Australia’s initial list, 30 electorates would have got no grants. In the final wash up only five missed out (no applications had come from three of them).
“I did not find evidence that the separate funding approval process conducted in the Minister’s office was unduly influenced by reference to ‘marginal’ or ‘targeted’ electorates. Evidence provided to me indicated that the Adviser’s spreadsheet was developed by one member of staff in the Minister’s Office, using information provided by Sport Australia in September 2018, as a worksheet to support an increase in funding for the Program.
“Senator McKenzie advised me in response to a direct question that she had never seen the Adviser’s spreadsheet and that neither she nor her staff based their assessments on it.
“Her Chief of Staff also told the Department of the Prime Minster and Cabinet that the Adviser had categorically stated she had not shown the spreadsheet to the Minister.”
Rejecting the Audit Office conclusion of a bias to marginal and targeted seats, Gaetjens says “180 ‘marginal’ and ‘targeted’ projects were recommended by Sport Australia, and 229 were ultimately approved by the Minister, representing a 27 per cent increase. This is smaller than the percentage increase of projects recommended (325) to projects funded (451) in non-marginal or non-targeted seats which was 39 per cent.”
“The evidence I have reviewed does not support the suggestion that political considerations were the primary determining factor in the Minister’s decisions to approve the grants”. So he had concluded she did not breach the section of the ministerial standard requiring fairness, Gaetjens writes.
A Philippines court has issued arrest warrants against former senator Antonio Trillanes IV and 10 other people for conspiracy to commit sedition, the court confirmed.
The branch clerk of Quezon City Metropolitan Trial Court (MeTC) Branch 138 confirmed today that the warrants had been issued by Judge Kristine Grace Suarez to all 11 charged in a case over the so-called Bikoy Ang Totoong Narcolist (The True Narcolist) videos.
The accused, including two priests, will be arraigned on Monday at 2 pm.
As many as three people have posted bail at P10,000 (about NZ$310) each, said the clerk. The clerk refused to disclose their identities but two of those who posted bail were priests Flaviano Villanueva and Albert Alejo.
A copy of the warrants were also not provided.
– Partner –
Besides Trillanes, the 10 others charged are:
Peter Joemel Advincula, alias Bikoy Fr Flaviano Villanueva Fr Albert Alejo Yoly Ong-Villanueva Boom Enriquez Jonnell Sanggalang JM Saracho Eduardo Acierto Vicente Romano A certain “Monique”
Last year, Advincula accused members of the opposition, as well as ranking figures in the Catholic Church and human rights lawyers, of conspiring to oust President Rodrigo Duterte through what he claimed was an operation code-named Project Sodoma, which involved producing and releasing the narcolist videos.
Robredo cleared On Monday, February 10, the Department of Justice filed charges against Trillanes and 10 others over the Bikoy videos but cleared Vice-President Leni Robredo, senators Leila de Lima and Risa Hontiveros, former senator Bam Aquino, former Magdalo representative Gary Alejano, and Otso Diretso candidates Erin Tañada, Chel Diokno, and Florin Hilbay.
All complaints against human rights lawyers, bishops, and members of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines were also dropped.
Trillanes, a fierce critic of Duterte, was first arrested under the Duterte administration on September 2018, when he was a sitting senator, for the charge of rebellion. This stemmed from Duterte’s Proclamation No. 572 which sought to revoke the amnesty granted to him in connection to the 2003 Oakwood mutiny and the 2007 Manila Peninsula siege.
The opposition and human rights groups slammed the September 2018 arrest as part of the Duterte government’s crackdown on vocal critics.
Michelle Grattan talks with Deputy Vice Chancellor Geoff Crisp about the week in politics, including further developments in the “sports rorts” affair, the future of Michael McCormack’s leadership of the Nationals, and the extension of the corona virus travel ban.
A study published today claims to have found a link between having had ten or more sexual partners and an increased risk of cancer. But it’s not as simple as that.
While having a sexually transmissible infection (STI) can increase the risk of certain types of cancer, using a person’s lifetime number of sexual partners as a marker of their likely sexual health history is one of several flaws in this research.
The evidence from this study isn’t strong enough to conclude that having had multiple sexual partners increases a person’s risk of cancer.
Misinterpreting these findings could lead to stigma around STIs and having multiple sexual partners.
The research, published in the journal BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health, used data from 2,537 men and 3,185 women participating in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a nationally representative study of adults aged 50+ in England.
The average age of participants was 64. Most were married or living with a partner, white, non-smokers, drank alcohol regularly, and were at least moderately active once a week or more.
Participants were asked to recall the number of people with whom they had ever had vaginal, oral or anal sex in their lifetime. The researchers grouped the responses into four categories shown in the table below.
The researchers then examined associations between lifetime number of sexual partners and self-reported health outcomes (self-rated health, limiting longstanding illness, cancer, heart disease and stroke).
The researchers controlled for a range of demographic factors (age, ethnicity, partnership status, and socioeconomic status) as well as health-related factors (smoking status, frequency of alcohol intake, physical activity, and depressive symptoms).
What the study found
Men with 2-4 partners and 10+ partners were more likely to have been diagnosed with cancer, compared to men with 0-1 partners. There was no difference between men with 0-1 partners and 5-9 partners.
Compared to women with 0-1 partners, women with 10+ partners were more likely to have been diagnosed with cancer.
Women with 5-9 partners and 10+ partners were also more likely to report a “limiting longstanding illness” than those with 0-1 partners.
The authors don’t specify what constitutes a limiting longstanding illness, but looking at the questions they asked participants, we can ascertain it’s a chronic condition that disrupts daily activities. It’s likely these ranged from mildly irritating to debilitating.
There was no association between number of sexual partners and self-rated general health, heart disease or stroke for either men or women.
Notably, while statistically significant, the effect size of all these associations was modest.
Misunderstanding these results could create stigma around STIs, which can deter people from sexual health check ups.Shutterstock
What does number of sexual partners have to do with cancer risk?
There is a reason for investigating whether a person’s lifetime number of sexual partners has anything to do with their cancer risk. If you’ve had a lot of sexual partners, it’s more likely you’ve been exposed to an STI. Having an STI can increase your risk of several types of cancer.
For example, human papillomavirus (HPV) is responsible for 30% of all cancers caused by infectious agents (bacteria, viruses or parasites), contributing to cervical cancer, penile cancer, and cancers of the mouth, throat and anus.
Viral hepatitis can be transmitted through sex, and having chronic hepatitis B or C increases the risk of liver cancer.
Untreated HIV increases the risk of cancers such as lymphomas, sarcomas and cervical cancer.
The authors of the study acknowledge the numerous limitations of the analysis and recommend further work be done to confirm their findings. We must interpret their results with this in mind.
Their use of lifetime number of sexual partners as a proxy measure for STI history is a key problem. While there is an association between having a higher number of partners and an increased risk of STIs, many other factors may be important in determining a person’s risk of being infected with an STI.
These include whether they’ve practised safe sex, what type of infection they might have encountered, and whether they’ve been vaccinated against, or treated for, particular infections.
Further, the analysis was based on cross-sectional data – a snapshot that doesn’t account for changes over time. Participants were asked to recall information from the past, rather than having measurements taken directly at different time points. It’s not possible to establish causation from a cross-sectional analysis.
Even if the association is confirmed in prospective, longitudinal studies, the findings may not apply to other groups of people.
Recent advances in vaccine development (such as the wide availability of the HPV vaccine), better STI prevention (such as the use of pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis – PreP and PEP – for HIV) and more effective therapy (for example, direct-acting antiviral agents to treat hepatitis C) will reduce the impact of STIs on cancer risk for those who can access them.
We now have a vaccine to prevent HPV, which in turn reduces the risk of cervical and other cancers.Shutterstock
People with higher numbers of sexual partners were more likely to smoke and drink frequently (increasing the risk of cancer), but also to do more vigorous physical activity (decreasing the risk of cancer).
For women, a higher number of sexual partners was associated with white ethnicity; for men, with a greater number of depressive symptoms. Although the researchers controlled for these factors, these points highlight some inconsistencies in the pattern of results.
The researchers also couldn’t explain why a greater number of sexual partners was associated with a higher likelihood of a limiting chronic condition for women, but not for men.
Ultimately, this study raises more questions than it answers. We need further research before we can use these results to inform policy or improve practice.
The paper concludes by saying enquiring about lifetime sexual partners could be helpful when screening for cancer risk. This is a very long stretch based on the evidence presented.
This approach could also be harmful. It could invade privacy and increase stigma about having multiple sexual partners or having an STI.
We know experiencing stigma can discourage people from attending sexual health screenings and other services.
It would be better to put limited health resources towards improving prevention, screening and treatments for STIs.
What’s in a name? A lot when it comes to disease outbreaks, according to the recent communication from the World Health Organisation (WHO) on the previously named coronavirus, now to be known as COVID-19.
While it has been noted that picking a name might not seem the most pressing problem in the middle of an outbreak, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus laid out the important considerations behind it in his announcement. Guidelines recommend avoiding “references to a specific geographical location, animal species or group of people,” he said, adding these measures aimed to prevent stigma.
The WHO renaming hopes to stymie racism and framing of COVID-19 as “the Chinese virus”, that has come with reports of discrimation.
Unfortunately, there has not been a WHO pronouncement about inappropriate terminology to deflect the media from attaching the word “deadly” to whatever new virus is in their sights!
The new name is intended to represent a viral persona and the WHO correctly points to past experiences showing disease names can “stigmatise entire regions and ethnic groups”. When we look at the history of disease naming we can see plenty of unintended consequences, stigmatising or otherwise.
In the 16th century “Pox” was a generic name for any frightening and unfamiliar health problem, particularly one that manifested with lesions on the human body. Pox (or “pocks” referring to the specific lesions) was a term often used interchangeably with “plague” as a population-terrifying word.
Both words came to carry a connotation of what or who the causes of the sickness might be. Less worthy people or “foreigners” were perennial favourites as the guilty parties in the case of the pox, while rats were usually added to the mix in the case of plague. Nobody was very concerned about stigmatising the rats.
Sexually transmitted disease syphilis was originally called The Great Pox and referred to as a “venereal” affliction (luckily, you can’t really stigmatise Venus). It was also named variously the French or Italian or English disease, depending on which of these newly designated states you were at war with or just wished to gratuitously insult.
Italian physician Girolamo Fracastorio (1484-1530) wrote a graphic poem about the disastrous physical effects of this disease on the young and beautiful. He named his “hero” Syphilis, thus providing another name for the contagion.
Hieronymus Fracastorius (Girolamo Fracastoro) shows the shepherd Syphilus and the hunter Ilceus a statue of Venus to warn them against the danger of infection.Wellcome Trust, CC BY
However, the use of the name “syphilis” for venereal disease was not common until the 19th century. By then it was no longer seen as a means to stigmatise attractive young men but rather as an acceptable name for a shameful social problem.
Those with long memories might acknowledge a year can be stigmatised by a disease just as easily as a geographic location. The year 1918 is associated with dread due to the outbreak of the Spanish Flu pandemic. Books have been published a century later with titles such as Pandemic 1918 and A Death Struck Year.
Microbe hunting
An interlude of enthusiastic microbe hunting in the early 20th century had the counter-intuitive result of young ambitious, university-trained bacteriologists enthusiastically competing to get their names attached to the “new” diseases.
Detected with then cutting-edge microscope equipment, tropical diseases were particularly popular, as distant but more exotic. African sleeping sickness, Yellow Fever, Buruli Ulcer, Chagas Disease, Dracunculiasis (Guinea Worm Disease), Schistosomiasis, Ebola, Yaws and others followed.
Meanwhile in New York the “disease” usually depicted as the archetypal example of stigmatising, was about to make its first media appearance.
The term GRID (gay-related immune deficiency) was used initially as a name to try to make sense of young gay men presenting at doctors’ surgeries or Emergency Rooms with collections of symptoms not usually seen in Western countries.
This name was changed to AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) when it was realised not just gay men were affected by compromised immune symptoms. Indeed, the Grim Reaper television commercials of the 1980s warned us that everyone from babies to the elderly was now at risk of this terrifying disease, but the stigmatising associated with GRID remained and the acronym AIDS did not protect the gay community from blame and rejection.
The WHO has developed guidelines to now be careful in their naming. Gone is the fear-mongering against pork products with swine flu, first seen in Mexico in 2009; or people from Middle East, treated with suspicion after the naming of Middle East respiratory syndrome in 2012.
Avian influenza was originally named fowl plague in 1878, and when H5N1, or “bird flu” created major new outbreaks in 2004 and 2005 millions of birds were slaughtered – including many with no risk of carrying the disease.
Naming by committee. The COVID-19 moniker is designed not to offend.EPA/Salvatore Di Nolfi
Fear is contagious
Fear needs a name and naming suggests a response, but not always is the response acceptable to everyone.
Examining the past shows avoiding stigmatisation was not of primary importance in dealing with large outbreaks of disease. Rather, the search for scapegoats took precedence.
Now, in effect, a greater fear (of the worse effects of stigmatisation) is being used to combat and correct a medicalised fear. Can misinformation be minimised by the best non-stigmatisation efforts of the WHO? Only history will tell.
The World Health Organisation said this week it may be 18 months before a vaccine against the coronavirus is publicly available.
Let’s explore why, even with global efforts, it might take this long.
China shared publicly the full RNA sequence of the virus – now known as SARS-CoV-2 rather than COVID-19, which refers to the disease itself – in the first half of January.
By late January, the virus was successfully grown outside China for the first time, by Melbourne’s Doherty Institute, a critically important step. For the first time, researchers in other countries had access to a live sample of the virus.
Using this sample, researchers at CSIRO’s high-containment facility (the Australian Animal Health Laboratory) in Geelong, could begin to understand the characteristics of the virus, another crucial step in the global effort towards developing a vaccine.
Vaccines have historically taken two to five years to develop. But with a global effort, and learning from past efforts to develop coronavirus vaccines, researchers could potentially develop a vaccine in a much shorter time.
No single institution has the capacity or facilities to develop a vaccine by itself. There are also more stages to the process than many people appreciate.
First, we must understand the virus’s characteristics and behaviour in the host (humans). To do this, we must first develop an animal model.
Next, we must demonstrate that potential vaccines are safe and can trigger the right parts of the body’s immunity, without causing damage. Then we can begin pre-clinical animal testing of potential vaccines, using the animal model.
First, we must understand the characteristics and behaviour of the virus in its host.Shutterstock
Vaccines that successfully pass pre-clinical testing can then be used by other institutions with the capacity to run human trials.
Where these will be conducted, and by whom, has yet to be decided. Generally, it is ideal to test such vaccines in the setting of the current outbreak.
Finally, if a vaccine is found to be safe and effective, it will need to pass the necessary regulatory approvals. And a cost-effective way of making the vaccine will also need to be in place before the final vaccine is ready for delivery.
Each of these steps in the vaccine development pipeline faces potential challenges.
Here are some of the challenges we face
The international Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations has engaged our team in those first two steps: determining the characteristics of the current virus, then pre-clinical testing of potential vaccines.
While Melbourne’s Doherty Institute and others have been instrumental in isolating the novel coronavirus, the next step for us is growing large amounts of it so our scientists have enough to work with. This involves culturing the virus in the lab (encouraging it to grow) under especially secure and sterile conditions.
The next challenge we face is developing and validating the right biological model for the virus. This will be an animal model that gives us clues to how the coronavirus might behave in humans.
Our previous work with SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) has given us a good foundation to build on.
SARS is another member of the coronavirus family that spread during 2002-03. Our scientists developed a biological model for SARS, using ferrets, in work to identify the original host of the virus: bats.
SARS and the new SARS-CoV-2 share about 80-90% of their genetic code. So our experience with SARS means we are optimistic our existing ferret model can be used as a starting point for work on the novel coronavirus.
We will also explore other biological models to provide more robust data and as a contingency.
What good will a vaccine be if the virus mutates?
There’s also the strong possibility that SARS-CoV-2 will continue to mutate.
Being an animal virus, it has already likely mutated as it adapted – first to another animal, and then jumping from an animal to humans.
Initially this was without transmission among people, but now it has taken the significant step of sustained human-to-human transmission.
As the virus continues to infect people, it is going through something of a stabilisation, which is part of the mutation process.
This mutation process may even vary in different parts of the world, for various reasons.
This includes population density, which influences the number of people infected and how many opportunities the virus has to mutate. Prior exposure to other coronaviruses may also influence the population’s susceptibility to infection, which may result in variant strains emerging, much like seasonal influenza.
Therefore, it’s crucial we continue to work with one of the latest versions of the virus to give a vaccine the greatest chance of being effective.
All this work needs to be done under stringent quality and safety conditions, to ensure it meets global legislative requirements, and to ensure staff and the wider community are safe.
Other challenges ahead
Another challenge is manufacturing proteins from the virus needed to develop potential vaccines. These proteins are specially designed to elicit an immune response when administered, allowing a person’s immune system to protect against future infection.
Fortunately, recent advances in understanding viral proteins, their structure and functions, has allowed this work to progress around the world at considerable speed.
Developing a vaccine is a huge task and not something that can happen overnight. But if things go to plan, it will be much faster than we’ve seen before.
So many lessons were learned during the SARS outbreak. And the knowledge the global scientific community gained from trying to develop a vaccine against SARS has given us a head-start on developing one for this virus.
A backlash against China’s official response to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak has left local officials and the central government scrambling to offset responsibility.
While the central government has accused local officials of being “inefficient,” the local government has reminded the public it is blocked from sharing information in real-time because of a heavily centralized system of information control.
First, blame the Chinese New Year Despite receiving notice of the deadly illness in early December 2019, Chinese officials took more than six weeks to openly admit that the public health situation had reached crisis levels.
A January 20 visit to Wuhan by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang marked the first public acknowledgment of the gravity of the outbreak. This visit became controversial as it happened just two days after the local Wuhan government held a massive public banquet for the Chinese New Year attended by more than 40,000 people despite full knowledge of the risks.
– Partner –
As China health expert and author of Governing Health in Contemporary China Huang Yanzhong explains in a podcast:
The local government, in order not to ruin the atmosphere, decided not to report the actual situation.
Then blame the local government After Li Keqiang’s visit to Wuhan, the Chinese government shifted to a well-known tactic of blaming and firing members of the local government in order to maintain the prestige of the central government, and above all, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The first one to take the blame was Wuhan mayor Zhou Xianwang, who tried to make excuses for the now-infamous banquet:
The reason why the Baibuting community continued to host the banquet this year was based on the previous judgment that the spread of the epidemic was limited between humans, so there was not enough warning.
As per the expected script, Zhou, along with governor Wang Xiaodong and Wuhan Party Secretary Ma Guoqiang from Hubei province (where Wuhan is located), also gave a press conference on January 26. The press event turned into a major disaster after both officials displayed a lack of knowledge about the crisis, making blunt statements that increased the sense of panic among the public.
First, governor Wang fumbled three times when answering a simple question regarding the number of masks available for the local population. He decreased the number of local mask production from 10.8 billion to 1.08 billion and finally 1.08 million.
The video of the press conference was widely shared on Chinese social media and Twitter:
Hubei province governor Wang Xiaodong, on the evening of January 26 at the press conference about the prevention of the new type of pneumonia epidemic, speaking about the number of masks produced in Wuhan. First he said the annual output was 10.8 billion pieces. After a while, he said it was 1.8 billion, and then he changed again to 1.08 million. The links can also be replayed after 47 minutes and 59 minutes. I’m going crazy after watching it
The blunder gave birth to memes mocking the incapacity of the local government and showing their lack of preparedness. At the same event, officials also displayed a lack of coordination:
While Governor Wang said that medical supplies were in short supply in Hubei, Mayor Zhou declared that the shortage had been mitigated.
The axe has since fallen on health officials:
What if the central government was also to blame? During a television interview on January 27, Mayor Zhou offered to resign and take the full blame:
Comrade Ma Guoqiang and I are willing to accept responsibility. If in the end you say someone has to be held accountable, you say the masses are not satisfied, then we’re willing to appease the world by resigning.
But while his 27 January declaration tows the party line, previously Zhou had made an unusual statement during Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to Wuhan on 20 January:
As a local government official, after I get this kind of information I still have to wait for authorisation before I can release it.
While thinly veiled, this statement is, in fact, a direct criticism of President Xi Jinping’s rule. Since taking office in 2013, Xi has accumulated large amounts of power in the central government and, for provinces, this means a very restricted space for local decision-making on sensitive issues.
As China researcher Jude Blanchette from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies explains:
Central-local relations in the Xi era have seen a severe diminishment of local-level autonomy, which has led to municipal and village officials waiting for clear signals from above before they take action.
Despite Beijing’s claims, the central government may deserve a significant amount of blame. On January 11, the team it dispatched to Wuhan concluded that everything was under control.
“The patients’ condition and the epidemic situation are currently controllable,” said Wang Guangfa, a member of the national medical expert team dealing with the situation.
Yet in a cruel and ironic twist, Wang Guangfa was himself contaminated by the virus. This sense of bitter irony is not lost on local officials in Wuhan and elsewhere.
Xi Jinping has been unusually low-profile since Premier Li Keqiang’s visit. This is interpreted as a form of political self-protection given that the outcome of the fight against the coronavirus remains uncertain.
However, Xi will not be able to stay out of the spotlight much longer. On March 5, 2020, China is holding its annual “Two Meetings” (两会 in Chinese) which are the annual plenary sessions of the two bodies that vote on political decisions at the national level.
As Victor Shih, a researcher on Chinese elites, points out, Xi’s isolation and elimination of other candidates might prove to be dangerous to manage for his political image, if not survival.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Smith, Associate Professor in Disaster and Emergency Response, School of Medical and Health Sciences, Edith Cowan University
creMost of us are probably familiar with the concept of psychological trauma, the impact on an individual’s psyche caused by an extremely distressing event.
But there’s another kind of trauma. A collective disturbance that occurs within a group of people when their world is suddenly upended.
Consider the Buffalo Creek flood of 1972, in which a dam burst at a West Virginia coalmine, inundating the town and killing 132 people. Visiting the region the year after the disaster, sociologist Kai Erikson noticed that in addition to ongoing personal trauma, there was a “collective trauma”. The community as a whole appeared to be in a permanent state of shock.
As Erikson noted in his book, Everything in Its Path, the floodwaters left more than physical damage in their wake. They also damaged the relationships and routines that had defined life for generations. Without these social anchors, the community struggled to find meaning and purpose and became disconnected in ways that outlasted the effects of individual psychological trauma.
The concept of collective trauma has risen to prominence in the wake of Australia’s bushfire crisis.Dean Lewins/AAP
What do we mean by collective trauma?
The concept of collective trauma has its roots in the work of French sociologist Émile Durkheim. He suggested that our norms, values and rituals are the foundations of social order. They provide the basis for connectedness and social cohesion, pillars of what we now call resilience.
Collective trauma occurs when an unexpected event damages the ties that bind community members together. It’s easy to see how a town-levelling flood might have this effect. Not only are communities physically destroyed, but the social ties that bind them together are also damaged.
Devastating natural disasters aren’t the only source of collective trauma. War, conflict and genocide have challenged established ways of living and fractured community bonds.
The damage inflicted by this summer’s unprecedented Australian bushfires can be viewed through a similar lens. We know events like these can challenge the way we think about the world, undermine our perceptions of safety, and rupture social bonds.
Australian trauma expert Rob Gordon believes social disconnection or “debonding” causes profound disruptions to community life. This undermines the social fabric of the community, which is one the most important recovery resources we have.
Over the years, there have been a range of interventions used to help reduce post-traumatic symptoms among groups of traumatised people. Many of these approaches have been community-based interventions that aim to facilitate psychosocial recovery.
Collective trauma is not currently a diagnosable condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is a handbook used by health care professionals to assist in the diagnosis of mental disorders.
However, in the latest version of the DSM, the criteria for PTSD was updated to include indirect exposure as a potential source of traumatisation. While this was an important step forward, there is still a considerable gap between what the DSM views as indirect trauma exposure and what history has taught us about collective trauma.
Recovering from the bushfire crisis will take more than just rebuilding physical structures. We also need to repair the social bonds that uphold communities.Joel Carrett/AAP
While concrete policies for the treatment of collective trauma are still largely absent, organisations such as the Australian Red Cross have developed guidelines for supporting communities before, during and after collective trauma events.
We know that connection to community matters for those who have experienced trauma. Recognising the power of connection for healing and finding ways to make that happen is key to improving well-being and resilience.
This can be achieved through community-based therapeutic interventions like “social reconnection groups”, which have been used to help communities recover from disasters such as the Ebola crisis, prolonged war and conflict in the Middle East, terrorist events, and natural disasters.
Unfortunately, community-based therapeutic interventions are not well understood. The effects they can have on the recovery of the community at large need to be studied further.
What have we learned?
Australians have experienced several significant events that have taught us important lessons about collective trauma, including the Port Arthur Massacre (1996), the Black Saturday bushfires (2009), Sydney’s Lindt Cafe Siege (2014), attacks on pedestrians on Melbourne’s Bourke Street (2017 and 2018), and a mass shooting in Margaret River in Western Australia (2018).
Events like the Port Arthur Massacre in 1996 have challenged us to think about how we can restore community bonds as well as treating traumatised individuals as part of our response to disaster.Matthew Newton/AAP
After such events, mental health professionals and community organisations can play a crucial role in providing support. They can empower people to identify and meet their basic needs, and promote a sense of safety and social connectedness. Psychological First Aid and Mental Heath First Aid are useful tools for building resilience, enhancing empowerment, and breeding hope.
To recover from the bushfire crisis, we need to harness these approaches. And if experiences from other collective traumas are any indication, it will likely take years and a great deal of imagination for us to figure out where we go from here.
A recent announcement by a Chinese health official suggested the new coronavirus might spread more easily than we thought, via an “airborne route”. The virus is now known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), while the name of the disease it causes is now called COVID-19.
The centre confirmed the virus appears to spread via droplets, direct contact and by coming into contact with contaminated surfaces and objects. The World Health Organisation agrees.
So far no infectious virus has been recovered from captured air samples. This would need to occur to demonstrate the virus was airborne.
What’s the difference between airborne and droplet spread?
When we sneeze, cough or talk, we expel particles in a range of sizes.
The bigger, wet droplets larger than 5-10 millionths of a meter (µm or micrometre) fall to the ground within seconds or land on another surface.
These wet droplets are currently considered to be the highest risk routes for the SARS-CoV-2.
But smaller particles aren’t implicated in the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
Smaller particles remain suspended in the air and evaporate very quickly (at less than one-tenth of a second in dry air). They leave behind gel-like particles made of proteins, salts and other things, including viruses.
These leftovers are called “droplet nuclei” and can be inhaled. They may remain aloft for hours, riding the air currents through a hospital corridor, shopping centre or office block. This is what we mean when we talk about something being airborne.
But there’s more to airborne spread. To infect humans, the droplet nuclei need to contain infectious virus. The virus must be able to land on our mucous membranes – the soft lining of our ears, nose, conjunctiva (eyelid), throat and digestive tract and it must be able to enter our cells and replicate.
There also needs to be enough virus to overcome our early immune responses to the invader and start an infection.
So a few stars have to align for airborne infection to result.
When we cough, sneeze or talk, we expel particles in a range of sizes.Shutterstock
Airborne spread would mean the virus could travel further. It could spread through unfiltered air conditioning ducting and reach people further away from the infected person, despite them not being in their direct line of sight.
It would also affect how far away from the patient hard surfaces need cleaning and whether airborne personal protective equipment (PPE) precautions – such as P2 respirator masks – would need to be more widely used.
Our definition of “sufficient contact” for someone to be a possible new infection may broaden, which would mean more people need to be monitored, tested and possibly quarantined for each known patient.
If we find out the new coronavirus spreads through the air, this might change the way we protect ourselves.Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA
But even if an airborne route is found in the future, it’s unlikely to be the major route of transmission.
People who are ill and show symptoms such as coughing and sneezing usually produce and expel viruses in greater amounts than those who show fewer symptoms. These sicker people are more likely to spread the virus via bigger wet droplets, physical contact and contamination of surfaces and objects.
Do I need to worry?
No. SARS-CoV-2 has been spreading the whole time, regardless of our understanding of how. That spread doesn’t look to be changing.
Currently, relatively few people infected with SARS-CoV-2 are outside of mainland China. Only 15 cases have been identified in Australia. Those found are isolated quickly and are well cared for.
The chances of catching SARS-CoV-2 outside of mainland China are, at the moment, remote (provided you aren’t on a certain cruise ship).
If the situation changes because infected travellers arrive in greater numbers than we can contain, then our best tools to mitigate spread remain the ones we already know:
distancing ourselves from obviously ill people
hand-washing
cleaning surfaces
good cough etiquette (coughing into a tissue or your elbow and washing your hands)
Venture beneath the ocean and you’ll see schools of fish and other alien-like species that may take your breath away. But one species in particular is an enigma in the marine world: the shy, elusive seahorse.
Approximately 50 species of seahorse are found worldwide, and Australia’s waters are home to at least 17 of them.
However, seahorses are considered threatened around the world, largely from over-harvesting for traditional Chinese medicines, unintended capture in fish trawl nets, and the loss of natural habitats such as seagrasses and mangroves.
To help seahorse populations bounce back while their natural habitats recover, we created new artificial habitats, called “seahorse hotels”. Our recent research showed how these hotels gave the Australian endangered White’s seahorse (Hippocampus whitei) – also known as the Sydney seahorse – a safe place to come together and call home.
Seahorse hotels are magnets for marine growth.
Species under threat
Hippocampus, the entire genus (category) for the species, is listed on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) of Wild Fauna and Flora. This means nations that have signed up to the convention must ensure harvesting seahorses – such as for traditional medicines – is done in a sustainable way.
Unfortunately, the CITES listing hasn’t been enough, and several seahorse species are still experiencing population declines.
Fourteen seahorse species are officially listed as endangered or vulnerable, and these species are considered at risk of becoming extinct in the wild. White’s seahorse is among them. It is one of the two seahorse species listed as globally endangered.
White’s seahorse hiding among sponges.Author supplied, Author provided (No reuse)
The first Australian seahorse under threat
First discovered in Sydney Harbour, White’s seahorse is native to the east coast of Australia and has been spotted from Hervey Bay in Queensland to the New South Wales south coast.
It grows up to 16 centimetres long and is found in shallow water bays and estuaries, where it lives among its natural habitats of sponges, soft corals and seagrasses. Marine biologists have also shown the species “falls in love” – pairings of males and females mate for life.
Whites seahorse in their natural soft coral cauliflower habitat.Author supplied, Author provided (No reuse)
The primary cause is the loss of natural habitats across their range in eastern Australia. In fact, within Port Stephens, more than 90% of soft coral and sponge habitats declined over 10 years at sites where the seahorse was once abundant.
These habitats were destroyed through the installation of boat moorings, anchoring of boats, and the inundation of habitats by sand moving into the Port Stephens estuary.
A home away from home
We devised seahorse hotels to help reverse the decline in White’s seahorse populations. And we named them so because we considered them to be a temporary residence while their natural habitats recovered.
The idea was born after we saw discarded or lost commercial fisher traps that, when rediscovered, had become heavily covered in marine growth such as sponges and corals.
These lost traps over time become magnets for marine growth which naturally starts to occur within days. As the growth increases over time, fish and invertebrates would move onto these new artificial homes. A few seahorses were even spotted living on them.
An old discarded fish trap that gave David Harasti the idea to develop seahorse hotels.Author provided
After we first deployed our 18 hotels, we found it only took within two months for seahorses to start using them. Over time, the numbers of seahorses using the hotels gradually increased: we recorded at least 64 different individuals over the next 12 months of 2018.
Seahorses hold onto the hotels by curling their long tail around the frame, the algae and the sponges, which holds them in place and stops them from being swept away by the waves and currents. By marking each seahorse with small fluorescent tags inserted just beneath the skin (called elastomer), giving each a unique ID, we’re able to track each seahorse.
A baby seahorse clinging to the hotel after months of marine growth.Author provided
Seahorse babies
We found some seahorses maintained a strong attachment to the hotels – they were spotted regularly on the monthly surveys. One seahorse was even sighted using the hotels in 12 different surveys.
What’s more, the seahorse hotels help White’s seahorses breed. We saw this when breeding season began in October, finding that 13 males living in the hotels had become pregnant. This gives us hope for the local population size to increase.
Excitingly, our seahorse hotel study has had international interest too, with more hotels trialling in places like Gibraltar, Greece, the United States, Philippines and Indonesia.
A pregnant male seahorse found living on the seahorse hotels for a few months. Look closely and you can spot the fluorescent orange tag just beneath its skin.Author provided
While we must do what we can to help conserve the natural habitats of seahorses, we at least know we can use the seahorse hotels to recover these elusive populations. Their success in attracting seahorses and helping them come together to mate seems to follow the simple concept of: “If you build it, they will come!”.
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol provides a way to measure local greenhouse gas emissions and removals. It is designed to record two elements of local emissions:
emissions within a municipal area, such as from cooking with natural gas or driving a car
emissions from activities within that area that produce emissions somewhere else, such as using electricity from a coal-fired power station or sending rubbish to landfill.
The method creates a consistent approach to measure emissions in different localities. It lets local governments and communities aggregate their individual commitments to reduce emissions.
The protocol is aligned with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) standards that guide countries’ greenhouse gas inventories. Local accounts can then be nested within national inventories without double counting.
By measuring greenhouse gas emissions at the local scale, the protocol supports local governments and communities as important actors in climate governance. Adding local efforts together gives them a stronger voice in national and international arenas. This political pressure is especially important given the inadequacy of countries’ commitments to meet the Paris Agreement targets.
Even though the protocol adds weight to local climate commitments, translating these commitments into action can be challenging. Consistent with IPCC standards, the protocol frames greenhouse gases in two important ways.
First, greenhouse gases are measured according to defined “sectors”. These include stationary energy, transportation, waste, industrial processes and product use, and agriculture, forestry and other land uses. These categories are shorthand for the complex and extended systems of infrastructure, resource flows and human activities that produce greenhouse gases.
Municipal boundaries often align poorly with these systems. The data on activity needed to calculate emissions are often patchy or misaligned at the local scale. Local governments and communities rarely have the authority to intervene directly and change these larger systems.
So although the protocol helps to direct attention to local activities and systems that produce emissions, changing those systems and activities is usually more complex.
Second, greenhouse gas emissions are translated, through a set of simple equations established by the IPCC, into a “carbon dioxide equivalent”. These equations are the basis for comparing, aggregating and exchanging greenhouse gas emissions and removals of different types, at different times and in different places.
These calculations are entangled with the claim that “a ton of carbon is everywhere the same”. It forms the basis for regulated and voluntary markets in carbon trading.
However, there are problems with this assumed interchangeability. As Larry Lohmann argues:
While carbon trading encourages ingenuity in inventing measurable ‘equivalences’ between emissions of different types in different places, it does not select for innovations that can initiate or sustain a historical trajectory away from fossil fuels […]
Local carbon accounts aren’t the whole answer
In sum, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol supports the legitimacy and strengthens the voice of local governments and communities in global climate governance.
At the same time, defining emissions by territory and sector does not fully reflect the complexity of the infrastructure systems and human activities that cause emissions. In particular, the protocol can reinforce a framing of carbon as an exchangeable commodity. This poses the risk that choices about whether to reduce or offset emissions could be skewed.
Without suggesting there is no place for territorial carbon accounts, it is important to recognise that how we measure emissions shapes possibilities for how we might manage them.
Alternative approaches such as consumption-based accounts measure greenhouse gas emissions from what is consumed by an individual or within a territory. This draws attention to choices about what we eat and what we buy, and to the social norms and systems of wealth, which are harder to see in territorial accounts.
The key point is that no single measure of greenhouse gases can offer a definitive view. As a complement to the protocol, an additional question for local governments and communities to ask when trying to manage greenhouse gases is: “Where do we have the power to effect change, and why does that change matter to us?”
The health implications of the Wuhan coronavirus (now called “Covid-19”) outbreak are, obviously, deeply concerning.
At the time of writing, it had infected more than 50,000 people and killed more than 1,300. Cities and cruise ships are in lockdown. Major trade shows like the Mobile World Congress have been cancelled. Even the Dalai Lama has indefinitely postponed all public appearances.
It has been widely noted that the crisis is having a large economic effect, not only on China but on countries such as Australia.
Those ripple effects stem from the fact that, compared to the time of the SARS outbreak in 2003, China is both a much larger economy and vastly more interconnected with the rest of the world.
Take Australia’s connections. China is Australia’s largest source for international students, with nearly 190,000 Chinese studying in our tertiary institutions. China is also Australia’s largest source of tourists and biggest trading partner.
Even if other countries don’t have the same level of exposure, the whole world is now radically interconnected. Global supply chains for products from cars to mobile phones run across multiple countries.
The components of an iPhone, for example, come from manufacturers in the United States as well as China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
The tectonic technological forces that have driven globalisation also mean an unprecedented “black swan” health crisis can quickly turn into a full-blown economic crisis.
Against this backdrop, it is striking that the same technological forces behind global interconnectedness are key to coping with the coronavirus crisis.
An example comes from the Alibaba Group – arguably China’s leading e-commerce company. It is using everything from food delivery to cloud computing to help combat the crisis.
One of the first things that happens in a crisis is demand surges for goods and services in limited supply – face masks, for example.
Shoppers queue to buy supplies in a pharmacy in the city of Guangzhou, Guangdong province, February 11, 2020.Alex Plavevski/EPA
Alibaba has encouraged sellers on its platforms to increase the supply of masks and other in-demand equipment. It has also used its influence to discourage the kind of price-gouging often seen during natural disasters.
On top of that, consider what life is like for about 11 million people in Wuhan, a city where normal life has ground to a halt as people avoid going out. How do they get groceries and other essentials?
A week before Chinese New Year, demand for takeaway food and other services increased 129%, according to Alibaba.
Deploying platforms
It’s worth pausing to reflect on how much worse the quarantine imposed on Wuhan and surrounding areas would be without the technology that makes transport and logistics today so sophisticated.
Keeping medical staff well cared for in Wuhan has also been crucial.
Leveraging Alibaba’s 18 Freshippo techno supermarkets in Wuhan, the group has set up a dedicated food-delivery team to provide free food and safe drinking water to local hospitals, rescue teams, reporters and volunteers. The group’s Amap Taxi operation has organised a volunteer force to provide free transport for all medical staff 24 hours a day. Alibaba’s travel platform “Fliggy” is be used to offer free accommodation to medical staff – a total of more than 10,000 rooms.
Finally, Alibaba’s cloud-computing business Ali Cloud – similar to Amazon Web Services – has helped health authorities track the outbreak and its spread. It has provided unlimited computing capacity to global medical researchers to accelerate the finding of a cure for the virus. It is also collaborating with Zhejiang Province’s Disease Control Centre to develop an artificial intelligence gene-analysis system that could could slash diagnosis time from two hours to half an hour.
At a time when globalisation is being sharply questioned, it is important to remember the upsides as well as the downsides of an interconnected world.
Yes, radical global interconnectedness makes the world more vulnerable to financial and public health crises. Yet those same forces have also lifted roughly 2 billion people out of extreme poverty in the past 30 years.
Those same technological forces drive the e-commerce platforms, cloud computing and artificial intelligence that help mitigate the effects of these crises.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names of deceased people.
In the quiet of the State Records Office, I have spent many hours searching for knowledge about my family.
In Australia’s archives, we can find letters written by Aboriginal people to the government. We hear echoes of their voices in their words on the page.
Some of these letters express grief, anger and frustration. Some protest the injustice of oppressive legislation.
Archives in the State Records Office of Western Australia hold hundreds of letters written by Noongar people to the Chief Protector of Aborigines and other government officials from the turn of the 20th century. The letters were captured within manic record-keeping systems used to surveil and control Aboriginal people.
These letters are an historical record of the agency of Noongar people to reckon with systematic human rights violations under the 1905 Aborigines Act and in particular the cruel administration of Chief Protector A.O. Neville from 1915 to 1940.
Aboriginal people are working to reclaim knowledge about our families in archives. The recovery of these letters has become a catalyst for storytelling, as we piece together archival fragments and living knowledge.
My searching has recovered many letters written by my family. It has recovered stories that had been lost for generations.
Heartbreaking pain
Within personal files and those relating to institutions for Aboriginal children is a collection of precious letters written by Noongar mothers and fathers to Neville pleading for children who had been forcibly removed as part of the Stolen Generations.
These letters are handwritten, often in faded pencil on yellowing paper with worn edges.
Emotions linger in words, in the handwriting itself, or in other marks on the page. A small indent is imagined to be the resting of the pencil on the page as the letter writer collected their thoughts.
Under the 1905 Act, Aboriginal parents were not the legal guardians of their own children. Neville unjustly became the guardian of every Aboriginal child in Western Australia under the age of 16.
Decades of pleading for children unfold within these letters, revealing deep Noongar truths about unending love and care for children. They are love letters written by mothers and fathers, and sometimes by children themselves.
Reading these letters, we come to feel – rather than know – the heart-breaking pain of having a child taken from you.
The words on the pages of these letters sound with a spirit of tenacity to restore broken connections within families.
A personal record of love
One of these many histories belongs to my grandmother’s grandfather, Noongar man Edward Harris. He campaigned for more than a decade between 1915 and 1926 for the return of his four children: Lyndon, Grace, Connie and my great-grandmother Olive.
He wrote these letters from the heart, a place where he held his children close to him. His letters, captured within archives, have become a treasured historical record of his love for his children.
I never expected to find him in archives and to listen to his voice in his words on the page.
Letter from Edward Harris to A.O. Neville.Elfie Shiosaki
Edward’s letters are assertions of humanity and human rights. Assertions of rights as a father.
In a letter to Neville dated February 1 1918, he writes:
And now before bringing this letter to a close I again appeal to you to have my children placed in my care, and to remind you that I am their father, and if you cannot do that, I’ll have to try some other means to have my children restored to me, either through the press or else a court of justice.
Edward met all the demands Neville placed on him in their correspondence for the return of his children: he could provide good character references; he had a stable job as a farm manager; he had a good home there; he had a wife to take care of the children; he had money to send them to school.
In a letter dated December 31 1918, he writes:
I am anxious to have my children home with me […] In order to have them with me, I have done what you thought was necessary.
On March 29 1919, he writes:
I can never convince myself that you are anxious for me to have my children back. I have told you before that you are hostile and biased, I still believe you are the same […]
[I]n all my dealings with you re the children you have raised too many obstacles and created too many difficulties, the result to me has always been disappointment. I have carried out all the conditions you have imposed on me, and I expect you to fulfil your promises re the children.
Neville refused to return Edward’s children from Carrolup Native Settlement near Katanning, and later Moore River Native Settlement.
This refusal had everything to do with oppression, and nothing to do with Edward’s ability to love and care for his children.
Reading these letters, from many parents, proves time and time again the structural nature of child removal.
Edward was a family man whose advocacy was motivated by his love and care for his children. He demanded the repeal of the 1905 Act. He held Neville to account for his abuse of power.
On August 21 1920, he writes:
[…] it would be a hard matter for you or anyone else to convince me that it is in the interests of the children that you are keeping them shut up at Carrolup. Your past actions show that you are malicious, you have never missed an opp[o]rtunity of hurting me. Not once. Also you have used your position as Protector and the Aboriginal Act to gratify your malice.
You speak of doing the best in the interests of my children. I cannot see it […]
Edward’s advocacy continued as he wrote letters, requesting a departmental inquiry into Neville’s refusal to return his children, and attempting to take his case to court.
In a letter to the Deputy Chief Protector of Aborigines, in March 1920, he writes:
Several times I have asked him [Neville] on what grounds does he refuse to restore me my children, and so far I am still in the dark as to his reasons for holding my children. Of course I will apply again for my children and also ask for an inquiry as I consider that I have been victimised by Mr Neville.
The way I have been treated by that gentleman is an outrage to one’s feelings and affections.
It is an outrage to anyone’s feelings and affections.
Edward, with his brother William Harris and many other Noongar families, went on to establish the first Aboriginal political organisation in Western Australia, the Native Union, in 1926.
William Harris described the organisation as a “protective union” for all Aboriginal people.
The Native Union demanded the repeal of the Aborigines Act 1905, in particular the power of the government to forcibly remove Aboriginal children from their families. It also held Neville’s administration to account for its systematic violation of Indigenous rights.
The Western Mail reported that during a meeting with Western Australian premier Philip Collier in 1928 William Harris said:
The department established to protect us, is cleaning us up […] Under the present Act, Mr Neville owns us body and soul […]
Taking up pen and paper, Edward Harris and many other Indigenous activists of his generation were involved in fundamental work to advocate for transformative discourses of humanity and human rights.
For our generation, their letters humanise histories of colonisation and intergenerational trauma.
Recovery and revitalisation
The recovery of this collection of letters is a practice of truth-telling about Stolen Generations. These letters reveal Aboriginal truths about unending love and care for children. They reveal truths about our collective humanity. These letters restore some humanity to the inhumanity of the Stolen Generations.
Recovering Aboriginal cultural heritage in archives contributes to the revitalisation of our storytelling as branches of knowledge about who we are and where we come from.
This is the legacy of these letters for the next generations.
These letters, some written more than a century ago, echo our current demands. Aboriginal people continue to contend with contemporary practices of child removal.
It is an honour to recover these letters, to shine some light on the long history of this love and the love in my own family story, too.
All excerpts of Edward Harris’s letters have been reproduced with permission. These excerpts may not be reproduced outside of the context of this article without the author’s permission.
The Nationals’ crisis is a political version of what social scientists call a “wicked problem”. It’s without any obvious solution, and every future course is fraught.
This is a “wicked problem” not just for the minor coalition partner, but for Scott Morrison also. He’s an alarmed and essentially powerless observer of a struggle destabilising the Coalition.
This week’s events – the resignation of Llew O’Brien from the Nationals, the hugely embarrassing defection of several of their MPs in a House of Representatives vote which made O’Brien deputy speaker, and the continued public positioning by Barnaby Joyce and his campaign manager Matt Canavan – indicate the trouble will continue.
On any reckoning, the duo of Joyce and Canavan, a former deputy prime minister and an articulate former cabinet minister, can land some hefty punches from the backbench.
Three possibilities lie ahead: Michael McCormack remaining leader of a split, dysfunctional party; Joyce having a second, and successful, tilt; David Littleproud emerging as a compromise.
McCormack is paddling desperately but his position looks increasingly unsafe.
His post-ballot reshuffle – a blatant jobs-in-return-for-votes exercise – has given the Joyce camp new grounds for stirring.
Joyce couldn’t have expected a post, and there were arguments both ways about whether Canavan’s disloyalty should have been rewarded by restoring him to cabinet. Beyond them, McCormack had either no room or no inclination for conciliatory gestures, as well as missing the opportunity to promote some new talent.
McCormack feels the party pressure to be more visible, but questions will inevitably be about the divisions. Asked in a Wednesday Nine interview whether he could survive, he sounded defensive rather than convincing. “Absolutely. I’m strong, I’m determined. And I’m going to stay.”
A move to Joyce would be the rashest course. If the party were confident it would get back the “old Barnaby”, the Barnaby of the early days of his leadership, it would switch in a flash.
But the doubters worry about the current Barnaby and fear how wild a ride they’d be in for.
They all know, however, that he won’t stop agitating. This week Canavan and Joyce launched the first of a promised “Weatherboard and Iron” series of podcasts. Their matey chat canvassed Joyce’s challenge, O’Brien’s resignation, the Nationals’ supporters, and of course coal.
Canavan squashed speculation – following O’Brien’s remaining in the Queensland Liberal National Party – about the prospect of LNP members meeting as a separate party room in Canberra. Canavan is a member of the LNP but he’s about promoting the Nationals’ brand. Both Joyce and Canavan tried to talk O’Brien out of quitting the Nationals (as they would, given his leaving takes out a Joyce vote).
In the podcast, Joyce encapsulated the broad pitch he’s making to the party when he said: “We’ve got to be bold enough and bolshie enough to get the outcomes that [Nationals’ constituents ] need and put yourself in a position where you can get the outcomes they need.”
The middle course for the Nationals – a move to Littleproud – could be the most rational. It would hold risks, given his inexperience. But he’s performed competently as a senior minister; he also comes from Queensland, and it is the Queenslanders who are the most unsettled among the Nationals.
The problem with the Littleproud scenario is there is no clear path there.
To have maximum authority in the party, Littleproud would need to be a consensus candidate. McCormack would ideally have to be “tapped” by someone close to him – such as Darren Chester – and agree to step down for the greater good. Joyce and his supporters would have to go along with the change. Such compliance is against the grain of each of them.
Littleproud is not inclined to challenge, which would be the worst way for him to get the leadership.
Unless and until the Nationals (100 years old this year, incidentally) get sorted, their in-fighting will poison the Morrison government. But Morrison is impotent in the crisis.
He has no formal role in the Nationals’ affairs, and he does not appear to carry informal influence with them, especially since his own standing has been reduced post bushfires. Indeed, with one issue being the Nationals’ feeling McCormack is too subservient to Morrison, any sign of Liberal interference would worsen things.
There was resentment among Nationals at Morrison being seen to push Bridget McKenzie under the bus over the sports grants, not least because they felt his office had more involvement than it admitted.
Those government MPs with a bent to black humour might note the Nationals’ war overshadowed the still-reverberating aftermath of the sports affair.
Thanks to a last-minute change of heart by Pauline Hanson, the government defeated an attempt to clip Senate leader Mathias Cormann’s wings for a while. The context was the Senate’s trying to force the release of the report Morrison commissioned on McKenzie from his departmental head Phil Gaetjens.
But even that small victory came with a tart taste.
Crossbencher Jacqui Lambie, angry at the government flouting accountability, said she’d suspend negotiations on the legislation to crack down on union bad behavior. “If they can’t show integrity up here, and do the right thing, why would I be voting for an ensuring integrity bill?” she said. It was a reasonable question.
Late on Thursday the sports rorts affair was refueled with the Audit office’s appearance before a Senate inquiry. The inquiry heard that, contrary to Morrison’s repeated claim that no ineligible projects were funded, some 43% were ineligible. (They had been judged eligible by Sport Australia but subsequently became ineligible because of timing factors and amended applications.) The committee was also told spreadsheets went to and fro between the Prime Minister’s office and the McKenzie office, with the PMO making direct representations for projects, though not necessarily successfully.
Amid the government’s misery, Labor suffered an own goal when Ten revealed the existence of a new sub-faction, which calls itself the “Otis group” (after a Canberra restaurant), formed within the caucus. It comprises up to 20 conservative members of the right faction, and is convened by resources spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon, who has been a vocal advocate of Labor taking a more sympathetic attitude towards coal.
Its members are worried Labor is failing to pay enough attention to its working class base. Apart from coal, among their concerns is the issue of religious freedom.
The group’s defenders say it is a way of giving the party’s conservatives a voice and keeping them happy. For the future, it is also a potential source of leverage for Fitzgibbon and like-minded caucus members when decision time comes on climate change and other issues.
The Otis group has only had one dinner – on the Sunday before parliament resumed. Anthony Albanese didn’t know of the group until he was warned the story of its existence was about to break on Wednesday. His anger doesn’t require description.
The publicity around the Otis group gave the government some cover for Thursday’s question time. But the Coalition still left Canberra that night, after the first parliamentary fortnight of 2020, in a bad place.
After days of silence, Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana today finally made a public statement on the termination of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the US, saying Philippine and American forces will cease to have joint exercises after the repeal takes effect in 180 days, or 6 months.
“With the formal serving of the notice of termination of the Visiting Forces Agreement, this year’s planned military exercises with the Americans shall proceed as scheduled within the 180 days that the VFA remains in force. However, our American counterparts may opt to discontinue the scheduled exercises before the 180 days are up,” Lorenzana said.
“Once the termination is final, we will cease to have exercises with them,” he added.
The Philippine and US militaries hold an average of 300 joint activities every year, many of them exercises and trainings meant to increase interoperability, or the familiarity that enables both sides to work seamlessly together.
Among those activities are the annual Balikatan exercises, set for May this year, which involves all of the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ (AFP) service branches: the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy, which includes the Marines.
– Partner –
Balikatan This year’s Balikatan exercises fall within the 6-month interim following President Rodrigo Duterte officially ordered the repeal of the VFA on Tuesday, February 11.
The VFA states that its termination takes effect after 180 days of the issuance of a notice from either party.
Besides the Balikatan, major joint activities between the AFP and the US military include the Kamandag exercises of their marine corps, the MTA Sama-Sama involving their navies, the Salaknib exercises of the two armies, and the Bilateral Air Contingent Exercise between their air forces.
AFP generals have credited these trainings with the advancement of Filipino troops’ warfighting capabilities, and exposure to advanced technologies and assets. The US Armed Forces is among the most formidable militaries in the world.
On Monday, US Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs R. Clarke Cooper told reporters that joint military exercises between the Philippines and the US would “be reduced or disappear” if the VFA were to end.
Easy entry The VFA allows for the easy entry of US troops into the Philippines by waiving regular immigration requirements such as passports and visas for US servicemen and women on official business.
It also sets rules on the entry and movement of US assets, and jurisdiction and trial proceedings for US military members accused of crimes committed while in the Philippines.
Ending the VFA would entail a major drawdown of US military troops in the Philippines.
It may also affect the implementation of the 1951 Mutual Defence Treaty between the two countries, and their Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement on the placement of military troops and assets in certain Philippine bases.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John L Hopkins, Theme Leader (Future Urban Mobility), Smart Cities Research Institute, Swinburne University of Technology
There are now more than 45,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus dubbed COVID-19 by the World Health Organization, and the disease has caused at least 1,115 deaths. The impact of the virus is now reaching way beyond public health: China is at the heart of global manufacturing, and as supply chains suffer, panic is beginning to set in.
In many provinces across China the government has urged hundreds of millions of workers to stay home to help reduce the spread of the virus. As a result, many factories have stayed closed since the Lunar New Year holiday in late January, halting the production of products and parts destined for countries around the world, including Australia.
The sectors hit hardest appear to be high-tech electronics, pharmaceuticals and the automotive industry.
Globalised supply chains and just-in-time manufacturing mean many seemingly unrelated products are vulnerable to pauses in the flow of goods from China.
It only takes one small missing part to bring entire supply chains to a standstill. If a tyre manufacturer in the United States doesn’t receive valves from a supplier in China, a car plant in Germany won’t receive any tyres, and therefore can’t ship finished cars to its customers.
Something similar happened to automotive giant Hyundai, which had to suspend all operations at its manufacturing plant in South Korea due to a lack of parts from China.
Even tech companies such as Samsung, Google and Sony, which have moved their factories out of China in recent years, are being affected. They still rely on China for many components such as sensors or smartphone screens.
It is not just large businesses that will feel these effects. Many small businesses around the world also source products and parts from China.
The supply of these is now uncertain, with no sign yet as to when normal service may resume. For products and parts that are still being manufactured in China, new enhanced screening measures at all Chinese border crossings are likely to cause further delays.
How will Australia be affected?
The effects of the coronavirus are also being felt in Australia. China is our largest trading partner for both imports and exports. According to the United Nations Comtrade database, Australian imports from China were valued at A$85.9 billion in 2018. The biggest product categories were electronics and electrical equipment, making up A$19.8 billion, and machinery, which accounts for another A$15.7 billion.
Besides the well-publicised impact on airlines, universities and tourism, Australian construction companies are warning clients of upcoming project delays as a result of forecast disruptions in materials sourced from China. Aurizon, Australia’s largest rail operator, has said the coronavirus will delay the arrival of 66 new rail wagons being made in Wuhan, the city at the epicentre of the outbreak.
Expect shortages of high-tech goods
Product shortages could also soon be visible on retailers’ shelves, with electronics stores such as JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman expected to experience significant disruption to their supply of computers, televisions and smartphones.
When shortages like this occur, customers will struggle to buy the products they want, when they want them. The only channels available might be third-party resellers offering highly inflated prices. In extreme cases, supply shortages like these can also lead to panic buying and stockpiling.
More uncertainty ahead
It is commonly said that “when China sneezes, the world catches a cold”. So what is the long-term diagnosis for the coronavirus breakout, and what will the economic symptoms be?
As so much is still unknown about COVID-19, with no vaccine or formal means of preventing it spreading having emerged yet, it’s too early to predict what the full impact will be.
For many industries the next few months will bring high levels of uncertainty, with disruptions certain to continue, before recovery programs can start to gain traction.
This is obviously a worry for many organisations, but could also be a period of new opportunity for others, as the world comes to terms with this latest global health crisis. Supply chains that are agile enough to react quicker than their competitors’, or those with more robust risk management plans, might find themselves gaining greater market share as a result of this crisis.
The Australian Rheumatology Association this week warned people not to take the supplement glucosamine for their osteoarthritis due to possible allergic side-effects.
What’s the evidence behind this latest advice? And do you really need to stop taking it?
How did we get here?
For years, glucosamine has been marketed as a treatment for osteoarthritis, which can occur when the protective cartilage in the joints wears down over time.
This is despite conflicting evidence on whether the supplement works. Yet many patients may buy glucosamine, presuming that even if it doesn’t help, at least it’s “natural” and so won’t do any harm.
But an Australian study, which has been online since last year and was cited in one of this week’s media reports, has given us more information about glucosamine’s safety.
The study found hundreds of allergic reactions to glucosamine have been reported to Australia’s medicines watchdog, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
So is it safe for you to take glucosamine? In short, if it works for you and you haven’t had any side-effects, and your doctor and pharmacist know you are taking it, it is likely to be safe based on the multiple trials conducted to date.
What is glucosamine?
Glucosamine is a naturally occurring substance the body uses to help build joint tissue, such as cartilage and tendons. In a supplement, the glucosamine can be made from the shells of prawns and other crustaceans, or it can be made synthetically in a factory.
Whether it works to manage osteoarthritis seems open to debate. The most recent evidence suggests little to no clinical benefit.
But advice to GPs about how to treat osteoarthritis says the issue isn’t just confined to glucosamine.
When the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners looked at about 62 other medicines and possible treatments for osteoarthritis of the knee and hip (which include registered drugs and complementary medicines), none were backed by high-quality evidence to say they worked. Most of the evidence was based on low- or very low-quality studies.
Is glucosamine really as dangerous as people say?
The Australia study found 336 cases of side-effects to glucosamine (and to another supplement used for osteoarthritis called chondroitin) were reported to the TGA over 11 years. Of these, 263 cases were allergies, which ranged from mild to severe.
We don’t know if these reactions included those from people with a known allergy to seafood or sulfur, as these would increase their risk of a reaction to glucosamine (glucosamine can come in different formulations, including glucosamine sulfate).
The glucosamine in supplements can come from the shells of prawns and other crustaceans, which is thought to trigger allergic reactions in some people.Shutterstock
But a large percentage of people take glucosamine daily in Australia, with no ill effects. The cases reported to the TGA amount to just 30 people a year, with 16% of allergic reactions considered severe.
Beyond allergic reactions, there are other safety concerns about glucosamine.
For instance, if you are taking glucosamine and a medicine that thins your blood (such as warfarin after a stroke), this can increase your risk of bleeding.
Glucosamine supplements have also been implicated in chronic liver disease and in worsening underlying asthma. Some patients may also experience digestive symptoms such as heartburn.
The risks of other side-effects seem unclear, including whether it raisesblood glucose levels in people with or without diabetes.
Conflicting advice
While the Australian Rheumatology Association has warned people to stop taking glucosamine, other advice is not so clear-cut.
Arthritis Australia reports glucosamine is a relatively safe treatment option for people with osteoarthritis and has relatively few side-effects compared with traditional medicines.
And the guidelines for GPs on how to manage osteoarthritis of the knee and hip makes a “conditional” recommendation not to use it, based on uncertainty over the balance of harms with potential benefit.
So, what should I do?
What should you do if you’re taking glucosamine? If it works for you and you want to keep using it, then do so only on the advice of your doctor. That’s especially the case if you have any underlying medical conditions including diabetes, allergies or asthma.
Next, let your pharmacist know so they can check for any possible interactions with your other medicines, which can increase your risk of side-effects. You are most at risk if you are also taking warfarin, or any other type of blood thinning medicine.
Finally, if you do have unwanted side-effects from glucosamine, stop using it immediately and report it to your doctor.
But then it began to rain, and rain. Sydney water storages jumped from 41% in early February to 75% now – the highest of any capital city in Australia.
This is great news for the city, but it comes with a big caveat. Floodwaters will undoubtedly wash bushfire debris into reservoirs – possibly overwhelming water treatment systems. We must prepare now for that worst-case pollution scenario.
Water in Sydney’s dams may be polluted from heavy rainfall, meaning people might need to boil their drinking water.Andrew Rankin/AAP
Reservoirs filled with rain
The water level of Sydney’s massive Lake Burragorang – the reservoir behind Warragamba Dam – rose by more than 11 meters this week. Warragamba supplies more than 80% of Sydney’s water.
Other Sydney water storages, including Nepean and Tallowa dams, are now at 100%. WaterNSW report that 865,078 megalitres of extra water has been captured this week across all Greater Sydney’s dams.
This dwarfs the volume of water produced by Sydney’s desalination plant, which produces 250 megalitres a day when operating at full capacity. Even at this rate, it would take more than 3,400 days (or nine years) to match the volume of water to added to Sydney’s supply this week.
The Warragamba Dam before the drought and after the recent heavy rains.
But then comes the pollution
Thankfully, the rain appears to have extinguished bushfires burning in the Warragamba catchment for months.
But the water will also pick up bushfire debris and wash it into dams.
Over the summer, bushfires burnt about 30% of Warragamba Dam’s massive 905,000 hectare water catchment, reducing protective ground cover vegetation. This increases the risk of soil erosion. Rain will wash ash and sediment loads into waterways – adding more nitrogen, phosphorous and organic carbon into water storages.
Waterways and ecosystems require nutrients like phosphorous and nitrogen, but excess nutrients aren’t a good thing. They bring contamination risks, such as the rapid growth of toxic blue-green algae.
Drinking water catchments will always have some degree of contamination and water treatment consistently provides high quality drinking water. But poor water quality after catchment floods is not without precedent.
Sydney’s welcome rain may have unwanted side effects.Peter Rae/AAP
We’ve seen this before
In August 1998, extreme wet weather and flooding rivers filled the drought-affected Warragamba Dam in just a few days.
This triggered the Cryptosporidium crisis, when the protozoan parasite and the pathogen Giardia were detected in Sydney’s water supplies. It triggered health warnings, and Sydneysiders were instructed to boil water before drinking it. This event did not involve a bushfire.
The Canberra bushfires in January 2003 triggered multiple water quality problems. Most of the region’s Cotter River catchments, which hold three dams, were burned. Intense thunderstorms in the months after the bushfire washed enormous loads of ash, soil and debris into catchment rivers and water reservoirs.
This led to turbidity (murkiness), as well as iron, manganese, nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon in reservoir waters. The inflow of organic material also depleted dissolved oxygen which triggered the release of metals from reservoir sediment. At times, water quality was so poor it couldn’t be treated and supplied to consumers.
The ACT Government was forced to impose water restrictions, and built a A$38 million water treatment plant.
Sediment from burnt land can wash into water supplies.AAP
Have we come far enough?
Technology in water treatment plants has developed over the past 20 years, and water supply systems operates according to Australian drinking water guidelines.
Unlike the 1998 Sydney water crisis, WaterNSW, Sydney Water and NSW Health now have advanced tests and procedures to detect and manage water quality problems.
In December last year, WaterNSW said it was aware of the risk bushfires posed to water supplies, and it had a number of measures at its disposal, including using booms and curtains to isolate affected flows.
The authors crossing the Coxs River during very low flow last September.Author provided
Look to recycled water
Sydney’s water storages may have filled, but residents should not stop saving water. We recommend Level 2 water restrictions, which ban the use of garden hoses, be relaxed to Level 1 restrictions which ban most sprinklers and watering systems, and the hosing of hard surfaces.
While this measure is in place, longer term solutions can be explored. Expanding desalination is a popular but expensive option, however greater use of recycled wastewater is also needed.
Highly treated recycled water including urban stormwater and even treated sewage should be purified and incorporated into the water supply. Singapore is a world leader and has proven the measure can gain community acceptance.
It’s too early to tell what impact the combination of bushfires and floods will have on water storages. But as extreme weather events increase in frequency and severity, all options should be on the table to shore up drinking water supplies.
Australia Post recently released a commemorative World of Sportset of stamps celebrating six Australian sportscasters. Billed as “household names in their respective sports”, they are all men.
Richie Benaud, Reg Gasnier, Les Murray, Lou Richards, Jack Dyer and Bob Davis should be acknowledged – they have made an enormous contribution to Australian sport and its coverage. “Australia’s love of sport,” said Australia Post Philatelic Manager Michael Zsolt, “extends to the voices that bring each game to life”.
Though these commentators are no longer on the airwaves, sports journalism remains largely masculine, even at a time when women’s professional sport is growing quickly and women’s teams are building strong fan bases.
Respected journalist and writer Angela Pippos has summed up Australian sports media bluntly as “pale, male and stale”.
Against this backdrop we ask, what about female sportscasters, their influence and significant contribution to Australian sport?
Persistent setbacks
Female sportscasters often have to prove their credibility in a way not expected of male sportscasters. The harassment that women sportscasters experience serves to remind them of their role in a male-dominated culture.
A 2017 US study of newspaper readers confirmed the obvious: female sport journalists are judged on their physical appearance more than their male counterparts. Their sexual desirability is rated and discussed.
Earlier examples of this behaviour, frequently framed as “humour”, included the objectification of Caroline Wilson, then chief football writer for The Age, by a co-host of The Footy Show (AFL) who stapled her photograph on a mannequin dressed in lingerie.
Though West Indian cricketer Chris Gale apologised for propositioning a female journalist during a live sideline television interview, his behaviour was indicative of the practices and behaviour female sportscasters experience.
This year, ESPN journalist Belén Mendiguren was the subject of inappropriate sexist remarks. Her experience reminds us of how difficult it is to challenge entrenched inequities.
New media platforms are increasingly spaces where female sportscasters are targeted for simply doing their job. The ability for consumers to access sport news digitally has also seen more direct contact with sportscasters. Harassment and threats of sexual and other violence are common.
Women’s voices
Former Olympic swimmer and sport reporter Judith Joy Davies could certainly mix it with the men most recently commemorated. Billed by some as Australia’s first female sportswriter, she covered the 1954 Commonwealth Games in Vancouver and the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne. Awarded the National Press Club Award for Sports Journalism in 1982, Davies was also a celebrated broadcaster. Her sharp wit together with “the lift in her voice” were said to engage and “carry listeners with her”.
Her 2011 induction to The Sport Australia Hall of Fame rightly recognised Davies’ contribution to Australian sportscasting.
In the contemporary era, Debbie Spillane’s sport broadcast career could certainly be celebrated. Her 1984 appointment with the ABC marked a first for full-time female broadcasters, as did her involvement in cricket commentary. As host of ABC Radio’s Grandstand program and through sport columns with The Sun-Herald and The Australian, Spillane has garnered accolades including the 2017 Australian Sports Commission Media Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Another notable female sportscaster and respected sports journalist is Tracey Holmes with her highly regarded weekly sports panel show The Ticket. As a senior ABC reporter, her program and podcasts often consider issues around diversity and she frequently tackles gender inequality in sport.
Network 7 cricket commentators Mel McLaughlin, Ricky Ponting and Michael Slater.Dave Hunt/AAP
Following the professionalism of women’s cricket, AFL and Soccer, opportunities for female sport journalists and commentators continue to grow. Women gaining experience in this space include Daisy Pearce calling the AFLW and Alison Mitchell who is a test match cricket commentator and regular on ABC’s Grandstand.
Cricket has led the promotion of women’s opportunities in the commentary box. This lead was likely spurred by the negative attention directed at the Nine Networks 2017 distinctively all-male commentary team.
Challenging status quo
An ABC Grandstand commitment to a 50-50 gender split in the commentary box has been followed by commercial gains. The addition of women’s voices and views included a ratings jump in key AFL cities Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
In early 2020, Sport Australia funded a two-day workshop aimed at professional female athletes to build their broadcast skills.
Rugby 7s player Alicia Lucas explained it was “a great way to push female voices in sport”. Rugby Australia’s Head of Women’s Rugby and Rugby Participation, Jilly Collins said:
This is actually changing the face of what sports commentary looks like, to bring different flavours, options and expertise.
Grassroots action is further challenging the status quo. The Outer Sanctum podcast is an all-female footy fan panel that made immediate headlines calling out derogatory comments about female athletes and journalists. They have since been part of the push to call out gendered language in sport.
This week, new webisode show All In debuted with hosts Samantha Lane and Emma Race enjoying a casual chat with footballer and boxer Tayla Harris.
Siren, a collective of Australian women’s sports advocates, content creators and fans are using their knowledge to elevate women’s voices.
These initiatives, alongside what appears to be a wider appetite for diversity in sports broadcasting, is enabling a broader range of voices to call and write about Australian sport. They may not sit still long enough to pose for postage stamps.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Cockfield, Professor of Government and Economics, and Deputy Dean, University of Southern Queensland
The National Party turned 100 on January 22, but celebrations were overshadowed by leadership turbulence, with Barnaby Joyce challenging Michael McCormack for the leadership.
The failed move to restore Joyce as leader of the party was driven, according to Joyce and some supporters, by the “need” to have a determined and independent voice within the Coalition. As Joyce put it,
we have to speak with our own voice, we have to drive agendas.
The Nationals are a distinct party, but working within the Coalition has provided them with considerable policy influence throughout history. And Coalitions have worked best in the past with adroit leadership and by resolving conflicts out of the public eye.
McCormack may grow into an adroit leader but he is at risk of being set aside because of ambition and impatience, as well as a hazy view of the history and place of the party.
Early electoral successes for the party
The Australian Country Party, the precursor to the modern National Party, was integral to establishment of non-Labor politics in Australia. It started in 1920 with representation from all states and immediate electoral impact.
The party’s share of lower house seats peaked at the 1937 federal election, and from then until the 1980s, it was routinely able to win about 10% of the vote and 15% of lower house seats.
The golden age for the Country Party was from 1949-83 – a time marked by solid parliamentary representation, the routine holding of key portfolios and strong influence on agricultural and rural policies.
The success of this period was not just about electoral performance. During the Coalition’s many years in government, the partner parties were also ideologically close on issues that mattered to the Country Party, which helped minimise open conflict.
These shared ideologies are no longer as strong as they once were, in part due to the increasing influence of market liberalism within the Liberal Party in the 1980s and ‘90s.
Furthermore, the Nationals are now an even smaller parliamentary party in 2020 than in 1980, holding only 10.6% of lower house seats.
Given tensions over policy, a need to maintain a rural identity and the rise of populist parties such as One Nation and The Shooters, Farmers and Fishers Party, the Nationals are now facing a challenge: how to express their independence, while remaining good partners in the Coalition.
Why good leadership and stable Coalitions have mattered
Throughout the history of the Country and National parties, it’s been critical for their leaders to maintain a fine balancing act.
It didn’t start out this way. The Country Party’s first leader, William McWilliams, wanted pure independence for the party, as was expected by the various farm organisations that supported “country” candidates in the 1920s.
However, his successor, Earle Page, set the model for future federal Coalition arrangements.
Earle Page.National Library of Australia
After the 1922 federal election, Country Party members fired some warning shots in their tactical voting on legislation and procedures. This led to the offer of a Coalition with the Nationalists, who even sacrificed a leader to allow this to happen. The Country Party secured key portfolios and Page formed a strong working relationship with the new Nationalists leader, Prime Minister Stanley Bruce.
This also ushered in a long period of relative stability in the leadership ranks of the Country Party. For 63 years, the party had only five leaders. And four of those served for more than 12 years each: Page (1921-39), Artie Fadden (1941-58), John McEwen (1958-71) and Doug Anthony (1971-84).
Each of these leaders had a strong working relationship with their Liberal counterparts in the Coalition. Fadden and McEwen both worked well with Robert Menzies, while Anthony had a close partnership with Malcolm Fraser.
Coalition stability was challenged briefly in 1939 when Page made an intemperate personal attack on Menzies, then leader of the United Australia Party. Page declared in the House that Menzies was unfit to lead government because he had not served in the first world war.
Page refused to work with Menzies, jeopardising the Coalition and leading to Page’s resignation as party leader. The internal turmoil contributed to Labor’s 1941 election win.
National leaders standing firm with Coalition partners
Since 1983, no Nationals leader has made it to 10 years at the top, though until the attempted Joyce resurrection, there had been only one direct leadership challenge.
Anthony’s successor, Ian Sinclair (1984-89) was one of the Country/National Party strongmen of the Fraser-Anthony era and an ardent coalitionist.
Ian Sinclair with his portrait when it was unveiled in parliament in 2001.Alan Porritt/AAP
However, he was politically wounded by the “Joh for Canberra” push, an attempt by Queensland National Party premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen to become prime minister. This resulted in a Coalition split and the loss of the 1988 federal election, leading Charles Blunt to challenge for and win the National leadership.
Most of the other National leaders in recent times, from Tim Fischer to Warren Truss, were strong coalitionists and worked to keep policy and personal conflict behind closed doors.
Even when the Nats felt pressure from their supporters for adhering to Coalition policies, their leaders held firm to maintain stability in government. Fischer, for example, stood shoulder to shoulder with John Howard on gun laws, despite the blow-back he received in many rural areas.
The result was good for the Nats: he led the party to unexpectedly retain 16 lower house seats.
Joyce has warned the National Party could cease to exist if more MPs decide to leave.Mick Tsikas/AAP
Why Joyce’s return would be a mistake
Yet, for Joyce’s supporters, this is still insufficient. Joyce’s time in leadership (2016-18) was a step back from diplomatic coalitionism with a more publicly combative style and demands for shifts in Coalition policy in key areas such as water.
But based on recent history, it is hard to argue the government isn’t paying enough attention to rural policy, given Prime Minister Scott Morrison has frequently been on the Wombat Trail to provide assistance to victims of floods, fires and droughts.
Even so, there will be no return to the golden age of rural policy-making in Australia, and the Nationals could be content, though they won’t be, with a long history of punching above their weight.
Coalitions have worked well for the Nationals, in terms of electoral success and policy outcomes, relative to their representation in parliaments. The party should bear this in mind when selecting its leaders, since the fracturing of Coalitions hasn’t served it well in the past.
The numbers of vegans in Australia is on the rise – for many, ruling animal products out of their diet is a relatively straightforward decision. But deciding whether to eschew leather products can be more challenging.
For non-meat eaters who do buy leather, the rationale is usually something like this: if meat is being produced anyway, and it generates a handy by-product such as leather, why not use it rather than waste it?
But there is evidence leather is driving, or at least supporting, the profitability of animal harvesting in some cases. This raises serious moral questions for anyone who cares about animals but still buys leather products.
Models protest against the use of leather at London Fashion Week.EPA
Kangaroo leather: a case in point
I’m a social policy expert who specialises in animal welfare legislation and ethics. I have also been vegan for about 20 years, mostly out of a moral opposition to factory farming.
But kangaroos are shot at night, from a distance, and their heads are small. This means they can not always be killed humanely with a single shot to the brain. According to the national code of practice, once a mother has been shot, joeys should be killed by decapitation or a blow to the head.
The sale of kangaroo leather boosts the value of the animal and has long been considered the backbone of the industry. The leather is sold at a premium for use in leather clothing and footballs.
Similarly, research shows the market for hide drives the ostrich farming industry in South Africa.
Luxurious calfskin comes from newborn calves, and sometimes even from calf fetuses.Shutterstock
In the beef industry, all byproducts add to the overall value of the animal, and hides comprise the biggest share.
And as has been reported, luxuriously soft calfskin is not necessarily a byproduct of the beef industry – it can come from newborn calves or even calf fetuses.
The animal welfare picture
Cow leather produced in Australia is subject to state laws and codes regulating animal welfare, transport and slaughter.
These guidelines don’t always stop the abuse of animals at slaughterhouses. However overseas, the laws can be even more lax.
However it should be noted that some academics say the leather industry can benefit some animal species. Their research shows that using exotic animals such as crocodiles, lizards and snakes for their skins gives those species a financial value. This drives local efforts to conserve habitat and prevents the animals from being harvested to extinction.
Indonesians gather after a crocodile killing spree in 2018. Some researchers say the animal hide trade can help conserve a species.EPA
Environmental and social harms
Leather production – and its negative side effects – is concentrated in developing countries, which raises a new lot of ethical questions.
Turning the skin of an animal into leather is chemically-intensive and polluting.
For example in Hazaribagh, a leather producing region in Bangladesh, untreated waste from leather tanneries reportedly runs through open canals while inside the tanneries the work is dangerous and child labor is common.
The poor in developing countries are hit hardest by the leather industry’s downsides.Piyal Adhikary
Is faux leather the answer?
The market has responded to some people’s aversion to leather. Vegan fashionista Stella McCartney uses “vegetarian leather” which is actually recycled polyester. She claims this “creates 24 times less of an environmental impact”.
Among participants at the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, a leading business event promoting sustainable fashion, it seems to be an article of faith that faux, synthetic or lab-produced leather is better for the environment.
But of course, the production of faux leather uses more energy than simply using the shoes and bags already in our wardrobes.
A personal choice
If you really love wearing leather but have animal welfare concerns, you might buy it second-hand. I’ve not gone down that path, because I believe wearing any leather normalises the practice.
There are signs public attitudes to leather are changing. In the United States for example, consumers are eating more beef but leather demand has recently dropped – a change attributed to synthetic alternatives and changing fashion tastes.
Ultimately, the decision whether to wear leather is a personal one. But before you buy your next leather product, do your research and consider whether your purchase might contribute to the animal welfare problem.
When a man died by suicide in 2016, a friend found an unsent SMS on his phone:
Dave Nic you and Jack keep all that I have house and superannuation, put my ashes in the back garden with Trish Julie will take her stuff only she’s ok gone back to her ex AGAIN I’m beaten. A bit of cash behind TV and a bit in the bank Cash card pin 3636 MRN190162Q 10/10/2016 My will
Following a dispute between the man’s widow and his brother and nephew, the Supreme Court of Queensland decided the message was a valid will.
The case represents a growing body of legal decisions reflecting how the digital age is challenging the courts.
In the UK, the Law Commission is reviewing the law of wills to decide whether it should reflect the ubiquity of digital technologies.
Except in very limited exceptional circumstances, a will is a document. To be a valid formal will, there are certain requirements: it must be in writing, on paper, signed by the testator, witnessed by other people, and formally executed. Specific formal language is encouraged.
In law, documents – more than witnesses or physical objects – have become the most important form of evidence.
But in the digital age, the distinction between a document, a witness and real evidence is becoming more difficult to perceive, and pointless to sustain.
What we understand as a “document” has expanded to include a potentially limitless range of digital forms and devices.
Challenges abound. Digital documents are long, ubiquitous, intangible, difficult to authenticate, easy to duplicate and modify. They sometimes bring more questions than answers.
The case of the unsent SMS
The Supreme Court of Queensland had no difficulty in finding that the unsent text message was a document. However, it was not a formal will. Informal wills can still be valid in some circumstances. The court noted that the unsent message was identified as a will, dated, contained the deceased’s initials and date of birth (“MRN190162”).
It identified most of his assets, included clear wishes about their distribution, provided a pin code and gave instructions about his ashes.
The court also considered his state of mind at the time of his death, determining he had sufficient capacity to make a will. It considered the fact the man didn’t send the text message: did it mean that his will was still in draft form and did not reflect his final wishes?
The court accepted evidence that he did not send the message so that his family would not interrupt his suicide. Despite lacking nearly all of the formalities of a will, it was found to be his valid last will and testament.
A court might look for clues wherever possible – even in the deceased draft messages folder.Shutterstock
In 1948, Cecil George Harris died following an accident on his Saskatchewan wheat farm. He had been trapped underneath his tractor for 12 hours in torrential rain. His wife and neighbours eventually found him during a lightning storm. Despite their best efforts, he died of his injuries.
Two of his curious neighbours went to examine Harris’ stricken tractor and found that message he’d scratched into the paint on the fender:
In case I die in this mess I leave all to the wife. Cecil Geo. Harris
An extract from ‘In Case I Die In This Mess’, an episode of the podcast History Lab, from Impact Studios at the University of Technology, Sydney.
The neighbours removed the fender after his funeral and conveyed it to a local lawyer. It was eventually held to be Harris’ last will and testament. Because this case is now a quirky landmark of Saskatchewan succession law, the fender and the knife Harris used to carve his message are now on display in the library of the University of Saskatchewan law school.
Grief, generosity, love, regret, hate, spite, retribution, eccentricity: the full gamut of human emotions are revealed in a person’s will, and in the conduct of their beneficiaries and descendants after death.
Probate courts are required to walk into this emotional minefield, and ask: what would the deceased have wanted?
When a deceased person hasn’t left a will, or they’ve left one that’s deficient, the court looks for clues.
And, as history tells us, the courts have often acted with considerable sensitivity and flexibility in trying to do justice to the dead.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
In Case I Die In This Mess was made by Impact Studios at the University of Technology, Sydney – a new audio production house combining academic research and audio storytelling. It is the first episode in a four part series titled ‘The Law’s Way of Knowing’, available for download through the award-winning UTS History Lab podcast.
But what’s the best way to tackle these if they come up in everyday conversation, whether that’s face-to-face or online? Is it best to ignore them, jump in to correct them, or are there other strategies we could all use?
Public health officials expect misinformation about disease outbreaks where people are frightened. This is particularly so when a disease is novel and the science behind it is not yet clear. It’s also the case when we still don’t know how many people are likely to become sick, have a life-threatening illness or die.
Yet we can all contribute to the safe control of the disease and to minimising its social and economic impacts by addressing misinformation when we encounter it.
To avoid our efforts backfiring, we need to know how to do this effectively and constructively.
Abundant research shows what doesn’t work. Telling people not to panic or their perceptions and beliefs are incorrect can actually strengthen their commitment to their incorrect views.
Over-reactions are common when new risks emerge and these over-reactions will pass. So, it’s often the best choice to not engage in the first place.
If you wish to effectively counter misinformation, you need to pay more attention to your audience than to the message you want to convey. See our tips below.
Next, you need to be trusted.
People only listen to sources they trust. This involves putting in the time and effort to make sure your knowledge is correct and reliable; discussing information fairly (what kind of information would make you change your own mind?); and being honest enough to admit when you don’t know, and even more importantly, when you are wrong.
Here’s how all this might work in practice.
1. Understand how people perceive and react to risks
We all tend to worry more about risks we perceive to be new, uncertain, dreaded, and impact a large group in a short time – all features of the new coronavirus.
Our worries increase significantly if we do not feel we, or the governments acting for us, have control over the virus.
People can’t process information unless they see their worries being addressed.
So instead of offering facts (“you won’t catch coronavirus from your local swimming pool”), articulate their worry (“you’ve caught colds in swimming pools before, and now you’re worried someone might transmit the virus before they know they are infected”).
Being heard helps people re-establish a sense of control.
Usually when we want to correct someone, it’s because we’re worried about the harms their false beliefs will cause.
But if we are emotional, what we communicate is not our knowledge, but our disrespect for the other person’s views. This usually produces a defensive reaction.
Manage your own outrage first before jumping in to correct others. This might mean saving a discussion for another day.
If you ask why someone is worried, you might discover your assumptions about that person are wrong.
Explaining their concerns to you helps people explore their own views. They might become aware of what they don’t know or of how unlikely their information sounds.
Because there is still considerable uncertainty about how severe the epidemic will be, information and the government’s response to it is going to change.
So you will need to frequently update your own views. Know where to find reliable information.
Being wrong is likely in an uncertain situation. If you are wrong, say so early.
If you asked your family or employees to take avoidance measures you now realise aren’t really necessary, then admit it and apologise. This helps restore the trust you need to communicate effectively the next time you need to raise an issue.
7. Politely provide your own perspective
Phrases like, “here’s why I am not concerned about that” or “I actually feel quite confident about doing X or Y” offer ways to communicate your knowledge without attacking someone else’s views.
You can and should be explicit about what harms you worry misinformation can cause. An example could be, “I’m worried that avoiding Chinese restaurants will really hurt their business. I’m really conscious of wanting to support Chinese Australians right now.”
8. On social media, model the behaviour you want to see
It’s harder to be effective on social media, where outrage, not listening, is common. Often your goal might be to promote a reasoned, civil discussion, not to defend one particular belief over another. Use very reliable links.
Your online comment can unintentionally reinforce misinformation, for example by giving it more prominence. Check the Debunking Handbook for some strategies to avoid this.
Make sure your posts or comments are polite, specific, factual and very brief.
Acknowledging common values or points of connection by using phrases such as “I’m worried about my grandmother, too”, or by being supportive (“It’s so great that you’re proactive about looking after your staff”), can help.
Remember why this is important
The ability to respond to emergencies rests on having civil societies. The goal is to keep relationships constructive and dialogue open – not to be right.
Teachers identify one in five children as having emerging health or developmental concerns when they start school. This might include a child being disruptive, having difficulties understanding the teacher’s instructions, or experiencing fears and anxieties at a level that makes it difficult for them to learn.
Our research, published in “Child: care, health and development”, found by year three these children, on average, had poorer NAPLAN results in reading and numeracy than those who didn’t start school with such difficulties.
Socio-economic disadvantage added further to the risk of poor learning outcomes for children with emerging concerns.
Children can miss school, have trouble doing school work due to fatigue or problems learning, or feel left out from their peer group and school life.
We can’t just look to individual schools and teachers to fix this. The whole of the education system needs reform to meet the needs of this large group of children.
What kind of difficulties are these?
In Australia, not all health and developmental difficulties qualify children for special needs programs. Our research focused on children with mild to moderate difficulties emerging in the early years of school. These can go under the radar.
The Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) collects data from teachers across Australia about all children’s development in their first year of school, every three years. Data from 2015 shows 17% of children had emerging developmental concerns identified by their teacher, but did not qualify as having special needs.
The majority of teacher concerns for these children related to language (44%), which includes children not being able to express themselves or follow directions. The next most common were concerns about behaviour (17%) such as the child having trouble with classroom rules; emotional problems (16%) such as withdrawing from learning and peers; and learning difficulties (10%) such as picking up specific reading skills.
The percentage of children starting school with these types of difficulties is increasing. The proportion of children with teacher-identified language difficulties rose from 8% to 14% between 2009 and 2015.
How this affects learning
We analysed the AEDC and NAPLAN data of 42,619 Victorian children. We looked at associations between teachers’ concerns when the children started school and their NAPLAN results in reading and numeracy at year three.
We also accounted for socio-demographic factors that could impact on both health and learning.
We found teachers’ concerns about children’s health and development at the start of school predicted lower reading and numeracy scores. By year three, this equated to about nine months behind in schooling on average.
Disadvantage and developmental difficulties affect kids’ learning.from Shutterstock.com
The combined effect of emerging concerns and socio-economic disadvantage on children’s academic learning was even greater. Around one-third (34%) of children with emerging concerns, and 39% of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, had poor reading and or numeracy outcomes.
When children had both emerging concerns and disadvantage, 60% had poor outcomes.
Children living in disadvantaged circumstances have less access to appropriate health and education supports (such as to specialist health services) that can be a buffer against poor learning outcomes. Because academic skills are vital for future career and education opportunities, this has the potential to reinforce the cycle of disadvantage across generations.
What do we need to do?
We previously found that 84% of children who started school with emerging health and developmental concerns did not have their needs consistently reported by their teacher and parent.
While the data couldn’t tell us the reasons why, it may not be surprising since parents and teachers see children in different contexts and from different perspectives. For example, a child may struggle more with the learning demands in a classroom which parents may not know about. But on the other hand, parents might be managing a medication routine at home the teacher may not be aware of.
This separation can become problematic if it interferes with children getting the support and services they need. Teachers are instrumental in identifying and making referrals to school services. Parents are increasingly expected to advocate for their child to receive additional support and services at school and in the community.
Health practitioners in and outside schools are also important parts of children’s care teams. They can offer information about a health condition, ideas for strategies to support the child at school, and information about their own services, to avoid duplication.
To build a shared understanding of children’s needs across these stakeholders, we need to find new ways to quickly identify, communicate about, and respond to children’s needs as they first become apparent.
The Nationally Consistent Collection of Data – an annual collection of information about Australian school students with disability – is an example of a positive shift towards recognising children with emerging needs and providing a common framework for understanding them. This is achieved by taking the focus away from a child’s diagnosis (or lack of it) and towards the adjustments needed to help children learn and participate at school.
Moving in these directions requires rethinking our approach to resourcing schools to support children with emerging health and developmental concerns, particularly for those who are also disadvantaged.
Short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb are increasingly displacing hotels and holiday letting agencies as the go-to form of accommodation. The ease of booking it all in seconds on your smartphone adds to the appeal of renting a well-appointed flat in Noosaville, or having basil or turmeric on hand in the kitchen of your Katoomba house. With so many people using Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms in Australia, have you ever wondered just how many Airbnbs there are?
The answer is 346,581. Or at least that’s the number of unique properties listed at least once in Australia between July 2016 and February 2019 (the period for which we have a complete data set for the entire country), with a high of 147,655 listed in December 2018. According to research we presented at the recent State of Australian Cities conference in Perth, we estimate about 4% of the Australian housing stock is, or has been, used as an Airbnb.
The number of listings grew by an average of 2.43% a month over that period. If trends continue, we are likely to have set another record this past December.
Airbnb property listings generally peak in the summer. The exception is in the country’s north. There the peak is in June and July holidays as chilly temperatures in the southern states send visitors to warmer climes.
There’s something for everyone
Airbnb properties come in all shapes and sizes. Just over half (53%) of Airbnb properties can be classed as houses and 37% as apartments. The remaining 10% are considerably more diverse, and include 82 boats, 21 tipis, 26 yurts, 43 train cars and even two lighthouses. You can also book a private island on the Great Barrier Reef, or a treehouse at Cape Tribulation.
Airbnb’s 346,581 listings in Australia include some extraordinary properties like this floating apartment on the Great Barrier Reef.Airbnb/AAP
The latest available data indicate 74% of listings are for entire homes, 26% are for shared properties and 1% are for shared bedrooms.
Of the total listings, 5% are studios, while 40% have one bedroom, 25% have two bedrooms and the remaining listings have three or more.
The map below shows the sheer density of these listings nationwide. Click here to see a larger version of the interactive map (hover over dots to display the location – the larger the dot, the greater the number of listings).
One remarkable thing about Airbnb is how ubiquitous it has become. Of the 2,292 statistical units (SA2) in Australia, 2,226 had at least one listing. As of February 2019, the average SA2 area had on average 56 listings, but the numbers varied greatly between localities.
The most popular places for absolute number of listings generally fall into one of two categories. Inner cities, like central Melbourne and Sydney, attract visitors year-round.
Holiday destinations, such as the Gold Coast, Byron Bay and Mornington Peninsula, tend to have more seasonal patterns.
Too big for policymakers to ignore
A key concern about Airbnb is the degree to which it causes displacement in the conventional rental market and/or disrupts residential neighbourhoods (think of tourists wheeling luggage into your building’s foyer 24/7). While difficult to measure both of these, our data indicate there are basically two types of Airbnb “landlords”: professionals, whose properties are always available, and hobbyists, who are regarded as genuine participants in the so-called sharing economy.
The fact entire home listings have been growing at a faster rate than shared accommodation suggests short-term rentals have been professionalised over time. Increasingly, management companies rather than individuals are leasing properties full-time.
Short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb are unlikely to disappear overnight. Some hotel chains and booking sites have adapted their strategies accordingly by providing apartment-style living alongside conventional hotel rooms.
The sharing economy has expanded tremendously over the past decade. A recent Australian Treasury report estimates nearly one in two Australians earned extra money from sharing economy services in the last six months of 2017. The impact on the economy totalled more than A$15 billion.
Policymakers increasingly need to consider the impacts of Airbnb and other sharing economy platforms. Understanding the complexity of all the pros and cons will be critical to making informed decisions.
Australia’s 12th Closing the Gap report, published yesterday, shows by most socio-economic measures Indigenous Australians continue to lag behind the rest of the population.
Only two of seven targets – early education and Year 12 completion rates – are on track. On the five others – child mortality, school attendance, literacy and numeracy, employment and life expectancy – there has been little or no improvement.
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt says it’s another failure of Indigenous policy in Australia.
The Indigenous employment rate, for example, has improved by less than a percentage point in a decade – to 49%, compared with 75% for non-Indigenous Australians.
Cultural counterfactuals
One of the problems with government policies for Indigenous Australians is their lack of sensitivity to cultural differences. In particular, they fail to account for Indigenous notions of value.
As noted in a 2019 report from the Committee for Economic Development of Australia on how to break the cycle of entrenched disadvantage, there’s a lack of contact between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. This means public opinion and government policy evaluations are generally unaware there are different Indigenous notions of social value.
We call the adjustments that need to be made in policy and measurement to account for these different perceptions of value “cultural counterfactuals”.
A good example of what this looks like can be found in Peak Hill, a small town between Parkes and Dubbo in New South Wales.
Here Maliyan Horizon, an Indigenous civil construction company, has been connecting people with jobs on country.
Creating sustainable careers for Aboriginal people in regional areas is a core business objective. The company does this through its commitment to training, upskilling and mentoring staff.
The company gives extra assistance, for example, to employees who have never before have had a full-time job. It also consults with local traditional owners to stay in touch with the needs of the community it works in.
Indigenous procurement policy
The federal government’s Indigenous procurement policy, on the other hand, is a good example of failing to account for cultural counterfactuals.
Since its introduction in 2015, this procurement policy has become one of the main government instruments to promote greater employment for Indigenous Australians. It requires all federal government agencies spend a percentage of their budgets with Indigenous enterprises.
According to the third-year evaluation of the policy by Deloitte Consulting, published in December 2019, the policy is a success by one key performance indicator – the number of Indigenous enterprises contracted to the Commonwealth government – and an “outstanding success” by the other – the number and value of contracts awarded to Indigenous enterprises. The report says:
Currently, Commonwealth procurement is exceeding the target by 4.1 percentage points (7.1% compared to 3.0%). In respect of providing genuine and sustainable economic opportunities for Indigenous businesses there is room for improvement as the above-mentioned 5.0% of total contracts issued equates to 1.5% of the value of those contracts.
But do Indigenous communities see it the same way?
IPP evaluation
Deloitte’s report has many good qualities. It makes useful recommendations. It doesn’t ignore problems like black cladding – where businesses employ Indigenous staff just to qualify for a government contract but have no commitment to providing stable long-term jobs.
But there is one fatal flaw.
Deloitte’s evaluation process involved focus groups with the owners and managers of Indigenous businesses. But the employees, the people supposed to be the beneficiaries of the policy, weren’t included.
This should be considered a major flaw in any policy evaluation. It assumes economic benefits from business will trickle down to communities. There is little evidence to prove it.
One of the evaluation’s recommendations is to use a measure called social return on investment (SROI) for contracts greater than A$4 million. This highly controversial idea attempts to reduce social policy impacts to a monetary value. It has been criticised for glossing over social and cultural complexities in its attempt to calculate a single financial value.
Towards more effective evaluations
Policies for Indigenous people should involve consulting Indigenous people to better reflect and prioritise Indigenous cultural knowledge and experiences. So should evaluations of those policies.
It’s crazy to not account for the perspectives of the people those policies are designed for.
Without more attention to cultural counterfactuals, Indigenous Australians will continue to be misrepresented. And Indigenous policies will continue to fail.
The cartoonist’s task is to give voice to ideas and sentiments that are repressed in culture. For Michael Leunig, it was an odd poetic impulse – a strand of lyricism, which Australians probably never suspected they possessed – that gave rise to his iconic work. According to the National Trust, he is an Australian National Living Treasure.
As the subject of Kasimir Burgess’s documentary The Leunig Fragments, Leunig is an oddly esoteric figure.
He is pictured sipping tea from a pristine white Ikea cup, curled up foetal-like on a couch, staring wide-eyed at the sky, or out across the misty water; dressed like a solitary trainspotter in a dark anorak and felt scarf, strangely child-like, but with lots of wild grey hair.
Leunig is best known for his daily newspaper cartoons featuring the whimsical characters Vasco Pyjama and Mr Curly. Together with his signature images of the duck, the teapot, an odd star or waning moon, they have supported his commentary on Australia’s political, social and emotional life for decades.
Audiences will also know Leunig for his paintings and poetry, but more so for the “Leunig industry”, the dozens of newspaper lift outs, posters and calendars, not to mention mugs, aprons, totes, tea towels and assorted kitsch synonymous with Australian popular culture through the 1980s and 90s.
For all its ubiquity, Leunig’s whimsy can be deceptively cutting, or, as Philip Adams puts it, “weaponised”.
The edge manifests itself in the disturbing use of light, dark, wings, halos, and clouds — let’s face it, this is an oddly religious mythos for a newspaper cartoonist (he once told Andrew Denton he liked the sound of the word, “God”) – and it hints at Leunig’s darker, more strident and uncomfortable themes.
The film covers Michael Leunig’s childhood but doesn’t delve into his controversies.
A lost boy
Born in Footscray in Melbourne’s inner west, Leunig was the son of an abattoir worker and the second eldest of five children. He became estranged from both his parents and siblings. He tells Burgess he never attended his parents’ funerals; never visited their graves; and doesn’t know where they’re buried. He doesn’t mention his sister, feminist cartoonist Mary Leunig, once in the course of Burgess’ film.
Burgess documentary storytelling is restrained and unobtrusive. He doesn’t impose a narrative, but, as his title suggests, lets the “fragments” tell the story. Shaped by image, soundtrack and theme, the result feels more like a musical score than conventional filmic story telling. It stumbles into the terrain of the literal only once or twice.
There’s also a layer of self-reflectivity that pulls the narrative together, giving context through the elements of docudrama that are woven into the film – the auditioning of a child actor to play Leunig as a boy is priceless; also conspicuous is the visual motif of the English teacher; a female muse from Leunig’s childhood that he seems to have carried with him throughout his life.
But at the end of it all, Leunig the man remains a mystery, which, I suspect is precisely Burgess’ point.
Sour tastes
Leunig’s career is not without controversy; a fact this documentary rather evades.
Leunig’s parody of John Howard as the prime minister who couldn’t stoop lower than he had, “No Disrespect Intended, however … ”, which was notoriously dropped from the Sydney Morning Herald, doesn’t appear. Nor does the controversy that swirled around the cartoons about the occupation of the Gaza.
His condemnation of the War on Terror is featured but treated poetically rather than specifically, or politically.
Worryingly, Leunig’s recurrent blasts at women he portrays as selfish or neglectful float across the screen and are seldom contextualised or even questioned.
After all, Leunig is well known for his anti-feminism: his opposition to childcare services for women who need to work to support their families, the outrageous irresponsibility of his anti-vaxx cartoons also aimed at mothers, his mindless tirades against young women who, he alleges, love their digital devices more than they love their babies.
Leunig’s short animation Dripping Tap, for example, runs almost full length in this documentary. In this video a husband, unable to sleep, tells his wife about the hopes and dreams and life and romance that is leaking out of his heart and into the mattress. Leunig’s punchline, delivered by the wife, is not only unkind, it is fundamentally chauvinist. “No, it’s definitely the cold tap in the laundry” is predicated on the assumption that women – unlike men – have no hopes or dreams or poetry, just domestic concerns.
‘No, it’s definitely the cold tap in the laundry.’ Leunig’s women are tethered to the domestic.
Women, like the figure of the teacher muse in this film, are just there to support men.
This documentary is beautiful, but it’s also more than a little deceptive in the way that it skates seamlessly across the surface of Leunig’s thoughts. Burgess should have dug a little deeper, down into the dark.
The Leunig Fragments opens in cinemas from February 13.
Lawyer and human rights activist Veronica Koman says Coordinating Minister for Security, Politics and Legal Affairs Mahfud MD “garbage” comment will only deepen the Papuan people’s wounds.
Earlier, Mahfud had referred to data on Papuan political prisoners and civilians killed in Nduga, which was handed over to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo during his visit to Canberra this week as “garbage”.
The document contained data on 57 political prisoners as well as 243 civilian victims who have been killed in Nduga regency, Papua, since December 2018.
“However I’m still very disappointed, bearing in mind this will deepen the wounds of the Papuan people,” Koman said.
She claimed, however, not to be surprised by Mahfud’s statement.
– Partner –
Koman recalled a statement by Mahfud last year when he said there had been no cases of human rights (HAM) crimes during Widodo’s first five years in office.
According to Koman, Mahfud’s statement also hurt the ordinary’s people’s feelings.
“Remember that before he once issued a statement which hurt the ordinary people’s feelings, namely that there has not been one HAM violation during Jokowi’s era, so actually it’s not too surprising when statements such as this come out of his mouth,” she said.
Gaining justice difficult Koman believes it is difficult for victims to obtain justice because human rights violations are not acknowledged by the government.
This, she said, showed that the human rights situation was becoming worse.
“Never mind obtaining justice, they won’t even admit there has been a single violation. This statement indicates the increasingly bleak human rights situation under [Widodo],” she said.
Moreover, following Mahfud’s statement, Koman admitted to being pessimistic about whether the government would withdraw security forces from Papua.
She believes this even though data on alleged victims of the military operations in Papua have already been given to Widodo.
“I’m not indeed too optimistic, but at last now we know, that the military operations in Nduga will continue but not because President Jokowi doesn’t know there are a growing number of victims,” said Koman.
“The supreme military command of this country already knows, but the operations will continue. Will the Papuan people still be asked to put their hopes in Pak [Mr] Jokowi?,” she asked.
Documents handed over As has been reported, Mahfud made a statement earlier in response to the documents handed over to Widodo in Canberra on Monday by Koman and other activists, which he referred to as “garbage”.
“It’s, what do you say, if indeed they exist, there’s just garbage,” said Mahfud at the Presidential Palace in Bogor on Tuesday.
Mahfud, who accompanied Widodo to Australia, also said he did not know if the documents had really been handed over directly to the head of state.
Mahfud said this was because there were many people competing with each other to greet him and hand over letters and documents to Widodo.
Earlier, Koman said that the documents were handed over directly to Widodo.
“Our team in Canberra succeeded in handing the documents over directly to President Jokowi. The documents contained the names and locations of 57 Papuan political prisoners who have been charged with makar (treason, subversion, rebellion), who are currently incarcerated in seven cities across Indonesia,” said Koman in a media release.
“We also handed over the names and ages of 243 civilians who have died during the military operations in Nduga [district, West Papua] since December 2018, both those killed by security forces as well as that died of illness and starvation in refugee camps,” she said.
Prisoners released Koman also noted a previous decision by Widodo to release five Papuan political prisoners during his first term in office in 2015.
But in the start of his second term in office, there were 57 people who had been charged with makar who are currently awaiting trial.
This would only worsen the conflict in Papua, said Koman.
Koman also questioned what Widodo would do in response to requests for troops to be withdrawn from Nduga.
With 87% reporting in today’s New Hampshire Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders won 25.7%, defeating Pete Buttigieg, who won 24.4%. Amy Klobuchar was a surprise strong third with 19.8%. Former frontrunners Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren bombed, with both winning fewer than 10% and failing to meet the 15% threshold needed to win national delegates.
In 2016, Sanders won the New Hampshire primary by a crushing 60-38 margin over Hillary Clinton. This year, the combined total for moderate candidates (Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Biden) was almost 18 points ahead of the combined total for far-left candidates (Sanders and Warren).
Democratic delegates are awarded proportionally, but with a 15% threshold. Sanders’ best chance to win the nomination is if the moderate candidates listed above, plus Michael Bloomberg, all miss the threshold in enough places, and allow Sanders to win a pledged delegate majority on a low vote share.
If several candidates win 15% or more and nobody is near a majority of pledged delegates, there will be a “contested Democratic convention” in mid-July. Contested conventions occurred frequently before the era of primaries and caucuses that give voters the opportunity to select their party’s presidential candidate. The last time a genuine contested convention occurred was in 1952.
The FiveThirtyEight model forecast has the probability of nobody winning a pledged delegate majority rising to 33%, while a Sanders majority chance is down to 38%, and Biden is at 18%, having crashed in the forecast after his poor Iowa result.
Amy Klobuchar is a US senator from Minnesota. She was first elected in 2006, and re-elected in 2012 and 2018, winning all three times by at least 20 points. In 2016, Clinton defeated Donald Trump by just 1.5% in Minnesota, while Barack Obama won by 8% in 2012. Klobuchar has outperformed the presidential lean in Minnesota by a large margin.
Klobuchar is 59, while the other top Democratic candidates can be perceived as either too old (Warren, Bloomberg, Biden and Sanders are all in their 70s, with the latter three in their late 70s), or too young (Buttigieg is 38). Klobuchar has a good case to make that she’s electable.
Getting under 10% was dismal for both Warren and Biden. Biden may be able to recover once the calendar turns to states with more black voters (Iowa and New Hampshire are almost all white). It is very hard to see where Warren can win, other than in her home state of Massachusetts.
In the RealClearPolitics average of national Democratic polls, Sanders leads with 23.0%, followed by Biden at 20.4%, Bloomberg 13.6%, Warren 13.0%, Buttigieg 10.4% and Klobuchar 4.4%. Most fieldwork for these polls was taken after Iowa, explaining drops for both Biden and Warren. Can Klobuchar increase her national vote share after New Hampshire?
The next Democratic contest is the February 22 Nevada caucus, followed by the February 29 South Carolina primary. There have been no polls in either state since Iowa. 14 states vote on “Super Tuesday” March 3, and 34% of pledged delegates are awarded as a result.
One week after Trump’s acquittal by the Senate on impeachment charges, his ratings with all polls in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate are 43.6% approve, 51.9% disapprove (net -8.3% approval). With polls of registered or likely voters, Trump’s ratings are 44.4% approve, 51.8% disapprove (net -7.4%).
Trump’s current ratings are his highest since very early in his presidency. The US economy (see below) continues to perform well, and that is Trump’s best asset in the general election this November.
In general election match-ups, Trump still trails all the leading Democrats in RealclearPolitics averages. He trails Sanders by 4.3%, Buttigieg by 1.0%, Klobuchar by 2.6%, Bloomberg by 6.0%, Biden by 5.6% and Warren by 2.2%.
In the US January jobs report, the household survey had a 0.1% rise in unemployment from December, to 3.6%. However, this unemployment increase was driven by a 0.2% increase in the participation rate, to 63.4%. The employment population ratio – the percentage of eligible Americans who are employed – rose 0.2% to 61.2%, its highest since November 2008, near the beginning of the global financial crisis.
The US uses two surveys for its jobs reports. In the establishment survey, 225,000 jobs were added in January, and the three-month average jobs gain for November to January was 211,000. The one weakness in this report is that average hourly wages increased 7c. We do not yet have the January inflation report. In December, inflation-adjusted wages fell.
In a recent Quinnipiac University poll, Trump’s ratings on the economy were 54-42 approve, down from his all-time high of 57-38 approve by the same pollster in mid-January.
Queensland YouGov poll: 50-50 tie
The Queensland election will be held on October 31, just before the US general election. A YouGov poll, presumably conducted November 5-6 from a sample of over 1,000, had a 50-50 tie, a one-point gain for Labor since the last such poll in August.
Primary votes were 35% LNP (down two), 34% Labor (up two), 15% One Nation (up two) and 10% Greens (down three). The reduced Greens vote and higher One Nation vote will decrease Labor’s share of overall preferences.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s ratings were 29% approve (down five) and 44% disapprove (down one), for a net approval of -15, down four points. Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington’s ratings were worse, at 23% approve (down eight) and 44% disapprove (up six), for a net approval of -21, down 14 points. Palaszczuk led as better Premier by 34-22 (34-29 in August).
At the May 2019 federal election, Queensland polling greatly overstated federal Labor’s position. However, polling was accurate at the November 2017 Queensland state election.
Sinn Féin upsets conservative duopoly at Irish election
Irish politics has been dominated by two conservative parties: Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. But at Saturday’s election, the far-left Sinn Féin upset this order by coming first on first preferences with 24.5% (up a massive 10.7% since the 2016 election). While Sinn Féin was first on votes, they were second on seats. More details at the beginning of my New Hampshire live blog for The Poll Bludger.
