Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James B. Dorey, PhD Candidate, Flinders University

It’s not often you get to cast your eyes on a creature feared to be long-gone.

Perhaps that’s why my recent rediscovery of the native bee species Pharohylaeus lactiferus is so exciting — especially after it spent a century eluding researchers.

But how did it stay out of sight for so long?

A creature overshadowed

Australia is home to 1654 named species of native bee. Unfortunately, these are often overshadowed in the eyes of public by the widespread and invasive European honeybee.

Scientific research on Australian native bees is lagging, compared to many other nations.

With this in mind, it may not be surprising to learn some native species can go unnoticed for many years. Although, when it’s the only representative of a whole genus, one might start to worry about losing something special.

In this case the genus is Pharohylaeus, where “pharo” means “cloaked”, as these bees’ first three abdominal segments overlay the others to resemble a cloak.

I found the cloaked bee P. lactiferus during a major east coast sampling effort of more than 225 unique sites. The discovery, and what I learnt from it, helped me find more specimens at two additional sites.

It also made me wonder why P. lactiferus had been missing for so long. Is it naturally rare, hard to find, or perhaps threatened?

Read more: We taught bees a simple number language – and they got it

Taxonomic trouble

Many Australian bees are very difficult to identify to a species level. In fact, some might be nearly impossible.

However, P. lactiferus is a relatively distinct black and white masked bee. Masked bees are those from the subfamily Hylaeinae, named so because they often have striking, bright facial patterns on an otherwise dark face.

With this distinctive appearance, identification issues weren’t a contributor to the mystery of P. lactiferus.

Seeing red

Still, despite having sampled extensively across sites and flowering plant species, I only found P. lactiferus on two types of plant: the firewheel tree and the Illawarra flame tree — both of which boast exuberant red flowers.

Bees generally don’t see shades of red, so such plants are usually pollinated by birds. It could be that bee researchers tend to avoid sampling these red flowering plant species for this reason.

Then again, bee vision and bee perception are not always the same. And bees are also guided by their keen sense of smell.

Habitat specialisation

So far, I’ve only found P. lactiferus within about 200 metres of one major vegetation subgroup, which is tropical or sub-tropical rainforest.

The first specimens I collected were in Atherton, Queensland. I later found more in Kuranda and Eungella. Some of these specimens are now stored in the South Australian Museum.

The habitat specialisation of P. lactiferus may suggest it has an above-average level of vulnerability to disturbances, particularly if it needs a strict set of requirements to make it through its entire life-cycle.

It is one of myriad bee species that nest in narrow, wooden hollows. Some bees such as Amphylaeus morosus dig these themselves and may require specific plant species to make their nest in.

Others such as Exoneurella tridentata need to use holes made by weevil larvae in two particular tree species: western myall and bullock bush.

Rainforests are also notoriously hard to sample. If a bee species spends much of its time in the high canopy, finding it would be difficult.

That said, two early collectors managed to find six specimens of P. lactiferus between 1900 and 1923. So its rarity doesn’t necessarily come down to it being a canopy-dweller.

Read more: The mystery of the blue flower: nature’s rare colour owes its existence to bee vision

Potential threats

We know in the bioregions where P. lactiferus has been found that rainforests have undergone both habitat destruction and fragmentation since European colonisation. This threat hasn’t abated and Queensland is still a land-clearing hotspot.

We also know these rainforests burnt across Queensland every year between 1988 and 2016. The 2019-20 black summer megafires burnt nearly double the area of any previous year.

For some bee species this may not be a problem. But for a species that potentially requires specific foods, habitats and even other species, it could mean local extinction.

Only so many populations of a single species can disappear, before there are none left.

Where does this leave us?

P. lactiferus persists, which is wonderful. Unfortunately, we can’t yet say whether or not it is threatened.

To determine this confidently would require a robust, extensive and targeted survey regime.

We may not be able to undertake such a regime for all 1654 of the named bee species in Australia. But perhaps we could make that effort for the country’s only cloaked bee.

– ref. Phantom of the forest: how I rediscovered the rare cloaked bee in Australia, hidden for a century – https://theconversation.com/phantom-of-the-forest-how-i-rediscovered-the-rare-cloaked-bee-in-australia-hidden-for-a-century-156026

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Georgina Heydon, Associate professor, RMIT University

The alleged rape of former Liberal Party staffer Brittany Higgins has raised many questions about how sexual assault gets reported.

Members of the Morrison government have repeatedly stressed the appropriate response to allegations of sexual assault is to go to the police.

Another former staffer Dhanya Mani, who alleges she was indecently assaulted while working in NSW state politics, says she received a similar response from senior Liberal figures.

In both cases, the complainants did not want the police involved at the time of their first disclosure. Higgins initially spoke to police in 2019, but then withdrew her complaint, because she felt it would put her career in jeopardy. Mani says she did not want to go through the police process because it would be “traumatising […] it doesn’t empower us”.

Sadly, these women’s experiences are all too common. Many survivors feel they will not believed or taken seriously by police. For some, the experience of giving a statement is retraumatising and stressful.

Survivors also express concern about how their workplaces and colleagues may respond, especially if the alleged offender is well-known.

Read more: Four in ten Australians think women lie about being victims of sexual assault

We are currently researching anonymous and confidential options for reporting sexual assault in Australia.

It is important people know that making a formal complaint to police is not the only avenue. While it is clear the criminal justice current system needs substantial improvement, we also need to identify alternative ways survivors can be heard.

Alternatives to a formal report

There are many alternative and informal ways that sexual assault survivors can — and do — disclose their experiences.

At the more informal end, they can tell a trusted friend, family member, colleague, GP, counsellor or psychologist. This enables survivors to commence the recovery process in a safe environment, where they can process their experiences, develop coping skills, tell their story and consider their different options.

Increasingly, survivors are also going online to tell their stories and receive support.

This includes platforms such as Reddit and Tumblr, where people post their experiences on particular message boards and others respond. Millions of survivors have also disclosed their experiences online using the #MeToo hashtag on Twitter and Facebook.

Informal options with police

Police forces in Australia still encourage formal reporting, but recognise the value of alternative options. There is some overseas evidence that informal reporting can improve rates of formal complaints.

In some states, police offer confidential, informal reporting options that do not count as official statements. The main purpose is to gather information about where crimes occur and adopt strategies to address emerging crime hot-spots.

In New South Wales, victims of sexual assault can fill out a form, which is available online and can be done anonymously. This form contains detailed questions about the offence, the offender and the victim, such as where the assault happened, what it it involved and whether the victim went to hospital.

NSW police say these reports can be used to “assist in other prosecutions” as well as working out crime prevention strategies.

Queensland similarly has an alternative reporting option, which police say can be an “extremely useful healing strategy”. In the ACT, adult sexual assault survivors can report a sexual assault that occurred more than six months ago online.

In states where there is no dedicated informal reporting option, survivors who wish to remain anonymous can make a report using a Crime Stoppers hotline.

Issues with alternative options

These alternative options are not designed to address the physical or mental health needs of survivors. They are more focused on police gathering useful information to try and either solve other assaults or work out patterns of crime.

The forms also include questions like “were you affected by alcohol or drugs?” and “what were you wearing at the time of the assault?”, which criminologists regard as victim-blaming.

Giving survivors more control

Our research team is working with police and sexual assault support centres to identify the obstacles and opportunities for alternative reporting.

We want to find out how these can benefit police work without compromising the needs of survivors.

Read more: ‘What I had to say mattered’ — how can we provide justice for sexual assault victims beyond criminal trials?

Models like this have worked in the past in Australia — although none are funded at the moment. Under this approach, users submit an informal but confidential report via a website. Information from these reports is then passed on to police, including detailed information about locations of alleged incidents, which could be used in crime mapping.

Users can include a phone number or email address so expert staff could contact them to arrange counselling.

What needs to change

So far, our work suggests alternative, informal reporting options may provide survivors with greater control over the outcomes of reporting. In particular, having a support service as a first contact, rather than police, may assist survivors in working out what their options are and providing them with greater agency.

Our research also suggests the design of forms can be improved to avoid leading or suggestive questions that might contaminate the survivor’s story with false information.

Read more: Witnesses are forgetting clues to the Boston bombings … quickly

Forms need to be based on good practice interviewing. This means the interviewee’s story is told in their own words and open questions are prioritised over closed requests for specific information.

Lastly, there is no national standard to alternative reporting options around sexual assault. We need to make sure any uniform approach is carefully designed to protect survivors.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732

– ref. Sexual assault: what can you do if you don’t want to make a formal report to police? – https://theconversation.com/sexual-assault-what-can-you-do-if-you-dont-want-to-make-a-formal-report-to-police-155948

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dana M Bergstrom, Principal Research Scientist, University of Wollongong

In 1992, 1,700 scientists warned that human beings and the natural world were “on a collision course”. Seventeen years later, scientists described planetary boundaries within which humans and other life could have a “safe space to operate”. These are environmental thresholds, such as the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and changes in land use.

Crossing such boundaries was considered a risk that would cause environmental changes so profound, they genuinely posed an existential threat to humanity.

This grave reality is what our major research paper, published today, confronts.

In what may be the most comprehensive evaluation of the environmental state of play in Australia, we show major and iconic ecosystems are collapsing across the continent and into Antarctica. These systems sustain life, and evidence of their demise shows we’re exceeding planetary boundaries.

We found 19 Australian ecosystems met our criteria to be classified as “collapsing”. This includes the arid interior, savannas and mangroves of northern Australia, the Great Barrier Reef, Shark Bay, southern Australia’s kelp and alpine ash forests, tundra on Macquarie Island, and moss beds in Antarctica.

We define collapse as the state where ecosystems have changed in a substantial, negative way from their original state – such as species or habitat loss, or reduced vegetation or coral cover – and are unlikely to recover.

The good and bad news

Ecosystems consist of living and non-living components, and their interactions. They work like a super-complex engine: when some components are removed or stop working, knock-on consequences can lead to system failure.

Our study is based on measured data and observations, not modelling or predictions for the future. Encouragingly, not all ecosystems we examined have collapsed across their entire range. We still have, for instance, some intact reefs on the Great Barrier Reef, especially in deeper waters. And northern Australia has some of the most intact and least-modified stretches of savanna woodlands on Earth.

Read more: Worried about Earth’s future? Well, the outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp

Still, collapses are happening, including in regions critical for growing food. This includes the Murray-Darling Basin, which covers around 14% of Australia’s landmass. Its rivers and other freshwater systems support more than 30% of Australia’s food production.

The effects of floods, fires, heatwaves and storms do not stop at farm gates; they’re felt equally in agricultural areas and natural ecosystems. We shouldn’t forget how towns ran out of drinking water during the recent drought.

Read more: Logging must stop in Melbourne’s biggest water supply catchment

Drinking water is also at risk when ecosystems collapse in our water catchments. In Victoria, for example, the degradation of giant Mountain Ash forests greatly reduces the amount of water flowing through the Thompson catchment, threatening nearly five million people’s drinking water in Melbourne.

This is a dire wake-up call — not just a warning. Put bluntly, current changes across the continent, and their potential outcomes, pose an existential threat to our survival, and other life we share environments with.

In investigating patterns of collapse, we found most ecosystems experience multiple, concurrent pressures from both global climate change and regional human impacts (such as land clearing). Pressures are often additive and extreme.

Take the last 11 years in Western Australia as an example.

In the summer of 2010 and 2011, a heatwave spanning more than 300,000 square kilometres ravaged both marine and land ecosystems. The extreme heat devastated forests and woodlands, kelp forests, seagrass meadows and coral reefs. This catastrophe was followed by two cyclones.

A record-breaking, marine heatwave in late 2019 dealt a further blow. And another marine heatwave is predicted for this April.

These 19 ecosystems are collapsing: read about each

What to do about it?

Our brains trust comprises 38 experts from 21 universities, CSIRO and the federal Department of Agriculture Water and Environment. Beyond quantifying and reporting more doom and gloom, we asked the question: what can be done?

We devised a simple but tractable scheme called the 3As:

• Awareness of what is important

• Anticipation of what is coming down the line

• Action to stop the pressures or deal with impacts.

In our paper, we identify positive actions to help protect or restore ecosystems. Many are already happening. In some cases, ecosystems might be better left to recover by themselves, such as coral after a cyclone.

In other cases, active human intervention will be required – for example, placing artificial nesting boxes for Carnaby’s black cockatoos in areas where old trees have been removed.

“Future-ready” actions are also vital. This includes reinstating cultural burning practices, which have multiple values and benefits for Aboriginal communities and can help minimise the risk and strength of bushfires.

It might also include replanting banks along the Murray River with species better suited to warmer conditions.

Some actions may be small and localised, but have substantial positive benefits.

For example, billions of migrating Bogong moths, the main summer food for critically endangered mountain pygmy possums, have not arrived in their typical numbers in Australian alpine regions in recent years. This was further exacerbated by the 2019-20 fires. Brilliantly, Zoos Victoria anticipated this pressure and developed supplementary food — Bogong bikkies.

Read more: Looks like an ANZAC biscuit, tastes like a protein bar: Bogong Bikkies help mountain pygmy-possums after fire

Other more challenging, global or large-scale actions must address the root cause of environmental threats, such as human population growth and per-capita consumption of environmental resources.

We must rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero, remove or suppress invasive species such as feral cats and buffel grass, and stop widespread land clearing and other forms of habitat destruction.

Our lives depend on it

The multiple ecosystem collapses we have documented in Australia are a harbinger for environments globally.

The simplicity of the 3As is to show people can do something positive, either at the local level of a landcare group, or at the level of government departments and conservation agencies.

Our lives and those of our children, as well as our economies, societies and cultures, depend on it.

We simply cannot afford any further delay.

Read more: Australia, you have unfinished business. It’s time to let our ‘fire people’ care for this land

– ref. ‘Existential threat to our survival’: see the 19 Australian ecosystems already collapsing – https://theconversation.com/existential-threat-to-our-survival-see-the-19-australian-ecosystems-already-collapsing-154077

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sally Patfield, Postdoctoral Fellow, Teachers and Teaching Research Centre, University of Newcastle

It’s that time of year again when hundreds of thousands of Australian students start university for the first time. Commencing students account for about 40% of the more than 1.6 million Australians enrolled in university (as at 2019, the most recent available data). It’s an important step for many in pursuing their educational and occupational dreams.

Those who are first in their families to pursue higher education can find this momentous step both exciting and daunting. “First in family” refers to students whose parents do not have a university degree. They are complete “newcomers” to higher education.

University is uncharted territory for these students, their families and even their communities. Our research shows “first in family” students often face complex and multiple forms of disadvantage that shape their transition to university. Despite this cohort of students now accounting for about half of university enrolments nationwide, government and university policies often overlook the particular challenges they face.

Read more: Why first-in-family uni students should receive more support

Only about one in four Australian adults hold a bachelor-level or higher qualification. But if a young person has a university-educated parent that almost doubles their odds of attending university.

An overlooked equity category

Australian universities are now often described as being open to the masses. However, the enduring relationship between parental education and university enrolment harks back to the days of an elite higher education sector.

Read more: Australia should start planning for universal tertiary education

For the past three decades, the Australian government has invested heavily in programs to widen participation in higher education. The aim has been to create a student body that more closely reflects the broader population.

The government has focused on a number of groups that are underrepresented in higher education, usually because of social, economic and/or educational disadvantage. These “equity target groups” are:

• Indigenous Australians

• people from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds

• people from regional and remote areas

• people with disabilities

• people from non-English-speaking backgrounds (NESB)

• women in non-traditional areas of study.

Improving access to university for these groups is vital for a fair and just society. However, our research shows first-in-family students are overlooked in this equity agenda.

A clear gap in aspirations

Our study focused on students in primary and secondary school. We drew on survey data from 6,492 students (across Years 3 to 12) enrolled in 64 government schools in New South Wales. The survey was part of a larger four-year project examining the formation of educational and occupational aspirations among young people.

We compared the prospective first-in-family students to their peers with university-educated parents.

We found many prospective first-in-family students belong to multiple equity categories. They are more likely to identify as Indigenous, come from lower socioeconomic circumstances and live in regional/remote areas than those with university-educated parents.

These prospective first-in-family students often experience overlapping forms of social and economic disadvantage. For example, many were from a low-SES background and lived in a regional or remote area.

Read more: Young Australians’ prospects still come down to where they grow up

However, some first-in-family students don’t belong to any existing equity groups. As a result, current equity interventions could overlook them.

Next, we examined the students’ educational aspirations. Starkly, we found prospective first-in-family students are much less likely to aspire to university than those with university-educated parents. The gap was clear across every stage of schooling.

Even after accounting for other socio-economic and demographic factors, we found young people with university-educated parents were just over 1.6 times more likely to aspire to university than their prospective first-in-family peers. This finding mirrors enrolment trends.

Our findings suggest prospective first-in-family students begin to rule out the idea of higher education from an early age.

Read more: Poorer NSW students study subjects less likely to get them into uni

What this means for policy and practice

Our research provides evidence of the need for a targeted focus on supporting first-in-family students to gain access to university.

While first-in-family status intersects with many existing equity categories, it’s an additional form of educational disadvantage that current policy doesn’t cover.

Practically, conversations about university need to occur early in schooling. It’s not a matter of asking young people to “choose” their post-school destination. Instead, they should be exposed to a wide range of possible options before they decide this pathway “isn’t for them”.

Some first-in-family students end up deciding later in life to go to university. That’s why enabling programs are also crucial to help these students get into higher education.

Arguably, first-in-family status should be the quintessential concern of university equity agendas. These students face unacknowledged hurdles in navigating a different pathway from the one their families took.

Their triumph in “being first” should be recognised for the new course it sets in family histories, often against great odds.

– ref. Odds are against ‘first in family’ uni students but equity policies are blind to them – https://theconversation.com/odds-are-against-first-in-family-uni-students-but-equity-policies-are-blind-to-them-155647

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Mountain, Director, Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Victoria University

Australia’s electricity market is unsustainable. Texas shows us why.

A week ago Texas experienced a bout of severe weather as arctic air reached deep into the state, driving temperature down to levels that had not been experienced for 30 years. The full human toll is yet to be counted, but 20 deaths have so far been associated with motor accidents, from fires lit for warmth and from carbon-monoxide poisoning after residents used their cars to try to warm their homes.

At the peak, 4.5 million people were without power in many cases for extended periods. The Texas Poison Centre received 450 calls about carbon monoxide poisoning.

A colleague in Austin, Texas, an expert in power markets, endured 59 hours without electricity during which period the temperature in his well-insulated home dropped to six degrees Celsius.

The main explanation was that gas pipelines froze, denying gas supply to Texas’s dominant gas-fired generators. One of the two Texas nuclear power stations also failed and the blades of some of the wind farms not equipped with de-icing equipment iced over.

Remarkable as the physical story was, the financial story is even more amazing.

For nearly four days the Texas wholesale electricity price reached its maximum cap of US$9,000 per megawatt hour, about 300 times the level it would otherwise have been expected to be.

Prices 300 times higher

Whereas the typical Texan household could expect to spend about $2 per day on electricity, if that household was not cut off during the freeze and was exposed to the real-time market, it would have been charged around $600 per day.

Many energy economists and public interest advocates have long yearned for customers to be exposed to the varying price of electricity in wholesale markets.

They have been saying it would make demand more responsive to supply and reduce the need for wholesale prices to ever climb particularly high.

But it is the users of a Texas start-up, Griddy, that does exactly that, that have been hit the hardest.

Households with power unable to afford it

These customers would have signed up to Griddy expecting to have to occasionally cut their demand for an hour or two to avoid peak prices and so reduce their bills.

As the storm approached, Griddy encouraged them to leave for safe harbour with other retailers that offered fixed price deals, but many could not find retailers to take them.

The physical storm has passed, but the financial storm has only just started.

There are rising concerns of a full-blown credit crisis in the Texas power market sending retailers and customers bankrupt. The Governor has ordered an inquiry.

Australia has the same system

It is difficult to know where to start with a problem as big and complex as this, but reaching for parallels is as good a place as any.

The closest parallel to the market for electricity is probably the market for petrol.

Australian motorists get upset if the price of petrol climbs by 10% in the space of a week. But in Texas wholesale electricity prices climbed by almost 30,000% during the storm and stayed at the US$9000 per megawatt hour ceiling for four days.

Read more: Texas blackouts show why energy should be a universal right

The theory on which the market rests is that the possibility of an enormous price spike is needed to ensure supply. It makes it worth someone’s while to do something expensive to get more electricity into the system.

It’s the same theory on which Australia’s market rests. Evidently, there’s room for improvement.

Australia’s ceiling is A$14,500 per megawatt hour. It has been reached only briefly (usually for no more than a few hours) and rarely (usually only a few times a year).

Australia’s market has the additional protection of caps on cumulative prices, but in the event of a Texas-style catastrophe, it could still send retailers broke.

The smallest retailers – often the lifeblood of retail competition – are most at risk.

Read more: The Texas deep freeze left the state in crisis. Here are 3 lessons for Australia

The proliferation of regulatory obligations to bolster reliable supply is testament to policy makers’ growing lack of confidence that price spikes are the way to do it.

It’s time for energy economists to reconsider what for many has been an article of faith — that prices are the right solution for everything.

– ref. Texas was a warning. Australia needs to rethink the design of its electricity market – https://theconversation.com/texas-was-a-warning-australia-needs-to-rethink-the-design-of-its-electricity-market-155856

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Stokes, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Deakin University

Tim Hart was sitting on his couch one evening in November 2011 when he got an email with the subject line: “I’m watching”. The message that followed was short and to the point …

Did you hear me? I’m at your house. Clean your fucking attic!!! — Jack Froese

Jack Froese had been a close friend of Hart’s since their teens. A few months earlier Froese and Hart had been up in Hart’s attic at his home in Dunmore, Pennsylvania. Jack had teased him then about how messy it was; now, it seemed, he was doing it again.

Except Jack was dead.

That June, Froese had died suddenly of a heart arrhythmia, at the obscenely young age of 32. Months later, he started emailing people. Those who replied to these emails never got a response, and the messages stopped as abruptly as they began.

Not long after Froese’s death, a group of philosophers gathered in a seminar room on the other side of the Atlantic to hear David Oderberg, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading, offer a curious thought experiment: what if you received an anonymous email, containing information that you and you alone were privy to?

In Oderberg’s example, the email might say, “I know you felt like killing Mr Watson for failing you on your A-level English exam,” — something you’d never told anyone at all — “but you deserved to fail”.

Who could this message come from: God? Your future self? A spambot whose random message just happened, by mind-boggling coincidence, to describe your early life? The late Mr Watson, now posthumously aware of how you felt that day and eager to set the record straight?

For the specific purpose of the interaction, says Oderberg, it doesn’t really matter, just as when a soldier receives an order on the battlefield it doesn’t matter whether the order comes from the colonel or the general.

Both options have what Oderberg dubs “telic possibility”. Something is telically possible if it might as well have been true. The purpose of the order is to command an action. It might as well have come from the colonel as from the general: an order’s an order.

Not infrequently, according to Oderberg, electronic communication is just like this. If all you want is to know how to drive to the nearest supermarket, GPS navigation with synthesised speech is just as effective as a human sitting next to you with a roadmap.

Someone under the misapprehension there is a flesh-and-blood person on the other end of the SatNav reading out driving instructions to them in real time will get to their destination just as quickly as someone who understands they’re listening to a computer. The voice might as well be a person as a piece of software.

Read more: Struggling with the uncertainty of life under coronavirus? How Kierkegaard’s philosophy can help

Planned or spammed?

There are other plausible, earthly explanations for Jack’s emails, though not all of them check out. You can send an email after you die, if you’ve done a bit of planning. There are online services specifically designed to send pre-prepared messages on your behalf after your death.

Some rely on a next of kin contacting the service to let them know the user has died. Others require the user to log in at set intervals or reply to periodic emails, and will assume the user has died if they don’t respond. (So if you’re keen to use such a service to tell people how much you secretly hated, cheated on, or lusted after them, just make sure you don’t fall into a long coma and then wake up. Things could get awkward.)

That would be a very neat explanation for Froese’s emails — except that an email his cousin received mentions an injury that happened long after Froese had died.

But what’s really interesting here is not how the emails came about, but the responses of the people who got them. Hart’s attitude was that, even if someone other than Jack wrote the emails, it ultimately didn’t matter:

… we spoke to his mother, and she told us, you know, ‘Think what you want about it, or just accept it as a gift’.

In other words, to use Oderberg’s language, Froese’s friends and family treated it as telically possible that the emails were from Jack. For the purpose of the communication, it didn’t really matter. They had the emails, and felt comforted by a sense of Jack’s persistence, whatever their origin.

Ghosts in the machines

The dead persist everywhere and nowhere, from the solidity of corpses to wispy traces in dreams, writing, building, and even in the faces of their descendants.

From the ancestor mask processions of the Romans through to the death masks of the royal and famous that began to be produced during the late Middle Ages, from the earliest portraiture to photography and video, humans have found ways to preserve the phenomenality of the dead, the distinctive way they appear and sound.

New technologies allow the dead to persist among us in enhanced ways, yet risk turning the dead into mere fodder for the living. Danger lies in the very thing that makes electronic communication so powerful: the transparency of the medium, the frictionless ease with which others appear to us, unburdened by distance and delay.

As the internet folds itself into the sinews of our everyday existence, as our flesh becomes increasingly digitised, the gap between electronic and face-to-face communication is closing. That makes it far easier for the dead to remain among the living. But it can also change our relationship to the dead in ethically troubling ways.

With every day that passes, the internet fills up more and more with dead people, while our ability to reanimate them becomes ever more powerful.

The dead are both more robust and more vulnerable — and we’re not ready for any of this. We need, urgently, to understand what the internet era means for our relationship to the dead, and what new demands this makes of us.

Read more: Everything dies and it’s best we learn to live with that

Talking to Edison

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that electric communication is now in its third century, reckoning from Francis Ronalds’ first working telegraph of 1816, two decades before Samuel Morse. What’s perhaps even more remarkable is that, as the cultural historian Jeffrey Sconce demonstrates in his book Haunted Media, the idea of communicating with the dead became conceptually entangled with electric communication right from the start.

Commercial telegraph services began to appear at roughly the same moment as the table-turning craze, which began with the rapping “spirits” that plagued the Fox Sisters in Hydesville, New York in 1848. The uncanny new technology of communication-at-a-distance provided a helpful structuring metaphor: the electric telegraph allowed the living to speak to each other across vast distances, while the “spiritual telegraph” of the séance room bridged the gulf between the living and the dead.

That association of the dead with electric communication, as Sconce notes, lingered right throughout the 20th century. Near the end of his life, Thomas Edison was speculating to reporters about the possibility of building a machine so sensitive it could communicate with the dead. Both Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, experimented with telepathy by winding wires around people’s heads. (It didn’t work.)

Many people found the telephone unsettling and even creepy the first time they heard it, reminiscent of the mysterious disembodied voices of the séance room. In particular, the entirely new phenomenon of white noise unnerved early telephone users; some came to interpret sounds within the phone line static as somehow connected to or even communications from the afterlife.

Electronic media collapses time and space, removes the tyranny of distance and absence; understandable, then, that overcoming the ultimate distance and the final absence, the chasm that separates us from the dead, would come to figure in the cultural imagination of the first generations of humans to live with this new technology.

But the dead do not just appear to us in terrifying visions or mysterious ciphers, but in the very real material and mental traces they leave behind.

Haunting is an everyday event, not an anomalous one. And with the digital age, the dead have found new ways to haunt us more comprehensively than ever before.

Read more: A month at sea with no technology taught me how to steal my life back from my phone

Digital grief

Ancient questions about the metaphysical and ethical status of the dead collide with new ones about our relationship to our information and our ownership of digital property.

Anxieties about whether public grief is “real” and who has the right to grieve are amplified when mourning is instantaneous and global. Crucially, this is not just an academic concern, but an urgent practical one. How are we to meet the conceptual and ethical challenges of the world that is coming into view? Can people really survive death online? Should we let them?

In 2017, Australian journalist Mark Colvin died, aged 65. A universally admired broadcaster and author, Colvin was also an avid and highly responsive Twitter user. The news broke around 11:40am, and Twitter was immediately flooded with tributes. Then, at 1:18pm, Colvin’s account posted a single tweet:

It’s all been bloody marvellous.

Had it been sent by a family member on his behalf? Had he, knowing the end was near, scheduled the tweet? Was the ghost of Mark Colvin somehow using his iPhone?

Nobody, it seemed, felt like asking. They all just wanted to say goodbye and explain what Colvin meant to them. It was what it was. “Think what you want about it, or just accept it as a gift”.

This is an edited extract from Digital Souls: A Philosophy of Online Death, by Patrick Stokes (Bloomsbury).

– ref. Friday essay: How can the dead send us emails? The ethical dilemma of digital souls – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-can-the-dead-send-us-emails-the-ethical-dilemma-of-digital-souls-154646

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Edwards, Associate Professor, Sydney School of Health Sciences, University of Sydney

Brisbane has just been confirmed as the preferred host for the 2032 Olympics. But Olympic organisers have more immediate concerns in mind — how to safely run the postponed Tokyo Olympics, due to start in July.

That’s why the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has released its “playbooks”, a set of rules to help ensure the safety and health of athletes and officials, as well as the wider community, during the pandemic.

Requirements for athletes include COVID-19 testing and using a contact-tracing app, but COVID-19 vaccination is not mandatory. It is, however, recommended when available in athletes’ home countries.

So what do athletes need to think about if offered a COVID-19 vaccine?

Will athletes be vaccinated before July?

Most COVID-19 vaccine programs around the world, including Australia’s, are prioritising high-risk people such as those in aged care and front-line workers. And the IOC is not recommending athletes “jump the queue” to get priority vaccination. So, under most national vaccination programs, most Olympic athletes will not have been offered vaccines by July.

But some athletes may be offered vaccinations before then, and future international sporting events may include similar vaccination recommendations.

Guidelines for vaccinating athletes, including Australia’s, before the Olympics have not been publicly released. But discussion on details of “vaccination passports” is growing. It is likely that recommendations would include all doses being completed (usually one or two doses) before travel. Injections would need to be three to 12 weeks apart, depending on the vaccine. But if it’s a single-dose vaccine, there may be a recommendation for allowing about a month for protection to build up before travel.

So, for any vaccine, preparation and planning will be important.

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

How about side-effects?

For most of us, planning to receive a COVID-19 vaccine might include thinking about travel and work schedules, and the possibility a vaccine reaction could mean a day off work, but likely little more.

For an elite athlete with detailed training and recovery plans, with potentially restricted access to training locations, and the possibility of a vaccine reaction, it gets a little more complicated.

Reassuringly, rates of severe or serious adverse events after COVID-19 vaccines are very low — at less than 1% of those vaccinated.

But the rates of mild or moderate vaccine reactions are higher. And unlike other vaccines, reactions to various COVID vaccines tend to be more common in younger adults (18-55 years old) than older adults.

Some vaccines (such as the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine) tend to have more systemic reactions such as headache and fever after the first dose; others (such as the Pfizer/BioNTech) after the second.

Read more: COVID vaccines have been developed in record time. But how will we know they’re safe?

For people receiving the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, about 89% reported local reactions (mostly vaccine site pain, with 51% reporting mild pain with no impact on daily activity). About 83% reported systemic reactions (mainly headache or fatigue, mostly mild).

For the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, 88% reported local reactions and 86% reported a systemic reaction.

For both vaccines, the reactions were mostly mild, not impacting activities, were reported in the first one or two days after vaccination, and resolved within a few days.

These reactions might have little impact on most of our daily lives but could stop an athlete training for a day or so.

Read more: Weekly Dose: paracetamol may be our favourite mild painkiller, but it doesn’t work for everything

Some researchers who conducted these vaccine studies are considering whether taking paracetamol before vaccination might help reduce reactions. For instance, reactions to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine were reduced for people who took paracetamol, without compromising the immune response.

But not all doctors agree this is a good idea, as studies with the influenza vaccine showed less effective responses when people tool paracetamol beforehand.

What does that mean for athletes? We know athletes lose training time when suffering from common cold symptoms. We also know vaccine reaction rates are higher in younger adults. So athletes may need to consider the possibility of a mild reaction. And it would be wise to plan for rest and recovery in the few days after their injection.

Does exercising help?

Fortunately, exercise appears to be a friend of vaccination. Athletes show stronger responses to the influenza vaccine than healthy adults of similar age. So athletes’ immune response after a COVID vaccine might be particularly strong. However, there have been no studies to test this specifically.

What we do know is that exercise causes immediate and long-term changes in our immune systems. A single bout of exercise causes release of signalling molecules and increases the number of immune cells circulating in the blood. Researchers believe that if exercise is timed immediately before or after a vaccination, these changes help our immune systems react to the vaccination.

Exercise close to the vaccination itself might also help reduce common COVID-19 vaccine reactions.

Exercise immediately before receiving a vaccine reduced rates of local and systemic reactions, although this was after two different vaccines, influenza and HPV (human papillomavirus). We don’t know for sure whether this will be the same for the COVID-19 vaccines because no one has actually tested it yet.

In a nutshell

So, athletes need to plan ahead. They might train before the injection, and take paracetamol in advance, if their doctor advises them to. They might need to plan for a reduced training load in the days after vaccination. They might also make sure they start the doses far enough ahead to complete all doses before travelling.

Read more: All the Olympics are a stage, and all the athletes merely players: the rich history of the modern Games

– ref. COVID vaccines won’t be compulsory for the Tokyo Olympics. But if offered, here’s what athletes need to know – https://theconversation.com/covid-vaccines-wont-be-compulsory-for-the-tokyo-olympics-but-if-offered-heres-what-athletes-need-to-know-155470

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

Defence Minister Linda Reynolds faces an agonising question. Should she say to Scott Morrison she doesn’t feel up to staying in what is one of the most demanding portfolios in the government?

Reynolds broke down in parliament last week. On Wednesday she was hospitalised after feeling unwell. This was described as “a precautionary measure”. Her office said it followed “advice from her cardiologist relating to a pre-existing medical condition”.

Like any minister embroiled in a serious crisis over how they’ve handled an issue, Reynolds has been under immense pressure since the Brittany Higgins story first appeared on Monday of last week.

Morrison publicly criticised her for not informing him when the incident occurred in 2019 that there was a rape allegation. The opposition in the Senate pursued her relentlessly and this week she had to correct information she’d given.

She’s also personally anguished about her conduct given that, although she appears to have done the best she could for Higgins at the time, Higgins now says she did not feel supported.

This is not the first occasion Reynolds has shown the stress the job can impose on her.

It was clear after the release late last year of the report on alleged war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, which was followed by a row over whether a meritorious unit citation should be removed. Reynolds found herself caught between backing the strong position taken by Chief of the Defence Force Angus Campbell and the more political stance of Morrison, who was listening to the predictable backlash from some veterans and their supporters.

Leaving aside the Higgins matter, Reynolds has plenty of critics of her portfolio performance. Now she is under fire, they have their own reasons for raising doubts about her future.

Her detractors describe her as a “nice person” but a minister lacking the capacity or political authority to deal with the defence behemoth and its continuing problems such as the vexed submarine program.

Although she was formerly in the Australian Defence Force, and so had knowledge of its issues and culture, Reynolds had limited ministerial experience when she moved into this mega job. She was given the defence industry post shortly before the 2019 election, with the promise of taking over the senior portfolio after it. It was all about Morrison’s number of women.

On the other hand, Reynolds has defenders. Neil James, of the Australia Defence Association, says her comparatively limited ministerial seniority is a handicap at times, but maintains: “We can see no reason to move her as long as her health holds up, and it’s hard to see anyone in the party who could do a better job. New ministers require six months to read into the role – and we can’t afford six months’ further delay now.”

Morrison says he has confidence in Reynolds and looks forward to her coming back. Whatever he thinks, in all the circumstances – not least that she’s a high-profile female – it would be difficult for him to push her out of defence in the immediate future.

Read more: Yes, the culture in Parliament House is appalling. But there are systemic problems that also need urgent reform

So, at least at this moment, her future rests in her own hands. And it is a painful choice.

If she stepped away from the defence job, it would be seen as conceding to her attackers (or to Morrison’s criticism).

Also, she has been in this portfolio less than two years and it would be galling to leave when, she might argue, she’ll have more runs on the board with more time.

But this fortnight has left her politically weakened, and the question of her health will hang over her. She is from Western Australia and the travelling for ministers from that state is particularly gruelling.

A different, less gigantic portfolio would better suit Reynolds’ abilities and situation. That, of course, is assuming her health is robust enough for her to continue in politics.

One mentioned successor for defence, if Reynolds left it, is Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.

Dutton this week was himself drawn in by the tentacles of the Higgins matter. After Higgins re-engaged with the police on February 5, the Australian Federal Police alerted Dutton on Thursday, February 11. This was proper under the protocols for what are defined as “sensitive” investigations.

Dutton says, “I took a decision at that time that I wasn’t going to inform the prime minister because this was an operational matter.”

But then “as a courtesy to the Prime Minister’s Office on the 12th, when there were media inquiries, we provided some detail to him, just that the AFP had an interest in this matter and I wasn’t provided with the ‘she said, he said’ details of the allegations. It was at a higher level and that’s the basis on which we provided information to the PM.”

This information went from Dutton’s chief of staff to John Kunkel, Morrison’s chief of staff.

We previously knew the PM’s press office worked from Friday February 12 through that weekend on questions from a journalist about the Higgins matter – without telling Morrison. With Dutton’s disclosure, we now know the most senior PMO staffer was also informed on the Friday – and didn’t mention anything to his boss.

The information didn’t raise a red flag for Kunkel, apparently because it was vague. Those who argue the silence was driven by a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach ignore the fact that would be counter-productive when someone was obviously going to “ask” very soon, and the PM would be caught short.

Before the December reshuffle, Dutton trailed his coat for the defence portfolio, when there was quite a push against Reynolds. If he does eventually get the job (whatever the timing), one question that exercises the bureaucracy is whether he could take with him his present departmental head, Mike Pezzullo (maybe with a lag, while the successor settled into home affairs).

Pezzullo, a hawk and lead author of the 2009 defence white paper when he was in the Defence Department, is the toughest senior operator in the public service. Some say he’d be just what defence needs; others say the military and some defence officials would be apoplectic.

The reverberations of the Higgins affair for the government will continue rumbling for some time. But in the most positive development of the week, with Higgins laying a formal complaint against her alleged assailant, the wheels of justice have started turning, albeit nearly two years after they should have.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Linda Reynolds’ future as defence minister is in her own hands – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-linda-reynolds-future-as-defence-minister-is-in-her-own-hands-156053

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Harris, Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, UNSW

Tiger Woods’ medical team has released a statement on Twitter to explain the injuries he sustained in his car crash earlier this week.

The statement was from the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a trauma centre, where golfer Woods was taken for emergency treatment after the single-vehicle accident.

I’m a practising orthopaedic surgeon specialising in trauma surgery and I lecture nationally and internationally on the orthopaedic treatment of fractures.

Here’s my explanation of some of the technical terms in the statement, and what this might mean for Woods’ recovery.

What were his injuries?

It appears from the statement his injuries were confined to his right lower leg. This may appear surprising to many who have seen the footage of the accident and heard that his vehicle rolled over.

However, it is common these days to have people admitted after bad car accidents with only injuries to their lower leg. This is because of seat belts, airbags and vehicle construction. These have done a lot to prevent the previously common facial injuries (from windscreens and steering wheels) and head, chest and abdominal injuries.

Read more: Smallpox, seatbelts and smoking: 3 ways public health has saved lives from history to the modern day

The statement says he had “comminuted open fractures affecting both the upper and lower portions of the tibia and fibula”.

Let me break that down. “Comminuted” means the bones had broken into many fragments, the opposite of a “simple” fracture where the bone breaks into two parts.

The “upper and lower portions” suggests he has what is called a “segmental” fracture, where the bone is broken in two separate locations.

The comminuted and segmental nature of the injury is not unexpected after high-energy injuries like car accidents and doesn’t change the treatment too much.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why do we have bones?

People place a lot of importance on how many pieces bones are broken into, but as long as the bones heal, they all end up in one piece regardless of how many pieces there were to start with.

The fact that it was a bad fracture, however, means it might be harder to get it to heal and that it might take longer.

“Open” fractures mean the skin overlying the broken bone was broken. The main concern is that having an open fracture increases the risk of infection. However, given Woods remained in the vehicle (he had to be broken out of it with special equipment), there is unlikely to be any dirt or highly contaminated material involved.

How did doctors treat his injuries?

The tibia and fibula are the two bones that link the knee to the ankle, the tibia being the much larger, main bone. His tibia and fibula were “stabilized by inserting a rod into the tibia”.

It is routine to treat fractures like this with a rod inserted inside the bone from top to bottom to line it up. The rod only needs to go into the tibia because the fibular usually follows the tibia into alignment, as the two bones are connected.

The statement also said that trauma to the soft-tissues of the leg required “surgical release of the covering of the muscles to relieve pressure due to swelling”.

This refers to a procedure called a fasciotomy which is performed for actual or impending “compartment syndrome” — a build-up of pressure in the leg.

We do not have information on whether the muscle was damaged as a result of the increased pressure (in which case there could be permanent weakness) or whether the muscle is intact. If the fasciotomy was done early and adequately, it is likely there will be no permanent muscle damage.

Will he recover?

The interesting thing about Woods’ injuries is that, while the “open” and “comminuted” fractures of the tibia and fibula sound very bad, if he can avoid the early problem of infection, these injuries on their own do not necessarily mean that he will have any permanent problems.

Once healed, the leg can potentially be just as straight and strong as it was before. Muscles can be strengthened and skin and bones usually heal.

The point of most concern relating to his long-term function is the part of the statement that said: “additional injuries to the bones of the foot and ankle were stabilized with a combination of screws and pins”.

Injuries that involve the joints — the parts where one bone joins another bone — are the ones that commonly lead to long-term problems. This is especially the case in the foot and ankle, as these joints take our whole body weight when walking. And these joints allow us to not only walk normally, but also swing a golf club.

If, for example, he has fractures that involve the ankle joint or any of the foot joints, this can result in permanent loss of flexibility and pain on walking.

Did Woods get special treatment?

People may be wondering if Woods got special treatment, or was even overtreated, which is something that can occur with famous people, and when people seek treatment and have the resources to pay for it.

With trauma though, particularly the type of trauma in this case, the treatment usually follows fairly standard practice. Although some surgeons and hospitals vary in exactly how they treat certain injuries, the management of these lower limb injuries is fairly uniform. So it is unlikely he was treated differently to any other patient who would present to that hospital.

– ref. Tiger Woods’ car crash injuries explained, according to a trauma surgeon – https://theconversation.com/tiger-woods-car-crash-injuries-explained-according-to-a-trauma-surgeon-156029

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ted Snell, Honorary Professor, Edith Cowan University

Review: A Forest of Hooks and Nails, Fremantle Arts Centre for Perth Festival

Several years ago, when being shown around an exhibition under preparation with a Nobel prize-winning guest, an academic colleague asked what one of the install crew was doing high above on a scissor lift.

When told he was moving a speaker 5mm to the left, my colleague scoffed and asked if that was necessary.

His guest boomed in, “I would never have been awarded a Nobel Prize if I hadn’t taken that level of care.” Duly rebuffed, they moved on, and the work proceeded.

The Nobel Prize winner and the young man installing the work were well aware of the importance of attending to the small details that make a difference.

Indeed the install crew at any art gallery is typically a group of talented and committed young artists. Their job requires attention to detail, complex problem solving, respect for the integrity of every artwork, and a willingness to respond to changes of mind — no matter how close to the deadline.

Of course, it must be a little frustrating for artists to install the work of others when they would ideally be preparing their own works for exhibition. So, this year for a Perth Festival exhibition, the Fremantle Arts Centre has made their dreams come true.

Tom Freeman, the gallery’s install coordinator, has curated an exhibition of the work of 10 of his install staff, allowing them to take over the walls, floor, and gallery spaces as artists in their own right.

Among their work is a small altar to installation, a shelf on which the tools of their trade are laid out in a row of implements and accessories.

Wall plugs of different sizes and colours, rolls of tape, paint cans, a laser level, a paint stirrer, and the cleverly folded paper dust collector used when drilling are aligned together alongside signs announcing “PLEASE DON’T PAINT THIS SECTION,” another “PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH.”

The installation is a homage to former gallery director Jim Cathcart, who described the middle of an install as like entering “a forest of hooks and nails”.

Freeman conceptualised the exhibition as an opportunity to showcase the talents of his remarkable crew, but also a chance for staff to reveal “the bones” of the building, built by convict labour in the 1860s for use as the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum.

Making magic

Rob Kettels’ work is an act of imaginative transformation. Occupying the small gallery to the rear of the building, his installation, Mineral Rites, uses salt, lighting gel, audio, and acrylic paint to create a magical environment.

Based on his 2016 experience of trekking across the dry salt-lake Wilkinkarra/Lake Mackay, one of Australia’s remotest places and our fourth-largest lake, Kettels investigates the ambience of the salt-infused environment and deploys those sensual cues within the gallery to shift our consciousness.

The juxtaposition of the seductive salt crystals covering the floor and the soft leaching of pink colour up the walls toward the blue sky is completely absorbing and convincing.

Within that space, we are transported to a different reality where everything is subsumed or inflected with the heat, the piercing light, and the brittle dryness of that remote site.

The work of the gallery

Other artists in the exhibition have found inspiration in their roles as install assistants.

Maxxi Minaxi May’s marvellous, fugue-like variations on rulers, set squares, measuring tapes and assorted plastic protractors are both witty and aesthetically intriguing. Despite the fact she lists her favourite install tools as the scissor lift and drill, she mines a great deal of visual impact from assembling these measuring devices into sculptural forms.

Deployed within the gallery, they throw interlocking shadows against the wall, mix colour through refraction, and re-articulate the space in surprising ways.

Tyrown Waigana is similarly inspired by installing — painting walls, unpacking artworks, and the inevitable cleaning up. His delightful digital animation documenting the unpacking of each new artwork on arrival in the gallery is enthralling.

In combination with his sculptural portrayal of wall preparation, we are given an insight into the attraction of install as professional engagement for an artist.

Not only do these artists get to work with the materials of their craft — in itself a great joy — but there is also the pleasure of engaging with the work of artists you admire.

Perhaps that is why this is such a joyous exhibition. The works of these ten artists fill the galleries of the Fremantle Art Centre with their creative energy, with their delight in transforming spaces, and their enthusiasm for sharing the pleasure of encountering artworks for the first time.

A Forest of Hooks and Nails is at Fremantle Arts Centre until 14 March 2021.

– ref. A Forest of Hooks and Nails is a joyous exhibition about the art of hanging art – https://theconversation.com/a-forest-of-hooks-and-nails-is-a-joyous-exhibition-about-the-art-of-hanging-art-155742

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael McGreevy, Research Associate, Flinders University

Less than two decades ago, South Australia generated all its electricity from fossil fuels. Last year, renewables provided a whopping 60% of the state’s electricity supply. The remarkable progress came as national climate policy was gripped by paralysis – so how did it happen?

Our research set out to answer this question. We analysed policy documents and interviewed major actors in South Australia’s energy transition, to determine why it worked when so many others fail.

We found governments need enough political power to push through changes despite opposition from established fossil fuel interests. They must also watch the energy market closely to prevent and respond to major disruptions, such as a coal plant closing, and help displaced workers and their towns deal with the change.

South Australia shows how good public policy can enable dramatic emissions reduction, even in a privately owned electricity system. This provides important lessons for other governments in Australia and across the world.

Why is the energy transition so hard?

In decades past, fossil-fuel-dominated energy markets revolved around a few big, powerful players such as electricity generators and retailers. Overhauling such a system inevitably disrupts these incumbents and redistributes benefits, such as commercial returns, to newer entrants.

This can create powerful – and often vocal – losers, and lead to political problems for governments. The changes can also cause hardship for communities, which can be rallied to derail the transition.

The change is even harder in a privatised energy market, such as South Australia’s, where electricity generators and other players must stay profitable to survive. In the renewables shift, fossil fuel businesses can quickly become commercially unviable and close. This risks supply shortages, as well as price increases like those after Victoria’s Hazelwood coal plant closed in 2017.

The obstacles help explain why a wealthy nation such as Australia, with extremely high per capita emissions and cheap, plentiful renewable resources, has struggled to embrace its clean energy potential. Even frontrunners in environmental policy, such as Germany, have struggled to make the switch.

Read more: Nationals’ push to carve farming from a net-zero target is misguided and dangerous

How South Australia did it

South Australia is a dry state – extremely vulnerable to climate change – with abundant wind and solar resources. These factors gave it the motivation and means to transition to renewables.

The South Australian Labor government, elected in 2002, adopted a target for 26% renewables generation by 2020. At the time, wind energy was already a competitive supplier of new generation capacity in Europe, creating an established wind farm industry looking to invest.

Some of South Australia’s best onshore wind potential was located near transmission lines running 300 kilometres from Port Augusta to Adelaide. This greatly reduced the cost of connecting new wind generators to the grid.

South Australia benefited greatly from the federal renewable energy target, established by the Howard government in 2001 and expanded under the Rudd government.

The scheme meant the South Australian government didn’t need to offer its own incentives to meet its renewables target – it just had to be more attractive to private investors than other states. This was a relatively easy task. Under the state Labor government, South Australia’s energy and environment policy was consistent and coordinated, in contrast to the weak and inconsistent policies federally, and in other states.

To attract renewable energy investors, the government made laws to help construct wind farms in rural zones away from towns and homes. New wind farms were regularly underwritten by state government supply contracts.

As the transition progressed, the state’s largest coal generator, at Port Augusta, was wound back and eventually closed. To help workers and the town adjust, the state government supported employment alternatives, including a A$6 million grant towards a solar-powered greenhouse employing 220 people.

The Labor government enjoyed a long incumbency, and the state was not heavily reliant on the export of fossil fuels. This helped give it the political leverage to push through change in the face of opposition from vested interests.

Read more: No point complaining about it, Australia will face carbon levies unless it changes course

It’s not easy being green

South Australia’s transition was not without controversy. Between 2014 and 2018, the state’s consumer electricity prices rose sharply. While critics sought to blame the increasing renewables share, it was largely due to other factors. These include South Australia’s continued reliance on expensive gas-fired power and the closure of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station in neighbouring Victoria, which fed large amounts of power into South Australia.

And in late 2016, South Australia suffered a statewide blackout. Again, renewables were blamed, when the disaster was in fact due to storm damage and overly sensitive trip switches.

After a second, smaller blackout six months later, the then federal treasurer Scott Morrison brought a lump of coal into parliament and argued South Australia’s renewables transition was:

…switching off jobs, switching off lights and switching off air conditioners and forcing Australian families to boil in the dark as a result of their Dark Ages policies.

In 2018, Labor lost office to a Liberal party highly critical of the renewables transition in opposition. But by then, the transition was well advanced. In our view, specific legislation would have been required to halt it.

The state Liberal government has now firmly embraced the renewables transition, setting a target for 100% renewable electricity by 2030. By 2050, the government says, renewables could generate 500% of the state’s energy needs, with the surplus exported nationally and internationally.

Leading the world

The South Australia experience shows a successful renewables transition requires that governments:

• have enough political power to advance policies that disadvantage energy incumbents

• monitor the energy market and respond proactively to disruptions

• limit damage to displaced workers, businesses, consumers and communities.

It also highlights the importance of having transmission infrastructure near renewable resources before new generators are built.

As energy markets the world over grapple with making the clean energy transition, South Australia proves it can be done.

Read more: The Texas deep freeze left the state in crisis. Here are 3 lessons for Australia

– ref. Against the odds, South Australia is a renewable energy powerhouse. How on Earth did they do it? – https://theconversation.com/against-the-odds-south-australia-is-a-renewable-energy-powerhouse-how-on-earth-did-they-do-it-153789

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kamaljit K Sangha, Senior Ecological Economist, Charles Darwin University

Northern Australia is by far the most fire-prone region of Australia, with enormous bushfires occurring annually across thousands of square kilometres. Many of these vast, flammable landscapes have precious few barriers to slow down a fire. Infrastructure and resources are limited, and people are widely dispersed across the region.

Fire risk reduction in the recent past included very local prescribed burning operations. The overall effect was small, with huge greenhouse gas emissions from out-of-control savanna wildfires.

So, what might a better approach look like?

Our team at the Charles Darwin University’s Darwin Centre for Bushfire Research has been working with Indigenous land managers, conservation, research and government organisations in northern Australia for the last 25 years to find more effective ways to manage wildfires.

These collaborations have led to a new approach, blending modern scientific knowledge with traditional Indigenous land management practices to reduce bushfire risk.

How? By reducing fuel load through a patchy mosaic of small, low intensity, burns early in the fire season that cut the risk of late dry season fires when greenhouse gas emissions are much greater.

By collaborating with Indigenous ranger groups, this experience shows Australia can develop economically sustainable long-term solutions to manage bushfire risks — and shows what might be possible for other natural hazards such as cyclones and floods.

Such collaborations deliver benefits such as:

When done well, a collaborative approach to emergency management can create opportunities on country, enhance cultural and learning opportunities for Indigenous peoples and deliver environmental benefits for everyone.

Making fire management economically sustainable: a case study

Indigenous fire management skills and traditions have long been practised in Australia but part of the challenge, as one study put it, is “finding the economic means to reinstate this type of prescribed strategic management.” In other words, how do we pay for it?

After Australia ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2007, there was renewed focus on reducing wildfires in Australia’s tropical savannas due to their significant role in creating greenhouse gas emissions.

In collaboration with Indigenous land managers and others, our collective efforts helped to develop what’s known as the savanna burning methodology. This system incentivises management of fire in the north.

Under this method, Indigenous land managers in tropical savannas can earn income for managing fire on their land to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is done through a tightly controlled system in which their emissions savings are measured in terms of carbon credit units.

Read more: The world’s best fire management system is in northern Australia, and it’s led by Indigenous land managers

Global and local benefits

This approach has allowed a new carbon economy to bloom in remote northern Australia. As one study put it:

Since the development of the first savanna-burning methodology determination in 2012, 25% of the entire 1.2 million km2 eligible northern savannas region is now under formally registered savanna-burning projects, currently generating [more than] A$30m per year.

These self-acquired funds go far to support Indigenous rangers to develop and improve skills so they can continue improving fire management across the north.

As Dean Yibarbuk, fire ecologist and senior traditional owner in West Arnhem Land has said:

This fire management program has been successful on so many levels: culturally, economically and environmentally. Through reinstating traditional burning practices, new generations of landowners have been trained in traditional and western fire management, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gas have been abated, and the landscape is being managed in the right way.

A consistent and reliable flow of funds from carbon contracts, as well as other government and philanthropic sources, further offers many other socio-economic benefits. It has been instrumental in allowing art centres, weed and feral animal control businesses, rock art conservation projects, and bi-cultural schools to flourish.

Investing money to save money

This system shows what’s possible with the right engagement and policy levers. Perhaps one day a similar approach could help reduce risk from other kinds of natural disasters, all while building community resilience.

In the future, could we have similar systems where flood mitigation projects or cyclone risk reduction projects are made economically viable for local communities?

This would reduce reliance on emergency services. It also makes it less likely cultural protocols are breached when non-local emergency personnel are sent in. For example, tree removal is a common cyclone risk reduction practice but it’s important to know which trees are culturally significant in a community, and why you need to leave them alone.

For these approaches to work, genuine and ongoing engagement with Indigenous peoples and dispersed remote communities is essential.

As a start to this engagement, we brought together Indigenous leaders, government representatives, and emergency management agency personnel from across the north for a meeting at Charles Darwin University late last year, supported by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre.

Many of the key personnel in these groups were meeting for the very first time, despite having worked for years on trying to address the same problems.

With appropriate funding, we could make such gatherings regular events so it’s easier for these stakeholders to work together. Long term collaborations can reduce disaster risk for northern Australian communities who live there permanently, build their resilience, and cut significant costs for Australian governments.

Resources to cover training, transport, and logistics are crucial to implement such an integrated approach.

Long term solutions cost money. But by drawing on local Indigenous knowledge and expertise on disaster risk reduction, we can make huge savings in the long term.

This story is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. You can read the rest of the stories here.

– ref. Indigenous expertise is reducing bushfires in northern Australia. It’s time to consider similar approaches for other disasters – https://theconversation.com/indigenous-expertise-is-reducing-bushfires-in-northern-australia-its-time-to-consider-similar-approaches-for-other-disasters-155361

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tauel Harper, Lecturer, Media and Communication, UWA, University of Western Australia

The federal government’s News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code, which passed the Senate today, makes strong points about the need to regulate misinformation.

In response, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, TikTok, Redbubble and Twitter have agreed to abide by a code of conduct targeting misinformation.

Suspiciously, however, the so-called Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation was developed by, well, these same companies. Behind it is the Digital Industries Group (DIGI), an association formed by them and some other companies.

In self-regulating, they hope to show the government they’re addressing the proliferation of misinformation (false content spread despite intent to deceive) and disinformation (content that intends to deceive) on their platforms.

But the only real commitment under the code would be to appear to be doing something. Since the code is voluntary, the platforms signed up can basically “opt in” to the measures at their own discretion.

A modest goal

The code suggests platforms might release data trends about known misinformation, or might label known false content or content spread by seemingly unreliable sources. They might identify and restrict paid political ads trying to deceive users, or they might reveal the sources of misinformation.

These are all great actions the platforms “might” take, as they aren’t bound by the code. Rather, the code will likely encourage them to police misinformation around an “issue of the day” by taking visible action around one topic, without confronting the spread of other profitable false information on their platforms.

The consequences of this would be great. False “news” can lead to dangerous conspiracies and armed attacks. It can even influence elections, which we saw in 2019 when Facebook hosted posts claiming the Labor party would introduce a “death tax” on inheritance. Things quickly spiralled.

The government has promised tougher regulation of misinformation if it feels the voluntary code isn’t working. Although, we should be careful about allowing the powerful regulate the powerful.

It’s unclear, for instance, whether the Morrison government would view posts about a supposed Labor “death tax” as being a real threat to democracy — even though this is misinformation.

Read more: How political parties legally harvest your data and use it to bombard you with election spam

There are better options

Regulating speech on the internet is difficult. In particular, misinformation is hard to define because often the distinction between genuinely dangerous misinformation, and valued myth or opinion, is based on a community’s values.

The latter is information that may not be accurate but which people still have a right to express. For instance:

Nickelback is the best band on the planet.

This is probably untrue. But the statement is relatively harmless. While the actual “truthfullness” is lacking, its subjective nature is clear. Considering this nuance, the solution then is for misinformation to be policed by the community itself, not an elite body.

Reset Australia, an independent group that targets digital threats to democracy, recently proposed a project in which interested tech platforms and members of the public could be subscribed to a live list of the most popular misinformation content.

A citizen-run jury could monitor the list to help ensure public oversight. This would involve the whole public sphere in the debate about misinformation, not just the government and platforms.

Once fake news is in the open, it becomes easier for public figures, journalists and academics to expose.

Who can you trust more?

Another effective strategy would be to create a national register of misinformation sources and content. Anyone could register what they think is misinformation to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, helping it quickly identify malicious sources and alert the platforms.

Digital platforms already do this internally, both through moderators and and by allowing the public to report posts. But they don’t show how posts are judged and don’t release the data. By creating a public register, ACMA could monitor whether platforms are self-regulating effectively.

Such a register could also keep a record of legitimate and illegitimate information sources and give each one a “reputation score”. People who accurately reported misinformation could also receive high ratings, similar to Uber’s ratings for drivers and passengers.

While this wouldn’t restrict anyone’s right to expression, it would be easier to point to the reliability of the source of information.

It’s worth noting this type of community-based peer review system would be open to potential abuse. Movie review site Rotten Tomatoes has had serious problems with people trolling film reviews.

For example, Captain Marvel was awarded a low audience rating because toxic online communities decided they didn’t like the idea of a female superhero, so they coordinated to rate the film poorly. But the platform was able to identify this pattern of behaviour.

The site ultimately protected the film’s score by ensuring only people who had bought a ticket to see the movie could rate it. While any system is open to abuse, so is ‘self regulation’ and communities have shown they can (and are willing to) solve such problems.

Wikipedia is another community-driven peer review resource and one which most people consider highly valuable. It works because there are enough people in the world who care about the truth.

Judging the accuracy of claims made in public allows for a consensus that is open to be challenged. On the other hand, leaving decisions about truth to private companies or political parties could actually exacerbate the misinformation problem.

A chance to move news into the 21st century

The news media bargaining code has finally passed. Facebook is set to bring news back to Australia, as well as start making deals to pay local news publishers for content.

The agreement between the government and Facebook — which serves the interests of those parties — seems like just another echo of the past. Large media players will retain some revenue and Google and Facebook will continue to expand their immense control of the internet.

Meanwhile, users remain reliant on the benevolence of tech platforms to do just enough about misinformation to satisfy the government of the day. We should be careful about surrendering power to both platforms and governments.

This new code won’t force significant change out of either, despite the pressing need for it.

Read more: Google is leading a vast, covert human experiment. You may be one of the guinea pigs

– ref. We can’t trust big tech or the government to weed out fake news, but a public-led approach just might work – https://theconversation.com/we-cant-trust-big-tech-or-the-government-to-weed-out-fake-news-but-a-public-led-approach-just-might-work-155955

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Baker, Professor of Public Health, University of Otago

Exactly one year ago tomorrow (February 26) the first confirmed case of COVID-19 arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand. Identified only as “a person in their 60s recently returned from Iran”, the case marked the beginning of an extraordinary period in the life of the country.

A year on, what are some of the lessons we have learned about this pandemic? And what are the implications for improving our response in future?

One of the main reasons for asking these questions lies in the legacy value of any improvements we make. That is, the potential for using this crisis as the catalyst for an urgently-needed upgrade to the country’s public health infrastructure, to enhance health, equity, prosperity and sustainability in the long term.

Elimination is the right strategy

Arguably, New Zealand’s greatest lesson is that an elimination strategy is the optimal response for a moderate to severe pandemic like COVID-19. The strategy provides a vivid example of how protecting public health also protects the economy when compared with mitigation or suppression strategies.

This successful approach has required decisive science-backed government action and outstanding communication to create the social licence needed for an effective response.

Prevention remains a fundamental strategy. At a technical level, we have learned COVID-19 transmission is mainly through airborne spread indoors, often from pre-symptomatic people. This highlights the value of mask use and good ventilation.

The risk from contaminated surfaces has been overemphasised. The virus shows large “transmission heterogeneity” (only about 20% of infected cases are responsible for most of the transmission), further underlining the importance of preventing super-spreading events.

Ongoing vaccination challenges

Another key lesson was how quickly the world developed highly effective, safe vaccines. The new messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines are performing particularly well.

But the COVID-19 endgame remains uncertain. Plausible global scenarios range from endemic infection (like seasonal influenza) to eradication (like SARS, smallpox, rinderpest and two of the three serotypes of poliovirus).

Read more: COVID vaccines: rich countries have bought more than they need – here’s how they could be redistributed

Newly emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants increase transmission risk and will probably reduce vaccine effectiveness over time, requiring vaccine reformulation.

A co-ordinated international effort to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines will not only protect the most vulnerable, it will also provide the best hope of containing the pandemic.

5 challenges for 2021 and beyond

Aotearoa faces five key challenges over the next year to weather the pandemic and deliver a valuable and lasting public health legacy.

1. Improving border biosecurity

Preventing the re-introduction of COVID-19 into the country remains the single most important short- to medium-term challenge to sustained elimination of the virus.

There are obvious benefits in taking a highly systematic approach to this process by considering the entire journey of travellers: from their week prior to departure, their flight to New Zealand (during which they can become infected), their two-week stay in MIQ facilities (where again they can become infected), and the period after leaving MIQ when they remain at elevated risk of being infectious.

Read more: How the coronavirus mutates and what this means for the future of COVID-19

The goal of having no infected people arriving in the country should become increasingly realistic. This should allow for the careful introduction of quarantine-free travel with other parts of the world that have also achieved elimination.

Investing in a purpose-built but versatile quarantine facility offers important short- and long-term benefits.

2. Enhancing outbreak detection and management

For the foreseeable future, New Zealand will need to maintain and enhance its systems for rapid detection and control of COVID-19 outbreaks as a backup measure for border failures.

Promising enhancements include the use of daily saliva testing of border workers and wastewater testing to detect community transmission sooner, as well as continuing improvements to contact tracing.

Read more: CDC says masks must fit tightly – and two are better than one

New Zealand has relatively high voluntary uptake of its COVID Tracer app, but routine use is poor. An obvious improvement would be to make use of the app mandatory when entering high-risk venues (nightclubs, indoor bars and restaurants, gyms, churches, entertainment venues) and by MIQ workers and recently returned travellers.

The alert level system needs revision to reflect new knowledge about transmission. There needs to be a greater focus on limiting crowding in high-risk indoor environments, promoting mask use (which is effective at reducing transmission) and using more geographically targeted and less disruptive “circuit-breaker lockdowns”.

3. Delivering vaccinations effectively and equitably

Vaccination strategies must prioritise effective border control, protect the most vulnerable and promote health equity. Achieving high coverage will depend on social engagement, community networks, and high-quality, comprehensive information systems such as the upgraded national immunisation register.

4. Establishing an effective public health agency

The pandemic provides a vivid illustration of the need to invest in effective public health infrastructure. A dedicated national agency is needed to create the critical mass of expertise in strategy and delivery that was missing at the start of the pandemic in New Zealand.

Read more: How New Zealand could keep eliminating coronavirus at its border for months to come, even as the global pandemic worsens

Such agencies are increasingly common in high-income countries. It was a key feature in the highly effective COVID response in Taiwan. This agency could provide the critical mass needed to put disease prevention and preparedness at the centre of government activities.

5. Establishing optimal emergency decision-making processes

The effective New Zealand pandemic response benefited from having a government that considered scientific advice and was concerned with well-being. However, the government has been slow to innovate in some areas.

An opportunity to reset the system

One of the greatest legacies from this pandemic could be to institutionalise an improved set of processes for decision-making in emergencies that do more to foster learning, innovation, continuous quality improvement and transparency. Key changes would be:

• political processes that enable highly informed debate and scrutiny while aiming for cross-party support of key response strategies (such as an ongoing epidemic response committee of parliamentarians)

• advisory processes that ensure high-level, multidisciplinary science input into the all-of-government response (e.g. the formation of a COVID-19 science council/rōpu).

• a well-resourced research and development strategy to ensure a high level of scientific evidence to shape the response and its evaluation

• commitment to, and a timetable for, an official inquiry to assess the pandemic response and drive wider system improvements.

In summary, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided a profound opportunity for reassessing health, social and economic functioning in Aotearoa New Zealand. It has demonstrated the value of proactive government decision-making to manage threats to population health.

The COVID-19 response provides a model for responding to a wide range of tough societal challenges, including the climate change emergency and growing social inequities.

– ref. A year on from the arrival of COVID-19 in NZ: 5 lessons for 2021 and beyond – https://theconversation.com/a-year-on-from-the-arrival-of-covid-19-in-nz-5-lessons-for-2021-and-beyond-155367

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nichola Shelton, PhD candidate, University of Sydney

Tens of thousands of Australian teenagers live with a communication disability, meaning they struggle with speaking, listening, reading, writing, and/or social skills.

Communication disability can include

It can start in early childhood and much of Australia’s speech pathology services are geared toward early intervention.

But communication disability can also be acquired later in life — or can start early but persist into adolescence.

Demand for speech pathology services across Australia is consistently strong but whether or not a teen gets access to speech pathology services may depend largely on where they live.

Read more: Common myths about speech problems in children

Some states better than others

Our research, published this week in the International Journal of Speech Language Pathology, highlights how unequally speech pathology services are provided in Australian public schools.

Some states have government-mandated provision, where the education department employs speech pathologists to work in schools or offer some other kind of school-based support.

We surveyed 96 speech pathologists who work with 12-16 year olds.

About 45% of the respondents were from states with government-mandated provision of services (Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria).

The remaining 55% were from states and territories with zero or minimal government-mandated provision (the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, and Western Australia). Minimal means government-mandated speech pathology services are usually only provided for the youngest school students.

Northern Territory has minimal government-mandated provision of speech pathology services in public schools. However, no speech pathologists practising in the Northern Territory completed our survey.

We found states with government-mandated speech pathology services (Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria) offer more intervention support for high school students with communication disability than states and territories with zero or minimal government-mandated provision (Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, and Western Australia).

In states where speech pathology services are not government-mandated, families of teens with communication disability must either seek out expensive private services, sometimes far from home — or miss out altogether.

In states where speech pathology services are government-mandated (Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria), about 49% of speech pathologists were employed in government service roles. In the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, and Western Australia, the figure was 15%.

States without government-mandated provision of speech pathology services had a greater proportion of speech pathologists employed in private practice (67% in Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, and Western Australia compared to 30% in Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria).

Working collaboratively with school leaders

Communication disability can affect literacy and other educational outcomes, mental health and future employment.

Young people with communication disability should have the right to inclusive education in mainstream classrooms. In many places, speech pathologists work closely with school teachers and principals, and help students either in small groups, one-on-one or sometimes working with the whole class.

Our research highlights that whether or not you can access such help may boil down to what state you’re in.

Younger children and speech pathology

In 2018, the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC), which collects nationwide data on all children in their first year of formal schooling, found 45,708 Australian children were at risk or vulnerable to challenges in speaking and listening.

Our study builds on previous research showing speech pathology services are not provided equally across Australia for children at the start of school. That’s particularly true for children who live in regional or remote areas, or who are developmentally vulnerable (a group in which children from lower socioeconomic and languages other than English backgrounds are over-represented).

Our research shows this unequal access to speech pathology across Australia continues into adolescence.

Listening to, and asking, young people about their experiences with communication disability is also crucial. There are many practical ways to consult students about reasonable adjustments that can be made in the classroom to make learning easier. These can include changing the pace or volume of information delivered.

The bottom line is access to speech pathology services for 12-16 year olds in public schools is inconsistent across Australian states and territories. Whether or not you’re able to access this kind of help shouldn’t depend on where you live.

Read more: How to tell if your child has a speech or language impairment

– ref. For teens, getting access to speech pathology services depends on where you live – https://theconversation.com/for-teens-getting-access-to-speech-pathology-services-depends-on-where-you-live-147193

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denise Thwaites, Assistant Professor in Digital Arts and Humanities , University of Canberra

Since May 2007, US-based digital artist Mike Winkelmann (who goes by the name Beeple) has posted a new artwork online every day. He posted the 5,000th one in January, and has now packaged them into an enormous digital collage titled Everydays: The First 5000 Days, which will be auctioned online by Christie’s on February 25.

The work will be sold in purely digital form, as a 21,069 × 21,069-pixel JPEG file and a “non-fungible token” or NFT. NFTs use blockchain technology to give the successful bidder unquestioned ownership of the work.

Read more: Blockchain is useful for a lot more than just Bitcoin

NFT artworks are becoming a serious business. Last year, Beeple made US$3.5 million on an NFT auction.

But the entry of a global blue-chip auction house like Christie’s into this domain may mark a new stage for blockchain technology, as a widespread tool for both maintenance and transformation of digital art markets.

Not as new as it seems

Christie’s claims the sale of Everydays is the first time a major auction house has offered a purely digital artwork. Christie’s has sold digital works before, including videos (such as Ryan Trecartin’s A Family Finds Entertainment in 2013) and software-based installations (such as teamLab’s Ever Blossoming Life – Gold in 2018).

But these were accompanied by physical trappings, such as certificates of authenticity or fancy hard drives to house the digital files. This time, however, it’s simply the image file and an accompanying NFT.

What are NFTs?

NFTs support claims to an artwork’s value. While the JPEG file of Everydays may be copied, the collector’s blockchain-based record of ownership will allow them to display the work (and to resell it) on a number of online platforms.

Christie’s has teamed up with one such platform, Makersplace, for the deal. Makersplace uses an open standard smart contract for its NFTs, which means the work can be sold in many other places in the the increasingly complex NFT ecosystem.

NFTs are useful in the digital art market because they enable claims to authenticity and scarcity, despite the ease with which digital works can ordinarily be copied. Artists and galleries have tried to create scarcity via limited-edition works and to assure authenticity with certificates, but NFTs seek to automate this process.

NFTs record ownership on a blockchain, which is a decentralised alternative to a central database. Built through cryptography and peer-to-peer networks, blockchains are resistant to tampering and hacking, which makes them useful for storing important records. Vince Tabora from US tech website Hacker Noon has written an accessible explainer of how blockchain is different from older ways of storing and organising data.

Why blockchain?

Ever since blockchains were described in the white paper published by pseudonymous Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, the idea of a “trustless” way to keep secure public records has evolved into a so-called “confidence machine”, fuelling a considerable amount of hype. Simultaneously, voices have emerged to encourage more nuanced and critical engagement with blockchain’s possibilities and limitations.MoneyLab Reader 2: Overcoming the Hype and There is No Such Thing as Blockchain Art are two key publications exploring these tensions across varied cultural domains.

Carnegie Mellon Researchers have described potential use-cases for the art industry, including securing artwork provenance (see Verisart) or enabling secure forms of fractional ownership (see Maecenas).

And Christie’s is no stranger to new technology. The company has hosted regular Art+Tech Summits since 2018 (the inaugural topic being blockchain).

In 2018, Christie’s proudly announced it was “the first auction house to offer a work of art created by an algorithm”, with the sale of the AI-generated painting Portrait of Edmond Belamy for more than 40 times its estimate.

So by selling Everydays as “the first purely digital work” to be offered by a major auction house, Christie’s is reinforcing its self-described “position at the forefront of innovation in the art world”.

Virtual trading cards and CryptoKitties

At the same time, Christie’s upcoming auction is only the tip of the NFT-collecting iceberg. Industry publication Coindesk estimates the total value of the NFT market to be US$250 million. Platforms such as Opensea, Nifty Gateway and SuperRare host a rapidly expanding range of digital collectibles to buy and sell by a growing community of collectors.

Beyond art, digital collectibles include virtual trading cards, artefacts and attire for virtual gaming worlds. They also underpin games such as CryptoKitties, in which NFTs serve to secure the “unique genome” of each kitty in the game. These examples reflect the uptake of NFTs across different digital subcultures, providing collectors with claims to uniqueness that were previously considered impossible in the online realm.

Blockchain for artists

Artists and other creative practitioners may also benefit from blockchain-backed systems.

Researchers at RMIT published a paper on how blockchain infrastructures could help Australia’s creative economy in 2019. They note how blockchains could support artists in trading, creating contracts, getting their work discovered, sharing resources – and making money to support their livelihoods.

Artists themselves are also searching for new ways to use blockchain and other “distributed ledger” technologies. Over the past decade, Furtherfield in London has worked with artists to explore the possibilities and limitations, partnering most recently with Goethe Institute and Serpentine Galleries for The DAOWO Sessions: Artworld Prototypes. Other notable projects include Artists Re: Thinking the Blockchain, which showcases how artists have a stake in this technological shift, and DisCo Coop, Trojan DAO and Black Swan DAO, which examine how new tools for organisation can challenge the value systems of the traditional art market, rather than further solidify them.

Blockchain futures

This reexamination of art in light of blockchain has also been happening in Australia. In 2019, Baden Pailthorpe and I worked with the Bitfwd community to curate a project called Blocumenta, which brought together local artists, designers and hackers to examine how blockchain could affect the arts, culture and heritage in the Asia-Pacific.

More recently, Nancy Mauro-Flude and I co-curated an event called Economythologies – MoneyLab#X, which was co-presented by several universities, galleries and arts organisations. We presented a program of talks, performances and artworks that considered how blockchain’s uprooting of legacy economic systems and narratives opens space to imagine different ways to value, design and organise our creative and cultural practices.

At this stage it’s hard to say exactly what blockchain will mean for art. For now, perhaps we should let Beeple have the last word:

bruh, i just learned wtf an NFT is like two weeks ago, not gonna act like i have a ton of intelligent shit to say here. this crypto space seems super interesting though and i see a ton of potential to do some weird shit nobody has done yet…

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

Economythologies – MoneyLab#X was co-presented by Centre for Creative and Cultural Research (University of Canberra), Institute for Culture and Society (Western Sydney University), School of Art and Design (Australian National University), Holistic Computing Aesthetics Network and Cultural Value Impact Network (RMIT University), Ainslie+Gorman Art Centre and Bett Gallery , with the support of the Institute of Network Cultures and Despoinas Media Coven.

The Blocumenta Blockathon was co-presented with bitfwd ventures and community, with the generous support of the University of Canberra, ACT Government, the Australian National University, DAOStack and Sigma Prime.

– ref. A token sale: Christie’s to auction its first blockchain-backed digital-only artwork – https://theconversation.com/a-token-sale-christies-to-auction-its-first-blockchain-backed-digital-only-artwork-155738

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Holcombe, Senior Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

Just as the parliamentary inquiry into Rio Tinto’s destruction of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters was reconvening in Canberra, another culturally significant site was damaged at one of BHP’s iron ore mines in the Pilbara.

This latest rock shelter, a registered site for the Banjima peoples, was reportedly damaged by a rockfall in late January. BHP said the site was not part of its current mining operations and the cause of the rockfall was not known.

Both incidents make clear the invidious and relentless threat to Aboriginal cultural heritage in the Pilbara (and elsewhere in Australian mining regions).

The destruction of one ancient and sacred rock shelter is, of course, devastating. But there’s a greater and as yet unrecognised loss to cultural heritage that is occurring from the “cumulative impacts” of mining activities in the Pilbara. It’s destruction by a thousand cuts.

A heavily industrialised landscape

It is difficult for most people to imagine the scale of the iron ore and gas operations in the region. Large swathes of this remote and ecologically delicate environment (a global biodiversity hotspot for subterranean fauna) have been transformed over the last several decades into a heavily industrialised landscape.

There are more than 25 industrial-scale iron ore mines in the Pilbara. Of these, Rio Tinto owns 16. They are part of an integrated network to transport iron ore out of the region, which includes four independent port terminals, a 1,700-kilometre rail network and other related infrastructure.

Western Australia’s iron ore sales have more than doubled over the past decade from 317 million tonnes in 2008-09 to 794 million tonnes in 2018-19. This was worth more than A$4.4 billion in royalties to the WA government in 2018.

Ancestral paths are being ‘boxed up’

As a submission to the parliamentary inquiry from the Wintawari Guruma Aboriginal Corporation stated, more than 93% of their Country is covered by mining tenements. There are seven mines in total, most owned by Rio Tinto.

This group is not unusual. The neighbouring Yinhawangka have four Rio Tinto mines on their Country, plus others owned by different companies, including FMG.

Under the current WA Aboriginal Heritage Act, the focus of heritage protection efforts is on tangible (often archaeological) sites defined as discrete “way-points” on a map and separated from the cultural landscape that supports them.

But this is a core misunderstanding of cultural heritage management. Intangible or ethnographic sites, which are rarely visible to non-Indigenous people or those who are not customary knowledge holders, struggle to find recognition.

Read more: Friday essay: masters of the future or heirs of the past? Mining, history and Indigenous ownership

These intangible sites are part of the interconnected spiritual journey known as “dreaming tracks” and “song-lines”. For the knowledge holders, these ancestral paths represent a fundamental truth of connection to Country.

However, as mining activity intensifies in the Pilbara, even if certain “sites” are protected, these ancestral paths are being “boxed up” and cut off from one another.

This is because the WA Aboriginal Heritage Act assesses applications and projects on an individual basis, without reference to the cumulative impacts of mining activities or the bigger picture of regional and national heritage.

What are cumulative impacts?

These cumulative impacts include such things as

1) loss of access to sacred sites, cultural places (including customary harvest grounds) and cultural materials

2) loss of cultural integrity of cultural places through destruction of Country in close proximity

3) loss through indirect effects, such as increased dust, vibration and noise

4) diminished amenities and visual integrity.

In 2015, BHP prepared a “cumulative impact assessment” of its direct and indirect mining footprint in the Pilbara. The authors indicated it was the first of its kind for the region.

Though the focus was purely on the environmental effects of mining activities — not cultural effects — the results are nonetheless revealing.

The authors listed five species from the region, including the olive python and the northern quoll, that are now considered “vulnerable” or “endangered”. These species also have great significance for traditional owners. Yet, they were not engaged in the cumulative impact assessment process.

To the best of our knowledge, none of the major mining companies in the Pilbara have undertaken cumulative impact assessments for Indigenous cultural heritage that encompass the entirety of their operational footprint.

Read more: Can a mining state be pro-heritage? Vital steps to avoid another Juukan Gorge

Land access protocols, locked gates and PPE

The ability of traditional owners to access Country to care for it, maintain their obligations to it, monitor the effects of mining operations and ensure inter-generational knowledge transfer is another sensitive issue.

Many groups in the Pilbara have “land access protocols” with the companies operating on their land. A publicly available protocol between the Yinhawangka and Rio Tinto gives insight into the strict visitation parameters for the company’s mining leases and tenements.

For instance, the “general conditions” require visitors to have vehicles fitted with a suitable UHF radio set to the sign-posted channels.

The requirements also include

providing information of all the areas that you plan to visit within the … mining lease area, the number of people/vehicles in your group, the date and time that access is required and the duration of your trip.

Each person entering a mining lease must also “meet the minimum PPE requirements”.

Though we recognise the need to manage for occupational health and safety, such intensive requirements would make access extremely difficult and unrealistic for many people, especially the elderly and children.

Land access protocols do not just apply to mining leases, but also to pastoral leases, which are owned by the companies to facilitate the development of mining operations and ensure land access. Rio Tinto owns six such leases in the Pilbara.

The visitation rights for these pastoral leases are similarly strict. The protocols for Rocklea station, for instance, allow native title holders to camp for no more than three nights.

Read more: Juukan Gorge inquiry puts Rio Tinto on notice, but without drastic reforms, it could happen again

The importance of conservation agreements

WA’s draft new heritage laws contain the phrase “cultural landscapes”, which is a step in the right direction.

However, to truly protect cultural heritage and accommodate Aboriginal rights and interests requires conservation agreements, similar to the Murujuga agreements made between the Commonwealth and both Rio Tinto and Woodside in the Pilbara.

The state government would have to forgo some mining royalties and, in line with recommendations by the parliamentary inquiry, native title holders would have the right to protect sites and declare areas “no-go zones”.

This has been the successful model under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act in the NT for more than 40 years. Such a model recognises

the interdependence of all life within Country constitutes a hard but essential lesson – those who destroy their Country ultimately destroy themselves.

The risk is that if decisive and strong measures aren’t taken, large swathes of the Pilbara will become desecration zones, or “sterilisation” zones, as some Aboriginal groups have termed the industrial mining landscape.

This will be the legacy, not only for the mining companies, but for Australia and most painfully, for the traditional owners who remain long after the miners have gone.

– ref. ‘Destruction by a thousand cuts’: the relentless threat mining poses to the Pilbara cultural landscape – https://theconversation.com/destruction-by-a-thousand-cuts-the-relentless-threat-mining-poses-to-the-pilbara-cultural-landscape-155941

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Farr-Wharton, Associate Professor in Management, Edith Cowan University

The aged care royal commission is due to hand down its final report on February 26, and it will be tabled in parliament in the days after that.

The long-term sustainability of the aged-care workforce and the financial health of the sector more broadly, have been hot topics, regularly under the microscope as part of the royal commission.

Underpinning this focus is a belief that quality health and well-being outcomes of elderly Australians in our aged-care system is impacted by the staff who service them, and the funding arrangements of aged-care organisations themselves.

Our research into the Australian aged care sector strongly supports the need to revise existing policy, ensuring aged-care organisations are adequately staffed and resourced. When that happens, residents will receive a higher quality of care.

Pay and aged-care work

But there is a deeper problem that remains largely overlooked: the payment of aged-care workers.

When beginning their career, the award rate for a full-time aged care worker is A$21.09 per hour – slightly less than a cleaner, and only $1.25 per hour more than the Australian minimum wage.

It goes without saying that aged-care workers do much more than clean. Although ensuring cleanliness and hygiene is certainly a component of aged-care duties, the job is substantially more complex and demanding, both physically and emotionally.

Aged-care work involves a broad spectrum of tasks: administering medication, identifying and treating pressure injuries, feeding, helping with mobility, facilitating choirs, card games and group excursions, and more.

Working in aged care requires someone who is engaged, focused, well-trained and ready to thrive in challenging clinical and social environments. Aged-care workers also need to contend with the emotional grief associated with end-of-life care and death. They need to do this while professionally engaging with families who themselves may be grief-stricken.

Read more: Australians want more funding for higher-quality aged care — and most are willing to pay extra tax to achieve it

That we have allowed this vital work to be so poorly remunerated and under-resourced is a grim reality that our society, and our government, need to face.

Societal values have radically shifted over the past decade – with the community expecting very high levels of quality care, and there is now an appetite for change in the way we value ageing, and those who work in aged care.

So, how might we restructure aged care to more appropriately pay the workforce, and improve outcomes for the elderly?

Lessons from nursing

Parallels can be drawn between the current state of our aged-care sector and that of the nursing profession in the first half of the 20th century. At that time, nurses were widely regarded as little more than cleaners and carers who happened to work in hospitals — reflecting the snail-paced change since Florence Nightingale’s innovations during after her military nursing in the Crimean war.

Over time, however, as societal values (particularly regarding the role of women) have shifted, it has become impossible to ignore the fact that nurses play a substantial clinical role for patients.

Slowly, and as recently as the early 2000s, nursing was becoming fully professionalised. Along with this came the requirement that registered nurses have university training. Now, the role that nurses play in clinical care in hospitals is central, perhaps even more so than doctors. This is particularly because patients’ contact time with nurses is generally greater than with doctors.

To be a nurse is to enter a profession that is highly valued, respected and relatively well-paid. The base award for a registered nurse is $25.16/hr, but this extends to a ceiling of $55.86/hr. The median hourly earnings in Australian nursing in 2019 was $36/hr. Many of today’s nurses are highly innovative and engaged, and increasingly efficient as a result.

So, while nurses may cost more to employ now than 50 years ago, they also contribute much more. The aged-care sector can certainly learn from this.

The benefits of professionalisation

Regardless of the royal commission’s specific findings, the Australian government will inevitably need to provide a more robust funding model to the aged-care sector to help meet the complex health needs of older Australians.

Yet research conducted as part of the royal commission has highlighted cost inefficiencies in the current system. We argue these inefficiencies can be mitigated by further professionalising the aged-care workforce.

Valuing the aged-care workforce as a profession will require investment in training. Improving access to higher levels of training for all aged-care workers will deliver a range of benefits: the workforce will become more adaptable, agile and innovative. This will prepare them for integration with new technologies such as Robear, the nursing-care robot.

Read more: Nurses of the future must embrace high-tech

If the COVID pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that governments can, when there is strong public appetite, spend significantly to resolve major crises. If left on its current trajectory, the aged-care sector may implode – particularly if we lose access to migrant labour as a result of our closed international borders.

It’s time to work smarter, not harder, and invest in the future of our aged-care workforce. There is every chance most Australians alive today will reap the benefits of a more engaged, innovative and productive aged-care workforce.

– ref. Paid on par with cleaners: the broader issue affecting the quality of aged care – https://theconversation.com/paid-on-par-with-cleaners-the-broader-issue-affecting-the-quality-of-aged-care-155753

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Nelson, Associate Professor of Economics, Griffith University

The US state of Texas has this month experienced some of its coldest weather on record. Houston recorded a temperature of -10.6℃, which is around 20℃ below average. And Dallas-Fort Worth recorded its lowest-ever temperature of -18.9℃.

It appears Texas infrastructure was not designed to deal with such extreme low temperatures. The cold snap caused chronic electricity and water shortages, and a major disaster has been declared.

The consequences have been bleak. Dozens of people have died and others, especially the vulnerable, have been left shivering in their homes.

Australia does not generally experience such cold winter temperatures. Yet our electricity systems are also vulnerable to climate change, extreme weather and power outages. So, there are valuable lessons to be learned from the Texan disaster.

What happened to the power system in Texas?

Essentially, the freezing temperatures appear to have caused power generators to fail while, at the same time, electricity demand reached a new record winter peak of 69 gigawatts.

It’s understood that due to the extreme weather, up to 46 gigawatts of electricity generation was unavailable, spread across many types of generators including thermal (coal, gas, and nuclear) and renewable (wind).

With record demand and failing generators, the system operator was forced to cut power to homes and businesses on a rotating basis. Up to 20 gigawatts of customer demand was unmet due to these outages.

The Texas power grid is not well connected to those in neighbouring states, and so could not draw electricity from those power systems.

For millions of people in Texas, this meant they were without power in freezing conditions and essential services such as hospitals experienced critical issues, including water outages and hospital bed shortages.

Read more: Texas electricity grid failure shows how microgrids offer hope for a better future

The combination of high power demand and low supply meant prices skyrocketed on the wholesale electricity market, where electricity generators sell power to retailers.

The average daily price during the extreme weather was close to the US$9,000 per megawatt hour price cap. For a point of reference, the average daily price in Australia’s market in recent months has been between A$20/MWh and A$40/MWh.

The Texas crisis serves as a warning to the world. Here are three lessons for Australia.

Lesson 1: We must prepare our electricity system for climate change

Australia must further acknowledge that climate change will bring severe weather events which threaten our power systems.

We may not experience extreme cold weather events, but increasingly challenging summers will bring high temperatures, heatwaves, floods and bushfires.

We only have to think of last summer and the extreme stress put on our power system due to bushfires, which led to blackouts in various towns across the east coast.

As US-based energy expert Fereidoon Sioshansi noted to us this week:

With climate change, we need to revisit our outdated assumptions about resilient grid planning in Texas and places such as Australia.

Australia’s energy regulators should consider climate change when approving new transmission investments.

And greater interconnection between the states would provide more resilience to extreme weather, allowing states to provide energy to other states whose power supplies are damaged by extreme weather.

Lesson 2: Don’t support the technologies of yesterday

Like Texas, Australia’s east coast market — called the national electricity market (NEM) — is an “energy-only market”. This means generators get paid only for the energy they produce, not the capacity they make available to supply electricity in the future.

The issues in Texas have led to discussion among economists and politicians about whether Texas needs a “capacity market”, where generators get paid for the capacity they make available. They say a capacity market would make the system more reliable.

But we believe this is misguided for three reasons.

First, a capacity market would not have changed the outcome in Texas because no one anticipated a scenario like this (see Lesson 1!).

Second, a capacity market in Australia is likely to be used to support existing, ageing, unreliable coal-fired plants, because they are already in the electricity system. Coal-fired plants are inflexible — they’re slow to respond to signals to produce more electricity. This means they’re more likely to detract, rather than add, resilience to our system.

Read more: Texas electricity grid failure shows how microgrids offer hope for a better future

Instead, we need flexible options that respond much faster to high electricity demand. These include technologies like battery storage, gas-fired peaking units (which run only at peak demand) and pumped hydro.

But this flexibility isn’t rewarded under a capacity market, because capacity would be paid for irrespective of whether electricity production can be turned on quickly (or not).

Third, there’s a better option for creating a more resilient, reliable system: a so-called “operating reserve” market.

This involves providing incentives to customers to reduce electricity use at short notice when power supplies are low. Generators and customers that can rapidly respond to challenging conditions are paid in this separate market (but only when necessary).

Australia’s regulators are currently considering whether to introduce this type of market. While Texas has a similar scheme, it focuses on creating higher prices to encourage spare capacity, rather than paying consumers and generators to make electricity available if needed.

Lesson 3: We need to do our fair share and decarbonise our electricity system rapidly

To prevent extreme weather from becoming a bigger problem, it’s critical Australia implements an enduring policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The simplest way of doing this would be transitioning the existing renewable energy target into an emissions intensity scheme. Essentially, this is where lower emissions generation (such as renewables) gets rewarded, while higher emissions generation (such as coal) gets penalised.

Allowing renewable energy generators to export their greenhouse abatement to other sectors would underpin faster decarbonisation and greater investment in new electricity supply.

Read more: Climate explained: how emissions trading schemes work and they can help us shift to a zero carbon future

Australia has always been one of the most fragile continents when it comes to the effects of climate change. We need to prepare our electricity system to be resilient to more extreme weather.

But we also need to rapidly scale up the decarbonisation of our electricity supply to ensure Australia plays its part in reducing global greenhouse emissions.

– ref. The Texas deep freeze left the state in crisis. Here are 3 lessons for Australia – https://theconversation.com/the-texas-deep-freeze-left-the-state-in-crisis-here-are-3-lessons-for-australia-155760

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shasha Wang, Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology

The ACT Legislative Assembly recently passed a motion to ban banking programs, like Commonwealth Bank’s Dollarmites, from schools later this year.

The move comes a few months after Victoria announced it would also ban such programs in state schools.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC) two-year review of school banking programs was released in December 2019. It found, among other matters:

young children are vulnerable consumers and are exposed to sophisticated advertising and marketing tactics by school banking program providers.

But our research suggests many young children are aware of marketing tactics, and not as vulnerable as we think.

The banking programs

Much of the criticism of school banking programs has been directed at the Commonwealth Bank’s Dollarmites (running in Australian schools since 1931). But the ASIC report found at least ten such programs were active across schools nationally.

Read more: We don’t need banks teaching kids about money. Schools have it covered

While around 63% of Australian primary schools had joined a school banking program, most primary school students (92%) did not participate or have accounts.

A survey of 1,349 Australian residents found most (84%) parents with children participating in school banking programs were satisfied with the program and 63% supported financial institutions offering bank accounts to students through school programs.

But the survey also identified 51% of parents had concerns about financial institutions marketing to young primary school students.

The inference children are vulnerable consumers appears to drive the narrative toward removing such programs from schools.

What’s a vulnerable consumer?

Vulnerability stems from consumers who enter service exchanges with some type of disadvantage. These might be personal or social characteristics, which may lead to discriminatory — or even predatory — actions by providers.

Many consumers find themselves vulnerable because they lack expertise regarding the services they are purchasing (such as financial services or insurance).

Read more: Social media platforms need to do more to stop junk food marketers targeting children

Children have long been viewed as particularly vulnerable in society, especially when it came to the sophisticated marketing of products like junk food, cigarettes or alcohol. There have been strong arguments to ban marketing communications targeting children in many countries (such as in Europe, the United States and Australia).

Yet, a 2017 review of studies and tests on the vulnerability of young children as consumers concluded:

Although the bases and measures of children’s vulnerability have existed for over 40 years, little of this research has been able to link children’s vulnerability to their consumption. A review of these tests reveals causes for inconsistencies and their implications for further research and public policy remedies for children’s vulnerability.

We put it to the test

Children under eight years old are viewed as especially vulnerable to marketing communications because they do not have sufficient knowledge about “persuasive advertising messages”.

We showed a video of a toy advertisement to 233 children, aged four to seven. We were conscious the young children may not have the verbal ability to articulate responses to questions. So we used images of children’s movies, television programs and advertisements so the children could identify what they believed was the nature of the toy advertisement. Children could select whether they thought it was a movie, a TV show or an advertisement.

We then used other images for children to identify whether they believed the source of the advertisement was a toy manufacturer, a teacher or a parent.

Children could also indicate the intentions of the adverts, such as “because they want you to know about the toy” or “because they want you to buy the toy”.

More than 75% of children knew four to six aspects of the persuasive advert.

For example, 76% knew the “toymaker made the advertisement” and 82% knew the “toymaker wanted to encourage children to use the product”. Although only 37% knew the “toymaker wanted them to buy the product”, children in that age group have less opportunities to use or see cash.

While many people may think children know nothing about advertising, our study showed most children could identify the nature and intentions of persuasive advertising.

Read more: No presents, please: how gift cards initiate children into the world of ‘credit’

We extended our study to see if children could make responsible financial decisions. We found children who earned pocket money were more likely to save money and reject the offer to buy an advertised toy.

Over-regulation could have negative effects

While the ASIC report is valid and balanced, the response to remove banking programs from schools may unintentionally negate the social and economic benefits of such programs.

Even if the Dollarmites program doesn’t educate children on consumer behaviour directly, marketing plays an important role in socialising consumers. It can help them understand their consumer rights, how to use unit pricing or how to save money.

Over-regulation may generate reactance. Consumer reactance occurs when a consumer feels lack of control over their choice and when behavioural freedom is threatened.

For example, children may only learn about products from their parents or friends based on their preference or knowledge. This means they may never get the opportunity to choose or practise their own coping strategies for marketing persuasion.

While most parents might be cautious about school banking programs, our results indicate children can demonstrate responsible consumption behaviours, save their pocket money and can identify persuasive advertising messages.

– ref. School banking programs target ‘vulnerable consumers’. But research shows kids are smarter than you think – https://theconversation.com/school-banking-programs-target-vulnerable-consumers-but-research-shows-kids-are-smarter-than-you-think-155360

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mengbi Li, Lecturer in Built Environment (Architecture), First Year College and Research Fellow, ISILC, Victoria University

The coronavirus has been escaping with distressing frequency from quarantine hotels, threatening serious outbreaks. To make things worse, multiple variants of the virus, possibly more infectious and deadly, have recently been detected. This accentuates the need for robust hotel quarantine, especially in countries like Australia that have controlled community transmission.

Read more: Perth is the latest city to suffer a COVID quarantine breach. Why does this keep happening?

While the hotel quarantine system has received wide attention, relatively few people have had the opportunity to experience and observe it first hand. Even fewer have been able to compare with other regions handling similar challenges. I happen to have needed to travel overseas and thus experienced quarantine in several places over the past months.

Based on my experience as an academic in architecture, I share some thoughts and observations here on how the design or redesign of buildings, infrastructure and cities can help people overcome the health challenges created by COVID-19.

Our buildings and cities were not designed to handle such extraordinary situations as this pandemic. One consequence is their design has often made the need to touch surfaces unavoidable.

Read more: How worried should I be about news the coronavirus survives on surfaces for up to 28 days?

Take lifts, for example

Some of the most frequently touched surfaces in buildings are the buttons in lifts. In some buildings in China, plastic wrap is used to cover the buttons and a sticker showing the time and date of last disinfection is attached nearby. Other buildings provide tissues for people to use as disposable finger covers.

In quarantine hotels, this procedure is even more carefully managed. Staff help guests by pressing the button. This small touch area needs frequent cleaning, which calls for extra human resources.

At Baiyunshan airport in Guangzhou, I used a lift with touch-free buttons. The keypad had infrared sensors installed next to the usual button. With just a wave of their finger over the touch-free button, users can select their destination.

Another mode free of physical screens features numbers displayed in a front-projected holographic display. A sensor detects the movement of pressing a button in the air to activate the lift.

This technology is not out of our reach. In response to the pandemic, authorities in Melbourne and Sydney have trialled touch-free buttons using infrared technology at pedestrian crossings.

One concern about touch-free buttons is the challenge they present to the visually impaired. Currently, a push-button is placed next to the infrared sensor. An alternative for people who need assistance would be to use gesture or voice commands. Other concerns include reliability and vandal-proofing.

Another sensitive touch spot is the toilet. The airport toilets I visited in Australia, China and Singapore are equipped with touch-free features to activate the flush, tap, soap dispenser and hand dryer. However, the doors and locks cannot function without touch. Touch-free sensors or foot pedals would probably help.

Alternatively, new materials or coatings like antimicrobial polymers could be applied in areas where touch is unavoidable. Of course, care must be taken to ensure the antiviral potency is both reliable and people-friendly.

Read more: Automatic doors: the simple technology that could help stop coronavirus spreading

Design solutions don’t have to be high-tech

Interestingly, touch-free public spaces do not always rely on advanced materials or sophisticated technology. In a Melbourne quarantine hotel, I noticed several bollards with foot pedals being used as hand sanitiser dispensers. These are designed to function mechanically and require no power connections.

Instead of a simple stainless steel bollard, this dispenser could be further reimagined as an artistic sculpture integrating the building’s signage at the entrance. Elsewhere, this design could be incorporated into litter bins along the streets.

Usually, for architectural design, circulation patterns are analysed to see how people reach each space and establish the relationships between different areas. For safety purposes, exits are checked to ensure people can evacuate in a timely way. To prepare for future pandemics, these studies could add analysis of touch points in both pandemic and non-pandemic periods.

The shared challenge posed by the pandemic has prompted some innovative ideas. For example, physical reminders to keep a social distance have variously involved using carpet tiles, mowed or trimmed landscape patterns, furniture arrangements, temporary structures and pavements or stickers.

Other solutions involve applying modular construction from well-equipped containers to create emergency hospitals or mobile testing stations.

Read more: Hospital beds and coronavirus test centres are needed fast. Here’s an Australian-designed solution

From touch-free public spaces to designing for social distance and modular construction, there are still many ways the design or redesign of our buildings and cities can help to protect the public. Good design is particularly important to protect those in high-risk environments, such as workers and senior citizens in health care and aged care.

Read more: Poor ventilation may be adding to nursing homes’ COVID-19 risks

As necessity is the mother of invention, there is nothing like a period of stress to stimulate creativity, industry and innovation.

– ref. I teach architecture and have been in quarantine a lot lately. Here are ways design can protect us against COVID-19 – https://theconversation.com/i-teach-architecture-and-have-been-in-quarantine-a-lot-lately-here-are-ways-design-can-protect-us-against-covid-19-154840

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

The fight between Facebook and the Morrison government is over almost before it began. Having drastically overplayed its hand by banning a vast range of content, Facebook has been forced to settle for what appear to be cosmetic concessions, such as a two-month period of mediation before disputes are subject to compulsory arbitration.

Its apparent decision to capitulate was doubtless assisted by the uniformly hostile international reaction to its bullying tactics.

The debate in Australia has been much less one-sided. Many commentators view it simply as a dispute between Facebook and News Limited, and take the view that News owner Rupert Murdoch is a greater threat to global democracy than Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg.

This view is defensible in general, but in this specific case, it was Zuckerberg who attempted to bludgeon a democratically elected government into submission, while the established media worked through the normal political process.

More interestingly, many supporters of Facebook’s position applied a standard market analysis to the media legislation.

They concluded that there was no reason Facebook (and Google) should be compelled to hand over advertising money to the media companies who benefit from links on Facebook and Google sites.

This critique seems compelling at first, if we think of both news and advertising as standard goods. But news is a special kind of good, and advertising (at least the kind of advertising in dispute here) isn’t really a good at all.

News spreads, making it hard to contain

Looking first at news, it is, like other forms of information, a textbook example of a “non-rival” good, rather like a magic pudding. No matter how much of it I consume, there is just as much left for you and everyone else.

Before the rise of the internet, this wasn’t quite true. Most information was communicated on printed paper, which was a costly resource. But today, no matter how vital or trivial, information can be communicated to billions of people at almost no cost beyond the fixed cost of the network connecting them.

At the same time, information is costly to discover and interpret.

As a society, we have developed various ways of paying for it.

On the other hand, news is costly

We fund academic research directly through government grants and indirectly through the long-standing practice of requiring most university teachers to undertake research along with their teaching work.

Another way we fund information and analysis is by restricting access to it by erecting paywalls. They work to some extent, but information has a way of leaking out past even the most secure barriers. Once public, information can spread rapidly, just like viruses (hence the phrase “going viral”).

Traditionally, the most common way of funding news has been to package it with advertising. In the 20th century, the main funding source for newspapers was the “rivers of gold” provided by classified ads for jobs, real estate, cars and so on.

Read more: This week’s changes are a win for Facebook, Google and the government — but what was lost along the way?

Readers wanted to read the advertisements and were forced to buy them bundled with news, on occasions throwing away the news part of the newspapers so they could read the ads.

Newspapers, television and radio used the revenue from the advertisements to subsidise the production of news, analysis and entertainment.

The internet has disrupted this model, enabling specialised websites such as Seek, Domain and Gumtree to provide a better service than either newspapers or their websites.

When most of the ads that people want to see are removed, what’s left are ads they would prefer not to see. Newspapers, radio and TV have been forced to present them in ways that are hard to avoid.

It’s always been an unsatisfactory arrangement. In television there is a constant struggle between broadcasters who need ads to be seen and viewers who try to screen ads out. The head of Turner Broadcasting once suggested that skipping ad breaks in order to go to the toilet was a breach of contract.

But, unsatisfactory as the arrangement has been, it has worked well enough to keep newspapers and broadcast organisations in business.

Until the arrival of Google and Facebook.

They are able to offer advertisers much better targeting of ads than either news organisations or traditional broadcasters.

Google and Facebook do ads better

Much of the content used to make this targeting work is links to content prepared by traditional news organisations.

The entire debate about who benefits most — the organisations that do the linking or the organisations that are linked to — misses the point.

Read more: One of these things is not like the others: why Facebook is beyond our control

We have always put up with advertising in order to get the information produced by news organisations.

Now the advertising revenue is flowing to Google and Facebook, and we have no model for funding news media in the future.

We may need direct public funding, perhaps financed by a tax on advertising.

In the meantime, forcing Google and Facebook to pay for links is not a particularly satisfactory solution, but it’s the best we’ve got.

– ref. Facebook versus News: Advertising is the real problem – https://theconversation.com/facebook-versus-news-advertising-is-the-real-problem-155639

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Hesketh, ARC Future Fellow and Association Professor, The University of Queensland

When Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was first published in On the Origin of Species in 1859, the book was conspicuously silent about how his theory applied to humans.

Darwin believed the subject of human evolution was so “surrounded with prejudices” he was determined to avoid it entirely.

It was only when he became frustrated by the way others conceived of human evolution that he took up the subject himself. His two-volume The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex was published on 24 February 1871.

Revisiting this work 150 years on, it is striking how some of Darwin’s most radical claims — such as humanity’s ape-like ancestry — are now taken for granted while some of his other views were clearly embedded in Victorian racial and gender stereotypes.

Read more: Guide to the classics: Darwin’s On the Origin of Species

Sexual selection

Darwin’s objective in Descent was threefold: to consider whether humans were descended from a pre-existing form; to consider the nature of human development; and to consider the differences between the “human races”.

In coming to terms with these issues, Darwin focused on the theory of sexual selection.

Darwin’s earlier theory of natural selection explained how the struggle for limited resources led to adaptations that were beneficial to certain individuals of the same species at the expense of others.

Sexual selection, in contrast, explained how the struggle for mates led to adaptations with no survival benefit. The bright plumages of male birds of paradise and the spectacular tail of the peacock were a product of mate choice by female birds, he wrote.

A similar process, he theorised, explained the development of specialised weapons for battle, such as the large horns of beetles: a result of males struggling against one another to secure mates.

Applying this principle to humans, Darwin argued that in the early stages of humanity’s development, men took the power of selection away from women. Men struggled against other men to select their mates, he wrote, and so became stronger and more intelligent over time, while women became more nurturing in their pursuit to attract mates through the cultivation of fashion.

It is not difficult to see how this theory of sexual selection naturalised Victorian gender relations.

Read more: How Darwin’s sexual selection theory co-stars in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

The development of the races

For Darwin, sexual selection also explained how different human races had developed.

While he was committed to the theory of monogenism, believing humans were a single species, he also adhered to a racial hierarchy. As historian of science Evelleen Richards shows in her recent book, Darwin’s encounters with Indigenous peoples during his Beagle voyage, circumnavigating the globe between 1831 and 1836, led him to perceive vast physical and intellectual differences between the human races.

He came to believe many of those differences could be explained by the processes of sexual selection. Differences in skin colour were, for Darwin, the result of diverse aesthetic preferences, which subsequently led to the development of distinct races. And as the races diverged, they were further shaped by inherited customs and social practices.

By accepting a racial hierarchy in this scheme, Darwin believed Indigenous peoples, or “savages” as he called them, represented “early stages” in human development.

In the final observation of the book, Darwin confessed he would rather be related to a “heroic little monkey” than to a “savage who delights to torture his enemies”.

His deeper message, however, was that readers should be consoled by the fact some of the nobler qualities of humans were shared by many of the great apes — even if they seemed to be absent from humanity’s “early stages”.

What makes humans moral?

The Descent of Man included three chapters dedicated to the subject of mind and morals. Darwin aimed to show there was “no fundamental difference between man and higher mammals” in their moral and mental faculties.

His moral theory relied heavily on animal observations, including those of dogs, apes, and even bees. He insisted humans shared the capacity to feel guilt, shame, and compassion with other social animals — therefore moral conscience was not unique to humans.

Darwin’s theory rejected essentialist and religious categories of “right” and “wrong”. He postulated different animals developed different moral systems depending on their environment and social structures, famously using bees as an example.

If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees […] our unmarried females would, like the workerbees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering.

Morality was the product of factors related to the struggle for survival and reproduction, and not divinely ordained.

Reception

Even though plant and animal evolution was largely accepted by the scientific community at the time, the subject of human evolution was still highly contentious. Darwin’s views were heatedly debated in the press and in public.

A reviewer for the Edinburgh Review observed:

no book of science has excited a keener interest than Mr. Darwin’s new work on the ‘Descent of Man.’ In the drawingroom it is competing with the last new novel, and in the study it is troubling alike the man of science, the moralist, and the theologian. On every side it is raising a storm of mingled wrath, wonder, and admiration.

By the end of 1871, the work was translated into Dutch, German, Italian and Russian.

Despite its commercial success, The Descent of Man was heavily criticised. At the beginning of 1872, Darwin lamented “hardly any naturalists” agreed with him on sexual selection.

Most naturalists felt Darwin attributed too much power to female choice, and they rejected the idea other animals could possess an aesthetic sensibility.

It was Darwin’s analysis of morality, however, that caused the greatest outrage. He stood accused of undermining the foundation of Christian society by advocating moral relativism.

Leading feminist Frances Power Cobbe rejected Darwin’s theory of morality as “simious”, while The Times thundered Darwin’s ideas could encourage “the most murderous revolutions”.

Darwin received hate mail from offended readers like Mr. D. Thomas, who referred to him as a “venerable old Ape”. Darwin began to be regularly caricatured as an ape in the press.

Descent today

Certain aspects of Descent hold up well, such as Darwin’s speculation humans originated from Africa, as evidenced by multiple fossil discoveries in the mid-20th century, notably by Mary and Louis Leakey.

Many of his controversial insights in relation to morality have been central to recent debates about “evolutionary ethics” among moral philosophers considering the relationship between our understanding of morality and evolution.

And his theory of mind and morals informed the development of multiple scientific disciplines in the 20th century, including evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and psychoanalysis.

The same cannot be said about Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. While the idea of “female choice” has been revived several times, such as in Robert Trivers’s parental investment theory which argues the sex that takes on the primary caring role has the greatest choice in a mate, there is very little consensus on the relationship between mate choice and beauty.

Moreover, most evolutionists consider male combat — as Darwin wrote about in horned beetles — a form of natural selection, rather than sexual selection.

And when it comes to Darwin’s general views of race and gender, he very much appears a man of his time and social background.

Today, what is most compelling about The Descent of Man is how Darwin’s portrayal of humans was made within the context of a system of evolution that applied equally to all of nature. At a time when other evolutionists stressed humanity’s uniqueness, Darwin instead sought to uncover man’s “lowly nature”.

– ref. Guide to the classics: Darwin’s The Descent of Man 150 years on — sex, race and our ‘lowly’ ape ancestry – https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-darwins-the-descent-of-man-150-years-on-sex-race-and-our-lowly-ape-ancestry-155305

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nigel William Crawford, Associate Professor, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

It emerged today that two aged-care residents in Brisbane were given an incorrect dose of the Pfizer vaccine — more than the amount recommended.

The 88-year-old man and 94-year-old woman were receiving their vaccinations yesterday as part of the first phase of Australia’s vaccine rollout, which began this week.

Both residents are being monitored, but haven’t shown any signs of adverse reactions so far.

Health Minister Greg Hunt has revealed the doctor who administered the vaccines had not completed the proper training. The doctor has been stood down from his position while the error is investigated.

But how did this mistake happen, and how can we aim to minimise the risk of it happening again?

The challenge of a multi-dose vial

We don’t yet know exactly what happened, as the incident is still under investigation. But it’s likely the doctor gave the patients either the whole or a larger part of the multi-dose vial than indicated.

COVID vaccines come in vials containing several doses. A vial of the Pfizer vaccine contains five or potentially six doses, and health-care staff need to extract individual doses from the vial. This is different to most other vaccines, which come in single-dose vials.

Multi-dose vials are useful in a pandemic situation. They allow manufacturers to distribute more vaccine, more easily and rapidly around the world.

We’ve actually seen this kind of mistake before — we call it a multi-dose vial error. It can happen if clinicians are not careful with the extraction, or haven’t fully understood the education and training with regards to multi-dose vials.

Other countries, such as Israel and Germany, have reported these kinds of incidents during their COVID vaccine rollouts. But similarly, there haven’t been serious adverse effects reported to date for the patients involved.

We (SAEFVIC — the Victorian vaccine safety service) reported on a similar case in Melbourne with the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine in 2010, which came in a vial containing ten doses of vaccine. A person was accidentally given the whole vial (5 millilitres, ten times the recommended 0.5ml). They were monitored and experienced a small local reaction, but no other side-effects.

Read more: How the Pfizer COVID vaccine gets from the freezer into your arm

Safety isn’t a significant concern here

In the early phase 1 and 2 vaccine clinical trials, scientists test a variety of dose sizes to determine what dose delivers the best immune response, while also not using more vaccine than necessary. This helps determine what dose is then used in the phase 3 efficacy trials.

In clinical trials for BNT162b2 (Pfizer’s COVID vaccine), some participants received more than three times the dose the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has provisionally approved (30 micrograms). These participants didn’t experience adverse reactions much more so than those who received the smaller doses, apart from one participant who had local pain at the injection site.

Although you can overdose on medications, vaccines are a bit different. I often say “you can’t have too much of a good thing” when it comes to vaccines. Really large amounts might produce challenges, but we are reassured by the phase 1 and 2 clinical trial data.

Even if these aged-care residents received up to five or six times the recommended dose (if they did in fact receive a whole 1.8ml vial), this is still a relatively small amount and not likely to be harmful. Of course, it’s still important to monitor them closely.

It’s possible any local side-effects, such as pain at the injection site or fever, may be slightly heightened with a larger dose. But the information we have from clinical trials, and the reports from other countries, tells us we have no reason to be concerned about anything more serious in the short or long term.

What happens now?

Even if these “overdoses” are not likely to be harmful, it’s always safest to stick to the recommended dose. We don’t want to see an incident like this repeated. It may also undermine confidence in the vaccine rollout, and where COVID vaccines are a precious resource, it’s important we try not to waste a single dose.

In such a large-scale vaccine program, human errors are bound to happen occasionally. It’s very positive that a nurse reportedly stepped in on noticing this mistake, and that we’ve seen open disclosure around the incident.

Read more: Open disclosure: why doctors should be honest about errors

The key now is what action we’re going to take to minimise the risk of this happening again.

Clinicians in Australia are not accustomed in their usual practice to delivering vaccines from multi-dose vials, meaning there’s a greater risk of error. This incident should be the impetus to make sure everyone administering vaccines has completed the required training, including the multi-dose vial component. This should be documented via their Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) registration number (where applicable).

This event should also prompt us to look at how we capture and report these sorts of errors in Australia. The focus on vaccine safety surveillance is, for the most part, on patients who have had an adverse event following immunisation — these are summarised nationally by the TGA.

Not all vaccine errors will lead to an adverse reaction, but we need to ensure we also have a systematic way to capture any errors in administering the vaccines. The newly established Vaccine Operation Centre, a federal government initiative, is in a good place to capture and collate this information.

Read more: How do we know the COVID vaccine won’t have long-term side-effects?

In the context of global vaccinations against COVID-19, multi-dose vials are the only way forward. The AstraZeneca vaccine will also come in multi-dose vials. So this is something we must do the best we can to get right.

– ref. When vaccinating 26 million Australians, expect a mistake or two. But we can minimise the risk of repeating Queensland’s overdose incident – https://theconversation.com/when-vaccinating-26-million-australians-expect-a-mistake-or-two-but-we-can-minimise-the-risk-of-repeating-queenslands-overdose-incident-155945

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Corey Martin, PhD Candidate, Swinburne University of Technology

Paris Hilton — model, reality TV star, actor, pop singer and DJ — gained worldwide notoriety in 2003 because of a leaked sex tape. Over the years she has been viciously parodied and lampooned, famously on South Park and in World of Warcraft.

But she has endured — and this week launched a new podcast, This Is Paris.

In the first episode, Hilton and her co-host, US television personality Hunter March, discuss love, commitment and hard work. Hilton’s fiance, Carter Reum also appears — apparently as a favour to her “because you know I hate this stuff”. The episode ends with a modern advice column in which Hilton responds to fan voicemail questions, including “how do I look hot on Zoom?”

In her recent tell-all documentary of the same name Hilton opened up about her difficult experiences growing up in the spotlight and alleged she had endured traumatic abuse at boarding school as a teenager.

The treatment of female celebrities

As with Framing Britney Spears (2021), the documentary prompted timely discussion of the treatment of women celebrities and their struggle to maintain agency within the structures of Hollywood and the media.

Born in 1981, Hilton was first known as an heiress to the Hilton hotels empire, founded by her great-grandfather. She began modelling as a child, and by the age of 18 was a socialite regularly photographed in the A-list New York party scene.

The 1990s has been dubbed “the tabloid decade”, and along with celebrity compatriots such as Lindsay Lohan and Tara Reid, Hilton was ruthlessly torn down for her perceived moral failings. Notably, it was young women who bore the brunt of this criticism — not men who behaved “badly”.

When she was 22, in 2003, internet pornography company Marvad Corp leaked a sex tape of Hilton and her then-boyfriend Richard Salomon (released as One Night in Paris in 2004).

Hilton sued the internet company she claimed illegally distributed the video (the case was later dismissed). In her documentary, she spoke about its release:

That was a private moment with a teenage girl not in her right headspace. But everyone was watching it and laughing, like it’s something funny. If that happened today it would not be the same story at all. But they made me the bad person. Like I did something bad.

It was my first real relationship. Eighteen. I was so in love with him and I wanted to make him happy. And I just remember him pulling out the camera. And he was kind of pressuring me into it.

But it was this leaked sex tape that ultimately helped solidify her status as a celebrity. In 2003, Hilton and fellow socialite Nicole Richie began filming The Simple Life (2003–2007), right when reality TV’s popularity was soaring.

The show, following Hilton and Richie as they attempted working-class jobs such as farming and fast food service, drew 13 million viewers the night it premiered. This humiliation of the privileged Hilton gave audiences an opportunity to recognise her for more than her tabloid presence.

She became a celebrity who was famous for being famous.

Changing with the times

Over the years, Hilton morphed into a legitimate celebrity through her sheer deftness at embodying — and doing the work of — celebrity itself.

She released her first fragrance in 2004, and her debut single in 2006. If bitterly, she even received some critical praise for her titular debut album: “it’s really not all that bad,” said one critic.

She forayed into acting, with bit parts on The O.C. and Veronica Mars, reaching a peak when she starred in the schlocky horror film House of Wax (2005). Like her pop album, her performance in this film was received with a combination of ridicule and begrudging appreciation.

In 2012, the year electronic dance music (EDM) was named the fastest growing mainstream music genre in the US, Hilton began her lucrative EDM DJ endeavours earning up to US$1 million per 90 minute set. She continues to DJ, including at the reputable Tomorrowland festival in Belgium in 2019.

Up close and personal

In the current digital media epoch, “authenticity” is required of celebrities. Generating a persona that allows her fans a seemingly real connection, Hilton is once again making savvy use of the zeitgeist.

With a tone that feels self-aware and bold, Hilton’s new podcast is reflective not only of her experiences as a celebrity, but also her resilience.

Read more: Michelle Obama, podcast host: how podcasting became a multi-billion dollar industry

The overtly constructed nature of many of Hilton’s former pursuits might attract little admiration in today’s social media spaces — and as an heiress, she is undoubtedly from a privileged background.

Yet her current intimate mode of celebrity is likely to lengthen her celebrity shelf life. As she strives for “authenticity”, Hilton is again rewriting her own celebrity script.

– ref. Podcast host, DJ …. how the much lampooned Paris Hilton has rewritten the celebrity script – https://theconversation.com/podcast-host-dj-how-the-much-lampooned-paris-hilton-has-rewritten-the-celebrity-script-155304

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Hall, Senior Researcher in Politics, Auckland University of Technology

In every crisis there is opportunity. Even during New Zealand’s strictest COVID-19 lockdown last year, many people felt the pandemic offered a chance to tackle other global crises, especially climate change.

The government responded to the pandemic with an extraordinary package of monetary and fiscal stimulus, most notably a NZ$50 billion allocation to the COVID-19 response and recovery fund.

But did the government embrace the call to “build back better” by directing that stimulus toward the low-emission economy or have these financial flows favoured carbon-intensive incumbents, locking us into an economic system implicated in making pandemics and other disasters more probable?

We partnered with international research network Energy Policy Tracker (EPT) to compare New Zealand’s response against other major countries.

We found New Zealand sits in the middle of the pack, with room to improve for future policy.

The good and bad of energy policy

The Energy Policy Tracker focuses on energy policy but excludes other sectors, such as land use or adaptation. It classifies COVID-19-related funding according to energy type, and it uses three buckets:

• policy that supports the fossil fuel economy
• policy that supports clean energy
• and policy that supports other energy, such as nuclear and biofuels.

The overall balance for Aotearoa New Zealand was 44.6% fossil fuel-related, 54.5% clean energy, and less than 1% other energy. By global standards, that is a fairly middling performance.

Among the countries the Energy Policy Tracker has analysed, the global average sees nearly one-half of economic stimulus going to fossil fuels, over one-third to clean energy, and one-sixth to other energy.

New Zealand’s performance looks increasingly ambivalent when we drop down to the next level of analysis.

Read more: Rich and poor don’t recover equally from epidemics. Rebuilding fairly will be a global challenge

The Energy Policy Tracker also analyses the environmental conditions placed on energy policy. On the one hand, it asks whether clean-energy policy involves major environmental trade-offs, such as fuel mixes that include oil or gas, or large hydropower projects that create emissions through construction and ecological disruption.

On the other hand, it asks whether fossil fuel-related policy comes with “green strings attached” that steer recipients toward cleaner long-term outcomes.

One example is the French government’s rescue package for Air France, which involved €7 billion in loans. It also requires Air France to renew its fleet with more fuel-efficient planes to reduce emissions, and to cease a few domestic routes that have transport alternatives like rail. Through policy innovations like this, about two-thirds of France’s fossil fuel-related stimulus is conditional.

Contrast this with New Zealand where one-twelfth of fossil fuel-related spending is conditional, such as road upgrades that incorporate cycling and pedestrian infrastructure. Meanwhile, 12 times as much, more than $1.4 billion, supports fossil fuel infrastructure unconditionally, much of it committed to Air New Zealand’s $900 million standby loan facility.

This is a lost opportunity to lock in the transition to a low-emissions economy.

Read more: New Zealand’s COVID-19 budget delivers on one crisis, but largely leaves climate change for another day

This is also mirrored on the other side of the ledger. Nearly $2 billion was spent on clean energy, but only one-quarter of this was unconditional. Big ticket items like wind farms are absent.

The majority went to clean conditional spending, such as investment in rail, ferry and bus infrastructure. Although these forms of public transport are more energy efficient, if they rely on fossil fuels they also emit carbon dioxide.

Compare that with the UK where relative support for unconditional clean energy policy was twice as high, including big commitments to energy efficiency, and walking and cycling infrastructure.

Takeaways for the next crisis

Given New Zealand will face further shocks in future, what lessons should we learn to improve our response?

Firstly, New Zealand is missing a trick on policy innovation. Some other countries are doing better, even in the midst of an emergency, to take an integrated approach that aligns crisis measures with long-term objectives.

Policy makers should be less reactive and more anticipatory. They should be working to create a climate-aligned investment pipeline, which is unambiguously weighted toward clean energy, with “green strings attached” wherever appropriate.

Secondly, the government should adopt a responsible investment framework, which prioritises low-emissions projects and screens out climate-misaligned investments.

In an emergency, decision making is often suboptimal because there is little time for due diligence. Some “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects ought to have been excluded on climate change grounds, including the Muggeridge Pump Station.

Thirdly, there is cause to be positive about New Zealand’s overall direction. Our strong baseline of renewable electricity means that untargeted economic stimulus is soaked up by a relatively clean energy system. Also, there are substantial commitments to non-energy climate policy, most notably the $1.245 billion Jobs for Nature programme.

The rudiments of a project pipeline have emerged through initiatives like the Provincial Growth Fund and various energy-related strategies, which were accelerated when the pandemic struck.

Consider, for example, the $18 million commitment to the Whale Trail, a 194km cycling and walking trail from Picton to Kaikōura, which enables travellers to explore their own backyard by climate-friendly means. If this is what climate-aligned infrastructure looks like, it is an investment we’re unlikely to regret.

– ref. New Zealand’s COVID-19 stimulus is a ‘lost opportunity’ to move towards a low-emissions economy – https://theconversation.com/new-zealands-covid-19-stimulus-is-a-lost-opportunity-to-move-towards-a-low-emissions-economy-155838

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Nicholls, Associate professor in regulation and governance, UNSW

After almost a year of heated discussion about the News Media Bargaining Code, there will shortly be a new law of the land – one that’s unlikely to be applied to the platforms it was intended to reign in. But that’s not to say it hasn’t done its job.

With some final tweaks expected to the draft legislation, Facebook on Tuesday announced it would restore news for Australian users and strike up commercial agreements with local publishers. It signed its first deal with Seven West media yesterday.

Google has already done deals with News Corp, Nine Fairfax, Seven West Media, The Guardian and regional news company ACM, turning back on its initial threat to pull Google Search from Australia.

Meanwhile, Facebook threatened to stop providing Australians access to news — and did (while also blocking domestic violence helplines, children’s cancer charities and the Royal Australian College of Physicians).

In return, the federal government said it would stop all advertising campaigns on the platform. Interestingly, it’s this move which most likely “assisted” the recent negotiated outcome with Facebook.

The amendments

The changes made to the code — other than the opportunity to sell advertising to the Commonwealth again — were small, but important. It’s worth remembering the code’s aim was to balance out the bargaining imbalance between big tech platforms and news media businesses.

Essentially, it provides a mechanism to force a deal when a commercial outcome can’t be reached voluntarily. The code is mandatory, since the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took the view the platforms would not otherwise get to a commercial offer, let alone a commercial settlement.

As set out by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, there were four changes made that have met Facebook’s needs:

1. before a digital platform is made subject to the code by being “designated”, the minister must first take into account whether it has reached commercial agreements with news media businesses

2. the government must give at least one month’s notice of designation to any platform it intends to make subject to the code

3. the non-discrimination provisions (crafted as an anti-avoidance mechanism) will not be triggered in respect to remuneration amounts or commercial outcomes that arise in the course of usual business practice

4. final offer arbitration will be a last resort and should be preceded by good faith mediation, provided this lasts no longer than two months.

Read more: Feel like breaking up with Facebook? Maybe it’s time for a social media spring clean

A major change?

The above amendments made by the government are not major, in terms of changing the scope of the News Media Bargaining Code. However, they do include some important clarifications regarding how the code will operate.

Both Google and Facebook were very concerned the approach of “final offer arbitration” would adversely affect them. In this, if a deal couldn’t be struck, both the platform and media business would have to present their offers and defer to an arbitrator to choose one.

Google and Facebook initially argued for “commercial arbitration”, where the arbitrator acts with more discretion. Commercial arbitration tends to favour the party with the most information or bargaining power.

The compromise of requiring good faith mediation before any compulsory arbitration (whether commercial or final offer arbitration) is a classic dispute resolution approach.

Win some, lose some

The News Media Bargaining Code has changed in a way that is a compromise, but hasn’t lost its original intention. The process of negotiating changes to the code has revealed the private values of Facebook, Google and any similar parties that could be impacted by the code.

The exposure draft, the introduction of the Bill, the Senate committee and Facebook’s petulant actions: all have acted to identify a financial outcome for each of Google, Facebook and the Australian news publishers.

The process has been a classic, but painful, exchange of information that would otherwise have been held close to the players’ respective chests.

For Google, it has shown Google Search must remain untouched, even if this means forking out millions in a matter of days. For Facebook, it has demonstrated that rapidly changing social media offerings (such as trying to remove news in Australia) can’t be done without major complications.

It may be too soon to judge whether Facebook’s approach of taking its lobbying to the brink worked in its favour, or to its detriment. The platform’s first interactions with the new UK Digital Markets Unit (a regulatory regime targeted at big tech firms) will likely shed some light.

And finally, the ACCC can claim it was right in its initial recommendation; after a long drought, there will soon be money flowing to public interest journalism.

Read more: Why Google is now funnelling millions into media outlets, as Facebook pulls news for Australia

Who pays?

The intention of the News Media Bargaining Code was to create an environment where commercial deals would be struck between the platforms and news media businesses in Australia.

Now, under several deals, Google and Facebook will pay Australian news media businesses tens of millions of dollars each year for locally created content.

There’s also a reasonable expectation regional news businesses will receive funds in exchange for regional news — although a clear standard offer is yet to be made by the platforms.

This development will not change the inevitable shift of the news business model to a largely digital environment. But it does balance the value proposition between news creation and news curation.

It has also made clear to Facebook, Google and news media businesses that they exist and operate in a symbiosis. The status of this relationship? Well, it’s complicated.

Read more: Google’s and Facebook’s loud appeal to users over the news media bargaining code shows a lack of political power

– ref. This week’s changes are a win for Facebook, Google and the government — but what was lost along the way? – https://theconversation.com/this-weeks-changes-are-a-win-for-facebook-google-and-the-government-but-what-was-lost-along-the-way-155865

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Nicholls, Associate professor in regulation and governance, UNSW

After almost a year of heated discussion about the News Media Bargaining Code, there will shortly be a new law of the land – one that’s unlikely to be applied to the platforms it was intended to reign in. But that’s not to say it hasn’t done its job.

With some final tweaks expected to the draft legislation, Facebook on Tuesday announced it would restore news for Australian users and strike up commercial agreements with local publishers. It signed its first deal with Seven West media yesterday.

Google has already done deals with News Corp, Nine Fairfax, Seven West Media, The Guardian and regional news company ACM, turning back on its initial threat to pull Google Search from Australia.

Meanwhile, Facebook threatened to stop providing Australians access to news — and did (while also blocking domestic violence helplines, children’s cancer charities and the Royal Australian College of Physicians).

In return, the federal government said it would stop all advertising campaigns on the platform. Interestingly, it’s this move which most likely “assisted” the recent negotiated outcome with Facebook.

The amendments

The changes made to the code — other than the opportunity to sell advertising to the Commonwealth again — were small, but important. It’s worth remembering the code’s aim was to balance out the bargaining imbalance between big tech platforms and news media businesses.

Essentially, it provides a mechanism to force a deal when a commercial outcome can’t be reached voluntarily. The code is mandatory, since the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took the view the platforms would not otherwise get to a commercial offer, let alone a commercial settlement.

As set out by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, there were four changes made that have met Facebook’s needs:

1. before a digital platform is made subject to the code by being “designated”, the minister must first take into account whether it has reached commercial agreements with news media businesses

2. the government must give at least one month’s notice of designation to any platform it intends to make subject to the code

3. the non-discrimination provisions (crafted as an anti-avoidance mechanism) will not be triggered in respect to remuneration amounts or commercial outcomes that arise in the course of usual business practice

4. final offer arbitration will be a last resort and should be preceded by good faith mediation, provided this lasts no longer than two months.

Read more: Feel like breaking up with Facebook? Maybe it’s time for a social media spring clean

A major change?

The above amendments made by the government are not major, in terms of changing the scope of the News Media Bargaining Code. However, they do include some important clarifications regarding how the code will operate.

Both Google and Facebook were very concerned the approach of “final offer arbitration” would adversely affect them. In this, if a deal couldn’t be struck, both the platform and media business would have to present their offers and defer to an arbitrator to choose one.

Google and Facebook initially argued for “commercial arbitration”, where the arbitrator acts with more discretion. Commercial arbitration tends to favour the party with the most information or bargaining power.

The compromise of requiring good faith mediation before any compulsory arbitration (whether commercial or final offer arbitration) is a classic dispute resolution approach.

Win some, lose some

The News Media Bargaining Code has changed in a way that is a compromise, but hasn’t lost its original intention. The process of negotiating changes to the code has revealed the private values of Facebook, Google and any similar parties that could be impacted by the code.

The exposure draft, the introduction of the Bill, the Senate committee and Facebook’s petulant actions: all have acted to identify a financial outcome for each of Google, Facebook and the Australian news publishers.

The process has been a classic, but painful, exchange of information that would otherwise have been held close to the players’ respective chests.

For Google, it has shown Google Search must remain untouched, even if this means forking out millions in a matter of days. For Facebook, it has demonstrated that rapidly changing social media offerings (such as trying to remove news in Australia) can’t be done without major complications.

It may be too soon to judge whether Facebook’s approach of taking its lobbying to the brink worked in its favour, or to its detriment. The platform’s first interactions with the new UK Digital Markets Unit (a regulatory regime targeted at big tech firms) will likely shed some light.

And finally, the ACCC can claim it was right in its initial recommendation; after a long drought, there will soon be money flowing to public interest journalism.

Read more: Why Google is now funnelling millions into media outlets, as Facebook pulls news for Australia

Who pays?

The intention of the News Media Bargaining Code was to create an environment where commercial deals would be struck between the platforms and news media businesses in Australia.

Now, under several deals, Google and Facebook will pay Australian news media businesses tens of millions of dollars each year for locally created content.

There’s also a reasonable expectation regional news businesses will receive funds in exchange for regional news — although a clear standard offer is yet to be made by the platforms.

This development will not change the inevitable shift of the news business model to a largely digital environment. But it does balance the value proposition between news creation and news curation.

It has also made clear to Facebook, Google and news media businesses that they exist and operate in a symbiosis. The status of this relationship? Well, it’s complicated.

Read more: Google’s and Facebook’s loud appeal to users over the news media bargaining code shows a lack of political power

– ref. This week’s changes are a win for Facebook, Google and the government — but here’s what was lost along the way – https://theconversation.com/this-weeks-changes-are-a-win-for-facebook-google-and-the-government-but-heres-what-was-lost-along-the-way-155865

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bethan Greener, Associate Professor of Politics, Massey University

National Party justice spokesperson Simon Bridges has accused New Zealand Police Commissioner Andrew Coster of being a “wokester” whose commitment to “policing by consent” is out of step with the law.

The claims were in response to Coster’s avowed belief that police need to engage with the community in a nuanced manner, which includes the wider principle of policing by consent. Coster has also recently said the police “can’t arrest our way out of the gang problem”.

But Bridges should know consent is a fundamental requirement for democratic policing. In the absence of public consent, we would have an occupying force, not a police force.

Modern police forces in liberal democratic states are a recent creation. Unlike the standing armies that formed alongside the sovereign state in the 1600s, policing (at least in the way we understand it in Western democracies) came late to the fray.

Policing by consent

As European monarchs struggled to imbue diverse regional groups with a sense of nationalism and national loyalty, countries such as France, Spain and Italy created a more militarised and mobile “continental” model of policing. These utilised “gens d’armes” — armed people — to establish constabulary forces.

In the UK, however, a different model of policing evolved. In the early 1800s, citing disorder and rising crime, British Home Secretary Robert Peel argued for the creation of a unified policing force that would seek to use minimum force to maintain law and order.

A nine-point summary of Peel’s 1829 instructions captures his core principles, including an emphasis on the need to prevent crime and disorder.

Seven of the principles emphasise, in different ways, the need for the public to approve of and co-operate with the police for them to successfully carry out their mission.

This is the heart of the concept of policing by consent: the public as a whole gives consent to the idea that some members of the community are trusted to have and exercise the powers required to keep the peace on behalf of the community.

Robert Peel’s legacy

These ideas were taken further by the UK’s first police commissioners, Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne, who were charged with developing a metropolitan police force for London.

England was a constitutional monarchy, with a representative assembly, which meant attempts to build a police force had to secure the passage of the requisite bills through parliament, as well as overcome any public scepticism.

Rowan and Mayne therefore made concerted attempts to secure the legitimacy of their nascent police force in the eyes of the populace. In time, this process led to the ideal of the English police officer – the “British Bobby” who lives in, protects and serves their community.

This idea of consent remains fundamental to policing in the UK as well as the countries that adopted this Peelian model, including New Zealand.

Read more: Black Lives Matter outrage must drive police reform in Aotearoa-New Zealand too

So the police have, at least in theory, always been based on a philosophy of policing by consent. This is not new or “woke”. It is nonetheless interesting that the New Zealand police have recently reiterated the centrality of these principles to their work and ethos.

As well as Commissioner Coster, Police Association president Chris Cahill has directly referenced Peelian principles in emphasising the importance of consent:

Of Peel’s nine principles, I believe the second to be the most important and the foundation of a fair and accepted police service – “to recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and the ability to secure and maintain public respect”.

Approval and consent

Yet while the police in New Zealand have typically enjoyed strong approval ratings, it is also clear this has differed across various communities.

The New Zealand Police is the descendant of the Armed Constabulary that played a role fighting against certain iwi in the 19th-century colonial wars rather than providing them with a citizen-based consensual police system.

Contemporary statistics still show an imbalance in policing of and for Māori. Prominent Māori activists have long called for and continue to call for reform of the justice system as a whole.

Read more: Trust, risk and routine arming: the killing of a frontline officer challenges New Zealand police practice

Coster’s emphasis on thoughtfully engaging with different communities appears to be an attempt to ensure all parts of New Zealand society approve of the police, and consent to be policed by them.

Moreover, recent research into justice and policing suggests that heavily punitive approaches, except in very select cases, are expensive and counter-productive. Research also increasingly demonstrates that incarceration does not significantly affect crime and disorder statistics.

An agency that is, to quote Bridges, “much less about arrest, much less about catching gangs and criminals”, but which is more about preventing criminality in the first place, is therefore entirely in step with the fundamental ethos of democratic policing.

– ref. Policing by consent is not ‘woke’ — it is fundamental to a democratic society – https://theconversation.com/policing-by-consent-is-not-woke-it-is-fundamental-to-a-democratic-society-155866

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bhiamie Williamson, Research Associate & PhD Candidate, Australian National University

Disaster resilience and recovery conversations are filled with mentions of “community”, but collapsing various groups together this way fails to acknowledge that people experience disasters differently.

For Indigenous peoples — whose experiences are shaped by vastly different historical and cultural contexts to non-Indigenous Australians — the lack of understanding or cultural safety demonstrated by government agencies and non-government organisations created additional trauma during the Black Summer bushfires.

The final report of the NSW bushfire inquiry found:

In some communities Aboriginal people felt unwelcome at evacuation centres and in some cases support services were reluctant to provide immediate relief… These experiences compounded the trauma they had already experienced as a result of the bush fires.

The Victorian government’s After the Flames report also found:

For Aboriginal people, relationships to Country, culture and community are not only interconnected, they are intrinsically linked to one’s identity. This means that when one of these foundations is impacted by a disaster, Aboriginal Victorians experience unique pain and loss.

In response to these findings, Bushfire Recovery Victoria has identified a number of unique issues faced by Indigenous peoples, including inappropriate funding models and reluctance to engage with support services due to experiences of racism.

Equally significant, Bushfire Recovery Victoria has identified the need to embed Aboriginal culture and healing in its programs.

Acknowledging the trauma associated with encounters between Indigenous people and culturally unsafe recovery agencies during Black Summer — and the long-overdue recognition of the place of culture and healing in disaster recovery — is a positive step.

This signifies the sector’s increasing willingness to address the systemic neglect of the needs of Indigenous peoples.

Read more: 1 in 10 children affected by bushfires is Indigenous. We’ve been ignoring them for too long

Indigenous healing and disaster recovery

In recent times, Indigenous healing frameworks have been called upon to respond to the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities. But it also has broader significance and is now applied in areas such as family violence, justice reinvestment and more.

We suggest healing as a process and practice can also be applied in disaster affected Indigenous communities.

Indigenous healing can be thought of as a cultural and spiritual process and inherently tied to Country.

As I (Bhiamie Williamson) outlined in a submission to the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements, Indigenous healing literature foregrounds the importance of culture and cultural specificity.

Indigenous approaches recognise that healing:

• is a holistic process that seeks to identify imbalance in a person’s life and rectify these imbalances
• is a social rather than an individual journey
• compels people to identify the root source of trauma and take actions to rectify this.

Healing resources also include activities such as storytelling, yarning circles, and land-based activities, to provide practical tools so professionals can support people and communities on their healing journey.

Although the field of Indigenous disaster recovery is in its infancy, it’s clear culturally-informed approaches to healing help support Indigenous communities recovering from disaster.

But these lessons have larger relevance to (non-Indigenous) community recovery more generally.

As governments, non-government organisations and researchers embark upon this long overdue work, it is important to reflect on how we frame these issues.

Non-Indigenous peoples learning from Indigenous peoples

Too often, the rebuilding of infrastructure and economies are considered separate to and above social, cultural and environmental elements of recovery.

By contrast, Indigenous culture and healing approaches emphasise the interconnectedness of all aspects of life.

But for positive and meaningful collaboration — and for others to learn from Indigenous healing approaches — non-Indigenous peoples and institutions must hear what Indigenous people are really saying, and examine their own practices.

This requires more just and equitable approaches to disaster recovery and resilience.

More research in Indigenous disaster recovery is needed, of course, but it’s also important to think carefully about how such research is done.

For Indigenous and non-Indigenous collaborations, it’s appropriate to ask: will the approach address power imbalances between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples?

A more productive collaborative approach can begin with reframing Indigenous communities to illuminate the sources of strength rather than vulnerability. It starts with focusing on systems – rather than people – as problems to be fixed.

Beyond ‘vulnerable’

The language of “vulnerable populations” is used to describe groups of people whose needs are distinct from mainstream populations, such as people with a disability, migrants, children and Indigenous peoples.

But viewing Indigenous peoples as vulnerable masks the inequitable power relationships that produce these same vulnerabilities. It typecasts Indigenous peoples as a problem to be solved and non-Indigenous peoples as benevolent helpers.

The language of vulnerabilities often overlooks or ignores the entrenched marginalisation of Indigenous peoples in areas such as local, state and federal governments, universities and business communities among others.

Vulnerabilities do exist, but they are not inherent characteristics of Indigenous peoples — instead they stem from systems of inequity.

Equally, the many strengths that exist in Indigenous communities are too often overlooked.

Many Indigenous communities can be characterised as possessing close social bonds, shared understandings of history and the ability to withstand extreme events and adjust to new norms.

These characteristics have been identified by community recovery researchers as enabling effective and timely recovery post-disaster.

Much can be learnt from Indigenous healing approaches to incorporate the pursuit of systemic change as an empowering — and necessary — complement to personal and community recovery.

Read more: Strength from perpetual grief: how Aboriginal people experience the bushfire crisis

This article is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. You can read the rest of the series here.

– ref. Unwelcoming and reluctant to help: bushfire recovery hasn’t considered Aboriginal culture — but things are finally starting to change – https://theconversation.com/unwelcoming-and-reluctant-to-help-bushfire-recovery-hasnt-considered-aboriginal-culture-but-things-are-finally-starting-to-change-154954

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

Fifty dollars sounds like a lot. But the increase in the JobSeeker unemployment benefit announced by Prime Minister Morrison on Tuesday is $50 per fortnight, which is just $25 per week, and it will replace the present temporary Coronavirus Supplement of $75 per week which is itself well down on the $275 per week it began at in March last year.

It’s hard to see the increase as other than a cut, especially when coupled with another of the changes which will allow recipients to earn other income of only $75 per week before JobSeeker gets cut, down from the present $150 per week.

It is, as the prime minister said, better than it would have been if things had reverted to back where they were before special Coronavirus provisions, when recipients could earn only $53 per week before having their payment cut.

But it’s not particularly generous. The Age and Sydney Morning Herald are quoting senior government sources as saying the $50 per fortnight increase in the rate was the lowest figure the party believed would be palatable to the public.

Morrison justified the increase of $50 per fortnight rather than $150 (which would have left what’s left of the Coronavirus boost in place) or $100 or any other figure by saying it will bring the payment to

41.2% of the national minimum wage, which puts us back in the realm of where we had been previously

Taking account of taxes paid and superannuation received by minimum wage workers, gives a slightly higher replacement rate of 42.3%, taking it back to roughly where it was at the end of the Howard Government in 2007.

However, there’s no readily-apparent reason why that should be a benchmark. During the life of the Howard government the level of the single payment fell from around 50% of the minimum wage to 42%, meaning what’s proposed will return it to its lowest point relative to other benefits under Howard.

JobSeeker and age pension as a proportion of the minimum wage 1990-2021

Morrison also said the increase was the largest permanent increase in the unemployment benefit since 1986. It’s an increase of 9.7%.

During the Hawke and Keating administrations the payment increased 23% in real terms, during the Whitlam administration it increased 50%. This means that while what’s offered is substantial by the standards of recent decades, it’s less so in the longer run.

But what about the supplements?

Morrison also argued in his press conference that JobSeeker is more adequate than the base rate would suggest because

on top of that, if they’re receiving Commonwealth Rent Assistance, that payment would increase to $760.40; and on top of that, the average value of stand-alone supplements, the energy supplement and so on, is an additional $13.03. So the suggestion that anyone who was on JobSeeker is simply on that payment alone and there aren’t additional supports that are provided is not correct.

It is true that all people on income support receive the energy supplement, but for a single person on JobSeeker the supplement is only $8.80 per fortnight or less than 65 cents a day.

Many people do indeed get rent assistance, but after paying rent they become worse-off rather than better-off.

This is because to get the maximum rate of rent assistance for a single person of $140 per fortnight, that person has to be paying around $310 per fortnight in rent, and if that person is paying more they get no extra help.

Private sector renters are amongst the worst-off recipients of income support.

Read more: Top economists want JobSeeker boosted $100+ per week, tied to wages

Other supplements such as the remote area allowance are indeed available, but are of no help to people who do not live in remote areas and may be inadequate to cover the higher costs involved. Supplements for help with language and literacy and are only paid to people in special educational programmes.

To calculate an average for supplementary payments when different groups receive very different supplements is inherently misleading.

How Australia compares

Net replacement rates measure the proportion of previous in-work income that is maintained after several months of unemployment. They are the benchmark used by the the prime minister to compare benefits to the minimum wage.

Using two months in unemployment as the measuring point (and using the most-recently published 2019 rankings) before the pandemic Australia’s replacement rate was the lowest in the OECD, even after rental assistance was added in.

Unemployment benefit, share of previous income after two months

When the maximum rate of Coronavirus Supplement was briefly in force in 2020, Australia moved to around the OECD average.

The new rate from April 2021 will move Australia from the lowest to the second lowest, ahead of Greece only.

Unemployment benefit, share of previous income, after Australian increase

It should be acknowledged that Australia’s system is based on different principles to many other OECD countries in which workers and their employers make contributions to and withdrawals from unemployment insurance. lso uses replacement rates.

Read more: $50 a fortnight rise in JobSeeker comes with tougher job search requirements

But the difference in the philosophy does not change the brutal reality that when Australian workers lose their job, their incomes fall more than in almost any other high-income country.

Even after what the government has trumpeted as a historic increase, there will be few developed countries in which people will be as worse off after losing work. Any permanent increase is welcome, but there is a long way to go.

– ref. The $50 boost to JobSeeker will take Australia’s payment from the lowest in the OECD to the second-lowest after Greece – https://theconversation.com/the-50-boost-to-jobseeker-will-take-australias-payment-from-the-lowest-in-the-oecd-to-the-second-lowest-after-greece-155739