Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Moran, Senior Associate, Grattan Institute

A Grattan Institute report released today finds Australian governments spent A$34 billion, or 21%, more on transport projects completed since 2001 than they first told taxpayers they would. And as we enter the era of megaprojects in Australia, costs continue to blow out.

Transport projects worth A$5 billion or more in today’s money were almost unheard of ten years ago. Today, as the chart below shows, megaprojects make up the bulk of the work under way across the country.

These megaprojects include WestConnex in Sydney, West Gate Tunnel in Melbourne and Cross River Rail in Brisbane. And this is to say nothing of some enormous projects being planned, such as Melbourne’s Suburban Rail Loop.

We are also hearing calls to add to this bulging pipeline. In June, the transport and infrastructure ministers of all states and territories said they were “clearing the way for an infrastructure-led recovery” from the COVID-19 recession.

Read more: We may live to regret open-slather construction stimulus

Cost overrun risks rise with project size

The Grattan report, The rise of megaprojects: counting the costs, sounds a warning about the risks of this approach. The report uses the Deloitte Access Economics Investment Monitor to look at the final cost of all public road and rail projects worth A$20 million or more and completed since 2001. As the chart below shows, we found bigger projects overran their initial cost estimates more often and by more.

Almost half of the projects with an initial price tag of more than A$1 billion in today’s money had a cost overrun. These projects overran their initial costs by 30% on average. The extra amount spent on some megaprojects was the size of a megaproject itself.

Cost announcements before governments were prepared to commit formally to a project were particularly risky. Only one-third of projects had costs announced prematurely, but these accounted for more than three-quarters of the A$34 billion overrun.

Read more: Missing evidence base for big calls on infrastructure costs us all

When early costings of infrastructure turn out to be too low, it distorts investment planning in three ways:

1. underestimating the costs of transport infrastructure can lead to over-investing in it relative to other spending priorities

2. if governments misunderstand the uncertainty in a project’s cost at the time they commit to it, their decision to invest in that project was made on an incorrect basis

3. because unrealistic cost estimates are more prevalent for larger projects, governments are more likely to over-invest in larger projects.

There’s also a fourth and no less important problem: when unrealistically low cost estimates are announced, the public is misled.

Despite the experience of the past 20 years, the costs of big projects continue to be underestimated. The chart below shows A$24 billion more than first expected will be spent on just six mega megaprojects (that is, projects with an initial cost estimate of A$5 billion or more) now under construction. Overruns on other megaprojects have been reported too.

Read more: Transport promises for election 2019: the good, the bad and the downright ugly

What needs to be done?

With megaproject costs continuing to blow out, governments should take immediate steps to manage better the portfolio of work under way — particularly if they are looking to add to it in the name of economic stimulus.

Each state’s auditor-general should conduct a stocktake of current projects. This would give the public and the government a clear picture of the situation.

Ministers should begin reporting to parliament on a continuous disclosure basis. Any material changes in expected costs, benefits or completion dates of very large projects should be disclosed.

Steps should be taken to put decisions on the incoming batch of projects on a sounder basis, too. When announcing a cost, ministers and government agencies should disclose how advanced the estimate is. If the proposal is at an early stage, they should quote a range of estimates.

Governments should also require their infrastructure advisory bodies to at least assess — if not approve — large proposals before funding is committed.

Looking further ahead, action is needed to stop the pattern of spending billions more than expected on megaprojects. State departments of transport and infrastructure should devote more resources to identifying modest-sized transport infrastructure proposals.

Read more: The PM wants to fast-track mega-projects for pandemic recovery. Here’s why that’s a bad idea

And governments need to start learning from the past. Detailed project data, particularly on expected and actual costs, should be centrally collated in each state.

Post-completion reviews should be mandatory on all large projects. These reviews should be published.

If there is no change in the way infrastructure is conceived and delivered in Australia, then the era of the megaproject will indeed mean megaproblems.

– ref. $34bn and counting – beware cost overruns in an era of megaprojects – https://theconversation.com/34bn-and-counting-beware-cost-overruns-in-an-era-of-megaprojects-149149

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gail Jones, Professor, Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University

This is an edited version of author Gail Jones’ submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the creative industries.

Literary culture carries profound social value. In general terms it is essential to employment, cultural literacy and understanding of community, as well as to Australia’s post-pandemic recovery and growth. It is also radically underfunded and in urgent need of new support.

I am particularly concerned with the low level of investment in literature through state and federal funding agencies compared with other art forms.

The economic benefits

Literature is a mainstay of the creative and cultural industries, which contributed $63.5 billion to the Australian economy in 2016-17. Creative arts employ 645,000 Australians and those numbers were increasing before the pandemic. Literature operates in the economy in many and complicated ways, since writers are “primary producers” of creative content.

Books form an often invisible bedrock of robust resources for the wider economy. They provide creative content in areas such as film, television, theatre and opera; moreover they contribute fundamentally to the educational sector, to libraries, events and what might be called our forms of cultural conversation.

The most conspicuous areas of economic benefit and employment are libraries, universities, schools, festivals, bookshops and publishing.

Indirect benefits, such as to tourism and cross-cultural understanding, are often overlooked in reference to the economic benefits of literature. Our books carry implicit, prestigious reference to a national culture and place; they attract interest, visitors and students and arguably establish a presence of ideas above and beyond more direct mechanisms of cultural exchange.

Cross-cultural exchange and understanding are crucial to the literary industries and of inestimable benefit in “recommending” Australia and its stories.

However, writers’ incomes are disastrously low, $12,900 on average; and COVID-19 has eliminated other forms of supplementary income. It has always been difficult to live as a writer in Australia (which is why most of us have “day jobs”) and it is clear writers are disproportionately disadvantaged. Although essential to the economic benefits of a healthy arts sector overall, writers are less supported by our institutions and infrastructure.

Read more: Five ways to boost Australian writers’ earnings

Total literature funding at the Australia Council has decreased by 44% over the past six years from $9 million in 2013-14 to $5.1 million in 2018-19. The abolition of specific literature programs such as Get Reading, Books Alive and the Book Council has been responsible for much of this decrease.

We need additional government-directed support such as the funding delivered to visual arts through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy ($6.6 million in 2018-19), regional touring delivered through Playing Australia ($7.4 million 2018-19) and the Major Festivals Initiative ($1.5 million 2018-19).

Shaping national identity

The literary culture in Australia is chronically underfunded, but its benefits are persistent, precious and immense. “Social well-being” requires social literacy, a sense of connection to one’s history, community and self: these are generated and nourished through narrative, conversation and reflection.

The literary arts create a sense of pride, community and solidarity. A single library in a country town can offer astonishing opportunities of learning and self-knowledge: how do we calculate value like this?

Read more: Friday essay: the library – humanist ideal, social glue and now, tourism hotspot

As someone who grew up in remote and regional areas, I’m aware of how crucial libraries and book culture are to a sense of connection with the nation. Moreover, reading is an indicator of mental health, especially among young people.

“National identity” also requires reflexive literacy: social understanding and agency derive from reading and writing; a nation that neglects its literary culture risks losing the skills that contribute to creative thinking in other areas — including in industry and innovative manufacturing. Local reading and writing initiatives have had remarkable success in areas like Aboriginal literacy and aged care mental support.

More Australians are reading, writing and attending festival events than ever before. Reading is the second most popular way Australians engage with arts and culture.

Writers’ festivals are flourishing and attendances growing. Libraries remain crucial to our urban and regional communities. It is no overstatement to claim that literature has shaped and reflected our complex national identity.

Australian literature at universities

The formulation of a Creative Economy Taskforce by Arts Minister Paul Fletcher is a positive step in establishing better understanding of this crucial economy. I would draw attention, however, to the lack of literary expertise on the taskforce. The appointment of a publisher or a high-profile Indigenous writer, for example, would give more diversity to the collective voice of our literary community.

The additional appointment of an academic concerned with Australian literature, such as the current director of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, would further enhance the claims of literature.

The education sector will have a role in implementing creative arts initiatives. There has been a deplorable lack of support for Australian literature within the academy.

Under the current wish to renovate the jobs sector through the creative arts there is an opportunity to direct dedicated funds within the education budget to establishing a Chair of Australian Literature in each university (or at least in the Group of Eight).

There is currently one Chair at the University of Western Australia and a privately endowed one at the University of Melbourne. Postgraduate scholarships could also be offered specifically in the area of Australian literary studies.

For a comparatively small outlay in budget terms, such a move would signal direct support for Australian reading, writing and research and would be widely celebrated in the education and library sectors.

‘Embarrassing’

It is embarrassing to discover that some European universities (in my experience Belgium, Germany and Italy, in particular) study more Australian literature than is offered in our own nation.

The case for increased Australia Council funding in the neglected area of literature has already been made. Writers’ incomes are, as attested, direly low and I worry in particular about diminishing funding for new and emerging writers.

An injection of funds into the literature sector of the Australia Council is another efficient and speedy way in which to signal understanding of the fundamental role of literature to our cultural enterprises and economic growth.

Cuts to publishing, festivals, journals, individual writers’ grants and programs generally, have had a disastrous effect on the incomes and opportunities for writers in this nation. Notwithstanding a few highly publicised commercial successes, most writers truly struggle to make ends meet. The “trickle down effects” — from a sustaining grant, say, to a literary journal — have direct economic benefits to writers and therefore to the wider economy.

Read more: Literary magazines are often the first place new authors are published. We can’t lose them

Most writers’ work is not recognised as a “job”; if it were, if there were a definition of “writer” as a category of honourable labour (such as it is, for example, in Germany and France), writers would be eligible for Jobmaker and Jobseeker benefits.

This may be blue-sky thinking, but I look forward to a future in which forms of precarious labour, like writing, are recognised and honoured as legitimate jobs.

Another area that may work well with literature is foreign aid. The government of Canada, for example, donates entire libraries of Canadian literature as part of its aid program. (I’ve seen one installed on the campus of the University of New Delhi.)

This works as a stimulus to the host economy (benefiting publishers and writers) and also the receiving community, for whom access to books and education may be difficult. It also encourages study of the host culture’s writings and has benevolent “soft power” effects of inestimable worth.

‘Literature houses’

The government has indicated physical infrastructure (buildings and so on) will be necessary to the renovation of the domestic economy post-COVID. This is a wonderful opportunity to consider funding “literature houses”, purpose-built sites for readings, writer accommodation for local and overseas residencies, places for book-launches, discussion and the general support of literature.

The Literaturhaus system in Germany, in which all major cities have funded buildings for writer events, and in which, crucially, writers are paid for readings and appearances, is a wonderful success and helps writers’ incomes enormously.

The inclusion of Indigenous, regional, rural and community organisations in proposals for “literature houses” would stimulate local building economies and generate community recognition of Australian literature.

The Regional Australia Institute considers creative arts as a potentially productive area of regional economies. However its 2016 map of Australia has a tiny space allocated to creative industries (situated around Alice Springs and linked to the Indigenous art industry). This strikes me as a radical imbalance and a missed opportunity.

A priority for this inquiry could be support for initiatives in literature, perhaps through existing library or schools infrastructure, to address creatively matters of both rural innovation and disadvantage.

Encouraging workshops in writing, including visiting writers, addressing reading and writing as a creative enterprise for the community as a whole: these could form the basis for an enlivening cultural participation and skills. Dedicated funds in literature for regional, remote and rural communities are urgently required.

Literature, in all its forms, is crucial to our nation — to the imaginations of our children, to the mental health and development of our adolescents, to the adult multicultural community more generally — in affirming identity, purpose and meaning.

– ref. Gail Jones: Australian literature is chronically underfunded — here’s how to help it flourish – https://theconversation.com/gail-jones-australian-literature-is-chronically-underfunded-heres-how-to-help-it-flourish-148906

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

Scott Morrison has lost no time pivoting to the incoming US administration, declaring on Sunday he hopes Joe Biden and his wife Jill will visit Australia for next year’s 70th anniversary of ANZUS.

“This is a profound time, not just for the United States, but for our partnership and the world more broadly,” Morrison told a news conference.

“And I look forward to forging a great partnership in the spirit of the relationships that has always existed between prime ministers of Australia and presidents of the United States.”

Those around Morrison say the government is already familiar with many figures in the Biden firmament, who were players in the Obama years.

Morrison also thanked Donald Trump and his cabinet “with whom we have had a very, very good working relationship over the years of the Trump administration and, of course, that will continue through the transition period.”

Meanwhile, Anthony Albanese retrospectively sought to put a less controversial gloss on his Friday comment, when he said Morrison should contact Trump and convey “Australia’s strong view that democratic processes must be respected”.

On Sunday Albanese said: “What I suggested was that Scott Morrison needed to stand up for democracy. He’s done that in acknowledging the election of President-elect Biden”.

Within Australia political attention is quickly turning to what a Biden administration will mean for the Morrison government’s climate change policies, and how Biden will handle China.

With an activist climate policy a central feature of Biden’s agenda, including a commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 (which Australia has refused to embrace), Australia faces an increased risk of becoming isolated internationally on the issue.

That could have trade and investment implications, something of concern to the business community.

Morrison sought to highlight a common Australian-US commitment to technology.

He said he particularly welcomed campaign comments Biden made “when he showed a lot of similarity to Australia’s views on how technology can be used to address the lower emissions challenge.

“We want to see global emissions fall and it’s not enough for us to meet our commitments,” Morrison said.

“We need to have the transformational technologies that are scalable and affordable for the developing world as well, because that is where all the emissions increases are coming from … in the next 20 years,” he said.

“I believe we will have a very positive discussion about partnerships we can have with the United States about furthering those technological developments that will see a lower emissions future for the world but a stronger economy as well where we don’t say goodbye to jobs,” Morrison said.

Labor will use the Biden win as a springboard to ramp up its attack on the government over climate policy, including in parliament this week.

Albanese said Biden would reject “accounting tricks” like the government’s argument to be allowed to use carryover credits to reach emission reduction targets.

Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull told the ABC the US result gave Morrison the opportunity to pivot on climate policy. Now was the time for him to say, “I don’t have to go on with all of the BS about a gas-led recovery, which is political piffle,” Turnbull said.

Chief of the Australian Industry Group Innes Willox said the Biden administration would place much more emphasis on climate change and energy policy.

“The commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 will encourage other economies to move down this path. We are already seeing significant steps in recent times from other major trading partners such as Japan, South Korea, the UK and the European Union.

“Australia, led by industry and investor action, is already headed this way without making a formal target commitment,” Willox said.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: A Biden presidency would put pressure on Scott Morrison over climate change

Willox said independent Zali Steggall’s climate change bill – with a pathway to a 2050 target – provided an immediate opportunity to move the debate forward. The bill will be introduced on Monday.

“The Bill is non-partisan. 2050 is many changes of government away, but for some industries it’s just a couple of investment cycles,” Willox said. The Steggall bill is receiving considerable business support.

Willox said the other major shift from a Biden administration would be “the opportunity for the US to re-engage with China on trade and broader economic issues.

“Efforts to take the heat out of differences on global trade through a change in tone will be welcomed but there should be no illusion that a Biden administration would seek to markedly soften the US’s stance on key issues,” Willox said.

“The risk for Australia until now has been that we have been caught up as collateral damage in the US-China trade dispute.

“The future risk is that China may seek to substitute Australian exports in key sectors with goods from the US in an effort to reset their economic relationship,” Willox said.

Asked about the prospect of the US rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Morrison said, “I think it would be very early days to speculate on those matters. I would simply say to the United States, the door has always remained open on the TPP. It is open now. It will be open in the future and you are welcome any time.”

– ref. View from The Hill: Morrison urges Biden to visit in 2021, as US result injects new force into Australia’s climate debate – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-morrison-urges-biden-to-visit-in-2021-as-us-result-injects-new-force-into-australias-climate-debate-149715

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Saul Eslake, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Tasmania

Last week, the fifth most senior minister in the Morrison Government, Agriculture Minister and Deputy National Party Leader David Littleproud, threatened the ANZ bank with “every lever at the federal government’s disposal – including the availability of deposit guarantees”.

His concern was an ANZ statement about climate change.

The bank had said that it supported the transition to a net zero emissions economy by 2050, and that as a consequence it would no longer provide banking services for new business customers with “material thermal coal exposures”.

For me, it evoked 18-year old memories of when I was the ANZ bank’s chief economist in the early 2000s.

I had delivered a speech to a conference of accountants in which I’d been critical of the Howard government for its pretence that the goods and services tax wasn’t a federal tax and therefore didn’t need to be included in budget estimates of total tax collections.

After seeing media reports of that speech, the then treasurer Peter Costello phoned the then chief executive of the ANZ John McFarlane threatening (as McFarlane subsequently relayed his words to me) regulatory action which ANZ would not like if I said that sort of thing again.

‘Regulatory action ANZ would not like’

Costello also had his then press secretary fax (it was 2002) a press report of my remarks to the then Chairman of ANZ, Charles Goode, with the offending passage circled.

I was, frankly, astonished, that the third most important minister in the government at that time, someone who by his own account was single-handedly returning the budget to surplus, promoting wide-ranging tax reform and reversing a long-term decline in Australia’s birth rate, would have the time to ring the head of one of Australia’s big four banks to complain about something its chief economist had said on an arcane topic to an obscure conference.

Read more: The art of the leak: how the budget is strategically doled out for maximum effect

And I was appalled that any Australian treasurer would be willing to use the regulatory powers granted to him to help ensure the stability of the financial system to (at the very least) silence someone who’d had the temerity to question the accounting treatment of a tax measure.

To their very great credit, neither the chief executive John McFarlane nor the chairman Charles Goode sought to take any disciplinary actions against me.

A delicate relationship

Goode sought an assurance that there was nothing personal in what I’d said (there wasn’t) and reminded me that I should not create the impression that ANZ was aligned with any side of politics.

McFarlane indicated that it was important that the ANZ “got on well” with the man who was (in his words) “likely to be the next prime minister”, and asked me to ring Costello up and “smooth things over”, and to avoid commenting on that particular topic again.

In accordance with these instructions I rang the treasurer’s office, but he refused to take the call (so I was told).

I scrupulously avoided such comments from then on.

When I declined an invitation from a journalist to comment on a subsequent government decision to fiddle with the timing of the Reserve Bank dividend to improve the 2004-05 budget position at the expense of the 2003-04 one, I received a note from McFarlane thanking me “for taking the greater good of ANZ and an easier life for me into account”.

A more ominous threat

Minister Littleproud’s threat to the ANZ’s current chief executive Shayne Elliott is more sinister.

Costello was trying to silence what could never have been more than a mere irritant.

Littleproud is seeking to prevent one of Australia’s leading banks from making a conscious, ethically-based decision to bring its lending practices into line with the goal of reducing Australia’s carbon emissions.

He is threatening to withdraw from its deposit customers the protection provided by Australia’s deposit insurance scheme – presumably in the hope that those customers would take their deposits to another financial institution.

It’s an odd approach for a member of a government that says it believes in a “vibrant, productive, free enterprise system”.

Such a free enterprise system would, presumably, be one in which privately-owned enterprises were free to decide who they did business with.

Read more: Saving for retirement gives you power, and ethical responsibilities

Instead Littleproud seems to believe (as perhaps does the government of which he is a part, since no-one more senior has sought to “clarify” his remarks), that the government should decide who gets loan funds, and the circumstances under which they get them.

Free enterprise is only as free as the government allows it to be.

– ref. From coal to criticism, this isn’t the first time the Coalition has tried to heavy the ANZ – https://theconversation.com/from-coal-to-criticism-this-isnt-the-first-time-the-coalition-has-tried-to-heavy-the-anz-149315

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

Pennsylvania and Nevada were today called for Joe Biden, taking him to 279 Electoral Votes, nine more than the 270 required to win. Biden is now the US president-elect, defeating an incumbent president for the first time since 1992.

Donald Trump has won 214 electoral votes. He is very likely to win North Carolina and Alaska. In Georgia, Biden leads by over 9,000 votes or 0.2%, with virtually all votes counted. In Arizona, Biden leads by under 19,000 votes or 0.6%.

If Biden holds his current leads in Georgia and Arizona, he will win the Electoral College by a 306 to 232 margin. That’s the exact margin by which Trump won the 2016 election, ignoring “faithless” electors.

On election night, Trump was well ahead in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. This occurred because election day votes were strongly Republican, and much of the mail-in votes in those states had not been counted. With the inclusion of mail-ins, Biden won Wisconsin by 0.6% and Michigan by 2.6%.

Pennsylvania took longer to process its mail, but Biden’s lead there will expand from its current 37,000 or 0.6%. Virtually all votes needed to be counted in Georgia for Biden to move ahead.

The late counting trend has been different in Arizona, in which Biden’s large lead on election night induced Fox News and the AP to prematurely call for him. In Arizona, the early mail, which was counted on election night, was good for Biden, but the later mail has been good for Trump. This pattern has normally been reversed in Arizona.

Cook Political Report analyst Dave Wasserman has a graphic tracking the national popular vote. Biden currently leads Trump by 50.7% to 47.6%, and that margin will expand further owing to there being far more vote remaining to be counted in Democratic strongholds like California and New York. The total number of votes cast is already up over 9% from 2016.

While the polls were biased against Trump both nationally and in key states, there was a large gap between the popular vote and the Electoral College “tipping-point” state, as they predicted. Wisconsin, which Biden won by just 0.6%, is likely to be the tipping-point state, with Biden’s lead likely to grow in Pennsylvania but drop in Arizona.

If Biden wins the national popular vote by four to five points, Wisconsin would be 3.5 to 4.5 points better for Trump than the overall popular vote.

While Trump outperformed his polls, the cause was unlikely to be shy Trump voters, as Trump under-performed Republican candidates for the House and Senate. CNN analyst Harry Enten says Republican House candidates are leading overall in Pennsylvania by two points. The small portion of the electorate that voted for Biden but Republicans in Congress made the difference.

The final FiveThirtyEight forecast gave Trump a 10% chance to win. Analyst Nate Silver wrote that in 2016, Trump was just a “normal polling error” from winning, but he needed a bigger error in 2020. In the end, Biden’s polling lead was large enough to survive the errors that occurred.

In the Senate, Republicans are tied 48-48 with Democrats in called races, but Republicans are very likely to win the final two uncalled races in Alaska and North Carolina. Democrats would need to win both Georgia Senate runoffs on January 5 to tie it 50-50, and allow Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to break the tie.

In the House, Democrats lead Republicans by 215 to 196 with 24 races uncalled. Republicans have so far made a five-seat net gain from the 2018 results.

– ref. Joe Biden wins US presidential election as mail-in votes turn key states around – https://theconversation.com/joe-biden-wins-us-presidential-election-as-mail-in-votes-turn-key-states-around-149700

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jared Mondschein, Senior Advisor, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

A timeless tradition in political journalism is trying to find a narrative that explains an electoral outcome.

A widely accepted narrative to explain Barack Obama’s win over John McCain in 2008 was that Americans wanted to embrace the “change” candidate who appeared the most dissimilar to then-President George W Bush. The narrative four years later in 2012 was that Republican Mitt Romney was too “elite” to resonate with American voters, and Obama was returned. Then in 2016, it was that Hillary Clinton was so confident of becoming president, she overlooked “Middle America”.

The accuracy of these widely accepted narratives in explaining electoral victories is fiercely debated. So, too, will be many of the narratives for Joe Biden’s election win to become the 46th president of the United States.

One narrative for this election may be that Biden ran a campaign that was unspectacular, when unspectacular was exactly what Americans wanted after four years of endless spectacles. Perhaps Americans wanted more conventionality after an exceedingly unconventional president.

Another potential narrative may be the death toll of nearly a quarter of a million Americans from the coronavirus pandemic was simply too overwhelming for President Donald Trump to overcome. When a majority of Americans blame the US government for the coronavirus situation in the country now seeing record numbers of infections each day, it’s not hard to see why they would want to change course.

Yet perhaps the most lasting narrative of this election is how fearful, uncertain, and polarised Americans are. Although this is not novel in modern American history, the ever-increasing reach and volume of this sentiment certainly is.

Read more: ‘America First’ is no more, but can president-elect Biden fix the US reputation abroad?

Passion, polarisation – and guns

In receiving more than 70 million votes, more Americans voted for Trump in this election than any other candidate in history – except for Biden, who earned more than 74 million votes. (Both of these totals will likely increase as further ballots are counted.) There’s no denying increased voter participation is an encouraging sign for American democracy, yet some of the passions fuelling that turnout are worrying.

Recent polling found a majority of Americans unwilling to agree the other side’s electoral victory in the presidential election should be accepted.

Americans recognise this in the other side too: only 16% of Trump voters said Democrats would accept a Trump re-election; 26% of Biden supporters said Republicans would accept a Biden win.

Alarmingly, other polling found around a third of Americans believed violence could be justified in support of their political parties’ goals, while 21% of those with a strong political affiliation were “quite willing to endorse violence if the other party wins the presidency”.

With more than three quarters of Americans saying they expected violence in the aftermath of the election, a record number of Americans in 2020 decided to arm themselves.

For more than a decade, the United States has had more guns than people. But 2020 has already broken records for the number of gun sales. This was often a partisan trend in previous years – Americans who leaned Republican were more than twice as likely to own a gun as those who leaned Democratic – yet there are some indications that in 2020, increased gun ownership became bipartisan.

Just last month, the Trump administration’s own Department of Homeland Security – an organisation set up in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 terror attacks – said it was Americans, specifically violent white supremacists, who posed the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland”.

Amid reports of a foiled plot to attack a vote-counting centre in Philadelphia and continued inflammatory rhetoric, there is little question as to whether violence in the aftermath of this election is likely.

So what happens now?

Trump will remain president for another 73 days, as a “lame duck” president. Biden will be inaugurated on January 20 2021.

So far, Trump has refused to concede defeat – in fact, he in insisting he won without offering any evidence of it – and has launched a series of legal challenges to the outcome. Many of those challenges have already been dismissed.

Simultaneous to his ceaseless battles over the integrity of his electoral loss, Trump will likely face extensive lobbying for presidential pardons – a unique privilege given to the president by the constitution “to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States”.

Conventional presidents have traditionally been concerned about how history will perceive their pardons. Trump is certainly not conventional, having used and considered using pardons for much of his presidency.

Trump will eventually leave the White House. But it is hard to see his loyal base leaving him anytime soon. Like so many other norms, Trump will be unlikely to adhere to the norm that former US presidents retire from political life after leaving the White House.

The fact Trump is still eligible to run for another term of office may allow him to follow in the footsteps of President Grover Cleveland, who was ousted from the White House by Benjamin Harrison in 1888, but four years later, defeated Harrison and took back the presidency.

While some Republican leaders are distancing themselves from the president, the fact Trump still enjoys a 95% approval rating among Republicans means he is undeniably an early favourite for the 2024 Republican nominee for president.

Lastly, Biden will assume the presidency facing multiple crises, ranging from a pandemic and economic downturn to overwhelming levels of fear, uncertainty, and polarisation. Should the US Senate remain Republican-controlled, he will need to navigate these crises in the face of a divided government. In this scenario, his former Republican colleagues in the senate would have final approval of his cabinet and legislative agenda.

From expanding NATO to the 2009 economic stimulus bill, Biden comes to the White House with arguably more bipartisan achievements than any president of the last half century. The question is whether he will overcome the widely-accepted narrative of a dangerously divided America.

Read more: Even if Biden has a likely win, leading a deeply divided nation will be difficult

– ref. Joe Biden wins the election, and now has to fight the one thing Americans agree on: the nation’s deep division – https://theconversation.com/joe-biden-wins-the-election-and-now-has-to-fight-the-one-thing-americans-agree-on-the-nations-deep-division-148106

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

In the United States, democratic norms are breaking down.

The president, Donald Trump, baselessly claimed at a White House press conference on Friday morning, Australian time, that the presidential election has been stolen from him by fraudulent and corrupt electoral processes.

This confronted the television networks, whose job is to report the news, with an acute dilemma.

In an already volatile political atmosphere, do they go on reporting these lies, laced with an undertone of veiled incitement to violence? Or do they cut away on the grounds that by continuing to broadcast this stuff, they are helping to propagate lies and perhaps to oxygenate a threat to the civil peace?

Major networks tune out

Many of the major networks — MSNBC, NBC News, CNBC, CBS News and ABC News — decided to cut away. So did National Public Radio.

MSNBC presenter Brian Williams said of Trump’s speech:

It was not rooted in reality and at this point, where our country is, it’s dangerous.

CNBC presenter, Shepard Smith, said the network was not going to allow it to keep going because what Trump was saying was not true.

CNN and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News broadcast Trump’s entire press conference but immediately afterwards challenged what he said. CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale said it had been the most “dishonest” speech Trump had ever given, with anchor Jake Tapper saying Trump’s statements were “pathetic” and “a feast of falsehoods”.

Fox’s host Martha MacCallum said the supposed evidence and proof of election misconduct would need to be produced.

Even Murdoch’s New York Post, which had endorsed Trump’s re-election, accused him of making “baseless” election fraud claims, quoting a Republican Congressman as saying they were “insane”.

The Washington Post carried two news stories on its front page, clearly calling out Trump’s lies: “Falsehood upon falsehood”; “A speech of historic dishonesty”.

A serious decision to silence the President

But what of the networks’ decision to cut away?

Silencing a public official in the course of his official duties is a very serious abrogation of the media’s duty in a democracy.

But so is allowing the airwaves to be used in such a way as to arouse fears for public confidence in the democratic process and — as MSNBC’s Williams argued — even public safety.

On the run, many of the big networks prioritised public confidence in the democratic process, and public safety, over the reporting of the president’s words.

It is a rare circumstance in any democratic society that the media are placed in the position of having to shoulder such a heavy burden of responsibility.

It is most unlikely that once the present crisis is over, assuming Democrat candidate Joe Biden wins, the American media will find themselves in this position again.

Even so, a Rubicon has been crossed. A president of the United States, a publicly elected official, has been silenced by significant elements of the professional mass media in the course of his public duties.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: A Biden presidency would put pressure on Scott Morrison over climate change

This was done principally on the grounds he was lying to the people in circumstances where there was a foreseeable risk of serious harm to the body politic, and there was no practicable way to reduce the risk.

Is that a standard the media is prepared to set for the future? If so, it would be giving itself a power that goes well beyond anything the media has claimed for itself up till now.

Journalists need to keep their nerve

In considering this, two questions arise.

What if all media outlets had adopted this course? No one except those at the White House press conference would have known the whole of what Trump said, seen the context and observed the demeanour with which he said it.

Would it have been enough to do as CNN and Fox did — report the speech and then repudiate it?

Read more: 5 types of misinformation to watch out for while ballots are being counted – and after

An answer to that would be: the lies were coming so thick and fast, and were so damaging to the public interest, that it would have been impossible to set the record straight in anything like real time.

Real-time fact-checking is a relatively new development, and a welcome one. But its feasibility should not be a criterion for deciding whether to publish breaking news, unless there is doubt about whether the breaking news is actually happening.

The networks that cut away doubtless acted in good faith to do right by the country. Trump’s speech was shocking and irresponsible.

However, American democracy is in crisis. At this time, above all, the public needs the institution of the fourth estate to keep its nerve and a clear head.

A primary norm of journalism is to inform the public. That certainly means being fair and accurate. But if the news contains lies, the norm is to publish and then call out the lying and set the record straight as soon as possible.

The networks need to explain to their audiences their reasoning behind the decision to cut away, and the media as a whole need to realise that if the norms of journalism break down, that just adds to the tragic chaos into which their country has descended.

– ref. To stay or cut away? As Trump makes baseless claims, TV networks are faced with a serious dilemma – https://theconversation.com/to-stay-or-cut-away-as-trump-makes-baseless-claims-tv-networks-are-faced-with-a-serious-dilemma-149628

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristen Rundle, Professor of Law, University of Melbourne

The division of the findings of the Victorian COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry into two – the interim report published today, with a final report due December 21 – is aimed at making a timely contribution to the redesign of the quarantine systems that will remain key to Australia’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic for some time to come.

With a view to the expected influx of returnees at Christmas, the national cabinet is due to discuss necessary changes later this month. Justice Jennifer Coate’s clear recommendations for how to devise and operate a quarantine system will surely be pivotal to its deliberations.

Key recommendations

Coate’s primary message is that quarantine – in whatever form it might take – is a public health operation. So any future quarantine system needs to be designed in a manner that ensures the centrality of this public health imperative.

We must wait until the final report to find out what Coate has to say on the larger governance and accountability questions surrounding “the decision” to contract out the front line of Victoria’s hotel quarantine operation to private security provision. However, her interim report already tells us a lot – if indirectly.

The report states it “is clear from the evidence to date” that the majority of those involved in the hotel quarantine program who contracted the virus were:

private security personnel engaged by way of contracting arrangements that carried with them a range of complexities.

It is therefore unsurprising that the issue of the appropriateness of contracting-out is the elephant in the room across a number of its key recommendations.

In particular, the recommendations record that the expertise of those involved in future quarantine operations will be crucial. Moreover, every effort should be made to ensure people working at quarantine facilities are “salaried employees” who are “not working in other forms of employment”.

It takes little effort to surmise that contracted-out service delivery is unlikely to meet any of these demands.

As I have explained elsewhere, to contract out a statutory function in whole or in part requires that it be translated into a “service” that private sector providers are capable of delivering.

In the Victorian case, this meant the front line of the hotel quarantine operation was performed pursuant to an “observe and report” security services contract. It was carried out by an entirely casualised workforce with little infection-control training and no lawful powers of enforcement. Many or most of them worked in other jobs at the same time.

Read more: Melbourne’s hotel quarantine bungle is disappointing but not surprising. It was overseen by a flawed security industry

Coate also recommended that, alongside the “embedded” presence of expert infection-control personnel, a 24/7 police presence be established at every facility-based quarantine operation. This clearly points to the failure of contracting-out from an enforcement perspective as well.

So, by implication or otherwise, the interim report confirms that too little thought was given to whether the contracted service could meet the dual public health and detention demands of the function at issue.

Coate’s conclusions on how a facility-based quarantine program should work make the multiple dimensions of this mismatch plain.

Where to from here?

The final report of the inquiry may well prove to be the most sustained critique of contracting-out, from the perspective of public expectations of government action, that Australia has yet seen. This would be a welcome shift from what has prevailed so far, with much more effort dedicated to refining and expanding the practice than to challenging it.

As for where the interim report fits with the “whodunnit” exercise that has dominated so much of the interest in the inquiry’s work so far, Coate makes clear we must wait until the final report to find out more. Whether Victoria ended up with private security at the front line of its hotel quarantine program as a result of a “decision” by one or more individuals, or (as counsel assisting Rachel Ellyard described it) a “creeping assumption that became a reality”, is something that ultimately might never be clear.

Either way, the question of accountability will remain. Providing a clear answer to it stands to be every bit as complicated as it has been so far.

The inquiry, which found the bungled scheme cost the state $195 million, has shown the relationship between contracting-out and political accountability is incoherent. Substantial reform in both directions is needed to make it otherwise. Coate’s final report will hopefully guide that much-needed conversation.

But, again, we can already take a lot from the interim report about where – minimally – we need to be. Any future Victorian quarantine program must be operated “by one cabinet-approved department”, in accordance with a “clear line of command vesting ultimate responsibility in the approved department and Minister”.

That department must in turn be “the sole agency responsible for any necessary contracts”. Among other things, its responsible minister must also ensure senior members of its governance structure “maintain records […] of all decisions reached”.

Such is the vision for the future. But it also highlights why it is so important not to lose sight of the “why” questions when the issue of accountability for what actually happened in Victoria’s disastrous hotel quarantine program is again upon us.

If the front line of the hotel quarantine system was simply too important a responsibility to be outsourced, it is time to get to the bottom of why this was the case, and why it might also be the case for other high-stakes government functions that carry serious consequences for public health or safety.

Providing sensible answers to those questions needs to be the goal. But what matters above all else is that we actually start asking them.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Premiers facing elections play hardball with hard borders

This piece was co-published with the University of Melbourne’s Pursuit.

– ref. Hotel quarantine interim report recommends changes but accountability questions remain – https://theconversation.com/hotel-quarantine-interim-report-recommends-changes-but-accountability-questions-remain-147094

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

Mining magnate Clive Palmer has lost his challenge to the closure of the Western Australian border in response to COVID-19. Palmer has also been ordered to pay costs.

While it is clear from the High Court’s order in Palmer v Western Australia that Palmer lost, it remains unclear whether the border closure was and remains valid.

Read more: WA border challenge: why states, not courts, need to make the hard calls during health emergencies

The reason for the lack of clarity is because the High Court has not yet handed down its reasons, which may take weeks or months. In the meantime, all we have is its orders – and they are phrased in a rather peculiar and limited way.

What did the court decide?

The High Court was asked whether WA’s Emergency Management Act or its Quarantine (Closing the Border) Directions were invalid because they breached the Constitution by stopping people from crossing the state’s border.

Section 92 of the Constitution says the movement of people among the states shall be “absolutely free”. But the High Court has previously accepted it can be limited if it is reasonably necessary to achieve another legitimate end, such as the protection of public health.

In the Palmer case, the High Court gave a very limited answer to the questions it was asked. In relation to the Emergency Management Act it said that “on their proper construction”, sections 56 and 67,

in their application to an emergency constituted by the occurrence of a hazard in the nature of a plague or epidemic comply with the constitutional limitation of section 92 of the Constitution.

Both these sections are quite general in nature. Section 56 says the minister can declare a state of emergency in the whole of the state or a part of it. There is nothing on obvious that would appear to offend section 92 of the Constitution in each of its limbs.

Section 67 says during a state of emergency, certain officers may issue directions that prohibit the movement of persons within, into or out of an emergency area. On the face of it, it is not directed at the movement of people across state borders. However, if a state of emergency were issued for the entire state under section 56, then section 67 would potentially allow a direction to be made that would prevent people from entering or leaving WA.

The High Court’s qualification in the phrase “on their proper construction” is therefore important. This raises the question of how the High Court has interpreted section 67 and whether it has restricted its interpretation in a manner that accommodates section 92 of the Constitution. We will have to wait for the High Court’s reasons to learn this.

The court’s order in relation to the Quarantine Directions is more unusual. It says the exercise of this power under clauses 4 and 5 of the directions “does not raise a constitutional question”. This refers to an issue raised during the hearing. The argument, initially raised by Victoria, was that the validity of a direction made under a power conferred by an act will depend on whether the direction falls within the scope of that power in the act.

Read more: States are shutting their borders to stop coronavirus. Is that actually allowed?

If the section in the act that confers the power (in this case, section 67 of the Emergency Management Act) is constitutionally valid, then any direction that falls within that power will be valid too.

The real question, then, is whether the direction falls within the scope of the legislative power. This is not a constitutional question, but a question of administrative law. The High Court then said in its order that it had not been asked this question, so it did not need to answer it.

On the basis of this technicality, the High Court (or at least a majority of the Justices) concluded it was not necessary to address whether the actual directions that stop people going in or out of Western Australia were valid.

Does this mean more litigation?

As this case does not seem to have resolved whether or not the directions are valid, will there be more litigation? It is possible someone could challenge the directions, arguing this time that they do not fall within the scope of the authorising section in the legislation.

But such litigation would have to start from square one and so would take some time to determine. As it would not be a constitutional matter, it might have to be decided by a lower court first.

Further, before initiating any such litigation, it would be important to read the High Court’s reasons, which may not be produced for some time. Those reasons will tell us about the scope of the legislative provision, which will be essential to know before any challenge to the directions made under it could proceed.

Hopefully, by the time we get to that point, there will be no need for such litigation because no such directions will exist, if the pandemic continues to ease in Australia.

Read more: How Clive Palmer could challenge the act designed to stop him getting $30 billion

But it does mean we may be left with inadequate guidance about such matters for the future, which would be unfortunate given the cost and time taken with this litigation. Perhaps the court’s reasoning about the interpretation of section 67 of the Emergency Management Act will give us sufficient understanding about the operation of section 92 of the Constitution and the tests applicable to border closures in a pandemic. But that remains to be seen.

Victorian lockdown challenge also rejected

In a busy day for the High Court on Friday, it also threw out hotelier Julian Gerner’s challenge to Melbourne’s lockdown laws.

Read more: Can a High Court challenge of Melbourne’s lockdown succeed? Here’s what the Constitution says

Gerner’s challenge, to be successful, would have required the High Court to find an implied freedom of movement in the Constitution.

This would have opened up all sorts of other laws to challenge and been condemned by conservatives as judicial activism. The court was so unimpressed by the argument that it unanimously rejected it on the spot, without even needing to hear Victoria’s response.

The end of the case was swift and brutal. It is unlikely this point will be raised again before the court.

– ref. Clive Palmer just lost his WA border challenge — but the legality of state closures is still uncertain – https://theconversation.com/clive-palmer-just-lost-his-wa-border-challenge-but-the-legality-of-state-closures-is-still-uncertain-149627

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Minchin, Executive Editor

The article was updated on Friday November 6, 2020, to reflect the final official figures released by the Electoral Commission.

Labour is celebrating a landslide victory tonight after winning 49% of the vote (confirmed as 50% after special votes were counted). The result means Labour could govern alone — the first time this has happened since New Zealand introduced a mixed member proportional (MMP) electoral system in 1993.

In her victory speech, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the result gave Labour “the mandate to accelerate our [COVID-19] response and our recovery. And tomorrow we start”.

Earlier, National Party leader Judith Collins, whose party only won 26.8% of the vote (reduced to 25.6% in the final count), promised to be a “robust opposition” and “hold the government to account for failed promises”.

You can read the analysis of the results by our five political experts here.

In the new parliament, Labour will have 65 seats — four more than the 61 needed to form government. National has 33, the Green Party ten, ACT ten and the Māori Party is expected to return to parliament with one seat (later increased to two seats after special votes increased the party vote to 1.2%).

The numbers are a reversal of the 2017 results, when Labour polled 36.9%, National had 44.4% of the vote and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters became the kingmaker.

New Zealanders had to wait almost a month before Peters announced he would form a coalition with the Labour Party, becoming deputy prime minister. The Green Party joined the coalition in a confidence and supply arrangement.

In this election, NZ First was ousted from parliament, after the party failed to reach the 5% threshold and neither of its candidates managed to win an electorate seat.

Five parties gained seats in parliament. The Māori Party is expected to win one of seven Māori electorate seats and return to parliament even though it only achieved 1% of the party vote (1.2% in the final count). None of the other minor parties won electorate seats or reached the 5% party vote threshold.

Compared to previous elections, record numbers of New Zealanders voted early in 2020. A day before the election, almost 2 million people had already cast their vote.

Read more:
NZ election 2020: how might record advance voting numbers influence the final outcome?

Results of the referendums

People also voted on two referendums: whether the End of Life Choice Act 2019 should come into force and whether the recreational use of cannabis should become legal.

The results for those are now finalised. Almost two thirds of the vote was in support of the introduction of the Right to Life legislation.

The vote for legalising the recreational use of cannabis was much closer but the majority favoured the No decision.

2017 election results

In 2017, the National Party won 44.4% of the votes and on election night, then prime minister Bill English celebrated victory.

But NZ First won 7.5% and held the balance of power. It was the third time for NZ First leader Winston Peters to become the veto player in the government-formation process.

After almost four weeks of negotiations, he opted to go into coalition with Labour, with the Green Party in a confidence and supply role. For the first time under New Zealand’s MMP electoral system, the new government was not led by the party that had won the largest number of seats.

Jacinda Ardern became prime minister in an extraordinary period in New Zealand’s political history. Just three months earlier, Ardern had been the deputy leader of a Labour Party polling in minor party territory.

– ref. New Zealand’s new parliament turns red: final 2020 election results at a glance – https://theconversation.com/new-zealands-new-parliament-turns-red-final-2020-election-results-at-a-glance-147757

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Perkins, Director, Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health and Professor of Rural Health Research, University of Newcastle

Among the Bushfire Royal Commission’s 80 recommendations, released last week, was a call to prioritise mental health support during and after natural disasters.

The Australian Medical Association this week called on the federal government to implement the recommendations to lessen the health impacts of future disasters, noting the ongoing mental health fallout from the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires.

The Royal Commission’s report comes as Australia heads into a bushfire season during a pandemic. Some farmers have this year lost their crops due to unseasonal rain and hail, as many rural communities anticipate further “big weather” events. Certain local economies, which are reliant on exports like wine and barley, are concerned about strained trade relations with China.

The combined effects of these adverse events is taking a toll on the health and well-being of rural people.

A year of cumulative stress

Australian Bureau of Statistics released last month showed rural suicide rates are much higher than those in the big cities.

The causes of psychological stress for rural people are many and varied, depending on who you are and where you live. Many are facing environmental and weather events at increasing frequency and intensity. Some of these events happen rapidly, such as fire and floods, whereas others are long-lasting and uncertain, like drought.

The effects of these events include direct losses such as injury and death, as well as loss of livestock and buildings. Indirect losses include declines in businesses and employment, and the disruption of social fabric when friends or family leave town.

Recovery or adaptation can take many years.

Read more: Distress, depression and drug use: young people fear for their future after the bushfires

These stresses of course come in addition to life’s normal challenges likes illness, bereavement and relationship breakdown.

For rural people, COVID has likely compounded these cumulative stresses and contributed to higher levels of trauma, mental ill-health and in some cases, suicidal behaviour.

Band-aid policies

In most rural communities, access to mental health services is relatively poor.

There’s longstanding evidence Medicare Benefits Scheme expenditure for mental health services is skewed towards metropolitan services.

State expenditure is focused on hospital services and care for those with high and complex needs. Consequently, many rural people with mild to moderate needs are under-served.

Traditionally, governments respond to crises reactively and by treating these events as short-term and disconnected. But this isn’t the experience of rural people.

Each adverse event is accompanied by (usually short-term) funding announcements by governments and agencies for new Headspace centres, expanded telephone helplines, websites, counsellors, or coordinators in the most affected areas.

Sometimes there’s overlap of effort across different government departments, federal and state jurisdictions or from different disaster responses, potentially wasting resources.

For example, in NSW, the longstanding drought has recently broken. But the social and economic recovery will take longer — possibly up to five years with consistent rain as it did following the Millennium drought.

Counsellors were funded to support rural residents during the drought in 2018, with more counsellors funded in response to the bushfires. And now additional services are being offered due to COVID.

While the extra support is welcome, the fragmentation and temporary nature of the funding means rural people may not know what services are available, and accessing services becomes confusing.

What’s more, with short-term contracts, it may be the same staff moving between roles and agencies, therefore not actually adding new staff to support local rural communities. This funding instability makes it difficult to retain a stable rural mental health workforce.

Read more: Budget funding for Beyond Blue and Headspace is welcome. But it may not help those who need it most

What can be done?

In the first instance, policymakers need to ask people living in rural areas what they need and involve them in the process of developing appropriate and accessible services.

Second, we need to adopt a systemic approach that examines the full range of adverse events that affect the mental health and well-being of individuals, families and communities. This means going beyond treating illness, to addressing environmental, economic, social and personal factors.

As part of this, we need people on the ground to support communities through preparedness activities such as educating people about mental health and how to access services, while stepping into disaster response and recovery as needed. Continuity and building on what already exists locally is key.

The Rural Fire Service is a good example of such a structure. It has a clear role in disaster response, but also works to prepare communities between disasters (for example, by conducting back-burning and educating about bushfire plans).

Localised support is important because preparedness and response look very different depending on where you live in rural Australia. For example, Lismore on the northern NSW coast experiences regular flooding, whereas Broken Hill in the state’s far west contends with more frequent drought, and fierce dust storms.

Third, to fully understand and plan for the diversity of rural communities, we need sophisticated data planning, collection and analysis systems. Beyond health data, we need to look at the social, economic, environmental factors which all contribute to mental health and the way people access care.

If we can do this well, local planning will become easier, more transparent and tailored to need.

Finally, rural communities need support to develop local leadership, so they’re empowered to lead local responses. This is unlikely to succeed with short-term band-aid solutions, but rather with long-term investment and strategic policy to build and sustain capacity to cope with adversity.

Read more: Collective trauma is real, and could hamper Australian communities’ bushfire recovery

– ref. Bushfires, drought, COVID: why rural Australians’ mental health is taking a battering – https://theconversation.com/bushfires-drought-covid-why-rural-australians-mental-health-is-taking-a-battering-148724

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

University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Assistant Professor Caroline Fisher discuss the week in politics.

This week the pair discuss the outcome of the Queensland election, the likely outcome and repercussions of the US election, as well as Christine Holgate’s resignation as CEO of Australia post, and the government’s securing of additional possible vaccination distribution agreements.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the Queensland election, the US election, and the reserve bank – https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-the-queensland-election-the-us-election-and-the-reserve-bank-149625

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By DB Subedi, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of New England

Over 37 million Myanmar citizens, including 5 million first-time voters, will go to the polls on November 8.

The election represents a litmus test for the popularity of National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was placed under a house arrest by the military for about 15 years intermittently between 1989 and 2010.

Much is at stake in this election, but the role of the military still looms large in Myanmar politics.

The constitutional change needed to further democratise Myanmar is impossible without the military’s consent, so achieving major political transformation through the election alone seems unlikely.

Read more: Rohingya genocide case: why it will be hard for Myanmar to comply with ICJ’s orders

The recent past

In 2011, after about five decades of military rule, the military nominally handed power to the government of President Thein Sein and his Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

Soon after, in the 2015 election, Suu Kyi’s NLD party won a landslide victory. She is now Myanmar’s incumbent state counsellor (equivalent to prime minister) but her international standing has taken a hit in recent years.

Critics accuse her of allowing widespread abuse of minority Rohingyas. Many Rohingya villages were burned down during a military crackdown in 2016 and 2017. Over 900,000 Rohingya — including more than 400,000 children — fled to Bangladesh and a large number of Rohingya refugees are dispersed across Southeast Asia.

Meanwhile, armed conflicts between ethnic armed organisations and the military continue, especially in the Rakhine state and the northern borderlands, and Myanmar’s transition to democracy is faltering.

New parties and political alliances

Suu Kyi’s NLD and its main rival, the USDP, are the two largest political parties vying for a majority of seats.

With its origin in the bloody 1988 anti-government uprising, the NLD has long fought for democracy and freedom.

The USDP (currently chaired by Than Htay), on the other hand, was formally registered in June 2010 with tacit support from the military. However, the USDP’s recent decision not to favour retired military generals as candidates indicates its ties with the military are weakening.

Many smaller parties and alliances are emerging and some, such as the People’s Party and the United Political Parties Alliance (UPPA), are likely to divide NLD’s traditional voters.

Two new political parties, the Union Betterment Party and the Democratic Party of National Politics, both formed by ex-military generals, will likely split the military sympathisers and cut into the USDP’s traditional voter base.

In states such as Kachin, Shan, Rakhine, Mon, Chin and Karen, many ethnic parties have recently merged to form a united front. They aim to win a majority in state parliaments and claim most of the national parliament seats in their states. These mergers may also weaken the NLD’s position; it had performed well in ethnic majority states in 2015.

Despite some notable economic and policy reforms, many ethnic parties are dissatisfied with the NLD government for the slow pace of transition from the military rule.

As the COVID-19 pandemic restricts freedom of movement, the candidates will be forced to campaign largely through social media and traditional media, which might work in the favour of larger and better-resourced parties. Not all parties and candidates have the finances to run online campaigns.

Big issues driving the voters

The election campaign will bring to light complex issues around Myanmar’s rich ethnic diversity: the continuation of armed conflict, demand from ethnic minorities for federalism, devolution of state power and better economic opportunities.

Despite the NLD’s promise of greater freedom and civil liberties, Suu Kyi’s government has prosecuted more journalists, social media users and human rights activists than the previous government.

Myanmar’s economic and infrastructure development has been limited and, as my research argues, has been manipulated for political gain by powerful interest groups.

This has helped radicalise a section of Buddhist extremists. The middle class and rural poor haven’t benefited greatly from development policies; more than 24% of people still live below the national poverty line.

Deep reforms for a federal system and equitable economic development policies are needed to bring real progress toward peace between ethnic armed groups and the government. The way land ownership and natural resources are managed would need to be overhauled. Such reforms, however, are constrained by provisions in Myanmar’s constitution that ensure state power is shared with the military.

The constitution allows the military to occupy 25% of parliamentary seats. Only serving military officers can lead the three most powerful ministries – defence, home affairs and border affairs. This makes the military a very powerful political institution, which effectively controls the peace process and the direction of the transition.

The Rohingya crisis: ‘seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing’

The persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, which then-United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein said in 2017 “seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, continues to loom large in Myanmar politics. It has created one of the world’s largest refugee crises.

Many international observers have criticised Suu Kyi’s silence on the Rohingya crisis. Inside Myanmar, however, her popularity remained strong (especially among the country’s majority Bamar community) as she was called to answer for allegations of genocide made at the International Court of Justice late last year.

The Bamar community makes up about 70% of the country’s population and is the major voter base of Suu Kyi’s party. They largely consider Rohingyas illegal migrants, despite the fact many have lived in Myanmar for generations. A section of the community supports radical Buddhist nationalism and resists ethnic pluralism.

The Rohingya crisis has made ethnic minority voters deeply sceptical of Suu Kyi, but within the Bamar community, Buddhist nationalist narratives have surged and may come to dominate electoral campaigns.

What’s the outlook for reform?

Myanmar’s military has frequently resisted constitutional reforms that would reduce its power.

If, as is expected, Suu Kyi’s NLD wins a majority this year, the military will likely collaborate with its allies in the parliament to block any constitutional reform.

If Suu Kyi’s political rivals — the USDP and other smaller parties and alliances — obtain a larger presence in the parliament, no single party will have a big enough majority to push through constitutional reforms. This will ultimately benefit the military and delay the transition to democracy.

– ref. Why Myanmar’s election is unlikely to herald major political reform or support transition to democracy – https://theconversation.com/why-myanmars-election-is-unlikely-to-herald-major-political-reform-or-support-transition-to-democracy-146021

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joseph Bevitt, Senior Instrument Scientist, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation

Albanerpetontids, or “albies” for short, are the cute little salamander-like amphibians you’ve likely never heard of.

Now extinct, Albies had a dream run. They’d been around since the Middle Jurassic around 165 million years ago, and probably even earlier. They lived through the age of dinosaurs (and saw out their extinction), then lived through the rise of the great apes, before quietly disappearing about 2.5 million years ago.

Albie fossils are scattered across continents, including in Japan, Morocco, England, North America, Europe and Myanmar. But until recently, we knew relatively little about what they looked like or how they lived.

New research by my colleagues and I, published today in Science, reveals these amphibians were the earliest known creatures to have rapid-fire tongues. This also helps explain why albies were once misidentified as chameleons.

A miniature marvel uncovered

The reason albies remained largely elusive until recently is because they were tiny. Their slight, fragile bones are usually found as isolated jaw and skull fragments, making them hard to study.

The first almost complete albie specimen was found in the wetland environment deposits of Las Hoyas, Spain, and reported in 1995. Even though it was squashed flat, it was enough for palaeontologists to conclude albies were unlike any living salamander or any other amphibian.

They were completely covered in scales like reptiles, had highly flexible necks like mammals, an unusual jaw joint and large eye sockets suggesting good vision. Why were albies so unique?

Read more: Meet the super salamander that nearly ate your ancestors for breakfast

Mistakes do happen

The answer partly came to light in 2016, when a group of researchers published a paper demonstrating the diversity of lizards found in the Cretaceous forests of what is now Myanmar.

They presented a dozen tiny 99-million-year-old “lizards”, all preserved in amber. Some were even found with soft tissue remains such as skin, claws and muscles, still attached within the fossilised tree resin.

The researchers used “micro-CT” technology to digitally excavate and study the specimens in detail. This involved using 3D imaging to digitally remove the fossil from the amber and study it on a computer — a technique that avoids the risk of physically damaging the fossil.

They noticed one small, juvenile specimen had a long rod-shaped tongue bone. It was identified as the earliest known chameleon: a remarkable discovery! Or was it?

Alas, mistakes do happen in science. As lizard experts, the researchers had interpreted their results through this lens. It took the keen eye of Susan Evans, a professor of vertebrate morphology and palaeontology at University College London, to recognise this particular “lizard” was actually a misidentified albie.

A tongue-tying revelation

Some time later, Sam Houston State University assistant professor Juan Daza spotted another unbelievable specimen among a collection of fossils preserved in Burmite amber, ethically sourced from Myanmar’s Kachin state.

It was an adult version of the juvenile albie Evans identified. Needing higher-resolution 3D images, the sample was sent to me to study at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne.

Named after a class of mythical spirits responsible for guarding natural treasures, Yaksha, and the person who discovered the fossil, Adolf Peretti (founder of the non-profit Peretti Museum Foundation) — the Yaksha perettii specimen was an entire skull trapped in golden amber.

Quick hits to unsuspecting prey

Its features that stood out were a long bone projecting back out of the mouth and soft tissue remains, including part of the tongue, jaw muscles and eyelids. By sheer luck, the soft tissue remains proved the long bone in the mouth was directly attached to the tongue.

In other words, Y. perettii was a predator armed with an incredible weapon: a specialised ballistic tongue that fired at lightning speed to capture prey — just as chameleons do today. It’s no wonder the original juvenile, only 1.5 centimetres long, was initially mistaken for a chameleon.

Modern chameleons have accelerator muscles in their tongues that lock in stored energy. This lets them fire their tongues at speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour in just a fraction of a second.

We believe albies’ projectile tongues were just as fast, used to great effect while sitting motionless in trees or on the ground. If so, this also explains why albies had unusual jaw joints, flexible necks and large, forward-facing eyes. All these traits would have made up their predator toolkit.

Tree sap turned to iridescent amber

Despite these remarkable new insights, however, many mysteries of albanerpetontids remain. For instance, how exactly are they related to other amphibians? How did they survive for so long, only to die out relatively recently?

We’ll need more intact specimens to answer these questions. And most of these specimens will probably come from the Hukawng Valley in Kachin, Myanmar.

It’s expected about 100 million years ago this region was an island covered in vast forests. Global temperatures back then would have exceeded today’s, with trees producing vast amounts of resin (which later turned into amber) as a result of damage by insects and fire.

Amber studied from this region will not only increase our knowledge of its expired ecosystems, it could also provide insight into how certain organisms today might evolve in response to a warming climate.

Read more: Fossil footprints give glimpse of how ancient climate change drove the rise of reptiles

– ref. This tiny amphibian that outlived the dinosaurs provides the earliest example of a rapid-fire tongue – https://theconversation.com/this-tiny-amphibian-that-outlived-the-dinosaurs-provides-the-earliest-example-of-a-rapid-fire-tongue-149445

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

How can we concentrate on a particular thing (like studies) without getting distracted? Melvina, aged 14

Thanks for this great question Melvina!

Many students are probably wondering the same thing as end-of-year assessments approach.

To concentrate best we need to resist distractions. To do this, it helps if you know what concentration looks like.

What is concentration?

When you concentrate, you direct or focus your thinking. Imagine your focus is like a torch beam.

This torch beam needs energy, which comes from your concentration. So we can think of concentration as the “mental energy” or “thinking petrol” your brain needs to focus.

Read more: Curious Kids: Is homework worthwhile?

We know it’s important to concentrate to get the best results from a project or task. But, with distractions everywhere, we also know how hard it can be.

So what distractions should we look out for?

Deal with physical distractions

These are distractions in your environment. It’s a good idea to take steps to reduce them.

First, try to adjust the amount of light and noise to a level that works best for you.

This might mean getting rid of excessive background noise, or quietening it to a level that helps you concentrate. The level that works best for you depends on your personality, the type of noise and how demanding the task you’re concentrating on is.

When it comes to lighting, for most people, brighter white lighting helps concentration. But, as with background sound, there’s no single rule that works for everyone.

Read more: Curious Kids: is it OK to listen to music while studying?

It can also help to keep your study space tidy and remove any items that could distract you, like your mobile phone.

Thoughts and feelings can be pretty distracting too

If you find yourself thinking of things you’d rather be doing than the task at hand, take a moment to consider what you’ll do after you’ve completed the task, and how much more you’ll enjoy them because of what you’ve achieved.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why does English have so many different spelling rules?

Feelings can be pretty distracting too.

If you feel worried about how people will respond to what you produce, like an essay or presentation, you might be hesitant to get started. To manage this, try noting how a task or topic fits with what you already know, or remind yourself of a time you got through a similar task.

There are a few things you can do before, during and after a task to help too.

How to manage distractions

When you start a study session, it’s useful to:

• decide what you want to get from the activity. What will the outcome look like?

• prepare by collecting all the materials you need for a task

• set yourself up so you can see your computer screen or books without straining your body

• remember what you already know about the topic or the task

• plan the steps you could take to complete the task.

As you work through the topic or the task, it’s helpful check your progress. Note what you’ve achieved so far. Are you moving towards your goal or do you need to change direction?

This helps you deal with distractions while you’re learning.

How to beat distractions

Towards the end of a task, review what you’ve learnt and store it in memory. This allows you to get around distractions that occurred during the learning.

Give this a go:

• say what you know now that you didn’t know earlier

• say how your new understanding has changed or added to what you knew

• feel positive about what you know now. Congratulate yourself on what your brain has done. The positive feeling helps you remember it better in the future

• imagine yourself remembering and using the main ideas in the future.

When you store your new understanding like this, you can use it more easily in the future to concentrate and to get around distractions.

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

– ref. Curious Kids: how can we concentrate on study without getting distracted? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-can-we-concentrate-on-study-without-getting-distracted-146572

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabriel da Silva, Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, University of Melbourne

As fires ravaged large sections of the Australian bush last summer, cities and towns all along the coast were blanketed in toxic smoke. Air pollutants were measured at unheard of levels across the country.

Hazardous air descended on cities hundreds of kilometres away from the fires themselves. This air was the most dangerous to breathe on the planet.

Read more: The bushfire royal commission has made a clarion call for change. Now we need politics to follow

The bushfire royal commission was tabled on October 30, with some sobering findings about fires and air pollution. Unfortunately, it showed that as a nation we were not prepared to deal with this public health emergency.

These disasters are inevitable under climate change, and while we need to urgently act on climate change to protect future generations, we also need to make changes now to mitigate the risks that already face us.

Australia must get better at communicating how to identify and then stay safe in hazardous air. A national set of air quality categories would go a long way to achieving this.

Over 400 deaths attributed to bushfire smoke

The royal commission heard that air pollution from the summer fires likely caused more than 400 deaths. Thousands of additional hospital admissions put added strain on our hospitals. All up the added burden to our health system was estimated at almost A$2 billion.

Even in the absence of extreme natural disasters, air pollution is one of Australia’s biggest public health concerns. Pollution from all sources causes thousands of deaths per year. This includes emissions from coal-fired power stations, diesel cars and wood-fired heaters.

Better preparing ourselves to deal with bushfire smoke will have flow-on benefits in tackling these problems.

Different state, different health advice

The royal commission found “there is an urgent need for national consistency in the categorisation of air quality”. At the moment, every state has their own system to categorise air quality and communicate it to the public.

Read more: How does bushfire smoke affect our health? 6 things you need to know

But there are major discrepancies with how different states identify the worst air quality.

Air quality is the sum impact of the concentration of various unhealthy chemicals in the air. These include ozone, nitrogen and sulfur oxides, and fine particulate matter. To communicate this to the public, most countries convert these chemical concentrations into an Air Quality Index (AQI).

In the US, there is a standardised AQI categorisation for the whole country.

In Australia, the situation is very different. Every state has its own bands, with their own colour codes. These bands trigger at different pollutant levels and carry different health advice. The Royal Commission told us this needs to be standardised, and now.

For example, in NSW the worst air quality category is “Hazardous”, which triggers at an AQI of 200. South Australia, however, only recognises “Very Poor” as the worst class of air quality, with an AQI of 150 and above.

During the summer bushfires, AQI values as high as 5,000 were measured. It’s clear the highest bands of air pollution are no longer appropriate.

We need a national air quality system

We have faced a similar problem before. After Victoria’s Black Saturday fires in 2009, we recognised that our fire danger ratings were inadequate.

The Black Saturday royal commission found we needed a higher category for the most dangerous fire conditions. The “Catastrophic” category (“CODE RED” in Victoria) was added. It carried clear advice about what to do in such dangerous conditions, instructing people to safely leave as early as possible.

Something similar now needs to happen with air quality ratings.

When facing future extreme bushfires, we need a way to identify when catastrophic conditions have led to air so unhealthy that everyone should take precautions, such as staying indoors and wearing masks. We then need to get clear health advice out to the public.

Read more: Our buildings aren’t made to keep out bushfire smoke. Here’s what you can do

A national air quality rating system could achieve this, and would also help address other important recommendations of the Royal Commission: That we need improved means of getting reliable information out to the public, along with better community education around what to do when air quality plummets.

There’s work to do

An Australian AQI should be featured on national weather reports and forecasts, providing important health information to the public every day of the year. At the same time it would familiarise Australians with air quality measures and actions that need to be taken to protect ourselves from unhealthy air.

But there is work to do. First, we need to develop a new set of air quality categories that work for the entire country, and reflects both the everyday hazards of industrial pollution and the extreme dangers of bushfires. These categories also need to be matched with sound health advice.

Read more: The bushfire royal commission has made a clarion call for change. Now we need politics to follow

And if we are going to report these measures more widely then we also need to get better at measuring and predicting air quality across the nation — two other important royal commission recommendations.

Achieving all of this won’t be easy. But if we can get it right then we will be much better placed to deal with smoke risk the next time severe bushfires inevitably happen.

– ref. Frequent extreme bushfires are our new reality. We need to learn how to live with smoke-filled air – https://theconversation.com/frequent-extreme-bushfires-are-our-new-reality-we-need-to-learn-how-to-live-with-smoke-filled-air-149427

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Cole-Hunter, Research fellow, Queensland University of Technology

When it comes to handling the waste crisis in Australia, options are limited: we either export our waste or bury it. But to achieve current national targets, policy-makers are increasingly asking if we can instead safely burn waste as fuel.

Proposals for waste incinerators are being considered in the Greater Sydney region, but these have been lambasted by the Greens and independent members of the NSW parliament, who cite public health concerns.

Meanwhile, the ACT government has recently put a blanket ban on these facilities.

Read more: China’s garbage ban upends US recycling – is it time to reconsider incineration?

But are their concerns based on evidence? In our systematic review of the scientific literature, we could identify only 19 papers among 269 relevant studies — less than 10% — that could help address our question on whether waste-to-energy incinerators could harm our health.

This means the answer remains unclear, and we therefore call for a cautious approach to waste-to-energy technology.

One person, one year, 500 kilograms of waste

Australia’s waste crisis began in 2018 when China greatly reduced how much waste it imported. China’s waste market was handling about half of the world’s recyclable materials, including Australia’s.

On average, Australia produces roughly 500 kilograms of municipal (residential and commercial) waste each year. This aligns with the OECD average.

New Zealand in comparison, despite its strong environmental stance, is among the worst offenders for producing waste in any OECD country. It produces almost 800 kilograms per person per year.

Now, most recyclable or reusable waste in Australia goes to landfill. This poses a potential risk to both climate and health with the emission of potent greenhouse gases such as methane and the leaching of heavy metals such as lead into the groundwater. As a result, local governments may want to seek alternative options.

Burning waste in Denmark

“Waste-to-energy” incineration is when solid waste is sorted and burned as “refuse-derived” fuel to generate electricity. This can replace fossil fuel such as coal.

Read more: The recycling crisis in Australia: easy solutions to a hard problem

The technology is on the rise among OECD countries. Denmark and Japan, for example, rely on waste-to-energy incineration to reduce their dependency on landfills and reach carbon neutrality.

In fact, Denmark’s waste-to-energy incinerator, Amager Bakke, is so well known it has become a tourist attraction, and is celebrated as one of the world’s cleanest waste-to-energy incinerators.

Every day, around 300 trucks filled with non-recyclable municipal solid waste are sent to Amager Bakke.

This fuels a furnace that runs at 1,000℃, turning water into steam. And this steam provides electricity and heat to around 100,000 households. Generally, people in Denmark warmly welcome it.

So what’s the problem?

In Australia and the US, community reception towards the building of new incinerators has been cold.

The big concern is burning waste may release chemicals that can harm our health, such as nitrogen oxide and dioxin. Exposure to high levels of dioxin can lead to skin lesions, an impaired immune system and reproductive issues.

However, control measures, such as the technologically advanced filters used in Amager Bakke, can bring the amount of dioxin released to near zero.

Another concern is that implementing waste-to-energy incineration may go against recycling schemes, due to the potential for an increased demand for non-recyclable plastics as fuel.

Supply of this plastic could come from the waning fossil fuel industry. This would work against the goal of establishing a “circular economy” that reuses and recycles goods where possible.

An analysis from 2019 found that to meet European Union circular economy goals, Nordic countries would need to increase their recycling, and significantly shift away from incineration.

This concern is understandable given incinerators operate cleanest when fuelled at full capacity. This is because a higher temperature means a more complete combustion — a bit like less ash and smoke coming off of a well-built campfire.

A lack of evidence

As with many policy solutions, determining the safety of burning waste is complicated.

Our review found a lack of evidence to fully reject well-designed and operated facilities. However, based on the limited number of health studies we found, we support a precautionary planning approach to waste-to-energy proposals.

Read more: Garbage in, garbage out: Incinerating trash is not an effective way to protect the climate or reduce waste

This means we need appropriate health risk assessment and life cycle analyses built into the approval process for each and every incinerator proposed in the near-future.

The studies we found were all performed in the last 20 years. None were from the Nordic countries, however, where waste-to-energy incineration has been in use for many decades.

The reasons for the Nordic embrace of this technology are speculative. One reason may be that their level of economic development allows large capital investment for safe, state-of-the-art design and operation.

Where to from here?

If councils are determined to pursue waste-to-energy incineration, we suggest they prioritise specific applications.

For example, we found the process with the most favourable life-cycle assessment (the most beneficial to health compared to traditional fossil fuel use) was the “co-incineration” of refuse-derived fuel for industrial cement.

Read more: South African study highlights growing number of landfill sites, and health risks

Currently, cement kilns are mostly fuelled by burning coal, and it’s difficult to reach the high temperatures required with traditional renewables. This means substituting coal for refuse-derived fuel could reduce the industry’s dependency on coal, when renewables aren’t an option.

Another solution is to focus instead on the waste hierarchy. This means first minimising waste production, maximising energy efficiency and maximising recycling and reuse of waste materials.

So, while we wait for more knowledge on how waste-to-energy incineration may affect our health, let’s focus on improving our waste hierarchy, rather than exporting our waste to feed a global crisis.

– ref. Can we safely burn waste to make fuel like they do in Denmark? Well, it’s complicated – https://theconversation.com/can-we-safely-burn-waste-to-make-fuel-like-they-do-in-denmark-well-its-complicated-148250

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olivia Karaolis, PhD Student, University of Sydney

Children come into the world ready to communicate. A baby cries and coos to express their feelings and respond to sounds. The ability to communicate develops quickly but uniquely in every child.

By the age of three, most children are able to understand simple requests such as, “pick up your shoes and bring them to me”. They can identify colours, shapes or food groups and use familiar names to recognise important people in their lives, like “grandma”. And they can respond to “who”, “what” or “where” questions.

At three, your child may be saying a lot of words and putting them together into simple sentences. They may ask questions (often a lot of questions) such as, “Where are we going?”

It is an exciting and wonderful time for children to learn about their world and share their discoveries. It can also be a time of anxiety, if a child is not showing the communication signs the parent expects them to at a particular age.

Children learn to speak and develop their communication through day-to-day interactions with their parents and caregivers.

In 2019 as part of my yet unpublished research (that draws on previous work in the United States), I went to three different preschools to work with three to four year olds using puppets. I observed all the children — including kids with a disability, those learning English as an additional language or those who are very shy — communicated more often and more effectively when talking to a puppet.

Research with school-aged children shows puppets, like a favourite doll or teddy bear, can encourage learning and improve communication and behaviour. Talking to a puppet, as opposed to a person, makes the conversation feel less personal and more pretend. It is a play-based technique sometimes used in therapy to help the child feel less self-conscious, and open up.

Read more: Children can’t always read between the lines. Sometimes it’s better to be explicit

I noticed the joy puppets brought to the children, as well as a growth in their understanding of feelings and the feelings of others. The children showed greater confidence when speaking to puppets and engaged in positive social interactions such as taking turns and sharing.

Parents can also use puppets to support their child’s development at home. Here are three things puppets can help with.

1. Use puppet play to encourage conversation

We introduced a range of puppets to children and quickly discovered the type of puppet used was important. Dinosaurs were very popular as was a duckling named Mabel and a Great White Shark called Bruce.

Think about the animals, characters, colours or creatures your child likes before choosing a puppet to add to your family. You can even make a simple puppet with an old sock.

Once you have your puppet, introduce it thoughtfully to your child. For example, you may pat it softly and have your child touch it with you. Ask your child to help you discover the sounds the puppet makes, its name and what it likes to play.

Make your child the expert in bringing your puppet to life. Through the creation of the puppet you can build your child’s vocabulary by modelling descriptive words and longer sentences.

For young children, try narrating their actions with the puppet. For example, “You are patting the puppet’s yellow beak, I think he likes it”.

Play peek-a-boo, sing songs or tell stories. The important thing to remember is to have fun.

2. Use puppets to get your child to answer questions

Try using a puppet to ask questions about your child’s day at preschool, their favourite part of a story or about their drawings or play.

Your puppet can help your little one by offering prompts such as, “Tell me about what you ate at snack time” or “I wonder what you made in the sandbox outside”?

Children may open up more to the puppet because they are funny and create a relaxed and playful environment, which is ideal for interactions.

Read more: Tinker Bell, Batman, Ben 10… if your kids are in character, they’re more likely to help around the house

Other ideas may include using the puppet to make up stories together or to take the puppet on a walk and ask questions about the things you see together.

3. Use a puppet to talk about feelings

Three year olds may find it hard to name their feelings or identify the reason they may be happy or upset. A puppet can act as a soothing way to have children tell you how they feel or learn the names of feelings.

For example, the puppet can use an angry voice or be crying to express emotion. Involve your child in helping the puppet by naming its feelings and coming up with possible solutions to their distress.

Two puppets can act out a frustrating situation and model new approaches such as sharing a favourite toy, trying new foods or cleaning up.

Puppets are a creative way to bring about speech and communication with your child. By bringing fun and imaginative play into your day, you can help your child develop their ability to share their world with you.

Read more: Children learn through play – it shouldn’t stop at preschool

– ref. Talking through play: 3 ways puppets can help your child open up – https://theconversation.com/talking-through-play-3-ways-puppets-can-help-your-child-open-up-132353

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University

Counsel assisting the NSW Inquiry into the suitability of Crown Resorts to operate Sydney’s new Barangaroo casino summed up this week by telling the Commissioner Crown was

not a suitable person to continue to give effect to the licence, and that Crown Resorts is not a suitable person to be a close associate of the licensee

Adam Bell SC reached the conclusion after considering the deleterious impact on the good governance of Crown Resorts caused by its dominant shareholder [James Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings] and ultimately, Mr Packer”.

He reminded the inquiry that protection of the public interest was a key objective of the NSW Casino Control Act.

The Barangaroo casino is yet to open, but Crown already operates two other Australian casinos, one in Melbourne and one in Perth, and one in London.

The Melbourne casino has been the centre of multiple whistle-blower and other allegations connected with tampering with gambling machines, associations with criminal identities and the arrest of 19 Crown staff in China in 2016.

The Sydney inquiry was initiated after the Nine network and The Age and Sydney Morning Herald published allegations about money laundering and links with criminals.

A tale of two cities

The Melbourne regulator, the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation, acted more quietly, initiating a still-uncompleted inquiry into the arrest of Crown staff in China in 2017 and putting its inquiry into the money laundering allegations on hold until it had seen the outcome of the NSW inquiry.

Belatedly, last month, a full eight months after the NSW hearings began, it issued Crown with a “show cause” notice relating to money laundering controls.

The state government had asked it to act as “a matter of priority” in mid 2019.

In 2017, Victoria’s auditor general identified serious issues relating to the Commission’s oversight of Crown.

It highlighted a “lack of leadership”, the second lowest staff satisfaction levels in the Victorian public sector, a lack of a “coherent organisation-wide approach to casino supervision” and insufficient attention to key areas of risk in the casino’s operations including money laundering.

In its five-yearly review of Crown’s licence in 2018 the Commission identified some concerns.

The concerns involved compliance with money laundering rules, the lack of engagement of independent directors with an oversight of the Melbourne casino, an uninspiring adoption of the responsible gambling rules, and a less than complete honouring of requests for self-exclusion.

It nevertheless concluded that it was in the public interest for Crown to maintain its license.

Fines rather than sanctions

Fines have been its the Commission’s preferred means of dealing with breaches of licence conditions.

In 2018 it fined Crown A$300,000 for gambling machine tampering and $25,000 in 2018 for a breach of junket rules.

It said it believed fines were enough in the light of

Crown’s past compliance history and general and specific deterrence, balanced against the level of co-operation, remorse, contrition and corrective action taken by Crown

Yet the NSW inquiry has heard evidence from James Packer and the company’s directors and management pointing to multiple continued failures in all these categories, in Melbourne.

The NSW premier has signalled concern about the casino’s planned opening in December, given that inquiry is not due to report until February.

West Australia’s regulator found no issues with Crown Burswood in its most recent (2018-19) annual report, but says it is monitoring the NSW inquiry.

Too big to touch?

It might be that Crown has become too big to regulate, at least in Victoria.

For some reason, the company has had enormous success with deflecting criticism. Along with other gambling operators, it has recruited powerful political figures from both major parties to assist it and is a major political donor.

There was ample evidence of the problems in Victoria well before the NSW inquiry identified them.

Read more: The Crown allegations show the repeated failures of our gambling regulators

The Victorian regulator’s slow and overly respectful approach might be because it felt Crown was too important to be held to account, or had too many political connections, or was too important as an employer or contributor to government revenue.

Or it might be because, as the auditor suggested, it has problems with staff.

But if we are to have any faith in Victoria’s ability to regulate gambling and crime, it’ll need to do more. NSW is showing how.

Read more: Gaming the board: Crown Resorts shows you just can’t bet on ‘independent’ directors

– ref. If Crown is unfit to hold a Sydney casino licence, what about Melbourne, and Perth? – https://theconversation.com/if-crown-is-unfit-to-hold-a-sydney-casino-licence-what-about-melbourne-and-perth-149443

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janna Thompson, Professor of Philosophy, La Trobe University

In 2017, when a biology professor in a state college in Washington protested against a proposed day-long ban on the presence of white students on campus, radical students shut the campus down.

The ban was part of a yearly college event designed to give black and minority students and staff a separate space in which to discuss the issues they face. Tensions were high that year. White nationalist groups had invaded the campus, targeting black students and members of staff.

The comments by the professor, Bret Weinstein, and his opposition to the colllege’s equity programs, led to campus protests against him. In protest against the failure of the college administration to quell the students, he resigned from his job.

Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, the authors of the new book Cynical Theories: How Universities Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity – and Why This Harms Everybody regard Weinstein as a victim of an ideology they call Social Justice Theory.

They hold humanities departments responsible for bringing it into existence, and their aim is to explain why it is so pernicious.

Read more: Is ‘cultural Marxism’ really taking over universities? I crunched some numbers to find out

Social Justice Theory

Pluckrose, a US magazine editor who describes herself as an exile from the humanities, and Lindsay, a mathematician and writer on politics and religion, were participants in the controversial 2018 Grievance Studies project, which aimed to discredit gender and race studies by submitting hoax articles to academic journals.

By getting articles on bogus topics through the reviewing processes of respected journals and into print, the authors believed they were proving that studies focusing on identity issues are “corrupt” and unscientific.

One hoax article, published in a journal of “feminist geography” looked at “human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity” at dog parks in Portland, Oregon; another purported to be a two-year study involving “thematic analysis of table dialogue” to explore why heterosexual men like to eat at Hooters.

Critics of their hoax quickly pointed out there was no scientific evidence to suggest that journals in fields focusing on identity are corrupt — indeed such hoaxes had happened in other areas of study too.

Pluckrose and Lindsay’s book, which grew out of the 2018 project, traces the evolution and growing influence during the late 20th century of theories about how the language we use to think and talk about the world structures our relationships.

The book takes aim at postmodern and post-structuralist thinkers, particularly the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. The authors blame him for propagating the view that all discourses, including science, create relations of power and subordination.

Read more: Explainer: the ideas of Foucault

In the new millennium, these postmodernist and deconstructionist projects morphed — according to Pluckrose and Lindsay — into the political weapon they call Social Justice Theory, or simply Theory.

In Cynical Theories, the pair trace the march of Theory as a political ideology through post-colonial studies, queer theory, feminism, and studies of race, disability and body size.

In their view, Theory is a harmful, anti-scientific ideology. It divides society into the oppressed — whose subordinate identities are constructed by hierarchies of power — and the oppressors who, wittingly or not, maintain oppressive relationships through their participation in political and social discourses and institutions.

Constructed identities

This Theory is cynical, according to the authors, because it finds oppression everywhere — even in the best intentions of progressive people and their movements of reform.

And it is bad for everyone, including disadvantaged groups, they say, because it gets in the way of an empirical approach to understanding and correcting social ills.

One aim of Pluckrose and Lindsay is to defend the central liberal value of freedom of inquiry against what they regard as an attack on free speech by the rise of identity politics — spawned by Theory.

The application of Theory is also harmful, they say, because it provokes a backlash from people who cannot understand why being white or male puts them into the camp of racists or sexists.

The result, they argue, is a racial politics that becomes increasingly fraught. We hear that:

racism is embedded in culture and that we cannot escape it. We hear that white people are inherently racist. We are told that only white people can be racist. […] Adherents actively search for hidden and overt racial offences until they find them.

According to the authors, these categories — race, sex, gender, being gay or straight, abled or disabled, fat or of normal body size — are forced onto individuals by the organising power of dominant discourses in politics, social life and science.

Adherents of Theory, they say, then argue these constructed identities are, nevertheless, real and inescapable experiences. For Theory, identity determines how a person thinks, acts and what she knows. A black person is not an individual who happens to be black. Blackness is central to who he is. Being black makes him into a victim of discourses that privilege whites.

Respecting the standpoint of those who have a subordinate position in hierarchies created by the ways we speak and act — blacks, women, people with minority sexual identities, victims of colonial power, the disabled and the fat — is a key political demand for activists influenced by Theory.

No truth, only discourse

Social hierarchies exist. Prejudice can be perpetuated by the unthinking behaviour of individuals. Discriminatory treatment of women and black people is sometimes embedded in institutions.

Pluckrose and Lindsay do not deny this.

They admit legal reforms have not eliminated racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. They recognise discriminatory treatment and prejudice can blight the lives of victims and undermine their ability to access the opportunities of their society.

What, then, is wrong with what they call Social Justice Theory?

The authors’ main contention is that Theory is relativist and unscientific. For its theorists, there is no objective truth — only the perspectives of people with different identities. And they demand the same respect for the standpoint of an oppressed group as for the views of scientists.

Pluckrose and Lindsay write:

It is no exaggeration to observe that Social Justice Theories have created a new religion, a tradition of faith that is actively hostile to reason, falsification, disconfirmation and disagreement of any kind.

Because Theory is a faith, it can insulate itself from criticism, say the authors.

It can dismiss dissenters, like the aforementioned biology professor, as the purveyors of an oppressive discourse.

‘Cancel culture’

Is Social Justice Theory as pernicious as Pluckrose and Lindsay want us to believe? Their criticism gets most of its plausibility from applications of Theory that do seem harmful and even absurd.

Disability, for instance, is not merely a social construction. Treating it as such may prevent the use of treatments that could make the lives of people better.

When doctors tell obese people they should lose weight they are not engaging in an act of oppression, but in healthcare.

Pluckrose and Lindsay are right to point out that campaigns to expose oppressive speech and behaviour can cause unjustified harm to individuals who are called out and “cancelled” for minor misdemeanours, or for stating a view that identity activists deem unacceptable.

The abuse heaped on J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, for saying that sexual differences are real and not constructed by discourse is an example.

Read more: Is cancel culture silencing open debate? There are risks to shutting down opinions we disagree with

In my opinion, however, the authors overstate both the illiberal tendencies of Theory and its influence on culture.

You do not have to be a relativist to think the opinions and feelings of people from minority groups ought to be respected. You are not anti-science if you think scientific research sometimes ignores the needs and perspectives of women and minorities.

Advocates of Theory aim to make institutions more inclusive and respectful of differences.

Liberals — as advocates of critical engagement — should be open to the possibility that Theory, despite faults, has detected forms of prejudice our society tends to overlook.

The question of universities

The most problematic aspect of Pluckrose and Lindsay’s book is the blame it heaps on humanities departments of universities for stirring up a cancel culture and the culture wars.

This gives ammunition to those who want to defund humanities and discourage students from taking humanities courses.

It gives support to the position of the Australian Federal Education Minister, Dan Tehan, who thinks that Australian universities have succumbed to a left-wing culture that “cancels” conservatives and their opinions.

This accusation, also made by conservative groups like the Institute of Public Affairs, is the reason why critics of universities want to force them to sign up to a free speech code.

But according to Glyn Davis, Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University, there is no evidence of a meaningful or growing threat to free speech in Australian universities.

Read more: Special pleading: free speech and Australian universities

Those who emphasise the dangers of a cancel culture often ignore more serious threats to universities and an open society. The students at the Washington college were reacting to the presence of groups that threatened the safety of black students.

They were responding to a real threat.

Combatants in the war

Pluckrose and Lindsay agree that threats to free speech can come from the right as well as the left, but their preoccupation with the latter indicates where they want to put most of the blame.

Cynical Theories is, on one hand, a scholarly book. Pluckrose and Lindsay are well versed in the literature they criticise, as their participation in the Grievance Studies hoax indicates.

Their book provides an in depth discussion of the works they want to criticise. Their critique of what they call Social Justice Theory deserves to be taken seriously.

But by overstating their case and aiming their weapons at humanities and universities they cannot pass themselves off as objective contributors to a search for truth.

They are combatants in the culture wars.

Cynical Theories: How Universities Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity – and Why This Harms Everybody, by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, is published by Swift Press.

– ref. Friday essay: a new front in the culture wars, Cynical Theories takes unfair aim at the humanities – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-a-new-front-in-the-culture-wars-cynical-theories-takes-unfair-aim-at-the-humanities-148524

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grant Duncan, Associate Professor, School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University

The US presidential election may still be extremely close, but one thing is clear: those pundits and pollsters who predicted Trump was in no position to win will be going back to the drawing board.

In any case, “Trumpism” is unlikely to disappear even after he’s gone — including in New Zealand.

Hardcore Trump supporters in the US may make up as few as 12% of America’s registered voters. But polls have consistently underestimated Trump’s numbers compared with actual election results.

The Real Clear Politics pre-election poll average had Joe Biden up by 7.2 points nationally, but as of November 5 he led by only 2.1 points. Perhaps there really is a “hidden Trump vote”.

Meanwhile in New Zealand, with Jacinda Ardern in charge of the country’s most diverse cabinet ever, the prospect of a Trump-like leader might seem remote. However, in online surveys conducted by Stuff.co.nz and Massey University in 2017 and 2020, we found a significant minority in support of Trump.

Kiwis for Trump

In mid-2017, 13% of respondents said they would have voted for Trump had they been able to, compared to a scientifically sampled poll in mid-2016 that found 9% support for Trump.

How to explain the difference? Trump’s victory in November 2016 may have boosted that support slightly. The Stuff/Massey survey is reader-initiated and non-representative, and may have over-represented disaffected conservatives. Or people may be more willing to indicate support for Trump online than by phone.

Nonetheless, there was a measurable level of support for Trump in New Zealand.

In the mid-2020 survey, we asked respondents if they hoped Trump would win or lose in the November election. This time, 11% said they hoped he would win (after weighting for gender due to the sample having a male bias of 61.2%).

Read more: An embarrassing failure for election pollsters

The Stuff/Massey survey sample also had a conservative bias, as 36.8% said they supported National — above where the party was polling at the time, and well above its election night result of 26.8%.

But let’s say roughly one in ten New Zealanders is a Trump supporter. Under New Zealand’s electoral system, that’s well above the threshold of 5% for a party to win parliamentary seats.

Of the 55,147 who answered the question in the mid-2020 survey, 6,833 said they hoped Trump would win. So, who are these Kiwi Trumpers? And what do they really think?

Even demographic spread

They are evenly spread across age-groups, but slightly higher (15.4%) in the 18-24 range. This may reflect a known phenomenon in which populist leaders boost young people’s satisfaction with democracy — or, to put it another way, help to reverse the trend towards political disengagement in democracies.

Kiwi men are more than twice as likely to support Trump than women — a much wider gender gap than was found in the US after the 2016 election.

Read more: US election: why democratic legitimacy remains at stake

Kiwi Trumpers are distributed evenly across lower and middle income brackets, and support declines only slightly in the upper income brackets.

Perhaps surprisingly, 15.6% of Pasifika respondents and 20% of those who ticked the “gender-diverse” box hoped Trump would win — above the overall 11% result.

A whopping 92% of the Kiwi Trumpers said we should leave statues of figures from our colonial past where they are, compared to the 49.8% of those who hoped Trump would lose.

National is the preferred party

Very few Kiwi Trumpers identified with arch-populist Winston Peters, however. Only 4.9% of them said he is the party leader they felt closest to, perhaps because of his coalition with Labour after the 2017 election. They were more attached to National’s Judith Collins (46.6%) and ACT Party leader David Seymour (30.2%).

Only 20% of National supporters overall said they hoped Trump would win. But this sub-group of National supporters made up 56% of the entire cohort of Kiwi Trumpers. A further 23% of Kiwi Trumpers supported ACT. So, the National Party is the preferred party of the Kiwi Trumper.

The far-right New Conservative Party’s supporters were only 1.2% of our sample, and that party won only 1.5% of the vote at the October election. But a clear majority of them (69%) supported Trump.

Read more: Can New Zealand’s most diverse ever cabinet improve representation of women and minorities in general?

In general, Kiwi Trumpers see society as more discontented, and politicians as less trustworthy, than the average New Zealander.

Some 47.5% of the Trump supporters endorsed conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 virus. For them, it was either “an invention of shadowy forces that want to control us” (11%) or “a biological weapon created by one of the world’s super-powers” (35.5%).

Only 7.7% of Trump opponents ticked either of those statements. And, overall, 85.8% of the sample agreed that the virus came from a natural source.

Moreover, only 11.7% of Trump supporters agreed the New Zealand government was taking the right approach to dealing with the economic impact of COVID-19, while 62% of Trump opponents agreed.

And 84% of the Kiwi Trumpers preferred the government take a “cautious and sceptical” approach to climate change, compared with 23.8% of opponents.

Could a Trump emerge in NZ?

Unsurprisingly, 54.6% of Kiwi Trumpers were in favour of New Zealand developing a closer alignment with the USA, compared with only 6.2% of Trump opponents. The vast majority (80.9%) of survey respondents preferred that New Zealand aim for greater independence from both the USA and China.

National’s Judith Collins made favourable comments about Trump during a pre-election debate, perhaps aware of support for him within her base.

Read more: A Biden presidency might be better for NZ, but the big foreign policy challenges won’t disappear with Trump

Suppose, then, that the National Party chose as leader a Trump-like conservative “non-politician” — someone who divided rather than united, and who put economic liberty ahead of health and human lives.

Bearing in mind that this inference is based on a non-scientific survey, he or she could energise perhaps an existing base of one-fifth of National’s supporters, while winning over others from parties further to the right.

Traditional conservatives and centre-right liberals within National would be aghast. But, desperate to change the government, they may have nowhere else to turn.

Then again, it could all end badly. Those voters who switched from National to Labour in 2020 may not want to switch back. And in New Zealand politics, the winning party is the one that wins those centrist voters.

– ref. Who are Donald Trump’s supporters in New Zealand and what do we know about them? – https://theconversation.com/who-are-donald-trumps-supporters-in-new-zealand-and-what-do-we-know-about-them-149424

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

Joe Hockey, former Australian ambassador to the United States who’s now in business there, came under sharp attack for some ill-informed comments about the high Democrat vote in Washington, DC.

Despite this faux pas, Hockey’s description of the American system as a dog’s breakfast – with states, counties and even some cities having responsibility for running presidential elections – is actually not far off the mark.

“In Australia you have the Australian Electoral Commission, thank god,” Hockey said.

Indeed, let’s give thanks not just for the AEC, but also for a few other features of our system, not least compulsory voting.

On a pure view of people’s rights in a democracy, they shouldn’t be forced to vote. But for the overall health of the polity, compulsory voting is a boon, on two levels.

It prevents attempts to game or defraud the system by using tactics that are dubious, or worse, to get out the vote or to discourage participation.

Compulsory voting also works to contain the extremes in the political debate, because contests are won or lost in the centre (broadly defined).

All the legal action we’re hearing about in the US is not the way of things in Australia. Challenges are rare, although there is one big recent exception.

The dual citizenship crisis embroiling a swathe of federal parliamentarians hugely disrupted the last parliament; even so, this was handled in an orderly manner via the High Court and byelections.

A strong political system has a calming effect.

Even allowing that Donald Trump is a one-off phenomenon, can anyone imagine an Australian leader giving the sort of speech he did in the early hours after election day?

In Australia, people were tut-tutting when Malcolm Turnbull was a touch graceless on election night in 2016.

Which goes, in part, to political culture. Australia is a more bound-together society than the US, economically and socially.

But we should beware. As in other countries, there’s been an increasing loss of trust in political institutions (although trust here has been boosted, at least temporarily, during COVID).

To keep our democracy in good shape, we must nurture and increase trust, ensure the economy works for the population generally, and maintain a strong social safety net. There is a significant relationship between economic security and a well-functioning political system.

We also need to do what’s possible to keep the political debate civil. Social media and polarisation in the mainstream media have already coarsened the conversation. That hasn’t undermined our democracy yet, but there are risks.

Without being complacent – and recognising there are many faults in government and elsewhere that should be vigorously called out – this is a week in which to celebrate what we have in this country.

After conquering the second wave of COVID, we’re in an enviable position on the virus – nearly at elimination, although that isn’t government policy. Looking at the deterioration in Britain and Europe, and the American situation, the contrast is dramatic.

The big challenge for Australia is, and will remain, the path out of recession. Many people will have a rotten Christmas, unemployed or with their businesses having failed or collapsing.

But we are continuing to see an official commitment to do what can be done to get the economy moving.

In the package it unveiled this week, the Reserve Bank pulled out all stops available to it to stimulate the economy, although its firepower is limited. It’s taking this action even as it revises up its forecasts on growth and unemployment.

Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe said on Tuesday: “Unemployment is a major economic and social problem that damages the fabric of our society. So, it is important that it is addressed.

Read more: 5 ways the Reserve Bank is going to bat for Australia like never before

“The Board recognises that, in the context of the pandemic, the responsibility for job creation falls mainly on the shoulders of business and government. But the Reserve Bank can, and will, make a contribution too.”

In the months ahead, the pressure will be on the Morrison government to ensure Australians are, in economic terms, best protected in these bad times.

One very significant decision the government will have to soon make is the longer-term level of JobSeeker, currently bolstered by the Coronavirus Supplement.

The government also must assess whether more stimulus is needed to get those unemployment numbers down as far and fast as possible.

How the Australian economy fares will depend on the responses of business and consumers, which goes to confidence, as well on the performance of the world economy, which is highly uncertain, affected by the course of the virus and countries’ economic decisions.

As the count stands, a Biden presidency is the most probable outcome in the US but it would be one constrained by a likely Republican Senate, making it harder for Biden to deliver the level of stimulus he has promised.

From Australia’s standpoint, what Joe Biden did on China would be vitally important. He might seek to dial down tensions somewhat – although it would be a matter of degree – and that would have implications for Australia’s policy.

A Biden presidency would put Australia on the spot over climate change. This is expected increasingly to become a major issue for the Morrison government internationally in 2021.

Already British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pointedly stressed to Morrison, in a recent telephone conversation, “that we need bold action to address climate change”.

Johnson noted “the UK’s experience demonstrates that driving economic growth and reducing emissions can go hand-in-hand”, according to the official Downing Street read-out of the call.

“Looking ahead to the Climate Ambition Summit on 12 December and COP26 in Glasgow next year, [Johnson] emphasised the importance of setting ambitious targets to cut emissions and reach Net Zero.”

The read-out from Morrison’s office omitted the zero target reference.

Morrison developed a functional relationship with Donald Trump and was feted at the White House by a president who didn’t have many friends among international leaders.

Assuming things go Biden’s way, Morrison would pivot to what would be a more conventional presidency, although one that would bring its own challenges for him, especially on climate policy.

If he were wise, Morrison would make a beeline for a Biden White House as quickly as he could get a time slot in early 2021.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: A Biden presidency would put pressure on Scott Morrison over climate change – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-a-biden-presidency-would-put-pressure-on-scott-morrison-over-climate-change-149548

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Taylor, Early Career Research Leader, Emerging Viruses, Inflammation and Therapeutics Group, Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University

The federal government’s announcement of agreements to supply vaccines from Novavax and Pfizer/BioNTech potentially increases the pool of COVID-19 vaccines Australians will be able to access.

These two vaccines are in addition to supply arrangements for vaccines from Oxford University/AstraZeneca and the University of Queensland/CSL, announced in September. Australia will also have access to vaccines via the World Health Organisation-backed COVAX initiative.

However, these arrangements depend on whether the vaccines are shown to be safe and effective in clinical trials, which are still ongoing. So what do we know about the two vaccines in this latest deal?

Read more: Scott Morrison to announce two new COVID vaccine deals

What do we know about the Novavax vaccine?

The Novavax vaccine, NVX-CoV2373, contains purified pieces of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

These proteins are administered with an adjuvant, a molecule that enhances the immune response. The idea is that when this vaccine is administered, the body recognises its contents as “foreign” and mounts a protective immune response.

Early clinical trials were performed in Australia. In the phase 1 clinical trials, the vaccine was generally well-tolerated and produced strong antibody responses, stronger than what we see in patients recovering from COVID-19.

Read more: From adenoviruses to RNA: the pros and cons of different COVID vaccine technologies

In September, Novavax launched a phase 3 clinical trial in the United Kingdom. Further large-scale clinical trials are planned for other countries in late 2020 and early 2021.

If the Novavax vaccine is successful 40 million doses are expected to be available in Australia during 2021, with the option to buy a further 10 million.

What do we know about the Pfizer vaccine?

The vaccine developed by Pfizer, BNT162b2, is based on the genetic material mRNA (or messenger ribonucleic acid). Such mRNA vaccines carry a piece of genetic material that codes for viral proteins, or parts of them. Once inside your cells, the mRNA instructs your cells’ protein factories to make copies of these viral proteins. These then stimulate your immune system to mount a protective immune response.

Pfizer’s BNT162b2 vaccine codes for the virus’ full-length spike protein.

In early clinical trials, the vaccine was generally safe with no serious side-effects. The vaccine also produced a robust immune response after two doses.

When older adults (65-85 years of age) were vaccinated, they produced a greater neutralising antibody response than seen in patients who contracted SARS-CoV-2 naturally.

Interestingly, BNT162b2 is one of the first COVID-19 vaccines to be tested in adolescents (12-18 years of age).

In July, Pfizer announced the launch of large-scale phase 2/3 trials. Trials are under way in several countries, including the United States, Germany, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa, involving 44,000 participants.

One of the challenges facing this vaccine is distribution, as it needs to be stored below -70℃. This is costly and makes transportation difficult, particularly in developing regions.

If BNT162b2 is successful, 10 million doses will be available in Australia from early 2021.

Read more: Australia’s just signed up for a shot at 9 COVID-19 vaccines. Here’s what to expect

What happens next?

Both vaccines, if successful in clinical trials, will be manufactured outside Australia.

This will allay fears Australia might miss out on mRNA vaccines as the country does not have the technology and capacity to make these vaccines itself.

A successful COVID-19 vaccine will also need to navigate the rigorous assessment and approval processes of the Therapeutic Goods Administration for use in Australia.

Read more: Australia may miss out on several COVID vaccines if it can’t make mRNA ones locally

Hedging our bets

It is unlikely all COVID-19 vaccines currently in development will be successful. We have already seen COVID-19 vaccine trials temporarily halted due to safety issues. And not all vaccines will provide a consistent level of immunity. Some vaccines may only provide immunity for limited periods of time and require a booster shot.

By investing in numerous front-running candidates, the Australian government’s strategy of not putting all its eggs in one basket is a wise one.

Investing in a range of vaccine technologies also has benefits, should more than one vaccine become available. This is because different vaccine technologies may be more effective or safe in different populations. This increases the likelihood all sections of society — young and old, with or without existing medical complications — could be targeted.

– ref. What do we know about the Novavax and Pfizer COVID vaccines that Australia just signed up for? – https://theconversation.com/what-do-we-know-about-the-novavax-and-pfizer-covid-vaccines-that-australia-just-signed-up-for-149522

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah John, College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University

Facing the gradual erosion of early leads in several battleground states — and increasingly likely defeat in the presidential election — the Trump campaign is launching a well-planned legal assault to challenge the validity of ballots and the process of vote-counting itself.

The Biden campaign is responding with an equally well-coordinated legal defence and a grassroots fundraising effort called the “Biden Fight Fund”.

Once again, the courts will be called in to resolve a US presidential election, although it is unlikely any rulings will change the results significantly — unless the election comes down to extremely narrow margins in Pennsylvania or Georgia.

Read more: Even if Biden has a likely win, leading a deeply divided nation will be difficult

Trump targets mail-in and early votes

The unusual nature of the 2020 election — with a record 100 million people voting early — ensured a topsy-turvy election night. Compounding the problem has been the large partisan divide in how people voted, with Democrats favouring early and mail-in voting and Republicans favouring in-person voting on election day.

Many states quickly reported the results from in-person ballots on election night, giving Trump an early lead in several battleground states. Those leads were then offset as mail-in and early votes were added to the tallies.

Trump has been encouraging his supporters to view these shifting totals as fishy, claiming:

This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.

So far, Trump has indicated he will bring challenges in four states. This is what he is claiming and the chances he will ultimately be successful.

Wisconsin: Trump requests a recount

In Wisconsin, where Biden leads Trump by less than a percentage point, the Trump campaign announced it will seek a recount. This is a relatively routine occurrence when margins are tight. Indeed, small margins often trigger automatic recounts in many states.

After Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016 by less than a combined total of 80,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, requested a recount. The courts denied the request in Pennsylvania, but partial recounts occurred in Michigan and Wisconsin.

As FiveThirtyEight noted in 2016, recounts rarely change the results of elections, except when margins are razor thin.

It is unlikely Biden’s current 20,000 vote margin over Trump in Wisconsin would be severely dented by a recount.

Read more: History tells us that a contested election won’t destroy American democracy

Michigan: Trump seeks a (temporary) halt to counting

In Michigan, the Trump campaign has filed a complaint seeking to halt the vote count on the basis that Republican Party “election inspectors” (that is, poll workers) do not have access to venues where the counting is taking place.

It is not uncommon for poll workers in the US to be affiliated with a political party. Many states, including Michigan, require poll workers from both parties to be present when votes are counted.

However, the filing provides no evidence that Republican poll workers have been denied access to vote-counting sites. Additionally, the legal bases of the claim appear weak.

For example, the complaint alleges Michigan is breaching the equal protection clause of the US Constitution because it is treating some voters differently from others in the state. Presumably, as the campaign alleges, this is because Democratic poll workers have been granted access to vote-counting sites that Republicans have not.

The complaint seeks a “speedy hearing,” which the Court of Claims has yet to grant. If it does, both the Trump campaign and the Michigan secretary of state will have to provide evidence of the access given to poll workers of different parties on election day.

Pennsylvania: taking it to the Supreme Court

In Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign has initiated court procedings to stop the vote count.

The first part of the lawsuit is similar to the challenge in Michigan: the campaign is seeking to stop vote-counting until Republican poll observers are given access to the sites.

Deputy campaign manager Justin Clark alleges Republican poll observers were unable to observe vote counting because they were forced to be too far away – a claim conspicuously absent in the Michigan filing.

The second part of the Pennsylvania action seeks to reject mail-in ballots from first-time voters who did not provide proof of identity when they registered.

The campaign claims Pennsylvania’s secretary of state didn’t follow the proper process in deciding to accept the ballots from these voters — a breach of federal law. However, the campaign has yet to produce evidence that significant numbers of first-time voters did not prove their identity.

This is perhaps the more interesting legal argument. The Help America Vote Act of 2002, a federal law passed in response to the contested 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, does require new voters to provide identification to register to vote.

If the Trump campaign’s lawsuit is successful, it could result in the removal of a swathe of mail-in ballots from the Pennsylvania vote tally.

Read more: Over 1 million mail-in ballots could be rejected in the US election — and the rules are changing by the day

In addition to these two challenges, the Trump campaign is appealing a decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to allow the counting of mail-in ballots received within three days after election day to the US Supreme Court.

The US Supreme Court rejected the Republican Party’s petition to fast-track a challenge to the decision in October, but appeared willing to consider it after election day.

As of yet, we do not know how many ballots could be affected by this ruling — and the counting of ballots continues.

Georgia: confusion created by courts takes centre stage

Finally, in Georgia, the Trump campaign has filed a petition to prevent any potential counting of late-arriving mail-in ballots.

In one sense, this action is the most straightforward of all the challenges. The petition seeks an order that the existing law be enforced: that all mail-in ballots arriving after 7pm on election day are excluded from the count.

However, the deadline for mail-in ballots in Georgia was also the subject of pre-election legal challenges — meaning voters could have been confused by the rules.

A court initially ruled these ballots could be counted for up to three days after the election, but this decision was then overturned by a higher court.

Challenges are unlikely to be Trump’s path to victory

For now, the Trump campaign has not launched any challenges in the other battleground states of Nevada and Arizona.

We may not end up seeing any challenges in these states, given the tight deadlines involved with elections. All litigation must be resolved or halted by December 8 so the election results can be certified and the Electoral College process can continue. This culminates in the vote that legally chooses the next president on January 6.

The legal challenges are a long shot for the Trump campaign to change the outcome of the election.

If Biden is declared the winner this week and the challenges fail, there may be another repercussion. It could further undermine confidence in the electoral process — a strategy Trump has employed, with varying degrees of success, throughout the race.

– ref. Re-election hopes fading, Trump tries for an election win in the courts – https://theconversation.com/re-election-hopes-fading-trump-tries-for-an-election-win-in-the-courts-149520

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Colin Yeo, Honorary Research Fellow, English and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia

In a year that began during one of the worst bushfire seasons in living memory and then saw a global pandemic take hold, rereading Ben Elton’s Stark offers an eerily prescient window into 2020 as the end of the world.

First published in 1989, Elton’s debut novel offered a doubly prophetic vision. First, his depiction of environmental destruction. Second, his vision of high-stakes private space exploration.

The world of Elton’s Stark is ruled by a shadowy ultra-rich cabal (akin to the Bilderberg Group), known as the Stark Conspiracy. Members of Stark have long been aware their profit-seeking activities have caused irrevocable environmental damage. They realise the Earth’s “vanishing point”, a scenario of total environmental collapse, is imminent.

The novel begins with the world facing a mass extinction event:

The earth was dying. To be more specific, the earth was being killed. Done to death by its fond owners. Killed by the pursuit of money. For the men gathered round the table it was utterly frustrating to have inherited the earth and then have the damn thing die on you.

Rereading Elton’s dystopian fiction today is unsettling. His prediction the world would be ruled, or rather owned, by the ultra-rich is closer to reality than fiction.

Read more: How 19th century fairy tales expressed anxieties about ecological devastation

Off the page

In 2019, months before the Australian bushfire crisis, the United Nations observed that around 1 million plant and animal species were threatened with extinction. Californian bushfires recently ravaged 4 million hectares of land, double the 2019 record.

That we are moving closer to a vanishing point is no longer confined to the realm of fiction. The last decade was one of the hottest on record.

In Stark, Elton predicts how deforestation will lead to irreversible salinisation of the landscape:

Now the trees are gone and Western Australia — like many hot parts of the world where surface evaporation is speedy and the forests have been cleared — faces a terrible problem with the salt of the earth.

The most unnerving similarity between Elton’s novel and the world of today is the speed at which the effects of climate change and environmental degradation take place.

Species of animals that were not meant to die out until mid twenty-first century were already extinct. Trees were proving far less resilient against acid ‘die-back’ than had been hoped.

Elton’s novel can be considered a product of the 1980s, when depletion of the ozone layer due to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) was a hot topic.

He has reflected, with scepticism, on Margaret Thatcher’s commitment to reducing CFCs. The influence of this socio-cultural milieu is evidenced by the book’s cover art — showing an aerosol-shaped spaceship leaving the earth.

While Elton has described the writing of Stark as from the perspective of an “outsider looking in”, its success and subsequent adaptation into a TV series is a testament to its compelling (and depressingly) poignant commentary. Before his debut novel Elton was a stand-up comic who co-wrote British television hits The Young Ones and Blackadder.

Read more: Ben Elton’s wrong – TV sitcoms aren’t dead, they’ve just changed since his day

Abandon ship

Responding to the imminent threat of annihilation, the members of the Stark conspiracy provide for themselves a creative solution: colonising the moon.

In 2020, Elton’s vision of colonising space is an increasingly immediate reality. Likewise, only for those who can afford it.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and the world’s richest man, has poured billions of dollars into his space exploration company Blue Origin.

Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spruiks a company view that humanity’s challenges lie in “better use of space”. In May, one of Tesla founder Elon Musk’s SpaceEx rocket ships launched two NASA astronauts into the earth’s orbit.

Elton sits among a pantheon of fiction writers in the ecocritical tradition, including David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas), Margaret Atwood (The Year of the Flood), Richard Powers (The Overstory) and Ian McEwan (Solar).

Stark stands out from other ecocritical texts for its weaving of humour, conspiracy, a critique of capitalism in a narrative with a distinctively dry (Western) Australian flavour.

The conspiracy theory elements of the novel that sounded outlandish in 1989 are far more believable in 2020. Indigenous land rights and the fictional town of “Kalgoorkatta” (a play on the Western Australian mining town of Kalgoorlie) feature as key plot points in the novel.

Though the text is satirical, readers recognised enough elements to make it Elton’s first bestseller. He has since written 14 bestsellers, including Popcorn, Inconceivable, Dead Famous, and High Society, three West End plays and three musicals.

Read more: Five must-read novels on the environment and climate crisis

A weary indictment

So, Elton’s dual depictions of global environmental destruction and space colonisation by the rich were light years ahead of their time. Yet the novel ends with a weary indictment of society’s unwillingness to make environmental change:

Too much money was involved, it simply wasn’t economical. Nothing had been done and now the reckoning was upon them all.

Elton’s vision is scarily poignant when re-read today. The book exemplifies the quote by Frederic Jameson:

It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

– ref. ‘The Earth was dying. Killed by the pursuit of money’ — rereading Ben Elton’s Stark as prophecy – https://theconversation.com/the-earth-was-dying-killed-by-the-pursuit-of-money-rereading-ben-eltons-stark-as-prophecy-147256

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Colin Yeo, Honorary Research Fellow, English and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia

In a year that began during one of the worst bushfire seasons in living memory and then saw a global pandemic take hold, rereading Ben Elton’s Stark offers an eerily prescient window into 2020 as the end of the world.

First published in 1989, Elton’s debut novel offered a doubly prophetic vision. First, his depiction of environmental destruction. Second, his vision of high-stakes private space exploration.

The world of Elton’s Stark is ruled by a shadowy ultra-rich cabal (akin to the Bilderberg Group), known as the Stark Conspiracy. Members of Stark have long been aware their profit-seeking activities have caused irrevocable environmental damage. They realise the Earth’s “vanishing point”, a scenario of total environmental collapse, is imminent.

The novel begins with the world facing a mass extinction event:

The earth was dying. To be more specific, the earth was being killed. Done to death by its fond owners. Killed by the pursuit of money. For the men gathered round the table it was utterly frustrating to have inherited the earth and then have the damn thing die on you.

Rereading Elton’s dystopian fiction today is unsettling. His prediction the world would be ruled, or rather owned, by the ultra-rich is closer to reality than fiction.

Read more: How 19th century fairy tales expressed anxieties about ecological devastation

Off the page

In 2019, months before the Australian bushfire crisis, the United Nations observed that around 1 million plant and animal species were threatened with extinction. Californian bushfires recently ravaged 4 million hectares of land, double the 2019 record.

That we are moving closer to a vanishing point is no longer confined to the realm of fiction. The last decade was one of the hottest on record.

In Stark, Elton predicts how deforestation will lead to irreversible salinisation of the landscape:

Now the trees are gone and Western Australia — like many hot parts of the world where surface evaporation is speedy and the forests have been cleared — faces a terrible problem with the salt of the earth.

The most unnerving similarity between Elton’s novel and the world of today is the speed at which the effects of climate change and environmental degradation take place.

Species of animals that were not meant to die out until mid twenty-first century were already extinct. Trees were proving far less resilient against acid ‘die-back’ than had been hoped.

Elton’s novel can be considered a product of the 1980s, when depletion of the ozone layer due to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) was a hot topic.

He has reflected, with scepticism, on Margaret Thatcher’s commitment to reducing CFCs. The influence of this socio-cultural milieu is evidenced by the book’s cover art — showing an aerosol-shaped spaceship leaving the earth.

While Elton has described the writing of Stark as from the perspective of an “outsider looking in”, its success and subsequent adaptation into a TV series is a testament to its compelling (and depressingly) poignant commentary. Before his debut novel Elton was a stand-up comic who co-wrote British television hits The Young Ones and Blackadder.

Read more: Ben Elton’s wrong – TV sitcoms aren’t dead, they’ve just changed since his day

Abandon ship

Responding to the imminent threat of annihilation, the members of the Stark conspiracy provide for themselves a creative solution: colonising the moon.

In 2020, Elton’s vision of colonising space is an increasingly immediate reality. Likewise, only for those who can afford it.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and the world’s richest man, has poured billions of dollars into his space exploration company Blue Origin.

Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spruiks a company view that humanity’s challenges lie in “better use of space”. In May, one of Tesla founder Elon Musk’s SpaceEx rocket ships launched two NASA astronauts into the earth’s orbit.

Elton sits among a pantheon of fiction writers in the ecocritical tradition, including David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas), Margaret Atwood (The Year of the Flood), Richard Powers (The Overstory) and Ian McEwan (Solar).

Stark stands out from other ecocritical texts for its weaving of humour, conspiracy, a critique of capitalism in a narrative with a distinctively dry (Western) Australian flavour.

The conspiracy theory elements of the novel that sounded outlandish in 1989 are far more believable in 2020. Indigenous land rights and the fictional town of “Kalgoorkatta” (a play on the Western Australian mining town of Kalgoorlie) feature as key plot points in the novel.

Though the text is satirical, readers recognised enough elements to make it Elton’s first bestseller. He has since written 14 bestsellers, including Popcorn, Inconceivable, Dead Famous, and High Society, three West End plays and three musicals.

Read more: Five must-read novels on the environment and climate crisis

A weary indictment

So, Elton’s dual depictions of global environmental destruction and space colonisation by the rich were light years ahead of their time. Yet the novel ends with a weary indictment of society’s unwillingness to make environmental change:

Too much money was involved, it simply wasn’t economical. Nothing had been done and now the reckoning was upon them all.

Elton’s vision is scarily poignant when re-read today. The book exemplifies the quote by Frederic Jameson:

It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

– ref. ‘The Earth was dying. Killed by the pursuit of money’ — rereading Ben Elton’s satiric novel Stark as prophecy – https://theconversation.com/the-earth-was-dying-killed-by-the-pursuit-of-money-rereading-ben-eltons-satiric-novel-stark-as-prophecy-147256

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

At the time of writing we don’t yet know who will win the US presidential election.

But we do know this for sure: Donald Trump will be able to win with less than half the votes cast. Put another way, Joe Biden will be able to lose even if he wins the popular vote.

Election analyst Nate Silver believes Biden would have to win by three to four percentage points to have a better than 50% chance of winning the presidency.

The same was true in 2016. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by around two percentage points but lost the presidency. And in 2000. Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the presidency.

Part of the reason is the geographically-based US electoral college system in which voters don’t directly elect the president but elect representatives who will vote on their behalf in an electoral college.

But another part is the result of a more general problem called Gerrymandering.

The term is named after a governor of Massachusetts Elbridge Gerry who, in 1812, drew a district (with a pencil, on a map, on the floor of the study in his house in Cambridge MA) so oddly shaped that political cartoonists said it resembled a salamander.

They christened his plan a “Gerrymander”.

Oddly shaped electorates can be designed to combine voters in very specific ways, limiting an opposing party’s ability to win many electorates.

The 4th Congressional district in Illinois, in the United States, is a famous example – combining votes from the North and South sides of Chicago, and running along a freeway at one point.

Even without odd shapes, where ever there is a geographic allocation of voters to electoral districts or states (as in the UK, Australia and many other countries) there is the prospect – indeed likelihood – that the popular vote won’t coincide with the winner of the majority of seats or states.

It’s possible to lose lots of seats by big margins and to still come out on top by winning slightly more by narrow margins.

Read more: More Americans are suing over gerrymandered state maps – but the Supreme Court is not likely to step in

At least in Australia and the United Kingdom, districts aren’t drawn by politicians, but in many states they are in the US.

While this doesn’t matter much for presidential elections, it has led people like me to spend a fair amount of time devoted to seeking to understand the motives of gerrymanders, whether they have advantaged incumbents, how to draw geographically-sensible looking districts, and how to use automatic means to change district boundaries as populations change.

One problem in the US is that even if the rules don’t change, voters naturally move between districts, often congregating with like-minded people, creating the effect of a gerrymander.

Read more: 4 reasons gerrymandering is getting worse

Even an independent electoral commission, such as Australia’s will find it hard to ensure that the party that wins the majority vote will be the party that takes office.

And they are not required to.

For federal elections the redistribution commissioners are required only to ensure that the number of voters in each electorate is roughly the same as in other electorates within the state.

In doing it they are required to take account of communities of interests, means of travel, and physical features.

Gerrymandering is semi-automatic

To look at the distribution of each party’s supporters and ensure it was evenly spread between electorates would be a highly political act.

It would involve making political judgements.

South Australia’s Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission was required to make those judgements between 1991 and 2016.

During those years it was told to ensure

as far as practicable, that the redistribution was fair to prospective candidates and groups of candidates, so that if candidates of a particular group attracted more than 50 per cent of the popular vote, including preferences, they would be elected in sufficient numbers to enable a government to be formed.

Until the law was repealed amid accusations about which side of politics would benefit South Australia was the only Australian state in which authorities were required to give consideration to political outcomes when drawing up electorates.

We are told that it no longer happens in South Australia and happens nowhere else in Australia. And it doesn’t, explicitly.

Read more: Explainer: how do seat redistributions work?

Yet implicitly redistribution commissions do make those calls making judgements that will either advance majority rule or retard it, regardless of whether they say or think they are.

It’s something that as voters and citizens, we should be aware of.

– ref. Vital Signs: Sure, the US election is gerrymandered, but so are others, and its hard to stop – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-sure-the-us-election-is-gerrymandered-but-so-are-others-and-its-hard-to-stop-149454

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kendall George, Lecturer, Nursing and Midwifery and Midwifery Program Leader, University of the Sunshine Coast

For most people, running a marathon sounds like a lot of work — and they probably wouldn’t even consider completing more than one within 24 hours.

The will to go the extra mile is what lies at the very heart of ultra-endurance events (and that’s exactly why they’re called “ultra”).

These events are for athletes who go beyond the typical marathon distance of about 42km, or engage in physical exertion for more than six hours. They’re generally performed via biking, swimming or running, but can also be held in activities such as kayaking.

Our new research published in the journal PLOS One looks at the role of “mental toughness” in the performance of ultra-endurance runners. Our findings suggest mind over matter is a real phenomenon — but can only get you so far.

The nitty-gritty of ultra-endurance events

On-foot ultra-marathons are notoriously challenging, with distances starting around 56km and going upwards of 150km. They’re often held in remote mountainous settings and almost always involve unpredictable course conditions and massive shifts in altitude.

Read more: I ran 100 miles in a day – this is what happened to my body

Unsurprisingly, research on ultra-marathon runners has found this unique population experiences a range of difficult circumstances during these events.

The most common physical reasons for withdrawal include nausea, vomiting, blisters and/or muscle pain. Alongside extreme physical pain and discomfort, it’s also common to experience intense fatigue, unpleasant emotions and negative thoughts.

Is it really mind over matter?

“Mental toughness” is usually associated with the ability to either remain consistent in the face of challenges, or to quickly recover from setbacks and adversity.

We wanted to investigate what motivates ultra-endurance athletes to keep going despite obvious physical and mental challenges. To do this, we focused on a group of 56 ultra-marathon runners who competed in the Hawaiian Ultra Running Trail 100, or HURT100.

This 160.1km endurance run is a difficult five-lap course in the mountains above the city of Honolulu, Hawaii. The track has little clear running space and runners spend most of the course navigating through tree roots and crossing streams. Topping it off is about 7,500m of cumulative elevation gain and loss over the course.

The elite athletes in our study completed two questionnaires, from which we found mental toughness didn’t seem to predict performance within the group.

Thus, we conclude there may be a “threshold” level of mental toughness one must overcome to even be able to prepare for, and compete in, such an event. But beyond this, other psychological, physical and logistical factors appear to have a greater impact on performance.

We also compared our group of ultra-marathon runners to athletes in other sports including hockey, tennis, professional football, high performance male athletics and mixed martial arts. We discovered the runners had significantly higher levels of mental toughness.

In terms of which specific characteristics led to greater mental toughness, such as confidence, commitment, personal responsibility or control over one’s thoughts — “self-efficacy” scored high.

This refers to an athlete’s belief in their ability to execute a task. For example, whether they believed they could complete the HURT100 distance within the 36-hour cut off time.

Read more: Will the genetic screening of athletes change sport as we know it?

Traversing the human mind

Our research has practical implications for athletes, whether they want to increase their own mental toughness, or know what it takes to run in an ultra-marathon event.

Having advanced knowledge of the mechanisms underpinning mental toughness (such as self-efficacy) could also help sport psychologists and coaches create more effective and targeted training programs.

That said, our findings do open doors to more questions. What other factors could predict performance in ultra-marathon runners? How wide is the range of characteristics that can be linked to mental toughness? And can these be learned by anyone?

Some may argue people are just born with greater levels of mental toughness and it’s in their genes. Others claim this can be developed over time as a result of individual experiences. It seems the age-old nature versus nurture debate persists.

Acknowledgement: the author would like to acknowledge the study’s first author, Anthony Brace, who is a Master of Psychology Candidate (Sport and Exercise) at the University of Queensland.

– ref. We studied mental toughness in ultra-marathon runners. Mind over matter is real — but won’t take you all the way – https://theconversation.com/we-studied-mental-toughness-in-ultra-marathon-runners-mind-over-matter-is-real-but-wont-take-you-all-the-way-149447