Why Melbourne's public housing towers have 'explosive potential' for coronavirus to spread

Nine Melbourne public housing estates are in their third day of a "hard lockdown", brought about by fears coronavirus has the "explosive potential" to spread within the units.

Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said the measures were in place because the environment was "desperately challenging".

That's because of a range of factors, like density, cleanliness and the jobs of many people living inside. High-density towers can be like 'vertical cruise ships'

We know one of the biggest weapons in stopping the spread of coronavirus is keeping our distance, and that the virus has more chance of transmission indoors.

Tenants in big apartment blocks often share facilities like lifts, corridors, rubbish facilities and laundry rooms — making the chance of running into someone higher.

Each one of the Melbourne tower blocks is home to hundreds of residents living in small units without balconies.

"Those towers have a large concentration of people in a small area," acting Australian Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said on Sunday. "They are vertical cruise ships, in a way.

"And so we have to take particular notice and particular attention to make sure that the spread is minimised and that people are protected."

Sharon Lewin, leading infectious diseases expert and the director of the Doherty Institute, said tightly-packed apartment blocks could be a "recipe for transmission".

"When you get very dense housing, it becomes very hard to physically distance and stop any spread," she told ABC Radio Melbourne.

Advocates have pointed to this as a reason there should be more public housing.

Victorian Public Tenants Association executive officer Mark Feenane said while COVID-19 did not discriminate based on income or housing tenure, "overcrowded living conditions assist the virus to spread".

On Sunday, 27 cases had been detected across the nine towers in Flemington and North Melbourne, but Professor Sutton said he expected there would be more diagnosed in coming days.

That's the big reason behind the lockdowns — authorities are concerned about people who may be "incubating" the virus.

As well as the problems faced by residents of an apartment block in containing the spread, tenants have told the ABC about broken lifts making it "impossible" to safely distance.

Melissa Wehan, who lives in one of the Racecourse Rd buildings in Flemington, told the ABC it was "inevitable" the virus would spread in her block. She said there was a lack of hand sanitiser around the building, including in communal spaces.

"Our lifts only hold — if we follow social-distancing instructions — two people at a time. There's 180 apartments in every building, nine flats in every floor," she said.

Other tenants have expressed concern about the lack of information in languages other than English.

Housing Minister Richard Wynne said "significant deep cleaning" had been done across Melbourne's 47 high-rise public housing blocks since the pandemic began.

"You can be assured that the deep cleaning both of the common areas, the lifts and indeed the common walkways has been very significantly ramped up since the start of the COVID virus, for all of the obvious reasons of the potential vulnerability of our tenants," he said on Sunday.

He said he had also asked his department to "ensure that we have got all of the appropriate language information in place".

Tenants are likely to work public-facing essential jobs
The Doherty Institute's Professor Lewin said while the physical environment was one factor, it was just part of the picture.

"A lot of people in these housing estates in Victoria particularly, are in work that's essential, so they're often more likely to be exposed to infection," she said.

"You're more in touch with the public if you can't work from home, so exposure is probably a big risk factor here.

And if people are living with larger family groups, they're more likely to bring the virus home.

But authorities have been careful to not lay blame on the residents of the towers. "It's not about the people who are there, it's about the entire environment and the way that people interact and the issue of how easily this virus spreads," Professor Sutton said.

Another potential factor is that the virus is known to last longer on surfaces with lower humidity and less sunlight — so a Melbourne winter could play a part.

There's also concern about background health status. Residents of public housing are often immigrants, on low income or living with a disability.

On Saturday, the Deputy Chief Health Officer, Annaliese van Diemen, said that added another layer of concern.

"The first priority here is to find every case in those towers so that we don't have an explosion of infections in a highly vulnerable community and very high rates of hospitalisations and deaths because of the background health status of a large number of people in these towers," she said.

Authorities are hoping they'll get on top of it with testing
The lockdown will last for at least five days, which authorities are hoping will be enough time to test all 3,000 residents and process the results. It could then be extended for longer.

Under the "detention directions" given to residents, the state also has the power to detain people for a further 10 days if they decline to be tested. Mr Andrews said that was because authorities would have to "assume you are positive".

Some residents felt unfairly targeted by the sudden lockdown and were left unprepared and confused when police arrived to enforce the new restrictions.

Professor Sutton said the "early, if imperfect control" was key to getting on top of the virus and preventing deaths. He said without the lockdown, the virus "would have spread beyond these towers".

Meanwhile, cases outside of those towers are continuing to climb around Melbourne, with tens of new infections recorded each day.

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Election results are tight enough that Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese can take a boost from it

A status quo result in the hotly contested Eden-Monaro by-election has simultaneously helped to strengthen Anthony Albanese's leadership of the Labor Party while giving Scott Morrison a shot in the arm, having withstood a possible protest vote over his handling of the bushfire crisis.

Both leaders were carefully managing expectations in the lead-up to the first by-election of the 46th Parliament, conducted under the shadow of a once-in-a-100-year pandemic, in the most challenging economic conditions since the Great Depression and in a region still traumatised by the black summer of fires.

These contaminants make it even harder than usual to pick apart the result and determine which issue ultimately swayed voters.

ABC election analyst Antony Green handed the win to Labor — a huge relief for Albanese who personally picked Labor's candidate Kristy McBain and threw everything at this seat to defend it.

He could not afford to be the first opposition leader in 100 years to lose a seat to a government in a by-election.

Labor had always said that it would lose about 3 per cent of its primary vote with the retirement of the popular sitting member Mike Kelly.

It turns out the party's vote fell by just over 2 per cent according to the latest figures, to 36 per cent, meaning it had to rely on favourable preference flows from the Greens, Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party and the Nationals to fall over the line.

That the junior Coalition partner even contested this election irritated the Liberals, that the party may have helped Labor win the seat, is a source of serious tension. But more on that later.

A win is a win but this result once again highlights the major challenge for Labor, exemplified by Bill Shorten at last year's election. Its primary vote is simply too low.

While it may have been distorted, somewhat, by the huge field of 14 candidates contesting Eden-Monaro, Labor frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon has openly conceded it's an issue, telling Insiders: "We do need to lift our primary vote and Anthony Albanese understands that."

But Fitzgibbon, who's from the party's right, has credited his left-wing leader with bringing Labor to the "sensible centre" and appealing to voters in regional Australia who have abandoned the party in droves.

"He was quick to jettison unpopular policies like franking credits," he told the ABC's Insiders. "He was quick to start establishing his bona fides with our traditional blue-collar base."

When asked if Albanese would lead Labor to the next election, Fitzgibbon responded "yes".

Equally, on the other side of politics, the Liberals are taking heart from the fact that the Coalition withstood the usual 3.8 per cent swing against a government in a by-election, even managing to ever so slightly improve its primary vote.

The bushfire crisis, together with McBain's personal profile, appears to have worked in Labor's favour along the NSW South Coast but the swings were largely contained, suggesting the white-hot anger directed at Morrison during the height of the crisis may have subsided.

That's possibly because of his handling of the COVID-19 crisis that followed.

But at a time when Morrison is enjoying sky-high personal approval ratings, some are questioning why that isn't translating into votes.

Indeed, the Newspoll results published in The Australian have already highlighted this issue.

Morrison's approval rating topped 68 per cent in the most recent poll but the two party preferred vote, showing the Coalition ahead of Labor 51-49 per cent, remains unchanged.

The PM didn't campaign nearly as much as Albanese in Eden-Monaro but it was his face on the corflutes outside the 70 or so polling booths, urging voters to back the Liberals.

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Volunteer firies 'disenchanted' and 'disrespected' by bureaucracy

Volunteer firefighters are leaving the ranks in NSW and Victoria due to disrespect from city-based professional emergency managers, the bushfire royal commission has heard.

Volunteer Fire Fighters Association of NSW vice-president Brian Williams said fire control plans overlooked input from local volunteers, which they feared put them at increased risk of harm.

The Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements has heard volunteer firefighters are dissatisfied with professional fire managers.
The Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements has heard volunteer firefighters are dissatisfied with professional fire managers.CREDIT:NICK MOIR

"The Rural Fire Service has become quite a city centric organisation and there has been a considerable loss of control at the local level," Mr Williams said. "Their [volunteer] input isn't valued like it used to be when we were under local government and they're tending to walk away and that's very unfortunate."

Volunteers do a "a very difficult, dangerous job" and the bureaucracy should "give them respect", Mr Williams said in a hearing of the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements on Friday.

He said a "growing feeling that we're no longer important" had been felt across the Rural Fire Service volunteer ranks for a number of years and as a result "really experienced people are becoming disenchanted and they're leaving the service".

Volunteer numbers had also taken a "worrying" drop in Victoria due to a lack of respect for their ranks, according to Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria chief executive Adam Barnett.

"We've still got a healthy culture in Australia for volunteering, and the healthy recruiting numbers I think lend themselves to say people want to volunteer," he said.

"But when you start looking into the reasons why volunteers are leaving and certainly those reasons from an association point of view, the dissatisfaction about how they are treated, it's dissatisfaction about how they are respected and recognised."

There were 65,992 volunteers in 1998 in Victoria but that number had dropped to 53,311 in 2020, he said.

"Unfortunately we have experienced a significant, I guess, downward trend in the last five years and looking at the figures we've probably lost roughly around the same amount of volunteers in the last five years as we had in the 15 years prior to that. So it's certainly a worrying trend in the short term," Mr Barnett said.

Association of Volunteer Bush Fire Brigades president Dave Gossage, from Western Australia, said volunteers had been "bullied" since local input had been diminished and administration of firefighting funding and regulations had been consolidated under the Department of Fires and Emergency Services.

"The department said to us that 'oh, you can have it so long as you come under our command and control'," Mr Gossage said. "That is just blatant bullying and abuse of power to actually use that, you know, control of the money to get people to come under their command and control."

Mr Gossage said the state bureaucracy created an "insulting" firefighting training system that ignored volunteers.

"In WA a system was brought in that created pathways for the paid people and then they said 'oh shivers, we forgot about the volunteers' and shoved them on," he said.

"But the way it was structured volunteers would always be subservient to the paid officers and that's insulting when we have volunteers who are running multi million dollar corporations and businesses and mines and all that being treated like fodder."

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NSW curriculum review is a fail

Despite the Berejiklian government’s  ‘back to basics’ rhetoric, the NSW curriculum review is proposing a radical overhaul that isn’t based on evidence, but will make life more difficult for teachers and students.

The curriculum definitely needs to be improved. But while many of the minor proposals of the latest review are sensible, the suggested major changes will make matters worse.

The most radical proposal is to move away from the normal year-level curriculum to an ‘untimed’ curriculum, so it will “not specify when every student must commence, or how long they have to learn, the content of each syllabus.”

This would remove any absolute standard for what all students should be expected to achieve in each year; yet another downward notch for the already-low expectations in our school system.

Teachers’ work in the classroom will be made harder because apparently they will need to — somehow — deliver lessons to students working on different syllabi within the same class, depending on their progress. It’s already a constant challenge to teach lessons to students with differing abilities and progress when covering the same syllabus.

How could a teacher possibly be reasonably expected to teach many different topics at the same time in one class and track each student’s progress against different standards? It’s a recipe for even more red tape for teachers, who already suffer from a heavy administrative burden.

Proof that this idea isn’t a practical one is that the review cannot point to any high-achieving school system, anywhere in the world, that has an ‘untimed’ curriculum. Not one.

Another proposal is that the HSC will have less emphasis on exams and introduce a “major project” for each Year 12 student.

But take-home assignments like this are far less fair than exams in demonstrating proficiency of a subject. For example, students from disadvantaged backgrounds would have less access to parental help or tutors at home for their major projects. This would undermine the integrity of the HSC — which is arguably the most rigorous Year 12 certificate in Australia — and negatively impact disadvantaged students in particular.

The review itself acknowledges these potential equity problems, and the best it can say in response is that they are “probably not insurmountable.” So that’s alright, then?

The NSW government’s response to the proposals for an untimed curriculum and major projects for the HSC has been “support in principle” but “further advice will be sought.” We can only hope this is bureaucratic code for “not going to happen.”

A review is one thing, government policy is another. The NSW government has only itself to blame if it implements the review’s recommendations and school results fail to improve — or continue to worsen — despite more taxpayer funding.

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 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

Why one of the world's top disease experts says Australia should abandon hard lockdowns, embrace 'herd immunity' and let COVID-19 rip

Sweden may have more deaths so far but should be safer from a future upsurge

A top disease expert has urged Australia to abandon its 'selfish' and 'self congratulatory' lockdown tactics and embrace a Swedish-style herd immunity strategy to fight COVID-19.

University of Oxford professor Sunetra Gupta said the Scandinavian country has 'done quite well in terms of deaths' - despite its record of 5,300 fatalities dwarfing Australia's.

Sweden holds the fifth-highest rate of deaths per capita in the world after the Nordic nation took its own path and declined to close its restaurants, bars, schools and shops to fight the spread of the virus.

Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has since called for an inquiry into the so-called soft approach. 

On the other hand, Australia took on a comparatively tougher stance and closed down state borders, businesses, restaurants and pubs earlier in the year.

The country has recorded 104 deaths with new coronavirus cases in the community only recorded in Victoria - despite the state enforcing some of the toughest lockdown measures in the country.

State premier Daniel Andrews was slammed by critics as 'Chairman Dan' for the state's harsh lockdown measures in response to the initial COVID outbreak in March - at one point even banning the playing of golf.

Victoria is now in the grips of what state health officials have politely described as a 'second peak', if not a second wave.

Professor Gupta has argued the state's predicament is proof that lockdown measures are ineffective in the longterm. 'There is no way lockdown can eliminate the virus … and so it's not at all surprising once you lift lockdown in areas it will flare up again,' she told The Australian.

'That is what we are seeing in the southern United States, and in Australia.'  

According to scientific research, between 30 and 81 per cent of the global population have T-cells from previous colds and flus that could automatically recognise the threat of the coronavirus, making them immune.

A large number of Australians will also be asymptomatic if they came down with the virus.

Professor Gupta argued it would be better to let COVID-19 spread in the community and have stronger measures to protect the vulnerable - such as the elderly or sick.

'You can only lock down for so long unless you choose to be in isolation for eternity so that's not a good solution,' she was quoted saying.

Australia has pinned its hopes on a vaccine, with human trials underway at universities around the world.

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Protests dying out in Brisbane

Fewer than a thousand people gathered for a Black Lives Matter protest in Brisbane city on Saturday, leaving organisers disheartened.

Just weeks ago, some 30,000 Queenslanders turned out to a rally following the death of African-American man George Floyd at the hands of police.

'I can not explain the disappointment,' Gomeroi Kooma woman Ruby Wharton told the small crowd gathered at King George Square on Saturday.

'It was okay for people to come out here and want to be a part of it when they were chasing a hundred likes on Instagram.'  'That is shameful and tokenism,' she said.

Organiser Bogaine Spearim told reporters the rally was intended to be a continuation of the global protests that kicked off in the wake of Mr Floyd's death in May.

'Deaths are continuing to happen in Australia - Dave Dungay Jnr said 'I can't breathe' before dying in custody,' he said. 'We will continue to hit the streets and disrupt until there is justice.'

Despite the small turnout, the protestors were vocal, shouting 'Always was, always will be Aboriginal land' and, 'No justice, no peace, no racist police'.

Garrwa and Butchulla man Fred Leone called on the Queensland government to conduct a broad review into black deaths in custody. 'F**k all has changed since 1991, since the last royal commission,' he said

'Black Lives Matter. They do not just matter cause it is trending, they matter every single day.'

More than 430 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are known to have died in custody in Australia since a royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody delivered its final report in 1991.

Organisers are also calling for anti-racism training in schools and an end to racial profiling by police.

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Australia risks squandering a lucrative export - and a diplomatic opportunity

There are a few things Australia is really good at. Most of them are resources, given to us through good fortune and geographical circumstance, we dig them up and send them all over the world, earning about $180 billion a year in the process.

A look down the top 10 list of Australia's exports - a roll call of the country's areas of comparative advantage – puts education at number three, tourism at number five, and mostly rocks in between.

Iron ore makes good steel but does little for exporting Australia's values or influence. Education does. Now it appears we may be squandering it.

Historically, the flow of people for educational exchange in Western democracies is seen as a way of transferring democratic values to non-democratic regions of the world.

There is no larger non-democratic market than China. At Australia's top universities they account for 60 per cent of all international enrolments, or 110,000 students. It is a massive market – worth $3.1 billion a year to the top 10 universities alone − and with many international students coming from more privileged backgrounds than average, a huge strategic opportunity to influence the potential future leaders of industry and government.

On Friday, the Business Council of Australia's Asia Taskforce published a report that found the single greatest post-COVID-19 opportunity for the Australian economy lies in Asia. China is the only G20 economy and along with Vietnam, one of the few economies in the world currently forecast to show growth in 2020.

"Australia must maintain a comprehensive and multi-faceted economic relationship with China in a strategy which focuses on the national interest but based on the principle of “China and” rather than “China or," the taskforce said.

"A challenge for Australia is that China has a different political system and is becoming more
assertive on the international stage as its economy grows. At the same time, China will remain our largest trading partner and a significant foreign investor in Australia, and thus a significant contributor to much of our prosperity for the foreseeable future."

The key to harnessing that growth is people. Particularly those who understand how business operates in both China and Australia, many of whom are likely to be Chinese students who have studied here themselves.

Unfortunately, the flow-on effects of increasingly heated diplomatic rhetoric from politicians on both sides into the community is undermining that opportunity, as is a spike in discrimination against Chinese students and Chinese-Australian migrants during the coronavirus.

China has ratcheted up the tension in its increasingly shaky relationship with Australia, with the government now urging its citizens not to travel here.

Researchers from Stanford University in California this week released research that found Chinese students who study in the United States are more predisposed to favour liberal democracy than their peers in China. It is not unreasonable to expect similar tendencies to appear in those heading to Australia.

But the study of more than 300 Chinese first-year undergraduate students in 62 universities across the US found once they encountered anti-Chinese discrimination, it significantly reduces their belief that political reform is desirable for China and increases their support for authoritarian rule.

"Strikingly, we find that encountering xenophobic discrimination is more likely to increase support for autocracy among students who are more predisposed against the Chinese regime and less supportive nationalistic Chinese policies," researchers Yingjie Fan, Jennifer Pan, Zijie Shao, and Yiqing Xu found.

"Altogether, this means that xenophobic discrimination blocks and perhaps unravels the micro-foundation of the effects of education on transferring democratic values."

Two years before the coronavirus ravaged the global economy, Australia’s former Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane warned the China debate was “threatening to spill over into a general suspicion of Chinese-Australians,” Australia was "flirting with danger” and “intolerance has been emboldened”.

Asian-Australians reported almost 400 racist attacks since the beginning of April, according to a Per Capita survey.

It is jarring to be considering this now as Hong Kong goes through a violent and distressing erosion of its civil liberties driven by the very top of the Chinese Communist Party, but China thinks in decades, not years. It is likely that our engagement with our largest trading partner will have to continue in some form after its most liberal territory is suppressed.

To be sure there are valid reasons for alarm rising in the Australian community about Chinese government’s growing influence and ambitions in the region. It has waged campaigns of disinformation, attempted to manipulate Australian politics, hacked computer networks, is expanding its military reach in the Pacific and repressed, often brutally, ethnic minorities at home.

But the tenor of the conversation in Australia has now reached such a point that two of Australia's foremost foreign policy experts were denounced by Michael Danby, a former member of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, for briefing a Labor shadow cabinet on the need for “sensible engagement” with China.

The two experts were Allan Gyngell, a former foreign policy adviser to Paul Keating and head of the Office of Nat­ional Assessments and Dennis Richardson, the former head of ASIO and Australia's ambassador to Washington.

Both suggested that a rising group of claw-branded Parliamentarians known as the Wolverines, who aim to aggressively curtail China's influence, may be counterproductive.

Danby was incensed. “It reeks of someone trying to reinforce ideological conformity," he told The Australian.

In other words, shut down the debate, there is no room for nuance on China.

"The list of compradors to be dragged before the Committee on UnAustralian Activities over not adhering to the correct line on China is getting longer by the day!," Richard McGregor, a senior fellow with the Lowy Institute posted on Twitter.

In the midst of all this, business is largely being cowed. Until Friday, the public has heard very little from the BCA or the Australia-China Business Council since bilateral diplomatic ties went into the freezer earlier this year. Big names such as Seven Group chairman Kerry Stokes and miner Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest go out and take the hits (with a heavy dose of self-interest) before retreating under a swell of anti-China sentiment. For every big business there are thousands of small businesses underneath that rely on China.

They cannot take part in the debate lest they are accused of reinforcing ideological conformity.

The Stanford University study suggests that while nuance is out of fashion, it might be the best chance Australia has of sending back well-informed former students to China with ideas that it may benefit from in the long term.

Those students that were not exposed to discrimination but were made aware of criticisms of the party did not tend to gravitate back towards authoritarianism.

"We find no increase in support for authoritarian rule when Chinese students encounter non-racist criticisms of China, the Chinese government, and China’s political institutions made by Americans," the study found.

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Australian first: Human coronavirus vaccine trials begin in South Australia

The first potential coronavirus vaccine developed in the southern hemisphere has begun human trials in Adelaide, with volunteers praised for their efforts to help save the world from the killer disease.

Australian company Vaxine will use a clinical trial unit at the Royal Adelaide Hospital to test the COVAX-19 vaccine.

Forty volunteers aged between 18 and 65 will be given two doses three weeks apart and will then have blood tests to measure protective antibody and their responses.

Vaxine research director Nikolai Petrovsky said COVAX-19 used a type of technology that mirrored previous work on vaccines for the SARS coronavirus.

He said it was thought to provide the most certain and reliable results. Known as the recombinant spike protein approach, it seeks to induce a hormonal and cellular immune response.

“As early as January 2020, our modelling identified that COVID-19 as a major pandemic threat that could potentially cause millions of deaths globally,” Professor Petrovsky said.  “Unfortunately, our early predictions were spot on.”

“Pandemic research is not something you can turn on and off like a tap,” she said. “People should not think that short-term funds, no matter how large, can deliver instant pandemic solutions after a crisis hits; it will always be too little, too late.”

South Australian Health Minister Stephen Wade said the willingness of volunteers to take part in the trial could play a key role in conquering COVID-19.

“As we can see with this trial today, by having local health networks that are friendly to research, we can actually give South Australians access to the very latest cutting edge technology and care,” Mr Wade said.

“We’ve got a strong emphasis on building medical research and programs such as this. “We’re very keen to make sure our facilities are not only delivering high-quality care for South Australians but also are the base for economic development.”

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

Silver lining: Flu cases plummeting

There has been a massive drop in the number of flu cases in Australia, thanks to COVID-19 social isolation measures and an increase in flu vaccines.

In the first five months of 2019 — a particularly severe flu season — the national total of laboratory-confirmed influenza cases reached 74,176.

But Immunisation Coalition data shows the number of cases in 2020 has plummeted since coronavirus lockdowns were introduced — from 20,032 cases in the first three months, to 504 in April and May.

Australian Medical Association (AMA) SA president Dr Chris Moy said the number of flu deaths prevented since the coronavirus pandemic began was probably "quite significant".

"It may have, up to this point, saved more people than it's actually killed, and certainly the response to COVID has actually saved a lot of people," he said.

"The only proviso to that is that it is possible that we may have actually delayed an [influenza] outbreak.

"But I think [the number] will still be less, because we have a far more highly immunised population this year than we have had in previous years."

Last year, there were over 900 influenza-linked deaths in Australia.

But until the end of last month, federal authorities had only been alerted to 36 "laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated deaths" in 2020, according to the Australian Influenza Surveillance Report.

Immunisation Coalition CEO Kim Sampson said that, in terms of overall case numbers, 2020 was tracking similarly to last year until the coronavirus pandemic hit.

"We were preparing ourselves for a very bad flu season once again," he said.

"Around three quarters of the way through March there was an announcement … to introduce restrictions on our movement and lockdown was introduced.

"We saw immediately a drop of in flu numbers."

Mr Sampson said it quickly became clear that there was a link, because of the impact changes in behaviour brought about by COVID-19 have had on the spread of other illnesses.

"We checked other respiratory diseases too, such as RSV [respiratory syncytial virus], and that had also significantly reduced, as had rhinovirus," he said.

'Record' vaccination uptake

The drop in influenza cases had previously been predicted, but the magnitude of the decline is "a phenomenon … that we've never seen before", Dr Moy said.

"The mechanism of spread of influenza is essentially the same as that of COVID, and that is droplet spread," he said.

"By applying the physical distancing, the restrictions … [have] closed down the transmission of influenza at the same time."

Dr Moy said a high vaccination uptake this year was potentially another factor in keeping flu rates low, and had contributed to a "level of herd immunity".

"We've had record numbers of vaccinations at an early stage, which has partly been due to the urgings of the providers and health authorities like ourselves," he said.

"We really did not want, early on, outbreaks of COVID and influenza happening at the same time."

While it is difficult to know exactly how many vaccines have been administered this year, the Australian Immunisation Register puts the number at more than 7.3 million.

At the end of last month, Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt announced a record 18 million vaccinations would be made available during the 2020 season.

But Dr Moy warned against complacency, saying high vaccination rates early on could present problems down the track, and that a small number of people should consider speaking with their doctor about a booster shot.

"It may be that the peak effect of the vaccinations may actually occur a little bit too early," he said.

"If influenza does get going at some stage, the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine for some individuals may start to peter out later in the year."

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Canberra has been coronavirus free for almost a month, and sewage samples confirm no hidden

Canberra has been free of 'known' cases of COVID-19 for some time — but it was the 'unknown' cases, potentially hiding within the community, that had authorities and many in the community worried.

Now, researchers from the Australian National University can confirm they had nothing to fear.

The ACT's sewage has been regularly tested for the last two months, with researchers looking for traces of SARS-CoV-2 within Canberra's waste.

Throughout all of May they did not find a single trace of the virus, suggesting it was entirely absent from the community.

June's results are still pending.

It adds an extra layer of confidence to the message from health authorities, that the virus is firmly under control — or in fact, non-existent — in the ACT

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Australia set to ease virus visa hardship for foreign students

Australia appears set to address international students’ visa gripes just as a resurgence of coronavirus cases on both sides of the Tasman Sea threatens to neutralise Antipodean universities’ upper hand in the race to revive student flows.

Times Higher Education understands that the Australian government may announce new visa arrangements next week, bringing rules for foreign students more in line with those in competitor countries.

The plans are expected to include fee waivers for students forced to extend their stay in Australia because of the pandemic, and to clarify whether online classes count towards the period of study required to qualify for post-course work rights.

This would coincide with a retreat from plans to fly in select groups of international students on a trial basis, in New Zealand as well as Australia. In New Zealand, the education minister, Chris Hipkins, has ruled out a return of overseas students in July or August.

In early May, Mr Hipkins encouraged universities to produce a “concrete proposal” for international students to be readmitted into the country, initially under carefully managed quarantine. But in a late June letter to representative body Isana New Zealand, he scuttled any hope of this happening in time for the start of the second semester.

“International students remain a priority group in the government’s planning for any managed border entry arrangements,” he wrote. But he warned that there were “many details to be worked through, including quarantine and isolation arrangements, monitoring processes and how the costs can be shared by those arriving”.

New Zealand declared itself coronavirus free less than a month ago, arousing optimism that it could boost its share of international students on the back of its successful pandemic management.

But nerves emerged about its ability to safely manage the entry of people from Covid-19 hotspots, particularly when two returnees from the UK tested positive for the disease after being released from quarantine for compassionate reasons.

Similar doubts have surfaced in Australia, after sloppy management of hotel-based quarantine led to a coronavirus outbreak in Melbourne and forced the Victorian government to put 36 suburbs back under lockdown.

This has raised doubts over plans to fly in foreign students – particularly a scheme to jet in some 800 students to Adelaide.

The federal government has said that it will approve such plans only in states that allow untrammelled travel from interstate. South Australia has now scrapped plans to open its borders to Victorians in mid-July.

Ironically, New Zealand and Australia are stepping back from schemes to bring in international students just as universities in northern hemisphere competitor countries – where the coronavirus is far more prevalent – pursue plans of their own.

With Australian educators struggling to harness the country’s mostly successful pandemic management to their advantage, the release of the long-awaited student visa flexibility package will be welcome news.

The International Education Association of Australia said such concessions had been a long time coming. “After three and a half months of advocacy, education providers are frustrated at delays but hopeful that Australia will be in a more competitive position soon,” said chief executive Phil Honeywood.

The UK has increased the competitive pressure, announcing that it will allow international doctoral students to stay for three years after they graduate. However, Australia still trumps the UK on this measure, granting foreign PhD graduates up to four years’ post-study work rights.

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Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says police are hunting for Victorians being smuggled over the Queensland border in trucks

As Queensland reported another day without any new coronavirus infections, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has confirmed police are concerned about Victorians being smuggled in trucks over the state’s border.

Ms Palaszczuk told reporters this afternoon she’d received an operational briefing from the Queensland Police Commissioner and the state’s disaster co-ordinator regarding the people-smuggling fears.

“They do have some concerns that that practice could be in place,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

“So what we say to everyone out there is, if you are thinking about doing it, don’t do it. You will be hit with a fine. Trucks will also be randomly stopped, and if you are a truck driver participating in this you will also get fined as well.”

Queensland’s state disaster co-ordinator, Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski, also warned “random” checks on freight and heavy vehicles will now be carried out at the border to ensure they weren’t smuggling in Victorians.

“Previously we’ve seen other heavy freight (and) that type of thing get waved through,” he said.

“They will still be able to do that but we will be randomly intercepting them to make sure that there are...not people getting through there that shouldn’t.

“We’ve already had people try and test the system all the way through, so we’re just going to make it really certain that people aren't doing that.”

From midday, any person (whether a Queensland resident or non-Queensland resident) who has been in any local government area in Victoria will be forced into mandatory hotel quarantine, for a minimum of 14 days, at their own expense.

Flights were booked out yesterday and today as Queenslanders raced to get back home.

“We’re calling on Queenslanders still there to come home as soon as possible. It’s safer here – we’ve had one case in almost two weeks and that was acquired overseas,” Deputy Premier and Health Minister Steven Miles told reporters yesterday.

“We just can’t risk removing border restrictions for people coming from areas of Victoria right now. These are very big concerns,” Ms Palaszczuk said on Tuesday.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

Australia set to offer safe haven visas to Hong Kong

Australia is set to offer safe haven visas to Hong Kong residents as the Chinese territory is consumed by another wave of protests and arrests over new national security laws imposed by Beijing.

The move will make Australia the second of the Five Eyes partners to offer Hong Kong residents refuge after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would open the country's borders to more than 3 million Hong Kongers if they wanted to leave the former British colony.

Hong Kong police arrested more than 300 people on Wednesday for various breaches after the new laws came into force, criminalising acts that undermine the Chinese state with life imprisonment in the historically liberal city.

Up to 10 protesters were detained for specifically violating the new laws, which prohibit acts of subversion, including holding up independence signs with British and American flags on them.

The Chinese government maintains the new laws are necessary to restore law and order after more than 15 months of protests over Beijing's influence in the territory.

British Foreign Secretary Dominique Raab on Wednesday called on Britain's allies to follow its lead and offer support to residents who wanted to leave the global financial hub.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Thursday the developments were very concerning and Australia's position was consistent with other like-minded countries, including Britain, the US and Canada.

He said he was "very actively" considering proposals to provide support to Hong Kong residents worried about their future.

"There are proposals that I asked to be brought forward several weeks ago and the final touches will be put on those and they'll soon be considered by cabinet to provide similar opportunities," he said.

"We think that's important and very consistent with who we are as a people and very consistent practically with the views that we have expressed."

Hong Kong is also home to the second largest group of Australian expatriates in the world, with more than 100,000 living in the semi-autonomous region.

The Departments of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister and Cabinet have been working on measures to respond to China's increasing control of Hong Kong since the new laws were proposed at the National People's Congress in May.

"When we have made a final decision on those arrangements then I'll make the announcements," Mr Morrison said. "Are we prepared to step up and provide support? The answer is yes."

Mr Morrison's strong language indicates he is now inclined to back measures that would offer safe haven to some of Hong Kong's 7.4 million citizens. Pro-democracy leaders resigned en masse on Wednesday and disbanded their political parties, worried they would be persecuted by new national security agencies and judicial systems established in the territory.

The Australian government has been wary of sticking its neck out on the issue up until now after repeated diplomatic stoushes with Beijing over the coronavirus crisis led to a series of trade spats over beef, barley, tourism and international students this year. Any move to offer refuge to Hong Kong residents is likely to once again inflame bilateral tensions, despite Britain leading the global push.

In London on Wednesday, Mr Johnson said the enactment and imposition of the national security law constituted a "clear and serious breach of the Sino-British joint declaration" signed after Britain's handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997.

"It violates Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy and is in direct conflict with Hong Kong basic law," Mr Johnson said.

"We made it clear that if China continued down this path, we would introduce a new route for those with British national overseas status to enter the UK, granting them limited leave to remain with the ability to live and work in the UK, and thereafter to apply for citizenship; and that is precisely what we will do now."

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'We don't want a second wave': Victorian spike weighs on Queensland border call

The Queensland government is considering opening up the state faster, but community transmission of the coronavirus in Victoria is a concern, says Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

Her comments came after the state recorded no new cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, a day after reported its first infection in more than a week.

Ms Palaszczuk confirmed an announcement about the opening of the Queensland border would be made on Tuesday after consideration of advice from the state's Chief Health Officer, Jeannette Young.

While consideration was being given to opening up faster, the spike in COVID-19 cases in Victoria was the "number one area of concern", she told reporters on Saturday. "We don't want a second wave and we don't want that community transmission here," Ms Palaszczuk said.

The government has come under fire for keeping the borders closed, including through two High Court cases unlikely to be heard before travel to Queensland is allowed again.

Ms Palaszczuk said the Dr Young would also consider the two-square-metre rule for smaller premises, down from four square metres, a change Prime Minister Scott Morrison said had been agreed in Friday's national cabinet.

A total of 1067 cases have now been recorded in Queensland and six people have died from the virus. There are currently two active cases of COVID-19 in Queensland, according to health department statistics.

The state's eight-day streak without new cases was broken on Friday when a Queensland ADF member tested positive in Papua New Guinea and was flown back to Brisbane.

Police Minister Mark Ryan on Friday announced extra quarantine compliance checks as travellers hit the road for the school holidays.

Backpackers and travellers in the Wide Bay region will be targeted - after a fruit picker tested positive on June 6 - as well as pubs and clubs across the state.

Mr Ryan said police had recently found a number of people not complying with quarantine orders. "Don't think we're not watching you," he warned.

"You're not just risking a fine. "You are also risking the healthcare of your fellow Queenslanders and you're risking all the hard work that Queenslanders have done to date in containing the coronavirus."

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Landlords tipped to claim billions more in tax losses as homes sit vacant

Australia's 2 million landlords will miss out on billions of dollars in rental income over the next two years as tenants struggle to pay.

Australian Taxation Office assistant commissioner Karen Foat predicts tax time will reveal a significant rise in negatively geared investors who typically claim a tax deduction when rental income does not cover the expense of owning the property.

In a typical financial year, landlords collectively declare to the Australian Taxation Office about $43 billion in total rent and $47 billion in deductions, Ms Foat said. About 60 per cent of rental properties are negatively geared.

"But we also know that this year, there's a lot of landlords who are receiving a reduced amount of rent, whether that's because their tenants are paying less, or unable to pay at all, or if their property is sitting vacant," she said.

"We would anticipate that there is going to be a greater number of people whose properties end up negatively geared because they still claim the expenses but they are likely to have some level of reduced rent."

This could lead to an extra $2 billion worth of losses claimed at tax time on estimates from SQM Research managing director Louis Christopher. He suspects a national 2.5 per cent decline in aggregate rents for the 2020 financial year, and a 2.5 per cent decline for the following year, bringing total rental income down to $40.9 billion.

Mr Christopher, whose company collects vacancy data and tracks market rents, said Sydney and Melbourne had been the "hardest hit" due to international border closures draining the market of short-term visitors, leading to more homes available on the standard rental market. In some inner CBD areas, more than one in 10 homes now sits vacant.

"The result of that is a rapid increase of supply in the inner-city areas for Sydney and Melbourne, as well as Brisbane to a lesser extent, which has created a major rise in rental vacancy rates and downward pressure on rent," he said.

However, Real Estate Institute of Australia president Adrian Kelly said the scenario was a "watch and wait" situation for the property industry, with eviction restrictions in many states and territories coming to an end in September.

"We've been making the federal government very much aware of the problem we've got coming in terms of what do we do with these tenants, because evicting them out on the street isn't going to be a great outcome for anybody," Mr Kelly said. "We need a form of rental assistance for these people and the government is very aware of that."

He estimates about 5 per cent of tenants are in the precarious position of being unable to pay their full rent and facing accruing rental arrears.

However, some experts are predicting the rental market will bounce back relatively quickly. PRD chief economist Diaswati Mardiasmo said previous crises, like the Asian Bird Flu and the Global Financial Crisis, also had a quick doubling in vacancy rates as tenants struggled financially but these recovered relatively quickly.

"We are at an all-time high [vacancy rate compared to] the past 15 years," Dr Mardiasmo said. "However, if we look at it from a health pandemic [and] financial crisis shock perspective we as a nation have been through this before and we have recovered," she said.

"With this we may see an increase in landlords negative gearing due to less rental prices and lost occupancy of their rental property, which is not uncommon nor surprising."

While some landlords have been able to freeze their mortgage for six months or delay council rate payments, she said "they will need to pay" eventually and in some cases this could be a bigger bill due to compounding interest.

Property research firm CoreLogic head of research Eliza Owen said rental incomes dropped about 0.5 per cent in Sydney and Melbourne between March and May.

"More severe deterioration in rental markets has been quite localised, and we expect that to continue in the second half of 2020," Ms Owen said.

"Rental price growth should stabilise once domestic restrictions on gatherings have eased, the labour market has improved, and interstate travel sees excess Airbnb stock withdrawn from the long term rental market."

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Australia has enough coronavirus drug remdesivir thanks to early supply donation

The Federal Health Minister says Australia has enough of the coronavirus drug remdesivir in the national stockpile thanks to donations made months ago by the drug's makers.

The United States has been accused of hoarding supplies of the drug

Greg Hunt said he recognised there were shortages around the world but said that was not the case in Australia. "Australia's in a fortunate position, it's available for doctors to use from the national medical stockpile for patients who are in hospital with illness," he said.

His comments come after the United States was criticised by health experts for hoarding almost all of the world's current supply of the drug. The US Government announced on Tuesday President Donald Trump struck a deal to buy 500,000 treatments of remdesivir from its makers at Gilead Sciences.

That represents 100 per cent of the company's July production capacity and 90 per cent of its capacity in August and September.

Remdesivir is a broad-spectrum antiviral drug designed to disable the mechanism by which some viruses make copies of themselves.

Mr Hunt said Australian health authorities acted early to secure a donation of the drug for use in coronavirus patients.

"Remdesivir is one of the therapies where there is some evidence — I don't want to overstate it — but some evidence that it can help to reduce the impacts on the critically ill," he said.

"We foresaw this, we acted early, we worked with the supplier Gilead to ensure that Australians were given a reserve supply."

Earlier, a spokesperson for the Minister said Australia had a "sufficient supply" of the drug "to meet current patient needs".

"The National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce currently states that the use of remdesivir for adults with moderate, severe or critical COVID-19 may be considered. "This recommendation will be updated as further evidence from clinical trials becomes available."

Mr Hunt said as at Thursday afternoon, there were 24 people in hospital, five in intensive care and one on ventilation.

Early trials testing the drug in patients hospitalised with COVID-19 found those who received it recovered quicker than those who did not. It is the only drug licensed by both the US and the European Union as a treatment for those with severe illness from coronavirus.

SOURCE 

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

Remuneration season might bring the virtuous unstuck

To their growing horror, some corporate leaders will soon discover their virtue signalling comes at a very personal price. Their Faustian pact with environmental, social and governance ­activists is about to hit them where it hurts, right in their hip pockets. And big time.

Unless, of course, they admit, as many of us always suspected, that the “social licence to operate” guff was only ever intended as a marketing ploy, and never meant to have a serious impact on real corporate decisions, such as executive remuneration. It was meant to be the equivalent of a heartwarming musical for the corporate world with corporate leaders parading on stage spouting sweet-sounding monologues in synch about their social responsibility. When the curtains went down, it was back to the real world.

Coinciding with the end of the financial year, many of Australia’s largest corporations will be making decisions about remuneration for their high-flying executives in the next few weeks. Specifically, when deciding how much, if any, to award in bonuses, the words of Australian Council of Superannuation Investors chief executive Louise Davidson will be ringing in their ears: “We would expect boards to be using discretion to review variable remuneration outcomes over the coming months, taking into account the appropriateness of any payments in light of the experiences of their investors, staff, customers and the broader community.”

Even for those directors who have not been told the news directly by proxy advisers, industry super funds and other adherents of the environmental, social and governance movement, no translation is necessary because money talks. Given that ACSI advises non-profit super funds with something in the region of $1.5 trillion in assets on how to exercise their votes on AGM decisions such as remuneration reports and director elections, there is nothing subtle about the message. If you don’t take an axe to remuneration, ASCI members will vote against you.

Now, for companies in trouble, or for those cutting or suspending dividends, this may be perfectly appropriate. And many chief executives, senior executives and boards have taken a whopping cut to their pay already. That is as it should be. Despite activists deriding the shareholder primacy theory, the law has, for many centuries, held that boards can, and should, have regard to the interests of other stakeholders, and to their reputation, when making these kinds of decisions.

But the ESG industry has latched on to the “social licence to operate” theory to go much further. It tells us that shareholder primacy is dead, and the interests of shareholders is just one factor, and not a specially important one, among many that boards should take into account.

When the US Business Roundtable released its Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation last August, it proclaimed that the 181 chief executives who signed it “commit to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders — customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders”. It was not accidental that shareholders came in last.

Never mind that this amounts to expropriating shareholders’ money for social purposes. Under this new dispensation, what ACSI calls “the broader community” takes precedence.

Why is this frightening the pants off virtue-signalling corporates? Because they may be forced into taking pay cuts, or at least accept pay restraint, even though their own corporation is in terrific shape and even though it’s not in the interests of their own shareholders to take a pay cut.

It’s not hard to see the ESG industry, or the anti-shareholder primacy gang, saying that in times of widespread unemployment and significant social hardship, paying executives big bonuses would not be in the interests of “the broader community”.

Ignore for one moment the rank hypocrisy of this view emanating from obscenely well-paid fund managers.

Ignore too the sheer chutzpah of ACSI and industry super funds setting down prescriptive corporate governance rules for listed companies while studiously rejecting similar governance standards for themselves.

The key issue for this remuneration season is that the activists will say executives of listed companies wallowing in handsome bonuses while many are on the dole will be in breach of the “social licence to operate”.

You might think this is all terribly far-fetched. Surely the corporate musical called “social licence to operate” can’t require executives of strongly performing companies to take pay cuts just because of a pandemic. It makes no sense. But that’s the point, and the beauty, of the phrase “social ­licence to operate”. Like that awful Hollywood movie-musical La La Land, it conjures up dreams. It can, and does, mean whatever activists want it to mean.

Maybe it’s fair enough that a company that has maintained its dividends by laying off workers, or increasing prices to consumers, or reducing services, will get a bollocking if it pays bonuses. But even companies that haven’t laid off staff, or cut costs, will be at risk if they pay bonuses in a time of social misery. In a world of co-equal stakeholders, community pain could outrank sound business practice.

Those corporate executives who have spent years waxing lyrical about their commitment to a “social licence” will now, like Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, be screaming “the horror, the horror” for their advocacy. “Social licence to operate” wasn’t supposed to mean this, they will plead. It was meant to warm hearts, allow us to hold our heads up high at Toorak dinner parties, or to justify voting for Zali Steggall or the Greens. It was only a marketing ploy, they will beg. It wasn’t meant to justify pay cuts in the interests of “the broader community”, they will wail.

Well the ESG industry has news for you. Whether your company is doing well or poorly, you have to take one for the team. It doesn’t matter if you worked all the hours God gave you, if you produced a stellar result, or if your company discovered the cure for coronavirus due to your work. Inclusivity means pay cuts for all.

Alternatively, this might be a wake-up call for some executives about virtue signalling.

Perhaps they will be less effusive about the social licence industry and start admitting it was never meant to be taken seriously if it costs real money. Here’s a novel idea for the pre-COVID-19 virtue signallers: they might stand up to the corporate equivalents of Antifa.

It’s hard to know which alternative will be more fun to watch.

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Coronavirus: Palaszczuk shines while Queensland Labor goes low

Remember March? Punch-ups in aisle 12 over a packet of bog roll? Shopping trolleys used as battering rams? It was a kinder, gentler time.

Yesterday, Premier Palaszczuk announced Queensland borders would be opening to all but Victorians on July 10.

Remember in March, too, those who claimed that COVID-19 was no worse than your run-of-the-mill flu?

The flimsy juxtaposition and many others like it were posed as part of an overall argument that locking downs our communities, our cities, our states and our country was an act of economic vandalism.

Imagine for a moment if these people had been placed in charge of public policy, if they had been allowed to do what they agitated for — keeping cinemas, gyms, pubs, clubs open with people milling about and the inevitable super spreading event occurring, here, there and pretty soon everywhere.

We don’t see the specious comparisons so much these days. That was a March thing. Now, in July, this pandemic has caused half a million deaths globally with 10 million people infected. And we are just six months in.

Much of the thinking in March and then in April was based on the absurdity that a pandemic has only a past and a present – a neat set of data, a beginning and an end with no thought given to what was yet to happen, supported by a media fascination with headline data that begins and ends with numbers of recorded cases and numbers of deaths.

One of the points I have tried to stress is that while 5.3 million people are listed as having recovered, many will have serious ongoing medical problems. These range from loss of cognitive function to renal, cardiac and respiratory illness. Serious stuff that will a) require medical care, complex surgery even lung, heart and kidney transplants and b) will take years off their lives.

When you’re in the public policy business, all you can do, all that can be expected of you is that you listen to experts and respond accordingly. You have to do so knowing that failures will occur, humans make mistakes or ignore advice outright.

Some people are wilful. Let’s be honest here. There are a lot of idiots about.

In my own neck of the woods over the Easter holidays, I was stunned to see people milling about in town. I can tell the tourists from the locals. It’s not hard. The blow-ins, most of whom come from Sydney, were dressed from tip to toe in their latest winter finery, scarves, jumpers and jackets so new you’d expect to see the price tags still dangling from them, while the locals got about in T-shirts.

They were sitting in cafes or strolling around shops, spending money. That’s the good news. But they were also walking four abreast along footpaths. Social distancing was ignored.

Having been told by experts that the COVID-19 pandemic was likely to last for a year or more, people chose instead to assume it was over on the basis of a month’s worth of data.

Governments were pressured to open up their borders and resume business as usual.

Which brings me back to Palaszczuk. At her press conference yesterday, she took a big swipe at the federal government. When asked about the pressure that had been applied to Queensland she answered, “I think, for a start, these border wars have got to stop. I think a national leader should be able to bring all states and territories together.

“Frankly, I’m a bit sick that Queensland has been singled out as opposed to South Australia and Tasmania just to name a few.

“And perhaps if Victoria had been almost self-quarantined or quarantined, then the Prime Minister cold have set a date for all of the other states and territories once Victoria was under control.”

“At the moment, what we have is a bit of confrontation where fights are being picked with different states and, frankly, I don’t think it’s good enough.

“I’ve been silent for a long time and I will not be silenced for standing up for what I believe to be right, for the health advice that I am being provided for by (Queensland Chief Medical Officer Dr Jeannette Young).

“And Dr Young and the advice that she has given us has put Queensland in a very good position. We’re not out of it yet. We know that.”

What Palaszczuk has done is consistently followed expert advice. This is even more remarkable given she will face Queensland voters on October 31. It’s a tough time to make hard decisions. She deserves credit for it.

But the party she leads, Queensland Labor, is another matter. Within hours of the Queensland premier’s press conference, social media started seeing advertisements like this:

“Deb has been calling for the borders to be open for months. Negative Deb’s constant criticisms are a genuine risk to the health and economic warfare of Queenslanders. “If it was up to Deb, QLD would be flooded with Victorians.”

Warfare? I presume what they meant was welfare. But who knows what’s going on in the minds of Queensland Labor.

In case you’re thinking this is a piece of harmless Queensland parochialism, then substitute “Victorians” for indigenous Australians or elderly Australians or non-Australians and see how it reads.

Deb, of course is Deb Frecklington, the opposition leader who is facing off with Palaszczuk in the Queensland election. Two weeks ago, LNP internal polling was leaked to the Sunday Times showing Frecklington was heading for defeat in the election.

Now, I can’t speak for the veracity of the polling but the fact that it was leaked is a sure sign that, to use a Gareth Evanism, a section of Frecklington’s own party is, “pissing on her swag.”

The advertisement came down off Twitter last night. But a version of it remains on Queensland Labor’s Facebook page, albeit with the warfare/welfare mention removed.

Politics need not be a scorched earth caper. And politics in times of pandemic must be collaborative, consensus building with the creation of evidence-based policy. The old adage in politics is: “When your opponent is drowning, throw them an anvil”, but in times of pandemic, politics doesn’t need to kick people and it should never seek to divide Australia on the basis of political clannishness.

By the way, this is not a case of cancel culture. I’m not advocating Labor takes its advertisement down. In fact, I think it should stay up as a general reminder that there really are a lot of idiots about and there is no shortage of them in Queensland Labor.

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Abolish stamp duty and lift the GST, says key tax reform review

NSW will struggle to fund essential services in difficult economic times unless it embraces urgent and wide-ranging tax reform including the abolition of stamp duty and an increase to the GST.

That's the finding of a year-long review of federal-state financial relations, ordered by NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet and chaired by former Telstra boss David Thodey, which will be released on Wednesday.

The report puts the state on a potential collision course with the Morrison government by recommending the state's most crucial source of revenue – the GST – be broadened and its rate lifted above 10 per cent. It also recommends stamp duty should be abolished, with homeowners given the option to opt-in to a land tax.

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has previously ruled out an increase in the GST, and said if the states wanted to embark on tax reform they would get no financial support from the government.

Mr Perrottet launched the review last year to identify ways the federal-state financial system could be improved and the overall national tax system could be made more efficient.

The report recommends that state governments, in consultation with the Commonwealth, consider options for lifting the GST rate and expanding its base over the medium to longer-term.

Overhauling the GST would see a move away from "harmful taxes including inefficient state taxes". But the extra GST revenue should go to lower-income households to ensure equity, the report says.

The NSW government should also replace stamp duty, which last year raised $7.5 billion for the state's coffers, with a broad-based land tax, the review committee recommended.

The review panel said there were various models to phase out stamp duty. "These included an option to allow homeowners to voluntarily opt in to land tax or pay transfer duty at the next purchase," the report says.

The report also calls for a "strategic national approach to payroll tax reform". The NSW government estimates it will raise $9.8 billion in revenue from payroll tax in 2019-20, out of a total $32.5 billion in state taxes collected.

Another recommendation in the report includes the introduction of user-pays road charging for electric vehicles as the federal government faces a projected shortfall in the $11.3 billion fuel excise. Forecasts show 60 per cent of all new cars sold to be electric-powered by 2046.

The report warns that state and territory governments face an era of higher debt, "challenging their ability to sustainably deliver essential services and infrastructure".

"The review recommends reforms at the state level that are challenging but necessary, as the states need to show, in good faith, that they are ready to carry their part of the load," it says.

The NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet believes dumping stamp duty is a crucial move in getting the state's economy moving again in wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Thodey said there was a new impetus to overhaul federal financial relations.

"The summer bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic have exposed the best and worst of the federation and have only added to the urgency to undertake significant reform," he said.

"The status quo will only exacerbate the challenge faced by the states in funding the essential services their citizens expect and deserve."

He said the review panel, which included former New Zealand prime minister Sir Bill English, found clear areas where federalism "can and must be improved for our long-term prosperity".

"Over months of consultation, we have found a consensus that our federation has served the nation well and, properly calibrated, can remain one of the most economically efficient forms of national government," Mr Thodey said.

Mr Perrottet said the pandemic proved "federation is strongest when states aren't afraid to lead".

"We all know our federation needs fixing. This is our once-in-a-generation opportunity to change it for the better," Mr Perrottet said. "As a government, our priority is clear: we want taxes that are lower, fairer, smarter and fit for purpose in the 21st century.

"It’s very fitting that on the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the GST we have the opportunity to consider what course we chart to revitalise our economy and deliver prosperity for the next generation."

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Australia's summer of extremes pushed grid to the limit, AEMO says

After several coal-fired power generators were decommissioned, this was to be expected

Australia's energy operator says the electricity grid barely made it through last summer's extreme temperatures and bushfires without major outages, with resilience to be further tested in the future.

The Australian Energy Market Operator's annual summer operations review found the nation's physical gas and electricity infrastructure was "being increasingly challenged", with "environmental limits and temperature tolerances for coal plants ... increasingly being approached and exceeded".

AEMO issued 178 directions to deal with actual or potential supply or system security issues, 10 times more than the previous three years. Of eight actual shortfalls — or a level 2 lack of reserves — half were in NSW, with three in Victoria and the other in South Australia.

The summer was Australia's second hottest on record, trailing only the previous summer, with maximum temperatures 2.11 degrees warmer than the 1961-90 average. December 2019 alone had 11 days when temperatures averaged above 40 degrees, equalling the number of such days during all previous years since 1910. Bushfires also charred large swathes of the forests of eastern Australia.

AEMO's managing director and chief executive, Audrey Zibelman, said the grid had to cope with longer lasting and more extreme climatic and bushfire conditions that also made forecasting more difficult.

“The industry and AEMO’s preparation contributed to mitigating the potentially extensive and significant power-system impacts of a season characterised by record high temperatures, catastrophic bushfires, significant smoke, dust, and violent storm activity,” Ms Zibelman said.

The avoidance of major blackouts was a key achievement of the summer, particularly after a heavy storm knocked out six transmission towers in south-west Victoria on January 31. South Australia was effectively cut off from the rest of the National Electricity Market for 17 days.

The addition of about 3700 megawatts of new capacity — mostly wind and solar — compared with the summer of 2018-19 helped provide additional supplies during peak demand.

While coal-fired power plants had their output cut during extreme heat, some wind farms were also curtailed, the first time AEMO had observed this.

"Dust exacerbated by the drought and bushfire smoke, ash and dust storms also materially impacted grid-scale and rooftop photovoltaic solar generation forecasts," AEMO's report said.

Prior to last summer, AEMO increased standby reserves - known as its Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) mechanism - by buying 137MW of long notice reserves for Victoria and 1698 MW of medium and short-notice reserves across the market.

During four days of high demand, AEMO activated such capacity at a cost of $39.8 million, avoiding blackouts that would have affected as many as 92,500 homes at an associated cost of $77 million, the report said. Those RERT expenses cost the average household in NSW $3.24 and $2.43 in Victoria.

The summer generated a host of other lessons for power operators, including the need to improve forecasting to adjust to the swelling supplies of renewable energy.

Some of the forecasting challenge is meteorological, with agencies struggling to pick the top of the temperature peaks.

For instance, Penrith in Sydney's west hit 48.9 degrees on January 4, the hottest temperature recorded in an Australian metropolitan area, or several degrees more than predicted.

"The results demonstrate a bias towards under-forecasting at high temperatures and are indicative of challenges in accurately assessing generation reserve on peak demand days throughout summer," AEMO said.

"This under-forecasting is coupled to the increasing weather sensitivity of electricity demand as the use of airconditioning grows."

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 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

"The West Australian" blasted over racist Indigenous cartoon

The term "Aborigine" is NOT offensive.  It is the normal term for Australian blacks and is Latin for "from the beginning" -- so recognizes their priority.

And "Abo" is simply an abbreviation.  Australians are great abbreviators so "Abo" is a normal abbreviation with no offensive intentions

It is however true that some Leftists have recently pushed the Canadian term "First peoples" as an alternstive term.  Ironic that the term Aborigine says the same thing in Latin

And some Aborigines use their tribal name as an identification (Murri", Boori" etc.)  But such names are too specific to be generally useful.  "Boong" appears to have originally been a tribal name but is now a derogatory name for Aborigines generally


The West Australian newspaper is copping backlash after publishing a cartoon that refers to an Indigenous character using an offensive racial slur and compares them to a dog.

The Modesty Blaise comic, published yesterday, shows  characters discussing an Indigenous tracker who is trying to find them.

One character says they are being chased by “four men, all armed ... and an Aborigine” — a term some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people find offensive.

The characters go on to describe the Indigenous character as an “abo tracker”.

“It’s no use hiding, that abo will smell us out quicker than a bloodhound,” a character says in the comic.

The publication is being blasted on social media with many labelling it “disgusting”.

“Just wondering how many people were involved in the chain of decision making, to allow this cartoon to be printed in the @westaustralian newspaper in 2020?” asked radio and television presenter Shelley Ware.

“I’m literally devastated this has been printed and our children have access to this. Honestly wish I was surprised though!!”

Late on Monday evening, The West Australian published an apology to its website stating the cartoon was written in 1981 and was supplied by an outside agency.

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Incredible pictures from space show Australia 'turning green' thanks to record rainfall after years of crippling drought

We were told that the drought was caused by global warming, so are we now having global cooling?

Amazing pictures taken from space show south-eastern Australia's incredible transformation thanks to record rainfall after years of severe drought.

NASA's Earth Observatory took the natural-colour images two years apart, in May of 2018 and again in June 2020. 

The 2018 photo shows land ravaged by record heatwaves - reaching 49.9C in some areas that year - and the lowest rainfall in almost a century. 

In the most recent image, large swathes of green can be seen spreading across Victoria and New South Wales. 

According to the Bureau of Meteorology average to above average rainfall from January to May this year led to soil moisture recovery in much of the area shown in the pictures.

Meanwhile, some rainfall records were broken in Victoria during the same time period.

Melbourne received around 400mm of rain from January to April, almost eight times more than the same time period in 2019, and the wettest since 1924.

New South Wales and the Murray–Darling Basin also received its first average rainfall since 2016 in April and May of this year.  

In addition, the BoM predicts the winter will be wetter than average for western New South Wales and parts of South Australia.

The forecasts also indicate a wetter than average period between August and October for much of eastern Australia. 

The pictures were taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA's Aqua satellite.

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Making sense of the government's war on arts degrees

It's pretty cheeky for Leftists to expect a conservative government to keep funding attacks on it

Let’s face it: the federal government’s overhaul of university fees in the humanities, widely interpreted as a swipe against what it sees as pesky leftists, is pretty stinging.

As a Gen X’er, I was primed for the possibility – even the desirability – of winding up behind the desk at the local video library where my high-honours paper on “reading ideology and desire in Ferris Bueller's Day Off” would come in handy.

Still, federal minister Dan Tehan’s announcement comes at a time when humanities graduates have been forced into an existential reckoning about our relative uselessness in a national crisis. We analysed and interpreted and poeticised our strange new world to death, but the pandemic brought into sharp relief our non-essentialness against cleaners, truck drivers and supermarket workers, let alone teachers, farmers, nurses, doctors and the scientists beavering away for a COVID-19 vaccine.

If this doesn’t ring true for you, brilliant. But the idea that a mere arts degree is a dead end runs so deep that Tehan’s policy feels almost like a parental rebuke – if it wasn’t smothered in disingenuousness.

In the same way a crusader for sexual morality is obsessed with sex, the Coalition’s culture warriors display niche preoccupations with culture. Don’t “silo” your degree, Tehan says. If you choose philosophy, study IT as well. I’m attracted to the folksy commonsense in that statement, but the government isn’t just making subjects in IT or agriculture cheaper – it’s doubling the cost of philosophy et-al, which actively discourages mixing and matching. It appears punitive.

Want to tease out the political and philosophical subtext to the conservatives’ decades-long antipathy towards the higher-education sector? Well, it’ll cost you – about $45,000. Roughly double what an arts degree costs now, bringing the humanities into the same price band as commerce and law.

Which, as others have argued, paradoxically raises the courses’ perceived value. And that’s only one example of how the overhaul is unlikely to achieve the stated aims of steering young people away from the queer, black-armband, coal-hating humanities and towards “job ready” degrees.

As higher education expert Andrew Norton says: “You’re not going to do something that will bore you for three years and bore you for another 40 simply because the course is cheaper.” Unless, to begin with, you’re poorer than most.

When in 2014 the Abbott government sought to slash public funding of universities by 20 per cent and de-regulate fees, Labor roared about the prospect of “$100,000 degrees” and Senate crossbencher Jacqui Lambie saw a plot to keep the battlers in their place. The plan failed to pass. Since then, the conservatives have avoided the appearance of undermining equal opportunity to higher education.

And in the context of the Coalition’s broader ideological war, deterring low-income students from arts courses didn’t make much sense to me, at least initially.

Back in 1970, when only 7 per cent of 15-to-64 year-olds had bachelor degrees, political affiliation tended to be dictated by income. These days, the tertiary educated are a reliable constituency for Labor – and its social democratic counterparts in the US and UK – with sections of what we loosely call “the working class” increasingly up for grabs.

The conservatives argue they’re the real materialists: emphasising Jobson Growth while progressives talk about shutting down coal and micro-aggressions. I found myself idly theorising that low-income students might be more inclined to bring a pragmatic perspective to the humanities, the kind the government professes to want.

“I’m pretty sure most Australian taxpayers preferred their funding to be used for research other than spending $223,000 on projects like ‘Post orientalist arts of the Strait of Gibraltar',” tweeted then Education Minister Simon Birmingham in 2018, when he spectacularly vetoed $4.2 million in recommended university research grants.

(Though I still don’t understand why he binned “Beauty and Ugliness as Persuasive Tools in Changing China’s Gender Norms” – a subject I would have thought useful in China’s new masculinist ethos under strongman Xi Jinping.)

But then my arts training (and a few extra hours of sleep) awakened me to the flaw in my reasoning about low-income students; once they make it to uni, and certainly after graduation, they’ve shifted into the tertiary-educated demographic that skews left, bringing a critical eye to the status quo.

That’s because conservative narratives have become taboo in the humanities, the hard-core warriors say – with some justification, I suspect, though that’s a subject for a thesis. While the government-commissioned inquiry into free speech on Australian campuses found no evidence of a “systemic” crisis of free speech on Australian campuses, former High Court judge Robert French left enough wriggle room for columnists in The Australian to warn about a potential, pretty much already realised, free speech crisis on Australian campuses.

I should disclose: while The Australian’s weekly takedowns of the ABC overwhelmingly leave me baffled, I’m occasionally amused at the reporting on totalitarian groupthink in humanities departments. Like the yarn about the history student reportedly instructed to use the adjective “enslaved” befor­e a noun such as African, in place of the noun “slave”, because, her guide said, “people weren’t slaves; they were enslaved”.

I’m fairly certain graduates of history, or sociology or political science come away with more than tactical skills in avoiding linguistic landmines. Gaining a thread of understanding about slavery, however we talk about it, or Western civilisation or the Spanish Flu pandemic or the Great Depression might just be worth the time.

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Universities grapple with new ways to test students to combat cheating

Universities are exploring new ways to tackle cheating and prepare students for workplace demands in a post-coronavirus world, with a particular focus on how exams and other assessments are conducted.

Academic integrity researcher Cath Ellis, who is associate dean of education in the faculty of arts and social sciences at the University of NSW, has found the bulk of students who cheat do so under the noses of supervisors during old-fashioned exams.

"The trust that people put in the integrity of invigilated exams may be misplaced," she said.

Associate Professor Ellis and a team of researchers recently found that close to 6 per cent of more than 14,000 university students surveyed admitted to cheating. Of those, more than half said they had provided help with exams and 41 per cent said they received help. About 8 per cent admitted to taking an exam for someone else and 4.2 per cent admitted someone else had done their exam.

"This research showed that exam cheating remains the most common type of contract cheating behaviour to which students admit," she said.

It was also the most likely to have involved payment including through a professional service.

Some universities have started using expensive new software that monitors individual students through cameras and keyboards to keep an eye on students sitting exams. Different versions included directly watching students, tracking their eye movements and keyboard activity.

The changes come as the federal government establishes a $3.9 million integrity unit in the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). New legislation will empower the unit to block access to cheating websites using court injunctions.

Associate Professor Ellis said the COVID-19 crisis had prompted universities to reconsider traditional ways of examining hundreds of students. "The real challenge we are facing is what can we do to replace exams," she said.

"I do appreciate there is a need for them in some circumstances. Whether we over-rely on them as an assessment technique is a valid question for us to ask ourselves.

"I think that there are cleverer more authentic ways to assess student learning and that is where a lot of universities are putting their efforts," Associate Professor Ellis said.

This included assessment of a broader range of skills students would be expected to demonstrate in the workforce. In that vein, the University of Sydney is trialling the assessment of student qualities including inventiveness, cultural competence and influence, which it hopes to adopt across all faculties.

The university's acting registrar and academic director for education policy and quality, Peter McCallum, said there had been a mixed response from different faculties including some that had raised concerns about their ability to fairly assess the graduate attributes.

Law professor Barbara McDonald said the law faculty had objected to the proposed assessment of students’ cultural competence or influence, among other things.

“Many academics have deep concerns about assessing cultural competence, and think it is ridiculous to be trying to assess whether a student has influence, as opposed to assessing their expertise and communication skills to go out and be influential," she said. "We think this is distracting us from our core responsibilities and would be impracticable to do fairly and meaningfully across hundreds of students."

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here