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New research calls for later-in-life driving lessons

New research has shown that older drivers should be coming forward to test and update their driving skills to keep people safer on the road, and keep senior drivers behind the wheel for longer. A new website launched by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and neuroscience institute NeuRA aims to help drivers aged in their 50s and above stay safe when driving, while also helping to update their skills to keep them on the roads for longer. Cognitive aging expert and UNSW professor Kaarin Anstey told <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/how-old-is-too-old-to-drive-in-australia-new-research-shows-ageing-motorists-should-have-driving-lessons/6a470fa9-f0c3-4571-a229-672e689f1e76" target="_blank" rel="noopener">9News</a> later-in-life driving lessons were crucial as our population grows and ages. "We obviously want people to stay on the road as long as it's safe for them to do so. And that's the issue: they have to be safe on the road," Anstey explained. "That's the point of the website, to empower older drivers, family members and health professionals." "We've been working on this issue of older drivers for over 20 years because the second biggest cause of injury in older adults is motor vehicle accidents or crashes (after falls)." Anstey said her research in <a href="https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2024/11/should-age-determine-how-long-drive-car" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Better Drive Study</a> analysed how the driving habits of older motorists changed if they had a refresher course. "A lot of people got their licence in an era where the cars were different, the roads were different, the road rules were different," she said. "We just feel there's a certain amount of improvement that probably all of us, not just the older age group but lots of people, could benefit in refreshing their driving skills." Anstey's pilot study, that followed motorists aged over 65 over 12 months, found older people were more likely to develop bad habits such as not checking blind spots or not keeping up to date with key road rules. She said people who did the driving lessons had a "big improvement" in their safety on the road. Later-in-life lessons could also identify if a person should be looking at giving up their licence, as Anstey added, "Sometimes there's people who we find who are not very safe drivers, or who have an impairment that they may not have been aware of." When asked what they thought of the initiative, some older drivers told 9News, "I think it's a good idea, there are some older people who definitely need a refresher but there are some that are still quite good." "I'd rather not go through those grills but I guess for everyone's safety it's a very good thing," another added. Image credits: Shutterstock

Travel Trouble

How should Australian media cover the next federal election? Lessons from the US presidential race

<div class="theconversation-article-body"><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/denis-muller-1865">Denis Muller</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-melbourne-722">The University of Melbourne</a> Media coverage in Australia of the US presidential election and of the Voice referendum in October 2023 offer some pointers to what we might expect during next year’s federal election campaign. They also suggest some ways in which the professional mass media might better respond to the challenges thrown up by the combination of disinformation, harmful speech and hyper-partisanship that disfigured those two campaigns. The ideological contours of the Australian professional media, in particular its newspapers, have become delineated with increasing clarity over the past 15 years. In part this is a response to the polarising effects of social media, and in part it is a reflection of the increased stridency of political debate. The right is dominated by News Corporation, with commercial radio shock jocks playing a supporting role. The left is more diffuse and less given to propagandising. It includes the old Fairfax papers, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, now owned by the Nine Entertainment Company, and Guardian Australia. These contours are unlikely to change much, if at all, between now and the 2025 election. <h2>Impartiality versus ‘bothsidesism’</h2> Under these conditions, how might Australian journalism practice be adapted to better serve democracy under the pressures of an election campaign? The objective would be to contribute to the creation of a political culture in which people can argue constructively, disagree respectfully and work towards consensus. In pursuing that objective, a central issue is whether and how the media are committed to the principle of impartiality in news reports. This principle is under sustained pressure, as was seen in both the presidential election and the Voice referendum. We know from the words of its own editorial code of conduct that News Corp Australia does not accept the principle of impartiality in news reports. Paragraph 1.3 of that code states: <blockquote> Publications should ensure factual material in news reports is distinguishable from other material such as commentary and opinion. Comment, conjecture and opinion are acceptable as part of coverage to provide perspective on an issue, or explain the significance of an issue, or to allow readers to recognise what the publication’s or author’s standpoint is on a matter. </blockquote> This policy authorises journalists to write their news reports in ways that promote the newspaper’s or the journalist’s own views. This runs directly counter to the conventional separation of news from opinion accepted by most major media companies. This is exemplified by <a href="https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2023/07/27/GNM_editorial_code_of_practice_and_guidance_2023.pdf">the policy</a> of The Guardian, including Guardian Australia: <blockquote> While free to editorialise and campaign, a publication must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact. </blockquote> Appended to The Guardian’s code is the essay written in 1921 by C. P. Scott, first the editor and then the owner-editor of the Manchester Guardian, to mark the newspaper’s centenary. It includes these words: “Comment is free, but facts are sacred”. Referring to a newspaper’s public duty, he added: “Propaganda […] is hateful.” In the present overheated atmosphere of public debate, impartiality has come to be confused with a discredited type of journalism known as “bothsidesism”. “Bothsidesism” presents “both sides” of an issue without any regard for their relative evidentiary merits. It allows for the ventilation of lies, hate speech and conspiracy theories on the spurious ground that these represent another, equally valid, side of the story. Impartiality is emphatically not “bothsidesism”. What particularly distinguishes impartiality is that it follows the weight of evidence. However, a recurring problem in the current environment is that the fair and sober presentation of evidence can be obliterated by the force of political rhetoric. As a result, impartiality can fall victim to its own detached passivity. Yet impartiality does not have to be passive: it can be proactive. During the presidential campaign, in the face of Trump’s egregious lying, some media organisations took this proactive approach. When Trump claimed during his televised debate with Kamala Harris that Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets in the town of Springfield, Ohio, the host broadcaster, the American Broadcasting Company, fact-checked him in real time. It found, during the broadcast, that there was no evidence to support his claim. <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nlCe8iOCJlQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" width="440" height="260" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></figure> And for four years before that, The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/">chronicled</a> Trump’s lies while in office, arriving at a total of 30,573. <h2>Challenging misinformation</h2> During the Voice referendum, many lies were told about what the Voice to Parliament would be empowered to do: advise on the date of Anzac Day, change the flag, set interest rates, and introduce a race-based element into the Constitution, advantaging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people over others. These were rebutted by the relevant authorities but by then the lies had been swept up in the daily tide of mis- or disinformation that was a feature of the campaign. At that point, rebuttals merely oxygenate the original falsehoods. More damaging still to the democratic process was the baseless allegation by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton that the Australian Electoral Commission had “rigged” the vote by accepting a tick as indicating “yes” but not accepting a cross as indicating “no”. <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y_4H1IQID_M?wmode=transparent&start=0" width="440" height="260" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></figure> Opposition Senate leader, Simon Birmingham, also said allowing ticks but not crosses undermined the integrity of the process. The electoral commissioner, Tom Rogers, was reported as repudiating these claims, but by then these lies had acquired currency and momentum. A proactive approach to impartiality requires establishing the truthful position before or at the time of initial publication, then calling out falsehoods for what they are and providing supporting evidence. Neither the principle of impartiality nor any other ethical principle in journalism requires journalists to publish lies as if they might be true. It would not have been a failure of impartiality to say in a news report that Dutton’s claims about a rigged referendum were baseless, with the supporting evidence. That evidence, set out in an <a href="https://antonygreen.com.au/how-many-voters-mark-referendum-ballot-papers-with-a-cross-not-many-based-on-evidence/">excellent example</a> of proactive impartiality by the ABC’s election analyst Antony Green at the time, was that the ticks and crosses rule had been in place since 1988. <h2>‘Proactive impartiality’ is the key to reporting the 2025 election</h2> The question is, do Australia’s main media organisations as a whole have the resources and the will to invest in real-time fact-checking? The record is not encouraging. In March 2024, the ABC dissolved its fact-checking arrangement with RMIT University, replacing it with an in-house fact-checking unit called ABC News Verify. In 2023, a team led by Andrea Carson of La Trobe University published a <a href="https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/21078">study</a> tracking the fate of fact-checking operations in Australia. Its findings were summarised by her in The Conversation. In the absence of a fact-checking capability, it is hard to see how journalists can perform the kind of proactive impartiality that current circumstances demand. On top of that, the shift from advertising-based mass media to subscription-based niche media is creating its own logic, which is antithetical to impartiality. Mass-directed advertising was generally aimed at as broad an audience as possible. It encouraged impartiality in the accompanying editorial content as part of an appeal to the broad middle of society. Since a lot of this advertising has gone online, the media have begun to rely increasingly on subscriptions. In a hyper-partisan world, ideological branding, or alternatively freedom from ideological branding, has become part of the sales pitch. Where subscribers do expect to find ideological comfort, readership and ratings are at put risk when their expectations are disappointed. Rupert Murdoch <a href="https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe">learned this</a> when his Fox News channel in the US called the 2020 election for Joe Biden, driving down ratings and causing him to reverse that position in order to claw back the losses. These are unpalatable developments for those who believe that fair, accurate news reporting untainted by the ideological preferences of proprietors or journalists is a vital ingredient in making a healthy democracy work. But that is the world we live in as we approach the federal election of 2025.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/243267/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/denis-muller-1865">Denis Muller</a>, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-melbourne-722">The University of Melbourne</a> Image credits: DEAN LEWINS/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Editorial - LUKAS COCH/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Editorial This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-should-australian-media-cover-the-next-federal-election-lessons-from-the-us-presidential-race-243267">original article</a>. </div>

Legal

Lessons we can all learn from the "Forgotten Women"

“The greatest underutilised resource in our economy is mothers in their childbearing years,” lawyer <a href="https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/soapbox/time-forgotten-women-australia-rise/">Kate Asher wrote in this publication</a> in 2017. “We have told them since they were little girls that they can achieve anything in life. But after they become mothers, they discover the cruel truth: the system is rigged against them. We all know these women. Many of us are these women – the Forgotten Women.” Sadly, things haven’t changed much in the years since. The Forgotten Women sacrifice so much financially to raise their children – often while also caring for elderly parents or in-laws. The full cost of these sacrifices don’t become apparent until years later. Compounding effects Time away from work means no contributions going into superannuation and inappropriate investments eat away at what they did have. Coming on top of the gender pay gap, it leaves a massive retirement shortfall. Many women returning to paid employment struggle to resume their previous career or full-time work, instead forced into less secure, lower paid part-time and casual jobs. If student loans weren’t repaid before leaving work, those debts have ballooned under years of indexation. We know women bear the brunt of domestic violence. Many marriages end in divorce once grown children leave home. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/deaths-australia/latest-release#:~:text=There%2520were%2520183%252C131%2520registered%2520deaths,by%252047%2520deaths%2520to%2520911.">far more men die in their 50s and 60s</a> – their pre-retirement years – than women, leaving many young widows. All these factors see women unexpectedly find their partner is no longer the source of income they had counted on. No wonder women over 55 are <a href="https://womensagenda.com.au/politics/local/advocates-call-on-support-for-older-women-and-dv-survivors-this-world-homelessness-day/">the fastest-growing demographic for homelessness</a> in Australia. What can we learn from this? There are many things we can take away from the traumatic experiences of these much-maligned women. Chief among them: don’t be complacent. Maintain visibility of finances, and take action. As a financial adviser, I have met lots of women; many who only sought advice after finding themselves in a financial black hole. I’m also passionately involved with various causes that support disadvantaged women and those fleeing violence. What strikes me about these women is that they almost unanimously say “I never thought this could happen to me”. And for many it can be preventable. We must be proactive in looking after ourselves – our current AND future selves – which means developing our own financial independence. Simply leaving money matters up to our husband or partner is not an option. We also need to get the message to friends, sisters, colleagues…. Breaking the cycle Too many women have sadly come unstuck because they relied on weak financial foundations. Just like the foundations of a house, you need strong foundations on which to build financial independence: <ul> <li>Emergency fund: a ‘get out’ fund should you ever need to flee danger (violence, natural disaster) or your household finances take an unexpected hit (redundancy, illness, another pandemic…). Not having readily available cash in an emergency can leave you stuck or forced to dip into investments or home equity, costing you dearly longer term.</li> <li>Spending and investment plan: more comprehensive than a budget, this plan offers visibility over your incomings, outgoings and assets. Visibility is key to cutting wasteful spending, staying on top of bills, and keeping you aligned on your money goals. Avoid sexually transmitted debt.</li> <li>Insurances: a valuable back-up plan to offset losses and help you recover financially from a disaster – personal and home. For women who are stay-home mums or carers, of particular importance is that your partner has life and income protection insurance, ensuring you can keep a roof over your head should they die or become unable to work, and possibly trauma insurance for yourself.</li> <li>Superannuation: Knowing up-front that you will have nothing going into super while you are not working means you can minimise the shortfall. For instance, consider ‘pre-paying’ extra contributions while you are still earning and/or have your partner make spousal contributions during your time out of work (and have them claim the associated tax benefit), and consider spouse splitting. But know what is happening in his super too, and if in your own business ensure contributions are made for both of you. </li> <li>Estate planning: Ensure your wishes are documented and your children are protected, both after you are gone and in the event you are ever incapacitated. Consider wills, guardianship, power of attorney, superannuation beneficiaries, and tax planning.</li> </ul> With good foundations in place, you can then look to other ways to build your independence. Invest early. Savings and investments you make in your early working years can offset your lack of income once you leave the workforce and continue growing in value for your retirement. Consider upskilling. Distance education allows stay-home parents to obtain new skills and qualifications, enhancing their future employability and earning potential. Stay level-headed in a separation. I’ve seen many women forgo money and investments in favour of keeping the family home, only to realise down the track they can’t afford its upkeep on their own. Or they sign on the dotted line without advice. Remember too that super is part of the joint assets – you could claim part of your ex’s super in the settlement, offsetting your time away from paid work. Finally, consider your approach to parenting. This is 2024: women don’t need to be the sole caregivers. Some couples now both go part-time, allowing them both to maintain a foot in the workforce (and continue earning income and super) while also enjoying time with their youngsters! Helen Baker is a licensed Australian financial adviser and author of On Your Own Two Feet: The Essential Guide to Financial Independence for all Women. Helen is among the 1% of financial planners who hold a master’s degree in the field. Proceeds from book sales are donated to charities supporting disadvantaged women and children. Find out more at <a href="http://www.onyourowntwofeet.com.au/">www.onyourowntwofeet.com.au</a> Disclaimer: The information in this article is of a general nature only and does not constitute personal financial or product advice. Any opinions or views expressed are those of the authors and do not represent those of people, institutions or organisations the owner may be associated with in a professional or personal capacity unless explicitly stated. Helen Baker is an authorised representative of BPW Partners Pty Ltd AFSL 548754. Image credits: Shutterstock

Money & Banking

Lessons for the next pandemic: where did Australia go right and wrong in responding to COVID?

<div class="theconversation-article-body"> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/adrian-esterman-1022994">Adrian Esterman</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-south-australia-1180">University of South Australia</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/guzyal-hill-575966">Guzyal Hill</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/charles-darwin-university-1066">Charles Darwin University</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/hassan-vally-202904">Hassan Vally</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/deakin-university-757">Deakin University</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kim-m-caudwell-1258935">Kim M Caudwell</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/charles-darwin-university-1066">Charles Darwin University</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/michael-toole-18259">Michael Toole</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/burnet-institute-992">Burnet Institute</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/steven-mcgloughlin-1246135">Steven McGloughlin</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/monash-university-1065">Monash University</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/tari-turner-7922">Tari Turner</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/monash-university-1065">Monash University</a> With COVID still classified as <a href="https://www.who.int/europe/emergencies/situations/covid-19">an ongoing pandemic</a>, it’s difficult to contemplate the next one. But we <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-pathogen-might-spark-the-next-pandemic-how-scientists-are-preparing-for-disease-x-223193">need to be prepared</a>. We’ve seen <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-we-seeing-more-pandemics-our-impact-on-the-planet-has-a-lot-to-do-with-it-226827">several pandemics</a> in recent decades and it’s fair to expect we’ll see more. For the final part in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-next-pandemic-160343">series of articles</a> on the next pandemic, we’ve asked a range of experts what Australia got right and wrong it its response to COVID. Here they share their thoughts on the country’s COVID response – and what we can learn for the next pandemic. <hr /> <h2>Quarantine</h2> The federal government mandated 14 days of quarantine for all international arrivals between March 2020 and November 2021. During that period, <a href="https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/resource/download/national-review-of-quarantine.pdf">452,550 people</a> passed through the system. The states and Northern Territory were given <a href="https://quarantineinquiry.archive.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/covid-19-hotel-quarantine-inquiry-final-report-0">just 48 hours</a> to set up their quarantine systems. The states chose hotel quarantine, while the Northern Territory repurposed an old miner’s camp, <a href="https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/darwins-howard-springs-facility-a-model-for-building-national-resilience/">Howard Springs</a>, which had individual cabins with outdoor verandas. The ACT had very few international arrivals, while Tasmania only had hotel quarantine for domestic travellers. During the first 15 months of the program, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.5694/mja2.51240">at least 22 breaches</a> occurred in five states (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia). An inquiry into Victoria’s hotel quarantine <a href="https://au.news.yahoo.com/covid-victorias-devastating-hotel-quarantine-killed-almost-800-people-110450178.html">found</a> the lack of warning and planning to set up the complex system resulted in breaches that caused Victoria’s second COVID wave of 2020, leading to almost 800 deaths. A <a href="https://www.cnet.com/science/features/how-the-delta-variant-breached-australias-covid-fortress/">breach at Sydney airport</a> led to the introduction of the Delta variant into Australia. In the next pandemic, mistakes from COVID need to be avoided. They included failure to protect hotel residents and staff from airborne transmission through ventilation and mask usage. Protocols need to be consistent across the country, such as the type of security staff used, N95 masks for staff and testing frequency. These protocols need to be included in a national pandemic preparedness plan, which is frequently reviewed and tested through simulations. This did not occur with the pre-COVID preparedness plan. Dedicated quarantine centres like Howard Springs already exist in Victoria and Queensland. Ideally, they should be constructed in every jurisdiction. Michael Toole <hr /> <h2>Treatments</h2> Scientists had to move quickly after COVID was discovered to find effective treatments. Many COVID treatments involved repurposing existing drugs designed for other viruses. For example, the HIV drug ritonavir is a key element of <a href="https://theconversation.com/pfizers-pill-is-the-latest-covid-treatment-to-show-promise-here-are-some-more-171589">the antiviral Paxlovid</a>, while remdesivir was originally developed <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-who-has-advised-against-the-use-of-two-antibody-therapies-against-covid-heres-what-that-means-190787">to treat hepatitis C</a>. At the outset of the pandemic, there was a lot of uncertainty about COVID treatment among Australian health professionals. To keep up with the rapidly developing science, the <a href="https://www.monash.edu/medicine/partnerships/our-partnerships/projects/national-clinical-evidence-taskforce">National Clinical Evidence Taskforce</a> was established in March 2020. We were involved in its COVID response with more than 250 clinicians, consumers and researchers. Unusually for evidence-based guidelines, which are often updated only every five years or so, the taskforce’s guidelines were designed to be “living” – updated as new research became available. In April 2020 we released the first guidelines for care of people with COVID, and over the next three years <a href="https://app.magicapp.org/#/guideline/7252">these were updated</a> more than 100 times. While health-care professionals always had access to up-to-date guidance on COVID treatments, this same information was not as accessible for the public. This may partly explain why many people turned to <a href="https://theconversation.com/thinking-of-trying-ivermectin-for-covid-heres-what-can-happen-with-this-controversial-drug-167178">unproven treatments</a>. The taskforce’s benefits could have been increased with funding to help the community understand COVID treatments. COVID drugs faced other obstacles too. For example, changes to the virus itself meant some treatments <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-centaurus-to-xbb-your-handy-guide-to-the-latest-covid-subvariants-and-why-some-are-more-worrying-than-others-192945">became less effective</a> as new variants emerged. Meanwhile, provision of antiviral treatments <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/How-we-analysed-COVID-antiviral-uptake-Grattan-Institute.pdf">has not been equitable</a> across the country. COVID drugs have had important, though not game-changing, impacts. Ultimately, effective vaccines played a much greater role in shifting the course of the pandemic. But we might not be so fortunate next time. In any future pandemic it will be crucial to have a clear pathway for rapid, reliable methods to develop and evaluate new treatments, disseminate that research to clinicians, policymakers and the public, and ensure all Australians can access the treatments they need. Steven McGloughlin and Tari Turner, Monash University <hr /> <h2>Vaccine rollout</h2> COVID vaccines were developed <a href="https://theconversation.com/one-of-sciences-greatest-achievements-how-the-rapid-development-of-covid-vaccines-prepares-us-for-future-pandemics-228787">in record time</a>, but rolling them out quickly and seamlessly proved to be a challenge. In Australia, there were several missteps along the way. First, there was poor preparation and execution. Detailed <a href="https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-mark-butler-mp/media/auditor-general-highlights-vaccine-rollout-failures">planning was not finalised</a> until after the rollout had begun. Then the federal government had <a href="https://theconversation.com/4-ways-australias-covid-vaccine-rollout-has-been-bungled-158225">overly ambitious targets</a>. For example, the goal of vaccinating four million people by the end of March 2021 fell drastically short, with less than one-fifth of that number actually vaccinated by that time. There were also <a href="https://theconversation.com/4-ways-australias-covid-vaccine-rollout-has-been-bungled-158225">supply issues</a>, with the European Union blocking some deliveries to Australia. Unfortunately, the government was heavily reliant on <a href="https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-mark-butler-mp/media/auditor-general-highlights-vaccine-rollout-failures">the AstraZeneca vaccine</a>, which was found, in rare cases, to lead to <a href="https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/covid-19-vaccines/advice-for-providers/clinical-guidance/tts">blood clots</a> in younger people. Despite all this, Australia ultimately achieved high vaccination rates. By the end of December 2021, <a href="https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2021/12/covid-19-vaccine-rollout-update-31-december-2021.pdf">more than 94%</a> of the population aged 16 and over had received at least one dose. This was a significant public health achievement and saved <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0299844">thousands of lives</a>. But over the past couple of years, Australia’s initially strong vaccine uptake has been waning. The <a href="https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-03/atagi-statement-on-the-administration-of-covid-19-vaccines-in-2024.pdf">Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation</a> recommends booster doses for vulnerable groups annually or twice annually. However, only 30% of people aged <a href="https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-09/covid-19-vaccine-rollout-update-13-september-2024.pdf">75 and over</a> (for whom a booster is recommended every six months) have had a booster dose in the past six months. There are several lessons to be learned from the COVID vaccine rollout for any future pandemic, though it’s not entirely clear whether they are being heeded. For example, several manufacturers have developed <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-covid-vaccines-may-be-coming-to-australia-heres-what-to-know-about-the-jn-1-shots-237652">updated COVID vaccines</a> based on the JN.1 subvariant. But <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/why-australia-could-miss-out-on-modernas-new-covid-19-vaccine/n5n0iruv1">reports indicate</a> the government will only be purchasing the Pfizer JN.1 booster. This doesn’t seem like the best approach to shore up vaccine supply. Adrian Esterman, University of South Australia <hr /> <h2>Mode of transmission</h2> Nearly five years since SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) first emerged, we now know <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-how-is-it-transmitted">airborne transmission</a> plays a far greater role than we originally thought. In contrast, the risk of SARS-CoV-2 being transmitted via surfaces is <a href="https://theconversation.com/catching-covid-from-surfaces-is-very-unlikely-so-perhaps-we-can-ease-up-on-the-disinfecting-155359">likely to be low</a>, and perhaps effectively non-existent in many situations. Early in the pandemic, the role contaminated surfaces and inanimate objects played in COVID transmission was overestimated. The main reason we got this wrong, at least initially, was that in the absence of any direct experience with SARS-CoV-2, we extrapolated what we believed to be true for other respiratory viruses. This was understandable, but it proved to be inadequate for predicting how SARS-CoV-2 would behave. One of the main consequences of overestimating the role of surface transmission was that it resulted in a lot of unnecessary anxiety and the adoption of what can only be viewed in retrospect as <a href="https://theconversation.com/catching-covid-from-surfaces-is-very-unlikely-so-perhaps-we-can-ease-up-on-the-disinfecting-155359">over-the-top cleaning practices</a>. Remember the teams of people who walked the streets wiping down traffic light poles? How about the concern over reusable coffee cups? Considerable resources that could have been better invested elsewhere were directed towards disinfecting surfaces. This also potentially distracted our focus from other preventive measures that were likely to have been more effective, such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/yes-masks-reduce-the-risk-of-spreading-covid-despite-a-review-saying-they-dont-198992">wearing masks</a>. The focus on surface transmission was amplified by a number of studies published early in the pandemic that documented the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7121658/">survival of SARS-CoV-2</a> for long periods on surfaces. However, these were conducted in the lab with little similarity to real-world conditions. In particular, the amounts of virus placed on surfaces were greater than what people would likely encounter outside the lab. This inflated viral survival times and therefore the perception of risk. The emphasis on surface transmission early in the pandemic ultimately proved to be a miscalculation. It highlights the challenges in understanding how a new virus spreads. Hassan Vally, Deakin University <hr /> <h2>National unity</h2> Initially, Commonwealth, state and territory leaders were relatively united in their response to the COVID pandemic. The establishment of the National Cabinet in <a href="https://federation.gov.au/national-cabinet">March 2020</a> indicated a commitment to consensus-based public health policy. Meanwhile, different jurisdictions came together to deliver a <a href="https://www.ato.gov.au/individuals-and-families/financial-difficulties-and-disasters/covid-19/jobkeeper-payment">range of measures</a> aimed at supporting businesses and workers affected by COVID restrictions. But as the pandemic continued, tensions gave way to deeper ideological fractures between jurisdictions <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12888-024-05834-9">and individuals</a>. The issues of <a href="https://www.unswlawjournal.unsw.edu.au/article/covid-19-vaccine-mandates-a-coercive-but-justified-public-health-necessity">vaccine mandates</a>, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-30/wa-premier-mark-mcgowan-reopening-date-decision/100788876">border closures</a> and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/00048674211031489">lockdowns</a> all created fragmentation between governments, and among experts. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/oct/19/daniel-andrews-lashes-josh-frydenberg-over-attack-on-victorias-covid-strategy">blame game began</a> between and within jurisdictions. For example, the politicisation of <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/govt-playing-cruise-ship-blame-game-labor/49ad3491-2187-4991-a3a0-1c61145bc2cb">quarantine regulations on cruise ships</a> revealed disunity. School closures, on which the Commonwealth and state and territory governments <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/we-made-the-wrong-decisions-covid-era-mass-school-closures-condemned-20240214-p5f521.html">took different positions</a>, also generated controversy. These and other instances of polarisation undermined the intent of the newly established <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-the-covid-crisis-easing-is-the-national-cabinet-still-fit-for-purpose-202145">National Cabinet</a>. The COVID pandemic showed us that <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4859497">disunity across the country</a> threatens the collective work needed for an effective response in <a href="https://ir.law.fsu.edu/jtlp/vol30/iss1/3/">the face of emergencies</a>. The <a href="https://www.pmc.gov.au/domestic-policy/commonwealth-government-covid-19-response-inquiry">COVID response inquiry</a>, due to release its results soon, will hopefully help us work toward <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-19-3292-2">national uniform legislation</a> that may benefit Australia in the event of <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-19-3292-2_10">any future pandemics</a>. This doesn’t necessarily mean identical legislation across the country – this won’t always be appropriate. But a cohesive, long-term approach is crucial to ensure the best outcomes for the Australian federation in its entirety. Guzyal Hill and Kim M Caudwell, Charles Darwin University <hr /> This article is part of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-next-pandemic-160343">series on the next pandemic</a>.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/239819/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/adrian-esterman-1022994">Adrian Esterman</a>, Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-south-australia-1180">University of South Australia</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/guzyal-hill-575966">Guzyal Hill</a>, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts and Society, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/charles-darwin-university-1066">Charles Darwin University</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/hassan-vally-202904">Hassan Vally</a>, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/deakin-university-757">Deakin University</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kim-m-caudwell-1258935">Kim M Caudwell</a>, Senior Lecturer - Psychology | Chair, Researchers in Behavioural Addictions, Alcohol and Drugs (BAAD), <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/charles-darwin-university-1066">Charles Darwin University</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/michael-toole-18259">Michael Toole</a>, Associate Principal Research Fellow, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/burnet-institute-992">Burnet Institute</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/steven-mcgloughlin-1246135">Steven McGloughlin</a>, Director, Intensive Care Unit, Alfred Health; Professor, Epidemiology and Preventative Medicine, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/monash-university-1065">Monash University</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/tari-turner-7922">Tari Turner</a>, Director, Evidence and Methods, National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce; Associate Professor (Research), Cochrane Australia, School of Population Health and Preventive Medicine, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/monash-university-1065">Monash University</a> Image credits: Shutterstock This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/lessons-for-the-next-pandemic-where-did-australia-go-right-and-wrong-in-responding-to-covid-239819">original article</a>. </div>

Legal

5 financial lessons you should impart to your adult children

Ultimately, we want our kids to live long, happy, healthy lives. Financial security is central to achieving this dream. So it may be time to have a chat about matters of money and ensure they are well set up for a prosperous future! While there are many important things to instil in future generations, the five below are perhaps the most crucial current-day issues for your adult children to master. <ol> <li>Avoid BNPL</li> </ol> Buy now, pay later (BNPL) schemes have taken off in popularity in recent years, allowing shoppers to purchase and use goods straight away yet pay for them over time in instalments. Sound too good to be true? Indeed. Most schemes attach hefty penalties and interest for missed or late repayments – much the same as credit cards. The debt quickly balloons, and can become unsustainable. The best approach to instil in your children is to always live within their means. <ol start="2"> <li>Avoid sexually transmitted debt</li> </ol> Joint finances, loans, credit cards, utilities, subscriptions, vehicles, businesses, property… all of these and more are shared liabilities. Even if a partner is the one who racks up the debts, your child is equally responsible for repaying them. This is what I call sexually transmitted debt. It could be inadvertent (such as having a partner who, despite their best intentions, is simply bad with money); hidden (like gambling addiction), deliberate (financial abuse), lose their job, have an accident, get seriously unwell. Either way, sexually transmitted debts can create long-term and even life-long problems, regardless of whether the relationship that created those debts survives: repayment struggles, credit constraints, bankruptcy, legal woes. When it comes to money, your children (and yourself) need to think with their head, not their heart. <ol start="3"> <li>Start investing </li> </ol> The number one thing financial advisers hear most is “I wish I started years ago”. Investments typically grow over time. The more time you allow, the bigger their value. Younger adults have big demands on their hip pocket. However, even starting with small investments allows compound growth to work its magic. Plus, given the housing affordability constraints facing younger generations, investments that can be sold or leveraged could better help them onto the housing ladder in future. Superannuation is another investment to pay attention to from a young age: managing investments, ensuring they are in a cost-effective fund, and avoiding mistakes – like consolidating funds without getting advice, which can inadvertently see them consolidate into a poorer performing fund or cancel attached insurances that had preferential terms. <ol start="4"> <li>Get a will</li> </ol> While young people may feel invincible, untimely deaths or disablement claims sadly can and do happen. And often unexpectedly: land transport accidents and accidental poisoning, together with suicide, make up <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/life-expectancy-deaths/deaths-in-australia/contents/leading-causes-of-death">the biggest causes of death for under 44s</a> in Australia. Not having a will and a nominated executor complicates matters for grieving family and can delay all-important access to finances. How would your child’s partner and kids (if they have them) survive if their super, insurances and other payouts are delayed through probate? Remember to point out that superannuation (and other structures like companies and trusts) are treated separately from a will, and so need beneficiaries nominated within them. Younger people are also less likely to have discussed their final wishes with loved ones – funeral arrangements, burial vs cremation, organ donation, inheritances etc. This is where a separate statement of wishes can be useful. <ol start="5"> <li>Get insured</li> </ol> Insurances – save perhaps vehicle and house/contents – are rarely on the minds of younger people. But they should be. That is because many insurances are cheaper and offer better coverage when people are younger and free of any health complications. That includes private health, life and permanent disability, and income protection cover. Other insurances, like asset protection, can also be more lucrative to lock-in early. Just think about how the Ts and Cs on insurances have changed (become more restrictive) since you were their age! So encourage your adult children to scrutinise their insurance coverage. (And keep them away from drugs and smoking to stay healthier for longer!) Helen Baker is a licensed Australian financial adviser and author of the new book, On Your Own Two Feet: The Essential Guide to Financial Independence for all Women (Ventura Press, $32.99). Helen is among the 1% of financial planners who hold a master’s degree in the field. Proceeds from book sales are donated to charities supporting disadvantaged women and children. Find out more at <a href="http://www.onyourowntwofeet.com.au">www.onyourowntwofeet.com.au</a> Image credits: Getty Images

Money & Banking

Style lessons from Iris Apfel

Ninety-four-year-old Iris Apfel is an internet sensation, and she doesn’t even own a computer. Constantly spotted wearing outrageously fabulous outfits, we can all, young or old, learn a thing or two about style and confidence from the fashion icon. 1. It’s all about the accessories – You merely have to take a quick glance at Iris Apfel to know she’s a fan of the accessory. Constantly decked out in huge glasses and layers upon layers of opulent necklaces, Apfel lives the fashion version of the philosophy, “Go big or go home.” 2. Be yourself – Apfel wears what she wants, and is more afraid of conforming than standing out in the crowd. "They say they want to be different and they all wear a uniform. I mean, in New York you can probably tell somebody’s zip code by what they are wearing,” Apfel explained to AnOther Magazine. <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CXCKjFxLRIS/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CXCKjFxLRIS/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Iris Apfel (@iris.apfel)</a> </div> </blockquote> 3. You don’t have to be “pretty” to be fabulous – Apfel doesn’t follow the societal hype of conventional beauty, preferring to embrace what she’s been given, instead. The fashion icon explained to The Guardian, “I’m not a pretty person. I don’t like pretty – so I don’t feel badly ... Most of the world is not with me, but I don’t care.” 4. Style isn’t always effortless – Apfel spends hours searching for accessories and bartering with shop keepers to find the perfect fabric. Not one to sit behind the computer and shop online, Apfel procures all her fashion finds herself, and it pays off. 5. Happiness comes first – According to Apfel, one’s own contentedness should come before fashion. “It’s better to be happy than to be well dressed,” she says. <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CrzBkoeMK5m/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CrzBkoeMK5m/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Iris Apfel (@iris.apfel)</a> </div> </blockquote> 6. Don’t be boring – You’d be hard-pressed to find Apfel in an outfit that isn’t colourful or wild by conventional standards. Even when she wears black, she offsets this with texture, donning furs, feathers, metals, and jewels – everything, it would appear, but the kitchen sink. But if anyone could pull that off, we bet it would be Iris too. Images: Instagram

Beauty & Style

Man fakes own death to teach his family a tough life lesson

A Belgian TikToker has become the subject of the internet’s scorn after playing a prank on the loved ones and mourners gathered to bid him farewell at what they believed to be his funeral. They were under the assumption that the service was being held for the recently-departed David Baerten - their 45-year-old friend who was not, it turns out, dead after all. Instead, Baerten had devised a plan with his wife and children to trick everyone into believing he’d passed on, all so that he could teach them a ‘valuable’ lesson in the importance of staying in touch. In a bid to make Baerten’s friends and followers believe the lie, one of his daughters even posted to social media about his passing, writing “rest in peace Daddy. I will never stop thinking about you. “Why is life so unfair? Why you? You were going to be a grandfather, and you still had your whole life ahead of you. I love you! We love you! We will never forget you.” The ‘funeral’ was held near Liege for the TikToker - who uses the name Ragnar le Fou for his social media antics - with his family and friends coming together for what they thought was a final farewell. But as they prepared for that difficult task, things took a sharp turn. Baerten, who had been alive the entire time, descended in a helicopter with a camera crew in tow to surprise them all. In a video later shared to social media, he could be heard telling them “cheers to you all, welcome to my funeral.” Another user - who was present at the time - shared a clip of Baerten in the arms of his sobbing loved ones, while others took the opportunity to complain about the entire “joke”. <iframe style="border-width: initial; border-style: none; display: block; font-family: proxima-regular, PingFangSC, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.01em; text-align: center; background-color: #ffffff; width: 605px; height: 740px; visibility: unset; max-height: 740px;" src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7243399474553425179?lang=en-GB&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymail.co.uk%2Fnews%2Farticle-12190705%2FMan-fakes-death-arrives-funeral-helicopter-teach-family-lesson.html&embedFrom=oembed" name="__tt_embed__v11218062736010092" sandbox="allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-scripts allow-top-navigation allow-same-origin"></iframe>They were complaints that continued online, as the videos gained traction and many raced to condemn him for the heartless stunt. “Really shocking, it should be punishable by law!” one user declared. “I'm shocked,” another said, before asking how he’d been able to do that to those close to him. “He wanted to see who would be there with his eyes,” one said, “what narcissism”. Someone else agreed, noting that “you really have to be full of yourself to do such a thing.” The feedback was so strong that Baerten was forced to explain his actions, claiming that “what I see in my family often hurts me. I never get invited to anything. “Nobody sees me. We all grew apart. I felt unappreciated. That’s why I wanted to give them a life lesson, and show them that you shouldn’t wait until someone is dead to meet up with them.” And while he is yet to share his own professional footage from the day, his plan had worked. “Only half of my family came to the funeral,” he said. “That proves who really cares about me. Those who didn’t come, did contact me to meet up. “So in a way I did win.” Images: TikTok

Family & Pets

“A lesson learned”: Uni student lands herself in an overdue book nightmare

A university graduate student received the shock of her academic career when an email arrived in her inbox to inform her she owed her school’s library a whopping $11,900 in overdue book fines. Hannah took to TikTok to share her story, posting a snippet of the horror email, and the news that her library account had amassed a debt of “$11,9000 owed for 119 lost books”. The books had been declared lost, though Hannah was quick to note that she was “still using” each of them, and had every intention of returning them once she was finished with her studies. To drive home the fact that the books were not missing, and instead safely in her scholarly possession, Hannah panned around the various piles of tomes stacked around her home, with a caption reading “the books aren’t lost, I’m just hoarding them until I finish my dissertation.” The email itself explained the books were marked as lost in the library’s system if they exceeded 30 days overdue, and that there was a flat rate of $100 per book in such instances. And according to the library, it was up to each patron to renew their books, and that Hannah “received overdue notices on the following dates prompting you to renew your library books before they are declared lost.” As she explained to The Daily Dot, she had checked out her collection three years prior while she’d been preparing for exams, and confirmed that she had received four reminders to either renew or return the books, but she’d put it off each time. “Then I got the automatic email,” she added, “saying all of the books were marked as lost and my account was charged $100 per book.” Hannah’s woe drew a mixed response from her audience, with some surprised that her library had even let her withdraw that many books in the first place, others unable to wrap their heads around the fact she could have let her situation get so bad, and many quick to defend the librarian, who they declared had only been doing her job. “My library only lets me check out 5 books at a time,” one wrote. “That’s why keeping library books past their due date is considered stealing,” another said, to which Hannah responded to promise her lesson had been learned. “Only 30 days over due??? Damn give a lil more time,” said one, with Hannah informing them that she’d had the books for years by that point. It wasn’t all bad for the budding scholar though, with Hannah explaining in another comment that “it was hunky dory”, as the library had waived her fees as soon as she’d responded to them, and that she’d been allowed to keep all 119 for an additional year. And, as she told another follower, “I’ve never replied to an email faster.” Images: TikTok

Books

Oh buoy! British tourist learns a tough lesson in taking a drunken dip

When this British tourist decided it would be a good idea to take a morning dip, he could not possibly have anticipated the way his day was going to go. In a clip that has taken the internet by storm, the holidaymaker was found clinging to a buoy at about 7 am in the morning, roughly 3.2 kilometres off the coast of Thailand near Pattaya. As to why he’d been out there so early in the first place? It had seemed like a “good idea”. The young man was reportedly intoxicated at the time of his discovery, when a boat passed by and he waved them down in his swimming shorts, seemingly hoping to catch a ride back to shore. After getting himself onboard, he took a moment to try and catch his breath, before informing the captain that his situation had arisen from him waking up and thinking a swim would be a good idea first thing. And before launching into some small talk with his saviour, he elaborated on his peculiar situation by adding, “I swim swim swim and then…” <iframe style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=476&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FNewsflare%2Fvideos%2F584202360137745%2F&show_text=false&width=380&t=0" width="380" height="476" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe> The boat’s captain, Charawat Rasrikrit, later reported that the young man appeared to be unhurt, and that he had been returned to his hotel. “I went to the temple early in the morning because it was a Buddhist holy day. I drove my boat and did not expect to see [a] tourist,” he admitted. “He was waving at me and said he could not swim back. “Maybe the Buddha took me to that area of the sea to help him. It was a holiday, not many boats would pass by him if I didn't come. “I see a lot of tourists get into trouble here. I thought that maybe he had been out partying the night before and was still in a good mood in the morning. He was probably still a little bit drunk. “A lot of tourists behave strangely when they come here.” Images: News Flare / Facebook

Travel Trouble

New lessons about old wars: keeping the complex story of Anzac Day relevant in the 21st century

What happened on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey 108 years ago has shocked and shaped Aotearoa New Zealand ever since. The challenge in the 21st century, then, is how best to give contemporary relevance to such an epochal event. The essence of the Anzac story is well known. As part of the first world war British Imperial Forces, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzacs) landed at Gallipoli on April 25 1915. For eight months they endured the constant threat of death or maiming in terrible living conditions. Ultimately, their occupation of that narrow and rugged piece of Turkish coast failed. The 30,000 Anzacs were evacuated after eight months. More than 2,700 New Zealand and 8,700 Australian soldiers died, with many more wounded. The <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/anzac-day-resources">first anniversary</a> of the landing was a day of mourning, with Anzac Day becoming a public holiday in 1922. A remembrance day of sorrow mixed with pride, it has grown over the years to include all those who served and died in later international conflicts. Over time, various narratives and themes have emerged from that Gallipoli “origin story”: of Aotearoa New Zealand’s emergence as a nation, proving itself to Britain and Empire; of the brave, fit, loyal soldier-mates who emblemised the Kiwi spirit of egalitarianism, fairness and duty. All this mingled with the lasting shock and underlying anger at class hierarchy and the British leadership’s incompetence. But historians know well that the “Anzac spirit” is a complex and ever-evolving idea. In 2023, what do we teach school-aged children about its meaning and significance? One way forward is to rethink those Anzac narratives and tropes in a more complex way. <h2>Colonialism and class</h2> The Anzac story is tied up in the nation’s history as part of the British Empire. The Anzac toll was just part of a staggering 46,000 “Britons” – including many from India and Ireland – who died at Gallipoli. Some 86,000 Turks also died defending their peninsula. We need to teach about the Anzac sacrifice in the context of a global conflict where the magnitude of loss was horrific. Importantly, Anzac themes are bound up in early forms of colonial nationalism: New Zealand proving itself to Britain and developing its own fighting mentality on battlefields far from home. Part of this involves the notion of incompetent British commanders who let down the Anzac troops – but this is part of a bigger story. Focusing on imperial and class hierarchies of the time can place what happened in that broader context. The legendary story of <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/wellington-battalion-captures-chunuk-bair">Chunuck Bair</a>, taken on August 8 by Colonel William Malone’s Wellington Regiment, but where most of the soldiers were killed when they weren’t relieved in time, is particularly evocative. <h2>Māori and the imperial project</h2> From our vantage point in the present, of course, we cannot ignore the Māori experience of war and colonialism. As the historian Vincent O’Malley has suggested, New Zealand’s “great war” of nation-making was actually <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/new-zealand-wars">Ngā pakanga o Aotearoa</a> – the New Zealand Wars. It’s time to teach the complexity of this past and the multiple perspectives on it. For example, Waikato leader <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/people/te-kirihaehae-te-puea-herangi">Te Puea Hērangi</a>led opposition to WWI conscription and spoke against Māori participation on the side of a power that had only recently invaded her people’s land. Conversely, Māori seeking inclusion in the settler nation did participate. On July 3 1915, the 1st Māori Contingent landed at Anzac Cove. <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3b54/buck-peter-henry">Te Rangi Hiroa</a> (Sir Peter Buck) (Ngāti Mutunga) was to say, "Our feet were set on a distant land where our blood was to be shed in the cause of the Empire to which we belonged." These words echo the familiar Anzac trope of the New Zealand nation being born at Gallipoli. Such sentiments led to postwar pilgrimages to retrace the steps of ancestors and claim the site as part of an Anzac heritage – a corner of New Zealand even. For many young New Zealanders it has become a rite of passage, part of the big OE. That a visit to Anzac Cove is still more popular than visiting the sites of Ngā pakanga o Aotearoa is something our teaching can investigate. <h2>Mateship and conformity</h2> The notion of the Anzac soldier as courageous and beyond reproach, willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for nation and empire, is also overdue for revision. The “glue” of mateship – a potent combination of masculine bravery and strength with extreme loyalty to fellow soldiers – is again a contested narrative. By the 1970s, as historian Rowan Light’s work shows, there was a significant challenge to such perceptions from the counterculture, peace protesters and feminists. And by the 1980s, veterans were sharing their stories more candidly with writer Maurice Shadbolt and war historian Chris Pugsley. Teaching about the meaning of mateship might examine the history of those peer-pressured into participating in war, those who were conscripted and had no choice, and more on the fate of conscientious objectors like Archibald Baxter. At its worst, the idea of mateship was window dressing for uniformity and parochialism. New Zealanders today have complex multicultural and global roots. We have ancestors who were co-opted to fight on different sides in 20th-century wars, including those who fought anti-colonial wars in India, Ireland and Samoa. Some came here as refugees escaping conflict. Jingoism and what it really represents deserves critical analysis. <h2>Poppies and peace</h2> The ubiquitous poppy, an icon much reproduced in classrooms, is also ripe for contextualisation and debate over its meaning. In the age of global environmental crisis, it can be seen as more than a symbol of sacrifice immortalised in verse and iconography. The poppy also reminds us of the landscapes devastated by the machinery of war that killed and maimed people, plants and animals. It contains within it myriad lessons about the threats science and technology can pose to a vulnerable planet. Anzac Day rose from the shock, loss and grief felt by those on the home front. And beyond the familiar tropes of nationalism, mateship and egalitarianism, this remains its overriding mood. Remembering and learning about the terrible physical and mental cost of war is the real point of those familiar phrases “lest we forget” and “never again”. That spirit of humanitarianism chimes with Aotearoa New Zealand’s modern role and evolving self-image as a peacekeeping, nuclear-free nation. Anzac Day also speaks to the need for global peace and arbitration, and how war is no viable solution to conflict. Those are surely lessons worth teaching. Image credits: Getty Images This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-lessons-about-old-wars-keeping-the-complex-story-of-anzac-day-relevant-in-the-21st-century-204013" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>.

Caring

What Australia learned from recent devastating floods – and how New Zealand can apply those lessons now

Australia and New Zealand have both faced a series of devastating floods triggered by climate change and the return of the <a href="https://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/content/historic-3rd-la-nina-is-back-but-it-barely-left-us-in-the-first-place">La Niña weather pattern</a>. So it makes sense that Australia has now <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-17/australia-sends-disaster-crew-to-nz-death-toll-rises/101989822">sent disaster crews</a> to help with the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle. With <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2343938-eastern-australia-is-battling-fifth-major-wave-of-floods-in-19-months/">five serious floods</a> in the space of 19 months in 2021-2022, Australia’s experiences – and how people responded – offer New Zealand a guide for recovering and rebuilding after an extreme weather event. The flooding events in both countries share two key common elements. First, the floods broke previous records and were the largest in recent history. Second, there were also repeat flood events. In Auckland, there were <a href="https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/residents-evacuated-homes-roads-flooded-again">two massive floods within five days</a>, while Cyclone Gabrielle became the Coromandel’s <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/484167/cyclone-gabrielle-thames-coromandel-already-facing-fifth-severe-weather-event-of-year">fifth severe weather event</a> for 2023 and devastated other parts of the North Island. The other common factor is urbanisation. <a href="https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/auckland-population-may-hit-2-million-in-early-2030s">Auckland’s population has been growing</a>, resulting in the increasing development of the built environment. Intensifying urban development places pressure on existing drainage systems – parts of which are no longer fit for purpose. Extensive built-up and paved areas with hard, impermeable surfaces can also cause rapid run-off during heavy rain, with the water unable to be absorbed into the ground as it would be in <a href="https://theconversation.com/auckland-floods-even-stormwater-reform-wont-be-enough-we-need-a-sponge-city-to-avoid-future-disasters-198736">soft, vegetated areas</a>. <h2>Working with the community</h2> Our <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7En6dA-N3MA">recent research</a> in the Hunter Valley in Australia – one of the areas affected by those five successive floods – identified similar factors contributing to the flooding events, including a <a href="https://www.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-06/Hunter%20REDS.pdf">rapidly growing regional population</a>. Two of our research sites – the Cessnock and Singleton local government areas – had growing urban centres that reflected a similar development trajectory to Auckland, albeit in a smaller scale. Our research in the Hunter Valley established the importance of identifying existing community resilience and gaps. We also observed the need to involve the community at all levels. This included having early warning systems and evacuation protocols in place to improve community access to information and warnings. The State Emergency Services (SES) is the main agency in New South Wales responsible for flood response and management. Supported by community volunteers, the SES has a clear focus at the local level. This community focus is evident with its “door-knocking kit”, which is based on a community-level vulnerability assessment. The SES has a list of those in the community who are most at risk, such as the elderly and people with disabilities. When a flood risk becomes evident, SES volunteers go knocking on doors to check their preparedness and provide evacuation support. The equivalent of SES in New Zealand, Auckland Emergency Management, could learn from this community-based approach and include it within its <a href="https://getready.govt.nz/en/involved/community/">Community Group Support</a> initiative, so that future disaster responses can be more closely tailored to the community. In the recent floods in Auckland, communication was an issue. Relaying directives and information through multiple institutional layers <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/oceania/some-incorrect-decisions-auckland-mayor-under-fire-over-deadly-floods-20230130-p5cggt.html">led to confusion</a>, which could have been avoided through a closer community-based approach. <h2>Building a volunteer army</h2> Another key factor in Australia is the large cadre of SES volunteers – around <a href="https://www.ses.nsw.gov.au/about-us/">9,000 in New South Wales</a>, a state with a population of just over eight million. This is a significant form of social capital, without which the current approach to flood response and management would not be possible. While there are initiatives in New Zealand to <a href="https://www.civildefence.govt.nz/get-ready/volunteering/">attract and engage volunteers</a>, more needs to be done. Civil defence needs to conduct a structural review of the existing volunteer organisations that work in the disaster and emergency response field to identify ways to improve the recruitment and retention. We also found evidence of volunteer “burn-out”, meaning there’s a need to support volunteers emotionally and financially during extended periods of disaster response and recovery. While there is a large number of SES volunteers in Australia, more are needed as climate change drives more frequent, extensive and intense disasters. Given the similar nature of repeat climate-related disaster events in New Zealand, provisions for a large cadre of well-supported and well-trained volunteers is necessary. A review of existing volunteer agencies and community organisations should be undertaken to identify ways they can be harmonised to avoid competing pressures for resources. As well, there’s a need to nurture collaboration between agencies to help with sharing skills, training, data and resource management. <h2>The need for resilience</h2> Perhaps the key lesson for New Zealand, and also Australia, is the need to think beyond emergency management to building long-term resilience within agencies and communities. As climate-related disasters become more common, we need to think about how our cities grow and how we can incorporate flood resilience by retaining green areas and vegetation, improved drainage and transportation links. But both countries also need to focus on being ready for a disaster, instead of managing it after it happens. In doing so, the pressures of managing the disaster when it arrives would be less – and so would the long-term impacts on people and the economy. Image credits: Getty Images This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-australia-learned-from-recent-devastating-floods-and-how-new-zealand-can-apply-those-lessons-now-200078" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>.

Travel Trouble

Frankenstein: how Mary Shelley’s sci-fi classic offers lessons for us today about the dangers of playing God

<a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/frankenstein-9780241425121" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus</a>, is an 1818 novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Set in the late 18th century, it follows scientist Victor Frankenstein’s creation of life and the terrible events that are precipitated by his abandonment of his creation. It is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fiction" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gothic novel</a> in that it combines supernatural elements with horror, death and an exploration of the darker aspects of the psyche. It also provides a complex critique of Christianity. But most significantly, as one of the first works of science-fiction, it explores the dangers of humans pursuing new technologies and becoming God-like. <h2>The celebrity story</h2> Shelley’s Frankenstein is at the heart of what might be the greatest celebrity story of all time. Shelley was born in 1797. Her mother, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mary Wollstonecraft</a>, author of the landmark A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), was, according to that book’s introduction, “the first major feminist”. Shelley’s father was <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/godwin/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">William Godwin</a>, political philosopher and founder of “philosophical anarchism” – he was anti-government in the moment that the great democracies of France and the United States were being born. When she was 16, Shelley eloped with radical poet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Percy Shelley</a>, whose <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ozymandias</a> (1818) is still regularly quoted (“Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”). Their relationship seems to epitomise the Romantic era itself. It was crossed with outside love interests, illegitimate children, suicides, debt, wondering and wandering. And it ultimately came to an early end in 1822 when Percy Shelley drowned, his small boat lost in a storm off the Italian coast. The Shelleys also had a close association with the poet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lord Byron</a>, and it is this association that brings us to Frankenstein. In 1816 the Shelleys visited Switzerland, staying on the shores of Lake Geneva, where they were Byron’s neighbours. As Mary Shelley tells it, they had all been reading ghost stories, including Coleridge’s <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43971/christabel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Christabel</a> (Coleridge had visited her father at the family house when Shelley was young), when Byron suggested that they each write a ghost story. Thus 18-year-old Shelley began to write Frankenstein. <h2>The myth of the monster</h2> The popular imagination has taken Frankenstein and run with it. The monster “Frankenstein”, originally “Frankenstein’s monster”, is as integral to Western culture as the characters and tropes from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But while reasonable continuity remains between Carroll’s Alice and its subsequent reimaginings, much has been changed and lost in the translation from Shelley’s novel into the many versions that are rooted in the popular imagination. There have been many varied adaptations, from <a href="https://youtu.be/TBHIO60whNw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Edward Scissorhands</a> to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGzc0pIjHqw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Rocky Horror Picture Show</a> (see <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/feb/11/the-20-best-frankenstein-films-ranked" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a> for a top 20 list of Frankenstein films). But despite the variety, it’s hard not to think of the “monster” as a zombie-like implacable menace, as we see in the <a href="https://youtu.be/BN8K-4osNb0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">trailer to the 1931 movie</a>, or a lumbering fool, as seen in <a href="https://youtu.be/nBV8Cw73zhk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Herman Munster incarnation</a>. Further, when we add the prefix “franken” it’s usually with disdain; consider “frankenfoods”, which refers to genetically modified foods, or “frankenhouses”, which describes contemporary architectural monstrosities or bad renovations. However, in Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein’s creation is far from being two-dimensional or contemptible. To use the motto of the Tyrell corporation, which, in the 1982 movie Bladerunner, creates synthetic life, the creature strikes us as being “more human than human”. Indeed, despite their dissimilarities, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoAzpa1x7jU" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the replicant Roy Batty in Bladerunner reproduces Frankenstein’s creature’s intense humanity</a>. <h2>Some key elements in the plot</h2> The story of Victor Frankenstein is nested within the story of scientist-explorer Robert Walton. For both men, the quest for knowledge is mingled with fanatical ambition. The novel begins towards the end of the story, with Walton, who is trying to sail to the North Pole, rescuing Frankenstein from <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_Das_Eismeer_-_Hamburger_Kunsthalle_-_02.jpg/1280px-Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_Das_Eismeer_-_Hamburger_Kunsthalle_-_02.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sea ice</a>. Frankenstein is being led northwards by his creation towards a final confrontation. The central moment in the novel is when Frankenstein brings his creation to life, only to be immediately repulsed by it: <blockquote> I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. </blockquote> Victor Frankenstein, like others in the novel, is appalled by the appearance of his creation. He flees the creature and it vanishes. After a hiatus of two years, the creature begins to murder people close to Frankenstein. And when Frankenstein reneges on his promise to create a female partner for his creature, it murders his closest friend and then, on Frankenstein’s wedding night, his wife. <h2>More human than human</h2> The real interest of the novel lies not in the murders or the pursuit, but in the creature’s accounts of what drove him to murder. After the creature murders Frankenstein’s little brother, William, Frankenstein seeks solace in the Alps – in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderer_above_the_Sea_of_Fog#/media/File:Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_Wanderer_above_the_sea_of_fog.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sublime nature</a>. There, the creature comes upon Frankenstein and eloquently and poignantly relates his story. We learn that the creature spent a year secretly living in an outhouse attached to a hut occupied by the recently impoverished De Lacey family. As he became self-aware, the creature reflected that, “To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being.” But when he eventually attempted to reveal himself to the family to gain their companionship, he was brutally driven from them. The creature was filled with rage. He says, “I could … have glutted myself with their shrieks and misery.” More human than human. After Victor Frankenstein dies aboard Walton’s ship, Walton has a final encounter with the creature, as it looms over Frankenstein’s body. To the corpse, the creature says: <blockquote> “Oh Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst.” </blockquote> The creature goes on to make several grand and tragic pronouncements to Walton. “My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change, without torture such as you cannot even imagine.” And shortly after, about the murder of Frankenstein’s wife, the creature says: “I knew that I was preparing for myself a deadly torture; but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse, which I detested, yet could not disobey.” These remarks encourage us to ponder some of the weightiest questions we can ask about the human condition: <blockquote> What is it that drives humans to commit horrible acts? Are human hearts, like the creature’s, fashioned for ‘love and sympathy’, and when such things are withheld or taken from us, do we attempt to salve the wound by hurting others? And if so, what is the psychological mechanism that makes this occur? </blockquote> And what is the relationship between free will and horrible acts? We cannot help but think that the creature remains innocent – that he is the slave, not the master. But then what about the rest of us? The rule of law generally blames individuals for their crimes – and perhaps this is necessary for a society to function. Yet I suspect the rule of law misses something vital. Epictetus, the stoic philosopher, considered such questions millennia ago. He asked: <blockquote> What grounds do we have for being angry with anyone? We use labels like ‘thief’ and ‘robber’… but what do these words mean? They merely signify that people are confused about what is good and what is bad. </blockquote> <h2>Unintended consequences</h2> Victor Frankenstein creates life only to abandon it. An unsympathetic interpretation of Christianity might see something similar in God’s relationship with humanity. Yet the novel itself does not easily support this reading; like much great art, its strength lies in its ambivalence and complexity. At one point, the creature says to Frankenstein: “Remember, that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.” These and other remarks complicate any simplistic interpretation. In fact, the ambivalence of the novel’s religious critique supports its primary concern: the problem of technology allowing humans to become God-like. The subtitle of Frankenstein is “The Modern Prometheus”. In the Greek myth, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Prometheus</a> steals fire – a technology – from the gods and gives it to humanity, for which he is punished. In this myth and many other stories, technology and knowledge are double-edged. Adam and Eve eat the apple of knowledge in the Garden of Eden and are ejected from paradise. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, <a href="https://youtu.be/RWCvMwivrDk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">humanity is born when the first tool is used</a> – a tool that augments humanity’s ability to be violent. The novel’s subtitle is referring to Kant’s 1755 essay, “The Modern Prometheus”. In this, Kant observes that: <blockquote> There is such a thing as right taste in natural science, which knows how to distinguish the wild extravagances of unbridled curiosity from cautious judgements of reasonable credibility. From the Prometheus of recent times Mr. Franklin, who wanted to disarm the thunder, down to the man who wants to extinguish the fire in the workshop of Vulcanus, all these endeavors result in the humiliating reminder that Man never can be anything more than a man. </blockquote> Victor Frankenstein, who suffered from an unbridled curiosity, says something similar: <blockquote> A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind … If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. </blockquote> And also: “Learn from me … how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.” In sum: be careful what knowledge you pursue, and how you pursue it. Beware playing God. Alas, history reveals the quixotic nature of Shelley and Kant’s warnings. There always seems to be a scientist somewhere whose dubious ambitions are given free rein. And beyond this, there is always the problem of the unintended consequences of our discoveries. Since Shelley’s time, we have created numerous things that we fear or loathe such as the atomic bomb, cigarettes and other drugs, chemicals such as DDT, and so on. And as our powers in the realms of genetics and artificial intelligence grow, we may yet create something that loathes us. It all reminds me of sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson’s relatively recent (2009) remark <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.0001/q-oro-ed4-00016553" target="_blank" rel="noopener">that</a>, “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.” This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/frankenstein-how-mary-shelleys-sci-fi-classic-offers-lessons-for-us-today-about-the-dangers-of-playing-god-175520" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. Image: Shutterstock

Books

Readers Respond: What was the most valuable lesson you learned from your parents?

As our parents raised us, they imparted some important lessons to help us strike out on our own and live the best life we can. From emphasising respect, love and manners to encouraging us to be financially independent, when we asked what the most valuable lesson you learned from your parents was, here’s what you had to say. Robyn Gibson - Treat others as you want to be treated. Love and respect in a family is more important than material things. Penny Paull - Respect, manners and work ethic. Simone Donovan - Work smart, then you don’t have to work hard. It’s stuck with me forever. Another one was make sure you enjoy your job, that way it’ll never seem like work. Oh.. and be nice to the nerds because one day they might be your boss. Dan Stevens - Not just one … I would not be the person I am today without learning many valuable lessons from my parents. Christine Ryan - My Mother always told us to put money away for our bills, such as rent, gas and electricity. That is something I have done for all my adult life. Judy Barker - To be careful crossing the road, don’t talk to anyone and come straight home. And that was said every time we left the house. Robyn Lane - That their love was unconditional, I have applied this to my love for my children, and grandchildren. Anna Maria Olislaegers - Manners, respect your elders and treat others the way you’d like to be treated. Also to wake up happy & not moody. Sue Mackney - Independence both financially and thinking particularly if you’re a woman. Never be dependent on a man. Roslyn Crane - My mum was a WW2 Army nurse, she would say to my sister and I, ‘it’s not what they do that counts, it’s what you do’. I handed it down to my children. To read what else you said, head <a href="https://www.facebook.com/oversixtys/posts/3338568396373423" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>. Image: Getty Images

Caring

When each pandemic day feels the same, Phil the Weatherman in “Groundhog Day” can offer a lesson in embracing life mindfully

Many of us will recall the comic film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/">Groundhog Day</a>.” Originally released in 1993, it stars the incomparable Bill Murray as Phil Conners, an insufferable Pittsburgh weatherman. A minor local celebrity who believes himself destined for much better things, he resents his piddling assignment to report on the Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. <img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381172/original/file-20210128-19-1q2x4lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C3%2C2493%2C1560&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" alt="Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day" /> Punxsutawney Phil after emerging from his burrow on Gobblers Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. <a href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/GroundhogDay/bd8d5370e7854bfea728a485b9c16bbf/photo?Query=groundhog&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=603&currentItemNo=11" class="source">AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar</a> The plan is to return to Pittsburgh after the festivities. But when a blizzard shuts down the highway, Phil finds himself trapped in Punxsutawney. He wakes up the next day, only to discover that it’s not the next day at all. It’s Groundhog Day all over again. For some reason he’s trapped in Feb. 2, forced to relive the same day over and over again. “What if there is no tomorrow?” he asks at one point, adding: “There wasn’t one today.” It is a question that will resonate with millions forced to stay indoors as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads and people wake up every morning wondering if the day ahead will be any different from the 24 hours they have just endured. But I have a more positive spin. As a <a href="https://cas.la.psu.edu/people/jde13">scholar of communication and ethics</a>, I argue that the lesson at the heart of the movie is that because we can never count on tomorrow, life must be lived fully in the present, not just for oneself, but also for others. Ultimately, “Groundhog Day” gives us a lesson in mindfulness. <h2>Metaphor for mindlessness?</h2> Phil was trapped in Groundhog Day, perhaps for hundreds of years. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/movies/groundhog-day.html">The original script said 10,000 years, though the director reportedly said it was 10</a>. Either way, that’s a long time to wake up to the same song every morning. Finally, Phil awakens, and it’s Feb. 3, that is, the next day. I believe what brings about tomorrow for Phil is that he learns to practice mindfulness. Phil’s repetitive existence can stand for a metaphor for mindlessness, for how we all get stuck in cycles of reactivity, addiction and habit. Locked in our routines, life can lose its luster. It can quickly seem like nothing we do matters all that much. “What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” Phil asks two local guys at the bowling alley. “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DazUImBLEhM">That about sums it up for me</a>,” one of them responds. <iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DazUImBLEhM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> Contemporary practices of mindfulness can trace their roots back to <a href="https://plumvillage.org/books/the-heart-of-the-buddhas-teaching/">Buddhism</a>. For Buddhists, the concept of reincarnation or <a href="https://www.lionsroar.com/just-more-of-the-same/">rebirth</a> is important. Many Buddhists believe that all living beings go through many births until they achieve salvation. As a scholar, I believe the idea of rebirth is more complex than is often understood in popular culture. Pali is the ancient sacred language of Theravada Buddhism. Scholar of Buddhism <a href="https://www.stephenbatchelor.org/index.php/en/stephen">Stephen Batchelor</a> notes that the ancient Pali language word “punabbhava,” often translated as “rebirth,” literally means “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300205183/after-buddhism">again-becoming</a>,” or what we might think of as “repetitive existence.” That’s Phil’s life, stuck in Groundhog Day. That’s what Phil is trying to escape, and what we are all trying to escape in COVID times – repetitive existence, a life stuck in one gear, frozen by habits and patterns that make every day feel the same, as though nothing matters. <h2>Taking a moment – to respond, mindfully</h2> If Phil’s stuckness is a metaphor for mindlessness, Phil’s awakening, I argue, is a metaphor for mindfulness. <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/204352/the-miracle-of-mindfulness-by-thich-nhat-hanh/">Mindfulness</a> is the practice of experiencing life as it is happening, squarely in the now, without immediately reacting to it or being carried away by it. Mindfulness is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc">a practice</a> of getting to know ourselves and our conditioning a little better. Conditioning is an automatic pattern of reacting to the world. By stepping out of autopilot, pausing, and noticing, many of us can find that we <a href="https://www.parallax.org/product/the-mindfulness-survival-kit-five-essential-practices/">are no longer captive </a> to our conditioning. Consequently, we gain the space to make choices about how we want to respond to life. That is what Phil does in the movie – he escapes repetitive existence by overcoming his initial conditioned, obnoxious, egotistical reactions to the world. At the beginning of the film, he calls himself the “talent” and berates the “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFgpsHrGvWY">hicks</a>” who live in the small town. He is too good for Groundhog Day. He wants to escape Punxsutawney as fast as possible. As the film continues, Phil accepts his situation and turns repetition into an opportunity for growth. He begins to find meaning in the place where he is trapped. He embraces life, fully, which also means that he notices his own suffering and the suffering of those around him. Phil addresses his own suffering by pursuing his passions and developing his skills. He learns to play the piano and becomes an accomplished ice sculptor. Initially, Phil felt nothing for those around him. People were objects to him, if he noticed them at all. By the end of the film, he feels compassion, which, according to the mindfulness teacher <a href="https://www.rhondavmagee.com/about-mindfulness-trainer/">Rhonda Magee</a>, means “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/565790/the-inner-work-of-racial-justice-by-rhonda-v-magee-foreword-by-jon-kabat-zinn/">the will to act to alleviate the suffering of others</a>.” Mindfulness is a practice that draws us into the world, into service. <a href="https://pennstate.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/compassion-and-human-development-current-approaches-and-future-di">Compassion</a> is at the heart of a mindfulness practice. <h2>Mindfulness in pandemic times</h2> <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381175/original/file-20210128-21-kdi02x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381175/original/file-20210128-21-kdi02x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" alt="Mediation in times of Covid." /></a> Compassion is at the heart of meditation. <a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-wearing-a-scary-face-mask-clasps-her-hands-in-news-photo/1228160036?adppopup=true" class="source">Mark Makela/Getty Images</a> Mindfulness does not mean turning away from <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/rhonda_magee_the_inner_work_of_racial_justice?language=en">difficulty</a>. It is a practice of meeting difficulty with <a href="https://www.tenpercent.com/covid">compassion</a>. Though Phil finally accepts that there might not be a tomorrow, nevertheless he acts to ensure that if tomorrow comes for himself and those around him, it will be better than today. For example, Phil saves the lives of at least two people: a young boy who, before Phil’s intervention, falls out of a tree onto a hard sidewalk, and the town’s mayor, who, before Phil bursts in to give him the Heimlich, chokes on his lunch. Phil’s mindful awareness of what is happening in the moment allows him to act for tomorrow without losing track of today. Phil’s mindfulness, and his compassion, drive the film’s central love story between Phil and Rita. At the beginning of the film, he was capable of loving only himself. By the end of the film, Phil has learned to love mindfully. According to <a href="https://theconversation.com/thich-nhat-hanh-who-worked-for-decades-to-teach-mindfulness-approached-death-in-that-same-spirit-175495">Thich Nhat Hanh</a>, who died recently, <a href="https://www.shambhala.com/true-love-1594.html">loving mindfully</a> means that “you must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.” Phil has learned that love is not about manipulation or possession but about collaboration in making a shared life together. To the best of his ability, Phil dedicates himself to alleviating the suffering of others in a present that is real and for a future that might not come. He does this in small acts of compassion like fixing a flat tire and more momentous acts like saving a life. This mindful dedication to the future in the face of uncertainty is, I argue, what allows him to wake up to a new day. This is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/5-buddhist-teachings-that-can-help-you-deal-with-coronavirus-anxiety-134320">good lesson</a> for us all, stuck, as we are, in a perpetual pandemic Groundhog Day, and dreaming, as we are, of tomorrow.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153605/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jeremy-david-engels-222106">Jeremy David Engels</a>, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/penn-state-1258">Penn State</a> This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-each-pandemic-day-feels-the-same-phil-the-weatherman-in-groundhog-day-can-offer-a-lesson-in-embracing-life-mindfully-153605">original article</a>. Image: <a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/bill-murray-and-andie-macdowell-in-a-scene-from-the-film-news-photo/163063765?adppopup=true" class="source">Columbia Pictures/Getty Images</a>

Movies

Affordable housing lessons from Sydney, Hong Kong and Singapore: 3 keys to getting the policy mix right

Affordable housing is a critical problem for Australia’s biggest housing markets. Five Australian cities are in the top 25 with “severely unaffordable” housing in a <a href="http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf">2019 Demographia survey</a> of 91 major metropolitan markets. Sydney was <a href="https://www.mortgagebusiness.com.au/breaking-news/13059-australia-s-housing-market-remains-severely-unaffordable">ranked the third least affordable</a> of the 91. The <a href="https://www.realestate.com.au/news/meet-australias-oldest-person-to-buy-their-first-home-this-spring/">average age of first-time buyers in Sydney has reached 38</a>. And, <a href="https://www.finder.com.au/how-much-of-our-wages-do-we-spend-on-rent-in-australia">on average, tenants spend more than 30% of their income on rent</a>. Those who entered the <a href="https://www.facs.nsw.gov.au/housing/help/applying-assistance/expected-waiting-times">Sydney market 10-15 years ago are more likely to find their housing affordable</a>. Cities with housing affordability issues have introduced various policy packages in response. This article compares the policies of Singapore, where housing is relatively affordable, Hong Kong (the <a href="http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf">world’s least affordable private housing market</a>) and Sydney. Our review shows a need for coherent and coordinated housing policies – a synergistic approach that multiplies the impacts of individual policies. Housing has direct impacts on people’s well-being. A housing market that works well may also enhance the economic productivity of a city. If not handled properly, housing affordability issues may trigger economic and political crises. Our review covers several aspects. <h2>A balance of renters and owners</h2> First, an affordable housing system needs to be about both the rental and ownership sectors. In Singapore, <a href="https://www.hdb.gov.sg/cs/infoweb/about-us">public housing provided by the Housing and Development Board</a> makes up 73% of Singapore’s total housing stock, which includes public rental and subsidised ownership. HDB flats house over 80% of Singapore’s resident population, with about 90% owning their homes. The average waiting time to get public housing is three to four years. Public housing is also important, although to a lesser extent, in Hong Kong. In this city, <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/2182106/why-public-housing-shortfall-will-remain-thorn-hong-kongs#targetText=Public%20rental%20housing%20estates%20found,cent%20of%20Hong%20Kong's%20population.">44.7% of the population live in public housing</a>. The <a href="https://www.housingauthority.gov.hk/tc/about-us/publications-and-statistics/prh-applications-average-waiting-time/index.html">average waiting time is three to five years</a>, depending on household type. In both cities, subsidised rental and subsidised ownership are an integral part of the public housing system, which aims to improve housing affordability. Sydney takes a very different approach. <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/hou/296/housing-assistance-in-australia-2018/contents/social-housing-dwellings">Social rental housing provides only 5.56% of housing</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/focus-on-managing-social-housing-waiting-lists-is-failing-low-income-households-120675">covers only low-income households in “priority need”</a>. The average waiting time to get into social housing is <a href="https://www.facs.nsw.gov.au/housing/help/applying-assistance/expected-waiting-times.">five to ten years</a>. Although there are other policy measures to support home buying and rental (such as the National Rental Affordability Scheme), these are not integrated with the public housing system in Sydney. Rather, the goal of these policies is to support the private housing market. <h2>It’s not just about housing supply</h2> Second, housing affordability needs to be backed up by demand-side policies – i.e. policies to help tenants and owners to develop financial capacity. Despite its heavy state intervention, Singapore’s public housing stresses the responsibility of individuals. The <a href="https://www.cpf.gov.sg/Members/AboutUs/about-us-info/cpf-overview">Housing Provident Fund</a> is a <a href="https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2019/03/15/singapores-mechanism-design-approach-to-housing-policy/">form of forced savings</a> for housing, retirement, health and education, among other things. It is <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/84e6/28299b345dcba34d328112424990cf1cabc2.pdf">integrated with the pension system to enhance the efficiency of savings</a>. Forced savings are not available in Hong Kong and Sydney for housing purposes. Since 2017 <a href="https://theconversation.com/budget-needs-a-sharper-policy-scalpel-to-help-first-home-buyers-76791">first home buyers in Australia have been able to draw on their voluntary superannuation contributions</a> for a deposit. <h2>Work-life balance matters</h2> Third, action on housing affordability needs to take employment and its location into account. Ultimately, the reason people find it hard to afford housing in certain locations is because they need to achieve a work-life balance. Both <a href="https://www.citymetric.com/transport/no-hong-kong-has-best-transport-system-world-mtr-trams-boats-4148">Hong Kong</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Singapore#Public_transport">Singapore</a> have developed extensive public transport systems. These offer affordable options for people to travel efficiently to and from work. In Hong Kong, the average daily commuting time by public transport is 73 minutes. Some 21% of the residents have to travel for more than two hours a day. In Singapore, average commuting time is 84 minutes, with 25% exceeding two hours. In Sydney, the average time is 82 minutes, but 31% take more than two hours. This means a significantly <a href="https://moovitapp.com/insights/en-gb/Moovit_Insights_Public_Transport_Index-1678">larger proportion of Sydney residents spend more time on public transport</a>. Among the <a href="http://theconversation.com/another-tale-of-two-cities-access-to-jobs-divides-sydney-along-the-latte-line-96907">worst-affected are white-collar workers from the city’s west and southwest</a>. <h2>Lessons from the 3 cities</h2> So, what we can learn from these cities’ experiences with housing affordability? Cities take very different approaches to these issues. Each approach has its own merits and issues. A key argument against public housing has been that it might give the tenants less incentive to save for housing. It might also not be popular with mainstream voters because of the cost to taxpayers. Singapore’s approach seems to be a midway solution. The government plays a bigger role in providing housing, but does not waive individual responsibilities. Providing public housing and at the same time demanding individuals and employers contribute can send a strong signal: people are encouraged to join the labour force. So far, Singapore faces the least housing affordability issues. Hong Kong and Sydney are much more liberal in their approaches to housing. In Sydney, only the poorest benefit from the public housing system. The younger generation is struggling to get on the housing ladder. In Hong Kong, people are forced to buy housing in the commercial market if their income is even just above the eligibility line for public housing. The severe unaffordability of private housing in Hong Kong, even for young professionals, brews social discontent. Combining these three perspectives, Sydney’s housing, savings and public transport systems are far from well synergised to offer a competitive package of affordable housing. The <a href="https://www.greater.sydney/metropolis-of-three-cities">30-minute city plan</a> prepared by the Greater Sydney Commission might improve the situation. However, similar to Hong Kong, current policies are weak in building the capacity of young people to own homes.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123443/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/youqing-fan-483837">Youqing Fan</a>, Lecturer, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/western-sydney-university-1092">Western Sydney University</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/bingqin-li-425950">Bingqin Li</a>, Associate Professor and Director of Chinese Social Policy Program, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/unsw-1414">UNSW</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/chyi-lin-lee-368009">Chyi Lin Lee</a>, Associate Professor of Property, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/unsw-1414">UNSW</a> This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/affordable-housing-lessons-from-sydney-hong-kong-and-singapore-3-keys-to-getting-the-policy-mix-right-123443">original article</a>. Image: Bill Roque/Shutterstock

Home Hints & Tips

“Take a lesson out of the Queen’s book”: Karl’s swipe at Harry

Karl Stefanovic has hit out against Prince Harry after the Duke’s latest interview where he compared his royal life to a mix “between The Truman Show and living in a zoo”. The Duke of Sussex also took aim at Prince Charles in his appearance on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepherd podcast, saying Charles passed “genetic pain and suffering” onto him. He also revealed the realisation he had in his 20s that he didn’t want to be involved in royal life. Coming after Harry and Meghan Markle’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey in March, Stefanovic signalled he’d had enough of Harry’s “whining”. “It’s a great thing that he got away from all that prying press in the UK,” Stefanovic said sarcastically. When co-host Allison Langdon sympathised with Harry’s mental health struggles and said “you have got to take the mental health stuff pretty seriously”, Stefanovic doubled down on his criticism. “Of course, Ally, but I’m just saying it’s ridiculous how he keeps whining about his childhood. He grew up in privilege, in a palace,” Stefanovic countered. “I mean, just give it a rest bro. “He looks happier too when he was partying in Vegas, I’m just saying.” Stefanovic was so “riled” by Harry’s latest outburst that he returned to the subject later in the show. “The guy doesn’t need to go from his [Californian] mansion and start rabbiting on about how hard life is when he has got enormous privilege, and to keep bagging his family,” he said. “Just get on with it. Take a lesson out of the Queen’s book and just get on with it. Carry on. I’m not saying anything more about that … it’s really riled me.” Harry described the “get on with it” attitude in his latest interview and said his desire to “break the cycle” within his own family drove the move to California. “It’s the job right? Grin and bear it. Get on with it. I was in my early 20s and I was thinking I don’t want this job, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be doing this,” he said. “Look what it did to my mum. How am I ever going to settle down and have a wife and family, when I know it’s going to happen again?”

News

Dismantling the police: lessons from three places that tried it

The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers sparked protests across the US and brought the Black Lives Matter movement back to the forefront of American politics. The intensity of these protests means that previously unthinkable demands for radical reform are now on the table. The defunding of America’s heavily armed police forces, a long-term demand of racial justice activists, looks increasingly achievable. In early June, a veto-proof supermajority of Minneapolis City council members supported efforts to <a href="https://theappeal.org/minneapolis-city-council-members-announce-intent-to-disband-the-police-department-invest-in-proven-community-led-public-safety/">“dismantle” and “abolish”</a> the police department and replace it with a new system of community policing. In Los Angeles, the mayor put forward a proposal to <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-03/lapd-budget-unrest-garcetti">divert between US$100 million and US$150 million</a> from the police department to invest in jobs and education for communities of colour. What this would look like in practice is still unclear. While reforms need to be matched to the specific national context and goals, there are a number of countries that have attempted to defund, demobilise and radically reform their police forces. Although this often occurs following armed conflict, the experience of three places in particular can provide important lessons for today. Iraq and de-Ba’athification Following the 2003 occupation of Iraq, the US ambassador Paul Bremer took the decision to “de-Ba’athify” the Iraqi state by removing civil servants from the era of Saddam Hussein en masse. US military planners <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep12200">had assumed</a> they would inherit a functioning state, including the security system. However de-Ba’athification changed this by essentially disbanding the Iraqi security forces, leaving its personnel with no re-integration programme or alternative source of work. This top-down imposition created <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02684521003588120">a large pool of unemployed men</a>, many of whom retained their access to arms and explosives in the post-war chaos. Many felt humiliated and hostile to the US forces, which <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Surge.html?id=9dQ_AQAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">researchers have argued</a> led to the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Surge.html?id=9dQ_AQAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">political basis for the subsequent Iraqi insurgency</a>. From the elite level to the rank-and-file, these newly desperate men helped to create and sustain the insurgency, with many of Hussein’s ex-generals and spies going on to <a href="https://time.com/3900753/isis-iraq-syria-army-united-states-military/">direct the activities of the Islamic State group</a>. The Minneapolis Police Department will not be demobilised into an environment of generalised chaos, foreign occupation and sectarian violence. Nevertheless, the blunders in post-war Iraq provide a clear lesson: you shouldn’t take jobs away from people who are trained in the use of coercion and violence without some idea of how to retrain and reintegrate them. In the US context this would be unlikely to lead to outright civil conflict as in Iraq – although anything is possible. A more realistic worry is that the police could simply move sideways into private security, a <a href="https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/industry-inequality-why-world-obsessed-private-security">quickly expanding sector</a> that was ironically trialled <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-dark-truth-about-blackwater/">with horrifying results</a> in Iraq and Afghanistan. The extended use of private security on US soil could be even <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0731129X.2012.740907">more violent and less accountable</a> than the current system of policing. Guatemala – rebranding not reform The end of the 36-year-long Guatemalan civil war in 1996 saw an ambitious peace programme. It promised to demilitarise the country’s internal security by transitioning from a brutal military-led counterinsurgency to a civilian police force. However, in practice the reforms failed to effectively move past the legacy of wartime repression. One important factor was that the newly democratic government adopted wholesale the model of the Spanish Guardia Civil, a highly militarised internal security force. The Guardia Civil has been used for internal repression in Spain since its <a href="https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2014/10/20/inenglish/1413807111_949949.html">inception</a> in the mid-19th century, to the recent attempts to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/catalonia-independence-referendum-catalan-police-storm-ministries-arrested-josep-maria-jov-a7956581.html">target the Catalan independence movement</a>. Guatemala’s decision to follow the Spanish model ran against the idea of a new policing approach even at the time. The reasoning behind the government’s decision was unclear, but bears the hallmarks of the continued influence <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3339023">of the Guatemalan military establishment</a>. The outcome is a security state that is still extremely violent towards both <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/extrajudicial-killings-on-the-rise-in-guatemala/">suspected criminals</a> and <a href="https://nacla.org/news/2018/06/21/terror-guatemala">political activists</a>. The lesson for the US here is that meaningful reform requires a clear sense of direction rather than simply a re-packaging of the existing model. Beyond this, it also shows the dangers of a fragmented security system. Changing the practices of local police forces will be less effective if agencies such as immigration and customs enforcement are able to continue engaging <a href="https://www.aclu.org/issues/immigrants-rights/ice-and-border-patrol-abuses">in widespread violence</a>. This is a particular vulnerability for the US, given its <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343320913089">overlapping security agencies</a> which lack centralised Federal control. Bougainville and bottom-up reform More positive lessons can be taken from the experiences of countries that have radically re-orientated their policing model away from retribution and towards reconciliation and restoration. The autonomous region of Bougainville, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/12/30/789697304/trying-to-form-the-worlds-newest-country-bougainville-has-a-road-ahead?t=1591805961684">likely to become the world’s newest nation</a>, used the end of a secessionist conflict with Papua New Guinea in 1998 as an opportunity to return to a form of community justice which emphasised honesty, forgiveness and rehabilitation. This functioned as a way of overcoming wartime trauma and encouraging reconciliation but was also extended out as a general policing model. This approach, while supported by international donors and peacekeepers, relied on long-standing local customs and practice. The result is a society which, while not problem free, is <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273755447_Bougainville_Community_Crime_Survey_2006">significantly safer</a> than the rest of Papua New Guinea. Crucially, the community-based police force enjoys <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2013.853961">broad popular support</a> among previously victimised rural communities. The US can’t replicate the traditional cultural practice of Bougainville, but it can learn the lessons from its experience. Rather than imposing a particular model, local politicians and international peacekeepers empowered local people to take control of their own safety and security. It is this bottom-up, consensual approach that can form the basis of effective security reform in the US. Written by Daniel Odin Shaw. Republished with permission of <a href="https://theconversation.com/dismantling-the-police-lessons-from-three-places-that-tried-it-140303">The Conversation.</a>

Caring

5 life lessons from your immune system

Scientists love analogies. We use them continually to communicate our scientific approaches and discoveries. As an immunologist, it strikes me that many of our recurring analogies for a healthy, functioning immune system promote excellent behaviour traits. In this regard, we should all aim to be a little more like the cells of our immune system and emulate these characteristics in our lives and workplaces. Here are five life lessons from your immune system. 1. Build diverse and collaborative teams Our adaptive immune system works in a very specific way to detect and eradicate infections and cancer. To function, it relies on effective team work. At the centre of this immune system team sits dendritic cells. These are the sentinels and leaders of the immune system – akin to coaches, CEOs and directors. They have usually travelled widely and have a lot of “life experience”. For a dendritic cell, this means they have detected a pathogen in the organs of the body. Perhaps they’ve come into contact with influenza virus in the lung, or encountered dengue fever virus in the skin following a mosquito bite. After such an experience, dendritic cells make their way to their local lymph nodes – organs structured to facilitate immune cell collaboration and teamwork. Here, like the best leaders, dendritic cells share their life experiences and provide vision and direction for their team (multiple other cell types). This gets the immune cell team activated and working together towards a shared goal – the eradication of the pathogen in question. The most important aspect of the dendritic cell strategy is knowing <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16385">the strength of combined diverse expertise</a>. It is essential that immune team members come from diverse backgrounds to get the best results. To do this, dendritic cells secrete small molecules known as chemokines. Chemokines facilitate good conversations between different types of immune cells, helping dendritic cells discuss their plans with the team. In immunology, we call this “recruitment”. Much <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07634-8">like our workplaces</a>, diversity is key here. It’s fair to say, if dendritic cells only recruited more dendritic cells, our immune system would completely fail its job. Dendritic cells instead hire T cells (among others) and share the critical knowledge and strategy to steer effective action of immune cells. T cells can then pass these plans down the line – either preparing themselves to act directly on the pathogen, or working alongside other cell types, such as B cells that make protective antibodies. In this way, dendritic cells establish a rich and diverse team that works together to clear infections or cancer. 2. Learn through positive and negative feedback Immune cells are excellent students. During development, T cells mature in a way that depends on both positive and negative feedback. This occurs in the thymus, an organ found in the front of your chest and whose function was first discovered by Australian scientist <a href="https://www.wehi.edu.au/about-history/notable-scientists/professor-jacques-miller">Jacques Miller</a> (awarded the <a href="http://www.japanprize.jp/en/prize_prof_2018_miller.html">2018 Japan Prize</a> for his discoveries). As they mature, T cells are exposed to a process of trial and error, and take on board criticism and advice in equal measure, to ensure they are “trained” to respond appropriately to what they “see” (for example, molecules from your own body, or from a foreign pathogen) when they leave the thymus. Importantly, this process is balanced, and T cells must receive both positive and negative feedback to mature appropriately – too much of either on its own is not enough. In the diverse team of the immune system, cells can be both the student and the teacher. This occurs during immune responses with intense cross-talk between dendritic cells, T cells and B cells. In this supportive environment, multiple rounds of feedback allow B cells to gain a tighter grip on infections, tailoring antibodies specifically towards each pathogen. The result of this feedback is so powerful, it can divert cells away from acting against your own body, instead converting them into <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29650674">active participants of the immune system team</a>. Developing avenues that promote constructive feedback offers potential to correct autoimmune disorders. 3. A unique response for each situation Our immune system knows that context is important – it doesn’t rely on a “one-size–fits-all” approach to resolve all infections. This allows the cells of our immune system to perfectly respond to different types of pathogens: such as viruses, fungi, bacteria and helminths (worms). In these different scenarios, even though the team members contributing to the response are the same (or similar), our immune system displays emotional intelligence and utilises different tools and strategies depending on the different situations, or pathogens, it encounters. Importantly, our immune system needs to carefully control attack responses to get rid of danger. Being too heavy handed leaves us with collateral tissue damage, such as is seen allergy and asthma. Conversely, weak responses lead to immunodeficiencies, chronic infection or cancer. A major research aim for people working in immunology is to learn how to harness balanced and tailored immune responses for therapeutic benefit. 4. Focus on work/life balance When we are overworked and poorly rested, we don’t function at our peak. The same is true for our immune cells. An overworked immune cell is commonly referred to as being “chronically exhausted”. In this state, T cells are no longer effective at attacking tumour or virus-infected cells. They are lethargic and inefficient, much like us when we overdo it. For T cells, this switch to exhaustion helps ensure a balanced response and avoids collateral damage. However, viruses and cancers exploit this weakness in immune responses by deliberately promoting exhaustion. The rapidly advancing field of immunotherapy has tackled this limitation in our immune system head-on to create new cancer therapeutics. These therapies release cells of their exhaustion, refresh them, so they become effective once more. This therapeutic avenue (called “<a href="https://theconversation.com/2018-nobel-prize-in-physiology-or-medicine-a-turning-point-in-the-war-on-cancer-104191">immune checkpoint inhibition</a>”) is like a self-care day spa for your T cells. It revives them, renewing their determination and efficiency. This has revolutionised the way cancer is treated, leading to the award of the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2018/press-release/">2018 Nobel prize in Medicine</a> to two of its pioneers, James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo. 5. Learn from life experiences The cornerstone of our adaptive immune system is the ability to remember our past infections. In doing so, it can respond faster and in a more targeted manner when we encounter the same pathogen multiple times. Quite literally, if it doesn’t kill you, it makes your immune system stronger. Vaccines exploit this modus operandi, providing immune cells with the memories without the risk of infection. Work still remains to identify the pathways that optimise formation of memory cells that drive this response. Researchers aim to discover which memories are the most efficient, and how to make them target particularly recalcitrant infections, such as malaria, HIV-AIDS and seasonal influenza. While life might not have the shortcuts provided by vaccines, certainly taking time to reflect and learn after challenges can allow us to find better, faster solutions to future problems. <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/joanna-groom-550055">Joanna Groom</a>, Laboratory Head, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/walter-and-eliza-hall-institute-822">Walter and Eliza Hall Institute</a> This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-life-lessons-from-your-immune-system-103425">original article</a>.

Body

Mother lashes out at police after receiving “ridiculous” fine for driving lesson amid coronavirus restrictions

A mother of a schoolgirl has lashed out at police after receiving a fine of $1,652 after taking her daughter for a driving lesson. Hunter told Nine News she was learning to drive in wet weather conditions alongside her mother Sharee in Frankston, Victoria on Sunday when they were pulled over by police. The officer told the pair that 17-year-old Hunter was breaking stage-three coronavirus restriction rules and as a result would be slapped with an eye-watering fine, but Sharee vows she will be contesting the “ridiculous” penalty. “Common sense did not prevail,” Ms Reynolds told <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/coronavirus/melbourne-lplate-driver-slapped-with-1600-for-nonessential-travel/news-story/9ec9d34e85030b48e61ee55026eac183" target="_blank">The Herald Sun.</a> “I didn’t for one moment think we were breaking the rules. We live together, we didn’t leave the car or stop.” Residents in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania and the ACT have been banned from leaving their homes except for food and supplies, medical care, exercise and work or education since last Monday. Sharee says she did not believe taking her daughter for a driving lesson was doing the wrong thing. “We didn't think for one minute that we would be doing anything wrong,” she explained to 3AW on Monday. “We weren't in contact with any person, we weren't stopping anywhere, we weren't planning on visiting any destinations, we were just learning to drive in those conditions. “She (the officer) said we were too far from home and we would cop a fine, and that Hunter would be the person to receive that fine.” Schoolgirl Hunter admitted she was “really stressing” when police pulled her over. “I was just shocked, because I obviously hadn't done anything wrong, or so I thought. I was just really stressing,” she said. Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Dr Brett Sutton has defended the fine, saying a teenager driving is a non-essential activity. Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said there was a possibility the penalty would be reversed. “It's quite possible it will be withdrawn because the public is now aware they can't be doing that activity, unless of course it's mixed in with driving to the shops where you are exempt to go and buy food, those sort of things” he said. Mr Patton said there would be an assessment of all circumstances before a decision to withdraw the fine or not could be made.

Legal

How the moral lessons of To Kill a Mockingbird endure today

Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the classics of American literature. Never out of print, the novel has sold over 40 million copies since it was first published in 1960. It has been a staple of high school syllabuses, including in Australia, for several decades, and is often deemed the <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/nitv-news/article/2017/02/21/australian-kill-mockingbird-makes-it-big-screen-indigenous-actor">archetypal race and coming-of-age novel</a>. For many of us, it is a formative read of our youth. The story is set in the sleepy Alabama town of Maycomb in 1936 - 40 years after the Supreme Court’s notorious declaration of the races as being <a href="http://time.com/4326692/plessy-ferguson-history-120/">“separate but equal”</a>, and 28 years before the enactment of the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-act">Civil Rights Act</a>. Our narrator is nine-year-old tomboy, Scout Finch, who relays her observations of her family’s struggle to deal with the class and racial prejudice shown towards the local African American community. At the centre of the family and the novel stands the highly principled lawyer Atticus Finch. A widower, he teaches Scout, her older brother Jem, and their imaginative friend Dill, how to live and behave honourably. In this he is aided by the family’s hardworking and sensible black housekeeper Calpurnia, and their kind and generous neighbour, Miss Maudie. It is Miss Maudie, for example, who explains to Scout why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird: “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.” Throughout the novel, the children grow more aware of the community’s attitudes. When the book begins they are preoccupied with catching sight of the mysterious and much feared Boo Radley, who in his youth stabbed his father with a pair of scissors and who has never come out of the family house since. And when Atticus agrees to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who is falsely accused of raping a white woman, they too become the target of hatred. A morality tale for modern America One might expect a book that dispatches moral lessons to be dull reading. But To Kill a Mockingbird is no sermon. The lessons are presented in a seemingly effortless style, all the while tackling the complexity of race issues with startling clarity and a strong sense of reality. As the Finches return from Robinson’s trial, Miss Maudie says: “as I waited I thought, Atticus Finch won’t win, he can’t win, but he’s the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that.” Despite the tragedy of Robinson’s conviction, Atticus succeeds in making the townspeople consider and struggle with their prejudice. <iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HOocTXKPVVU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> Atticus Finch delivers his closing statement in the trial of Tom Robinson in the 1962 film. The effortlessness of the writing owes much to the way the story is told. The narrator is a grown Scout, looking back on her childhood. When she begins her story, she seems more interested in telling us about the people and incidents that occupied her six-year-old imagination. Only slowly does she come to the events that changed everything for her and Jem, which were set in motion long before their time. Even then, she tells these events in a way that shows she too young to always grasp their significance. The lessons Lee sets out are encapsulated in episodes that are as funny as they are serious, much like Aesop’s Fables. A case in point is when the children return home from the school concert with Scout still dressed in her outlandish ham costume. In the dark they are chased and attacked by Bob Ewell the father of the woman whom Robinson allegedly raped. Ewell, armed with a knife, attempts to stab Scout, but the shapeless wire cage of the ham causes her to loose balance and the knife to go astray. In the struggle that ensues someone pulls Ewell off the teetering body of Scout and he falls on the knife. It was Boo Radley who saved her. Another lesson about what it means to be truly brave is delivered in an enthralling episode where a local farmer’s dog suddenly becomes rabid and threatens to infect all the townsfolk with his deadly drool. Scout and Jem are surprised when their bespectacled, bookish father turns out to have a “God-given talent” with a rifle; it is he who fires the single shot that will render the townsfolk safe. The children rejoice at what they consider an impressive display of courage. However, he tells them that what he did was not truly brave. The better example of courage, he tells them, is Mrs Dubose (the “mean” old lady who lived down the road), who managed to cure herself of a morphine addiction even as she was dying a horribly painful death from cancer. He also teaches them the importance of behaving in a civilised manner, even when subjected to insults. Most of all Atticus teaches the children the importance of listening to one’s conscience even when everyone else holds a contrary view: “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule”, he says, “is a person’s conscience.” The continuing value in Atticus’ belief in the importance of principled thinking in the world of <a href="https://www.economist.com/prospero/2016/02/22/how-to-kill-a-mockingbird-shaped-race-relations-in-america">Black Lives Matter</a> and the Australian government’s rhetoric of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2018/jan/18/the-african-gang-crisis-has-been-brewing-in-australias-media-for-years">“African gangs”</a>, is clear. Atticus’ spiel on “conscience” and the other ethical principles he insists on living by, are key to the enduring influence of the novel. It conjures an ideal of moral standards and human behaviour that many people still aspire to today, even though the novel’s events and the characters belong to the past. Lee herself was not one to shy away from principled displays: writing to a school that banned her novel, she summed up the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/harper-lee-letter-to-a-school-board-trying-to-ban-mockingbird-2016-2?IR=T">source of the morality</a> her book expounds. The novel, she said, “spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct”. Fame and obscurity When first published the novel received <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-harper-lee-to-kill-a-mockingbird-1960-review-20160219-story.html">rave reviews</a>. A year later it won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, followed by a <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/04/19/to-kill-a-mockingbird-film-review/">movie version</a> in 1962 starring <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vouoju4mETc">Gregory Peck</a>. Indeed, the novel was such a success that Lee, unable to cope with all the attention and publicity, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/go-set-a-watchman/why-harper-lee-kept-her-silence-for-55-years/">retired into obscurity</a>. Interviewed late in life, Lee cited two reasons for her continued silence: “I wouldn’t go through the pressure and publicity I went through with To Kill a Mockingbird for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say, and I will not say it again.” The latter statement is doubtless a reference to the autobiographical nature of her book. Lee passed her <a href="http://time.com/4234210/harper-lee-childhood/">childhood</a> in the rural town of Monroeville in the deep south, where her attorney father defended two black men accused of killing a shopkeeper. The accused were convicted and hanged. Undoubtedly influenced by these formative events, the biographical fiction Lee drew out of her family history became yet more complex upon the publication of her only other novel, Go Set a Watchman, in 2016. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2016/jun/05/go-set-a-watchman-by-harper-lee-review">Critics panned it</a> it for lacking the light touch and humour of the first novel. They also decried the fact that the character of Atticus Finch was this time around a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/books/review-harper-lees-go-set-a-watchman-gives-atticus-finch-a-dark-side.html">racist bigot</a>, a feature that had the potential to taint the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/19/go-set-a-watchman-harper-lee-legacy-to-kill-a-mockingbird">author’s legacy</a>. Subsequent biographical research revealed that Go Set A Watchman, was not a sequel, but the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. Following initial rejection by the publisher Lippincot, Lee reworked it into the superior novel many of us know and still love today. Lee gave us the portrait of one small town in the south during the depression years. But it was so filled with lively detail, and unforgettable characters with unforgettable names like Atticus, Scout, Calpurnia and Boo Radley that a universal story emerged, and with it the novel’s continuing popularity.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100763/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/anne-maxwell-179443">Anne Maxwell</a>, Assoc. Professor, School of Culture and Communication, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-melbourne-722">University of Melbourne</a> This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-moral-lessons-of-to-kill-a-mockingbird-endure-today-100763">original article</a>.

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How the moral lessons of To Kill a Mockingbird endure today

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