I’m homesick for Australia, but it isn’t mine any more. It’s an unwell country in crisis.

 Extract from The Guardian

Australia news

Tara June Winch

Stranded in France, the Miles Franklin winner reflects on what her country looks like from the outside: violent, racist and in denial

• This is an edited version of a speech which opened the Sydney writers’ festival on 27 April

‘What good is being patriotic if you’re lying about the whole story?’: Tara June Winch.

Fri 30 Apr 2021 03.30 AEST

Last modified on Fri 30 Apr 2021 06.01 AEST

I’m on the Dfat flight waitlist, but nothing is leaving Paris. We lament all this on the “Stranded Aussies” forum. Home’s out of reach. Lately I’m reminded of that Neil Diamond song – with tweaked lyrics it would go: “Nowadays, I’m lost between two shores / France is fine, but it ain’t home / Australia is home, but it ain’t mine no more.”

It doesn’t feel like mine sometimes. Or if it does, it feels as if it’s the mine of 30 years ago. Why are 30-year-old royal commission recommendations still being debated, with nothing implemented? If we’ve said these things for decades, if the tools are there but without the societal or political will to implement change, then what good is time spent on the whittling of wood, the sharpening of stone to begin with? What good is a speech? What good is a royal commission? What is the point of all these reductionist words?

Perhaps for all these words, we’ve been focusing on the wrong ones. There is nothing quite like being grouped into that uncomfortable category of “Aussie” to make one evaluate the term.

What Australia looks like from the outside is an unwell country. It looks like being “Aussie” is a mental health crisis – a national crisis of identity. All egalitarian, but none of the justice. All words, no action. All that open space, and so many confined in cells. All the freedom of speech, and none of the critique. All those mates, yet all that violence.

Australia is violent. The police are violent. Perhaps not individually, but the system of overseeing and training law enforcement is violent, is racist, is broken. Australia is violent – one just has to look at the stats on domestic abuse, sexual violence, coercive control against women and children which exists in every Australian suburb, regardless of race and religion. The women killed every week by those men that fall through the cracks, whose masculinity is consumed by a violence never addressed in our early education.

Every human society has violence, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are no different – but not inherently more violent. Yet for merely 3% of the population, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 28% of the prison population. “Incarceration as a last resort” – that’s a 30-year-old recommendation. The families of the almost 500 avoidable deaths that have happened in police custody in that time know it.

Photograph: Richard Wainwright/AAP

And what of the self-inflicted violence? Almost one in five of all children aged between 11 and 17 experience high or very high levels of psychological distress, and Indigenous youth statistics are worse: unmatched suicide rates of our next generations, those with that terrible inheritance of colonialism and capitalism and being forgotten.

The hallmark of a healthy society has always been measured by how it cares for the disadvantaged, but there aren’t enough beds nor funding to even begin to address the mental health crisis.

This is a battleground; blood-soaked land, once scorched. From the distance, “Aussie” looks like the battler of the wetter wet season, the driest dry season; it looks like a pall of locusts, a terror of mice, a celebrity haven, the only commonwealth country not to have a treaty, those sinking boats, those island prisons.

French people ask me: “Why don’t we know about the Aborigine issues? Why don’t Australians like refugees and asylum seekers?” I published my first book 15 years ago, and Australian readers are still asking me the same questions: “Why don’t we know? Why were we never told about intergenerational trauma and the stolen generations, reform schools, missions, black birding? Why don’t we know that white Australia has a Black history?”

These aren’t disconnected problems; I think they’re one and the same. We Aussies don’t know who we are. What has been so effectively hidden is that whole story of Australia – by the education system, by the media, by the façade we’ve grown up with. We need to decolonise our education system, because it is a lie to say our languages are not a practical utility when they are languages of the land we all inhabit. These oldest words need to be accepted as part of our national identity – admit that we are a colony, admit that English doesn’t begin to describe our country. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o said of colonised Kenya: “The bullet was the means of the physical subjugation, and language was the means of the spiritual subjugation.” Don’t we realise that we’ve spiritually subjugated an entire nation?

Having a national identity, being “Aussie”, cannot happen without truth-telling and inclusivity. We can’t celebrate Covid success – and that long-term isolation from the world that comes with it – without examining the gilded cage, the rottenness on the underside, that violence against our First Nations people, against women, against those who have made Australia their home but haven’t the keys for the door.

What good is being proud of a country, patriotic, if you’re lying about the whole story? And knowing what it looks like from the outside, how will you read and write and tell and vote in those acres of open space, and those free, unmasked sun-dappled days with your mates?

*

I ordered a box from an Aussie supplies company. In it was overpriced Dettol (I wanted to smell our childhood home on cleaning days), Keens curry powder, a squeezy bottle of Vegemite, and some of our native ingredients. I’ve been cooking along to that beautiful Indigenous cookbook Wandu Mai. There’s a foreword by uncle Bruce Pascoe. In it he writes: “You can’t eat our Aboriginal food if you can’t swallow our history.”

Home is Tharawal salt, my mother there, my grandmother; and there’s the Ngurambang country, my father there, those grass plains. I’m homesick – as I’m sure so many migrants and refugees in detention are homesick, now more than ever. Those denied a place on country. I hope for a future that doesn’t feel like it’s not mine no more. Because among all the horror of the status quo it is within reach: the possibility to be whole, to be healed as well.

On the heels of that moment in 2020 when you were listening, it is not just time now but so past overdue to be honest with ourselves. To ask our education system to educate us and our kids, to retrain our police force, to heal our country, our land, our minds, our broken hearts. Because how can we hold a mirror to ourselves and write Aussie literature, read Aussie books, if we don’t know what it is to be Aussie in the first place?

I’m thinking of that EE Cummings poem, that line about “the root of the root, and the bud of the bud”. That’s where we should start to look – all the way back.

• This is an edited version of a speech made on 27 April at the Sydney writers’ festival. The festival continues until Sunday 2 May

Scott Morrison's India and China problems share the same challenge — finding the right balance.

Extract from ABC News 

Analysis

The Conversation

By Michelle Grattan

Posted 3hours ago, updated 2hours ago

Morrison, who has believed some premiers have been excessively cautious, showed himself just as reluctant to take a risk this week.

(AAP: Mike Tsikas)

Help keep family & friends informed by sharing this article

Getting the right balance is one of the main challenges when framing and executing policies.

The difficulties of achieving this are being exposed currently on two fronts — the repatriation of Australians and relations with China.

The politics of risk and fear have been central in managing COVID from the start. State and territory leaders in particular have been risk-averse, and they've won praise and votes for it.

With this week's federal government decision to suspend flights bringing Australians home from India, Scott Morrison, who has believed some premiers have been excessively cautious during the pandemic, showed himself just as reluctant to take a risk.

As COVID rages in India, with thousands dying daily, more than 9,000 Australian citizens and residents are trapped. Flights, government-sponsored and commercial, are "paused" until at least May 15. Indirect routes back are mostly blocked too.

All flights from India to Australia are suspended until mid-May.

The decision to suspend was prompted by the escalating crisis leading to returnees from India suddenly forming a high proportion of the COVID cases in Australian quarantine.

One of these returnees was at the centre of the recent Perth COVID leakage from quarantine that led to a three-day lockdown there and had Premier Mark McGowan slash the number of quarantine arrivals he was willing to accept.

But where is the right "balance" here between the safety of the community and the rights of Australians in danger to be protected by their government? Moral as well as practical issues should be weighed.

Was it the right decision?

There is a strong argument the government has got the balance wrong.

Obviously the prospect of outbreaks in the Australian community has to be minimised. At the same time, the well-being of our fellow Australians in India, some 650 of whom are described by the federal government as "vulnerable", should also be a priority.

To do the proper thing by these people could mean a slightly higher risk level for the community at home. But it would be very small.

Why India's actual COVID-19 figures are likely to be much higher

There have been breaches, but our quarantine system is basically effective. Lessons have been learned and arrangements progressively strengthened (although more still needs to be done).

Also, it should not be beyond the wit of government to obtain extra quarantine capacity even if only on a temporary basis, or to rearrange other arrivals for a few weeks. And the Howard Springs facility (which has had many COVID cases from India, but no breakouts) in the Northern Territory is about to expand.

If we can't move, at a minimum, the vulnerable (and preferably a lot more) people out of India ASAP, it doesn't say much for us as a country, morally or organisationally.

The China tightrope

The "balance" we should be seeking in relation to policy on China involves very different issues.

Australia needs to firmly back its national interests while avoiding unnecessary provocation.

It's been clear for some time Australian foreign and defence policy is operating on the assumption China will be a growing threat over the medium term. This goes well beyond the present tensions in the bilateral relationship, which have seen China retaliate against Australian exports.

Australian defence policy has been, and is being, reset as China becomes more assertive, militarily and diplomatically, in the region. Australia's attention to its Pacific neighbours has been stepped up in response to China's efforts to woo them.

On the evidence, the reset is justified, although China experts differ among themselves about the potential threat. More disputed than the basic strategy, however, is the wisdom of individual measures and statements that rile the Chinese.

Zhao Lijian, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson, says Australia hyping of 'China threat' is 'unethical'

For example, some critics suggest the federal government was ill-advised when, with a fanfare of publicity, last week it quashed the Victorian government's agreements made under China's Belt and Road Initiative. The action was taken following new federal legislation enabling the review of agreements between states, territories and public universities and foreign governments.

The Lowy Institute's Richard McGregor has written: "There can be little argument that Victoria should not have entered into these agreements. But that doesn't mean they should have been unwound in the frontal manner in which they were."

McGregor suggests a more subtle approach could have been used, such as persuading Victoria "to allow the agreements to die a natural death, without fanfare".

The Victorian agreements certainly pale in importance compared with the deal the Northern Territory government did a few years ago to lease the Port of Darwin to a Chinese company.

This agreement does not fall under the recent legislation; while there is concern in hindsight, ending the arrangement would cause serious friction.

An Anzac salvo

Much drama has centred this week on the Anzac Day missive Mike Pezzullo, secretary of Home Affairs, sent to his departmental staff.

"In a world of perpetual tension and dread, the drums of war beat — sometimes faintly and distantly, and at other times more loudly and ever closer," Pezzullo wrote.

Why Australia is ramping up its defence facilities

"Today, as free nations again hear the beating drums and watch worryingly the militarisation of issues that we had, until recent years, thought unlikely to be catalysts for war, let us continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war."

Pezzullo didn't mention China but he didn't need to. The Chinese had no doubt they were in the frame and condemned the senior Australian public servant as a "troublemaker".

The Chinese know Pezzullo well — he was the lead author of the 2009 defence white paper which gained attention for its blunt warning about growing Chinese military power.

Pezzullo's Anzac comments — reported in The Times in the UK under the headline "‘Drums of war beating' warns Australia as China tension grows" — can be viewed as a lofty statement of the obvious, or as spelling out too explicitly what the diplomats might prefer left unsaid.

Critics wonder at the Anzac Day timing of such forward-looking comments and say it's not the place of a public servant to be speaking out anyway.

Before he issued it, Pezzullo gave his statement — as a courtesy, rather than for vetting — to his new minister, Karen Andrews, who raised no objection.

But it did not go to Morrison who, when asked for his reaction, stressed the pursuit of peace. The PM, in the Northern Territory this week talking about defence, was less than pleased to have a bureaucrat unbalancing his messaging.

After Peter Dutton shifted from home affairs to defence in the recent reshuffle, Pezzullo was touted as possibly following him. But Morrison has no plans to move him, least of all when Andrews, without national security experience, has just arrived in this home affairs behemoth.

The attention on Pezzullo will subside but Dutton will be closely watched for what balance he strikes in his new post.

Dutton wants a high profile as defence minister, and he's never been one to mince his words.

And tough words on China can play well with voters who, according to surveys, have become very suspicious of that country. Dutton is the leader of the right in the Liberal Party and aware of his hawkish base.

Keeping in the spotlight while not causing unnecessary diplomatic trouble will require a delicate dance. Dutton doesn't look like a man light on his feet, but we'll see.

Michelle Grattan is a professorial fellow at the University of Canberra and chief political correspondent at The Conversation, where this article first appeared.

From dust bowl to California drought: a climate scientist on the lessons we still haven’t learned.

Extract from The Guardian

California

The Enterprise Bridge crosses over a section of Lake Oroville in Oroville, California. Water levels at the lake have dropped to 42% of its capacity.

Peter Gleick argues there’s an urgent need to reshape our relationship to water: ‘There is enormous untapped potential for conservation’

Maanvi Singh in San Francisco

@maanvissingh

Thu 29 Apr 2021 20.00 AEST

Last modified on Thu 29 Apr 2021 23.53 AEST

California is once again in a drought, just four years after the last dry spell decimated ecosystems, fueled megafires and left many rural communities without well water.

Droughts are a natural part of the landscape in the American west, and the region has in many ways been shaped by its history of drought. But the climate scientist Peter Gleick argues that the droughts California is facing now are different than the ones that have historically cycled through the Golden State.

“These are not accidental, strange dry periods,” said Gleick, the co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a global thinktank that has become a leading voice on water issues in California and around the world. “They’re increasingly the norm.”

Gleick this week spoke with the Guardian about the history of drought in the west, and the urgency of reshaping our relationship to water. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The California governor has declared a drought emergency in two counties, a few years after the state faced its last major drought from 2011-2017. Are more frequent dry periods part of a new normal?

The last drought was a wake up call to the effects of climate change. For the first time, the public began to make the connection that humans were impacting the climate and the water cycle – affecting the intensity and severity of our droughts.

Since that drought, we have learned some lessons about improving water efficiency, and reducing waste. We had serious conversations about things like getting rid of grass lawns for example. But we still haven’t learned the fundamental message: that these are not accidental, strange dry periods. They’re increasingly the norm.

We better start to assume that the sooner we put in place policies to save water, the better off we are. We don’t seem to have learned that there still is enormous untapped potential for conservation and efficiency despite our past improvements.

If the last drought helped people wake up to a worsening climate crisis, how did other defining droughts reshape our understanding of water in the region?

There were the dust bowl years of the 1930s, when thousands and thousands of people were dislocated from their homes in the western US because of severe drought that decimated agriculture and triggered deadly dust storms.

Peter Gleick, the co-founder of the Pacific Institute. Photograph: Courtesy of Peter Gleick

After drought in the 50s, we started building big water infrastructure like dams and aqueducts in California, in part because we knew that populations were growing in the coastal areas very rapidly and that we had to expand access to water supply. That infrastructure brought enormous benefits, but it came with massive costs that we didn’t appreciate at the time. In particular, it really started to disrupt our ecology.

Following the dust bowl, probably the worst drought we experienced in California was the 1976-1977 drought, which is considered the state’s worst two-year drought on record. That drought really, really showed us, OK, we’re vulnerable to extreme dry weather, despite having built these dams and the aqueducts to help store, conserve and distribute water. It showed us that massive population and economic growth has put new pressures on our water resources. I’d say that was our first real wake up call.

Of course, climate change wasn’t a contributor to the dust bowl in the 1930s. But it seems there are some major lessons we could learn from that period about how badly designed policies can really intensify natural disaster. Back then, it was farmers’ decision to plow up millions of acres of native grassland, and plant water-intensive crops that caused the soil to erode and stirred up the deadly, devastating dust storms that we associate with that drought.

The way we’ve decided to use water in the west has a long, complicated history. Going back to the dust bowl era, until now – at least on paper – agriculture and other industries have far greater rights than anyone else. And that has put an enormous stress on our system, economically.

Sure, during the dust bowl, settlers didn’t really understand some crucial things about soil management that we now understand. And we have learned how to make more food with less water. But we never had a rethink of our system of water rights, and how much of our limited water we should be spending on agriculture versus leaving in the natural ecosystem.

Those were lessons we should have learned during the dust bowl, and, frankly we are still having to learn.

Going back to the dust bowl era, until now – at least on paper – agriculture and other industries have far greater rights than anyone else

During the last drought, we saw the death of about 163m trees, and that dead vegetation helped fuel some of the worst fires in the state’s history. Even though research has found that conditions during the last drought were actually worse than the dust bowl – a lot of people in the west who lived through it wouldn’t describe it as being so bad.

Good infrastructure has insulated a lot of Californians from really feeling the impacts of drought. In the US, most of us don’t directly experience the consequences of drought the way people in other parts of the world do.

How do you measure 100m dead trees and the risk to forest fires that could be attributed to that drought? How do you measure the death of 95% of the Chinook salmon? How do you measure the impact on poor communities who were left without water? We don’t put dollar values on these things, and so we don’t directly see or feel the impact.

I don’t want to minimize the impact of the last drought on particular farmers. But the systems that we’ve built mean that even if some fields have to fallow, we can still keep growing during drought years. Even during a severe drought I can turn the water on my tap and, you know, incredibly cheap, pure water comes out.

But that’s not the case for many disadvantaged communities in the Central Valley, who couldn’t turn on the tap and get water. They’re the ones suffering most directly from the impacts of extreme drought, but they’re largely invisible to many other Californians. And that’s not the case for our ecosystems and fisheries and forests, which are dying out.

The pandemic brought down rents – but Australia’s housing is still grossly unaffordable for many.

 Extract from The Guardian

Grogonomics Housing

Greg Jericho

The lack of supply of low cost, appropriately sized housing remains as critical as it has ever been.

• Only three rental properties in Australia are affordable for singles on jobseeker – study
• Sydney’s 8.5% quarterly house price rise largest in three decades

‘Anglicare found that of the 74,266 properties that were available for rent around Australia on 26 March this year, just three were affordable for a single person on jobseeker.’

Thu 29 Apr 2021 03.30 AEST

Last modified on Thu 29 Apr 2021 14.52 AEST

Despite the pandemic bringing about low inflation and the unusual case of rental prices falling, the reality on the ground is dire for low-income households. The latest Anglicare rental affordability snapshot shows affordability – especially for families – has plummeted.

The latest consumer price index figures released on Wednesday showed inflation grew in the past 12 months by just 1.1%. In the past such a figure would have been noteworthy as absurdly low, and yet in our weird pandemic economy it is actually an improvement:

Graph not displaying properly? Click here

But while overall price growth is increasing (mostly due to petrol prices and health care costs) the price of rents in the first three months of this year were 1.4% below what they were before the pandemic hit last year.

That of course is the Australian average, but all capital cities have either falling rent prices (Sydney, Melbourne, and Darwin) or slower growth than in the past couple of years:Graph not displaying properly? Click here

But while this might lead you to expect that affordability has improved on average for renters, the latest Anglicare Rental Affordability Snapshot reveals that this is not the case for low-income households.

Each March Anglicare goes through the rental listings to see what is affordable and what is appropriate for different households – such as those on the aged pension, a single person on jobseeker or a couple on the minimum wage with two kids.

This process cuts through the verbiage around the cost of living and housing affordability by presenting the reality on the ground.

And the ground is rather arid.

Anglicare found that of the 74,266 properties that were available for rent around Australia on 26 March this year, just three were affordable for a single person on jobseeker – and all three were share accommodation. One was in Brisbane, one in Perth and one in the NSW Riverina region.

Everywhere else there was nothing.

The reality is not much better for those on either the aged pension, the parenting payment, or disability support payment. It is really only until you get to the minimum wage that you see more than 1% of properties being affordable and appropriate.

Graph not displaying properly? Click here

For a single person on the minimum wage, Brisbane is the best metropolitan area for choice, and even then, just 4% of available rental properties are affordable and appropriate:

Graph not displaying properly? Click here

And while the lack of properties is meagre for all low-income households, what is clear from the 2021 snapshot is that things have become much worse.

For a couple on the aged pension or a single parent on the parenting payment, things are as bad now as they have been for many years, and are shockingly worse compared to last year when the Covid bonus was included:

Graph not displaying properly? Click here

The options are always better for those on the minimum wage – especially if you have a couple both earning $753.80 a week.

But even here we see that the amount of affordable and appropriate rental properties is much lower than it has been for many years:

Graph not displaying properly? Click here

The issue is not just affordability, but appropriateness.

If you are a single person or a couple, you pretty much have the choice of every property listing (except share housing for couples).

But as soon as you have children, and children above certain ages, the needs change and the options shrink considerably.

In Melbourne, there were 32,289 rental listings on 26 March, but just 9,903 of them were suitable for a family with two children.

For single people and couples, affordability is the key; for those on DSP affordability and appropriateness both need to be covered (and this of course excludes the other aspect which cannot be measured of the suitability of the precise location):

Graph not displaying properly? Click here

A couple in Melbourne both on the full-time minimum wage could afford to rent 23,382 properties, but just 42% (9,903) of them were appropriate for a family of four, and just 5,132 were both affordable and appropriate.

While this suggests that things perhaps are not too bad for a couple on a minimum wage – they can afford around half of the properties that are suitable for a family of four – across the country, the situation is clearly dire for those existing on just one minimum wage:

Graph not displaying properly? Click here

For a family of four with just one adult earning the full-time minimum wage and the other partner on the parenting payment and Family Tax Benefits, the best place in Australia is Adelaide, where they can afford 14% of all family appropriate properties.

Thus even the best situation sees them locked out of more than 85% of the family-suitable rental market.

The Anglicare snapshot highlights that while employment might have recovered to pre-pandemic levels and inflation growth is extremely low, the lack of supply of low cost, appropriately sized housing remains as critical as it has ever been.

World will lose 10% of glacier ice even if it hits climate targets.

Extract from The Guardian 

Our disappearing glaciers Environment

Exclusive: loss is equivalent to more than 13,200 cubic kilometres of water or 10m Wembley Stadiums

• Visualised: glaciers then and now

Research suggests 1.9 billion people are at risk of mountain water shortages, most of them in China and India.

Jonathan Watts Global environment editor

@jonathanwatts

Thu 29 Apr 2021 19.22 AEST

Last modified on Thu 29 Apr 2021 22.17 AEST

A tenth of the world’s mountain glacier ice will have melted by the middle of this century even if humanity meets the goals of the Paris climate agreement, according to figures compiled exclusively for the Guardian.

The loss is equivalent to more than 13,200 cubic kilometres of water – enough to fill Lake Superior, or more than 10m Wembley Stadiums – with knock-on effects on highly populated river deltas, wildlife habitats and sea levels.

In some particularly hard-hit areas, including central Europe, North America and low latitudes, glacier mass is expected to decline by more than half.

Scientists said the overwhelming bulk of this melt-off, which does not include Greenland or Antarctica, is unavoidable because it has been locked in by the global heating caused by humans in recent years.

However, they say the actions governments take today – including the recent announcements of more ambitious emissions-cutting goals by the US, the UK and others – can make a big difference to the landscape in the second half of this century.

“What we see in the mountains now was caused by greenhouse gases two or three decades ago,” said the glaciologist Ben Marzeion from the University of Bremen. “In one way, we could see it as a doomsday because it is already too late to stop many glaciers melting. But it is also important that people are aware of how decisions taken now can affect how our world will look two or three generations from now.”

Marzeion extracted the data from a synthesis last year of more than 100 computer models generated by research institutes around the world.

These studies projected various possible behaviours of the planet’s roughly 200,000 mountain glaciers, depending on different emissions pathways and weather circulation patterns.

The compiled results are considered the most accurate estimate yet of how mountains will lose their white snow-caps and blue ice-rivers.

Between 2021 and 2050, Marzeion calculated the average mass loss over the various scenarios is 13,200 Gt. This is equivalent to melting almost five Olympic swimming pools of ice every second over the next 30 years.

View from a remote ice cave in the Eagle glacier in Juneau, Alaska. Photograph: Becky Bohrer/AP

Aggressive emissions cuts would barely slow this. The difference between the best and worst-case scenarios was less than 20%. The remaining 80% is already locked in.

That contrasts with projections for the second half of the century, when the decisions taken now will make a huge difference. In a low-emissions scenario, current glacier mass is projected to diminish by about 18% by 2100, which would be a slowdown. By contrast, in a high-emissions scenario, the loss would accelerate to reach 36%.

This has multiple consequences. Mountain glacier melt contributes more than a third of sea-level rise, a higher contribution than the Antarctic, according to the latest European State of the Climate Report, which was released last week. This is steadily raising the risk of floods and inundations along coastal regions and rivers.

Depending on how quickly emissions can be cut, the extra runoff is likely to add 79-159mm to sea levels by 2100, according to the synthesis paper.

At a local and regional level, it can also reduce the stability of river systems. On a seasonal level, Alpine glaciers help to regulate water supply by storing precipitation in winter and releasing it in summer.

But as they melt away over decades due to global heating, more downstream areas will first experience a water boom, then a bust. Previous studies suggest 1.9 billion people are at risk of mountain water shortages, most of them in China and India.

The urgency varies according to altitude, ice thickness, weather patterns and a host of other factors. Lower mountain ranges, such as the European Alps or the Pyrenees, are expected to be among the worst affected. In Switzerland and Italy, there are already cases of famous glaciers retreating rapidly or melting completely.

Scientists predict there could even be more glaciers in the world by 2050 because many of the current big bodies of ice will split into smaller fragments, but they stress the number and area of glaciers is less important than the trends affecting mass and volume over decades.

“It is very important to think long term,” said Samuel Nussbaumer of the World Glacier Monitoring Service and the University of Zurich. “Glaciers have a long memory.”

Australian energy board chair says gas-fired power plant in Hunter Valley ‘doesn’t stack up’

 Extract from The Guardian

Energy

Kerry Schott says private sector won’t back ‘expensive power’ when there are cheaper alternatives such as renewables and batteries.

A coal truck in the Hunter Valley. ‘Coal companies are going broke’ and they are likely to retire power plants ‘before their technical lives end,’ the Energy Security Board chair, Kerry Schott, says.

Katharine Murphy and Paul Karp

Fri 30 Apr 2021 03.30 AEST

Last modified on Fri 30 Apr 2021 03.33 AEST

The chair of Australia’s Energy Security Board says a taxpayer-funded gas-fired power plant in the Hunter Valley makes little commercial sense given the abundance of cheaper alternatives flooding the market.

The Morrison government is continuing to hold out the prospect of Snowy Hydro building a new plant at Kurri Kurri to replace the power generation gap created by the exit of the ageing Liddell coal-fired plant.

But the ESB chair, Kerry Schott, told Guardian Australia putting more gas into the energy market to support renewables was questionable when gas was “expensive power”.

“One of the reasons given for [a taxpayer-funded plant in the Hunter] is it will flood the market with gas-fired power and when there’s a tonne of supply in the market, prices go down,” Schott said.

“We all learned this in economics. However, that doesn’t work when there are a whole lot of other things around that are cheaper in price, like wind, solar and big batteries, like pumped hydro and we’ve got Snowy 2.0 coming.

“Nobody is going to build it from the private sector because it doesn’t stack up. Because it’s expensive power, it’s hard to see it makes commercial sense.”

Schott was speaking ahead of the release on Friday of options to reform the energy market.

The Energy Security Board has flagged more transparency around the exit of coal plants as well as a beefed-up reliability obligation imposed on retailers. Some renewable energy interests fear a more onerous reliability obligation will lead to coal plants remaining in the system longer.

The Coalition has suggested since last year that taxpayers could fund a new gas plant in the Hunter if private companies fail to supply alternatives.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the energy minister, Angus Taylor, have imposed a deadline of 30 April for privately funded alternatives to be brought forward.

Energy Australia has proposed a gas peaking station with a nominal capacity of up to 450MW and could proceed with that development. A spokesperson for Taylor said the government may also proceed with the Snowy proposal which had already secured “critical NSW state significant infrastructure status for their proposed Kurri Kurri gas generator”.

As well as Schott’s scepticism, a taskforce advising governments about the impact of the Liddell closure did not back Morrison and Taylor’s insistence that 1,000MW of additional dispatchable electricity would be needed to replace the old coal plant.

The taskforce listed a range of committed and probable projects that it found would be “more than sufficient” to maintain a high level of power grid reliability as Liddell shut.

The ESB’s consultation paper on Friday will float proposed reforms to energy market rules including a more substantial reliability obligation on retailers. It is being pushed by some governments but is controversial in the energy sector.

Schott said governments pursuing the proposal wanted “a bit more certainty in their world” during the transition to low emissions. She said her own view was it could “help” create more order in the transition “but it’s arguable that this is the long term investment signal that we need”.

While there is concern that a more onerous reliability obligation could provide an incentive to keep coal plants operating for longer, Schott was blunt about the prospects for coal-fired generation.

“Coal companies are going broke and they are likely to retire before their technical lives end,” the ESB chair said. Schott said given the economics of energy generation, it was now likely coal plants in Australia would be shuttered four or five years earlier than expected only a couple of years ago.

She said if governments ultimately created a reliability obligation that required retailers to buy advance contracts to fill supply gaps, and trade in physical certificates, that wouldn’t be enough to bake coal into the system.

“As well as a certificate market there is also an energy market and you don’t get dispatched if you are more expensive than wind and solar matched with pumped hydro and batteries increasingly, and a bit of gas,” Schott said.

She said additional regulation aimed at keeping the lights on during the transition would not impact the coal retirement trajectory significantly because “commercial viability” was driving the change.

“If you are a wind farm and you are trying to firm your load and it’s cheaper to do it with big batteries or a bit of gas or pumped hydro, that’s what you are going to do”.

Schott said what was required to ensure the transition happened in an orderly way was collaboration between levels of government, but that wasn’t happening.

She said the chaos following the collapse of the national energy guarantee had demonstrated there was no way of stopping governments “interfering” in the energy market “but it would be good if they tell their neighbours what they are about to do because [the decisions] affect one another”.

Schott said having a national policy mechanism to guide the transition would be optimal, but now the die appeared to be cast in favour of governments intervening and underwriting new investments.

She said state governments were currently “pulling an enormous amount of weight to make sure that we muddle through” but the transition was “messy and it would be far better if we had a national target and we could all sit down and work together”.

The new proposals from the ESB come as Australian company directors rated climate change the number one priority for the federal government. The Australian Institute of Company Directors will on Friday call on the government to introduce five-year emissions reduction targets.

As Michael Collins drifted above the Moon, he held a 'secret terror' for the Apollo 11 mission.

 Extract from ABC News

By Jordan Hayne

Posted Yesterday at 1:17pm

Michael Collins has died aged 90.

(Supplied: NASA)

When the Apollo 11 landing module detached and sent Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin hurtling towards the surface of the moon, Michael Collins began a journey of his own.

For the next 21 hours, the pioneering astronaut, who died overnight, continued to orbit the moon, further removed from humanity than any person before him.

His was a crucial role in the Apollo 11 mission — the others would not have been able to return to Earth without him — but Collins would later acknowledge he didn't have the best seat in the house.

As his command module dipped behind the far side of the moon, it blocked his communications with Earth and he became completely isolated, more than 300,000km from home.

Collins was left alone in space after the landing craft headed to the surface of the Moon.

(Supplied: NASA)

"It is there, reinforced by the fact that radio contact with the Earth abruptly cuts off at the instant I disappear behind the moon, I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life," he wrote.

"I am it.

"If a count were taken, the score would be three-billion-plus-two over on the other side of the moon, and one-plus-God-knows-what on this side."

From home, Mission Control noted "not since Adam has any human known such solitude as Mike Collins is experiencing during this 47 minutes of each lunar revolution when he's behind the Moon with no one to talk to except his tape recorder."

Michael Collins's secret terror

As Armstrong declared "one giant leap for mankind", Collins remained waiting in the command module orbiting 100km above.

Collins feared his companions would not be able to leave the Moon.

(SSPL/Getty)

There, he dwelled on the fate of his crewmates, and whether they would be able to return to him.

The plan had always been that if Armstrong and Aldrin crashed or were unable to leave the moon's surface, Collins was to head back to Earth alone. 

A prepared contingency statement from President Richard Nixon, to be read out if the worst happened, made no mention of Collins. 

"These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding," Nixon would have said about Armstrong and Aldrin had they been left to die on the Moon.

"Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace."

But Collins held a "secret terror" — that he would be blamed for the potential disaster.

"I would have been that guy who left them up there on the moon to die," he said in a 2019 interview.

"It would have been an awful, terrible, national catastrophe."

Not so lonely

On returning home, Collins learned he'd been cast as the "loneliest man in history" by the press — something he struggled to understand.

"When we returned to Earth and went through our debriefings, the whole focus of the press attention when it came to me was 'wasn't I the loneliest person in the whole lonely space program in that lonely orbit behind the lonely moon, more lonely than any previous lonely people had ever been lonely?," he later joked.

"And I thought that was ridiculous."

On the astronauts' return, Collins was dubbed "the loneliest man in history".

Collins would write that despite his concern for Armstrong and Aldrin, he mostly felt "awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation" during his time alone.

But he never felt lonely.

At the end of his solitude, the lunar module returned to view and approached the command module.

He snapped a famous photograph of it and the crew's home planet in the background.

But he said nothing could capture the true beauty of the moment.

"It doesn't sparkle like the real thing did," he said.

Collins took this picture as Armstrong and Aldrin returned from the Moon.

(Supplied: NASA)

When the coronavirus supplement was cut, single mum Leanne's darkest days returned.

Extract from ABC News

By business reporter Rhiana Whitson

Posted 21minutes ago

Leanne says she sometimes skips meals to provide for her daughter, Claudia.

(Sarah Lawrence)

Help keep family & friends informed by sharing this article

It's been almost a month since the federal government drastically reduced the coronavirus supplement to $50 a fortnight from its peak of $550.

For anyone, that's a lot of money.

But for single parents, many of them women, the extra cash offered them a taste of a better life, says Terese Edwards, the chief executive of the National Council of Single Mothers and their Children (NCSC).

"It filled a gap of a failing income support system, it put a bandaid over growing inequality, and it masked, for six months, child poverty," she said.

Just ask Leanne Taylor.

The coronavirus supplement meant she and her 11-year-old daughter did not have to struggle to pay for the basics.

But now, the dark days have returned.

Leanne and her daughter Claudia were able to afford the basics, but not anymore.

(Sarah Lawrence)

After paying for groceries bills and rent, Leanne is lucky to be left with about $100 each week to spend on other everyday items.

"Kids need nutrition, but sometimes I will just go without so she can eat a meal the next day," she explained.

Her voice cracks with emotion when asked about how missing out on the extra money has affected her daughter.

"I feel like my child is being left behind. She can't do things her friends do. Simple things like taking her ice skating is a struggle," she said.

Sadly, Leanne is not alone. The statistics for sole-parent households are truly alarming.

Children in these families are three times more likely to be living in poverty than those in couple families and the overall poverty rate for single-parent families is 44 per cent, according to research commissioned by the Australian Council of Social Services.

Nationally, more that two million people received the coronavirus supplement, according to Anti-Poverty Week research.

Another one million children benefited from the same supplement, with about half of those kids being in single-parent households.

For Leanne, life had become even tougher. RIght now, she can't afford to service her car.  

"It has had a great toll on my mental health," she said.

Luckily, her friend has offered her parent's house for her to rent in the Victorian town of Bendigo, which will leave her out of pocket $310 per week. 

She had been struggling to find a rental, and the offer was a huge lifeline for her and her daughter, Claudia.

In a joint submission ahead of the federal budget, the Council of Single Mothers, the Brotherhood of St Laurence and Grandparents Australia want the $550 coronavirus supplement reinstated until the pandemic is over -- as well as a permanent increase in JobSeeker payments, training and free child care for single parents.

As Ms Edwards explains, the best thing about the coronavirus supplement was that people could see the massive difference it made to families struggling to get by.

"People could get job ready, get a haircut and buy new clothes. Single parents could afford for their children to play sport," Ms Edwards said.

Those are things Boadi Vincent has certainly missed as she struggles to manage with her two kids.

Single mum Boadi is sick of living "hand to mouth" as she raises her two kids.

(Supplied)

She describes the loss of the coronavirus supplement as "a death by a thousand cuts".

"The cuts keep increasing and the cost of living is ever-growing," she adds.

At the moment, she and her sons are living on variations of canned beans.

"You're constantly on the edge, you're constantly living hand-to-mouth, there is just no security," she said.

Boadi is studying speech pathology, a profession she hopes will give her family a more financially secure future.

She believes single mothers have been an easy target for successive governments that are keen to improve their budget bottom line.

Since 2006, single parents have been forced off parenting payments and onto JobSeeker once their youngest child turns eight.

"It's discriminatory. I have a job, I am a mother raising the next generation of Australians who are going to grow up and pay taxes," she said.

"The government is pushing our children into poverty and forcing them to live as second-class citizens."

Receiving the coronavirus supplement meant Hobart Mum Elizabeth Clark was able to save money, buy her first car and pay for driving lessons.

"I could say 'yes' to my daughter more often, since the supplement was reduced and ended, I haven't been able to add to savings, and have to keep a close eye on the budget." she said.

On top of that, Ms Clark will also lose access to her single parenting payment because her daughter turns eight soon.

"Worrying about money definitely affects my mental health," she said.

"Hobart is in a rental crisis with skyrocketing rents and I expect my weekly rent will go up this year just as my income will go down. I'm very fortunate in lots of ways, but it's still a worry."