Taking Australia's temperature

Aussies don’t live as long as people in Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, Japan, San Marrino or Andorra but we’re doing way better than the Yanks, the poor regularly fall off the perch sooner than silvertails and swells, Aboriginal babies die often and early, living in the bush is a health hazard for many, there are more of us 'enjoying' a spell in hospital, we gobble down anti-depressants while a heck of a lot of us are obviously topping ourselves - but she’ll be right mate. Last year, after asking the nation to “Say Aarrh, stick out your tongue, turn your head and cough” the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released its rather self-congratulatory bi-annual report card and here are the key points :

General

Life expectancy and death

• Australia’s life expectancy at birth continues to rise and is among the highest in the world—almost 84 years for females and 79 years for males.


• Death rates are falling for many of our major health problems such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma and injuries.


• Coronary heart disease causes the largest number of ‘lost years’ through death among males aged under 75 years, and breast cancer causes the most among females.

Diseases

• Cancer is Australia’s leading broad cause of disease burden (19% of the total), followed by cardiovascular disease (16%) and mental disorders (13%).


• The rate of heart attacks continues to fall, and survival from them continues to improve.


• Around 1 in 5 Australians aged 16–85 years has a mental disorder at some time in a 12-month period, including 1 in 4 of those aged 16–24 years.


• The burden of Type 2 diabetes is increasing and it is expected to become the leading cause of disease burden by 2023.


• The incidence of treated end-stage kidney disease is increasing, with diabetes as the main cause.

Health risks

• Risk factors contribute to over 30% of Australia’s total burden of death, disease and disability.


• Tobacco smoking is the single most preventable cause of ill health and death in Australia.


• However, Australia’s level of smoking continues to fall and is among the lowest for OECD countries, with a daily smoking rate of about 1 in 6 adults in 2007.


• Three in 5 adults (61%) were either overweight or obese in 2007–08.


• One in 4 children (25%) aged 5–17 years were overweight or obese in 2007–08.


• Of Australians aged 15–74 years in 2006–2007, less than half (41%) had an adequate or better level of health literacy.


• Rates of sexually transmissible infections continue to increase, particularly among young people.


• Use of illicit drugs has generally declined in Australia, including the use of methamphetamines (the drug group that includes ‘ice’).

Life stages

Mothers and babies

• The proportion of females having caesarean sections has continued to increase over the latest decade, from 21% in 1998 to 31% in 2007.


• The perinatal death rate of babies born to Indigenous mothers in 2007 was twice that of other babies.

Children and young Australians

• Death rates among children and young people halved in the two decades to 2007, largely due to fewer deaths from transport accidents.


• More children are being vaccinated against major preventable childhood diseases, with 91% (the target level) being fully vaccinated at 2 years of age—but only 82% of 5 year olds are covered.


• Land transport accidents and intentional self-harm accounted for 2 in every 5 deaths (42%) among young Australians (aged 15–24 years) in 2007.

People aged 25–64 years

• The main causes of death in this age group in 2007 were coronary heart disease for males (14% of their deaths) and breast cancer for females (12%).

Older Australians

• For older people, the main causes of death are heart disease, stroke and cancer.


• At age 65, Australian males can now expect to live a further 19 years to almost 84 years of age, and females a further 22 years to almost 87.

Groups of special interest

• People with disability are more likely than others to have poor physical and mental health, and higher rates of risk factors such as smoking and overweight.


• Compared with those who have social and economic advantages, disadvantaged Australians are more likely to have shorter lives.


• Indigenous people are generally less healthy than other Australians, die at much younger ages, and have more disability and a lower quality of life.


• People living in rural and remote areas tend to have higher levels of disease risk factors and illness than those in major cities.


• Compared with the general community, prisoners have significantly worse health, with generally higher levels of diseases, mental illness and illicit drug use than Australians overall.


• Most migrants enjoy health that is equal to or better than that of the Australian-born population—often with lower rates of death, mental illness and disease risk factors.


• Compared with those in the general community, Defence Force members have better health, although their work can place them at higher risk of injury.


• The veteran community is less likely than the general community to report being in very good or excellent health.

Health services

• In 2007–08, just over 2% of total health expenditure was for preventive services or health promotion.


• Between 1998–99 and 2008–09, there was an increase in general practitioners’ management of some chronic diseases, including hypertension, diabetes and depression.


• Ambulances attended 2.9 million incidents in 2008–09, of which 39% were emergencies.


• The number of hospital admissions rose by 37% in the decade to 2007–08.


• Over half of the hospital admissions (56%) in 2007–08 were same-day admissions, compared with 48% in 1998–99.


• In 2008–09, about 1 in 9 of all prescriptions under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme were for a mental health-related medication.

Health workforce

• Employment in health occupations is still growing—23% growth between 2003 and 2008, almost double that across all occupations (13%).


• Between 2002 and 2007, there was a 26% increase in people completing health occupation university courses.


• The mix of the medical workforce changed between 1997 and 2007


• the supply of primary care doctors (in ‘full-time equivalent’ numbers per 100,000 population) has decreased


• the supply of specialists, specialists-in-training and hospital-based non-specialists has increased.

Health expenditure

• Health expenditure during 2007–08 was $103.6 billion, exceeding $100 billion for the first time.


• Health expenditure in 2007–08 equaled 9.1% of gross domestic product (GDP).


• As a share of its GDP, Australia spent more than the United Kingdom in 2007–08 (8.4%), a similar amount to the OECD median (8.9%) and much less than the United States (16%).


• Governments funded almost 70% of health expenditure in 2007–08.


• For Indigenous Australians in 2006–07, spending per person on health and high-level residential aged care was 25% higher than for other Australians.

Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) issues media release in response to factual errors and misleading comments concerning national referendum voting instructions

 

Despite the legislation concerning national referenda being clear (as evidenced by the above interview with Antony Green), misinformation and at times deliberate disinformation is to be found in both mainstream and social media concerning the proposed 2023 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament referendum.

The level of factual inaccuracy has become a matter of concern.....

Australian Electoral Commission, AEC Newsroom, Media releases 2023

Media advice: Referendum voting instructions

Updated: 25 August 2023

Australian voters are rightly proud of their electoral system – one of the most transparent and robust voting systems in the world. As a result, there is an intense, and highly appropriate level of public interest in all aspects of that system, and associated commentary online and in mainstream media. Sometimes this commentary is immediate and based on emotion rather than the reality of the law which the AEC must administer.

There has been intense commentary online and in mainstream media regarding what will and will not be a formal vote for the 2023 referendum; specifically around whether or not a ‘tick’ or a ‘cross’ will be able to be counted. Much of that commentary is factually incorrect and ignores:

• the law surrounding ‘savings provisions’,

• the longstanding legal advice regarding the use of ticks and crosses, and

• the decades-long and multi-referendum history of the application of that law and advice.

The AEC completely and utterly rejects the suggestions by some that by transparently following the established, public and known legislative requirements we are undermining the impartiality and fairness of the referendum.

As has been the case at every electoral event, the AEC remains totally focussed on electoral integrity. Indeed, electoral integrity is a central part of the AEC’s published values; underpinned by, and supported through, complete adherence to all relevant laws and regulations.

How to cast a formal vote

The formal voting instructions for the referendum are to clearly write either ‘yes’ or ‘no’, in full, in English.

It is that easy: given the simplicity, the AEC expects the vast, vast majority of Australian voters to follow those instructions and cast a formal vote.

Previous levels of formality

It is important to keep scale, or a lack of it in this instance, and precedent in mind when discussing this matter.

More than 99% of votes cast at the 1999 federal referendum were formal. Even of the 0.86% of informal votes, many would have had no relevance to the use of ticks or crosses.

AEC communication

Instructions for casting a formal vote – to write either yes or no in full, in English, will be:

• part of the AEC’s advertising campaign,

• on the AEC website,

• in the guide delivered to all Australian households,

• an instruction by our polling officials when people are issued with their ballot paper,

• on posters in polling places, and

• on the ballot paper itself.

This is why the level of formal voting at previous referendums has been so high and why the AEC expects the vast, vast majority of voters to follow those instructions.

The law

Like an election, the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984 includes ‘savings provisions’ - the ability to count a vote where the instructions have not been followed but the voter’s intention is clear.

• The AEC cannot ignore the law and cannot ignore savings provisions.

The law regarding formality in a referendum is long-standing and unchanged through many governments, Parliaments, and multiple referendums. Legal advice from the Australian Government Solicitor, provided on multiple occasions during the previous three decades, regarding the application of savings provisions to ‘ticks’ and ’crosses’ has been consistent – for decades.

This is not new, nor a new AEC determination of any kind for the 2023 referendum. The law regarding savings provisions and the principle around a voter’s intent has been in place for at least 30 years and 6 referendum questions.

The longstanding legal advice provides that a cross can be open to interpretation as to whether it denotes approval or disapproval: many people use it daily to indicate approval in checkboxes on forms. The legal advice provides that for a single referendum question, a clear ‘tick’ should be counted as formal and a ‘cross’ should not.

Media resources:

AEC Newsroom

AEC YouTube (AECTV)

AEC imagery (AEC Flickr)

AEC media contacts

~~~~ENDS~~~~

BACKGROUND

The Guardian, 24 August 2023, excerpts:

Voters in the upcoming voice to parliament referendum are being urged to write “yes” or “no” on referendum ballot papers – and being warned that if they use a cross, their vote may not be counted.

The well-established and longstanding rule which will mean ticks are likely allowed but votes that use crosses are likely excluded has prompted criticism from the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, the former prime minister Tony Abbott and the no campaign, which claims the requirement will “stack the deck” against them.

The rule has been on the books, without controversy, for 30 years and six referendum questions, and when asked about ticks and crosses on Thursday, an Australian Electoral Commission spokesperson simply said: “Please don’t use them.”….

Fair Australia tweeted: “Looks like just another attempt to stack the deck against ‘no’ voting Australians.”

Abbott claimed on 2GB that “there’s a suspicion that officialdom is trying to make it easier for one side … This is the worry all along that there is a lot of official bias in this whole referendum process.”

Dutton, also speaking on 2GB, called it “completely outrageous” and claimed the situation “gives a very, very strong advantage to the ‘yes’ case”. The opposition leader said he would ask the government to draft legislation to change the rule.

The Coalition opposition did not propose amending this rule during debate on the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act earlier this year, and supported the government’s legislation....

The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 August 2023, excerpt:

Despite Dutton’s insistence that an X should denote a No vote, in his 2022 election candidate nomination form he repeatedly placed an X in a box to indicate a Yes to questions about his citizenship and the country of his parents’ birth, for example.

Click on image to enlarge

In fact across the entire Dutton_Q47P document “x” was used interchangeably by Peter Dutton to denote Yes, No, and Not Applicable.

NOTE:

History of Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984 can be found at

https://www.legislation.gov.au/Series/C2004A02908

Thursday's Column 8 - you'd reckon Fairfax could afford to put this online

Kevin Ryan, of Wahroonga, was in Penrith South a few days ago, and reports driving past a car wrecker's yard. The name of the business? "Khartoum."

"Koel alert! Koel alert!" we are warned by Anne Moore, of Waverley. "Heard on Monday at 6.45am. I think this is even earlier than my reported first koel in Column 8 a couple of years back, Soon there will be no first report we'll have koels permanently in residence."

More on affect/effect, from Anton Crouch, of Glebe (Column 8, Tuesday): "A simple rule is to use 'affect' as a verb and 'effect' as a noun. Then you'll be right 99 per cent of the time in conversation and 90 per cent of the time in writing. If you want real pedantry (as opposed to Keith Binns's partial attempt), both 'affect' and 'effect' can be used as a verb and a noun. There's also a use of 'affect' where it means something like 'to pretend to'. But all this gets too hard - the simple rule given above will suit for most of us." Yes indeed, Anton. Most effective.

"Tuesday's headline 'Vet on receiving end as whipping becomes frenzied', writes Duccio Cocquio, of Hunters Hill, "reminds me of an old one from the Wellington Dominion that read 'Drive to ban horse whipping mushrooms'. Very evocative: was it a mad horse whipping the poor mushrooms or a cluster of cruel fungi hitting the innocent horse?" Hard to say but wouldn't the second interpretation require a hyphen?

"I did particularly enjoy the back page of the Sport section in Tuesday's Herald," writes Allan Roberts, of Marrickville, "where the article on Kim Clijsters wining the US Open stated that 'She scrambled with the agility of a gymnast to her players' box to find her husband, Brian Lynch, a professional basketball'." What does a professional basketball earn, we wonder? It'd be hard work.

Richard Sewell theorises that the birds circling pylons of the Anzac Bridge at night are attracted to insects, which in turn are attracted by the bright lights. We now recall that we raised this subject two or three years back, when birds were going crazy around the Harbour Bridge during a bogong moth plague. And lo and behold, a bogong flew out of our wardrobe this morning. What are we in for?

"I was brought up in Blackburn, Lancashire, UK," writes Robert Heathcote, of Newcastle, "a cotton- weaving town. All the older members of my family were weavers and used the term 'cotton on' a lot to mean 'Do you get the idea?'. (Column 8, Saturday). "But they all acknowledged that it derived from the process in weaving where a thread breaks, and they had to 'cotton on' to resume the job. I think also it could mean to start work, or a new job, but it definitely comes from cotton weaving."

"My wife bought a litre of orange juice from Harris Farm Markets at Bridgepoint, Spit Junction," reports Peter Schramko, of Artarmon. "The label reads '100% SQUIZEED ORANGE JUICE'. Does that mean that someone has had a good look at it?"

Column8@smh.com.au(no attachments please).Phone 9282 2207 fax 9282 2772. (include name, suburb, daytime phone)

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, 17/9/09

UN-UNESCO Global Assessment Report: "The loss of species, ecosystems and genetic diversity is already a global and generational threat to human well-being."

Smithsonian.com, 6 May 2019:

Our world is losing biodiversity, and fast. According to a report released today by the United Nations, up to one million species could face extinction in the near future due to human influence on the natural world. Such a collapse in biodiversity would wreak havoc on the interconnected ecosystems of the planet, putting human communities at risk by compromising food sources, fouling clean water and air, and eroding natural defenses against extreme weather such as hurricanes and floods.

In the sweeping UN-backed report, hundreds of scientists found that biodiversity loss poses a global threat on par with climate change. A 40-page “Summary for Policy Makers” was released in advance of the full report, which is expected to be published later this year and span nearly 2,000 pages. The document calls the rate of change in nature “unprecedented” and projects that species extinctions will become increasingly common in the coming decades, driven by factors such as land development, deforestation and overfishing.

“The basic message is the same as what the scientific community has been saying for more than 30 years: Biodiversity is important in its own right. Biodiversity is important for human wellbeing, and we humans are destroying it,” Robert Watson, the former chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) that produced the report, said during a press conference on Monday.

To produce the report, 145 biodiversity experts plus hundreds of other contributors compiled information over three years from 15,000 sources. For years, scientists have been sounding the alarm about biodiversity’s dramatic decline in what some have dubbed the world’s sixth mass extinction event. This die-off, however, differs from the other five in its central cause: humans.

As the global assessment confirms, human activity is a major driver of biodiversity decline among the millions of species on Earth. The report ranks some of the top causes of species loss as changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of organisms (like hunting or fishing), climate change, pollution and invasive alien species (often introduced by human travel across ecosystems). The current global rate of species extinction is already “at least tens to hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years,” and it’s expected to keep accelerating.

All in all, human action has “significantly altered” about 75 percent of the world’s land environment and 66 percent of its marine environment, according to the report. Insect populations have plummeted in tropical forests, grasslands are increasingly drying out into deserts, and pollution along with ocean acidification is driving many coral reef ecosystems to the brink.

The destruction of biodiversity at all levels, from genes to ecosystems, could pose significant threats to humankind, the report says. In addition to affecting human access to food resources, clean water and breathable air, a loss of species on a global scale could also clear a path for diseases and parasites to spread more quickly, says Emmett Duffy, a biodiversity expert with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center who contributed to the report.

“Historically, a lot of us have thought about conservation and extinction in terms of charismatic animals like pandas and whales,” Duffy says. “But there’s a very strong utilitarian reason for saving species, because people depend on them. There’s an environmental justice aspect.”

The effects of biodiversity loss won’t be distributed equally, either, the researchers found. The most devastating impacts would disproportionately affect some of the world’s poorest communities, and the report concludes that the decline in biodiversity undermines global progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals, milestones set by the U.N. General Assembly in 2015 to reduce global inequality…..

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/one-million-species-risk-extinction-threatening-human-communities-around-world-un-report-warns-180972114/#exuFQ5WihTWc7MTq.99

IPBES Global Assessment Preview, excerpt:

Important aspects of the Global Assessment

Building upon earlier IPBES assessment reports, especially the recently-released Land Degradation and Restoration Assessment and the Regional Assessment Reports for Africa, the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Europe and Central Asia (March, 2018), the Global Assessment:

• Covers all land-based ecosystems (except Antarctica), inland water and the open oceans
• Evaluates changes over the past 50 years — and implications for our economies, livelihoods, food security and quality of life
• Explores impacts of trade and other global processes on biodiversity and ecosystem services
• Ranks the relative impacts of climate change, invasive species, pollution, sea and land use change and a range of other challenges to nature
• Identifies priority gaps in our available knowledge that will need to be filled
• Projects what biodiversity could look like in decades ahead under six future scenarios: Economic Optimism; Regional Competition; Global Sustainability; Business as Usual; Regional Sustainability and Reformed Markets
• Assesses policy, technology, governance, behaviour changes, options and pathways to reach global goals by looking at synergies and trade-offs between food production, water security, energy and infrastructure expansion, climate change mitigation, nature conservation and economic development

What the CSIRO and climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au state about coastal New South Wales:

KEY MESSAGES

·         Average temperatures will continue to increase in all seasons (very high confidence).

·         More hot days and warm spells are projected with very high confidence. Fewer frosts are projected with high confidence.

·         Decreases in winter rainfall are projected with medium confidence. Other changes are possible but unclear.

·         Increased intensity of extreme rainfall events is projected, with high confidence.

·         Mean sea level will continue to rise and height of extreme sea-level events will also increase (very high confidence).

·         A harsher fire-weather climate in the future (high confidence).

·         On annual and decadal basis, natural variability in the climate system can act to either mask or enhance any long-term human induced trend, particularly in the next 20 years and for rainfall.

At its ordinary monthy meeting of 23 April 2019 Clarence Valley Council passed the following resolution: