Group items tagged

That night the temporary campground under the bridge swelled to the hundreds, including many who had fled with just the clothes on their backs and who were now sleeping in their cars. The discount department store sold out of tents that night, we were told. Many people had not intended to flee, but changed their minds when they saw the size and speed of the smoke column.

The next morning at the official evacuation centre it was easy to spot those whose houses had been lost. They walked around white-faced, desperate to talk to someone but wary of the notebook. I made friends with the animals: 250 horses held safe in the saleyards, countless dogs, five chickens laying eggs in the back of a Landrover. Shellshocked humans who did not want to talk about how they were doing told me about how their pets were faring, and then their kids, and then finally themselves.

My first fire callout this season was to the well-heeled Sydney suburb of Turramurra in November, where no property was lost, houses were doused in the delightfully coloured pink fire retardant and some departing firefighters handed us ice creams on their way out.

Reporting on the fires requires a lot of driving, instinct and guesswork. There is often more information in the newsroom than on the ground, and we relied a lot on firefighters, the fire and traffic apps and radio broadcasts. I also received text updates on wind and weather changes from my dad, who can read charts better than I can.

In Kurrajong Heights, photographer Jessica Hromas and I met a strike team waiting for a fire to come up from the gorge and into the suburbs. A firefighter told us where to park our car – facing out and with doors unlocked – and said he’d give us a radio so he could tell us when to escape.

There has been a lot of anger and politics swirling around Australia’s bushfires, as well as a lot of facts – some relevant, some not, and some fake.

So while some of my colleagues have been delivering blistering and heart-wrenching narratives from the fire grounds, I’ve been knee deep in academic papers about bushfires, and conversations about the Forest Fire Danger Index and the Indian Ocean dipole.

As the fires took hold in NSW and continued in Queensland, a blame game emerged. These fires had little to do with the climate crisis, some were saying, but were down to “greenies” and their “policies” to stop hazard-reduction burning in forests and national parks.

I’ve spoken to I don’t know how many experts in their field over the last few months. I’ve disturbed conservationists and scientists on their holidays. One ecologist on Kangaroo Island was telling me what was going on while she and her children evacuated her house from the threat of a fire. The climate crisis comes up in every conversation.

We have upheld our editorial independence in the face of the disintegration of traditional media – with social platforms giving rise to misinformation, the seemingly unstoppable rise of big tech and independent voices being squashed by commercial ownership. The Guardian’s independence means we can set our own agenda and voice our own opinions. Our journalism is free from commercial and political bias – never influenced by billionaire owners or shareholders. This makes us different. It means we can challenge the powerful without fear and give a voice to those less heard.

In both countries, the public initially resisted and then complied, in part because the information flowing from officials at every level was largely consistent.

Playing their own versions of explainer in chief, Mr. Morrison has veered toward conservative radio, while Ms. Ardern prefers Facebook Live. But they’ve both received praise from scientists for listening and adapting to evidence.

“It’s a case of politicians just not being in the way,” said Ian Mackay, an immunologist at the University of Queensland who has been involved in response planning for the pandemic. “It’s a mix of things, but I think it comes down to taking advice based on expertise.”

Australia and New Zealand have squashed the curve

Australia, a nation of 25 million people that had been on track for 153,000 cases by Easter, has recorded a total of 6,670 infections and 78 deaths. It has a daily growth rate of less than 1 percent, with per capita testing among the highest in the world.

New Zealand’s own daily growth rate, after soaring in March, is also below 1 percent, with 1,456 confirmed cases and 17 deaths. It has just 361 active cases in a country of five million.

These figures put the two countries closer to Taiwan and South Korea, which have controlled the virus’s spread for now, than to the United States and Europe — even places seen as success stories, like Germany.

That collaboration set the tone. Many of the state and local task forces spurred on by Mr. Morrison’s early action have stayed in constant contact, drawing in academics who independently started to model the virus’s spread

The government then opened the budgetary floodgates to support suffering workers and add health care capacity. When infections started climbing, many of the labs and hospitals hired second and third rounds of scientists to help.

It all started with scientists. In Australia, as soon as China released the genetic code for the coronavirus in early January, pathologists in public health laboratories started sharing plans for tests. In every state and territory, they jumped ahead of politicians.

The newly formed national cabinet has delivered a surprising level of consensus for a country with a loose federal system subject to high levels of discord among state premiers, whose roles and powers resemble those of American governors.

Dr. Michael Baker, a physician and professor at the University of Otago in Wellington, became a prominent voice outside the government pushing for elimination of the virus, not just its suppression.

In Australia, officials are mostly discussing elimination in private, as a potential side effect of a strategy they still describe as suppression

elimination would be a “nirvana” scenario — an achievement that would be tough to maintain without indefinite bans on international travel or 14-day quarantines until a vaccine arrives.

Like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the American government’s scientific response, they are known for extensive public health pedigrees, calm demeanors and no-nonsense adherence to facts.

He and others like him at the local level are key factors in a revival of trust in government that has appeared in poll after poll lately, even as the two countries’ economies have cratered and people have been told to severely restrict their lives.

some scientists wonder if eliminating the virus with good management might rebuild some faith not just in democracy, but also in the value of expertise.

“Maybe we’ll see the return of science,” Dr. Mackay added. “I doubt it, but who knows.”

America's daily new cases topped 100,000 on Wednesday, and its death toll exceeds 234,000, a staggering figure even accounting for its greater population than Australia, which has recorded 907 deaths.

Meanwhile, in the United States, 52,049 people are hospitalized and 10,445 are in an ICU

No new cases were reported on the island continent Thursday, and only seven since Saturday, besides travelers in hotel quarantine. Eighteen patients are hospitalized with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. One is in an intensive care unit. Melbourne, the main hotbed of Australia's outbreak that recently emerged from lockdown, has not reported a case since Oct. 30.

Australia provides a real-time road map for democracies to manage the pandemic. Its experience, along with New Zealand's, also shows that success in containing the virus isn't limited to East Asian states (Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan) or those with authoritarian leaders (China, Vietnam).

Several practical measures contributed to Australia's success

The country chose to quickly and tightly seal its borders, a step some others, notably in Europe, did not take.

Health officials rapidly built up the manpower to track down and isolate outbreaks.

And unlike the U.S. approach, all of Australia's states either shut their domestic borders or severely limited movement for interstate and, in some cases, intra­state travelers.

Perhaps most important, though, leaders from across the ideological spectrum persuaded Australians to take the pandemic seriously early on and prepared them to give up civil liberties they had never lost before, even during two world wars.

"We told the public: 'This is serious; we want your cooperation,' 

A lack of partisan rancor increased the effectiveness of the message

The conservative prime minister, Scott Morrison, formed a national cabinet with state leaders — known as premiers — from all parties to coordinate decisions

Political conflict was largely suspended, at least initially, and many Australians saw their politicians working together to avert a health crisis.

"Regardless of who you vote for, most Australians would agree their leaders have a real care for their constituents and a following of science," McLaws said. "I think that helped dramatically.

Australians' willingness to conform — especially in Melbourne, where residents endured a lengthy state-ordered lockdown — reflects political attitudes that differ from those in parts of the United States

In a nation where compulsory voting produces conventionally center-left or center-right political leaders, governments tend to be regarded as the solution to society's problems rather than the cause.

Australia's national response was led by Health Minister Greg Hunt, a former McKinsey & Co. management consultant and a Yale University graduate. Hunt and Morrison worked with the state premiers, who hold responsibility for on-the-ground health policy, to develop a common approach to the pandemic.

The government closed Australia's borders to travelers from China on Feb. 1, the same day as the Trump administration in the United States. But unlike the Trump administration, which has criticized its primary infectious-disease adviser, Anthony S. Fauci, Hunt relied heavily on health experts from the start.

"In January and February, we were focused on containing the risk of a catastrophic outbreak," Hunt said in an interview. "We had a clear strategic plan, which was the combination of containment and capacity-building."

"We closed the border and concentrated on testing, tracing and social distancing," he added. "We built up our capacity to fight the virus in primary and aged care and hospitals. We invested in ventilators, and vaccine and treatment research."

Hunt's department oversaw the purchase of huge amounts of protective equipment and clothing, including masks, which became mandatory on Aug. 2 in the state of Victori

After a sick doctor in his 70s treated more than 70 people in the city before being diagnosed, Hunt accelerated a 10-year plan to phase in video consultations with physicians. Within 10 days, almost anyone in Australia could see a doctor over the Internet under Australia's highly subsidized health-care system, including psychiatrists.

When private hospitals said they were in danger of going broke because non-urgent surgery had been canceled, the government stepped in with emergency funding, securing beds that could be used for coronavirus patients.

In private, Hunt swapped ­practical stories with his wife, Paula Hunt, a former infectious-diseases nurse who kept a 1995 bestseller by U.S. science journalist Laurie Garrett, "The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance," on her bedside table, he said.

While opinion polls show strong support for the tough measures, many people have been badly affected. Australia entered its first recession in 29 years, small businesses have closed, and reports of depression are up. On Tuesday, an anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne turned violent. Police arrested 404 people.

for a time, it appeared Australia's early success was imperiled, after lax security at hotels in Melbourne that were housing returned travelers led to a second outbreak in July. By August, more than 700 cases a day were diagnosed. It looked like Australia could lose control of the virus.

Almost all public life in Melbourne ended. After 111 days of lockdown, the number of average daily cases fell below five. On Oct. 28, state officials allowed residents to leave their homes for any reason.

Australia currently bans its citizens and residents from overseas travel, a decision that has been particularly tough on its 7.5 million immigrants.

Most Australians will have access to a vaccine by the middle of next year, Hunt said, a major step toward allowing them to travel.

His latest Twitter post, though, set a new bar for China’s long-running flouting of diplomatic niceties, foreign policy experts said

“It was a deranged move by the standards of modern diplomacy,” said James Laurenceson, the director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney.

After the document was released, Chinese officials said they also planned to draw attention to Australia’s treatment of its Indigenous people and of older residents in nursing homes — an answer to Australia’s criticism of China’s treatment of Uighurs, a Muslim minority, and its crackdown on Hong Kong.

According to the 2016 survey, 45 percent said that Australia should distance itself from the United States if Mr. Trump became president, Mr. Roggeveen said.

“We can assume that number will now rise,” said Mr. Medcalf, of Australian National University. “This incident will only intensify the damage done by Trump’s abandonment of the T.P.P., which would have been a pillar of strategic partnership as well as of trade.”

The United States operates signals intelligence and radar facilities in remote corners of Australia that are becoming more important as North Korea’s nuclear threat expand

“Australia shares raw and finished intelligence in the closest possible collaboration you can imagine,” Mr. Jennings said. “It is extremely high tech. It is something no countries can equal

China’s role in Asia and North Korea’s nuclear efforts are far more important to the United States-Australia alliance than any one telephone call, said Peter Hayes, an Australian who is the director of the Nautilus Institute, a California-based research institute on security issues. But Mr. Trump’s “ability to create chaos” has placed those important strategic questions under a “dark cloud,” he said.

“The United States has invested five decades in creating that system of alliances, and it is evident Trump is pretty ignorant of it and doesn’t care about it, to the extent he knows about it,” Mr. Hayes said.

China's embassy in Australia said Prof Hamilton had been "playing up the 'China threat' for quite some time".

It has also received sharp criticism in Australia. Prof John Keane, a University of Sydney politics expert, said the book presented a simplistic view of Chinese power and was "filled with wilful ignorance".

"It's really up to our politicians now to interpret this and act on it in a way that minimises the perception of divisiveness and xenophobia," he said.

“If this country has any conscience, it will start a healing process that starts with truth-telling,” the former Greens MP Lidia Thorpe, a Gunnai-Gunditjmara woman, told the rally.

It resisted the idea. But with Australia’s two most populous states pulling inexorably in the direction of lockdowns, with employers screaming for help, and job losses mounting everyday, wage subsidies is where the centre of gravity ultimately rested.

If people can remain connected to their jobs, and if businesses can hibernate and return in the spring with as few accumulated liabilities as possible, then the economic damage associated with this event is more likely transient than permanent.

How deep is this fiscal hole and how do we begin to recover in a budgetary sense after this shock? Honestly, who knows, and right now that is the least of our problems.

The scientists used fossil and modern coral cores to examine how frequently these events occurred back to 1240. Analysing data from 500 of those years, they found an extreme positive Indian Ocean Dipole like the one Australia experienced in 2019 was rare, occurring just 10 times.

The strongest event on the instrumental record occurred in 1997. But using the coral records the researchers were able to find another more extreme case in 1675.

The findings, published in Nature, are the largest record developed for the Indian Ocean Dipole. Other research has also suggested that Indian Ocean Dipole events have become more frequent in recent decades.

“Looking at the tropical oceans in this interconnected way improves our understanding of seasonal to decadal climate variations in regions that profoundly impact Australia,” England said.He said this could help Australia “to be better prepared for future climate risks caused by the Indian Ocean Dipole”.

“You have the second highest carbon emissions per person on Earth and you are burying your head in the sand. You aren’t a climate sceptic, you are a climate denier,” she said.

Cutting off the interview, Morgan said: “I’ve got to say: wake up. Wake up. Climate change and global warming are real and Australia right now is showing the entire world just how devastating it is.

“And for senior politicians in Australia to still pretend there’s no connection is absolutely disgraceful.”

Different species relate to fire in different ways, Costello explains. Wombats, for example, dig burrows to escape, while koalas climb into the canopy.

“When you do that, you get more productive landscapes, you get healthier plants and animals, you get regeneration, you discourage invasive elements, which are sometimes native species that might belong in the system next door.

Dr David Bowman is a professor of pyrogeography and fire science at the University of Tasmania. Bowman describes Indigenous fire management as “little fires tending the earth affectionately”.

In northern Australia, Indigenous land ownership is widespread. Caring for country and ranger programs in protected areas has delivered a degree of autonomy to traditional owners to walk the country, burning according to seasonal need and cultural knowledge.

Professor Bowman says it is possible to “blend Aboriginal with European and modern scientific approaches to create an opportunity for all land users and land owners”.

“These ‘right way’ fire days are getting fewer and fire behaviour is changing along the same lines as over east. Late season conditions are also driving more fires in unusual ways due to the climatic conditions we are currently facing.”

The Darwin centre for bushfire research at Charles Darwin University maps bushfires weekly. Since traditional burning was reintroduced on a large scale, the centre has collected enough data to show that the area of land destroyed by wildfires has more than halved, from 26.5m hectares in 2000, to just 11.5m hectares in 2019.

“It was pretty bad before that happened,” Edwards says. “It was just fires running wild across huge tracts of north Australia that nobody was doing anything about.”

“If we want to manage our natural environment properly, we need to be doing prescribed burning. There’s so much cultural knowledge out there still, and it’s being totally ignored. There’s hundreds of Indigenous rangers out there now doing this work.”

The Coag national bushfire management policy includes a commitment to “promote Indigenous Australians’ use of fire”, but Indigenous fire groups like Firesticks Alliance say they need more resources to build capacity.

In the Kimberley, the Land council holds community fire planning meetings throughout the early dry season to ensure the correct people are burning their country.

“Because in the end there’s two things which are important to [remember]: all humans have come from a fire management background in their cultures, it’s just that some cultures ended up obliterating that knowledge because of industrialisation.

“We need to encourage and promote the philosophy of Aboriginal fire practice because that’s going to be a really important pathway for sustainable fire management and also for healing because so many communities have been traumatised and shocked by the scale of the burning.”

“There’s all this canopy that’s been burnt away. We’ve got knowledge and techniques that can help heal that country in the future. It’s going to take some time. We’ve got probably two or three years before we can really be effective in some of that country because it needs to recover. But if we don’t get in there after that, then we miss our chance.”

You’ve read 5 articles in the last four months. More people than ever before are reading and supporting our journalism, in more than 180 countries around the world. And this is only possible because we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

None of this would have been attainable without our readers’ generosity – your financial support has meant we can keep investigating, disentangling and interrogating. It has protected our independence, which has never been so critical. We are so grateful.

"We considered ourselves married [in 2013], but in a legal sense we weren't," said Ms Kindt, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

ll the pre-emptive self-congratulation of “back in black” is out. The measure of success now is not the shibboleths of neoliberal philosophy, but how many lives can be spared, and how many jobs and businesses can be maintained in the face of a profound global economic shock triggered by a health crisis – which is exactly as it should be.

On Wednesday, the bodies of two men were recovered from flooded vehicles. One man, 25, died when his car was submerged in northwest Sydney. He reached an emergency operator and was on the line for 44 minutes until contact was lost,

Near Alice Springs in central Australia, tourists have flocked to Uluru, also known Ayers Rock, to catch a rare glimpse of cascading waterfalls at the reddish-orange rock formation. Park officials say 46 millimeters (1.8 inches) of rain fell there over the weekend – about a sixth of the average annual rainfall in the region. While the event isn't unprecedented, it is uncommon.

Although rivers were expected to crest on Wednesday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned that the flooding, which has been concentrated along the eastern seaboard, would not remain "just a coastal event."The Warragamba Dam, located on the western outskirts of Sydney, has been spilling the equivalent of the city's famous harbor in water each day. It's expected to continue its overflow for at least another week, threatening highly populated areas, Morrison said. "We advise that the rain and flood situation does remain dynamic and extremely complex," he said.

Darren Osmotherly, who owns the Paradise Café Pizzeria in Portland, NSW, west of Sydney, told Reuters that damage to his restaurant would likely top a half-million Australian dollars (US$380,000).

the New South Wales government is working on addressing new challenges the rain will bring — including damaging gusts of wind, flash flooding and ash and debris in water supplies

Rescuers have worked to save wildlife by dropping carrots as celebrities pledge large donations to help with fire relief efforts.

Following their meeting, Abe said the countries would enhance their coordination on activity in the disputed South China Sea and the nuclear threat posed by North Korea.

"For both of our nations, the United States remains the cornerstone of our strategic and security arrangements," Turnbull said. "And our respective alliances for the United States are as relevant and important today as they have ever been. We'll work closely with the incoming administration as we have been to advance the region's interests and our shared goals."

in those countries, it’s only gotten worse. Part of the damage in the years since has been the hardening of the lines and divisions between these tribes, between red and blue.

Their fury was not with the Liberals but with Australia. That their fellow citizens had chosen their investment properties over climate action.

There had always been the thought that such a schism couldn’t happen in Australia. If anything, we gravitate towards the middle, and for years both Liberal and Labor had such similar offerings that it hardly seemed to matter who was governing

this election was different. There was a clear choice about the future, and for the many people in the room on Saturday night, the fact that their vision for Australia’s future was not affirmed, made them feel estranged and alienated from their own country.

A man in a suit was outside talking into his phone and crying: “This country’s breaking my heart,” he said

“Are we doomed? Are we just like all the other countries where one half hates the other half’s guts?” I asked my dad. Dad said no way, and quoted Bob Hawke at me: “I want to be remembered as a bloke who loved his country and still does.”

The result is another lesson that the politics of climate change isn’t as simple as Western cultural elites claim. Labor thought that droughts, heat waves and brush fires would cause voters to embrace its climate solutions. Young people say they care about the issue, often as virtue-signaling

Faced with lost jobs, higher taxes and a higher cost of living, voters in democracies time and again have rejected climate-change policies that wouldn’t in the end matter all that much to the climate.

The Liberal-National victory shows again the importance of the economic growth message to center-right politics. Some on the American right want to abandon pro-growth policies in favor of lite versions of the left’s income redistribution schemes

The right in Australia won on the sharp contrast with the left on taxes, growth and climate change.

Asian nations are also wary of getting caught in the middle of a battle between China, a major investor and market for their goods, and the U.S., for whom they rely on for security. The U.S., for instance, has offered rhetorical support for Australia, which has seen China cut off imports of Australian coal, wine and other goods over Canberra’s call for an independent investigation of how China handled the emergence of the coronavirus.

The cabinet secretaries’ visits next week will be their first trips overseas since taking office and, the State Department said, are meant to underscore the U.S. commitment to these alliances and the region’s security.

On Friday, Mr. Biden will host a virtual summit with other leaders of the so-called Quad, a strategic group seen as a bulwark against Chinese expansionism that includes Australia, Japan and India.

Relations, strained for years, pitched down last year as the Trump administration ramped up its drive to roll back China’s global influence, bolster support for partners such as Taiwan and confront Beijing over alleged espionage, its crackdowns on Hong Kong and in the Muslim-region of Xinjiang, and other policies seen as inimical to U.S. interests.

The U.S. hasn’t named its representative but for the Chinese it will be Ma Jun, a World Bank veteran and former chief economist at the People’s Bank of China who is an expert on environmentally sustainable finance.

“I told him I will work with China when it benefits the American people,” Mr. Biden tweeted afterward. Mr. Xi also pledged cooperation and told his counterpart a confrontation between the two powers would be a disaster, according to Chinese media.

The survey, which was conducted by Beacon Research and Shaw and Company Research, also found that 28% of Americans believe the U.S. should prioritize its military resources toward Asia, compared with the Middle East, which was second at 21%.