Study on rural women: ‘If my husband dies before me, I would not stay here – I’d move’

Kathleen O'Sullivan
Dec 5, 2020
AGRILAND, IRELAND


Work, relationships and social activities are all affected by where someone lives, and a recent academic article looks at the role that living in a rural area has on women in both Ireland and Sweden.

The latest NUI Galway Whitaker Institute Policy Brief looks at an article by Alison Herbert entitled ‘What Role Does Rural Place Play in the Lives of Mid-Life Women in Sweden and Ireland?’

The academic article discusses how ‘rural place’ is a “significant influencer of the ageing and states of well-being experienced by older women”.

The article draws on two independent studies of 25 rural mid-life women (45 to 65-year-olds) in Connemara, Co. Galway, and 10 in Värmland, Sweden, that were done in recent years. The paper examined the influence of “gendered rural place” on these mid-life women.

‘A Pathway To Rural Social Isolation’

The academic article states that the data shows a “compelling need for a greater consideration of the critical and diverse role rural place plays in shaping women’s experiences of ageing and well-being both at mid-life and in older age”.
One participant, who is a native to Connemara, “underscored how climate and weather can become negative features of rurality and, when combined with diminished public transport, form a pathway to rural social isolation”.

“I would say we’re very isolated politically. We feel it here, especially during the two bad winters, even the bus couldn’t run. Then you feel isolated,” the 48-year-old said.

‘If My Husband Dies Before Me, I Would Not Stay Here’

The article said that in a few cases of participants in Connemara, they “strongly wanted to leave their rural place but could not secure agreement from their partners”.

One woman had moved with her husband from Co. Dublin to Connemara with their children. The children have now grown up and left home, leaving her feeling “very little attachment” to the area.

“The stresses here are a lot less than living in an urban environment with the traffic,” the 61-year-old acknowledged.

“It’s the clean air – we might have other problems, but we respect the environment.

“We have limited rubbish collection, so we compost, it influences how we live our lives and those of our children too – we grow our own veg.

But, if my husband dies before me, I would not stay here – I’d move. We have no public transport at all here and if I could no longer drive, I’d be trapped.

The briefing by the Whitaker Institute on this article notes that the studies drew “on the social representation model in which rurality becomes the meanings attached to it: rural becomes defined through the senses and aesthetics; such as slower pace of life, greater sense of space, and an increased sense of intimacy”.

“The Sweden study shows a marked appreciation of the environment and its biotic and abiotic qualities, which helped to bond rural women to place.

“Most participants of both studies self-identified as ‘rural women’, whether native to their area or in-migrant.”

Women In Sweden Held ‘Stronger Affiliations’ To Their Rural Environment

The women in the Sweden study held “stronger affiliations” to their rural environment. They “more purposely incorporated their natural environments in order to enhance feelings of well-being”.

In contrast, participants from the Ireland study praised Connemara’s qualities, such as healthy clean air, but mostly fell short of utilising their environments actively.

“There are likely to be a number of reasons for this, including a perception of busier working lives and less discretionary time among the Ireland participants, but also perhaps from sociocultural norms, including Sweden’s ‘outdoor’ ethos in comparison to that of Ireland.

“Crucially, Sweden’s participants anticipated relatively high well-being in older age in comparison to Ireland’s, attributable in the main to state supports for housing and health.”
The brief concludes that policymakers should consider “what constitutes the components of a positive rural place identity if they wish to encourage rural repopulation”.

“Policy must also address the rural issues that may negate strong place identity and attachment, including perceptions of social isolation from critical networks; geographic loneliness; and social exclusion from mainstream socioeconomic services.”

International Day of Rural Women: ‘The role of women on farms isn’t even recognised by themselves’

Kathleen O'Sullivan
Oct 15, 2020
AGRILAND, IRELAND



“The role of women on farms isn’t recognised enough by anyone…not even by the women themselves.”

Today (Thursday, October 15) is International Day of Rural Women and, around the globe, the crucial role women play in agriculture and rural and community life is being celebrated.

While national statistics show very few women work in agriculture in Ireland, the work done by women on family farms “is a lot more” than is realised.

Women In Agriculture In Ireland

In the recently published Annual Review and Outlook 2020 of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, it shows that at a European scale, the number of women in farming has been slowly increasing.

According to the department’s client database, 16% of the registered farmers in 2019 were women (25,400). 55% (13,849) of female farm owners were over 60 in 2019 with 14% of these aged over 80.

The Central Statistics Office Labour Force Survey showed that in 2019, 13% of workers in the primary agriculture, forestry and fishing sector were female.
Teagasc Survey

Aisling Molloy, an advisor with Teagasc, undertook a study two years ago on women and their role in agriculture. She said that there was an “obvious lack of recognition of the work that women contribute to farms, particularly by themselves, as 64% of the women who classified themselves as ‘not working on a farm’ carried out at least one farm task”.

“85% of respondents carried out farm tasks, mainly farm accounts and/or form filling, department schemes and making decisions,” Molloy added.

Molloy told AgriLand: “The biggest thing is that the role of women on farms isn’t recognised enough by anybody…even by the women themselves.

Things that they didn’t recognise as important – like paperwork and going to the co-ops – when they don’t recognise that, they don’t recognise their own value.A

“At farm events, a lot of the time, the farmer is referred to as ‘he’, and that in itself is a huge issue because obviously women can be farmers too. A lot of the time, unless you refer to them as he and she, it’s sort of masking that straight away.

“Farm ownership and names on herd numbers are low; but the percentage of women working on farms is huge.”
Women Do More Unpaid Work And Are Still The Main Carer In The Family

Irish Rural Network, the national network which aims to represent the interests of rural communities, told AgriLand that women are at the heart of all communities, which was highlighted in particular during the recent Covid-19 restrictions.

“In general, women do more unpaid work and are still the main carer in the family – whether this is caring for their children or caring for elderly relatives or neighbours,” Louise Lennon of Irish Rural Link said.

“However, on family farms in rural areas, women also help out on farms – again, unpaid and unrecognised by the state.

While national statistics show very few women working in agriculture, the work done by women on family farms is a lot more.

Lennon also said that women living in rural areas “do not have the same employment opportunities available to them as women in urban areas”.

“More women than men in rural areas work in sectors that generally pay minimum wage, such as retail, caring roles and in the tourism and hospitality sector,” she continued.

“A study by the Western Development Commission using Census 2016 figures showed that women account for majority of those employed in the hospitality sector in the western region, reflecting the national picture.

“55.4% of those employed in the sector were females. It is often more difficult for women to commute long distance to access higher-paid employment – due to childcare or need to care for elderly relatives.

“This is even more difficult for one-parent families (which we know the majority are headed by females) living in rural areas.”

According to the network, women living in rural areas are also at more risk than women in urban areas of poverty as they get older. This is compounded by an ageing population, with more women than men living in the country.

Irish Rural Link leads a consortium made up of The Wheel, NUI Galway and Farrelly & Co to deliver the National Rural Network – which has been looking at the “pivotal role of women” in Irish agriculture through a recent video series.

Dr. Maura Farrell from the National Rural Network and NUI Galway said that these women are “highly innovative, resilient and dedicated to farming”.

“It sends a clear message of support for women interested or embarking on a career in agriculture and, in turn, a message to farm owners that women interested in farming are capable and worthy successors of the family farm,” Dr. Farrell added.

#NIMBY

Communities end up having to take in these imposing wind farms for no good reason’

Kathleen O'Sullivan
Dec 6, 2020 AGRILAND, IRELAND


In the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, communities are ending up “having to take in these enormous, imposing wind farms for no good reason”.

This is according to Daryl Kennedy, spokesperson for the Delvin Raharney Ballivor Wind Action Group in Co. Westmeath.

The group is made up of locals trying to get “right, balanced information to the communities” before the planning applications for wind farms are lodged, which is expected next year.
Turbines are being proposed for lands at Bracklyn and Ballivor, by two different companies – Galetech and Bord na Móna.

The proposed turbines would be the largest in Ireland if permission is granted, at possible heights of around 200m.

“The community has been on alert for several years,” Kennedy tells AgriLand.

Kennedy says that he is “very much into renewable energy”, with measures in place in his own home. He says that himself, along with other members of the group, are fighting back against what “isn’t being done for the greater good”.

“If we knew a wind farm was going in place and was going to have a measurable impact on our carbon emissions, then yes, we’d go for it – but we’re taking in something which is only to meet a completely displaced demand for data centres,” Kennedy says.

“If you have an equation, you have two sides of your equal sign – on one side, you have a good reason and on the other side, you have a good solution. And we don’t have either by wind farms being developed in areas like this.”

‘The Economics Don’t Really Stack Up’

Kennedy thought back to 2013/2014, when “Pat Rabbitte was minister and there was a huge effort at that time to export electricity to the UK coming from wind energy”.

“At that time, a large number of companies jumped in to try and develop incredible numbers…we’re talking thousands of turbines across the midlands,” Kennedy continues.

Eventually it fell through…personally, I think the economics don’t really stack up. It looks good and at face value it looks like good, clean, green energy.

“Then it came around again only in the last year with Bord na Móna trying to figure out what [it’s] to do with the huge banks of land and [it] obviously decided [it] wants to get into the green renewable space.

“[It] came up with the idea, of what I would characterise as a fairly lazy idea, of just sticking up a whole load of turbines.”

‘Everything Has Gone Into Wind’

Kennedy feels the government has “put all its eggs in one basket” by “giving into the wind lobby”.

“Everything has gone into wind. On a lot of days, solar is no good, wind is no good, therefore you need to have some alternatives.

Some days there isn’t a puff of wind – there wouldn’t be a blade of grass moving.

“Years ago we were talking about exporting, whereas now, the focus is on the data centres going up around the Dublin region. Our electricity demand is going to increase because of all the data centres.

“Our electricity demand goes up, data centres want to claim green credentials and the easiest thing to go with is wind, even though you couldn’t possibly run a data centre on wind energy because it’s too intermittent, so you’d end up with this enormous increase in demand for renewables which, at the end of the day, is probably pointless.

“We end up with massive increases in wind farms and so, rural communities like ourselves here in Co. Westmeath and many other communities end up having to take in these enormous, imposing wind farms for no good reason.”

‘Use It In A Way To Regenerate Biodiversity’

Kennedy says that the development of wind farms “is far from what the community wants”.

“Retain the carbon in sinks and put something into the land which doesn’t disturb what is natural. Starting to use it in a way that will regenerate the biodiversity is far better than wind farms,” he says.

If we end up with over 35 turbines if the planning permission is granted, we’re probably talking about anything up to 4,500 trucks worth of concrete being poured into the bog.

“There are some people who would be close to the edge of it, where bog is close to farmland.

“With that possible amount of concrete put into bogs, people need to consider if this will raise water levels, is there going to be flooding, even leaching of materials from the concrete into the local water supply – these things are concerning to many people in the area.”

UK urged to follow Denmark in ending North Sea oil and gas exploration

Britain’s credibility as climate champion rests on bold and urgent action, say campaigners

Greenpeace activists protest against new oil and gas exploration in Denmark’s Dan oilfield in the North Sea last summer. Photograph: Andrew McConnell/Greenpeace/EPA


Toby Helm and Robin McKie
Sun 6 Dec 2020 THE GUARDIAN

Britain must end all oil and gas extraction in the North Sea as a matter of urgency if it is to maintain its position as a credible climate champion. That was the stark warning issued by green campaigners yesterday in the wake of last week’s decision by Denmark to halt its exploration for new North Sea reserves as part of its commitment to cut carbon emissions and tackle climate change.

The Danish decision is an embarrassment for Boris Johnson who announced last week that Britain would take a lead in the battle against global heating by cutting national carbon emissions by 68% by 2030, a rate faster than any other major economy.

However, the UK has not announced plans to end exploration in the North Sea for new gas and oil fields or to halt extraction there – despite the established link between global warming and fossil fuel extraction and burning.

By announcing its North Sea ban last week, say campaigners, Denmark has undermined Johnson’s attempt to portray himself as a world climate leader next Saturday when he is scheduled to co-host a virtual Climate Ambition summit of world leaders.

“If the UK is to be a real global climate leader, it must follow Denmark’s lead by stopping issuing new oil and gas exploration licences and delivering a managed phase-out of oil and gas extraction,” said Ken Penton, UK climate campaigner for the international NGO, Global Witness. “This must include funding a just transition for oil and gas workers and their communities to ensure they can benefit from the new green economy and do not suffer the fate of UK coal miners and their communities.”

The Danish government voted on Thursday to cancel the country’s next North Sea oil and gas licensing round, 80 years after it first began exploiting its hydrocarbon reserves. Denmark’s 55 existing platforms, spread across 20 oil and gas fields, will be allowed to continue extracting fossil fuels but the decision to end the hunt for new reserves will guarantee an end to Denmark’s fossil fuel production.

Helene Hagel from Greenpeace Denmark said the parliamentary vote would allow the country to “assert itself as a global frontrunner and inspire other countries to end our dependence on climate-wrecking fossil fuels”.

In contrast to the Danish decisions, Johnson concentrated his attention last week on issuing new targets for emissions following advice, issued by the UK’s climate change committee, that the costs of cutting them had fallen rapidly in the past few years. This would make it easier to change the UK’s target of reducing emissions by 57%, compared with 1990 levels, to a more ambitious 68% by 2030.

Johnson said the new target should boost the UK’s chances of reaching its goal of being a net zero emitter of greenhouse gases by 2050. At the same time, he outlined commitments to phase out diesel and petrol cars, boost offshore wind farms and invest in hydrogen fuel technologies.

However, critics say the plan lacks detail while business leaders have warned that considerable investment will be needed to bring about these new emission goals.

“We are going to need innovations that will help us to develop ways to store energy and exploit hydrogen as a fuel,” said Alison Doig, of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.

“These innovations may take time to develop, however. That means we will have to act very quickly over other issues such as heating inefficiencies in housing and phasing out petrol and diesel cars. There is a real urgency about this issue and we should be clear about the need to move very quickly if we want to achieve our climate goals.”

Timnit Gebru’s actual paper may explain why Google ejected her

It questioned language models similar to the ones used in Google’s Search

By Kim Lyons Dec 5, 2020 THE VERGE

Photo by Kimberly White / Getty Images for TechCrunch

A paper co-authored by former Google AI ethicist Timnit Gebru raised some potentially thorny questions for Google about whether AI language models may be too big, and whether tech companies are doing enough to reduce potential risks, according to MIT Technology Review. The paper also questioned the environmental costs and inherent biases in large language models.

Google’s AI team created such a language model— BERT— in 2018, and it was so successful that the company incorporated BERT into its search engine. Search is a highly lucrative segment of Google’s business; in the third quarter of this year alone, it brought in revenue of $26.3 billion. “This year, including this quarter, showed how valuable Google’s founding product — search — has been to people,” CEO Sundar Pichai said on a call with investors in October.

Gebru and her team submitted their paper, titled “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?” for a research conference. She said in a series of tweets on Wednesday that following an internal review, she was asked to retract the paper or remove Google employees’ names from it. She says she asked Google for conditions for taking her name off the paper, and if they couldn’t meet the conditions they could “work on a last date.” Gebru says she then received an email from Google informing her they were “accepting her resignation effective immediately.”

The head of Google AI, Jeff Dean, wrote in an email to employees that the paper “didn’t meet our bar for publication.” He wrote that one of Gebru’s conditions for continuing to work at Google was for the company to tell her who had reviewed the paper and their specific feedback, which it declined to do. “Timnit wrote that if we didn’t meet these demands, she would leave Google and work on an end date. We accept and respect her decision to resign from Google,” Dean wrote.

GEBRU IS KNOWN FOR HER WORK ON ALGORITHMIC BIAS, ESPECIALLY IN FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY

In his letter, Dean wrote that the paper “ignored too much relevant research,” a claim that the paper’s co-author Emily M. Bender, a professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington, disputed. Bender told MIT Technology Review that the paper, which had six collaborators, was “the sort of work that no individual or even pair of authors can pull off,” noting it had a citation list of 128 references.

Gebru is known for her work on algorithmic bias, especially in facial recognition technology. In 2018, she co-authored a paper with Joy Buolamwini that showed error rates for identifying darker-skinned people were much higher than error rates for identifying lighter-skinned people, since the datasets used to train algorithms were overwhelmingly white.

Gebru told Wired in an interview published Thursday that she felt she was being censored. “You’re not going to have papers that make the company happy all the time and don’t point out problems,” she said. “That’s antithetical to what it means to be that kind of researcher.”

Since news of her termination became public, thousands of supporters, including more than 1,500 Google employees have signed a letter of protest. “We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with Dr. Timnit Gebru, who was terminated from her position as Staff Research Scientist and Co-Lead of Ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) team at Google, following unprecedented research censorship,” reads the petition, titled Standing with Dr. Timnit Gebru.

“We call on Google Research to strengthen its commitment to research integrity and to unequivocally commit to supporting research that honors the commitments made in Google’s AI Principles.”

The petitioners are demanding that Dean and others “who were involved with the decision to censor Dr. Gebru’s paper meet with the Ethical AI team to explain the process by which the paper was unilaterally rejected by leadership.”

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

TOO MUCH CUTENESS 

AUSTRALIA 

Little pygmy possum discovered on Kangaroo Island after fears bushfires had wiped them out

By Mahalia Carter

Posted Yesterday at 6:59pm

Little pygmy possums are the world's smallest possums and weigh about 7 grams.(Supplied: Ashlee Benc/Kangaroo Island Land For Wildlife)

A little pygmy possum has been found on Kangaroo Island for the first time since its habitat was mostly destroyed in bushfires that burnt almost half the island.

Key points:

• Little pygmy possums live in Tasmania and small patches of SA and Victoria
• There were fears the species had been wiped out from Kangaroo Island's bushfires
• One has been discovered living on the island this week

Fauna ecologist Pat Hodgens said the discovery on the west of the South Australian island, nearly one year on from the fires, was extremely exciting.

"There's only really been 113 formal records of the species [ever on Kangaroo Island]," he said.

"So certainly not very common and, obviously, the summer bushfires burnt through much of that habitat that species had, but we were certainly hopeful that we would find them."

Little pygmy possums are mainly found in Tasmania.(Supplied: Ashlee Benc/Kangaroo Island Land For Wildlife)

Mr Hodgens said the little pygmy possum was a difficult species to find and study, given their tiny size.

The little pygmy possum, or Cercartetus lepidus, weighs a mere 7 grams.

Described as the world's smallest possum, they can primarily be found in Tasmania, along with Kangaroo Island and sometimes on mainland South Australia and Victoria.

A bushfire destroyed much of Flinders Chase National Park.(AAP: David Mariuz)

Conservation group Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife found the tiny creature earlier this week as part of a larger recovery effort in the wake of the summer bushfires.

Two people died and almost 90 homes were destroyed in the fires, with a significant amount of wildlife also killed.

A western pygmy possum (left) and a little pygmy possum found on Kangaroo Island.(Supplied: Ashlee Benc/Kangaroo Island Land For Wildlife)

Mr Hodgens said the group was completing extensive forest surveys to figure out what species were now left "to try to do everything we can to protect them to ensure that they hang around during this pretty critical time".

"It's very important now because it is kind of like the last refuge for a lot of these species that really rely on very old long, unburned vegetation," he said.

A little pygmy possum having its head measured.(Supplied: Ashlee Benc/Kangaroo Island Land For Wildlife)

More than 20 other wildlife species have been found, including a bibrons toadlet, a southern brown bandicoot and a tammar wallaby.

He said while it was great news, there were still concerns for other rare species that had not been spotted yet, such as the native swamp rat.

"We don't know a lot about that species because it is pretty rare around the island and also fairly susceptible to the wildfire events," he said.

"Even with all fauna survey efforts and camera trapping that we're doing, we're still yet to locate an individual swamp rat."

'Militant' unions are a thing of the past — just like strong wages growth

By business reporter Gareth Hutchens ABC.AU
Posted Yesterday 

The Builders Labourers Federation had a reputation as a "militant" union under Jack Mundey in the 1970s.(Twitter: @Statelibrarynsw)


One of the hardest things to learn as you get older is how difficult it is to persuade someone with facts alone.

Have a look at the graph below.

It shows how many working days have been lost to industrial disputes in Australia since early 1985.

Working days lost from industrial disputes, quarterly, '000s (thousands)

Chart: Gareth Hutchens Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics Get the data Created with Datawrapper

The most recent data is for the September quarter this year, when 11,700 working days were lost.

The peak of 699,200 days lost was in the December quarter of 1992.

Notice how something dramatic occurred after 1992 that severely reduced how many days were being lost to strikes?

That was a watershed moment in Australian industrial relations.

In 1993, the Keating Labor government passed the Industrial Relations Reform Act which legislated the full introduction of enterprise bargaining, and for the first time in Australia's history, a limited "right to strike".

Paul Keating brought in reforms that stamped out the activity of 'militant' unions in Australian workplaces.(Supplied: SMH News Picture By Staff)

In the years afterwards, the screws were tightened further with other legislative changes, cumulatively curbing workers' power.

You can see strike activity is practically on life support these days, according to the Bureau of Statistics data released last week.

Nonetheless, many people still refer to "militant unions" as though it's the 1970s, and believe unions still dominate industrial life — and politicians may find it easy to reinforce that narrative by repeating the words often enough.

Ancient wisdom knew emotion was key

Marcus Cicero, the ancient Roman politician and author, was apparently one of the most persuasive public speakers in antiquity.

He said the key to swaying audiences was to realise that humans are ruled by emotion.

If you want to persuade someone of your argument, don't appeal to logic alone; appeal to how they feel about something.

Get them feeling angry or frightened or anxious and you'll find it much easier to have them believing what you want them to believe.


"To sway the audience's emotions is victory; for among all things it is the single most important in winning verdicts," he said.

He used different techniques to persuade people.

Repetition (for obvious reasons) and pithy rhymes (because it's easier to remember something when it rhymes) were favourites.

He liked to focus on the personal defects of his opponents, whether real or imagined, so he could avoid talking about the real issues.

He also loved "labelling" his opponents with negative adjectives whenever he mentioned them, because it had a cumulative negative effect on the emotions of people in his audience.

Think of how Donald Trump does that instinctively by using "crooked Hillary", "sleepy Joe Biden", "low-energy Jeb", "cryin' Chuck Schumer", and "foul-mouthed Omar", among a long list of others.
What does this have to do with industrial strikes?

The point about declining levels of industrial disputation is merely an example of how our brains can hold tightly to a narrative about something regardless of the truth.

What is a recession and what does it mean for me?

The economy went backwards during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here's what a recession is, and what it means for you.Read more

It's something to remember next time you hear economists talking about the paltry levels of wages growth these days.

Back in 2017, long before last summer's bushfires and this year's pandemic, the Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe warned Australia's economy was suffering a "crisis" in wages growth.

He said workers should realise they could start pushing for a larger share of the economic pie because the unemployment rate was relatively low.

At that point in the economic cycle, Australia's unemployment rate was sitting at a four-year low of 5.5 per cent but the trend underemployment had just risen to an historic high of 8.8 per cent.

"At some point, one imagines that's going to lead to workers being prepared to ask for larger pay rises," Dr Lowe said.

"If that were to happen it would be a good thing."

Share of national income going to workers keeps declining

Dr Lowe's comments came after the Bureau of Statistics released data showing the share of national income going to Australia's workers was close to a 50-year low.

The data showed the share of gross domestic product (GDP) being distributed via wages had fallen to 51.5 per cent, down from 54.2 per cent in the third quarter of 2016, while the share of GDP flowing into the hands of business had risen from 24.5 per cent to 27.5 per cent.

Economist Paul Dales from Capital Economics wrote a note to clients at the time explaining that as a share of GDP the compensation of Australian workers was sitting near the bottom of the international table.


"Back in 1975, Australian households received a bigger share of the economic pie than households in the US, France and New Zealand," Mr Dales wrote.

"But the downward trend in labour's share of GDP over the past 40 years has been more marked in Australia than in those other countries, apart from New Zealand."

Mr Dales said workers in many industrialised countries had seen their share of the economic pie dwindle in recent decades, and it was mainly due to structural changes that reduced the bargaining power of workers, including globalisation, increased flexibility in labour markets, and improved technical innovation, which had reduced firms' cost curves.

He said the rise in the importance of mining in Australia had also played a part, because modern mining generated relatively large profits with relatively few workers.

Fast forward to this year

New data last week showed the share of national income going to Australia's workers has just hit another low.

In the June quarter, the labour share of national income fell below 50 per cent for the first time since 1959 after the Federal Government's COVID stimulus payments to businesses caused company profits jump by a massive 14.9 per cent.

That trend continued in the September quarter, with the profit share lifting to another high and the wages share stuck well below 50 per cent for the second consecutive quarter.

Graph showing share of national income going to companies via profits and workers via wages.(Supplied: ABC, Macrobond, ANZ Research)

"This means many businesses have buffers to draw on over coming months, but it also raises issues about the targeting of further measures to support the economy," ANZ senior economist Felicity Emmett wrote in a note to clients last week.

"Strong profit growth has not translated into stronger investment. At least not yet.

"Non-mining investment fell 3.5 per cent in the third quarter to be 13 per cent lower than a year ago. Mining investment also fell [5.2 per cent in the quarter].


"The outlook remains uncertain. While the Government is trying to boost investment with large incentives like the instant asset write-off, firms are yet to commit.

"We expect, though, over time, a recovery in household consumption will feed through to stronger investment outcomes."

So, ANZ's economics team believes that despite the percentage of total factor income going to the commercial sector sitting at record levels in Australia, business investment will pick up noticeably once households start spending more.

Greens leader Adam Bandt would rather government money be funneled into public services and infrastructure rather than the JobKeeper program.

(ABC News: Luke Stephenson)

Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt told the ABC that direct investment in public services and infrastructure would have provided far more effective stimulus than business subsidies in these circumstances.

"The Government's trickle-down approach to recovery has seen profits grow while jobs and wages drop," Mr Bandt said.


"The handouts to big business while cutting support to everyday people means Australia is coming out of the pandemic more unequal than when we went into it."
Federal Government to push for more industrial relations changes

Federal parliament sits this week for the final time this year.

Recovery is a long way off for wages and jobs

The recession may technically be ending but it will take much longer for Australia's economy to get back to where it was before the pandemic, as wages stagnate, unemployment remains high and cuts to Government subsidies loom, Stephen Long writes.

The Federal Government is expected to announce plans to give employers hit by the COVID shutdowns, such as retailers, more powers to offer their part-time workers extra hours without paying overtime rates.

They also want to make it easier for business to change workers' duties and location of work more easily.

It will be sold as a way to support the economic recovery on the other side of the pandemic.

The proposed changes mirror the emergency flexibility provisions enjoyed by employers who accessed JobKeeper this year, but to allay workers' concerns that the provisions in the bill will be made permanent there will reportedly be a two-year limit on some of them.

However, unions fear the bill will be a trojan horse for more casualisation of the workforce.

SPACE RACE 2.0

Chinese Spacecraft Dock in Lunar Orbit for Transfer of Moon Samples – Next Stop, Earth!

Chang’e-5’s orbiter approaches the lunar ascent module for docking. 

Credit: CNSA / CLEP

POSTED ON DECEMBER 5, 2020 BY ALAN BOYLE

Two robotic Chinese spacecraft have docked in lunar orbit for the first time ever, in preparation for sending samples from the Moon to Earth.

The lunar ascent module for China’s Chang’e-5 mission was captured by the metal claws of the mission’s orbiter at 5:42 a.m. Beijing time December 6th (2142 UTC December 5th), the China National Space Administration reported.

Over the half-hour that followed, a canister containing lunar material was safely transferred to the orbiter’s attached Earth-return capsule. In the days ahead, the ascent module will be jettisoned, and the orbiter will fire its thrusters to carry the return capsule back toward Earth.

If all proceeds according to plan, the orbiter will drop off the return capsule for its descent to Inner Mongolia sometime around December 16th, with the exact timing dependent on the mission team’s analysis of the required trajectory. That would mark the first return of fresh material from the Moon since the Soviet Luna 24 spacecraft accomplished the feat back in 1976.

The rendezvous marked the latest milestone in a historic mission that began less than two weeks ago with Chang’e-5’s launch. It took only a few days for the 8.2-metric-ton craft to reach lunar orbit, and a couple of days more to proceed with the descent of Chang’e-5’s lander and ascent module.

After a successful touchdown in a region known as Oceanus Procellarum, the lander used a drill as well as a robotic arm equipped with a scoop to dig up enough lunar regolith to fill a sample container in the ascent module. On December 3rd, the ascent module blasted off and headed for the orbital rendezvous.

Andrew Jones, a journalist based in Finland who’s been tracking every step of Chang’e-5’s mission, said in a tweet that the successful rendezvous and docking was a “massive step towards bringing home fresh lunar samples.”

The mission is significant not only for its technical successes, but for its scientific promise as well. The lunar landing site’s basaltic rocks are thought to have been formed 1.2 billion years ago, which is relatively recent in geological terms. Chang’e-5’s samples could be the youngest material ever brought back from the Moon – and they could thus shed new light on the geological evolution of the Earth-Moon system.

It’s been a big week for extraterrestrial sample return: In addition to Chang’e-5’s exploits, Japan’s Hayabusa 2 probe successfully dropped off samples from an asteroid at the end of a six-year round trip.

SPACE RACE 2.0

Japan retrieves asteroid samples in hunt for origins of planets

By Stanley White, Melanie Burton
DECEMBER 5, 2020

TOKYO/MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Japan has retrieved a capsule of asteroid dust from Australia’s remote outback after a six-year mission that may help uncover more about the origins of the planets and water, the Asian nation’s space agency said on Sunday.

 

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Hayabusa2's capsule carrying the first extensive samples of an asteroid lit up as it enters the earth's atmosphere while it is observed at Coober Pedy, Australia, in this photo taken by Kyodo December 6, 2020. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS

The mission of the Japanese spacecraft, Hayabusa2, spotlights Asia’s growing role in space exploration, with a Chinese robotic vehicle collecting lunar samples last week for the first time since the 1970s.

A helicopter flew the capsule from the unmanned craft, containing the first extensive samples of asteroid dust, from the landing site in Australia’s desert to a domestic research facility of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

“The probe landed on the asteroid twice, and the second time it created an artificial crater and collected some debris,” agency president Hiroshi Yamakawa told a news conference.

“I hope this will shed light on how the solar system was formed and how water was brought to Earth.”

The capsule may also contain some gas, which will be extracted in Australia, Yamakawa added.

The spacecraft, launched in 2014 from Japan’s Tanegashima space centre, journeyed for four years to the asteroid Ryugu, where it gathered a sample and headed home in November 2019.

Spectators gathered at a theatre near the Japanese capital of Tokyo to view the return clapped and waved banners in NHK footage, with one woman in tears. They wore masks and kept a distance from each other as precautions against the coronavirus.

Asteroids are believed to have formed at the dawn of the solar system, and scientists say the sample may contain organic matter that could have contributed to life on Earth.

“What we are really doing here is trying to sample this pristine rock that has not been irradiated by the sun,” astrophysicist Lisa Harvey-Smith told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Gases trapped in the rock samples could reveal more about conditions prevailing about 4.6 billion years ago, she added.

The retrieval of the capsule also highlights close technical cooperation between Japan and Australia.

“Our job supporting JAXA will not be complete until we see the sample... safely leaves Australia and returns to Japan,” Megan Clark, head of the Australian Space Agency, told the news conference.

“And then the sample will start to tell its stories and reveal to us some wonderful signs about how water arrived on our Earth and how we even may have been formed, such as our organics, carbon-based animals, humans, and plants.”

Japan’s craft, named for the peregrine falcon, a bird of prey, orbited above the asteroid for a few months to map its surface before landing. It used small explosives to blast a crater and collected the resulting debris.

After Hayabusa2 dropped off the capsule, it changed course and headed back into space.

The capsule lit up on re-entry into the atmosphere early on Sunday and landed in the Woomera restricted area, about 460 km (285 miles) north of Adelaide, the space agency said.

Reporting by Melanie Burton; Editing by William Mallard and Clarence Fernandez

Japan’s Hayabusa2 Capsule Successfully Returns Rare Asteroid Ryugu Samples to Earth
DECEMBER 5, 2020

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) celebrated its successful Hayabusa2 mission as a specialized capsule dropped off rare asteroid samples – 100 milligrams to be exact – before moving on to the next part of its extended mission of visiting more space rocks. These samples come from Ryugu, a half-mile-wide asteroid that travels through our solar system up to 131 million miles from the sun. Hayabusa-2 was first launched in 2014 with the aim of collecting the first sample of material from below an asteroid’s surface. 

Asteroids are essentially the leftovers of our early solar system, 4.5 billion years ago, and what scientists may discover in these primitive space rocks could answer a lot of questions about the solar system’s history. Ryugu, a C-type asteroid, is rich with organic carbon molecules, like water, and amino acids, which are the building blocks for proteins that were important to the evolution of life on Earth.

Organic materials are the origins of life on Earth, but we still don’t know where they came from. We are hoping to find clues to the origin of life on Earth by analyzing details of the organic materials brought back by Hayabusa2,” said Makoto Yoshikawa, a Hayabusa2 project mission manager.