Brodie Emery

What does it mean to be Australian?  Australia Day gives us a chance to reflect as a nation not only about what makes us great, but also to look back and learn from some darker moments in our history.  As a nation, we have been a spectacular success in many areas, while there are still ways we can improve.

Our nation is a land built on immigration - 97.5% of us descend from ancestors that immigrated here at some point within the past 225 years.  We have built on this and are defined by our multiculturalism.  Each wave of immigration has enriched our culture, whether it be Italian, Greek, Vietnamese, Chinese or one of many others.  There have been some hiccups along the way, but we get along pretty well when compared to most other nations, few of which can claim the diversity we can.  We have built incredible wealth over 200 years through successive mining booms and world-class education.  We have become a world leader in medicine and science and continuously overachieve in the sporting arena.  We have a lot to be proud of.

This does not mean we should stand still.  There are many things we can improve on.  Our indigenous people still often don’t get the recognition they deserve as the original owners of the land which was taken from them after European settlement, and the most vulnerable in our society - refugees, children, the disabled and our homeless are often forgotten. We are still unequal in many ways - many loving couples cannot marry, and women are still paid less than their male counterparts. In recent times, our environmental record has been unsatisfactory for a nation with such wealth and opportunity to move beyond old, outdated practices.  But united we can move forward, and we are lucky enough to be in a position to address these issues so long as the willpower is there.

It upsets me to see the way our national day has been hijacked by some in recent years.  Australia Day should not be White Australia Day.  Nor will it be Citizens Day or Invasion day. While some may argue it should be set on a different day, Australia Day gives us a chance to reflect on the good and the bad, and how we can each contribute to keep us on the right track moving forward.  

It gives us a chance to congratulate and be inspired by those who have done an exceptional job to make Australia a better place, like Australian of the Year Ita Buttrose, Senior Australian of the Year Ian Maddocks and Young Australian of the year Akram Azimi.  We can all do our bit.  

However you choose to spend today - whether it be at the beach, with family, listening to the year’s finest music on our national radio station, or working to keep the country moving, Happy Australia Day.

The rise in online media in recent years has been a boon for those seeking an independent and alternative source of information outside mainstream news outlets. With such a wealth of information at our fingertips, we are able to become at least moderately informed about any topic within minutes. While this independence brings with it more freedom and flexibility in the issues reported, it also can allow incorrect and downright dangerous anti-science beliefs to take hold, particularly among individuals and groups with limited knowledge or skills required to critically analyse information presented.

Two examples of an anti-science movements that have gained prominence in recent years are the extremely vocal anti-vaccination lobby and climate change denial. Dangerously, both have taken a strong hold in recent years despite an overwhelming body of scientific evidence to the contrary.  Two possible reasons for this are a lack of scientific education and knowledge, or simply complete ignorance in support of an agenda or prejudiced viewpoint.  In a world that science has greatly improved, we can’t afford to succumb to such viewpoints or we risk going backwards as a society.

The anti-vaccination lobby has been around for a number of years but has grown in strength and voice in recent years with the rise of various online ‘information’ sites, which has seen in a dangerous decline in children’s vaccination rates in Australia to 83% of four year olds - well below the 90% level that ensures community wide protection. This has coincided with an increase in whooping cough cases in recent years from 332 in 1991, to 38601 cases in 2011 (many due to a new, vaccine resistant strain of the disease). The importance of being vaccinated is highlighted by a comparative study published in the American Journal of Pediatrics which found vaccine refusers are 23 times more likely than vaccine accepters to contract Whooping Cough (Glanz et al. 2009) - a strong indication of the effectiveness of immunisation. 

There are a number of other ‘facts’ put forward by the anti vaccination lobby which are not substantiated by evidence or worse, are contrary to scientific evidence.  The Australian Academy of Science recently released a publication debunking many of the myths pushed by the anti-vaccination lobby, including the downright incorrect link between vaccination and autism.   

This is not to say that vaccinations do not come without side effects, but when weighed against the risks of not being immunised these side effects pale into insignificance.  An un-immunised child contracting measles is 2000 times more likely to develop encephalitis as a complication in comparison to the risk associated with being immunised.

In scientific circles, vaccination is one of the triumphs of modern medicine.  In spite of the evidence, incorrect ideas still take hold to the detriment of children like New Zealand’s Alijah Williams, who recently contracted tetanus and now faces months in hospital after being refused vaccination by his parents. As a society, we owe it to our children to ensure that these diseases are not given a chance and remain a thing of the past.

You can read the Australian Acadamy of Science publication here: http://www.science.org.au/policy/immunisation.html. 

Climate Change is front and centre of public discussion again after the tragic effects of Hurricane Sandy in North America.  One of the unfortunate traits of humanity as a whole is that we are still a very reactive species, and sometimes it takes a major disaster to spur action on any given issue.  I am still doubtful whether Sandy is enough of a wake up call.

While it is hard to pinpoint climate change as the cause for a single event, there is one thing most scientists agree on - that climate change systematically caused or worsened Hurricane Sandy, in much the same way that smoking systematically causes lung cancer, or poor diet systematically causes diabetes.

Some effects are relatively obvious in exacerbating the effects of Sandy - the abnormally high sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic fueling the superstorm. Other effects are more subtle - a high pressure ridge in the absence of the semi-permanent low pressure system over the Arctic this year most likely as a result of the sea ice melt resulted in Sandy making landfall where it usually would have been pushed out sea, causing minimal damage. In Australia, we are seeing the effects also - more severe storms, heat waves and bush fires have been a more common theme in recent years.

These kinds of event are no longer the work of climate models - they are happening now.  An interesting study from NASA recently highlighted this - changes in atmospheric humidity are in line with the worst-case scenario climate models - that is, we are looking at a five degree rise in temperature by the end of the century (we have so far seen around 0.8 degrees). The consequences of this are extensive and catastrophic, what we have seen recently across the globe is just the beginning.

We can no longer sit on our hands and take a wait and see approach.  The future is now, and the more we delay, the more the costs will increase.  It makes both environmental and economic sense to act now, so why not do something about it?

Some days you just don’t know what to make of life. All it seems is that it is one endless inescapable cycle - eat, sleep, and a few more trivial things in between. Meaning is lost, and we forever live in hope that something is going to save us and break the mould, presenting us with some fresh air to breathe into what is otherwise a stale existence. In doing so, we miss the true magic that our lives can offer, and we forget that every day there are hundreds of these trivial things in between eating and sleeping that would paint each day with brighter colours and fill our hearts with happiness. Life goes on however, and we dare not forget to dream what it may be like to grace the pages of tabloid magazines and live the life of kings and queens basking under constant sunshine in a land of infinite prosperity, where everybody can claim to be somebody. As a result we gradually become more insecure and introverted, afraid and losing our sense of self because of the constant bombardment from all angles telling us who we should be, taking the dream further from our reach but making it more attractive as the message is reinforced that our lives aren’t as good as they really are. One can only live in hope that our collective consciousness can be raised enough so that as a whole we can all live our very own dreams that we have right now in the palm of our hand, that we pass by every day in search of what does not exist.