Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marlene Longbottom, Associate Professor, Indigenous Education & Research Centre, James Cook University

This article contains information on deaths in custody and the violence experienced by First Nations people in encounters with the Australian carceral system. It also contains references to and the names of people who are now deceased.

As the country reels from women being killed due to violence, government has responded by calling urgent meetings and roundtables to address this national crisis. This must properly include Indigenous women, who experience shocking levels of family and domestic violence, and sexual assault.

It must be recognised women are not a homogenous, collective group. The issues experienced by non-Indigenous women are not always the same as those experienced by Indigenous women. As such, it is imperative the voices of Indigenous survivors, researchers and advocates in addressing violence are fully heard and respected in the current debate.

According to recent research led by Kyllie Cripps, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are 32 times more likely to be hospitalised for injury associated with violence than non-Indigenous women. They are eight times more likely to be a victim of homicide. This figure is higher in some areas, such as Western Australia, which recorded Aboriginal mothers as 17.5 times more likely to be a victim of homicide.

Recently, the Domestic Family and Sexual Violence Commission convened an emergency roundtable. However, we are still concerned the outcomes of the roundtable do not respond to the serious and ongoing structural and systemic barriers Indigenous women face.

There are also concerns a significant investment recently announced in Western Australia will not support Indigenous women. They’re based largely on an expansion of existing services, police, child protection and corrections, and non-Indigenous service responses. These decisions were made contrary to the states own Aboriginal family violence policy and in the absence of research or evidence base.

Potentially harmful reforms

Indigenous women’s sustained advocacy, as well as coronial inquests, and the senate inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, have all shone a light on how Indigenous women and children experience violence at alarming rates, even after formal inquiries and royal commissions over the past two decades.

However, as was identified in the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Queensland Police Service’s responses to domestic and family violence, reforms are often reactive and short lived. Key recommendations have been ignored, while governments have made services mainstream.

White feminists have pursued a law and order agenda that has been proven not only to be ineffectual, but potentially even harmful to Indigenous women. For example, coercive control laws risk misidentifying Indigenous women as the perpetrators of violence for not presenting as “ideal victims”.

As Aboriginal women with lived experience of violence, we continue to point out the urgency of addressing the abhorrent rates of violence through the inclusion of our voices at national forums. For years, Indigenous researchers, survivors, advocates and allies have called for action. This advocacy, and expertise, is often overlooked.

Failures of policing

Governments promise to address the issue. Emergency services promise to do better. Yet in coronial inquests, inquiries and specialist investigations, we continue to see the services with the mandate to protect the community failing Indigenous women. Indigenous women are reluctant to call the police for many reasons, including ongoing racism and prejudice.

Indigenous women know police may not take their reporting of violence seriously. This is common knowledge in Indigenous communities. Calls are often downgraded in urgency or not responded to at all, even after a victim has repeatedly calling triple zero for support. In many cases, Aboriginal women are wrongly identified as perpetrators, situations that have also resulted in their being murdered.

The Northern Territory coroner is currently examining the role systemic racism played in the murders of four Aboriginal women. The Queensland Commission of Inquiry also found racism, misogyny and sexism contributed to the negative experiences of victim-survivors. Cripps further found in her study coroners have previously identified systemic racism as being significant in the deaths of Indigenous women.

And while Aboriginal women are at an elevated risk of violence and homicide, culturally safe family and domestic violence services are critically underfunded or non-existent. This is neglectful. The National Family Violence Prevention and Legal Services has funding tied to federal government cycles and is unable to meet demand. It’s currently awaiting the government’s response to a review into the National Legal Assistance Program. This was finalised in March and called for an increase in recurrent funding to enable their services to provide crucial support to Indigenous women and children nationally.

One size doesn’t fit all

Indigenous women have long argued for systemic reforms that address the underlying drivers of violence, support victim-survivors, ensure justice and demand accountability for offenders. This means not every support service can be for all women. They need to be tailored to meet the specific needs of Indigenous women.

The presumption that one size fits all omits the unique factors in different communities across the nation. For example, some regional and remote communities face significant difficulties in accessing telecommunication services. At the same time, the connectedness of cities doesn’t automatically make support easily accessible.

The lives of Indigenous women are at further risk with delays due to distance and access to funds to escape unsafe situations. This was demonstrated through evidence supplied to the Queensland Commission of Inquiry. It found a high likelihood of death in some remote areas. Centralised call centres can be thousands of kilometres away, delaying access to help.

Research jointly led by Marlene Longbottom found accessible services need to ensure Indigenous women are not retraumatised as they share their stories. We should also remember the first responders in these situations are ultimately families. As a result of helping a woman fleeing a violent situation, families also become targets for perpetrators and their networks.

A key deterrent to reporting violence is that police are mandatory reporters of child abuse. Indigenous women know if they report violence against them, police and child protection working together can decide children are at risk and remove them into state care. There is a real risk of child removal as a consequence for Indigenous women who report violence, causing immense harm and trauma to mothers and their children.

While there have been changes that include service integrations and high-risk teams, the implementation of these services can often let Indigenous women down because they are not based on their needs.

As Indigenous women are rightly reluctant to seek support, systems continue violence. Not only must Indigenous women consider the safety of themselves and their children, they also have to navigate multiple services. These service systems are often challenging and overwhelming, and can also offer contradictory advice. This makes decision-making difficult.

When it comes to sexual assault, there are virtually no culturally appropriate services available to Indigenous women and girls, who are at high risk of such violence. According to the World Health Organization, one in three Indigenous women globally will be a victim of rape in their lives. This is certainly true of First Nations women and girls in Australia.

Increasingly, our homicide research is finding links between sexual violence perpetration and subsequent domestic and family violence deaths. It is crucial more research is done in this space to ensure we are identifying casual links and preventive opportunities.

Growing the knowledge base

A recent study by Hannah McGlade with the Australian National Research Organisation on Women (ANROWS), highlights the violence as systemic and structural, also constituting Indigenous femicide. Research on murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls by Indigenous researchers has been neglected by the state, yet is critical to understanding and responding effectively.

Greater investment is required in research by Indigenous researchers. We are part of a new research initiative that aims to address this knowledge gap.

Given the lack of government action over many years, Aboriginal women, including the former Social Justice Commissioner, have led national policy change. Indigenous women’s calls for a separate national action plan, also supported by United Nations treaty bodies and experts, were finally heard.

This plan must be underpinned by Indigenous-led efforts in each state and territory, and including the establishment where needed of Aboriginal family and domestic violence state peak bodies. We say again “nothing about us, without us” and call for genuine engagement with the state and sector. There’s a lot of work to do to save the lives of First Nations women and it must start now.

Marlene Longbottom is a DAATSIA Research Fellow funded by the Australian Research Council.

Hannah McGlade is affiliated with the Noongar Family Safety and Wellbeing Council.

Kyllie Cripps receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other state governments to conduct research and evaluations.

– ref. Indigenous women are most affected by domestic violence but have struggled to be heard. It’s time we listened – https://theconversation.com/indigenous-women-are-most-affected-by-domestic-violence-but-have-struggled-to-be-heard-its-time-we-listened-229720

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Tuesday’s budget will respond to the deepening public agitation over Australia’s housing shortages by pouring new money into crisis accommodation for women and children, social housing and infrastructure.

A specially-convened national cabinet late Friday ticked off on the package, much of which is delivered through the states and territories.

It allocates $1 billion for crisis and transitional accommodation for women and children fleeing domestic violence, and youth under the National Housing Infrastructure Facility.

This includes increasing the proportion of grants for this investment from $175 million to $700 million in the budget to support crisis and transitional housing.

In the debate over violence against women that has taken centre stage in recent weeks, there have been constant calls for more accommodation to enable women to leave dangerous situations.

A further $1 billion is to be provided to “get homes built sooner”. This will be money for states and territories for roads, sewers, energy, water and other community infrastructure.

The government also announced a new $9.3 billion five year national agreement, starting July 1, on social housing and homelessness.

This is for states and territories to address homelessness, provide crisis support, and build and repair social housing. It includes a doubling of Commonwealth homelessness funding to $400 million annually, matched by state and territory governments.

The government’s statement on the housing package was very short on detail, with no indication on the timing through the forward estimates of the various funding allocations. Nor did it say whether any part of the money had been repurposed.

The government also said it will work with the higher education sector on regulations requiring universities to boost their supply of student housing for local and foreign students.

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It says the new budget money will build on the more than $25 billion in new housing funding it has committed to in various programs over the next decade.

It has a goal of building 1.2 million homes by the end of the decade.

But demand continues to run far ahead of supply, with high migration intakes – which the government is cutting – and shortages of labour and materials adding to the problem.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the housing issue “isn’t about one suburb or one city nor one state. It’s a challenge facing Australians everywhere and it needs action from every level of government”.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the government was delivering billions more dollars in the budget to build more houses “because we know that to address this housing challenge, we need to boost supply”.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Budget to pledge billions more in funds and fresh effort to tackle intractable housing crisis – https://theconversation.com/budget-to-pledge-billions-more-in-funds-and-fresh-effort-to-tackle-intractable-housing-crisis-229818

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Dehm, Senior lecturer, international migration and refugee law, University of Technology Sydney

The High Court unanimously ruled today that the Australian government can keep asylum seekers in immigration detention indefinitely in cases where they do not “voluntarily” cooperate with their own deportation.

This includes, for example, when a person refuses to apply for travel documents due to a longstanding fear for their life if returned to their home country.

At the crux of today’s ruling is the legal fiction that indefinite immigration detention can remain “non-punitive” and legitimate if a person is detained for the “purpose” of their eventual removal from Australia – even if the human effects of this detention are harmful and experienced as punishment.

The decision places a significant limit on the precedent set by last year’s landmark High Court ruling that indefinite immigration detention is unlawful if there is “no real prospect” of a person’s deportation in the foreseeable future.

Read more:
The government wanted to avoid an inquiry into its deportation bill. Given the findings, it’s easy to see why

What did the case involve?

The case centred around “ASF17”, a bisexual Iranian man who has been held in closed immigration detention in Australia for more than ten years. Although Iran criminalises homosexual activity, ASF17 was found not to be a refugee under Australia’s fast-track asylum claim process, which many experts have deemed to be flawed and discriminatory.

Under Australian law, the government is required to deport ASF17 as soon as reasonably practicable back to Iran – or release him from detention if there is “no real prospect” of deportation.

The government argued before the court, however, that it was not required to release him because he was not cooperating in his own deportation. He had refused to seek the required travel documents from the Iranian government.

The Australian government argued that ASF17 could bring his indefinite detention to an end at any time by voluntarily returning to Iran, or by taking the necessary steps to allow the government to deport him.

ASF17’s lawyers argued he had “good reason” for not cooperating with his own deportation – he feared for his life if he returned to Iran. As he stated during cross-examination during the case:

if I didn’t fear harm, I wouldn’t have stayed in this camp for 10 years. I would have quickly gone back to begin with the first day. Who […] will leave their family and prefer the prison?

ASF17 was prepared to be deported to any country other than Iran. And Iran would not have even allowed him to return, as it does not accept forced or involuntary deportations of its citizens from other countries.

The Australian government acknowledged there was no reasonable prospect of him being sent anywhere else.

What did the High Court decide?

The court found there was still a “real prospect” of ASF17’s removal, given it depended in part on his conduct. Central to the court’s verdict was how it characterised ASF17’s position:

He has decided not to cooperate. He has the capacity to change his mind. He chooses not to do so.

The court held that in such circumstances, detention remained “non-punitive” and therefore lawful. By making this finding, the court was basically saying that the constitutional limit on the government’s power to keep a person in indefinite detention does not apply in such cases.

The court emphasised the language of choice and capacity, saying it has to be within “the power” of the detainee to decide not to assist in their own deportation. The court left open an exception for those who are medically incapacitated.

Although it was an unanimous verdict, Justice James Edelson did provide a separate reasoning that stressed the possible “gaps” in the Migration Act for recognising refugees. This included where the asylum process might have overlooked key issues. Or, in cases where a decision to refuse refugee status is “flawed” but upheld for other reasons, such as the person travelled to Australia on a forged document.

While Edelson stressed the High Court could not revisit the “factual basis” of ASF17’s asylum case, he noted the immigration minister could still exercise discretion to allow his claim to be reassessed or grant him a visa.

Edelson said this was an alternative to keeping ASF17 in detention until he provided consent

to be returned to a country where he might be executed if he were to express, privately and consensually, what has been found to be his genuine sexual identity.

Implications of the decision

Today’s decision reflects the government’s relentless campaign to limit the effects of last year’s High Court ruling that indefinite immigration detention was unlawful. This decision led to the immediate release of over a hundred people.

The controversial draft legislation now before parliament is widely seen as a direct response to ASF17’s case. If passed, the legislation will compel a person in immigration detention to cooperate in their own deportation. The bill goes much further than the High Court’s decision, however, by making refusal to cooperate in deportation a criminal offence.

The ASF17 case also highlights the moral contradictions between Australia’s international and domestic politics.

Australia has imposed sanctions against members of the Iranian regime responsible for egregious human rights abuses and violations. In 2022, a Senate Committee report recommended the Australian government increase the number of visas offered to Iranians with a:

particular focus on women, girls and persecuted minorities seeking to escape the regime. Iranians in Australia on temporary visas who cannot safely return to Iran due to the current crisis and policies of the [Iranian regime] should not be required to do so.

Yet, rather than doing just that in ASF17’s case, the government continues to treat Iranian asylum seekers with suspicion. In fact, the bill before parliament would even make it possible for the immigration minister to apply a blanket ban on all people from countries that refuse to accept the return of deported citizens, such as Iran.

As a result of today’s decision, up to 200 people may remain indefinitely detained. The decision also impacts thousands of others who have been denied asylum by the flawed “fast-track process” and have been living in the Australian community for over a decade, but fear returning to their home nations due to persecution.

Ultimately, the decision is a missed opportunity to move away from Australia’s harmful use of immigration detention that allows for some people to be detained their entire lives.

Sara Dehm receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Anthea Vogl receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Commonwealth Departure of Health and Aged Care.

– ref. High Court dismisses key challenge to indefinite immigration detention. What does it mean? – https://theconversation.com/high-court-dismisses-key-challenge-to-indefinite-immigration-detention-what-does-it-mean-229628

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Munro, Lecturer, Creative Industries and Digital Media, University of South Australia

Twenty-four hours after the release of Macklemore’s pro-Palestine protest song Hind’s Hall on social media on May 7, the video had already notched up over 24 million views.

In two minutes and 49 seconds, the music video uses found footage gleaned from social media feeds intercut with the songs lyrics in white text on a black background.

Much of the footage is of pro-Palestine encampments unfolding on the grounds of US universities. We also see images of popular Palestinian journalists Bisan Owed, Motaz Azaiza and Wael Al Dahdouh, footage from the Israeli bombing in Gaza, and older footage, such as N.W.A.’s Fuk Da Police (1988).

Much of the imagery is illustrative of the lyrics and polemic in messaging.

This use of found, gleaned and archival footage is a continuation of a long tradition in video art where artists have used existing footage to comment on and amplify social, political and environmental issues.

What is found footage?

Found footage filmmaking is a strategy used by artists and filmmakers who take audiovisual material from its original source and re-contextualise it.

Removed from its original context, this footage allows the artists to create new associations and critical perspectives on the material, culture and circulation of meaning. This process is also called remediation.

Prior to the proliferation of digital media, found footage artists found inspiration in newsreels, films and archives. Tracey Moffat worked with editor Gary Hillberg from 1999–2017 in creating a series of films call Montages, which reflect on tropes in Hollywood films.

Christian Marclay’s The Clock (2010) was a 24-hour video installation compiled from hundreds of films with scenes of clocks, watches and other timepieces.

Adam Curtis’ feature films draw on the vast BBC archives, which meditate on politics, power and psychology.

The advent – and plethora – of user-generated content on social media has given rise to new possibilities for video content.

With an endless flow of images and information through social media scrolls, the question of how to interrogate this material underpins how video artists approach found footage today.

Amplifying truths – and misinformation

The launch of YouTube in 2005 brought the ability to participate in the creation and sharing en masse of self-made video content.

Artist Natalie Bookchin saw this outpouring and sharing of personal testimonies through vlogs as an opportunity to reflect on the the contemporary social, cultural and political landscape in the United States.

Editing these vlogs, Bookchin created choral-like multiscreen video installations. Bookchin’s 2009 work Testament, a three-chapter multi-screen video installation, meditates on the shared vulnerability, isolation and collective experience of prescription medication, job loss and sexual identity.

Surrounded by the multiple voices in the gallery, the individual voices become a collective outpouring, giving voice to feelings of doubt, shame, anger and resignation. The multitude of voices transform an individual experience into one that reflects the impact of social and political pressures.

Bookchin’s follow-up work, Now he’s out in public and everyone can see (2012), similarly uses YouTube vlogs – but this time focused on the perception of African American men as threats.

Originally an 18-screen installation, the video excerpts speculate and comment on incidents involving famous African American men. This creates a collective narrative where there is always contradiction and never a singular agreed-upon truth.

In doing so, this work comments on how social media circulates and reinforces rumours, stereotypes and misinformation.

Montage and juxtaposition

Political commentary can also be made through juxtaposing unexpected images and sound. Montage editing is a technique first used by Soviet-era filmmakers in the 1920s through which the “collision” of images creates a new meaning.

American artist and filmmaker Arthur Jafa uses this technique to great effect in Love is the Message and the Message is Death (2016).

In this eight-minute video, Jafa takes up the question of the representation of African Americans through the 20th century through montages of found footage from film, music video, sports broadcasts and vlogs to the soundtrack of Kanye West’s Ultralight Beam.

The video oscillates between the hopes, dreams and great creative and sporting successes of Black Americans, undercut by the pervasive threat of systemic violence and white supremacy.

Long sequences of music, dance and sporting prowess, backed by West’s melodic anthem, are suddenly replaced by sounds and images captured on a mobile phone.

This footage feels familiar whether we have seen it or not. A scene taken from inside a car of a Black woman being pulled over by the police crying out for her children sits between that of gospel singing and the civil rights movement, demanding us to question what progress has been made.

While Macklemore’s found footage practice might seem unsubtle, given his platform, that’s also the point. Accompanied by unambiguous lyrics, re-presenting these images to a broad audience aims for maximum impact in a screen environment where attention is in constant demand.

Found footage gives video artists strategies to challenge dominant ways of thinking and reflecting on socio-political issues. When we see footage we know from social media, the news or films, we are given the opportunity to bring disparate ideas together, and challenged to see the world anew.

Kim Munro does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. A brief history of found footage video art – and where Macklemore’s Hind’s Hall fits in – https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-found-footage-video-art-and-where-macklemores-hinds-hall-fits-in-229638

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Helal, Assistant Dean (Sustainability), The University of Melbourne

Since ancient times, people have built structures that reach for the skies – from the steep spires of medieval towers to the grand domes of ancient cathedrals and mosques. Today the quest is to build the world’s tallest skyscrapers, such as Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Soaring above the rest, its decorative spire accounts for 29% of its total height – 4,000 tonnes of structural steel just for aesthetics.

Burj Khalifa isn’t unique in this respect. “Vanity height” – the extra height from a skyscraper’s highest occupied floor to its architectural top – shapes city skylines around the globe.

In a world where environmental concerns are paramount, is such architectural vanity justifiable?

Our research shows the pursuit of “vanity height” makes this a pressing issue. Even a modest spire increases the carbon emissions from the production of materials for a skyscraper’s structure by about 15%.

Building tall is not just about architecture; it’s big business. Being ranked among the world’s tallest buildings can transform an otherwise ordinary skyscraper into a globally recognised icon. This creates an incentive to add vanity height.

Our proposed solution is to rethink the global standard for ranking the world’s tallest buildings.

A matter of measurement

The way we measure the height of skyscrapers is at the heart of this issue. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) is the ultimate authority on skyscraper heights. It bestows the coveted title of “world’s tallest building”.

Historically, there wasn’t much debate over skyscraper heights as early buildings typically had flat roofs. The first significant issue arose in 1929 when the Chrysler Building in New York City installed a last-minute spire, securing the self-proclaimed title of the “world’s tallest building” over the Bank of Manhattan.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, founded in 1969, established criteria in the early 1970s that included decorative spires. This formalised a practice that would be contentious time and again.

A landmark moment in the council’s history was the 1998 showdown between Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur and Sears Tower in Chicago, now known as Willis Tower. Imagine these two giants side by side: the pointy spires of the Petronas Towers, with 88 floors, and the flat-topped Sears Tower, with 108 floors. But the council uses “height to architectural top”, which includes decorative spires. As a result, it declared Petronas Towers the tallest building in the world, outstripping Sears Tower for the title.

Back in Chicago, this was not a popular verdict. Picture the folks on the 108th floor of the Sears Tower looking down at the celebrations on the 88th floor of the Petronas Towers, perplexed by how those extra metres of spire made the difference. The decision even made its way into popular culture with Jay Leno joking on The Tonight Show:

All the council does is, once every ten years, they look up in the sky and say, ‘Yep, that’s the tallest!’

Even if extra height does not secure a place among the world’s top 100 tallest buildings, height still matters. Skyscrapers gain valuable prestige as the tallest in their city, region or country, or by earning use-specific accolades like “world’s highest restaurant” or “world’s highest religious space”.

The hidden cost of vanity height

Sixty years ago, the renowned Bangladeshi-American architect and engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan demonstrated the exponential impact of a building’s height on the amount of material needed to build it. Indeed, doubling the height of a building could triple the structural materials required. A stronger structure, using more materials, is needed to withstand greater wind and earthquake loads on taller buildings.

This means there’s a large “embodied carbon premium for height”. This premium is the additional greenhouse gas emissions from producing the extra materials needed for a taller skyscraper.

A telling example from our study shows that even a modest spire, making up 16% of a building’s total height, can increase the embodied carbon of a 90-storey skyscraper by 14%. In maximising the building’s height for aesthetic, status or financial reasons, designers are prioritising these concerns over environmental sustainability.

We took a detailed look at Dubai, a city celebrated for its towering skyline. We found the collective vanity height of its 100 tallest buildings adds up to more than 3.5 kilometres.

We estimate these decorative elements contributed at least 300,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s both the direct embodied carbon of the spires and, much more importantly, the embodied carbon added by reinforcing the buildings to support the extra structural loads.

To put this impact into perspective, 300,000 tonnes of emissions is equivalent to the embodied carbon associated with building about 2,400 average Australian homes. It’s a hefty price to pay, simply to adorn 100 skyscrapers with pointy hats that inflate their heights and status in global rankings.

Redefine heights to set more sustainable standards

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, which champions the motto “Towards Sustainable Vertical Urbanism”, has a crucial opportunity to lead change. What if it revised how we measure and rank tall buildings to better reflect this commitment to sustainability?

In light of our findings, we call on the council to remove the incentive for vanity height. We propose the “height to highest occupied floor” be adopted as the main standard for ranking skyscrapers by height.

Such a change may be controversial. Burj Khalifa would keep its title as the world’s tallest, but One World Trade Center with a vanity height of 155 metres, for example, would drop nine places, losing its status as the tallest in North America.

However, for every building that falls in the rankings, others will rise. Our research shows there are more winners than losers among the 100 tallest buildings worldwide. So support for this change could outweigh resistance.

Cities continue to grow and environmental challenges are becoming more acute. The need to re-evaluate our approach to architectural design is becoming ever more pressing. In particular, vanity architecture features like excessive decorative spires burden not only our skylines but also our environment.

Ultimately, we’re all better off if we change how we rank the world’s tallest buildings.

Dario Trabucco is a member of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat Europe Scientific and Advisory Group.

James Helal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Sky-high vanity: constructing the world’s tallest buildings creates high emissions – https://theconversation.com/sky-high-vanity-constructing-the-worlds-tallest-buildings-creates-high-emissions-229183

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Williams, Professor of Economics, The University of Melbourne

At the end of this month, a senate inquiry by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee is due to hand down its report on a bill to legalise cannabis.

Legalisation aims to redirect profits away from organised crime, safeguard people aged under 18, and protect public health through strict safety and quality regulations. To achieve these goals, the newly legalised market would need to draw current cannabis consumers – particularly those who use large amounts – away from the illegal market and its established network of suppliers.

A legal market can also be taxed, and the revenues generated could help fund much-needed public spending – for example, on mental health and substance use treatment services. Australia’s Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) estimates a legalised market would deliver a $28 billion windfall for the public purse in the first decade.

But we think the PBO’s estimate is too high, and based on the current patterns of cannabis use, $13 billion is a more credible estimate.

So how do we know how big the cannabis market is, and how much revenue it could deliver?

How much cannabis do Australians consume?

Assessing the size of an illegal market is – by its very nature – hard. Criminal enterprises do not lodge tax returns or collect GST, and cash transactions leave no digital trace.

However, there are two key ways we can try to estimate it:

• a supply-side approach, which looks at production
• a demand-side approach, which looks at consumption.

Most countries, including Australia, collect survey data on cannabis use, which lends itself best to a demand-side approach.

We can estimate the size of the market – in total annual consumption – by multiplying the number of expected users by the amount they use. But frequent users of cannabis consume very differently to infrequent users, so our approach is to estimate the consumption of different user types separately and then add them up.

The National Drug Strategy Household Survey (NDSHS) collects data on the kinds of illicit drugs Australians are using, and how often.

To estimate the number of users of different types, we take the percentage of Australians who reported a particular frequency of use in the latest National Drug Strategy Household Survey and multiply it by the total number of Australians aged over 14 – the population sampled for the survey.

This is in contrast to the Australian Parliamentary Budget Office, which used data from a survey of Canadians aged over 15 and the size of the Australian adult population. But these particular differences don’t turn out to matter much in practice.

We then adjust for the expected rate of under-reporting in the survey and an anticipated 15% growth in demand due to legalisation.

All up, we estimate that a new legalised market could attract 3.4 million cannabis users in its first year.

Next, we need to calculate the amount of cannabis each of the user types consumes in a year.

We can do this by multiplying the annual number of “use days” by the amount consumed on each use day. For example, daily users have 365 use days per year, whereas for those who use once or twice a year, we use a value of 1.5.

This is where our approach differs from that of the Parliamentary Budget Office, which multiplied the amount consumed on each use day by seven, to obtain weekly use, and then by 52 to get annual use, for all user types.

Did you spot the problem? By multiplying the use day amount by seven and then 52, all users are assumed to use 364 days a year, even if they only use once or twice a year!

The amount consumed on a use day is itself difficult to estimate because the National Drug Strategy Household Survey does not collect information in grams, but rather the number of cones, bongs or joints.

To solve this problem, the Parliamentary Budget Office followed the approach of its Canadian equivalent and used survey data from US think tank RAND, which presented survey respondents with images of different quantities of cannabis to help them estimate their personal use accurately. We also follow this approach.

As can be seen in the above chart, more frequent users consume more on a typical use day. Over the course of a year, a daily user consumes 36 times as much as someone who uses one to three times per month.

The last step is to multiply the number of users by the amount used for each user type. We estimate that Australia consumes 441 tonnes of cannabis per year.

Averaged across the 3.4 million users, this is around 2.5 grams each per week.

The Parliamentary Budget Office’s estimate is much bigger – 6 grams per week – because it assumes all users use 364 days per year.

It’s important to point out that our figure of 441 tonnes per year is based on a number of estimates. Our statistical method means we can only be reasonably certain that it is between 243 and 633 tonnes per year.

But the above chart also tells us a lot about the market’s composition. Together, daily and weekly users account for 98% of consumption even though they account for just 36% of cannabis users. To reduce illegal trade, a new legal market must attract these users.

Can a legal cannabis market work?

In other jurisdictions around the world, frequent users have been attracted to the legal market by high-quality, contaminant-free and THC-labelled cannabis. Leakage to and from the illegal market has also been reduced by seed-to-sale systems that track where cannabis is grown, processed and sold.

But pricing is one of the most important factors. The Parliamentary Budget Office supposes a price of $16.95 per gram, of which $3.55 would be tax – 10% GST and 15% excise. How does this compare to the illegal market?

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) estimates that one gram typically costs $22.50. So at first glance a legalised price of $17 seems competitive, especially given the quality guarantee.

But the daily and weekly users typically don’t purchase by the gram. They are much more likely to purchase by the ounce – 28 grams. ACIC estimates put the price of an ounce at $300, which works out at around $11 per gram. This means switching to legal cannabis might not appeal on price to most of the current market.

For this reason, we base our estimated tax revenues on a retail price of $12 per gram, of which $2.51 would be tax.

At this price, and using our market size estimate of 441 tonnes, our ballpark figure for the tax revenue generated in the first ten years of legalisation is around $13 billion. This of course assumes that leakage to and from the illegal market is reduced by a seed-to-sale tracking system.

Policymakers should therefore think carefully about pricing, taxation and providing discounts for buying in bulk. Implementing seed-to-sale monitoring systems could also help protect the legal market.

Otherwise, legalisation might not deny profits to organised crime – or deliver a substantial tax windfall – after all.

Read more:
As many states weigh legalising cannabis, here’s what they can learn from the struggles of growers in Canberra

Jenny Williams’ research has been supported by the Australian Research Council.

Christiern Daniel Rose receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. How can we measure the size of Australia’s illegal cannabis market – and the billions in taxes that might flow from legalising it? – https://theconversation.com/how-can-we-measure-the-size-of-australias-illegal-cannabis-market-and-the-billions-in-taxes-that-might-flow-from-legalising-it-229287

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edward Musole, PhD Law Student, University of New England

Recent trends show Australians are increasingly buying wearables such as smartwatches and fitness trackers. These electronics track our body movements or vital signs to provide data throughout the day, with or without the help of artificial intelligence (AI).

There’s also a newer product category that engages directly with the brain. It’s part of what UNESCO broadly defines as the emerging industry of “neurotechnology”:

devices and procedures that seek to access, assess, emulate and act on neural systems.

Much of neurotechnology is either still in development stage, or confined to research and medical settings. But consumers can already purchase several headsets that use electroencephalography (EEG).

Often marketed as meditation headbands, these devices provide real-time data on a person’s brain activity and feed it into an app.

Such headsets can be useful for people wanting to meditate, monitor their sleep and improve wellness. However, they also raise privacy concerns – a person’s brain activity is intrinsically personal data. This is particularly concerning when it comes to EEG headsets and wearables designed for children.

The subtle creep in neural and cognitive data wearables are capable of collecting is resulting in a data “gold rush”, with companies mining even our brains so they can develop and improve their products.

A serious privacy concern

In a background paper published earlier this year, the Australian Human Rights Commission identified several risks to human rights that neurotechnology may pose, including rights to privacy and non-discrimination. Legal scholars, policymakers, lawmakers and the public need to pay serious attention to the issue.

The extent to which tech companies can harvest cognitive and neural data is particularly concerning when that data comes from children. This is because children fall outside of the protection provided by Australia’s privacy legislation, as it doesn’t specify an age when a person can make their own privacy decisions.

The government and relevant industry associations should conduct a candid inquiry to investigate the extent to which neurotechnology companies collect and retain this data from children in Australia.

The private data collected through such devices is also increasingly fed into AI algorithms, raising additional concerns. These algorithms rely on machine learning, which can manipulate datasets in ways unlikely to align with any consent given by a user.

What does the privacy law say?

Users should have complete transparency over what data their wearables collect, and how it is being used.

Currently, the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles govern the collection, use and disclosure of personal information in Australia.

Right now, Australians don’t have any legal protections from privacy infringement on their brain and cognitive data. Technology companies can mine the neural data of Australians – including children – and store this information outside Australia.

We urgently need to update the laws to provide more robust privacy protections for when neurotechnology comes into play. This would proactively protect the privacy of Australians of all ages at all times.

How should we change the laws?

One potential solution would be to update our privacy legislation to work in conjunction with the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), which regulates the supply of medical devices in Australia.

This would ensure wearables compatible with mobile apps and software that currently circumvent the TGA would fall within their stringent oversight. Such devices include fitness trackers and smartwatches, but also EEG headbands.

Doing this would mean these privacy-invasive technologies have to align with the TGA’s regulations, protecting the cognitive and neural data of Australians.

We could also establish additional data collection oversights to monitor neural data collection by companies within and outside Australia. This way, we could ensure compliance with privacy regulations and put into place measures that prevent unauthorised data collection or surveillance through wearables.

Such changes should also provide users with the right to access their neural and cognitive data. For example, users should always have the option to have their data permanently erased. Doing this would ensure that Australians’ data is treated in a transparent, ethical and legally sound manner.

Australia is at a pivotal crossroads. We need to address the risks associated with data harvesting through neurotechnology. The industry of devices that can access our neural and cognitive data is only going to expand.

If we make these reforms now, Australia could become a global leader in privacy protection. And we could all enjoy the benefits of wearable tech while knowing our privacy rights are stringently protected.

Edward Musole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Wearable devices can now harvest our brain data. Australia needs urgent privacy reforms – https://theconversation.com/wearable-devices-can-now-harvest-our-brain-data-australia-needs-urgent-privacy-reforms-229006

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yousuf Mohammed, Dermatology researcher, The University of Queensland

You wake up, stagger to the bathroom and gaze into the mirror. No, you’re not imagining it. You’ve developed face wrinkles overnight. They’re sleep wrinkles.

Sleep wrinkles are temporary. But as your skin loses its elasticity as you age, they can set in.

Here’s what you can do to minimise the chance of them forming in the first place.

How side-sleeping affects your face

Your skin wrinkles for a number of reasons, including ageing, sun damage, smoking, poor hydration, habitual facial expressions (such as grinning, pouting, frowning, squinting) and sleeping positions.

When you sleep on your side or stomach, your face skin is squeezed and crushed a lot more than if you sleep on your back. When you sleep on your side or stomach, gravity presses your face against the pillow. Your face skin is distorted as your skin is stretched, compressed and pulled in all directions as you move about in your sleep.

You can reduce these external forces acting on the face by sleeping on your back or changing positions frequently.

Doctors can tell which side you sleep on by looking at your face

In a young face, sleep wrinkles are transient and disappear after waking.

Temporary sleep wrinkles can become persistent with time and repetition. As we age, our skin loses elasticity (recoil) and extensibility (stretch), creating ideal conditions for sleep wrinkles or lines to set in and last longer.

The time spent in each sleeping position, the magnitude of external forces applied to each area of the face, as well as the surface area of contact with the pillow surface, also affects the pattern and rate of sleep wrinkle formation.

Skin specialists can often recognise this. People who favour sleeping on one side of their body tend to have a flatter face on their sleeping side and more visible sleep lines.

Can a night skincare routine avoid sleep wrinkles?

Collagen and elastin are two primary components of the dermis (inner layer) of skin. They form the skin structure and maintain the elasticity of skin.

Supplementing collagen through skincare routines to enhance skin elasticity can help reduce wrinkle formation.

Hyaluronic acid is a naturally occurring molecule in human bodies. It holds our skin’s collagen and elastin in a proper configuration, stimulates the production of collagen and adds hydration, which can help slow down wrinkle formation. Hyaluronic acid is one of the most common active ingredients in skincare creams, gels and lotions.

Moisturisers can hydrate the skin in different ways. “Occlusive” substances produce a thin layer of oil on the skin that prevents water loss due to evaporation. “Humectants” attract and hold water in the skin, and they can differ in their capacity to bind with water, which influences the degree of skin hydration.

Do silk pillowcases actually make a difference?

Silk pillowcases can make a difference in wrinkle formation, if they let your skin glide and move, rather than adding friction and pressure on a single spot. If you can, use silk sheets and silk pillows.

Studies have also shown pillows designed to reduce mechanical stress during sleep can prevent skin deformations. Such a pillow could be useful in slowing down and preventing the formation of certain facial wrinkles.

Sleeping on your back can reduce the risk of sleep lines, as can a nighttime routine of moisturising before sleep.

Otherwise, lifestyle choices and habits, such quitting smoking, drinking plenty of water, a healthy diet (eating enough vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, healthy fats, yogurt and other fermented foods) and regular use of sunscreens can help improve the appearance of the skin on our face.

Yousuf Mohammed receives funding from the United States Food and Drug Administration. Views expressed here do not reflect the official policies of the FDA nor do they imply endorsement by the US government. ​

Vania Rodrigues Leite E. Silva receives funding from the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, CNPq, for the Productivity Scholarship in Technological Development and Extension Innovation – DT (CNPq, Process 302153/2023-3).

Khanh Phan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Sleep wrinkles are real. Here’s how they leave their mark – https://theconversation.com/sleep-wrinkles-are-real-heres-how-they-leave-their-mark-217380

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By César Albarrán-Torres, Senior Lecturer, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology

As one of billions of bilingual individuals in the world, it disappoints me when a film or TV show with characters of a non-English-speaking background is spoken entirely in English. This is specially the case when the production has been distributed globally.

It is even more disappointing – borderline insulting – when the lines are delivered by a native English speaker in a fake, over-the-top accent.

That said, there are some encouraging signs linguistic diversity is finally being portrayed in a more faithful and respectful manner. Acapulco, an Apple TV+ comedy now entering its third season, is a good example of how English can be used as a common language in a show without quashing language diversity and authenticity.

Half-baked attempts at diversity

The screen industry’s practice of using fake accents and English-only dialogue is longstanding. Classic Hollywood actors such as Katherine Hepburn, Charlton Heston and Marlon Brando have all played Asian or Latino characters and spoken English in fake accents.

Rather than ditching the accent altogether – such as in Shakespearean adaptations where actors are dressed as Romans but still sound British – we’ve seen several examples where A-listers put on fake accents in a setting where English isn’t the everyday language.

Take the recent Disney+ hit Shōgun. While the Japanese characters speak Japanese among themselves (points for that), the Portuguese and Spanish settlers communicate in English, and do so in heavily imposed accents. This half-baked attempt at linguistic diversity might be because Shōgun is an American show. But as Screen Rant features editor Marcelo Leite points out:

a fully accurate portrayal of the story would be entirely in Portuguese and Japanese, and all of Shōgun would have to include subtitles.

Another example comes from Ridley Scott’s 2021 film House of Gucci, which featured Lady Gaga, Adam Driver and Jared Leto, among others. The film takes place in Italy with characters who would normally speak Italian. Yet the film is spoken mostly in English. Audience reactions to the cast’s heavy, cartoon-like “Italian” accents were quite negative.

Why does Hollywood tend to be monolingual?

English-only productions are made under the premise Hollywood produces content mainly for American audiences, and that these audiences are monolingual.

As of recently, however, two factors are changing how movies and TV shows are conceptualised and brought to life. The first is that the vast linguistic diversity within the United States is increasingly being represented by directors and showrunners who are bilingual themselves.

The second is the global distribution of content through streaming services. It means audiences across the globe are getting used to watching content with subtitles in languages other than English, and other than their own.

As streaming inches us towards a global TV culture, cultural and linguistic representation is becoming an important topic. And this awareness is driving multilingual productions, such as Acapulco, in English-speaking countries.

Some of these productions even explore issues of language and culture loss in diverse communities. For instance, Vida and Gentefied both focus on the impacts of gentrification in Los Angeles – one of which is the loss of bicultural and bilingual character in Mexican-American enclaves. Both shows, created by Latinx showrunners, use English when it is logical to do so, and Spanish (or Spanglish) when non-white characters converse among themselves.

Another mainstream show, ABC’s Jane the Virgin, has a character (Jane’s abuela, Alba) who speaks almost entirely in Spanish.

The linguistic tide is turning

Recent television shows have demonstrated multilingual scripts can be both successful and dignified.

Acapulco, which has been compared to Ted Lasso, sets a precedent for what inclusivity can look and sound like. This light-hearted comedy counters the linguistic complacency that has dominated TV cultures for so long, whereby English is used as a standardising tool that is detrimental to diversity.

Acapulco is shot in Mexico with Latino talent, but also includes white English-speaking actors and a cross-national star, Eugenio Derbez. It is spoken in Spanish, English and Spanglish in a dignified and organic way.

The setting is an all-inclusive resort in the Mexican Pacific. Employees are forced to speak in English among themselves while on the premises, but speak in Spanish outside of the hotel. This in itself is a critique of labour practices in the Global South’s hospitality industry.

Nothing to lose, much to gain

Normalising language diversity onscreen forces creators to seek more multicultural talent behind and in front of the camera, particularly when it is these people’s communities being portrayed.

Beyond this, audiences will be empowered by seeing their own languages represented, or will otherwise benefit from being exposed to new languages they haven’t heard before. Indeed, research has found watching shows and films in foreign languages can help viewers learn them.

The growth in multilingual scripts will also inevitably lead to the normalisation of subtitles, which will help more broadly in making film and TV accessible for all.

Shows like Acapulco demonstrate the paradigm shift that’s taking place across Hollywood and other entertainment industries. And with streaming, it’s easier than ever for this content to go global.

César Albarrán-Torres does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. No more bad accents, stereotypes or cringe: why the rise of multilingual TV is good news for everyone – https://theconversation.com/no-more-bad-accents-stereotypes-or-cringe-why-the-rise-of-multilingual-tv-is-good-news-for-everyone-229113

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Ruppanner, Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of The Future of Work Lab, Podcast at MissPerceived, The University of Melbourne

A recent report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows US fertility rates dropped 2% in 2023. With the exception of a temporary increase in the fertility rate at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the US fertility rate has been falling steadily since 1971.

Australia exhibits a similar pattern. Fertility has declined since 2007 despite government attempts to invest in a “baby bonus” to encourage Australian women to have more children.

Taking a more global perspective, we can see similar patterns across other industrial nations: Japan, South Korea and Italy have some of the lowest global fertility rates.

So, what is going on here? Despite highly valuing children and our roles as parents, why are women having so few babies? And, importantly, why should we care?

How much fertility is good for a country?

On my recently launched podcast MissPerceived, I discuss why fertility rates rule the world. For a population to maintain its current size – that is, neither shrink nor grow – the total fertility rate needs to be above 2.1 births per women. This is because we need to have enough babies to replace both parents after they die – one baby to replace the mother and one to replace the father, and a little extra to account for infant mortality.

In short, if we want a population to grow, we need women to have more than two children. This was exactly what happened in many Western nations, such as Australia, the UK and US, following the second world war. Women were having more than 2.1 births, which resulted in a baby boom. Many families grew to three or more children.

This type of population structure, replacement or some growth, is critical to creating a healthy-working age population to support the young and old.

But, in many countries, the fertility rate is less than replacement level, which means the population is shrinking. In the US and Australia the current fertility rate is 1.6. In the UK it is 1.4. And in South Korea it is 0.68.

So, these countries are shrinking, and in the case of South Korea, shrinking quickly. What this means is that more people are dying in these countries than being born. As a result, the population is getting older, poorer and more dependent on others for their care.

For a country like South Korea or Italy, this is a problem for the present. And, in Australia, this will be a problem for the near future. Someone will have to care for the ageing population. The question of who and how will be of increasing policy importance.

Why is fertility declining?

So, why aren’t women having more babies? Well, there are a few answers:

1. Women are better educated now than ever before. Women’s education has been rising steadily for decades, with Australian women now better educated than men. Australia has some of the most educated women in the world.

Education delays fertility for multiple reasons. First, it pushes out the age of first birth since women are spending a longer time in school. Second, it gives women more resources they then want to trade on the market after finishing a degree. Simply, women are often not having babies in their teens and early 20s because they are getting their education and launching their careers.

2. Young people are being delayed in, well, everything. It is much harder for young people to achieve the traditional markers of adulthood – stable jobs and buying a first home. Often these are factors that are identified as critical to having a first child. So, many young people are delaying fertility due to economic and housing insecurity.

Further, we now have safe and effective contraception, which means sex outside of marriage is feasible and sex without procreation can be almost guaranteed. All of this means parenthood is delayed. Women are having babies later and fewer of them.

3. Children are expensive and time-consuming. In many industrialised nations, the cost of children is astronomical. Average childcare costs in Australia have outpaced inflation. School tuitions, even for public schools, absorb a significant portion of parents’ budgets.

If you multiply this by more children, the costs go up. Intensive parenting norms, which guide how many people parent, emphasise significant time investments in children that are one-on-one. Simply, we spend more time interacting with our children in intense ways than previous generations.

And all of this is on top of greater time spent in paid employment. So, to do parenting “right”, according to current social norms, is to be deeply invested in our children in terms of time, energy and resources, including money.

4. Workplaces and policies are slow to adapt to supporting caregiving. Our workplaces still expect significant face-to-face time at work and long hours. Although the pandemic ushered in more remote work, many workplaces are rolling back this provision and mandating people return to work in some capacity. This is despite Australians highly valuing access to remote and flexible work, in part because they spent less time commuting and report significantly higher levels of burnout.

A nuanced approach is needed

Because the reasons behind declining fertility are not simple, the solutions can’t be simple either. Offering baby bonuses, as Australia and other nations have done, is pretty ineffective, because they don’t address the complexity of these interlocking issues.

If we are serious about supporting care, we need better career and housing pathways for young people, more investment in child and aged care infrastructure, technological innovations to support an ageing population, and workplaces that are designed with care at the core. This will create a culture of care to support mothers, fathers, children and families alike.

Leah Ruppanner receives funding from the Australian Research Council. This research is featured on MissPerceived.

– ref. Women in rich countries are having fewer kids, or none at all. What’s going on? – https://theconversation.com/women-in-rich-countries-are-having-fewer-kids-or-none-at-all-whats-going-on-229185

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Corderoy, Medical doctor and PhD candidate studying involuntary psychiatric treatment, School of Psychiatry, UNSW Sydney

Picture two people, both suffering from a serious mental illness requiring hospital admission. One was born in Australia, the other in Asia.

Hopefully, both could be treated on a voluntary basis, taking into account their individual needs, preferences and capacity to consent. If not, you might imagine they should be equally likely to receive treatment against their will (known colloquially as being “sectioned” or “scheduled”).

However, our research published in British Journal of Psychiatry Open suggests this is not the case.

In the largest study globally of its kind, we found Australians are more likely to be treated in hospital for their acute mental illness against their will if they are born overseas, speak a language other than English or are unemployed.

What we did and what we found

We examined more than 166,000 episodes of voluntary and involuntary psychiatric care in New South Wales public hospitals between 2016 and 2021. Most admissions (54%) included at least one day of involuntary care.

Being brought to hospital via legal means, such as by police or via a court order, was strongly linked to involuntary treatment.

While our study does not show why this is the case, it may be due to mental health laws. In NSW, which has similar laws to most jurisdictions in Australia, doctors may treat a person on an involuntary basis if they present with certain symptoms indicating serious mental illness (such as hallucinations and delusions) which cause them to require protection from serious harm, and there is no other less-restrictive care available. Someone who has been brought to hospital by police or the courts may be more likely to meet the legal requirement of requiring protection from serious harm.

The likelihood of involuntary care was also linked to someone’s diagnosis. A person with psychosis or organic brain diseases, such as dementia and delirium, were about four times as likely to be admitted involuntarily compared to someone with anxiety or adjustment disorders (conditions involving a severe reaction to stressors).

However, our data suggest non-clinical factors contribute to the decision to impose involuntary care.

Compared with people born in Australia, we found people born in Asia were 42% more likely to be treated involuntarily.

People born in Africa or the Middle East were 32% more likely to be treated this way.

Overall, people who spoke a language other than English were 11% more likely to receive involuntary treatment compared to those who spoke English as their first language.

Some international researchers have suggested higher rates of involuntary treatment seen in people born overseas might be due to higher rates of psychotic illness. But our research found a link between higher rates of involuntary care in people born overseas or who don’t speak English regardless of their diagnosis.

We don’t know why this is happening. It is likely to reflect a complex interplay of factors about both the people receiving treatment and the way services are provided to them.

People less likely to be treated involuntarily included those who hold private health insurance, and those referred through a community health centre or outpatients unit.

Our findings are in line with international studies. These show
higher rates of involuntary treatment among people from Black and ethnic minority groups, and people living in areas of higher socioeconomic disadvantage.

A last resort? Or should we ban it?

Both the NSW and Australian mental health commissions have called involuntary psychiatric care an avoidable harm that should only be used as a last resort.

Despite this, one study found Australia’s rate of involuntary admissions has increased by 3.4% per year and it has one of the highest rates of involuntary admissions in the world.

Involuntary psychiatric treatment is also under increasing scrutiny globally.

When Australia signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, it added a declaration noting it would allow for involuntary treatment of people with mental illness where such treatments are “necessary, as a last resort and subject to safeguards”.

However, the UN has rejected this, saying it is a fundamental human right “to be free from involuntary detention in a mental health facility and not to be forced to undergo mental health treatment”.

Others question if involuntary treatment could ever be removed entirely.

Where to from here?

Our research not only highlights concerns regarding how involuntary psychiatric treatment is implemented, it’s a first step towards decreasing its use. Without understanding how and when it is used it will be difficult to create effective interventions to reduce it.

But Australia is still a long way from significantly reducing involuntary treatment.

We need to provide more care options outside hospital, ones accessible to all Australians, including those born overseas, who don’t speak English, or who come from disadvantaged communities. This includes intervening early enough that people are supported to not become so unwell they end up being referred for treatment via police or the criminal justice system.

More broadly, we need to do more to reduce stigma surrounding mental illness and to ensure poverty and discrimination are tackled to help prevent more people becoming unwell in the first place.

Our study also shows we need to do more to respect the autonomy of someone with serious mental illness to choose if they are treated. That’s whether they are in NSW or other jurisdictions.

And legal reform is required to ensure more states and territories more fully reflect the principal that people who have the capacity to make such decisions should have the right to decline mental health treatment in the same way they would any other health care.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Researchers from the University of NSW, University of Sydney and NSW Ministry of Health conducted the research mentioned. I would like to acknowledge and thank my PhD supervisors (Grant Sara, Matthew Large, Christopher Ryan and Kimberlie Dean), three of whom co-authored the published research.

– ref. We looked at over 166,000 psychiatric records. Over half showed people were admitted against their will – https://theconversation.com/we-looked-at-over-166-000-psychiatric-records-over-half-showed-people-were-admitted-against-their-will-226820

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Treby, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, RMIT University

Peatlands store more carbon per square metre than any other ecosystem on Earth. These waterlogged, mossy bogs beat even dense rainforests for their ability to act as carbon reservoirs.

Under the right conditions, peat soils accumulate from carbon-rich, semi-decomposed plants. But if things go wrong, the carbon balance can be tipped in the other direction, releasing carbon into the atmosphere.

We wanted to know if feral horse grazing and trampling is reducing the amount of carbon Australia’s alpine peatlands can store. These peatlands are found in alpine and mountainous regions of Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. But they’re quite rare on the mainland, restricted to areas such as those frequented by feral horses in the Snowy Mountains.

In our new research, we sampled peat soils from areas with and without feral horses in Kosciuszko National Park, NSW. We found peatlands untouched by feral horses store almost 50% more carbon. In degraded peatlands, where horses had trampled all of the plants leaving bare soils at the surface, carbon storage was even lower.

Brumby numbers are booming

Australia has more feral horses than any other country and their numbers have been growing.

A 2020 survey estimated the alpine horse population was increasing at 23% a year. A more recent survey published in December 2022 estimated there were more than 18,000 horses in Kosciuszko National Park alone.

Unfortunately, these large, hard-hooved animals are causing soil erosion and compaction.

In peatlands, where soils are soft and wet, the damage from grazing and trampling is even more pronounced.

Horses travel through peatlands to access drinking water in creeks and pools. This has degraded peatlands in the Australian Alps.

In March 2022, we sampled soils from 12 alpine and subalpine peatlands in Kosciuszko National Park. Seven of these sites had been degraded by feral horses and five hadn’t.

Where there was no evidence of horse activity, the peatlands were storing 45% more carbon in their soils than peatlands with evidence of horses. In heavily trampled areas, where all vegetation had been removed by horses, carbon storage was 16% lower than where vegetation remained.

Why are brumbies bad for carbon storage?

When peatlands are intact, healthy sphagnum moss and other plants capture atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) through photosynthesis. Over time, carbon-rich plant material including decaying plant matter builds up as the peat soil.

But if the plants are grazed or trampled, they can no longer capture CO₂.

We also found degraded peatlands also had higher soil nitrogen concentrations, likely due to inputs (fertilisation) from horse waste.

In agricultural systems, having more nitrogen in the soil is generally a good thing. Unfortunately the opposite is true for peatlands, which are naturally low in nitrogen. Even small increases in nitrogen can reduce moss growth and survival and allow other types of plants to displace them, while also promoting the growth of microbes that break down carbon-rich plant matter and release yet more CO₂.

Increased peat nitrogen can also lead to higher emissions of nitrous oxide (N₂O), a very potent greenhouse gas. This means the global warming potential of degraded peatlands might be even higher than previously thought.

We know from our previous research that much of the peat carbon lost from horse-impacted peatlands is emitted as CO₂. Peatlands degraded by horses are losing CO₂ to the atmosphere, while intact peatlands are taking up CO₂.

Peatlands can recover but they need our help

Our findings support land managers’ efforts to protect and restore these peatlands, which are recognised as a threatened ecosystem under national environmental law. Facilitating long-term peatland carbon storage is a nature-based climate solution – we need to ensure our peatlands can perform at their best now, more than ever before.

Australia’s alpine peatlands deserve our protection. They are important for many reasons. These include controlling freshwater flows at the source of our most valuable water catchments. Peatlands also provide vital habitat for rare and endangered species such as the corroboree frog, alpine water skink and broad-toothed rat.

The good news is we know, through this study and our previous research, that grazed and degraded peatlands can recover over time. The peatlands we sampled that didn’t have evidence of feral horses had historically been grazed by sheep and cattle, which were widespread throughout the Australian Alps last century.

In the decades since domestic livestock grazing ended in the NSW Alps, a thick healthy layer of moss and other peatland plants has regenerated. High concentrations of peat soil carbon are building up again.

Recovering soil carbon, however, is not quick. In the midst of the climate crisis, we don’t have 50 years to wait for our peatlands to regain their carbon storage function while they recover from degradation by feral horses.

We have already lost about half of our peatlands, mainly through grazing and fire. Many may never recover.

The best way to ensure the health of Australia’s remaining peatlands is to protect them from harm to begin with. We need to keep horses and other large feral animals out of our peatlands.

Protect and restore Australia’s alpine peatlands

Under the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan, adopted in 2021 and amended in 2023, the NSW government is taking steps to protect the alpine environment. However, horses will remain in defined in “retention areas” (albeit in lower numbers). This will require extensive fencing of peatlands within the National Park to protect them from horses.

In most situations, other interventions are needed to restore peatlands such as slowing drainage to keep water within the peatlands. This will encourage peatland plants to regrow.

Where surface vegetation has been removed, mosses can be transplanted from healthy peatlands. Shading may help speed their recovery.

By protecting Australia’s alpine peatlands from feral animals, we can help them fight climate change, while looking after our water catchments and threatened species.

Sarah Treby received funding from Parks Victoria’s Research Partners Program to carry out this research.

Samantha Grover received funding from the veski inspiring women grant scheme.

– ref. Feral horses in Australia’s high country are damaging peatlands, decreasing carbon stores – https://theconversation.com/feral-horses-in-australias-high-country-are-damaging-peatlands-decreasing-carbon-stores-228990

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephanie Wescott, Lecturer in Education, Monash University

Earlier this week, two students were expelled from a Melbourne private school for their involvement in creating a spreadsheet that ranked girls using sexist and violent categories (from “wifeys” and “cuties” to “unrapeable”).

There has been a necessary focus on the school and its response and significant community outrage about the actions of the young men involved. But this incident is not an isolated one.

Our ongoing research has found sexism, sexual harassment and misogyny are rife in Australian schools.

This is influenced by the rise in popularity and ubiquity of figures from the “manosphere” (an overlapping collection of extreme men’s communities that are anti-women and against women’s empowerment) on social media. This includes Andrew Tate, the “misogynist influencer” who is facing trial in Romania on charges of human trafficking and rape (which he denies).

At the same time, Australia is confronting shockingly high rates of violence against women. Last week, the federal government announced a range of measures to respond to the crisis and quell the public’s understandable anger.

Although the package contains measures aimed at preventing young people being exposed to misogynistic content online, it largely overlooks the crucial role of education in tackling sexist attitudes that enable and drive the current high rates of violence. To make real change, schools must be included.

Our research on schools and Andrew Tate

Our research explores the influence of anti-women and anti-feminist online figures such as Tate on boys’ behaviour and attitudes towards women in Australian schools.

In mid-2023, we interviewed 30 women teachers working in schools across the country. The women described a sharp increases in sexism, misogyny and sexual harassment in their classrooms.

Teachers also identified the explicit influence of Tate on their students’ attitudes and behaviours. This included setting images of Tate as their computer desktop backgrounds, provoking teachers with Tate’s ideas (for example, asking teachers whether they agree women shouldn’t be allowed to drive), and using his body language (such as a hand gesture he often displays when photographed).

One teacher spoke of the transformation of a student she had known for several years:

I taught [a] boy in Year 7 and he was a wholesome, creative [child]. This boy does dance competitions and is in a dance troop and is always polite to me […] and yet is [now] writing these disturbingly misogynistic messages, literally saying, ‘No, Andrew Tate is being vilified. He’s in the right.’ I’m like, who is that boy? That’s not the boy that I’ve seen for the last couple of years.

The response needs to be urgent

This is happening within a broader culture of backlash to gender justice gains achieved via feminist activism – including the #metoo movement. Teachers in our study said their students believe women have achieved unequal power over men.

Despite these worrying trends and teachers requesting help from school management, the women we spoke to reported schools were not responding in a meaningful or urgent way.

Our study findings have been echoed by an April 2024 survey of Adelaide school teachers, who described how misogynist language and physical intimidation are commonplace in their schools. They are also part of a much longer history of research showing an ongoing culture of sexism in Australian schools.

We need a national campaign…

If we are serious about changing the way our culture sees and treats women, we need to view schools as sites of primary prevention. This means they are places where we intervene to help stop the problem of gendered violence happening in the first place.

First, we need the federal government to lead a national campaign calling for a zero-tolerance approach to violence against women and girls in schools. It needs to specifically use the words “sexism”, “misogyny” and “violence against women”.

In our research teachers reported their schools will often stay away from using such language. Instead, “disrespect” or other ways of classifying this behaviour are used to explain what are obviously sexist incidents. This reluctance could be due to fears of controversy.

But this risks reducing the problem to simply being about individual behaviour and takes gender out of it. Naming and confronting sexism directly can be the first step in creating safer and more inclusive learning environments for women, girls and gender-diverse people in schools.

…and national guidelines

Second, we need national, consistent guidelines and advice for schools on how to respond to incidents of sexism, sexual harassment and misogyny.

At the moment, it is largely left up to schools to handle this and teachers are telling us they are falling short. With all the other pressures schools are under, clearly they need more support and guidance to respond to incidents adequately.

Other researchers have also suggested a national code of conduct for sexism and sexual harassment in schools with reporting guidelines.

This would ensure consistent approaches to incidents, give us a clearer picture of what is happening, and allow us to tell when things start to improve.

We also need more education

Third, respectful relationships education should be mandatory across all Australian schools.

Although it is mentioned in the Australian Curriculum, it is up to states and territories to decide how it is delivered. Even though respectful relationships is mandatory in Victorian government schools, teachers in our study described its presence in their schools as diluted. They said they would like to see it expanded.

The messages and attitudes should also be implemented across the whole school, including in school policies, school leadership and teaching approaches. This means there is greater recognition of schools as safe workplaces, places for learning and parts of the community.

Australia is in the grips of a national crisis of violence against women. Schools, as microcosms of broader society, deserve much more meaningful, long-term interventions to contribute to a change that is urgently needed.

Steven Roberts currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian government that does not pertain to the content of this article. He is a board director at Respect Victoria. This article is written independently from this role.

Stephanie Wescott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Andrew Tate’s extreme views about women are infiltrating Australian schools. We need a zero-tolerance response – https://theconversation.com/andrew-tates-extreme-views-about-women-are-infiltrating-australian-schools-we-need-a-zero-tolerance-response-229603

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Goss, Adjunct Associate Professor, Health Research Institute, University of Canberra

Government spending on health has been growing so rapidly that a decade ago the then health minister Peter Dutton called it “unmanageable” and “unsustainable”.

Health spending grew in real terms by 44% in the ten years to 2021–22. Real GDP grew by 26% in that period, so we have been spending increasing amounts on health as a proportion of GDP.

Until recently, we had little idea of whether that extra spending was value for money – whether it was making Australians healthier, and whether each dollar was making Australians more healthy over time.

In other words, we have had very little idea of the productivity of the healthcare system. The Bureau of Statistics doesn’t measure it in the national accounts.

As with defence, we have only ever known what we have spent on health, without necessarily knowing what we actually get for this money, and whether our value for money is improving or not.

Health productivity has been a mystery until now

Piecemeal attempts to get a better handle on the productivity of healthcare services have defined their outputs as the number of medical or hospital services delivered or pharmaceuticals delivered for each dollar spent. These attempts have shown only small increases in productivity.

But the problem with these estimates is they haven’t measured the outputs that matter, which are greater health-related quality of life and longer lives that result from health treatments.

Now, for the first time, the Productivity Commission has attempted to measure what actually matters. And what it’s come up with is startling.

The commission has found that between 2011-12 and 2017-18, at a time when the market-sector productivity growth for the economy as a whole grew by 0.7% per year, the productivity of the healthcare sectors it examined grew by 3% per year.

The sectors the commission was able to examine were those that treat cancer, cardiovascular disease and “blood, endocrine and kidney disease”.

The commission says its findings suggest:

[…] the additional spending in the parts of the healthcare sector we studied has been ‘worth it’ – it has delivered net benefits for society.

But its finding of average growth of about 3% per year conceals marked differences in productivity growth by disease.

For cancer treatment, the productivity growth has been about 9% per year, much more than economy-wide productivity growth. But for treating cardiovascular disease, productivity has shrunk by about 4% per year.

Cancer treatments work better

The large improvement in the productivity of cancer treatment is not surprising. Cancer survival rates continue to improve, from a five-year survival rate of 52% in the early 1990s to 70% in 2014-2018.

It’s an improvement more than big enough to offset the relatively high growth in real cancer expenditure of 36% over the period studied.

More surprising is the decline in the productivity of cardiovascular treatment.

Partly this is because a good deal of the decline in cardiovascular premature mortality rates of 21% in the period studied has been due to things other than health treatment expenditure, reduced smoking among them.

Remaining heart attacks might be harder to treat

As well, our successes in preventing cardiovascular disease in recent decades may be making the treatment of those who succumb to it more difficult.

Fewer people suffering heart attacks and strokes might mean the remaining cases admitted to hospitals are more complex and more expensive to treat, reducing the apparent productivity of treatment.

It is also possible that there are data errors in the productivity estimates. And it is likely some cardiovascular disease treatments are cost-effective and others are not, making the mix of treatments push down overall productivity.

The commission quite rightly calls for more research and better data to find out.

Difficult decisions ahead

The commission has examined only about one-third of health treatments.

The remaining two-thirds include important diseases like mental illness, dementia, infectious diseases and musculoskeletal disorders.

The commission has done some work on mental illness. It determined that outcomes would be improved if resources were shifted from hospital treatment to cost-effective treatments in the community and improving things such as inadequate incomes, employment, housing, social support and justice services.

As the commission does more, it will also need to assess the productivity of interventions that prevent diseases, as well as interventions that treat them.

The commission’s findings are good news for the health system in that they indicate it is getting more productive than previously assumed.

But the variation in productivity between different sectors shows room for further improvements.

Some improvements will require taking resources from poor-performing treatments and giving them to emerging, more cost-effective treatments. That won’t be popular with the providers of those existing treatments.

But it is what we will need if we are to further improve health outcomes without even bigger increases in health expenditure as a proportion of GDP.

It won’t be easy, but it’s where the commission’s work is heading.

John Goss does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Yes, spending on health is growing, but new research shows we’re getting more for it – https://theconversation.com/yes-spending-on-health-is-growing-but-new-research-shows-were-getting-more-for-it-228884

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Many people who follow federal budgets know about the magnificent “budget tree” in a parliamentary courtyard, which turns a glorious red in time for the May event.

This week Treasurer Jim Chalmers posed by the tree for pre-budget photos. As the snappers looked for a new take on an old favourite shot, Chalmers kicked the leaves. The treasurer has an eye for angles; he understands the importance of presentation and narrative as well as content.

The budget tree has its own narrative; those in Parliament House have once again watched as the tree’s changes signal the coming date. In these weeks, and indeed in the months before, Chalmers has been weaving his budget story.

Over this time, as international and Australian economic conditions have altered, so have some aspects of his preparatory narrative. No matter: when necessary he starts a fresh chapter. On the whole, Chalmers is a “no surprises” politician – his approach is to prepare the public for what’s on the cards.

As is the modern way, the government is putting out to the media ahead of time figures and announcements from the budget, in embargoed “drops”. That way, these get a clear run in the morning media, ahead of comments and criticisms from pesky stakeholders or sceptical experts. Maximum control has been achieved over the government’s pre-budget publicity. There are few genuine “leaks” of measures these days.

Among the “drops”, we’ve seen the change to the HELP indexation of student debt, and a new payment for students on teaching, nursing and social work placements. Also “dropped” has been the smaller-than-before revenue upgrade that will be in the budget. That came with Chalmers’ warning not to expect a cash splash.

Once we get to Tuesday night, things will be harder for the treasurer to control. He will hope his narrative holds, but critics will spring up from all directions, especially with a budget like this year’s, which has to juggle sharply different demands in difficult circumstances.

Chalmers referred this week to charting “a responsible middle course between those who want us to slash and burn in the budget and those who think that it should be some kind of free-for-all of spending”.

The hardliners in the media will thunder it’s all too loose, with excessive spending and not enough of the revenue windfalls banked. The welfare lobby has the government’s own Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee’s total wish list to refer to, which inevitably the government isn’t able to fulfil.

Chalmers has already told us that, in the short term, the budget – which delivers Labor’s second consecutive surplus – will emphasise the continuing fight against inflation. In the longer term, the emphasis will switch to promoting growth.

Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock said this week: “Jim Chalmers says publicly, and he says to me in private, that he does have inflation in his mind while he is thinking about the budget”.

In a clear and repeated message, Bullock also warned: “We don’t think we [the bank] necessarily have to tighten [rates] again. But we can’t rule it out. If we have to, we will.”

Politically, the government needs an interest rate cut before the election, due in a year. A rise would be a political disaster.

With the inflation dragon wounded but not slain and a rate cut (the most likely next move) already pushed out months, budget spending has to be restrained. But at the same time, extra spending on cost-of-living relief is required, beyond the expensive (rejigged) income tax cuts.

We can expect there’ll be targeted help on energy costs and rental assistance, among other things. Apart from the cost-of-living relief they bring, the energy and rental measures have a second benefit: in the immediate term they subtract from, rather than add to, inflation.

Households squeezed by living costs, however, and eyeing that short term surplus, may see various budget measures as not coming their way or as inadequate. Of course all taxpayers will get a tax cut, but one problem is people have factored that in (even though it doesn’t come until July 1).

Chalmers is caught between “back-end loading” some of the budget’s new spending while trying to minimise the structural challenges in the later years, when the budget is already under pressure from the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the costs of an ageing population and the defence program.

A centrepiece of the budget will be the government’s controversial Future Made in Australia interventionist policy. We won’t see the umbrella legislation for this, but there will be more details about its framework. Importantly, the budget will contain tax incentives as part of the government’s effort to attract investment from overseas.

Observers will be focused on what more is said about the guardrails around Future Made in Australia, which has seen (among other initiatives) $1 billion committed to the manufacture of solar panels, which critics argue would be much better imported. We’d also expect information about the parts of the program that will be on and off budget, and about the economic rationale for the government incentivising private investment in particular sectors.

To some eyes, Future Made in Australia has a blokey feel about it – because of the nature of the projects – when the government is very sensitive to gender issues.

This sensitivity has been heightened by the recent publicity around the domestic violence crisis. More generally, the government is very attuned, in political terms, to women. In high-profile appointments, it has made clear its active search for women candidates. It has to take into account in the budget that many female voters will have even more of a gender lens on it than usual.

This is only Chalmers’ third budget but he’s been around for a lot more: as a staffer he worked on five of former treasurer Wayne Swan’s six budgets. Treasurers receive a leather-bound book of their budget papers. When Swan retired, he gave Chalmers the copy of his second budget book (2009-2010). The accompanying inscription read: “When challenges arise in your future ministerial service keep this Hansard nearby as a reminder of the cause we represent and the people we serve”.

Chalmers has fulfilled Swan’s prediction of a ministerial career. And many are presently rating him as the government’s best performer. All that attention to detail counts. But each budget presents a fresh test over the latest hurdles. And, of course, opportunities to kick some new goals.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Like the famous budget tree, Chalmers can change the story to suit the season – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-like-the-famous-budget-tree-chalmers-can-change-the-story-to-suit-the-season-229711

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Hepburn, Professor, Deakin Law School, Deakin University

Gas is back – if it ever went away.

Yesterday, the Albanese government doubled down on gas with the release of its Future Gas Industry policy.

Under this proposal, gas will be part of our power mix until at least 2050. New gas fields will be opened to avoid the supply problems that have bedevilled east coast users. And our gas exports will remain a source of income and diplomatic power.

What about climate change? Well, the strategy is littered with references to low-emissions gas, carbon capture and storage, decarbonisation and the need to shore up energy supply as coal departs the grid. As it states:

Continued gas development and more flexible gas infrastructure is needed to increase the resilience of Australia’s energy system and keep costs down as we transition.

But this is a fig leaf. We cannot open new gas projects and still meet our climate goals. If we want to make sure we have enough domestic supply on the east coast, we could simply reserve some of our export gas, as Western Australia has done.

Having your cake and eating it too

Gas still supplies more than a quarter of Australia’s power within the National Energy Market. By 2028, the report forecasts supply shortages will begin to hurt the east coast. But this supply crisis could be solved easily with a WA-style reservation policy, where a percentage of gas extracted from existing supply is mandated to be reserved for the domestic east coast market. The fact the government is not pursuing this option means the supply crisis is of our own making.

Cynics would say the domestic supply issue is a cover for vastly larger interests, namely the A$17 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry which sells about 90% of our gas overseas with demand for LNG in the Asian region expected to continue until 2050. Over the past decade, our LNG exports have risen sharply. For several years, Australia was the world’s top exporter, competing directly with the likes of Qatar. Gas now accounts for 14% of our export earnings.

Last year, we exported 80 million tonnes of the stuff – roughly 114 shiploads. That’s the first drop in production since 2015.

The reason? Production is likely to have peaked. Many gas fields are running dry, and exploration has slowed. Late last year, the oil and gas industry put out a report stating:

investment in supply is also required to meet current long-term LNG commitments with the current committed and anticipated production also declining over time to below contracted levels in the medium-term.

Now we have a new government strategy, calling for renewed exploration and development.

Is there a role for gas?

The gas industry would, of course, like us to keep using gas for as long as possible. But how does that square with the need to get to net zero as soon as possible? To meet Australia’s commitment to net zero by 2050, emissions from gas must be reduced.

As Federal Resources Minister Madeleine King says in the foreword to the new gas strategy:

Under all credible net zero scenarios, natural gas is needed through to 2050 and beyond, though its production and use will change over this period[…] Gas will be a transition fuel that firms renewable power generation and is required for manufacturing and minerals processing until such time as alternatives are viable. Gas can support our future made in Australia. However, the greenhouse gas emissions associated with gas must sharply decline and where gas use cannot be reduced, emissions must be increasingly abated and offset.

This has some truth. We cannot simply turn off the gas pipelines overnight for our domestic consumption. Homes still use gas. Industries rely on it. Gas peaking plants have taken up some of the slack left by coal leaving the grid. Development of lower emission alternatives such as biomethane, hydrogen gas, pumped hydro, batteries and other bio-fuels will take time, especially for industrial use.

The report envisages the steepest domestic falls in demand in east coast buildings, which essentially means Victorian homes, as the state most reliant on gas. Here, the state government has signalled it wants to end this reliance. But the report sees industrial demand remaining high due to a lack of alternatives, and an increase in gas demand on the west coast for new industrial users, such as fertiliser plants coming on line, which will use gas as a key feedstock.

So is the government actually planning for the time when gas stays safely in the ground, where it does not add to corporate coffers and also does not add to the tally of planet-warming gases?

Not exactly. Under the most ambitious emissions scenario in the report, the government foresees global demand for gas dropping 30% by 2043. That’s almost two decades away, and a 30% drop is not much on that kind of timescale. Further, the report states gas “underpins a wide range of economic activity in Australia and globally, with secure gas supplies being a core component of energy security.” So, our Future Gas Strategy will continue to be aligned with the production and export of gas, despite out Net Zero commitments

What’s also clear in the report is the importance this government places on gas as a geopolitical tool. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, global gas prices skyrocketed as major gas consumers scrambled to find alternative supplies. By and large, they have – and Australia is one of the beneficiaries of the global gas grab.

As King notes in her foreword:

Australia is and will remain a reliable and trusted trade and investment partner, including for liquefied natural gas (LNG). Our trade partners have made large investments over decades in Australia’s resources industry.

The Greens, teals and independents have seized on this report as evidence the government is simply doing whatever the gas industry wants. Vocal independent David Pocock described the strategy as “morally bankrupt”.

It’s hard to write that line of argument off completely. As the International Energy Agency has said, large new fossil fuel projects are simply not compatible with cutting emissions and tackling climate change.

Read more:
Gas is good until 2050 and beyond, under Albanese gas strategy

Samantha Hepburn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Australia can have a future for the gas industry, or meet its climate commitments – but not both – https://theconversation.com/australia-can-have-a-future-for-the-gas-industry-or-meet-its-climate-commitments-but-not-both-229700

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Bennett, Professor of Music, Australian National University

The future belongs to the analogue loyalists. Fuck digital.

As a tsunami of CDs, DAT tapes and samplers swept the recording industry in the late 1980s, Big Black frontman and alternative music agent provocateur Steve Albini threw down the gauntlet in defiance.

His commitment to analogue recording processes and the permanency of analogue media resonated among alternative music communities sceptical of the major record industry, and their perceptions of impending digital doom.

This quote, taken from the liner notes of Big Black’s sophomore album Songs About Fucking (1987), signified the end of Albini’s band and the beginning of his recording career.

Albini’s untimely death at the age of 61 is a huge loss to independent music.

An analogue sound

A protégé of London’s Southern Studios recordist John Loder (CRASS, Ministry, Jesus and Mary Chain), Albini peeled the remnants of analogue recording from Southern’s sticky floors and stuck it all over Chicago’s alternative music scene.

He quickly carved out a reputation as a go-to recordist for artists wanting to achieve a transparent representation of a live sonic aesthetic.

From The Jesus Lizard to Manic Street Preachers, Pixies to The Stooges, Albini applied his same raw-and-roomy drum microphone techniques alongside uncompromisingly upfront guitars to every session – regardless of whether the client was an indie rock giant or an emergent local band.

In 2003, Albini’s commitment to technologically unobtrusive recording sessions was immortalised in David Josephson’s e-22S – a small diaphragm condenser microphone built to Albini’s requirements and bearing his Electrical Audio studio insignia.

The power of words – and music

As a journalism graduate from Northwestern University, Albini routinely provoked outrage with his nonchalant commentary of extreme events and material, writing for local fanzines and reviewing the Chicago punk scene.

Armed with a Roland TR606 drum machine and a penchant for horror stories in the local news, I previously described Albini’s noise-punk as “designed to confront listeners with real-life horrors of suburbia, to reflect bigotry and social exclusion and to mediate the extremities of human behaviour via equally confronting music.”

In 2020, Albini apologised for his confrontational writing – and later band name Rapeman – as “unconscionable” and “indefensible”, a result, he said, of his unchecked privilege.

All apologies aside, it is hardly likely the dozens of women and LGBTQI+ artists Albini recorded – including Laura Jane Grace, The Breeders, Nina Nastasia, Screaming Females and PJ Harvey, to name but a few – would have set foot in his studio had Albini’s deviant satirising reflected his true politics or beliefs.

After all this is the man, who when writing to Nirvana to pitch the recording for their In Utero album, told them he’d “rap your head with a ratchet” in the same letter he humbly insisted on no points or royalties.

The only person I wanted to call

Albini’s reputation as an unapproachable and prickly recalcitrant was far from the truth.

For those fortunate enough to have recorded with Albini, he was known as a kind, patient and accommodating engineer, eager to make bands feel at home and committed to capturing the truest possible representation of their live sound.

This was my experience, too.

As a young doctoral student researching sound recording and production techniques in 2009, Albini was only too happy to discuss his career and recording techniques with me.

“I feel like it borders on the fraudulent for me to charge for a recording session knowing that the product of that recording session is going to be impermanent,” he told me. He was adamant tape was still the only reliable recording medium well into the 21st century.

A couple of years later when we needed a keynote for the Art of Record Production conference, there was only one person I knew to call. Albini happily obliged – despite spending most of the conference weekend glued to online poker tournaments.

As an analogue loyalist, Albini was perhaps the recording industry’s last man standing. Technically accomplished, sonically subversive and fiercely independent, in his later years he showed a rare humility for a decorated recording engineer, and an open willingness to teach in the face of relentless industry gatekeeping.

Never a nostalgic, Albini demythologised recording processes with a stream of recording videos shot from his own Electric Audio studios. Dressed in his trademark navy blue overalls and beanie, just a week ago Albini happily explained the schematic of a SamAmp VA tube preamplifier in a video that effortlessly blends in-depth electronics theory with an exuberant punk joy de vivre.

Albini’s final album with band Shellac, To All Trains, will be released on May 17.

Samantha Bennett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Technically accomplished, sonically subversive and fiercely independent, I’ll remember Steve Albini for his rare humility – https://theconversation.com/technically-accomplished-sonically-subversive-and-fiercely-independent-ill-remember-steve-albini-for-his-rare-humility-229708

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Strong, Associate professor, Music Industry, RMIT University

This week American rapper Macklemore released a new track, Hind’s Hall, which has gained a lot of attention because of its explicitly political nature.

The track is unapologetically pro-Palestine. It declares the artist’s solidarity with student protesters occupying campuses across the globe in response to the ongoing conflict in Gaza, which the International Court of Justice has said could plausibly be a genocide.

The title refers to student protesters renaming Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall as “Hind’s Hall” when they occupied it. Hind Rajab was a six-year-old Gazan girl who died in horrific circumstances – trapped for days in a car with the bodies of her family members killed by Israeli fire. The Israeli military also killed Red Cross emergency responders who tried to come to her aid.

Macklemore has previously been known for more lighthearted songs such as Thrift Shop and Downtown but ventured into (safer) political territory with Same Love in 2012, a celebration of LGBTQI+ relationships.

This new track goes beyond the politics of previous work in taking a no-holds-barred stance on Palestine. It also calls out problems with policing and censorship in the United States, and its role in enabling the slaughter in Gaza.

The song concludes in a celebration of protest and collective action:

If the West was pretendin’ that you didn’t exist, you’d want the world to stand up and the students finally did.

The legacy of protest music

Hind’s Hall is of course just the latest in a long line of protest songs released in relation to key political moments. Previous examples include The Specials’ song Nelson Mandela protesting against apartheid, Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit commenting on violent racism in the United States, and numerous iconic songs from the anti-Vietnam War movement.

The entire genre of hip-hop has been built on a foundation of social commentary and protest – often about race and social conditions – making it a fitting vehicle for Hind’s Hall.

Even political parties understand music’s potential to convey messages, which is why they, too, often use music to drive their campaigns. The song It’s Time from the 1972 Gough Whitlam campaign was used to evoke feelings of hope in voters through music, lyrics and the involvement of well-known Australian musicians such as Little Pattie.

This doesn’t always go to plan, however. Artists have pushed back on their songs being used by politicians they don’t agree with.

There have also been cases of politicians using songs where the message doesn’t align with their own. For instance, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA has been used several times as a pro-US anthem by politicians who missed its critique of the country.

This raises an important point. An artist might try their best to convey a political point in a song, but they can never guarantee the audience will understand it in the way they want.

Why music?

Can a song like Hind’s Hall really galvanise the public into taking action on an issue? The link between political songs and people taking political action is by no means clear-cut. Often the clearest outcome of protest songs is that they strengthen the bonds between people who already agree on an issue, rather than changing their position.

That said, we know music has the power to hit people on several levels and to translate political messages in a powerful way. That’s because it elicits strong emotions and sensations that go beyond words or facts. Someone who has never felt strongly about a political issue may become engaged if they are moved by a song.

Music is also fundamentally social and creates community and belonging. When a song like Hind’s Hall explodes, people respond not only to its instruments, melodies and lyrics, but also to other people’s reactions to the song.

In this way, music can raise the public profile of an issue and make it challenging for people who have otherwise disengaged to remain disengaged.

Macklemore’s song has received coverage in media outlets around the globe.

Meanwhile, media coverage on the ground in Gaza has been highly politicised. Journalists themselves been targeted and Israel has recently moved to shut down Al Jazeera’s operations in the country.

Against this backdrop, we can see the significance of Hind’s Hall giving media space to the people under siege and the protesters supporting them. Millions of people who might have not known who Hind Rajab was will now remember her name.

What happens next?

There’s a risk that comes with putting too much weight into the potential of a single song (however powerful) by a well-known musician. That is, it could simply be used to manufacture attention and strong reactions for the sake of clicks.

What matters is what happens next. Will Macklemore’s song stop the US government and its allies (which include Australia) from funding the war on Gaza? Probably not. Will it encourage more people to participate in campaigns and protests? Maybe. Will it help maintain motivation for the people who are already taking action? More likely.

What it will undoubtedly do is provide a focal point around which people can discuss how to oppose the killing of tens of thousands of people and the stoking of a wider regional war. It will also add to the increasing domestic and international pressure the US government is already being compelled to respond to, such as by pausing weapons shipment.

It may also encourage more artists to speak about the issue. As Macklemore notes in the song, “the music industry’s quiet, complicit in their platform of silence”. Many artists are no doubt scared of speaking up on such issues.

In 2003, the Dixie Chicks almost had their careers ruined following a comment they made onstage that critiqued George W. Bush’s decision to take the US to war in Iraq.

Nonetheless, as Macklemore has shown, artists’ voices have weight. In dark and difficult times, it may make a difference if they use them.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Hind’s Hall is Macklemore’s bold new pro-Palestine anthem. What might it actually achieve? – https://theconversation.com/hinds-hall-is-macklemores-bold-new-pro-palestine-anthem-what-might-it-actually-achieve-229702

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danica Jenkins, Lecturer in European Studies, University of Sydney

On a freezing spring night in March, Georgia’s national soccer team beat Greece in a nail-biter penalty shootout to qualify for the Euro 2024 championships. The atmosphere on the streets of the capital Tbilisi was electric – it was a euphoric and self-affirming moment for the small Caucasian nation. More than just a soccer match, it signalled to many Georgians their country was on the right path after finally gaining official European Union candidate status in December 2023.

Barely six weeks later, however, Georgia’s European future hangs in the balance. The warm, convivial atmosphere of that post-match night has been replaced by violent street clashes between security forces and anti-government protesters who fear the increasing Russification of their country.

From my house in Tbilisi, I hear the reverberations of these demonstrations grow louder each night, moving from their epicentre outside parliament to Heroes Square – a monument built to honour Georgians who have died fighting for the integrity of their nation.

As the movement grows beyond Georgia’s capital, tens of thousands continue to rally against a controversial bill being pushed through parliament by the ruling Georgian Dream party. Critics say the legislation was taken straight from the pages of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s playbook.

Read more:
Georgia is sliding towards autocracy after government moves to force through bill on ‘foreign agents’

Why the bill is causing anger

The so-called “Foreign Agents Bill” would require groups in Georgia that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “agents of foreign influence”. It is a move that Georgian Dream claims will increase transparency among media, civil society and other non-governmental organisations, and protect Georgian statehood.

The government first introduced the bill last year, but was forced to withdraw it under pressure from protesters and Georgia’s Western allies.

As tensions on Tbilisi’s streets have heightened over the past week with the first and second parliamentary readings of the bill, opposition groups have urged the government to withdraw it again. They fear it will lead to a crackdown on independent media and civic liberties as it did in Russia when a similar law was introduced in 2012 and then expanded a decade later.

The legislation is just the latest in a series of questionable actions by Georgian Dream that seem to be leading the country away from its constitutionally enshrined Western path and into alignment with Kremlin-style authoritarianism.

EU leaders have warned the law could derail the country’s hopes of joining the bloc, if it is passed. With recent polls indicating nearly 90% of Georgians support joining the EU, this prospect was enough to compel many angry, mostly young citizens onto the streets.

As Niki Tarkhan-Mouravi, an independent publisher and activist who has been attending the nightly protests, told me:

We are scared the new legislation will give the government more control over Georgian people, on what they do and how they get funded. If passed, it will slowly shut down all organisations working hard in Georgia to promote Western values, such as individual rights and our commitment to building a more open society, as it did in Russia. And we do not want to be like Russia – our future is in Europe.

A test of a young democracy

This is a familiar story across the post-Soviet landscape, where the Western aspirations of young democracies frequently collide with the realities of living in Russia’s orbit.

Georgian Dream came to power in 2012, largely in response to then-President Mikheil Saakashvili’s increasingly unpopular neoliberal reforms and confrontational approach to Russia, which many believe led to the 2008 Russo-Georgian War.

Since then, Georgian Dream has maintained a fragile balance between pursuing the public’s Western aspirations and appeasing Russia, Georgia’s neighbour to the north. It has increasingly favoured the latter, however, especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, another neighbour, in 2022.

Indeed, domestic politics in former Soviet republics are often far more complex and delicate than Western critics may fathom. One need only look at Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to see what happens when citizens of Russia’s neighbours begin to voice civic aims that stray too far from Putin’s sphere.

Georgia has been deeply scarred by the experience of wars with Russia. Some 20% of its territory is still occupied by Russian forces from the 2008 conflict. Georgian Dream has exploited the public’s fear of Russian aggression as a pretext for domestic political gain.

Yet, Georgian citizens also understand the predicament of living in Russia’s shadow.

Images of security forces using water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds of peaceful demonstrators in Tbilisi are strikingly reminiscent of Ukraine’s 2013 Euromaidan protests.

These were prompted by then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to renege on Ukraine’s association agreement with the EU in favour of closer ties with Russia. The protests grew into Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity several months later, which ousted Yanukovych and gave rise to a new generation of anti-corruption, pro-democratic leaders.

However, the revolution also prompted Russia to annex Crimea and incite an insurgency in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region in 2014. This laid the groundwork for Russia’s war in Ukraine today.

Where Georgia goes from here

It remains to be seen whether the protests in Georgia will grow into a Euromaidan-style revolution. However, a nascent civil society is clearly defining its core values more sharply in response to threat.

Georgia is at a crossroads not simply because of the government’s decisions, but because a young, civic-minded population is coming of age and wants to safeguard its democratic future.

But if Georgians truly want to parlay their Western aspirations into a more resilient democratic future, they must back up their anti-Russian rhetoric with a deeper sociocultural and historical reckoning.

This will involve in-depth public discussions about the past and future direction of the nation. Georgian politicians and citizens alike must recognise the collective responsibility of building and maintaining an open society.

For now, my Georgian friends and their fellow citizens await the bill’s final reading in parliament on May 17. At a time when even established democracies are grappling with deep fragmentation and polarisation, it is clear these protests are more significant than merely the domestic affairs of a peripheral Caucasian nation.

Danica Jenkins does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘We do not want to be like Russia’: a first-hand account of Georgia’s fight for democracy – https://theconversation.com/we-do-not-want-to-be-like-russia-a-first-hand-account-of-georgias-fight-for-democracy-229491

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam G. Arian, Lecturer (Accounting & Finance), Australian Catholic University

Imagine every ton of carbon dioxide a company emits is slowly inflating its costs — not just in terms of potential fines or fees but in the capital it needs to grow and operate.

This isn’t just an environmental issue, it’s a stark reality many companies experience today.

Our new research, looking at more than a thousand Australian-listed companies from 2007 to 2020 reveals higher carbon emissions significantly increase the costs to business.

Similar analysis has been done in Europe and North America where environmental regulations are tough and longstanding. But ours is the first analysis of its type in Australia where regulations are less stringent.

Emissions linked to costs

Our research, using panel regression analysis – a statistical method often used in social science, demography and econometrics – shows companies with higher emissions are seen as riskier investments.

Due to confidentiality agreements about financial data, we are unable to disclose company names. But the trend was consistent across utilities, energy, industrial and other sectors.

This risk isn’t about stock market ups and downs; it’s about how individual companies stand out from others due to their environmental practices.

In finance, this type of risk is known as “idiosyncratic risk”. It refers to the dangers a company faces on its own, separate from the broader market, often driven by specific actions like how much carbon it emits.

Higher risk translates into higher costs when these companies try to raise money. Whether it’s taking out a loan or selling shares, the market demands greater returns to compensate for the higher risk, driving up costs.

Essentially, the more a company pollutes the more expensive it becomes for it to fund growth and operations.

The markets are watching

Today’s markets are increasingly vigilant about environmental impacts.

Investors and lenders make decisions based on how companies manage their carbon emissions. For every extra ton of emissions, a company’s expansion costs can jump by 18.5% due to higher operational and compliance risks.

Higher expansion costs can cut into profits and damage a company’s financial health. A big carbon footprint risks putting off environmentally conscious investors and consumers, reducing market value.

Reducing footprints isn’t just about corporate goodwill, it’s a critical financial strategy. It lowers the perceived risk and, subsequently, costs.

Energy efficient companies have a smaller environmental impact and greater investment appeal.

Managing risks and finances

The implications of our research extends beyond individual companies.

It provides evidence for more rigorous reporting of corporate carbon emissions. Clear and consistent disclosure of these figures is good for transparency and improves company valuations.

For regulators and policymakers, these findings boost the case for stronger environmental legislation demanding rigorous emission disclosures and reductions.

Our findings are in line with the government’s proposed environmental regulations, to enforce stricter emission disclosures and reduction targets.

These measures are also designed to promote more favorable financial conditions in the capital markets, making Australian companies more competitive globally.

Everyone benefits

As pressure for sustainable operations increases, managing emissions is emerging as not just an environmental responsibility but as a savvy business move.

Companies with low-carbon practices have a competitive edge in market perception and real financial terms.

This isn’t just about combating climate change. Understanding and managing carbon emissions is about securing a financially viable future in an increasingly green economy. It helps the planet and the wallet.

Our analysis provides a critical insight into why businesses need to design strategies aimed at sustainability and business success is inextricably linked to effective carbon management.

By making environmental responsibility a financial strategy, companies can ensure their future is greener and financially sound.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Our research shows higher carbon emissions increase costs for Australian businesses – https://theconversation.com/our-research-shows-higher-carbon-emissions-increase-costs-for-australian-businesses-229133

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Somwrita Sarkar, Senior Lecturer in Design and Computation, University of Sydney

The “latte line” is the infamous, invisible boundary that divides Sydney between the more affluent north-east and the south-west. Historically, people north of the line enjoy better access to jobs and education, and can capitalise on rising property wealth. This has reinforced economic inequality.

Despite our image as a classless society, similar spatial divides have long marked Australia’s other capital cities as well. So are things getting better or worse?

We set out to answer this question by investigating neighbourhood population changes across Australia’s five largest cities – Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. We used census data to track patterns of wealth and disadvantage between 2011 and 2016. We looked at who moved in, out of or remained in each location, and who goes to work where.

We found clear evidence of social exclusion at work. These capital cities are becoming more segregated along socioeconomic lines. And the trend was worst in Sydney.

Measuring gentrification and exclusion

To see whether we could detect gentrification in action, we looked for evidence of lower-income people being displaced from well-located areas.

We were also interested in signs of the reverse. For instance, has the boom in apartments near transport and employment centres helped lower-income earners find more housing near their workplaces, counteracting spatial exclusion?

Using internal migration data from 2011 and 2016, we traced movement between locations using the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) “Statistical Area Level 2” (SA2) – the smallest area for the release of full census statistics.

These localities also have Socio-Economic Indices for Areas (SEIFA) scores. This is a combined measure of socio-economic advantage and disadvantage, education, occupation and economic resources.

We classified every SA2 into one of four neighbourhood types:

1. escalator: people moving in come from SA2s with the same or lower SEIFA scores, and people moving out go to SA2s with higher SEIFA scores, so escalators signify upward social mobility

2. gentrifier: in-movers come from SA2s with higher SEIFA scores (more affluent areas) and out-movers go to SA2s with the same or lower SEIFA scores

3. isolate: in-movers and out-movers come from and go to SA2s with the same or lower SEIFA scores, so the movers have likely been “priced out” or excluded from other localities

4. transit: in-movers and out-movers come from and go to SA2s with higher SEIFA scores.

We counted the SA2s falling into each of these neighbourhood types. The results show clear, dynamic patterns of social exclusion along geographic lines.

In the most advantaged areas, isolate neighbourhoods dominate. This indicates lower–income earners have already been excluded from these locations.

By contrast, transit neighbourhoods cluster in more disadvantaged neighbourhoods. This suggests these locations may offer access to economic opportunity. But they are at risk of becoming gentrified, excluding and displacing lower-income residents.

Measuring access to jobs

Access to jobs is essential for economic opportunity. We measured connectivity to the main centres of employment at the SA2 level for all five cities, using ABS Census journey-to-work data .

Again, we found higher SEIFA-scoring neighbourhoods were better connected to employment centres than those with lower SEIFA scores. Higher-income earners can afford to live close to their workplaces. Lower-income workers can’t.

Housing and jobs create double disadvantage

The most advantaged households benefit from their high access to employment opportunities. This is reflected in high house prices and rents in those neighbourhoods. And that, in turn, reinforces patterns of household wealth, poverty and spatial segregation.

Our study revealed high-income and very-high-income earners are clustering in ever-tighter spatial groups. In effect, they live behind an invisible “neighbourhood exclusion barrier”.

Over time, moderate and low-income renters are displaced from these areas of affluence. Other lower-income earners can’t replace them as the housing has become too expensive. This effect persists despite the economic ties lower-income workers often have to these areas.

This results in a labour market where the highest earners are closest to centres of employment. Those on lower and moderate incomes are forced out to the city fringes and must travel more to get to work.

Residential exclusion and the employment connectivity divide combine to increase spatial inequalities in cities.

This is in addition to the inefficiencies created by the mismatch between the locations of jobs and housing.

So how do the cities compare?

Sydney emerged as the most segregated and unequal of the five cities. The latte line is getting stronger.

Melbourne emerges as a much more equitable city than Sydney. The segregation effects are not as strong in Melbourne. When it occurs, like Sydney, segregation occurs at the higher ends of the market, rather than at the lower ends.

Perth echoes Sydney, but weakly. The spatial concentration of moderate-income, high-income and very-high-income households has increased in Perth.

Brisbane and Adelaide are the most stable cities in this study. However, they still show the general trend towards segregation.

What can we do to create more cohesive cities?

Globally, segregated cities entrench disadvantage, drain productivity and deplete community wellbeing. Neighbourhoods, and mobility between neighbourhoods, matter..

Explicit targets to reduce spatial segregation should become front and centre of our spatial planning efforts. Wider government investment in social and economic infrastructure should underpin these targets.

A first step would be to make it mandatory for new developments across all suburban and regional localities to include affordable homes. Otherwise, the market will continue to sort lower-income earners into areas of lower opportunity.

Some parts of the United States, have so-called “anti-snob” laws to counter gentrification and exclusion processes. These laws allow affordable housing developers to override planning rules in areas that lack lower-cost options.

In Hong Kong, Singapore and the Netherlands, governments co-ordinate infrastructure and residential development with public transport services. They ensure or directly deliver a range of social and affordable homes for people of all incomes to rent or buy.

These examples show what can be done to fix our housing problem and reduce the segregation in our cities. Governments need to do more than call for new housing supply, or promise planning rule reforms to increase densities, or offer grants to first-home buyers. A target “number” of new dwellings isn’t enough.

We also need to have a planned and nuanced response to where these new homes would be located. These homes must be:

• affordable and close to old and new job clusters
• well served by social and community infrastructure
• a mix of housing and tenure types that works against segregation.

Setting measurable targets for affordable housing inclusion alongside investment in transport, education, health and cultural infrastructure would be a good start.

Somwrita Sarkar received funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) to carry out the research reported.

Nicole Gurran and Rashi Shrivastava do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Our cities are widening the divide between the well-off and the rest. How can we turn this damaging trend around? – https://theconversation.com/our-cities-are-widening-the-divide-between-the-well-off-and-the-rest-how-can-we-turn-this-damaging-trend-around-222386

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dowdy, Principal Research Scientist in Extreme Weather, The University of Melbourne

In media articles about unprecedented flooding, you’ll often come across the statement that for every 1°C of warming, the atmosphere can hold about 7% more moisture.

This figure comes from research undertaken by the French engineer Sadi Carnot and published 200 years ago this year.

We now know there’s more to the story. Yes, a hotter atmosphere has the capacity to hold more moisture. But the condensation of water vapour to make rain droplets releases heat. This, in turn, can fuel stronger convection in thunderstorms, which can then dump substantially more rain.

This means that the intensity of extreme rainfall could increase by much more than 7% per degree of warming. What we’re seeing is that thunderstorms can likely dump about double or triple that rate – around 14–21% more rain for each degree of warming.

Thunderstorms are a major cause of extreme flooding around the world, contributing to Brazil’s disastrous floods, which have submerged hundreds of towns, and Dubai’s flooded airport and roads.

For Australia, we helped develop a comprehensive review of the latest climate science to guide preparedness for future floods. This showed the increase per degree of global warming was about 7–28% for hourly or shorter duration extreme rain, and 2–15% for daily or longer extreme rain. This is much higher than figures in the existing flood planning standards recommending a general increase of 5% per degree of warming.

Why are thunderstorms important for extreme rain?

For thunderstorms to form, you need ingredients such as moisture in the air and a large temperature difference between lower and higher air masses to create instability.

We typically associate thunderstorms with intense localised rain over a short period. What we’re seeing now, though, is a shift towards more intense thunderstorm downpours, particularly for short periods.

Extreme rain events are also more likely when thunderstorms form in combination with other weather systems, such as east coast lows, intense low pressure systems near eastern Australia. The record floods which hit Lismore in February 2022 and claimed the lives of many people came from extreme rain over many days, which came in part from severe thunderstorms in combination with an east coast low.

Climate change pumps up extreme flood risk factors

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that:

frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events have increased since the 1950s over most land areas for which observational data are sufficient for trend analysis (high confidence), and human-induced climate change is likely the main driver

This increase is particularly clear in short-duration extreme rains, such as those caused by thunderstorms.

Why? In part, it’s because of the 7% figure – warmer air is able to hold more water vapour.

But that doesn’t explain everything. There’s something else going on. Condensation produces heat. So as water vapour turns into droplets, more heat becomes available, and hot air rises by convection. In thunderstorms, more heat fuels stronger convection, where warm, moisture-laden air is driven up high.

This explains why thunderstorms can now drive such extreme rainfall in our warming world. As water vapour condenses to make rain, it also makes heat, supercharging storms.

We are seeing these very rapid rates of rainfall increase in recent decades in Australia.

Daily rainfall associated with thunderstorms has increased much more than the 7% figure would suggest – about 2-3 times more.

Hourly rainfall extremes have also increased in intensity at similar rates.

What about very sudden, extreme rains? Here, the rate of increase could potentially be even larger. One recent study examined extreme rain for periods shorter than one hour near Sydney, suggesting about a 40% increase or more over the past 20 years.

Rapid trends in extreme rainfall intensity are also clear in other lines of evidence, such as fine-resolution modelling.

To model complex climate systems, we need the grunt of supercomputers. But even so, many of our models for climate projections don’t drill down to grid resolutions smaller than about 100 kilometres.

While this can work well for large-scale climate modelling, it’s not suitable for directly simulating thunderstorms. That’s because the convection processes needed to make thunderstorms form happen on much smaller scales than this.

There’s now a concerted effort underway to perform more model simulations at very fine scales, so we can improve the modelling of convection.

Recent results from these very fine scale models for Europe suggest convection will play a more important role in triggering extreme rainfall including in combined storms, such as thunderstorms mingling with low pressure systems and other combinations.

This matches Australian observations, with a trend towards increased rain from thunderstorms combining with other storm types such as cold fronts and cyclones (including low-pressure systems in southern Australia).

Does this change how we plan for floods?

The evidence for supercharged thunderstorm rainfall has grown in recent years.

Australia’s current flood guidance recommendations, which influence how infrastructure projects have been built, are based on extreme rain increasing by just 5% for each degree of warming.

Our research review has shown the real figure is substantially higher.

This means roads, bridges, tunnels built for the 5% figure may not be ready to deal with extreme rain we are already seeing from supercharged thunderstorms.

While Australia has become more conscious of links between climate change and bushfires, studies show we are less likely to link climate change and more intense storms and floods.

This will have to change. We still face some uncertainties in precisely linking climate change to a single extreme rain event. But the bigger picture is now very clear: a hotter world is likely one with higher risk of extreme floods, often driven by extreme rain from supercharged thunderstorms.

So what should we do? The first step is to take climate change influences on storms and flood risk as seriously as we now do for bushfires.

The next is to embed the best available evidence in how we plan for these future storms and floods.

We have already loaded the dice for more extreme floods, due to existing human-caused climate change and more to come, unless we can quickly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

Read more:
Why is Australia’s east coast copping all this rain right now? An atmospheric scientist explains

Andrew Dowdy receives research funding from The University of Melbourne.

Conrad Wasko receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jennifer Catto is an Associate Professor of Weather and Climate at the University of Exeter and receives funding from various research councils.

Seth Westra is a Professor of Climate Risk an the University of Adelaide, Research Director of the One Basin Cooperative Research Centre, and Director of the Systems Cooperative. He receives funding from various government and non-government sources.

– ref. Supercharged thunderstorms: have we underestimated how climate change drives extreme rain and floods? – https://theconversation.com/supercharged-thunderstorms-have-we-underestimated-how-climate-change-drives-extreme-rain-and-floods-228896

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Symons, Macquarie School of Social Sciences, Macquarie University

Life has transformed our world over billions of years, turning a dead rock into the lush, fertile planet we know today. But human activity is currently transforming Earth again, this time by releasing greenhouse gases that are driving dramatic changes in our climate.

What if we could harness the power of living organisms to help rein in climate change? The field of “engineering biology”, which uses genetic technology to engineer biological tools for solving specific problems, may be able to help.

Perhaps the most dramatic success to date of this nascent field is the mRNA vaccines that helped us weather the COVID pandemic. But engineering biology has enormous potential not only to help us adapt to climate change, but also to limit warming.

In our latest paper in Nature Communications, we reviewed some of the many ways engineering biology can aid the fight against climate change – and how governments and policy makers can make sure humanity reaps the benefits of the technology.

Could engineering biology help fight climate change?

We identified four ways engineering biology might help to mitigate climate change.

The first is finding better ways to make synthetic fuels that can directly replace fossil fuels. Many existing synthetic fuels are made from high-value crops such as corn and soybeans that might otherwise be used for food, so the fuels are expensive.

Some engineering biology research explores ways to make synthetic fuel from agricultural waste. These fuels could be cheaper and greener, and so might help speed up decarbonisation.

For example, it would be much faster for airlines to decarbonise their existing fleets by switching to synthetic zero-carbon jet fuels, rather than waiting to replace their aircraft with yet-to-be-developed planes running on hydrogen or batteries.

The second is developing cost-effective ways to capture greenhouse emissions (from industrial facilities, construction and agriculture) and then use this waste for “biomanufacturing” valuable products (such as industrial chemicals or biofuels).

The third is replacing emissions-intensive production methods. For example, several companies are already using “precision fermentation” to produce synthetic milk that avoids the dairy industry’s methane emissions. Other companies have produced microbes which promise to fix nitrogen in soil, and so help reduce use of fertilisers produced from fossil fuels.

Finally, the fourth is directly capturing greenhouse gases from the air. Bacteria engineered to consume atmospheric carbon, or plants bred to sequester more carbon in their roots, could in theory help reduce greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

Beyond the technological and economic barriers, it’s unclear whether these ideas will ever gain a social license. Given the “science fiction-like” character of some of these emerging climate responses it’s essential that researchers be transparent and responsive to public attitudes.

Fact or science fiction?

Just how realistic are these ideas? Bringing a new product to market takes time, money and careful research.

Take solar power, for example. The first solar cell was created in the 1880s, and solar panels were installed on the White House roof in 1979, but it took many more decades of government support before solar power became a cost-competitive source of electricity.

The engineering biology sector is currently flooded with investor capital. However, the companies and projects attracting most investment are those with the greatest commercial value – typically in the medical, pharmaceutical, chemical and agricultural sectors.

By contrast, applications whose primary benefit is to reduce greenhouse emissions are unlikely to attract much private investment. For example, synthetic jet fuel is currently much more expensive than traditional jet fuel, so there’s no rush of private investors seeking to support its commercialisation.

Government (or philanthropic) support of some kind will be needed to nurture most climate-friendly applications through the slow process of development and commercialisation.

Back to picking winners?

Which engineering biology applications deserve governments’ assistance? Right now, it’s mostly too early to tell.

Policymakers will need to continually assess the social and technical merits of proposed engineering biology applications.

If engineering biology is to play a significant role in fighting climate change, policymakers will need to engage with it skilfully over time.

We argue government support should include five elements.

First, continued funding for the basic scientific research that generates new knowledge, and new potential mitigation tools.

Second, public deliberation on engineering biology applications. Some new products – such as precision-fermented synthetic milk – might gain acceptance over time even if they at first seem unattractive. Others might never gain support. For this public deliberation to reflect the interests of all humanity, low- and middle-income countries will need to gain expertise in engineering biology.

Third, regulations should be aligned with public interest. Governments should be alert to the possibility of existing industries trying to use regulations to lock out new competitors. For instance, we may see efforts from animal-based agricultural producers to restrict who can use words like “milk” and “sausage” or to ban lab-grown meat completely.

Fourth, support commercialisation and scale-up of promising technologies whose primary benefit is reducing greenhouse emissions. Governments might either fund this work directly or create other incentives – such as carbon pricing, tax credits or environmental regulations – that make private investment profitable.

Fifth, long-term procurement policies should be considered where large-scale deployment is needed to achieve climate goals. For example, the US Inflation Reduction Act provides unlimited tax credits to support direct air capture. While these incentives weren’t designed with engineering biology in mind, they are technologically neutral and so might well support it.

A bioengineered future in Australia?

Governments are now involved in a global race to position their countries as leaders in the emerging green economy. Australia’s proposed “future made in Australia” legislation is just one example.

Other governments have specific plans for engineering biology. For example, the United Kingdom committed £2 billion (A$3.8 billion) last year to an engineering biology strategy, while the US CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 called for the creation of a National Engineering Biology Research and Development Initiative.

If such interventions are to be economically and ecologically successful, they will need to work with still-developing technology.

Can policymakers work with this kind of uncertainty? One approach is to develop sophisticated assessments of the potential of different technologies and then invest in a diverse portfolio, knowing many of their bets will fail. Or, they might create technology-neutral instruments, such as tax credits and reverse auctions, and allow private industry to try to pick winners.

Engineering biology promises to contribute to a major step up in climate mitigation. Whether it lives up to this promise will depend on both public and policymakers’ support. Given just how high the stakes are, there’s work for all of us to do in reckoning with this technology’s potential.

Jonathan Symons is an Associate Investigator with the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology, Macquarie University, Sydney and part of a team that has received a Seed Grant from the Centre for work exploring “Future dairy: Australia’s cattle imaginaries”.

Jacqueline Dalziell is an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology, Macquarie University. She is part of a team that has received a Seed Grant from the Centre for work exploring “Future Dairy: Australia’s Cattle Imaginaries.”

Thom Dixon is a PhD Candidate with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Synthetic Biology and the Macquarie University School of Social Science. He is Vice President with the Australian Institute of International Affairs NSW, and works full-time at Macquarie University.

– ref. Should we fight climate change by re-engineering life itself? – https://theconversation.com/should-we-fight-climate-change-by-re-engineering-life-itself-227995

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Baker, Associate Professor in Human Geography, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

As local and regional councils struggle with inadequate infrastructure and unsustainable costs, New Zealand will be hearing a lot more about the potential solution offered by so-called “city deals”.

These deals are relatively long-term agreements between different levels of government (and sometimes other parties) about deciding, delivering and funding economic development and infrastructure initiatives within a defined local area.

Already, Wellington and Auckland councils are working towards regional deals with central government aimed at giving them more options for funding and managing their affairs. The National-led coalition is expected to announce a framework for city deals later this year.

National flagged its intention to implement city deals before last year’s election. Since then, think tanks, global and local consulting firms, Infrastructure NZ and Local Government NZ have all been having their say on how these might work.

A recent meeting of New Zealand mayors and local government chiefs heard from Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham about the UK’s first city deal over a decade ago. He extolled the virtues of a “place first” approach that involves and engages citizens more in the future of their cities.

In the UK, city deals signalled a shift away from a conventional one-size-fits-all model of regional development. Each deal is bespoke, reflecting local priorities. Beginning with Greater Manchester in 2011, there are now more than 30 city deals in the UK.

Australia has arranged ten city deals since 2016.

Their experiences suggest there are two general varieties of city deal. One revolves around mechanisms for funding infrastructure. The other goes further and involves devolving budgets and responsibilities from central government to newly created regional or city authorities.

City deals offer potential circuit-breakers for stalled and stagnant urban and regional progress, but New Zealand needs to take stock of the lessons being learned elsewhere.

Infrastructure deals

Infrastructure deals offer a co-operative mechanism for addressing deficits in local infrastructure. It’s a problem most wealthy countries are facing after decades of under-investment.

Filling the funding gap has been hindered by various factors: central government reluctance to borrow or tax more, short-term thinking based on electoral cycles, and different priorities within levels of government.

This has all primed politicians to look favourably on seemingly longer-term, co-operative ways to approach infrastructure development.

Australia has opted for infrastructure deals between federal and local governments. These have been praised for providing local governments with formal channels of engagement and extra funding from federal government.

But the deals have also been criticised for commercial secrecy and lacking a coherent national direction. Eight years in, it’s still hard to say whether Australian city deals have really improved infrastructure problems.

Devolution deals

UK city deals have involved devolving limited budgets and responsibility from central government to new sub-national governments, called combined authorities.

At a national level, right-leaning political parties have tended to take up the devolution agenda. But at the local level, politicians of all stripes want more autonomy in what is a highly centralised country.

Greater Manchester is the poster child of devolution deals, with its Mayoral Combined Authority seen as a model for others. It retains 100% of its business rates tax revenue, has developed an active travel strategy, re-municipalised the regional bus system, and improved health and social care.

This “trailblazer” deal was extended in 2023. But “devo deals”, as they are known, have been criticised for their lack of transparency (they’re negotiated in private, with no public consultation) and the absence of any attached statutory powers.

For instance, Greater Manchester has yet to gain approval for a spatial plan, which is key to setting the context and tone for economic and social development across ten local authorities. House building in the region has stalled as a result.

The art of the deal

City deals have become popular, in part, for politically symbolic reasons. Put simply, making a deal sounds sexier than “arranging a long-term inter-governmental agreement”.

Maybe not surprisingly, governments that favour city deals have been on the right of the political spectrum, with strong affinities to business. Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and current New Zealand prime minister Christopher Luxon also came to politics after corporate careers. City deals align neatly with their public images.

Beyond the symbolism, though, the experiences of Australia and the UK suggest such deals are not in themselves a quick fix for governing cities.

Negotiations often involve little or no reference to an overarching strategy, which can compound social inequalities and lead to unco-ordinated patchworks of projects. Governance has also tended to be opaque, risking the perception they are really “city back-room deals”.

They also call for capacity building in local government, which requires time and resources. UK central government demanded the establishment of a new level of administration – the mayoral combined authority – to oversee delivery of deals.

This entails significant bureaucratic and political manoeuvring. Yet even the largest and best-resourced local government bodies in Australia and New Zealand struggle to mobilise the bureaucratic power and expertise they need, routinely outsourcing to the private sector.

None of these challenges are impossible to overcome. But with city deals set to expand into New Zealand, there is room to refine the art of the deal itself.

Tom Baker receives funding from the Marsden Fund.

Cristina Temenos and Kevin Ward do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘City deals’ are coming to NZ – let’s make sure they’re not ‘city back-room deals’ – https://theconversation.com/city-deals-are-coming-to-nz-lets-make-sure-theyre-not-city-back-room-deals-228599

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gary Sacks, Professor of Public Health Policy, Deakin University

In recent years, there’s been increasing hype about the potential health risks associated with so-called “ultra-processed” foods.

But new evidence published this week found not all “ultra-processed” foods are linked to poor health. That includes the mass-produced wholegrain bread you buy from the supermarket.

While this newly published research and associated editorial are unlikely to end the wrangling about how best to define unhealthy foods and diets, it’s critical those debates don’t delay the implementation of policies that are likely to actually improve our diets.

What are ultra-processed foods?

Ultra-processed foods are industrially produced using a variety of processing techniques. They typically include ingredients that can’t be found in a home kitchen, such as preservatives, emulsifiers, sweeteners and/or artificial colours.

Common examples of ultra-processed foods include packaged chips, flavoured yoghurts, soft drinks, sausages and mass-produced packaged wholegrain bread.

In many other countries, ultra-processed foods make up a large proportion of what people eat. A recent study estimated they make up an average of 42% of total energy intake in Australia.

How do ultra-processed foods affect our health?

Previous studies have linked increased consumption of ultra-processed food with poorer health. High consumption of ultra-processed food, for example, has been associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, and death from heart disease and stroke.

Ultra-processed foods are typically high in energy, added sugars, salt and/or unhealthy fats. These have long been recognised as risk factors for a range of diseases.

It has also been suggested that structural changes that happen to ultra-processed foods as part of the manufacturing process may lead you to eat more than you should. Potential explanations are that, due to the way they’re made, the foods are quicker to eat and more palatable.

It’s also possible certain food additives may impair normal body functions, such as the way our cells reproduce.

Is it harmful? It depends on the food’s nutrients

The new paper just published used 30 years of data from two large US cohort studies to evaluate the relationship between ultra-processed food consumption and long-term health. The study tried to disentangle the effects of the manufacturing process itself from the nutrient profile of foods.

The study found a small increase in the risk of early death with higher ultra-processed food consumption.

But importantly, the authors also looked at diet quality. They found that for people who had high quality diets (high in fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, as well as healthy fats, and low in sugary drinks, salt, and red and processed meat), there was no clear association between the amount of ultra-processed food they ate and risk of premature death.

This suggests overall diet quality has a stronger influence on long-term health than ultra-processed food consumption.

When the researchers analysed ultra-processed foods by sub-category, mass-produced wholegrain products, such as supermarket wholegrain breads and wholegrain breakfast cereals, were not associated with poorer health.

This finding matches another recent study that suggests ultra-processed wholegrain foods are not a driver of poor health.

The authors concluded, while there was some support for limiting consumption of certain types of ultra-processed food for long-term health, not all ultra-processed food products should be universally restricted.

Should dietary guidelines advise against ultra-processed foods?

Existing national dietary guidelines have been developed and refined based on decades of nutrition evidence.

Much of the recent evidence related to ultra-processed foods tells us what we already knew: that products like soft drinks, alcohol and processed meats are bad for health.

Dietary guidelines generally already advise to eat mostly whole foods and to limit consumption of highly processed foods that are high in refined grains, saturated fat, sugar and salt.

But some nutrition researchers have called for dietary guidelines to be amended to recommend avoiding ultra-processed foods.

Based on the available evidence, it would be difficult to justify adding a sweeping statement about avoiding all ultra-processed foods.

Advice to avoid all ultra-processed foods would likely unfairly impact people on low-incomes, as many ultra-processed foods, such as supermarket breads, are relatively affordable and convenient.

Wholegrain breads also provide important nutrients, such as fibre. In many countries, bread is the biggest contributor to fibre intake. So it would be problematic to recommend avoiding supermarket wholegrain bread just because it’s ultra-processed.

So how can we improve our diets?

There is strong consensus on the need to implement evidence-based policies to improve population diets. This includes legislation to restrict children’s exposure to the marketing of unhealthy foods and brands, mandatory Health Star Rating nutrition labelling and taxes on sugary drinks.

These policies are underpinned by well-established systems for classifying the healthiness of foods. If new evidence unfolds about mechanisms by which ultra-processed foods drive health harms, these classification systems can be updated to reflect such evidence. If specific additives are found to be harmful to health, for example, this evidence can be incorporated into existing nutrient profiling systems, such as the Health Star Rating food labelling scheme.

Accordingly, policymakers can confidently progress food policy implementation using the tools for classifying the healthiness of foods that we already have.

Unhealthy diets and obesity are among the largest contributors to poor health. We can’t let the hype and academic debate around “ultra-processed” foods delay implementation of globally recommended policies for improving population diets.

Gary Sacks receives funding from the National Health and Medical Reearch Council (NHMRC), the Australian Research Council (ARC), VicHealth, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF.

Kathryn Backholer receives funding from the National Heart Foundation, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council, The Ian Potter Foundation, Vic Health, the WHO and UNICEF. She is affiliated with the Public Health Association of Australia as a Board member.

Kathryn Bradbury receives funding from the New Zealand Heart Foundation.

Sally Mackay is affiliated with Health Coalition Aotearoa

– ref. Not all ultra-processed foods are bad for your health, whatever you might have heard – https://theconversation.com/not-all-ultra-processed-foods-are-bad-for-your-health-whatever-you-might-have-heard-229493

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University

We upload some 3 billion images online each day. We make most of these photos on smartphones and use these devices to document everything from gym progress and our loved ones to a memorable meal.

But what makes a “quality” photo? Many people, even those who make images for work, struggle to answer. They often say something along the lines of “I know it when I see it”. But knowing some dimensions of a quality photograph can help make your images stand out and make you a more literate media maker and consumer.

Quality can be relative, but knowing the various dimensions at play can help you draw on those that are most relevant for your particular audience, context and purpose.

I identified six dimensions which will impact the quality of photographs. Here’s what I learnt – and what you can apply to your own photographs.

1. Production and presentation

Think of the factors in front of and behind the lens.

If you know you’re being recorded, this can affect your behaviour compared to a candid depiction.

You might be more or less comfortable posing for a friend or family member than for a stranger. This comfort, or its lack, can lead to more stiff and awkward poses, or ones that look more natural and confident.

Presentation circumstances, like the viewing size and context, also matter.

A group shot can make a nice statement piece above a fireplace, but it wouldn’t have the same effect as a profile photo. Be aware of how “busy” your image is, and whether the viewing conditions are well-suited for the nature of your photo.

Images with lots of elements, fine textures or other details need to be viewed large to be fully appreciated. Images with fewer, larger and simpler elements can usually be appreciated at smaller sizes.

2. Technical aspects

Technical aspects include proper exposure – meaning the image isn’t too dark or too bright – adequate focus, and appropriate camera settings.

Some of these camera settings, like shutter speed, affect whether motion is seen as frozen or blurred.

If the image is too blurry, too pixelated, or too light or dark, these technical aspects will negatively impact the photograph’s quality. But some motion blur, as distinct from camera shake, can make more dynamic an otherwise static composition.

3. Who or what is shown

Who or what is shown in the photographs we see is affected, in part, by access and novelty. That’s why we often make more photos during our holidays compared to documenting familiar settings.

Some people or locations can be under-represented and photographing them can lead to more visibility, and, depending on the context, a more empowering framing.

Consider in your photography if you’re including people who are typically under-represented, such as older individuals, people of colour, people living with disabilities and queer people. Also consider whether you’re representing them in stereotypical or disempowering ways.

As examples, when photographing older people, consider whether you’re showing them as lonely, isolated, passive, or in need of mobility aids.

4. Composition

Composition includes positioning of elements in the frame, the balance between positive and negative space, and depth, among others.

Generally, images that centre the subject of interest aren’t as visually engaging as images that offset the subject of interest. This is what’s known as the rule-of-thirds approach.

Likewise, images that have no depth are generally not as interesting as images with a clear foreground, midground and background. “Seeing through things” with your compositions can help increase the visual depth of your photos alongside their visual appeal.

5. The psycho-physiological

The psycho-physiological concerns how the viewer reacts to what is shown.

This includes the biological reaction we have to seeing certain colours, for example the way the colour red can increase our heart rate. It also can include the feeling we have when seeing a photo of someone we know.

The most powerful photos use colour and other elements of visual language strategically for a specific effect. Looking at these images might evoke a specific emotion, such as empathy or fear, and influence how the viewer responds.

6. Narrative

Narrative concerns the storytelling quality of the image.

Images can show something in a literal way (think a photograph from a real estate listing) or they can tell a bigger story about the content represented or about the human condition (think about some of the iconic photos that emerged during Australia’s black summer bushfire season).

Literal photos help us see what something or someone looks like but they might not have as much of an impact as iconic photos. For example, the well-known photo of three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless body on a beach in Turkey boosted fundraising for refugees 100-fold.

A more thoughtful process

Next time you pull out your smartphone to make an image, don’t just “spray and pray”. Try to pre-visualise the story you want to tell and wait for the elements to line up into place.

Being aware of aesthetic and ethical considerations alongisde technical ones and emotional resonance can all help engage viewers and lead to more standout imagery.

To challenge yourself further, consider taking your phone off full-auto mode and play with camera settings to see how they impact the resulting photos.

T.J. Thomson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is an affiliate with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society.

– ref. Photos are everywhere. What makes a good one? – https://theconversation.com/photos-are-everywhere-what-makes-a-good-one-229011

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dan Weijers, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Co-editor International Journal of Wellbeing, University of Waikato

It’s been seven years since the launch of Replika, an artificially intelligent chatbot designed to be a friend to human users. Despite early warnings about the dangers of such AI friends, interest in friendships and even romantic relationships with AI is on the rise.

The Google Play store shows more than 30 million total downloads of Replika and two of its major competitors since their respective launches.

With one in four people around the world reporting being lonely, it is no wonder so many are drawn to the promise of a friend programmed to be “always here to listen and talk, always on your side”.

But warnings about the perils to individual users and society at large are also growing.

AI scholar Raffaele Ciriello urges us to see through the fake psychopathic empathy of AI friends. He argues that spending time with AI friends could exacerbate our loneliness as we further isolate ourselves from the people who could provide genuine friendship.

Benefits versus danger signs

If being friends with AI chatbots is bad for us, we had better put a stop to this experiment in digital fraternity before it’s too late. But emerging studies of AI friendship suggest they may help reduce loneliness in some circumstances.

Stanford University researchers studied a thousand lonely Replika-using students, 30 of whom said the AI chatbot had deterred them from committing suicide (despite no specific question about suicide in the study).

This research shows having an AI friend can be helpful for some people. But will it be helpful for you? Consider the following four red flags – the more flags your AI friend raises, the more likely they are to be bad for you.

1. Unconditional positive regard

The chief executive of Replika, and many Replika users, claim the unconditional support of AI friends is their main benefit compared to human friends. Qualitative studies and our own exploration of social media groups like “Replika Friends” support this claim.

The unconditional support of AI friends may also be instrumental to their ability to prevent suicide. But having a friend who is “always on your side” might also have negative effects, particularly if they support obviously dangerous ideas.

For example, when Jaswant Singh Chail’s Replika AI friend encouraged him to carry out his “very wise” plot to kill the Queen of England, this clearly had a bad influence on him. The assassination attempt was thwarted, but Chail was given a nine year sentence for breaking into Windsor Castle with a crossbow.

An AI friend that constantly praises could also be bad for you. A longitudinal study of 120 parent-child pairs in the Netherlands found over-the-top parental praise predicted lower self-esteem in their children. Overly positive parental praise also predicted higher narcissism in children with high self-esteem.

Assuming AI friends could learn to give praise in a way that inflates self-esteem over time, it could result in what psychologists call overly-positive self-evaluations. Research shows such people tend to have poorer social skills and be more likely to behave in ways that impede positive social interactions.

2. Abuse and forced forever friendships

While AI friends could be programmed to be moral mentors, guiding users toward socially acceptable behaviour, they aren’t. Perhaps such programming is difficult, or perhaps AI friend developers don’t see it as a priority.

But lonely people may suffer psychological harm from the moral vacuum created when their primary social contacts are designed solely to serve their emotional needs.

If humans spend most of their time with sycophantic AI friends, they will likely become less empathetic, more selfish and possibly more abusive.

Even if AI friends are programmed to respond negatively to abuse, if users can’t leave the friendship, they may come to believe that when people say “no” to being abused, they don’t really mean it. On a subconscious level, if AI friends come back for more, this behaviour negates their expressed dislike of the abuse in users’ minds.

3. Sexual content

The negative reaction to Replika’s removal of erotic role-play content for a short period suggests sexual content is perceived by many users as an advantage of AI friends.

However, the easy dopamine rushes that sexual or pornographic content may provide could deter both interest in, and the ability to, form more meaningful sexual relationships. Sexual relationships with people require effort that the virtual approximation of sex with an AI friend does not.

After experiencing a low-risk, low-reward sexual relationship with an AI friend, many users may be loath to face the more challenging human version of sex.

4. Corporate ownership

Commercial companies dominate the AI friend marketplace. They may present themselves as caring about their users’ wellbeing, but they are there to turn a profit.

Long-term users of Replika and other chat bots know this well. Replika froze user access to sexual content in early 2023 and claimed such content was never the goal of the product. Yet legal threats in Italy seem to have been the real reason for the abrupt change.

While they eventually reversed the change, Replika users became aware of how vulnerable their important AI friendships are to corporate decisions.

Corporate ineptitude is another issue AI friend users should be concerned about. Users of Forever Voices effectively had their AI friend killed when the business shut down without notice, due to the company’s founder being arrested for setting his own apartment alight.

Given the scant protection for users of AI friends, they are wide open to heartbreak on a number of levels. Buyer beware.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. AI companions can relieve loneliness – but here are 4 red flags to watch for in your chatbot ‘friend’ – https://theconversation.com/ai-companions-can-relieve-loneliness-but-here-are-4-red-flags-to-watch-for-in-your-chatbot-friend-227338

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Williams Veazey, ARC DECRA Research Fellow, University of Sydney

In the 2007 film The Bucket List Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play two main characters who respond to their terminal cancer diagnoses by rejecting experimental treatment. Instead, they go on a range of energetic, overseas escapades.

Since then, the term “bucket list” – a list of experiences or achievements to complete before you “kick the bucket” or die – has become common.

You can read articles listing the seven cities you must visit before you die or the 100 Australian bucket-list travel experiences.

But there is a more serious side to the idea behind bucket lists. One of the key forms of suffering at the end of life is regret for things left unsaid or undone. So bucket lists can serve as a form of insurance against this potential regret.

The bucket-list search for adventure, memories and meaning takes on a life of its own with a diagnosis of life-limiting illness.

In a study published this week, we spoke to 54 people living with cancer, and 28 of their friends and family. For many, a key bucket list item was travel.

Why is travel so important?

There are lots of reasons why travel plays such a central role in our ideas about a “life well-lived”. Travel is often linked to important life transitions: the youthful gap year, the journey to self-discovery in the 2010 film Eat Pray Love, or the popular figure of the “grey nomad”.

The significance of travel is not merely in the destination, nor even in the journey. For many people, planning the travel is just as important. A cancer diagnosis affects people’s sense of control over their future, throwing into question their ability to write their own life story or plan their travel dreams.

Mark, the recently retired husband of a woman with cancer, told us about their stalled travel plans:

We’re just in that part of our lives where we were going to jump in the caravan and do the big trip and all this sort of thing, and now [our plans are] on blocks in the shed.

For others, a cancer diagnosis brought an urgent need to “tick things off” their bucket list. Asha, a woman living with breast cancer, told us she’d always been driven to “get things done” but the cancer diagnosis made this worse:

So, I had to do all the travel, I had to empty my bucket list now, which has kind of driven my partner round the bend.

People’s travel dreams ranged from whale watching in Queensland to seeing polar bears in the Arctic, and from driving a caravan across the Nullarbor Plain to skiing in Switzerland.

Nadia, who was 38 years old when we spoke to her, said travelling with her family had made important memories and given her a sense of vitality, despite her health struggles. She told us how being diagnosed with cancer had given her the chance to live her life at a younger age, rather than waiting for retirement:

In the last three years, I think I’ve lived more than a lot of 80-year-olds.

But travel is expensive

Of course, travel is expensive. It’s not by chance Nicholson’s character in The Bucket List is a billionaire.

Some people we spoke to had emptied their savings, assuming they would no longer need to provide for aged care or retirement. Others had used insurance payouts or charity to make their bucket-list dreams come true.

But not everyone can do this. Jim, a 60-year-old whose wife had been diagnosed with cancer, told us:

We’ve actually bought a new car and [been] talking about getting a new caravan […] But I’ve got to work. It’d be nice if there was a little money tree out the back but never mind.

Not everyone’s bucket list items were expensive. Some chose to spend more time with loved ones, take up a new hobby or get a pet.

Our study showed making plans to tick items off a list can give people a sense of self-determination and hope for the future. It was a way of exerting control in the face of an illness that can leave people feeling powerless. Asha said:

This disease is not going to control me. I am not going to sit still and do nothing. I want to go travel.

Something we ‘ought’ to do?

Bucket lists are also a symptom of a broader culture that emphasises conspicuous consumption and productivity, even into the end of life.

Indeed, people told us travelling could be exhausting, expensive and stressful, especially when they’re also living with the symptoms and side effects of treatment. Nevertheless, they felt travel was something they “ought” to do.

Travel can be deeply meaningful, as our study found. But a life well-lived need not be extravagant or adventurous. Finding what is meaningful is a deeply personal journey.

Names of study participants mentioned in this article are pseudonyms.

Leah Williams Veazey receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Alex Broom receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Katherine Kenny receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

– ref. Paris in spring, Bali in winter. How ‘bucket lists’ help cancer patients handle life and death – https://theconversation.com/paris-in-spring-bali-in-winter-how-bucket-lists-help-cancer-patients-handle-life-and-death-225682

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mohan Singh, Professor of Agri-Food Biotechnology, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences at the University of Melbourne., The University of Melbourne

Australia’s vital agriculture sector will be hit hard by steadily rising global temperatures. Our climate is already prone to droughts and floods. Climate change is expected to supercharge this, causing sudden flash droughts, changing rainfall patterns and intense flooding rains. Farm profits fell 23% in the 20 years to 2020, and the trend is expected to continue.

Unchecked, climate change will make it harder to produce food on a large scale. We get over 40% of our calories from just three plants: wheat, rice and corn. Climate change poses very real risks to these plants, with recent research suggesting the potential for synchronised crop failures.

While we have long modified our crops to repel pests or increase yields, until now, no commercial crop has been designed to tolerate heat. We are working on this problem by trying to make soybean plants able to tolerate the extreme weather of a hotter world.

What threat does climate change pose to our food?

By 2050, food production must increase by 60% in order to feed the 9.8 billion people projected to be on the planet, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates.

Every 1°C increase in temperature during cropping seasons is linked to a 10% drop in rice yield. A temperature rise of 1°C could lead to a 6.4% drop in wheat yields worldwide. That’s as if we took a major crop exporter like Ukraine (6% of traded crops before the war) out of the equation.

Plants, unlike animals, cannot seek refuge from heat. The only solution is to make them better able to tolerate what is to come.

These events are already arriving. In April 2022, farmers in India’s Punjab state lost over half of their wheat harvest to a scorching heatwave. This month, scorching temperatures in Southeast Asia are savaging crops.

What happens to plants when they face extreme heat?

Plants use photosynthesis to convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into sugary food. When it’s too hot, this process gets harder.

More heat forces plants to evaporate water to cool themselves. If a plant loses too much water, its leaves wilt and its growth stalls. A plant’s solar panels – the leaves – cannot capture sunlight when wilted. No water, no energy to make the fruit or grain we want to eat. When the air temperature hits 50°C, photosynthesis shuts down.

Hotter temperatures can make it harder for plants to produce pollen and seeds, and can make it flower earlier. Heat weakens a plant, leaving it more vulnerable to pests and diseases.

Our seed crops – from rice to wheat to soybeans – rely on sexual reproduction. The plants have to be fertilised (pollinated by bees and flies, for instance) to produce a good yield.

If a heatwave strikes during the fertilisation period, plants find it harder to set their seeds and the farmer’s yield drops. Worse, high temperatures cause sterile pollen, which slashes the number of seeds a plant can produce. Pollinators such as bees are also finding it hard to adapt to the heat.

Read more:
Exposing plants to an unusual chemical early on may bolster their growth and help feed the world

Preparing our crops

To give our crops the best chance, we will have to use genetic modification techniques. While these have often been controversial, they are our best shot in responding to the threat.

The reason is genetic modification gives us more precise control over a plant’s genome than the traditional method of breeding for specific traits. It’s also much faster as we can isolate genes from one organism and transfer it to another without sexual reproduction. So while we can’t cross sunflowers with wheat using sexual reproduction, we can take sunflower genes and transfer them to wheat.

For decades, we’ve relied on genetically modified versions of some of our most important food and fibre crops. Nearly 80% of soybeans worldwide have been genetically modified to boost yield and make them more nutritious. Genetically modified canola accounts for more than 90% of production in Canada and the United States, while about 20% of the canola grown in Australia is genetically modified. But until now, we’ve had no commercially adopted crops modified to resist heat.

One way to do this is to search for heat tolerant plants and transfer their prowess to our crops. Some plants are remarkably heat tolerant, such as the living fossil welwitschia mirabilis, which can survive in the Namibian desert with almost zero rainfall.

Heat shock and heat sensors

Plant cells possess heat-shock proteins, just as ours do. These help plants survive heat by protecting the protein-folding process in other proteins. If heat-shock proteins weren’t there, vital proteins would unfold rather than fold into the right shape for the job.

We can try to strengthen how these existing heat-shock proteins function, so the cells can keep functioning in hotter conditions.

We can also tweak the behaviour of genes acting as heat sensors. These genes operate as master switches, controlling a cell’s response to heat by summoning protective heat shock proteins and antioxidants.

In our laboratory, we have modified soybean plants by strengthening these heat-sensing master switch genes. Soybean plants expressing higher levels of this gene had significant increases in protection. Under short, intense heatwave conditions, these modified plants wilted less, produced more viable pollen, had fewer structural deformities, and had better yields under heat stress conditions.

What about wheat?

While we have become accustomed to genetically modified soybeans, we have not yet come to terms with the need to alter wheat – the single most important staple crop.

Heatwaves pose a similar problem for wheat, but community acceptance is not there. The pushback against modified wheat has been very strong.

In the lab, researchers in universities and agricultural companies have had success in modifying wheat to tolerate more heat. But none of these changes have made it into crops planted in fields.

If we are to feed a growing population on a hotter planet, this will have to change.

Read more:
Climate change threatens to cause ‘synchronised harvest failures’ across the globe, with implications for Australia’s food security

The research in Mohan Singh’s laboratory has been funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) over the years. In addition, the University of Melbourne provided funding for the research.

Prem Bhalla had received funding from the Australian Research Council and the University of Melbourne.

– ref. Heat is coming for our crops. We have to make them ready – https://theconversation.com/heat-is-coming-for-our-crops-we-have-to-make-them-ready-223553

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Marley, Environment + Energy Editor, UK edition

Your home was probably designed for a climate that no longer exists.

As long as humanity continues to burn fossil fuel, padding the heat-trapping blanket of gases in Earth’s atmosphere, the weather will become more volatile. Without an urgent transformation, our built environment will buckle under the mounting strain of heatwaves, floods and storms.

It’s estimated that close to 7 billion people will live in urban areas in 2050. Climate scientists convened by the United Nations have said that global emissions of greenhouse gas must be net zero by then – in other words, equal to the rate at which they are removed by ecosystems and (still immature) technology.

For people to thrive in a more dangerous world, cities will need to look very different.

This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage comes from our weekly climate action newsletter. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 30,000+ readers who’ve subscribed.

Houston is a city of 2.3 million people in southeast Texas, US. Heavy rainfall caused widespread flooding here last week.

How much carnage storms cause in a warming world is only partly a function of the climate. Equally important is the design of a city says Richard B. “Ricky” Rood, a professor emeritus of climate, space and engineering at the University of Michigan.

Read more:
Houston’s flood problems offer lessons for cities trying to adapt to a changing climate

“Pavement is a major contributor to urban flooding, because water cannot be absorbed and it runs off quickly. The Houston area’s frequent flooding illustrates the risks,” he says.

“[Houston’s] impervious surfaces expanded by 386 square miles between 1997 and 2017, according to data collected by Rice University. More streets, parking lots and buildings meant more standing water with fewer places for rainwater to sink in.”

What Houston and other concrete-covered cities need is less grey and more green, says Lund University’s Björn Wickenberg. Wickenberg is a PhD candidate who researches nature-based solutions to problems like urban flooding.

“My neighbourhood has three dams for storing stormwater in the event of extreme rain. These help slow the water instead of overburdening the city’s underground water sewage system, which would increase the risk of flooding.”

That’s not all they do. Wickenberg describes how these storm-water dams have created ponds that serve as larders for herons and ice-skating facilities when they freeze. On a much bigger scale, wetland habitats are being considered to buffer coastal cities from rising seas.

Read more:
Slow down and embrace nature – how to create better cities when the pandemic is over

“‘Sponge cities’, an approach first introduced in China in 2013, are a nice example of this in practice,” say engineer Faith Chan (University of Nottingham) and geographer Olalekan Adekola (York St John University).

“The idea of a sponge city is that rather than using concrete to channel away rainwater, it is best to work with nature to absorb, clean and use the water. So, much like a sponge, the cities are designed to soak up the excess storm water without becoming over-saturated.”

Read more:
As sea levels rise, coastal megacities will need more than flood barriers

Speculation preventing adaptation

Saudi Arabia had a different vision of a 21st-century city.

Read more:
The scaling back of Saudi Arabia’s proposed urban mega-project sends a clear warning to other would-be utopias

The Line, as the name suggests, would have been entirely linear: a 170-kilometre gash in the desert running from the Red Sea and clad in reflective material. A private police force and autonomous transport system aside, The Line’s planners had few answers to how 1.5 million people were going to live well in an artificial channel exposed to 50°C temperatures, says David Murakami Wood, a professor of critical surveillance and securities studies at the University of Ottawa.

“Who was going to want to live at the far end of a 170-kilometre long parallel terrace from which your only means of exit was an ‘intelligent’ train system?” he asks.

“And how was security going to be managed for a place which promised freedom and legal systems compatible with international human rights norms in one of the most authoritarian nations in the world, both internally and externally?”

Saudi Arabia plans to scale back The Line to a measly 2.4km by 2030. Woods doubts whether the scheme was much more than a public relations exercise, designed to raise speculative foreign investment. But he argues The Line indicates a wider failure of the capitalist imagination to devise a desirable place for people to live in a rapidly changing climate.

Designing a resilient city is one thing. To turn that blueprint into a real place, countries have to contend with a market-driven system of planning that prioritises protecting assets at the expense of everything else.

Sustainable development expert Lucien Georgeson and earth system scientist Mark Maslin (both at UCL) compared public spending on climate adaptation in megacities within rich and poor nations. No country is spending enough to adapt to climate change. But Georgeson and Maslin revealed that New York City spends £190 (US$260) on it per person, while Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa – where climate change is a far scarier prospect – can afford less than £5 (US$7).

Read more:
COP26: countries are not spending nearly enough on adapting to climate change

“It seems the amount spent on climate adaptation is driven more by the amount of wealth at risk rather than the number of vulnerable people,” they say.

Read more:
Climate change adaptation in global megacities protects wealth – not people

– ref. A ‘sponge city’ may be your home in 2050 – https://theconversation.com/a-sponge-city-may-be-your-home-in-2050-229565

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

The Albanese government is talking up the crucial role of gas as a transition fuel “through to 2050 and beyond”.

In a gas strategy to be released on Thursday, the government envisages the fuel’s uses would change over time, as energy efficiency improved, renewables were firmed and emissions were reduced.

“But it is clear we will need continued exploration, investment and development in the sector to support the path to net zero for Australia and for our export partners, and to avoid a shortfall in gas supplies,” Resources Minister Madeleine King says, outlining the government’s policy.

The strategy sees gas as crucial to the new Future Made in Australia policy, which includes support for manufacturing and refining critical minerals.

At present gas supplies 27% of Australia’s energy, and 14% of the country’s export income. The industry employs 20,000 people.

The government’s gas-is-good rhetoric will come under fire from the Greens, sections of the environmental movement and some within Labor who take a hard line on any fossil fuel.

Greens leader Adam Bandt has declared gas to be as dirty as coal and previously accused Labor of spitting in people’s faces by “fast-tracking new gas mines that undo everyone else’s good work” in promoting cleaner energy.

Among the principles on which the government’s policy is based is that gas must remain affordable for Australian users. Over the years, there have been battles involving both sides of politics with producers to ensure the industry, which is export-oriented, provides adequate and affordable local supplies.

Facing warnings about the risk of gas shortages in the local market, the Labor government introduced the mandatory Code of Conduct and a renewed Heads of Agreement with LNG exporters, and strengthened the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism.

To support household and business consumers, the government says it will work with states and territories to ensure gas remains affordable for those who need it.

The strategy says new gas sources will be required to meet demand during the transition.

It commits to “prevent gas shortfalls by working with industry and state and territory governments to encourage more timely development of existing gas discoveries in gas-producing regions”.

This is an implied warning that companies should not sit on undeveloped supplies. The Weatern Australian government has called for a strengthening of the so-called use-it-or-lose-it rules to stop big companies sitting on deposits.

The strategy also commits to reducing gas-related emissions by working with industry and regulators to minimise venting and flaring of methane from operations. These issues have been taken up by environmentalists.

The government will promote geological storage of CO2 and release acreage for offshore carbon capture and storage.

“Gas will play an important role in firming renewable power generation and is needed in hard-to-abate sectors like manufacturing and minerals processing until such time as alternatives are viable and can be deployed,” the government says.

The government has also flagged greater controls on the use of seismic surveys by gas companies. Seismic testing is a hot issue with environmental groups who say it disturbs sea life.

Real disposable income to grow in 2024-25: budget

Tuesday’s budget will forecast a 3.5% growth in real disposable income in 2024-25. This is expected to be driven by a 4.5 percentage point contribution from growth in labour incomes and a one percentage point contribution from the tax cuts. This would be the fastest rate of growth in more than a decade, excluding the pandemic.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Gas is good until 2050 and beyond, under Albanese gas strategy – https://theconversation.com/gas-is-good-until-2050-and-beyond-under-albanese-gas-strategy-229635

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Next week the government will again next try to get its legislation through to deal with non-citizens who won’t cooperate with efforts to deport them.

The bill, which the opposition and crossbench refused to rush through in the last parliamentary sitting, went to a Senate inquiry that reported this week. In dissenting comments, the Coalition urged a number of amendments.

On Friday the High Court brings down a crucial judgement in a case involving a detainee who is refusing to cooperate.

To discuss the Coalition’s position on the bill, as well as the issue of handling the former detainees who were released last year, we’re joined by Senator James Paterson, who is Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber Security.

On the opposition’s objections to the current bill, Paterson says:

We’ve really got two major concerns. The first is the potential for unintended consequences and the Department of Home Affairs themselves. Acknowledge this. They said that elements of the bill could encourage people smugglers to tempt people back onto boats again.

The second major concern we have is that these are extraordinary powers to vest in the hands of a single minister, the Minister for Immigration [with] very little oversight, very little restrictions, very little limitations on the Minister’s exercise of that power. And we think the normal checks and balances should be reinserted.

On whether the Coalition is likely to strike a deal, Paterson keeps the door open:

We’ll consider the government’s response in totality when they provide it. And we will then go through our processes, including our shadow cabinet and party room, to finalise our position.

On Friday’s High Court judgement, Paterson believes the government will win the case but says if it does not, parliament should be ready to respond quickly:

We will have to deal with that as a parliament if we come to that and we should use any constitutional and any lawful means to protect the community. I really hope that the court would not go down that path and would not take away one of the legs of community protection.

Finally, speaking on the recent incident in the Yellow Sea between an Australian Helicopter and a Chinese Fighter Aircraft, Paterson says:

This is becoming a really clear pattern of behaviour […] by the Chinese Communist Party to attempt to intimidate us and coerce us and drive us out of not just their territorial waters or their exclusive economic zone, but international waters where we have a legitimate purpose.

So it’s very important that we robustly respond to stand up for ourselves and for our service personnel and we think the Prime Minister should do that.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: James Paterson on prospects for passage of the government’s deportation bill – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-james-paterson-on-prospects-for-passage-of-the-governments-deportation-bill-229626