Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University

The kimono garment, the national dress of Japan, carries within itself all of the magic and traditions of Japanese culture.

The basic features of the kimono are fairly simple. It is a wrapped front garment with square sleeves that has a rectangular body where the left side is wrapped over the right, except in funerary use.

The garment may be traced back to the Heian period as a distinctive style of dress for the nobility. In the Edo period (1603–1867) it came to a glorious culmination with colourful and expensive fabrics.

The great poet Matsuo Bashō once wrote “Spring passes by / again and again in layers / of blossom-kimono”. Since childhood I’ve loved the mystical image “blossom-kimono”.

In 2020, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London staged their epic exhibition Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk, where hundreds of garments, accessories, prints and photographs charted the history of the kimono from the 17th century through to the present.

A new exhibition from the National Gallery of Victoria is similarly ambitious. Over 70 fabulous garments of exquisite craftsmanship – some made of silk with gold and silver embroidery and dazzling designs – have been assembled within a context of over 150 paintings, posters, wood block prints, magazines and decorative arts.

Although many of the items have never been previously exhibited in Australia, most are now in the collection of the NGV, with many specifically acquired for this exhibition.

Exquisite production

There are seven newly acquired Edo-period silk and ramie kimonos, richly decorated with leaves, tendrils and falling snow. They provide us with a glimpse at the wealth and sophistication of the samurai and merchant classes of the 18th and 19th centuries.

One of the highlights is the Uchikake Furisode wedding kimono with pine, bamboo, plum and cranes, from the early to mid-19th century.

It is a display of exquisite taste with satin silk, shibori tie dyeing, and embroidery with gold thread. The birds and the vegetation seem to float on the surface and must have created an amazing sight when worn.

The garment is simple and functional and, despite the exquisiteness of its production, it is also restrained in contrast to the conspicuous exuberance of some examples of 19th century European courtly dress.

Some of these Edo period kimonos can become quite narrative-driven in their design, as with the Hitoe kosode kimono with themes alluding to eight Noh theatre plays of the late Edo period. Slightly smaller than the wedding kimono, that was 177.5 cm long as opposed to 167 cm, this one revels in a blue background on gauze satin silk with a multiplicity of little narrative scenes like an assembly of diverse stage sets.

The exhibition also includes the work of contemporary Japanese kimono designers including Hiroko Takahashi, Jotaro Saito, Modern Antenna, Tamao Shigemune, Y&SONS, Rumi Rock and Robe Japonica.

The kimono as a concept

The kimono is more than an historic artefact, one where ideas and methods of production were to remain constant for centuries. It is also an idea that inspires designers working in international fashion houses.

The NGV exhibition includes kimono-inspired works of Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, John Galliano, Comme des Garçon, Alexander McQueen, Givenchy, Zambesi and Rudi Gernreich.

Alexander McQueen’s Gown, belt and sandals (Dégradé) (2007) is one of the takeaway memories from this exhibition. The humble functional kimono has been totally transfigured.

To the silk-satin shell there have been added leather, metal and rubber accessories and synthetic shoulder pads. The purple and pink colour scheme and the sweeping sleeves that trail along the ground create a mesmerising and dominant phantom-like character that owns and dominates the space.

It is difficult not to be impressed by McQueen’s vision, but we have now moved quite a long way from the kimono.

The kimono is a wonderful concept – an armature on which to hang many different ideas. The beauty of this exhibition is that it frees the idea of a garment from a static piece of cloth, at best to be displayed on a dummy, to something approaching a concept in design that artists will clasp and from which they will create their own work.

There are many rich nuances in the show, for example the superb almost monochrome and somewhat gothic Men’s undergarment (nagajuban) with graveyard, skulls and crescent moon (c.1930).

At the same time, we have Women’s kimono with geometric design and accessories (c.1930) with its polychrome exuberance with reds, blacks and greys combining geometric motifs with soft organic feather-like forms.

Bashō’s “blossom-kimono” was a meditation on the passing of time and the hope that a young girl will live to experience wrinkles that come with old age. The kimono in this exhibition celebrates the passing of time and generational change within the life of an immortal idea about function, form and ideas of beauty.

Kimono is at the National Gallery of Victoria until October 5.

Sasha Grishin 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. The kimono is more than an artefact and more than clothing. It is a concept artists will make their own – https://theconversation.com/the-kimono-is-more-than-an-artefact-and-more-than-clothing-it-is-a-concept-artists-will-make-their-own-253030

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

For many years now, Australian political scientists have pointed out that that established partisan allegiance is in decline. In 1967, 36% of Coalition supporters and 32% of Labor voters reported lifetime voting for their side. At the 2022 election, the Australian Election Study found the figures to be 16% and 12%.

These changes help to explain the rising support for independents and minor parties at federal elections; they now take about a third of the primary vote.

So much for voters. What about for politicians? Of course, there have always been plenty of parliamentarians who had an earlier stint as a member of some other party before landing in the one that sent them into parliament. Brendan Nelson was in the Labor Party before he was Liberal. John Gorton was Country Party before he was Liberal. Adam Bandt was Labor before he was Green. And so on. We are all entitled to change our minds, even if switching political parties was once closer to changing football teams – a habit that immediately arouses suspicion in a sports-loving nation.

Senator Dorinda Cox’s switch from the Greens to the Labor Party was apparently a homecoming, according to Cox. She was once a Labor Party member, she said. Last week, she was criticising the party over its approval of Woodside’s Northwest Shelf gas project. This week, she finds Labor’s values aligned with her own.

Of course, her defection has been accompanied by a steady leaking of little details of her Greens career, such as an excoriation of the Labor Party, in her application to run for the Greens, when she said the ALP patronised “women and people of colour” and cared more about its donors than members.

That’s politics, but it’s a democratic deficit that senators elected as part of a Senate team, in a system that has facilitated above-the-line voting since 1984, can sit for years afterwards in the parliament as a member of another party.

But good luck in getting up a constitutional change, via referendum, to change that.

Still, it is easy to understand how such nimbleness breeds cynicism about political parties. Another perspective might be that the fluidity of allegiance out in the electorate has come to inhabit the political class itself.

All the same, defections from one party to another are quite rare these days in federal politics, at least after one is sitting in parliament. But defections from a party to sit as an independent are not and some, such as Bob Katter, have managed to build successful political careers outside the parties.

One who did not was was Julia Banks, the Liberal member for Chisholm, who announced she would not be seeking re-election and then left the party for the crossbench in the wake of Scott Morrison’s ascension to the leadership in 2018. Banks complained of bullying and intimidation within the Liberal Party and the wider parliament, and wrote a book on her experiences. She subsequently failed to gain election as an independent in another seat.

There were several defectors in the last parliament. A House of Representatives crossbench that began at 16 had reached 19 by the end, with the defections of two Liberals (Russell Broadbent and Ian Goodenough, both after losing preselection) and one National, Andrew Gee, the latter over his party’s opposition to the Voice. Only Gee has lived politically to tell the tale, winning Calare as an Independent, as Peter Andren did before him.

Defections from minor and microparties are especially common, based as they often are on a high-profile leader and lacking traditions of party discipline or solid structures of organisational governance. Jacqui Lambie began as a Palmer United Party senator. Tammy Tyrrell began as a Jacqui Lambie Network senator.

The biggest “defection” in modern Australian politics was that of Cheryl Kernot from the Australian Democrats to the Labor Party in 1997. It is easy, over a quarter of a century on, and with the Australian Democrats no longer in the Australian parliament, to underestimate what a big deal this was at the time.

Kernot was a rock star of a politician, leader of the Australian Democrats, and a national celebrity. But there are significant differences with Cox beyond Kernot’s greater eminence. She resigned her Senate seat immediately and would win the marginal Brisbane seat of Dickson in the following year’s election. Then, in 2001, she would lose it to a young and ambitious former policeman named Peter Dutton.

The experience was ultimately an unhappy one for Kernot: she believed that having recruited her into the ranks, the Labor Party – and its leader, Kim Beazley, did not know how to make the best use of her. She was also on the receiving end of some relentlessly negative and sometimes intrusive media coverage. And by her own admission, she made mistakes. The story of her career’s unravelling is not straightforward. The role that gender played in it remains contentious.

Perhaps Kernot’s experience would alone be sufficient to prompt second thoughts in anyone seeking to jump ship. There are, of course, older prohibitions. In the Labor Party, a defector was known as a “rat”. Billy Hughes, the prime minister whose effort to introduce conscription in the first world war split the party, is the most famous of them.

“Rat” is not a word much heard these days, but it was thrown around a bit when Senator Fatima Payman defected in 2024, and applied more seriously in 1996 to Labor Senator Mal Colston when he resigned from the Labor Party in exchange for the deputy presidency of the Senate.

The best historical example of a defection being good for your career is that of Joe Lyons, who ratted on Labor in 1931 to lead a new party called the United Australia Party, a switch engineered by a small group of influential businessmen.
The circumstances – the Great Depression, real fear of civil violence, and the disintegration of a federal Labor government – were highly unusual.

More commonly, defection is a bad career move. Most of the Labor politicians who went over to the breakaway anti-communist Democratic Labor Party (DLP) in the mid-1950s found themselves out of parliament and looking for a new job. Stan Keon, one of those flying high ahead of the split, even occasionally mentioned – unrealistically – as a possible future prime minister, would run a Melbourne wine shop. Others, such as Vince Gair, Queensland Labor premier, lived to fight another day as a DLP senator (and ambassador to Ireland).

Cox has three years left of her senate term. After that, she will be at the mercy of the Labor Party. Labor won three Senate seats at the 2022 half-Senate election in Western Australia and perhaps it could do so again. On that occasion, in a surprise victory, the third place went to the young up-and-coming union organiser, Fatima Payman.

Frank Bongiorno 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. Defections are fairly common in Australian politics. But history shows they are rarely a good career move – https://theconversation.com/defections-are-fairly-common-in-australian-politics-but-history-shows-they-are-rarely-a-good-career-move-258177

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mia Mclean, Senior lecturer, Auckland University of Technology

Infants born very preterm spend weeks or even months in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) while their immature brains are still developing.

During this time, they receive up to 16 painful procedures every day. The most common is a routine heel prick used to collect a blood sample. Suctioning of the infant’s airways is also common.

While many of these procedures provide critical care, we know they are acutely painful. Even tearing tape off the skin can be painful.

We also know, from decades of research, that preterm babies’ exposure to daily painful invasive procedures is related to altered brain development, stress functioning and poorer cognitive and behavioural outcomes.

The commonest strategy to manage acute pain in preterm babies is to give them sucrose, a sugar solution. But my recent research with Canadian colleagues shows this doesn’t stop these long-term impacts.

In New Zealand, there is no requirement to document all procedures or pain treatments. But as the findings from our Canadian study show, we urgently need research to improve long-term health outcomes for children born prematurely.

Long-term effects of pain in early life

We collected data on the number of procedures, clinical exposures and sucrose doses from three NICUs across Canada.

One of these sites does not use sucrose for acute pain management. This meant we were able to compare outcomes for children who received sucrose during their NICU stay and those who did not, without having to randomly assign infants to different care as you would in a randomised controlled trial – the gold standard approach.

At 18 months of age, when children born preterm are typically seen for a follow-up, parents report on their child’s behaviour. Our findings replicate earlier research: very preterm babies who were exposed to painful procedures early in life showed more anxiety and depressive symptoms by toddlerhood.

Our findings are similar regarding a child’s cognition and language, backing results from other studies. We found no link between preterm babies’ later behaviour and how much sucrose they were given to manage pain.

The sweet taste of sucrose is thought to alleviate pain because it leads to the release of endorphins. It has become the worldwide standard of care for acute neonatal pain, but it doesn’t seem to be helping in the long term.

Improving pain treatment

About 1 in 13 babies are born preterm each year in Aotearoa New Zealand. Some 1-2% are very preterm, two to four months early. Māori and other ethnic minorities are at higher risk.

Studies in New Zealand show children born very preterm have up to a three-fold risk of emotional disorders in preschool and by school age. This remains evident through adulthood.

Sucrose may stop preterm babies from showing signs of pain, but physiological and neurological pain responses nevertheless happen.

As is the case internationally, sucrose is used widely in New Zealand, but there is considerable variation in protocols of use across hospitals. No national guidelines for best practice exist.

Infant pain should be assessed, but international data suggest this isn’t always the case. What’s more, pain isn’t always managed. Routine assessment of pain and parent education videos are useful initiatives to encourage pain management.

Minimising the number of procedures is recommended by international bodies. Advances in clinical care, including the use of less invasive ventilation support and the inclusion of parents in the daily care of their infant, have seen the number of procedures decrease.

Pain management guidelines also help, but whether these changes improve outcomes in the long term, we don’t know yet.

We do know there are other ways of treating neonatal pain and minimising long-term impacts. Placing a newborn on a parent’s bare chest, skin-to-skin, effectively reduces short and long-term effects of neonatal pain.

For times when whānau are not able to be in the NICU, we have limited evidence that other pain management strategies, such as expressed breast milk, are effective. Our recent research cements this: sucrose isn’t helping as we thought.

Understanding which pain management strategies should be used for short and long-term benefits of this vulnerable population could make a big difference in the lives of these babies.

This requires additional research and a different approach, while considering what is culturally acceptable in Aotearoa New Zealand. If the strategies we are currently using aren’t working, we need to think creatively about how to limit the impact of pain on children born prematurely.

Mia Mclean 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. Premature babies are given sucrose for pain relief – but new research shows it doesn’t stop long-term impacts on development – https://theconversation.com/premature-babies-are-given-sucrose-for-pain-relief-but-new-research-shows-it-doesnt-stop-long-term-impacts-on-development-256804

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Niall Johnston, Conjoint Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney

A spitting pot I consider as an essential part of the bed-room apparatus.

That’s what French physician René Laennec wrote in 1821. Laennec, who invented the stethoscope, spent his days gazing at his patients’ phlegm. In the days before x-rays and blood tests, phlegm was considered a valuable diagnostic tool.

Today, most of us don’t carry around a spitting pot. But a persistent question remains, especially during winter, when noses are dripping and chests are rattling.

When you have a cough, should you spit out phlegm or is it better to swallow it?

It might feel like an odd or even slightly stomach-churning topic, but it’s a remarkably common question patients ask doctors.

What is phlegm?

Phlegm, also known as sputum, is the thick, sticky mucus your lungs and windpipe make. This acts as a defensive barrier to protect them.

Its main ingredients are mucins – large, sugar-coated proteins that trap viruses, bacteria, allergens and dust. These mucins also regulate inflammation and the body’s immune response to bacteria and viruses.

We most commonly see phlegm with viral illness during winter. But phlegm is also evident in other medical conditions including asthma and allergies, bacterial infections, such as sinusitis, or with smoking or exposure to air pollution.

In fact, we’re always making phlegm, even when we are healthy. Cells in the lungs secrete mucus to keep surfaces moist and trap irritants. When we encounter something potentially harmful, such as a virus or allergen, immune cells detect the threat and release signals that tell mucus-producing cells to step up their game.

This extra mucus helps trap the invader and move it out of the lungs. Tiny hairs lining the airways (called cilia) then sweep the mucus up to the throat, where we cough it out or swallow it.

The case for spitting

Some people feel better if they spit out phlegm, especially if the phlegm is thick, sticky or irritates the throat.

Spitting also lets you see what’s coming up. If phlegm contains blood, for example, it is important to see a doctor to exclude a more serious underlying illness, such as tuberculosis or cancer.

If you do spit out, do so into a tissue and throw it in the bin. Wash your hands afterwards. This reduces the risk of spreading infection to others via respiratory droplets or contaminated surfaces.

However, spitting out phlegm isn’t always practical, or polite. And for most viral infections, it doesn’t help you get better any faster than swallowing. The aim is to remove phlegm from the lungs, which occurs with either method.

Spitting is also not feasible for young children, who haven’t yet developed the coordination to do so effectively. They’ll generally swallow their phlegm.

The case for swallowing

It might not sound particularly appealing, but swallowing phlegm is a normal process, and harmless. In fact, we often swallow phlegm without realising it.

The lungs generate about 50 millilitres of phlegm daily. It goes unnoticed because it’s thin, blends with saliva and we continuously swallow it. We only become aware of it when it thickens, such as during a viral infection.

After you swallow phlegm, it travels to the stomach, where acid and enzymes break it down, along with any germs it carries.

Swallowing phlegm doesn’t “recycle” the germs, and it won’t result in the infection spreading elsewhere.

In fact, swallowing viruses can even help build immunity. Once inside the gut, immune cells begin to recognise pieces of the virus and start preparing the body to respond more effectively to it in the future. Some important immunisations, such as the oral polio vaccine, work through this very mechanism.

So, what’s the verdict?

Whether you spit or swallow phlegm, both are safe. Spitting can help some people feel better, especially if their cough is associated with thick phlegm that’s causing distress.

But for most healthy people, there’s no need to force a cough or spit out phlegm. Swallowing phlegm is completely safe. And in young children, it’s the only feasible option.

In the end, it won’t matter if you spit or swallow your phlegm this winter. So choose what feels right (and least icky) for you.

Phoebe Williams receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Medical Research Future Fund, and the Gates Foundation.

Niall Johnston 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. Spit or swallow? What’s the best way to deal with phlegm? – https://theconversation.com/spit-or-swallow-whats-the-best-way-to-deal-with-phlegm-256216

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Graeme Cooper, Professor of Taxation Law, University of Sydney

The Australian Labor Party just won an election victory for the ages. Now, it may be forced to walk back one of the key achievements of its first term.

Here’s why: United States President Donald Trump is about to declare an income tax war on much of the world – and we Australians are not on the same side.

Over in the US, the “One Big Beautiful Bill act” – a tax and spending package worth trillions of dollars – has been passed by the House of Representatives. It’s now before the Senate for consideration.

Within it lies a new and highly controversial provision: Section 899. This increases various US tax rates payable by taxpayers from any country the US claims is maintaining an “unfair foreign tax” by five percentage points each year, up to an additional 20% loading.

Having been an integral part of an international effort to create a global 15% minimum tax, Australia now finds itself in the firing line of Trump’s “revenge tax” warfare – and it’s a fight we’re unlikely to win.

A global minimum tax rate

The origins of the looming income tax war started in 2013, when the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its plan to stamp out “base erosion and profit shifting”.

This refers to a range of strategies often used by multinational companies to minimise the tax they pay, exploiting differences and gaps in the tax rules of different countries.

The OECD’s first attempt to tackle the problem was a collection of disparate measures directed not only at corporate tax avoidance, but also controlling tax poaching by national governments and “sweetheart deals” negotiated by tax officials.

Under both Labor and the Coalition, Australia was initially an enthusiastic backer of these attempts.

However, the project was not a widespread success. Many countries endorsed the final reports but, unlike Australia, few countries acted on them.

After the failure of this first project, the OECD tried again in 2019. This evolved to encompass two “pillars” to change the global tax rules.

Pillar one would give more tax to countries where a company’s customers are located. Pillar two is a minimum tax of 15% on (a version of) the accounting profits of the largest multinationals earned in each country where the multinational operates.

Labor picked up this project for the 2022 election, promising to support both pillars – and they honoured that promise.

Mixed success

Around the world, the two pillar project had mixed success. Pillar one was dead-on-arrival: most countries did nothing. But Australia and several other countries, mostly in Europe, implemented pillar two – the global minimum tax.

The OECD has always maintained the base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) project was a coalition of the willing, meant to rebalance the way income tax is allocated between producer and consumer countries, and rid the world of tax havens.

In the US, Republicans did not share that view. For them, BEPS was simply another attempt by foreign countries to get more tax from US companies.

This Republican dissatisfaction with the OECD is now on full display. On the first day of his second term, Trump issued an executive order, formally repudiating any OECD commitments the Biden administration might have given.

He also directed his officials to report on options for retaliatory measures the US could take against any foreign countries with income tax rules that are “extraterritorial” or “disproportionately affect American companies”.

Why Australia is so exposed

Australia could find itself in the firing line of Trump’s tax warfare on many fronts. And the US doesn’t lack firepower. Section 899 adds to a number of retaliatory tax provisions the US already had at its disposal.

The increased tax rates would affect Australian super funds and other investors earning dividends, rent, interest, royalties and other income from US companies.
Australian super funds in particular are heavily invested in US markets, which have outperformed local stocks in recent years.

It would also affect Australian managed funds owning land and infrastructure assets in the US, as well as Australian entities such as banks that carry on business in the US.

And there are other measures that would expose US subsidiaries of Australian companies to US higher tax.

The bill would even remove the doctrine of sovereign immunity for the governments of “offending” countries. Sovereign immunity refers to a tax exemption on returns that usually applies to governments. This means the Australian government itself could have to pay tax to the US.

There are concerns on Wall Street this will dampen demand for US government bonds from foreign governments, which are big buyers of US Treasuries. The argument may sway some in the Senate – but how many remains to be seen.

What Australia may need to do next

We may be incredulous that anyone would consider our tax system combative, but enacting the OECD pillar two was always known to be risky.

There are other, homegrown Australian tax measures that have drawn American ire.

In 2015, Australia enacted an income tax measure (commonly called the “Google tax”) specifically directed at US tech companies. In 2017, we followed this up with a diverted profits tax. Trump’s bill specifically targets both measures.

Tying ourselves to the OECD’s global minimum tax project might have seemed like a good idea in 2019. In 2025, it looks decidedly unappealing, and not just because of Trump.

First, there is not actually any serious revenue in pillar two for Australia. Treasury’s revenue estimate totalled only $360 million after four years, just slightly more than a rounding error in the federal budget.

Second, we are increasingly alone and vulnerable in this battle. It might feel emotionally satisfying to stand up to the US. If there was a sizeable coalition alongside us, there might be some point.

If Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill act does pass through the US Senate, the Australian government and business will be left exposed to much higher costs.

Since abandoning the US market is not really an option, it might be time to surrender quietly and gracefully – by reversing, at the very least, the contentious bits of pillar two.

Graeme Cooper 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 is in the firing line of Trump’s looming ‘revenge tax’. It’s a fight we’re unlikely to win – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-in-the-firing-line-of-trumps-looming-revenge-tax-its-a-fight-were-unlikely-to-win-257961

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Rose, Professor in Transport Engineering, Monash Institute of Transport Studies, Monash University

Last weekend a pedestrian in Perth tragically died after being struck by an e-scooter.

This followed the death of another person in Victoria last month who was hit and killed by a modified e-bike which police alleged could travel at 90 kilometres per hour.

A study published earlier this week also found nearly 180 e-scooter injuries in young people aged five to 15 at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital in 2023 and 2024. One in ten injuries were life-threatening or potentially life-threatening.

Even though e-bikes and e-scooters have many benefits, such as improving urban accessibility and giving people scope to reduce or even eliminate carbon-emitting car use, these examples highlight their associated risks.

For these risks to be properly addressed, an overhaul of regulations covering e-bikes and e-scooters is urgently needed.

All to do with power

E-bikes have a battery-powered motor to assist the rider. The key word there is “assist”: to be legal the rider has to be pedalling to get the power assistance.

E-scooters are a new variant of the once humble children’s kick scooter. They are more sturdy to support an adult rider, and the battery-powered motor provides all the power.

Some e-bikes and e-scooters have throttles, which enable riders to accelerate to higher speeds without pedalling. Technically, these are illegal.

These new forms of urban transport are surging in popularity. This year alone, about 150,000 e-bikes are forecast to be sold across the country. An estimated 350,000 Australians – about 1.3% of the population – owned an e-scooter in 2024.

Regulations governing e-bikes and e-scooters were historically designed with reference to the power required to ride a regular bicycle.

A person needs to provide power equal to 220 watts to propel a regular bicycle at 32km/h on a flat road without a headwind.

The figure of 250 watts emerged as the baseline in Europe for the power limit on e-bikes. It is 500 watts in Canada and 750 watts in the United States.

In 2017, Australia harmonised its e-bike regulations with with those in Europe.

The regulations specify that power-assisted e-bikes can have a motor up to 250 watts. But the rider must pedal to get the power assistance and it must cut out above 25km/h.

E-bikes can travel faster than 25km/h. But the rider has to be providing all the power above that speed.

The same power limit was applied to e-scooters. But given their design and smaller wheels, regulators in Australia were more conservative, specifying a 20km/h maximum speed.

Differences across Australian states have since emerged with New South Wales allowing e-bikes up to 500 watts. Queensland has also removed motor power output from its e-scooter regulations and allows them to travel at speeds up to 25km/h.

There are two main problems with the existing system of regulations. First, there is nothing to stop the import of high-performance e-bikes and e-scooters from overseas. Second, enforcement is difficult and rarely occurs, because the police don’t have the equipment to easily test motor power.

What needs to change?

The federal government has a clear role to play in stemming the import of e-bikes and e-scooters that exceed the legal limits for public use in Australia.

However there is no evidence the government has engaged with the issue. This is inconsistent with its commitment to the National Road Safety Strategy and the approach taken to the management of vehicle safety and import regulations which apply to motor vehicles.

State and territory governments must revise and simplify their e-bike and e-scooter regulations.

Tasmania is on the front foot with its review of e-bike regulations. But e-scooter regulations also need reform – to make them easier for the public to understand, to ensure these devices offer a viable travel option for people and, importantly, to enable efficient enforcement.

A few changes to the rules could then make a big difference.

For a start, references to motor power should be removed because the severity of a crash depends on speed not the power of the device. Having the regulations framed in terms of power is a complication for enforcement and we don’t use it to regulate motor vehicles.

Then we need to focus on where, and how fast, these vehicles can be ridden.

A good first step would be to follow the lead of Queensland and Tasmania and legalise footpath riding, subject to a 12km/h or 15km/h speed limit as is the case in those states.

Restricting e-scooters to low-speed roads (up to 50km/h), and with a lower speed limit when ridden on the footpath, would minimise the risk of dangerous collisions with pedestrians and reduce the risk of dangerous collisions with cars on high-speed roads.

Specifying a max speed under power assistance for e-bikes of 32km/h would bring us in line with the regulations for countries that have cities similar to Australia’s such as Canada and New Zealand.

This would open our market to more models from overseas. It would also ensure e-bikes are better able to keep up with traffic when ridden on roads and are more competitive in terms of travel time relative to the car, to help further reduce car use.

When it comes to e-scooters, moving to a 25km/h speed limit (as is the case in Queensland), combined with restricting their use to roads of up to 50km/h, would improve their compatibility with the flow of motor vehicles on local streets.

Local government and road authorities should also have the power to declare areas where footpath riding is not permitted – for example, inner-city footpaths with heavy pedestrian activity. They should also have the power to set speed limits for riders on shared paths and bicycle lanes where there is likely to be interaction with pedestrians.

With those changes in place, police would be able to enforce displayed speed limits for e-bikes and e-scooters using radar guns, as is already done in Queensland, and issue fines where appropriate.

Geoff Rose has received in-kind support for his research, in the form of data, from shared e-scooter operating companies; he has served on the oversight panel for the Victorian Government’s shared e-scooter trial and he has consulted to the Tasmanian Department of State Growth on e-bike regulations.

– ref. E-bikes and e-scooters are popular – but dangerous. A transport expert explains how to make them safer – https://theconversation.com/e-bikes-and-e-scooters-are-popular-but-dangerous-a-transport-expert-explains-how-to-make-them-safer-257126

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University

Impressionism is the world’s favourite art movement.

Impressionist paintings create an oasis of beauty into which a viewer can escape from a sometimes dark and troubling world, or simply from the mundane boredom of urban living.

The Impressionist master, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, once famously observed:

To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty. Yes, pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.

The new Impressionism exhibition at the National Gallery of Victory brings together over a 100 of these pleasant, cheerful and pretty paintings and graphics. It features some of the greatest names in French Impressionism, including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Édouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Paul Signac and Alfred Sisley.

For the first time in Australia

Initially, the Impressionist painters had difficulty in selling their work amid the torrent of negative criticism.

But then their Parisian art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel established a gallery in New York City, and the American artist Mary Cassatt – who worked with the Impressionists in Paris – found increasing popularity. By the 1880s and 1890s, American collectors started to buy Impressionist paintings by many of the top French artists.

This explains why the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston possesses such an outstanding collection of Impressionist paintings. Yet, unlike the museums in New York, the Boston museum is less well known and Australians are seeing many of these paintings for the first time.

To say that most works in this exhibition have never been previously seen in Australia is only partially true. Four years ago, just before Melbourne was locked down for COVID, the NGV launched a similar show. Apart from a handful of art lovers posing as media, that show expired under lockdown and was packed up and returned to Boston without being widely exposed to Australian audiences.

The new reiteration is supplemented with six additional paintings, including the early and deeply moving painting by Degas of Degas’s Father Listening to Lorenzo Pagans Playing the Guitar (1869–72).

The whole exhibition has been totally reimagined as part of an immersive interior design. It moves far away from the clinical white cube of a modern exhibition space and closer to the 19th century posh domestic interiors in which the paintings first appeared.

An extensive and in-depth exhibition

Chronologically, the exhibition charts the development of French Impressionism from the mid-19th century and the so-called Barbizon school and realism, through to late Impressionism in the early 20th century.

It includes the great paintings by Cézanne and Manet, and memorable paintings from early to late Impressionism. There is an abundance of important works by the main Impressionist masters including Monet (16 of his canvases in one room), Degas, Sisley, Renoir, Pissarro, Cassatt and Morisot, and a few unexpected gems by van Gogh and Signac.

It is an extensive and in-depth exhibition.

The depth of the Boston collection enables rare insights. For example, when we see Édouard Manet’s Street Singer (1862), we may be aware that he employed his favourite model Victorine Meurent. Apart from being a model, Meurent was also an artist in her own right and in the same exhibition there is a self-portrait of her from 1876.

Strictly speaking, perhaps neither painting can be described as “Impressionist”. But it is a wonderful encounter of a woman being observed and, in the same exhibition, this woman looking out of the picture space and doing the observing. The self-portrait is one of those additions that was not in the original show.

If we glance at a handful of some of the outstanding paintings in the show – including Monet’s Grainstack (snow effect) (1891), The water lily pond (1900), or Water lilies (1905); Renoir’s Dance at Bougival (1883) or The Seine at Chatou (1881); Pissarro’s Spring pasture (1889); Degas’s Racehorses at Longchamp (1871/1874); and Morisot’s Embroidery (1889) – we have all of the beloved features of French Impressionism.

Light and bright

While the French Impressionists were not a monolithic group, their art was generally characterised by three things.

Firstly, a lighter and brighter palette with a conscious move to the ultraviolet end of the colour spectrum.

Secondly, a divisionist application of colour with juxtaposed dabs of pigment allowing for colour to blend in the eye rather than on a mirror-smooth surface of the canvas.

Finally, a move to a more democratic subject matter with landscapes, gardens, drinking parties, picnics and street scenes easily outnumbering images of pagan gods in complicated embraces.

Australian audiences never seem to tire of French Impressionism. This exhibition brings a fresh crop of rarely seen major paintings and graphics of the highest order.

If you love Impressionism, French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is a must-see exhibition. This new exhibition will change the history of Australian art exhibitions from Australia’s greatest Impressionist show that no one had seen, to Australia’s greatest Impressionist exhibition that everyone has seen.

French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is at the National Gallery of Victoria until October 5.

Sasha Grishin 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. ‘There are too many unpleasant things in life without creating more’: why Impressionism is the world’s favourite art movement – https://theconversation.com/there-are-too-many-unpleasant-things-in-life-without-creating-more-why-impressionism-is-the-worlds-favourite-art-movement-253031

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stuart Murray, Associate Professor, International Relations and Diplomacy, Bond University

Since coming to power in 2022, the Albanese government has focused strongly on the Indo-Pacific.

The prime minister’s recent trip to Indonesia was the latest high-level bilateral summit as Australia seeks to recalibrate relationships, enhance security and, where possible, win the battle for hearts and minds in the region.

Read more:
There’s no country more important to Australia than Indonesia. Trouble is, the feeling isn’t mutual

In a world slipping further into “strategic atrophy,” art, music, food, culture, sport and other forms of soft power are no longer peripheral.

In the foreword to the recently launched Australian Sports Diplomacy 2032+ strategy, for example, Labor MP Tim Watts stated:

Sport is an important tool for Australia’s diplomatic engagement at a time when Australia needs to use every dimension of our national power to advance our interests.

The First Nations of Australia are mentioned in this strategy but it fails to reflect the depth, power and influence Indigenous sports diplomats could bring.

Arguably, our sports diplomacy would be more authentic, unique and effective (especially in the Pacific) if First Nations people, perspectives and programs were genuinely integrated from the outset – baked in, not bolted on.

The epic history of First Nations sport

Indigenous Australians were the first people to play sport on this land.

Before colonisation, Australia’s population was around 750,000, divided into about 500 nations.

Though sometimes hostile, these communities shared a common language: sport.

Physical pursuits served, and still serve, many purposes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: fostering communication, preserving lore, teaching youth to be effective providers and most importantly, practising survival skills.

Sport was also a civilising force used for social, cultural and diplomatic ends. Games and carnivals increased contact between clans, easing tension, division, xenophobia and misunderstandings that could spark violence.

Battendi (spear-throwing), Marngrook (football), Koolchee (ball games), and Prun (mock war) are examples of diplomatic games that predate the ancient Greek Olympics by tens of thousands of years.

Sport became central to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture, identity and diplomacy.

“Deadly” – a term meaning excellent – sports diplomacy is a more fitting way to describe this unique form of diplomacy. Done well, it offers a more accurate, authentic brand of Australia to the region and beyond.

The battle for the Blue Pacific

The “Blue Pacific” – a term describing a shared Pacific culture, identity and collective diplomatic strategy – offers an opportunity to harness the power of deadly sports diplomacy.

If Australia hopes to win Pacific hearts and minds, it should send more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sports diplomats and teams to countries such as Fiji, Papua New Guinea (PNG) and New Zealand, because the nations of the Blue Pacific deeply respect the old, wise First Peoples of Australia.

These relationships are built on shared values: culture, family, spirituality and sport.

The Black Swans – Australia’s First Nations netball team, which debuted at the PacificAus Sports netball series in 2024 – are included as a case study in Sports Diplomacy 2032+. However, it’s the government’s A$600 million NRL project in PNG that has dominated headlines.

Read more:
Sports diplomacy: why the Australian government is spending $600 million on a new NRL team in PNG

The Albanese government’s backing of this initiative has sparked criticism among supporters of other codes in Australia with strong ties to Pacific nations – especially rugby union, which until recently was the code of choice in Fiji and throughout Polynesia.

However, rugby league may be a more effective sports diplomacy tool. It enjoys growing popularity in those locations and has undisputed national sport status in PNG, the most populous Pacific nation by far.

It’s also arguably more “deadly,” with its Indigenous All Stars team and an Indigenous Round.

In the NRL, 48% of players have Pasifika heritage, and 12% identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, compared to 3% across the Australian population.

Should rugby union receive similar support? Perhaps, but first, it must address the absence of Indigenous players.

Since Rugby Australia’s founding in 1949, only 15 Aboriginal men have played Test rugby for Australia.

What about similar funding for soccer, the national obsession of strategically important near neighbours Solomon Islands and Vanuatu?

It too has had a relative absence of Indigenous players at Australia’s highest levels, notwithstanding the pioneering careers of Charlie Perkins, John Moriarty, Archie Thompson and recent Matildas Lydia Williams and Mackenzie Arnold.

Extra time

Integrating the world’s oldest living culture in Australia’s sports diplomacy program can only enhance our relationships, diplomacy and national brand.

The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS)’s Share a Yarn initiative is helping lead the way.

Established in 2020, it connects elite First Nations athletes with respected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mentors.

Throughout the year, athletes and mentors meet online, attend monthly storytelling sessions and attend an annual cultural connection camp at the AIS campus.

As Marissa Williamson Pohlman, the first Aboriginal woman to compete in boxing at the Olympics in 2024, noted:

Mainstream sport can be challenging but having the unwavering support of mob keeps me grounded and focused on my goals.

The fact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have practised sports diplomacy for more than 60,000 years is a powerful story. It is one that should be celebrated at every international sporting event we attend, bid for, or host.

Including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, programs and perspectives would strengthen and innovate our strategies, add vital cultural iconography, inspire like-minded nations and help win hearts and minds from Honiara to Hawaii.

The authors would like to thank Kombumerri woman Emily Pugin (DFAT) and Butchulla/Goreng Goreng Paul Martin for their contribution, teaching and help in commissioning and drafting the report that informs this article.

Stuart Murray receives funding from The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Narelle Bedford 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. ‘Deadly’ sports diplomacy: why Australia’s Indigenous people must be a part of our sports strategy – https://theconversation.com/deadly-sports-diplomacy-why-australias-indigenous-people-must-be-a-part-of-our-sports-strategy-257542

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Welch, Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

As part of its resource management reforms, the government will soon allow “super-sized granny flats” to be built without consent – potentially adding 13,000 dwellings over the next decade to provide “families with more housing options”.

This represents genuine progress in reducing regulatory barriers. But the scale of the housing crisis means we have to ask whether incremental reforms can deliver meaningful change.

The numbers provide important context. Against current consenting rates of 40,000 to 50,000 new dwellings per year, those projected 70-square-metre granny flats represent a 2.6% increase in housing supply.

In Auckland, where housing pressure is most acute, 300 additional units might be built annually. For some, that’s likely to be useful. But for a country already facing a housing crunch, it’s insignificant.

The costs of a granny flat

The numbers also reveal who can participate in this proposed solution. Building a basic 70-square-metre granny flat will cost between NZ$200,000 and $300,000. Add site works, utility connections and mandatory licensed building practitioner supervision, and total project costs will be closer to the upper end of that range.

At current interest rates, financing $250,000 requires approximately $480 weekly in loan payments. While rents of $500-$600 per week are achievable in urban markets, these thin margins assume optimal conditions.

For property owners with existing equity, this presents a viable investment. For those seeking affordable housing – young families, essential workers, recent immigrants – the benefits remain largely theoretical.

This dynamic illustrates a persistent challenge in market-based housing solutions: policies intended to improve affordability often primarily benefit those with capital to deploy.

Pressure on the pipes

Each granny flat requires full residential infrastructure – water, wastewater and stormwater connections. The development contributions – fees councils charge on new builds to fund infrastructure – will help fund network upgrades. But New Zealand already faces a $120-185 billion water infrastructure deficit over the next 30 years, just to fix existing systems.

The challenge is particularly acute in established suburbs where these units are most likely to appear. Parts of Christchurch serviced by vacuum sewers already operate at capacity. Auckland’s combined sewer areas face overflow risks during heavy rainfall. Wellington’s ageing pipes struggle with current demand.

Adding thousands of dispersed infill units to stressed networks poses genuine engineering challenges that funding alone cannot solve.

Transport infrastructure faces similar pressures. With minimum parking requirements axed across the nation, these new granny flats will likely increase on-street parking demand and local traffic.

While some granny flat residents may rely on public transport or active modes, New Zealand’s car ownership rates – 837 vehicles per 1,000 people – suggest most will own vehicles.

Approved but not always built

International experience offers instructive parallels. California’s 2017 Accessory Dwelling Unit legislation provides the closest comparison. After removing similar regulatory barriers, California saw permits increase from 1,000 in 2016 to 13,000 in 2019.

However, construction costs and infrastructure constraints limited actual completions to roughly 60% of approved units.

Australian cities report similar patterns. Despite permissive regulations in many areas, only 13-23% of suitable properties actually added secondary dwellings. High construction costs and infrastructure limitations proved more binding than regulatory constraints.

Closer to home, Auckland’s experience with minor dwellings under the Unitary Plan suggests cautious optimism. Since 2016, the city has averaged 300-400 secondary dwelling consents annually where permitted. The number of units actually constructed is unknown.

Allowing one-storey detached 70-square-metre units without building consent may increase this modestly. But they are unlikely to dramatically accelerate production given persistent cost and capacity constraints.

Another form of wealth transfer

The policy’s benefits flow primarily to existing property owners. They will gain new development rights without competitive tender or public process. While perhaps justified by broader housing benefits, it’s worth acknowledging this is a form of wealth transfer.

Granny flats typically add roughly their construction cost to property values, providing capital gains alongside rental income potential.

For renters, benefits depend on how many units actually materialise and at what price point. Secondary units often rent at 20-30% below comparable standalone houses due to their size and backyard location.

This could meaningfully expand options for singles and couples. But families requiring larger accommodation will see limited benefits.

The policy’s design constraints also tell us what kind of urban density is acceptable. Single-storey height limits, two-metre boundary setbacks and standalone requirements essentially mandate the least efficient form of intensification.

Units could share walls and services, and two-storey designs that use less land could be permitted. Instead, the granny flat exemption favours the one configuration that maintains suburban aesthetics while delivering minimal extra housing.

A modest response to the housing crisis

The granny flat exemption exemplifies New Zealand’s approach to housing challenges: acknowledging a crisis while implementing modest responses.

Despite severe shortfalls in housing supply, the medium-density development common in comparable countries remains largely unrealised. An estimated 180,000 households could be accommodated through comprehensive densification.

There are genuine benefits worth acknowledging, of course. The exemption reduces bureaucratic barriers, enables some additional housing and gives property owners new options.

The question isn’t so much whether the new policy should be embraced. But rather whether the government is willing to complement it with larger changes the housing crisis demands.

Timothy Welch 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. Making it easier to build a granny flat makes sense – but it’s no solution to a housing crisis – https://theconversation.com/making-it-easier-to-build-a-granny-flat-makes-sense-but-its-no-solution-to-a-housing-crisis-258185

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide

Mould in houses is unsightly and may cause unpleasant odours. More important though, mould has been linked to a range of health effects – especially triggering asthma.

However, is mould exposure linked to a serious lung disease in children, unrelated to asthma? As we’ll see, this link may not be real, or if it is, it’s so rare to not be a meaningful risk. Yet we still hear mould in damp homes described as “toxic”.

Indeed, mouldy homes can harm people’s health, but not necessarily how you might think.

What is mould?

Mould is the general term for a variety of fungi. The mould that people have focused on in damp homes is “black mould”. This forms unsightly black patches on walls and other parts of damp-affected buildings.

Black mould is not a single fungus. But when people talk about black mould, they generally mean the fungus Stachybotrys chartarum or S. chartarum for short. It’s one of experts’ top ten feared fungi.

The focus on this species comes from a report in the 1990s on cases of haemorrhagic lung disease in a number of infants. This is a rare disease where blood leaks into the lungs, and can be fatal. The report suggested chemicals known as mycotoxins associated with this species of fungus were responsible for the outbreak.

What are mycotoxins?

A variety of fungi produce mycotoxins to defend themselves, among other reasons.

Hundreds of different chemicals are listed as myocytoxins. These include ones in poisonous mushrooms, and ones associated with the soil fungi Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus.

The fungus typically associated with black mould S. chartarum can produce several mycotoxins. These include roridin, which inhibits protein synthesis in humans and animals, and satratoxins, which have numerous toxic effects including bleeding in the lungs.

While the satratoxins, in particular, were mentioned in the report from the 90s in children, there are some problems when we look at the evidence.

The amount of mycotoxins S. chartarum makes can vary considerably. Even if significant amounts of mycotoxin are present, getting them into the body in the required amount to cause damage is another thing.

Inhaling spores in contaminated (mouldy) homes is the most probable way mycotoxins enter the body. For instance, we know mycotoxins can be found in S. chartarum spores. We also know direct injection of high concentrations of mycotoxin-bearing spores directly in the noses of mice can cause some lung bleeding.

But just because inhaling spores is the probable route of contamination doesn’t mean this is very likely.

That’s because S. chartarum doesn’t release a lot of spores. Its spores are typically embedded in a slimy mass and it rarely produces the spore densities needed to replicate the animal studies.

The original reports suggesting the US infants who were diagnosed with haemorrhagic lung disease were exposed to toxic levels of mycotoxins were also flawed.

Among other issues, the concentrations of mould spores was calculated incorrectly. Subsequent correction for these issues resulted in the association between S. chartarum and this disease cluster basically disappearing.

The American Academy of Asthma Allergy and Immunology states while there is a clear, well-established relationship between damp indoor spaces and detrimental health effects, there is no good evidence black mould mycotoxins are involved.

But mould can cause allergies

Moulds can affect human health in ways unrelated to mycotoxins, typically through allergic reactions. Moulds including black moulds can trigger or worsen asthma attacks in people with mould allergies.

Some rarer but severe reactions can include allergic fungal sinusitis, allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis and rarer still, hypersensitivity pneumonitis.

These can typically be controlled by removing the mould (or removing the person from the source of mould).

People with impaired immune systems (such as people taking immune-suppressant medications) may also be prone to mould infections.

In a nutshell

There is sufficient evidence that household mould is associated with respiratory issues attributable to their allergic effects.

However, there is no strong evidence mycotoxins from household mould – and in particular black mould – are associated with substantial health issues.

Ian Musgrave has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council to study adverse reactions to herbal medicines and has previously been funded by the Australian Research Council to study potential natural product treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. He is currently a member of one of the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s statutory councils.

– ref. Is black mould really as bad for us as we think? A toxicologist explains – https://theconversation.com/is-black-mould-really-as-bad-for-us-as-we-think-a-toxicologist-explains-258173

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joseph Ibrahim, Professor, Aged Care Medical Research Australian Centre for Evidence Based Aged Care, La Trobe University

The Coroners Court of Victoria is undertaking an inquest into the deaths of eight aged care residents across six facilities, over a nine-month period in 2021.

Each death occurred after an interaction between residents, known as resident-to-resident aggression.

If your loved one is living in aged care, it’s natural to be distressed and concerned for their safety after hearing about these deaths.

Here’s what we know about when and where it’s more likely to happen, how relatives can safeguard their loved ones, and what’s happening across the system to reduce the risk of it occurring.

What does it look like?

Resident-to-resident aggression refers to aggressive and intrusive interactions between long-term care residents that would likely be unwelcome and potentially cause the recipient physical or psychological distress or harm. It includes physical, sexual and verbal aggression.

However, the term “aggression” is potentially misleading. In most cases, the residents involved are not consciously intending to cause harm.

The prevalence of resident-to-resident aggression in aged care has been estimated at 20%, but is likely under-reported. This means that over a month, 20% of aged care residents are likely to experience an incident of resident-to-resident aggression. This is usually verbal abuse or an invasion of privacy.

The variation in reported prevalence rates makes it hard to know if the rate is increasing.

The consequences of resident-to-resident aggression range in seriousness from functional decline, to psychological or physical injury, to death.

In 2017, we published a national study of deaths from resident-to-resident aggression in nursing home residents in Australia. Over 14 years, we identified 28 deaths.

Almost 90% of residents involved – either as an “exhibitor” (often referred to as the aggressor) or a target – had dementia. Three-quarters of those diagnosed with dementia had a history of behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia, including wandering and physical aggression.

Exhibitors of aggressive behaviour were mostly male (85.7%), often younger, and more recently admitted to the aged care facility than the target.

Resident-to-resident aggression leading to death was most likely to occur between two male residents.

Half of all incidents leading to death involved a resident pushing and the target falling, leading to injuries such as hip fracture and head injury. This underscores the vulnerabilities posed by physical frailty among aged care residents.

Incidents resulting in death occurred mostly in communal areas, reflecting the ongoing challenges of an aged care system that relies on residents living together.

Learning from past incidents

Resident-to-resident aggression was previously brought to national attention by the death of a resident at the Oakden facility in South Australia. This led to a coronial inquest and the facility closed in 2017.

The case raised issues including the need for residents exhibiting potentially aggressive behaviour to have regular clinical reviews, accurate and detailed documentation, and adequate escalation and reporting of any incidents of aggression.

Since 2021, facilities have been required to report incidents of “unreasonable use of force”. The Australian Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission monitors these events through the Serious Incident Response Scheme.

The last report, from March 2023, provides a series of case studies and highlights the need for better approaches to behaviour support and risk assessment.

However, prevention requires a broader systems-based approach to better understand the problem, and generate and evaluate interventions. This should include reviewing trends at the facility, provider and national level.

Approaching individual situations

Resident-to-resident aggression is expected to become more common as more people are diagnosed with dementia.

Cognitive impairment in both the exhibitor of aggressive behaviour and targets makes this more complex, as a resident could become either one, depending on the precipitating circumstances.

In one-third of the cases we analysed, the exhibitor of aggressive behaviour and the target had been involved in an earlier incident together in the past 12 months. This suggests there are opportunities for intervention.

Are police involved?

When serious injury or death occurs, it is the role of police to investigate the incident and refer to the Office of Public Prosecutions, if appropriate.

Attributing legal responsibility is problematic and criminal charges are rarely filed. This may be because the residents involved are unfit for police interview or unfit to stand trial.

Alternatively, prosecution may not be deemed in the public interest.

Managing symptoms of dementia

Dementia may impair a person’s ability to reason, express their needs and manage their emotions. It can also impair their ability to respond, in a socially acceptable way, to interpersonal conflict.

Behaviour-management strategies to support the person with dementia include having a calm environment with a familiar routine and clear communication.

Over the past decade, more formal services have become available to help manage behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia.

Dementia Support Australia operates a Severe Behaviour Response Team which is available 24/7, responding to referrals from health professionals within 48 hours.

Specialist dementia care units also operate across Australia, as recommended by the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety final report.

Managing dementia symptoms requires multidisciplinary expertise spanning the aged care, disability and mental health sectors. Yet integrating these services remains a challenge.

The federal government has committed to addressing the sub-optimal management of residents living with dementia.

Supporting your loved one

If you’re worried about your loved one, the first step is to express these concerns directly to the facility staff, as you would with any other matter. Open communication helps the facility staff to get to know your loved one and provide more tailored support.

Being better informed about the subject can help you to advocate for your loved one.

The Older Persons Advocacy Network is available to residents for free, independent and confidential support. They can advocate for you if you feel your concerns aren’t being heard or your loved one’s care is compromised.

What happens next with the inquest?

The Coroners Court will investigate this important and distressing issue and aims to reduce the number of preventable deaths.

The coroner will hear the evidence, and may make formal recommendations about how to improve resident safety. Government agencies are required to consider and respond to these recommendations.

It’s clear we have a long way to go to safeguard the rights of older people living in residential care.

Joseph Ibrahim is a medical specialist in geriatrics and an academic with over 30 years of clinical experience. He is a Professor with the Australian Centre for Evidence Based Aged Care, La Trobe University and an Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University. He previously received funding from state and national government for research into the safety and quality of aged care homes and resident-on-resident aggression. He has also been an expert witness for criminal and coroners court cases as well as the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

Amelia Grossi 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. Resident-to-resident aggression is common in nursing homes. Here’s how we can improve residents’ safety – https://theconversation.com/resident-to-resident-aggression-is-common-in-nursing-homes-heres-how-we-can-improve-residents-safety-257818

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ana M. M. Sequeira, Associate Professor, Research School of Biology, Australian National University

Big animals of the ocean go about their days mostly hidden from view. Scientists know this marine megafauna – such as whales, sharks, seal, turtles and birds – travel vast distances to feed and breed.

But almost a third are now at risk of extinction due largely to fishing, shipping, pollution and global warming.

Protecting them can be difficult, because we don’t often know where these animals are.

New research I led sought to shed light on the issue. My colleagues and I gathered 30 years of satellite tracking data to map hotspots of megafauna activity around the globe.

We tracked 12,794 animals from 111 species to find out where they go. The results reveal underwater “highways” where megafauna crisscross the global Ocean. They also show where megafauna dwell for feeding and breeding. Now we know where these special places are, we have a better chance of protecting them.

Pulling all the data together: a mega task

For more than 30 years, marine biologists have tagged large animals in the sea with electronic devices and tracked their movements via satellite. The trackers capture data on everything from speed of travel, to direction of movement and where the animals spend most of their time.

I put a call out to the global research community to bring together the tracking data. I hoped it would help scientists better understand the animals’ movements and identify their favourite places.

Some 378 scientists from 50 countries responded. We assembled the world’s largest tracking dataset of marine megafauna. It includes species of flying birds, whales, fishes (mostly sharks), penguins, polar bears, seals, dugongs, manatees and turtles. They were tracked between 1985 and 2018, throughout the world’s oceans.

Mapping reveals a lack of protection

When we started analysing the data, it showed the tagged animals used some parts of the ocean more frequently than others. Most of them travelled to the central Indian Ocean, northeast Pacific Ocean, Atlantic north, and waters around Mozambique and South Africa.

It’s likely this reflects a lack of data from elsewhere. However, these species are known to go to places where they are most likely to find food, so we expect some areas to be used more than others (including the areas we detected).

Then we were able to identify the world’s most “ecologically and biologically significant areas” for the tracked animals.

Currently only about 8% of the global ocean is protected. And only 5% of the important marine megafauna areas we identified occur within these existing marine protected areas.

This leaves all of the other important marine megafauna areas we identified unprotected. In other words, the species using those areas are likely to suffer harm from human activities taking place at sea.

More than 90% of the important marine megafauna areas we identified are exposed to high plastic pollution, shipping traffic or to intensifying global warming. And about 75% are exposed to industrial fishing.

We also found marine megafauna tend to spend most of their time within exclusive economic zones. This area lies beyond the territorial sea or belt of water 12 nautical miles from the coast of each country, extending 200 nautical miles from shore. The presence of megafauna in these exclusive economic zones means individual countries could increase the protection afforded within their jurisdictions.

About 40% of the important marine megafauna areas were located in these zones. But about 60% were on the high seas.

The future of marine megafauna conservation

The High Seas Treaty, recently adopted by the United Nations and signed by 115 countries, governs the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological biodiversity on the open ocean.

Working alongside this treaty, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework aims to protect 30% of the global ocean by 2030. This presents an opportunity to ensure important marine megafauna areas are well represented.

We used an optimisation algorithm to identify the best areas to protect, when it comes to marine megafauna. We gave priority to areas that are potentially used for feeding, breeding, resting and migrating across all the different species.

But even if important marine megafauna areas are selected when 30% of the ocean is protected, about 60% of these areas would still stay unprotected.

Significant risks from human activities will remain. Management efforts must also focus on reducing harm from fishing and shipping. Fighting climate change and cutting down noise and plastic pollution should also be key priorities.

Like for most megafauna on land, the reign of marine megafauna might come to an end if humanity does not afford these species greater protection.

Ana M. M. Sequeira receives funding from the Australian Research Council and a Pew Marine Fellowship from the Pew Charitable Trusts. She is also affiliated with the University of Western Australia.

– ref. We tracked 13,000 giants of the ocean over 30 years, to uncover their hidden highways – https://theconversation.com/we-tracked-13-000-giants-of-the-ocean-over-30-years-to-uncover-their-hidden-highways-254610

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Roberts, Professor of Education and Social Justice, Monash University

Every school around Australia is almost certain to have students who are victim-survivors of family and domestic violence.

The 2023 Australian Child Maltreatment Study found neglect and physical, sexual and emotional abuse of children is widespread. Among Australians aged 16–65 years, 32% experienced physical abuse, 28.5% experienced sexual abuse, 39% experienced emotional abuse and 9% had been neglected during their childhoods.

As the place where children spend the bulk of their time outside home, schools could be an important source of help and support. But are they equipped to do this?

Our research, published in the Australian Journal of Social Issues, explores the impact of domestic and family violence on young people’s education. Our findings show just how significant the disruption to a young person’s education can be, including how safe or supported they feel at school.

Our study

Our study draws on data from the Adolescent Family Violence in Australia project. This is a national survey of more than 5,000 young Australians aged 16–20 years old. We focused on a subset of 1,651 respondents who had experienced domestic and family violence, either by experiencing violence between other family members or being directly subjected to it.

The survey asked both structured and open-ended questions to explore the impacts of domestic and family violence.

Family violence disrupts school attendance and participation

Our study showed family violence has a significant impact on school attendance. Young people told us they missed classes or dropped out of school during their experiences of violence.

For some young people, attending school while coping with trauma, fear and instability at home was too overwhelming.

A 19-year-old woman shared how she became so anxious in the presence of teachers and other authority figures she could only manage one day of school per week in a secluded setting.

Another young woman described missing classes regularly to care for her mother after violent episodes, while a 20-year-old man said he stayed home to protect his mother.

Even when young victims did attend school, the emotional toll of family violence often meant they were socially withdrawn. Some spoke about losing friends due to frequent house moves and school shifts, while others withdrew socially because of anxiety and trauma. One 17-year-old explained:

I don’t talk a lot to male teachers and don’t really have close friendships with girls at my school, so I tend to stay home.

Some participants described school as a safe haven away from their abusive home. But even in these cases, learning was often still difficult. One young person commented:

Yes, I wanted to go to school to get away from home, but felt very alone and isolated because no one knew what was happening.

Family violence and homework

The effects of family violence extend beyond the classroom. Many young people told us how the chaos, fear and emotional exhaustion of life at home made it difficult, if not impossible, to complete homework or study for exams. One young woman remarked:

I can’t do any homework at home because it’s not a safe environment for me.

Another young person described being kept up late listening to fighting or because of police visits, leaving them physically and emotionally exhausted in the morning.

In some cases, abusive parents directly prevented their child from attending school or doing homework. Other young people described not having access to the tools they needed, like a working computer or internet connection – sometimes withheld deliberately by a parent.

These accounts show how for some children experiencing family violence, learning at home is not just difficult, it is fundamentally unsafe.

A missed opportunity

It can be difficult for schools to fully understand and appreciate what’s happening for students at home.

Few of the young people we surveyed proactively disclosed their experiences to school staff, including teachers and counsellors. Disclosure rates ranged from just 12% to 17%, depending on the type of violence the young person reported experiencing.

For those young people who did disclose, their experiences varied. Some young people described school staff as a lifeline – listening without judgement, offering helpful information and taking action where needed.

Others described being ignored, dismissed or harmed further by insensitive responses. As one young person said, the “school counsellor told me I needed to understand dad’s behaviour and keep my head down”.

The help students received seemed to depend on the individual teacher or school counsellor, their knowledge and training. This inconsistency represents a major barrier to effective and early intervention.

What needs to change

As well as learning, schools can also provide safety, stability and healing. We need schools to be supported to provide more effective and consistent care for students experiencing family violence.

As other research has similarly found, responses need to be trauma-informed (recognising the impact of trauma on students) and student-centred (focusing on individuals’ needs). This involves:

• providing trauma and domestic violence-informed training to all school staff

• ensuring schools have clear processes to follow if a student disclosures domestic violence, including referrals to appropriate external supports

• adopting flexible attendance and academic policies for young people impacted by domestic violence

• building collaborative partnerships with community-based domestic violence and mental health services.

The National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault. The Men’s Referral Service (1300 766 491) offers advice and counselling to men looking to change their behaviour.

Steven Roberts receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Government and ANROWS, among others. He is a Board Director at Respect Victoria, but this article is written wholly separate from and does not represent that role.

Kate has received funding for research on violence against women and children from a range of federal and state government and non-government sources. Currently, Kate receives funding from Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS), the South Australian government, Safe Steps, Australian Childhood Foundation and 54 Reasons. This piece is written by Kate Fitz-Gibbon in her role at Monash University and Sequre Consulting, and is wholly independent of Kate Fitz-Gibbon’s role as chair of Respect Victoria and membership on the Victorian Children’s Council.

Rebecca Stewart is a project officer at No to Violence. The views expressed in this article are her own.

– ref. ‘No one knew what was happening’: new research shows how domestic violence harms young people’s schooling – https://theconversation.com/no-one-knew-what-was-happening-new-research-shows-how-domestic-violence-harms-young-peoples-schooling-256890

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Hortle, Deputy Director, Tasmanian Policy Exchange, University of Tasmania

Tasmania’s Liberal government and its premier, Jeremy Rockliff, have come under huge pressure since the state budget was handed down last week.

It’s culminated in the Tasmanian House of Assembly voting to pass a motion of no confidence in the premier – but only after the speaker, Labor’s Michelle O’Byrne, cast a tie-breaking vote in favour.

Rockliff has since confirmed he’ll recall parliament to sit early next week and debate some emergency bills, then ask the governor for permission to call an early election.

It’s been a wild few days in Tasmanian politics, with huge amounts of conjecture and confusion. Here’s how it all unfolded.

What is a no confidence motion?

First, we need a short lesson in our system of government, called the Westminster system. The Tasmanian situation right now all started with a motion of no confidence in the premier, Rockliff.

This type of parliamentary motion is used to declare the parliament no longer has confidence in the target of the motion.

No confidence motions can be directed at a specific minister or a government as a whole.

If a no confidence motion in a minister is passed, they usually resign from their ministry and sometimes from parliament as well.

If a no confidence motion in a government is passed, the leader of the government usually recommends one of two options to the governor. They can ask the governor to dissolve parliament and call an election, or they can advise the governor to ask someone else (usually the leader of the opposition) to have a go at forming government.

What is happening in Tasmania?

Strap in, it’s complex.

On May 29, the Liberal government presented the state budget. The outlook is grim, with the state forecast to be over $10 billion in debt by 2029.

To address this, the government proposed big cuts to the public service in the coming years.

On June 2, the leader of the opposition, Labor’s Dean Winter, tabled a motion of no confidence in the premier at the end of his budget reply speech.

“Tabling” a motion means putting it on the agenda for discussion at some point in future. To be debated, it has to be “moved”.

Winter stated he wouldn’t move the motion until he had enough support to guarantee it would pass. The motion focused on three things:

• alleged poor financial management

• the ongoing Spirit of Tasmania ferry fiasco

• and the government’s plan to potentially privatise some state-owned businesses.

Support was fast in coming. By Monday evening, three of the six cross-benchers had said they would vote for the motion, meaning Labor only needed the five Greens MPs to jump onboard.

At a party meeting early on Wednesday morning, the Greens decided they would do just that.

So, instead of debating the budget, Wednesday and Thursday were spent debating the no confidence motion.

There was a lot of confusion in Tasmanian political circles at this point. There is very little formal procedure that describes how no confidence motions work in Tasmania’s parliament.

Instead, what happens is defined by convention, which means there are lots of grey areas. There have only been a few successful no confidence motions in Tasmania’s history (the most recent ones were in 1989 and 1982).

So how did it play out?

This time around, there were a few complications.

The motion referred to the premier, not the government. There was speculation, therefore, that if the motion passed, the Liberal Party could replace Rockliff as leader, and Labor would then pass the budget.

However, during parliamentary debate, several Liberal MPs argued they saw the motion as indicating lack of confidence in the whole government – not just the premier. Under this view, Rockliff would have to go to the governor, Barbara Baker, and ask her to call an election, or advise her to ask Winter to try to rally the numbers to govern.

Although the convention is that the governor follows the premier’s advice, there is precedent for them making their own decision.

Just to spice things up further, Baker is currently on leave. The decision would need to be made by the lieutenant-governor, Chief Justice Chris Shanahan, who is new to his role – and the state.

An election quickly shaped up as the most likely outcome. On Thursday morning, Rockliff announced that if the motion passed, he would ask the governor to dissolve parliament and call an election.

Shortly after that, Winter ruled out governing in coalition – or doing a deal – with the Greens. This made it very unlikely any alternative government would have the numbers to pass legislation through the lower house, leaving the lieutenant-governor with few options.

Late on Thursday, parliament voted on the motion. With the numbers tied at 17-17, the speaker cast her vote with the “ayes” alongside the other nine Labor MPs, all five Greens MPs, independents Craig Garland and Kristie Johnston, and the Jacqui Lambie Network’s last remaining MP, Andrew Jenner.

Following an emotionally charged speech, Rockliff met with the lieutenant-governor. Speaking to the media afterwards, he said he’ll recall parliament on Tuesday with the aim of passing an emergency supply bill to ensure public servants continue to be paid despite the delay in the budget process.

Rockliff said he would then ask Baker – who returns from leave next week – for permission to call an election. It will be interesting to see if she takes his advice or not.

What happens now?

All this means Tasmania could head back to the polls in mid-July, just 16 months after the last state election.

The Liberals will seek to pin the blame for the snap election on Labor and the crossbench, and hope that a grumpy electorate punishes them for this.

They will also try to convince Tasmanians they are the only party that can get the controversial stadium in Hobart is built, thereby delivering the state its long-desired AFL team.

Labor will campaign on the three things it cited in the no confidence motion, while arguing it will also guarantee that Tasmania gets an AFL team.

They’ll also be hoping to ride the wave of the recent strong result for federal Labor at the national election. However, on past evidence, they can’t bank on this.

Labor’s challenge will be differentiating themselves from the current government, because their positions are pretty closely aligned on key issues, including the stadium, salmon farming, and the proposed development assistance panels.

The Greens will set out their stall as the only party firmly against the current stadium proposal and in favour of removing salmon farming in Tasmanian waters.

For the independents, an early election is bad news. Campaigns are expensive, and without extensive party resources to draw on, some independents may be forced to decide whether they can afford to run again so soon.

All of this does not point to a more stable parliament. The vote share of the two major parties has been steadily decreasing in Tasmania. A new election is not likely to reverse this trend.

In the meantime, Tasmanians are left to wonder when their political leaders will get serious about tackling the state’s complex health, housing, education, sustainability, and productivity challenges.

Robert Hortle 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. Tasmania could go to an election just 16 months after its last one. What’s going on? – https://theconversation.com/tasmania-could-go-to-an-election-just-16-months-after-its-last-one-whats-going-on-258180

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

Anthony Albanese loves a trophy, especially a human one. He prides himself on his various “captain’s pick” candidates – good campaigners he has steered into seats.

Way back in the Gillard days, he was key in persuading discontented Liberal Peter Slipper to defect. Slipper became an independent and Labor’s speaker.

The exercise helped the government’s numbers, but the bold play didn’t end well for Labor or for Slipper. The government was tarnished, and Slipper, relentlessly pursued by the Coalition and mired in controversy, eventually had to quit the speakership. The affair did produce Julia Gillard’s famous misogyny speech, however.

Now Albanese has another gee-whiz prize – Western Australian Senator Dorinda Cox, who has defected from the Greens. Cox, after being defeated in a bid for Greens deputy leader, approached Labor and the PM drove her course to being accepted into the party.

The manoeuvre makes a marginal but insignificant difference to Senate numbers – Labor will still need the Greens to pass legislation opposed by the Coalition.

Taking in Cox is a risk, and some in Labor are looking at it askance.

The prime minister’s embrace of Cox contradicts Labor’s argument when its Western Australian senator Fatima Payman defected to become an independent. It said then hers was a Labor seat and she should therefore resign. But this wouldn’t be the first time expediency trumped consistency in politics.

Cox, who is Indigenous and was spokeswoman for First Nations and resources in the last parliament, has been a fierce critic of the extending the North West Shelf gas project, which the government has just announced. Albanese says he is confident she “understands that being a member of the Labor Party means that she will support positions that are made by the Labor Party”.

She has also faced allegations of treating staff badly. Labor discounts the claims against her, saying they are overblown and a product of Greens factionalism and toxicity. Certainly, she was given a tough time by the hard-left faction represented by deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi. Labor would be wise to ensure Cox feels supported in her new party home.

Albanese perhaps calculates that the worst that can happen is there’s a blow up and she defects to the crossbench. Labor could shrug and say, she was never really one of us.

Snatching a senator from the Greens is particularly satisfying to Albanese because he hates the party so much. Last term, lower house Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather (defeated at the election) really got under his skin. More generally, the Greens held up important legislation, most notably on housing.

In the new Senate, Labor will need only the Greens to pass legislation opposed by the Coalition. How new Greens leader Larissa Waters – who replaced Adam Bandt after he lost his seat – handles the party’s relationship with the government will be crucial for the more contentious parts of Labor’s legislative program.

The usually low-key Waters will be under a lot of pressure. The Greens had a bad election, losing three lower house seats. Now they have lost a senator at the start of Waters’ watch.

Waters conceded on the Serious Danger podcast in late May that Labor had successfully run the narrative of the Greens as blockers. “So I do think we’re going to need to be quite deft in how we handle balance of power in this term, […] People want us to be constructive. They don’t just want us to roll over and tick off on any old shit. They want meaningful reforms.”

Waters will want to pick her fights carefully, and also find ways of pursuing the Greens’ agenda where the party co-operates. The first deal is likely to be on the government’s legislation to increase the tax on those with large superannuation balances, which contains the controversial provision to tax unrealised capital gains.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and her team will confront some of the same problems as the Greens – when to oppose and when to seek to negotiate with the government.

For his part, Albanese will have a novel challenge with Ley – what stance to adopt against the first female opposition leader, especially but not only in parliamentary clashes.

After facing two alpha male opposition leaders, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton, a new approach will obviously be necessary. As one Labor man succinctly puts it, “Labor can’t monster a woman”. There can be no repeat of Albanese, a frontbencher a decade ago in the Shorten opposition, interjecting to urge a female colleague engaged in a stoush with Ley to “smash her”.

For Ley, trying to deal with the Liberals’ multiple difficulties in attracting women voters and candidates must be high on her agenda. Former Liberal federal president Alan Stockdale, one of the three-person group currently running the NSW division of the party, showed himself part of the problem when this week he told the NSW Liberal Women’s Council, “The women in this party are so assertive now that we may need some special rules for men to get them pre-selected”.

Stockdale said later he was being “light-hearted”. Tone deaf might be a better term. Ley jumped on him. “There is nothing wrong with being an assertive woman. In fact I encourage assertive women to join the Liberal Party.”

The jury is out on whether Ley will be able to make any sort of fist of her near-impossible job. But in the short time she’s been leader, she has shown she is willing to be assertive.

She emerged from the brief split in the Coalition looking much steadier than Nationals leader David Littleproud, even though she had to persuade her party room to accept the minor party’s policy demands.

In her frontbench reshuffle, she was willing to wear the inevitable criticism that came with dropping a couple of senior women who had under-performed.

As deputy leader, Ley adjusted her style a while before the election, toning down the aggression and sometimes wild attacks, that had characterised her performance earlier in the term. A Liberal source said she found her “line and length”. As leader, she will have others, notably deputy Ted O’Brien, to do the head-kicking, giving her room to attempt to develop a positive political persona.

Labor leaned into attacking Dutton – never afraid to name him. With Ley, Albanese might adopt the Bob Carr approach of avoiding using his opponent’s name. At least until he finds his line and length in dealing with her.

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: Albanese will need some nuance in facing a female opposition leader – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-albanese-will-need-some-nuance-in-facing-a-female-opposition-leader-257338

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rico Merkert, Professor in Transport and Supply Chain Management and Deputy Director, Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS), University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney

It is finally happening. After five years of being a private company, Virgin Australia will relist on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on June 24. The company is expected to raise A$685 million through the initial public offering (IPO).

So, who will benefit from Virgin Australia’s return to the share market? Having paid $3.5 billion for the bankrupt carrier back in 2020, private equity firm Bain Capital will be the most immediate winner.

Earlier this year, Bain had sold 25% of the company to Qatar Airways. Now, with the IPO, Bain will reduce its stake from about 70% down to 40%.

With Virgin’s anticipated market capitalisation close to $2.3 billion and enterprise value of reportedly up to $3.6 billion, it is now evident that Bain Capital has – with Jayne Hrdlicka at the helm of the airline – not only managed to turn the company around, but to also profit nicely from doing so.

Without Bain’s rescue at the beginning of the pandemic (which was catastrophic for airlines globally), the situation may have become quite detrimental for travellers. It also avoided having the Australian taxpayer foot the bill for a bailout.

Whether the airline’s customers end up better off will depend on what Virgin Australia ends up doing with the $685 million it raises, on top of the substantial profits it has recently been able to generate.

Stronger competition for Qantas?

Looking at the strategies of both Virgin Australia and its biggest competitor, Qantas, in recent years, it seems both have learned to love playing the duopoly game.

Based on our own calculations, Virgin controls roughly 33% of Australia’s domestic seat capacity and the Qantas group (which includes Jetstar) much of the rest on the country’s core flight network.

In the 2010s, the two airlines were out-competing themselves in adding capacity to the market, which drove down yields (or revenue per passenger) and nearly killed Virgin Australia 1.0.

Now, Qantas and Virgin have new chief executives who understand both airlines can be very profitable if they show some (capacity) discipline in how many seats they create and sell.

Better services

For that reason, it’s likely not much will change in terms of competition, at least in the domestic market. But this is only true as far as capacity is concerned.

It seems reasonable to assume Virgin’s raised capital will only support future growth if it is profitable. The majority of the funds will likely go towards fleet renewal and improvement of the airline’s product.

For consumers, this wouldn’t necessarily mean lower airfares in the domestic market. But it would mean newer aircraft and enhanced services, which is a positive for both flyers and the environment.

International departures

Virgin Australia will become a more formidable competitor to Qantas, thanks to its newly formed relationship with international partner Qatar Airways and the additional cash from relisting.

It will be interesting to observe what Qatar will do next and whether a new player – perhaps Singapore Airlines – will enter the scene and take a stake in the airline once Virgin Australia is trading publicly again.

It would not be the first time an international airline has taken a stake in Virgin Australia, and could create some interesting dynamics.

Another beneficiary is Virgin Australia’s management team, who’ve been somewhat shackled by the priority of getting the IPO off the ground. The IPO will free up management to deploy resources towards more longer-term priorities.

Many will see a significant payday – it’s estimated staff are sitting on shares that could soon collectively be worth $180 million.

Why now?

Bain Capital has timed this IPO carefully. Virgin Australia has (in tandem with Qantas) produced a stellar financial performance in the last financial year. It may deliver an even better one in the current reporting period.

To maximise returns, it is likely Bain did not want to waste the opportunity to capitalise on the moment. Global markets are still full of volatility and geopolitical uncertainty. What may diminish is the financial performance of the core business Bain Capital is trying to sell.

At $2.90 a share, Virgin Australia will have a price-to-earnings ratio (used to assess how relatively expensive a share price is) of seven times its expected earnings this financial year. This is lower than Qantas’ ratio of ten times expected earnings this financial year.

Profits are likely to remain high this year, with continuing strong demand, high yields and low jet fuel prices. The brokers and underwriting investment banks will use this to sell the story.

IPOs can sometimes deliver those already holding shares in a company significant day-one windfall profits. In this case, however, Bain’s expertise in the venture capital market means it is unlikely to leave any money on the table.

One may also argue while Virgin appears to be priced at a discount compared to Qantas, there may be legitimate reasons for the price differential, such as Qantas’ very profitable loyalty business.

Given uncertainties around demand and geopolitical tensions, there is no guarantee the share price of Qantas will remain at record highs for too long, which means the opportunity to present Virgin shares as a bargain may be short-lived.

In the long term, it is widely agreed airlines are by definition volatile investments and not necessarily something the average investor should have in their portfolio.

Moving forward

Symbolically, the decision for Virgin to use a new stock ticker – VGN instead of the old VAH – may avoid bringing back bad memories.

Five years can be a lifetime in aviation, but maybe not to bond holders who got just 10 cents in the dollar and shareholders (including the large airline partners who held equity stakes) who got nothing when the airline collapsed in 2020.

From a strategy perspective, it will be important for management to avoid history repeating itself with international airlines buying into Virgin and securing board seats.

This can be one way of influencing the strategy of the carrier’s domestic arm to funnel more passengers to their own international flights.

It is positive, for both Virgin Australia and the Australian aviation industry, that Bain Capital appears set to pull this off and that the revitalised airline is now truly Virgin Australia 2.0.

Rico Merkert and his team of PhD students receive funding from the Australian Research Council through a discovery project and various research industry project, including with Thales and Air New Zealand. He has previously worked on research with and for international airlines, including Qantas and Virgin Australia.

– ref. Virgin Australia is coming back to the share market. Here’s what this new chapter could mean – https://theconversation.com/virgin-australia-is-coming-back-to-the-share-market-heres-what-this-new-chapter-could-mean-258179

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Speck, Emerita Professor, Art History and Curatorship, University of Adelaide

Jack Ball, a Sydney-based trans artist, was awarded the 2025 Ramsay Art Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia for an immersive installation Heavy Grit.

The inspiration for the photo-collage and sculptural artwork stems directly from the artist’s exploration of the Australian Queer Archives in Melbourne – especially the scrapbooks covering the closeted decades of the 1950s to 1970s – and the merging of the past with present.

The grainy print surface of the photo-collage elements, drawing on newspaper clippings, are arranged as four semi-abstract fluid shapes.

Collage allows Ball to layer archival material with his own photo practice, to cut, crop, resize and imply ambiguity and possibility in the blurred imagery.

The collages sit beside small photographs placed behind textured stained glass that seem like peep shows into queer culture, and are emblematic of Heavy Grit’s tension between what is revealed and what is hidden.

Beneath are sand-filled soft sculptures, all of which suggest intimacy, stolen moments, the bright lights of Oxford Street, queer dress culture and much more, set off by loose flourishes of orange framing the collage. There is a delicate play of surface, scale and medium in an expansive installation that requires close, but slow looking.

The Ramsay Prize

The A$100,000 prize, awarded every two years, is open to artists under 40.

It is the nation’s richest art prize for that age category and is funded in perpetuity by the Ramsay Foundation, for artwork in any medium.

It is visionary in intent and reflects donors Diana and James Ramsay’s aim “to support and encourage contemporary Australian artists to make their best work at a pivotal point in their career”. And it has done just that.

It commenced in 2017. Vincent Namatjira, who was awarded the prize in 2019, proceeded to win the Archibald Prize. Kate Bohunnis (2021) and Ida Sophia (2023) attribute winning the Ramsay to being career changing.

Strong work on show

There is much strong work across a range of media areas on show in this year’s exhibition.

Arrernte artist Alfred Lowe’s ceramic sculptural figures are adorned with bright pink raffia skirts. But beneath the colour and whimsy and contrasting materials is an exploration of his conflicted First Nations world of Central Australia and its charged politics.

Tom Polo’s brightly coloured abstract and gestural paintings of fragmented and exaggerated forms suggest human vulnerability and the fluidity of daily life.

Bridie Gillman’s evocative Pink room, pink womb painting is a double-sided triangular installation which references ideas of place and belonging.

It was produced in response to staying in an 18th century bedroom with pink walls in Portugal. The dramatic colour changes she observed according to the light conjured up notions of a deep maternal presence. She invokes this in her changing shades of pink on the canvases and base, accompanied by a subtle soundscape by Reuben Schafer.

Shireen Taweel’s meticulous suspended copper objects delve into matters astronomical, the contribution of a Persian polymath’s foundational work in trigonometry and the precision required to locate stars and other celestial bodies.

She emulates that precision in her intriguing copper installation, Al-Tusi preferred to rely on perfect circles instead, as an instrument of astronomical observation. Her pierced motifs in the copper are informed by precise calculations.

Chinese-Australian artist Jason Phu draws on his cultural heritage in his large painting. Comic-like figures enact a narrative across time, as occurs in more serious Chinese Scroll paintings.

Phu inverts the tradition, adds a vernacular touch, and oscillates between humour and grim despair. His central figure in red enacts the text above: “the deepest love, the deepest despair”.

David Attwood’s whimsical kinetic sculptural assemblage featuring a motorised house cleaning sponge harks back to the wacky idea of a self-cleaning house, and touches on the gendered nature of housework.

Liam Fleming was schooled in the refined precision and techniques of making production line glass. Here, his slumped glass sculptural work come from his “letting go” of this exactness.

Greek-Australian queer artist and designer Jordon Gogos’ impressive large tapestry, Time Machine, is made from repurposed and recycled textiles, and explores memory and identity.

His deft mix of chance and design – and extending the possibilities of fabric itself by layering, embroidering and felting – produces a compelling and playful piece.

These are just eight of the artworks on show in which the experimentation, range, diversity and rich cultural mix point to a vibrant contemporary art scene.

What’s left unsaid

But of the 22 finalists – a veritable who’s who of the contemporary art scene – only one artist reflects on war in a world beset by conflict.

Ukrainian-born Stanislava Pinchuk is currently Australia’s official war artist in Ukraine. Her moving image work, Theatre of war, focuses on three such “theatres”: the siege of Sarajevo, the war in Ukraine, and Homer’s account of the Trojan war in the Iliad.

But where is the bravery of earlier Ramsay entries such as Hoda Afshar’s moving photographic portraits of our courageous whistleblowers in Agonistes, shown in the Ramsay Art Prize exhibition of 2020?

There were close to 600 entries this year, so it seems odd that no-one else was selected for the final cut whose work had overt political content such as the war in Gaza.

The Ramsay Art Prize 2025 is at the Art Gallery of South Australia until August 31.

Catherine Speck has received funding from the ARC to investigate Australian art exhibitions (with Joanna Mendelssohn, Catherine De Lorenzo and Alison Inglis).

– ref. Jack Ball wins the Ramsay Art Prize among a who’s who of Australian young contemporary artists – https://theconversation.com/jack-ball-wins-the-ramsay-art-prize-among-a-whos-who-of-australian-young-contemporary-artists-257326

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

With almost all primary votes now counted to two-party preferred (as I explained on May 29), Labor has won the national two-party vote by a 55.3–44.7 margin, although this may drop to a 55.2–44.8 margin once the remaining votes from Bradfield come in.

Labor’s two-party share is over two points higher than in any poll taken in the final week before the election.

Final primary votes were 34.6% Labor (up 2.0% since the 2022 election), 31.8% Coalition (down 3.9%), 12.2% Greens (steady), 6.4% One Nation (up 1.4%), 1.9% Trumpet of Patriots (down 2.2% from United Australia Party in 2022), 7.4% independents (up 2.1%) and 5.7% others (up 0.6%).

The table below shows the primary vote and two-party estimates of all ten polls conducted in the final week before the election, with the election results at the bottom. When polls gave a breakdown for Trumpet of Patriots, independents and others, I’ve combined these for an all Others total. Bold numbers in the table represent estimates that were within 1% of the result.

Fieldwork dates for the Ipsos poll were not released, but it was published in The Daily Mail on election day, so it was presumably taken in the last week. Published primary votes in this poll included 5% undecided, which I have redistributed proportionally to the parties listed.

In 2019, all the polls gave Labor between a 51–49 and a 52–48 lead. The actual result was a Coalition win by 51.5–48.5.

This year, all polls had Labor between a 51–49 and a 53–47 lead and the actual result was a Labor win by 55.3–44.7. The two polls (Freshwater and Ipsos) that had Labor below a 52–48 lead were particularly poor.

The polls understated Labor’s primary vote and overstated the Coalition’s. Labor won the primary vote by 2.7 points, when nearly all polls had the Coalition ahead (Redbridge was tied). The Freshwater and Ipsos polls performed badly in overstating the Coalition’s vote.

The Greens were mostly overstated, while One Nation was overstated by every pollster except Morgan.

Preference flow assumptions compounded the polls’ problems. If I plug the election primary votes into my 2022 preference flows spreadsheet, I get a Labor two-party lead of 55.3–44.7, the same as the actual result.

Newspoll had higher One Nation preference flows to the Coalition than in 2022. If they’d used 2022 flows, Labor would have led by about 53–47. YouGov used data from its MRP polls that gave the Coalition both a higher share of One Nation and Greens preferences than in 2022. If they’d used 2022 flows, Labor would have led by 54.2–45.8.

We won’t have data on preference flows by party for some time, but it’s likely that One Nation preferences did become more pro-Coalition. However, Greens and independent preferences compensated by becoming more pro-Labor.

Respondent-allocated polls from Essential, Resolve, Freshwater, Redbridge and Spectre all suggested this would be the case. YouGov may have used MRP polls earlier in the year to allocate preferences. Labor was doing badly on preferences earlier.

The poll graph that I used in my pre-election articles is below. There was a surge to Labor in March and April. Labor had been polling poorly from December to February and may have lost an election held then. The polls told us that Labor had recovered to an election-winning position, but they understated the magnitude of that win.

The best two polls were not the final polls, but a Morgan poll taken two weeks from the election that gave Labor a 55.5–44.5 lead. Morgan’s final two polls both gave Labor a 53–47 lead. The other good poll was a Redbridge poll of 20 marginal seats that gave Labor a 54.5–45.5 lead a week before the election (actual result 54.8–45.2 to Labor across these seats).

Redbridge would have been better if they’d stuck with their 54.5–45.5 to Labor in the marginal seats in this poll, but they dropped back to 53–47 to Labor in the poll published on election day.

The final YouGov MRP poll predicted Labor would win 84 of the 150 seats, understating Labor by ten seats. An exit poll of early voters from the first two days of early in-person voting correctly had swings to Labor.

While public polling was poor at this election, Liberal internal polling was worse. This article in The Australian published the day before the election said the Coalition was confident of gaining ten seats from Labor. Labor actually gained 14 seats from the Coalition.

The worst seat polls

I’m not going to relate every seat poll in this election, but there were some seat poll stinkers.

I referred to JWS seat polls of Ryan, Brisbane and Griffith on April 18. These polls gave the Liberal National Party a 57–43 lead over Labor in Ryan, with the Greens a distant third on primary votes. In Brisbane, Labor led the LNP by 51–49. In Griffith, Labor led the LNP by 51–49, but the LNP led the Greens by 53–47.

In Ryan, the Greens made the final two and defeated the LNP by 53.3–46.7. If Labor had made the final two, they would have won by 57.8–42.2. In Brisbane, Labor crushed the LNP by 59.0–41.0. In Griffith, Labor and the Greens made the final two, and a two-party count between Labor and the LNP had Labor winning by 65.9–34.1.

I referred to a Compass seat poll of McMahon on April 11. This poll gave right-wing independent Matt Camenzuli 41% of the primary vote, the Liberals 20% and Labor incumbent Chris Bowen just 19%. Bowen actually won 45.5% of the primary vote, the Liberals 26.8% and Camenzuli just 9.8%.

I referred to KJC polls of four seats on April 27. These polls gave the Liberals a 49–45 lead including undecided in Tangney and a 46–41 lead in Blair. In Richmond, the Greens led Labor by 39–34. In Hunter, Labor led the Nationals by 45–41.

Labor actually won Tangney by 57.0–43.0 and Blair by 55.7–44.3. In Richmond, the Greens did not make the final two, and Labor would have beaten them easily if they had. In Hunter, One Nation instead of the Nationals made the final two, with Labor winning by 59.0–41.0. Had the Nationals made the final two, Labor would have won by a similar 59.5–40.5.

Recount results and Greens senator defects to Labor

In Liberal-held Bradfield, Teal Nicolette Boele defeated the Liberals by 26 votes after a recount, overturning an eight-vote Liberal lead on the original count. The Liberals could challenge this result in the courts, but Boele will be seated until the courts decide.

In Goldstein, the partial recount of primary votes for Teal incumbent Zoe Daniel and Liberal Tim Wilson was completed on May 31. Wilson won by 175 votes, down from 260 before the recount started.

With these results, the final seat outcome of the election is 94 Labor out of 150, 43 Coalition and 13 for all Others. That’s a Labor majority of 38 by the UK method.

Western Australian Greens Senator Dorinda Cox, who was elected in 2022, defected to Labor on Monday. This gives Labor 29 of the 76 senators and the Greens ten. Labor will still need either the Coalition or the Greens to reach the 39 votes required for a Senate majority. Cox’s six-year term will expire in June 2028.

South Korea and Poland elections

On Tuesday the centre-left candidate won the South Korean presidential election that had been called early after the previous right-wing president was impeached and removed from office. On Sunday the Law and Justice (PiS) candidate won the Polish presidential election, defeating a pro-Western centrist.

Donald Trump’s US national ratings have improved since his nadir in late April. I wrote about these events for The Poll Bludger on Wednesday.

Adrian Beaumont 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. Final counting shows polls understated Labor in 2025 election almost as much as they overstated it in 2019 – https://theconversation.com/final-counting-shows-polls-understated-labor-in-2025-election-almost-as-much-as-they-overstated-it-in-2019-256981

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Mudgway, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Canterbury

The sudden resignation this week of one of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s senior press secretaries was politically embarrassing, but also raises questions about how New Zealand law operates in such cases.

A Stuff investigation revealed the Beehive staffer allegedly recorded audio of sessions with sex workers, and whose phone contained images and video of women at the gym, supermarket shopping, and filmed through a window while getting dressed.

The man at the centre of the allegations has reportedly apologised and said he had sought professional help for his behaviour last year.

The police have said the case did not meet the threshold for prosecution. And this highlights the difficulties surrounding existing laws when it comes to non-consensual recording, harassment and image-based harm.

Describing his “shock” at the allegations against his former staffer, the prime minister said he was “open to revisiting” the laws around intimate audio recordings without consent. If that happens, there are several key areas to consider.

Are covert audio recordings illegal?

New Zealand law prohibits the non-consensual creation, possession and distribution of intimate visual recordings under sections 216H to 216J of the Crimes Act 1961. These provisions aim to protect individuals’ privacy and bodily autonomy in situations where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

The definition of “intimate visual recording” under these sections is limited to visual material, such as photographs, video or digital images, and does not extend to audio-only recordings.

As a result, covert audio recordings of sex workers engaged in sexual activity would fall outside the scope of these offences, even though the harm caused is similar.

If such audio or video recordings were ever shared with others or posted online, that may be a criminal offence under the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 – if it can be proved this was done with the intention to cause serious emotional distress.

What about covert filming of women in public places?

Covert recording of women working out or walking down a road, including extreme closeups of clothed body parts, would unlikely meet the definition of “intimate visual recording”.

That is because they do not typically involve nudity, undergarments or private bodily activities, and they often occur in public places where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

Even extreme closeups may not meet the threshold unless they are taken from beneath or through clothing in a way that targets the genitals, buttocks or breasts. While they are invasive and degrading, they may remain lawful.

By contrast, it is more likely that covert filming of women dressing or undressing through a window would satisfy the definition, depending on where the women were. For example, were they in a place where they would have a reasonable expectation of privacy?

If the non-consensual recording captures a person in a state of undress, then the creation of such images or videos could be considered a crime.

Are any of these behaviours “harassment”?

Under the Harassment Act 1997, “harassment” is defined as a pattern of behaviour directed at a person that involves at least two specified acts within a 12-month period, or a single continuing act.

These acts can include following, watching, or any conduct that causes the person to fear for their safety. Although covert filming or audio recording is not expressly referenced, the acts of following and watching within alleged voyeuristic behaviour, if repeated, could fall within the definition.

But harassment is only a crime where it is done with the intent or knowledge that the behaviour will likely cause a person to fear for their safety. This is a threshold that might be difficult to prove in voyeurism or similar cases.

Covert recording of women’s bodies, whether audio or visual, is part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence facilitated by technology. Feminist legal scholars have framed this as “image-based sexual abuse”. The term captures how non-consensual creation, recording, sharing or threatening to share intimate content violates sexual autonomy and dignity.

This form of harm disproportionately affects women and often reflects gender power imbalances rooted in misogyny, surveillance and control. The concept has become more mainstream and is referenced by law and policymakers in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Has New Zealand law kept up?

Some forms of image-based sexual abuse are criminalised in New Zealand, but others are not. What we know of this case suggests some key gaps remain – largely because law reform has been piecemeal and reactive.

For example, the intimate visual recording offences in the Crimes Act were introduced in 2006 when wider access to digital cameras led to an upswing in covert filming (of women showering or “upskirting”, for example).

Therefore, the definition is limited to these behaviours. But the law was drafted before later advances in smartphone technology, now owned by many more people than in 2006.

Generally, laws are thought of as “living documents”, able to be read in line with the development of new or advanced technology. But when the legislation itself is drafted with certain technology or behaviours in mind, it is not necessarily future-proofed.

Where to now?

There is a risk to simply adding more offences to plug the gaps (and New Zealand is not alone in having to deal with this challenge). Amending the Crimes Act to include intimate audio recordings might address one issue. But new or advanced technologies will inevitably raise others.

Rather than responding to each new form of abuse as it arises, it would be better to take a step back and develop a more principled, future-focused criminal law framework.

That would mean defining offences in a technology-neutral way. Grounded in core values such as privacy, autonomy and consent, they would be more capable of adapting to new contexts and tools.

Only then can the law provide meaningful protection against the evolving forms of gendered harm facilitated by digital technologies.

Cassandra Mudgway 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. Resignation of PM’s press secretary highlights gaps in NZ law on covert recording and harassment – https://theconversation.com/resignation-of-pms-press-secretary-highlights-gaps-in-nz-law-on-covert-recording-and-harassment-258274

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

The federal government’s decision to extend the life of Woodside’s North West Shelf gas plant in Western Australia has been condemned as a climate disaster.

The gas lobby claims more gas is needed to secure energy supplies, pointing to predicted gas shortages in parts of Australia in the short term. But given most proposed gas projects are directed at the export market, the problem is likely to persist.

And the science is clear: no fossil fuel projects can be opened if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Despite this, a slew of polluting gas projects are either poised to begin operating in Australia, or lie firmly in the sights of industry.

How Australia’s gas contributes to climate change

Gas production in Australia harms the climate in two ways.

The first is via “fugitive” emissions – leaks and unintentional releases that occur when gas is being extracted, processed and transported. These emissions are typically methane, which traps more heat in the atmosphere per molecule than carbon dioxide.

Fugitive emissions count towards Australia’s greenhouse gas accounts, comprising about 6% of our total emissions.

So, government approval for new gas projects undermines Australia’s commitment to reaching net-zero emissions. Labor enshrined this goal in legislation in its previous term of government, and all states and territories have also adopted it.

The second climate harm occurs when Australia’s gas is burned for energy overseas. Those emissions do not count towards our national emissions accounts, but they substantially contribute to global warming.

Under national environment law, the federal government is not required to consider the potential harm a project might cause to the global climate. This loophole means fossil fuel developments can continue to win government backing.

Below, I outline six of the biggest gas projects Australia has in the pipeline.

1. Barossa Gas Project

This A$5.6 billion project by energy giant Santos is located in the Timor Sea, about 300km north of Darwin. The Australian government’s offshore energy regulator approved it in April this year.

The project will extract gas from the Barossa field and transport it to a liquified natural gas (LNG) facility in Darwin for processing and export.

The venture would reportedly be among the worst polluting oil and gas projects in the world. On one estimate, it would release about 380 million tonnes of climate pollution over its 25-year life.

2. Scarborough Pluto Train 2

Pluto Train 2 is an extension of Woodside’s existing Scarborough project, centred around a gas field about 375km off WA’s Pilbara coast. A 430-kilometre pipeline would connect that gas to a second LNG train at a facility near Karratha. “Train” refers to the unit in a plant that turns natural gas into liquid.

The project has federal and state approval. It is about 80% complete and scheduled to begin operating by next year. According to Climate Analytics, the expansion would create about 9.2 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent each year.

3. Surat Phase 2

This coal seam gas project in Gladstone, Queensland, would be operated by Arrow energy – a joint venture between Shell and PetroChina.

It involves substantially expanding existing gas fields by building up to 450 new production wells. The project is expected to supply 130 million cubic feet of gas each day at its peak, and has been opposed by environment groups.

4. Narrabri Gas Project

This $3.6 billion Santos project in northwest New South Wales involves drilling up to 850 coal seam gas wells over 95,000 hectares. The National Native Title Tribunal last month ruled leases for the project could be granted, leaving Santos only a few regulatory barriers to clear.

Environmental groups and Traditional Owners say the project threatens water resources, biodiversity and Indigenous sites. However, the tribunal found the project’s benefits to energy reliability outweighed those concerns.

5. Beetaloo Basin

The Beetaloo Basin is located 500km southeast of Darwin. It covers 28,000 kilometres and is estimated to contain up to 500 trillion cubic feet of gas. A number of companies are vying for the right to develop the huge resource.

It is predicted to emit up to 1.2 billion tonnes over 25 years. A CSIRO report says Beetaloo could be tapped without adding to Australia’s net emissions. However, experts say the report was too optimistic and relies far too heavily on carbon offsets.

6. Browse Basin

Browse Basin, 425 kilometres north of Broome off WA, is considered Australia’s biggest reserve of untapped conventional gas.

Woodside plans to develop the Browse gas fields, but the area is remote and difficult to access. According to the ABC, Woodside’s North West Shelf project is considered the last hope for extracting the valuable resource.

Environmental groups say the project, if approved, would emit 1.6 billion tonnes of climate pollution – three times Australia’s current annual emissions.

The basin is also located near the pristine Scott Reef, a significant coral reef ecosystem.

A major disconnect

The projects listed above, if they proceed, weaken Australia’s efforts to reach its emission reduction goals. And their overall climate impact is truly frightening.

The re-elected Labor government has pledged to revisit attempts to reform national environment laws. This presents a prime opportunity to ensure the climate harms of fossil fuel projects are key to environmental decision making.

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. Woodside’s North West Shelf approval is by no means a one-off. Here are 6 other giant gas projects to watch – https://theconversation.com/woodsides-north-west-shelf-approval-is-by-no-means-a-one-off-here-are-6-other-giant-gas-projects-to-watch-257899

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew England, Scientia Professor and Deputy Director of the ARC Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, UNSW Sydney

In June 2023, a record-breaking marine heatwave swept across the North Atlantic Ocean, smashing previous temperature records.

Soon after, deadly heatwaves broke out across large areas of Europe, and torrential rains and flash flooding devastated parts of Spain and Eastern Europe. That year Switzerland lost more than 4% of its total glacier volume, and severe bushfires broke out around the Mediterranean.

It wasn’t just Europe that was impacted. The coral reefs of the Caribbean were bleaching under severe heat stress. And hurricanes, fuelled by ocean heat, intensified into disasters. For example, Hurricane Idalia hit Florida in August 2023 – causing 12 deaths and an estimated US$3.6 billion in damages.

Today, in a paper published in Nature, we uncover what drove this unprecedented marine heatwave.

A strange discovery

In a strange twist to the global warming story, there is a region of the North Atlantic Ocean to the southeast of Greenland that has been cooling over the last 50 to 100 years.

This so-called “cold blob” or “warming hole” has been linked to the weakening of what’s known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – a system of ocean currents that conveys warm water from the equator towards the poles.

During July 2023 we met as a team to analyse this cold blob – how deep it reaches and how robust it is as a measure of the strength of the Atlantic overturning circulation – when it became clear there was a strong reversal of the historical cooling trend. The cold blob had warmed to 2°C above average.

But was that a sign the overturning circulation had been reinvigorated? Or was something else going on?

A layered story

It soon became clear the anomalous warm temperatures southeast of Greenland were part of an unprecedented marine heatwave that had developed across much of the North Atlantic Ocean. By July, basin-averaged warming in the North Atlantic reached 1.4°C above normal, almost double the previous record set in 2010.

To uncover what was behind these record breaking temperatures, we combined estimates of the atmospheric conditions that prevailed during the heatwave, such as winds and cloud cover, with ocean observations and model simulations.

We were especially interested in understanding what was happening in the mixed upper layer of water of the ocean, which is strongly affected by the atmosphere.

Distinct from the deeper layer of cold water, the ocean’s surface mixed layer warms as it’s exposed to more sunlight during spring and summer. But the rate at which this warming happens depends on its thickness. If it’s thick, it will warm more gradually; if it’s thin, rapid warming can ensue.

During summer the thickness of this surface mixed layer is largely set by winds. Winds churn up the surface ocean and the stronger they are the deeper the mixing penetrates, so strong winds create a think upper layer and weak winds generate a shallower layer.

Thinning at the surface

Our new research indicates that the primary driver of the marine heatwave was record-breaking weak winds across much of the basin. The winds were at their weakest measured levels during June and July, possibly linked to a developing El Niño in the east Pacific Ocean.

This led to by far the shallowest upper layer on record. Data from the Argo Program – a global array of nearly 4,000 robotic floats that measure the temperature and salinity in the upper 2,000 metres of the ocean – showed in some areas this layer was only ten metres deep, compared to the usual 20 to 40 metres deep.

This caused the sun to heat the thin surface layer far more rapidly than usual.

In addition to these short term changes in 2023, previous research has shown long-term warming associated with anthropogenic climate change is reducing the ability of winds to mix the upper ocean, causing it to gradually thin.

We also identified a possible secondary driver of more localised warming during the 2023 marine heatwave: above-average solar radiation hitting the ocean. This could be linked in part with the introduction of new international rules in 2020 to reduce sulfate emissions from ships.

The aim of these rules was to reduce air pollution from ship’s exhaust systems. But sulfate aerosols also reflect solar radiation and can lead to cloud formation. The resultant clearer skies can then lead to more ocean warming.

Early warning signs

The extreme 2023 heatwave provides a preview of the future. Marine heatwaves are expected to worsen as Earth continues to warm due to greenhouse gas emissions, with devastating impacts on marine ecosystems such as coral reefs and fisheries. This also means more intense hurricanes – and more intense land-based heatwaves.

Right now, although the “cold blob” to the southeast of Greenland has returned, parts of the North Atlantic remain significantly warmer than the average. There is a particularly warm patch of water off the coast of the United Kingdom, with temperatures up to 4°C above normal. And this is likely priming Europe for extreme land-based heatwaves this summer.

To better understand, forecast and plan for the impacts of marine heatwaves, long-term ocean and atmospheric data and models, including those provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States, are crucial. In fact, without these data and models, our new study would not have been possible.

Despite this, NOAA faces an uncertain future. A proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year released by the White House last month could mean devastating funding cuts of more than US$1.5 billion – mostly targeting climate-based research and data collection.

This would be a disaster for monitoring our oceans and climate system, right at a time when change is severe, unprecedented, and proving very costly.

Matthew England receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Alex Sen Gupta receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Andrew Kiss receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Zhi Li receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Unprecedented heat in the North Atlantic Ocean kickstarted Europe’s hellish 2023 summer. Now we know what caused it – https://theconversation.com/unprecedented-heat-in-the-north-atlantic-ocean-kickstarted-europes-hellish-2023-summer-now-we-know-what-caused-it-258061

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Mahady, Associate Professor, Gastroenterologist & Clinical Epidemiologist, Monash University

Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in Australia, with more than 15,000 cases diagnosed annually. It’s also the second most common cause of cancer-related death.

Recently, headlines have warned of an uptick in cases among younger adults, noting bowel cancer cases in people under 50 in Australia are among the highest in the world.

While this is very worrying, it’s also important to note the rate of new cases of bowel cancer in Australia overall has actually been falling over the past 20 years or so. Most cases of bowel cancer still occur in adults over 50, and thanks to a national screening program in this age group, rates are declining.

So why are rates increasing in younger people, and what can we do to mitigate the risk?

National screening is working

Australia was one of the first countries to commence population-based screening for bowel cancer. The National Bowel Cancer Screening Program was introduced in 2006. A kit is sent in the mail every two years to adults aged 50–74.

This simple poo test detects microscopic amounts of blood that may indicate the presence of cancer or a precancerous lesion, leading to earlier detection and higher rates of survival.

Despite the effectiveness of the program, participation rates are less than optimal at around 40%. We could see even further declines in rates of bowel cancer if more people took part.

How about younger adults?

In contrast to the falling incidence of bowel cancer in older people, emerging data over the past few years paints a different picture for people under 50.

Research I did with colleagues showed an increase in both bowel and rectal cancer from 1982 to 2014 in Australia in people under 50.

A recent preprint (a study yet to be peer-reviewed) includes data up to 2020, and further supports this trend. It suggests people born in the 1990s have two to three times the risk of bowel cancer compared to those born in the 1950s.

Similar trends have been noted in many countries, however international data suggests the rates of young-onset bowel cancer in Australia are among the highest in the world.

What’s driving this increase?

At the moment the causes are unclear. Some studies have focused on diet and lifestyle, obesity, and consumption of red meat.

However, diet as a cause of any disease is notoriously difficult to study. This is because it requires long-term data on what people eat, and following them up for the development of the disease (called an observational study).

If there are positive findings in the observational study, researchers may then test their hypothesis in a randomised controlled trial where one group eats a certain food (such as red meat) and the other does not, and then compare rates of bowel cancer in each group over time.

Due to the near impossibility of conducting these types of trials – as participants would need to follow strict dietary guidelines for years – dietary causes are challenging to prove.

More recent research has focussed on the potential role of E. coli infection in childhood, proposing that infection with some strains may lead to early DNA changes and subsequent increased cancer risk. Other research is looking at the role of an altered gut microbiome. These hypotheses warrant further work.

What can people do to reduce their risk?

It’s important to watch for any new or concerning symptoms. Any blood in your poo, particularly if it’s a new symptom, or a change in your regular bowel habits, are good reasons to promptly book a doctor’s appointment.

And while the bowel cancer screening kits are sent to adults from age 50 every two years, as of 2024 people aged 45–49 can request a kit to be sent to them.

Because the participation rate in the bowel cancer screening program is less than optimal, people over 50 who receive the kit in the mail are strongly encouraged to do the test as soon as possible. Increasing screening participation rates remains one of the most important ways we can reduce the burden of bowel cancer in Australia.

Suzanne Mahady 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. Bowel cancer rates are declining in people over 50. But why are they going up in younger adults? – https://theconversation.com/bowel-cancer-rates-are-declining-in-people-over-50-but-why-are-they-going-up-in-younger-adults-257728

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liesel Spencer, Associate Professor, School of Law, Western Sydney University

Australian parents will be familiar with this school morning routine: hastily making sandwiches or squeezing leftovers into containers, grabbing a snack from the cupboard and a piece of fruit from the counter.

This would be unheard of in many other countries, including Finland, Sweden, Scotland, Wales, Brazil and India, which provide free daily school meals to every child.

Australia is one of the few high-income countries that does not provide children with a daily nutritious meal at school.

As families increasingly face food insecurity and a cost-of-living crisis, here’s how school lunches could help.

School lunches are important

During the week, children get a third of their daily food intake at school. What they eat during school hours has a significant impact on their health.

Australian children have much higher rates of obesity than children in countries with healthy lunch programs.

As children’s diets affect physical and cognitive development, and mental health, poor diet can also affect academic performance.

International research shows universal school meal programs – where all children are provided with a healthy meal at school each day – can improve both health and educational outcomes for students.

The problem with BYO lunchboxes

In Australia, children either bring a packed lunch or buy food at the school canteen. But the vast majority of these lunches don’t meet kids’ dietary needs.

As a 2022 Flinders University report notes, more than 80% of Australian primary school lunches are of poor nutritional quality. Half of students’ school-day food intake comes from junk food and fewer than one in ten students eat enough vegetables.

While these figures are based on 2011–2012 data, subsequent national survey data does not show significant improvements in children’s healthy diet indicators, including fruit and vegetable consumption. Time pressures on carers mean pre-packaged food can be a default lunchbox choice.

At the same time, many families with school students are not able to provide their children with healthy lunches. Food insecurity — not having regular access to enough safe, healthy and affordable food — affects an estimated 58% of Australian households with children, and 69% of single-parent households.

Hot weather also raises food safety concerns, as it’s hard to keep fresh food cool in schoolbags.

School meals programs in Australia

There are some historical examples of providing food to children at school in Australia. This includes the school milk program which ran from 1950s to 1970s. There were also wartime experiments in the 1940s. For example, the Oslo lunch (a cheese and salad sandwich on wholemeal bread, with milk and fruit) was provided at school to improve the health of children.

Today, there is a patchwork of school food programs run by not-for-profit organisations providing breakfast and/or lunch, and various schemes, including kitchen garden and school greenhouse programs.

There are also pilot schemes providing hot meals. For example, in Tasmania, the current pilot school lunch program feeds children in participating schools a hot lunch on some days of the week with state government support. Evaluation of the program showed strong benefits: healthier eating, calmer classrooms, better social connections from eating lunch together, and less food waste.

The 2023 parliamentary inquiry into food security recommended the federal government work with states and territories to consider the feasibility of a school meals program.

In May, the South Australian parliament opened an inquiry into programs in preschools and schools to ensure children and young people don’t go hungry during the day.

What would it take to introduce school meals?

Rolling out universal school meal programs across Australian schools would require cooperation between government and private sectors.

It could build on what already exists – including canteens, school gardens, food relief and breakfast clubs – to create a more consistent and inclusive system.

There’s a strong evidence base to guide this, both from Australian pilot programs and international examples.

Decisions would have to be made about regulation and funding – whether to opt for a federally-funded and regulated scheme with federal and state cooperation, or a state-by-state scheme.

Funding mechanisms from international models include fully government-funded, caregiver-paid (but with subsidies for disadvantaged families) and cost-sharing arrangements between government and families.

Costs per child per day are around A$10, factoring in economies of scale. Some pilot programs report lower costs of around $5, but involve volunteer labour.

More research is needed to determine parent and community attitudes and model these funding options, including preventative health benefits.

Delivery models may also vary depending on each school’s size, location and infrastructure. This could include onsite food preparation, central kitchens delivering pre-prepared meals, or partnerships with not-for-profit providers.

Ultimately, providing food at school could save parents valuable time and stress, and ensure all Australian students can access the health and education benefits of a nutritious school meal.

Liesel Spencer has undertaken volunteer work for the Federation of Canteens in Schools (Australia).

Miriam Williams has undertaken volunteer work for the Federation of Canteens in Schools (Australia).

Katherine Kent 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. Australian kids BYO lunches to school. There is a healthier way to feed students – https://theconversation.com/australian-kids-byo-lunches-to-school-there-is-a-healthier-way-to-feed-students-257465

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margaret Faulkner, Senior Marketing Scientist, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, University of South Australia

Revenue for Australia’s charity and not-for-profit sector has reached record highs, and total donations have grown. But the story isn’t the same everywhere, and some smaller charities may be struggling.

That’s according to the latest edition of the Australian Charities Report from the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC), released this week.

The report shows that in the 2023 reporting year, revenue for Australia’s charity sector rose by 10.7% to a record A$222 billion. This was bigger than the growth in expenses, which rose by 8.4% to $212 billion.

Total donations and bequests also rose, to $18.9 billion. But the picture is nuanced. One single donation made to the Minderoo Foundation of $4.9 billion is included in this figure.

If this is left out, total donations rose by less than 0.4% across the sector. This suggests we should perhaps put any celebrations on hold and instead ask why donations might be flat-lining.

In 2023, the top 30 charities accounted for 40% of all donations and bequests to the sector. This was double the 20% share reported for the previous year.

Australia’s charity sector plays a vital role in society. For it to thrive, all of its elements must be healthy, including smaller charities.

Some big wins

The large donation was made to the Minderoo Foundation (in Fortescue shares) by Andrew and Nicola Forrest, as part of their commitment to the Giving Pledge. This further concentrated the share of donations received by the largest charities.

The Minderoo Foundation funds a wide range of philanthropic programs and research. For example, it works with Citizens of the Sea to collect marine life DNA as part of the 2025 Pacific Rally to monitor marine biodiversity.

In 2023, the Minderoo Foundation funded the creation of Uncloud as a peer-to-peer hub to show the true impact of vaping, a program that has been handed over to VicHealth.

Elsewhere, Clean Up Australia once again had the most volunteers of any organisation. In 2023, it increased its numbers by 120,000 volunteers to more than 1 million. This represented 44% of the entire growth in volunteer numbers across the sector.

These are both great examples of how large national charities can grow year-on-year. But what about the smaller ones?

Why smaller charities struggle

About 60% of Australia’s charities operate with revenue less than $500,000. And about half of these are classified as “extra small” – with revenue less than $50,000. These are the charities that will be doing it tough.

The report shows extra small charities had the highest increase in total expenses, up 21%. It also shows that they continue to bring in less revenue than they spend. Extra small charities had a net loss of $144 million in 2023 compared with a loss of $85 million the year before, a 69% increase.

At the University of South Australia’s Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, we are aware that small brands suffer twice.

The first problem is they have fewer customers (or in this case, donors). The second is that, on average, those who support them will display slightly less loyalty than supporters of the bigger brands. In marketing, this is known as “double jeopardy” for brands.

It is a statistical effect we can’t change, but one that is worth knowing when evaluating results and setting strategies for the sector.

Larger charities have some key advantages that make garnering support easier.

One is simply that they are more well-known. Those who only give infrequently are more likely to come across (and give to) larger charities.

Smaller charities, on the other hand, are more likely to be sharing their supporters with multiple charities, both small and large.

As a consequence, loyalty of smaller brands looks slightly lower than that shown to bigger brands.

How can we fix this?

One way of raising the profile of smaller charities is to encourage mergers and support other ways to grow. The report shows a number of charities categorised as extra small in 2022 moved into the small charity category in 2023.

Helping individual charities get bigger can have positive knock-on effects for employment in the sector and job security.

The report notes 45% of the staff of small charities were casual, compared with 23% of extra large charity staff. Extra large charities also reported adding the most employees, an increase of 60,480.

Working together

Another solution is the federated charities model, where charities with similar goals work together to provide a coherent brand identity that reduces wastage in marketing expenses. If they share resources, they can ensure everyone is consistent in how the brand is portrayed and they can optimise marketing expenditure.

Under this model, individual charities can tailor their messaging or choice of media outlet to suit their local context, while building a valuable brand all can use, making it as easy as possible for people to volunteer and donate money.

There are still some services in society that rely on very small charities that can’t easily grow or federate with others. While support is available to access other revenue streams, such as grant funding, this assumes the charity has people who can write grants, manage its expenditure and report back to the funding body.

That puts this potential revenue source out of reach for many. The operations of many of these smaller charities do not look sustainable in the current environment, and we need to come up with new solutions to show our support.

Margaret Faulkner’s PhD received funding from The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Research Foundation (now known as The Hospital Research Foundation). As a member of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute she benefits from corporate sponsorship, but this does not influence the institute’s research or opinions. Until recently she was a director of a small non-profit organisation and has received funding for research projects from large non-profits within Australia and overseas.

– ref. Australia’s charity sector is growing – but many smaller charities are doing it tough – https://theconversation.com/australias-charity-sector-is-growing-but-many-smaller-charities-are-doing-it-tough-258073

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wellett Potter, Lecturer in Law, University of New England

On Friday, Taylor Swift announced she now owns all the music she has ever made. This reported US$360 million acquisition includes all the master recordings to her first six albums, music videos, concert films, album art, photos and unreleased material.

The purchase of this catalogue from private equity firm Shamrock Capital is a profoundly happy event for Swift. She has expressed how personal and difficult it was not to own these works.

In her announcement, Swift acknowledged that it was due to her fans purchasing her rerecorded music (known as “Taylor’s Version”) and the financial success of the record-breaking Eras Tour which enabled this purchase.

The story behind “Taylor’s Version” and why she didn’t own the catalogue to her original six albums is due to copyright, music industry practices and contractual terms. Let’s break it down.

What’s in a music catalogue?

When it comes to valuing a music catalogue, it largely comes down to two types of rights: master rights and publishing rights.

Master rights are rights pertaining to the ownership of the actual sound recordings – the final recorded version. These are called “masters” because they’re the original source from which all copies are made.

Under traditional music industry contracts, record labels usually hold ownership of masters and associated materials. This can be music videos, tour videos, unreleased works, photographs and album covers.

Through licensing, the label controls the use of this material and retains the majority of the royalties. In return, the label provides the artist with financial backing, recording resources and marketing.

Publishing rights, on the other hand, relate to the underlying composition – the music and lyrics. The rights to music publishing usually belong to the songwriter, regardless of who performs the song.

Publishing rights govern how a song can be used and who earns royalties from that use. For example, a song may be played on a streaming platform, covered in a live performance or licensed for a commercial or film.

Swift’s contracts

Swift was 15-years-old when she was signed to Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine record label.

The agreed contractual terms were typical of the music industry. In exchange for the financial support to make, record and promote her subsequent albums and tours, Big Machine held the rights to Swift’s master recordings and associated materials in her first six albums. Her relationship with the label lasted 13 years.

As a songwriter, Swift retained separate publishing rights to her songs (the music and lyrics) from her first six albums, which she licensed through Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

In 2018, Swift was reportedly offered to re-sign with Big Machine, in a deal which would involve her “earning” the rights to one original album for each new one she produced.

Swift did not renew her contract and moved to Republic Records (Universal Music Group), who allow her to own her masters. She also moved to Universal Music Publishing Group for her music publishing.

Subsequent sales

In June 2019, Big Machine’s catalogue was sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, for a reported US$330 million, with US$140 million representing Swift’s catalogue.

Swift described this as her “worst case scenario”, as she had a tumultuous history of alleged bullying from Braun. She also alleged she found out about the acquisition at the time it was announced to the world, without being given the opportunity to purchase her catalogue.

Throughout 2019 and 2020 it was reported she attempted to regain ownership, but negotiations fell through.

In October 2020, Swift’s catalogue was sold to Shamrock Capital, a private equity firm, for an estimated US$300+ million. In recent years, private equity firms have been purchasing music catalogues as profitable long-term financial assets, rather than for artistic or cultural reasons.

These events led Swift to rerecord her first six albums, branding them “Taylor’s Version”. Four have been released.

She was able to create new versions of her songs, with their own intellectual property rights attached.

As owner of these new masters, she has control over where these songs are used, and she receives a greater portion of the income from the streams, downloads and licensing.

The decision was enormously successful. Mobilising her fans’ support via social media, they prioritised purchasing “Taylor’s Version” over the original masters, diluting the value of the originals.

Successful futures

Swift has repeatedly emphasised the need for artists to retain control over their work and to receive fair compensation. In a 2020 interview she said she believes artists should always own their master records and licence them back to the label for a limited period.

This would mean the label could monetise, control and manage the recordings for a certain time, but the artist retains the ownership. They eventually gain back full control, rather than handing over permanent rights to the label.

Swift’s experience has sparked conversations within the industry, prompting emerging artists to approach record labels with caution and advocate for fairer deals and ownership rights. Olivia Rodrigo negotiated her contract with Swift’s saga as a cautionary tale.

Purchasing her catalogue and masters gives Swift autonomy about how the rights to all of her music is used. Her fans are likely to continue to support her and purchase both the originals and “Taylor’s Version”, so the value of her original albums may rise.

And, in the long-run, her new acquisition will likely make her much wealthier.

Wellett Potter 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. Taylor Swift now owns all the music she has ever made: a copyright expert breaks it down – https://theconversation.com/taylor-swift-now-owns-all-the-music-she-has-ever-made-a-copyright-expert-breaks-it-down-257965

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sussex, Associate Professor (Adj), Griffith Asia Institute; and Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

The iconoclastic American general Douglas Macarthur once said that “wars are never won in the past”.

That sentiment certainly seemed to ring true following Ukraine’s recent audacious attack on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, using small, cheap drones housed in wooden pods and transported near Russian airfields in trucks.

The synchronised operation targeted Russian Air Force planes as far away as Irkutsk – more than 5,000 kilometres from Ukraine. Early reports suggest around a third of Russia’s long-range bombers were either destroyed or badly damaged. Russian military bloggers have put the estimated losses lower, but agree the attack was catastrophic for the Russian Air Force, which has struggled to adapt to Ukrainian tactics.

This particular attack was reportedly 18 months in the making. To keep it secret was an extraordinary feat. Notably, Kyiv did not inform the United States that the attack was in the offing. The Ukrainians judged – perhaps understandably – that sharing intelligence on their plans could have alerted the Kremlin in relatively short order.

Ukraine’s success once again demonstrates that its armed forces and intelligence services are the modern masters of battlefield innovation and operational security.

Finding new solutions

Western military planners have been carefully studying Ukraine’s successes ever since its forces managed to blunt Russia’s initial onslaught deep into its territory in early 2022, and then launched a stunning counteroffensive that drove the Russian invaders back towards their original starting positions.

There have been other lessons, too, about how the apparently weak can stand up to the strong. These include:

• attacks on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s vanity project, the Kerch Bridge, linking the Russian mainland to occupied Crimea (the last assault occurred just days ago)

• the relentless targeting of Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure with drones

• attacks against targets in Moscow to remind the Russian populace about the war, and

• its incursion into the Kursk region, which saw Ukrainian forces capture around 1,000 square kilometres of Russian territory.

On each occasion, Western defence analysts have questioned the wisdom of Kyiv’s moves.

Why invade Russia using your best troops when Moscow’s forces continue laying waste to cities in Ukraine?

Why hit Russia’s energy infrastructure if it doesn’t markedly impede the battlefield mobility of Russian forces?

And why attack symbolic targets like bridges when it could provoke Putin into dangerous “escalation”?

The answer to this is the key to effective innovation during wartime. Ukraine’s defence and security planners have interpreted their missions – and their best possible outcomes – far more accurately than conventional wisdom would have thought.

Above all, they have focused on winning the war they are in, rather than those of the past. This means:

• using technological advancements to force the Russians to change their tactics

• shaping the information environment to promote their narratives and keep vital Western aid flowing, and

• deploying surprise attacks not just as ways to boost public morale, but also to impose disproportionate costs on the Russian state.

The impact of Ukraine’s drone attack

In doing so, Ukraine has had an eye for strategic effects. As the smaller nation reliant on international support, this has been the only logical choice.

Putin has been prepared to commit a virtually inexhaustible supply of expendable cannon fodder to continue his country’s war ad infinitum. Russia has typically won its wars this way – by attrition – albeit at a tremendous human and material cost.

That said, Ukraine’s most recent surprise attack does not change the overall contours of the war. The only person with the ability to end it is Putin himself.

That’s why Ukraine is putting as much pressure as possible on his regime, as well as domestic and international perceptions of it. It is key to Ukraine’s theory of victory.

This is also why the latest drone attack is so significant. Russia needs its long-range bomber fleet, not just to fire conventional cruise missiles at Ukrainian civilian and infrastructure targets, but as aerial delivery systems for its strategic nuclear arsenal.

The destruction of even a small portion of Russia’s deterrence capability has the potential to affect its nuclear strategy. It has increasingly relied on this strategy to threaten the West.

A second impact of the attack is psychological. The drone attacks are more likely to enrage Putin than bring him to the bargaining table. However, they reinforce to the Russian military that there are few places – even on its own soil – that its air force can act with operational impunity.

The surprise attacks also provide a shot in the arm domestically, reminding Ukrainians they remain very much in the fight.

Finally, the drone attacks send a signal to Western leaders. US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, for instance, have gone to great lengths to tell the world that Ukraine is weak and has “no cards”. This action shows Kyiv does indeed have some powerful cards to play.

That may, of course, backfire: after all, Trump is acutely sensitive to being made to look a fool. He may look unkindly at resuming military aid to Ukraine after being shown up for saying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would be forced to capitulate without US support.

But Trump’s own hubris has already done that for him. His regular claims that a peace deal is just weeks away have gone beyond wishful thinking and are now monotonous.

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s reluctance to put anything approaching serious pressure on Putin has merely incentivised the Russian leader to string the process along.

Indeed, Putin’s insistence on a maximalist victory, requiring Ukrainian demobilisation and disarmament without any security guarantees for Kyiv, is not diplomacy at all. It is merely the reiteration of the same unworkable demands he has made since even before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

However, Ukraine’s ability to smuggle drones undetected onto an opponent’s territory, and then unleash them all together, will pose headaches for Ukraine’s friends, as well as its enemies.

That’s because it makes domestic intelligence and policing part of any effective defence posture. It is a contingency democracies will have to plan for, just as much as authoritarian regimes, who are also learning from Ukraine’s lessons.

In other words, while the attack has shown up Russia’s domestic security services for failing to uncover the plan, Western security elites, as well as authoritarian ones, will now be wondering whether their own security apparatuses would be up to the job.

The drone strikes will also likely lead to questions about how useful it is to invest in high-end and extraordinarily expensive weapons systems when they can be vulnerable. The Security Service of Ukraine estimates the damage cost Russia US$7 billion (A$10.9 billion). Ukraine’s drones, by comparison, cost a couple of thousand dollars each.

At the very least, coming up with a suitable response to those challenges will require significant thought and effort. But as Ukraine has repeatedly shown us, you can’t win wars in the past.

Matthew Sussex has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Atlantic Council, the Fulbright Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Lowy Institute and various Australian government departments and agencies.

– ref. The secret to Ukraine’s battlefield successes against Russia – it knows wars are never won in the past – https://theconversation.com/the-secret-to-ukraines-battlefield-successes-against-russia-it-knows-wars-are-never-won-in-the-past-258172

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

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is expected to have his first face-to-face meeting with US President Donald Trump this month, against a background of increased steel and aluminium tariffs and US pressure on Australia to boost its defence spending.

How Australia manages the now unpredictable US relationship has become a major debate among policy experts. Some question the implications for Australia’s reliance on the US for its security.

One voice urging Australia to “rebalance” its relationship with the US is Dr Emma Shortis, the director of the Australia Institute’s International and Security Affairs program.

Shortis is a historian with a particular interest in the United States’ history and politics. She joins the podcast to talk about her new book, After America: Australia and the New World Order.

On the Australia–US alliance, Shortis says Trump doesn’t think about Australia – which might be a good thing, given Canada’s experience.

Trump doesn’t really think about the United States’ relationship with Australia. We know that. He has made it very clear. He was asked in the Oval Office about the AUKUS submarine deal, and he responded, what does that mean? He doesn’t think about Australia.

[…] We also probably have to ask ourselves, would it be a good thing if Donald Trump thought about Australia more, if he cared about us more, or gave us more attention?

[…] There’s been a subtle but a noticeable shift in language coming from the prime minister in particular, about Australia’s role in the world and about the relationship with the United States – particularly this week, saying that Australia effectively won’t be dictated to by the United States around defence spending […] In the longer history of the way Australian leaders have bent the knee to the United States, that’s a pretty significant change.

On Albanese’s likely meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada, Shortis cautions against making offers to Trump on critical minerals to seek a better deal on tariffs.

It doesn’t matter what we give him. So giving away Australian sovereign resources, or offering them on the cheap without much return, is not only not great policy [… but] it doesn’t align with a strategy of progressive patriotism that the prime minister has been talking about. And I don’t think it will get us much from the United States.

It also falls into a trap that Trump is so good at laying, which is dividing the world. Getting individual world leaders to come scraping and begging, asking for exemptions, rather than being met by a solid wall of democratic resistance to what he’s doing.

On hopes that after Trump, America might move away from its current style of politics, Shortis argues Trump’s changes are deeper than him.

I would also argue really strongly that the America we thought we knew, the Biden version of the United States, is not coming back any time soon. This second Trump administration is an entirely different beast from the first. Trump and particularly the people around him, the movement that supports him, see this as a generational victory for the far-right movement in the United States. And they will not give it up easily.

[…] So this idea that we can just wait him out, that we can rely on the old assumptions about the cycles of American politics, I think is something we have to be really careful with.

Shortis argues Australia should be “a real friend” to the US and its people – which would mean speaking up when we disagree – rather than abandoning the alliance.

I don’t think we should drop the alliance. I also don’t think that is a realistic option politically at the moment. I think the alliance does serve a purpose when it is oriented towards those shared values […] and not to a kind of poverty-stricken view of security and the prevention of war.

[…] What we can do is pursue more independence in our decision-making, which lots of other countries do. If you look around the world, not many other countries are continually asking themselves: ‘Who is going to come and protect us? Who is going to come and save us?’ That is almost a kind of uniquely Australian trait. But again one that’s not inevitable and that we can rethink.

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: historian Emma Shortis warns against falling into Trump’s trade traps – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-historian-emma-shortis-warns-against-falling-into-trumps-trade-traps-258174

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stella Huangfu, Associate Professor, School of Economics, University of Sydney

Australia’s economy slowed sharply in the March quarter, growing by just 0.2% as government spending slowed and extreme weather events dampened demand. That followed an increase of 0.6% in the previous quarter.

The national accounts report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed annual growth steady at 1.3%, below market forecasts for an improvement to 1.5%.

The result is also weaker than the Reserve Bank of Australia’s forecasts.

The ABS said: “Extreme weather events further dampened domestic demand and reduced exports”, with the impact particularly evident in mining, tourism and shipping.

This report on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will be a key consideration for the Reserve Bank’s next meeting on July 7–8, helping shape its decision on whether to cut rates again. In May, the central bank cut the cash rate by 0.25% to 3.85%.

On balance, the softer than expected pace of growth makes another rate cut in July a bit more likely.

Private demand drives growth as public spending slumps

Household spending slowed to 0.4% in the quarter from 0.7%. Essential spending led the way, with a sharp 10.2% rise in electricity costs due to a warmer-than-usual summer and reduced electricity bill rebates. Food spending also increased as Queenslanders stocked up ahead of Tropical Cyclone Alfred.

Investment also contributed to growth, though its composition shifted. Private investment rose 0.7%, driven by a rebound in house building and strong non-dwelling construction, particularly in mining and electricity projects. But business investment in equipment and machinery slumped.

Public investment fell 2.0%, ending a run of positive growth since September 2024. This decline, which detracted 0.1 percentage points from GDP, reflected the completion or delay of energy, rail and road projects.

“Public spending recorded the largest detraction from growth since the September quarter 2017”, the ABS said.

Disappointing trade performance

Exports unexpectedly became the main drag on growth in the March quarter, marking a sharp turnaround from December 2024.

Total exports fell 0.8%, led by a drop in services – particularly travel – due to weaker foreign student arrivals and lower spending. Goods exports also declined as bad weather disrupted coal and natural gas shipments, and demand from key markets like China and Japan softened.

The growth outlook is soft

Given the weaker-than-expected growth in the March quarter, Australia’s economic outlook remains soft.

A disappointing sign in the report was another fall in GDP per head of population, known as GDP per capita. This measure declined by 0.2%, after just one quarterly rise and seven previous quarters of a “per capita recession”, when population growth outpaces economic growth.

The household saving rate continue to rise in the March quarter, back to pre-COVID levels at 5.2%. This is because income grew faster than spending, and households remain cautious amid economic uncertainty. Additional government support also boosted savings.

The economic slowdown reflects weak household spending and a notable pullback in public sector investment. With domestic demand under strain, short-term growth prospects appear limited as the economy continues to adjust to past interest rate hikes and the early effects of the recent cuts.

The Reserve Bank began cutting official rates in February – its first move after 13 consecutive hikes between May 2022 and November 2023 – but the impact has yet to flow through. The next GDP figures, due on September 3, will offer a clearer picture of how the February and May rate cuts are shaping the recovery.

Trade tensions add uncertainty

Global conditions have become more unsettled, with rising trade tensions and shifting geopolitical alliances putting pressure on international trade. Renewed tariff threats – particularly from the US – are disrupting global supply chains. For export-reliant Australia, this increases the risk of weaker trade volumes and greater exposure to external shocks.

At the same time, China’s post-pandemic recovery is losing momentum, dragged down by weak consumer demand and a struggling property sector.

Given Australia’s close trade ties with China, any sustained slowdown there poses a clear threat to export earnings and broader economic growth. Together, these global headwinds are adding to the uncertainty surrounding Australia’s economic outlook.

A balancing act on rates

With demand soft and the economy losing momentum, the Reserve Bank may cut interest rates again at its July meeting to help boost growth. Key sectors like household spending, public services and mining have been under pressure. A further rate cut could support confidence and encourage more spending.

However, the monthly inflation report for April adds uncertainty. While headline inflation held steady at 2.4% over the year to April, underlying measures ticked higher.
The monthly rate excluding volatile items such as fuel and fresh food rose to 2.8%, up from 2.6%. That suggests price pressures are becoming more widespread.

These mixed signals leave the RBA facing a delicate balancing act. Upcoming data, particularly the employment report on June 19 and the May monthly inflation indicator on June 25, will be critical in determining whether inflation is easing enough to justify another cut or showing signs of persistence that call for caution.

Stella Huangfu 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. Extreme weather events have slowed economic growth, adding to the case for another rate cut – https://theconversation.com/extreme-weather-events-have-slowed-economic-growth-adding-to-the-case-for-another-rate-cut-257962

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristin Diemer, Associate Professor of Sociology, The University of Melbourne

In our national discussions on domestic and family violence, much of the focus is rightly on the women experiencing the violence and how best to help them.

But another vital, less acknowledged part of the puzzle is the impact on children.

Children and young people exposed to, or witnessing domestic violence between their parents or primary caregivers is widely recognised as a form of child abuse.

They can be placed in otherwise unthinkable scenarios. These include being forced to spy on a parent, defending a parent, intervening to stop the violence, or being used as a hostage.

After the event, young people can be the ones assisting with injuries, calling for emergency services and witnessing police intervention. Sometimes, they’re forced to leave the home and seek refuge.

As we seek to end violence in a generation under the national plan, focusing on children will be key.

The extent of the problem

Evidence shows children living with domestic violence have greater rates of learning difficulties, poor health and wellbeing and may exhibit challenging behaviours.

The Australian Personal Safety Survey (2021–2022) identified one in eight adults (13%) witnessed violence between their parents or caregivers before the age of 15.

People were twice as likely to have witnessed violence towards their mother than their father.

There is also emerging evidence children and young people exposed to domestic violence are more likely to be victims of multiple forms of maltreatment.

The Australian Child Maltreatment Study invited people aged 16 and older to participate. Four out of ten young people (aged 16–24) who responded to the survey and experienced childhood abuse, also reported more than one type of abuse.

What does this mean for them as adults?

Australians who witness violence against their mother as a young person are 2.5 times more likely to become victims of intimate partner domestic violence from the age of 15, compared to people who are not exposed to domestic violence during childhood.

We don’t know why they are at greater risk, but one theory is that children who grow up in a domestic violence household may minimise or normalise the behaviour.

The Australian National Community Attitudes Survey on Violence Against Women shows a quarter of Australians (23%) minimise domestic violence, believing it’s is an overreaction to day to day stress.

We don’t know how many people in Australia who witness domestic violence as a child become perpetrators of intimate partner abuse as adults.

Howeve, global studies have found witnessing parental violence as a young person is the highest risk factor associated with likelihood of perpetrating violence in adult relationships (28%). This is closely followed by permissive attitudes on violence against women (24%).

New data released by the Australian Institute of Family Studies further reveals men who grow up with positive father figure role models expressing affection are 48% less likely to become perpetrators of family violence in adulthood.

Do childhood victims become adult victims?

While there is a real increased risk of adult domestic violence among children who witness parental domestic violence, it is not the majority.

One in three (34%) Australian women who witness parental domestic violence against their mother become victims of adult domestic violence themselves. It’s one in seven (14%) men.

As researchers, we are usually identifying a problem, rather than examining positive outcomes. This means less attention has been paid to understanding resilience and what protects young people.

Our research team has conducted two projects in which we spoke with young people about their experience of living with fathers who abused their mothers.

While we focused on amplifying their voices and asking what they wanted to say to their fathers, it was common for them to mention they were fearful of forming their own intimate partner relationships.

They had heard of cycles of intergenerational violence and did not want to become like their fathers.

Can we break the cycle?

An evaluation of a pilot project working directly with children and young people in the western suburbs of Melbourne found children living with domestic violence experienced present fear, overwhelming worry about their future, and an inability to form positive friendships.

Receiving one-on-one, intensive support helped them with improved confidence, decreased fear and overall increased happiness.

Both of these example studies with children and young people are small. Conducting research with children and young people involves greater attention to risk, ethics and safety, and often requires a greater amount of time for the whole process. Many projects are not sufficiently funded to include the voices of young people.

The available research shows the concerning long-term impact of childhood exposure to domestic violence, but it also shows hope.

It is a minority of children in these circumstances who become victims in adulthood, and we estimate also a minority who go on to perpetrate violence.

Reparative work with children does show their lives can be greatly improved. The participation of young people in research and the recent Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety conference also shows they can clearly articulate an understanding of their experiences, what has worked for them, and importantly, what is not effective.

We have good evidence for what can work to prevent and end family violence if there is sufficient long-term investment.

But children’s needs have been under investigated. We would benefit from better understanding of what can help young people exposed to domestic violence and the positive impact of early intervention.

The National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.

Kristin Diemer holds a joint appointment at the University of Melbourne and Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS). She is a member of the Advisory Panels for the Australian Personal Safety Survey, and the National Community Attitudes Survey on violence against women.

– ref. Young people who witness domestic violence are more likely to be victims of it. Here’s how we can help them – https://theconversation.com/young-people-who-witness-domestic-violence-are-more-likely-to-be-victims-of-it-heres-how-we-can-help-them-257463