Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cher McGillivray, Assistant Professor in Psychology, Bond University

Former tennis champion-turned-commentator Jelena Dokic this week revealed she had sought to reconcile with her abusive father as an adult. He never, however, apologised or showed remorse for the physical and psychological abuse he meted out to her throughout her childhood.

“In fact,” she told the ABC, “he said he would do it all again.”

As a psychologist, I found his response shocking but sadly unsurprising. Many parents and caregivers who abused their children will never apologise for the harm they have done; many won’t acknowledge or admit the abuse happened at all.

For the millions of victim-survivors around the world, this can be incredibly confusing and confronting. It can be hard to stop seeking that acknowledgement and apology from your abuser.

So, why does this happen, and what can victim-survivors do?

Shame and silence

Victims of child abuse often find denial by perpetrator or family protectors who dismiss and shift blame deeply traumatising. Feelings of powerlessness, fear and self-blame often follow.

It’s natural to want an apology; as history shows, apologies matter.

But apologies are deeply tied to shame for both survivors and their perpetrators. A genuine apology requires a shared understanding of what happened and why it was unjust.

Many perpetrators, however, lack self-confidence, impulse control and empathy. This often manifests as a string of failed peer and marital relationships marred by abuse, dysfunction and distress.

They may also genuinely believe corporal punishment is an effective method of disciplining a child. A vast body of research shows it causes many more problems than it solves.

Sadly, many parents who abuse were also abused as children themselves. They may believe the abuse they dished out was “nothing” compared to what they received, which (in their mind) justifies their own behaviour.

Things can get even more complex when the parent is abusing drugs or alcohol; their child may need to take on a lot of responsibility at a young age. This is sometimes referred to as “parentification” (when the child has to parent their parent).

An apology shifts the weight of blame from victim to perpetrator. But what can you do if your abuser refuses to accept blame?

Don’t expect the person to heal you

Start by understanding that what happened to you wasn’t your fault.

Ask yourself whether it’s actually helping you to wait for an apology from someone with no capacity, intention or ability to provide the apology you deserve.

Think carefully about whether you still – consciously or unconsciously – seek your abuser’s approval, and where else in life you can find that approval or acceptance.

Don’t expect the person who hurt you to heal you. You are able to pull yourself out.

Find people who believe you and share your story. Talk to a trusted family member or friend, or therapist. Recovery from maltreatment can be enhanced with therapy, including interventions involving family and child-focused interventions and parent training.

Ending intergenerational abuse isn’t easy, but it’s possible

Research has shown abusive parents can process their own past traumas and vulnerabilities.

Talk therapy with a psychologist or other mental health provider is particularly effective for parents who have experienced maltreatment themselves, especially when unresolved personal trauma may hinder acknowledgement and an apology.

But keep your expectations realistic.

If your abusive parent acknowledges your trauma, then they have to admit they failed you in some crucial way. Many are incapable of admitting this truth to themselves – but others, with the right support, might be able to take that step.

If your abuser can’t or won’t, do not let their internalised shame keep you in darkness.

Believe in your own intrinsic goodness and work to rebuild connections with yourself and others.

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

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.

Cher McGillivray 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. Why won’t my abusive parent admit they were wrong and apologise? – https://theconversation.com/why-wont-my-abusive-parent-admit-they-were-wrong-and-apologise-267420

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Jayne Carle, Postdoctoral Researcher in Tropical Forest Ecology, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, WSU, Australian National University

One approach to help fight climate change is to protect natural forests, as they absorb some atmospheric carbon released by burning fossil fuels and store large volumes of carbon.

Our new research on Australia’s tropical rainforests challenges the assumption that they will keep absorbing more carbon than they release.

We found that as climate change has intensified over the past half-century, less and less carbon has been taken up and converted to wood in the stems and branches of the trees in these forests. Woody biomass is a large and relatively stable store of carbon in forests, and acts as an important indicator of overall forest health.

The effect has been so pronounced that the woody biomass of these forests has gone from being a carbon sink to a carbon source. This means carbon is being lost to the atmosphere due to trees dying faster than it is being replaced by tree growth.

This is the first time woody biomass in tropical forests has been shown to switch from sink to source. Our research indicates the shift likely happened about 25 years ago.

It remains to be seen whether Australian tropical forests are a harbinger for other tropical forests globally.

What did we find?

Since 1971, scientists have tracked around 11,000 trees in 20 tracts of tropical rainforest in Australia’s far northeast, now part of the Queensland Permanent Rainforest Plots Network. This 49-year research effort is one of the world’s longest and most comprehensive of its kind.

We analysed this long-term data and found a clear signal: woody biomass switched from being a carbon sink to a carbon source about 25 years ago.

Why? One reason: trees are dying twice as fast as they used to.

Tropical rainforest tree species are adapted to generally warm, wet conditions. As the climate changes, they are subjected to increasingly extreme temperatures and drier conditions.These kinds of extreme climate events can damage wood and leaves, limiting future growth and leading to higher rates of tree death.

We also found tree deaths from cyclones reduced how much carbon these forests could absorb. Cyclones in far north Queensland are projected to become increasingly severe under climate change. They are also likely to push further south, potentially affecting new areas of forest.

Isn’t carbon dioxide plant food?

Burning fossil fuels and other human activities have increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. This should make it easier for plants to absorb CO₂ from the air, photosynthesise and grow. Given this, Earth system models predict higher atmospheric CO₂ levels will stimulate plant growth and increase how much carbon tropical forests can take up.

Also, remote sensing shows the canopies of tropical forests on Australia’s east coast are about 20% greener than they were in the 1980s. This suggests forest canopy growth has increased due to higher levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere. But this isn’t the whole picture.

Our data shows any potential increase in photosynthesis resulting in greener forest canopies has not translated to greater carbon storage in stems and branches.

The reason may be that tree growth can be limited by water, nutrients and heat. Our work suggest that warmer and drier conditions have limited tree growth even as CO₂ concentration has increased.

In a separate study, scientists artificially increased CO₂ and found the extra carbon taken up by leaves wasn’t being stored as extra woody growth. Rather, it was quickly released through roots and soil microbes.

What about other forest carbon stocks?

It will be challenging to find out whether these forests as a whole (including wood, roots, leaves and soils) have declined in carbon sink capacity.

The use of a specialised research tool known as eddy covariance towers could help, as these measure overall CO₂ movement into and out of ecosystems.

As of yet, only 15 years of this kind of data from three tropical Australian sites is available, which currently limits our ability to describe the fuller impact of climate change.

In any case, we know carbon stored in forest canopies and soils is often broken down and released back to the atmosphere faster than carbon in woody biomass.

So while Australia’s tropical rainforest carbon stores remain large, they may be less secure and reliable than in decades past.

Long term datasets are vital

When people visit Australia’s tropical rainforests, they can see intact stretches of biodiverse forest and large, carbon-rich trees. It’s hard to directly see the changes we have detected – for now, they’re only visible in the data.

Without high-quality long-term datasets, this signal would have been almost impossible to detect. Unfortunately, persistent funding shortages for long-term ecological monitoring threaten the continuity of these hugely valuable datasets.

Australia has the potential to assume a globally leading role in tropical ecosystem science. In light of state and national biodiversity and emission reduction commitments, Australian governments should support continued monitoring of vital ecological research sites.

Tropical forests may not be saviours

The fact that woody biomass in Australia’s tropical rainforests is now a net source of carbon has major implications.

These findings challenge our future reliance on forests as natural absorbers of extra atmospheric carbon.

We don’t know yet whether all tropical forests will respond similarly. Evidence on carbon sink capacity is mixed. Rainforests in South America are showing a decline while African rainforests are generally not.

Overall, the world’s tropical forests remain very significant stores of carbon and biodiversity. Their protection remains essential despite the climate risks they face.

Hannah Jayne Carle is affiliated with the Queensland Permanent Rainforest Plots network.

Adrienne Nicotra receives funding from the Australian Research Council and NCRIS.

Michael N Evans has received funding from the Royal Society of London and the Wolfson Foundation (UK).

Patrick Meir currently receives funding for research from the UK NERC, the Royal Society (UK), the UK government and the USA NSF

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

– ref. A crucial store of carbon in Australia’s tropical forests has switched from carbon sink to carbon source – https://theconversation.com/a-crucial-store-of-carbon-in-australias-tropical-forests-has-switched-from-carbon-sink-to-carbon-source-262955

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Hartigan, Lecturer in Economics, University of Sydney

The price of gold surged above US$4,100 (A$6,300) an ounce on Wednesday for the first time, taking this year’s extraordinary rally to more than 50%.

The speed of the upswing has been much faster than analysts had predicted and brings the total gains to nearly 100% since the current run started in early 2024.

The soaring price of gold has captured investors’ hearts and wallets and resulted in long lines of people forming outside gold dealers in Sydney to get their hands on the precious metal.

What explains the soaring price of gold?

A number of reasons have been suggested to explain the current record run for gold. These include greater economic uncertainties from ballooning government debt levels and the current US government shutdown.

There are also growing worries about the independence of the US Federal Reserve. If political interference pushes down US interest rates, that could see a resurgence in inflation. Gold is traditionally seen as a hedge against inflation.

But these factors are unlikely to be the main reasons behind the meteoric rise in gold prices.

For starters, the price of gold has been on a sustained upward trajectory for the past few years. That’s well before any of those factors emerged as an issue.

The more likely explanation for the current gold price rally is growing demand from gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

These funds track the movements of gold, or other assets such as stocks or bonds, and are traded on the stock exchange. This makes assets such as commodities much more accessible to investors.

Before the first gold ETF was launched in 2003, it was considered too difficult for regular investors to get gold exposure.

Now gold ETFs are widely available, gold can be traded like any other financial asset. This appears to be changing investors’ view of gold’s traditional role as a safe-haven asset in times of political or financial turmoil, when other assets such as stocks are more risky.

In addition to retail investor demand, some emerging market economies – notably China and Russia – are switching their official reserve assets out of currencies such as the US dollar and into gold.

According to the International Monetary Fund, central bank holdings of physical gold in emerging markets have risen 161% since 2006 to be around 10,300 tonnes.

To put this into perspective, emerging market gold holdings grew by only 50% over the 50 years to 2005.

Research suggests the reason for the switch into gold by emerging market economies is the increasing use of financial sanctions by the US and other governments that represent the major reserve currencies (the US dollar, euro, Japanese yen, and British pound).

Indeed, Russia became a net buyer of gold in 2006 and accelerated its gold purchases following its annexation of Crimea in 2014. It now has one of the largest stockpiles in the world.

Meanwhile, China has been selling down its holdings of US government bonds and switching to buying gold in a process referred to as “de-dollarisation”. It wants to reduce its dependency on the US currency.

Emerging market central banks also lifted their gold holdings after Russia’s exclusion from the international payments system known as SWIFT and a proposal by US and European governments to seize Russian central bank reserves to help fund support for Ukraine.

Further de-dollarisation efforts by emerging market economies are expected to continue. Many of these economies now view the major Western currencies as carrying unwanted risk of financial sanctions. This is not the case with gold. This could mean financial sanctions become a less effective policy tool in the future.

Could gold have further to run?

Ongoing demand from Russia and China, and investor demand for gold ETFs, means the gold price could rally further. Both factors represent sustained increases in demand, in addition to existing demand for jewellery and electronics.

Further price rises will likely fuel increased ETF inflows via the “fear of missing out” effect.

The World Gold Council last week reported record monthly inflows in September. For the September quarter as a whole, ETF inflows topped US$26 billion and for the nine months to September, fund inflows totalled US$64 billion.

In contrast, emerging market central bank demand for gold is less affected by price and more driven by geopolitical factors, which supports increasing demand for gold.

Based on these two drivers, analysts at Goldman Sachs have already revised up their price target for gold to US$4,900 an ounce by the end of the 2026.

Why gold’s rise is a win for Australia

What does the current gold rally mean for Australia?

As the world’s third-largest producer of gold, with at least 19% of known deposits, Australia will benefit from further increases in gold prices.

In fact, the Department of Industry, Science and Resources now expects the value of gold exports to overtake liquefied natural gas exports next year.

This will see gold become our second-most important export behind that other “precious” metal: iron ore.

Luke Hartigan receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DP230100959).

– ref. The price of gold is skyrocketing. Why is this, and will it continue? – https://theconversation.com/the-price-of-gold-is-skyrocketing-why-is-this-and-will-it-continue-267004

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By George Buchanan, Deputy Dean, School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University

The hope of the world wide web, according to its creator Tim Berners-Lee, was that it would make communication easier, bring knowledge to all, and strengthen democracy and connection. Instead, it seems to be driving us apart into increasingly small and angry splinter groups. Why?

We have commonly blamed online echo chambers, digital spaces filled with people who largely share the same beliefs – or filter bubbles, the idea that algorithms tend to show us content we are likely to agree with.

However, these concepts have both been challenged by a number of studies. A 2022 study led by one of us (Dana), which tracked the social media behaviours of ten respondents, found people often engage with content they disagree with – even going so far as to seek it out.

When an individual engages with a disagreeable post on social media – whether it’s “rage bait” or something else that offends you – it drives income for the platform. But on a societal scale, it drives antisocial outcomes.

One of the worst of these outcomes is “affective polarisation”, where we like people who think similarly to us, and dislike or resent people who hold different views. Research and global surveys both show this form of polarisation is growing across the world.

Changing the economics of social media platforms would likely reduce online polarisation. But this won’t be possible without intervention from governments, and each of us.

How our views get reinforced online

Social media use has been associated with growing affective polarisation.

Online, we can be influenced by the opinions of people we agree or disagree with – even on topics we had previously been neutral towards. For instance, if there’s an influencer you admire, and they express a view on a new law you hadn’t thought much about, you’re more likely to adopt their viewpoint on it.

When this happens on a large scale, it gradually separates us into ideological tribes that disagree on multiple issues: a phenomenon known as “partisan sorting”.

Research shows our encounters on social media can lead to us developing new views on a topic. It also shows how any searches we do to get more insight can solidify these emerging views, as the results are likely to contain the same language as the original post that gave us the view in the first place.

For example, if you see a post that inaccurately claims taking paracetamol during pregnancy will give your baby autism, and you search for other posts using the key words “paracetamol pregnancy autism”, you will probably get more of the same.

Being in a heightened emotional state has been linked to higher susceptibility to believing false or “fake” content.

Why are we fed polarising content?

This is where the economics of the internet come in. Divisive and emotionally laden posts are more likely to get engagement (such as likes, shares and comments), especially from people who strongly agree or disagree, and from provocateurs. Platforms will then show these posts to more people, and the cycle of engagement continues.

Social media companies leverage our tendency towards divisive content to drive engagement, as this leads to more advertising money for them. According to a 2021 report from the Washington Post, Facebook’s ranking algorithm once treated emoji reactions (including anger) as five times more valuable than “likes”.

Simulation-based studies have also revealed how anger and division drive online engagement. One simulation (in a yet to be peer-reviewed paper) used bots to show that any platform measuring its success and income by engagement (currently all of them) would be most successful if it boosted divisive posts.

Where are we headed?

That said, the current state of social media need not also be its future.

People are now spending less time on social media than they used to. According to a recent report from the Financial Times, time spent on social media peaked in 2022 and has since been declining. By the end of 2024, users aged 16 and older spent 10% less time on social platforms than they did in 2022.

Droves of users are also leaving bigger “mainstream” platforms for ones that reflect their own political leanings, such as the left-wing BlueSky, or the right-wing Truth Social. While this may not help with polarisation, it signals many people are no longer satisfied with the social media status quo.

Internet-fuelled polarisation has also resulted in real costs to government, both in mental health and police spending. Consider recent events in Australia, where online hate and misinformation have played a role in neo-Nazi marches, and the cancellation of events run by the LGBTQIA+ community, due to threats.

For those of us who remain on social media platforms, we can individually work to change the status quo. Research shows greater tolerance for different views among online users can slow down polarisation. We can also give social media companies less signals to work from, by not re-sharing or promoting content that’s likely to make others irate.

Fundamentally, though, this is a structural problem. Fixing it will mean reframing the economics of online activity to increase the potential for balanced and respectful conversations, and decrease the reward for producing and/or engaging with rage bait. And this will almost certainly require government intervention.

When other products have caused harm, governments have regulated them and taxed the companies responsible. Social media platforms can also be regulated and taxed. It may be hard, but not impossible. And it’s worth doing if we want a world where we’re not all one opinion away from becoming an outcast.

Dana McKay has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Digital Health Agency, and Google (this last ruing her PhD).

George Buchanan 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 world wide web was meant to unite us, but is tearing us apart instead. Is there another way? – https://theconversation.com/the-world-wide-web-was-meant-to-unite-us-but-is-tearing-us-apart-instead-is-there-another-way-266253

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martin Kear, Sessional Lecturer, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

Despite the euphoria surrounding the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, Gaza is still wracked with violence.

More than two dozen Palestinians have been killed in recent days in clashes between Hamas and members of various clans. Hamas has also reportedly executed blindfolded men in a public square.

With the Israeli military withdrawing to pre-determined ceasefire lines, Hamas members are beginning to re-assert their control. However, powerful clans are also jockeying for position – some allied to Hamas’ ideological rival, the West Bank-based Fatah movement, and some backed by Israel.

So, who are these clans? What role do they play in Gaza? And how much of a threat are they to Hamas?

Who are the clans?

Familial clans have existed in Palestinian society for centuries. In recent decades, they have come to play a key role in Palestinian politics.

The clans are primarily collections of family groups in various parts of Gaza. One of the largest and most well-armed is the Dughmush clan in Gaza City, headed by Mumtaz Dughmush. This clan was immediately targeted by Hamas after the ceasefire.

The al-Majayda clan also holds sway in part of Khan Younis. Hamas forces raided their neighbourhood earlier this month, killing several family members. This week, however, the clan publicly supported Hamas’ effort to regain control over Gaza.

Importantly, these clans and their relationships with Hamas and Fatah are dynamic and constantly evolving. Members of both Hamas and Fatah also belong to clans. This often leads to clashes over territory and control, with clan loyalties often outweighing movement allegiances.

As Israeli historian Dror Ze’evi notes, any attempt by Hamas or Fatah to disarm the clans would be seen as an affront and met with serious opposition.

A long history of entrenched power

After the 1948 war that saw the creation of Israel and the Palestinian al-naqbah (or Nakba), around 750,000 Palestinians fled Israel to the Gaza Strip, West Bank and neighbouring Arab states.

This was when clans began to assume traditional roles of mediators and patrons. Their organised structures made them best-placed to provide welfare and assistance to a shattered Palestinian society.

As law and order, security and financial independence improved in the territories in the subsequent decades, Palestinians came to rely less on their support. This brought a decline in their power and influence.

This changed, though, during the First Intifada (1987–93) and Second Intifada (2000–05) when Palestinian society was again plunged into crisis. This was especially true in the Gaza Strip, which was known as the engine room of organised Palestinian resistance.

The Second Intifada, in particular, changed the role of the clans significantly, after Israel destroyed much of the organised Palestinian security forces and infrastructure in the territories.

With neither Hamas nor Fatah able to ensure the safety of Palestinians, this created a security vacuum. And some of the clans exploited this by transforming into paramilitary organisations. Again, this was especially true in the Gaza Strip, where Israel’s efforts to crush Palestinian resistance were felt most intensely.

When the Second Intifada ended, the Gazan clans retained a significant amount of political influence and military power. After Hamas won the 2006 elections, some Fatah-aligned clans tried to prevent it from taking power.

So entrenched were these clans that when Hamas finally assumed control of Gaza in 2007, it took the movement a year to effectively bring the more powerful clans under its authority. Even then, it was more of a truce than a victory for Hamas.

Israel backing Hamas rivals

This status quo remained until Hamas’ October 7 2023 terrorist attacks on Israel. Israel’s revenge for these attacks devastated the Gaza Strip, once again robbing Gazans of any semblance of safety and security.

Now, with Israel’s partial troop withdrawal, another security vacuum has been created. And many clans appear keen to fill it, some with the help of Israel.

In June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted his government was arming some Gazan clans, gangs and militias, such as the Popular Forces, led by Yasser Abu Shabab.

Netanyahu’s rationale was that any opposition to Hamas helped Israel and saved soldiers’ lives. It also pitted Palestinian against Palestinian, placing additional pressure on Hamas.

After the ceasefire came into effect, Hamas began targeting what it called
“collaborators and traitors” – an apparent reference to those clans and gangs cooperating with Israel.

The Popular Forces, meanwhile, have refused to lay down their arms. A dozen other new militias have also reportedly emerged across the strip in recent days, including one led by Hossam al-Astal, who said:

Hamas was always betting that there won’t be any alternative to replace them in Gaza, but now I’m telling you, today, there is an alternative force to Hamas. It could be me or Abu Shabab or anyone else, but alternatives today exist.

While this violence between Hamas and rival groups does not directly affect the ceasefire that ended the war, it is evidence that Israel is still attempting to meddle in Gaza’s security and exert its control.

But the peace plan negotiated by US President Donald Trump looks shakier by the day, given its call for Hamas to disarm. Trump said this week if Hamas refused to disarm themselves, “we will disarm them […] perhaps violently”.

The peace plan also calls for Hamas to withdraw from Palestinian politics, to be replaced eventually by the Palestinian Authority, which currently administers parts of the West Bank. However, Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected the Palestinian Authority assuming control of Gaza.

This ambiguity over the future governance of Gaza opens the possibility that the more powerful clans could become alternate centres of political power, as they had during the Second Intifada. This time they may do so under the auspices of Israel’s military occupation.

This would further fracture Gaza and weaken any effort by the Palestinian Authority to reunite the territories under a single governance structure. It would also make a future Palestinian state tenuous.

Also, Hamas will not go quietly. And this is a very real danger to peace and security in Gaza, especially if Hamas sees any resistance to its authority from the clans as little more than a proxy war with Israel.

Martin Kear 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. Hamas is battling powerful clans for control in Gaza – who are these groups and what threat do they pose? – https://theconversation.com/hamas-is-battling-powerful-clans-for-control-in-gaza-who-are-these-groups-and-what-threat-do-they-pose-267446

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

Victorian Liberal senator James Paterson has, figuratively speaking, taken his Liberal colleagues by the scruffs of their necks and given them a good shake. His blunt message is, get out of your funk and cooperate in rebuilding the house.

In his Tuesday Tom Hughes Oration, Paterson did put it more politely, but he still didn’t mince words. “We must call time on the apology tour,” he said. “[We must] resolve our internal differences about our direction amicably”, he said (stressing both the importance and the difficulty of this), and “develop a coherent and compelling alternative policy agenda”.

Debate and discipline have to be balanced, which means “there is a time limit on this soul-searching process.

“We must do it now at the start of the term so it does not drag on forever. An ongoing mass public therapy session doesn’t exactly scream ‘ready for government’.”

There was more. Forget being tempted to ape Nigel Farage’s right wing Reform Party that’s doing so well in the United Kingdom. Apart from anything else – and Paterson expressed scepticism about what Reform preaches – he pointed out the obvious. Lurching off in that direction won’t work in our compulsory voting system.

Nor should the Liberals “become a free market version of the Teals, which accepts the cultural zeitgeist and contests no social agendas advanced by the left”.

And certainly they should forget the idea of a split in the party on ideological grounds. That “would be about as successful for us as Labor’s split in the 1950s was for them”.

“Instead, we must seek to understand and incorporate the reasonable concerns of the good faith actors on the right who today express dissatisfaction with the direction of the Liberal Party.”

Of course the adjectives are significant: what are “reasonable” concerns, and who are “good faith” actors will be, to an extent, in the eyes of beholders.

Paterson, who is finance spokesman and a member of the leadership team, is seen as one of the best talents in the much-depleted Liberals.

He’s a skilled attack dog. After Andrew Hastie’s dummy spit, he stepped in temporarily as acting home affairs spokesman, and last week gave the government an awkward time in Senate estimates over the ISIS brides.

If positions were based on merit Paterson, not Michaelia Cash, would be Liberal leader in the Senate.

Paterson is now taking it upon himself to analyse his party’s parlous situation, to make suggestions about what needs to be done (as well as warning what should not be done), and to argue to the demoralised and fractious troops that they can actually do it.

On Wednesday Liberal Leader Sussan Ley was initially coy when pressed about whether Paterson had discussed his speech with her before delivering it. Later she said she had read it beforehand.

Who really cares what she knew of it? There was hardly anything Paterson said to which Ley could reasonably object and indeed, this was the sort of speech she should be giving.

Paterson’s contribution is important not just for its content, but for who he is – a conservative who voted for Angus Taylor after the election but is supporting Ley’s leadership. That’s at least for the time being.

His support is especially important when radical conservatives such as Hastie and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price are rejecting her leadership (despite Hastie’s declarations on the contrary). If Ley loses a pragmatic conservative like Paterson, she’s probably done for.

Paterson frankly acknowledged and used history to make his points, including the failure to make generational change (from John Howard to Peter Costello before the 2007 election) and misreading electoral victories (after 2019).

On the tricky debate about whether the party’s eyes should be primarily on the “base” or on swinging voters in the centre, Paterson argued this was a “false choice”.

“We need to appeal to both our traditional supporters and swinging voters. It is only a question of sequence,” he said. He advocated starting with the base (with support for the flag, the ANZAC tradition, Australia Day and the like): symbols important to the base that do not turn off the swinging voters.

Paterson’s faith in such sequencing, let alone the practical management of it, does seem overly optimistic. Juggling the base and the appeal to the swingers is at best a delicate operation and can at times become near impossible.

In broad terms, Paterson wants the Liberals to land on “a policy agenda based on limited government, free markets and lower taxes”. Making that fit together in the contemporary world, however will require a big juggling effort. Let alone crafting politically acceptable detail.

“At the same time, we must not shy away from important debates about our culture, identity and sovereignty which are not going away in an age of disruption, and which matter so much to our supporters,” he said.

The Liberal party is full of those who see the glass as half empty if not drained altogether. Paterson is seeking to present it – at least publicly – as potentially half full.

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. View from The Hill: Liberal frontbencher James Paterson delivers some sharp messages to his party – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-liberal-frontbencher-james-paterson-delivers-some-sharp-messages-to-his-party-267223

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hussein Dia, Professor of Transport Technology and Sustainability, Swinburne University of Technology

Australia’s sluggish electric vehicle transition has begun to accelerate. In the first half of the year, more than 72,000 battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles were sold. That’s about 12% of all new cars, up almost a quarter over the same period in 2024.

Despite this momentum, progress is still too slow. EVs now dominate in countries such as Norway (98.3% of new cars), Nepal (76%) and China (51%). Australia is lagging.

If nothing is done, transport is projected to be Australia’s largest emissions source by 2030. Cutting emissions 62–70% by 2035 under the government’s new target will require rapidly shifting from combustion engine vehicles to EVs.

This week, the Electric Vehicle Council called for an end to the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035 to speed up the shift. Setting a sunset date would align Australia with major trading partners.

Despite the risk of pushback, a phase-out deserves serious public debate. Letting the market decide is leading to a very slow transition. This policy leap could trigger the rapid shift we need.

Why is a phase-out needed?

At present, transport accounts for 22% of Australia’s total emissions. It’s also the fastest-growing source.

EVs will be essential in cutting these emissions. Australia has to reach an EV market share for new cars of at least 50% in the next decade to achieve its broader 2035 emissions target.

Without tougher measures and a firm phase-out, that looks unlikely. The task is sizeable. Despite growing momentum, EVs only make up about 2% of the 21.7 million cars on the road today.

Several countries have already committed to banning or phasing out new petrol, gas or diesel cars.

The United Kingdom has mandated 80% of new cars and 70% of vans be zero-emission by 2030 and 100% by 2035.

Europe’s experience shows safeguards are essential

The tussle over the European Union’s legislated ban is worth examining.

All cars and vans sold after 2035 in the EU are legally required to produce zero emissions – other than an exemption for vehicles running under strict conditions on synthetic e-fuels made from captured carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

It wasn’t easy to get these laws through. The bloc’s top carmaking nation, Germany, threatened to block the laws unless e-fuels were allowed. The EU was forced to negotiate a compromise opening a loophole for combustion engines to persist under the guise of “climate-neutral fuel”.

Even so, the EU’s hard-fought ban remains one of the world’s strongest measures to phase out fossil-fuel vehicles. Most major carmakers support the ban and automakers such as Volkswagen have already announced plans to end new petrol and diesel car sales well before 2035. Mercedes has been the most vocal in opposing the ban.

The mistake Brussels policymakers made was to move to ban fossil fuel cars without laying out clear transition pathways. When bans like this are proposed, powerful interests invested in the status quo will look for ways to weaken them.

Ensuring these phase-outs work depends on preventing backsliding through safeguards such as clear interim targets to track progress, flexible review mechanisms, protections against loopholes, and support for equity and infrastructure.

Politics and industry pressure will complicate Australia’s path

Any move to ban or restrict a product will meet resistance. When the federal government rolled out its New Vehicle Efficiency Standard, it met strong pushback – even though the standards have no binding sales targets or bans but rather set targets for exhaust emissions from new vehicles.

Federal minister Chris Bowen has repeatedly emphasised that the transition must rely on levers such as efficiency standards, incentives and infrastructure rather than bans.

Bowen has stated Australia “cannot just wish away fossil fuels” and dismissed earlier proposals to ban new combustion engine vehicles. His consistent opposition suggests he views bans as politically risky.

Any such ban would likely be seized on by the opposition and even government MPs in car-dependent regional and outer metropolitan areas.

Car dealers and industry lobby groups focused on legacy combustion engine cars are likely to oppose any legislation speeding up the shift to EVs. But EV makers and charging companies would hail the ban.

Rising EV sales show the community is increasingly supportive. But affordability, range of models and charger reliability remain concerns.

How to build a ban

Any such ban in Australia would have to be legislated or regulated, not aspirational. It would have to come with robust targets for EV uptake and infrastructure expansion offering certainty to manufacturers and markets.

It would have to be paired with steadily tightening fuel-efficiency standards and incentives, as well as fair road pricing and registration reforms to ensure equity.

The charging infrastructure rollout would have to be scaled up aggressively and with particular focus on filling in gaps in rural, regional and remote areas.

Any ban would have to be equitable. This would mean extra support for lower-income and rural households, pragmatic trade-in schemes, and measures to preserve used-vehicle markets so people who can’t yet afford new EVs still have access to affordable transport.

Importantly, the policy must guard against backsliding by limiting loopholes, undertaking regular reviews and building in transparency mechanisms.

The car industry will need transition support such as workforce reskilling and incentives for local manufacturing to support the EV industry.

Any ban should be part of a wider strategy focused on ending subsidies and incentives for fossil fuel vehicles and potentially creating a cost-neutral feebate scheme, where levies on buyers of new high-emissions vehicles are used to offer rebates for zero or low-emission vehicles to offset higher prices.

Examples include France’s Bonus Malus and New Zealand’s Clean Car Discount.

A question of resolve

Banning petrol cars by 2035 isn’t radical – it’s necessary. Voluntary transitions and market forces will be too slow.

Opponents will frame any ban as coercive and unfair. Europe’s experience suggests powerful interest groups will seek to delay or weaken any ban.

A phase-out date cannot be a slogan – it must give certainty and set the direction for the entire transport system.

For car-dependent Australia, a 2035 ban may sound like a tough ask. But without it, transport risks becoming an albatross around our necks. The question now is whether Australia has the discipline to match the ambition.

Hussein Dia receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the iMOVE Australia Cooperative Research Centre, Transport for New South Wales, Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, and Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts.

– ref. Banning combustion engine cars by 2035 will be necessary to get Australia moving on electric vehicles – https://theconversation.com/banning-combustion-engine-cars-by-2035-will-be-necessary-to-get-australia-moving-on-electric-vehicles-267530

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evangeline Gardiner, PhD Candidate in Public Health, The University of Queensland

“You look so great! Have you lost weight?”

“Wow, you’re looking so healthy now! Good for you.”

As fat people, we’ve heard comments like this for most of our lives. At the times when our bodies were smaller, these comments made us feel proud and accepted. We felt like we were finally “good enough”.

But when we regained the weight, as happens for most people, we felt like our bodies were no longer “good enough” and that these well-intentioned comments were in fact harmful.

Through our work as size- and weight-inclusive researchers, we’ve come to understand it wasn’t just us – the extent of harm from comments such as these is far-reaching.

Both positive and negative comments about weight can lead to negative outcomes. Whether they lose weight or not, larger-bodied people are judged and criticised.

Women’s weight in particular is policed and considered fair game for comment. Consider the commentary about the recent weight loss of celebrities such as Lizzo and Serena Williams.

The effects can be even worse for those with multiple marginalised identities across race or ethnicity, gender, class and ability.

It’s time we stop “complimenting” weight loss, even when well-intentioned. Here’s why – and what to do instead.

5 reasons why ‘complimenting’ weight loss can harm

1. It reinforces weight stigma

Complimenting weight loss sends the message that smaller bodies are better, and contributes to negative attitudes, beliefs and stereotypes about larger-bodied people.

This leads to unfair treatment of larger-bodied people in places such as school, work and social settings. For example, larger-bodied people, especially women, are often seen as less suitable for jobs.

These negative views can also be internalised, causing larger-bodied people to believe they are less deserving of respect or fair treatment because of their body size.

2. It links worth with appearance

Praising someone for losing weight reinforces the belief that the most important aspect of a person is the appearance of a smaller body, rather than valuing other qualities or achievements.

This also impacts children. Family-based weight stigma and parental comments about weight and dieting are associated with higher psychological distress in pre-adolescents and adolescents.

3. It overlooks natural diversity of body size

It holds onto the idea that there is only one “right” way for a body to look, and assumes everyone is aiming to be smaller, rather than recognising that bodies naturally come in all shapes and sizes.

4. It assumes intent

It ignores the fact that sometimes weight loss is unintentional and caused by health issues, stress, abuse, neglect or financial challenges. It’s better not to comment on someone’s body as you might inadvertently be praising illness or distress.

5. It can trigger disordered eating

It can send people who have struggled with their relationship with food back into ways of thinking that they may have worked hard to overcome. This can make old patterns of eating resurface or create new ones, particularly in adolescence, with the harm extending through to adulthood.

Read more:
How we think about ‘obesity’ and body weight is changing. Here’s why

What to do instead

We’re not suggesting you stop complimenting people all together, as it can be beneficial to both the people receiving and giving the compliments. As Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca once said, “Whenever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.”

But we need to ensure our compliments truly are kind and not inadvertently harmful.

Instead of complimenting others on weight loss, share compliments on more important attributes, such as “You have such an infectious laugh” or “I always feel happier after seeing you”. You could also compliment someone on an achievement, such as “I really admire the way you created such a fantastic event.”

Likewise, irrespective of any change in your body weight, focus your self-compliments on improvements in your wellbeing. You could tell yourself “I’m proud of myself for getting stronger” or “It feels great to be more flexible now I’m moving more.”

It’s OK not to respond when someone “compliments” you on weight loss, or even to choose not take on the labour of explaining why it’s harmful. On the days it feels challenging to speak up, be kind to yourself. Try saying something like, “Yeah, I’d rather not talk about my body” or “I promise my weight is the least interesting thing about me.”

If you’re tempted to comment on your own or other people’s weight, learn more about the harms of weight-related comments from larger-bodied people and those who have experienced weight stigma. Organisations such as Size Inclusive Health Australia, the Butterfly Foundation, the Embrace Collective and the National Eating Disorders Collaboration are also good sources of information.

Comments on weight loss stay with you. They can have long-term impacts on your self worth, health and wellbeing, as well as your relationships with your family members, friends and others. So let’s not send the message that a peron’s worth is measured in kilos.

Evangeline Gardiner is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, exploring weight-inclusive approaches to public health. Her PhD is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Scholarship (RTP). She is a member of Size Inclusive Health Australia (SIHA) and works at the National Eating Disorders Collaboration (NEDC). Evangeline identifies as a larger-bodied person, drawing on her lived and professional experience to advocate for a health system that supports the health and wellbeing of individuals of all sizes.

Lily O’Hara has received funding from Queensland Health. She is affiliated with Size Inclusive Health Australia. She identifies as a larger-bodied person and has been involved in research and practice in size-inclusive health promotion for decades. Lily was the host of the 11th Annual International Weight Stigma Conference in 2025.

– ref. 5 reasons we shouldn’t ‘compliment’ people who lose weight – https://theconversation.com/5-reasons-we-shouldnt-compliment-people-who-lose-weight-264696

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

A Victorian Resolve poll has Labor sliding back after a surge in August. Federal Labor had a 55–45 lead in Resolve and a 54–46 lead in Redbridge, with One Nation recording its highest vote in any poll since 1998.

A Victorian state Resolve poll for The Age, conducted with the federal September and October Resolve polls from a sample of over 1,000, gave the Coalition 33% of the primary vote (steady since August), Labor 30% (down two), the Greens 12% (steady), independents 10% (up one) and others 15% (up two).

Resolve doesn’t usually give a two-party estimate for its state polls, but The Poll Bludger estimated a “tight result”, with preference flows from the 25% who are voting for an independent or another party being crucial.

Liberal Brad Battin led Labor incumbent Jacinta Allan by 33–27 as preferred premier (32–25 in August). Allan’s net likeability was steady at -21, while Battin’s net likeability was +9.

The next Victorian state election will be held in November 2026. Labor had a massive surge in the August poll to retake the lead, and it has slipped back in this poll. The preferred premier measure usually favours incumbents more than voting intentions.

Battin’s lead as preferred premier may mean that Labor’s vote has been boosted by the federal election result. When voters focus more on state issues in the lead-up to the election, Labor could drop back further.

By the next election, Labor will have governed Victoria for the last 12 years and 23 of the last 27 years. An “it’s time” factor should favour the Coalition.

Federal Resolve poll has large Labor lead

A national Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted October 7–12 from a sample of 1,800, gave Labor a 55–45 lead by respondent preferences, unchanged since September.

Primary votes were 34% Labor (down one), 28% Coalition (up one), 12% One Nation (steady), 11% Greens (steady), 9% independents (steady) and 7% others (up one). By 2025 election preference flows, Labor would lead by above 55–45, a one-point gain for the Coalition.

Anthony Albanese’s net approval dropped five points to -6, with 47% rating his performance bad and 41% good. Sussan Ley’s net approval slumped 14 points to -5, but it is still much higher than in the early October Newspoll (-20). Albanese extended his lead over Ley to 40–23 as preferred PM from 38–26 in September.

On the best way forward for the Coalition, 32% thought they should move towards the political centre ground, 25% to the conservative right and 11% thought they shouldn’t change. Among Coalition voters, this was 33% to centre, 32% to right and 12% no change.

Labor led the Liberals on economic management by 29–28 (a 29–29 tie in September). On keeping the cost of living low, Labor led by 28–24, reversing a 28–27 Liberal lead in September. In the September Resolve poll, cost of living was rated the most important issue by 40%, far ahead of any other issue.

Asked if they were likely to buy a new vehicle in the next year or two, 35% said they were considering buying a petrol or diesel vehicle, 21% a hybrid vehicle and just 11% a fully electric vehicle (EV), while 30% were unlikely to buy a new vehicle.

Almost half cited the high cost of EVs as a barrier, with 40% citing a lack of charging infrastructure. By 56–13, respondents supported a road user charge for EV drivers. By 52–15, they thought funds raised from a road user charge should be used to roll out EV charging infrastructure.

By 44–22, voters supported Australia’s continued commitment to net zero emissions by 2050, with Coalition voters favouring net zero by 38–31.

Redbridge poll

The Poll Bludger reported that a national Redbridge and Accent Research poll for The Financial Review, conducted September 25 to October 7 from a sample of 1,997, gave Labor a 54–46 lead by respondent preferences, a 0.5-point gain for Labor since the September Redbridge poll.

Primary votes were 34% Labor (down one), 29% Coalition (down one), 14% One Nation (up three), 11% Greens (steady) and 12% for all Others (down one). By 2025 election preference flows, this poll would be about 54–46 to Labor, a one-point gain for the Coalition. It’s the closest by this measure of any poll since the election.

Analyst Kevin Bonham said the 14% for One Nation in this poll is their best in any reputable national poll since their first peak in 1998. Redbridge has been better for One Nation than other polls this term.

Respondents were tied 37–37 on whether the Coalition should drop its support for net zero. By 47–35, they did not think the Albanese Labor government had the right priorities. But by 55–16, they did not think Ley’s Coalition was ready for government.

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. Labor slides back in a Victorian Resolve poll; federal Labor still well on top – https://theconversation.com/labor-slides-back-in-a-victorian-resolve-poll-federal-labor-still-well-on-top-267287

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hunter Bennett, Lecturer in Exercise Science, University of South Australia

Many of us go to the gym to bulk up. But how does it actually work?

When you lift weights, it increases tension on the fibres in your muscles, and causes metabolic by-products (such as lactate and hydrogen) and inflammation to build up in the muscle tissue.

These signals tell your muscles to adapt and grow stronger.

But if your aim is to build muscle, lifting the same weight the same number of times every week won’t be enough; you need to continually increase the load or do more repetitions. This is known as “progressive overload”.

So, how do you know when to increase weight? And how much should you add? Let’s take a look.

Knowing how much you can increase

No matter how keen you are, the exact rate your muscles develop is mostly outside your control.

Your genetics likely play a role. Some people will simply adapt to lifting weights faster than others, meaning they can add weight more quickly.

However, lifestyle factors are also important.

Your body is more likely to be able to adapt when you get enough sleep, eat enough protein and keep life stress to a minimum. Otherwise, your progress is likely to be slower.

If you’re new to weight training, you will also likely improve faster than someone who has been training for years. This is sometimes known as “newbie gains” – especially noticeable in the first year of training.

But the more you train, the more your body adapts. Basically, the closer you are to your genetic “ceiling” – the natural limit to how much you can lift – the slower you will improve.

2 methods to increase weight

There are lots of ways you can increase weight in the gym. But we’ll focus on two good ones.

If you are a beginner, using the “linear progression” method is great. This means adding a small amount of weight (for example, 2.5kg) every week or two, while trying to keep your number of repetitions – or “reps” – the same.

For example, in week one, you might do five reps on the leg press at 50kg. Then in weeks two and three, you increase to five reps at 52.5kg, and by week four or five you’re doing five reps at 55 kg.

However, you’ll reach a point where you can’t just add the same amount of weight every couple of weeks. This is when you might try something like the “double progression” method.

Using this approach, you would pick a set and rep range, such as three sets of 8–12 reps. When you can finally do three sets of 12 reps, you increase the weight a little.

At the new higher weight, you might only be able to do eight reps in each set. So you work to slowly increase the number of reps, until you get back up to three sets of 12.

Then, repeat the process: add a little weight and start again at eight reps.

Read more:
Your body can be a portable gym: how to ditch membership fees and expensive equipment

How can I tell I’m ready to lift more?

If the weights are feeling too light, or you can easily manage all your prescribed sets and reps, then it could be time to increase.

But you can add weight even when it’s still feeling challenging.

Research shows most people overestimate how hard they are working in the gym, and underestimate how much weight they can lift or how many reps they can do.

So keeping a logbook to track your progress is a good idea. This allows you to look back and try to beat what you did last week – by either going slightly heavier or adding another rep or two to your set.

You won’t beat your logbook every week. But if increasing weight is your aim, it can help keep you on track and know what to aim for so you keep getting stronger.

When should I ease off?

Two signs might suggest you need to back off a little.

First, if the way you do the repetition is changing drastically as you add more weight, this might suggest you are simply making the movement easier, rather than getting stronger.

For example, if you add weight to your squat but start squatting shallower, this probably isn’t actually increasing the load on your muscles.

Second, if you’re feeling unusually fatigued or like you’re getting weaker every week, you might need to take it easy for a week to recover. This can be a sign of overtraining, which commonly happens when people don’t allow adequate rest between sessions.

Can you increase weight too quickly?

Weight training is incredibly safe – especially compared to other sports.

But it can sometimes still be a good idea to take it slow, especially when you’re new to weight training. You’ll find you can increase strength very quickly. But this is also when you’re learning how to perform movements correctly, and your body is adapting to the new stress.

So keeping your weight increases small (for example, just 2.5kg every couple of weeks) will give you a chance to refine your technique and build tolerance gradually. This may also help protect against injuries.

Finally, don’t stress if you are unable to increase weight for a few weeks (or even months).

If the training still feels hard, you can be pretty confident that it is helping you build muscle and get stronger.

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

– ref. Should I increase weights at the gym? How often? And by how much? – https://theconversation.com/should-i-increase-weights-at-the-gym-how-often-and-by-how-much-263048

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Baker, Professor of Housing Research, University of Adelaide

Australia was once a nation where the great Australian dream was owning a home with ample space for a lawn and a garden. But by the 1990s, the dream had shifted, at least politically, with then prime minister Paul Keating famously saying there was “more to life than the quarter acre block”.

He suggested governments should plan for more diverse, denser and consolidated housing options. Our cities could be more efficient, allow people to be closer to the services they needed, and the smaller land requirements of higher density and high rise would provide people with more affordable housing options.

Over the past three decades, governments have promoted high rise in policy and through the planning systems. A state government plan to build high-rise apartments in suburban Melbourne is a recent example.

But despite decades of encouragement by governments and a growing climate imperative to make our cities compact and efficient, high rise living is relatively unusual in Australia. Only around 4% of Australians live in high rise apartments (four storeys or more).

Here’s why that might be, and what can be done about it.

Why build high rise?

The potential benefits of high rise for cities are widely stated, both by politicians and in the academic literature.

For residents, high rise can mean better proximity to important amenities such as schools, parks, or shops, and minimises work commute time and costs. It allows households to trade off dwelling size for more convenient central locations.

For governments, more people can to afford to live in desirable areas where the availability of land is often severely limited.

These developments are (usually) cheaper per dwelling to provide infrastructure such as water and sewerage.

Who lives in high rise housing?

Many of the characteristics of high rise dwellers probably won’t surprise you.

The Australian Housing Conditions dataset is derived from a series of large scale surveys that ask Australians about their current housing and future plans.

The forthcoming release includes useful insight into the perspectives of just over 20,000 households.

It shows people living in high rise are about twice as likely to be renters than homeowners. This trend is likely to continue, as Australia embraces large scale Build to Rent high rise development.

Australians in the 4% who have chosen high rise are younger than homeowners, less likely to have children and more likely to have been born overseas.

People living in high rise are also more mobile, moving almost twice as often as homeowners.

Importantly though, the reasons high rise dwellers give for wanting to move tell us a lot about their experience of living in apartment towers – and how we might make it more attractive to Australians in future.

What do Australians want?

The comparatively small size of high rise apartments (mostly one or two bedrooms, compared to three or four bedrooms in traditional separate houses) means more than 60% of high rise dwellers hoped to move to increase the size of their home.

This points to a need for diversity in the high rise stock. As recent media reporting points out, in many European countries, it’s common for families to raise children in high rise homes.

But the larger apartments required by families are rare in Australia, removing this option for many. Those larger apartments that do exist tend to be at aimed at the luxury market, making them unaffordable for families.

Building more family-sized, affordable apartments will also help alleviate concerns about Australian cities becoming places devoid of children.

You might think the closer proximity of neighbours in high rise buildings would result in more interactions and problems. Interestingly, the survey data show this is a relatively infrequently cited reason for wanting to move.

A recent Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute policy brief suggests that for households that want a more central location and don’t need the extra space, “apartment living can be attractive and more affordable”.

Even so, affordability is a surprisingly common concern for residents living in high rise housing. This is reinforced by a descriptive analysis of recent Census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

It suggests a slightly higher prevalence of affordability problems (paying more than 30% of household income for rent or mortgage) in high rise apartments, compared to separate dwellings.

Indeed, a sizeable proportion in our high rise sample expected to have to move to secure cheaper housing or avoid expected rent increases.

A high rise future?

Maybe the biggest barrier to the uptake of high rise is perceived build quality.

A few years ago, some high rise build quality failures were widely publicised. The cladding crisis, which has affected apartment buildings across the world, is still being addressed.

Defects in developments like Opal Tower and Mascot Towers initiated a series of government inquiries, reforms and eventually improvements to the National Construction Code.

Regardless of these improvements, it’s likely there’s some memory of these earlier problems, making Australians slightly more hesitant to choose high rise options.

Stories of poor practice among the strata firms that manage high rise blocks also act as disincentives.

So, we have a bit of work to do to sell high rise living to more than 4% of Australia’s population. The stock currently being built in Australian cities isn’t yet diverse enough to house people at all stages of the family lifecycle, and at all affordability levels.

It is a stock where renters (and investors) dominate, but one that is comparatively unappealing to prospective homeowners.

Clearly, governments have a lot of work ahead of them if Australia wants to get closer to delivering on its higher density living potential.

Emma Baker receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), the National Health and medical Research Council (NHMRC), and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI).

Amy Clair receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

Chris Leishman receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Commonwealth Government, Queensland Government, South Australia Government, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Super Member Council of Australia. He is a non-executive director of Housing Choices Australia.

– ref. The government wants more of us living in high rises. Here’s why Australians don’t want to – https://theconversation.com/the-government-wants-more-of-us-living-in-high-rises-heres-why-australians-dont-want-to-265577

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gilles E. Gignac, Associate Professor of Psychology, The University of Western Australia

As your youth fades further into the past, you may start to fear growing older.

But research my colleague and I have recently published in the journal Intelligence shows there’s also very good reason to be excited: for many of us, overall psychological functioning actually peaks between ages 55 and 60.

And knowing this highlights why people in this age range may be at their best for complex problem-solving and leadership in the workforce.

Different types of peaks

There’s plenty of research showing humans reach their physical peak in their mid-twenties to early thirties.

A large body of research also shows that people’s raw intellectual abilities – that is, their capacity to reason, remember and process information quickly – typically starts to decline from the mid-twenties onwards.

This pattern is reflected in the real world. Athletes tend to reach their career peak before 30. Mathematicians often make their most significant contributions by their mid-thirties. Chess champions are rarely at the top of their game after 40.

Yet when we look beyond raw processing power, a different picture emerges.

From reasoning to emotional stability

In our study, we focused on well-established psychological traits beyond reasoning ability that can be measured accurately, represent enduring characteristics rather than temporary states, have well-documented age trajectories, and are known to predict real-world performance.

Our search identified 16 psychological dimensions that met these criteria.

These included core cognitive abilities such as reasoning, memory span, processing speed, knowledge and emotional intelligence. They also included the so-called “big five” personality traits – extraversion, emotional stability, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and agreeableness.

We compiled existing large-scale studies examining the 16 dimensions we identified. By standardising these studies to a common scale, we were able to make direct comparisons and map how each trait evolves across the lifespan.

Peaking later in life

Several of the traits we measured reach their peak much later in life. For example, conscientiousness peaked around age 65. Emotional stability peaked around age 75.

Less commonly discussed dimensions, such as moral reasoning, also appear to peak in older adulthood. And the capacity to resist cognitive biases – mental shortcuts that can lead us to make irrational or less accurate decisions – may continue improving well into the 70s and even 80s.

When we combined the age-related trajectories of all 16 dimensions into a theoretically and empirically informed weighted index, a striking pattern emerged.

Overall mental functioning peaked between ages 55 and 60, before beginning to decline from around 65. That decline became more pronounced after age 75, suggesting that later-life reductions in functioning can accelerate once they begin.

Getting rid of age-based assumptions

Our findings may help explain why many of the most demanding leadership roles in business, politics, and public life are often held by people in their fifties and early sixties. So while several abilities decline with age, they’re balanced by growth in other important traits. Combined, these strengths support better judgement and more measured decision-making – qualities that are crucial at the top.

Despite our findings, older workers face greater challenges re-entering the workforce after job losses. To some degree, structural factors may shape hiring decisions. For example, employers may see hiring someone in their mid-fifties as a short-term investment if retirement at 60 is likely.

In other cases, some roles have mandatory retirement ages. For example, International Civil Aviation Organisation sets a global retirement age of 65 for international airline pilots. Many countries also require air traffic controllers to retire between 56 and 60. Because these jobs demand high levels of memory and attention, such age limits are often considered justifiable.

However, people’s experiences vary.

Research has found that while some adults show declines in reasoning speed and memory, others also maintain these abilities well into later life.

Age alone, then, doesn’t determine overall cognitive functioning. So evaluations and assessments should focus on individuals’ actual abilities and traits rather than age-based assumptions.

A peak, not a countdown

Taken together, these findings highlight the need for more age-inclusive hiring and retention practices, recognising that many people bring valuable strengths to their work in midlife.

Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species at 50. Ludwig van Beethoven, at 53 and profoundly deaf, premiered his Ninth Symphony. In more recent times, Lisa Su, now 55, led computer company Advanced Micro Devices through one of the most dramatic technical turnarounds in the industry.

History is full of people who reached their greatest breakthroughs well past what society often labels as “peak age”. Perhaps it’s time we stopped treating midlife as a countdown and started recognising it as a peak.

Gilles E. Gignac 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. Worried about turning 60? Science says that’s when many of us actually peak – https://theconversation.com/worried-about-turning-60-science-says-thats-when-many-of-us-actually-peak-267215

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

In her final speech as Wellington mayor, Tory Whanau spoke candidly about the relentless online abuse she faced during her term, much of it racist and sexist. None of it would have been reassuring for hopeful candidates waiting for the weekend’s results.

Whanau described how false sexual rumours and targeted harassment circulated on social media, and was then repeated by other councillors. The speech underscored the toll digital vitriol can take on those in political office.

Is this something newly elected local body politicians can expect, too? Likely so, and arguably it will be experienced differently depending on their ethnicity, sexuality and gender.

Across the country, women in local government have faced relentless harassment in recent years. It’s the kind of abuse that has been described as “technology-facilitated violence against women”, and which aims to humiliate, coerce or silence.

This takes many forms: gendered disinformation, where false or sexualised rumours are spread to discredit women; misogynistic slurs and threats, often invoking violence or sexual humiliation; and image-based sexual abuse, where women’s likenesses are manipulated into pornographic content or shared without consent.

This is not unique to New Zealand. International research shows consistent trends, with online abuse causing significant emotional and psychological harm. It can discourage women from running for office or participating in public events once elected. And it can make them abandon a political career altogether.

Targeted disinformation and harassment can also erode trust in women leaders and distort political debate. In extreme cases, online abuse escalates into offline threats or stalking.

Given the decreasing numbers putting themselves forward for local office, especially Māori and women candidates, the consequences for representative democracy may already be evident.

Big gaps in the law

Online violence toward politicians tends to spike after significant events such as public debates or other campaign activity, and when public figures speak on certain hot button topics such as racism, LGBTQIA+ rights or
climate change.

And with a general election next year, there is every indication this kind of behaviour will ramp up again. Unfortunately, the law addressing online abuse is fragmented and limited.

Current legislation, including the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015, criminalises certain forms of online harassment, threats and the non-consensual sharing of intimate images.

But the law focuses primarily on individual acts, and does not fully capture the gendered and cumulative harm of abuse faced by women politicians. Defamation law can address false statements, but it is often costly and too slow to prevent the rapid spread of harmful content.

Proposed anti-stalking legislation aims to expand protection by criminalising repeated harassment, online or otherwise. The government has also introduced a security allowance for councillors to install monitored home security systems.

Significant gaps remain, however. Online, gender-based violence that combines sexualised rumours, slurs and coordinated smear campaigns often falls between existing offences. Women candidates often fall back on informal support networks rather than legal remedies.

Shifting the political culture

Tory Whanau called for change – but what kind of change would be meaningful and effective?

For the most part, online spaces are unregulated. Rather than being a utopia of free expression, in practice they can be as corrosive to democratic debate as censorship.

But this raises important questions about the limits of speech. Freedom of expression is vital for a healthy democracy, but it is not absolute. It can be limited when it threatens the rights of others.

This includes the right to non-discrimination, freedom from violence, the right to participate in public life, and the free expression of others. Without protections, these rights are at risk.

Legal reform will have to address the structural and cultural drivers of online gender-based violence by strengthening legal protections to

• capture coordinated, gendered attacks
• ensure social media platforms take rapid and effective action against harassment
• and implement codes of conduct for candidates and parties, prohibiting the spread of false or misleading information.

A well designed code of conduct would not restrict robust political debate. Rather, it would set clear expectations for honesty and respect, distinguishing legitimate criticism from targeted abuse and disinformation.

The British government is exploring such regulation in response to rising online abuse of politicians. Importantly, its approach is underpinned by statutory safety duties on social media platforms – obligations New Zealand currently lacks.

Without comparable measures here, the burden largely falls on individuals and councils to respond to abuse, rather than preventing it at its source.

But as well as balancing protection from harm and legitimate debate, it is vital to shift the political culture away from normalising or trivialising abuse.

Online safety training for political parties, councillors and staff, combined with robust public awareness campaigns, will help create an environment where women can participate fully without fear.

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. Polls and trolls: is violent online abuse turning women off local politics? – https://theconversation.com/polls-and-trolls-is-violent-online-abuse-turning-women-off-local-politics-267225

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Hastings Dunn, Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham

Following the Middle East summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire deal has been compared in the media to the Good Friday agreement which brought an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland and the Dayton accords which achieved a (so far) lasting peace in the Balkans. The fact is that Trump’s deal differs significantly from both.

It is largely imposed from the outside. It’s highly transactional in nature. And it lacks a clear blueprint as to what happens next.

But it’s worth noting that one of the defining things about the US president as a politician is the way that he will typically make an exaggerated claim about an achievement which then sets the framing for the rest of the world to react to. So he boasted of his ceasefire deal that it was “not only the end of war, this is the end of the age of terror and death”.

Others have run with the Good Friday agreement comparison. The Christian Science Monitor asserted on October 2, the day after the US president unveiled his 20-point plan: “Mr. Trump’s blueprint rests on the hope that what worked in Northern Ireland will work in Gaza, and on one assumption above all: that Israelis and Palestinians are ready to accept that continued violence won’t get either of them what they want.”

This, of course, is no small assumption, nor is there anything to suggest it has any foundation.

What has been agreed between Israel and Hamas is an end to the fighting and the release of prisoners and hostages. But serious obstacles remain. The disarmament of Hamas is by no means a done deal (in fact it looks less likely by the day).

Meanwhile the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza also looks to be a non-starter and the plan’s text remains very vague as to the extent the Israel Defense Forces will move out of Gaza, if at all. Questions of governance, the agreement of a process towards a Palestinian state and the cost of reconstruction have yet to be resolved.

But the most important hurdle in the way of this ceasefire deal holding firm is the profound lack of trust between the parties.

Set against these obstacles, the ceasefire and return of the hostages and release of Palestinian prisoners, momentous though these two things have been, represent the low-hanging fruit of any end to the conflict. They should be seen as the first steps on a difficult and uncertain diplomatic path that has been characterised by decades of setbacks and political failure.

By contrast the Dayton and Northern Ireland peace processes that led to those agreements were painstakingly negotiated between all the parties in advance through detailed diplomacy and resulted in complex power-sharing arrangements. They were guaranteed by intricate governing structures that addressed the long-standing sectarian divisions through detailed constitutional changes and new institutions.

Aspiration is not agreement

No such details are part of “The Trump Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity”. This, it turns out, is a 462-word document signed in Egypt by a hastily arranged group of international leaders that notably did not include representatives from Hamas or Israel.

It states: “We, the undersigned, welcome the truly historic commitment and implementation by all parties to the Trump Peace Agreement, ending more than two years of profound suffering and loss – opening a new chapter for the region defined by hope, security, and a shared vision for peace and prosperity.”

While laudable, aspiration is no substitute for detailed agreement and at this point Trump’s claims appear to be a case of premature congratulation.

Given how tentative the peace agreement is and the fact that October’s ceasefire looks remarkably similar to that which was agreed and then breached in January 2025, why is this being treated with such fanfare? Is it really, to quote Trump, “the historic dawn of a new Middle East”?

Beyond the obvious fact that Trump loves the adulation that has come with this peace process, there are also other political calculations in play. For the US to be openly and obviously committed to the peace process makes it more difficult for the opposing parties to reopen hostilities without the risk of incurring US displeasure for ruining their achievement.

The more it is hyped as part of this theatre the more violators might reap the wrath of a president who felt his achievement and chances of a Nobel peace prize had been undermined.

What’s in it for other leaders?

The presence of so many world leaders at Trump’s peace summit requires a different explanation. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, UK prime minister, Keir Starmer and Canada’s Mark Carney might be forgiven for wondering why their presence was required as extras in this performative political theatre.

Behind their smiles and applause, they must have been acutely aware that such optics are damaging to the way they are viewed by their domestic public and press – and that their presence there will be criticised as evidence of supplication to Trump’s adulation. The presence in Sharm el Sheikh of Hungary’s Victor Orban added to the impression that Trump had gathered what he considers his fan club to Egypt.

But why they were willing to attend is equally revealing. As well as being seen to be supportive of the peace process and being keen to add to its momentum to raise the cost of its failure, Carney, Macron and Starmer are also playing a longer game. They perhaps hope to nudge Trump in the direction of further acts of international leadership.

Most notably, they are keen for Trump to embrace his self-identification as a “peacemaker” in order to pressure the Russian president Vladimir Putin to end his aggressive war against Ukraine.

Like most second-term US presidents Trump is concerned for his legacy. If flattering his ego into directing his energies towards this end achieves this goal, then their part in this iteration of the Trump Show should probably be judged by history as worthwhile.

David Hastings Dunn has previously received funding from the ESRC, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Open Democracy Foundation and has previously been both a NATO and a Fulbright Fellow.

– ref. Egypt peace summit showed that Donald Trump’s Gaza deal is more showbiz extravaganza than the ‘dawn of a new Middle East’ – https://theconversation.com/egypt-peace-summit-showed-that-donald-trumps-gaza-deal-is-more-showbiz-extravaganza-than-the-dawn-of-a-new-middle-east-267472

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Colleen Murrell, Chair of the Editorial Board, and Full Professor in Journalism, Dublin City University

The world’s media are currently busy recording the tales of released Israeli hostages, freed Palestinian prisoners and their families after a ceasefire came into effect for the war in Gaza. But they are doing so while still being held at a distance from the centre of the story.

Foreign journalists have been banned by Israel from entering the Gaza Strip independently since the start of the war. And senior members of the international media are not optimistic that access to Gaza will change any time soon.

I asked Phil Chetwynd, global news director at Agence France-Presse (AFP), why he thought Israel was so insistent at keeping out external reporters. He told me:

Any situation where independent media are kept out or targeted gives rise to questions about the motivation. We are told it is because of our safety, but we have been covering wars non-stop for the past 100 years. We are ready to assume the risks. Given the extraordinary high death toll of journalists in Gaza, we have to presume it is a deliberate attempt to stop media revealing the full impact of the war and the Israeli military campaign.

Read more:
How Israel continues to censor journalists covering the war in Gaza

He reflected on how AFP would like to plan its coverage.

Our Palestinian journalists have done an amazing job, but all our Gaza staff journalists were evacuated over a year ago. They would like to return. The Palestinian freelancers who work for us have also done incredible work, but they are absolutely exhausted after two years of conflict. So we need journalists to be able to enter the Gaza Strip – I do not make a distinction between Palestinian and international.

He added:

I think it is important to have fresh eyes on the situation on the ground. I would also say it is sometimes easier for international journalists to report more freely on the activities of Hamas.

Reporting on Gaza

For the past two years, the only access Israel has provided for foreign media to enter Gaza has been under embedded conditions with the Israeli military. In the weeks following the October 7 Hamas attacks in 2023, a number of British reporters including from the BBC and Channel 4 News did avail of this restricted coverage. American correspondents and news agencies have also taken up offers.

But this access has been sporadic and has favoured Israeli journalists. In August 2025, an ABC Australia team managed to secure an “embed” trip to the Kerem Shalom aid site in southern Gaza after repeated requests were turned down.

In his report, ABC’s Matthew Doran pointed out that embeds are “highly choreographed and controlled”. However, Doran explained that he accepted the trip as “an opportunity to gain access to a site Israel is using to prosecute its case it is trying to feed the population of Gaza – an argument the humanitarian community, and world leaders, argue is full of holes”.

Doran noted that the small embed trip included an Israeli media outlet, an Israeli writer and “a handful of social media influencers”, all eager to post pro-Israeli sentiments. Israel has consistently accused the international media of succumbing to Hamas propaganda.

A number of initiatives have been tried over the past 24 months to enable external reporters access to Gaza. The Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Jerusalem has challenged the restrictions in Israel’s supreme court.

On September 11, the FPA noted that it had been a full year since it submitted its second petition to the court. But despite the urgency, it said “the court has repeatedly agreed to the [Israeli] government’s request for delays and postponed one hearing after another”.

Read more:
Gaza: high numbers of journalists are being killed but it’s hard to prove they’re being targeted

Petitions have also been sent to the Israeli authorities with the backing of international media organisations and groups such as Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Both of these have coupled their campaigns with calls for an immediate end to the killing of Palestinian journalists in Gaza who have been the world’s only eyes on the conflict as witnessed by those under fire.

According to the CPJ’s Jodie Ginsberg, writing in the Guardian in August, more than 192 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war. This number includes 26 journalists whom the CPJ believes have been targeted deliberately in “the deadliest conflict for journalists that we have ever documented”.

Israel has denied targeting journalists, except in cases where it has accused particular Palestinian journalists of being terrorists. The CPJ has argued in return that Israel should stop “its longstanding practice of labelling journalists as terrorists or engaging in militant activity, without providing sufficient and reliable evidence to support these claims”.

As recently as September, the BBC along with AFP, Associated Press and Reuters launched a film calling on the Israeli authorities to allow the international press access to Gaza. It noted the media’s part in informing the world about the D-Day landings, the Vietnam war, the Ethiopian famine, the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Rwandan genocide, the Syrian refugee crisis and the current conflict in Ukraine.

David Dimbleby’s narration calls on Israel to allow international reporters in, “to share the burden with Palestinian reporters there so we can all bring the facts to the world”.

But looking at the current stalemate, a cynic might ponder if the the first open access to Gaza will be to the Washington press caravanserai that will surely be allowed in to document the rebuilding of Gaza into a Trump-envisioned riviera.

Colleen Murrell has received funding from Irish regulator Coimisiún na Meán (2021-4) for research for the annual Reuters Digital News Report Ireland.

– ref. Israel is still not allowing international media back into Gaza, despite the ceasefire – https://theconversation.com/israel-is-still-not-allowing-international-media-back-into-gaza-despite-the-ceasefire-267356

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joseph Mellors, Research Associate in Management and Marketing, University of Westminster

If you ask an AI service like ChatGPT or Google Gemini to recommend a destination for your next summer holiday, it will happily provide you with a list of attractive destinations. But many of them will be very familiar.

Paris, Venice, Santorini and Barcelona are all likely to feature, because the AI algorithm is nudging you towards the same old places. The illusion of personalised advice is what makes people less likely to question it – and why AI risks intensifying overtourism.

And the use of AI for holiday inspiration is growing fast. A recent survey found it has doubled in the past year, with uptake strongest among younger travellers. Nearly one in five Britons aged 25–34 now turn to AI tools to plan their trips.

In my own research, I analysed ChatGPT’s travel recommendations and found that it gravitates towards the most visited destinations by default. Lesser-known or more sustainable locations only tend to appear when travellers explicitly ask for them.

This could easily exacerbate the overtourism which is already testing the limits of many residents in highly visited places. In Mallorca, locals are demanding limits on flights and holiday rentals, while Venice introduced a day-tripper fee in an attempt to manage visitor pressure.

AI will quickly add to that pressure if millions of holiday makers make plans using the same online filters and tips. These algorithms are trained on what’s most visible online – reviews, blogs and social media hashtags – so quickly focus on what’s already popular.

And if travellers simply accept the defaults, the result will be more of the same, and more strain on places already under pressure.

But consumers aren’t entirely powerless. With a bit more intent, AI research can yield different and fascinating destinations.

My research suggests that discerning travellers need to start by asking better and more searching questions. Generic prompts such as “the best beaches in Europe” or “beautiful city” lead straight to the same results.

Instead, try something like: “Which towns are reachable by train but overlooked in most guides?” Or maybe: “Where can I go in July that’s not a major tourist hotspot?”

Push the system, ask follow-up questions and scroll past the first few results. That’s where the surprises often lie.

You could also change your timings. AI tends to focus on peak season because that’s when the most online reviews are posted and the most travel content is published.

Asking about off-peak months is a simple way to beat this built-in bias, so perhaps specify the Italian lakes in October or the Greek islands in May.

Or ask AI to dig a little deeper for its source material. AI draws heavily on English-language content, which favours international hot spots, but is also capable of finding independent travel blogs or local tourism cooperatives.

Type in something like “Spanish-language blogs about Asturias” or “community-run agritourism in Slovenia” and you could unearth something rewarding and off the beaten track. This is the kind of thing that can really unearth the vast potential benefits of AI and its capabilities.

The road less travelled

It could also easily help you to compare the costs and timings of various travel options, and assess the carbon footprint of your journey. It just requires a little bit of digging to get past the surface layer.

After all, these systems are designed to serve up the most obvious and well-documented suggestions, not what’s diverse or sustainable. (Although the same technology could just as easily be coded slightly differently to show rail travel before air for example, or to prioritise locally run independent businesses.)

So while the convenience of AI is seductive, it can also be predictable. If your holiday plans could be copy-pasted from Instagram, any sense of adventure can easily get left behind.

Consider using AI as a starting point, not the final word. Guidebooks, local media and conversations with residents restore the unpredictability that makes travel memorable.

By asking sharper questions, shifting their timing, checking footprints and seeking local voices, travellers can use AI as a tool for discovery rather than congestion. Every prompt is a signal to the system about what matters.

The next time you ask ChatGPT where to go, make it work a bit harder. Test it, argue with it and use its extraordinary capabilities to find somewhere new – or settle for the same crowded itinerary as everyone else.

Joseph Mellors 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. How to use AI to guide your holiday plans – by a tourism expert – https://theconversation.com/how-to-use-ai-to-guide-your-holiday-plans-by-a-tourism-expert-267277

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kai Li Lim, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia and Research Fellow in E-Mobility, The University of Queensland

More public electric vehicle (EV) chargers will be built across Australia through a A$40 million funding boost, according to a recent government announcement. The new chargers will be a mix of fast chargers and kerbside chargers.

More chargers should mean more confidence for drivers to make the switch to EVs. But as researchers who study charging networks, we see a critical design flaw. The government is focusing on expanding the number of chargers. The problem is ensuring chargers actually do what they should: charge your car.

Most EV drivers charge at home. But when they use the public network, they need to know the charger is working. To track this, the government uses a metric called “uptime”, requiring chargers to be online 98% of the time. That sounds good. But it only measures whether a charger is connected to the network – not whether you can actually use it.

Fixing this gap will be essential to give motorists confidence in EV chargers – and speed up the slow shift to electric transport.

The uptime fallacy

Imagine you’re on a long road trip. You pull into a regional town, low on charge, and find the only fast charger is blocked by a petrol car. Or maybe the payment system is down. Or the cable has been vandalised. Or the charger simply refuses to “talk” to your car, failing the digital handshake needed to start a session.

For all these cases, the charger would still pass the uptime test. It’s online, communicating with its network. But it’s not actually able to do what drivers need it to do: charge the battery.

These issues are now common in Australia, especially the failed handshake problem where charging attempts fail right after they begin due to a communication problem between car and charger.

Australia has limited data on the prevalence of the problem. Our analysis of DC fast chargers funded by the Californian government shows the scale of the problem in a similar market. We found that while charger networks reported roughly 95–98% uptime, the chance of drivers successfully charging was substantially lower at 75–83%.

Public chargers aren’t just convenience – they’re essential

Around 80% of EV charging happens at home or at work in Australia.

But the public network is a lifeline for three crucial groups.

First, the millions of people who live in apartments (about 10% of the population as of 2021) or homes without off-street parking (about 25%). For them, public kerbside chargers aren’t a backup – they’re essential.

Second are the long-distance drivers who depend on highway fast chargers to travel between cities and towns. At present, our charger locations don’t always match up with where people actually want to drive and charge. This creates potential charging deserts. A single broken charger in one of these low-access areas can ruin a family holiday or a crucial work trip.

The third group is the growing number of freight and fleet operators shifting to electric vans and trucks. Charging reliability directly affects logistics schedules and business costs.

For all these users, charger reliability is especially important. Uptime won’t cut it.

Most popular EV charger apps rely on uptime as a way to show charger reliability, but some apps go beyond this to show more useful data, such as the last successful charge. Drivers can feel more secure choosing a charger proven to have recently delivered a successful charge.

Reliability beyond uptime

One solution is to shift away from a reliance on uptime and use a better metric.

In the United States, a large industry consortium recently hashed out what this might look like. Our research contributed to one of the outcomes: new customer-focused KPIs (key performance indicators) for chargers.

How do they work? Rather than relying on network data showing a charger is online, these KPIs draw in multiple sources of data, such as:

• using charger reviews to quickly spot repeat failures such as blocked charging, payment glitches and safety issues
• using vehicle and charger telemetry to pinpoint where and why charging sessions fail (while protecting privacy)
• regular on-site audits for damage, accessibility, lighting and the ease of locating the charger to catch issues missed by data
• verifying these data sources by comparing reported uptime with actual charging success rates.

Better still, by combining this data with maintenance logs and weather patterns, we can build predictive models to forecast when a charger is likely to fail and schedule proactive repairs.

This rigorous approach would give drivers far better confidence in public chargers.

Australia could easily adopt a similar approach, given the data, partners and capabilities already exist.

The first step would be a proof-of-concept to demonstrate how to fuse data from networks, vehicle telemetry and user check-ins and reviews with real world audits. Next would be publishing an open standard for charger KPIs and work with states and networks to roll it out nationally.

Boost security

A truly reliable network must also be secure. In the US, vandalism and copper theft have become real issues. One operator has installed GPS trackers in its charging cables. Thankfully, Australia hasn’t yet seen these issues at the same scale. But it would be naive to think our network is immune. As the charger network grows, so does its vulnerability.

The solutions are to invest in proactive measures such as good lighting, CCTV and tamper-proof designs, as seen across Norway and other leading EV nations.

If these problems escalate in Australia, it will be another source of charger anxiety, where drivers fear being left with a drained battery far from home. The end result will be that more drivers stick with petrol cars or choose plug-in hybrids.

Kai Li Lim currently receives funding from the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads and has previously received funding from sources including Energy Consumers Australia and the StB Capital Partners.

Tisura Gamage receives funding from the National Center for Sustainable Transportation (NCST).

– ref. Blocked bays and failed handshakes: many public EV chargers are unusable – despite being ‘online’ – https://theconversation.com/blocked-bays-and-failed-handshakes-many-public-ev-chargers-are-unusable-despite-being-online-239402

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rafiqa Qurrata A’yun, Assistant Professor, Universitas Indonesia – Associate, CILIS, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

Mass protests against the greed of politicians led to protests in late August across Indonesia, calling for major reforms to the political system and police force. Civil society groups played a key role in these events.

The protests were triggered by the plans of well-paid politicians in Indonesia’s House of Representatives to enormously increase their housing allowances. Their subsequent ridicule of public criticism only inflamed the situation.

When the protests resulted in casualties – in particular, the death of a motorcycle taxi driver run over by a police vehicle – the public anger grew, leading to riots. Public buildings, including police stations and regional legislatures, were set on fire, and the homes of some prominent politicians looted.

Police have since launched a huge crackdown involving systematic hunts for activists.

By late September, police had detained thousands of protesters and named 959 suspects (equivalent to being charged in the Australian system). They included 295 children, mostly high school students.

Among those who have been detained are young activists who played a significant role in organising and promoting the protests. These include:

• Delpedro Marhaen, head of the human rights organisation Lokataru Foundation
• Syahdan Husein, an activist associated with the student movement Gejayan Memanggil
• Muhammad Fakhrurrozi, an activist affiliated with the Social Movement Institute in Yogyakarta.

They have all been charged with incitement of violence under the Criminal Code and the vaguely worded Electronic Information and Transactions Law.

A TikToker, Figha Lesmana, also faces charges of incitement for posting an innocuous video calling on people to join the protests.

In addition, civil society organisations claim two people disappeared during a protest in Jakarta on August 29. Police say they are still trying to locate them.

Indonesia’s senior legal minister, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, has defended the police. He claims it would be impossible for police to arrest thousands of individuals without just cause.

However, civil society organisations say this is exactly what happened, citing the absence of a clear legal basis for many arrests, along with accusations of police misconduct. Legal aid activists say some activists were allegedly tortured to obtain forced confessions of involvement in the riots.

Rights groups also say police are seizing books they claim are subversive to use as evidence to support their arrests. These include works by Oscar Wilde and a respected Indonesian priest, Franz Magnis-Suseno.

These groups say the suspects have also been denied the right to choose their own lawyers, instead being forced to use those selected by the police.

Government responses

President Prabowo Subianto’s office has issued no statements on the arrests of civil society leaders. Prabowo is, however, appointing a commission to accelerate reform of the national police following public demands in the wake of the protests.

The national police chief has also established a new group tasked with reforming the force, comprised of more than 50 officers and advised by academics and NGO activists.

However, civil society groups have questioned the clarity and seriousness of these reform efforts, especially considering the vast majority of the members of the latter group are police themselves.

In addition, the police chief has recently issued a new regulation expanding the use of coercive measures, including firearms, in response to so-called “attacks” on the police.

Many fear this will be used to justify excessive use of force against future protestors.

What’s next?

It is unlikely the August protests will be the last. None of the underlying issues that triggered them – poor policy-making, growing poverty, the greed of politicians and police misconduct – have been resolved. The protesters’ demands, summarised in their manifesto, remain largely unaddressed.

In fact, the recent arrests suggest authorities expect more trouble. Although many of those arrested were subsequently released, their detentions still serve as an intimidating warning to civil society.

The authorities clearly believe the protest movement can expand its influence through social media. So their actions are, in fact, aimed at the broader public, particularly high school and university students, who might otherwise back future protests led by the activists.

Moreover, the arrests have kept civil society groups busy addressing the criminal charges faced by hundreds of detainees. This has diverted attention from the primary objectives of the broader protest movement.

The crackdown has major implications for Indonesia’s future. Civil society organisations are the engines for policy development in the country. They also play a vital role in monitoring government and holding it to account.

The democratic regression Indonesia has experienced over the last decade has undermined many of checks and balances that constrained earlier administrations. If civil society now becomes unable to act freely, there will be very little left to rein in the politicians whose misbehaviour sparked the riots in the first place.

Rafiqa Qurrata A’yun received funding from the Australia Awards Hadi Soesastro Prize.

Tim Lindsey receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Indonesian police arrested hundreds after August riots, sending a chill through civil society – https://theconversation.com/indonesian-police-arrested-hundreds-after-august-riots-sending-a-chill-through-civil-society-267100

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Pope, Associate Professor, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University

After Christmas dinner in 2021, our family was glued to the television, watching the nail-biting launch of NASA’s US$10 billion (AU$15 billion) James Webb Space Telescope. There had not been such a leap forward in telescope technology since Hubble was launched in 1990.

En route to its deployment, Webb had to successfully navigate 344 potential points of failure. Thankfully, the launch went better than expected, and we could finally breathe again.

Six months later, Webb’s first images were revealed, of the most distant galaxies yet seen. However, for our team in Australia, the work was only beginning.

We would be using Webb’s highest-resolution mode, called the aperture masking interferometer or AMI for short. It’s a tiny piece of precisely machined metal that slots into one of the telescope’s cameras, enhancing its resolution.

Our results on painstakingly testing and enhancing AMI are now released on the open-access archive arXiv in a pair of papers. We can finally present its first successful observations of stars, planets, moons and even black hole jets.

Working with an instrument a million kilometres away

Hubble started its life seeing out of focus – its mirror had been ground precisely, but incorrectly. By looking at known stars and comparing the ideal and measured images (exactly like what optometrists do), it was possible to figure out a “prescription” for this optical error and design a lens to compensate.

The correction required seven astronauts to fly up on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1993 to install the new optics. Hubble orbits Earth just a few hundred kilometres above the surface, and can be reached by astronauts.

By contrast, Webb is roughly 1.5 million kilometres away – we can’t visit and service it, and need to be able to fix issues without changing any hardware.

This is where AMI comes in. This is the only Australian hardware on board, designed by astronomer Peter Tuthill.

It was put on Webb to diagnose and measure any blur in its images. Even nanometres of distortion in Webb’s 18 hexagonal primary mirrors and many internal surfaces will blur the images enough to hinder the study of planets or black holes, where sensitivity and resolution are key.

AMI filters the light with a carefully structured pattern of holes in a simple metal plate, to make it much easier to tell if there are any optical misalignments.

Hunting blurry pixels

We wanted to use this mode to observe the birth places of planets, as well as material being sucked into black holes. But before any of this, AMI showed Webb wasn’t working entirely as hoped.

At very fine resolution – at the level of individual pixels – all the images were slightly blurry due to an electronic effect: brighter pixels leaking into their darker neighbours.

This is not a mistake or flaw, but a fundamental feature of infrared cameras that turned out to be unexpectedly serious for Webb.

This was a dealbreaker for seeing distant planets many thousands of times fainter than their stars a few pixels away: my colleagues quickly showed that its limits were more than ten times worse than hoped.

So, we set out to correct it.

How we sharpened Webb’s vision

In a new paper led by University of Sydney PhD student Louis Desdoigts, we looked at stars with AMI to learn and correct the optical and electronic distortions simultaneously.

We built a computer model to simulate AMI’s optical physics, with flexibility about the shapes of the mirrors and apertures and about the colours of the stars.

We connected this to a machine learning model to represent the electronics with an “effective detector model” – where we only care about how well it can reproduce the data, not about why.

After training and validation on some test stars, this setup allowed us to calculate and undo the blur in other data, restoring AMI to full function. It doesn’t change what Webb does in space, but rather corrects the data during processing.

It worked beautifully – the star HD 206893 hosts a faint planet and the reddest-known brown dwarf (an object between a star and a planet). They were known but out of reach with Webb before applying this correction. Now, both little dots popped out clearly in our new maps of the system.

This correction has opened the door to using AMI to prospect for unknown planets at previously impossible resolutions and sensitivities.

It works not just on dots

In a companion paper by University of Sydney PhD student Max Charles, we applied this to looking not just at dots – even if these dots are planets – but forming complex images at the highest resolution made with Webb. We revisited well-studied targets that push the limits of the telescope, testing its performance.

With the new correction, we brought Jupiter’s moon Io into focus, clearly tracking its volcanoes as it rotates over an hour-long timelapse.

As seen by AMI, the jet launched from the black hole at the centre of the galaxy NGC 1068 closely matched images from much-larger telescopes.

Finally, AMI can sharply resolve a ribbon of dust around a pair of stars called WR 137, a faint cousin of the spectacular Apep system, lining up with theory.

The code built for AMI is a demo for much more complex cameras on Webb and its follow-up, Roman space telescope. These tools demand an optical calibration so fine, it’s just a fraction of a nanometre – beyond the capacity of any known materials.

Our work shows that if we can measure, control, and correct the materials we do have to work with, we can still hope to find Earth-like planets in the far reaches of our galaxy.

Benjamin Pope receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Big Questions Institute.

– ref. How we sharpened the James Webb telescope’s vision from a million kilometres away – https://theconversation.com/how-we-sharpened-the-james-webb-telescopes-vision-from-a-million-kilometres-away-262510

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Victoria Souliman, Lecturer, French and Francophone Studies, University of Sydney

When art historian Linda Nochlin famously asked “why have there been no great women artists?” in 1971, her point wasn’t that women lacked talent. It was that the art world had systematically excluded and erased them from history.

In the 50 years since, scholars and curators have worked to reclaim these forgotten women artists. But change has been slow.

The Guerrilla Girls’ activism in the 1980s, the Countess Report’s damning statistics on gender inequality in Australian galleries, and the National Gallery of Australia’s recent Know My Name initiative show the fight for recognition is ongoing.

Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890–1940 marks an exciting new chapter in this project. The new exhibition, from the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, makes a groundbreaking contribution to recovering the stories of overlooked women artists.

Read more:
Why weren’t there any great women artists? In gratitude to Linda Nochlin

The global stage

With 222 works from 34 collections, Dangerously Modern celebrates the boldness and resilience of the first wave of professional Australian women artists who left for Europe between the turn of the 20th century and the second world war.

They went seeking advanced artistic training and the chance to compete on the global stage. Their time abroad was transformative.

Intimate portraits and domestic interiors by Florence Fuller (1867–1946) and Bessie Davidson (1879–1965) capture moments of quiet reflection. These artists navigated unfamiliar cultures, engaged with cutting-edge artistic movements and built new creative networks.

They lived far from home and maintained connections across two continents – often celebrated in one and forgotten in the other.

The exhibition sheds light on these expatriate artists. They engaged in artistic communities from bustling cosmopolitan centres like Paris and London to regional France, England, Ireland and North Africa.

It reveals the variety of artistic styles in which they worked while weaving together five themes that explore human experience and artistic purpose.

Truly modern

Bold and vibrant paintings by artists like Iso Rae (1860–1940) show their engagement with modern artistic movements.

Through painting en plein air (outdoors) and post-impressionist techniques (using vivid colours and expressive brushstrokes), these women expressed their own experience of modern life. For some, this included portraying their female lovers.

Art can help heal personal trauma. Here, in particular, these women looked at the devastation of war.

The pairing of paintings by Hilda Rix Nicholas (1884–1961) is especially powerful: The Pink Scarf (1913) glows with light, texture and delicate beauty; These Gave the World Away (1917) depicts her husband’s lifeless body on the battlefield.

By retracing the achievements and journeys of 50 expatriate women artists, the exhibition presents works never seen before in Australia. From the celebrated New Zealand artist Edith Collier (1885–1964), Girl in the Sunshine (c.1915) is notable for its bold use of colour, flattened perspective and simplified forms.

It also features works that haven’t been seen in Australia for over a century. A winter morning on the coast of France (1888) by Eleanor Ritchie Harrison (1854–95) was recently rediscovered and donated to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The exhibition also reunites works by artist friends who painted side by side.

Women at the forefront

We are privy to moments of breakthrough in these artists’ creativity and careers.

The exhibition brings together landscapes Grace Crowley (1890–1979), Anne Dangar (1885–1951) and Dorrit Black (1891–1951) painted together in 1928 while studying under the French artist André Lhote (1885–1962) in the hilltop village of Mirmande in southeastern France.

These works, to which the artists applied cubist principles (breaking down forms into geometric shapes and showing multiple perspectives), testify to both artistic freedom and each woman’s individual vision and skill.

Though such works placed them at the forefront of French modern art movements, these artists were largely overlooked back in Australia.

Why? At the time, Australia’s conservative art establishment promoted a nationalist agenda. They favoured masculine depictions of labour and Australian landscapes painted by male artists working in Australia.

This elite group marginalised not only women artists but also expatriates who participated in international artistic developments. The resulting nationalist narrative long overlooked the themes this exhibition explores.

Nora Heysen (1911–2003), daughter of celebrated landscape painter Hans Heysen, exemplifies this dual marginalisation. Despite becoming the first woman and youngest artist to win the Archibald Prize in 1938, her self-portraits – which reveal her search for identity and assertion during her London years – remained hidden from public view until the 1990s.

When Thea Proctor (1879–1966) returned to Sydney from London in the 1920s, she wrote, as the catalogue quotes, “it seemed very funny to me to be regarded by some people here as dangerously modern”.

“Dangerously modern” perfectly captures the spirit of the exhibition. These expatriate women artists were seen as threats to tradition, gender roles and to the prevailing definition of what Australian art should be.

Beyond reclaiming the place of these women in the history of Australian art, the exhibition emphasises the importance of migration in shaping artistic identity.

By recognising works created abroad as integral to Australia’s artistic story, this exhibition transforms how we understand both Australian art and modernism as a global movement.

Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890–1940 is at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until February 15 2026.

Victoria Souliman 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. These Australian women modernist painters were overlooked, and forgotten. A century later, they are in the spotlight – https://theconversation.com/these-australian-women-modernist-painters-were-overlooked-and-forgotten-a-century-later-they-are-in-the-spotlight-266149