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

It doesn’t take much for a journalist to get under Donald Trump’s skin. When the ABC’s United States correspondent John Lyons started questioning the president during a Washington “doorstop” about his business dealings while in office, the response was both full-on and petty.

Lyons was trying to get answers for a coming ABC Four Corners program.

He asked how much wealthier Trump was now than when he re-entered office and “Is it appropriate, President Trump, that a president in office should be engaged in so much business activity?”

Trump said that “my kids are running the business”, and mostly the deals were done before he took office.

Turning on Lyons, he asked where he was from.

When Lyons replied he was from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation – Four Corners, the president let loose.

“In my opinion, you are hurting Australia very much right now. And they want to get along with me.

“You know, your leader is coming over to see me very soon. I’m going to tell him about you. You set a very bad tone”.

When Lyons tried to continue, Trump said “Quiet”.

The White House followed up with a post on its official response account. “POTUS smacks down a rude foreign Fake News loser (many such cases): ‘Quiet.’”

Albanese is set to have his long-sought first meeting with Trump next week on the sidelines of the United Nations leaders week. Trump’s reference to it is the first time it has been officially confirmed.

The Albanese government has been trying to clear obstacles ahead of the meeting. With the Americans pressing Australia to increase its defence spending from about 2% of GDP at present to 3.5%, defence announcements have preceded the meeting.

At the weekend the government announced $12 billion in investment over a decade in a naval facility in Western Australia.

Defence Minister Richard Marles also argues Australia is spending more than 2% on defence according to a different measure.

“There are different measures around the world of percentages of GDP. I mean, if you look at the way in which NATO accounts for its own spending in terms of percentage of GDP, based on that metric, our spending on GDP today in terms of defence is around 2.8%,” he said at the weekend.

Given how some other leaders have been treated when meeting Trump, there has been some nervousness in the Prime Minister’s Office about the initial face-to-face encounter between the president and the prime minister.

The planned Four Corners’ program adds a fresh potential irritant.

The ABC said: “John Lyons is a highly awarded journalist and one of the most experienced and respected reporters in Australia. His job is to ask questions. He has the ABC’s full support.”

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. Trump accuses ABC journalist of ‘hurting Australia’ and says he’ll report him to Albanese – https://theconversation.com/trump-accuses-abc-journalist-of-hurting-australia-and-says-hell-report-him-to-albanese-265378

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yaqoot Fatima, Professor of Sleep Health, University of the Sunshine Coast

You’re gently drifting off to sleep when suddenly your arms and legs convulse and you jolt yourself awake. Or, perhaps you’re relaxing in bed when, out of the blue, your dozing partner does an almighty twitch, scaring you half to death.

This is called a hypnic jerk or sleep start. It is often accompanied by a sensation of falling or tripping over.

An estimated 70% of people will experience this at some point.

So, what causes the hypnic jerk? And can certain factors make it more likely to happen?

A minor misinterpretation

The truth is we don’t know exactly why it happens, but sleep researchers have some theories.

As we transition from wakefulness to sleep, the nervous system winds down and muscles relax.

Sometimes, the brain misreads this relaxation as a sensation of falling or tripping. The brain sends a quick but powerful signal to the body. The hypnic jerk is the result.

Hypnic jerks usually affect one side of the body and are painless. Some people, however, may experience a tingling or painful sensation.

For most people, hypnic jerks are not associated with any health or other sleep problems. When hypnic jerks occur frequently over prolonged period, however, people may come to anxiously anticipate them. This can lead to insomnia.

Are they linked to certain health conditions or medications?

Some research has shown hypnic jerks can be more common among people with certain conditions, such as Parkinson’s disease. One 2016 study suggests hypnic jerks may be a symptom that can occur in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease.

However, it’s very unlikely they would happen in the absence of other common symptoms, such as changes to movement and mobility or REM sleep behaviour disorder (where people start acting out dreams). These are much more reliable potential indicators of Parkinson’s disease.

Frequent hypnic jerks that disrupt sleep can be a side effect of some prescription medications, particularly antidepressants such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). This includes medications such as escitalopram, sertraline and fluoxetine.

Although considered a rare side effect and the exact cause is still unknown, researchers have reported various cases in which people using these medications experience hypnic jerks, often resolving quickly after stopping the medication.

If you’re on these medications, experiencing hypnic jerks and feel worried about it, chat to your prescribing doctor.

Other medications that contain caffeine, and non-prescribed substances that have stimulating effects, such as cocaine, have also been linked with hypnic jerks.

Good sleep hygiene

Hypnic jerks are normal and generally no cause for concern.

However, certain lifestyle factors can make them more likely. These include:

• sleep deprivation
• stress and anxiety
• excessive intake of stimulants, such as nicotine or caffeinated drinks
• strenuous exercise before bed.

Keeping these factors under control is all part of good sleep hygiene anyway – whether or not you’re worried by hypnic jerks.

Yaqoot Fatima receives funding from NHMRC, MRFF, Beyond Blue and in-kind support from ResMed.

Alexandra Metse has received funding from the Australian Prevention Partnership Centre, the Waterloo Foundation, and the NSW Department of Education.

Daniel Sullivan has previously received funding from the NHMRC/MRFF and Queensland Health. He is a member of the Australasian Sleep Association.

– ref. A big, convulsive twitch while dozing off? Sleep experts explain the ‘hypnic jerk’ – https://theconversation.com/a-big-convulsive-twitch-while-dozing-off-sleep-experts-explain-the-hypnic-jerk-264197

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Harrison, Director, Master of Business Administration Program (MBA); Co-Director, Better Consumption Lab, Deakin University

When the newly appointed chief executive of tracking app Life360 recently described the company as part of the “anxiety economy”, it sounded like a throwaway phrase. But it was also surprisingly candid.

The app, which allows families to track their children’s (or parent’s) whereabouts in real time, is on one in ten phones in the US, according to some reports. What began as a niche product has become part of everyday life for many households.

Life360, along with Snapchat’s Snap Map and Apple’s Find My Friends (or Stalk My Friends as it is called in my family) is promoted as a tool for safety and peace of mind.

But the fact its chief executive was comfortable to explicitly link the app to anxiety and its commercial exploitation highlights a much larger cultural phenomenon: we increasingly exist in a world where our unease, vigilance, and even our guilt is being used for profit.

Technology can prey on anxiety

From an evolutionary perspective, anxiety is mostly a good thing. It evolved to prepare us for potential threats – things like a rustle in the grass keeping us awake at night. This bias means negative or threatening information is more easily and quickly processed.

The difficulty is that the world we inhabit now is very different to the savannah. The same vigilance that once protected us from predators now keeps us refreshing apps, scrolling news feeds, and checking digital maps for reassurance.

But technology is not neutral. Indeed, it can serve to amplify this instinct. A tracking app like Life360 sells you peace of mind, but it can also create new anxieties. If your child’s location dot pauses for ten minutes, you might feel compelled to check, to call, or to worry. The reassurance is real, but so is the unease.

The illusion of control offered by these products gives us the sense that monitoring reduces risk, when in fact it can serve to increase our dependence on the technology. In fact, some research suggests that the harder we try to suppress anxiety, the worse it becomes.

Anxiety often presents as a vague unease. The genius of marketing lies in giving that unease a focus; for example, your home might not be safe, your child might not be learning enough, or your skin might not be radiant enough. Once the unease is named, a product can be offered as the solution. In the contemporary and commercial world, consumer products become the “fixes” that we use to defend ourselves from this constant instability.

The ‘guilty mum’ marketing ploy

Parenting is one area of life that marketers have been able to exploit with products to both relieve and reinforce those fears. The “guilty mum” trope captures the way marketing exploits the gap between the actual self (“I can’t always be there for my child”) and the ought/ideal self (“a good mum should always know and protect”).

That gap produces guilt, which ultimately creates demand for products such as baby monitors, organic snacks, and tracking apps. And while the relief is genuine, it is temporary, because the underlying self-discrepancy remains.

This helps to explain why facts rarely calm us. Statistically, most children are safer today than at almost any time in history with lower mortality rates, less violence, and better health care. Yet we are drawn to extreme and noticeable events, a bias that makes threats stand out more vividly than the quieter, more ordinary evidence of safety. And because parents do not feel safer, marketers can take advantage of this gap between facts and feelings.

This is why calling it an “anxiety economy” is not hyperbole. Economies emerge when a resource can be cultivated, extracted, exchanged, and scaled. Companies identify new triggers for anxiety, create tools to manage them, and sustain the unease they claim to solve.

Algorithms then capitalise on this fear by testing millions of tiny interventions to determine which notifications, prompts and stories most effectively push our emotional buttons. By agreeing to the terms and conditions, we become part of a larger corporate consumer behaviour experiment.

The concern with these apps is not that they are inherently bad. In fact, they can and do provide a degree of comfort. However, the deeper issue is when the exploitation of anxiety becomes normalised. Once we believe in the necessity of monitoring, it becomes difficult to resist. These convictions are initially framed through the commercial lens built around personal choice, but bleed into daily routines, and eventually become part of the economy.

So, while the chief executive of Life360 may have been unusually unguarded, her statement raises a deeper question: do we want a society that commercialises fear? Anxiety is a universal human emotion, yet choosing to exploit it for profit is entirely cultural.

Markets do not care for us as people do. When even the financial press casually describes investment in a company like Life360 as a “lucrative roller-coaster”, it is worth pausing to ask whether we want investment markets and economies that reward the monetisation of anxiety.

Paul Harrison has previously received funding from ASIC, the TGA, Department of Environment and Heritage, and the Consumer Action Law Centre. He is affiliated with Deakin University, Better Consumption Lab, Consumer Policy Research Centre, Australian Health and Practitioner Regulation Agency, and Australian Internet Domain Administrator.

– ref. The ‘anxiety economy’ is booming. But should companies be profiting from our fears? – https://theconversation.com/the-anxiety-economy-is-booming-but-should-companies-be-profiting-from-our-fears-264586

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elianor Gerrard, Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

Reaching net zero in Australia relies on the bush. That’s where the land, sun, wind and freshwater resources are.

But as the clean energy build accelerates, some landholders are pushing back. Unfortunately, their legitimate worries have been magnified by media coverage and vested interests.

The recent series of News Corp Australia Bush Summits promoted farming and mining while mining magnate Gina Rinehart took aim at the damage she claims renewables and the “net zero ideology” were doing to farmers already struggling with “devastating droughts, fires [and] floods”.

Clean energy – key to mitigating climate change – is growing rapidly, driven by projects in rural areas. In just five years, Australia has almost doubled how much clean energy goes into its main grid, reaching 40% this year.

The speed of the rollout has caused fractures in regional and rural areas as the “presumed benevolence” of renewable energy comes face-to-face with the realities of large-scale infrastructure development. In Victoria, controversial new laws mandating access for transmission line builders are likely to inflame relations with host landowners. The carrot of increased payments seems barely enough.

Farmers worry more and more about changes to the climate. Most quietly support renewables and many benefit directly from the reliable income of solar and wind. But rapid change can create real tensions, especially when change is seen as being done to a community, not with it.

What should be done? Policymakers, project developers and landowners should focus on finding ways of equitably sharing the very real benefits of the clean energy transition with the communities who will host them.

Polarisation serves vested interests

The energy debate has long been polarised in Australia, characterised by outrage and negativity. Australia’s long-running “climate wars” gave rise to a decade of political instability and a succession of prime ministers.

Media coverage amplifies the sense of an intractable conflict between clean energy projects and the bush.
In politics, energy and climate policy continues to be weaponised in debates. The debate over the “net zero agenda” has fractured the Coalition.

Inflaming this debate is useful for vested interests who benefit from delaying climate action as long as possible.

Farmers see climate change as their top threat

Farmers are already feeling the effects of climate change. In a 2023 survey of Australian farmers, 92% reported experiencing unwelcome changes in seasons and climate in recent years, and 71% are spending money to cut emissions from their farms.

Asked to name the main threat they were facing, 55% chose climate change. Just 1% chose transmission lines and another 1% chose the renewable rollout.

“The bush” is often presented as an immovable bloc resistant to renewables, but this framing is simplistic. Farmers have long fought against coal and gas projects in fertile areas such as the Hunter Valley. And many farmers directly benefit from clean energy projects, quietly exploring ways of pairing renewables and transmission lines with farming.

In July, Bendigo hosted a national expo on renewables and agriculture. Farmers, researchers, policymakers and advocates discussed methods such as agrivoltaics, where sheep graze under solar panels.

This month, Farmers for Climate Action hosted a national summit exploring similar territory. At the conference, farmers spoke about how renewables were a financial lifeline amid challenging conditions.

Taking the heat out of the debate

Rural concerns should not be dismissed. Wind farms attract fears over noise and visual impact, and large transmission lines provoke concerns over potential impact on farming through to lower property values.

The best way forward? Ignore the noise, listen to genuine concerns, and focus on sharing benefits, clear communication and making decisions collaboratively. Here’s how:

Share the benefits

Renewable developers often initiate community benefit schemes such as funding community initiatives or committing to local jobs. The Clean Energy Council estimates these schemes could be worth A$1.9 billion by 2050.

Renewable projects can help by leaving a legacy of infrastructure and programs to make life better in the bush. Shared equity schemes go even further. In Canada, communities get a mandatory 25% of project equity. In Australia, the First Nations Clean Energy Network is pushing for similar shared equity.

Decide together, share knowledge

Towns in designated renewable energy zones are getting in early to ensure the community has a bigger role through community meetings and discussion. Residents in Hay made it clear they wanted to ensure benefits would flow to their region.

Citizen assemblies can help create common ground in communities before conflict sets in.

Open discussion gives communities more power and more buy-in. Local knowledge and expertise can feed into related initiatives, such as encouraging biodiversity on solar farms.

Fill the information vacuum

When communities aren’t kept well informed, misinformation can flourish. Trust and transparency are key. Communication has to be early, two-way and ongoing. One solution may be local energy hubs, where staff can answer questions directly.

Share the load

Rural and regional areas are doing the heavy lifting on clean energy, as a NSW Parliamentary Inquiry recently heard. Urban areas can contribute through mechanisms such as the new urban renewable energy zone in the Illawarra, though these have their own complexities.

Community power networks offer another way for urban communities to shoulder some of the responsibility for the energy shift by producing, storing and using their own energy.

Through the increased electrification of homes – coupled with flexible demand and greater network utilisation – cities and urban areas could become “giant batteries.”

Polarisation is pointless

Change is not always easy. Anxieties can be magnified to create polarisation or gridlock. But issues can be worked through.

We need to put aside fearmongering and collaboratively decide how best to shape the emerging clean energy era to benefit all Australians – rural or otherwise.

Elianor Gerrard previously worked for the Community Power Agency, which runs two initiatives mentioned in this article.

Kimberley Crofts has previously consulted for RE-Alliance, a nonprofit who ran an initiative mentioned in this article.

– ref. Battle for the bush? Ignore the noise – most farmers like renewables – https://theconversation.com/battle-for-the-bush-ignore-the-noise-most-farmers-like-renewables-264680

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon Richardson, Visiting Fellow, Centre for European Studies, Australian National University

A frequent question around peace talks over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is whether Ukraine should give up land as part of an interim or final settlement.

United States President Donald Trump has often suggested this would be a natural and inevitable outcome, particularly given Ukraine has – in his view – a weak hand of “cards”. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the White House last month, Trump told him there was no getting back Crimea, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014.

Trump has jokingly described his motivation for promoting peace in Ukraine as a desire to “get to heaven”. But as the saying goes, the path to hell is paved with good intentions.

Indeed, Trump has aligned himself with many Russian officials on territorial concessions, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who has said history has many examples of peace agreements that shift borders.

It is important to debunk this notion. Acquisition of territory through war has, in fact, been taboo since the end of the second world war and the establishment of the United Nations.

While there have been many military conflicts, there are no evident examples of a UN member country ceding recognised, independent territory to another UN member following a war or invasion.

Wars and conquest

Until the early 20th century, territorial concessions were the norm after wars, backed by all sorts of narratives about hereditary rights, ancient borders, superior civilisations, punishments for unpaid debts or simple law of the jungle.

A classic example was the Treaty of Guadeloupe-Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War of 1846–48. Mexico was forced to cede 55% of its territory, including present-day New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, Texas and western Colorado.

In a recent article, Yale academics Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro explain that before the first world war, shifting borders was a legally recognised means by which states resolved disputes. They calculate there were more than 150 territorial conquests around the world before 1945.

The end of the second world war saw massive border changes in Eastern Europe. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin shifted the borders of Poland hundreds of kilometres westward at the expense of Germany, while the Soviet Union swallowed swathes of eastern Poland. Italy also lost some its pre-war territory to Yugoslavia and France.

The Soviet Union also got to keep regions it had absorbed in the wake of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, including the Baltic States, Moldova, western Ukraine and parts of Finland. These changes reflected the facts on the ground and were accepted at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences.

But in the broader zeitgeist, it was time to put an end to wars of conquest. This was articulated in Article 2 of the UN Charter, which requires states to refrain from the use of force against the “territorial integrity or political independence” of any other state.

The principle was further cemented in UN Security Council resolution 242 following the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, which decrees that acquisition of territory following war cannot be accepted.

That is why the international community has largely rejected any move towards Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, along with the Golan Heights. (The United States, however, accepted the latter in 2019.)

The taboo on conquest since 1945

The only successful territorial conquests broadly accepted by the international community since 1945 have been a few cases of newly independent countries in the 1960s taking over enclaves or neighbouring territory formerly held by colonial powers. This includes, for example, India taking Goa from Portugal.

But other seizures of ex-colonial territories have been broadly rejected, or at least strongly contested. The main examples are Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara and Indonesia’s seizure of East Timor. Indonesia’s [takeover of West Papua] was accepted by the international community as part of a UN-mandated self-determination process, though this has since been condemned by many as deeply flawed.

South Vietnam’s ultimate takeover by the North might be regarded as a conquest, but neither Vietnam recognised the other as a separate country, seeing the conflict effectively as a continuation of civil war. Neither was a UN member.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the most blatant attempt to conquer independent territory was Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait. This was repelled by a UN-sanctioned force.

Global opposition to Russia’s seizures

Distinct from invasions, there have been many unresolved border disputes that have occasionally flared into armed conflict. Russia, however, had no such dispute with Ukraine before its 2014 takeover of Crimea.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine negotiated a border treaty to delineate their borders in precise detail. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the treaty in 2003 and later affirmed that Russia had no territorial claim against Ukraine.

An overwhelming number of UN members have rejected Russia’s annexation of Crimea and four other regions of southeastern Ukraine.

However, the initial outrage at the invasion has weakened over time. Many countries have accused the US of a double standard, given its invasion of Iraq in 2003 (even if that didn’t involve territorial conquest). Trump’s statements about acquiring Greenland, Canada, Gaza and the Panama Canal have only further weakened confidence in US opposition to territorial conquest.

As political scientist Tanisha Fazal argues, the norm against territorial conquest risks suffering a “death of a thousand cuts”. Allowing Russia to keep parts of Ukraine could be a terminal blow.

What a lasting peace should look like

Some commentators have argued for an interim settlement under which Russia would retain control of occupied territory without Ukraine ceding it formally. A final settlement would be left to the future.

Some have called this de facto recognition of Russian annexation, but that is a misguided notion. De facto recognition implies acceptance of a new status quo, along with a return to business as usual.

The outcome of the war will only be partially about territory. Russia has imposed a brutal occupation on these regions, with widespread allegations of torture, killings, disappearances, population transfers and thefts of Ukrainian businesses and homes. Ukrainian language, culture and identity are being erased under a draconian regime.

Ukraine appears willing to accept an interim ceasefire to stop the bloodshed. But its territorial integrity should be fully supported by making clear to Russia that its invasion and occupation remain illegal and unacceptable.

This would include maintaining economic sanctions, demanding accountability for war crimes, returning property stolen from Ukrainians, and allowing Ukrainians transferred to Russia to return home. Ukraine must also be given the means to defend itself against a renewed Russian attack.

Advocates of anything less would be condoning and normalising flagrant territorial aggression. They would merit neither earthly rewards, such as Nobel Prizes, nor divine blessings.

Jon Richardson 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. Since WWII, it’s been taboo to force nations to cede land after war. Russia wants to normalise conquest again – https://theconversation.com/since-wwii-its-been-taboo-to-force-nations-to-cede-land-after-war-russia-wants-to-normalise-conquest-again-264590

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Cornell, PhD Candidate in Public Health & Community Medicine, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney

When news broke last week that US political influencer Charlie Kirk had been shot at an event at Utah Valley University, millions of people around the world were first alerted to it by social media before journalists had written a word.

Rather than first seeing the news on a mainstream news website, footage of the bloody and public assassination was pushed directly onto audiences’ social media feeds. There weren’t any editors deciding whether the raw footage was too distressing, nor warnings before clips auto-played.

Australia’s eSafety commissioner called on platforms to shield children from the footage, noting “all platforms have a responsibility to protect their users by quickly removing or restricting illegal harmful material”.

This is the norm in today’s media environment: extreme violence often bypasses traditional media gatekeepers and can reach millions of people, including children, instantly. This has wide-ranging impacts on young people – and on society at large.

A wide range of violence

Young people are more likely than older adults to come across violent and disturbing content online. This is partly because they are more frequent users of platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and X.

Research from 2024 from the United Kingdom suggests a majority of teenagers have seen violent videos in their feeds.

The violence young people see on social media ranges from schoolyard fights and knife attacks to war footage and terrorist attacks.

The footage is often visceral, raw and unexpected.

A wide range of harms

Seeing this kind of violent footage on social media can make some children not want to leave the house.

Research also shows engaging with distressing media can cause symptoms similar to trauma, especially if the violence feels close to our own lives.

Research shows social media is not simply a mirror of youth violence but also a vector for it, with bullying, gang violence, dating aggression, and even self-directed violence playing out online. Exposure to these harms can have a negative effect on young people’s mental health, behaviour and academic performance.

For others, violent content on social media risks “desensitisation”, where people become so used to suffering and violence they become less empathetic.

Communication scholars also point to cultivation theory — the idea in this case that people who consume more violent content begin to see the world as potentially more dangerous than it really is.

This potentially skewed perception can influence everyday behaviour even among those who do not directly experience violence.

Read more:
How images of knives intended to stop youth knife crime may actually be making things worse

A long history of violence

Violence distributed by media is as old as media itself.

The ancient Greeks painted their pottery with scenes of battles and slaying. The Romans wrote about their gladiators. Some of the first photographs ever taken were of the Crimean War. And in the second world war, people went to the cinema to watch newsreels for updates on the war.

The Vietnam war was the first “television war” — images of violence and destruction were beamed into people’s homes for the first time. Yet television still involved editorial judgement. Footage of violence was cut, edited, narrated and contextualised.

Seeing violence as if you were there has been transformed by social media.

Now, footage of war, recorded in real time on phones or drones, is uploaded to TikTok or YouTube and shared with unprecedented immediacy. It often appears without any additional context – and often isn’t packaged any differently to a video of, say, somebody walking down the street or hanging out with friends.

War influencers have emerged – people who post updates from conflict zones, often with no editorial training, unlike war journalists. This blurs the line between reporting and spectacle. And this content spreads rapidly, reaching audiences who have often not sought it.

Israel’s military even uses war influencers to “thirst trap” social media users for propaganda purposes. A thirst trap is a deliberately eye-catching, often seductive, social media post designed to attract attention and engage users.

How to opt out of violence

There are some practical steps that can be taken to reduce your chances of encountering unwanted violent content:

• turn off autoplay. This can prevent videos from playing unprompted

• use mute or block filters. Platforms such as X and TikTok let you hide content with certain keywords

• report disturbing videos or images. Flagging videos for violence can reduce how often they are promoted

• curate your feed. Following accounts that focus on verified news can reduce exposure to random viral violence

• take a break from social media, which isn’t as extreme as it sounds.

These actions aren’t foolproof. And the reality is that users of social media have very limited control over what they see. Algorithms still nudge users’ attention toward the sensational.

The viral videos of Kirk’s assassination highlight the failures of platforms to protect their users. Despite formal rules banning violent content, shocking videos slip through and reach users, including children.

In turn, this highlights why more stringent regulation of social media companies is urgently needed.

Samuel Cornell receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

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

– ref. Viral violent videos on social media are skewing young people’s sense of the world – https://theconversation.com/viral-violent-videos-on-social-media-are-skewing-young-peoples-sense-of-the-world-265371

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Becky Freeman, Professor in Public Health, University of Sydney

Australia aims to reduce rates of daily smoking to 5% or less by 2030. By 2023, we got down to 8.3%.

A key tool to encourage smokers to quit has been to raise the tobacco taxes. Now a pack of 20 cigarettes costs over A$40, with the excise making up around 70% of the price.

Meanwhile, illegal cigarettes have flooded the market, often costing $20 or less a pack. People who wouldn’t normally break the law are now buying cheap, illicit tobacco.

Critics of the current tobacco excise argue the tax has stopped working to further reduce smoking rates and should be lowered. But what would this mean for illicit tobacco consumption?

We asked five experts: could making tobacco cheaper actually cut down smoking rates?

Five out of five said no. Here are their detailed responses.

Becky Freeman is an unpaid expert advisor to the Cancer Council tobacco issues committee and a member of the Cancer Institute vaping communications advisory panel. She has received relevant competitive grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Medical Research Future Fund, NSW Health, the Ian Potter Foundation, VicHealth, and Healthway WA; consulting fees from the World Health Organization, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Department of Health, the United States Food and Drug Administration, the NHMRC e-cigarette working committee, NSW Health, and Cancer Council; and travel expenses from the Oceania Tobacco Control Conference and the Australia Public Health Association preventive health conference.

Coral Gartner receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, and Australian Institute of Criminology. She has been engaged as an expert for the Australian government in litigation. She is a member of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco and the Public Health Association of Australia and is the Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board for the BMJ Journal, Tobacco Control. She is a member of Project Sunset, which is a non-profit network of tobacco control researchers and advocates who support phasing out the general retailing of commercial tobacco products.

Roger Magnusson previously received research funding from the Australian Research Council.

Ron Borland receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the United States’ National Institute for Health.

Fei Gao 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. Could making tobacco cheaper actually cut down smoking rates? We asked 5 experts – https://theconversation.com/could-making-tobacco-cheaper-actually-cut-down-smoking-rates-we-asked-5-experts-265384

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steve Hatfield-Dodds, Honorary Professor of Public Policy, Australian National University

The clock is ticking on the federal government’s big climate reveal: Australia’s 2035 emissions targets. The declaration is expected later this week, and will signal to the world how hard Australia will go to help avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Draft advice by the Climate Change Authority, which is advising the government on the target, flagged it may recommend a range of emissions cuts between 65-75%, from 2005 levels. The government is being pushed from both sides – to either go bold, or settle on a conservative figure.

Adding heat to the debate, the government on Monday released the National Climate Risk Assessment, which laid bare the frightening implications for Australia if global warming is not curbed.

So what must the government weigh up when choosing the 2035 emissions target? What is at stake? And how should we judge whether the government’s decision is good or bad?

The target must be genuinely achievable

Steep emissions reductions will be required across all sectors of the economy to land anywhere inside the 65-75% range by 2035.

Some sides of the debate, such as the Climate Council and Business for 75, suggest Australia can rapidly accelerate its pace of emissions reduction.

To deliver these emissions cuts in ten short years requires real-world investment and action. In the electricity sector, for example, an estimated A$142 billion in capital investment is needed for essential electricity infrastructure by 2050 – to deliver, among other things, a 140% increase in generation by 2035.

However, the rollout of electricity generation and transmission infrastructure is struggling to meet even the current 2030 targets. This should give optimists pause.

Other voices have sought to highlight the potential negative impacts of higher emissions targets. The Business Council of Australia, for example, says a target over 70% may send businesses offshore, leading to a loss of export earnings.

However, good policy design can avoid or minimise these outcomes. For example, the Safeguard Mechanism – which aims to reduce industrial pollution – already includes carefully designed rules for trade-exposed heavy industry.

Importantly, when it comes to setting an emissions target, all argument and analysis used to inform the decision should be evidence-based and grounded in reality. And real-world policies must be available to deliver the target.

So when assessing the achievability of the government’s target, we should ask ourselves:

– does the target reflect what the evidence says is possible in the next decade?

– how can Australia speed up action and negate potential economic and social harms?

– does the government have the right policies to achieve the targets?

The target must be genuinely ambitious

The benefits-versus-costs ratio of climate action has improved markedly in recent years, for several reasons.

First, the cost of renewable energy has fallen quickly. And analysis shows around 60% of the emissions reductions required to 2035 can be met using renewable energy and other existing technologies. These also have the potential to save households and businesses money.

Second, our understanding of current and future climate harms is growing. For example, as the National Climate Risk Assessment revealed, projected climate disaster costs could total $40.3 billion every year by 2050, even if global warming was limited to 1.5°C.

What’s more, Australia has much to gain from the global clean energy transition. Its world-class sun and wind resources can underpin new export industries in energy-intensive commodities such as iron and steel. My research in 2023 showed new energy industries and related opportunities could boost national income by at least $60 billion by 2050. The potential has only expanded since then.

Ambitious targets are important. They provide businesses with the clarity and confidence to deploy the capital and workers to actually make the net-zero transition happen. They are also crucial to attracting international investment and talent.

Conversely, a low target would discourage potential investors and entrepreneurs, and undermine Australia’s future prosperity.

Ambitious targets also motivate government, driving both policy tweaks and more substantive changes.

And Australia’s global reputation is on the line. We must walk the talk on climate – both to maintain our status as a responsible global citizen, and to encourage others to do the same.

All this strengthens the case for Australia to set the most ambitious target it can confidently achieve.

So when assessing the ambition of government’s target, we should ask ourselves:

– is it proportionate to climate impacts and threats we seek to avoid?

– will it attract the investment and talent needed?

– will it encourage (or discourage) stronger climate action by other countries?

Consolidating momentum

Global action is not yet sufficient to limit climate change to 1.5°C. However, the emissions curve has tilted down from previous runaway growth – and policy momentum is building.

Crafting an effective global response to climate change is a diabolical problem for the world’s democracies, but we are making progress.

Australia’s middle ground is now larger, more diverse and better-informed than it was 15 years ago. Many more people now understand the need for sensible emissions reduction and the potential benefits of the energy transition.

Some may argue Australia must go on a war footing – set a 2035 target of at least 85% and do whatever it takes to meet it. Maybe they’re right. But no democractically elected government could follow this path unless the majority of Australians were convinced.

Australia cannot afford to get stuck in the past. Setting – and delivering – an ambitious emissions target will leave the nation better placed than a timid target will.

The 2035 target is a huge opportunity for Australia. The government must ensure it is evidence-based, achievable, ambitious, and in the national interest.

Steve Hatfield-Dodds is head of research for the EY Net Zero Centre. As EY-Parthenon Strategy’s Chief Climate Economics and Policy Officer (Oceania) he advises not-for-profits, businesses, and national, state and territory governments on climate and sustainability strategy. Recent engagements have included advice and expert review for Australian Treasury and the Climate Change Authority. He was a member of the Chubb Review of arrangements for Australian Carbon Credit Units in a personal capacity in 2022.

– ref. Australia’s 2035 climate target is coming. Here’s how we’ll know if it’s good enough
 – https://theconversation.com/australias-2035-climate-target-is-coming-heres-how-well-know-if-its-good-enough-265372

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Bertram, Visiting Scholar, School of History, Philosophy, Political Science and International Relations, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

The growing view that New Zealand’s energy market is “broken” has brought with it a stream of suggestions for piecemeal changes that nibble at the edges of the problem, without tackling the real structural, legal and distributional issues.

Nor do those suggestions demonstrate how such changes would fit into a coherent overall scheme for the future industry, or truly bring down soaring prices that are crippling households and businesses.

NZ First’s Shane Jones seems to agree, and recently called for his party to consider a policy of renationalising the big “gentailers” (the combined generation and retail companies). But his solutions appear designed to lock in dependence on fossil fuels rather than hasten the 100% renewable energy future that now beckons.

From the outset, it’s important to set clear goals for the electricity industry. Mine are: reliable abundant supply, and the lowest possible price to end-users, especially households.

Those were the goals of the old New Zealand Electricity Department, and they had been largely achieved by 1986. So-called reforms since then have reduced reliability while massively increasing prices and profits for the benefit of asset owners (including the government).

So, it’s also important to remember there are now entrenched vested interests whose incomes and asset portfolios are dependent on high prices and monopoly profits.

Bringing prices and profits down will mean writing down the asset values of the gentailers, the national grid and the lines companies – at the expense of their shareholders.

New Zealanders in general may be big winners. But there would be powerful and noisy losers. The sums involved will be large, and the politics will be difficult.

Rents and rising prices

Most of New Zealand’s electricity is generated from low-cost renewables – hydro, geothermal and wind – but also some high-cost thermal generation (mainly from the coal-and-gas-fired Huntly power station).

Before reform, the wholesale electricity price was set to cover the average cost of generation. Since reform, the wholesale price has been set by the highest-priced supplier, which these days mostly means Huntly.

That highest price is paid to all generators, despite the fact most of them will have offered to supply (and would have covered their genuine costs) at much lower prices.

As long as Huntly is kept in the mix as the highest-cost supplier that sets the market price, the market design will keep prices high – far above the cost of the solar and wind generation, whose entry to the market is being blocked by that same market design.

The result has been to enrich the owners of low-cost hydro and geothermal plant inherited from the old New Zealand Electricity Department.

From the moment this market mechanism was proposed in the mid-1980s, it was obvious it would drive prices up and deliver large rents (pure excess profits) on the legacy hydro and geothermal assets.

Equally, from the moment the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter’s cut-price supply contract was signed in 1960, it was clear that exceptions could be made. It was – and is – possible to impose long-term contracts to have electricity supplied to target groups of consumers at a low price.

In 1992, I and colleagues suggested how a contract similar to Tiwai Point’s could have provided 20,000 gigawatt-hours per year at two cents per kilowatt hour, to be passed through to consumers. The same contract structure remains an option today to lessen the burden of energy poverty on residential consumers.

However, what would have been simple back in 1992 was rejected as too “regulatory” by the head of Electricorp, which was overseeing the deregulation of the electricity market in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, it is politically hard because of the overblown asset values, dividends and tax revenues that have flowed from the high-price regime.

Worse, the first beneficiaries of monopolistic prices and asset values throughout the 1990s and 2000s have in many cases taken their capital gains and departed. The investors who bought their shares at high prices are now exposed to regulatory risk if the flow of economic rent is cut back.

Energy poverty and job losses

In 2012, in my submission to the select committee considering the Mixed Ownership Model Bill, I warned that future governments might find themselves forced to restrain anti-consumer and anti-competitive behaviour, which would push down the gentailers’ asset values and share prices.

I wrote then that this would “be financially devastating for the balance sheets of the companies, in precisely the same way as their conduct since 1990 has been devastating for the household budgets of millions of ordinary people”.

In the 13 years since, the conflict between monopoly profit and the public interest has worsened steadily, producing energy poverty for households and job losses in manufacturing, while asset values have soared.

Meanwhile, the arrival of energy-hungry computer data centres threatens to preempt any low-cost new generation that comes online.

Bringing down prices

Governments seem paralysed, both by their own conflicts of interest as owner-shareholders and by the prospect of backlash from powerful corporate and shareholder interests that benefit from the status quo.

Several broad solutions are straightforward in principle:

• breaking up the gentailers

• bringing in enough wind, solar, geothermal and battery power to remove the need for Huntly, even in dry years

• and redirecting the legacy hydro assets to operate as a battery-equivalent rather than a profit centre.

But for electricity prices to come down significantly, the government would need to do at least these four things:

• break down monopoly power and the sympathetic regulatory regime of the Electricity Authority and Commerce Commission

• resurrect local electrical supply authorities to operate “energy communities”, combining the cost benefits of local small and medium-scale sources of renewable supply, with local network operators as coordinators

• tender out procurement contracts for large-scale offshore wind, onshore solar and battery storage, owned and operated outside of the gentailers

• and factor the true economics of renewable energy into the market by forcing the established vested interests to genuinely compete in the face of the renewables revolution.

Consumers and small business deserve a break after three decades of the current system. The outlook, alas, is for more of the same government fiddling while the economy suffers.

Geoff Bertram 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. Power struggle: why fixing NZ’s ‘broken’ electricity market is such a formidable challenge – https://theconversation.com/power-struggle-why-fixing-nzs-broken-electricity-market-is-such-a-formidable-challenge-264582

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Flavio Menezes, Professor of Economics, Director of the Australian Institute for Business and Economics, The University of Queensland

New figures show Australians bought a record 85,000 home batteries in the first half of 2025. That’s almost three times more than the year before, and nearly fivefold growth since 2022.

Eventually, those batteries will need to be reused or recycled. What happens then? The rules we create today will shape whether that’s affordable or easily available for householders.

My research – prepared for the federal Treasury at the request of the Australian and New Zealand governments – shows how both countries can reduce regulatory barriers to the net-zero transition.

For example, my consultation with industry revealed that moving a home or car battery from Melbourne to Perth can require multiple permits. This makes transporting batteries across different Australian states needlessly costly.

Unless this is addressed, battery recycling and repurposing markets will be smaller in some places than necessary. This drives up prices and reduces consumer choice.

So how do Australia and New Zealand compare on our current approaches to regulatory standards? And what three reforms do we need to deliver practical changes across the two countries, such as rolling out EV chargers that work with all electric cars, at the lowest price possible?

How standards affect our lives

When we picture barriers to a cleaner economy, we often think of coal plants or polluting petrol cars. Yet a serious obstacle is less visible: regulatory standards.

These technical rules were first introduced in Australia a century ago, for bolts on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Today Australia has around 10,000 voluntary standards, covering everything from workplace and car safety to EV chargers and batteries. These can become mandatory when adopted by regulators or governments.

Operating out of sight, standards are like the economy’s plumbing.

Built well, they help the economy run smoothly. Standards give businesses, investors, and consumers confidence that products are safe, compatible and reliable. They enable trade, cut transaction costs, and help scale up new technologies.

But when standards are set up poorly, we get blockages: slower investment, stifled competition and higher costs.

It’s crucial we get this right now. Over the next decade alone, it’s estimated Australia will need up to 4,000 more new standards to help manage the net-zero transition, along with cyber-security and more.

The price of getting it right or wrong

Take the example of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure.

If we want more people to buy EVs, drivers need to know that chargers are safe, “interoperable” (able to seamlessly work for different cars) and widely available.

But if each Australian state sets slightly different regulatory standards, manufacturers and operators face higher costs. Electric car owners then risk ending up with incompatible systems or paying higher prices.

For new technologies, aligning with international benchmarks would cut costs, improve safety, and accelerate the development of a circular battery economy.

The Australian Productivity Commission has estimated that simply broadening recognition of overseas standards in mandatory consumer safety product rules could save businesses A$500 million a year.

In the energy sector, the commission found adopting international standards for vehicle-to-grid technology – to allow electric cars to feed power into the grid – could unlock a net present benefit of $2 billion by reducing the need for extra grid-scale battery storage.

How Australia and NZ compare

Right now, Australia faces three systemic problems.

• Duplication: regulators often replicate the work of international bodies, such as the International Electrotechnical Commission. For small economies, this adds cost without value and delays access to technology.

• Fragmentation: states, territories, and regulators adopt or interpret standards differently. Businesses must comply with multiple regimes, raising costs and discouraging investment.

• Outdated processes: standards are slow to update, leaving Australia out of step with global best practice. Consumers risk missing out on newer, safer, and cheaper products.

The impact is clear. Australia’s small economy is split into eight smaller slices. Consumers face fewer choices, higher prices, and slower adoption of innovation.

In contrast, I found New Zealand takes a more pragmatic approach. It defaults to trusted international or overseas standards unless there is a strong local reason to do otherwise.

3 fixes for Australia and NZ

The report recommended three reforms for both Australia and New Zealand.

• Clarity: clearly define when standards should be mandatory. They should be adopted only when essential for achieving public policy objectives, and designed to avoid unnecessary burdens on competition and innovation.

• Default to international standards: international and trusted overseas standards should be the starting point, with regulators required to justify any departure. This would reduce duplication, cut compliance costs, and make it easier for firms to participate in global supply chains.

• Coordination: regulators must collaborate across jurisdictions to close gaps, avoid overlaps, and consider the broader policy impacts of standards.

What to watch next

Since receiving my report, the Australian and NZ governments recently committed to work together on electric vehicle charging, electrical products (including batteries), building and construction standards and product safety standards.

If they do adopt a smarter approach – clarifying when standards are needed, defaulting to trusted international norms, and improving coordination across jurisdictions – Australia and New Zealand can better support and speed up the clean energy transformation.

This article draws on the report I prepared for Treasury at the request of the Australia–New Zealand 2+2 Climate and Finance Dialogue. I am also the Chair of the Queensland Competition Authority and a member of the Australian Competition Tribunal.

– ref. From batteries to EV chargers, Australia and NZ need these 3 fixes to hit net-zero at less cost – https://theconversation.com/from-batteries-to-ev-chargers-australia-and-nz-need-these-3-fixes-to-hit-net-zero-at-less-cost-265197

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Skoyles, PhD Candidate, School of Planning, University of Waterloo

The housing affordability crisis is top of mind for many around the world, including Canadians. Between 2019 and 2024, house prices in Toronto and Montréal had an average annual increase of 6.7 per cent and 10.2 per cent, respectively.

Prices throughout the country are expected to continue increasing over the next decade and as a result, the pressure is intense to rapidly increase residential development.

Yet, municipal governments must balance this pressure with other tasks, like preparing for the effects of climate change. Some of the most pressing challenges for cities include meeting their housing and climate change goals without massive changes in land use to maintain green spaces and the benefits they provide to people.

Natural spaces like parks and woodlands provides many diverse benefits to city residents, from helping to cool off surrounding neighbourhoods to providing recreational areas.

The advantage these spaces have over grey infrastructure is that they can simultaneously help combat multiple challenges faced by cities, including poor air quality, heatwaves and flooding. When nature is intentionally used to combat these types of challenges, it is referred to as nature-based solutions.

Nonetheless, nature-based solutions are still rarely implemented in developments. Therefore, it’s important to identify and use key opportunities that can help communities balance their competing goals by increasing the use of nature-based solutions.

By highlighting these opportunities, we can inform municipal governments, developers and residents about how communities can be built to successfully combat climate change and other challenges.

In our recent study, we interviewed planners and developers throughout Ontario to identify these opportunities.

Nature in development

Municipal planners and private land developers across Ontario are obliged by provincial policy to consider nature in their decisions about the planning and development of neighbourhoods.

However, this largely happens because they are required by law to protect municipal natural heritage systems (large woodlots or wetlands, for example), and not because they understand or support the benefits from nature, such as flood prevention.

Natural features that fall outside the natural heritage system, such as smaller woodlots or individual trees, are not protected by provincial policy. Instead, they can be protected by municipal policy or bylaws. However, these policies and bylaws vary, and some municipalities do a better job than others in protecting nature for their residents.

Developers often see protected nature as a barrier to development, but some of them also understand that it provides benefits to residents. Some try to make use of nature in innovative ways, like building natural pathways or naturalized creeks through a subdivision.

Unfortunately, municipalities sometimes push back against these innovations because of concerns over maintenance costs and worries about possible interference with infrastructure.

Read more:
Bringing forests to the city: 10 ways planting trees improves health in urban centres

Nature and climate change

Overall, the planners and developers we interviewed recognized that nature can help communities fight the effects of climate change.

They stated that planning policies and bylaws are also starting to change in ways that can address these concerns. For example, many municipalities have established tree canopy targets or introduced more restrictive stormwater management requirements.

But climate change is rarely stated as the reason for a change to policy and bylaws. For example, a city might recognize tree cover is important for the city environment and introduce a tree protection bylaw, but that does not mean the bylaw addresses climate change.

Similarly, developers might plant trees to beautify a neighbourhood and make it more desirable for home buyers, but they might not do this to reduce climate change impacts. Addressing climate change only implicitly or as a side effect makes it much harder to co-ordinate different actions and can limit their overall effectiveness.

A main reason why the climate change benefits of nature are considered only implicitly is that planners and developers are uncertain about how reliable the information is for quantifying these benefits.

Another problem is that municipalities differ in how they address these issues, which creates highly variable regulatory conditions. Having province- or nation-wide standards would help fix this issue.

Though they are not yet widely implemented across Canada, some municipalities use green development standards as a key mechanism for introducing benefits of nature in developments. These standards work, for example, by mandating a minimum percentage of green landscaping on a development site. Unfortunately, Ontario’s recently passed Bill-17 has created uncertainty around these standards.

Ways to support nature-based solutions

There are key opportunities to support building more sustainable and climate-ready communities through increased use of nature-based solutions in developments. These opportunities largely come through policy, tools and people:

1. Provincial and municipal policy changes that consider the climate change benefits of nature-based solutions could help increase its use in development. This could be done by strengthening and expanding green development standards, like those currently implemented in some cities.

2. Developing and using tools that can rigorously quantify the climate change benefits of nature-based solutions could also have substantial impact. These tools could clarify the benefits of nature-based solutions and provide a solid argument for their increased use.

3. Collaboration between the public and private sectors is crucial to encourage increased use of nature-based solutions. Whether it is working together to craft realistic policy goals or to incorporate new tools, both sectors are key to ensuring changes are effective and efficient.

Adam Skoyles has received funding from Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Michael Drescher receives or has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness, and the Natural Assets Initiative. Michael Drescher has had a volunteer position for Carolinian Canada and has worked with the Ontario Land Trust Association.

– ref. Canadian cities can prepare for climate change by building with nature – https://theconversation.com/canadian-cities-can-prepare-for-climate-change-by-building-with-nature-263608

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

Opposition leader Sussan Ley says welfare should be targeted “to those who truly need it”, and people should be helped “off welfare and into self-reliance”.

In her first major economic speech as leader, Ley on Wednesday will lay down some policy markers to contain spending and the size of government, with more people looking after their own needs rather than expecting government to do so.

Welfare benefits should not be paid to wealthier households, Ley says in her speech, titled “From Dependency to Empowerment: Restoring Responsibility to the Budget”. To be given to CEDA in Melbourne, it has been released ahead of delivery.

“We must move from a time of dependency to empowerment,” she says.

“By ‘dependency’, I mean the growing expectation that government will provide for every need and solve every problem by spending more.

“This mindset, supercharged in recent years, weakens both our finances and our national character.

“My message is that we must put guard rails around government spending, not as an end in itself, but so that we can strengthen our economy, preserve our capacity to help those truly in need, and ensure the next generation inherits opportunity, not debt.

“Because debt is an issue of intergenerational fairness.”

Ley says that moving to empowerment is about getting the balance right between what people do for themselves and the taxpayer-funded safety net.

“It’s about reaffirming that government can do a lot of good but it cannot and should not do everything.”

There is general agreement about the importance of a safety net, Ley says, “but true compassion is sustainable compassion.

“A welfare system that attempts to be all things to all people will eventually collapse under its own weight, and that outcome would hurt the most vulnerable most of all.

“If we want to keep the safety net strong, we have to ensure it is financially sustainable and targeted to genuine need.

“Unfortunately, in the past few years, the pendulum has swung too far toward dependency.

“It has become almost taboo in politics to suggest that not everyone is entitled to every government benefit.
But I ask: is it fair to pile up debts that our children will have to pay off?”

Ley’s speech will win support from those who believe more discipline should be imposed on government spending and on the reach of government, and those who want the Coalition to differentiate itself from Labor. But her pitch is also risky, because opponents will fan fears of some people losing benefits under the Liberals.

In 2012, then shadow treasurer Joe Hockey stirred criticism with a speech on “The End of the Age of Entitlement”. Treasurer in the Abbott government, Hockey’s first budget, incorporating much of his approach, triggered a massive backlash.

Ley points to research from the Centre for Independent Studies that said more than half of adults relied on government for most of their income, and 10% of taxpayers paid two thirds of all income tax.

“The time of reflexively looking to Canberra to solve every problem with a blank cheque, must give way to a time of empowerment, personal responsibility, and fiscal commonsense.”

Ley says the Albanese govenrment has “normalised and extended the era of big government,” rather than shifting back to normalcy after the big COVID spending.

“Rather than using the recovery to pare back spending, the current government has layered on even more permanent programs and higher baseline spending.
The mindset of “government will take care of everything” has been actively encouraged.

“If we keep spending at pandemic-emergency levels during ordinary years, we will inevitably lose our AAA credit rating.”

Ley says this year government spending will reach 27% of GDP. This is the highest (outside recession) since 1986, and up from 24% since the government came in.

“We are essentially running a peacetime economy on emergency fiscal settings. That is obviously not sustainable.”

The first step in moving to “empowerment” and responsible budget management must be to re-establish “some fundamental principkle in our public discourse,” Ley says.

“Principles that used to be broadly accepted across politics, but which have been allowed to erode.” The default position should be balancing the budget over the economic cycle, with surpluses in prosperous times to pay down debt. Spending growth had to be restrained, and over-reliance on volatile revenue booms had to be avoided.

Policies were needed to incentivise people.

“This means winding back disincentives to work and save.

“It means targeting welfare to those who truly need it, while encouraging those who are able to work or study to do so.

“Our goal should be to help people off welfare and into self-reliance , not to add more people onto government support unnecessarily.

“As a government , we cannot, and should not, shield everyone from every cost of living pressure by writing a cheque.

“Ultimately, the best form if welfare is a job and a thriving private economy.

“Universal free everything might sound nice, but in reality it drains resources from those who need help most.

“We believe government support should be a safety net, not a blanket.

“That means, for example, we should not be paying welfare benefits to high-income households.”

The Liberals would be “unrelenting” in pursuing efficiencies, and eliminating duplicative or low-value programs.

“We are at a crossroads. Down one path is a continuation of the status quo. Bigger government, higher spending, higher debts and eventually higher taxes to pay for it, and a people increasingly reliant on Canberra’s largesse.

“Down the other path is a course correction restoring sustainability and unleashing the power of our people and businesses to drive progress.

“The first path may feel comfortable for a time, until it hits the wall of economic reality. The second path may require some hard work and adjustment now, but it will lead to far greater rewards in the future.”

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. Opposition leader Sussan Ley commits to more targeted welfare, saying it shouldn’t go to high income households – https://theconversation.com/opposition-leader-sussan-ley-commits-to-more-targeted-welfare-saying-it-shouldnt-go-to-high-income-households-265379

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Australian Catholic University

Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old Utah man suspected of having fatally shot right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, is reportedly not cooperating with authorities. Robinson was apprehended after a more than two-day manhunt and is being held without bail at the Utah County Jail.

While a motive for the shooting has yet to be established, Utah Governor Spencer Cox has highlighted Robinson’s links to gaming and the “dark internet”.

Bullet casings found at the scene were inscribed with various messages evoking gaming subcultures. One of the quotes – “Notices bulges, OwO what’s this” – can be linked to the furry community, known for role-playing using animal avatars.

Another message – “Hey, fascist! Catch! ↑ → ↓↓↓” – features arrow symbols associated with an action that allows players to drop bombs on their foes in Helldiver 2, a game in which players play as fascists fighting enemy forces.

One casing reads “O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Ciao, ciao!”, words from an Italian anti-Mussolini protest song, which also appears in the shooter game Far Cry 6. Yet another is a homophobic jibe: “if you read this you are gay LMAO”.

If Robinson does turn out to be a shooter radicalised through online gaming spaces, he would not be the first. Previous terrorist shootings at Christchurch (New Zealand), Halle (Germany), Bærum (Norway), and the US cities of Buffalo, El Paso and Poway were all carried out by radicalised young men who embraced online conspiracies and violent video games.

In each of these cases, the shooter attempted (and in all but the Poway shooting, succeeded) to live stream the atrocities, as though emulating a first-person shooter game.

A growing online threat

The global video game market is enormous, with an estimated value of almost US$300 billion (about A$450 billion) in 2024. Of the more than three billion gamers, the largest percentage is made up of young adults aged 18–34.

Many of these are vulnerable young men. And extremist activists have long recognised this group as a demographic ripe for radicalisation.

As early as 2002, American neo-Nazi leader Matt Hale advised his followers “if we can influence video games and entertainment, it will make people understand we are their friends and neighbours”.

Since then, far-right groups have produced ethnonationalist-themed games, such as “Ethnic Cleansing” and “ZOG’s Nightmare”, in which players defend the “white race” against Islamists, immigrants, LGBTQIA+ people, Jews and more.

Studying radicalisation in gamer circles

For many, the Kirk shooting has resurfaced the perennial question about the link (or lack thereof) between playing violent video games and real-world violence.

But while this is an important line of inquiry, the evidence suggests most radicalisation takes place not through playing video games themselves, but through gaming platform communication channels.

In 2020, my colleagues and I studied an extraordinary data dump of more than nine million posts from the gaming platform Steam to understand this process.

We found evidence of radicalisation occurring through communication channels, such as team voice channels. Here, players establish connections with one another, and can leverage these connections for political recruitment.

The radicalisation of vulnerable users is not instantaneous. Once extremists have connected with potential targets, they invite them into platforms such as Discord or private chat rooms. These spaces allow for meme and image sharing, as well as ongoing voice and video conversations.

Skilful recruiters will play to a target’s specific grievances. These may be personal, psycho-sexual (such as being unable to gain love or approval), or related to divisive issues such as employment, housing or gender roles.

The recruit is initiated into a fast-changing set of cynical in-jokes and in-group terms. These may include mocking self-designations, such as the Pepe the Frog meme, used by the far-right to ironically embrace their ugly “political incorrectness”. They also use derogatory terms for “enemies”, such as “woke”, “social justice warriors”, “soyboys”, “fascists” and “cultural Marxists”.

Gradually, the new recruit becomes accustomed to the casual denigration and dehumanisation of the “enemies”.

Dark and sarcastic humour allow for plausible deniability while still spreading hate. As such, humour acts an on-ramp to slowly introduce new recruits to the conspiratorial and violent ideologies that lie at the heart of terrorist shootings.

Generally, these ideologies claim the world is run by nefarious and super-powerful plutocrats/Jews/liberals/communists/elites, who can only be stopped through extreme measures.

It then becomes a question of resolve. Who among the group is willing to do what the ideology suggests is necessary?

What can be done?

The Australian Federal Police, as well as the Australian parliament, has recognised the threat of violence as a result of radicalisation through online gaming. Clearly, it’s something we can’t be complacent about.

Social isolation and mental illness, which are sadly as widespread in Australia as they are elsewhere, are some of the factors online extremists try to exploit when luring vulnerable individuals.

At the same time, social media algorithms function to shunt users into ever more sensational content. This is something online extremists have benefited from, and learned to exploit.

There is a growing number of organisations devoted to trying to prevent online radicalisation through gaming platforms. Many of these have resources for concerned parents, teachers and care givers.

Ultimately, in an increasingly online world, the best way to keep young people safe from online radicalisation is to keep having constructive offline conversations about their virtual experiences, and the people they might meet in the process.

Matthew Sharpe 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. Charlie Kirk shooting suspect had ties to gaming culture and the ‘dark internet’. Here’s how they radicalise – https://theconversation.com/charlie-kirk-shooting-suspect-had-ties-to-gaming-culture-and-the-dark-internet-heres-how-they-radicalise-265279

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

Only a few months into her leadership, Sussan Ley is facing an extraordinary insurgency from Liberal frontbenchers.

Last week she had to sack Jacinta Price for refusing to endorse her leadership.

Now she is being warned, bluntly, that if the Liberals don’t drop the commitment to net zero by 2050 – or at least water it down – there will be walkouts by frontbenchers.

Andrew Hastie, the opposition’s home affairs spokesman, told the ABC on Monday if Ley stuck with net zero “that leaves me without a job”.

“I’ve nailed my colours to the mast. If I go out with the tide in two and a half years, that’s great. I’ll get a lot more time with my kids back. My primary mission in politics is to build a stronger, more secure, more competitive Australia. Energy security is a vital input to that.”

Hastie said he felt “quite passionate” about the net zero issue.

For someone with intimate knowledge of military discipline, one would have thought Hastie would have had more understanding of the need for reasonable discipline in politics too. But he has decided to make his own rules.

He is acting in a way that is quite contemptuous of Ley, whose position is weak because her party is fractured into warring factions.

With the Liberals conducting a review of their energy policy, Hastie has spoken out on net zero on multiple occasions since the election. By indicating that if he didn’t get his way he would spit the dummy rather than accept a majority decision, he is presumably seeking to turn up the heat on his leader and his party.

His reference that he wouldn’t really mind if he lost his seat at the next election is also self-indulgent, as if the seat is his personal possession rather than being more appropriately seen as belonging to his party.

On Tuesday education spokesman Jonno Duniam bought into the debate, describing Hastie as “a man of integrity”, and telling Sky News “if we just said net zero at any cost by 2050, I think you’d find there’d be a mass exodus”. This would be “bad policy”.

Duniam is pointing to a likely compromise – net zero with qualifications or conditions – which may be where Ley now hopes to land her divided party.

This would be a weakening of the net zero commitment Scott Morrison took to the Glasgow climate conference in 2021, and would invite criticism from the younger voters and in inner urban seats.

But it would be better, in political terms, than ditching the commitment entirely. It also may be the best Ley could do, given the opposition to net zero that has emerged among many in the rank and file across the country. The Victorian state Liberal council became the latest party body to vote against it last weekend.

In a week when the government is preparing to launch its 2035 target and has put out a major report on the threats posed by climate change, you would have thought the opposition would try to avoid drawing attention to its problems on climate policy.

You would have expected it would have Dan Tehan, its spokesman, on climate and energy, out and about.

But no. Tehan is overseas, and has been talking up nuclear energy.

It is a metaphor for the Liberals’ wider problem of finding themselves in the wrong places at the wrong times.

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: Hastie refuses to accept that politics, like military service, requires some discipline – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-hastie-refuses-to-accept-that-politics-like-military-service-requires-some-discipline-265011

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan L. Zecher, Associate Professor, Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Australian Catholic University

Charlie Kirk: white nationalist, conservative Christian, right-wing social media personality, shooting victim, and now, a “martyr”. That is, according to his supporters.

Since Kirk’s death last week, a number of his followers from the Christian right have ascribed him the title of “martyr”. President Donald Trump himself called Kirk a “martyr for truth and freedom”.

Similarly, Rob McCoy, a pastor emeritus from California, said at a Sunday morning church service

Today, we celebrate the life of Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old God-fearing Christian man, a husband, father of two, a patriot, a civil rights activist, and now a Christian martyr.

Looking back at the history of martyrdom offers insight into what it means for Kirk to be hailed a martyr, both for his memory, and for the future of the United States.

From witness to criminal to witness again

The term martyr emerged in ancient law courts with the Greek word martus, meaning a witness or person who gives testimony.

From their earliest days, Christians appropriated it to refer to those who testified to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Luke even concludes with Jesus telling his disciples: “You are witnesses – martyres – of these things” (Luke 24:48).

Early Christians regularly ran afoul of Roman authorities, and were brought to court as criminals. The charges generally revolved around questionable loyalty to the Roman state and religion. Could someone worship Jesus and also offer sacrifice to the traditional gods, including the emperor or his divine spirit (his “genius”)?

Christians and Romans alike thought not. From the 2nd century onward, accounts of these trials centred on a single question: “are you a Christian?”. If the answer was “yes”, execution followed.

For local authorities, the executed person was a criminal. But for fellow Christians, they were witnesses to the truth of the gospel, and their deaths were evidence of the Christian God. They were both witness and testimony – “martyrs” in every sense.

In 2004, scholar of early Christianity, Elizabeth Castelli, argued martyrs are born only after their death. The martyr isn’t a fact, but a figure produced by the stories told about them, and the honour afforded them in ritual commemorations. A person isn’t a martyr until other people within a specific community decide they are.

To understand what makes someone a martyr, we have to ask two questions:

1. what are they a witness to? As in, what ideal or cause led to their death and how did their death testify to it?

2. who are they a witness for? Who tells their story and who calls them a martyr?

Boundaries and borderline cases

The history of martyrdom is also a history of debates over what kind of death “counts”, and what role martyrs play in the church.

Questionable cases have accumulated through the decades. Some “martyrs” volunteered eagerly, perhaps too eagerly.

On April 29 304 CE, an archdeacon named Euplus stood outside the city council chamber in Catania, Sicily, shouting: “I want to die; I am a Christian”. After some discussion, the governor sentenced him to torture and he died of his injuries. Was this martyrdom, or suicide?

Under Christian emperors from the 4th century on, soldiers who died fighting Persians (or later Arabs) also came to be called martyrs. A soldier’s death is especially considered martyrdom if they fought against members of a different religion.

However, the soldier-martyr label has also raised anxieties. The most recent example came from the troubling claim by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kyrill that Russian soldiers who die fighting in Ukraine are martyrs – despite fighting fellow Orthodox Christians. What do these soldiers testify to?

The stories of martyrs define community borders. Those who kill martyrs tend to be treated as enemies of the faith, whether they are Roman authorities, enemy combatants, or even people assumed to be complicit in the event.

The MAGA martyr

Let’s apply the two questions above to Charlie Kirk, who has been dubbed both “martyr” and “patron saint of MAGA”.

What would Kirk be a martyr to? To his supporters and those on the MAGA right, he died for free speech, for Judeo-Christian values, for a commitment to “Western civilisation”, and supposedly for the “truth” itself.

To others, especially those he attacked and denigrated publicly – such as queer and trans people, immigrants, Muslims and feminists – he died for white nationalism, hatred and exclusion.

This takes us back to the second question: who is Charlie Kirk a martyr for? Clearly, the answer to this is Christian nationalists, MAGA supporters and the broader American right.

He testified in life to their shared beliefs and values, and in death is their “patron saint”. The legacy of Kirk’s death will be to define who is part of this community, and who is excluded. The question then is, will a division framed in such polarising terms come to define American society as a whole?

From revenge to love

Following Kirk’s death, people on the far-right called for violent revenge against the left – even though the shooting suspect’s political motivations are unknown.

Media have reported a surge in radicalisation on right-wing platforms. There was even a website, now removed, dedicated to doxxing anyone who spoke negatively about Kirk and using that information to get them fired.

Against this rhetoric of revenge, the history of martyrdom offers a different way forward. The early theologian, Clement of Alexandria, said someone becomes a martyr not because of their death, but because of their love.

The only true witness, he argued, is love, because God is love. The only honour one can offer the martyrs is to love as they loved. Clement suggests it’s possible to reject vengeance and sectarianism, even if one loves the martyrs.

Jonathan L. Zecher 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. Can Charlie Kirk really be considered a ‘martyr’? A Christianity historian explains – https://theconversation.com/can-charlie-kirk-really-be-considered-a-martyr-a-christianity-historian-explains-265283

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aruna Sathanapally, Chief Executive, Grattan Institute

Despite the fear of Artificial Intelligence (AI) taking our jobs, we actually don’t have enough workers.

The Baby Boomer generation is retiring and Australia’s workforce is ageing. The challenge of finding the workers we need will grow over the coming years.

Meanwhile, more workers will be needed to support the clean energy transition, build more housing and meet growing demand for human services – particularly healthcare and aged care.

Here’s what’s driving this situation and what can be done to ensure we get the workforce we need for the services and infrastructure we value.

Australia’s workforce needs are growing

Australians live longer than people in almost every other country in the world, and we enjoy high standards of living in our old age.

As Australians live longer, the population that is over 75, and over 85, are growing to a size we have not seen before.

Our ageing population is already reshaping demand for labour and services, and this will continue in the coming decades. Older people need more care and other services than younger people.

And as countries get richer, their citizens’ expectations of government services increase. These trends are driving growing demand for workers in healthcare, aged and disability care.

Older people also typically live in smaller households (one or two people), which means we need to build more homes for a particular population.

Australia is also in the midst of a whole-of-economy transformation to net-zero carbon emissions, which will require substantially more infrastructure, and a major reallocation of labour and skills. It’s an industrial revolution on a deadline.

At the same time, our working age population is shrinking as a share of the total population. A smaller workforce relative to the size of the population will make it harder to build the homes and infrastructure we need, and provide the care services we expect.

The counter-trend here is technology and AI. AI is likely to bring many productivity benefits and may mean fewer workers are needed in a range of occupations.

But the balance of evidence suggests AI is overall more likely to augment than replace workers, at least in the next few years.

Read more:
These jobs will thrive – but others may vanish – as AI transforms Australia’s workforce

Making the most of our talent pool

The Australian labour market is strong. Our unemployment rate is low. But Australia can and should aim higher on workforce engagement to increase the number of workers, hours worked and making full use of workers’ skills and expertise.

Beneath the aggregate statistics, there are still many groups that face barriers to work or want to work more hours – particularly women.

Read more:
New study finds the gender earnings gap could be halved if we reined in the long hours often worked by men

Australian women are much more likely to work part-time than their international peers (or Australian men).

And when you consider that Australian women are among the most highly educated in the world, the untapped potential is even greater.

Migration is another essential part of meeting our future workforce needs and is Australia’s great strength among advanced economies. Migration increases the size of our working-age population, thereby slowing the ageing of the population.

But the biggest benefits come from attracting skills and talent from across the world, ensuring migrants can actually use their training and experience once in Australia, and better supporting migrants to thrive.

Pulling the policy levers

Governments hold many policy levers to help grow Australia’s talent pool.
Most directly, the federal government determines Australia’s migration intake and the skills mix.

Australia should aim to be a best-practice migration nation, with a migration system that is:

• flexible (rather than overly prescriptive)

• focused on the medium-term (rather than short-term skills shortages)

• offers a clear pathway from temporary visas to permanent residency (while acknowledging that not all temporary visa-holders can obtain residency)

• and ensures that migrants can put their skills and qualifications to best use in Australia.

Governments should also be reducing barriers to work, particularly for women with young children. Women with young children are much more likely than the general population to face high “effective marginal tax rates” – the proportion of additional income lost to taxes, reduced welfare payments, additional childcare costs, and HELP repayments – which make the pay-off from work unattractive.

Women with young children are also much more likely than other groups to increase their paid work hours if their effective marginal tax rates are reduced.

Federal and state governments have made important progress in recent years on reducing barriers to work for parents with young children. But there is more to be done.

Even after recent increases in the child care subsidy, a quarter of working-age women who use childcare still face high or very high effective marginal tax rates.

Ensuring high-quality childcare is broadly available and affordable would reduce barriers to work for parents, and older carers too, helping to boost our talent pool.

As Australia’s population ages, older worker engagement will become increasingly important too. Workforce engagement starts to decline when people reach their 50s, and drops steeply for people in their 60s.

Embracing flexible work practices and investing in healthier ageing would enable more people to work for longer.

Australia’s challenge is not job creation, but how to find the workers we need. Our governments will need to pull all the levers to ensure we do.

The Grattan Institute began with contributions to its endowment of $15 million from each of the Federal and Victorian Governments, $4 million from BHP Billiton, and $1 million from NAB. In order to safeguard its independence, Grattan Institute’s board controls this endowment. The funds are invested and contribute to funding Grattan Institute’s activities. Grattan Institute also receives funding from corporates, foundations, and individuals to support its general activities as disclosed on its website.

– ref. Australia needs more workers. These are the policy changes that would help get them – https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-more-workers-these-are-the-policy-changes-that-would-help-get-them-265191

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hui Wen Quek, PhD candidate, Discipline of Pharmacy, The University of Western Australia

Australians are living longer than ever before. While this is broadly good news, ageing well comes with a range of challenges.

As people grow older, they’re more likely to develop multiple chronic conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and cognitive problems such as dementia.

These conditions often mean people need to take more medications. Around one in three Australians aged over 70 take five or more different medications. While these can be important, and even lifesaving, managing multiple medications can become a major challenge in itself.

We wanted to understand more about how older Australians use medications. In a new study, we looked at ten years of national data from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), which subsidises medications for eligible Australians.

What did we find?

Using a 10% sample of Australians between 2013–23, we examined how often people aged 65 and over visited prescribers and pharmacies for the dispensing of their PBS medicines. Prescribers included GPs and other medical specialists, for example.

We found older Australians visited their prescribers an average of five times a year and made 16 pharmacy visits annually for the supply of their PBS medications. In 2023, people over 65 had an average of 31 PBS-subsidised medicines dispensed throughout the year (this figure may include repeats of the same medicine).

We also found the number of older Australians using five or more regular PBS medications increased by 32% (from 1.03 million to 1.35 million) from 2013 to 2023, likely driven by population ageing.

It’s important to note our study only captured PBS-subsidised medications that were dispensed. Prescriptions that weren’t filled or those not subsidised by the PBS (such as over-the-counter medications and supplements) weren’t included, meaning the true number of medications older people are using is likely even higher.

Managing medications

While medications are essential for managing health, they can also pose risks. Taking more medications often means a higher likelihood of errors, side effects, drug interactions and hospitalisations.

What’s more, as we age, physiological changes such as reduced kidney and liver function can increase the risk of medication-related harms. Depending on the individual, it could come to a point where the risk of harm eventually outweighs the benefits of the medication.

Sometimes, when it comes to medications, less can be more.

As well as the physical health risks, managing multiple medications can be complex and demanding for older adults and their families. More medications mean more doctors’ visits, more trips to the pharmacy, and prescription costs can also quickly add up. All this can influence what daily life looks like for older people.

Meet ‘Jean’

Let’s look at a hypothetical case study. Jean is 80 and lives on her own. She is on ten different medications for conditions including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, arthritis, reflux and sleep problems. Some need to be taken multiple times a day, meaning she takes more than ten tablets daily.

Jean’s routine revolves around managing her medications, remembering what to take and when, coping with medication side effects including dizziness and tiredness, and making frequent trips to the doctor and pharmacy.

She’s stopped going to her weekly bowls game, and even lunch outings have become stressful as she needs to remember her pills and time them around meals. Her daughter helps with transport and picking up scripts, but the complexity of her medications has affected her lifestyle, independence, and enjoyment of life.

Although this case study is fictional, it reflects the circumstances many older people find themselves in with regards to medication use.

What can be done?

It’s important for older people taking multiple medications to talk to their doctor or pharmacist about whether their current medication regimen is still right for them, and how to manage their medication safely and effectively.

Many Australians, particularly older adults, could be eligible to be referred by their GP for a government-funded medication review. These medication reviews are conducted by a credentialed pharmacist and designed to help people get the most benefit from their medications while minimising any potential harms.

However this service remains under-utilised, which motivated a recent campaign to improve awareness and uptake.

Read more:
Taking more than 5 pills a day? ‘Deprescribing’ can prevent harm – especially for older people

Let’s return to Jean. Fortunately, she recently received a detailed medication review.

The reviewing pharmacist was able to make some practical changes to the timing of when Jean takes some of her medications. Also, by suggesting products that combine more than one medication in a single tablet, the pharmacist reduced the number of tablets Jean needs to take every day.

The pharmacist also worked with Jean’s community pharmacy to repackage Jean’s medications into a pill organiser and helped establish a reminder system to help Jean remember to take her medications at the correct times and when to refill her prescriptions.

Finally, the pharmacist queried several of Jean’s medications with her doctor in light of side effects and changes in her health status. As a result, the dose of one medication was halved, and another was discontinued.

Jean now plans to have her medications reviewed annually.

Older Australians tell us they want to enjoy happier, healthier and more fulfilling lives. With the right support, there’s a real opportunity to reduce the burden of taking multiple medications, and help older Australians like Jean not just live longer, but live well.

Hui Wen Quek is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia. Her PhD is funded by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.

Amy T Page is supported by the Western Australian Future Health Research and Innovation Fund/Western Australian Department of Health. She receives funding from the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF). She is the Director for the Centre for Optimisation of Medicines, The University of Western Australia.

Christopher Etherton-Beer is the chair of the Drug Utilisation Sub-Committee of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee. The views expressed in this article do not represent those of the committee.

Kenneth Lee is supported by the Western Australian Future Health Research and Innovation Fund/Western Australian Department of Health. He receives funding from the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF). He is the Deputy Director for the Centre for Optimisation of Medicines, The University of Western Australia.

– ref. Older Australians collect an average of 31 PBS scripts a year – new research – https://theconversation.com/older-australians-collect-an-average-of-31-pbs-scripts-a-year-new-research-261271

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa M. Given, Professor of Information Sciences & Director, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University

The Australian government today released regulatory guidance on the social media minimum age law, which comes into effect on December 10. The law will restrict individuals under 16 from holding accounts on many social media platforms.

Reasonable steps for tech companies

This guidance follows a self-assessment guide for technology companies recently released by the eSafety Commission. Companies can use this to determine whether their services will be age-restricted.

That guidance included details on the types of platforms to be excluded from the age restrictions, such as those whose “sole or primary purpose” is professional networking, to support education or health, or to enable playing of online games.

Today’s guidance is aimed at services likely to be age-restricted, such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. It sets out what the government considers “reasonable steps” technology companies must take to “ensure they have appropriate measures in place” to comply with the legislation.

Removing underage users

Social media platforms will be expected to “detect and deactivate or remove” accounts from existing underage users. The government advice says this should be done “with care and clear communication”, which suggests account-holders will be notified.

However, it remains unclear whether companies will delete a user’s content. Nor is it clear whether an underage person’s account could be reactivated once they turn 16.

Preservation options may demonstrate a level of “care” expected by the legislation. This may be important for young people concerned about losing their creative content and social media history.

Tech companies will also need to “prevent re-registration or circumvention by underage users whose accounts have been deactivated or removed”.

This suggests companies may need to put measures in place to counter attempts to use virtual private networks (VPNs), for example, which allow users to hide their country of residence. They may also need strategies to check whether underage users are accessing accounts due to errors made by age-assurance technologies.

How age assurance may work

For users over 16 who are erroneously restricted from accessing accounts, technology companies must “provide accessible review mechanisms”.

Companies are also expected to take a “layered approach” to age assurance to minimise error rates and “friction” for users. They must also give users choice on how age will be assured, as they “cannot use government ID as the sole method”.

This may allay some data-privacy concerns. However, the number of users who need to provide some form of personal information to assure their age will be significant.

The government guidance makes clear companies must ensure they are “avoiding reliance on self-declaration alone” (that is, simply asking users their age). Companies must also be “continuously monitoring and improving systems” to demonstrate they are effective in limiting underage account access.

Will the legislation achieve its goal?

The guidance provides clarity on many practical questions about how the legislation will be implemented. It also demonstrates that Australians under 16 are not being banned, completely, from accessing social media content.

Under-16s will still be able to view social media content online without logging into an account. This means things such as watching YouTube on a web browser.

Young people may still access content through accounts held by older people. Think of when adult accounts remain logged in on shared devices.

Parents and other caregivers will need to ensure they understand the new rules and continue to guide young people accessing content online. The eSafety Commissioner will also provide further resources to support people to understand the new laws.

What won’t be required

Importantly, the government “is not asking platforms to verify the age of all users”. The guidance explains such a blanket verification approach “may be considered unreasonable, especially if existing data can infer age reliably”. Some young people may keep their accounts, such as in cases where facial scanning technology estimates them to be over 16.

The government “does not expect platforms to keep personal information from individual age checks” or retain “user-level data”. Rather, companies will be expected to keep records that “focus on systems and processes”.

This suggests individual cases of young people accessing accounts may not mean companies have failed to comply with legislation.

However, the eSafety Commissioner said in a press conference today that companies will be expected to “make discoverable and responsible reporting tools available”. Where some young people’s accounts are missed, the government will “talk to the companies about the need to retune their [age assurance] technologies”.

What happens next?

Technology companies are likely to start implementing restrictions using data they already have for account holders, to ensure compliance from December 10. If a person signed up to Facebook in 2004, when the platform launched, for example, that could demonstrate the account holder is over 16 without additional checks.

However, the government is not prescribing specific approaches or technologies companies must use. Each service will need to determine its own strategy. This means Australians could face differing expectations for age assurance from each platform.

What the government has made clear is there will be no delay in the start date for compliance. Communications Minister Anika Wells said there is “no excuse for non-compliance”.

The next steps are now in the social media companies’ hands.

Lisa M. Given receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Association for Information Science and Technology.

– ref. Details on how Australia’s social media ban for under-16s will work are finally becoming clear – https://theconversation.com/details-on-how-australias-social-media-ban-for-under-16s-will-work-are-finally-becoming-clear-265323

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ehsan Noroozinejad, Senior Researcher and Sustainable Future Lead, Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University

Climate risks are hitting where Australians feel it most: at home.

One of the headline-grabbing figures in a new climate risk assessment was that Australian property values could take a A$611 billion hit by 2050, under a 3°C warming scenario.

That level of warming is something Australia needs plan for. As a new National Adaptation Plan, also released yesterday, said:

it is prudent to plan for global warming levels of 2°C to 3°C by the end of this century, with temperatures in Australia likely to track higher than the global average.

But what does that $611 billion hit to property values actually mean? And what more can we do to better protect our homes – including 1.5 million of them already at high or very high risk today?

The $611 billion property price forecast

Australia’s first comprehensive National Climate Risk assessment, released yesterday, forecasts losses in Australian “property values” could reach $571 billion by 2030 under a 3°C warming scenario. By 2050, that could hit $611 billion.

To be clear, that isn’t the bill to repair or rebuild homes after disasters. And it doesn’t include the cost of replacing public assets such as roads, bridges or power stations.

It’s the drop in market value of properties as climate risk becomes clearer, buyers pay less, banks may value homes lower, and insurance can get more expensive or harder to obtain.

For example, if a house that might have sold for $800,000 without these risks sells for $720,000 once flood risk and higher premiums are factored in, that $80,000 difference is a “loss in value”.

Aggregated across the country, those individual discounts add up to the assessment’s forecast of $611 billion by 2050.

1.5 million homes at high risk – even now

The assessment found about 751,000 (8.2%) of residential buildings are currently located in “high risk” areas for floods, bushfires, tropical cyclones and heatwaves, while 794,000 (8.7%) are in “very high risk” areas. That’s a total of more than 1.5 million homes today.

Even under a conservative 2°C warming scenario, that’s expected to rise to 789,000 homes (8.9%) in high-risk areas, and more than 1 million (11.1%) in very high-risk areas.

And you don’t have to own a beachfront home to be at growing risk from rising sea levels.

The assessment found 1.5 million people in coastal communities – especially in low-lying areas within 10 kilometres of soft shorelines – could be in high and very high risk areas for coastal flooding and erosion by 2050. That could grow to a third of coastal communities – home to more than 3 million people – by 2090 if populations stayed put.

Read more:
Is this Australia’s climate wake-up call? Official report reveals a hotter, harder future if we don’t act now

Costlier home insurance, if you can get it

The new assessment also warns insurance affordability and availability are likely to worsen, with flow-on effects to mortgages and house prices if insurance cover is withdrawn.

Direct impacts from floods, coastal inundation, fires, wind and subsidence could more than double the number of properties classed as high risk by 2100.

For some homes, insurance premiums could rise enough to knock 10% off the property value.

Read more:
Australia faces a home insurance reckoning – and we can learn from California’s bold move

That all assumes things stay the same as they are today. Governments, communities and households can all do more in response to these two new reports.

4 key gaps we need to act on

Australia’s new adaptation plan is a start. It outlines national leadership across seven systems and sets out $3.6 billion committed since 2022 and around $9 billion to 2030 for measures that support resilience. These include the $1 billion Disaster Ready Fund and urban river cooling projects.

Read more:
Climate change is causing ever more disruption. Can Australia’s new adaptation plan help?

But what else would help?

The federal government is expected to announce its new emissions reduction targets this week.

In the meantime, there are four pillars of practical adaptation that would give Australians greater confidence, all of which align with the new assessment’s evidence.

1) National floodplain mapping with consistent data: Australians need clear, comparable hazard bands to guide land-use planning and building decisions. The assessment points to risk-based planning and building codes as core tools. National mapping would feed these directly.

Read more:
Insurers have detailed data on your home’s flood risk. So, why don’t you?

2) Open-access extreme weather–water models: publicly accessible tools linking rainfall, rivers, floodplains and coasts, so councils and insurers can stress-test decisions off the same, transparent system.

3) Continuous monitoring and event forensics: after every major flood, fire or storm, we need to collect consistent exposure, damage and claims data to reconstruct what failed – and why. This would support the adaptation plan’s push for effective, evidence-based adaptation and would avoid investing in measures that don’t work.

4) Regional ‘testbeds’ linking researchers, councils and insurers: piloting risk-based planning, climate-adjusted building codes, and nature-based coastal protections (such as mangroves) in high-risk regions. After testing, we then need to scale up what works.

This would help us develop more community-level plans to reduce damage bills and make homes insurable for longer.

What households and communities can do

If you’re in a flood-prone street, elevate electrics and appliances and use flood-tolerant materials. In bushfire zones, ember-proof vents and upgrade roofs and gutters.

Rooftop solar plus batteries and local community microgrids can help keep the power on during heat and storms. The assessment lists microgrids and storage as practical adaptation measures for energy resilience.

Finally, try using the assessment report’s new interactive online maps to understand your local risk. These show where climate risks are already high (for example, parts of northern Australia and coastal areas) and how it grows with increased warming.

Ehsan Noroozinejad has received funding from both national and international organisations. He is an expert in innovative housing policy and climate resilience. His most recent funding on integrated housing and climate policy comes from the Australian Public Policy Institute (APPI). He also serves, in a volunteer capacity, on the Executive Committee of the Early- and Mid-Career Academic and Practitioner (EMCAP) Network at Natural Hazards Research Australia, the Australian government-funded national centre for natural hazard resilience and disaster risk reduction.

– ref. New climate report warns property prices face a $611 billion hit. What does that mean? – https://theconversation.com/new-climate-report-warns-property-prices-face-a-611-billion-hit-what-does-that-mean-265284

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Graeme Austin, Professor of Law, University of Melbourne; Chair of Private Law, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Right now in the United States, there are dozens of pending lawsuits involving copyright claims against artificial intelligence (AI) platforms. The judge in one case summed up what’s on the line when he said:

These products are expected to generate billions, even trillions, of dollars for the companies that are developing them. If using copyrighted works to train the models is as necessary as the companies say, they will figure out a way to compensate copyright holders for it.

On each side, the stakes seem existential. Authors’ livelihoods are at risk. Copyright-based industries – publishing, music, film, photography, design, television, software, computer games – face obliteration, as generative AI platforms scrape, copy and analyse massive amounts of copyright-protected content.

They often do this without paying for it, generating substitutes for material that would otherwise be made by human creators. On the other side, some in the tech sector say copyright is holding up the development of AI models and products.

And the battle lines are getting closer to home. In August, the Australian Productivity Commission suggested in an interim report, Harnessing Data and Digital Technology, that Australia’s copyright law could add a “fair dealing” exception to cover text and data mining.

“Fair dealing” is a defence against copyright infringement. It applies to specific purposes, such as quotation for news reporting, criticism and reviews. (Australian law also includes parody and satire as fair dealing, which isn’t currently the case in New Zealand).

While it’s not obvious a court would agree with the commission’s idea, such a fair dealing provision could allow AI businesses to use copyright-protected material without paying a cent.

Understandably, the Australian creative sector quickly objected, and Arts Minister Tony Burke said there were no plans to weaken existing copyright law.

On the other hand, some believe gutting the rights of copyright owners is needed for national tech sectors to compete in the rapidly developing world of AI. A few countries, including Japan and Singapore, have amended their copyright laws to be more “AI friendly”, with the hope of attracting new AI business.

European laws also permit some forms of text and data mining. In the US, AI firms are trying to persuade courts that AI training doesn’t infringe copyright, but is a “fair use”.

An ethical approach

So far, the New Zealand government has not indicated it wants similar changes to copyright laws. A July 2025 paper from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), Responsible AI Guidance for Businesses, said:

Fairly attributing and compensating creators and authors of copyright works can support continued creation, sharing, and availability of new works to support ongoing training and refinement of AI models and systems.

MBIE also has guidance on how to “ethically source datasets, including copyright works”, and about “respecting te reo Māori (Māori language), Māori imagery, tikanga, and other mātauranga (knowledge) and Māori data”.

An ethical approach has a lot going for it. When a court finds using copyright-protected material without compensation to be “fair”, copyright owners can neither object nor get paid.

If fair dealing applied to AI models, copyright owners would basically become unwilling donors of AI firms’ seed capital. They wouldn’t even get a tax deduction!

The ethical approach is also market friendly because it works through licensing. In much the same way a shop or bar pays a fee to play background music, AI licences would help copyright owners earn an income. In turn, that income supports more creativity.

Building a licensing market

There is already a growing licensing market for text and data mining. Around the world, creative industries have been designing innovative licensing products for AI training models. Similar developments are under way in New Zealand.

Licensing offers hope that the economic benefits of AI technologies can be shared better. In New Zealand, it can help with appropriate use of Māori content in ways uncontrolled data scraping and copying don’t.

But getting new licensing markets for creative material up and running takes time, effort and investment, and this is especially true for content used by AI firms.

In the case of print material, for example, licences from authors and publishers would be needed. Next, different licences would be designed for different kinds of AI firms. The income earned by authors and publishers has to be proportionate to the use.

Accountability, monitoring and transparency systems will all need to be designed. None of this is cheap or easy, but it is happening. And having something to sell is the best incentive for investing in designing functioning markets.

But having nothing to sell – which is effectively what happens if AI use becomes fair dealing under copyright law – destroys the incentive to invest in market-based solutions to AI’s opportunities and challenges.

Graeme Austin 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. AI companies want copyright exemptions – for NZ creatives, the market is their best protection – https://theconversation.com/ai-companies-want-copyright-exemptions-for-nz-creatives-the-market-is-their-best-protection-264468

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Saini Samim, PhD Candidate, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of Melbourne

How did humans become human? Understanding when, where and in what environmental conditions our early ancestors lived is central to solving the puzzle of human evolution.

Unfortunately, pinning down a timeline of early human evolution has long been difficult – but ancient volcanic eruptions in East Africa may hold the key.

Our new study, published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, refines what we know about volcanic ash layers in Turkana Basin, Kenya. This place has yielded many early human fossils.

We have provided high-precision age estimates, taking a small step closer to establishing a more refined timeframe of human evolution.

Millions of years of volcanic eruptions

The Great Rift Valley in East Africa is home to several world-renowned fossil sites. Of these, the Turkana Basin is arguably the most important region for early human origins research.

This region is also within an active tectonic plate boundary – a continental rift – that has triggered volcanic eruptions over millions of years.

As early humans and their hominin ancestors walked these Rift Valley landscapes, volcanic eruptions frequently blanketed the land in ash particles, burying their remains.

Over time, many fossil layers have become sandwiched between volcanic ash layers. For archaeologists today, these layers are invaluable as geological time stamps, sometimes across vast regions.

Excellent timekeepers

Volcanic eruptions are excellent timekeepers because they happen very quickly, geologically speaking. As hot magma erupts, it cools and solidifies into volcanic ash particles and pumice rocks.

Pumice often contains crystals (minerals called feldspars) which act as natural “stopwatches”. These crystals can be directly dated using radiometric dating.

By dating the ash layers that lie directly above and below fossil finds, we can establish the age of the fossils themselves.

Even when such minerals are absent, volcanic ash layers can still help in dating archaeological sites. That’s because ash particles from different eruptions have unique chemical signatures.

This distinct geochemical “fingerprint” means we can trace a particular eruption across large distances. We can then assign an age to the ash layer even without datable crystals.

For instance, an ash layer found in Ethiopia, or even on the ocean floor, can be matched to one in Kenya. As long as their chemical compositions match, we know they came from the same eruption at the same geological point in time. This approach has been applied in the region for many decades.

Previous landmark studies have already established the geology of the Turkana Basin.

However, the region’s frequent eruptions are often separated by just a few thousands of years. This makes many ash layers essentially indistinguishable in time. Furthermore, some ash layers have very similar “fingerprints”, making it difficult to confidently tell them apart.

These challenges have made it tricky to date the Nariokotome tuffs, three volcanic ash layers in the Turkana Basin. While it’s clear from the rock record these are three separate ash layers, their age estimates and chemical signatures are very similar. We set out to narrow them down.

What did we find?

Compared to previous methods, modern dating tools can achieve an order-of-magnitude improvement in precision.

In other words, we can now confidently distinguish volcanic ash layers that erupted within just 1,000 to 2,000 years of each other. Applying this high-precision method to the Nariokotome tuffs, we resolved them as three distinct volcanic events, each with a precise eruption date.

However, determining the ages is not enough to fully distinguish these volcanic layers. Because the ash layers landed so close together in time – and potentially from very similar volcanoes – they also have remarkably similar major element geochemical “fingerprints”. Major elements are the most abundant elements in rocks, but they can’t always tell us much about the age and source of the rock material.

That’s where trace elements prove especially useful. These are elements that occur in very small amounts in rocks but provide much more distinctive chemical signatures.

Using laser-based mass spectrometry, we analysed the trace element composition of both the ash particles and their associated pumices. This provided us with unique trace-element fingerprints for each layer – still similar, but distinct.

Retracing human history

Once we had both precise age estimates and distinct geochemical profiles, we traced these ash layers in key archaeological sites.

For instance, the Nadung’a site in West Turkana, believed to be a prehistoric butchering site, has yielded some 7,000 stone tools. Our updated age estimates now makes this site approximately 30,000 years older than previously thought.

More importantly, we showed these refined methods can be applied beyond Kenya. We traced the ash layers of equivalent ages from Kenya to the Konso Formation in Ethiopia, indicating they came from three individual eruptions, in which material was spread across large distances.

The Nariokotome tuffs are an important case study that shows the powerful combination of high-precision dating with detailed geochemical fingerprinting. As we apply these techniques to more ash layers, both within the Turkana Basin and potentially beyond Kenya, we’ll have a better understanding of key questions in human evolution.

Did new tool technologies and species emerge gradually or suddenly? Did more than one hominin species exist simultaneously? How did shifting environments, climate and frequent volcanism affect early human evolution?

Now that we have precise geological timelines for the places where these artefacts were found, we’re a step closer to answering these long-standing questions about early humankind.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of David Phillips and Janet Hergt to this article.

Saini Samim receives funding from the Melbourne Research Schorship provided by the University of Melbourne. She has also received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Turkana Basin Institute for this project.

Hayden Dalton receives funding from The Turkana Basin Institute via a Proof of Concept Research Grant (TBI030)

– ref. Volcanoes can help us untangle the evolution of humans – here’s how – https://theconversation.com/volcanoes-can-help-us-untangle-the-evolution-of-humans-heres-how-255013

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hsiao-chun Hung, Senior Research Fellow, School of Culture, History & Language, Australian National University

Smoke-drying mummification of human remains was practised by hunter-gatherers across southern China, southeast Asia and beyond as far back as 12,000 years ago, my colleagues and I report in new research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This is the earliest known evidence of mummification anywhere in the world, far older than better-known examples from ancient Egypt and South America.

We studied remains from sites dated to between 12,000 and 4,000 years ago, but the tradition never vanished completely. It persisted into modern times in parts of the New Guinea Highlands and Australia.

Hunter-gatherer burials in southern China and Southeast Asia

In southern China and Southeast Asia, tightly crouched or squatting burials are a hallmark of the hunter-gatherers who inhabited the region between roughly 20,000 and 4,000 years ago.

Archaeologists working across the region for a long time have classified these graves as straightforward “primary burials”. This means the body was laid to rest intact in a single ceremony.

However, our colleague Hirofumi Matsumura, an experienced physical anthropologist and anatomist, noticed some skeletons were arranged in ways that defied anatomical sense.

Combined with this observation, we often saw some bones in these bodies were partly burnt. The signs of burning, such as charring, were visible mainly in the points of the body with less muscle mass and thinner soft tissue coverage.

We began to wonder if perhaps the deceased were treated through a more complicated process than simple burial.

A casual conversation in the field

A turning point came in September 2017, during a short break from our excavation at the Bau Du site in central Vietnam.

The late Kim Dung Nguyen highlighted the difficulties of interpreting the situation where skeletons were found, likely intentionally placed and seated against large rocks. Matsumura noted problems with their bone positions.

I remember blurting out – half joking but genuinely curious – “Could these burials be similar to the smoked mummies of Papua New Guinea?”

Matsumura thought about this idea seriously. Thanks to generous support and cooperation from many colleagues, that moment marked the real beginning of our research into this mystery.

How we identified the ancient smoked mummies

With our new curiosity, we began looking at photographs of modern smoked-dried mummification practices in the New Guinea Highlands in books and on the internet.

In January 2019, we went to Wamena in Papua (Indonesia) to observe several modern smoked mummies kept in private households. The similarity to our ancient remains was striking. But most of the skeletons in our excavation showed no outwardly obvious signs of burning.

We realised we needed a scientific test to prove our hypothesis. If a body was smoked by low-temperature fire – while still protected by skin, muscle and tissue – the bones would not be obviously blackened. But they could still retain subtle signs or microscopic traces of past firing or smoking.

Then came the COVID pandemic, which led to travel restrictions, preventing us from travelling anywhere. My colleagues and I were spread across different regions, but we sought various ways to continue the project.

Eventually, we tested bones from 54 burials across 11 sites using two independent laboratory techniques called X-ray diffraction and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. These methods can detect microscopic changes in the structure of bone material caused by high temperatures.

The results confirmed the remains had been exposed to low heat. In other words, almost all of them had been smoked.

More than 10,000 years of ritual

The samples, discovered in southern China, Vietnam and Indonesia, represent the oldest known examples of mummification. They are far older than the well-known practices of the Chinchorro culture in northern Chile (about 7,000 years ago) and even ancient Egypt’s Old Kingdom (about 4,500 years ago).

Remarkably, this burial practice was common across East Asia, and likely also in Japan. It may date back more than 20,000 years in Southeast Asia.

It continued until around 4,000 years ago, when new ways of life began to take hold. Our research reveals a unique blend of technique, tradition and belief. This cultural practice has endured for thousands of years and spread across a very broad region.

A visible form bridging time and memory

Ethnographic records show this tradition survived in southern Australia well into the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In the New Guinea Highlands, some communities have even kept the practice alive into recent times. Significantly, the hunter-gatherer groups of southern China and Southeast Asia were closely connected to Indigenous peoples of New Guinea and Australia, both in some physical attributes and in their genetic ancestry.

In both southern Australia and Papua New Guinea, ethnographic records show that preparing a single smoked mummy could take as long as three months of continuous care. Such extraordinary devotion was possible only through deep love and powerful spiritual belief.

This tradition echoes a truth as old as humanity itself: the timeless longing that families and loved ones might remain bound together forever – carried across the ages, in whatever form that togetherness may endure.

Hsiao-chun Hung receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DP140100384, DP190101839).

– ref. 12,000-year-old smoked mummies reveal world’s earliest evidence of human mummification – https://theconversation.com/12-000-year-old-smoked-mummies-reveal-worlds-earliest-evidence-of-human-mummification-265261

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Stollznow, Research Fellow, Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University

A few years ago, I was called a “bitch” in a workplace meeting simply for speaking up. The word stung, not just as a personal insult, but as part of a long tradition of policing women’s behaviour. Bitch is one of the most charged gendered slurs in English. And yet, today, it can be playful, empowering, or even celebratory.

This contradiction fascinated me. How did one word become both a weapon and a badge of honour? That’s the question I set out to answer in my book, Bitch: The Journey of a Word.

A word with teeth

Bitch has a long pedigree. First recorded more than 1,000 years ago as bicce (pronounced “bitch-eh”) in Old English, it began as a straightforward term for a female dog.

Almost immediately, though, it leapt into figurative use as an insult for women, comparable to calling someone a “slut” today. Interestingly, around the same time it became an insult for men as well.

The jump from “dog” to “bitch” as a slur was easy. In ancient Greece and Rome, the equivalent words for “dog” were already being used as a scathing insult – albeit used differently for both genders. Aimed at a woman, it usually implied disobedience, immodesty or shamelessness. Aimed at a man, it referred to human vices such as greed, arrogance and cowardice.

By the 18th century, bitch had become one of the most powerful gendered insults in the English language. British lexicographer Francis Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) called it “the most offensive appellation that can be given to a woman”. In many ways, it still is.

Unlike other contemporaneous slurs such as “shrew” or “harlot”, which have mostly faded from use, bitch endured. Its survival lies in its flexibility: it has been used to chastise women as nagging, manipulative, or domineering – but also, more recently, to praise them as strong, ambitious or unapologetic. For example, “you’re a bitch” versus “you’re a boss bitch”.

The long life of the word shows us how language both mirrors and moulds society. Words can wound, but they can also be repurposed as symbols of power.

A weapon against women (and men)

Bitch has long been a catch-all insult towards women. It is most often aimed at those judged “unpleasant”, but in practice can be triggered by almost anything.

Crucially, a woman can be branded a bitch not only for negative traits, but also for traits considered positive in men, such as assertiveness, ambition, sexual confidence and authority. Powerful celebrities and politicians are frequent targets.

Aimed at men, the term carries a different sting. It implies weakness, submission, or effeminacy: a man who fails to perform masculinity “correctly”.

Within LGBTQIA+ communities, the word has been reimagined. It can be used playfully, or affectionately as a term of endearment. Outside those spaces, however, it often retains its edge as a term of abuse.

Language and power

In the 1960s, feminists began reclaiming bitch, aligning it with independence and power. Campaigns and pop culture, from American feminist Jo Freeman’s BITCH Manifesto to singer Meredith Brooks’ 1997 song Bitch, recast the insult into a badge of pride signifying strength and confidence. Viral phrases like “boss-ass bitch” continue this tradition of turning stigma into self-empowerment.

Yet, the word is not, and may never be, fully reclaimed. Its sharpest edge remains a slur. For many, bitch still retains its bite. Whether it lands as offensive or complimentary depends on context, tone and power dynamics.

Like other reclaimed words such as “gay” or “queer”, bitch can empower or hurt, depending on who wields it and who it is being directed at.

The word has spawned countless contemporary idioms, from “resting bitch face” to
“life’s a bitch, and then you die”, and evolved playful modern spellings such as “biotch” to “biznatch”.

Its ubiquity shows how language reflects and reinforces attitudes about gender, power and behaviour. At the same time, it teaches a broader lesson: language is alive.

Words continually evolve along with society. And the struggle over who “owns” bitch mirrors broader struggles for gender equality. The word’s potential to empower or harm is a direct reflection of how society treats women.

The story of bitch

Over more than a millennium, bitch has survived censorship, bleeping and outright bans, only to return in ever-changing forms. Yet its original meaning remains: a female dog. All of its senses coexist, from insult to compliment, and from playful to profane. Its survival depends on its versatility and its unmistakable power to provoke.

True reclamation may depend less on the word itself and more on improving the conditions for women in modern society. Until then, bitch remains a powerful word: a sharp instrument of insult, and a mirror of our cultural values.

Ultimately, the journey of bitch shows us words are never neutral. And as our society changes, this 1,000-year-old word will continue to speak volumes.

Karen Stollznow 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. ‘Bitch’ has a 1,000-year history. Its use has always been about power – https://theconversation.com/bitch-has-a-1-000-year-history-its-use-has-always-been-about-power-264479

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland

The signing of a new defence treaty between Australia and Papua New Guinea will mark one of the most significant moments in the history of the bilateral relationship since PNG’s independence 50 years ago this week.

The treaty, to be signed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his counterpart James Marape in PNG, is expected to provide for closer military integration, mutual consultation on security threats, and a large-scale Australian investment in modernising the PNG Defence Force.

It will also set the framework for Papua New Guineans to serve in the Australian Defence Force on equal terms with Australian soldiers.

The broad thrust of the deal is clear: Australia and PNG are locking in a long-term, formal security partnership at a critical time in the Pacific.

Deep roots in shared history

The alliance between the two countries can be traced back to 1942, when Papua New Guinean soldiers, carriers, guides and villagers played a decisive role in the Kokoda campaign against invading Japanese forces. That experience imprinted itself deeply on Australia’s strategic consciousness and on our sense of obligation to PNG.

Formal defence cooperation began soon after PNG’s independence in 1975, with the creation of the Defence Cooperation Program. For nearly five decades, this program has provided training, infrastructure and advisory support. Thousands of PNG officers and enlisted personnel have passed through Australian training institutions, and joint exercises have become routine.

At times, however, cooperation has been complicated. During the 1990s, when conflict raged on Bougainville, many people in PNG believed Australian-supplied equipment was being used against Bougainvillean separatists.

That perception caused resentment and reminded Canberra that trust in the relationship cannot be taken for granted.

Why this treaty matters now

The new treaty comes at a significant geo-strategic moment, with China pursuing an expanded role in the Pacific. It has sought to secure a security agreement with Solomon Islands, as well as a region-wide trade and security deal. China is also suspected of playing a role in stalling a security agreement between Australia and Vanuatu.

The unresolved tensions over Indonesian rule in West Papua and Bougainville’s continued quest for independence remain potential flashpoints, as well.

For Australia, PNG is not simply a neighbour, but the key to its northern approaches. Defence Minister Richard Marles was blunt this week in describing its geostrategic weight:

PNG is obviously on our northern flank. It really matters that we have the very best relationship we can have with PNG in a security sense.

For PNG, the treaty provides a clear answer to the question of who its most trusted security partner is.

In an era where Port Moresby has expanded ties with China, the United States, Japan, Indonesia and others, this is no small step. It reflects a calculation that the Australia relationship is unique – the only one that combines proximity, capability and an enduring sense of shared history.

Partnership and equality

The symbolism of timing this announcement to coincide with this week’s independence celebrations is important. Fifty years ago, the Australian flag was peacefully lowered in Port Moresby, an act of trust between then prime minister Gough Whitlam and his PNG counterpart Michael Somare.

The defence treaty likewise needs to be understood in terms of partnership and equality. Albanese has consistently described Australia and PNG as “partners and equals”. That matters, because Papua New Guineans remain sensitive to any hint of condescension in the relationship. A treaty that enshrines mutual consultation rather than one-sided obligation fits that frame.

PNG Defence Minister Billy Joseph has said the treaty will include provisions similar to NATO’s Article 4 – requiring consultation on emerging threats – rather than NATO’s more binding Article 5 focused on collective defence.

This would allow Australia and PNG to act together when their interests align, but avoids overreach. It also reflects sensitivity to PNG’s sovereignty, and to the reality that Australia must not appear to dictate Port Moresby’s security choices.

Balancing ambition with realism

Allowing Papua New Guineans to serve in the ADF and even acquire Australian citizenship could open new opportunities for young people, but it will need careful management to avoid the hollowing out of the PNG Defence Force.

Australia’s promise of billions of dollars in support to modernise PNG’s military also carries expectations: PNG will want to see sustained delivery, not just announcements.

There are risks to be managed for Australia, as well. The treaty could, in theory, entangle Canberra in future domestic or regional disputes, from the PNG–Indonesia border to Bougainville. These are sensitive issues, and Canberra will need to tread carefully.

Still, the benefits are clear. By embedding PNG in Australia’s strategic orbit, the treaty removes ambiguity about where Port Moresby looks first for security support. It also strengthens regional stability by demonstrating that the Pacific’s largest island nation has a reliable partner committed to its success.

A relationship to be nurtured

Ultimately, treaties and defence hardware are only part of the story. What sustains the relationship is the dense web of personal and institutional ties built over generations – from soldiers on the Kokoda Track to aid workers, teachers, business people, sports teams and families across the Torres Strait.

That connective tissue has sometimes frayed, but it remains unmatched by any other partner. As I have argued elsewhere, Papua New Guineans know Australians well, even if Australians still have much to learn about PNG.

PNG’s population is expected to more than double by mid-century, potentially surpassing Australia’s. Its choices will shape the Pacific. At 50 years old, PNG is a resilient if often noisy democracy, with its own traditions of negotiation and compromise.

The new defence treaty is therefore not just about military cooperation. It is about recognising PNG as a nation that makes its own strategic decisions. It also ensures Australia is the partner that shows up, delivers and stays the course.

If the Kokoda campaign represents the historical foundation of our defence ties, the treaty marks their modern renewal. It reminds us that in security – as in so many other fields – when Papua New Guineans look for a partner they can trust, they continue to look first to Australia.

Ian Kemish is chair of the Kokoda Track Foundation, which receives funding from the Australian government and a range of corporate sponsors in PNG and Australia. He served as Australian high commissioner to PNG from 2010 to 2013.

– ref. With new PNG defence treaty, Australia is delivering on its rhetoric about trust at a critical time – https://theconversation.com/with-new-png-defence-treaty-australia-is-delivering-on-its-rhetoric-about-trust-at-a-critical-time-265064