Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stuart Khan, Professor and Head of School of Civil Engineering, University of Sydney

A new Productivity Commission report has urged Australian governments to commit to providing universal access to safe and reliable drinking water, warning that public health depends on it.

The report, National Water Reform 2024, is the result of an inquiry requested by the federal government. It found Australian governments must reform many of the ways water is managed to ensure the current and future wellbeing of our communities, environment and economy.

Australia has an existing strategy for national water reform, known as the National Water Initiative (NWI). It was agreed with the states and territories in 2004.

The Productivity Commission found the initiative has served Australia well throughout the past 20 years, but the challenges of water management are growing. Demand for water is increasing and changing. Climate change is making rainfall less reliable as a water source.

An updated National Water Initiative will help governments navigate these challenges.

The report urges a greater focus on water service provision that is “effective, equitable and efficient”. That requires good management. The report highlights the concept of a basic level of service, requiring all governments to commit to providing universal access to a safe and reliable supply of drinking water.

Why doesn’t everyone have a safe water supply?

Most Australians already enjoy very safe and reliable drinking water services. However, some communities don’t. Many small and remote communities, many of which have high Indigenous populations, have poor drinking water quality.

A December 2023 review looked at water quality trends in remote Australian communities. It highlighted contaminants in the water as a concern.

Very high levels of contaminants in source water are leading to levels that exceed thresholds set by the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines. Excessive hardness, turbidity, fluoride, iron and manganese levels are found in communities with limited treatment facilities.

Other communities have poorly maintained bores or groundwater. These are often vulnerable to runoff pollution from livestock. This exposes communities to risks of infection by bacteria and other pathogens, causing gastrointestinal diseases.

Inadequate water quality and quantity are harming the health of remote communities, particularly among Indigenous populations. Poor-tasting or visually unappealing drinking water may cause them to drink sugary beverages instead.

Water safety is still an issue for bigger communities

In contrast, water quality in Australia’s larger towns and cities is generally very high. But excellent levels of safety are not universal.

The safety of a water supply is not defined only by historical water quality. Safety also encompasses the likelihood and consequences of future incidents.

Some scenarios may be viewed as “an accident waiting to happen”. Even where water quality has historically been excellent, accidents do happen. The consequences can be significant if adequate measures are not in place to manage them. Important preventive measures include strict management of drinking water catchments, application of multiple independent water treatment processes, comprehensive monitoring of these processes, and effective incident response procedures.

In major cities of highly developed countries, water quality incidents tend to occur when something goes seriously wrong. There have been significant waterborne disease outbreaks in:

• New Zealand, caused by a bacterial infection, campylobacteriosis

• the United States, caused by the parasite Cryptosporidium

• Canada, caused by E. coli and Campylobacter jejuni bacteria

• the United Kingdom, caused by Cryptosporidium

• Norway, caused by Campylobacter bacteria.

What are the lessons for Australia?

Often, these incidents involve an element of human error. The risks are greater when skills and training have been neglected. Earlier this year, the Water Services Association of Australia highlighted inadequacies in skills and training for water supply operators.

Many of Australia’s drinking water supplies are also vulnerable to extreme weather conditions. Heatwaves, droughts, bushfires, cyclones and floods can all threaten drinking water supplies.

Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and severity of many types of extreme weather events. This means the risk of water quality incidents in our towns and cities is set to grow.

How do we pay for a safe supply?

Another important aspect of providing universal access is affordability. If improved services mean customers can no longer afford to pay their water bills, they will not be any better off.

This need for affordability is often what really limits our ability to improve water quality and safety. A technical solution to practically any water quality problem is available, but someone has to pay for it. The question of how we pay for water quality improvements needs to be considered further.

Our capital cities generally apply the concept of “postage stamp pricing”. All customers pay the same rates for their drinking water, even though some customers cost much more to service than others. But this cross-subsidisation between customers is limited in states where local councils, rather than larger state-wide entities, supply water for regional towns and remote communities.

All stages of the supply chain matter

The reforms needed to ensure universal access to safe and reliable drinking water also include institutional improvements. The Productivity Commission found there’s a need to ensure the separation of policy setting, service delivery and regulation, each with clearly defined roles.

Water service providers should have incentives to be efficient and innovative, and to deliver services in cost-effective ways that are in their customers’ interests.

For long-term success, Australian governments must establish and maintain processes that ensure water infrastructure developments and refurbishments are ecologically sustainable, economically viable and culturally responsive. If these wider impacts are overlooked, improvements in drinking water quality and safety will be short-lived and come at a high price.

Stuart Khan receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and Water Quality Reseach Australia (WQRA). He is Chair of the Water Forum of the Australian Academy for Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE).

– ref. Some of us don’t have high-quality drinking water, and it’s putting public health at risk. How do we deliver universal access? – https://theconversation.com/some-of-us-dont-have-high-quality-drinking-water-and-its-putting-public-health-at-risk-how-do-we-deliver-universal-access-233462

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

There are no parallels for the first debate of the 2024 US presidential election cycle.

From the moment Joe Biden walked across the stage, stiff-backed and straight-armed, disaster unfolded for the sitting president.

The bar Biden had to clear as he squared off against former president Donald Trump was always unfairly high. The election had already been framed as one largely about age, rather than, as Biden himself has argued, an existential fight for American democracy.

The debate was no different. Trump, supportive right-wing media and even much of the mainstream coverage focused overwhelmingly on Biden’s ability to just get through the 90 minutes coherently and strongly.

A generous interpretation – and one Biden supporters will no doubt push – is that he did get through it. Some have been saying that he did so with a cold.

But that messaging is unlikely to be successful.

From the moment the president coughed and gasped his way through his first answer, he likely confirmed the worst fears of even his staunchest supporters that he is simply too old to run again.

It is very difficult to see how Biden recovers from here.

Lack of fact-checking

The current president struggled to find his feet from the beginning.

One of the first questions from the CNN moderators focused on reproductive rights, a subject that should have been a clear winner for Biden.

Both his campaign and his administration have made this issue a big focus of the 2024 election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade two years ago. That decision was a clear mobiliser for voters in the 2022 midterm elections, in which Democrats performed much better than many analysts had expected.

Today, one in three American women live under total abortion bans. Democrats have been working hard to lay the blame for that squarely with Trump, who had repeatedly bragged about his role in upending reproductive rights in America.

After Trump told egregious lies about late-term and even “after birth” abortions during the debate, however, Biden stumbled in his response, failing to land on a clear message.

From there, Trump knew he had him.

Biden’s performance meant the actual policy substance of the debate, alongside the real stakes of this election, will be completely overshadowed. But the blame for that does not lie entirely at Biden’s feet.

The format of the debate saw the two CNN moderators reel off thematic questions one after the other without fact-checking the responses, or in some (but not all) cases, pushing the candidates to respond directly to the questions.

Shockingly, it was not until half an hour into the debate – once Biden had already lost – that the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and Trump’s threats to American democracy were raised.

The choice not to fact-check the candidates – and not to prioritise democracy as a central issue for the election – had the effect of placing the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s authoritarian tendencies on equal footing with the two men’s golf handicaps (which came up later in the debate).

That was a disaster for Biden’s attempts to frame this election on his terms. More importantly, it’s a potential disaster for American democracy.

Trump’s lies about the insurrection – such as his suggestion it was a false flag operation or that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was somehow to blame – were allowed to stand because neither the moderators nor Biden were able to effectively push back.

Trump was also allowed to say he will only accept the results of the election in November if it suits him, without being challenged directly by the moderators.

What does the debate mean?

A significant portion of the debate focused on the world beyond American shores, making clear how much this election matters globally.

As in domestic issues, the two candidates stand far apart in their policy positions on issues from climate action to Ukraine. Questions about Biden’s ceasefire plan for Gaza, for example, brought forth one of the more astounding moments in an already astounding debate – Trump suggested that Biden had “become like a Palestinian”, but a “bad” one.

At one point, attempting to recover and get ahead of Trump, Biden pushed back on what he sees as Trump’s overwhelming negativity about his own country.

The United States is, Biden said, the “most admired country in the history of the world”. Like the rest of the debate, the assertion wasn’t fact checked, either.

And after this showing, it’s very hard to argue that it is true.

Biden’s reputation, too, has likely taken a disastrous hit. His poor performance already has Democrats scrambling.

Former Obama administration official Julian Castro, for example, posted on X (formerly Twitter):

Biden had a very low bar going into the debate and failed to clear even that bar. He seemed unprepared, lost, and not strong enough to parry effectively with Trump, who lies constantly.

Other Democrats have already begun discussing whether Biden needs to drop out of the race. An open convention would be an enormous, and surprising, risk for the Democratic Party to take.

But the pressure on Biden’s candidacy will now be immense. And whether he can turn it around is much less clear now than it was before the debate.

There are no real parallels for what unfolded in Atlanta today. And there are likely none for what comes next.

Emma Shortis is senior researcher in International and Security Affairs at The Australia Institute, an independent think tank.

– ref. Muddled answers and outright lies: what the Biden-Trump debate says about the dire state of US politics – https://theconversation.com/muddled-answers-and-outright-lies-what-the-biden-trump-debate-says-about-the-dire-state-of-us-politics-233347

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sean Buckley, Lecturer in Molecular Ecology and Environmental Management, Edith Cowan University

Climate change threatens plants and animals around the world, but some regions are particularly exposed. Some are vulnerable simply due to the huge diversity of species they harbour. Others will experience more acute climate disruption than elsewhere. For some regions, such as Western Australia’s southwest, both are true.

WA’s southwest is a globally recognised “biodiversity hotspot”. Such regions have exceptionally high numbers of “endemic” species – those not found anywhere else – and have experienced significant habitat loss. And alarmingly, the region is fast becoming hotter and drier.

Our new research shows how climate stability in the past allowed ancient populations of small freshwater fish to persist today, despite their isolation. This stability is now at risk as climate change worsens, suggesting tough times ahead for these fish populations.

As the planet warms, ambitious conservation actions are urgently needed to save the iconic biodiversity of WA’s southwest – one of Australia’s natural treasures.

A hotspot for life

There are only two biodiversity hotspots in Australia: the coastal forests of eastern Australia, and southwest WA. The latter spans more than 356,000 square kilometres from Shark Bay to Esperance. It is home to more than 8,000 species of plants, over half of which are endemic. Its animal diversity is similarly impressive.

So how did southwest WA become such a melting pot of biodiversity? Scientists have proposed several reasons.

First, the surrounding arid land isolates it from the rest of Australia, which allowed a unique suite of species to assemble. Second, its landscape and species are ancient – many tracing back to Gondwanan origins. This suggests biodiversity has accumulated for hundreds of millions of years.

And finally, parts of this region have been protected against climate change for millions of years, including during glacial periods, due to a current carrying warm water down Western Australia’s coast. This climate stability is particularly relevant today.

Since the 1970s, rainfall in southwest WA has decreased by up to 15%, and is set to worsen in the near future. Annual temperatures have increased by more than 1°C since the start of the 20th century.

That raises an important question: if species in the region haven’t experienced much climate change in the past, can they cope with it now? Our research set out to answer this question by examining freshwater fish.

A surprising discovery

We used molecular ecology approaches, which combine genetic information with ecological and environmental data. We focused on two small freshwater fish species endemic to southwest WA – the western and little pygmy perches.

Our previous research showed these remarkable species have existed in the landscape for millions of years, despite not being able to move very far. They made ideal candidates for understanding how climate history might have shaped evolution.

We obtained genomic data from populations of these fish across southwest WA. From this, we determined their evolutionary histories, such as how long ago they last shared a common ancestor, and whether their populations had been connected in the past. Separately, using computer modelling, we investigated how past climates had affected where the species lived, and how this might change in future.

So what did we find? The populations of pygmy perches were very genetically distinct from each other. In fact they were so distinct, it is likely they comprise at least three, rather than two, different species.

We found two separate lineages of western pygmy perches. The analysis showed these lineages, despite looking physically similar, last shared an ancestor about nine million years ago. This suggests they should be classed as two distinct species, and the conservation status of both species should be reassessed.

Our genomic results also suggest these divergent populations of pygmy perches must have persisted in the landscape for millions of years. Our climate modelling supported this conclusion.

Our reconstructions of past climate found little evidence for large changes in the distribution of these species in the last three million years. This reflects the general stability in the climate over that time, which allowed these isolated populations to persist and form distinct lineages.

What about future climate change?

Unfortunately, things started to look dire when we looked at predictions under future climate changes. Large declines in ranges for the fish species were predicted in the coming decades.

For one of the western pygmy perch species, this included a total loss of suitable habitat by about 2070 under a “business-as-usual” scenario – that is, a scenario where no further efforts to reduce global carbon emissions are made.

Sadly, the effects of climate change on other freshwater species in this region are already being felt. Recent drying of streams has caused a decline in ancient insect species. And less winter-spring rainfall in the region is projected to reduce spawning in freshwater fish populations.

Drying and warming is also reducing the availability and quality of natural refuge pools, which most freshwater fish rely on to survive the dry season.

So what can be done? First, it’s important to make rivers and streams as healthy as can be. That includes restoring and protecting banks, and considering the needs of aquatic species when extracting water.

We must also prevent more non-native fish species from entering waterways, and explore the conservation potential of artificial aquatic refuges such as ponds and dams.
And more drastic interventions, such as moving populations to new locations, may also be required.

Of course, reducing our carbon emissions will be crucial for the survival of biodiversity, especially freshwater fish, across the globe.

Climate change poses an existential threat to southwest WA’s unique natural environment and the species within it. Swift, broad-ranging action is needed to avoid tragic losses.

Luciano Beheregaray receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Mark Allen receives funding from The Ian Potter Foundation for the project investigating the use of fire-fighting waterpoints as conservation refuges.

Stephen Beatty receives funding from The Ian Potter Foundation for the project investigating the use of fire-fighting waterpoints as conservation refuges.

Sean Buckley 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. ‘Things started to look dire’: our deep-dive into past climates sounds a warning for this unique corner of Australia – https://theconversation.com/things-started-to-look-dire-our-deep-dive-into-past-climates-sounds-a-warning-for-this-unique-corner-of-australia-233340

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Austin, Lecturer in Theatre, The University of Melbourne

Rising situates itself as a festival of new art, performance and music that takes place in the heart of Naarm/Melbourne just as the weather turns cold and the days get darker and shorter.

Now in its fourth year, the festival mapped out a walkable festival footprint in and around the CBD.

Rising has become known for unlocking and transforming hidden landmarks and spaces of the city. The festival provides access and a sometimes alternative perspective of the histories and memories of these sites.

Rising is engaging with ideas of the city as a site of power in determining how urban spaces and cityscapes are active mediums for defining categories of inclusion.

The festival is slowly working out what its voice is, and how it might want to impact this city. But significant actions and strategies still appear to be missing from its thinking and approach.

Interventions from First Nations artists

The city itself is a contested site of identity and belonging.

During lockdown in 2021, and returning again this year, The Rivers Sing heralded the end of each day.

From Deborah Cheetham Fraillon (Yorta Yorta), the extraordinarily haunting, large-scale audio installation echoed across the Yarra River with a vocal landscape of words from English and Boon Wurrung and Woiwurrung language.

The Blak Infinite, an art installation and exhibition curated by Kimberley Moulton (Yorta Yorta) and Kate ten Buuren (Taungurung), transformed Federation Square. The square became host to artworks exploring narratives of First People’s connection to the sovereign and political environmental movements.

The Blak Infinite was anchored by Embassy from Richard Bell (Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman and Gurang Gurang).

Embassy is a direct salute to the first Aboriginal Embassy that activists set up under a beach umbrella on the lawns of Parliament House in 1972. A tent that hosts public events and discussions, this installation has toured the world, creating a First-Nations-led urban space for reflection and action on Aboriginal rights.

The political and disruptive insertion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander narratives layered directly across and onto these sites creates a powerful tension. It reveals ongoing colonial impacts on city landscapes and actively demonstrates the exclusion of certain histories and cultural memories.

Making space for new audiences

This relationship with the city as a contested site of identity and belonging resonated with other work I saw during the festival.

In two performances, I experienced a strong sense of community gathering and coming together, which felt both political, disruptive and strategic.

Toward the end of the festival, I was in the audience for Indian mentalist, magician, illusionist, YouTuber and consummate performer Suhani Shah in her first Australian show.

The show was full of intergenerational Indian families. The audience were thrilled and delighted by Shah’s set of impressive mind-reading tricks (which held little delight or interest for me, unfortunately).

The show felt largely out of place in an international arts festival. Perhaps it’s better suited to either a casino venue with its glitz and glam, or somewhere much more intimate.

Despite this, I was struck by the gathering of this particular community on a cold Wednesday night in the heart of the city. Whole families had arrived; there were young children dressed up in puffer jackets and shiny shoes and senior family members with limited mobility escorted by their adult children.

Rising says its ambition is to aspire to be a cultural leader in inclusion and access and for the festival program to be a true reflection of the city, representing people with a variety of life experiences, cultures and backgrounds.

In the presentation of Shah, something interesting is happening with this programming strategy. Shah drew a new and different audience base to the city and to a work in an often highly exclusive arts festival context.

Likewise, I spent a delighted three-and-a-half hours witnessing the incomparable theatre production of Counting and Cracking. This much-lauded show by S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack follows the epic and compelling journey of a Sri Lankan-Australian family over four generations from 1956 to 2004.

First staged in Sydney in 2019 and appearing at various festivals since then – including the Edinburgh International Arts Festival in 2022 – Counting and Cracking is bringing a new kind of Australian story to local and global audiences.

It is difficult to overestimate what it means for Australia to be reflected on stage in the way Counting and Cracking manages. Not only does it support the re-imagining of Australian identity as multicultural, intersectional and complex, it reveals in exciting ways our world-class capacity for original storytelling through performance.

Again, I was acutely aware of being in a largely non-white and heavily Sri Lankan audience.

The care and regard taken to welcome this gathering of people – including the provision of Sri Lankan street food available for purchase before, during and after the show – was a welcome reminder that the hosting of the audience is important.

It was necessary to ensure this story, which would resonate with many audience members in complex and often difficult ways, was held with care.

An uncertain future

The future of Rising remains under a question mark, with state government funding for future festivals yet to be confirmed.

As a festival of new performance, music and art, Rising’s strength lies in creative assembly and assembling on city sites as a political and disruptive action. These collective assemblies support the imagining of new stories, futures, communities and possibilities for both the city itself and the people who make up the communities within and around it.

The work in front of Rising is to strive to be both local and global, bringing the best out of Naarm and bringing the best to the city.

The question of who the festival is speaking to, with, for and how is key to its success – and remains unresolved.

Rising has great potential to continue to connect, shape and transform the existing arts ecosystem in the city. But this requires some deep consultation and consideration as it contemplates what the future holds.

Sarah 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. At this year’s Rising festival, I was most excited by the new and unexpected audiences – https://theconversation.com/at-this-years-rising-festival-i-was-most-excited-by-the-new-and-unexpected-audiences-233100

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hazel Keedle, Senior Lecturer of Midwifery, Western Sydney University

More than 1,700 pregnant women in South Australia have reportedly been given the wrong “due date” due to a technical error in their computerised medical records. This has prompted concerns some women may have had an early induction of labour as a result.

According to today’s ABC report, most of the women whose records are affected have since given birth, while about 100 are still pregnant. Not all women have yet been notified of the error.

An investigation is now under way to find out how the error happened and if the incorrect due dates have impacted care.

But how accurate are due dates anyway? And what happens when we get them wrong?

What is your due date?

What people normally call their “due date” is actually the estimated day your baby will be born. There are a variety of online tools to work out this date, based on something called Naegele’s rule, named after the German obstetrician Franz Naegele (1778-1851).

Naegele’s rule works out your estimated due date by taking the first day of your last menstrual period, adding seven days, then adding 40 weeks (nine months).

Naegele’s rule has limitations. First, it assumes all menstrual cycles are 28 days long and ovulation occurs on day 14. It also relies on the woman knowing the date of her last menstrual period.

This method is still used by doctors and midwives to work out the expected date of birth.

However, there is an increased reliance on using an ultrasound between eight and 16 weeks to predict the due date. This measures the size and development of the fetus to calculate its gestational age. From there, the sonographer uses that data to work out when the baby is due.

There’s also a trend towards identifying a date range rather than an exact due date.

A large retrospective study of over a million births in Germany found 90% of births occurred between 19 days before to seven days after the expected due date. That is a range of 37 weeks to 41 weeks’ gestation.

Why are due dates important?

Your due date is important for a number of reasons, beyond allowing you and your family to plan for the months ahead. It’s a key piece of information your midwife or doctor uses to monitor your pregnancy, assess whether everything is on track, and if intervention is recommended.

One intervention closely linked to your expected due date is the offer of induction of labour (being induced) if you are “overdue”. For women who have had their estimated due date incorrectly calculated there is the possibility they will be induced earlier than required.

Using an ultrasound-predicted date can give more accurate dating than using Naegele’s rule, perhaps avoiding unnecessary induction of labour if the woman is not really overdue. However, more evidence is required to confirm this.

Why are we so concerned about inductions?

In Australia there is a rising number of women who have their labours induced compared to waiting for labour to start spontaneously. Now 41% of women pregnant for the first time are induced.

Induction of labour can increase the use of more interventions during labour, such as an epidural and continuous fetal monitoring. It can also increase the chance of a caesarean birth. Research has also found women wish to avoid an induction of labour in a subsequent birth.

The World Health Organization does not recommend women with uncomplicated pregnancies undergo routine induction of labour at less than 41 weeks.

Every week the baby remains in the womb is important as the baby is still growing and developing up to 40 weeks of pregnancy. Every week the baby is born closer to 40 weeks means they are less likely to need to spend time in intensive care.

Can I calculate my own due date?

If you have been told there has been an error in the calculation of your due date you can work it out yourself by:

• entering the date of your last menstrual period into an online calculator

• looking at the due date calculated during a pregnancy ultrasound up to 16 weeks gestation.

Remember though, there is greater accuracy when you consider a 37-41 week range of when your baby’s due.

Ultimately, your baby doesn’t always play by the rules. And very few babies are born exactly on their due date.

Hazel Keedle is affiliated with the Australian College of Midwives..

– ref. If you’re pregnant, how accurate is your ‘due date’? – https://theconversation.com/if-youre-pregnant-how-accurate-is-your-due-date-233547

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Anderson, Professor of Sports Law, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

In the iconic 1980s movie Back to the Future II, the elderly villain, Biff Tannen, steals a Grays Sports Almanac.

He travels back in time to his youth and creates an enriched future for himself by knowing and betting on the outcome of every major United States sporting event from 1950-2000.

The UK election campaign is currently having a Back to the Future moment.

This week, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had to withdraw support from two Conservative candidates suspected of betting on the date of the election.

Craig Williams had been Sunak’s parliamentary private secretary, his closest aid. Laura Saunders is married to the Conservatives’ director of campaigning, who has taken since taken a leave of absence.

Williams, who has been interviewed by Gambling Commission officials, is alleged to have placed a £100 bet (at odds of 5/1), three days before Sunak somewhat surprisingly announced July 4 as election day. Saunders also placed a bet.

The scandal has now encompassed other party officials and five members of the police who provide personal protection to senior politicians.

More generally, it has prompted several politicians across all parties to admit to betting on the outcomes of referenda and elections, even in constituencies in which they are standing.

Arguably, the affair reflects the deep cultural prevalence of gambling in societies such as the UK. It also prompts ethical questions about whether politicians should be expressly restricted from betting on matters of state.

Inside information in politics

Certainly what has happened would appear to be a breach of the House of Commons’ Code of Conduct, which mandates members only use information they receive in confidence in the course of their parliamentary activities – and never for other purposes.

That part of the Code of Conduct could be called the Marconi clause after a 1912 scandal which led to accusations that senior members of the UK Liberal government had transgressed in their public duties by purchasing shares in the Marconi company in advance of the corporation being granted a lucrative public tender.

Similarly, in Australia, under the Federal Code of Conduct, ministers must not use any information they gain in the course of their official duties for personal gain or the benefit of any other person.

In both the jurisdictions, the misconduct might, at its most grave, be considered a criminal act as, respectively, misconduct in public office (UK) or an abuse of public office under the Australian criminal code.

The more likely criminal offence in the UK is that under section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005, it is an offence to use confidential information to gain an unfair advantage when betting (cheating at gambling).

Conviction can lead to a fine or up to two years in prison. Similar provisions exist in the crimes acts of various states in Australia, such as New South Wales and Victoria.

These provisions have been used primarily in a sporting context.

In the UK, the Gambling Act was used to convict some of those involved in fixing a cricket test at Lord’s between England and Pakistan in 2010. Three Pakistan players, through their agent, were offered financial inducements to play in a pre-determined way to allow others to manipulate the betting markets in what turned out to be a newspaper sting.

In 2020, two men in NSW were convicted when, with prior inside knowledge of the result, they placed bets on the 2019 NRL coach of the year award.

And, in another case, an AFL umpire in Victoria has been accused of allegedly exploiting inside information on the award of the Brownlow Medal in 2022.

Common to all the above is claims of abuse of inside information. But what exactly is meant by that term?

What is inside information exactly?

Inside information is similar to insider trading. This is when a senior executive in a company uses information not yet publicly available to make a profit or avoid losses, typically on the company’s share price.

Insider trading is seen to undermine public confidence in the integrity of the financial system and can attract a lengthy jail sentence. Equally, cheating at gambling undermines the integrity of sport and is seen as a fraud on all consumers who legitimately bet.

In a gambling sense, there are four elements to inside information.

First, it is “privileged”. That is, it is information obtained in a trusted capacity on the understanding that it should not be made generally available.

Second, it must be sufficiently meaningful to be capable of having value ascribed to it. What this means is that if the information were generally available, it would likely influence or change the betting decisions of those who commonly bet on that event.

In a sporting context, an assistant coach knowing in advance that a star athlete in not going to play is both privileged and meaningful information. Knowing the team is going to play with different colour socks is not.

The third element relates to how the information in acquired.

For example, when a jockey on the morning of the Melbourne Cup speaks enthusiastically about their chances in the race, or when a director speaks glowingly about the immediate future of the company, a punter or investor may be influenced to bet on that horse or acquire stock in that company.

But neither example is the type of inside information relevant to a criminal charge. Such examples are of inferred not inside information.

Fourth, in both insider trading and cheating at gambling, it generally doesn’t matter if the person in receipt of inside information commercially exploits it on the stock or betting exchanges. The act of receiving the inside information with the intention of using it illicitly suffices.

The more money that is made on the back of such information – millions on a share price or thousands on the gambling markets – will usually correlate to the severity of the sanction.

In the UK, Craig Williams stands to make a £500 profit from his bet on the July 4 election, but a bit like old Biff Tannen, the collection of his winnings will not have been worth the wait.

Sometimes in politics, as in sport and in life, you can know too much, too soon.

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

– ref. The UK election gambling scandal shows the dangers of inside information – but what exactly is it? – https://theconversation.com/the-uk-election-gambling-scandal-shows-the-dangers-of-inside-information-but-what-exactly-is-it-233442

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Saric, Computer Scientist & Mechatronic Engineer, CSIRO

Our latest research has found that clickable links on websites can often be redirected to malicious destinations. We call these “hijackable hyperlinks” and have found them by the millions across the whole of the web, including on trusted websites.

Our paper, published at the 2024 Web Conference, shows that cybersecurity threats on the web can be exploited at a drastically greater scale than previously thought.

Concerningly, we found these hijackable hyperlinks on the websites of large companies, religious organisations, financial firms and even governments. The hyperlinks on these websites can be hijacked without triggering any alarms. Only vigilant – some might say paranoid – users would avoid falling into these traps.

If we were able to find these vulnerabilities across the web, so can others. Here’s what you need to know.

What are hijackable hyperlinks?

If you make a typo when entering your bank’s web address, you might accidentally end up on a phishing site – one that impersonates, or “spoofs”, your bank’s website to steal your personal info.

If you’re in a rush and don’t inspect the website closely, you may enter sensitive personal details and pay a steep price for your mistake. This could include identity theft, account compromise or financial loss.

Something even more dangerous happens when programmers mistype web addresses in their code. There’s a chance their typo will direct users to an internet domain that has never been purchased. We call these phantom domains.

For example, a programmer making a link to theconversation.com might accidentally link to tehconversation.com – note the misspelling. If the mistyped domain has never been purchased, someone could come along and buy that phantom domain for around A$10, hijacking the inbound traffic. In these cases, the price of programmers’ mistakes is paid by the users.

These programmer linking errors don’t just risk directing users to phishing or spoofing sites. Hijacked traffic can be directed towards a range of traps, including malicious scripts, misinformation, offensive content, viruses and any other hacks the future will bring.

Over half a million phantom domains

Using high-performance computing clusters, we processed the whole browsable web for these vulnerabilities. At a scale never seen in research, in total we analysed over 10,000 hard drives’ worth of data.

Doing so, we found over 572,000 phantom domains. The hijackable hyperlinks directing users to them were found on many trusted websites. In a twist of irony, this even included web-based software designed to enforce privacy legislation on websites.

We investigated what errors caused these vulnerabilities and categorised them. Most were caused by typos in hyperlinks, but we also found another type of programmer-generated vulnerability: placeholder domains.

When programmers develop a website that does not yet have a specific domain, they often enter links to a phantom domain with the expectation the links will be fixed later.

We found this to be common with website design templates, where the aesthetic components of a website are purchased from another programmer rather than developed in-house. When the design template is later installed on a website, the phantom domains are often not updated, making links to them hijackable.

To determine if hijackable hyperlinks could be exploited in practice, we purchased 51 of the phantom domains they point to and passively observed the inbound traffic. From this, we detected substantial traffic coming from the hijacked links. Compared to similar new domains that lacked hijacked links, 88% of our phantom domains got more traffic, with up to ten times more visitors.

What can be done?

For average web users, awareness is key. Links cannot be trusted. Be vigilant.

For those in charge of companies and their websites, we suggest several technical countermeasures. The simplest solution is for website operators to “crawl” their websites for broken links. Countless free tools are available for doing so. If any broken links are found, fix them before they are hijacked.

We, the Web

British scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee first proposed the web at CERN in 1989. In his earliest description of it – still widely available on the web as a testament to itself – there is a section titled “non requirements”, where security is addressed. This section includes the fateful phrase:

[Data security is] of secondary importance at CERN, where information exchange is still more important.

While this was true of CERN in 1989, the web is now the primary information exchange medium of the modern age.

We have come to treat the web as an external component of our own brains. This is evidenced by the popularity of large language models like ChatGPT, which themselves are trained on data from the web.

As our dependence deepens, it might be time to mentally re-categorise web data security from “non requirements” to “important requirements”.

Kevin Saric receives funding from the Cyber Security Research Centre Limited whose activities are partially funded by the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme. He is affiliated with CSIRO and QUT.

– ref. We analysed the entire web and found a cybersecurity threat lurking in plain sight – https://theconversation.com/we-analysed-the-entire-web-and-found-a-cybersecurity-threat-lurking-in-plain-sight-233240

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney

In March, Australian MP Andrew Wilkie used parliamentary privilege to allege the Australian Football League (AFL) was operating an “off the books” illicit drug testing regime that is at odds with its obligations under the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Code.

This prompted an investigation by Sport Integrity Australia (SIA) and, after three months of evaluation, the nation’s peak sport anti-corruption watchdog has now released its findings.

What did Sport Integrity Australian find?

Crucially, the SIA report found no breach of the WADA Code by any players or support personnel, noting a “lack of understanding” about the AFL’s illicit drug policy had contributed to public speculation about nefarious intent.

Indeed, SIA understood why players would make themselves unavailable for match day if they believed an illicit drug (prohibited by WADA only in competition) put them at risk of a doping violation.

While SIA was hardly condoning illicit drug use among athletes, it acknowledged the ubiquity of such substances, noting 13.5% of Australians over the age of 14 had admitted to using cocaine in 2022–23.

The game day withdrawal strategy, which seeks to avoid a doping infringement, is not a breach of the WADA Code.

Why does the AFL have an illicit drug policy?

There are two main elements: player welfare and risk management.

At its core, the illicit drug policy has for many years adopted a harm-minimisation approach based on a medical model, the goal being behavioural change under the oversight of a doctor, with confidential counselling at the “first strike”.

But there are also penalties: a “second strike” results in public disclosure and a four-game suspension, with a “third strike” incurring a ban of 12 games.

The SIA report noted some critics of the AFL policy prefer a more punitive approach at the outset, with “naming and shaming” of transgressors at the first strike and much harsher penalties generally.

However, SIA felt it was not within its purview to endorse a particular strategy, which it said was a matter for the AFL and the AFL Players’ Association.

After all, SIA acknowledged, the athletes entered into the illicit drug policy voluntarily – there is no requirement to do so by WADA.

That said, if an athlete presents on match day with an illicit drug in their system, WADA will treat them as a doper. In other words, a player would receive an anti-doping infringement and be subject to a ban from sport.

There is a crucial risk-management point here: WADA does not test for illicit substances outside of match day, in effect leaving the responsibility for managing illicit drug use to sport organisations.

And these bodies hardly want to lose athletes to a doping infringement because they have traces of cocaine or cannabis in their body on game day.

What does the SIA report recommend?

The SIA report acknowledged the AFL’s illicit drug policy has been in place for nearly 20 years but, like any policy, is subject to debate in terms of its objectives and efficacy.

A review of the policy, which was already under way, has now garnered considerable public interest. SIA has offered several recommendations, which are consolidated below.

First, the AFL is encouraged to enhance its illicit drug education training and resources, not just to players and clubs but all of the game’s stakeholders.

The goal should be to “increase transparency” of the illicit drug policy, even though this can never be complete due to the confidentiality that underpins a medical model. SIA suggested de-identified data may be made public to illustrate the number of infringements under the policy.

Second, the AFL needs to improve the intelligence capability of the AFL Integrity Unit, with which SIA has a long relationship.

The goal here is to ascertain whether illicit drug traffickers are infiltrating the sport, which would present integrity concerns.

This should be accompanied by better promotion of the AFL’s anonymous tip-off portal, thereby encouraging anyone to raise integrity concerns.

Third, the AFL should expand its illicit drug policy to accommodate the AFL Women’s league, and to consider ways to mitigate the risk of illicit drug use among non-playing staff across both the AFL and AFLW.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, the AFL should consider establishing a committee to oversee the revised illicit drug policy, including staff from the AFL, the AFLPA, the AFL Doctors’ Association, and independent representatives from outside the sport.

The goal here is to provide a level of confidence, both within the sport and beyond, that the illicit drug policy functions with proper processes and that outcomes are proportionate to its aims.

An elephant in the room?

The SIA report acknowledged the AFL is one of a handful of sports in Australia to have an illicit drug policy.

Other major professional team sports, notably rugby league, rugby union and cricket, have similar policies to the AFL, while basketball, field hockey and motorsport also have illicit drug policies.

A lack of consistent monitoring and testing programs across the Australian sports sector, with associated athlete welfare processes and risk management education, represents a curious governance deficit.

After all, the Australian Sports Commission’s National Sports Plan from 2018 included a determination “to protect Australian sport from integrity threats, such as doping, match-fixing and illicit drugs”.

Surprisingly, though, the word “drug” appears only once in the entire report, and there is nothing to indicate what sports are expected to do by way of mitigating against illicit drug use among athletes.

The SIA report suggested the Australian sport sector could benefit from the staging of a “national illicit drugs roundtable” for all sports (there are about 60 in all).

It admitted that among the minority of sports that do have an illicit drug policy, “the guidelines, processes and sanctions that surround each code’s drugs policy are as unique as the sports themselves”.

So, there is much to be learned and revised going forward.

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

– ref. The AFL’s illicit drug policy is under fire but the bigger issue is that not all sports have one – https://theconversation.com/the-afls-illicit-drug-policy-is-under-fire-but-the-bigger-issue-is-that-not-all-sports-have-one-233229

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Paterson, Professor of Earth Sciences, University of New England

If you’ve ever visited the fossil gallery of a natural history museum — or its gift shop, for that matter — you’ve probably seen the armoured body remains (or exoskeletons) of an extinct group of animals called trilobites. These ancient marine arthropods lived in the world’s oceans from 521 million to 252 million years ago.

We know a great deal about the diversity, lifestyles and evolution of these iconic invertebrate fossils. More than 22,000 species of trilobite have been named.

This is largely because the trilobite exoskeleton was made of a mineral called calcite, which fossilised very easily. However, fossils showing soft body parts of these creatures, such as the antennae and walking legs, are far rarer. Even when these features have been found, they may be obscured by flattening or partly hidden by sediment.

In a new study, published today in Science, we document a remarkable discovery of Moroccan trilobites preserved in volcanic ash, representing the most anatomically complete examples ever found. These new specimens not only preserve the antennae and walking legs, but also mouth structures and even the entire digestive system in three dimensions.

A palaeontological Pompeii

The new trilobite fossils are Cambrian in age (around 509 million years old) and preserved as undistorted three-dimensional moulds within fine volcanic ash, not unlike the human bodies entombed at Pompeii in Italy by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.

We scanned the specimens with X-rays to reveal and reconstruct the exquisite anatomy in high resolution, right down to the tiniest bristles (less than a tenth of a millimetre long) on the walking legs.

It may seem highly unlikely to find fossils preserved in volcanic ash, particularly their soft tissues. But ironically, it is the violent nature of eruptions that helps with this style of exceptional preservation.

Explosive eruptions, specifically a type called pyroclastic flows, produce high-speed clouds of ash that can cover vast areas, including marine environments, in a very short amount of time. Such an event would have rapidly buried these trilobites, which were living in shallow waters near the shoreline, with the volcanic ash quickly moulding and cementing the animals in place.

This entombment must have been almost instantaneous, as we also find tiny filter-feeding animals called brachiopods attached to these trilobites in positions they would have been in life, capturing a symbiotic relationship “snap frozen” in time.

Read more:
Pompeii: ancient remains are helping scientists learn what happens to a body caught in a volcanic eruption

Tantalising trilobites

Our discovery has revealed features previously unknown in trilobites.

For example, the new fossils show a sophisticated feeding apparatus. In particular, the first pair of head appendages behind the antennae possess what could be described as “spiny spoons”, used for chewing and scooping food into the mouth. Attached to these “spiny spoons” are antenna-like structures that may have acted as taste receptors or touch sensors.

Read more:
Ancient marvels: the first shell-crushing predators ground up their prey between their legs

One specimen (see below) also reveals the entire digestive system, starting with the mouth opening, leading to an oesophagus, which then extends to an enlarged J-shaped stomach connected to a long intestine running the entire length of the body.

There is also a structure called the labrum, a kind of fleshy lip associated with the mouth that forms part of the oral chamber where food is processed.

Interestingly, the labrum has long been hypothesised to exist in trilobites, but never observed in fossils. This discovery now helps us better understand how arthropod mouthparts evolved across living and extinct forms.

These fossils give palaeontologists a new “search image” to look for such anatomical features in newly collected trilobite specimens, or those already sitting in museum drawers. But perhaps more importantly, this discovery highlights volcanic ash deposits as underexplored sources for exceptionally preserved fossils.

John Paterson receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. A ‘trilobite Pompeii’: perfectly preserved fossils of ancient sea critters found buried in volcanic ash – https://theconversation.com/a-trilobite-pompeii-perfectly-preserved-fossils-of-ancient-sea-critters-found-buried-in-volcanic-ash-233230

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Romain Fathi, Senior Lecturer, School of History, Australian National University

Just one hour after the far-right’s surge in the European elections on June 9, French President Emmanuel Macron made the surprising decision to dissolve the French national assembly and call for snap elections.

The latest polling from last weekend shows the far-right National Rally party leading the race with 35.5% of the vote, followed by the New Popular Front (a coalition of far-left, communist and centre-left parties) with 29.5%, and Macron’s centrist alliance (Ensemble) in third with 19.5%.

With Macron’s government now hanging on by a thread, what is expected to happen in the two-stage election starting Sunday and concluding on July 7?

First, what exactly is the national assembly?

France has a semi-presidential system of government in which the president and the parliament share power. The president is elected by popular vote and appoints the prime minister, as well as the cabinet ministers (on the recommendation of his or her prime minister).

The government must secure the support of the majority of MPs in the national assembly (the lower house of parliament) to stay in power. If the national assembly loses confidence in the government, it can dismiss the prime minister and cabinet ministers. The president, in turn, has the power to dismiss the national assembly.

Feeling the national assembly was growing less supportive of his government, Macron chose to fire first and dissolve the assembly.

Since the establishment of the current French constitution in 1958, the national assembly has been dissolved six times by the president. But it had never previously happened on the basis of European-related matters, such as the European elections.

Read more:
French snap elections: ‘cohabitation’ could reshuffle the cards between president and prime minister

Why did Macron pull the trigger?

Officially, Macron called for snap elections because the National Rally party, led by Marine Le Pen, received 31.5% of the vote in the European elections, more than double the support for Macron’s centrist party.

Because of this, Macron felt the national assembly no longer represented the mood of the French people, so he has called for a “clarification” – a word he has repeated over and over since June 9.

The move to dissolve the assembly has been deemed risky by many in France because it gives the far right an opportunity to win a national election and, potentially, form a government. The last time the far right was in office was in Vichy France (the Nazi collaborationist government during the second world war).

Beyond Macron’s talking points, the reality is many were expecting a dissolution of the assembly because the government has grown weaker. What surprised people was not the dissolution itself, but the timing, conflating European and French politics, which are generally quite distinct issues.

Macron has been working with a minority government since 2022. His government has had to find unlikely allies on the centre-right, the left and even the far right in the past two years just to pass legislation.

In the past six months, there has been so much discord in the national assembly, it has become harder and harder for Macron and his government to do anything. There were also rumours the opposition might unite to dismiss his government in September, after the French summer holidays.

Given his temperament, Macron was never going to allow this chaos to continue for another three years when the next presidential election is due to be held, potentially eroding the public’s trust in their institutions.

Why is France so divided?

French politics has long been dominated by either a strong moderate right or a strong moderate left taking turns in power, with small parties in the centre and even smaller parties on the far left and far right.

This changed under Macron. When he was first elected in 2017, his centrist party demolished the large moderate left and moderate right parties by persuading their MPs to defect to his party. This was the only way the centre could gain power, by forging alliances with the moderates on either side of the political spectrum.

Those moderates who chose to remain in their parties then became more likely to side with the extreme fringe of the far left and the far right. As a result, these factions both grew larger in the national assembly in the 2022 election, as Macron’s party lost seats.

One could argue that structurally, economically and demographically, France has not changed that drastically in the last decade. Since Macron’s first term, however, the political landscape has become unrecognisable, as polarisation has set in.

At the same time, Le Pen took over from her father as leader of the new National Rally (formerly National Front) party and has successfully “de-demonised” it, transforming it from a fringe far-right party into a large populist movement supported by a much larger portion of the electorate.

So, what is likely to happen?

Macron’s attempt to secure a clear majority in the national assembly to re-establish a functioning government seems unlikely.

However, the National Rally party and the New Popular Front are not tipped to obtain an absolute majority, either.

As such, there are three possible outcomes:

1) National Rally earns the majority of seats and forms a government with Macron remaining as president. This is known as cohabitation, which means the president and prime minister are from two different political parties.

This is very unlikely to happen, however. The National Rally will gain MPs at this election, but probably not enough to form government. And National Rally leader Jordan Bardella has already indicated his party wouldn’t govern without a clear majority.

2) Macron’s coalition and the New Popular Front will work together to form a government. This would be difficult ideologically, but both sides would likely prefer it to a far-right government.

3) Macron’s coalition does well enough and is able to form an alliance with MPs from the moderate right and the moderate left.

The latter two scenarios are most credible. But whatever the outcome, the next government will likely be even weaker than the current one – precisely the situation Macron had hoped to rectify. The spectre of political instability is worrisome to the French people, as well as the financial markets.

From Macron’s perspective, the election will either be his Austerlitz – one of Napoleon’s most famous victories, in part, because he was outnumbered – or his Waterloo, a terrible military defeat.

But for the president, going somewhere is better than being stuck, even if it ends up not being the direction he had hoped to take.

Romain Fathi 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. Explainer: What’s at stake in France’s election, and could it make Macron’s government even weaker? – https://theconversation.com/explainer-whats-at-stake-in-frances-election-and-could-it-make-macrons-government-even-weaker-232705

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Woods, Professor of Health Economics, University of Technology Sydney

New analysis has revealed many Australian aged care residents are not receiving the levels of care they need and are entitled to.

The UTS Ageing Research Collaborative, which we are involved in, recently released its 2023–24 mid-year report on Australia’s aged care sector.

A particular focus of this edition was on the level of direct care being delivered in aged care homes by nurses and personal care workers to residents. In sharing this analysis, we acknowledge there is a well-documented shortage of workers across the economy, with the unemployment rate at a near-historical low. And even given these workforce pressures, many aged care providers are delivering very high levels of care.

But a significant number are not. Nearly two-thirds of aged care homes are failing to meet mandated levels of direct care. And yet taxpayers have paid millions of dollars to providers to deliver that care. Some providers are making large surpluses as a result.

New standards for direct care

In response to the findings of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, the federal government committed to setting minimum standards for the level of direct care time that residents were to receive. In 2022, all providers were given a year to raise their level of staffing to reach these standards and were funded to do so.

These standards require a sector-wide average of 200 minutes of direct care per person per day (from registered and enrolled nurses and personal care workers). And 40 minutes of this care has to be delivered by a registered nurse. The minimum level each resident should receive varies above or below that 200 minutes depending on their assessed needs.

These standards became mandatory on October 1 2023. For the first three months after the targets were mandated, only half of all providers met or exceeded either of their care targets (the total direct care minutes or the registered nurse target). Only 36% met both.

This was a small increase from the previous quarter, but some providers still fell well short.

Funding the costs of care

Residential aged care is funded for three main activities:

• direct care such as nursing and personal care, including bathing, dressing, toileting and personal grooming (almost wholly funded by taxpayers)

• everyday living services such as food, laundry and cleaning (paid mainly by residents and capped at 85% of the single age pension)

• accommodation (paid by the government for those of limited means and self-funded by those with higher incomes and wealth).

On the advice of the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority, the government has increased the direct care funding for each resident living in an aged care home. The assumption is the home will spend that money to employ enough staff to meet its care level targets.

The report shows the difference between each aged care home’s average funding for direct care and its expenditure on that activity. Comparing the mid-year results for the past three years, in 2021 and 2022 homes produced, on average, a small surplus where revenue was slightly greater than wages and other expenses. This situation, where funding is just above costs, is the intended result of the new pricing reforms.

But things have changed for the most recent period. The government has significantly increased funding to meet the costs of staffing to achieve the mandatory care levels. It has also increased funding in light of the pay rises to direct care staff, primarily nurses and personal care workers, which was decided by the Fair Work Commission.

This taxpayer funding has been provided to each home regardless of whether they are employing the required number of staff.

Because of the failure of some providers to meet their mandated targets to December 2023, the sector, on average, generated a significant direct care surplus of more than A$13 per resident per day. Some providers have been using the money to cross-subsidise losses they incur for their everyday living services and accommodation.

Which homes are not meeting their targets?

We found homes that were not delivering their mandatory care minutes were, on average, achieving significant financial benefits from their direct care activities. Homes that had staffing care levels well above their required number were making a loss from their direct care.

Further, the homes that were not delivering their mandatory care minutes were more often in metropolitan and larger regional centres. They were also more likely to be operated by for-profit providers.

In essence, while we acknowledge the tight labour market and the effort many homes are making to meet or exceed their mandatory requirements, a large number of residents are not receiving the care they need. This also means taxpayers are funding direct care that is not being delivered.

With the minimum sector average level of direct care due to rise to 215 minutes per resident per day on October 1 this year (and registered nurse care to rise to 44 minutes), this situation may get even worse.

Michael Woods is Professor of Health Economics at the UTS Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation. He is Policy Advisor to the UTS Ageing Research Collaborative (UARC) and Chairs the Editorial Board of Australia’s Aged Care Sector. He is a Member of IHACP’s Aged Care Advisory Committee and undertakes policy research for the Commonwealth Government and the aged care sector. Michael was a former Deputy Chair of the Productivity Commission. He has no funding or other conflicts of interest related to this article.

Nicole Sutton has received funding from the Department of Health and Aged Care. She is the treasurer of Palliative Care NSW.

– ref. Most aged care homes are falling short of minimum care standards – new report – https://theconversation.com/most-aged-care-homes-are-falling-short-of-minimum-care-standards-new-report-232991

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

As scripted political dramas go, Julian Assange’s (welcome) arrival in Canberra on Wednesday night would be hard to beat.

Even before Assange exited the plane, Anthony Albanese was on the phone in a pre-arranged call. Immediately afterwards the prime minister, often reluctant to disclose the content of phone calls, happily shared details of their conversation with the media at a mid-evening news conference in Parliament House.

“I was quite pleased to be the first person here who he spoke with, [it] was mutually worked out that that would occur,” Albanese said.

Earlier in the day, the Assange team had suggested he might appear at a late-night news conference at a nearby hotel. Instead, his lawyers, led by Jen Robinson, and his wife Stella spoke for him, explaining his plea bargain and casting the pursuit of him as an issue of press freedom.

Not far away at the United States embassy, they sucked up the end of what has been, in many eyes, a lose-lose saga for the Americans.

The Assange team heaped credit on Albanese and his government. The prime minister – a long-time advocate for Assange – put the success down to patient diplomacy. “I’m an outcomes-based politician. I believe in making a difference. We can make a difference.”

The obvious story of Assange’s freedom is one of unflagging pressure brought by the Australian government. But that pressure wasn’t necessarily just on the US. It was likely also placed on Assange and his legal teams.

The diplomacy and lobbying undertaken by Albanese, his ministers, Australia’s Washington ambassador Kevin Rudd and others tilled the soil for the plea bargain deal. But the deal’s linchpin was Assange’s decision to plead guilty to a charge of espionage. What role did the Australian side play in helping persuade him to do that?

Rudd, in an interview with the ABC, gave his insight into the process. He was asked if the Assange team took some convincing to agree to a guilty plea. He said, “If you stand back from the detail, what’s it ultimately a decision about?

“Do you allow this court case to go from extradition to substantive deliberation to appeal in the United States, to further appeal in the United States, with ultimately a Supreme Court case on the future of the [Constitution’s] first amendment, and the application of the first amendment’s principles on freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and does that apply to foreigners acting in a capacity like Mr Assange? Or do you cut a deal through a plea bargain?

“Working that through, sensitively, the system, not intruding into the autonomy of the parties, was what I think any professional diplomat would do.”

Assange was still bridling at having to plead guilty at Wednesday’s brief hearing in Saipan that gave him his freedom. The US Constitution’s first amendment and the Espionage Act “are in contradiction,” he said. At a Thursday press conference at Parliament House, Stella Assange redefined the guilty plea, saying Assange was “pleading guilty to committing journalism”.

Assange’s freedom has reopened a debate about whether he is, or is not, a journalist. Revealing a huge trove of secret information is what an investigative journalist would do. But critics say real journalists curate such material, redacting sensitive items that could endanger lives.

This argument is surely a journey up a definitional dry gully. Plenty of journalists don’t do desirable curating. It is an issue of ethics, not whether the person is or is not called a “journalist”.

After years of substantial support across the political divide for freeing Assange, by week’s end, the splits in opinion about him were more obvious. Coalition members criticised Albanese’s celebration of the moment (though Albanese has not endorsed Assange’s actions in publishing confidential US information).

As for Assange’s future, no doubt the “press freedom” campaign will continue. Beyond that, who knows? The trajectory of a man who ran for the Australian Senate while ensconced in London’s Ecuador embassy in 2013 is not easy to predict.

The PM would be wise to take the win and move on. In political terms, Assange could be sticky fly paper.

The Assange extravaganza overshadowed two other significant stories this week: an unhelpful inflation figure and the fallout from a Labor senator voting against her party.

Wednesday’s monthly figure for May showed inflation rising to an annual 4%, from 3.6% in April. How this should be interpreted is not entirely clear – the June quarterly figures, out in a month’s time (and just before the Reserve Bank board’s next meeting) will be more informative. But there was immediate speculation that there could be an interest rate rise in coming months, rather than (or perhaps ahead of) the hoped-for fall.

This was a downer for the government, just a day after Albanese at the weekly caucus meeting had urged his troops to spruik next week’s positive messages.

“Once these sitting weeks are over people should be well and truly out campaigning,” he said. “It’s very rare to have a date like July 1 where pay rises, tax and energy bill relief all start on the same date. Cost of living is overwhelmingly the number one issue and the critical weakness of Peter Dutton’s nuclear idea is the cost.”

Albanese has faced a tame, obedient caucus – a quite different beast from the one that, for instance, Bob Hawke had to contend with.

But on Tuesday Western Australian Senator Fatima Payman, a Muslim, assaulted the foundational caucus principle of solidarity when she crossed the floor on an (unsuccessful) Greens motion declaring “the need for the Senate to recognise the state of Palestine”.

Views within Labor polarised over how Payman should be, and was, handled.

Hardliners thought there should be serious consequences for her. Cooler heads accepted that heavy discipline (such as suspending her from caucus) would be counterproductive. It would further inflame the Palestinian issue, already hellishly difficult for Labor. And it would be a bad look to slap down a young conflicted Muslim woman.

Albanese resorted to a light-touch reproof, telling Payman not to attend next week’s caucus. But his action angered some, who said it was the prerogative of caucus, rather than the prime minister, to deal with an erring member. More to the point, Payman remains a time bomb, with Labor waiting for the next occasion the Greens seek to snare her.

Beyond her particular case, Payman’s action does raise an important question. Is Labor’s solidarity-at-all-costs rule still fit for purpose? The Liberals allow their MPs to cross the floor, and we are in an era when the public has come to like “community candidates” who are trading on their individuality.

In his 2013 book, Hearts and Minds, Chris Bowen, now energy minister, strongly argued more independence should be given to Labor parliamentarians.

Bowen wrote that the level of voting discipline imposed in Australian parties “would be unacceptable in most comparable countries” and recommended for Labor a British-type arrangement allowing MPs to cross the floor on some issues.

Labor had “dedicated and passionate MPs driven to make a difference. The public should see more of these people in action,” Bowen wrote.

Many Labor MPs would believe he had a point. But it is a point Labor has no appetite to address any time soon.

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

– ref. Grattan on Friday: the Assange light and sound show overshadows government problems – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-the-assange-light-and-sound-show-overshadows-government-problems-233451

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian R. Camilleri, Associate Professor of Marketing, University of Technology Sydney

Yesterday, thousands of Sydneysiders gathered at the Opera House to watch the world’s most subscribed-to YouTuber, MrBeast, give away ten mostly luxury cars.

Beyond people who can drive, the crowd was also packed with children who decided to sit in the sun for hours just to watch others win prizes.

These fans knew what to expect. MrBeast, whose real name is James “Jimmy” Donaldson, has built his brand on massive giveaways and contests that award ordinary people with great riches. With 290 million YouTube subscribers, his videos tend to quickly amass 100-200 million views, generating revenue through advertising, sponsorships and merchandise.

Participants in MrBeast’s videos often undertake unique challenges to win prizes. Other times, they’ll do nothing at all: charity videos – aka recording yourself giving huge sums to homeless people – are a massive online trend (and have rightly raised ethical concerns).

The question is why do so many of us love watching this content when we ourselves aren’t getting much from it … or are we?

Watching winning feels like winning

When those around us are happy, it rubs off. Researchers call this emotional contagion. This idea suggests people tend to “catch” other people’s emotions and replicate them.

And as you may have noticed, people receiving huge giveaways tend to be pretty happy. Watching contestants laugh in glee after winning as much money as they can carry will naturally curve the lips of most viewers.

Another reason MrBeast’s content is so popular is because it gives us something to talk about. Research shows the bulk of our conversations tend to relate to our personal experiences and relationships. We use our memorable experiences to fuel quality conversations, which then provide us with social capital.

Who can forget the time MrBeast recreated Squid Game in real life? And who could resist telling others about it? There’s a reason that video got more than 600 million views.

In another video, MrBeast challenged 100 people aged 1 to 100 to democratically eliminate one another over several days until a victor emerged. This production involved 300 cameras and a massive team of crew and editors to cut it down to a 40-minute extravaganza.

Most of MrBeast’s videos are highly extravagant – costing millions to make – and completely novel. They generate surprise and awe, which helps explain why they’re so binge-able and widely shared.

You want a Lamborghini? You better work

Although some MrBeast videos show him simply giving money away to people, his more recent videos often require participants to complete various challenges.

In yesterday’s Opera House giveaway, contestants had to play a game of cornhole (in which contestants aim objects – usually beanbags – at holes cut into a slanted board). Eventually, a man named Sergio walked away with the coveted A$450,000 Lamborghini.

In one recent video, a contestant named Alex was offered US$10,000 (about A$15,000) for every day he survived alone in an abandoned grocery store. He eventually lasted 45 days and walked away with US$450,000 (A$675,000)

There are a couple of reasons people enjoy watching others “work” for a prize. Most people, for instance, have a strong sense of fairness and want to believe people get what they deserve. They believe in a “just world”.

When we see someone win something by overcoming a challenge, this feels more deserved and equitable, which makes their victory more gratifying to watch. For instance, on day 13 of being stuck in the grocery store, Alex managed to create a functioning shower out of raw store parts. Who could begrudge such creativity?

People are also drawn to the suspense and narrative arcs that naturally emerge from overcoming such challenges. Researchers call this narrative transportation – the idea that people mentally enter the world a story evokes.

As contestants push to victory we learn about their lives and values, which keeps us engaged and invested as we anticipate a resolution. On day 30, for instance, we meet Alex’s wife and two young children and discover his true motivation for pushing on with the challenge.

A win-win for all?

Although there is little direct research on how such content might affect us individually, these videos do raise some interesting questions.

For instance, could watching too much of such content leave you with unrealistic expectations of reality, or even make you frustrated with your own situation?

The allure of MrBeast’s content lies in its life-changing potential, but this is far from most people’s reality. Research has found focusing on wealth and expensive possessions can lead to negative effects on mood, motivation and overall wellbeing. And adolescents are at increased risk.

On the face of it, MrBeast’s videos may seem to suggest you or I can get rich quick. In reality, however, MrBeast started his YouTube channel when he was 13 years old – and has more-or-less worked tirelessly since then.

His success reminds us we create our own experience of the extraordinary.

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

– ref. The MrBeast effect: an expert explains why we’re drawn to videos of random people winning big – https://theconversation.com/the-mrbeast-effect-an-expert-explains-why-were-drawn-to-videos-of-random-people-winning-big-233443

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Miles Park, Senior Lecturer, Industrial Design, UNSW Sydney

While vapes or e-cigarettes first appeared around 20 years ago as an alternative to smoking, their prevalence and use have increasingly become problematic.

Governments and regulators are now catching up to what is widely seen as an addictive and unsafe product. Australia has just passed a world-first bill that will ban all vapes from general retail later this year.

Currently, the most predominant vapes on the market are single-use, disposable products designed to appeal to younger people. Despite their short lifespan, vapes are complex products that contain several valuable resources.

However, there are no practical means to collect or recycle vapes. Most end up as electronic waste or e-waste in landfill. Some are simply thrown on the street as litter. So what’s really inside vapes?

How do vapes work?

Vapes can be categorised as either reusable or disposable (single use), the more prevalent option.

Reusable vapes have a rechargeable battery and cartridge or liquid refills offered in a bewildering selection of flavours. More elaborate vapes contain microprocessors that offer customisable features, coloured LEDs and even small coloured screens.

In their simplest configuration, single-use disposables have the common components found in all e-cigarette types. Vapes contain a battery, a pressure sensor (like a modified microphone), an LED light, a heating element and a reservoir with e-liquid (the “juice”).

When the sensor is activated by taking a drag on the device, the battery provides power to a heating element that vaporises or atomises the liquid.

Tearing down a single-use vape

Analogous to the study of anatomy, teardowns are a technique used by industrial designers and design engineers to systematically disassemble a product.

This allows us to identify and describe the internal components and their relationships within a product. It can provide useful information about materials, manufacturing processes, assembly and technology.

Equally, it can provide insights into repairability, upgradability and ease of disassembly for end-of-life recovery for potentially valuable or harmful materials.

We obtained a random selection of commonly found, depleted, single-use vapes to teardown, identify and describe what is inside.

Housing

Disposable vapes are not designed to be disassembled. The main housing is made out of aluminium and covered in a paint finish and graphics, closed at the ends with plastic parts.

Once the housing end caps are removed, which is often not a straightforward task, the internal assembly slides out.

These internal parts are wedged or taped together within the main housing, and battery terminals are soldered to wires connecting to a pressure sensor and a heating element embedded in an e-liquid reservoir.

Battery

Despite disposable vapes being non-rechargeable, the ones we disassembled all contained a lithium battery. Although much smaller, they are not dissimilar to the bundles of batteries found in products like power drills and electric vehicles.

These cells have high-power density: they can store lots of electrical energy in a relatively small package. This is needed to supply periodic bursts of energy to the heating element, and to outlast the supply of e-liquid in the reservoir.

All the batteries we tested during the teardown of depleted single-use vapes still maintained a charge that could power a test light bulb for at least an hour.

Pressure sensor

An air pressure sensor is a semiconductor switching device. Not unlike a microphone that converts vibrations into electrical energy, the pressure sensor detects a drop in pressure and closes an electronic switch.

This occurs during the action of taking a drag on the vape, which creates a partial vacuum within the device. When the switch is closed, a simple (short) circuit illuminates an LED and supplies current to the heating element.

Heating element: vaporiser

The heating element is embedded in a cap at one end of the e-liquid reservoir and connected to a wick. When the device is activated, an electrical current heats a metal strip that vaporises some of the volatile e-liquid.

The e-liquid reservoir

Disposable vapes contain an absorbent foam material saturated with e-liquid and contained in a plastic tube with silicone endcaps.

In the centre of the reservoir is a wicking material that draws in the surrounding e-liquid to be in contact with the heating element.

The e-liquid itself contains a range of ingredients such as propylene glycol, nicotine and flavourings, many of them with unknown health impacts.

Designed for the dump

The consumption of vapes has been skyrocketing in recent years, and they now represent a significant proportion of an alarming new category of e-waste.

Single-use e-waste results in a significant loss of valuable materials – notably aluminium and lithium.

Worse, when a disposable vape is thrown in the bin, the energy-dense lithium batteries pose a fire danger for waste management workers.

The materials in vapes also have toxic effects on the environment when released.

Having potentially valuable metals mixed with other, low-value materials such as plastic makes vapes difficult to separate and recycle. Overall, single-use vapes are clearly wasteful of resources and dangerous in the environment.

Miles Park 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. What’s really inside vapes? We pulled them apart to find out – https://theconversation.com/whats-really-inside-vapes-we-pulled-them-apart-to-find-out-233334

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paula Lorgelly, Professor of Health Economics, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

This week the coalition government made a significant investment in Pharmac, increasing funding by NZ$604 million over the next four years.

In doing so, it delivered on a National Party election promise to fund 13 cancer drugs. Specifically, it will fund seven of those named during the election, while the remaining six will be replaced with “as good as or better alternatives”. In total, this will fund up to 54 new drugs, including 26 cancer drugs.

This announcement finally delivers hope to many cancer patients, profits to the pharmaceutical industry, and a sigh of relief for MPs who had been accused of breaking an election promise.

It also reinforces the integrity of the Pharmac process, but it won’t change the fact that access to medicines in New Zealand lags behind other similar countries.

How does the Pharmac process work?

Pharmac is an independent agency that makes decisions about whether pharmaceuticals, vaccines and medical devices deliver value to the New Zealand taxpayer. But these value decisions have to be made within the budget Pharmac is allocated each year.

Pharmac was one of the first health technology assessment agencies. It is internationally held in high regard for the low prices it can negotiate, in part because it manages its own budget.

If Pharmac thinks a drug or device is cost-effective but can’t currently afford it, it puts it on an options for investment list. This is essentially a waiting list that Pharmac will get to if it finds cost savings elsewhere when negotiating prices, or gets more government funding (as has just happened).

The drugs and devices on this list are ranked in order of priority using Pharmac’s factors for consideration. This process is confidential to ensure Pharmac can negotiate the best prices, because if a pharmaceutical company knew it was high on the list, it wouldn’t engage as effectively in price negotiations.

Benefits beyond cancer patients

Pharmac’s waiting list is heavily criticised. Some drugs, including those it will now fund, were added many years ago.

Among these drugs, for example, Cetuximab for bowel cancer was first submitted to Pharmac in May 2018 and placed on the list in December 2019. An application for Axitinib for kidney cancer was received in September 2013 and ranked in March 2014, and subsequently reranked in 2019, 2021 and 2022.

National had promised to reinstate the $5 prescription charge to pay for its 13 new cancer drugs (which were available in Australia in 2021 but not in New Zealand). That was estimated to bring in $280 million. So why is the government now paying $604 million?

The investment isn’t just paying for these cancer drugs. It would appear Pharmac is holding steadfast that its prioritisation of drugs delivers the most health benefit. My guess is that one of those cancer drugs the government wanted to fund sits at number 54 on the list. To fund it, the investment covers everything listed above it in the options for investment list.

It appears that while the National Party and the Cancer Control Agency Te Aho o Te Kahu said it was important to fund this cancer drug, there were other drugs considered more important and higher priority. Hence cancer patients will benefit but also people with infections, respiratory problems, osteoporosis, sexual health concerns, skin conditions, inflammatory conditions and mental health problems – an estimated 175,000 people in total.

The price of political meddling

Even more patients could benefit if the government had simply promised more money with no strings attached. During the election, Labour promised to increase Pharmac’s funding by $1 billion over four years. National promised an extra $724 million plus ring-fenced cancer drug funding.

Because the National Party chose to name these drugs, the suppliers will be less likely to engage in price negotiations. Providing more money without naming the drugs would have allowed for Pharmac to negotiate better, get a better price and use the latest investment to fund more than 54 drugs.

Despite this uplift in funding, drug availability in New Zealand still lags behind other similar countries. This will likely remain the case because Pharmac can only spend within its budget.

If we wanted greater access to pharmaceuticals, Pharmac would need much more money or we could change the process. Pharmac could simply make decisions and Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora could fund it.

This is the model used by the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). NICE makes decisions that the NHS must fund from its health budget. Essentially, the opportunity cost falls on the wider health and care system.

An alternative to more drug funding

It is possible to improve population health by addressing the social determinants of health (80% of ill health is due to socioeconomic and environmental factors) or by improving access to primary and preventive care, so patients get diagnosed earlier, which is generally cheaper.

The goverment’s decision to repeal New Zealand’s smoke-free legislation and reduce funding for a new, more accessible cervical screening process will cause considerable harms and costs in terms of raising demand for lung and cervical cancer treatments. It is almost as if one coalition agreement giveth and another taketh away.

The discussion of how much funding Pharmac should get and how Pharmac makes decisions (including how long it takes) will continue. An educated guess suggests this latest investment means Aotearoa New Zealand now spends 6.5% of its health budget on pharmaceuticals and less than a third of this will be on oncology.

Isn’t it time to think about the 93% we spend in the rest of the health system and to make that more efficient and equitable?

Paula Lorgelly consults to Pharmac and has in the past consulted for the pharmaceutical industry. She receives funding from the Ministry of Health and the EuroQol Foundation. Paula is a member of the EuroQol Group which owns the EQ-5D instrument which is widely used in health technology assessments.

– ref. A funding boost for NZ’s drug-buying agency Pharmac to pay for cancer drugs is welcome – but it won’t solve underlying issues – https://theconversation.com/a-funding-boost-for-nzs-drug-buying-agency-pharmac-to-pay-for-cancer-drugs-is-welcome-but-it-wont-solve-underlying-issues-233205

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s plan to build seven nuclear power plants in Australia has attracted plenty of critical attention. But there’s a striking feature which has received relatively little discussion or criticism: the nuclear plants would be publicly owned and operated, similar to the National Broadband Network (NBN).

On the contrary, it received enthusiastic endorsement from free-market advocates such as The Australian’s Judith Sloan, who observed: “It’s how the French nuclear plants were first constructed.” It is also the way Australia built its biggest single piece of energy infrastructure, the Snowy Mountains Scheme.

But there’s a fundamental problem here. Over the last three or four decades the federal public service has been hollowed out in the name of “new public management”. This became very clear during the COVID pandemic, when state governments – who have preserved their ability to act far better – ran most of the response. There is a very real question over whether we have the governmental capacity to achieve net zero.

From NBN to National Nuclear Network?

Dutton’s acknowledgement of the publicly owned NBN as a model worth using is a welcome advance on the view of Malcolm Turnbull, one of his predecessors as Liberal leader.

A decade ago, then-prime minister Turnbull embarked on a disastrous “mixed mode” redesign of the NBN. This reflected his belief – expressed publicly after leaving office – that a publicly owned broadband network should never have existed.

Labor is in no position to oppose Dutton’s calls for public ownership. State Labor governments in Victoria and New South Wales have re-established publicly owned electricity enterprises, while South Australia’s Labor government has floated the same idea.

Whatever technological choices we make, it is clear our days of relying on the private sector to provide vital infrastructure are coming to an end. The question now is whether the public sector can recover to take the lead.

The National Energy Market, for instance, was meant to promote competition and drive electricity prices down. It has failed to do so, resulting in a string of government interventions, some more successful than others.

Arguably the biggest failed intervention was the now-defunct Energy Security Board, a politically driven response to South Australia’s statewide blackout in 2016.

The board sought to patch up the National Energy Market with a capacity market, which was immediately dubbed “CoalKeeper” due to incentives for old coal plants to keep going, as well as new grid access charges, promptly dubbed “Solar Stopper” due to discouraging new investment in solar. Energy experts did not favour this approach.

What proved more successful as a response to South Australia’s big blackout was the decision by the state government to fund the Horndale big battery, which was, when built in 2017, the world’s largest utility-scale battery storage.

Should new power be private or publicly owned?

Both major parties are flagging more intervention. The federal government has stopped waiting for markets to provide clean energy in favour of seeking tenders for new renewables through a capacity investment scheme. The scheme received 40 gigawatts worth of bids from renewable developers, far beyond the goal of 6GW.

This shift has come in response to developments bogging down, hampered by inadequate regulation and local opposition driven by a combination of genuine concerns about environmental impacts and culture-war driven science denialism.

Labor’s current renewables-led strategy requires 10,000 kilometres of new publicly built transmission lines, to meet our net zero goals. We’d need even more transmission if we are to become a major exporter of clean energy, either as electricity or in products such as green hydrogen and ammonia.

On the Coalition side, no private firm is likely to accept the risks involved in creating a nuclear power industry from scratch. Government would have to lead.

As Nationals leader David Littleproud has now acknowledged in relation to finding sites for nuclear plants, the national need for clean energy is too important to allow “not in my backyard” opponents – some with only a tenuous connection to the area in question – to slow or stop government plans.

If government is to lead, it must have the capacity

What Dutton’s nuclear gambit shows us is that, surprisingly, Australia’s two major political parties are in strong alignment on the need to rebuild state capacity.

Whether it’s Labor working to get transmission lines and offshore wind up and running or the Coalition working to create a nuclear industry from scratch, it will take a strong government with the capacity to articulate a plan, and the legal, financial and human resources to make it a reality.

All of these requirements were met when we constructed the Snowy Mountains Scheme, a decades-long federal government initiative undertaken in cooperation with Victoria and NSW.

Are they still in place? Not yet. Government capacity to act has been eroded over decades of neoliberalism. Particularly at the national level, public service expertise has been hollowed out and replaced by reliance on private consulting firms.

To rebuild the federal government’s capacity to act will require recreating the public service as a career which attracts the best and brightest graduates – many of whom currently end up in the financial sector.

The private sector still plays a central role in the construction of infrastructure, as was the case with the Snowy Scheme. But it’s up to governments to take the lead in finance and planning.

This poses particular challenges for the Liberal Party, which has long favoured the interests of businesses small and large, and has been historically opposed to public ownership. But from the late 1990s until relatively recently, Labor was also keen on privatisation.

The French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau once observed that “war is too important to be left to generals”. As we are discovering to our cost, infrastructure investment is similarly too important to be left to private investors.

John Quiggin has undertaken consultancy work for unions and other groups supporting public ownership in the electricity industry.

– ref. Achieving net zero with renewables or nuclear means rebuilding the hollowed-out public service after decades of cuts – https://theconversation.com/achieving-net-zero-with-renewables-or-nuclear-means-rebuilding-the-hollowed-out-public-service-after-decades-of-cuts-233107

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thao Phan, Research Fellow, Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Monash University

The chief executive of drone delivery company Wing says 2024 is “the year of drone delivery”. The company first went public in 2014 as a Google “moonshot” project and now operates in several cities in Australia, the United States and Finland, with plans to expand further.

Wing promises fast, cheap delivery of food and groceries at the touch of a button, with critics voicing concerns about personal intrusions such as noise and privacy. But what are the real challenges of having delivery drones in your neighbourhood?

To find out, I’ve been spending time in Australia’s “drone zones”, interviewing residents and local business operators in trial suburbs across Canberra and Logan in Queensland. It turns out noise and privacy aren’t their main problems.

Instead, people talked about larger, infrastructural issues – bad traffic, poor public transport, and other failures of urban planning – and how drone delivery is being proposed as a band-aid solution.

How does Wing work?

For customers, Wing works much like UberEats or Menulog: people place orders and pay via an app. On offer are lightweight, mundane items from various suppliers, such as takeaway coffees, sushi rolls and small supermarket goods.

What’s different is the delivery. A small autonomous drone with its own sensors and navigation system brings the package by air.

In community trials, delivery times have been incredibly fast. The average time is ten minutes, with the fastest-ever delivery – from order placement to arrival at the doorstep – taking 2 minutes and 47 seconds.

Wing conducted its first trials in the rural town of Royalla near the border of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Australia has been a test bed for its systems ever since.

In my research on drone delivery in Australia, I’ve been spending time in Canberra and Logan, observing the trials and interviewing locals about what life with drone delivery is actually like.

There were differing views on issues like noise and privacy. For instance, some people weren’t bothered by noise while others likened it to a “jumbo whipper snipper”. But of bigger concern was what Wing signalled for the future of urban planning and the viability of small business.

Sustainability that relies on cars and traffic

One of Wing’s strongest pitches to government and residents alike has been that its battery-powered drones offer a zero-emission, fast, sustainable solution to “last mile” delivery. In effect, Wing promises to take cars off the road by adding drones to the sky. However, its current business model relies on traffic congestion and poor urban planning.

The areas Wing has targeted have major infrastructural issues. While Wing may offer a quick fix for these problems in the short term, in the long term the company’s success relies on roads staying congested and neighbourhoods being unwalkable. This is a major red flag for these communities who would rather see a better transport system on the ground than more drone traffic in the sky.

From Wing’s perspective, according to a spokesperson:

Wing provides a useful service for people who live in areas that experience heavy traffic congestion […] We think drones are a better vehicle match for moving a small package when other efficient means aren’t available.

In my interviews with residents in Browns Plains (in Logan, south of Brisbane) and Gungahlin (in Canberra), our conversations would quickly turn from drones to poor public transport and roads:

Honestly, it’s terrible. We have buses that take an hour just to get to Woodridge. It’s literally a 13-minute drive down the road and it takes ages to get there. The traffic is always crap.

Parking was also a major complaint in these areas:

The planning of Gungahlin, it’s like things have just been added on. The huge growth in a lot of high-density buildings has made a huge difference to parking and things when people want to go shopping […] there’s not enough parking.

Abandoning small business in favour of big partnerships

In 2019, when Wing first landed in the city of Logan in Queensland, it partnered exclusively with local businesses. In theory, Wing would help these businesses reach new customers and “take [them] to new heights”.

This strategy was incredibly successful. Local hardware stores, coffee shops and grocery stores provided stock for Wing’s warehouses. In 2021, Wing declared Logan “the drone delivery capital of the world”.

But in 2022 Wing began to pivot to a model that was easier to scale up. Instead of stocking and supplying its own warehouses, or managing its own delivery app, Wing struck deals with big retail players including Coles and DoorDash.

Both customers and local businesses feel left in the lurch. As one resident told me:

The reason we started to go on there was, well, you can still support local. Get it delivered pretty cheap, and [there’s a] convenience factor. And then when they’ve taken everything off, like Boost [Juice] is probably the only one really that I use on there now, and that’s through DoorDash, not even through them direct.

Another business owner said he felt “ditched”:

They put an end date to it and said “We’re redoing the way we’re doing business.” […] They decided to cut their costs even though they’re owned by Google, they got a lot of money. They’re going to use the rooftop space from the big shopping centres and launch the drones from there and use the stock from Coles or whoever they were dealing with at the time.

Wing’s large partnerships also make it harder for small businesses to compete. A local neighbourhood shop cannot meet the expectation of ten-minute delivery, and delivery platform commissions of up to 15–20% will also cut into their margins.

A Wing spokesperson told The Conversation the company is offering delivery services to more small businesses than in the past, adding “68% of restaurants and merchants on the [Wing] marketplace are independent small businesses that aren’t affiliated with a national chain or brand”.

Long-term impacts

The picture emerging from my interviews shows drone delivery started out as a nice enough novelty, but potential long-term impacts on the liveability of neighbourhoods are becoming clear.

Wing’s innovations are not only technical – things like autonomous drones, physical infrastructure, and traffic management systems – but also social and regulatory. The partnerships with major retailers and property developers are no less significant, and the company is also involved in the development of new regulations and safety standards for drones. As a subsidiary of the multitrillion-dollar US tech conglomerate Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Wing has significant resources to throw at making sure its business succeeds.

Wing has said Australia represents the future for drone delivery. By listening to the stories of people who are already living with drone delivery, we can learn more about their risks and unexpected impacts.

Are delivery drones operating in your neighbourhood? Our team is collecting photos, videos and stories about what it’s like to live with drone delivery. Please make a contribution and help us understand what our future could be like.

Thao Phan is employed in the ARC Centre of Excellence on Automated Decision-Making & Society (ADM+S). Her research is funded by the ADM+S, the UKRI Bridging Responsible AI Divides Programme, and the Monash-Warwick Alliance Fund.

– ref. Is drone delivery a modern miracle or a band-aid fix for poor urban planning? I went to Australia’s ‘drone zones’ to find out – https://theconversation.com/is-drone-delivery-a-modern-miracle-or-a-band-aid-fix-for-poor-urban-planning-i-went-to-australias-drone-zones-to-find-out-232977

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ray Fells, Professor of Negotiation, The University of Western Australia

Almost half of all Australian workers are currently watching for or actively seeking a new job, according to a recent Gallup report.

High stress levels, murky work-life boundaries and the fact that pay packets don’t go as far as they used to can all become compelling reasons to look elsewhere. Many may be tempted by the promise of a higher salary.

Of course the grass isn’t always greener, and there may be ways to make your current job more fulfilling. This could include inviting your boss to have a discussion about increasing your pay.

But both landing a new job and chasing a raise internally can put you in the sometimes tricky position of negotiating how much you’re paid.

Fortunately, like many other kinds of negotiation, there are three key principles that will offer you a better chance of success.

Know what you want and why

First, it’s important to know exactly what you want and why you want it.

In the case of looking for a new job, your aspirations should be based on your future, not driven by what is wrong with the job you now have. In what way do you expect the jobs you are looking into to offer you more than your current position?

Researching the relevant levels of pay for similar roles in your industry can offer you a sense of what’s reasonable and suggest where to place the goalposts.

Similarly, when seeking a pay rise, you shouldn’t just go in with vague hopes of being paid more.

It’s important to have a firm idea of how much more you’d like to be paid, and prepare a case for why – such as a recent improvement in performance or evidence of new responsibilities.

Step into the other person’s shoes

Important as your goals may be, any negotiation is two-sided. It is not only about what you want to achieve but what the other party wants, too.

This is the second principle of effective negotiation: other-directedness. Always negotiate from the perspective of the other party.

Imagine you are the other negotiator preparing to negotiate with you. Get to understand what they want, why they want it, what pressures might they be under and what constraints they might have to operate within.

Many organisations have a pretty firm salary and remuneration structure and it is unrealistic to think they are going to bust that structure wide open just to accommodate you. So be reasonable.

Just as importantly, you need to think ahead about what they are going to say in response to your request. What offer are they likely to put on the table – and what is then going to be your response? Plan for a range of different scenarios.

Focusing only on what you are initially going to ask for could see you lose control of the rest of the conversation.

Understanding the other party’s perspective puts you in a better position to present what you have to offer in a way that resonates with their goals. You may feel your extra effort should earn you a pay rise, but focus your request on the outcomes that have helped your employer achieve their goals.

Thinking about the other party also keeps your expectations more realistic. It’s important to set high goals, but if they are outside the other party’s ballpark, you might find yourself backing down or walking away empty-handed.

Have a solid backup plan

This leads us to the third principle of negotiation: knowing what you are going to do if you don’t get what you want.

A good alternative gives you confidence to restate your offer or claim even though the negotiator on the other side of the table has raised their eyebrows at it. Working out this alternative before you start negotiating is vital.

Depending on your circumstances, there may be a range of good alternatives when negotiating your salary for a new job. If you applied for multiple roles, you may be fielding other job offers. You’ll also often have the opportunity to just stay where you are.

Negotiating an internal pay rise might seem to have fewer tangible alternatives if it falls through. Disappointingly, you stay where you are and keep the salary you have.

But there are more ways to move yourself forward than just financially. For example, pursuing further accreditation, especially if subsidised or enabled by your employer, could help you stay motivated and improve your standing in future negotiations.

Remember, though, any negotiation is two-sided and the other party has alternatives, too.

In a job interview, if you have a rare set of skills and they have had a key employee suddenly leave, you could be well positioned to get a good outcome. Often, though, there will be someone else who can fill the vacancy and we might need the job more than they need us to fill it.

In that case, explore all the possibilities around salary – working arrangements, leave provisions and so on that will make the job more attractive to you. Before agreeing, always check that the prospect on offer is better than your alternative.

Ray Fells 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. Negotiating a new salary or a pay rise? Here’s what you need to know to succeed – https://theconversation.com/negotiating-a-new-salary-or-a-pay-rise-heres-what-you-need-to-know-to-succeed-233324

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Broomhall, Director, Gender and Women’s History Research Centre, Australian Catholic University

History remembers Jane as the ultimate damsel in distress – known for her death, rather than her life. Fuck that! What if history were different?

So says the promo for My Lady Jane, an alternative history about Lady Jane Grey who was Queen of England, France and Ireland for little more than a week in July 1553.

This avowedly “alt-universe of action, history, fantasy, comedy and steamy romance” series, as the press release calls it, takes all sorts of liberties, but in some ways, it may be closer to the mark than we might imagine. These fictional women are almost as feisty as the historical Jane and her cousin, Mary, who would become Queen Mary I.

Jane has often been portrayed as a tragic figure. In this, the French painter Paul Delaroche has a lot to answer for. His 1833 visual melodrama, The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, remains a powerful image attached to her history.

Delaroche’s romanticised vision seemed to capture the pathos of a young woman blindly following expectations and sacrificed to dynastic politics – establishing its own influential alt-history.

So what do we know about Lady Jane Grey?

The great-granddaughter of Henry VII and great-niece of Henry VIII, Jane had access to an unusually rich humanist education for a woman of her time and demonstrated an exceptional ability to make use of it, writing letters in Latin and Greek and learning Hebrew. This made her the talk of Protestant Europe.

For Jane, studying seemed an escape from the pressures of her parents. She told one scholar she found studying with her tutor a relief from being in the presence of an exacting mother and father, time when “I think myself in hell”.

Jane’s commitment to Protestantism saw her writing to one of continental Europe’s leading reformer, Zurich-based Heinrich Bullinger, before she was 14.

But Protestantism in England was under threat. By mid 1553, 15-year-old King Edward VI was dying. Edward’s heir was his Catholic, older half-sister Mary, who, if she were to reign, looked set to undo the Protestant kingdom.

At stake for Mary and Jane, two strong-willed women, were competing visions of faith for the kingdom of England. Under Mary, England would return to the Catholic Church. Under Jane, England would continue along the course of Protestantism, launched by her great-uncle Henry VIII.

Edward’s solution was to disinherit his sisters, and to pass the crown to Jane and her future male heirs.

But Edward’s draft plan for his succession suggests there was some uncertainty about whether placing Jane as queen was the right idea. After all, England had no history of successful ruling queens. He had first written that the crown would go to “L Janes heires masles”, and then amended it to read “L Jane and her heires masles”.

When Edward died on July 6 1553, the letters patent issued regarding his will bore the signatures of more than 100 of the kingdom’s leading men. Supporters of the Protestant vision for England held almost all key positions of power.

On July 9, Jane, aged only 15 or 16, was informed of Edward’s death and her new status. On July 10, she was proclaimed Queen, signing herself “Jane the Quene” on official documents.

But Mary was not giving up. She had been gathering supporters in the days before Edward’s death. On July 10 she wrote to the Privy Council, England’s leading body of men advising the monarch, informing them she was queen and expected their obedience. She had gathered a large army behind her, and what likely sealed her success was the work of a faction combining Catholics and conservatives in the Privy Council who flipped the council’s allegiance to Mary.

Jane’s support rapidly collapsed. The kingdom’s powerful men must have weighed their prospects in the two regimes, and most could likely find a place to operate in either.

Winner takes all

As she took the throne, Mary needed a way to explain away Jane. She was to be tried for high treason, but she was also a relative.

A Jane misguided by others was a convenient version of history.

At first, Mary spared the execution warranted by the guilty verdict for both Jane and her equally youthful husband, Guildford Dudley. But further attempts at rebellion in January 1554, led by Jane’s father, pushed Mary to carry out the sentences.

Even then, Mary postponed Jane’s execution date to allow her time to convert to Catholicism. Jane refused, expressing her resolve for the same beliefs that had guided her decisions and actions.

On February 12 1554, Jane stood on the scaffold. She gave a speech that claimed both her innocence and her guilt.

Perhaps, as she saw Mary’s version of history increasingly take root, she wanted to assert her own.

And so we are left with a story of the tragic teen queen vs bloody Mary. As the promo says: “there is always power, if you know how to play the game” – and this game didn’t end with Jane’s death.

Susan Broomhall receives funding from the Australian and Swedish Research Councils.

– ref. A woman who blindly conformed or feisty creator of her own story? What we know about the real Lady Jane Grey – https://theconversation.com/a-woman-who-blindly-conformed-or-feisty-creator-of-her-own-story-what-we-know-about-the-real-lady-jane-grey-232831

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

The climate wars have been reignited with the Coalition’s release of its controversial plan for nuclear power, an option totally rejected by the government.

Meanwhile, a report this week from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AMEO) has indicated the government needs to speed up efforts in what has become a challenging energy transition.

Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen joins the podcast to discuss the issues.

On the cost of the energy transition, which the opposition has claimed will be between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion, Bowen says

Today the Energy Market Operator released their latest Integrated Systems plan. It has the updated cost – $122 billion. That’s the system-wide non-customer owned cost of renewable energy generation, transmission and storage.

Now let’s just call it out. The opposition goes around saying, oh it’s $1.2 trillion. They’re are utterly misquoting and misrepresenting a report which was about the cost of net zero across the entire economy, not just electricity, which is what we’re talking about, but industry, transport, agriculture, everything and that’s to get to net zero by 2050, which they allegedly sign up to.

If you’re asking what’s the cost of getting […] our electricity sector to 82% renewables by 2030 and then net zero by 2050, what we’re talking about is that figure in the Australian Energy Market report.

Labor has faced some criticism over mocking the Coalition’s nuclear plan.

Bowen says

the basis of a mature debate must be facts, and the opposition should be putting more facts out there about their policy.

The reason I’m so firmly against nuclear energy for our country is that it doesn’t stack up. It’s economically irrational and for the alleged party of free enterprise to admit that no private sector investment is going to come in to do nuclear, so therefore, they have to set up a government monstrosity to run it.

On Julian Assange’s return to Australia, Chris Bowen says

I think this is a very good outcome. I don’t support what he did all those years ago, but I think he should be free.

The prime minister’s been very modest about claiming any credit, and I understand why, but I just want to say, from the prime minister, the foreign minister, ambassador Rudd, and High Commissioner Smith – I think they played a blinder in working behind the scenes.

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Chris Bowen on ‘calling out’ claims about the energy transition’s cost – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-chris-bowen-on-calling-out-claims-about-the-energy-transitions-cost-233357

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Cullen, Adjunct Professor in Law, The University of Western Australia

Today Julian Assange walked out of the Federal Court Building in Saipan, North Marianas Islands, a free man. He pleaded guilty to one count of breaching the US Espionage Act.

With the court accepting his 62 months already spent in Belmarsh Prison as a sufficient sentence, he has no more case to answer, and no more sentence to serve.

However, this case leaves behind it a trail of unanswered legal questions and unresolved controversies. In particular, there are questions of fundamental human rights that can only now be addressed in future cases, if ever.

Can freedom of speech concerns stop extradition?

Once Assange had formally pleaded guilty, the US government’s lawyers announced they would immediately withdraw the request to extradite Assange from the UK.

That means the appeal that would have been heard later this year will not go ahead.

To recap, in May the UK High Court gave Assange the right to appeal the UK Home Secretary’s order for his extradition. This was granted on two grounds, both related to free speech.

Read more:
Julian Assange plea deal: what does it mean for the WikiLeaks founder, and what happens now?

The first ground of appeal accepted by the court was that extradition would be incompatible with Assange’s right to freedom of expression, as guaranteed in the European Convention on Human Rights.

The second ground, related to the first, is that he would be discriminated against on the basis of his nationality because he could, as a non-citizen of the US, be unable to rely on First Amendment freedom of speech rights.

But as this appeal is no longer proceeding, the issue of whether a threat to the accused’s freedom of expression can stop extradition will therefore not be argued or decided. The European Court of Human Rights and other human rights bodies have never addressed this point. It’s unlikely to arise again soon.

An espionage precedent?

Also on freedom of expression, the relationship between the US Espionage Act and the First Amendment of the US Constitution remains an open question.

In today’s pleadings, Assange and the US government took different views on whether the exercise of freedom of expression should constitute an exception to the offences under the Espionage Act. Nonetheless, Assange accepted that no existing US case law established such an exception.

This leads to the question of whether today’s guilty plea establishes a precedent for prosecuting journalists for espionage.

In the strict legal meaning of precedent in common law, which refers to a binding judicial interpretation, it does not.

The judge made no determination on whether Assange or the US government was legally correct. However, the US government can now point to this case as an example of securing a conviction against a journalist under the Espionage Act.

The question of how much a non-national of the US can rely on the First Amendment likewise continues to be on the table. This issue would also have been addressed in the extradition appeal, as a question of whether Assange would be discriminated against on the basis of his nationality.

Detention or confinement?

Finally, today’s hearing revived the question of whether the time Assange spent in the Ecuadorian embassy between 2012 and 2019 counts as detention.

As the judge moved to determine whether the sentence of “time served” was a sufficient penalty for his offence, the US government insisted the judge could only consider the 62 months in Belmarsh.

Assange’s lawyers argued he had been detained for 14 years, including the period claiming asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. In 2016, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found Assange was arbitrarily detained in the embassy, largely because of the disproportionate length of time between his initial arrest and the date of the working group’s opinion, over five years.

The UK and Sweden both rejected the working group’s findings, which they do not regard as binding. Furthermore, the findings went beyond the established case law on arbitrary detention, which usually focus on issues of legality and fair process rather than duration. Only the dissenting member of the Working Group analysed the impact of Assange’s voluntary conduct on the length of his stay in the embassy.

Read more:
Julian Assange has been in the headlines for almost two decades. Here’s why he’s such a significant public figure

In today’s hearing, the judge referred to Assange’s “14-year ordeal” but accepted the time in Belmarsh alone was sufficient penalty. The judge considered this period, just over five years, comparable to the seven years served by Chelsea Manning, who had provided the documents to Assange.

It is also worth noting that Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, speaking on ABC Radio National, described Assange as “confined” in the Ecuadorian embassy, avoiding the legally significant term “detained”.

The legal status of Assange’s period in the embassy therefore remains ambiguous, despite the UN Working Group’s 2016 findings.

Today, the main story is that Assange no longer faces prosecution for espionage and is now free to return to his family. However, some of the legal issues emerging from this case remain tantalisingly unresolved.

Holly Cullen receives funding from a Deakin University HDR scholarship. She has been a volunteer for the Australian Labor Party.

– ref. Julian Assange is free, but curly legal questions about his case remain – https://theconversation.com/julian-assange-is-free-but-curly-legal-questions-about-his-case-remain-233339