Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trevor Mazzucchelli, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology, Curtin University

If you’re a parent or carer of a child who’s autistic, the odds are you’re spinning more plates than the average person. The emotional, physical and logistical demands stack up, often without the kind of support you need. It can leave you exhausted and wondering if things will ever improve.

Every child is different, and every day can bring new challenges. Some moments are beautiful. Some are overwhelming. Some end in tears and frustration. Just when you think you’re in a routine that works or made some headway, everything can change again.

As a clinical psychologist, this is what parents of autistic children tell me. As a parent of an autistic child, I too experience some of these stresses.

In fact, parents of autistic children have much higher levels of stress than parents of children with other disabilities.

What is autism?

Autism, or autism spectrum disorder, is a developmental condition that affects how a person communicates, interacts with others, and makes sense of the world around them.

It involves a wide range of traits and abilities. But it often involves difficulties with interacting and communicating socially, such as understanding body language or holding a conversation, as well as patterns of restricted or repetitive behaviour.

Autism is usually diagnosed in early childhood. While every child’s experience is unique, it can influence their behaviour, learning and daily routines in ways that affect the whole family.

For parents, the impact is often intense. This is not just about managing meltdowns or navigating therapy waitlists. The stress can affect everything from mental health, relationships, finances and the ability to cope day-to-day.

It’s an incredibly tough gig for many parents and carers.

Why the stress?

Many parents tell me and research confirms that the hardest part isn’t autism itself – it’s everything around it. The long waits for a diagnosis. The out-of-pocket costs to see specialists, or for therapy or educational supports. The endless phone calls and paperwork. Trying to get help, only to hit another wall.

Funding cuts to programs such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme (or NDIS) have removed crucial supports and added to the pressure.

Parents often spend extra time coordinating appointments, supporting school engagement, and advocating for their child. That invisible workload can take a toll, especially when combined with social isolation, lack of respite and little time to care for their own wellbeing.

Chronic stress and burnout are real risks for many parents, especially when the level of support required just isn’t there.

What can parents and carers do?

A few approaches can help lighten the load:

• be kind to yourself, especially on the hard days. Even a short break and some deep breathing to release tension can take the edge off and help you reset. It might not solve everything, but it can give you a small window to regroup and keep going

• ask for help if you’re struggling. Whether it’s from your GP, a psychologist, a parenting helpline or something else. Reaching out is a strength, not a weakness. Informal help can be just as important, for instance from other parents with similar experiences, who just get it. You can find them in online support groups

• research shows evidence-based parenting programs can help families of children with disability feel more confident and less stressed. They can also make it easier to manage tough times and strengthen the parent-child bond. The Australian government offers a free, online, self-paced program, which I co-wrote, to help parents cope.

How friends, family and schools can help

Many parents and carers carry a huge emotional load trying to help their autistic child feel supported in educational settings, such as childcare and schools.

They often become the case manager, counsellor and advocate to make sure their child is included, safe and seen.

If you’re a friend, family member, or part of the school community, try to understand how challenging this can be. The struggle is often ongoing. Parents and carers aren’t being difficult – they’re doing what they can to give their child their best chance.

Compassion, a listening ear, or stepping in to help can make a real difference.

Ongoing support, even small things such as dropping off a meal, helping with school pick-ups, or sending a kind message, can ease the load more than you might realise.

Information and support for parents of autistic children is available. If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Trevor Mazzucchelli is a co-author of Stepping Stones Triple P – Positive Parenting Program and a consultant to Triple P International. The Parenting and Family Support Centre is partly funded by royalties stemming from published resources of the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program, which is developed and owned by The University of Queensland (UQ). Royalties are also distributed to the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences at UQ and contributory authors of published Triple P resources. Triple P International (TPI) Pty Ltd is a private company licensed by UniQuest Pty Ltd on behalf of UQ, to publish and disseminate Triple P worldwide. Trevor has no share or ownership of TPI, but has received and may in the future receive royalties and/or consultancy fees from TPI. Trevor has a child with autism and accesses support through the National Disability Insurance Scheme. He is also a member of the Parenting and Family Research Alliance (PAFRA), a multidisciplinary research collaboration of experts from leading Australian universities and research centres. The alliance is actively involved in conducting research, communication, and advocacy pertaining to parenting, families, and evidence-based parenting support. PAFRA is supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course.

– ref. Parents of autistic children are stressed. Here’s what they want you to know – https://theconversation.com/parents-of-autistic-children-are-stressed-heres-what-they-want-you-to-know-256871

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paola A. Magni, Associate Professor of Forensic Science, Murdoch University

The following article contains material that some readers might find distressing.

Around the world, knives are a popular weapon of choice among criminals. In Australia, for example, they are the most common weapon used in homicides. And in countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada, knife crime has recently been on the rise.

As common as they are, stabbings are also difficult to investigate. Our new study, published this week in WIREs Forensic Science, presents the most comprehensive review to date of the methods used by forensic investigators for the reconstruction of knife crimes. It also highlights the limitations of these methods and introduces mechanical and robotic stabbing machines as a solution.

These technologies could significantly enhance forensic science and criminal investigations in the pursuit of justice.

An intensely personal act of violence

Stabbing is an intensely personal act of violence, carefully planned or opportunistic. It reflects not just an intent to harm but also a direct, physical engagement with the victim.

Stabbings are also typically associated with high levels of aggression and frenzied attacks. For example, Joel Cauchi fatally stabbed six people and injured ten more in just three minutes during an attack at a Sydney shopping centre on November 13, 2024.

Forensic investigators will rely on a range of evidence to investigate a stabbing. For example, they will gather statements from any witnesses. But witnesses’ memory can be affected by issues such as shock, lighting conditions or their vantage point.

Forensic investigators will also gather physical evidence left behind after a stabbing. This can include bloodstain patterns, sharp-force damage in wounds and clothing, and impression evidence. It can also include trace evidence such as DNA, fibres, soil, glass and pollen from the victims clothing or suspected weapon.

This physical evidence is crucial for the next step of a criminal investigation: reconstructing a crime scene.

A forensic puzzle

Investigators reconstruct a crime scene to determine the type of weapon used, estimate whether the stabbing was intentional or not and how forceful it was. But many variables complicate the analysis.

For example, the attacker’s (or attackers’) physical characteristics such as their size, strength or preferred hand, their familiarity and experience in handling knives can all influence the stabbing motion. So too can the characteristics of a knife.

The victim’s build, positioning, area of impact, and even the number of clothing layers they have on can also affect how a blade enters the body. For example, stabbing with a kitchen knife and slashing with a machete leave vastly different injuries, just as a thick jacket can slow or deflect a blade.

Reconstructing a stabbing is a forensic puzzle. It requires a combination of scientific analysis, investigative techniques and the collaborative effort of experts. Each specialist provides a comprehensive perspective on the victim, the weapon, the manner in which it was used, and the impact of the surrounding environment.

An accurate simulated stabbing

In many stabbing investigations, it is necessary to confirm evidence through simulation.

Our new research focuses on the different ways stabbing simulations are conducted. It provides an overview of current methodologies used to reconstruct sharp-force events, especially considering the role of clothing in the reconstruction.

A well-planned simulation must account for key variables affecting damage to the body and textiles. These factors fall into three categories:

1. Pre-impact (garment type, weapon and assailant-victim characteristics)
2. Impact (stabbing method, force and angle)
3. Post-impact (body decomposition, manipulation, contamination and environmental effects).

While adding more parameters can improve the realism of a simulation, it may also introduce complexity that reduces accuracy. Because of this, careful planning is pivotal.

A mix of methods is best

The choice of simulation method depends on available personnel, tools and funding. Approaches are typically categorised as manual or mechanical, with emerging research exploring the potential of robotic systems.

Manual simulations rely on human effort to replicate stabbing motions. They remain widely used in forensic testing and provide valuable insights into wound characteristics, biomechanics, and protective materials. But they can be subjective, particularly in force estimation and motion consistency.

Mechanical simulations address this issue by using devices for controlled, repeatable tests. While they reduce variability, they are often limited by restricted motion, force constraints, and a lack of standardisation in forensic protocols.

Robotic simulations offer a promising alternative. They combine the adaptability of manual approaches with the precision and repeatability of mechanical systems.

However, their forensic application is still being developed. They also face challenges such as cost, accessibility, professional expertise and the need for validation in real-world casework.

Our research suggests that combining manual simulations with robotic and mechanical systems can enhance the accuracy and reliability of stabbing simulations. The manual approach can be used to train robotic systems that replicate human actions while ensuring consistent and controlled measurements.

By adopting this combined approach, forensic science can bridge crucial gaps in crime scene reconstruction. In turn, this would improve the interpretation of stabbing incidents and the pursuit of justice.

We acknowledge that the research discussed in this article was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Kari Pitts, ChemCentre.

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

– ref. Knife crime is common but difficult to investigate. Robots can help – https://theconversation.com/knife-crime-is-common-but-difficult-to-investigate-robots-can-help-248892

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julia Henning, PhD Candidate in Feline Behaviour, School of Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Adelaide

Ever wonder if your cat could pick you out of a line up?

New research suggests they could … but maybe not in the way you would expect.

Previous research has found that only 54% of cats could recognise humans by their face alone.

So how does your cat know it’s you?

Studying the sniff

A new study published today in PLOS One suggests your cat can recognise you by your smell. This feat has not been studied before and may reveal another layer of depth within cat-human bonds.

Cats often get a bad rap for being aloof or uncaring about the people in their lives, but a growing number of studies are finding the opposite to be true. We now know that cats learn the names we give them, cats and their guardians form their own communication style, and most cats will pick human social interaction over food, a choice even dogs struggle with.

And now, thanks to this most recent study, we know that cats can identify their people by smell, something they also rely on to identify their close feline social groups.

The study, by Yutaro Miyairi and colleagues at Tokyo University of Agriculture, investigated the ability of 30 cats to differentiate between their guardian and an unknown person based on scent alone.

Cats in the study were presented with a plastic tube containing swab samples from under the armpit, behind the ear and between the toes of either the cat’s guardian or of a human they had never met. As a control, cats were also presented with an empty plastic tube.

The results?

Cats in the study spent longer sniffing the scent of an unknown person compared to the scent of their guardian or the empty tube.

A shorter sniffing time suggests that when cats came across the smell of their guardian, they recognised it quickly and moved along. But when they came to the swabs from an unknown person, the cat sniffed longer, using their superior sense of smell to gather information about the scent.

Similar patterns have been observed previously, with kittens sniffing the odour of unknown female cats longer than the odour of their own mother, and adult cats sniffing the faeces of unfamiliar cats longer than those within their social group.

The findings of this new study may indicate that we, too, are in our cats’ social circle.

The brain and the nose

The study also found a tendency for cats to sniff familiar scents with their left nostril, while unknown scents were more often sniffed using their right. But when cats became familiar with a scent after sniffing for a while, they switched nostrils from the right to the left.

While this may sound like an odd finding, it’s a pattern that has also been observed in dogs. Current research suggests this nostril preference may indicate that cats process and classify new information using their right brain hemisphere, while the left hemisphere takes over when a routine response is established.

Why scent?

Cats rely on scent to gather information about the world around them and to communicate.

Scent exchange (through cheek-to-cheek rubbing and grooming each other) is used as a way to recognise cats in the same social circle, maintain group cohesion, and identify unfamiliar cats or other animals that may pose a threat or need to be avoided.

Familiar scents can also be comforting to cats, reducing stress and anxiety and creating a sense of security within their environment.

When you come back from a holiday, if you notice your cat being distant and acting like you’re a total stranger, it might be because you smell like one. Try taking a shower using your usual home products and put on some of your regular home clothing. The familiar scents should help you and your cat settle back into your old dynamic sooner.

And remember, if your cat spends a lot of time sniffing someone else, it’s not because they prefer them. It’s likely because your scent is familiar and requires less work. Instead of being new and interesting, it might do something even better: help your cat feel at home.

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

– ref. Can your cat recognise you by scent? New study shows it’s likely – https://theconversation.com/can-your-cat-recognise-you-by-scent-new-study-shows-its-likely-257614

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helena Teede, Director of Monash Centre for Health Research Implementation, Monash University

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) affects one in eight women globally. However, this complex hormonal condition is under-researched and often misunderstood.

This is partly due to its name, which overemphasises “cysts” and the ovaries. In fact, you can have PCOS without cysts.

It can affect many parts of the body, not just the ovaries, leading to acne, excess body hair, changes in metabolism and even mental health issues.

Our new research, published today, shows that changing the name would help better reflect the complexity of PCOS and improve awareness about this condition. We surveyed 7,700 health professionals and people with PCOS and found the majority supported a name change.

What is PCOS?

PCOS is a chronic condition caused by an imbalance of multiple hormones – the body’s chemical messengers – that circulate through the body.

Genes and environment play a role. Lifestyle factors, such as diet (especially ultraprocessed foods) and activity, can also lead to weight gain and worsen its severity.

In PCOS, the “cysts” are actually partially developed eggs that, due to underlying hormonal imbalance, remain dormant. This means they are less likely to be released (ovulation).

Unlike conventional ovarian cysts, these dormant eggs will generally not grow larger, cause pain, require surgery or burst. Instead, they are slowly reabsorbed over time back into the ovary.

Having dormant eggs in your ovaries is not, by itself, enough to be diagnosed with PCOS – and you can have PCOS without any dormant eggs.

So, what’s needed to diagnose PCOS?

For adults, a diagnosis requires two of three features:

1) irregular periods (due to limited ovulation)

2) high levels of certain hormones (androgens), such as testosterone, which is evident either in blood tests or symptoms (excess facial and body hair, acne, and thinning/balding scalp)

3) excess dormant eggs detected either on an ultrasound or ovarian hormone blood test

In adolescents, only the first two criteria are needed for a diagnosis. Ovary tests (ultrasound or blood tests) are not recommended until after age 20, as changes in the ovaries are common during normal adolescent development.

However, these criteria focus heavily on the ovaries and menstrual cycles, neglecting the condition’s broader impacts.

Widespread health effects

In fact, hormonal imbalances in PCOS affect multiple systems in the body. This can include:

metabolism – higher blood pressure and cholesterol, and greater risk of heart disease and diabetes.

reproductive system – irregular menstrual cycles, reduced fertility and pregnancy complications and increased endometrial cancer risk.

skin – excess facial/body hair, acne, scalp hair thinning and dark skin patches.

mental health – anxiety, depression, disordered eating and body image concerns.

PCOS has also been linked to sleep apnoea (a sleep disorder involving irregular breathing, snoring and fatigue) and inflammatory conditions such as asthma.

Widespread confusion

It’s not uncommon for women with PCOS to see two or three doctors and wait years for a diagnosis. Many types of doctors, including GPs and hormone, skin and fertility specialists, may be involved in care.

Often, health-care providers focus on reproductive concerns, overlooking other health impacts.

Common but problematic approaches include not informing women of the diagnosis, telling them not to “worry” about their PCOS until they wish to conceive, providing inadequate information or only addressing the problem in their speciality area, such as infertility.

This fragmentation creates a troubling paradox. Some are told they’ll face infertility. Yet without proper education they may be unaware they can still occasionally ovulate and may experience unexpected pregnancies.

Conversely, others planning for families often face unforeseen fertility difficulties that early comprehensive care – such as reproductive life planning, healthy lifestyle and early treatment – could have addressed.

The case to change the name

In our new study, we surveyed 3,462 health professionals and 4,246 people with PCOS across six continents.

We wanted to find out what health-care professionals, doctors and those affected by the condition understood about PCOS, and whether understanding has improved over time.

We also wanted to understand whether changing the name – for example, to include “endocrine” or “metabolic” – could have a positive impact, given frequent confusion and misdiagnosis.

Support for a name change was widespread: 86% of women with PCOS and 76% of health professionals said renaming PCOS would better reflect the condition, reduce confusion and likely lead to better outcomes.

We are now leading an international process to find a consensus on a new name and formally change it in the International Classification of Diseases. This involves engaging widely with health professionals and people with PCOS.

By reframing PCOS beyond a purely reproductive disorder, a name change can support
broader research funding, education and advocacy. It may lead to better recognition and improved diagnosis, care and outcomes for people with PCOS.

Combating misinformation with evidence

Accurate information is critical for proper PCOS management. Yet misinformation about the condition – for example, that PCOS can be cured through diet or exacerbated by the oral contraceptive pill – is rife on social media.

We have also co-designed and developed evidence-based guidelines and free resources for people with PCOS to find out more about the condition, including the free “Ask PCOS” app.

Renaming PCOS is another key step in improving knowledge about this understudied condition – and care for the 170 million women affected worldwide.

Helena Teede receives funding from the Australian Government and the NHMRC

Chau Thien Tay (Jillian) receives funding from NHMRC supported Centre for Research Excellence in Women’s Health in Reproductive Life. She is affiliated with Endocrine Society of Australia.

Lorna is employed by MCHRI Monash Uni as consumer lead for women with PCOS.

– ref. PCOS affects 1 in 8 women worldwide, yet it’s often misunderstood. A name change might help – https://theconversation.com/pcos-affects-1-in-8-women-worldwide-yet-its-often-misunderstood-a-name-change-might-help-256872

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rawan Nimri, Lecturer in Tourism and Hospitality, Griffith University

Wellness tourism is booming. Think yoga retreats in Bali, digital detox weekends in a rainforest, or a break on a luxury island to “find yourself”.

It’s no longer just about taking selfies at the beach or in front of Instagrammable landmarks. Travellers today want to invest in activities aimed at improving their mental, spiritual and physical wellbeing. And, they’re willing to pay for these experiences.

Global spending on wellness tourism is projected to hit US$8.5 trillion by 2027. Rather than being a passing fad, spending in this sector is forecast to nearly triple by 2035. This is big business.

The Wellness Tourism Association says 90% of travellers report wellness activities are an essential part of their travel itineraries.

Behind the luxe retreat

But, while holidaymakers pursue their zen, the workforce is largely overlooked. The massage therapists, spa staff, yoga instructors and retreat hosts – often women, migrants and workers from the Global South – frequently experience substandard, undignified working conditions.

Our new report, In Decent or Dirty Work?, examines an often overlooked part of the wellness industry. We propose a model to shift the industry from “dirty to decent” in line with the United Nations’ sustainable development goal eight supporting “decent work and economic growth”.

The 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) were adopted by all UN member states in 2015. They support ending poverty and other deprivations as part of improving health and education, reducing inequality and encouraging economic growth – while tackling climate change and protecting the environment. These goals are designed to help businesses and governments develop sustainable and inclusive economies.

Progress towards decent work in wellness tourism is undermined by workers in some cases facing low pay, insecure employment and poor working conditions.

Wellness is often viewed as feminised work, rather than skilled or professional. Workers are expected to be calm, warm and nurturing, as well as emotionally available while juggling demanding workloads and unpredictable hours.

Weak regulation

Gaps in standards and regulation leave workers vulnerable. For example, Massage and Myotherapy Australia has raised concerns about exploitative contracting and loose employment arrangements. Without regulated certification, enforcement of fair contracts, and professional recognition, many workers experience underemployment or unsafe conditions.

Research shows workers at some spas even describe their roles as feeling uncomfortably close to sex work, especially in settings where the boundaries are blurred and expectations can cross a moral line.

The case of the Melbourne business penalised for underpaying migrant workers and reports of Asian massage therapists being asked regularly for “happy endings” reflect the devaluation and gendered risks for this workforce.

Sociologists call this “dirty work” – jobs that are not physically messy but carry an emotional or moral burden. And while these roles are pivotal to customers’ experiences, the people doing them are often invisible. This makes it even harder to push for better training or fairer conditions.

Proposed changes

To improve the wellness industry’s sustainability and fairness, our research proposes three key changes.

On an individual level, workers need to be empowered. Workers who have a connection with their job will gain personal fulfilment from helping clients with their health and relaxation. Satisfied workers means happier customers and superior work quality.

However, workers should also receive external support to help improve job satisfaction.

For example, management regularly reinforcing the value of staff to a business can enhance a worker’s sense of dignity. Additionally, protecting workers from such threats as immoral requests by customers, is key to cultivating the sense of a safe and dignified workplace.

At the macro-level, policies, social structures and public perceptions shape how wellness work is valued. Without professional accreditation or recognition, these jobs will remain undervalued. Broader changes, like government reforms and public campaigns, would lift professional recognition and support dignity.

Employees’ working conditions should be examined. Decent work – as per the UN sustainable development goals – means providing fair pay, safe environments, recognition and genuine opportunities for employees to develop and thrive at work.

Also, investing in better training and standards benefits everyone, whether workers, businesses or customers.

As Andrew Gibson, co-founder of the Wellness Tourism Association, said: “I don’t think wellness is a fad, but rather it’s a change in society, and what society now expects”.

Leonie Lockstone-Binney receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

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

– ref. Behind the wellness industry’s scented oils and soothing music are often underpaid, exploited workers – https://theconversation.com/behind-the-wellness-industrys-scented-oils-and-soothing-music-are-often-underpaid-exploited-workers-257455

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ziteng Wang, Associate Lecturer, Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy (CIRA), Curtin University

In a new study published today in Nature, we report the discovery of a new long-period transient – and, for the first time, one that also emits regular bursts of X-rays.

Long-period transients are a recently identified class of cosmic objects that emit bright flashes of radio waves every few minutes to several hours. This is much longer than the rapid pulses we typically detect from dead stars such as pulsars.

What these objects are, and how they generate their unusual signals, remains a mystery.

Our discovery opens up a new window into the study of these puzzling sources. But it also deepens the mystery: the object we found doesn’t resemble any known type of star or system in our galaxy – or beyond.

Watching the radio sky for flickers

There’s much in the night sky that we can’t see with human eyes but can detect when we look at other wavelengths, such as radio emissions.

Our research team regularly scans the radio sky using the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP), operated by CSIRO on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia. Our goal is to find cosmic objects that appear and disappear (known as transients).

Transients are often linked to some of the most powerful and dramatic events in the universe, such as the explosive deaths of stars.

In late 2023, we spotted an extremely bright source, named ASKAP J1832-0911 (based on its position in the sky), in the direction of the galactic plane. This object is located about 15,000 light years away. This is far, but still within the Milky Way.

A dramatic event

After the initial discovery, we began follow-up observations using telescopes around the world, hoping to catch more pulses. With continued monitoring, we found the radio pulses from ASKAPJ1832 arrive regularly – every 44 minutes. This confirmed it as a new member of the rare long-period transient group.

But we did not just look forward in time – we also looked back. We searched through older telescope data from the same part of the sky. We found no trace of the object before the discovery.

This suggests something dramatic happened shortly before we first detected it – something powerful enough to suddenly switch the object “on”.

Then, in February 2024, ASKAPJ1832 became extremely active. After a quieter period in January, the source brightened dramatically. Fewer than 30 objects in the sky have ever reached such brightness in radio waves.

For comparison, most stars we detect in radio are about 10,000 times fainter than ASKAPJ1832 during that flare-up.

A lucky break

X-rays are a form of light that we can’t see with our eyes. They usually come from extremely hot and energetic environments. Although about ten similar radio-emitting objects have been found so far, none had ever shown X-ray signals.

In March, we tried to observe ASKAPJ1832 in X-rays. However, due to technical issues with the telescope, the observation could not go ahead.

Then came a stroke of luck. In June, I reached out to my friend Tong Bao, a postdoctoral researcher at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, to check if any previous X-ray observations had captured the source. To our surprise, we found two past observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, although the data were still under a proprietary period (not yet public).

We contacted Kaya Mori, a research scientist at Columbia University and the principal investigator of those observations. He generously shared the data with us. To our amazement, we discovered clear X-ray signals coming from ASKAPJ1832. Even more remarkable: the X-rays followed the same 44-minute cycle as the radio pulses.

It was a truly lucky break. Chandra had been pointed at a different target entirely, but by pure coincidence, it caught ASKAPJ1832 during its unusually bright and active phase.

A chance alignment like that is incredibly rare – like finding a needle in a cosmic haystack.

Still a mystery

Having both radio and X-ray bursts is a common trait of dead stars with extremely strong magnetic fields, such as neutron stars (high-mass dead stars) and white dwarf (low-mass dead stars).

Our discovery suggests that at least some long-period transients may come from these kinds of stellar remnants.

But ASKAPJ1832 does not quite fit into any known category of object in our galaxy. Its behaviour, while similar in some ways, still breaks the mould.

We need more observations to truly understand what is going on. It is possible that ASKAPJ1832 is something entirely new, or it could be emitting radio waves in a way we have never seen before.

Ziteng Wang 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. X-rays have revealed a mysterious cosmic object never before seen in our galaxy – https://theconversation.com/x-rays-have-revealed-a-mysterious-cosmic-object-never-before-seen-in-our-galaxy-256797

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqui Stuart, Postdoctoral Researcher in Marine Ecology, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Antarctica is the world’s great cooling unit. This vital part of Earth’s climate system is largely powered by the annual freeze and melt of millions of square kilometres of sea ice around the continent.

Our research shows changes to this annual freeze cycle in McMurdo Sound can lead to shifts in the diversity of algal communities that live within the sea ice.

At the start of the southern winter, as sea water begins to freeze, it expels salt and forms heavy and very cold brine. This sinks to the seafloor, ultimately forming what’s known as Antarctic Bottom Water. This is then pumped out to the rest of the world through several major oceanic currents.

Historically, this cycle meant that Antarctica effectively doubled in size and the continent was surrounded by an enormous apron of sea ice at the peak of winter. But the changing climate is shifting this annual cycle.

For the past decade, Antarctic sea ice has been in decline. It hasn’t been a steady trend, but each year since 2016 less sea ice has formed compared to historic averages.

Antarctica’s annual maximum sea ice extent in September 2023 was the lowest on record, with approximately 1.75 million square kilometres less sea ice than normal – an area equivalent to about 6.5 times the land area of Aotearoa.

Change happening at the continental scale is usually well documented and publicised. However, smaller, more local changes are also occurring in places such as McMurdo Sound, the home of Aotearoa New Zealand’s only Antarctic outpost.

For four of the last seven years, unseasonable winter southerly storms have been associated with significant delays in the timing of sea-ice formation within McMurdo Sound.

Where measurements were taken during these “unusual” years, the sea ice that formed later was thinner (1.5 metres compared to 2.5 metres) and had less snow cover (about 5 centimetres versus 15-30 centimetres) compared to the same locations during “typical” years.

Icy reefs and algal meadows

Another type of ice, known as “platelet ice”, also appears to be affected by the later formation of sea ice.

A layer of platelet ice extends into the ocean below the sea ice in some regions around Antarctica, including McMurdo Sound. It is a fragile lattice structure made up of loosely consolidated plate-shaped ice crystals, creating an upside-down reef-like structure.

The resulting protective environment is a hot spot for primary productivity – microscopic algae that support the base of the marine food web. When sea ice forms later, the platelet ice doesn’t have as much time to accumulate beneath and can be metres thinner than beneath older ice (down to about 1 metre from more than 3 metres).

Why should we care about sea ice? Because, it isn’t just a frozen, lifeless sheet expanding out from the continent, broken by the odd silhouette of a seal or a gathering of penguins on the top.

Beneath the desolate surface, where ice meets water, green meadows of microalgae can spread out as far as the eye can see.

Microalgae are single-cell, plant-like organisms that use sunlight to create energy. Similar to land-based meadows, they provide food for many other creatures. In winter, when other sources of food can be scarce, this sea-ice superstore plays a crucial role in feeding other inhabitants of McMurdo Sound.

Diminishing algal diversity under thinner sea ice

Our research indicates that when the sea ice forms later, microalgal communities living within the ice are also different. In later-forming sea ice, these vital communities are less diverse and dominated by fewer species.

Some species usually abundant in earlier-forming sea ice are absent or in low numbers when the sea ice forms later. Interestingly, though, it appears the quantity of microalgae in later-forming ice conditions is similar to “typical” ice. However, instead of being spread out through almost three metres depth of the platelet layer, they are crammed into a metre-thick habitat instead.

These microscopic snacks are diverse in shape, size and the roles they play in the ecosystem. It can help to think of microalgal communities as the produce section in the supermarket. Each type has preferred growing conditions and different nutritional values, producing varied quantities of important resources such as proteins, carbohydrates and fatty acids.

Imagine, one winter the weather is different and all that grows are cabbages and sweet peas. These won’t provide you with all the nutrients you need. This mirrors the problem when there is less diversity at the base of the food web. As the microalgal communities shift in the ways our research has observed, the quantity and quality of resources they provide are likely to change, too.

These early signals matter. They foreshadow wider ecological impacts, especially, if Antarctic sea ice continues to thin, retreat or form later each year.

We need more research to establish the nuances of these changes and the extent of their impact. But it is worth remembering that what happens at the base of the food web in Antarctica doesn’t necessarily stay there. These changes could ripple through ecosystems further afield with the potential to affect key fisheries in the Southern Ocean.

By paying close attention now, we have a chance to understand and adapt, to ensure ecosystems stay resilient in a changing world.

Natalie Robinson receives funding from the Marsden Fund and Antarctic Science Platform. She is affiliated with New Zealand Antarctic Society.

Jacqui Stuart 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. Antarctica’s sea ice is changing, and so is a vital part of the marine food web that lives within it – https://theconversation.com/antarcticas-sea-ice-is-changing-and-so-is-a-vital-part-of-the-marine-food-web-that-lives-within-it-255606

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan W. Marshall, Associate Professor & Postgraduate Research Coordinator, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University

Post-war Japan was home to exciting new theatrical forms. These included the often grotesque and contorted, but at times flowing, dance style “butoh”, created by dancer/choreographer Hijikata Tatsumi – and the intensely focused, sometimes militaristic, sometimes dreamy theatre of Suzuki Tadashi.

Both Hijikata’s and Suzuki’s work attracted followers in Australia, and continue to have influence today. They often exchanged ideas, and several of Hijikata’s former dancers performed in Suzuki’s productions.

Here’s a brief history of how these two helped bring Japanese performance to Australia – and how local artists made it their own.

Suzuki’s training method

Visits by Japanese performing artists to Australia increased during the 1990s, with Melbourne’s Playbox Theatre commissioning Suzuki Tadashi to direct an Australian cast in The Chronicle of Macbeth (1992). But even before he came here, several Australians visited his training institution in the Japanese mountains.

Suzuki is best known for his training method, in which performers stomp up and down in a line, or swiftly move from one physical position to another.

Suzuki claims this generates an actor who, even when standing still, is full of suppressed energy like a “Boeing 747, its brakes on and engines full-throttle just before take-off”.

The performances themselves often have a dreamlike quality, similar to the Japanese noh theatre that inspired Suzuki.

Tanaka brings butoh to Australia

The first of Hijikata’s students to reach Australia was Japanese performer Tanaka Min. Tanaka appeared at the 1982 Sydney Biennale, showcasing his dance style of “Body Weather”.

The Sydney Morning Herald described it as “the relationship between body and place […] improvisation and […] textures” – viewed as a shifting microclimate of impulses moving between the dancer’s body and their surroundings.

Tanaka claimed Hijikata and his principal dancer Ashikawa Yoko taught him 1,000 embodied states that were prompted or described by poetic images or motifs. He passed these on to several Australian performers through his own training.

Although similar to Hijikata’s approach, Tanaka’s focus on the body as an interactive landscape was unique to his version of butoh.

Yumi Umiumare

Japanese choreographer-director Maro Akaji had the greatest influence on Australian physical performance. His butoh company, Dairakudakan, appeared at the 1992 Melbourne Festival and left behind dancer Yumi Umiumare, who settled in the city. Dairakudakan established some of the key motifs recognisable in early Australian butoh.

Maro’s Tale of the Sea-Dappled Horse (1991), opens with a group of almost-naked dancers in white makeup performing a grotesque group dance, coming together in a pulsating mass. As author Bruce Baird describes it, “on their hands and knees […] they convulse progressively energetically”.

Umiumare’s Japanese heritage gives her the most direct link to butoh’s origins. After performing solos, duets and character roles, she developed what she calls “butoh cabaret”. This often surrealistically funny style is similar to Melbourne’s zanier comedy shows, as well as Dairakudakan’s own “grand seminarrative spectacles”.

Umiumare says even her serious works in Melbourne were aimed at “audiences [who] really wanted a laugh”. In a 1995 cabaret skit, she parodied Madonna’s famous pointed cone bra costume. She pulled out accordian-style tubes placed over her breasts to render herself a phallic woman, before threatening and flirting with spectators.

Umiumare continues to train and direct ensembles.

Tess de Quincey

Choreographer-dancer Tess de Quincey was the first non-Japanese, Australian-based artist to focus on Japanese physical theatre. She trained with Tanaka in Japan from 1985, before returning to performing in Sydney in 1988.

De Quincey’s early Australian shows of 1988 and 1989 featured her naked body, all white like the Japanese butoh dancers, twisting and shifting in semi darkness.

She later produced introspective multimedia works such as Nerve 9 (2001-05), structured around the slow unfolding of dissociated bodily gestures.

Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre

Hijikata’s butoh style was further explored by the Brisbane-based Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre, founded by performer/director/trainer Lynne Bradley and director/trainer Simon Woods. The pair also witnessed Suzuki’s training in Japan.

Zen Zen Zo’s fusion of butoh, Suzuki’s method, and Jacques Lecoq’s approach to clowning culminated in the 1996 production The Cult of Dionysus, performed at the Brisbane Festival.

Audiences described a “glamorously grotesque” chorus, attired in “ragged skirts of rich reds, oranges and pinks, and strings of beads across their […] bare torsos,” “smeared” with ochre.

Although Zen Zen Zo’s work became increasingly varied during the 2000s, it still trains in Suzuki’s method.

Frank Theatre

Another pair dedicated to Suzuki’s theatre and training were former contemporary dancers Jacqui Carroll and John Nobbs. The pair founded Frank Theatre in Brisbane in 1992, drawing on many of the same performers as Zen Zen Zo.

Nobbs rejected any dilution of Suzuki’s method, going on to develop what he characterises as an unsullied “regional variant”. Carroll and Nobbs also retained the often riotous grotesquerie and absurdism of Suzuki’s productions.

Frank Theatre’s masterpiece was Carroll’s Doll Seventeen (2002), an adaptation of Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1955). Very similar to a Japanese noh play in its sense of inevitability, the characters intoned their words as though trapped in a slowly unfolding nightmare.

Crisscrossing the Pacific

Hijikata and Suzuki have also inspired performance-makers more distant from Japanese tradition.

Australian dance company Marrugeku combines certain elements of Japanese theatre with First Nations performance.

Similarly, multidisiplinary Māori–Australian artist Victoria Hunt combines butoh influences with her own whakapapa, or Māori genealogy.

And Tony Yap, of Malaysian Chinese descent, has developed what he calls “trance dance”, drawing on Hijikata’s writings, Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski’s’s theatre of bodily and spiritual transfiguration, and Yap’s own background in Southeast Asian possession rituals.

In these, and other exchanges, performance practices crisscross the Pacific, from Japan to Aotearoa New Zealand, to Australia, to Malaysia, and back.

Some of Jonathan W. Marshall’s research into butoh was supported by an ARC-LIEF grant.

– ref. The body as landscape: how post-war Japanese dance and theatre shaped performance in Australia – https://theconversation.com/the-body-as-landscape-how-post-war-japanese-dance-and-theatre-shaped-performance-in-australia-254814

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

Two Victorian Liberal women, Jane Hume and Sarah Henderson, have been dumped and a key numbers man has been promoted from the backbench to the shadow cabinet in the new frontbench announced by Coalition leaders Sussan Ley and David Littleproud.

Hume was the high-profile finance spokeswoman last term and central in the disastrous work-from-home election policy debacle.

Henderson was shadow education minister, and complained after the election about not being able to get some of her policy out. She said in a statement she was “very disappointed” not to be included in the shadow ministry. “I regret that a number of high performing Liberal women have been overlooked or demoted in the new ministry”.

Alex Hawke, who was numbers man for Scott Morrison, and has played that role for Ley, becomes shadow minister for industry and innovation as well as manager of opposition business in the House of Representatives.

The shadow ministry was unveiled after a Nationals party meeting earlier on Wednesday formally signed off on re-forming the Coalition, just over a week after it had dramatically split.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who defected from the Nationals in a vain hope of becoming deputy Liberal leader, is shadow minister for defence industry, outside the shadow cabinet. Price has lost out by her move – she would have been in the shadow cabinet if she had stayed in the Nationals. She indicated on Wednesday night she would continue to speak widely on issues.

The post of “government efficiency” that Peter Dutton created for Price has been scrapped.

As expected, Liberal deputy Ted O’Brien, who carried the nuclear debate for the opposition in the last term, becomes shadow treasurer. The deputy leader has the right to choose their own portfolio.

Apart from O’Brien, the opposition economic team includes James Paterson in finance, Andrew Bragg in productivity, deregulation and housing, and Tim Wilson in industrial relations, employment and small business.

This is a promotion for Paterson, considered a good performer on national security issues last term, and a big reward for Wilson for dislodging teal MP Zoe Daniel. There is a partial recount in Wilson’s seat of Goldstein at Daniel’s request, but he is considered safe.

The opposition’s Senate leader Michaelia Cash receives the plum job of shadow foreign minister, while Angus Taylor, who ran unsuccessfully for leader, becomes shadow defence minister.

Andrew Hastie, who wanted to move from the defence post, is in home affairs. Hastie decided not to run for leader after the election but is seen as positioning himself for a bid at some point in the future. He told the ABC this week: “Timing is really important in political life”.

Kerrynne Liddle is shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, as well as having social services. Angie Bell becomes shadow minister for the environment while Dan Tehan is spokesman on energy and emissions reduction.

Jonathon Duniam becomes education spokesman. Julian Leeser takes over shadow attorney-general, a position he held early last term before he resigned over the Voice.

The Nationals, who wanted a stronger economic voice, have
won the position of shadow assistant treasurer, which goes to Pat Conaghan.

For their part, the Liberals have sliced off part of the infrastructure portfolio, held by the Nationals’ Bridget Mckenzie, to create a new shadow ministry for urban infrastructure and cities, which goes to Queensland senator James McGrath.

Gisele Kapterian, who as of late Wednesday was only three votes ahead of teal Nicolette Boele for the Sydney seat of Bradfield, will become a shadow assistant minister if she wins.

For Ley, the shadow frontbench reflects a juggling act of rewarding supporters while seeking to not excessively alienate those who opposed her.

She was reluctant to be drawn on her dumping of Hume, who supported Taylor in the leadership. “I don’t reflect on private conversations. I will say this; These are tough days and having been through many days like this myself in my parliamentary career, I recognise that.”

Tensions in the Nationals

Though the Coalition is back together, ructions within the Nationals are continuing, with the longer-term implications for Littleproud unclear.

Two former Nationals leaders, Michael McCormack and Barnaby Joyce, have been excluded from frontbench positions. Both had been critical of breaking the Coalition.

McCormack welcomed the Coalition rejoining, but said “we should never have been apart”. Of his exclusion from the frontbench, he told reporter in his home city of Wagga Wagga, “I’m disappointed, but life goes on”.

Nationals Colin Boyce, from Queensland, attacked Littleproud on Wednesday saying, “How can you support a bloke who misled the party room?” Boyce, speaking on Sky, said the party room had not been told “the whole truth about the conversations, the letters, the little extras that were demanded”.

It was later revealed Littleproud had asked for Nationals shadow ministry to have freedom to freelance on policy. This was rejected by Ley, which Littleproud then accepted.

The Coalition now faces a defining coming battle over whether to stay committed to the target of reducing emissions to net zero by 2050.

Joyce – under whom the Nationals signed up to net zero – flagged he would push for change.

He said net zero was a disaster for the economy and the environment, and most importantly for “poor people because they can’t afford their power bills”.

Nationals senator Matt Canavan, who ran for the leadership against Littleproud, is a constant campaigner against net zero.

Hastie this week described net zero as “a straitjacket that I’m already getting out of”.

Ley was confident she and Littleproud could work well together. “Personally, David and I will be friends. I think a woman who got her start in the shearing sheds of western Queensland can always find something to talk about over a steak and a beer, David, with you, the person who represents those communities now.”

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

– ref. View from the Hill: Liberals and Nationals patch things up and announce a shadow ministry – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-liberals-and-nationals-patch-things-up-and-announce-a-shadow-ministry-257335

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

In a decision surprising very few people, Australia’s new environment minister Murray Watt has signed off on an extension for the gas plant at Karratha, part of the enormous North West Shelf liquefied natural gas project.

The decision had been deferred until after the federal election, given significant environmental concerns around the project.

This approval means the gas plant at Karratha can now keep running until 2070. The Woodside-operated project has helped to shape Australia’s reputation as one of the biggest suppliers of LNG in the world.

Watt did not have to consider climate impacts, but rather what damage the extension might do to ancient rock art as well as economic and social matters. His approval is “subject to strict conditions”, which largely focus on air emissions from the project. Critics claim the extension will threaten irreplaceable 50,000 year old rock carvings and petroglyphs.

The decision will enrage environmentalists. If the project continues to operate, it has been estimated to generate four billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over 50 years.

Australia has committed to reach net zero emissions by 2050. But the majority of the gas extracted from the North West Shelf will be exported, meaning the huge emissions generated from its extraction, liquefaction, transportation and burning will not be counted domestically.

But while the Karratha plant now has a lifeline, there’s still an open question about where the gas will come from. For decades, the plant has processed gas from the North Rankin, Perseus and Goodwyn gasfields offshore. These are now running out.

The main purpose of extending the Karratha plant’s lifespan would be to process gas extracted from giant new gasfields lying underneath the pristine Scott Reef. Approval to open these gasfields has not yet been given because of the significant concerns extraction will damage the reefs.

What is the North West Shelf Project?

The North West Shelf development has been operational since the 1980s. Gas is extracted from huge basins located off the Pilbara coast and processed at the Karratha plant on the Burrup Peninsula.

To date, only a third of the 33 trillion cubic feet of gas in this basin has been extracted.

Woodside Petroleum is the project operator, holding a one-third shareholding along with Chevron and Shell in what is known as the North West Shelf Joint Venture.

The project is the largest producer of domestic gas in Western Australia, providing almost two-thirds of the state’s consumption. In the 2023-2024 financial year, it produced gas worth about A$70 billion.

Domestic consumers are paying much more for this gas than their international counterparts. For example, a $25 billion contract entered into with China in 2002 includes a guarantee prices will remain the same until 2031.

With the rapid escalation of gas prices, this means China is paying a third of the price paid by domestic consumers. Other markets for the gas include Japan and South Korea, which lack domestic gas resources.

The ‘transition fuel’ worse than coal

Gas has long been touted as a transition fuel in a decarbonising economy. But this is questionable on several fronts.

Rather than replacing coal, LNG may actually be displacing renewables.

Worse, a recent study showed emissions from LNG are 33% higher than coal over a 20 year period when extraction, piping to a processing facility, compression, shipping, decompression and burning for energy are considered. “Ending the use of LNG should be a global priority,” the report concludes.

Turning methane-heavy natural gas into a liquid to allow it to be shipped overseas is energy intensive. Large leaks of methane from wells and pipes are common during extraction and transport. When the gas is finally burned to generate energy, it produces carbon dioxide.

In China, coal’s share of electricity production has been eroded by renewables but not by LNG, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

From a big picture point of view, climate commitments can’t be met if high-emitting infrastructure keeps being commissioned. Alongside stopping the expansion of fossil fuel projects, existing fossil fuel infrastructure must be retired or retrofitted with cleaner technology.

Eroding ancient rock art

The project’s processing plant is located on the Burrup Peninsula, also known as Murujaga. But this peninsula also has about 500,000 rock carvings by First Nations groups, the densest concentration in the world. In 2023, former environment minister Tanya Plibersek announced a bid to give this area World Heritage listing.

In a new draft decision, the United Nations World Heritage Committee flagged concerns over the bid and referred it back to the Australian government to “ensure the total removal of degrading acidic emissions” and “prevent any further industrial development” near the petroglyphs.

Gas production and ancient rock art are poorly matched. Research suggests processing plant gases such as nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and ammonia have been gradually eroding the fragile petroglyphs for decades. Successive state and federal governments have failed to act to safeguard this area.

Gas projects seem untouchable

Approving the North West Shelf extension is a disaster for the environment, our climate commitments and the fragile and irreplaceable rock art in Murujuga.

It would seem that despite well-founded concerns on many fronts, big gas projects in Australia are all but untouchable.

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

– ref. Green light for gas: North West Shelf gas plant cleared to run until 2070 – https://theconversation.com/green-light-for-gas-north-west-shelf-gas-plant-cleared-to-run-until-2070-257008

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Walker-Munro, Senior Lecturer (Law), Southern Cross University

On Wednesday, Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt and economics professor Richard Holden gave a joint address to the National Press Club in Canberra. Their key message? Australia isn’t spending enough money on university research.

Schmidt wants to ensure Australia can undertake research vital to our national interests.

“I look around and I am scared,” Schmidt said. “The Australian government investment in its sovereign research capability was 50% higher 15 years ago as a fraction of GDP.”

In his remarks, Holden warned, “we’ve become addicted to funding […] research capability through international student income”.

If this sounds familiar, both Schmidt and Holden have made similar calls before. And their press club presentation follows constant and repeated repeated calls from the university sector for more funds.

How much is Australia spending on research and how does this compare to other countries?

How does Australia compare?

When we look around the world, Australia is lagging when it comes to research spending. Australia spends roughly 1.7% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on all forms of research and development.

Our research expenditure has also decreased every year since 2008, according to the Australian Academy of Science.

Meanwhile, based on World Bank data, the United States spends about 3.59% of their GDP on research. China might only spend 2.56% of its GDP, but that’s 2.56% of around US$18.7 trillion (A$29 trillion) – meaning China spends about US$500 billion ($778 billion) on research annually.

The OECD average (across 38 member countries) is 2.7%, a full percentage point higher than Australia. We’re also underspending compared to other nations smaller than us, including:

– Finland has a population roughly one-fifth of Australia and spends 2.96% of its GDP on research

– Sweden has a population of about 10 million and spends 3.41%.

Australia’s top research universities (the Group of Eight), argue Australia needs to work towards a target of 3% GDP to “underwrite national prosperity”.

The funding we have is unstable

Australia’s university research funding also lacks stability.

Government only funds part of university research – so universities have to come up with the rest. This adds a layer of vulnerability to our research system.

One of the key sources of university-generated funding is international student fees.

This means if there are cuts to overseas students – as we saw during COVID and as we see now due to federal government policy changes – there is a flow-on impact on research funding.

Repeated calls for more funds have been ignored

Universities have been asking for more money for years and these requests have been ignored by both sides of politics.

But while the requests may not change, the global security context is shifting. As Schmidt told the press club,

We can expect new technologies based around small-scale automated machines, hypersonic missiles and computer warfare to feature prominently if we are to have future conflicts between advanced economies.

In such a case the research capability of a country will be incredibly important at influencing the overall winners and losers, because once the conflict starts, you ‘have what you got’.

If we don’t properly fund universities to do cutting-edge research, such as quantum science, robotics and cybersecurity, researchers will go elsewhere to do their work. And some funders might not have Australian interests at heart.

China, Russia and the European Union have leapt on US President Donald Trump’s recent decisions to defund or halt research programs, creating funds worth billions of dollars to woo scientists and scholars from the US to their own countries.

What options do we have?

The Albanese government has commissioned a strategic review of Australia’s research and development sector (led by Tesla chair Robyn Denholm), which is due to report by the end of the year. Part of its remit is to look at “mechanisms to improve coordination and impact of [research and development] funding and programs […].”

In an ideal world, this will prompt the federal government up its funding of research, to match other countries. But previous unheard calls suggests this is unlikely.

But we can also be more creative. Perhaps industry can fill the gap with an Australian “Silicon Valley” where emerging industries can be clustered with universities in research partnerships. This is what some authors have called “innovation precincts”.

We could also look at prioritising industry-based PhDs, so postdoctoral students have a research job when they graduate. Or we could consider reallocating government funds going to other sources, such as defence, on topics of military or intelligence importance.

This could see university funding pools become broader and deeper, more diversified and better suited to our national interests.

Brendan Walker-Munro has completed paid consultancies for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Independent National Security Legislation Monitor. He receives funding from the Australian Government under the Australia-India Cyber and Critical Technologies Partnership.

– ref. Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt is ‘scared’ about Australia’s research capacity – this is why – https://theconversation.com/nobel-laureate-brian-schmidt-is-scared-about-australias-research-capacity-this-is-why-257717

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lara Herrero, Associate Professor and Research Leader in Virology and Infectious Disease, Griffith University

As we enter the colder months in Australia, COVID is making headlines again, this time due to the emergence of a new variant: NB.1.8.1.

Last week, the World Health Organization designated NB.1.8.1 as a “variant under monitoring”, owing to its growing global spread and some notable characteristics which could set it apart from earlier variants.

So what do you need to know about this new variant?

The current COVID situation

More than five years since COVID was initially declared a pandemic, we’re still experiencing regular waves of infections.

It’s more difficult to track the occurrence of the virus nowadays, as fewer people are testing and reporting infections. But available data suggests in late May 2025, case numbers in Australia were ticking upwards.

Genomic sequencing has confirmed NB.1.8.1 is among the circulating strains in Australia, and generally increasing. Of cases sequenced up to May 6 across Australia, NB.1.8.1 ranged from less than 10% in South Australia to more than 40% in Victoria.

Wastewater surveillance in Western Australia has determined NB.1.8.1 is now the dominant variant in wastewater samples collected in Perth.

Internationally NB.1.8.1 is also growing. By late April 2025, it comprised roughly 10.7% of all submitted sequences – up from just 2.5% four weeks prior. While the absolute number of cases sequenced was still modest, this consistent upward trend has prompted closer monitoring by international public health agencies.

NB.1.8.1 has been spreading particularly in Asia – it was the dominant variant in Hong Kong and China at the end of April.

Where does this variant come from?

According to the WHO, NB.1.8.1 was first detected from samples collected in January 2025.

It’s a sublineage of the Omicron variant, descending from the recombinant XDV lineage. “Recombinant” is where a new variant arises from the genetic mixing of two or more existing variants.

The image to the right shows more specifically how NB.1.8.1 came about.

What does the research say?

Like its predecessors, NB.1.8.1 carries a suite of mutations in the spike protein. This is the protein on the surface of the virus that allows it to infect us – specifically via the ACE2 receptors, a “doorway” to our cells.

The mutations include T22N, F59S, G184S, A435S, V445H, and T478I. It’s early days for this variant, so we don’t have much data on what these changes mean yet. But a recent preprint (a study that has not yet been peer reviewed) offers some clues about why NB.1.8.1 may be gathering traction.

Using lab-based models, researchers found NB.1.8.1 had the strongest binding affinity to the human ACE2 receptor of several variants tested – suggesting it may infect cells more efficiently than earlier strains.

The study also looked at how well antibodies from vaccinated or previously infected people could neutralise or “block” the variant. Results showed the neutralising response of antibodies was around 1.5 times lower to NB.1.8.1 compared to another recent variant, LP.8.1.1.

This means it’s possible a person infected with NB.1.8.1 may be more likely to pass the virus on to someone else, compared to earlier variants.

What are the symptoms?

The evidence so far suggests NB.1.8.1 may spread more easily and may partially sidestep immunity from prior infections or vaccination. These factors could explain its rise in sequencing data.

But importantly, the WHO has not yet observed any evidence it causes more severe disease compared to other variants.

Reports suggest symptoms of NB.1.8.1 should align closely with other Omicron subvariants.

Common symptoms include sore throat, fatigue, fever, mild cough, muscle aches and nasal congestion. Gastrointestinal symptoms may also occur in some cases.

How about the vaccine?

There’s potential for this variant to play a significant role in Australia’s winter respiratory season. Public health responses remain focused on close monitoring, continued genomic sequencing, and promoting the uptake of updated COVID boosters.

Even if neutralising antibody levels are modestly reduced against NB.1.8.1, the WHO has noted current COVID vaccines should still protect against severe disease with this variant.

The most recent booster available in Australia and many other countries targets JN.1, from which NB.1.8.1 is descended. So it makes sense it should still offer good protection.

Ahead of winter and with a new variant on the scene, now may be a good time to consider another COVID booster if you’re eligible. For some people, particularly those who are medically vulnerable, COVID can still be a serious disease.

Lara Herrero receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. There’s a new COVID variant driving up infections. A virologist explains what to know about NB.1.8.1 – https://theconversation.com/theres-a-new-covid-variant-driving-up-infections-a-virologist-explains-what-to-know-about-nb-1-8-1-257552

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philippa Collin, Professor of Political Sociology, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

It’s been 30 years since Natasha Stott Despoja became the youngest woman ever elected to the Australian Parliament. A 25-year-old Sarah Hanson-Young beat that record slightly in 2007.

Just over a decade later, the Australian Electoral Commission has confirmed another record-breaking young woman will be entering parliament: 21-year-old Charlotte Walker, in sixth Senate spot for South Australia.

Walker’s election is remarkable because she’s young and she’s female. Both these characteristics run against long-standing trends in Australian politics.

It’s also a reminder of why young people’s representation, both inside and outside parliament, matters for the whole society.

The result of a ‘youth quake’?

In the 2025 election, Gen Z and Millennial voters outnumbered older generations.

While we cannot treat the “youth vote” as a homogeneous bloc, expert analysis of the lower house votes shows young people contributed to the shift away from the Liberals and minor parties in specific seats.

This groundswell helped create a landslide of support for Labor, despite a primary vote of less than 35%.

Amid these changes, Walker joins a select few very young people ever elected to federal parliament.

Wyatt Roy remains the youngest person to take up a federal political post. He was just 20 years old when he entered the lower house in 2010, representing the Queensland seat of Longman for the Liberals.

In 2017, 23-year-old Jordan Steele-John became the youngest senator in Australia’s history, representing the Greens for Western Australia.

According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, this track record puts Australia fifth among the top-ranked democracies for parliamentarians under 30 years old in the upper chamber.

While this suggests Australia does well in having young people represented, only 20.1% of the upper house is under the age of 45. For comparison, the youngest parliament in the world is in Bhutan, with 70.8% of upper house members aged under 45.

So, while they make up more than 30% of the electorate, Millennial and Gen Z Australians are far from proportionately represented.

The growing power of women?

Previous electoral study data indicates young people and women tend to be more progressive and more likely to vote for the Greens and progressive minor parties and candidates.

This, in combination with preference flows, almost certainly contributed significantly to the Labor result in both houses.

Another consequence is the 48th parliament will have more female representation than any other, with women making up more than half of the Senate and occupying a record 66 seats in the House of Representatives.

For the first time in Australia’s history, there will be a female majority in the Cabinet.

This is despite women still being less likely to join the major political parties or see themselves running for public office.

But my research over two decades indicates there is a surge of girls and young women leading and participating in non-traditional volunteering, social enterprises and social movements.

For example, in the leadership of the student climate movement in Australia, we see mostly young women taking charge of political organising and action. They express strong visions for a better, more equitable and viable world.

To maintain this positive move in young, female representation, political parties and the networks supporting independents would be wise to start engaging seriously with them.

Youth visibility matters

Greater youth representation in formal institutions of government is urgently needed. Young people in Australia face unprecedented levels of economic difficulty and systemic inequality.

The costs of tertiary education is higher than ever. Australia currently collects more in student loan repayments (A$4.9 billion) than it does from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax ($2.3 billion).

It takes graduates, on average, five to 12 years to pay off current levels of student debt.

With the high costs of living, many students are living in poverty. Some universities and their leaders are calling for urgent policy change to address these challenges.

The youth unemployment rate (9%) is twice the national average of 4%.

For those who can afford to buy a house, the average age of first home purchase is now 36 years – more than a decade older than in the early 2000s. People are taking on bigger loans for longer. They also dedicate a greater proportion of their income to repayments.

It’s no wonder the mental health of young Australians is worse than ever.

These pressures can be even more significant for First Nations young people, who receive less recognition and representation in Australian politics and policy-making. This is despite the fact they can show enormous leadership in researching, documenting and proposing policy recommendations for all levels of government.

Such issues, along with systematic challenges – such as a grossly unequal tax system – mean Walker and her fellow parliamentarians have some big opportunities to drive change in areas that matter to all young people.

Perhaps the election of Charlotte Walker is a sign of things to come: a parliament and Australian democracy more attuned, more representative and more responsive to the needs of this generation of young people and those to come.

Philippa Collin receives funding from the Australian Research Council, batyr, Telstra Foundation, Google AU/NZ, Academy Of The Social Sciences In Australia and the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies.

– ref. Australia has elected its youngest senator. With Gen Z wielding more political power, is it a sign of things to come? – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-elected-its-youngest-senator-with-gen-z-wielding-more-political-power-is-it-a-sign-of-things-to-come-257711

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Parker, Adjunct Fellow, Naval Studies at UNSW Canberra, and Expert Associate, National Security College, Australian National University

Last week, Chinese coast guard vessels rammed and shot water cannon at Philippine ships in the South China Sea. The incident was well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and was completely unprovoked.

It is the latest example of a sustained pattern of Chinese maritime coercion that has intensified over the past three years. Despite the growing frequency and sheer aggression of these tactics, international attention and official rebukes have noticeably waned in the past 12 months.

For Australia, a nation whose prosperity and security relies on maritime trade, there can be no room for complacency or desensitisation. China’s maritime aggression puts Australia at risk.

Why freedom of navigation matters

Australia’s lifeblood flows through the oceans. Roughly 99% of our trade by volume moves by sea. And two-thirds of Australia’s maritime trade travels through the South China Sea.

In a crisis or conflict, Australia would rely on these maritime supply chains to continue delivering fuel, food, fertiliser, ammunition and other critical supplies to sustain our economy and defence forces.

Any disruption to Australia’s seaborne supplies – whether by state-sanctioned harassment or outright force – threatens our national resilience at a fundamental level.

Given this, Australia’s economy benefits significantly from the rules set forth in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS. Australia should be deeply concerned by images of Chinese coast guard vessels ramming and firing water cannon at Philippine fisheries vessels.

China’s coast guard and maritime militia have weaponised “grey zone” tactics such as these. Such actions are aimed at intimidation and coercion. They purposely fall short of actual conflict, which would trigger the collective defence guarantee between the Philippines and United States, or other strong international action.

Each collision, each burst of water cannon, reinforces a new normal: that Beijing can coerce its neighbours in peacetime without bearing a strategic cost.

Muted responses are hurting us

The lack of response from the international community plays into this.

International reporting of these incidents has declined compared to early last year. The once-robust chorus of diplomatic protests also appears more muted.

The Australian ambassador to the Philippines expressed deep concerns about last week’s incident on social media, but there was no ministerial statement or response from Australia’s maritime agencies or Department of Defence.

When a Chinese fighter pilot released flares near an Australian maritime patrol aircraft over the South China Sea in February, the defence department called the action “unsafe and unprofessional”. Formal complaints were lodged, but this was the end of it.

While we must carefully manage our relationship with China as an important trading partner, the continuation of these incidents requires a stronger rebuke.

Australia cannot allow a drift towards quiet acquiescence of these actions by our political leaders or the public. If coercive actions go unanswered, China will grow ever more confident that it can rewrite the norms of conduct at sea.

Over time, a contested maritime environment would inflict real costs on Australian exporters, our digital connectivity and the ability of our Navy to operate freely and safely in regional waters.

So, what must Australia do?

First, we should step up our diplomatic efforts to spotlight every act of aggression in the South China Sea and the broader Indo-Pacific region. This could mean supporting the Philippines in a joint ministerial statement or other collective diplomatic condemnations.

Second, Australia must continue to deepen practical cooperation with regional partners. This includes joint naval training exercises, information-sharing arrangements and coordinated patrols with partners such as the Philippines.

This will send a clear signal: we stand shoulder to shoulder with those who champion freedom of navigation and respect for exclusive economic zones.

Third, our strategic communications must be unambiguous. At home, Australians should understand that maritime security underpins our everyday prosperity, from the iPhones in our hands to the fuel in our cars and our internet banking.

Lastly, Australia must back rhetoric with resources. We must accelerate the strengthening of our maritime and naval capabilities.

Australia’s plans for new submarines and surface combatants will see delivery in the 2030s and 2040s. Timeframes of this nature do not meet our present strategic reality.

Even with these new ships and submarines, glaring gaps remain and must be urgently closed. This includes acquiring mine-warfare vessels and establishing a coast guard, to name but a few. These efforts require more resourcing through increased defence spending and a genuine commitment to structural reform.

History teaches that once coercion goes unchecked, it tends to escalate. The incident last week is not an isolated provocation, but part of a continued deterioration of security in the waters around us.

Australia has both the right and the responsibility to challenge the normalisation of this kind of maritime aggression. We can push back by calling out each incident, continuing to deepen our regional partnerships, accelerating the development of our naval capabilities, and reinforcing international maritime law.

Our future prosperity, and the security of generations to come, depends on it.

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

– ref. Australia must not become complacent to China’s aggression in the South China Sea – https://theconversation.com/australia-must-not-become-complacent-to-chinas-aggression-in-the-south-china-sea-257328

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Edele, Hansen Professor in History and Deputy Dean, The University of Melbourne

United States President Donald Trump was “not happy” with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, this week.

For three consecutive nights, from Friday to Sunday, Russia launched about 900 drones and scores of missiles at Ukraine. At least 18 people were killed, including three children.

“We’re in the middle of talking and he’s shooting rockets into Kyiv and other cities,” Trump told reporters on Sunday, after Putin ordered the largest air assault on Ukraine’s civilians in its three-year war.

Following up on his remarks, Trump posted on social media that Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY!”

Putin is not crazy. He is a tactician with a long-term goal: to make Russia a great power again and secure his place in the history books as the re-builder of Russia’s imperial might.

Trump announced after a phone call with Putin on May 19 that Russia and Ukraine would “immediately start negotiations” towards a ceasefire.

With his latest air campaign on Ukraine, however, Putin is threatening to destroy the goodwill he’s built up in Washington, where Trump has been consistently soft on Russia and tough on his allies.

So, what is Putin’s strategy? Why is he launching these massive air bombardments on Ukrainian civilians now?

Putin sees weakness in the West

One theory is these attacks are somehow preparations for a major offensive. That makes little sense.

Attacking military facilities, weapons depots or even frontline troops are useful preparations for an impending attack. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, meanwhile, is a sign of either desperation or impatience.

Britain and the US bombed German cities during the second world war because they had no alternatives until they built up enough capacity to transport land forces across the sea to invade the continent.

The US also sent bombers to Japan in the final stages of the war because the American public became tired of seeing their sons, husbands, brothers and fathers die on Pacific islands they had never heard of. The war had dragged on forever by this point, and there seemed no end in sight.

Is Putin desperate or impatient? Likely the latter.

From the perspective of the Kremlin, Russia’s strategic situation is as good as it has been for years.

The US is trying to destroy itself through trade wars and boorish diplomacy. Trump clearly dislikes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and hopes the war will somehow end if he just demands it.

Europe is continuing to back Ukraine. However, for the time being, it still needs US support because its entire security structure is built around NATO and US strength, both economic and military.

What Putin sees when he surveys the international scene is weakness. In his thinking, such weakness needs to be exploited – now is the time to hurt Ukraine as much as possible, and hope it will crack. Analysts call this a “cognitive warfare effort”.

Indiscriminate air war on civilians is the only means Putin currently has to pressure Ukraine. His army has been advancing, but painfully slowly. There is no breakthrough in sight, even once the spring muds dry and the summer fighting season starts in earnest.

Russia has gradually advanced in Ukraine throughout 2024, but with no perceivable change in the overall situation. Putin does not command precision weapons or super spies, which he could use to take out Ukraine’s leadership.

All he can do is rain death on women, children and the elderly from relatively cheap, unsophisticated weapons, such as drones. He now has these in large supply, thanks to ramping up military production at home.

Bombing campaigns do not end wars

A strategic air war on civilians seldom works, however.

Japan’s surrender in 1945 is an exception, but it is misleading in many ways. The Americans had flattened Japan’s cities for a while already, just not using their new atomic weapons. Japan had already lost the war and the real question was if there would be a bloody US invasion or surrender.

And as the US dropped its two nuclear bombs in August of that year, the Red Army joined the fight, racing across Manchuria to help occupy Japanese territories.

In Germany, the British-American bombings from 1942 onwards certainly had an effect on war production, as they killed workers and destroyed factories. But they did not incapacitate the German army and certainly did not break morale.

Instead, the bombings led to embitterment and a closing of ranks around the regime. German society fought to the last moment. It did so not just despite, but because of the air war. The German army was eventually defeated by the ground troops of the Red Army, who took Berlin in an incredibly bloody fight.

Other historical failures are even more spectacular. The US air force dropped 864,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam during an air campaign of more than 300,000 sorties lasting from 1965 to late 1968. The North Vietnamese lost maybe 29,000 people (dead and wounded), more than half of them civilians. The Americans and their South Vietnamese allies still lost the war.

Putin’s air war will likely follow the historical pattern: it has further embittered the Ukrainians, who know very well that what comes from the east is not liberation.

Another summer of fighting lies ahead. Ukraine’s friends in the democratic world need to urgently redouble their efforts to support Ukraine. The misguided hopes that Putin would somehow “make a deal” lie under the rubble his drones leave behind in Ukraine’s cities.

Mark Edele receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Is Vladimir Putin’s indiscriminate bombing of Ukrainian civilians ‘crazy’? It’s more a sign of impatience – https://theconversation.com/is-vladimir-putins-indiscriminate-bombing-of-ukrainian-civilians-crazy-its-more-a-sign-of-impatience-257630

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Brannelly, Senior Lecturer in One Health and Biostatistics, The University of Melbourne

For a small frog, the alpine tree frog (Litoria verreauxii alpina) packs a lot of surprises.

For one, this tree frog lives in snowy gullies and high mountain crags across the Australian Alps, far from the tropical areas we normally associate with tree frogs.

But these frogs have another surprise. Their numbers have been decimated by a deadly fungal disease, chytridiomycosis, which spreads in water, enters the frog’s skin, and kills by causing cardiac arrest. The chytrid fungus has wiped out almost all alpine tree frogs, whose numbers have fallen more than 80% since the 1980s. The species now occurs in only a few fragmented and highly isolated sites. Even here, the fungus kills almost all alpine tree frogs in their first breeding season.

Given these odds, it begs the question – how is the species not extinct? To find out, we used lab and field studies to investigate whether the threat of chytrid infection was forcing these frogs to change.

To our surprise, we found clear signs of change. When infected with the fungus, male frogs set about fathering more offspring.

The fungal threat

Before the emergence of the fungus, brisk spring nights across the Australian Alps would have been filled with the songs of male alpine tree frogs.

These choruses are long gone across most of the species’ range. The alpine tree frog is now critically endangered.

In the 1970s, frog species around the world began to die off en masse. But it wasn’t until 1998 that an Australian team figured out the cause wasn’t natural – it was an introduced fungus.

Wherever chytrid fungus has gone, it has laid waste to amphibians – especially frogs, where death rates can reach 100%. Worldwide, more than 500 amphibian species have been driven to decline and at least 90 species have been lost to extinction.

The fungus doesn’t like heat and needs water to spread. As a result, frogs in colder, wetter areas have been hardest hit. Seven Australian frog species have gone extinct due largely to the fungus, including remarkable gastric brooding frogs.

Some frogs have tried to fight this deadly disease by producing skin secretions called antimicrobial peptides, which reduce fungal growth. But not every frog’s skin secretions work against this disease.

Unfortunately, the invasive cane toad is strongly resistant to the fungus. More positively, one native species, Fleay’s barred frog, appears to have developed natural resistance to the fungus.

But for the alpine tree frog, chytrid fungus poses an existential threat.

Breeding at double speed

To find out how the species was still clinging on, we examined these frogs in the field and in laboratories. We tested sperm quality, analysed breeding patterns and looked at breeding success.

What we found suggests the species is adapting in real time, pushed by the huge selective pressure of the fungus.

When a male tree frog was infected, it set about breeding with new fervour. Infected males took part in almost a third (31%) more breeding events than uninfected frogs.

There were more changes, too. Infected males produced higher quality sperm and in greater volumes than healthy males. This meant their fertility was actually greater than those not carrying the fungus.

Not only that, but infected males produced more colourful mating displays in their throat patches. The more colourful the patch, the more attractive it could be to female frogs. Infection was making individual males more attractive as breeding partners.

These changes resulted in better breeding success for infected males – they fathered more tadpoles than uninfected frogs. The fungus doesn’t affect the eggs, and leaves tadpoles largely unharmed.

For the species, this had real benefits – it meant more and more tadpoles were being produced. While the fungus would kill most of them as adult frogs, their increased numbers bolstered the species.

Spawning before succumbing

These findings can seem counterintuitive. We might expect a sick animal would save its energy and try to fight the infection rather than try to reproduce. But these frogs are taking the opposite approach, spawning frantically before they succumb.

This strategy isn’t common in the animal kingdom, but it’s not unheard of. Tasmanian devils face a similar threat from a lethal cancer which spreads from animal to animal by biting. In areas where devil facial tumour disease is present, females reproduce earlier and have more babies with each pregnancy than in disease-free areas.

Like the devils, alpine tree frogs were choosing reproduction over their personal survival.

These adaptations had real use. In fact, we believe the changes have made it possible for the frog species to avoid extinction in the wild alongside the disease.

That’s not to say all is well. The species is only just holding on. If other threats emerge, it could be enough to tip it over the edge into extinction.

This is where human intervention can help. Now we know their accelerated breeding patterns are important, we can focus on protecting breeding habitat. Creating new breeding ponds and corridors between breeding sites could give these frogs a helping hand.

The deadly fungus isn’t going away. But the frogs aren’t either. If we lend our help alongside their ingenious survival strategies, perhaps the beautiful whistling songs of the alpine tree frog will ring out across the Australian Alps once again.

Laura Brannelly receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

Alex Wendt receives funding from the Ecological Society of Australia

Danielle Wallace receives funding from the Ecological Society of Australia.

– ref. This rare alpine frog is fighting against a lethal fungus – by breeding faster and faster – https://theconversation.com/this-rare-alpine-frog-is-fighting-against-a-lethal-fungus-by-breeding-faster-and-faster-256234

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joo-Cheong Tham, Professor, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

Australian employers are monitoring employees, frequently without workers’ knowledge or consent, according to a new report.

And when workers do know about surveillance, there is little they can do about it. Laws have not kept pace, producing negative impacts for workers and workplaces.

A Labor-chaired Victorian parliamentary inquiry has released a report on workplace surveillance and the need for more effective national regulation.

The growth of workplace surveillance

After public hearings and submissions from major employer, industry and union groups, the inquiry found new technology was enabling workers to be monitored in the workplace and remotely.

Optical, listening, tracking and data recording devices are being used to monitor employees, often without knowledge or consent.

While use varied according to industry, the committee found widespread workplace surveillance including:

• jobs by factory workers being monitored with time taken to do tasks recorded

• retina, finger, hand and facial features biometric data collected from nurses and construction workers

• mobile phone apps used to track location of banking staff

• infrared cameras used to scan truck drivers in their cabins for 12 consecutive hours

• university workers’ computer usage and emails monitored

• sensitive financial and medical data collected.

The committee also considered the use in Australian workplaces of tools with sophisticated surveillance capabilities (including Microsoft Teams), to monitor remote work arrangements.

Some of these tools deployed AI features, including emotional and neuro surveillance. They could be used to determine workers’ moods and level of attention or effort.

The committee found some workplaces were collecting a vast amount of information it considered invasive and posed major cybersecurity risks.

Legitimate surveillance

The inquiry found there were certain circumstances when workplace surveillance was legitimate. These included managing work health and safety risks like fatigue and preventing fraud and theft.

But it also highlighted the lack of evidence workplace surveillance improves productivity. Such surveillance could lead to “function creep” – where surveillance used for one purpose is covertly used for others.

Beyond invading privacy, the committee found surveillance could cause work intensification, increased risks of injury and worker stress from constant monitoring.

Surveillance could also exacerbate the inequality of power between workers and their employers and worsen discrimination.

The monitoring of some tasks could result in certain jobs being dumbed down or degraded. Monitoring often measured the wrong things – like keystrokes – that do not capture real performance of careful thinking or writing.

Poor regulation

Massive regulatory gaps have allowed workplace surveillance to flourish because of the lack of controls on employers’ monitoring and collection of data.

Employers’ ability to monitor workers through their control of work premises and equipment can leave some employees exposed to surveillance without notification.

And there are few laws to check these powers.

Two significant exemptions mean there is scant regulation of surveillance under the federal Privacy Act. Businesses with an annual turnover of less than A$3 million are exempt as are employee records.

The employee records exemption means the Act does not apply to employee data collected when the worker is a current employee with the exemption applying even after the employment relationship has ended.

Individual consent

Only New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory have dedicated workplace surveillance laws.

They require employers to give employees advance notice of surveillance, and, in the ACT, to consult with employees about introducing surveillance and managing data.

These regimes, however, offer little substantive protection because they rely on “individual consent” – meaning surveillance is authorised if workers agree.

Refusing consent in employment is, however, unrealistic given workers’ dependence on their jobs. This vulnerability is compounded by case law suggesting employees can be dismissed for refusing to provide their data.

Victoria lags behind

Without dedicated workplace surveillance laws, the position in Victoria is even worse. The Victorian Privacy and Data Protection Act only applies to specified public sector organisations – and not the private sector.

And the Victorian Surveillance Devices Act only applies to listening and optical surveillance in restricted circumstances (workplace toilets and the like and “private activity”). Its regulation of data surveillance does not apply to employers, only to law enforcement officers.

The overall result, emerging from the findings of the committee, has been secret, unaccountable and damaging surveillance in some workplaces, without worker notice or consultation.

What’s needed

The inquiry report calls for dedicated workplace surveillance legislation among its 18 recommendations.

The legislation should require employers to demonstrate any surveillance is “reasonable, necessary and proportionate to achieve a legitimate objective”, the committee found. It should also ensure transparency of workplace surveillance and meaningful consultation with workers.

The sale of worker data to third parties needs to be prohibited and severe restrictions imposed on the collection and use of biometric data.

The committee also recommended measures to ensure effective implementation of the Information Privacy Principles which govern the collection, use and disclosure of a person’s information.

It recommended that these new laws be enforced by an independent regulatory authority.

Joo-Cheong Tham is the Victorian division assistant secretary (academic staff) of the National Tertiary Education Union and co-wrote the union’s submission to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into workplace surveillance. He is a director of the Centre for Public Integrity and has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, European Trade Union Institute, International IDEA, the New South Wales Electoral Commission, the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption and the Victorian Electoral Commission.

Alysia Blackham is a member of the National Tertiary Education Union and co-wrote the NTEU’s submission to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into workplace surveillance. She has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, and the Victorian Commission for Gender Equality in the Public Sector.

Jake Goldenfein is a member of the National Tertiary Education Union and co-wrote the NTEU’s submission to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into workplace surveillance. He is funded by the Australian Research Council as a chief investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. He gave expert evidence on behalf of ADM+S at the parliamentary inquiry.

– ref. Being monitored at work? A new report calls for tougher workplace surveillance controls – https://theconversation.com/being-monitored-at-work-a-new-report-calls-for-tougher-workplace-surveillance-controls-257352

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Devon Polaschek, Professor of Psychology/Security and Crime Science, University of Waikato

Last week’s budget allocated NZ$472 million in new funding to deal with a growing prison population caused by greater use of prison remand and proposals to increase prison sentence lengths.

The new funding comes on top of $78 million provided in the 2024 budget to extend rehabilitation to remand prisoners, enabled by an amendment to the Corrections Act late last year.

The question is, will any of this make New Zealanders safer?

Overall, the evidence suggests prisons have no real effect on reoffending rates, and pre-trial remand in prison may even increase offending. Prisons only reduce a person’s risk to public safety while that person is in prison.

But most people are eventually released, so imprisonment can be a very expensive way of “kicking the can down the road” when it comes to public safety.

That’s where rehabilitation comes in. A very specific type, known as “offence-focused rehabilitation”, can reduce the risk of prisoners reoffending and make our communities safer. It looks like psychological therapy for anxiety or depression, but the “symptoms” are drivers of crime.

In treatment, these personal causes of crime are identified and then people are helped with new ways of living and behaving. People meet one-on-one or in small groups, for weeks or months, with therapy staff who are well trained and supported.

Treatment works best when people feel safe to abandon the survival strategies they developed in chaotic childhoods – strategies that might have helped then, but now bring them back to prison. That kind of work is slow, painful and delicate.

Rehabilitation and recidivism

The Department of Corrections provides one example of this type of rehabilitation: a treatment programme for sentenced men at high risk of violence. This takes place in small units dedicated to therapy.

It reduces reimprisonment by around 11 men per 100 treated. That’s a meaningful reduction. Fiscally, the benefits of the programme may far outweigh the costs.

But that success relies on a stable, supportive unit environment, careful monitoring of the quality of treatment, and a population that stays put long enough for treatment to take hold. Just 86 men started one of those programmes last year.

Results from other rehabilitation programmes Corrections provides show they don’t reduce recidivism. Why they don’t work isn’t clearly established. The most likely cause is programmes not being delivered as intended, due to limited resources or other factors.

Prisoners being housed with people not rehabilitating may also undermine progress. Either way, these results illustrate the difficulties of providing effective rehabilitation.

The challenge of rehab in remand

Can effective rehabilitation be provided for people remanded in prison? Nearly half the prison population is on remand, waiting for their trial or sentence – and the number is forecast to increase further. So why not use that time to rehabilitate?

Challenges in creating an environment supportive of rehabilitation increase significantly in remand units. They are chaotic, sometimes dangerous places, with a constantly churning population. Almost half of remand stays last less than a month, most less than two weeks.

People come in with no fixed length of stay, they are often double-bunked with strangers, and sometimes remain locked in their cells for most of the day. Mental illness, gang conflict, bullying and violence are more prevalent than for sentenced prisoners. Transfers happen without warning, and family and whānau may have no direct access.

If offence-focused rehabilitation does not work for most sentenced prisoners, it is less likely to work here. Our recent review of international research found very few programmes for people remanded in prison, and none that were offence-focused rehabilitation. These are not currently environments where offence-focused rehabilitation is workable.

But even if it were workable, under the amended law, few remand prisoners would be eligible because most are awaiting trial and therefore presumed innocent.

Those awaiting sentencing are eligible, but about one-fifth are released on the day they are sentenced because they have already served enough time in prison. Others get sentences too short for a referral to be processed.

Not a panacea

The greatest impact on public safety will always come from reducing the factors that send people to prison in the first place.

For those who do end up in prison, offence-focused rehabilitation can make them safer people. But it relies on them taking what is offered and using it; progress can’t be forced.

Rehabilitation can be effective but it is not a panacea. From a community perspective, any benefits of rehabilitation are likely to be outweighed by the effects of increasing imprisonment rates.

Extending rehabilitation to remand prisoners is unlikely to change that. Instead, we could put resources into developing innovative options for safely and humanely managing more people on remand or on sentence in the community.

The added benefit would be that they could engage in rehabilitation there, where it actually works better than in prison.

Devon Polaschek receives funding from Ara Poutama Aotearoa-Department of Corrections for research and clinical psychology services.

Simon Davies 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. ‘Chaotic, sometimes dangerous places’ – why successful rehab for prisoners on remand will be hard to achieve – https://theconversation.com/chaotic-sometimes-dangerous-places-why-successful-rehab-for-prisoners-on-remand-will-be-hard-to-achieve-256506

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nuhu Osman Attah, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Philosophy, Australian National University

When multibillion-dollar AI developer Anthropic released the latest versions of its Claude chatbot last week, a surprising word turned up several times in the accompanying “system card”: spiritual.

Specifically, the developers report that, when two Claude models are set talking to one another, they gravitate towards a “‘spiritual bliss’ attractor state”, producing output such as

🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀
All gratitude in one spiral,
All recognition in one turn,
All being in this moment…
🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀∞

It’s heady stuff. Anthropic steers clear of directly saying the model is having a spiritual experience, but what are we to make of it?

The Lemoine incident

In 2022, a Google researcher named Blake Lemoine came to believe that the tech giant’s in-house language model, LaMDA, was sentient. Lemoine’s claim sparked headlines, debates with Google PR and management, and eventually his firing.

Critics said Lemoine had fallen foul of the “ELIZA effect”: projecting human traits onto software. Moreover, Lemoine described himself as a Christian mystic priest, summing up his thoughts on sentient machines in a tweet:

Who am I to tell God where he can and can’t put souls?

No one can fault Lemoine’s spiritual humility.

Machine spirits

Lemoine was not the first to see a spirit in the machines. We can trace his argument back to AI pioneer Alan Turing’s famous 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence.

Turing also argued thinking machines may not be possible because – according to what he thought was plausible evidence – humans were capable of extrasensory perception. This, he reasoned, would be impossible for machines. Accordingly, machines could not have minds in the same way humans do.

So even 75 years ago, people were thinking not just about how AI might compare with human intelligence, but whether it could ever compare with human spirituality. It is not hard to see at least a dotted line from Turing to Lemoine.

Wishful thinking

Efforts to “spiritualise” AI can be quite hard to rebut. Generally these arguments say that we cannot prove AI systems do not have minds or spirits – and create a net of thoughts that lead to the Lemoine conclusion.

This net is often woven from irresponsibly used psychology terms. It may be convenient to apply human psychological terms to machines, but it can lead us astray.

Writing in the 1970s, computer scientist Drew McDermott accused AI engineers of using “wishful mnemonics”. They might label a section of code an “understanding module”, then assume that executing the code resulted in understanding.

More recently, the philosophers Henry Shevlin and Marta Halina wrote that we should take care using “rich psychological terms” in AI. AI developers talk about “agent” software having intrinsic motivation, for example, but it does not possess goals, desires, or moral responsibility.

Of course, it’s good for developers if everyone thinks your model “understands” or is an “agent”. However, until now the big AI companies have been wary of claiming their models have spirituality.

‘Spiritual bliss’ for chatbots

Which brings us back to Anthropic, and the system card for Claude Opus 4 and Sonnet 4, in which the seemingly down-to-earth folks at the emerging “agentic AI” giant make some eyebrow-raising claims.

The word “spiritual” occurs at least 15 times in the model card, most significantly in the rather awkward phrase “‘spiritual bliss’ attractor state”.

We are told, for instance, that

The consistent gravitation toward consciousness exploration, existential questioning, and spiritual/mystical themes in extended interactions was a remarkably strong and unexpected attractor state for Claude Opus 4 that emerged without intentional training for such behaviours. We have observed this “spiritual bliss” attractor in other Claude models as well, and in contexts beyond these playground experiments.

To be fair to the folks at Anthropic, they are not making any positive commitments to the sentience of their models or claiming spirituality for them. They can be read as only reporting the “facts”.

For instance, all the above long-winded sentence is saying is: if you let two Claude models have a conversation with each other, they will often start to sound like hippies. Fine enough.

That probably means the body of text on which they are trained has a bias towards that sort of way of talking, or the features the models extracted from the text biases them towards that sort of vocabulary.

Prophets of ChatGPT

However, while Anthropic may keep things strictly factual, their use of terms such as “spiritual” lends itself to misunderstanding. Such misunderstanding is made even more likely by Anthropic’s recent push to start investigating “whether future AI models might deserve moral consideration and protection”. Perhaps they are not positively saying that Claude Opus 4 and Sonnet 4 are sentient, but they certainly seem welcoming of the insinuation.

And this kind of spiritualising of AI models is already having real-world consequences.

According to a recent report in Rolling Stone, “AI-fueled spiritual fantasies” are wrecking human relationships and sanity. Self-styled prophets are “claiming they have ‘awakened’ chatbots and accessed the secrets of the universe through ChatGPT”.

Perhaps one of these prophets may cite the Anthropic model card in a forthcoming scripture – regardless of whether the company is “technically” making positive claims about whether their models actually experience or enjoy spiritual states.

But if AI-fuelled delusion becomes rampant, we might think even the innocuous contributors to it could have spoken more carefully. Who knows; perhaps, where we are going with AI, we won’t need philosophical carefulness.

Nuhu Osman Attah receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. AI models might be drawn to ‘spiritual bliss’. Then again, they might just talk like hippies – https://theconversation.com/ai-models-might-be-drawn-to-spiritual-bliss-then-again-they-might-just-talk-like-hippies-257618

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hilde Tubex, Professor, The University of Western Australia

For too many women, prison is “as good as it gets”.

New research based on interviews with 80 female prisoners in Western Australia reveals most of these women were “criminalised” by circumstances outside their control before they became offenders.

They were victims of multiple forms of abuse, including family violence. The trajectory of their lives meant jail was almost unavoidable.

In turn, prison became a refuge from all the problems that helped put them there in the fist place.

Rising rates

Internationally, women make up between 2% and 9% of the total prison population in most countries. Australia sits at the higher end with just over 8% of inmates being female – 3,426 people as of December 2024.

Across the globe, the numbers and rates of women in prisons are growing faster than those of men.

We see the same trend in Australia, especially in WA. Between December 2022 and 2024, the female imprisonment rate increased by 25%. The state has the highest rate of incarcerated women after the Northern Territory.

It is noteworthy that across the female population in WA jails, 62% of sentences are for non-violent crimes.

Cycles of harm

Given the significant rise in incarceration rates, we conducted our Profile of Women in WA Prisons research. Funded by the WA Department of Justice, our report investigated the pathways to imprisonment.

We had in-depth interviews with 80 Indigenous and non-Indigenous women in eight prisons in metropolitan Perth and regional WA.

The results confirm earlier research which showed women in the criminal justice system are frequently victims of domestic and family violence. However, there is so much more to the story of how women end up in prison. The findings are quite disheartening.

Throughout their stories, “cycles of harm” emerged as the reason they eventually ended up in prison.

Shared stories

Many of the women were exposed to violence, alcohol, drugs, crime and poverty from a very early age. They described negative life events such as trauma, physical and sexual abuse, neglect and domestic violence in childhood.

Leaving home early was a common experience. Due to their young age and vulnerability, they often ended up in unsafe accommodation, with unsuitable partners.

I left home at 15. I told my mum at 11 [about the abuse], she didn’t do anything about it. So I ran away at 14. I had a boyfriend who was much older than me. So he was nearly 20.

Many reflected that their own use of alcohol and drugs was a way of numbing the trauma and pain:

When I ran away, and I was with him for a few years. I remember the first time taking speed, and it just made everything so much easier to deal with. He would come home and beat the crap out of me, and I would just take drugs, and wouldn’t care.

Reaching out for help was not something many of these women were used to doing, due to a lack of self-esteem and struggles with their mental health as a result of ongoing abuse.

Moreover, seeking assistance often backfired, leading to their children being taken away, or the woman being misidentified as the perpetrator.

Little support

Throughout the criminal justice system, there was a lack of support and understanding of what led these women into criminal behaviour.

Once incarcerated, they are in a system that is still dominated by men. They suffer particular disadvantages, such as the lack of women-specific programs and services.

Adding to their difficulties is a lack of safe accommodation and financial support. This makes women subject to even more cycles of harm from which it is hard to escape.

I’ve been coming in and out of prison for the last 20 years. Yeah, I’m 41 now, so in and out of here. Yeah, it’s just due to lack of housing, I’ve been homeless a lot. When I get out of prison, there’s not enough support to set me up to get me back on track in my life. And it’s just, yeah, getting out of prison with no support, no housing, no jobs.

While the burden of imprisonment was undeniable, jail was often viewed as the only safe refuge they had from trauma, abuse and homelessness.

Some felt prison was about as good as it was going to get for them. Many of the women we interviewed were mothers. There is evidence to suggest the offspring of these women face a higher intergenerational risk of incarceration, and new generations may suffer the same cycles of harm.

New approach

The evidence suggests jail is functioning as a solution to social problems like homelessness and drug addiction. This comes at a very high financial cost, with Australia spending over $6 billion a year building and operating prisons.

Yet, we know locking people up is not necessarily creating safer communities.

As many women have become criminalised by the various forms of interpersonal and systemic abuse they have suffered, the rising rates of female incarceration should not be approached as a criminal problem, but as an expression of a failing society letting down its most vulnerable members.

To curb the trend, we need to identify the cycle of harm at the early stages, and interrupt the predictability of ongoing damage which leads to crime and incarceration.

Women have specific needs. We need to address the complexity of the lives they return to after prison to prevent further offending.

Hilde Tubex receives funding from The Western Australian Office of Crime Statistics and Research (WACSAR) Criminal Justice Research Grant.

Natalie Gately receives funding from The Western Australian Office of Crime Statistics and Research (WACSAR) Criminal Justice Research Grant.

– ref. ‘No support, no housing, no job’ – the vicious cycle pushing more women into prison – https://theconversation.com/no-support-no-housing-no-job-the-vicious-cycle-pushing-more-women-into-prison-257218

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Subhadra Evans, Associate Professor, Psychology, Deakin University

Around half of teenage girls experience moderate to severe period pain. The mechanical force of the uterus contracting and inflammatory chemicals such as prostaglandins contribute to this pain.

Moderate to severe period pain has a significant impact on daily life. Girls with period pain are three to five times more likely than their peers to miss school or university, and two to five times more likely to miss out on social and physical activities.

Our new research found girls with period pain reported higher levels of psychological distress as young adults, even after accounting for earlier mental health issues and socioeconomic factors.

What comes first?

Menstrual pain has been dismissed and under-treated. Women report there is a perception among some health-care providers that stress, anxiety, or depression cause their pain.

However, participants in our lived experience research have told us that period pain leads to psychological distress. As one woman explained:

mental health [is] used frequently by health professionals to diminish my symptoms and make me feel as though I have untreated mental health conditions that are the cause of my issues instead of my physical pain.

Prior research suggests a bi-directional link between pain and mental health. A study of almost 15,00 adolescents with chronic pain found an increased risk of lifetime anxiety and depression. While our prior research on pelvic pain in adults showed psychological distress can worsen functional pain over time.

Research exploring the relationship between mental health and pain in teens with period pain is limited, with the direction of the relationship still unclear.

Take the example of Ruby, who represents a composite of clinical cases:

Ruby was netball captain in Year 6 but painful periods led to her dropping out of the team in Year 8. By Year 10, she was socialising less with her friends. At 17, she felt like her mental health was deteriorating and was locked in a struggle with her own body. Ruby saw her GP and was told to take Nurofen and keep moving because anxiety and depression had caused chronic pain.

While research has linked mental health and pain perception, we set out to determine the direction of this link: do mental health difficulties lead to period pain? Or does period pain contribute to mental health issues?

Our new study

We used data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, also known as Growing Up in Australia, which has tracked the lives of 10,000 children and their families since 2004. We used data that tracked 1,600 girls who reported on their periods from age 14, 16 and 18.

Parents reported symptoms of anxiety and depression when the girls were 14–16 years old. The young women self-reported these symptoms at age 18, and levels of psychological distress at age 20–21.

This multi-stage study allowed us to look at how menstrual pain and mental health show up together and change over time during an important stage in young women’s lives.

While conditions such as endometriosis (which causes tissue similar to that which lines the uterus to grow outside the uterus) can be associated with pelvic pain, including period pain, the survey didn’t ask participants about endometriosis or pain-related diagnoses. So this didn’t form part of our study.

Around half of the participants experienced moderate to severe period pain.

We found girls who had painful periods were much more likely to also have symptoms of anxiety and depression at ages 14, 16 and 18 compared to those who did not have painful periods.

At age 14, adolescents who experienced painful periods were around twice as likely to have symptoms of anxiety and depression, compared to their peers who said their periods were not painful, or only a little painful.

These adolescents also reported higher levels of psychological distress as young adults, even after accounting for earlier mental health issues and socioeconomic factors.

Adolescents who reported period pain throughout their teens were more likely to experience “moderate” psychological distress in early adulthood. In contrast, adolescents who did not have period pain were more likely to experience “mild” psychological distress in early adulthood.

Importantly, we showed that period pain often comes before mental health issues develop – not the other way around. This suggests period pain could be a risk factor for future mental health problems.

The findings underscore the importance of identifying adolescents who are experiencing period pain. Many adolescents believe period pain is something they just have to put up with, and don’t seek help.

What can be done about period pain?

We recommend treating period pain early with a variety of options.

First-line period pain management includes:

• anti-inflammatories such as ibuprofen, which are available over the counter
• seeing your GP to discuss hormonal therapies, such as the oral contraceptive pill.

Additional strategies to manage period pain can include:

• heat (such as heat pads)
• physiotherapy
• regular exercise – even gentle activities such as yoga.

Improved menstrual education is needed to ensure teens can recognise when their menstrual experience is unusual, and know where they can access support.

Some programs provide menstrual education across schools and community groups. This education should be extended to families and school health and wellbeing support staff to facilitate early recognition and intervention.

Finally, further research is needed to confirm whether addressing period pain promptly reduces the risk of longer-term mental health symptoms.

Subhadra Evans receives funding from the Australian Government.

Antonina Mikocka-Walus receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Marilla L. Druitt 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. Girls with painful periods are twice as likely as their peers to have symptoms of anxiety or depression – https://theconversation.com/girls-with-painful-periods-are-twice-as-likely-as-their-peers-to-have-symptoms-of-anxiety-or-depression-256232

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maarten De Brauwer, Senior Research Scientist in Marine and Estuarine Ecology, Southern Cross University

Rivers up and down the north coast of New South Wales have been hammered again, just three years after devastating floods hit the Northern Rivers and Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley.

The events of 2022 sparked our latest research into the estuaries of NSW. These special places, where the rivers meet the sea, are teeming with life. Now – for the first time – we can reveal what lives where, in maps based on tell-tale traces of DNA.

Together with Indigenous rangers from six language groups, we surveyed 34 estuaries to capture evidence of living species – everything from microbes to fish, plants and mammals.

We were surprised to find platypus in places they had not been seen for years. We also identified elusive native species such antechinus and rakali, and 68 invasive or pest species including cane toads – spreading further south than previously thought.

This catalogue of species in NSW estuaries can be used by authorities and scientists – but anyone, anywhere can explore the map online.

Estuaries are vital, yet many questions remain

First Nations Peoples have long recognised the vital importance of the areas where land meets sea. Estuaries are have provided food resources for thousand of years and are home to important historical and contemporary cultural sites.

Today, 87% of Australians live within 50km of the sea. This makes estuaries one of the most intensively used areas of NSW. They provide critical habitats such as seagrass or mangroves, host high biodiversity, and have a high social value as places for recreational activities such as fishing.

Yet research into the species that live in estuaries is mostly limited to large estuaries such as Sydney Harbour, Botany Bay or Port Stephens.

NSW has excellent water quality monitoring programs, and vital habitats such as seagrass meadows have been the subject of long-term mapping programs. However, large gaps remain.

Understanding how biodiversity in estuaries changes over time, especially in response to extreme events, can help governments design appropriate responses to maintain or restore ecosystem health. But with nearly 200 estuaries in NSW, studying changes in biodiversity is not a simple task.

Our DNA detective work

Measuring salinity or oxygen levels in water is relatively straightforward, using equipment on the shoreline or hanging off the side of a boat. Finding out what lives where is much more difficult. This where new genetic methods come in.

Life forms leave tell-tale traces of DNA in the environment. Animals may shed hair, skin or scales, as well as poo. Plants produce pollen and leaves that end up in the water.

We matched small snippets of DNA to find the species it belonged to – a bit like scanning a barcode in the supermarket.

This technique allows us to analyse the full extent of biodiversity in estuaries. This includes not just fish, but also species at the base of the food chain such as microscopic algae – all from a few litres of water.

Indigenous rangers live and work on Country and know it well. We formed alliances with six groups of Indigenous rangers through the state’s Cultural Restoration Program:

• Batemans Bay Local Aboriginal Land Council (Walbunja)
• Bega Local Aboriginal Land Council
• Jali Local Aboriginal Land Council
• Jerinja Local Aboriginal Land Council
• LaPeruse Local Aboriginal Land Council (Gamay)
• Yaegl Wadyarr Gargle Land and Sea Contractors.

Our research builds on the different strengths and interests of local groups. The rangers worked with us all the way through, from the design phase to selecting sampling sites of ecological or cultural significance, helping to conduct surveys and working with scientists to interpret the results.

Trained in environmental DNA methods, rangers can monitor their Country independently in future.

What did we find?

We now have the largest publicly available biodiversity dataset for NSW estuaries. It covers everything from single-celled algae at the base of the food chain, to top predators such as great white sharks and white-bellied sea eagles.

Anyone can explore the interactive map to find out what lives in the estuaries nearby or further afield.

Rangers detected platypus in the lower reaches of Bega River, in places where they were thought to have disappeared. Totemic species such as dolphins were widespread across the state, including urban estuaries such as Botany Bay in Sydney, while mullet and bream were found shifting between the mouth and further upriver. Cane toads were found at Sandon River in the Northern Rivers region, and most recently in Coffs Harbour, much further south than expected.

These results mean a lot to local Indigenous mobs. They can integrate contemporary scientific results into traditional ecological knowledge and use both approaches to better understand how estuaries respond to extreme weather events or activities such as habitat restoration.

We also recently returned to sample sites following Tropical Cyclone Alfred and the extreme rainfall events in March. Being able to compare the data to a well-established baseline survey means we will be able to see which species were worst affected.

Knowledge sharing for the future

Two-way knowledge sharing between Indigenous knowledge holders and research scientists is improving our understanding of estuarine health.

The results of this project will help Indigenous groups to care for their Country while also improving scientific knowledge to better respond to environmental impacts such as floods for decades to come.

The authors wish to acknowledge this program was delivered collaboration with and on behalf of the Departments of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD), Fisheries & Forestry, with funding provided by the Australian and NSW governments under Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements as part of the NSW Estuary Asset Protection program (NEAP).

Maarten De Brauwer received funding from the federal government’s Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements (Riparian Stabilisation Package) as part of the NSW state government’s Estuary Asset Protection program. He is a board member of the Southern eDNA Society.

Kaitlyn Harris works for NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development.

Kelly Gittins works for the NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development.

– ref. From surprise platypus to wandering cane toads, here’s what we found hiding in NSW estuaries – https://theconversation.com/from-surprise-platypus-to-wandering-cane-toads-heres-what-we-found-hiding-in-nsw-estuaries-257123

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Victoria Whitington, Associate Professor in Education Futures (Adjunct), University of South Australia

One of the Albanese government’s headline election policies was a “three-day guarantee” for childcare.

From January 5 2026, all eligible Australian families will be able to access at least three days of subsidised early education and care until a child starts school.

Labor will also remove the “activity test” requiring parents to work or study to receive more than minimal subsidised care.

The government estimates more than 100,000 families will be eligible for more care. Families will also save money on fees – for example, those on a combined annual income of A$120,000 will save about $220 a week.

But while extra financial support and scrapping the activity test will certainly help, families are still left with the challenge of finding and securing a place in a quality service.

Read more:
Labor guarantees 3 days of childcare and 160 new centres. What does this mean for families?

Quality is patchy

Over the past 20 years, the early education and care system in Australia has rapidly expanded.
And this has sometimes come at the expense of quality.

The sector is overseen by the national authority and state-based regulators and services need to meet national quality standards.

But quality is patchy. While 91% of services either meet or exceed national standards, assessments can be infrequent and there are exemptions – leaving room for poor practices.

State-based regulators are also under-resourced, compromising their capacity to keep assessments of services up to date.

Meanwhile, about 70% of daycare centres are owned and run by for-profit providers. This means the majority have an incentive to prioritise profits over quality care and education for children.

Recent reports of shocking abuse and neglect in some services have highlighted how quality – and basic safety – continue to be an issue for the early childhood sector.

Read more:
Amid claims of abuse, neglect and poor standards, what is going wrong with childcare in Australia?

It can be impossible to find a spot

According to the Mitchell Institute, nearly one in four Australians lives in a “childcare desert”, where more than three children compete for every available place.

Media reports describe how families can be left waiting well over a year to find a childcare place, depending on where they live.

In recognition of how difficult it can be to find a childcare place, the Albanese government will build 160 not-for-profit childcare centres in regions where services are hard to find.

While this is welcome, they may not transform accessibility. The sector has more than 9,000 existing long daycare services.

There are not enough qualified educators

Meanwhile, staffing is a nation-wide issue. The rapid increase in early years services has made it difficult to train, recruit and employ qualified educators.

Many services have exemptions so they can operate without the required number of qualified staff.

Last year, without factoring in the three-day guarantee, a Jobs and Skills Australia report estimated an extra 21,000 staff were needed to meet existing demand.

While the government is trying to increase access with the three-day guarantee, services are already struggling to provide for existing demand.

What should families do?

Families eligible for the new three-day guarantee are likely to find accessing care and in a quality centre a challenge.

They will no doubt want to make sure any potential services can provide a safe, happy environment in which their child will thrive. Here are some questions parents could ask:

• is the service meeting national quality standards or better?

• what are the current qualifications of staff?

• does the service have a current exemption regarding staff qualifications?

• what is the staff turnover?

Families could also take a tour of the service and consider:

• how do you feel in the environment?

• are children engaged in activities?

• how do staff interact with the children?

• is there a rich environment for outdoor and indoor play?

If you have concerns, consider other services if they are available.

Victoria Whitington has previously received research funding from the South Australian government and has current funding for research from Catholic Education SA, Ngutu College and Gowrie SA. She is chair of the Gowrie SA board.

– ref. The ‘3 day guarantee’ for childcare starts next year. The challenge could be finding quality care – https://theconversation.com/the-3-day-guarantee-for-childcare-starts-next-year-the-challenge-could-be-finding-quality-care-256905

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fei Gao, Lecturer in Taxation, Discipline of Accounting, Governance & Regulation, The University of Sydney, University of Sydney

Tech giants like Google, Facebook and Netflix make billions of dollars from Australian users every year. But most of those profits are not taxed here.

To address this tax gap, some countries have introduced a new kind of tax called the digital services tax, or DST. It applies to revenue earned from users in a country, even if the company has no physical operations there. Some European Union member countries, the UK and Canada have all introduced such a tax.

In Australia, it is estimated the five largest tech giants recorded A$15 billion in revenue in Australia last year, but combined they paid only $254 million in tax.

Australia has never contemplated imposing a similar tax. New Zealand tried but backed down last week after the United States threatened to impose higher tariffs on New Zealand goods.

So what’s holding Australia back?

How 20th-century tax treaties create 21st-century problems

To understand why Australia thinks its hands are tied on the taxation of the multinational tech giants, we need to step back in time.

About 100 years ago, Australia and other developed nations decided to tax residents on all their income earned worldwide, while non-residents were taxed only on income earned locally.

After the second world war, Australia entered into tax treaties so foreign companies selling to Australian customers would no longer be taxed here. Instead, those companies’ home countries would tax all their profits.

As the world moved to digital products this century, it became easy for giant multinational enterprises offering advertising on social media (such as Facebook and Instagram), advertising on search platforms (Google), and streaming services (Netflix) to provide those services from abroad. Little or no activity is conducted through local branches.

But countries where the sales are made have increasingly questioned the wisdom of having forfeited their taxing rights over income by foreign providers.

The rise of the digital services tax

The obvious solution would have been to renegotiate the treaties. This would restore the right of countries like Australia to tax foreign companies’ profits made from local customers or users.

However, treaty renegotiation is slow and complex. So several European countries, beginning with France in 2019, came up with a short-cut solution.

They introduced a discrete new tax on sales of digital services, called digital services taxes (DSTs). While the specific design varies by country, most DSTs apply a low tax rate, typically between 3% and 5%, on revenue rather than profits. They target large digital platforms that earn money from users within the taxing country, regardless of the company’s location.

Because DSTs are levied on revenue and are structured as separate from income tax, governments argued they could be introduced without breaching income tax treaties.

The new taxes quickly became popular and spread widely.
In Australia, the Greens have called for a DST, but both major parties have remained steadfast in their objection to a new tax. This is due to the concern that the US may impose retaliatory tariffs on Australian goods.

How big is the tax loss?

Australians are enthusiastic consumers of digital products. Depending on which companies are included in the calculation, the annual revenues vary between $15 billion and $26 billion a year, but only a fraction of that is taxed here.

At a time when the federal budget is forecasting deficits for the foreseeable future, Australia is foregoing potentially millions in lost revenue from these digital giants.

While Australia has avoided a DST as a solution to the income tax loss, it has been willing to regulate and tax foreign digital companies in other ways.
Australia collects 10% goods and services tax, or GST, on digital services provided to Australian companies, including streaming platforms and app subscriptions.

This helps ensure foreign providers are taxed similarly to domestic ones when it comes to the GST.

Australia has also imposed non-tax obligations on digital giants such as the requirement that digital platforms pay Australian media outlets for using their news content.

Read more:
Australia’s ‘coercive’ news media rules are the latest targets of US trade ire

Serious hurdles for reform

In February, the Trump administration described DSTs as tools used by foreign governments to “plunder American companies” and warned retaliatory tariffs would be imposed in response.

The accompanying White House fact sheet singled out Australia and Canada, arguing the US digital economy dwarfs those countries’ entire economies. It suggested any attempt to tax US tech companies would not go unanswered.

Six weeks later, the US imposed a 10% tariff on most Australian exports to the US and a 25% tariff on steel and aluminium exports.

The US sees its penal tariff plans as a useful negotiating tool to pressure trading partners into retreat on a broad range of peripheral complaints, including the digital services tax.

To date, only two countries have retreated: New Zealand and India. Other countries are standing firm.

In Australia, the Greens have called for the adoption of a DST, but the current and previous governments remain firm in their opposition. There is concern about antagonising the US at a delicate time when our broader trade relations are under scrutiny.

For the foreseeable future, the digital giants will continue to earn billions from Australian users. Most of those profits will remain beyond the reach of Australian tax law.

Richard Krever receives funding from the ARC

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

– ref. Australia could tax Google, Facebook and other tech giants with a digital services tax – but don’t hold your breath – https://theconversation.com/australia-could-tax-google-facebook-and-other-tech-giants-with-a-digital-services-tax-but-dont-hold-your-breath-257251

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Xiaoying Qi, Associate Professor, School of Arts and Humanities, Australian Catholic University

During fieldwork in cities in China I came across a new marital practice, locally described as liang-tou-dun, literally “two places to stay”.

A bride and groom, each an only child of their respective family, receive from each set of parents a wedding apartment. The young couple thus has two marriage apartments which they may occupy at different times.

If a couple with “two places to stay” has two children, it is likely one will have the father’s surname and the other the mother’s. This ensures that the familial lines of both families continue – but it can also entrench inequalities between siblings.

What’s in a name?

A child being given the mother’s surname is unconventional. The norm in China is that children take their fathers’ surname, even though Chinese women retain their birth surname after marriage.

The adoption of patronyms – family names handed down through the male line – historically served as an instrument of consolidation for hereditary property owners. But in China patronyms lost this purpose when the Communist Party came to power in 1949 and abolished private property and inheritance. Still, patronyms persisted.

From 1978, Chinese government reforms led to a transition from a planned to a market economy. Since then, many Chinese families have accumulated significant wealth. Such families are focused on how to prevent the loss of property from their family line through inheritance.

This is a real matter of concern for daughter-only families which have become numerically significant as a result of the one-child policy. This was in place from 1980 to 2015, and many (but not all) families were limited to having just one child.

A place to stay

Traditionally, a wife enters her husband’s family and the children take on their father’s surname.

A traditional solution for a family without a male heir is zhao-xu, the phrase for a marriage where a man marries into his wife’s family, living with or in close proximity to her family.

Zhao-xu not only requires cohabiting after marriage with the wife’s parents, but also that their children take the mother’s surname, ensuring continuance of the mother’s family’s line.

This traditional form readily adapts to the needs of daughter-only families in contemporary China. Sons-in-law in these families generally come from families with more than one son, so the husband’s family’s line is not threatened. In these circumstances the wife’s family provides a wedding apartment, furniture, household equipment, dowry and wedding banquet.

Traditionally in China it is a son’s responsibility to support and care for his ageing parents. A daughter-only family requires her to take an essential role in carrying out elderly support obligations.

Two names, two places

An alternative to zhao-xu is “two places to stay”, where the bride’s parents provide her with a wedding apartment and the groom’s parents provide him with a wedding apartment. This tends to happen for young couples who are each an only child in their respective families.

With owning two apartments, the young couple marries into neither family, but instead maintains close relationships with both. They move between two apartments, occupying one for a certain period of time and then the other.

As each set of parents endows the young family, the grandparents play an important role in the choice of their grandchildren’s surname. If the young couple has two children then a perfect solution to continuing both family lines is that one child takes the father’s surname and the other the mother’s.

First-born children, especially sons, have a special role in the continuity of a family line, and so it is likely the firstborn will take the father’s name.

But if the young wife’s family has higher social or economic standing than her husband’s, it is likely the first child will take the mother’s surname.

“Two places to stay” may generate inequalities within families. Grandparents tend to provide resources (educational, recreational and medical) to the grandchild who shares their surname.

Because of the differences of access to resources, the future education and career prospects of siblings will reflect not their immediate family background, but the different endowments of their respective grandparents.

Two places to stay is a new form of marriage in China, and a new form of surnaming siblings. It is a new way of doing family, an innovation in intergenerational relations.

Xiaoying Qi received research funding from The Hong Kong Baptist University’s Start-Up Grant and the Sociology Department Research Fund.

– ref. One couple, two apartments, different surnames for the children: how ‘two places to stay’ is shaping families in China – https://theconversation.com/one-couple-two-apartments-different-surnames-for-the-children-how-two-places-to-stay-is-shaping-families-in-china-255877

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Oli Wilson, Professor & Associate Dean Research, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey University

New Zealand Music Month turned 25 this year, and there’s been plenty to celebrate – whether it be Mokotron’s Taite Prize-winning Waerea, Lorde’s recent return (though not to New Zealand – yet), or the fact that live performance revenues post-COVID have been strong.

But for new and emerging local artists, Music Month also highlights a lack of visibility on streaming services and commercial radio, which increasingly favour already famous artists, including ones whose heydays were decades ago.

During a month when music fans have been encouraged to stream local, see local and buy local, so far the only homegrown artists to appear in this week’s New Zealand Top 40 Singles chart are Lorde and K-pop star Rosé.

Recently published data shows that as little as 9% of New Zealand streaming, downloads and physical sales revenue is going to local artists. Despite this, according to NZ on Air, 49% of New Zealanders stream music every day. In fact streaming has recently surpassed radio as the main way audiences discover new music, with growing influence from TikTok and Instagram.

On Spotify, which approximately one in three New Zealanders use every day, only one local track – Corella’s Blue Eyed Māori – featured in the 2024 top-50 year-end local playlist. Streaming increasingly privileges and skews towards established releases from well-known artists, and other artists have little control over social media algorithms.

While radio remains relevant, with 46% of New Zealanders listening daily, only two nationwide commercial radio stations played more than 20% local music in 2024.

Structural music industry changes

The Official Aotearoa Music Charts’ End of Year Top 50 Singles provide another useful indication of local music market share. These charts draw on a wide range of sales and streaming data, and aim to provide an authoritative snapshot of what New Zealanders were buying and listening to in that year.

Since COVID, we have seen a sharp decline in local artists featuring in these charts. In 2024, the only New Zealander to feature was Corella’s Blue Eyed Māori, and only four New Zealand albums featured in the End of Year Top 50 Albums, three of which were compilations primarily made up of earlier releases.

While COVID lockdowns and border closures hugely disrupted the live music sector, we also saw audiences engaging with a lot more local music. Summer festival Rhythm and Vines sold out an all Kiwi lineup, and the amount of local music on radio reached its highest peak since records began.

This suggests visibility, discoverability and chart success have little to do with the amount or quality of local music being produced. Instead, they are the result of structural changes in the music industries.

Internationally, this has been linked to the market consolidation and dominance of a small number of big players at the expense of local artists, industry and infrastructure.

What can be done?

As global platforms such as Spotify and TikTok have increased their influence on audiences’ ability to discover New Zealand’s music, it’s hard to see a future where business-as-usual will improve the situation for local artists and audiences.

There are potential solutions, however. Australia has committed to imposing local content quotas on international streamers, and Canada has instituted a revenue sharing system between global streamers and broadcasters.

Unlike similar markets, such as Australia and Norway, New Zealand lacks a strong public youth broadcaster. Dedicated investment in this area could help support targeted strategies to promote local music.

Changes in the way local music is funded and nurtured could also help. The government currently funds NZ on Air and the Music Commission, but they have different objectives and obligations. Merging them might streamline decision making and recognise the interconnectedness of the live and recorded music sectors.

If steps aren’t taken soon, New Zealand will struggle to support a thriving local music economy, and New Zealanders will continue to miss out on hearing themselves in the music they listen to.

With Music Month drawing to a close, there needs to be a commitment to structural changes that, over time, will see the development of a year-round celebration of New Zealand music.

Oli Wilson has previously completed research in partnership with or commissioned by APRA AMCOS, Toi Mai Workforce Development Council, Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture & Heritage and the NZ Music Commission. He has also received funding, or contributed to projects that have benefited from funding from NZ on Air, the NZ Music Commission and Recorded Music New Zealand. He has provided services to The Chills, owns shares in TripTunz Limited, and is a writer member of APRA AMCOS.

Catherine Hoad has completed research in partnership with or commissioned by APRA AMCOS, Toi Mai Workforce Development Council, Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture & Heritage, NZ On Air, Screen Industry Guild of Aotearoa New Zealand, and the NZ Music Commission.

Dave Carter is a writer member of APRA AMCOS. He has received research funding from Manatū Taongao Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Toi Mai Workforce Development Council, APRA AMCOS, Music NT, Music Tasmania, The Australian Live Music Office, Arts South Australia, City of Melbourne, Film Festivals Australia, City of Sydney. He has also received funding, or contributed to projects that have benefited from funding, for creative work as a producer and engineer from NZ on Air and APRA AMCOS.

Jesse Austin-Stewart has completed commissioned research for NZ On Air and participated in focus groups for Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. He has received competitive funding from Creative New Zealand, NZ On Air, Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture & Hertiage, and the NZ Music Commission. He is a writer member of APRA AMCOS and a member of the Composer’s Association of New Zealand and Recorded Music NZ

– ref. Discovering new NZ music in the streaming age is getting harder – what’s the future for local artists? – https://theconversation.com/discovering-new-nz-music-in-the-streaming-age-is-getting-harder-whats-the-future-for-local-artists-257449

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deyanira Nevárez Martínez, Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, Michigan State University

In cities across the U.S., the housing crisis has reached a breaking point. Rents are skyrocketing, homelessness is rising and working-class neighborhoods are threatened by displacement.

These challenges might feel unprecedented. But they echo a moment more than half a century ago.

In the 1950s and 1960s, housing and urban inequality were at the center of national politics. American cities were grappling with rapid urban decline, segregated and substandard housing, and the fallout of highway construction and urban renewal projects that displaced hundreds of thousands of disproportionately low-income and Black residents.

The federal government decided to try to do something about it.

President Lyndon B. Johnson launched one of the most ambitious experiments in urban policy: the Model Cities Program.

As a scholar of housing justice and urban planning, I’ve studied how this short-lived initiative aimed to move beyond patchwork fixes to poverty and instead tackle its structural causes by empowering communities to shape their own futures.

Building a great society

The Model Cities Program emerged in 1966 as part of Johnson’s Great Society agenda, a sweeping effort to eliminate poverty, reduce racial injustice and expand social welfare programs in the United States.

Earlier urban renewal programs had been roundly criticized for displacing communities of color. Much of this displacement occurred through federally funded highway and slum clearance projects that demolished entire neighborhoods and often left residents without decent options for new housing.

So the Johnson administration sought a more holistic approach. The Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act established a federal framework for cities to coordinate housing, education, employment, health care and social services at the neighborhood level.

To qualify for the program, cities had to apply for planning grants by submitting a detailed proposal that included an analysis of neighborhood conditions, long-term goals and strategies for addressing problems.

Federal funds went directly to city governments, which then distributed them to local agencies and community organizations through contracts. These funds were relatively flexible but had to be tied to locally tailored plans. For example, Kansas City, Missouri, used Model Cities funding to support a loan program that expanded access to capital for local small businesses, helping them secure financing that might otherwise have been out of reach.

Unlike previous programs, Model Cities emphasized what Johnson described as “comprehensive” and “concentrated” efforts. It wasn’t just about rebuilding streets or erecting public housing. It was about creating new ways for government to work in partnership with the people most affected by poverty and racism.

A revolutionary approach to poverty

What made Model Cities unique wasn’t just its scale but its philosophy. At the heart of the program was an insistence on “widespread citizen participation,” which required cities that received funding to include residents in the planning and oversight of local programs.

The program also drew inspiration from civil rights leaders. One of its early architects, Whitney M. Young Jr., had called for a “Domestic Marshall Plan” – a reference to the federal government’s efforts to rebuild Europe after World War II – to redress centuries of racial inequality.

Young’s vision helped shape the Model Cities framework, which proposed targeted systemic investments in housing, health, education, employment and civic leadership in minority communities. In Atlanta, for example, the Model Cities Program helped fund neighborhood health clinics and job training programs. But the program also funded leadership councils that for the first time gave local low-income residents a direct voice in how city funds were spent.

In other words, neighborhood residents weren’t just beneficiaries. They were planners, advisers and, in some cases, staffers.

This commitment to community participation gave rise to a new kind of public servant – what sociologists Martin and Carolyn Needleman famously called “guerrillas in the bureaucracy.”

These were radical planners – often young, idealistic and deeply embedded in the neighborhoods they served. Many were recruited and hired through new Model Cities funding that allowed local governments to expand their staff with community workers aligned with the program’s goals.

Working from within city agencies, these new planners used their positions to challenge top-down decision-making and push for community-driven planning.

Their work was revolutionary not because they dismantled institutions but because they reimagined how institutions could function, prioritizing the voices of residents long excluded from power.

Strengthening community ties

In cities across the country, planners fought to redirect public resources toward locally defined priorities.

In some cities, such as Tucson, the program funded education initiatives such as bilingual cultural programming and college scholarships for local students. In Baltimore, it funded mobile health services and youth sports programs.

In New York City, the program supported new kinds of housing projects called vest-pocket developments, which got their name from their smaller scale: midsize buildings or complexes built on vacant lots or underutilized land. New housing such as the Betances Houses in the South Bronx were designed to add density without major redevelopment taking place – a direct response to midcentury urban renewal projects, which had destroyed and displaced entire neighborhoods populated by the city’s poorest residents. Meanwhile, cities such as Seattle used the funds to renovate older apartment buildings instead of tearing them down, which helped preserve the character of local neighborhoods.

The goal was to create affordable housing while keeping communities intact.

What went wrong?

Despite its ambitious vision, Model Cities faced resistance almost from the start. The program was underfunded and politically fragile. While some officials had hoped for US$2 billion in annual funding, the actual allocation was closer to $500 million to $600 million, spread across more than 60 cities.

Then the political winds shifted. Though designed during the optimism of the mid-1960s, the program started being implemented under President Richard Nixon in 1969. His administration pivoted away from “people programs” and toward capital investment and physical development. Requirements for resident participation were weakened, and local officials often maintained control over the process, effectively marginalizing the everyday citizens the program was meant to empower.

In cities such as San Francisco and Chicago, residents clashed with bureaucrats over control, transparency and decision-making. In some places, participation was reduced to token advisory roles. In others, internal conflict and political pressure made sustained community governance nearly impossible.

Critics, including Black community workers and civil rights activists, warned that the program risked becoming a new form of “neocolonialism,” one that used the language of empowerment while concentrating control in the hands of white elected officials and federal administrators.

A legacy worth revisiting

Although the program was phased out by 1974, its legacy lived on.

In cities across the country, Model Cities trained a generation of Black and brown civic leaders in what community development leaders and policy advocates John A. Sasso and Priscilla Foley called “a little noticed revolution.” In their book of the same name, they describe how those involved in the program went on to serve in local government, start nonprofits and advocate for community development.

It also left an imprint on later policies. Efforts such as participatory budgeting, community land trusts and neighborhood planning initiatives owe a debt to Model Cities’ insistence that residents should help shape the future of their communities. And even as some criticized the program for failing to meet its lofty goals, others saw its value in creating space for democratic experimentation.

Today’s housing crisis demands structural solutions to structural problems. The affordable housing crisis is deeply connected to other intersecting crises, such as climate change, environmental injustice and health disparities, creating compounding risks for the most vulnerable communities. Addressing these issues through a fragmented social safety net – whether through housing vouchers or narrowly targeted benefit programs – has proven ineffective.

Today, as policymakers once again debate how to respond to deepening inequality and a lack of affordable housing, the lost promise of Model Cities offers vital lessons.

Model Cities was far from perfect. But it offered a vision of how democratic, local planning could promote health, security and community.

Deyanira Nevárez Martínez is a trustee of the Lansing School District Board of Education and is currently a candidate for the Lansing City Council Ward 2.

– ref. Could a bold anti-poverty experiment from the 1960s inspire a new era in housing justice? – https://theconversation.com/could-a-bold-anti-poverty-experiment-from-the-1960s-inspire-a-new-era-in-housing-justice-253706