Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank den Hartog, Professor of Information Systems, Research Chair in Critical Infrastructure, University of Canberra

A few weeks ago, word started to come out that the newly minted United States Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had acquired unprecedented access to multiple US government computer systems.

DOGE employees – tech billionaire Elon Musk and his affiliates – have been granted access to sensitive personal and financial data, as well as other data critical for national security. This has created a national and international outcry, and serious concerns have been raised about data security, privacy and potential influence.

A group of 14 state attorneys-general attempted to have DOGE’s access to certain federal systems restricted, but a judge has denied the request.

Questions of trust

What are the deeper reasons behind this outcry? After all, Musk is far from the first businessman to gain political power.

There is, of course, US President Donald Trump himself, alongside many more on both sides of politics. Most of them kept running their businesses at arm’s length and went back to them after a stint in Washington.

So why are so many people alarmed now, but not before? The key word here is trust. Surveys suggest many people don’t trust Musk with this kind of access.

Does that mean we trusted the others? The foundation of modern cyber security is not to trust anything or anybody in the first place.

So while a lack of trust in Musk is one reason for disquiet, another is a lack of trust in the current state of cyber security in US government systems and procedures. And for good reason.

An insider threat

The situation in the US raises the spectre of what cyber experts call an “insider threat”. These concern cyber security incidents caused by people who have authorised access to systems and data.

Cyber security relies on controlling the so-called “CIA triad” of confidentiality, integrity and availability. Insider threats can compromise all three.

Authentication and subsequent authorisation of access has traditionally been an important measure to prevent cyber incidents from occurring. But apparently, that is not sufficient any more.

Perhaps the most famous insider incident in history is Edward Snowden’s leak of classified documents from the US National Security Agency in 2013. Australia too has had its share of insider breaches – the 2000 Maroochy Shire attack is still a textbook example.

Musk and his DOGE colleagues have now become insiders.

How to reduce the risk of insider threat

There are plenty of strategies organisations can follow to reduce the risk of insider threats:

• more rigorous vetting of employees

• giving users only the bare minimum access and privileges they need

• continuously auditing who has access to what, and restricting access immediately when needed

• authenticating and authorising users every time they access a different system or file (this is part of what is called a “zero trust architecture”)

• monitoring for unusual behaviour regarding insiders accessing systems and files

• developing and nurturing a cyber-aware culture in the organisation.

In government systems, the public should be able to trust these procedures are being rigorously applied. However, when it comes to Musk and DOGE, it seems they are not. And that’s where the core of the problem lies.

Clearances and a lack of care

DOGE employees without security clearance reportedly have access to classified systems which would normally be considered quite sensitive.

However, even security clearances offer no iron-clad guarantees.

Security clearances assume someone can be trusted based on their past. But past performance can never guarantee the future.

In the US, obtaining and holding a security clearance has become a status symbol. A clearance may also be a golden ticket to high-paying jobs and power, and hence subject to politics rather than independent judgement.

And it seems little care has been taken to keep users’ access and privileges to a minimum.

You might think DOGE’s employees, tasked with seeking out inefficiency, would only need read-only access to the US government IT systems. However, at least one of them temporarily had “write” access to the systems of the treasury, according to reports, enabling him to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending.

It all comes down to trust

Even if all possible access control and vetting procedures are in place and working perfectly, there will always be the problem of how to declassify information.

Or to put it another way: how do you make somebody forget everything they knew when their clearance or access is revoked or downgraded?

What Musk has seen, he can never unsee. And there is only so much that can be done to prevent this knowledge from leaking.

Even if all procedures to protect against insider threats are followed perfectly (and they aren’t), nothing is 100% secure.

We would still need a certain level of public trust that the obtained data and information would be dealt with responsibly. Has trust in Musk and his affiliates reached that level?

According to recent polling, public opinion is still divided.

Frank den Hartog is the Cisco Research Chair in Critical Infrastructure at the University of Canberra. He is an Adjunct Fellow at the University of New South Wales.

Abu Barkat Ullah is a steering committee member for the Canberra Cyber Hub and has received several research grants from Australian government and private organisations.

– ref. Insider threat: cyber security experts on giving Elon Musk and DOGE the keys to US government IT systems – https://theconversation.com/insider-threat-cyber-security-experts-on-giving-elon-musk-and-doge-the-keys-to-us-government-it-systems-250046

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Isaac Gross, Lecturer in Economics, Monash University

The Reserve Bank’s decision to cut interest rates for the first time in four years has triggered a round of celebration.

Mortgage holders are cheering the fact their monthly repayments are now slightly lower, while the Albanese government hopes the small easing in the cost of living will lift voters’ moods.

This is despite the Reserve Bank’s warnings that further rate cuts may not eventuate, depending on how much further progress is made on taming inflation.

But it’s important to remember not everybody benefits from an interest rate cut. Some will be worse off.

Savers lose out

Not all Australian households are net borrowers. Many are net savers, retirees or prospective homebuyers, who actually lose out when rates fall.

For starters, only about a third of households are in hock to the banks when it comes to a monthly mortgage repayment.

Another third of households have paid off their mortgage entirely, and so don’t benefit from a reduction in mortgage interest rates. And the remaining third are renters, who also don’t pay a mortgage.

So while this news is generally a good thing for borrowers, a fall in mortgage rates only directly benefits a minority of households.

Here are some of the ways lower interest rates might actually hurt rather than help the typical Australian household.

Higher house prices

One of the most immediate effects of lower interest rates is their impact on the housing market. With cheaper borrowing costs, more buyers can afford larger loans, bidding up house prices. This is great if you already own a home, but terrible if you’re still trying to buy one.

For young Australians locked out of home ownership, a rate cut makes things even harder. It drives prices higher, forcing prospective buyers to stretch their finances further just to get a foot in the market. Reserve Bank calculations suggest that, in the long run, higher house prices from lower rates can outweigh the benefit of lower mortgage repayments.

Lower returns on savings

If you’re a saver rather than a borrower, interest rate cuts are unequivocally bad news. Whether you’re saving for a home deposit, retirement, or just an emergency fund, lower rates mean you earn less on your bank deposits. The money in your savings account is now growing more slowly, making it harder to build wealth over time.

Indeed, more than 20 banks actually cut their term deposit rates in advance of the Reserve Bank’s decision on Tuesday, according to Canstar research.

Analysis of HILDA data, which surveys household wealth and income, suggests net savers tend to be younger households without property, retirees living off savings, and those who are not in full-time employment. For these groups, lower rates mean less income and fewer financial opportunities.

Retirees will feel the squeeze

Many retirees rely on income from interest-bearing assets such as term deposits or cash savings. When rates fall, their returns shrink. The cost-of-living crisis has made it harder for retirees on a fixed income to fund their lifestyles, and a rate cut only makes things worse.

While some retirees have exposure to the stock market via superannuation, many prefer the stability of cash savings. With rates falling, they face the tough choice of either reducing their spending or taking on more investment risk in their old age.

Bad news for the dollar, and overseas travellers

When the Reserve Bank cuts rates, it tends to weaken the Australian dollar. A weaker dollar makes overseas travel more expensive for Australians. That pint of beer in London, that piña colada in Puerto Rico, or that shopping trip to New York all become pricier.

For Australians planning international holidays, rate cuts are a blow. A strong Australian dollar makes travel cheaper, and lower rates work against that. So while mortgage holders might celebrate, anyone hoping to travel overseas finds themselves worse off.

Read more:
Heading on an overseas holiday? The Australian dollar tumbled this week – but that’s not bad news for everyone

More expensive imports

Just as a weaker Australian dollar makes travel more expensive, it also increases the cost of imported goods. And Australia imports a lot – especially cars and petrol.

Since the closure of domestic car manufacturing, all new vehicles sold in Australia are imported. Petrol, the second-largest import, is also sensitive to currency fluctuations. When the Australian dollar weakens due to lower interest rates, the cost of these essential goods rises. For the millions of Australians who rely on their cars for daily life, this is a significant financial burden.

This isn’t to say rate cuts don’t benefit a large portion of Australians. Anyone with a significant mortgage debt will find themselves with lower monthly repayments, and that’s undoubtedly a financial relief.

But the public narrative around interest rates tends to treat cuts as a universal good, ignoring the many Australians who are left worse off.

Falling interest rates are a sign the high inflation that has caused the cost-of-living crisis has abated. That is an economic success that ought to be celebrated. But that now rates are falling again, we should at least acknowledge the costs that come with them.

Isaac Gross 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. Official interest rates have been cut, but not everyone is a winner – https://theconversation.com/official-interest-rates-have-been-cut-but-not-everyone-is-a-winner-250140

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Korolev, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, UNSW Sydney

The United States and Russia agreed to work on a plan to end the war in Ukraine at high-level talks in Saudi Arabia this week. Ukrainian and European representatives were pointedly not invited to take part.

US President Donald Trump seemingly entered into these negotiations prepared to capitulate on two main points that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been seeking. Russia is opposed to Ukraine joining NATO and wants to retain Ukrainian territory captured since its invasion of Crimea in 2014.

Such a dramatic shift in Washington’s approach to Ukraine’s sovereignty and security has undermined Western-Ukrainian unity on the acceptable parameters around ending the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine won’t accept a deal negotiated without them. Former US National Security Adviser John Bolton said Trump “effectively surrendered” to Putin.

European leaders, too, are concerned after they were excluded from the Saudi talks. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said:

This does not mean that peace can be dictated and that Ukraine must accept what is presented to it.

Many believe Trump’s moves to splinter this trans-Atlantic front against Russia send a signal that Washington is
abandoning its commitment to European security.

However, there’s another important factor at play in Trump’s actions: the intensifying global competition over critical minerals. Trump wants to secure access to Ukraine’s vast reserves of these minerals, even if it means breaking with the US’ traditional allies in the European Union.

Why are Ukraine’s minerals so valuable

According to some reports, Ukraine has deposits of 22 of the 34 minerals identified as critical by the EU. These include:

• lithium and cobalt, used in rechargeable battery production
• scandium, used for aerospace industry components
• tantalum, used for electronic equipment
• titanium, used in the aerospace, medical, automotive and marine industries
• nickel ore, manganese, beryllium, hafnium, magnesium, zirconium and others, used in the aerospace, defence and nuclear industries.

China currently dominates the world’s supply chains of these minerals – it is the largest source of US imports of 26 of the 50 minerals classified as critical by the United States Geological Survey.

This is the reason behind Trump’s suggestion last week that the US be granted 50% of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as reimbursement for the billions of dollars in weapons and support it has provided to Kyiv since the war began.

The problem, however, is that at least 40% of Ukraine’s minerals are currently under Russian occupation in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions of the country. (Other sources put this figure as high as 70%.)

Concerned about Ukraine’s territorial integrity, Zelensky has publicly rejected the US demand for half of Ukraine’s mineral resources, because the proposal does not include security guarantees. It only vaguely referred to payment for future aid, according to reports.

In response, the White House National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said:

President Zelensky is being short-sighted about the excellent opportunity the Trump administration has presented the Ukraine.

What kind of deal could be made?

A big question ahead of any peace negotiations over Ukraine is whether commercially-minded Trump would be willing to accept a counter-proposal from Putin.

Since Russia currently controls large swathes of mineral-rich eastern Ukraine, Putin may be willing to offer Trump an exclusive critical minerals deal in exchange for the US formally committing to not restoring Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders and not letting the country into NATO.

Ukraine, meanwhile, may be angling for its own minerals deal with European countries in exchange for their continued support. Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal expressed his country’s willingness to set up joint ventures with the EU in this area:

We could replace Russian titanium on the European market, contributing to the development of both the EU’s civilian industry and advanced military technologies.

He also said the project of rebuilding Ukraine could be a boon for the entire bloc.

The European Commission has recommended a policy of encouraging Ukraine to export these materials to the EU. In response, authorities in Kyiv started working out the necessary regulatory and legal measures to integrate Ukraine into the EU’s resource strategy.

With so many powers keen to access its minerals, Ukraine is in an extremely complex and hard-to-navigate geopolitical situation.

Zelensky’s bet on the EU, instead of the US, might be right, given the growing rift between Brussels and Washington over Ukraine’s future. But as Thucydides, the ancient Greek historian, once said, the odds may be stacked against it:

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

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

– ref. Trump wants to do a deal for Ukraine’s critical minerals. Will Zelensky give him what he wants – or will Putin? – https://theconversation.com/trump-wants-to-do-a-deal-for-ukraines-critical-minerals-will-zelensky-give-him-what-he-wants-or-will-putin-250064

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brenton Prosser, Professor of Public Policy and Leadership, UNSW Sydney

Although Australia has a strong and proud democracy, it nonetheless faces important challenges.

Among these, youth democratic engagement and civics education have been matters of national concern for more than two decades.

With the latest national curriculum testing showing the lowest levels of civics on record, and a parliamentary inquiry finding that civics education is not working in Australia, it is timely to ask why, after so much attention over so many years, so little has changed.

One of the potential explanations for this is the difficulties researchers face collecting evidence on what works in civics education and engagement programs long-term. The importance of the availability of this evidence for political and policy leaders has been reinforced by calls for a more robust understanding of democratic literacy and civics engagement across the lifecourse.

Importantly, new UK-based research, currently being applied in Australia by UNSW, seeks to address this vital data and decision making gap.

Read more:
Australian students just recorded the lowest civics scores since testing began. But young people do care about politics

Identifying the gaps in democratic evidence

In Australia, there is a well-documented decline in civics education and public trust. However, a common theme in the research is that it is easier to measure decline and disaffection than to identify what works.

While many inspirational initiatives have been publicly and privately funded in Australia, they tend to be siloed, small and difficult to assess.

In the UK, research has revealed that, historically, there had been no clear coordination or alignment of civic learning, engagement, and participation initiatives across national and local government. Moreover, it found there was little long-term commitment to civic initiatives, with many not outliving the relevant government or minister who initiated them.

Prominent recent reports in Australia suggest a similar situation.

Meanwhile, research indicates that fostering democratic participation and resilience is an ongoing process across people’s lives. But how to best gather and use data on this life process remains a challenge.

It is a response to such research and policy challenges that is at the core of the “civic journey” concept.

What are ‘civic journeys’?

The notion of journeys in human experience is not new. Often, education, health and social sectors seek to map client journeys as part of effectiveness and equity analyses. In the civic context, the notion of journey is applied to democratic literacy, civic momentum, transformative action and lifelong engagement. In other words, it’s not just about civics education at school.

The civic journey concept originated in the UK. At its core is an intention to establish “an integrated and high-quality, seamless tapestry of opportunities” to learn about and engage in the democratic process and civic life.

The UK civic journeys initiative has informed research into youth as a fundamental stage in citizens’ life-long journeys. It noted that the opportunity to experience democracy (be citizens) was as important as the education to understand democracy (become citizens) in shaping democratic literacy and participation. But crucially, both were forged during key transitions within childhood and adolescence.

Further, the UK study identified the importance of entry, exit and re-entry into political and civic learning and activity at different points of youth transitions to adulthood and throughout adult life. Put another way, it found that “hot spots” of high engagement, “cold spots” of disengagement and “black spot” openings to extremism all coalesced around major transition points in the life course.

The civic journey approach also highlighted the importance of connecting volunteering and other forms of civic activism with formal approaches to civics education and youth democratic participation. This highlights the importance of linking youth civic socialisation programmes in schools, local communities, and online.

When understood and mapped, these points can be prioritised for attention.

A uniquely Australian approach to civic journeys

The adaptation of civic journeys for research and policy provides an important opportunity. With its focus around collecting data on outcomes, it helps identify what works in the democratic experiences of citizens at different stages of their lives. When applied to the full life course, it supports the most effective allocation of public resources to interventions.

The civic journey metaphor also helps guide future work in this space. Such an approach could support governments with their interest in better coordination, design and funding of long-term data to identify the best initiatives.

There is also the potential to apply the civic journey concept in a multicultural context. Civic journeys can be used as a lens to examine the diverse journeys in and between different cultural groups to help preempt and mitigate disruption. This in turn helps build a collective democratic journey. Further, it could be used to identify the “black spots” and reduce exposure to alienation or extremism.

In summary, the civic journeys approach has significant potential to better understand and shape the individual and collective experiences of Australians across the life course. It can also help build a national narrative underpinning ongoing work to further strengthen Australia’s civics education and democracy.

The authors 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. Civics education is at an all-time low in Australia. Mapping our ‘civic journeys’ may help – https://theconversation.com/civics-education-is-at-an-all-time-low-in-australia-mapping-our-civic-journeys-may-help-250138

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karleen Gribble, Adjunct Professor, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Western Sydney University

Sleep is the holy grail for new parents. So no wonder many tired parents are looking for something to help their babies sleep.

A TikTok trend claims giving your baby a tablespoon or two of butter in the evening will help them sleep more at night.

As we’ll see, butter is just the latest food that promises to help babies sleep at night. But no single food can do this.

So if you’re a new parent and desperate for a good night’s sleep, here’s what to try instead.

Is my baby’s sleep normal?

Babies need help to fall asleep, through feeding, movement (like rocking) or touch (like a cuddle or massage).

Newborn babies also do not know night from day. Melatonin in breastmilk helps babies sleep more at night until they start to make this sleep-inducing hormone themselves. Bottlefed newborn babies do not have access to this melatonin. Regardless of how you feed your baby, it can take several months for them to develop a sleep pattern with longer stretches at night.

Babies also sleep lighter than older children and adults. Light sleep helps ensure they continue breathing, protecting them from SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). It also means they wake easily and often.

The idea that babies should sleep deeply, alone and for long stretches, goes against their physiology. So “sleeping like a baby” usually means waking quite a lot at night.

Yet, many parents have been asked whether their baby is sleeping through the night and is a “good baby”. The perception is that if a baby doesn’t sleep for long stretches at night, it must be “bad”.

This may lead parents to say their babies sleep longer than they really do, setting unrealistic expectations for other new parents.

Could feeding butter do any harm?

The social pressure around baby sleep can add stress and anxiety for new parents. So the Tiktok trend about feeding babies butter may seem tempting.

But giving babies any solid food before they are around six months old is not recommended. Babies’ digestive systems are not ready for solid food until they are around six months and feeding them before this can cause constipation or make them more likely to catch an illness. For this reason alone, you should not give your young baby butter.

From about six months old, babies should be offered nutritious, iron-rich solid foods. Butter doesn’t fit this bill because it is almost all saturated fat. If butter replaces more nutritious foods, babies may not get the vitamins and minerals they need.

Butter is the latest in a long line of beliefs about certain foods making babies sleep longer at night. It was once thought that adding cereal or crushed arrowroot biscuits in bottle of milk before bedtime would make them sleep longer. Research found this did not increase sleep at all.

Similarly, there is no evidence that giving babies butter before bed makes them sleep longer.

In fact, research shows the foods babies eat make no difference to night waking.

What else can I try?

Waking overnight doesn’t necessarily mean a baby is hungry. And stopping breastfeeds or bottle feeds overnight doesn’t necessarily reduce night waking.

Your baby could be too hot or cold, or need a nappy change. But some babies continue to wake at night even without an obvious problem.

The good news is, sleeping is a skill babies develop naturally as they grow.

Behavioural sleep interventions, known as “sleep training”, are not very effective in increasing overnight sleep. In one study, sleep training did not reduce the number of night wakes and only increased the length of the longest sleep by about 16 minutes. Sleep training is especially not recommended for babies under six months.

Look after yourself

If you’re missing out on sleep at night, try to have small naps during the day while your baby sleeps. Ask friends and family to do some chores to allow you to nap.

If your baby is crying and you find yourself getting overwhelmed it is OK to put your baby down somewhere safe (like a cot or baby mat) and take some time to settle yourself.

If your baby’s sleep pattern changes significantly or they haven’t slept at all for more than a day, or if your baby seems to have pain or a fever see your doctor, or family and child health nurse, as soon as possible.

Some helpful resources

If you think your baby is not sleeping well because of a breastfeeding problem, the Australian Breastfeeding Association has a national helpline. The association can also advise on co-sleeping.

The charity Little Sparklers provides peer support for parents, including someone to chat to, about baby sleep. It also has helpful resources.

UNICEF has resources about caring for your baby at night. And the UK-based Baby Sleep Info Source (Basis) provides evidence-based information about babies and sleep.

Karleen Gribble is a volunteer breastfeeding educator and counsellor with the Australian Breastfeeding Association, a member of the Public Health Association of Australia and the World Public Health Nutrition Association.

Naomi Hull is the National Coordinator of the World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative – Australia and is on the Executive of the Infant and Toddler Foods Research Alliance. Naomi is a volunteer breastfeeding counsellor with the Australian Breastfeeding Association, and a member of the International Lactation Consulants Association, the Lactation Consultants of Australia and New Zealand, the Public Health Association of Australia and the World Public Health Nutrition Association. Naomi receives funding from a RTP Stipend Scholarship from the federal government.

Nina Chad has been the Infant and Young Child Feeding Consultant for the World Health Organization since 2021. She is a member of the Public Health Association of Australia, the World Public Health Nutrition Association and the Australian Breastfeeding Association.

– ref. Feeding your baby butter won’t help them sleep through the night, whatever TikTok says – https://theconversation.com/feeding-your-baby-butter-wont-help-them-sleep-through-the-night-whatever-tiktok-says-249699

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Annette Kroen, Research Fellow Planning and Transport, RMIT University

The cleanup is underway in northern Queensland following the latest flooding catastrophe to hit the state. More than 7,000 insurance claims have already been lodged, most of them for inundated homes and other structures.

The Queensland floods are a reminder that climate-induced natural disasters are becoming more frequent and severe in Australia. Recent reports have identified the high number of Australian homes that are vulnerable to the increased risks of floods, coastal erosion and bushfires.

Despite the evidence of escalating danger to homes and communities, we are ill-prepared for severe weather events. A new report from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute spells out the case for better integration, especially of urban planning processes. This is urgently needed to reduce the exposure of housing to growing disaster risks.

Top priorities for planning authorities must include an end to building homes in the wrong locations, such as flood zones, and improving the resilience of dwellings to disaster hazards.

Poor coordination

At the national level, there is little integration of the three pillars of sound strategy: housing policy, settlement planning and disaster management. For example, neither housing policy nor planning frameworks incorporate disaster preparedness or mitigation.

A focus on disaster response and recovery also hinders proper coordination in the disaster prevention area, even though avoidance in the first place is clearly more cost effective.

However, this may be changing. Both the Issues Paper for the National Housing and Homelessness Plan and State of the Housing System report have acknowledged climate change and natural disasters are risk factors affecting housing.

And the National Urban Policy includes “sustainable and resilient” as one of its three major goals for liveable cities.

At the state and territory level, there is more clearly defined coordination through state emergency management planning. It also occurs via fire agencies that advise on planning proposals.

In New South Wales, the NSW Reconstruction Authority is responsible for developing and implementing the State Disaster Mitigation Plan and for housing recovery.

This means settlement planning and relevant housing issues are directly under the auspices of the agency responsible for disaster prevention and recovery. This is one way to improve integration, but further coordination with housing and planning agencies would be desirable.

Greater focus on risk reduction

Relevant Australian agencies are enhancing their approaches to disaster management in relation to housing. But housing policy still needs to accord greater priority to disaster risk reduction. This includes the location and resilience of housing relative to climate change hazards, such as fires and floods.

In settlement planning, tensions between disaster risk reduction and economic and other development goals need to be addressed. Planning processes and policies to move communities away from risk areas via managed retreat and possibly compensation schemes must be developed.

We can look to international experience for guidance. In Quebec, Canada the provincial government offered significant funding towards property buybacks after floods in 2017 and 2019. It also introduced a cap on disaster aid in high risk locations. Bylaw regulations banned any new developments or reconstruction.

Households had to decide to either relocate or bear the cost of repeated disaster recovery. This strategy is an example of a successful relocation plan in an area at risk of repeated future flooding.

The strategy received a relatively positive response from the affected municipalities and homeowners, potentially due to the generous buyout offers.

This example illustrates the need for policies to manage disaster risk and urban development much more clearly.

Better integration needed

A whole of government approach that establishes clear policy and planning responsibilities would improve integration. It would also allow agencies to develop clearer strategies for the task. Improved data availability and harmonisation of risk identification would further support good decision making by housing and planning agencies.

At the operational level, more staff exchanges between housing, planning, and emergency agencies would support capacity building.

Detailed evaluations of housing experiences and planning outcomes from previous disasters would underpin improvements and integration. This occurs to some extent through formal statutory inquiries into disasters.

A standardised evaluation for housing and planning agencies would provide more focused insights. One idea is to gauge temporary housing programs to build an inventory of suitable and available temporary housing types.

In addition to coordination between government agencies, there is also a need to better communicate with the public on potential disaster risks. Local communities need to be included in planning, both for short-term disaster management and longer-term resettlement decisions.

If we fail to better integrate housing policy with disaster preparation, we will continue to build on flood plains and other high risk areas. People, and their homes, will remain on the front line of deadly natural disasters.

Annette Kroen receives funding from Natural Hazards Research Australia and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

RMIT University receives finding from AHURI and NHRA to support Jago Dodson’s research which is relevant to this article, as well as a range of other funding sources.

– ref. How to protect more Australian homes from the growing risks of floods, fires and other climate disasters – https://theconversation.com/how-to-protect-more-australian-homes-from-the-growing-risks-of-floods-fires-and-other-climate-disasters-249860

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Davis, Chair of Women’s Health, Monash University

The federal government has recently pledged to create a new Medicare rebate for menopause health assessments. It’s due to be available from July 1.

The announcement featured in the government’s response to the Senate inquiry into menopause, released last week, though was first flagged earlier this month as part of the government’s pre-election funding package for women’s health.

So what is a menopause health assessment? And how will it improve the health care women receive during this stage in their lives?

Why we need this

Outside reproductive health, women’s health care has generally been modelled on the needs of men. A prime example is the government-funded midlife health check for people aged 45 to 49. This is intended to identify and manage risks to prevent chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

The recent Senate inquiry into issues related to menopause and perimenopuase highlighted that the timing of this health check is not fit for purpose for women. This is because at menopause, which occurs on average at the age of 51 in Australia, women’s health profiles change.

Women gain tummy fat, their cholesterol levels go up, and glucose (sugar) metabolism becomes less efficient. All these changes increase a woman’s risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Vast numbers of women are given a clean bill of health at this midlife health check in their late 40s. But when they subsequently go through menopause, they can go on to develop heart disease and diabetes risk factors, which may go undetected.

Some women also go through early menopause: around 12% between the ages of 40 and 45, and around 4% before 40.

Those women who experience menopause before age 45 are known to be at significantly higher risk of heart disease than other women. But, by the time women with early menopause qualify for the midlife health check, crucial metabolic changes may have silently occurred, and the opportunity to intervene early to address them may be missed.

What will a menopause health check involve?

The federal government has committed A$26 million over two years to fund the new menopause health assessments, as part of a $64.5 million package designed to improve health care for women experiencing perimenopause and menopause.

Some $12.8 million will also be dedicated to a menopause-related community awareness campaign.

My own research has shown women understand menopause means the loss of fertility, but often have little knowledge of the health changes that occur as part of the menopause transition. So increasing health literacy around menopause is much needed.

Similarly, for the introduction of these menopause-specific consultations to be effective, women will need to know what these health checks are for, if they’re eligible, and how to access a menopause health check.

The new menopause health checks will be provided by GPs. Exactly what they will involve is yet to be clarified. But I would anticipate they will include a combination of the assessment and management of perimenopause and menopause, overall health and wellbeing, and assessment of risk and prevention of future ill health, notably heart disease, diabetes and osteoporosis.

Upskilling health-care providers

Equally, health-care providers will need to understand the impact of menopause on long-term health and how best to mitigate against disease risks, including the role of menopausal hormone therapy.

My research has shown health-care providers lack confidence in delivering menopause-related care, indicating a need for more education around menopause.

In line with this, the Senate inquiry called for the upskilling of the medical workforce in the field of menopause through medical school training, postgraduate specialist programs, and ongoing education of clinicians.

While the government cannot mandate what is taught in medical schools or the content of specialist training programs, its response to the inquiry encourages these institutions to incorporate menopause in their curricula.

Further, part of the government funding will go towards expanding a professional development program on managing menopause offered by Jean Hailes for Women’s Health.

A good start, but still not enough

The government’s new funding, and the new menopause health checks in particular, recognises that women’s health is strongly dictated by major biological events, such as menopause, as opposed to age.

This is good news. But we need to do more to equip health professionals to provide the best menopause care to women in these health assessments and beyond.

Adding new menopause modules to medical school and specialist training programs will ensure greater awareness of the impact of menopause on women’s health and wellbeing. However, awareness alone won’t ensure high-level training for the complex care many perimenopausal and menopausal women need.

The opportunities for medical graduates to gain hands-on clinical experience in menopausal medicine are mostly limited to the select few who get to work in a hospital specialist menopause clinic during their training.

Notably, there’s no credentialed training program in menopause medicine in Australia. Meanwhile, the North American Menopause Society does offer a credentialed program.

The challenge has been that menopause does not belong to one medical specialty. This is why we need an accredited training program – for both GPs and medical specialists – to ensure a truly skilled workforce able to deliver gold standard menopause care.

But without further federal funding to set this up, it will not happen.

Susan Davis receives funding from NHMRC, Medical Research Future Fund, the Heart Foundation, MS Australia. She has prepared and delivered educational presentations for Besins Healthcare, Bayer, and Mayne Pharma and has served on Advisory Boards for Theramex, Astellas, Abbott Laboratories, Mayne Pharma, and Besins Healthcare. She is a Member of the Executive of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

– ref. Australian women will soon be eligible for a menopause health check. Here’s what to expect – https://theconversation.com/australian-women-will-soon-be-eligible-for-a-menopause-health-check-heres-what-to-expect-249499

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Subha Parida, Lecturer in Property, University of South Australia

Houses and fire do not mix. The firestorm which hit Los Angeles in January destroyed nearly 2,000 buildings and forced 130,000 people to evacuate.

The 2019–20 Australian megafires destroyed almost 2,800 homes. This summer, houses and buildings have been lost in Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania.

As temperatures inch upwards, bushfires will become more severe and more frequent, posing risks to more homes. But fires don’t affect homes equally. Older homes built before fire resilience standards became mandatory are at higher risk of going up in flames.

In the aftermath of the devastating LA fires, there are signs that newer homes have fared better than older ones. Previous fires in California and Australia have shown newer homes built with fire-resilient features are more likely to survive than older homes.

The problem is, more than half (55%) of Australia’s homes were built 30 or more years ago – before national standards for fire resilience were introduced.

The good news: you can take action to make older homes more resilient.

Why are new homes better able to survive bushfires?

Location, vegetation and luck play a role in determining which houses survive fires. But there is also evidence newer homes with heat- and ember-resistant features survive better.

Construction standards in both Australia and the United States require the use of materials and designs which reduce fire risk.

In Australia, the national construction standards have been in place since the early 1990s. Over time, the standards have expanded to include more fire-resistant features, such as fire-resistant external walls.

By contrast, older homes are more likely to be built of flammable materials such as wood and untreated timber. Older homes are also more likely to have mature trees and shrubs closer to the house, which can increase fire risk. But as the CSIRO Bushfire Best Practice Guide points out, “trees can also be used to shield against wind, absorb radiant heat, and to filter embers […] when located at a safe distance from the house”.

More exacting construction standards apply for homes built in areas considered at risk of bushfire. State and territory governments have interactive maps of these areas.

Unfortunately, climate change is expanding these areas at risk. As the LA wildfires show, warmer climates mean fire can attack suburbs and cities thought to be safe from bushfire.

Climate change is also making home ownership more expensive, as insurance premiums rise in the wake of more expensive disasters. Analysts predict banks may begin rejecting mortgage applications for properties in areas at high risk from fire.

How can we make older homes more resilient?

Older homes remain highly sought after, especially in cities such as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

But for these homes to be brought up to modern standards of bushfire resistance, they often require significant retrofitting. These retrofits can drastically reduce the risk of ignition.

How do houses actually ignite? Wind-blown embers are a common cause in starting house fires. If a few houses in a town start burning, the fire can spread house to house.

Here are 5 ways to protect your older house:

1. Upgrade external vents. Traditional external vents are designed to ventilate rooms and roofs. But they also permit embers to gain access to attics and crawl spaces and spark a fire. Upgrading to ember-resistant vents can directly improve your home’s resilience.

2. Install ember gutter guards. Ember-resistant gutter guards are made of metal and have finer mesh than normal gutter guards. These help to prevent the build-up of dry leaves and twigs and stop small embers from landing.

3. Upgrade windows and walls. You can cut your risk further by installing bushfire-resistant shutters for windows, using fire-resistant material for wall insulation and replacing combustible material with better alternatives such as metal roofing, fibre cement siding for walls and tempered glass windows.

4. Check your deck and verandah. Wooden decks and verandahs are risky in high-risk areas. If they need to be rebuilt, choose fire-resistant materials.

5. Make space around your home. In fire-prone areas, removing trees and shrubs within 20 metres of the house can reduce risk. A well-managed area of pavers and low-density plants and shrubs close to the home acts as a fire break.

Ahead of fire season, making and updating an evacuation plan is equally vital. Homeowners should prepare emergency kits with essential documents, medications, and protective gear. If a fire starts in your area, applying fire-retardant gels to surfaces at risk can provide temporary protection.

Homeowners can use the National Emergency Management Authority’s bushfire resilience rating app to assess their home’s bushfire risk and to see which retrofits are highest priority.

State or territory governments offer advice on making your house more resistant to fire attack: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory, Australian Capital Territory.

Protecting our homes takes time – and money

Australia’s housing crisis has been front page news for months. As we head towards the federal election, it will remain a hot-button issue. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet heard discussion of the risk posed to our housing stock from bushfires made worse by climate change.

While planning controls and building standards can raise the standards of future homes, better support and incentives are needed to retrofit existing homes – especially for those built before fire safety standards became the norm.

Retrofitting is crucial. But it’s not cheap. Costs can range from A$8,500 to $47,000 per property.

These expenses can be prohibitive for many homeowners. Initiatives such as the Bushfire Resilience Rating Home Self-Assessment app can result in insurers offering premium discounts to homeowners using it to introduce recommended measures.

In some areas, local governments offer financial assistance for retrofitting, such as the Bushfire Wise Rebate by Ku-ring-gai Council in NSW.

Without greater financial support or government incentives, a significant portion of Australia’s housing stock will remain vulnerable, increasing risks as climate change expands fire-prone areas.

Subha Parida receives receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI)

Lyrian Daniel receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI).

Michaela Lang receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI).

– ref. More than half of Australia’s homes were built before fire standards came in. Here are 5 ways to retrofit them – https://theconversation.com/more-than-half-of-australias-homes-were-built-before-fire-standards-came-in-here-are-5-ways-to-retrofit-them-249490

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania

Tasmania has been burning for more than two weeks, with no end in sight. Almost 100,000 hectares of bushland in the northwest has burned to date. This includes the Tarkine rainforest and alpine ecosystems of Cradle Mountain that may never recover.

The situation has taken emergency services and land management agencies by surprise. The seasonal bushfire outlook for summer 2024 suggested Tasmania’s fire risk was nothing out of the ordinary. The state was also well prepared for bushfire fighting, particularly with specialised aircraft.

But this fire season has turned out to be anything but typical. Firefighting capacity has been stretched to the limit and interstate crews have been called in.

It all began with a massive lightning storm in the evening of Monday February 3. The incidence of such lightning fires has been increasing in Tasmania since the 1990s.

An official inquiry into the bushfires will no doubt be held, given the substantial social, economic and environmental harm – as well as the sizeable costs associated with fighting the fires from the air in remote and rugged landscapes.

Nonetheless, important lessons are emerging from these fires, which speak to the broader, worsening threat as the climate changes.

Understanding the impacts of the fires

Fortunately, direct economic losses from theses fires have been limited so far, despite significant disruption associated with evacuation and road closures. Tourism operators and honey producers have been hardest hit.

The fires caused brief but substantial smoke pollution across the state, placing a range of people with medical conditions at risk.

The full environmental effects and the benefits of prescribed burning are yet to be evaluated. Nonetheless, there is grave concern about damage to unique rainforests and alpine ecosystems. If sufficiently dry the organic soils, or peats, that supports forests and treeless areas in western Tasmania are also vulnerable to combustion.

We undertook a preliminary estimate of how much highly fire-sensitive vegetation – plant communities that will take more than 50 years to recover – may have burned. This involved comparing the current bushfire boundaries or footprint, based on satellite data and field reconnaissance, to vegetation mapping used for various purposes including fire management. We put the figure at 19,716 hectares of vegetation. However, it’s possible not all of this burned and islands of unburned vegetation persist within the broad fire boundary.

Our estimation includes 10,419 hectares of temperate rainforest (10% of the fire area) and 462 hectares of alpine vegetation (0.45% of the fire area). Neither of these vegetation types can readily tolerate fire.

Our analysis suggests about half of fire-affected rainforest areas have been previously burned by fires since 1982 (48%) and some small areas have burned twice (5%). Recurrent fires in rainforest can result in permanent loss of this vegetation. Just how much damage has been done will require further assessment.

Emergence of new fire patterns

The number of fires ignited by lightning have increased in Tasmania since the 1990s. When the lightning occurs in storms without much rain, or where the rain evaporates before it hits the ground, it’s known as dry lightning.

Concerningly, in the last decade two other major dry lightning fire events have occurred,
likely a signal of a change in fire activity. As a result, fires are burning into areas that historically are rarely affected by fire, damaging the natural values of the Tasmanian wilderness.

This event could not be predicted

Going into summer, experts were concerned that soils across western Tasmania were particularly dry. This increased the fire risk in the seasonal outlook.

The recent rapid fire growth in Tasmania was caused by the unusual combination of regional drying (including dry soils), an extreme lightning storm and subsequent strong winds.

But the sequence of events that caused this fire to take off could not have been predicted more than a week ahead. That’s because it is impossible to predict lightning and windstorms outside the seven-day window of weather forecasts.

What’s more, our research shows it is currently not possible to reliably predict which lightning strikes will start fire.

Rapid attack and fire suppression have practical limits

Massive lightning storms that ignite multiple fires overwhelm the capacity of firefighters to locate and immediately extinguish all the flames.

Unfavourable weather conditions caused the west coast fires to rapidly grow. Firefighting shifted from attempts to extinguish the fire to instead contain its spread. This involved techniques such as targeted waterbombing, back burning and building fire breaks.

These approaches have been successful in some cases, notably the deployment of retardant drops to contain the Canning Peak fire, saving extensive stands of conifer rainforest. But suppression efforts were imperfect, as the loss of a private tourist facility hut on the Overland Track has demonstrated.

Managing these massive fires demands triage – making difficult choices about where to direct firefighting effort. Effective triage requires a detailed understanding of the location of areas of high economic, cultural and environmental value. High-quality mapping of these sites and involvement of specialists in the broader decision-making process is essential.

The Tasmanian government does have maps and expertise to guide triage, but there are calls for more investment to protect the region’s ecological values. This is particularly important for small, localised sites vulnerable to fire, such as groves of ancient Huon pine.

Broader lessons for fire fighting

Dry lightning storms are hard to predict, extraordinarily difficult to contain, and can cause substantial economic, social and environmental harms.

Technology alone – such as that which combines satellites, artificial intelligence, drones and water bombers – is not enough to eliminate these fires. What’s needed is a diverse portfolio of approaches, involving a combination of:

• reducing fuel loads by prescribed burning
• firefighting that is carefully targeted using high quality data
• expertise embedded in firefighting teams.

Researchers and fire managers must also identify the best strategies for prescribed burning to reduce bushfire risk while protecting areas of high economic, conservation and cultural value.

Climate change will bring more frequent monster fires – and fighting them demands a broad suite of investment.

David Bowman is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and also receives funding from the New South Wales Bushfire and Natural Hazards Research Centre, and Natural Hazards Research Australia.

Grant Williamson receives funding from the NSW Bushfire and Natural Hazards Research Centre, and Natural Hazards Research Australia.

– ref. More dry lightning in Tasmania is sparking bushfires – challenging fire fighters and land managers – https://theconversation.com/more-dry-lightning-in-tasmania-is-sparking-bushfires-challenging-fire-fighters-and-land-managers-250063

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martin Loosemore, Professor of Construction Management, University of Technology Sydney

This week, the Productivity Commission released its much-awaited report into productivity growth in Australia’s housing construction sector. It wasn’t a glowing appraisal.

The commission found physical productivity – the total number of houses built per hour worked – has more than halved over the past 30 years.

The more nuanced measure of labour productivity – which accounts for improvements in size and quality – has also fallen, by 12%.

Both measures put home-building productivity well behind the broader economy, something the report’s authors attribute to “decades of poor performance”.

We’ve known about this problem for a long time. The Productivity Commission’s report is well researched and makes some sensible recommendations.

Solving the underlying problem will require a coordinated approach between government, home-owners, construction companies and workers.

Measuring productivity

Housing can take many forms. However, from a productivity perspective, the process of development is essentially the same.

In very simple terms it involves:

• concept and initial design, feasibility, finance and business case development
• land acquisition and due diligence
• detailed design, development and building approvals
• pre-construction planning and working drawings
• construction project management
• practical completion, final certificates and settlement, commissioning and handover.

There are no official estimates of housing construction productivity. So, the Productivity Commission used Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data to create its own new measures to capture productivity across this entire process.

Falling or flat-lining productivity in this sector is a well-known long-term problem. Under the National Housing Accord, the federal government has committed to building 1.2 million new well-located homes by the end of this decade.

But in the first three months since the National Housing Accord was launched, only 44,884 homes were built across Australia. That’s about 15,000 fewer than the required quarterly target of 60,000.

The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council projects that new market housing supply will ultimately come in at about a quarter of a million homes below the accord’s target.

4 key problems

The report identified four key factors behind the malaise:

1. complex, slow approvals, as well as delayed construction certificates and essential infrastructure connections
2. lack of innovation and slow uptake of digital technologies and modern methods of construction
3. the dominance of smaller building firms resulting in low economies-of-scale and project management challenges associated with supply chain fragmentation
4. difficulties attracting and retaining skilled workers resulting in skills and labour shortages.

The report proposes seven reform directions in response. These centre on speeding up the planning approval process, investing in research and development, and increasing workforce flexibility.

Fixing things won’t be simple

The Productivity Commission’s report has brought a welcome focus on planning and approvals as a key element of easing the housing crisis.

It acknowledges that under-resourcing of agencies involved in the approvals process, such as local governments, has made the problem worse.

One issue with increasing the number of planning approvals processed is that you then need to have a construction industry that can build fast enough to keep up with them.

Currently, we don’t. Industry research shows since 2013, the number of workers within Australia’s construction workforce has increased by more than 25%. But they are working 2% fewer hours each year, and achieving an output that’s 25.4% lower.

Keeping an eye on quality

Amid any push to speed up approvals, we need to be mindful of the possible risks. Loosening building regulations can increase the risk of quality problems and inappropriate development.

If widespread across the industry, such problems can cause significant personal and economic harm to households, social and economic costs for society. They can also increase building costs, insurance premiums and strata fees.

This problem calls for a range of tools to reduce the risk of compromising on quality when regulations are loosened or changed. New South Wales has two key pieces of legislation in place that could act as a model for other states.

One allows owners to sue if a person who carries out construction work fails to exercise reasonable care. The other allows the Building Commission to investigate building work and require rectification of defects for up to six years.

NSW also has an independent builder trustworthiness rating scheme. This is known as iCirt and operated by credit rating agency Equifax.

Innovation isn’t a panacea

A major feature of the Productivity Commission’s report discusses the housing construction industry’s low innovation culture.

However, much innovation is hidden from view, since it occurs at the manufacturing stage. And innovation itself is not a panacea.

While calling for greater innovation seems obvious on the surface, research has shown its ability to increase productivity depends on a wide range of factors and is certainly not guaranteed. It can even increase costs and reduce quality and productivity if not managed effectively.

More holistic workforce planning

The report also highlights issues with attracting and retaining a skilled workforce. Issues include low apprenticeship take-up and completion rates, restrictive trade pathways, and large infrastructure projects drawing talent away.

This raises a bigger issue. Despite workforce planning across the industry by the Construction Industry Training Board the industry still seems to be constantly reacting to a skilled labour shortage rather than planning ahead to predict and prevent one.

Read more:
Will new $10,000 apprentice payments help solve job shortages in construction? Not anytime soon

Martin Loosemore 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. Here’s why increasing productivity in housing construction is such a tricky problem to solve – https://theconversation.com/heres-why-increasing-productivity-in-housing-construction-is-such-a-tricky-problem-to-solve-250048

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cristóbal Castro Barrientos, PhD candidate, NZ Policy Research Institute, Auckland University of Technology

Despite Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s reassurance that “some green shoots” are starting to show in the economy, including a 50 point cut in the official cash rate expected to be announced later today, the outlook for 2025 remains uncertain for many – and grim for some.

Unemployment reached 5.1% in the final quarter of 2024, the highest level since 2020, according to the latest data from Stats NZ. That translates to a total of 156,000 unemployed individuals.

At the same time, a 1% decrease in gross domestic product in the third quarter of 2024 puts more pressure on the job market.

While the unemployment rate may not have reached the levels of past crises – the rate exceeded 6% during the 2008-2009 recession – the devil is in the detail.

The Stats NZ data show the most affected sectors include male-dominated occupations such as technicians and machinery operators, accounting for 85% of the latest job losses.

Women have seen smaller declines in employment and a slight increase in transitions to part-time roles. But the shift from full-time to part-time employment, especially among men, suggests the creation of quality full-time jobs will be a challenge.

Job losses concentrated in male-dominated industries also have broader economic implications. They may signal shifts in household income dynamics, particularly for families that depend on a male breadwinner.

It could also contribute to rising male underemployment (when a worker’s job doesn’t fully utilise their skills, education or experience) and further disparities in the employment rates of men and women.

Overall, these trends raise questions about the nature and quality of work now available in the job market, and what strategies the government can respond with.

A rise in ‘discouraged’ workers

In the fourth quarter of 2024, the annualised employment rate (representing the proportion of the working-age population employed over a year, adjusted for seasonal fluctuations) was 67.4%, compared with 69% in the same period of the previous year.

This is the most significant decline since 2009. It reflects job losses and a “discouraged worker” effect.

Discouraged workers are those who have stopped seeking employment due to a perceived lack of opportunities. Instead of remaining in the labour force, they may rely on savings, family support, welfare, or transition into informal or temporary work.

A drop in quality work

The rise in part-time employment, particularly among men, raises concerns about the quality of the labour market. Although employment levels appear stable, the growth of less secure jobs may conceal structural weaknesses.

In the fourth quarter of 2024, the number in part-time employment reached 585,000, the highest figure since 1986. Over the past year, 36,000 men left full-time jobs, while 9,000 transitioned to part-time work.

One of the main risks of this trend is that companies may be cutting costs without resorting to mass layoffs, which implies reduced job security for workers. Many of these transitions to part-time employment are not voluntary but rather a sign that the economy is not generating enough stable job opportunities.

Additionally, part-time jobs often offer lower wages, fewer benefits and fewer opportunities for career advancement.

This type of employment can contribute to stagnation in skill development and reduce workers’ purchasing power, ultimately affecting consumer spending and overall economic growth.

There is also a perception of discrimination against part-time workers, with one in three reporting feeling discriminated against in their jobs.

A year of two halves

While consumer confidence has been low, recent revisions to economic growth estimates suggest the economy hasn’t been as weak as perceived.

Current projections are that unemployment may reach a peak between 5.3% and 5.6% in mid-2025 and then trend downwards.

With inflation now within the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s target range, changes in the official cash rate are needed to contain the damage to a weakened labour market. The central bank is forecast to cut the interest rate by 50-points today.

The weak growth in the working-age population and a potential decline in labour force participation could limit how high unemployment rises, as fewer people may be actively looking for work. But this does not mean a strong recovery is imminent.

New Zealand faces a significant but not insurmountable challenge. An unemployment rate of 5.1% should raise a red flag and is devastating for the increasing number of workers who have lost their jobs. But the data also show the increase is part of an anticipated economic cycle.

What matters is how the government reacts to the increases in unemployment and changes to the job market. A supportive job-creation policy and a coordinated strategy for the most affected sectors will be key in avoiding long-lasting pain in the labour market.

Cristóbal Castro Barrientos 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. Economic ‘green shoots’ and lower interest rates disguise worrying trends in NZ’s job market – https://theconversation.com/economic-green-shoots-and-lower-interest-rates-disguise-worrying-trends-in-nzs-job-market-249685

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pascale Lubbe, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Molecular Ecology, University of Otago

When people arrived on the shores of Aotearoa New Zealand and began to turn the land to their needs, they set in motion great changes.

The landscape of today bears little resemblance to that of a mere thousand years ago. More than 70% of forest cover has been lost since human arrival. Native bush has been replaced by tussocks, scrublands and, most of all, open agricultural land.

These changes affected our birdlife dramatically. Some species, like the moa, were simply hunted to extinction. Others fell directly to mammalian predators. Many species were victims of severe habitat destruction. The loss of suitable habitat remains a key conservation challenge to this day.

However, a changing distribution of plants is not a uniquely modern feature. New Zealand has seen equally radical shifts in habitat before – during the Ice Age, which lasted 2.6 million years and ended about 12,000 years ago.

At its height, parts of the country were up to 6°C colder than today, and glacial ice sheets spread wide fingers across the Southern Alps. The dry, cold climate resulted in widespread grass and scrubland. Forest cover became patchy everywhere except for the northern North Island.

Our new research tracks how bird life responded to these changes – in particular how exotic species took advantage of the shifting landscapes to make New Zealand home.

Ice Age invaders

Native birds responded to the Ice Age in a variety of ways. Kiwi populations became so isolated in forest patches they split into new lineages. Several moa species moved across the landscape, following their shifting habitat.

Some groups adapted, spreading into novel environments. Kea split off from their relatives the kākā, becoming more generalised. This is known as in situ adaptation; an existing group changing its habits or character to deal with new environments.

But where new ecological opportunities arise, species from elsewhere will also come to take advantage of them. Our research uncovers a pulse of colonisation by exotic bird species that coincides with the reduction of forest cover and the expansion of grasslands at the start of the Ice Age some 2.6 million years ago.

These species were primarily generalists, able to take advantage of a variety of habitats. But there was also an influx of birds pre-adapted to more open conditions, such as the ancestors of Haast’s eagle, pūtangitangi (paradise shelduck) and pīhoihoi (pipit).

Where did these “invaders” come from? Principally, from Australia. For millions of years, they have ridden the winds across the Tasman Sea and, occasionally, established breeding colonies on our shores.

Over a long enough time, those new populations evolved to become distinct, endemic New Zealand species found nowhere else on earth. Pīwakawaka (fantail), ruru (morepork), weweia (dabchick) and kakī (black stilt), to name a few, are all descended from Ice Age Australian ancestors.

They arrived in a New Zealand characterised by scrub, tussock and grass during cold glacial periods, followed by slowly expanding forests during warmer interglacials.

History repeats itself

Today, open vistas once again dominate the landscape. This time they were sculpted by humans rather than a cooling climate. The changing environment means new ecological opportunities – and vacancies – have been left by the great number of species that have gone extinct.

Correspondingly, many new species have naturalised on our shores. Welcome swallows, royal spoonbills, Australian coots, spur winged plovers and white-faced herons started making their home here during the 1930s to 50s.

Silvereyes have been here longer, first reported during the 1850s, while glossy ibis and barn owl only started breeding here this century. All likely flew across the Tasman to settle here.

Some arrivals seem to serve as ecological replacements of a kind. The kāhu (swamp harrier) is a stand-in for the now-extinct Eyles’ harrier and Haast’s eagle. The poaka (pied stilt) is a common sight where kakī once dominated. And Australian coots proliferate where New Zealand coots once waded.

Native habitats for native birds

These birds are following ancient patterns and processes. Where new opportunities appear, new organisms will rise to fill them. Our highly modified ecosystems are responding in the only way open to them, with exotic species expanding their range to take advantage of empty ecological niches – job vacancies in the ecosystem.

Indeed, these invasions are likely to become more frequent as species distributions shift in a warming climate. As our native species decline under threats of habitat loss and predation by mammalian pests, they will be ecologically replaced by other species.

Left to their own devices, Aotearoa’s plants and animals will look different in the future. The unique species that have called these islands home for millions of years will increasingly be replaced by more generalist species from elsewhere.

The good news is that in predator-free native bush, endemic birds can outcompete introduced species.

The route to protecting our native species in a fast changing world remains as clear as ever – protect and restore native habitat and eradicate mammalian predators.

Pascale Lubbe currently receives funding from the Marsden Fund.

Michael Knapp has received funding from The Royal Society of New Zealand (Rutherford Discovery Fellowship).

Nic Rawlence receives funding from the Marsden Fund.

– ref. Loss of forests brought new birds to NZ during the last Ice Age – we’re witnessing a similar process now – https://theconversation.com/loss-of-forests-brought-new-birds-to-nz-during-the-last-ice-age-were-witnessing-a-similar-process-now-248523

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Stone, Principal Research Fellow, School of Population and Global Health, The University of Western Australia

Having dense breasts is a clear risk factor for breast cancer. It can also make cancers hard to spot on mammograms.

Yet you might not be aware you have dense breasts, even after mammographic screening.

In Australia, advice for women with dense breasts and their health-care professionals can be inconsistent and confusing.

This is because there’s not currently consensus on whether women who have dense breasts, but no symptoms, benefit from further imaging such as ultrasounds. Concerns include potential cost of these tests and the risk they can produce false positives.

What is breast density?

Breasts are made up of fatty tissue and fibroglandular tissue (including glands that make milk, held together by fibrous tissue).

On a mammogram – an x-ray of the breast – fibroglandular tissue appears white and fatty tissue appears dark. The white areas are referred to as breast density.

A higher proportion of fibroglandular tissue means your breasts are dense.

There are four categories to classify breast density:

• A: almost entirely fatty
• B: scattered areas of fibroglandular density
• C: heterogeneously or consistently dense
• D: extremely dense.

Breast density is very common. Around 40% of women aged 40–74 are estimated to have “dense breasts”, meaning they fall in category C or D.

What’s the link to cancer?

Breast density is associated with the risk of breast cancer in two ways.

First, breast density usually decreases with age. But if a woman has high breast density for her age, it increases her likelihood of breast cancer.

One study looked at the risk of breast cancer over the age of 50. It found there was a 6.2% risk for the one-third of women with the lowest density. For the 5% with the highest density, the risk was 14.7%.

Second, breast density “masks” cancers if they develop. Both cancers and breast density appear white on a mammogram, making cancers very hard to see.

Breast cancer screening saves lives through early detection and improved treatment options. But we don’t yet know if telling women about their breast density leads to earlier cancer detection, or lives saved.

In Australia, screening mammography is free for all women* aged 40 and older. This is run through BreastScreen Australia, a joint national, state and territory initiative. Those aged 50-74 are invited to have a mammogram, but it’s available for free without a referral from age 40.

However, the messages Australian women currently receive about breast density – and whether it’s recorded – depends on where they live.

What does the advice say?

In 2023, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists updated its position statement to recommend breast density is recorded during screening and diagnostic tests in Australia and New Zealand.

Meanwhile BreastScreen Australia says it “should not routinely record breast density or provide supplemental testing for women with dense breasts”. However this position statement is from 2020 and is currently under review.

Some state and territory BreastScreen programs, including in Western Australia, South Australia and soon Victoria, notify women if they have dense breasts. Victoria is currently at an early stage of its roll-out.

While the messaging regarding breast density differs by state, none currently recommend further imaging for women with dense breasts without speaking to a doctor about individual risk.

What are the issues?

Providing recommendations for women with dense breasts is difficult.

The European Society of Breast Imaging recommends women with extremely dense breasts aged 50–70 receive an MRI every two to four years, in addition to screening mammography. This is based on a large randomised controlled trial from the Netherlands.

But the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists describes this recommendation as “aspirational”, acknowledging cost, staffing and accessibility as challenges.

That is, it is not feasible to provide a supplemental MRI for everyone in the screening population in category D with extremely dense breasts (around 10%).

Further, there is no consensus on appropriate screening recommendations for women in the category C (heterogeneous density).

We need a national approach to breast density reporting in Australia and to do better at identifying who is most likely to benefit from further testing.

BreastScreen Australia is currently undergoing a review of its policy and funding.

One of its goals is to enable a nationally consistent approach to breast screening practices. Hopefully breast density reporting, including funding to support national implementation, will be a priority.

*This includes those recorded female at birth and who are gender diverse.

Jennifer Stone receives funding from Cancer Council Western Australia and the NHMRC. She is affiliated with the University of Western Australia and the University of Melbourne. She is Co-chair of the Australian Breast Density Consumer Advisory Council and member of the InforMD Alliance (www.informd.org.au).

– ref. Having dense breasts is linked to cancer. But advice about breast density can depend on where you live – https://theconversation.com/having-dense-breasts-is-linked-to-cancer-but-advice-about-breast-density-can-depend-on-where-you-live-249863

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

The National Anti-Corruption Commission will finally investigate whether six people referred to it by the royal commission into Robodebt engaged in corrupt conduct.

This follows an independent reconsideration by former High Court judge Geoffrey Nettle, who examined the NACC”s original decision not to pursue the referrals.

That decision was highly controversial, bringing a plethora of complaints, and sharp criticism of NACC chief Paul Brereton.

The NACC’s inspector, Gail Furness, found Brereton had not adequately excused himself when the matter was considered. Brereton had delegated the decision-making because he knew one of the people referred professionally, but the inspector found he was still involved in the process.

In its Tuesday statement the NACC said:“The purpose of the investigation is to determine whether or not any of the 6 referred persons engaged in corrupt conduct”.

The names of those referred to the NACC – contained in a sealed section of the royal commission report – were not made public. The sealed section has not been released.

The NACC statement said: “Consistent with its usual practice, the Commission does not publish reasons for commencing an investigation, as doing so may prejudice the investigations, disclose information which the Commission is required by law to keep confidential, compromise investigative pathways and/or unfairly impact reputations and rights of individuals to impartial adjudication.”

The NACC stressed its arrangements would ensure the investigation was “impartial and fair”. Brereton and those deputy commissioners involved in the original decision not to investigate the referrals won’t be part of the investigation.

Robodebt used a flawed system of income averaging to determine debts. The scheme, later found to be illegal, raised $1.76 billion from hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients. But many of the debts were wrong, and eventually the money had to be repaid.

In its findings, the royal commission targeted multiple public officials including ministers who had overseen the scheme (one of them Scott Morrison who as social services minister had been an initiator of it) and public servants.

A number of the bureaucrats who’d been involved with the scheme, including two who had been departmental heads, were later found to have breached the public service code of conduct.

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. NACC belatedly to investigate whether six Robodebt referrals engaged in ‘corrupt conduct’ – https://theconversation.com/nacc-belatedly-to-investigate-whether-six-robodebt-referrals-engaged-in-corrupt-conduct-250145

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

Last week in Europe, the United States sent some very strong messages it is prepared to upend the established global order.

US Vice President JD Vance warned a stunned Munich Security Conference that Europe has an “enemy within”, referring to leaders who ignore their citizens’ concerns and values. He also advocated for right-wing political groups to be brought into the mainstream.

Meanwhile, at a meeting of NATO defence ministers, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth talked about hard power, the warrior ethos and the need for NATO members to spend up to 5% of their GDPs on defence. Most have only just climbed to about 2%, the longstanding NATO guideline.

In Poland, he reaffirmed the US commitment to the defence of Poland (and NATO) and committed to bolstering the US military presence there. So, despite the mixed messaging, the United States is not leaving Europe anytime soon.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is reportedly demanding a significant levy from Ukraine as payback for US protection and support.

The combination of remarks has left pundits and policymakers wondering – is the US-led international order, with its multilateral institutions, nearing its end?

The demise of the rules-based order?

The United States played a leading role in establishing the rules-based international order from the ashes of the second world war.

Critics have decried the UN-related institutions that arose at this time. But the rules-based order is perhaps best viewed as Voltaire saw the Holy Roman Empire: “no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire”. Those proclaiming the demise of the rules-based order should be careful what they wish for.

Such a system of trusted international exchanges barely existed prior to 1945. And while superpowers have carved out many exceptions for themselves, the rules-based order has nonetheless resulted in a time of remarkable stability and prosperity for the world.

So, why would the United States now appear to be retreating from this arrangement? The declining centrality of US influence goes some way to explain this.

China’s rise and the rise of Trump

To place the current events in proper context, we need to go back 25 years, when China joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

This move was supported by and facilitated by then US President Bill Clinton in a belief that market liberalisation would eventually lead to political liberalisation.

Since then, China’s growth has skyrocketed thanks to its ready access to global markets. But it’s retained a strong mercantilist approach, counter to the spirit of the WTO. This has generated much resentment and nervousness among Western powers about the changing global power balance.

Since Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012, in particular, China has taken on an adversarial position to the rules-based order, following its own set of rules.

In effect, the world got neither the political nor the trade liberalisation that it once sought from China. Rather, the rules as they applied in China (and to an extent in Russia) allowed state-owned enterprises to co-opt – if not outright steal – technology shared by their international industry partners.

Foreign companies were squeezed out of China and had difficulty competing with lower-priced Chinese products at home.

Trump’s rise is, in part, a reaction to these developments. During his first term from 2017–20, Trump fitfully attempted to take a retaliatory, transactional approach to international relations. Now, as he begins his second term, he has a much more clear-eyed plan of action.

What Trump expects now

What became startlingly clear at the Munich Security Conference was Trump’s new vision of transactional alliances with America’s traditional partners.

In his view, the United States is not so much retreating into isolationism as much as it’s acting as a great power with its own economic interests at heart. Trump is eager for the US to assert its place in a world where spheres of influence matter as much – if not more – than any particular set of rules.

Evidently, the US is no longer advocating for multilateralism, in which states cooperate as equals. Now, it’s focused more on multi-polarity – a world with several great powers, in which the US puts its own interests first. As Trump frequently reminds us, “America First”.

According to this world view, allies and adversaries have equally been taking unfair advantage of:

• America’s famous openness (notably its borders)
• its liberal trade policies (which, according to Trump, has led to the de-industrialisation of the American heartland).

Its allies have also taken advantage of the generosity of its security umbrella, leading to their cavalier approach to security.

The Trump administration’s remedy to all of this involves doling out sanctimonious advice. An example of this: Vance telling European allies they should unwind their relaxed immigration policies.

It’s also doling out some tough medicine, apparently trying to provoke a reaction in European capitals so they significantly increase their defence spending. This would enable the US to step back from being Europe’s security guarantor and finally undertake its long-talked-about pivot to Asia and focus on its main adversary: China.

Russia evidently features as part of this plan. Trump appears intent to try to cleave Russia from its Chinese embrace in order to either isolate or weaken China. A hard-nosed deal with Russia over Ukraine may well be the price he’s willing to pay to make that happen.

For America’s close security and economic partners, this presents an unprecedented challenge. The old preconceptions and expectations no longer seem to apply. What’s important now is not so much America’s shared values with Europe, it’s their overlapping interests.

For America’s allies, as well as its adversaries, this is going to require some hard thinking and new strategies, both economically and militarily.

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

– ref. Trump’s view of the world is becoming clear: America’s interests matter more than any set of rules – https://theconversation.com/trumps-view-of-the-world-is-becoming-clear-americas-interests-matter-more-than-any-set-of-rules-250144

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

The Reserve Bank has delivered the expected modest rate cut of a quarter of a percentage point, and we’re set for the predictable frenzy of speculation about an April election.

The cut is unlikely to be a major vote changer, after 13 increases. But it was absolutely vital to the government. Labor would have suffered a big knock if Michele Bullock and her board had held out.

The cut underpins the narrative of things improving, and may put voters in a better mood. At least that’s the government’s thinking.

But the bank is highly circumspect in its tone. It warned in its statement:

The forecasts published today suggest that, if monetary policy is eased too much too soon, disinflation could stall, and inflation would settle above the midpoint of the target range. In removing a little of the policy restrictiveness in its decision today, the Board acknowledges that progress has been made but is cautious about the outlook.

Speculation about the election date is a frustrating exercise, given only Anthony Albanese – and perhaps a few closest to him – knows his thinking, which could still be, as he suggested recently, “fluid”. In recent days the PM has played the tease. Periodically he talks about the intense work on budget, set for March 25; if that went ahead, it would mean a May election. But last week, he was also talking about parliament having seen its last day, which pointed to April.

It is hard to see the logic of Albanese launching a campaign before the March 8 Western Australian election, given that would be confusing for both state and federal campaigns and put maximum pressure on Labor’s WA volunteers. If Albanese opts for April 12, he would have to call it immediately after the WA poll.

Many in the business world would like the election done and dusted ASAP, because the pre-election period means a hiatus of sorts.

The opinion polls can be read various ways, but as things stand, they point to a minority government.

This is already putting pressure on crossbenchers, notably the teals, to indicate what factors they’d take into account in deciding who they’d support. The Coalition, if it reached about 72 seats (76 is a majority), would be eyeing off crossbenchers Bob Katter, Rebekha Sharkie, Allegra Spender and Dai Le as potentials to guarantee them confidence and supply. Of course that would assume they all were re-elected.

But this is putting several carts before the horse. Much will happen in the next few weeks, whether the election is April or May. Current polls that make predictions down to individual seats should be treated with much caution.

While the polls are presently depressing for Labor, this week’s Newspoll had a finding on inflation that might cheer treasurer Jim Chalmers. It found that less than a quarter of people believe inflation would have been lower under a Coalition government. In other words, while high prices are making voters sour, that is not necessarily directly translating into blame for Labor.

When the campaign proper is underway, the smallest things can blow up in leaders’ faces.

Albanese failed to remember key numbers in 2022. He had enough fat so his generally lackluster performance didn’t matter in the end. Dutton is yet to be campaign-tested. Rather disconcertingly for his handlers, in his Sky interview last Sunday he forgot deputy prime minister Richard Marles had just been in Washington.

Meanwhile Dutton is hard at work humanising his image in a series of interviews, and the obligatory 60 Minutes family get together with Karl Stefanovic (who did the Meet the Morrisons – the Duttons-at-home came without an musical performance).

Albanese worked hard at this before the last election, repeating over and over his story of being brought up in council housing, son of a single mother.

Dutton’s more complicated back story involves a stint as a youngster in a butcher’s shop, buying a house at 19, an early divorce, and a failed relationship that produced a baby who became his first child in his second marriage. And of course his career as a policeman.

One can imagine that some of these memories are painful to have to canvas in public, but the campaign’s hard heads say the public want to know all about a potential PM. So it has to be done.

(One Dutton incident is rarely recalled these days, that involved a temporary loss of political nerve. In 2009, after a redistribution made his seat of Dickson notionally Labor, Dutton sought to jump to the Gold Coast seat of McPherson. But he was beaten in a preselection by Karen Andrews, who is retiring at this election. That forced him back to Dickson, which he then held at the 2010 election.)

Albanese does not need to canvass his backstory as much these days but he took advantage of Valentine’s day to put out some sentimental social media fodder.

He and fiancé Jodie (to whom he proposed on Valentine’s day last year) sat, with Toto between them, turning over cards with questions said to be posed by the public. With each question (such as “who said I love you first”) they pointed to each other or themselves.

Opinion was divided about the video. Toto fell into the sceptics’ camp, jumping to the ground before it was finished.

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: will Albanese opt for an April election now a rate cut has him breathing more easily? – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-will-albanese-opt-for-an-april-election-now-a-rate-cut-has-him-breathing-more-easily-250136

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

The Reserve Bank cut official interest rates on Tuesday, the first decrease in four years, saying inflationary pressures are easing “a little more quickly than expected”.

However, the central bank said the outlook for economic activity and inflation remains uncertain, with a risk that household spending may be slower than expected.

The reduction in the cash rate target will come as a relief to the one-third of households with a mortgage. It will help to ease the cost of living crisis for them.

The cut from a 13-year high of 4.35% to 4.1% had been widely expected by economists and financial markets.

The interest rate cut may help tip the scales for the government to call an early election. But recent opinion polls suggest the government still has work to do to put itself in a winning position.

Announcing its decision, the Reserve Bank said it had “more confidence that inflation is moving sustainably towards the midpoint of the 2-3% target”.

All four of the major banks swiftly passed on the cut in official rates to mortgage-holders. The average new housing loan is $666,000. Reducing the interest rate on this by 0.25% will mean $110 less a month in repayments (assuming a standard 30-year loan).

It is the first change in the cash rate since November 2023 and marks the first small reversal of 13 rate increases. The central bank had hiked interest rates quickly from the near-zero emergency level during the COVID epidemic and lockdowns.

Why did the Reserve Bank cut now?

The interest rate cut comes after headline inflation eased, to 2.4% during 2024, within the Bank’s 2-3% inflation target range.

However, the Bank’s preferred measure of underlying inflation, the “trimmed mean”, which excludes temporary factors such as the government’s electricity rebates, rose by 3.2% during 2024. This is just above the target range but a little less than the 3.4% the Bank had been forecasting.

“We cannot declare victory on inflation just yet,” Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock told a press conference after the decision. “It’s not good enough for it to be back in the target range temporarily, the board needs to be confident it’s returning to the target range sustainably.”

Read more:
Lower inflation in the December quarter boosts chances of an interest rate cut

The RBA and the election

In its first meeting for the year, the Reserve Bank board rejected the notion that they should hold off changing rates because an election is approaching.

While cutting interest rates will suit one side of politics, not cutting would have benefited the other. The impartial approach is to take the same decision as if no election were looming.

As then RBA governor Glenn Stevens said in 2007 after raising rates during an election campaign:

I do not think we ever could accept the idea that in an election year — which, after all, is one year out of three — you cannot change interest rates.

How does the Reserve Bank compare with other central banks?

Some central banks in comparable economies had already started lowering interest rates and have cut them by more than the RBA. But that is because most had raised interest rates by more.

The Reserve Bank adopted a strategy of being more patient in returning inflation to its target, so as to limit the increase in unemployment.

The strategy has worked. Unemployment in Australia peaked at 4.2% and is now 4.0%. By contrast, in New Zealand it is over 5% and in the euro area and Canada it is over 6%.

The Reserve Bank hasn’t received the credit it deserves for this strong performance.

Where to from here?

This is the last meeting of the current Reserve Bank board. It is being replaced by a new monetary policy committee, and a separate governance board as part of an overhaul of the bank. Two new members will replace two members of the current board for its next meeting on April 1.

The RBA board’s statement said that it “remains cautious on prospects for further policy easing”. This is central bank-speak for not rushing into further interest rate cuts.

The RBA also noted that “geopolitical and policy uncertainties are pronounced”. This is a reference to the economic fallout from United States President Donald Trump’s policies on trade and slashing jobs.

His proposed tariffs and deportations will increase inflation in the US and make US interest rates higher than they otherwise would be.

Read more:
What would a second Trump presidency mean for the global economy?

But this does not mean interest rates need to be higher here. Indeed, a trade war would weaken the global economy, which could lead to less inflation in Australia.

The Reserve Bank also released its updated forecasts. These show the underlying inflation rate dropping to 2.7% by June and then staying around there through 2026 and 2027.

Unemployment is low at 4%, and below what the Bank has previously regarded as “full employment”. But it is not leading to any surge in wage growth.

Indeed, the Bank commented that wages growth has been a little lower than it had forecast. Inflationary expectations are also well contained.

This offers hope there may be at least one further interest rate cut later this year (and the Reserve Bank’s forecasts assume this). But borrowers should not get their hopes up that interest rates will revisit the COVID-era lows. That is very unlikely.

John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist at the Reserve Bank.

– ref. The Reserve Bank has cut rates for the first time in four years. But it is cautious about future cuts – https://theconversation.com/the-reserve-bank-has-cut-rates-for-the-first-time-in-four-years-but-it-is-cautious-about-future-cuts-249704

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

The Reserve Bank has delivered the expected modest rate cut of a quarter of a percentage point, and we’re set for the predictable frenzy of speculation about an April election.

The cut is unlikely to be a major vote changer, after 13 increases. But it was absolutely vital to the government. Labor would have suffered a big knock if Michele Bullock and her board had held out.

The cut underpins the narrative of things improving, and may put voters in a better mood. At least that’s the government’s thinking.

But the bank is highly circumspect in its tone. It warned in its statement:

The forecasts published today suggest that, if monetary policy is eased too much too soon, disinflation could stall, and inflation would settle above the midpoint of the target range. In removing a little of the policy restrictiveness in its decision today, the Board acknowledges that progress has been made but is cautious about the outlook.

Speculation about the election date is a frustrating exercise, given only Anthony Albanese – and perhaps a few closest to him – knows his thinking, which could still be, as he suggested recently, “fluid”. In recent days the PM has played the tease. Periodically he talks about the intense work on budget, set for March 25; if that went ahead, it would mean a May election. But last week, he was also talking about parliament having seen its last day, which pointed to April.

It is hard to see the logic of Albanese launching a campaign before the March 8 Western Australian election, given that would be confusing for both state and federal campaigns and put maximum pressure on Labor’s WA volunteers. If Albanese opts for April 12, he would have to call it immediately after the WA poll.

Many in the business world would like the election done and dusted ASAP, because the pre-election period means a hiatus of sorts.

The opinion polls can be read various ways, but as things stand, they point to a minority government.

This is already putting pressure on crossbenchers, notably the teals, to indicate what factors they’d take into account in deciding who they’d support. The Coalition, if it reached about 72 seats (76 is a majority), would be eyeing off crossbenchers Bob Katter, Rebekha Sharkie, Allegra Spender and Dai Le as potentials to guarantee them confidence and supply. Of course that would assume they all were re-elected.

But this is putting several carts before the horse. Much will happen in the next few weeks, whether the election is April or May. Current polls that make predictions down to individual seats should be treated with much caution.

While the polls are presently depressing for Labor, this week’s Newspoll had a finding on inflation that might cheer treasurer Jim Chalmers. It found that less than a quarter of people believe inflation would have been lower under a Coalition government. In other words, while high prices are making voters sour, that is not necessarily directly translating into blame for Labor.

When the campaign proper is underway, the smallest things can blow up in leaders’ faces.

Albanese failed to remember key numbers in 2022. He had enough fat so his generally lackluster performance didn’t matter in the end. Dutton is yet to be campaign-tested. Rather disconcertingly for his handlers, in his Sky interview last Sunday he forgot deputy prime minister Richard Marles had just been in Washington.

Meanwhile Dutton is hard at work humanising his image in a series of interviews, and the obligatory 60 Minutes family get together with Karl Stefanovic (who did the Meet the Morrisons – the Duttons-at-home came without an musical performance).

Albanese worked hard at this before the last election, repeating over and over his story of being brought up in council housing, son of a single mother.

Dutton’s more complicated back story involves a stint as a youngster in a butcher’s shop, buying a house at 19, an early divorce, and a failed relationship that produced a baby who became his first child in his second marriage. And of course his career as a policeman.

One can imagine that some of these memories are painful to have to canvas in public, but the campaign’s hard heads say the public want to know all about a potential PM. So it has to be done.

(One Dutton incident is rarely recalled these days, that involved a temporary loss of political nerve. In 2009, after a redistribution made his seat of Dickson notionally Labor, Dutton sought to jump to the Gold Coast seat of McPherson. But he was beaten in a preselection by Karen Andrews, who is retiring at this election. That forced him back to Dickson, which he then held at the 2010 election.)

Albanese does not need to canvass his backstory as much these days but he took advantage of Valentine’s day to put out some sentimental social media fodder.

He and fiancé Jodie (to whom he proposed on Valentine’s day last year) sat, with Toto between them, turning over cards. with questions said to be posed by the public. With each question (such as “who said I love you first”) they pointed to each other or themselves.

Opinion was divided about the video. Toto fell into the sceptics’ camp, jumping to the ground before it was finished.

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: will Albanese opt for an April election now that a rates cut has him breathing more easily? – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-will-albanese-opt-for-an-april-election-now-that-a-rates-cut-has-him-breathing-more-easily-250136

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Allan Fels, Professor Allan Fels, Professor of Law, Economics and Business at the University of Melbourne and Monash University., The University of Melbourne

Australia is creeping towards adding a divestiture power to its Competition and Consumer Act.

Under such a law, the courts, on the recommendation of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, could break a firm into parts.

Divestiture is currently used in Australia when the competition and consumer commission considers proposed mergers. Often it will only approve a merger when certain parts of the business are broken up to prevent monopolies.

It has also been used to deal with abuse of market power by electricity providers.

Under the proposed change, a company with substantial market power which breaches the Consumer and Competition Act may be forced to divest assets to restore balance and ensure the market is competitive. This would reduce the possibility of consumers being over-charged.

The Coalition has already proposed breaking up the major supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths which have been long-accused of price gouging customers.

On Sunday, Coalition leader Peter Dutton signalled he was likely to introduce divestiture if elected to stop insurers from “ripping off” customers by charging exorbitant premiums or refusing to pay claims.

Premiums have soared by 16.4% in the last year as Australia has been hit by major floods and bushfires. Climate Valuation analysts last month warned one in ten properties could be uninsurable by 2035.

Repeating his position on Monday, Dutton said:

If we have a situation where people are being priced out of insurance or they’re deemed an uninsurable risk when they shouldn’t be, that is a failure of the market and we’ll respond accordingly to that.

He said insurance companies had to be responsible corporate citizens and work with their customers.

We’re not going to have a situation where people can’t afford insurance or they’re being priced out of products.

Previously the Morrison government enacted laws which enabled a breakup of energy companies in certain circumstances.

Labor has not supported a divestiture power. One reason is the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association has opposed such measures.

The case for divestiture

In principle there is a strong case for a divestiture law.

Monopolies and market power stem from an industry being highly concentrated. Often the only way to prevent them from misusing their monopoly is to break them up. The solution could be left to the market or to price regulation or other remedies but these do not address the source of the problem.

A divestiture power has long existed in the United States. It was used to break up oil, cigarettes, and chemicals in the early days of antitrust law. In the mid-80s it was successfully used to break up the AT&T telephone monopoly. AT&T controlled both long distance and local calls before it was broken up.

But divestiture is only occasionally used and only when stringent criteria are satisfied.

Some 20 years ago the US Department of Justice proposed a breakup of Microsoft – the case was never finalised because of procedural problems. However, the Federal Court laid out many prerequisites before this drastic remedy could occur.

The power has been used in a number of other OECD countries including the United Kingdom.

When divesting is necessary

There has been heavy use in Australia of divestiture powers to break up gas and electricity monopolies in the last 30 years

And there is a strong case for making it a general remedy available for all industries, even though its use would be infrequent.

Importantly, the availability of this sanction would provide an incentive for firms to comply with abuse of market power provisions of the competition law. These provisions are intended to stop powerful businesses from deterring competition by making it difficult for new entrants to join the market.

The sanctions for this part of the law currently are very weak. Fines are rarely imposed and if they are, they are small and seen as a cost of doing business to be weighed up against the benefits of anti-competitive behaviour.

Another reason is that cases take many years. For example, the ACCC case v Safeway 19 years ago took seven years before a court resolution.

A divestiture power would make firms far more careful before breaching the law.

Too ‘Russian’?

Occasionally people question the desirability of this power on the grounds it is the sort of thing you would only see in a country like Russia.

In an ABC interview last February, Prime Minister Albanese said:

We have a private sector economy in Australia and not a command and control economy […]We’re not the old Soviet Union. What we have the power to do is to encourage competition and encouraging new entrants.

However, most observers agree one of the big failures of the Soviet economy has been failure to divest monopolies in energy, transport and other parts of the economy.

The Coalition’s adoption of a divestiture remedy in three industries is welcome. We need at some point to move to a divestiture power that is available for the whole economy.

Allan Fels is a former chair of the ACCC.

– ref. What is divestiture and how would it stop insurance companies ‘ripping off’ customers? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-divestiture-and-how-would-it-stop-insurance-companies-ripping-off-customers-250036

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arjen Vaartjes, PhD Student, Quantum Physics, UNSW Sydney

What makes something quantum? This question has kept a small but dedicated fraction of the world’s population – most of them quantum physicists – up at night for decades.

At very small scales, we know the universe is made up of waves and energy fields ruled by the laws of quantum mechanics, but at the scale of the everyday world around us we mostly see solid objects following the older rules of classical mechanics. When we ask what makes something quantum, we are asking where the line is between these two realms and how it can be drawn.

In a new study published in Newton, we answer this question in a previously undiscovered way. We show that a single spinning particle can show indubitable evidence of quantum behaviour.

The discovery of spin

One hundred years ago, Dutch physicists Samuel Goudsmit and George Uhlenbeck proposed the idea that most tiny particles never really stand still. Instead, they suggested, electrons – elementary particles that form the outer shell of atoms – behave like minuscule spinning tops.

The spin can be either clockwise or anticlockwise, or what physicists call “spin up” and “spin down”. This binary nature of spinning electrons means that they can be used as building blocks for quantum computers.

However, in 1925 Goudsmit and Uhlenbeck’s spinning electron proposal caused an uproar in the physics establishment. At this time, physics was shaped by illustrious names such as Albert Einstein, Max Planck and Paul Ehrenfest, who laid the groundwork for the grand theories of relativity and quantum mechanics that transformed our understanding of the universe.

After eminent physicist and Nobel laureate Hendrik Lorentz criticised the spin theory, Uhlenbeck got cold feet and wanted to retract the paper. Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit’s mentor Ehrenfest told them to persist, writing: “You are both young enough to be able to afford a stupidity!”

Old ideas still remain

This kind of resistance to new ideas is not unusual in physics. As Planck put it, science progresses one funeral at a time.

Much like the scepticism about the discovery of spinning electrons, today many physicists are educated with a misconception about how spin works. Conventional wisdom, still taught in standard textbooks, tells us that spin is a quantum property that is essential to understanding the behaviour of electrons and nuclei. But at the same time, the textbooks say the rotation of the particle is still somehow perfectly described by classical physics.

Tsirelson’s forgotten protocol

A similar consideration applies to another textbook system, the harmonic oscillator (e.g. a pendulum). According to a 1927 theorem by Paul Ehrenfest, the way a quantum pendulum swings is indistinguishable from a swing in the park.

Strikingly, almost 80 years later the Russian-Israeli physicist Boris Tsirelson had an idea showing that it is possible to discern a quantum pendulum from a swing in the park, provided the quantum system is prepared in a truly quantum state. At the time, Tsirelson’s paper attracted little notice.

Another 15 years later, the research team of Valerio Scarani in Singapore resurfaced Tsirelson’s paper from the depths of the internet. Scarani’s student Zaw Lin Htoo extended Tsirelson’s idea, proving theoretically that it actually was possible to detect quantumness in the rotation of a spin.

Bigger particles and Schrödinger’s cat

Our team at the University of New South Wales decided to take on the challenge and prove the quantumness of a spin in a real experiment. However, we couldn’t do it with a simple spin like an electron. Because an electron is so small, it only has two possible spin states: up and down. Again defying widespread intuition, it turns out that an electron spin can only be prepared in quasi-classical states, which obey the old textbook predictions.

Instead we used a much larger particle, the nucleus of an antimony atom. The spin of this particle can point in eight different directions, instead of just two.

We were able to place the atom in a so-called “Schrödinger’s cat” state, in which it is in a superposition of two widely different spin directions at once.

We then performed the Tsirelson-Scarani protocol, which involves measuring not just the average orientation of the spin, but the positivity of it – a very different kind of measurement to what is done in standard spin resonance setups. This experiment showed unquestionable evidence for the quantumness of the antimony’s spin.

What’s next?

Our study is important for discovering fundamental truths about the universe, and for providing clarity on what it means to “be quantum”. However, it may also have real-life applications.

The states that we demonstrated to be quantum with the Tsirelson-Scarani protocol are exactly the kind of thing that give quantum computation and quantum sensing an advantage over classical counterparts. In the future we will focus making the most of these systems for use in technological applications.

Arjen Vaartjes receives funding from the Sydney Quantum Academy.

Andrea Morello receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Department of Defence, and the US Army Research Office.

– ref. New experiments finally prove a long-forgotten theory about how quantum particles spin – https://theconversation.com/new-experiments-finally-prove-a-long-forgotten-theory-about-how-quantum-particles-spin-250059

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary Anne Kenny, Associate Professor, School of Law, Murdoch University

Australia’s minister for home affairs announced on Sunday that the federal government has struck a deal with Nauru to “resettle” three non-citizens from what’s come to be known as the “NZYQ cohort”.

The NZYQ cohort is a group of people released from long-term immigration detention after the High Court’s NZYQ 2023 decision.

The court found their ongoing detention was unconstitutional where there was no reasonable prospect of removing them to another country. This led to the release of over 200 people from detention, the majority of whom had previously had visas cancelled on character grounds or had committed crimes.

This new deal with Nauru has significant implications.

What happened on the weekend?

According to the home affairs minister, three people from the NZYQ group have now been granted 30-year visas by Nauru, and will soon be removed to that country.

The minister said all three have criminal histories. One has been convicted of murder.

Nauru may accept more people from the NZYQ cohort, referring to these people as “the first three”. The minister says he expects a legal challenge to their removal.

Read more:
High Court reasons on immigration ruling pave way for further legislation

Why it is this development significant?

Once a non-citizen has had their visa cancelled on criminal grounds, they are often deported to their country of origin after serving their prison sentence.

However, the individuals in the NZYQ group cannot be returned to their country of origin. That could be because international law prevents Australia returning them to places where they may face harm (a principle known as “non-refoulement”).

Or, they may have no recognised nationality and no country to accept them.

This raises the question of what should be done with them after they complete their prison sentence.

Up until the decision in NZYQ, people in this situation were simply kept in immigration detention. It was often almost impossible to get another country to accept them.

The Australian government tried to get many other countries to accept the man at the centre of the NZYQ case. This person, a stateless Rohingnya man given the pseudonym NZYQ, had been convicted of a serious crime.

The High Court noted no country had a standard practice of resettling people in situations such as this. It noted the immigration department had never successfully transferred such a person to a third country (in other words, to a place that was not Australia, and not their country of origin).

The Nauru deal announced on the weekend is an important development, in part because it is the first significant use of new migration laws rushed through late last year.

What do the new migration laws allow?

These laws aimed to respond to concerns around the NZYQ cohort being released into the community.

The new laws allow the government to transfer non-citizens to third countries, in this case Nauru, under “third country reception arrangements.”

The details of these agreements are left entirely to the discretion of government. The laws grant broad powers to remove people and provide payments to those third countries.

People who may be removed to a third country include those in the NZYQ group who, since the High Court decision, have been living in the community on bridging visas.

Why are some concerned?

A major issue is the uncertainty surrounding the rights and support of individuals sent to Nauru.

It’s unclear how or whether these people will be able to get housing and access to work, or how they might be treated in a country with high unemployment. Some may have family members in Australia and may be separated indefinitely from them.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has raised significant concerns around what it calls “externalisation” of international protection obligations without adequate protection safeguards or standards of treatment.

Externalisation, it says, can lead to

indefinite “warehousing” of asylum-seekers in isolated places, exposing them to indirect refoulement and other dangers.

The UN Human Rights Committee has also said that outsourcing operations to another country did not absolve Australia of accountability and its human rights obligations.

A possible precedent

A final concern is the precedent this agreement with Nauru sets for how other countries may treat refugees with criminal convictions.

Australia’s model of offshore processing has already been used as a reference by other countries, including the UK.

With the growing international debate about managing refugees with criminal convictions, this arrangement may end up being replicated elsewhere.

The lack of safeguards for people in third countries, such as Nauru, could mean refugees and asylum seekers are transferred without proper protection, exposing them to further harm.

How do other countries handle cases like this?

It is not uncommon for countries to send criminal deportees to their home countries. But in situations where people are stateless or cannot be sent home due to a fear of serious harm, countries either have to allow the person to remain or seek an alternative country to send them to.

However, it remains very hard for countries to convince other countries to accept people who have criminal convictions.

Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to prepare a detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in order to hold up to 30,000 “high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States”.

Exact details of the arrangement remain unclear and the plan has been criticised by a range of human rights groups and legal organisations.

What are the alternatives to Australia’s Nauru plan?

Other countries have established systems for managing non-citizens who are not entitled to protection or whose visas have been revoked due to criminal offences, ensuring they are not detained indefinitely.

After completing their prison sentences, these individuals are typically released into the community, where domestic law enforcement handles any further offending.

Neglecting to address offending behaviour or rehabilitation within the Australian system – whether during imprisonment, detention, or in the community – and then deporting individuals to developing countries doesn’t really solve the problem.

It simply means we are externalising the problem to a poorer country.

Mary Anne Kenny has received funding from the ARC. She is a member of the Migration Institute of Australia and the Law Council of Australia and an affiliate of the UNSW Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. She previously was an independent advisor to the governments of Australia and Nauru as part of the Joint Advisory Committee on Nauru between 2012 – 2016.

Lisa van Toor receives funding from Research Training Plan (RTP) scholarship for her PhD. She is currently a PhD student with the UNSW Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. She previously was a Judge’s Associate in the Supreme Court of Nauru between 2018-2019. Lisa is a member of the Greens WA.

– ref. Australia is deporting 3 non-citizens from the ‘NZYQ’ group to Nauru. What could it do instead? – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-deporting-3-non-citizens-from-the-nzyq-group-to-nauru-what-could-it-do-instead-250053

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt Fitzpatrick, Professor in International History, Flinders University

Ukraine has not been invited to a key meeting between American and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia this week to decide what peace in the country might look like.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine will “never accept” any decisions in talks without its participation to end Russia’s three-year war in the country.

A decision to negotiate the sovereignty of Ukrainians without them – as well as US President Donald Trump’s blatantly extortionate attempt to claim half of Ukraine’s rare mineral wealth as the price for ongoing US support – reveals a lot about how Trump sees Ukraine and Europe.

But this is not the first time large powers have colluded to negotiate new borders or spheres of influence without the input of the people who live there.

Such high-handed power politics rarely ends well for those affected, as these seven historical examples show.

1. The Scramble for Africa

In the winter of 1884–85, German leader Otto von Bismarck invited the powers of Europe to Berlin for a conference to formalise the division of the entire African continent among them. Not a single African was present at the conference that would come to be known as “The Scramble for Africa”.

Among other things, the conference led to the creation of the Congo Free State under Belgian control, the site of colonial atrocities that killed millions.

Germany also established the colony of German South West Africa (present-day Namibia), where the first genocide of the 20th century was later perpetrated against its colonised peoples.

2. The Tripartite Convention

It wasn’t just Africa that was divided up this way. In 1899, Germany and the United States held a conference and forced an agreement on the Samoans to split their islands between the two powers.

This was despite the Samoans expressing a desire for either self-rule or a confederation of Pacific states with Hawai’i.

As “compensation” for missing out in Samoa, Britain received uncontested primacy over Tonga.

German Samoa came under the rule of New Zealand after the first world war and remained a territory until 1962. American Samoa (in addition to several other Pacific islands) remain US territories to this day.

3. The Sykes-Picot Agreement

As the first world war was well under way, British and French representatives sat down to agree how they’d divide up the Ottoman Empire after it was over. As an enemy power, the Ottomans were not invited to the talks.

Together, England’s Mark Sykes and France’s François Georges-Picot redrew the Middle East’s borders in line with their nations’ interests.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement ran counter to commitments made in a series of letters known as the Hussein-McMahon correspondence. In these letters, Britain promised to support Arab independence from Turkish rule.

Read more:
What was the Sykes-Picot agreement, and why does it still affect the Middle East today?

The Sykes-Picot Agreement also ran counter to promises Britain made in the Balfour Declaration to back Zionists who wanted to build a new Jewish homeland in Ottoman Palestine.

The agreement became the wellspring of decades of conflict and colonial misrule in the Middle East, the consequences of which continue to be felt today.

4. The Munich Agreement

In September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier met with Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, and Germany’s Adolf Hitler to sign what became known as the Munich Agreement.

The leaders sought to prevent the spread of war throughout Europe after Hitler’s Nazis had fomented an uprising and began attacking the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland. They did this under the pretext of protecting German minorities. No Czechoslovakians were invited to the meeting.

The meeting is still seen by many as the “Munich Betrayal” – a classic example of a failed appeasement of a belligerent power in the false hope of staving off war.

5. The Évian Conference

In 1938, 32 countries met in Évian-les-Bains, France, to decide how to deal with Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany.

Before the conference started, Britain and the US had agreed not to put pressure on one another to lift the quota of Jews they would accept in either the US or British Palestine.

While Golda Meir (the future Israeli leader) attended the conference as an observer, neither she nor any other representatives of the Jewish people were permitted to take part in the negotiations.

The attendees largely failed to come to an agreement on accepting Jewish refugees, with the exception of the Dominican Republic. And most Jews in Germany were unable to leave before Nazism reached its genocidal nadir in the Holocaust.

6. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

As Hitler planned his invasion of Eastern Europe, it became clear his major stumbling block was the Soviet Union. His answer was to sign a disingenuous non-aggression treaty with the USSR.

The treaty, named after Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop (the Soviet and German foreign ministers), ensured the Soviet Union would not respond when Hitler invaded Poland. It also carved up Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres. This allowed the Soviets to expand into Romania and the Baltic states, attack Finland and take its own share of Polish territory.

Unsurprisingly, some in Eastern Europe view the current US-Russia talks over Ukraine’s future as a revival of this kind of secret diplomacy that divided the smaller nations of Europe between large powers in the second world war.

7. The Yalta Conference

With the defeat of Nazi Germany imminent, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and US President Franklin D Roosevelt met in 1945 to decide the fate of postwar Europe. This meeting came to be known as the Yalta Conference.

Alongside the Potsdam Conference several months later, Yalta created the political architecture that would lead to the Cold War division of Europe.

At Yalta, the “big three” decided on the division of Germany, while Stalin was also offered a sphere of interest in Eastern Europe.

This took the form of a series of politically controlled buffer states in Eastern Europe, a model some believe Putin is aiming to emulate today in eastern and southeastern Europe.

Matt Fitzpatrick receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the History Council of South Australia.

– ref. Ukraine isn’t invited to its own peace talks. History is full of such examples – and the results are devastating – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-isnt-invited-to-its-own-peace-talks-history-is-full-of-such-examples-and-the-results-are-devastating-250049

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

Yesterday’s revelation of a 2023 standoff between the Human Rights Commission and New Zealand’s internet safety agencies highlights lingering concern about the current online safety code.

According to the report from RNZ, the commission told NZ Tech and Netsafe that social media companies X Corp. and Meta failed to protect former prime minister Jacinda Ardern from misogynistic and dehumanising violence across their platforms.

The commission’s claim that the Code of Practice for Online Safety and Harms was not fit for purpose apparently drew a sharp legal response from the agencies, which argued the commission showed bias and had overstepped its remit.

But the historical incident raises important questions New Zealand has yet to grapple with properly.

Established in 2022, the code is a voluntary set of commitments co-designed with the technology industry, including some social media companies such as Meta and X-Corp.

Companies become signatories to the code and agree to its commitments. The current signatories are Meta, Google, TikTok, Twitch and X Corp.

Among other provisions, the code asks signatories to take steps to reduce harmful content on their platforms or services, including harassment (where there is an intent to cause harm), hate speech (which includes sexist hate speech), incitement of violence and disinformation.

The code is not legally enforceable. Compliance relies on willingness to adopt such measures. But there is an accountability structure in the form of an oversight committee. The public can lodge complaints with the committee if they believe signatories have breached the code, and the committee can remove a signatory from the code.

When it was launched, the code received some international acclaim as an example of best practice for digital safety. But its critics argued that because it was co-written with social media companies, the commitments were not as strong or effective as they might have been.

Is the code effective?

Last year, Netsafe rang the alarm about increasing rates of online misogyny and violent extremism, including the targeting of public figures and politicians.

This raises obvious questions about the code’s effectiveness. Since the Human Rights Commission cited the extreme online violence directed at Jacinda Ardern, former Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman has spoken about the violent online misogyny and racism she experienced while in office.

These forms of gender-based violence are a breach of women’s human rights. They also lead to women politicians self-censoring, avoiding social media, and generally having less contact with the public.

Some overseas studies have shown prolonged exposure to online violence has led to women MPs leaving office sooner than planned. Overall, online harm endangers representative democracy and breaches women’s rights to participate in politics.

The human rights implications also mean the New Zealand government has legal duties under international treaties to prevent online gender-based violence.

The United Nations has also called on social media companies to do more to prevent the spread of racial hatred. As such, it is a function of the Human Rights Commission to promote and monitor compliance with international standards.

NZ is out of step internationally

In its current form, the code is not effective. Its commitments aim to reduce harm rather than eliminate it, and it is not comprehensive about the kinds of harm it wants signatories to reduce.

For example, it does not include reference to “volumetric” attacks – the type of coordinated harassment campaigns against a person that were directed at Ardern.

Further, the code’s threshold for “harm” is high, requiring the online violence to pose an imminent and serious threat to users’ safety. This does not easily capture the types of gender-based violence, such as misogynistic hate speech, that over time normalise violence against women.

The code also emphasises the role of users in managing harmful content, rather than placing a responsibility on the platforms to investigate how their services and technologies might be misused to cause harm.

Relying on voluntary commitments also puts New Zealand out of step with other countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia which have legally enforceable requirements for social media companies to protect online safety.

Placing that burden on users – to block, report or remove content – is merely reactive. It does not prevent harm because it has already happened. And for some groups, such as MPs and public figures, the harm they receive can be overwhelming and seemingly endless.

Preventing online gender-based violence requires proactive measures that are legally enforceable. To fulfil its international obligations, the government should urgently review the need for legal regulation that places the burden of online safety on large social media companies rather than on users.

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

– ref. Online violence and misogyny are still on the rise – NZ needs a tougher response – https://theconversation.com/online-violence-and-misogyny-are-still-on-the-rise-nz-needs-a-tougher-response-250033

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joel Garrett, Lecturer in Exercise Science and Physiology, Griffith University

Australia’s love affair with the major football codes – the Australian Football League (AFL) and National Rugby League (NRL) – is well documented. However, one aspect that stands out to many observers, particularly those overseas, is the length of these leagues’ pre-seasons.

While global and international sports such as soccer and the United States’ National Football League (NFL) typically have pre-seasons lasting only a few weeks to two months, AFL and NRL pre-seasons can stretch well beyond that, sometimes up to and even surpassing four months.

Why do these two codes, more than almost any others, devote such an extended block of time to pre-season training?

The answer lies in a blend of the diverse physical qualities required to play AFL and NRL and the greater risk of injury associated with short preparation times.

High-impact collisions and diverse physical demands

Both the AFL and NRL are considered contact team sports. Athletes are required to cover large distances at speed, with frequent contact.

AFL players can run upwards of 12–17 kilometres per match, at incredibly high intensities, all while executing numerous technical actions, such as kicking, catching, handballing and tackling.

NRL players face similar challenges. Athletes are required to perform more than 30 high-impact collisions per game combined with repeated bouts of high-intensity activity, such as running and sprinting.

This blend of endurance, strength and power, combined with the high contact demands, creates a distinct training challenge.

Off-season programs must therefore develop multiple physical qualities. These include endurance for sustained high-intensity efforts, speed and agility for generating and closing space, and strength and power for tackling, wrestling and contested ball situations.

A shorter pre-season can limit the time available to improve each of these qualities safely. This in turn increases the likelihood of in-season injuries and reduced performance overall.

Longer pre-seasons and injury prevention

From a sports science perspective, a key benefit of extended pre-seasons is the gradual increase in training load. This helps reduce injury risk once the season begins.

Research has shown the importance of progressive overload (gradually increasing training demands in a safe, structured manner), recovery management, and adequate conditioning to tolerate in-season demands.

Evidence also shows increased pre-season participation, additional pre-season sessions and higher workloads (such as total distance) result in fewer games missed due to injury within the season.

These findings underscore that a carefully structured, longer preparation phase, even if it appears arduous, can build resilience.

By gradually but systematically exposing players to both low- and high-intensity running volumes, physical contact, and skill-based sessions, clubs can equip their athletes’ bodies to withstand the onerous demands of an AFL or NRL season.

What do other codes do?

European football (soccer) clubs often have limited downtime between league seasons and international fixtures.

Pre-season often entails high-profile international exhibition tours, leaving little space for the months-long conditioning programs common in AFL and NRL.

Moreover, the absence of a draft system can mean injured players are simply replaced via the transfer market. This reduces the incentive for longer pre-season conditioning to keep key athletes healthy.

The NFL’s pre-season is relatively short. It uses a training camp model that includes a few pre-season games in which their “starters” play a limited role due to injury concerns.

The sport’s stop-start nature and its athletes’ highly specialised positional requirements also results in players having a more specific physical profile. In contrast, AFL and NRL players require a broader physical profile.

In recent years, the NFL has become increasingly aware of higher injury rates tied to abrupt increases in training load. It is now exploring extended or restructured pre-season protocols that in part aim to reduce injury risk.

Changes may be afoot

Interestingly, the AFL itself may face a similar scenario this year.

In the most recent off-season, many AFL clubs had only two to three weeks of full-squad structured training before Christmas, followed by three weeks off.

This approach, designed to provide player downtime, might inadvertently produce an effect akin to what the NFL experiences, where shorter preparation periods are linked to higher rates of tendon and soft-tissue injuries.

Sports scientists at Australian clubs will be monitoring training loads closely when their players return, aiming to avoid the pitfalls of quick turnarounds meeting high-impact competition.

There’s a reason for these long pre-seasons

Devoting three to four months to pre-season training is not merely a quirk of the Australian sporting calendar.

It is a necessary response to the extreme physical demands of these codes. More importantly, a longer, carefully managed pre-season significantly lowers in-season injury risks.

Clubs need to strike a balance between giving players sufficient rest and allowing enough time for a measured and carefully planned off-season. This not only enhances performance, but reduces injuries.

Given the evidence, it is little wonder that Australian codes invest so heavily in this crucial preparation phase.

Darren Burgess, General Manager of High Performance at Adelaide Football Club, contributed to this article.

Joel Garrett 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. AFL and NRL pre-seasons are among the longest in world sport – here’s why – https://theconversation.com/afl-and-nrl-pre-seasons-are-among-the-longest-in-world-sport-heres-why-248430