Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hayley Boxall, Research Fellow, Australian National University

Domestic and family violence (DFV) has received increasing attention in recent years. It is most commonly associated with intimate partner violence between current and former partners, followed by abuse perpetrated against children by their parents and carers.

But what about sibling violence?

International estimates suggest that sibling violence (also known as sibling-to-sibling violence) is one of the most common forms of DFV globally. Yet in Australia and internationally, there is very little conversation or research about it. This means our understanding of when, why and how it occurs remains underdeveloped, and this in turn affects the development of effective policy and practice.

To improve understandings of sibling violence in Australia, we analysed data collected as part of a national study of 16–20-year-olds’ use and experiences of DFV in the home. Of the 5,021 young people we surveyed, 4,340 said they had siblings.

What is sibling violence?

One of the biggest barriers to better understanding sibling violence is differentiating between sibling rivalry and conflict, and abuse. Research suggests abuse is often minimised by family members and clinicians, even when the behaviours are described as “extreme” and persistent.

For our study, guided by the literature, we defined sibling violence as involving serious and high-harm behaviours. This includes:

• threats to kill
• threats to hurt someone close to the young person
• non-fatal strangulation or sexual abuse
• persistent and frequent forms of other abusive behaviour (for example, verbal, emotional physical, property damage and threats to harm/hurt a sibling).

Overall, 303 young people in the sample self-reported they had been subjected to or used sibling violence by the time they were 18. Within this, 58% said they had used sibling violence, 60% said they had been subjected to it, while 18% said they experienced both victimisation and perpetration.

Sibling violence is multifaceted

The most common form of sibling violence reported by young people was verbal abuse. Of our respondents, 72% reported experiencing verbal abuse from a sibling, while 74% reported using verbal abuse against a sibling. Physical violence was the next most common form of sibling violence reported, with 64% reporting experiencing physical abuse from a sibling, and 73% reporting using physical abuse against a sibling.

Although less common, a significant proportion of young people also reported experiences of:

• threats to kill (victimisation: 26%; perpetration: 9%)
• non-fatal strangulation (victimisation: 14%; perpetration: 3%)
• sexual abuse (victimisation: 13%; perpetration: 2%).

Almost all young people who had experienced sibling violence reported experiencing multiple and overlapping forms of abuse. Indeed, our study finds that sibling violence is rarely experienced as an isolated act of abuse. Rather, it is often experienced as part of a broader patterns of behaviours encompassing physical, sexual and non-physical abuse.

Sibling violence is gendered

The findings from our study highlight that like other forms of DFV, sibling violence is gendered.

A significantly larger proportion of cis female (47%) and trans/non-binary young people (50%) reported they had been subjected to sibling violence, compared to cis males (25%).

Meanwhile, a larger proportion of cis males (59%) said they had used sibling violence compared to cis female (35%) and trans/non-binary young people (32%).

Sibling violence often co-occurs with other forms of DFV within families

Over 90% of young people in our study reported they had experienced DFV between other family members, such as intimate partner violence between their parents.

Also, over half of the young people who had been subjected to sibling violence reported they had experienced other forms of maltreatment by another family member, most frequently by their mothers and fathers.

Sibling violence has significant impacts on young people

Young people in our study reported that sibling violence and other forms of DFV had significant impacts on them. It affected their social, emotional and physical wellbeing, and education achievements.

Relationships between siblings have important developmental implications for young people’s understandings of familial relationships. The strength of sibling relationships has been linked to longer-term health and social wellbeing outcomes. While our siblings can sometimes feel like our greatest enemies, they can also be our strongest supports in life.

An emerging body of research has also found that young people who use sibling violence are at higher risk of perpetrating abusive behaviours against their intimate partner(s) and family members later in life.

Sibling violence can have significant impacts, including trauma, anxiety and poor mental health, eating disorders, and the misuse of alcohol and drugs on those who experience it.

What is needed?

Our study builds new understandings of sibling violence in Australia. It highlights the importance of early interventions for young people who experience DFV during childhood. This includes ensuring effective responses for young people who use violence against their siblings.

Without effective early intervention, we are missing opportunities to address the negative consequences of such experiences, including an increased risk of future perpetration of intimate partner violence.

To facilitate improved identification and early intervention, frontline screening for DFV among individuals and families must include sibling violence.

Given the substantial overlap of intimate partner violence, other forms of child maltreatment, child-to-parent abuse and sibling violence, we need holistic interventions that address the support needs of all family members.

These responses must extend to supporting children and families’ recovery from DFV and seek to break the cycle of inter-generational violence in the home.

Hayley Boxall currently receives research funding from the Queensland Law Reform Commission, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety and the ACT Justice and Community Safety Directorate.

Kate has received funding for family violence-related research from the Australian Research Council, Australian Institute of Criminology, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, the Victorian, Queensland and ACT governments, the Commonwealth Department of Social Services and the Victorian Women’s Trust. This piece is written by Kate Fitz-Gibbon in her role at Monash University and is wholly independent of Kate Fitz-Gibbon’s role as Chair of Respect Victoria.

Silke Meyer currently receives research funding from Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, the Queensland Mental Health Commission, and the Department of Child Safety, Seniors and Disability Services (Qld).

– ref. We can’t solve family violence until we include violence between siblings in the conversation – https://theconversation.com/we-cant-solve-family-violence-until-we-include-violence-between-siblings-in-the-conversation-242384

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ashish Nanda, Research Fellow, Deakin Cyber Research and Innovation Centre, Deakin University

Australia’s new digital ID system promises to transform the way we live. All of our key documents, such as driver’s licences and Medicare cards, will be in a single digital wallet, making it easier for us to access a range of services.

The federal government is still developing the system, with a pilot expected to run next year. Known as the “Trust Exchange”, it is part of the Trusted Digital Identity Framework, which is designed to securely verify people’s identities using digital tokens.

Earlier this year, in a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra, Federal Minister for Government Services Bill Shorten, called the new digital ID system “world leading”. However, it has several privacy issues, especially when compared to international standards like those in the European Union.

So how can it be fixed?

What is Trust Exchange?

Trust Exchange – or TEx – is designed to simplify how we prove who we are online. It will work alongside the myID (formerly myGovID) platform, where Australians can store and manage their digital ID documents.

The platform is intended to be both secure and convenient. Users would be able to access services ranging from banking to applying for government services without juggling paperwork.

Think of the system as a way to prove your identity and share personal information such as your age, visa status or licence number — without handing over any physical documents or revealing too much personal information.

For example, instead of showing your full driver’s licence to enter a licensed premises, you can use a digital token that confirms, “Yes, this person is over 18”.

But what will happen to all that sensitive data behind the scenes?

Falling short of global standards

The World Wide Web Consortium sets global standards around digital identity management. These standards ensure people only share the minimum required information and retain control over their digital identities without relying on centralised bodies.

The European Union’s digital identity system regulation builds on these standards. It creates a secure, privacy-centric digital identity framework across its member states. It is decentralised, giving users full control over their credentials.

In its proposed form, however, Australia’s digital ID system falls short of these global standards in several key ways.

First, it is a centralised system. Everything will be monitored, managed and stored by a single government agency. This will make it more vulnerable to breaches and diminishes users’ control over their digital identities.

Second, the system does not align with the World Wide Web Consortium’s verifiable credentials standards. These standards are meant to give users full control to selectively disclose personal attributes, such as proof of age, revealing only the minimum personal information needed to access a service.

As a result, the system increases the likelihood of over-disclosure of personal information.

Third, global standards emphasise preventing what’s known as “linkability”. This means users’ interactions with different services remain distinct, and their data isn’t aggregated across multiple platforms.

But the token-based system behind Australia’s digital ID system creates the risk that different service providers could track users across services and potentially profile their behaviours. By comparison, the EU’s system has explicit safeguards to prevent this kind of tracking – unless explicitly authorised by the user.

Finally, Australia’s framework lacks the stringent rules found in the EU which require explicit consent for collecting and processing biometric data, including facial recognition and fingerprint data.

Filling the gaps

It is crucial the federal government addresses these issues to ensure its digital ID system is successful. Our award-winning research offers a path forward.

The digital ID system should simplify the verification process by automating the selection of an optimal, varied set of credentials for each verification.

This will reduce the risk of user profiling, by preventing a single credential from being overly associated with a particular service. It will also reduce the risk of a person being “singled out” if they are using an obscure credential, such as an overseas drivers licence.

Importantly, it will make the system easier to use.

The system should also be decentralised, similar to the EU’s, giving users control over their digital identities. This reduces the risk of centralised data breaches. It also ensures users are not reliant on a single government agency to manage their credentials.

Australia’s digital ID system is a step in the right direction, offering greater convenience and security for everyday transactions. However, the government must address the gaps in its current framework to ensure this system also balances Australians’ privacy and security.

The work has been supported by the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre Limited, whose activities are partially funded by the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme.

The work has been supported by the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre Limited whose activities are partially funded by the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme.

The work has been supported by the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre Limited, whose activities are partially funded by the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme.

– ref. Australia’s new digital ID scheme falls short of global privacy standards. Here’s how it can be fixed – https://theconversation.com/australias-new-digital-id-scheme-falls-short-of-global-privacy-standards-heres-how-it-can-be-fixed-241797

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carol Johnson, Emerita Professor, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Adelaide

Having a female presidential candidate has made gender obvious in this US presidential election, even to many who normally neglect its role. The specific contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, along with the prominence of issues such as abortion, has resulted in a particularly large gender voting gap. Far more women have consistently indicated support for Harris and far more men for Trump.

However, gender has always been crucial in US presidential elections, not just because of gender voting patterns but because competing performances of masculinity have always played a major role.

Role of masculinity in 2020 election

The last presidential election saw Joe Biden’s form of kind and caring protective masculinity being explicitly contrasted with Trump’s divisive, hyper-masculine one.

Furthermore, strong male leaders are meant to protect the people from physical, social and economic harm. I have argued that one factor that contributed to Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat was a protective masculinity failure, especially in regard to COVID.

For example, former President Barack Obama argued that, unlike Biden, Trump could not be counted on to protect Americans:

Eight months into this pandemic, new cases are breaking records. Donald Trump isn’t going to suddenly protect all of us. He can’t even take the basic steps to protect himself […]. Joe understands […] that the first job of a president is to keep us safe from all threats: domestic, foreign, and microscopic.

Trump’s re-energised protective masculinity

However, since his 2020 electoral defeat, Trump has resurrected himself as a strong masculine protector. He claims that “our enemies” are trying to use legal charges to take away his freedom and silence him because he “will always stand” in the way of their attempt to silence the American people and take away their freedom.

He will also be a vengeful protector, declaring:

I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution. I will totally obliterate the deep state.

Trump has long appealed to men who feel that traditional masculinity, and its related entitlements, are under threat.

He is currently courting white males, the youth manosphere, “techno bros”, “crypto bros”, conservative male unionists threatened by globalisation and offshoring, and conservative black and Latino men.

He has been explicitly mobilising misogyny, including by making lewd references to Harris. JD Vance has assisted Trump’s efforts.

Nonetheless, Trump claims that he will be a strong male protector of women, protecting them from illegal immigrants, crime, foreign threats and other anxieties:

You will be protected and I will be your protector. Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free.

Trump has even promised that, as a result, women “will no longer be thinking about abortion.” This is all despite his own alleged history of sexual assault.

Harris, gender and the women’s vote

By 2024, Biden’s apparent physical and cognitive decline meant that he was no longer a convincing masculine protector (or viable ongoing presidential candidate).

The choice of Harris as his replacement candidate had advantages, but it was also a gamble given the combined roles of gender and race. After all, despite the long history of US racism, it still proved easier to elect a black man (Obama) to the presidency than a white woman (Hillary Clinton).

However, the women’s vote is particularly important this election. As well as Harris’ appeal to younger and black women, Democrats have emphasised the importance of her appeal to white women, including some who previously voted Republican. Anti-Trump Republicans such as Liz Cheney are assisting Harris in appealing to the latter.

Issues such as abortion are crucial. The overturning of Roe v Wade abortion rights, enabled by Trump stacking the Supreme Court, also puts IVF at risk by not clarifying when life begins (with implications for frozen embryos). Senate Republicans have twice blocked a vote on a Democrat-led bill designed to protect IVF. Harris has pledged to sign a law protecting abortion rights (if Congress passes it).

Trump claims he supports IVF, won’t bring in a national ban on abortion and believes in abortion “exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother”.

However, Trump Republicans are courting, and influenced by, the American religious right on abortion. There aren’t such exceptions in several Republican states, as Harris’s heartrending accounts of the impact on women and their health reveals. Furthermore, Missouri, Kansas and Idaho are also trying to drastically reduce legal access to the abortion drug mifepristone.

Harris also emphasises other issues of particular significance for women, such as affordable childcare and better pay for care workers.

Harris and “tonic” masculinity

Given the role of competing masculinities in US presidential elections, Harris’ campaign has intentionally appealed to a very different form of protective masculinity from Trump’s.

Vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz’s, “America’s dad” image (of being a warm, caring but sports loving coach, national guard serving, gun owning, hunter) is used to contrast his “tonic masculinity” with Trump’s “toxic” masculinity. Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, is depicted as a supportive “wife-guy” who has “reshaped the perception of masculinity” (while strongly denying allegations he once slapped a woman).

Despite conservative claims of men being economically left behind, the Biden/Harris administration argues it has revitalised manufacturing and male jobs along with it and Harris will continue to do so. Meanwhile, Obama has urged black men to get behind Harris and the Harris campaign has highlighted its policies benefiting black men.

Can Harris mobilise protective femininity?

Given the major role of gender in US presidential elections, a key issue is whether Harris can successfully evoke a caring, motherly, protective femininity that promises security and economic benefits to voters and helps to counter Trump’s protective masculinity.

Other women politicians have been able to (for example, Germany’s Angela Merkel). Women leaders particularly mobilised protective femininity during the COVID health crisis (for example, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern). However, it always seemed likely masculinist leadership stereotypes would re-emerge once the economy needed rebuilding after the pandemic.

Harris has pledged she will “create an opportunity economy” and “protect our fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do”. She promises to be the kind of president “who cares about you and is not putting themselves first”. Whether such electoral pitches are successful remains to be seen.

Why the outcome of this election is crucial for gender equality.

A woman US president is long overdue after 46 male ones. A Trump victory would have major implications for abortion, IVF and women’s rights generally, including progress on the Biden/Harris National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality. Immigrant and black women will be particularly vulnerable. A Trump victory would also have major implications for which models of masculinity are publicly endorsed.

A Trump victory would embolden conservative so-called anti-gender ideology campaigns. The Trump campaign has recently spent US $21 million (A$31.9 million) on ads associating Harris with LGBTIQ+ equality, especially transgender rights.

The Trump campaign asserts that “Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you.” While Trump has also pledged that “we will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools.”

A Trump victory will influence the future US economy, including risking increasing gender inequality in an Elon Musk-style unregulated technopoly.

Finally, academic commentators have drawn attention to the way in which socially conservative views on gender have been mobilised to support new forms of authoritarian regimes in Europe and elsewhere.

In short, this presidential election is a crucial one for the American people generally, but for the female half of the population in particular.

Carol Johnson 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. Gender is playing a crucial role in this US election – and it’s not just about Kamala Harris – https://theconversation.com/gender-is-playing-a-crucial-role-in-this-us-election-and-its-not-just-about-kamala-harris-242113

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne

I have never really been interested in ghosts, mummies or zombies, not even at Halloween. But as October 31 approaches each year I am reminded of a biological tale involving all three. It’s the real-life horror story of a flesh-eating, brain-warping fungus from the genus Cordyceps, which inspired the zombie-apocalypse video game and TV series The Last of Us.

Worldwide, there are hundreds of species of Cordyceps. Most of them prey on insects. They’re famous for hijacking the brains of some ants. Once the fungus takes over, it directs the ant to climb to a high point on a plant and then bite down on the stem or twig in a macabre death grip. The reproductive structures of this parasitic fungus will soon burst out of the ant’s head, spreading its spores to infect another unsuspecting host.

But the species with which I am most familiar (Cordyceps gunnii) doesn’t attack ants – it parasitises insects such as rather large “ghost” caterpillars. This species doesn’t force its victims to climb, but takes control when they are buried in the soil.

You might spot a grotesque-looking dead caterpillar pushing up through the earth as if rising from the grave, with a large fungal growth emerging from its head. Some are about the size of an adult finger, but cream and dark brown in colour. It is truly a thing that could trigger nightmares.

Consuming the ghostly host

Unsuspecting insects become infected with Cordyceps when they eat them by mistake, or when spores attach to their bodies.

The caterpillar of the Australian ghost moth (Abantiades labrynthicus) tends to burrow straight down into the soil to graze on roots of gum trees and some other species related to eucalypts. So it probably picks up the fungus as it burrows into the earth. The fungus then penetrates the exoskeleton or digestive tract of the insect with a thin, needle-like tube.

Once inside the caterpillar, the fungus starts to grow rapidly. It produces very fine threads (hyphae) that spread through the body of the insect, replacing its structure. The fungus expands to fill the available space, assuming ultimate control. Exactly how the fungus takes control of the insect brain is not fully understood, but we know the fungus produces a range of chemicals that influence the brain in a way that meets the environmental and reproductive needs of the fungus.

The caterpillar is doomed as soon as the fungus starts to grow inside it. After being taken over by another life form, the zombie caterpillar dies. All of this happens out of sight, under the soil surface.

But Cordyceps is not done with the caterpillar just yet. It consumes all the resources the insect can offer, then pushes antler-like reproductive structures out through the caterpillar’s head. These spore-producing structures can be more than 10cm long. They’re clearly visible above ground, but can be hard to spot as they look a bit like a twig. Wind carries the spores to infect more unwary caterpillars.

These fungus-filled caterpillars are now fully mummified. Nothing remains of the caterpillar but a brittle exoskeleton.

As the reproductive structures dry and wither, they gently tug on the mummy to which they are still attached. If the soil is dry, the now empty exoskeleton of the caterpillar emerges from its hole. As it does so, the fungal reproductive structures are often lost and all you see remaining is the empty husk.

Half animal, half vegetable

Members of the genus Cordyceps boast the unusual common name of vegetable caterpillars. This strange name comes from a belief, which persisted until the 1800s, that the caterpillars had somehow transformed from insects to fungi, or from animal to plant.

This was a much debated and widely written about example of transmutation, a theory that was not uncommon in pre-Darwinian times. It was not until the early 1900s that the true, full and gruesome nature of the relationship between Cordyceps and its insect victims was revealed.

On the lookout for Cordyceps

Cordyceps gunnii is the most commonly seen species of vegetable caterpillar in southeastern Australia, found in several states.

Another less conspicuous species, the fawn vegetable caterpillar, Cordyceps hawkesii, occurs along Autralia’s east coast, often under wattles, but is even harder to see. Naturalists hunting for this vegetable caterpillar often find they have already inadvertently trampled over it before they spot it.

Yet another species, Cordyceps taylori, can also be regularly seen emerging from large ghost moth caterpillars in Victoria. When the husks of these dead, mummified caterpillars appear to emerge from their holes in the ground, they look particularly striking.

The classification of these vegetable caterpillar fungi is still being debated by experts. It is likely not all are closely related. Some are now placed in a new genus, Ophiocordyceps, but regardless of the name, they are all capable of making zombies and mummies of their victims.

You can join in the process of hunting for and mapping these elusive species through citizen science projects such as he Great Aussie Fungi Hunt or iNaturalist Australia.

Traditional medicines and the vegetable caterpillar

As Halloween approaches, you may be wondering whether humans need worry about being zombified and mummified by Cordyceps fungi. Could the naturalists hunting the vegetable caterpillars become the hunted? The answer is a resounding no. In fact, the opposite is true – these macabre creatures have a long history in traditional medicine.

Cordyceps sinensis, a Chinese vegetable caterpillar very similar to C. gunnii, has been used in traditional medicine for centuries. Modern research shows there may be benefits from its use (or extracts from it) in treatments associated with autoimmune responses. While the fungus has been cultivated for about 40 years, naturally growing, wild fungi can be very expensive as they are still relatively rare and difficult to find. A kilogram can retail for A$30,000, driving a fungal gold rush across the Himalayas.

Members of the genus Coryceps, or more correctly the Ophiocordyceps genus, have been around for more than 45 million years. Despite their depiction in The Last of Us, humans have nothing to worry about. The fungi are quite particular about their victims. But if you are a certain species of ant or ghost moth, then Halloween may take on a whole new meaning.

Gregory Moore 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. You can keep your ghosts and ghouls – the ‘Cordyceps’ fungus creates real-life zombies – https://theconversation.com/you-can-keep-your-ghosts-and-ghouls-the-cordyceps-fungus-creates-real-life-zombies-241901

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Westrupp, Associate Professor in Psychology, Deakin University

Pweeeeese! I want cwacker!

If you’ve ever found yourself cringing when your child suddenly starts talking in a high-pitched, baby-like voice, you’re not alone.

Many parents and caregivers find this behaviour jarring — and yes, a little bit annoying.

Why do older children sometimes revert to baby talk? And what can you do to manage it?

Why do kids use a baby voice?

Children may revert to speaking like a baby when they are seeking comfort, affection and reassurance.

For children, being a baby reminds them of a time when they were safe, and all their needs were taken care of. When they revert to using a baby voice, they are signalling to us they’re feeling vulnerable, tired, stressed, uncertain or overwhelmed, and are wanting more connection and practical help from us.

Most regressions are normal, and very common. In fact, healthy learning and development is never perfectly linear. This is reflected in nature, where there are cycles of rapid growth followed by periods of rest and dormancy. After a burst of development, children can be tired, or miss having the same level of support from us.

Children are also more likely to use a baby voice when they’re managing a change or stressful life event. For example, the birth of a new baby in the family, starting school, moving house, or parents separating, are common times when children need more support.

Help! Why is a baby voice so annoying?

As parents and carers, it can be confusing and grating when our older, capable child seems to be moving backwards in development, and using a voice they used many years ago.

Parents might associate a baby voice with neediness, or immaturity, and feel anxious about what this means for their child’s development.

In the past, this behaviour was viewed as a problem.

So the advice was to ignore it and only respond when children use their normal voice. However, this can can create shame in our child and make them afraid to express their feelings and needs.

Tips for managing baby voice

Developmentally, there’s no problem with children occasionally using a baby voice, so we don’t need to try to stop this behaviour.

Instead, we can be curious. What might be happening for our child?

1. Acknowledge their feelings: we can empathise with, validate and accept our child’s underlying emotions. And then try to meet their need for safety and connection. We might say:

Oh my love, sounds like you’re finding everything hard today, and can’t manage putting your shoes on? Are you feeling tired?

2. Meet their needs: if they’re wanting extra help or connection, we should give it. We can think of this as a “refuelling” pit stop – they might need a little extra care as they manage their current stage of development, or cope with a change. We can say:

I’d love to help you put your shoes on, let’s do it together. How about you do the socks, and I’ll tie your laces?

Remember, providing extra help doesn’t mean you’ll always have to do so. Children have a natural drive towards skill development and independence. When they have the energy, they’ll want to keep practising their skills.

3. Be kind to yourself: if your child’s baby voice is getting on your nerves, it’s understandable, and normal. Providing extra care can be taxing, and sometimes it’s hard to find that extra energy. We can remind our child that we all need rest.

I hear you’re so tired today and want my help. The problem is I’m feeling so tired too! I wonder if we can help each other? Can we start with a big cuddle?

4. If in doubt, seek help: if your child shows other signs of developmental regression for more than two weeks, talk to your GP.

Depending on age, this might include lost skills related to language and communication, walking and balance, self-care (such as dressing, toileting), sleeping, or becoming more clingy, having meltdowns and losing interest in interacting or playing with others.

Elizabeth Westrupp receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. She is affiliated with the Parenting and Family Research Alliance, and is a registered clinical psychologist.

– ref. Why is my kid using a baby voice? How can I manage it? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-my-kid-using-a-baby-voice-how-can-i-manage-it-240436

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Baumann, Professor in Business, Macquarie University

Do you own any memorabilia depicting Elvis, Princess Diana, David Bowie, Prince or Michael Jackson? Perhaps a beloved t-shirt, a favourite mug, a special keyring or a novelty plate? You might not know it, but you are participating in something known as “necro-branding”.

Necro-branding is where the image of a celebrity is sold to the public, perhaps by their estate or by their fans, long after the celebrity has died.

These necro-branded items act almost like talismans, helping us preserve the past and remind us of an era long gone.

Necro-branding is also shaping up to be a multibillion-dollar industry. Even the stars of today – such as Taylor Swift – will inevitably one day become the necro-brands of tomorrow.

And with the astonishingly rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), we can expect celebrities’ images to be “reincarnated” even more in the future, and their legacies extended far beyond death.

Necro-branding is everywhere

As colleagues and I argued in our recent paper in the journal Celebrity Studies, the quintessential necro-branded celebrity is Elvis Presley.

From Elvis impersonators to countless items of Elvis memorabilia, the Elvis brand has only increased after the star’s death. Elvis-themed postage stamps issued by the US Postal Service reportedly became the top-selling commemorative postage stamps of all time. He’s also appeared on stamps issued by countries all around the world, such as the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi.

As we explain in our recent paper:

At the time of his death, Elvis was worth an estimated US$5 million dollars ($40  million in today’s terms), but by 2022, it was estimated that Elvis Presley Enterprises has a net worth of between $400 million and $500 million. The use of his image on merchandise and memorabilia contributes to the continuation of his legacy.

And it’s not just necro-branding marketed to older fans; younger generations are also a target with Elvis marketing.

Think, for example, of the stratospherically successful early-2000s dance track version of A Little Less Conversation, by Dutch musician Junkie XL. Or, for instance, of the way Elvis tracks are woven throughout the Disney animated movie Lilo and Stitch.

Of course, Elvis is not the only necro-branded celebrity. David Bowie, Prince, Michael Jackson, John Lennon and Johnny Cash are other obvious examples, with countless pieces of merchandise bearing their images. Their brand value has increased once the star has passed away.

Deceased royals – such as Princess Diana and, more recently, Queen Elizabeth – are another obvious example, especially because living royals already enjoy such massive brand values.

Necro-branding works because of the deep connection fans feel with celebrities. One study of fans of NBA basketballer Kobe Bryant found that as fans’ grief and shock waned, other stronger emotional responses, such as love, actually increased.

Another 2024 study analysing fans of Johnny Cash and John Lennon suggested that fans acted “religiously” in honouring the memories of these beloved musicians.

Marilyn Monroe is another heavily necro-branded celebrity. As we argue in our recent paper

Her brand has shown strong durability in terms of earnings and is now licensed to the same management group that owns the bulk of the Elvis brand, Authentic Brands Group (ABG). Monroe often made the top ten list of earners in the Dead Celebrities List from 2001 to 2008.

Necro-branding and AI

AI already plays a pivotal role in branding of celebrities, alive and dead, and will no doubt be used more in future to extend the marketability of today’s celebrities.

Think, for instance, of the way some of the recordings from the past are imperfect. Elvis footage from the 1970s often has good sound quality, but the actual video footage reflects the technology of the time.

While this can be partially rectified with remastering, future AI-powered technology will allow entire reproductions of shows, with all imperfections removed.

Perhaps, many decades from now, an AI-generated version of Taylor Swift will be performing for fans of that era. Whole personas can be altered to meet the demands of different generations of fans, maintaining their legacy indefinitely.

Brand new songs can be performed by a necro-celebrity who never actually sang them, or songs from other entertainers (dead or alive) can be performed by the avatar of a dead singer.

AI has already been used to create a version of the song Barbie Girl sung in the “voice” of Johnny Cash, alongside a medley of other pop hits.

A whole new frontier

Even if you’re new to the term, you’re already part of the necro-branding market. And there is more to come once AI advances and consumers can no longer distinguish between fake and real.

The lines will become blurry, as the branding of necro-celebrities become a whole new frontier for marketing and AI develops ever faster and better.

Joanne Soviner, a year 12 student at North Sydney Girls High School, contributed to this article.

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

– ref. What is necro-branding? And what’s it got to do with Elvis, Princess Diana and Taylor Swift? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-necro-branding-and-whats-it-got-to-do-with-elvis-princess-diana-and-taylor-swift-240989

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Daniel, Associate Lecturer in Communications, Western Sydney University

Movie monsters have captivated audiences since the days of early cinema. They evoke fascination and terror, allowing audiences to confront their fears from the safety of the movie theatre or living room.

Arguably one of the most enduring and captivating of these monsters is Freddy Krueger, the villain of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series who celebrates his 40th screen birthday this November.

Memorably played by Robert Englund, Freddy quickly became a cultural icon of the 1980s and 1990s. Beyond his burned face and iconic bladed glove, Freddy’s dark humour and acidic personality set him apart from other silent, faceless killers of the era, such as Michael Myers in Halloween or Jason Vorhees in Friday the 13th.

Written and directed by horror maven Wes Craven, 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street garnered positive reviews for its innovative concept: Freddy stalked and attacked his victims in their dreams, making him inescapable and allowing him to tap into their deepest fears. The series (seven films plus a 2010 remake and Freddy vs. Jason spin offs) blended supernatural horror and surrealism with a dark and twisted sense of humour.

Scary … but funny

Humour was key to Freddy’s “popularity”. Both sinister and strangely charismatic, Freddy’s psychological torture of his adolescent victims often oscillated between terrifying and amusing.

A famous kill scene from 1987’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors demonstrates this paradox.

Aspiring actress Jennifer drifts off to sleep while watching a talk show on TV. In her dream, the host of the talk show suddenly transforms into Freddy, who attacks his guest before the TV blinks out. When Jennifer timidly approaches the TV set, Freddy’s head and clawed hands emerge from the device, snatching her while delivering an iconic one-liner: “This is it, Jennifer – your big break in TV!”

Freddy turns his victims’ fears or aspirations – their dreams – against them.

Creating a monster

Craven has shared how the character of Krueger came to life in Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, an oral history of the series.

He described a childhood experience of seeing a strange mumbling man walking past his childhood home. The man stopped, he said, and looked directly at him “with a sick sense of malice”. This deeply unsettling experience helped shape Freddy’s menacing presence.

The character’s creation also emerged from the filmmaker’s interest in numerous reports of Southeast Asian refugees dying in their sleep after experiencing vivid nightmares.

In the film, Krueger’s origin story reveals him as a child murderer who was apprehended but released due to a technicality in his arrest. Seeking justice, the parents of his victims take matters into their own hands, and form a vigilante mob. They corner him in his boiler room and burn him alive. But Freddy’s spirit survives to haunt and kill the children of his executioners.

Read more:
Halloween films: the good, the bad and the truly scary

Cultural repression, expressed on film

Film critic and essayist Robin Wood argued horror films often bring to the surface elements society has repressed. These fears, desires, or cultural taboos are not openly acknowledged.

But movie monsters act as manifestations of what society suppresses, such as sexuality, violence or deviant behaviour. American academic Gary Heba argues Freddy is:

an example of America’s political unconscious violently unleashed upon itself, manifesting everything that is unspeakable and repressed in the master narrative (perversion, child abuse and murder, vigilantism, the breakdown of rationality, order, and the family, among others), but still always present in the collective unconscious of the dominant culture.

The monster decades

The 1970s and 1980s marked a golden era for the creation of horror film nasties like Krueger, Myers, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface and killer doll Chucky.

Since then, the landscape of horror has shifted, with fewer singular monsters emerging. The diversification of horror sub-genres (zombie virus horror, anyone?), the rise of psychological horror (Hereditary), and an emphasis on human-driven terror (Wolf Creek) or supernatural forces all contribute to this shift.

While modern horror continues to thrive, few characters have achieved the same iconic status as Freddy – although some would argue Art the Clown from the recent Terrifier franchise and the reinvigorated Pennywise from IT could join this exclusive group.

Happy Halloween!

Despite a failed reboot in 2010, the legacy of A Nightmare on Elm Street is strong, having influenced numerous filmmakers with its skilful mix of surrealism and slasher horror.

However, it’s the orchestrator of the titular nightmares whose legacy is perhaps the strongest.

With each Halloween, new fans choose Freddy for their costume. All it takes is a tattered striped sweater, a brown fedora hat, and a glove with sharp, finger-lengthening blades. Don’t forget makeup to re-create Krueger’s grisly facial burns. Sweet dreams!

Adam Daniel 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. Freddy Krueger at 40 – the ultimate horror movie monster (and Halloween costume) – https://theconversation.com/freddy-krueger-at-40-the-ultimate-horror-movie-monster-and-halloween-costume-240905

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Jackman, Departmental Lecturer in Development Studies, University of Oxford

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the world’s longest reigning female political leader, fled Bangladesh on 5 August 2024 for the safety of India. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of protesters descended on Bangladesh’s capital city, Dhaka. The crowds ransacked her official residence, occupied the nation’s parliament and burnt down her family home.

Hasina, who had ruled the country for more than 20 years in total, had been widely accused of turning autocratic and clamping down severely on any opposition to her rule.

For many, the Bangladesh revolution offers hope in the context of growing global authoritarianism. It illustrates the power of the youth to confront entrenched leaders, and the fragility of authoritarianism. It also highlights a striking feature of contemporary global politics: how central capital cities are to the political life of nations.

In our new book, Controlling the Capital: Political Dominance in the Urbanizing World, a diverse range of scholars argue that capital cities are crucial political sites. They’re where governing elites seek to assert and maintain political control, and they are also stages for political contestation.

The book is focused on sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the two fastest-urbanising regions of the world.

Authors explore the strategies and tactics used by ruling elites to politically dominate their capital cities in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The authors also consider how urban populations have engaged with these efforts. People may resist authority, but they can also cooperate with it in ways that benefit themselves – which sometimes reinforces or supports authoritarian control.

This is increasingly important in the context of two contemporary trends. First, authoritarianism is growing globally. Just 10 years ago under half of the world’s population lived under authoritarian rule; now the figure is at 71%. The second trend is the ongoing rapid urbanisation of the world’s population, with the majority of us globally now living in urban areas.

Urban unrest

Over the past year we’ve seen how capital cities are spaces for contestation.

Some pro-democracy movements draw from their own histories of struggle and the paths that have been carved by those before them. The template of Bangladesh’s 2024 revolution is ingrained in politics from the ways in which liberation was fought and how later struggles against authoritarian rule were won. The capital city has also been crucial, and students at Dhaka University were key mobilisers in such movements.

In other contexts, the link between political resistance and urban areas is a relatively new and surprising route to political change. One example is “the struggle” seen in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo and the unseating of the Rajapaksa family, who were perceived as increasingly authoritarian rulers of the country. The Colombo chapter in this volume highlights how such protests emerged in a context where urban unrest had rarely threatened those in power before.

Even where anti-authoritarian protests have proved futile time and again, urban populations rarely remain quiet.

In Kampala, Uganda, demonstrations prior to the 2021 elections resulted in a horrifying government crackdown. Inspired by events in neighbouring Kenya, protesters took to the streets once more in July 2024 to demonstrate against corruption.

Read more:
Kenya’s protests happened in every major urban centre – why these spaces are explosive

The protests that erupted in Nairobi from late June 2024 against tax rises engulfed the capital city. They continued for some time, fuelled by the brutal police response. Similarly, Nigeria’s 2020 #EndSARS protests against police brutality created a powerful movement in cities such as Abuja and Lagos which shook government, and resonated across much of the continent.

In an age of social media, learning and mimicry across national borders is increasingly common. One of the defining images of Kenya’s 2024 urban uprising was of a group of men with their arms raised and crossed at the wrists – a gesture of anti-authoritarian protest that gained particular resonance several years back during neighbouring Ethiopia’s own uprising.

As urban protest seems set to continue and spread – often taking intentionally similar forms – techniques of urban authoritarian control are more varied and complex.

Strategies to dominate and control city populations can be dramatic and repressive – such as the brute force of police violence – and they can also be subtle, deeply ingrained, and sometimes difficult to discern.

Authoritarian tactics

Our book argues that authoritarian leaders are increasingly aware of the power of the urban masses. As a result, they are using a range of subtle, and not-so-subtle, tactics to entrench their domination in capital cities.

We broadly described two types of interventions that elites use.

The first are policies and favours that actively build support among urban groups. These can range from inclusion in political parties to investments in social provisions or infrastructure to win support. The book’s chapter on Addis Ababa shows how the latter were particularly striking under the previous governing regime in Ethiopia.

The second are repressive interventions that aim to crush opposition. These are also diverse, and include violent crackdowns, but also surveillance and intimidation.

In practice, the two types of interventions often overlap. The line also blurs through various forms of manipulation. For instance, misinformation or the delivery of goods in exchange for performances of political loyalty, underpinned by implicit threats of coercion.

We also highlight the significance of urban geography.

Ruling elites often seek to divide city populations (for example inner-city dwellers versus the peripheries). This is evident in our book’s chapter on Colombo, Sri Lanka. The Rajapaksas tried to consolidate power by appealing to the new middle class suburbanites through “beautification” projects. But these displaced and excluded the inner-city poor.

Chapters on Harare and Kampala also show how particular peripheral areas have become central to efforts to build an urban support base by Zanu-PF and the National Resistance Movement. This often plays out through the informal parcelling out of land to supporters.

Contesting autocratic rule

Concerns about authoritarian politics are at an all-time high.

The above Google Ngram highlights the perilous rise in the use of the term “autocratization” in published work over the past decade.

Meanwhile, the contestation of autocratic rule will continue to erupt in cities, especially in rapidly urbanising parts of the world. In this context, the need to understand how autocracy and urbanisation collide could hardly be more important.

If pro-democracy forces are to have any hope of prevailing against efforts by authoritarian ruling elites to entrench their position, there is a crucial need to better understand their urban strategies and tactics.

David Jackman received funding from the Leverhulme Trust.

Tom Goodfellow is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which funded part of the research on which this book is based.

– ref. Autocrats and cities: how capitals have become a battleground for protest and control – https://theconversation.com/autocrats-and-cities-how-capitals-have-become-a-battleground-for-protest-and-control-240377

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

Saturday’s Queensland result provides the latest evidence of the dual tugs on the modern Labor Party, coming from its different constituencies.

The smallest swing against the Miles government was in inner Brisbane; the swing became bigger in the outer suburbs, and larger again in the regions. The broad state figures were: south-east Queensland 6.3%; rural/regional Queensland 9.2%. The awings in the city were: inner Brisbane 5.0%; outer Brisbane 7.7%.

This sort of divide reflects a challenge, first recognised decades ago, that’s highlighted by former Labor senator and minister Kim Carr, in his just-published A Long March. In a scathing critique of Labor’s problems, Carr calls this a “cultural crisis.”

“The Labor ship has struck the rock of identity politics,” Carr writes, “with too many of its spokespeople adopting a censorious tone to those who fail to embrace their particular social policy agendas”.

From the left, old school and former factional heavyweight, Carr argues Labor has sought to build a new constituency without paying sufficient attention to its traditional support base.

Over decades, the once-working class party has taken up causes that appeal to the wealthier, better-educated middle- class voters, and these people have moved their support to it. The cost has been an erosion of outer suburban votes, the people now being aggressively targeted by opposition leader Peter Dutton.

Meanwhile, in inner urban areas Labor has come under increasing pressure from the Greens. The danger for the ALP, Carr believes, is by trying to compete with the Greens on identity politics it will inevitably be outmanoeuvred.

“The profound challenge for the Labor Party in the 2020s is to find a way to bind together its more affluent and educated support base in the inner and middle suburbs of the big cities with its less well-off and less formally educated supporters in the outer suburbs and regional cities,” Carr says.

Political historian Paul Strangio, however, warns that while obviously Labor has to straddle constituencies, “there is no returning to an imagined ‘heartland’. The outer suburbs Carr seems to want Labor to focus upon are themselves radically changing. They are not a repository of old-fashioned working class values and priorities, and nor on their own are they sufficient to provide a basis for the party to hold government.”

Carr says the issue is how to build Labor’s primary vote in its heartland communities.

On what we’ve seen in recent politics, this appears a formidable, if not insurmountable, hope for any time soon.

Voters don’t trust parties, let alone join them. The popularity of “community candidates” has seen a record-sized crossbench in the House of Representatives, with an expanded Greens presence and disillusionment with the Liberals making a strong contribution to the number in 2022. Next year’s election will test whether this trend is entrenched.

Carr points out that Labor has a party membership that’s wealthier and older than the general community. Its membership is “thin” in the outer suburbs and the regions compared with the inner areas.

Among the consequences is that the messages coming up through the party may not gell with the preoccupations of the broader community, he says.

Over the years the ALP rank and file has not just shrunk numerically but been deprived of most of the not-inconsiderable power it once had within the party.

In terms of clout, Labor’s national conference, which sets the platform, is a diminished beast, though massively swollen numerically. The party membership’s power over preselections has been greatly reduced, thanks to factional deal-making and frequent intervention by the party’s national executive. In just one significant way has the rank and file gained power: it now has a 50% voice in electing the party’s leader, so far exercised once, in 2013, when Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese faced off.

Given the shrinkage and balkanisation of the party, there is currently not the interest in internal party reform that erupted periodically and often heatedly in earlier years.

Labor veteran Race Mathews’ career, documented by his wife Iola in Race Mathews: A Life in Politics, has an extraordinarily broad political CV: a staffer for federal and state leaders, MP for the federal seat of Casey (elected on the 1972 Whitlam wave and defeated in the 1975 post-dismissal rout), and a Victorian state minister. An enduring preoccupation for Mathews, who was part of an influx of young, well-educated middle-class activists attracted to Labor in the 1960s and early 1970s, was fighting to make the Labor Party fit for purpose and more internally democratic.

Serving on Gough Whitlam’s staff in the late 1960s, Mathews was in the thick of the then-opposition leader’s tumultuous battle with the troglodytes of the Victorian party, who preferred political impotence to the power of government. Whitlam knew that unless the ALP organisation was reformed, Labor’s road to office would be obstructed.

Way back when, the party’s organisation, in which the left flexed a lot of muscle, liked to signal that the MPs were under its thumb. In 1963, then-opposition leader Arthur Calwell and Whitlam, his deputy, were embarrassed when photographed outside a Canberra hotel waiting for the party’s special national conference (to which they were not delegates) to decide Labor’s attitude to the North West Cape joint facility. The ultimate decision was not the problem – the line it was made by “36 faceless men” was.

Mathews later highlighted the significance of the 1970 federal intervention in Victoria, saying it had led to important reforms in that state and elsewhere. “Good people were brought into parliament and membership was a rewarding experience.” But then factionalism “ossified” the party and “if you weren’t part of the factions, you were marginalised”.

In his 70s Mathews (who is now aged 89 and suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease) was still fighting for democratisation of Labor’s organisation, which he described as “archaic and decrepit”. While party leaders and others were supportive in principle, the quest for a new wave of change ultimately brought only limited outcomes.

Iola Mathews quotes her husband’s Facebook answer to those who wondered why he, at 80, he was still in these trenches.

He wrote: “The fact is that nobody ever changed the party other than from inside it, or ever will. And shaping it closer to our heart’s desire is the only game in town.”

The truth is, however, it’s a game those who run the Labor Party these days have no serious interest in pursuing. As Strangio observes, “the age of the mass party has passed”.

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: ‘identity politics’ has challenged the Labor Party to define its identity – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-identity-politics-has-challenged-the-labor-party-to-define-its-identity-242215

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jocelyne Basseal, Associate Director, Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute (Sydney ID), Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney

The long-awaited independent inquiry into Australia’s COVID response was released today, with lessons on how the nation could better prepare for future pandemics.

The 868-page report outlined nine guiding recommendations and 26 actions, including 19 set for implementation over the next 12 to 18 months. These form the foundation for future pandemic preparedness.

With initial strong national solidarity, Australia acted quickly to close national borders, the inquiry found. This bought crucial time, but Australia was not adequately prepared for a crisis of the scale of the COVID pandemic.

Australia’s response lacked strong central co-ordination and leadership. Communication about public health advice was often conflicting or not appropriately communicated with the most vulnerable groups. Public trust was further undermined by a lack of transparency in decision-making, such as disease modelling, which underpinned important public health responses.

In hindsight, the inquiry concluded a fully fledged Australian Centre for Disease Control (CDC) could have made a huge difference. In response, the federal government today committed A$251 milion to establish such a centre in Canberra.

What did the inquiry find?

1. Early rapid response and consensus helped keep us safe. As an inland nation, Australia was able to close its borders while preparing for the ultimate inevitable population-wide spread of SARS CoV-2. But it was unprepared for pandemic-related quarantines.

2. Initially, the communication was clear and consistent. This didn’t last. Huge uncertainties, rapidly changing circumstances, differing opinions among experts and the politicisation of the response undermined communication strategies. Communication with diverse ethnic groups and vulnerable populations groups were often sub-optimal. In future, misinformation and disinformation needs to be addressed through improving health literacy and proactive communication.

3. Our health-care infrastructure was lacking and couldn’t cope with emergency surge capacity, the inquiry found, although health-care workers “pulled together” remarkably. Aged care facilities were particularly vulnerable and had poor infection-control practices. More broadly, there were supply chain issues and inadequate stockpiles of essential infection prevention and control equipment, such as masks and gloves. Australia was unable to manufacture these and was left at the mercy of foreign providers.

4. Analysing the genetic material of the virus and widespread testing were critical to tracking viral evolution and spread. Pathogen genomics in New South Wales and Victoria, for instance, allowed accurate tracking of virus variants and local transmission. But there was poor exchange of data between jurisdictions and limited national coordination to optimise data interpretation and response.

5. Transparent, evidence-based decision-making was lacking. Disease models that informed key decisions were opaque and not open to scrutiny or peer review.

6. Vulnerable populations, including children, suffered disproportionately. COVID-related school closures were particularly harmful as they affected learning, socialising and development, and disproportionately affected children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Strict social isolation also increased the risk of family violence, along with anxiety and other mental health impacts. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experienced higher risks due to the inequity of service provision and the social determinants of health.

7. Research is important and should be rapidly scalable. Good surveillance systems for emerging infectious diseases and future pandemic threats should be in place. Patient specimens need to be stored so we can rapidly explore the mechanisms of disease and develop essential diagnostic tests. The inquiry recognised the need for Australia to develop its own vaccines and for access to mRNA technology was recognised as an important health security measure, given challenges in vaccine access.

8. Global solidarity and co-operation create a safer word for all.
The stark inequities in COVID vaccine access, opened major fault lines in international relationships and still complicate the drafting of a global pandemic treaty.

9. Emerging diseases with a One Health focus should be recognised as a ‘standing threat’. In our modern interconnected world, with highly concentrated human and animal populations combined with stressed ecosystems, new diseases with pandemic potential will continue to emerge at an unprecedented rate. This requires a gobal focus.

How could a CDC make a difference?

One of the inquiry’s key take-home messages is that the lack of strong, independent, central co-ordination hampered our pandemic response.

The inadequate flow of data between jurisdictions were major shortcomings that limited the ability to target responses. This is needed to understand:

• transmission dynamics
• the vulnerabilities in those with severe disease
• the circulating viral variants.

The inquiry also emphasised the need to analyse data in near real time.

Good data drive evidence-informed and transparent policy. This is a crucial area for a future Australian CDC to address. The CDC will function as a “data hub”, with Canberra offering the ideal location supporting a multi-jurisdictional “hub-and-spoke” model.

Australia’s new CDC is expected to be launched by January 2026, pending legislation approval. The ongoing challenge will be to ensure it delivers optimal long-term health benefits for all Australians.

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. Australia’s COVID inquiry shows why a permanent ‘centre for disease control’ is more urgent than ever – https://theconversation.com/australias-covid-inquiry-shows-why-a-permanent-centre-for-disease-control-is-more-urgent-than-ever-239498

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

The government-appointed inquiry into Australia’s COVID response has warned public trust won’t be so high in a future pandemic and people would be unlikely to accept again many of the measures taken.

“That means there is a job to be done to rebuild trust, and we must plan a response based on the Australia we are today, not the Australia we were before the pandemic,” the report released on Tuesday said.

The inquiry was conducted by former NSW public servant Robyn Kirk, epidemiologist Catherine Bennett, and economist Angela Jackson. It examined the health and economic responses; while it did not directly delve into the state responses, it did cover the federal-state interface.

The overall takeout from the inquiry is that “Australia did well relative to other nations, that experienced larger losses in human life, health system collapse and more severe economic downturns”.

But “the pandemic response was not as effective as it could have been” for an event for which there was “no playbook for pivotal actions.”

The inquiry said “with the benefit of hindsight, there was excessive fiscal and monetary policy stimulus provided throughout 2021 and 2022, especially in the construction sector. Combined with supply side disruptions, this contributed to inflationary pressures coming out of the pandemic.”

The inquiry criticised the Homebuilder program’s contribution to inflation, as well as Jobkeeper’s targeting, and said blanket access to superannuation should not be repeated.

The government – which might have originally expected the inquiry to have been more critical of the Morrison government – quickly seized on the report’s economic criticisms.

The panel has made a set of recommendations to ensure better preparation for a future pandemic.

It highlighted the “tail” the pandemic has left, especially its effect on children, who suffered school closures.

“Children faced lower health risks from COVID-19; however, broader impacts on the social and emotional development of children are ongoing. These include impacts on mental health, school attendance and academic outcomes for some groups of children.”

The report noted that the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee had never recommended widespread school closures.

A lack of clear communication about risks had created the environment for states to decide to go to remote learning.

The impacts on children should be considered in future pandemic preparations, the inquiry said.

It strongly backed making permanent the interim Australian Centre for Disease Control. The government will legislate next year for the CDC, to start on January 1 2026, as an independent statutory agency.

The CDC would be important in rebuilding trust, the report said, as well as “strengthening resilience and preparedness”. It would provide “national coordination to gather evidence necessary to undertake the assessments that can guide the proportionality of public health responses in future crises”.

The report said trust in government was essential for a successful response to a pandemic.

At COVID’s outset, the public largely did what was asked of them, complying with restrictive public health orders.

But the initial strengthening of trust in government did not continue through the pandemic. By the second year, restrictions on personal freedom were less accepted.

Reasons for the decrease in trust included a lack of transparency in decision making, poor communication, the stringency and duration of restrictions, implementation of mandated measures, access to vaccines and inconsistencies in responses across jurisdictions.

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. Inquiry warns distrustful public wouldn’t accept COVID measures in future pandemic – https://theconversation.com/inquiry-warns-distrustful-public-wouldnt-accept-covid-measures-in-future-pandemic-242383

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mona Krewel, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

After winning the 2023 election, the National-led coalition government quickly embarked on a wide range of policy changes, often reversing the policies of its Labour predecessor.

A year on, despite continuing economic troubles, the three government parties have remained ahead in the polls – although sometimes only marginally.

The National-Act-NZ First coalition’s continued support suggests voters think it is delivering on its mandate – the promises and outcomes people had in mind when they voted for the coalition parties. Which raises the question, what exactly did people want when they voted in 2023?

The New Zealand Election Study helps us understand why people voted the way they did. After the election, the study surveyed a random sample of people registered to vote, receiving just under 2,000 responses. We use this data to try to understand the new government’s mandate.

Economy and cost of living dominated

When asked to choose who they would prefer to lead the next government, about 48% wanted a National-led coalition, compared with 38% who preferred Labour to lead.

Nearly half of all voters wanted a new government after the election, suggesting this was a “change” election.

The issues that mattered for voters provide insights into why voters wanted change in 2023. The Election Study asks people what the most important issue was for them when voting.

A word cloud (see below) of the most important issues shows two responses stood out: the economy and the cost of living.

However, unlike 2020 – when COVID dominated – in 2023 there was a range of issues people cared about, including health, climate change, and law and order: 73% wanted tougher sentencing laws. National’s strong stance on law and order was therefore also part of its mandate.

Moreover, there are clear differences between the two connected issues of the economy and cost of living.

Voters who said “the economy” was their most important issue tended to feel National was the party best equipped to address this problem. Voters who answered “cost of living” (and other related terms, such as poverty) were more likely to say Labour would be the best party to deal with those problems.

Some good news for Labour

While economic issues were front-of-mind for many people, and people wanted change, levels of satisfaction with the previous government’s performance were still surprisingly high.

Some 54% said the Labour government did a “very” or “fairly” good job – strong support for a government dismissed at the election. And 64% of respondents also continued to approve of the previous government’s COVID response, suggesting Labour was still getting credit for its management of the pandemic.

The previous Labour government were therefore not widely considered to be incompetent, as National and its partners perhaps hoped it would be.

Indeed, Labour’s Chris Hipkins was slightly more liked by voters on average than National’s Christopher Luxon (5.3 versus 4.7 out of 10). Hipkins was also seen as a marginally more competent leader than Luxon, overall.

However, the infamous slogan from Bill Clinton’s 1992 US presidential campaign – “it’s the economy, stupid!” – was central in the 2023 election.

Almost 75% of people thought the economy had got worse over the year prior to the election, and two-thirds of voters believed the economy or inflation had affected their voting decision.

The state of the economy and inflation rate were clearly on people’s minds. Economic evaluations mattered more than memories of the COVID crisis, the likeability or perceived competence of party leaders, or long-term views about parties.

A fragile mandate

In the year since the election, inflation has fallen, just as it has in other countries. But unemployment has increased, the economy has moved into recession, and a recent 1News Verian poll showed more voters think New Zealand is in worse shape than better shape since the election.

Nonetheless, the coalition government remained ahead in the polls, despite criticism of many of its policies. The Election Study can also shed light on where some of these criticisms of the government come from.

Only 30% of New Zealanders wanted the restoration of interest deductibility for landlords, whereas 46% wanted landlords to pay tax on this income.

Half of the electorate wanted stronger measures to reduce carbon emissions, while just 23% did not want them. Voters also wanted more health and education expenditure.

Our results suggest the National-led coalition government has a mandate from voters to reduce inflation and to manage the economy towards growth and improved living standards.

Voters also want to see a reduction in crime, and better government services, especially healthcare.

If the coalition fails to deliver on this challenging set of expectations, National and its partners are likely to feel the wrath of voters at New Zealand’s next election – particularly considering people retained relatively favourable attitudes about the outgoing Labour government.

The New Zealand Election Study, of which Dr Krewel is one of the Principal Investigators, is funded by Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, the Electoral Commission, the Gama Foundation, and the University of Auckland.

Through the New Zealand Election Study, Jack Vowles receives funding from Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington and the Electoral Commission.

Matthew Gibbons, Sam Crawley, and Thomas Jamieson 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. 2023 election study: what voters really wanted, and why the coalition’s mandate could be fragile – https://theconversation.com/2023-election-study-what-voters-really-wanted-and-why-the-coalitions-mandate-could-be-fragile-242179

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff M Boucher, Associate Professor in Literary Studies, Deakin University

Is Donald Trump a fascist? General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, thinks so. Trump is “fascist to the core,” he warns.

John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, agrees. So does Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent in this year’s presidential election.

But political commentators who have a grounding in history are not so sure. Writing in The Guardian, Sidney Blumenthal calls Trump “Hitlerian” and his rallies “Naziesque”, but stops short of calling him a fascist.

Michael Tomasky of The New Republic understands the reservations, but he is tired spending time debating the difference between “fascistic” and just plain “fascist”. “He’s damn close enough,” Tomasky writes, “and we’d better fight”.

I understand this logic. It’s the reason Harris uses the term “fascist” to describe Trump – to send “a 911 call to the American people”. But there’s a problem.

I have spent the past six years researching right-wing, authoritarian political communication in America. I can say with confidence how these kinds of labels can misfire. They can very easily be made to look like liberal hysteria, playing straight into the hands of the far right.

Here are the two reasons why it is crucial to call Trump exactly what he is.

1. Calling Trump a fascist, and then instantly adding, “or close enough,” plays directly into the hands of the far right. “See?” they might say. “Anytime anyone steps outside the liberal consensus, they get labelled a fascist. This is how political correctness silences dissent.”

2. Trump’s kind of authoritarianism thrives on ambiguity about what sort of right-wing populist figure he is. Its success depends on the fact that “fascist” is the only name we have right now for authoritarian politics.

In my view, Trump is not a fascist. Rather, he is part of a “new authoritarianism” that subverts democracy from within and solidifies power through administrative, rather than paramilitary, means.

Why the ‘fascism’ label is unhelpful

This brand of new authoritarianism hides in plain sight because there is no name for it yet. It looks like something else – for example, right-wing populism that is anti-liberal, but not yet anti-democratic. And then suddenly, it shows itself as anti-democratic extremism, as Trump did in refusing to accept the 2020 election result and encouraging the storming of the Capitol.

This moment starkly revealed Trump as a new authoritarian. Supplementary debate about whether Trump is like Adolf Hitler risks being pointless. But the problem is that fascism is the only name we have now for anti-democratic extremism.

All fascists are authoritarians. But not all authoritarians are fascists. It’s crucial to understand there are other types of authoritarianism – and how they differ.

This is not just important for preventing Trump from seeking to subvert American democracy. It is also vital for stopping Trump imitators, who will now spring forth in other democracies. If there is still no name for what they are other than “fascist,” then they, too, will thrive on ambiguity.

What is ‘new authoritarianism’?

I suggest we focus on what Trump actually is – an anti-democratic, “new authoritarian” – and understand what this means and how he is gaining wider support using right-wing populism.

The new authoritarians don’t necessarily take a sledgehammer to a nation’s institutions, for example, by doing away with elections. Rather, they hollow out democracy from within, so it becomes a façade draped over a one-party state.

We have many examples of this kind of ruler today: Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko, Tunisia’s Kais Saied and, of course, the poster-figure for the new authoritarians, Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s admiration for Putin is a matter of public record. For alt-right thinkers who are influential with Trump, such as Steve Bannon, Putin provides a blueprint for how new authoritarianism works.

Authoritarians like Putin must govern through the state, not the people, because, as social psychologist Bob Altemeyer explains, they ultimately represent a tiny minority of the population.

Military dictatorships rule through the armed forces. The fascist regimes of 20th century Europe were ultimately police states. They relied on converting paramilitary death squads into secret police (like the Gestapo) and state security (the SS in Nazi Germany).

The new authoritarians, however, govern through the transformation of the civil service into their own personal political machines.

That is why Trump is obsessed with the “deep state”, by which he means the way in which democratic institutions have built-in legal safeguards defended by civil servants, who can potentially frustrate executive orders. The new authoritarian strategy is to appoint a stratum of political loyalists to key positions in their administrations, who can circumvent institutional checks. But that is no easy matter.

If Trump is elected, he has vowed to “crush the deep state”, for example, by purging thousands of nonpolitical civil service employees. As part of this, he has pledged to establish a “truth and reconciliation commission” oriented to punishing those he thinks opposed him the past.

Trump has been following this new authoritarian playbook for nearly his entire political career. These are the three steps he is taking to lay the groundwork for authoritarian rule:

1) Undermine electoral integrity

The first key to new authoritarianism: subvert democracy by undermining electoral integrity. The acid test here? Authoritarians do not accept election results when the opposition has won. As Trump has very bluntly put it, “I am a very proud election denier”.

Trump’s opening move in this regard was to take over the Republican Party. He used election denialism to do this, while also marginalising any moderates who opposed him.

The Trump Republican Party is now a minority party, oriented to white grievance, resentment of immigrants and the anti-democratic idea that a country should be run like a company.

Its only hope for winning government as a minority party is by trying to suppress the vote of its opponents. To do this, pro-Trump Republican states have passed a number of laws since 2020 to make voting more difficult.

These states have also aggressively removed people from the voting rolls. Texas alone has stricken one million voters off its rolls since 2021, only 6,500 of whom were deemed non-citizens.

If Trump wins, he will likely make it even harder for people to vote. Civil rights groups fear he may introduce a citizenship question to the census, use the Department of Justice to conduct a massive purge of voter rolls, and launch criminal investigations of electoral officials.

As a backup, Trump will likely resurrect the “election integrity commission” he established in 2017 to justify his claims of alleged voter fraud in the 2016 election and support his election denialism narrative.

2) Weaken the legislative and judicial branches

The second key to new authoritarianism: circumventing the checks-and-balances function of the legislative branch of government. The goal here is to rule by executive fiat or govern through a stacked legislative majority.

The new authoritarians often govern through executive orders, including the use of emergency powers. For instance, Trump has envisaged a scenario in which a Republican Congress could enact emergency powers to empower the president to overturn the authority of state governors to fire their prosecutors and use the National Guard for law enforcement.

Such a development would depend on a number of factors, including the complicity of the judiciary. This is why new authoritarians also attempt to stack the judiciary with loyalists.

In his first term, Trump not only appointed three Supreme Court justices, he also placed judges to the federal appeals courts, district courts and circuit courts.

3) Attack their enemies

This leads to the third pillar of new authoritarianism: decapitating the political opposition and suppressing dissent.

Trump’s threats to investigate and prosecute his enemies, including leading figures in the Democratic Party, should be taken very seriously. His calls to target the “enemy from within” were pointedly directed at what he deemed “radical left lunatics”.

Journalists and the news media would also likely be targeted. Trump’s statement that the broadcast licenses of national networks should be revoked, for example, needs to be understood in the context of his pledges to dismantle federal regulatory agencies if elected.

That matters, because the next step for new authoritarians to solidify their power is through suppressing dissent. Trump has proposed using the military in civil contexts to target criminals and prevent illegal immigration. He has reportedly even questioned why the military couldn’t “just shoot” protesters.

It is important to understand how this differs from fascism, because it is central to Trump’s ability to retain electoral support.

Classical fascism under dictators like Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini was based on street-fighting, paramilitary movements, which used violence to intimidate and crush the opposition. The equivalents of this today are right-wing militias such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

Trump keeps one foot on the edge of this camp. But alt-right figures like Bannon understand that swastika flags and paramilitary uniforms are a political liability. Their preference is for new authoritarianism, which is able to push
a right-wing extremist agenda by reducing democracy to sham elections, rather than openly setting up a totalitarian regime.

As such, Trump can dodge accusations of being a “fascist” by telling the Proud Boys to “stand by”, while throwing up a smokescreen of equivocations about the January 6 Capitol insurrection. He can distance himself from kind of paramilitary violence that is reminiscent of classical fascism.

It is about time to call things by their true names. Trump has the anti-democratic tendencies of a new authoritarian – and, as his opponents point out, he seems likely to put his words into actions if elected a second time.

Geoff M Boucher 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. Is Donald Trump a fascist? No – he’s a new brand of authoritarian – https://theconversation.com/is-donald-trump-a-fascist-no-hes-a-new-brand-of-authoritarian-241586

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Boucher, Associate Professor in Public Policy and Political Science, University of Sydney

Some of the ways migrants are exploited in the workforce get a lot of public attention. We hear tragic stories about wage theft, forced unpaid overtime, unsafe work conditions or discrimination. And we are likely to hear more such grim stories revealed at a NSW parliamentary inquiry that will examine modern slavery in Australia.

These vulnerabilities all relate to what researchers call workplace precarity – insecurity or uncertainty at work. But too often, a major piece of this picture gets overlooked.

My recent analysis of more than 900 court cases brought by migrant workers shines a light on migrants being sexually harassed, sexually assaulted or trafficked for sexual reasons in their workplaces.

Yet, with the exception of a recent landmark research report on sexual harassment experienced by migrant women, this issue has not received the attention it deserves.

The taboo nature of sexual crimes likely plays a role in this neglect. When it is covered, there is often a somewhat sensationalist focus by the media on the sex work industry.

In the process, we may overfocus on sex work and neglect many other workplaces in which migrant workers can face forms of sexual violence. Any reckoning with workplace precarity more broadly cannot afford to ignore the risk of sexual exploitation.

Read more:
Migrant workers have long been too scared to report employer misconduct. A new visa could change this

What is ‘precarity’?

Workplace “precarity” – insecurity or uncertainty at work – can affect us all.

It can encompass a wide range of aspects, including a lack of workplace protections, job insecurity and social or economic instability at work.

Visa status, a lack of knowledge of local laws and language barriers can all make migrants more vulnerable to workplace precarity.

Unscrupulous employers may exploit these known vulnerabilities to extract favours and take advantage.

Many theories of economic precarity do not consider sexual risk at all.

What my research uncovered

My research, drawn from more than 900 court cases brought by migrant workers, uncovered some harrowing examples.

In one case in Canada, an employer sexually harassed and in one case raped two migrant women who worked in his business as fish filleters. One of the women felt she had to comply with demands for fellatio to avoid deportation back to Mexico.

Following a ruling, the women were awarded damages under Ontario human rights law.

In another highly publicised case in Australia, a farmer was found guilty of raping a young British backpacker, threatening refusal to sign off on her farm work if she did not comply.

Such a “sign off” is required for a working holiday maker to be able to extend their visa for an additional year.

Sex slavery

A further case concerned sex slavery. Two Thai women entered Australia fraudulently on tourist visas with the intention of undertaking sex work. The sex work began, with their consent.

However, they came to be subjected to work that went beyond what had been contracted in terms of the number of clients, the nature of sexual services provided, frequency and rest periods.

One woman suffered damage to her sexual organs. They also had their mobile phones removed. After several legal appeals, this behaviour was found to amount to sex trafficking and the defendant employer was imprisoned.

An attempt to overturn the conviction was refused.

Recent research by the NSW Anti Slavery Commissioner’s Office with migrant workers on NSW farms also suggests allegations of sexual violence could be unreported due to a perceived risk of retaliation.

Interwoven risks

These cases, and many others, all demonstrate that economic and sexual exploitation can commingle for migrant workers.

In such cases, employers may use economic and visa vulnerability to extract sexual favours. At times in these cases, there are also egregious examples of underpayment or even non-payment.

To capture this relationship in migration systems, I developed the term sexual precarity. This has five core components:

1. restrictive visa conditions
2. debt bondage
3. live-in arrangements that heighten exposure to employers during non-working hours
4. entrapment and slavery
5. the combination of sexual violence with economic exploitation or other forms of physical injury.

What needs to be done?

First, as with broader migrant worker rights, education campaigns for migrants are required.

These would extend beyond making them better informed about their rights on economic exploitation to issues of discrimination and protection from sexual exploitation.

Second, practical safeguards can be put in place to protect migrant women in isolated workplaces.

This might include female-only sleeping dorms, female-only agriculture workforces, support person rules for meetings with male employers and general advice on sexual consent laws for both employers and employees.

Third, policymakers could consider whether sexual offences that are accompanied by a visa threat should suffer additional penalties under criminal or immigration law.

This has already been made the case with recent changes to visa sponsorship where employers who coerce migrants into breaching their visa conditions are subjected to certain penalties.

Anna Boucher received funding from the Australian Research Council and the University of Sydney that funded this prior research. She is Vice President (Independent) on the Australian Institute of Employment Rights. 2023-4 she was on the NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s Advisory Panel.

– ref. ‘Sexual precarity’: how insecure work puts migrants at risk of being sexually harassed, assaulted or trafficked – https://theconversation.com/sexual-precarity-how-insecure-work-puts-migrants-at-risk-of-being-sexually-harassed-assaulted-or-trafficked-238880

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Louise Deacon, PhD Graduand, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey University

Current thinking about workplace problems, mental health and the law is hindering New Zealand’s ability to prevent job-related mental harm.

The inclusion of mental health in New Zealand’s Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA) is meant to protect workers from the risk of harm arising from exposure to workplace psychosocial hazards.

These arise from the way work is designed, managed and led, and the context in which work is carried out. They can cause psychological, social or physical harm. Common examples include long work hours, role ambiguity, emotional demands, job insecurity and bullying.

Our research examined how the most senior company decision-makers understood their legal duties as they relate to mental health.

Under the HSWA, these officers – including company directors and chief executives – must exercise due diligence to ensure their company is compliant with the law.

But most of the 24 research participants, who were officers of large companies, expressed uncertainty and ambiguity about the meaning of “mental health” within the HSWA.

The harms of work

Exposure to psychosocial hazards is commonly reported by New Zealand workers.

Those working in jobs such as policing, nursing and teaching, for example, report high levels of emotional demands.

Māori and Pacific workers, workers in retail, and workers in their 30s report higher than average levels of job insecurity.

The harm caused by exposure to these these hazards typically presents as psychological. But it has also been strongly linked to cardiovascular disease and musculoskeletal disorders.

Lack of expertise

Managerial decisions relating to how work is designed, organised and managed influence how people experience work and the psychosocial hazards they may face.

Psychosocial risk often stems from operational and performance decisions relating to things like intensification, staffing, production and market demands.

In many organisations, these decisions are made in the boardroom – far removed from where the core work of the business is carried out.

Many of the research participants felt the uncertainty about the meaning of mental health within the HSWA arose from a lack of expertise in New Zealand’s health and safety workforce, a lack of clear regulatory guidance, and the complexity of psychosocial risk.

As one participant said:

There’s no boundaries, there’s no playbook, there’s no formula they can follow, it’s hard and it’s complex and it’s different for each person, and there’s nobody who you can point to and go, “They’ve absolutely nailed it”.

But our analysis also found that uncertainty and ambiguity arose from other factors.

These included a belief that the risk of exposure was often rooted in the personal characteristics and behaviours of workers rather than in their work. There was also a focus on fixing harm rather than preventing it and the conflation of psychosocial risks with other risks.

Unfortunately, these beliefs also limited the application of the HSWA.

Instead of addressing work-related risk, senior managers became distracted by workers’ personal lives and focused on reactive management strategies rather than preventative ones. They adopted an approach to risk management that emphasised “risks to the organisation” rather than “risks to workers”.

Bullying in the workplace

These limits were most clearly evident when participants described their oversight of organisational responses to bullying and harassment.

Many of the causes of bullying and harassment lie in the way work is organised, managed and led.

However, in detailing their performance of due diligence, participants described ensuring such risks were managed by recounting conflict reporting and resolution systems, support for victims, and organisational policy stressing “zero tolerance” for poor workplace behaviour.

While these responses might form part of a comprehensive approach to bullying and harassment (although in practice these could be unjust, ineffective or even counterproductive), on their own they may also be inadequate when the problem is considered under work health and safety law.

The risk-based, preventative nature of the HSWA requires that harm is prevented through understanding, anticipating and intervening in the contributing factors within the work environment.

Research has firmly established that bullying is more likely in organisations where there are unreasonable workloads, high job demands and job insecurity, along with laissez-faire or “hands off” management, or management strategies that relentlessly require workers do more with less.

Consideration of these risks may be relevant in the current context of job insecurity and job cuts across the public sector which could result in increased demands on remaining workers.

The link between hazards and harm

Risk assessment must focus on what can, and ought to be, known about the relationship between these psychosocial hazards and potential harm. Risk management must aim to eliminate or minimise risks as far as reasonably practicable.

Importantly, acting on risk does not require evidence of harm. Responding to harm once it has happened is contrary to the overall purpose of the HSWA.

But addressing deeper organisational factors is much more difficult and uncomfortable for those in charge.

Preventing bullying and harassment requires considering how decisions about the design, organisation and management of work may contribute to the risk of harm.

Prevention can therefore explicitly question the decisions and practices of company directors, executives and managers – not traditionally considered within the remit of work health and safety.

As a result, bullying and harassment tend to be framed as an interpersonal problem between workers and their managers. This is less challenging than bringing the decisions relating to the management and governance of a company into question.

The preventative focus is then placed on correcting and improving behaviour rather than managing or changing the conditions of work which give rise to bullying and harassment.

Louise Deacon received a grant from Health and Safety Association of New Zealand and a Massey University Doctoral Scholarship for this research.

Bevan Catley has recieved funding in the past from The Health Research Council of New Zealand and WorkSafe New Zealand concerning work-related psychosocial risks.

David Tappin has received research funding in the past from The Health Research Council of New Zealand and WorkSafe New Zealand concerning work-related psychosocial risks.

– ref. Where’s the harm in that? How we think about workplace hazards hampers the application of health and safety law – https://theconversation.com/wheres-the-harm-in-that-how-we-think-about-workplace-hazards-hampers-the-application-of-health-and-safety-law-240794

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Flora Salim, Professor, School of Computer Science and Engineering, inaugural Cisco Chair of Digital Transport & AI, UNSW Sydney

In 2014, the British philosopher Nick Bostrom published a book about the future of artificial intelligence (AI) with the ominous title Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. It proved highly influential in promoting the idea that advanced AI systems – “superintelligences” more capable than humans – might one day take over the world and destroy humanity.

A decade later, OpenAI boss Sam Altman says superintelligence may only be “a few thousand days” away. A year ago, Altman’s OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever set up a team within the company to focus on “safe superintelligence”, but he and his team have now raised a billion dollars to create a startup of their own to pursue this goal.

What exactly are they talking about? Broadly speaking, superintelligence is anything more intelligent than humans. But unpacking what that might mean in practice can get a bit tricky.

Different kinds of AI

In my view the most useful way to think about different levels and kinds of intelligence in AI was developed by US computer scientist Meredith Ringel Morris and her colleagues at Google.

Their framework lists six levels of AI performance: no AI, emerging, competent, expert, virtuoso and superhuman. It also makes an important distinction between narrow systems, which can carry out a small range of tasks, and more general systems.

A narrow, no-AI system is something like a calculator. It carries out various mathematical tasks according to a set of explicitly programmed rules.

There are already plenty of very successful narrow AI systems. Morris gives the Deep Blue chess program that famously defeated world champion Garry Kasparov way back in 1997 as an example of a virtuoso-level narrow AI system.

Some narrow systems even have superhuman capabilities. One example is Alphafold, which uses machine learning to predict the structure of protein molecules, and whose creators won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year.

What about general systems? This is software that can tackle a much wider range of tasks, including things like learning new skills.

A general no-AI system might be something like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: it can do a wide range of things, but it does them by asking real people.

Overall, general AI systems are far less advanced than their narrow cousins. According to Morris, the state-of-the-art language models behind chatbots such as ChatGPT are general AI – but they are so far at the “emerging” level (meaning they are “equal to or somewhat better than an unskilled human”), and yet to reach “competent” (as good as 50% of skilled adults).

So by this reckoning, we are still some distance from general superintelligence.

How intelligent is AI right now?

As Morris points out, precisely determining where any given system sits would depend on having reliable tests or benchmarks.

Depending on our benchmarks, an image-generating system such as DALL-E might be at virtuoso level (because it can produce images 99% of humans could not draw or paint), or it might be emerging (because it produces errors no human would, such as mutant hands and impossible objects).

There is significant debate even about the capabilities of current systems. One notable 2023 paper argued GPT-4 showed “sparks of artificial general intelligence”.

OpenAI says its latest language model, o1, can “perform complex reasoning” and “rivals the performance of human experts” on many benchmarks.

However, a recent paper from Apple researchers found o1 and many other language models have significant trouble solving genuine mathematical reasoning problems. Their experiments show the outputs of these models seem to resemble sophisticated pattern-matching rather than true advanced reasoning. This indicates superintelligence is not as imminent as many have suggested.

Will AI keep getting smarter?

Some people think the rapid pace of AI progress over the past few years will continue or even accelerate. Tech companies are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in AI hardware and capabilities, so this doesn’t seem impossible.

If this happens, we may indeed see general superintelligence within the “few thousand days” proposed by Sam Altman (that’s a decade or so in less scifi terms). Sutskever and his team mentioned a similar timeframe in their superalignment article.

Many recent successes in AI have come from the application of a technique called “deep learning”, which, in simplistic terms, finds associative patterns in gigantic collections of data. Indeed, this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to John Hopfield and also the “Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton, for their invention of Hopfield Networks and Boltzmann machine, which are the foundation for many powerful deep learning models used today.

General systems such as ChatGPT have relied on data generated by humans, much of it in the form of text from books and websites. Improvements in their capabilities have largely come from increasing the scale of the systems and the amount of data on which they are trained.

However, there may not be enough human-generated data to take this process much further (although efforts to use data more efficiently, generate synthetic data, and improve transfer of skills between different domains may bring improvements). Even if there were enough data, some researchers say language models such as ChatGPT are fundamentally incapable of reaching what Morris would call general competence.

One recent paper has suggested an essential feature of superintelligence would be open-endedness, at least from a human perspective. It would need to be able to continuously generate outputs that a human observer would regard as novel and be able to learn from.

Existing foundation models are not trained in an open-ended way, and existing open-ended systems are quite narrow. This paper also highlights how either novelty or learnability alone is not enough. A new type of open-ended foundation model is needed to achieve superintelligence.

What are the risks?

So what does all this mean for the risks of AI? In the short term, at least, we don’t need to worry about superintelligent AI taking over the world.

But that’s not to say AI doesn’t present risks. Again, Morris and co have thought this through: as AI systems gain great capability, they may also gain greater autonomy. Different levels of capability and autonomy present different risks.

For example, when AI systems have little autonomy and people use them as a kind of consultant – when we ask ChatGPT to summarise documents, say, or let the YouTube algorithm shape our viewing habits – we might face a risk of over-trusting or over-relying on them.

In the meantime, Morris points out other risks to watch out for as AI systems become more capable, ranging from people forming parasocial relationships with AI systems to mass job displacement and society-wide ennui.

What’s next?

Let’s suppose we do one day have superintelligent, fully autonomous AI agents. Will we then face the risk they could concentrate power or act against human interests?

Not necessarily. Autonomy and control can go hand in hand. A system can be highly automated, yet provide a high level of human control.

Like many in the AI research community, I believe safe superintelligence is feasible. However, building it will be a complex and multidisciplinary task, and researchers will have to tread unbeaten paths to get there.

Flora Salim receives funding from Australian Research Council and Cisco. She acknowledges the support from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) (CE200100005).

– ref. What is AI superintelligence? Could it destroy humanity? And is it really almost here? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-ai-superintelligence-could-it-destroy-humanity-and-is-it-really-almost-here-240682

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shane Rogers, Lecturer in Psychology, Edith Cowan University

The creeping shadows and haunting decorations transform the everyday into something eerie at Halloween. And you might be thinking about scaring yourself with a good horror movie.

Grotesque imagery, extreme violence, startling jump scares and menacing characters are common elements, making viewers feel fear, dread and disgust.

We generally aim to avoid these negative emotions in our everyday lives.

So why would some people seek them out, and enjoy them, in horror movies?

1. Fear can be thrilling

There is lots of overlap between the emotions of fear and excitement. In both, stress hormones are released that can produce physical symptoms such as increased heart and breathing rates, sweating and muscle tension. People also feel more alert and “on edge”.

Research has consistently shown people with personalities that crave intense emotional experiences, including fear and excitement, tend to enjoy horror movies.

But for more fearful people, the jump scares and violent scenes can be too intense. This can result in coping behaviours such as looking away or putting their hands over the ears, especially if they are highly immersed in the movie.

Although, if they also happen to enjoy intense emotion, they may still enjoy the thrill of the ride.

2. There’s a sense of relief

People may enjoy horror movies because of a sense of relief after a scary moment has passed.

Watching a horror movie can be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, with distinct peaks and troughs of fear and relief over the course of the film.

For example, in the 2017 movie It the main protagonists survive a series of scary encounters with a demonic clown. The scary moments are separated by calmer scenes, prompting a rollercoaster of emotions.

In the classic 1975 movie Jaws, viewers experience relief from the scary moments, only to be scared again and again.

3. They satisfy our morbid curiosity

Many horror movies feature supernatural themes and characters such as zombies, werewolves and vampires. So horror movies can help satiate a morbid curiosity.

The violence, death, destruction and grotesque elements can provide curious people a safe space to explore things that are not safe (or socially appropriate) in the real world.

4. We can work out our limits

Horror movies can reflect our deepest fears and prompt introspection about our personal thresholds of fear and disgust.

So some people may enjoy watching them to get a better understanding of their own limits.

Watching horror might also be a way to push personal boundaries to potentially become less fearful or grossed out by things in real life.

In a study one of us (Coltan) conducted, horror movie fans reported less psychological distress during the early months of the COVID pandemic compared with people not identifying as a horror movie fan.

5. They can be social

Some people say the social aspect of watching horror movies with others is a big part of their appeal.

Watching with others might help some people feel safer. Alternatively, this might help amplify the emotional experience by feeding off the emotions of people around them.

Horror movies are also a common pick as a date night movie. Being scared together gives a good excuse to snuggle and take comfort in each other.

6. They give us pleasure in other people’s misery

Horror movies can provide the pleasurable emotion we feel when witnessing the misfortune of others, known as schadenfreude. This occurs most when we feel the person experiencing misfortune deserves it.

In many horror movies the characters that suffer a gruesome fate are only side characters. Much of the time these unfortunate souls are made out to be unlikeable and often make foolish choices before their grisly end.

For example, in the 1996 teen witch movie The Craft, the character Chris Hooker is portrayed as being cruel to women. Then he dies by being blasted out of a window.

Despite the grisly nature of horror movies, a study by one of us (Coltan) found horror fans seem to have the same levels of empathy as anyone else.

What do I make of all this?

Horror movies allow us to confront our deepest fears through the safety of make-believe.

People enjoy them for lots of different reasons. And the precise combination of reasons differs depending on the specific movie, and the person or people watching it.

What is certain though, is the increasing popularity of horror movies, with many to choose from.

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. 6 reasons why people enjoy horror movies – https://theconversation.com/6-reasons-why-people-enjoy-horror-movies-241480

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Kandulu, Research Fellow, College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University

Climate change and biodiversity loss are mounting threats to Australia’s water security. So ee often hear calls for more dams. But is that the answer?

Our recent research reveals large dam projects are costly gambles with public money. They often fail to deliver promised economic benefits. They also have major environmental, financial and social impacts.

In New South Wales, some members of the Lower Lachlan River community were concerned about plans to expand Wyangala Dam. They first asked us in 2020 to investigate its full costs and benefits, with findings presented at a local workshop in 2022.

The first WaterNSW estimate of capital and operating costs was A$620 million in 2018. Within a few years, it had soared to as much as $2.1 billion. In 2023, the project was scrapped because it wasn’t economically viable.

Similar concerns surround other projects overseas and in Australia, including Hells Gate Dam in Queensland, and Dungowan Dam and Snowy Hydro 2.0 in NSW.

To avoid repeating costly mistakes and mismanaging taxpayers’ money, we need a smarter approach to major water projects. This includes independent assessments and greater transparency, with business cases made public and decision-making open to scrutiny. And planning for climate change must become a priority.

Lessons from past mistakes

Inadequate economic assessments of big dam projects are a global problem. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and India’s Subansiri Lower Hydroelectric Project promised big, but had rising price tags and devastating impacts on ecosystems.

In Australia and worldwide, big dam cost overruns can be up to 825%. The average overrun is 120%. This casts serious doubt on such projects’ financial and social viability. Public costs for private gains are a major concern.

Our study reviewed the original business case for the Wyangala Dam expansion. The original study had concluded there would be net social benefits and gave the project the green light.

Our review found the business case was seriously flawed. It overestimated benefits and grossly underestimated physical capital and environmental costs.

Estimated building costs blew out by 239%. If the project had gone ahead, the costs would undoubtedly have increased.

On top of this, assessments of impacts on rivers and wetlands were poor and superficial. They greatly undervalued the environmental effects of expanding the dam, particularly on downstream wetlands.

On the other side of the equation, its benefits were overblown, particularly for water security and agriculture.

Local voices believed many of their concerns had been ignored. There were deep concerns that flood-dependent farmers downstream might lose some of their livelihoods. Indigenous communities were worried about their cultural sites being destroyed.

Our analysis provided a more rigorous assessment of benefits and costs of the Wyangala Dam expansion.

We found total project costs were underestimated by at least 116%. The benefits were inflated by 56%. This meant the true impacts on the environment, agriculture and local communities were misrepresented.

Rethinking Australia’s water future

Our analysis provides a salutary lesson on why we need to rethink water security. Instead of sinking billions into dams, we should find smart and sustainable ways to manage our water.

The fixation on building and expanding dams means innovative alternatives are often ignored. These other options include recycling water, managing demand and carefully recharging aquifers (using aquifers as underground dams).

The National Water Grid Fund exemplifies the misguided “build more dams” mindset. Its portfolio of 61 large water projects has a total capital cost estimate of up to $10 billion.

Despite this massive investment, only 23 of these projects have publicly available business cases. It leaves more than $1.7 billion in committed funding shrouded in secrecy.

This lack of transparency is alarming, given the history of cost overruns and inadequate assessment of environmental damage. It points to the urgent need to reassess our approach to water security. The public has a right to know that their governments are spending wisely.

To avoid repeating costly mistakes and mismanaging taxpayers’ money, we need a smarter approach. Independent business cases should be mandated for all major water projects.

We also need a strong public sector capable of transparent evaluation. Promised new National Environmental Standards as part of reforms to environmental protection laws are likely to require rigorous scrutiny too. We must embrace transparency by opening decision-making to public scrutiny and diverse perspectives, including local voices and Indigenous stakeholders, from the start.

Finally, infrastructure planning must account for long-term climate impacts on water availability. Planning for climate change is vital.

As projects such as the proposed Wyangala Dam expansion demonstrate, Australia can no longer afford to gamble its water future on outdated, costly and environmentally destructive solutions. It’s time to end the wasteful spending.

Instead, we need to channel our efforts into truly effective, sustainable and transparent water management. Strategies must give priority to community needs, First Nations’ water rights, environmental protection and long-term climate resilience.

John Kandulu is a recipient of funding from various sources, such as state and Commonwealth governments, as well as non-profit organisations. His affiliations include the Centre for Social Impact at Flinders University and the Environment Institute at the University of Adelaide.

Richard Kingsford receives funding from a range of organisations, including the Australian Research Council, state and Commonwealth governments, non-government organisations, including World Wide Fund for Nature and Australian Conservation Foundation. He is a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists and a councillor on the Biodiversity Council.

Sarah Ann Wheeler receives funding from a range of organisations, including the Australian Research Council, state and Commonwealth governments and non-government organisations.

– ref. Why building more big dams is a costly gamble for our future water security and the environment – https://theconversation.com/why-building-more-big-dams-is-a-costly-gamble-for-our-future-water-security-and-the-environment-239106

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frederik Juliaan Vervaet, Associate Professor of Ancient History, The University of Melbourne

The year is 50 BC. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely. One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders.

So begins the Asterix comic series, which positions Julius Caesar as the power-lusting dictator of the mighty Roman Empire who conquered all of Gaul. All except, of course, for one heroic village, where Asterix, Obelix and Dogmatix are among the Gauls (or Gaul dogs) frustrating Rome’s hapless legions.

Well, that’s the comic book version.

But who really were the Gauls? And why were they such a problem for Rome?

The Gauls are the most famous group of Celtic peoples who occupied most of the lands west of the Rhine, thus causing this area to be known in antiquity as Gaul.

They sported long blonde or reddish dreadlocks (often washing their hair in lime-water and pulling it back to the nape of the neck), handlebar moustaches on the men, colourful shirts and striped coats. The ethnonym Galli is believed to derive from a Celtic root gal- meaning “power” or “ability”, and has been linked to the Irish word gal, meaning “bravery” or “courage”.

Fearsome warriors

From the fifth to third centuries BCE, the Celtic tribes of central Europe were among the continent’s most fearsome warriors.

From their heartlands around what is now the Czech Republic (Bohemia derives its name from the powerful Boii Gallic tribe), they conquered the British Isles, all of France and Belgium (Gaul proper) and parts of Spain. They also conquered the fertile alluvial plains of what became known to Romans as Cisalpine Gaul, meaning “Gaul this side of the Alps”.

The Gauls even conquered lands as far afield as in present-day Turkey. The descendants from these once mighty peoples still live in Ireland (Gaelic comes from the word Gaul), Wales and Brittany.

The Gauls had a very warlike reputation. They produced tall and muscular warriors who often wore helmets that, according to the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, sometimes had horns attached or “images of the fore-parts of birds or four-footed animals”. He also wrote that:

The women of the Gauls are not only like the men in their great stature but they are a match for them in courage as well.

Gauls fought with long broad-swords, barbed spears, and chariots drawn by two horses. They fastened the severed heads of their enemies about the necks of their horses.

Possessing huge quantities of alluvial gold, Gallic nobles wore heavy necklaces (known as “torcs”) of solid gold and consumed untold amounts of imported wine, fabulously enriching Italian merchants.

Their acts of bravery were immortalised by lyric poets called bards, and they put great stock in their shamans, called druids, who also presided over regular human sacrifices.

In 387 BCE, Gallic raiders from Cisalpine Gaul sacked Rome. They only failed to take the Capitol because of a hostile incursion into their own homelands, forcing them to break camp and return – not before, however, exacting a crippling price in gold from the profoundly humiliated Romans.

The Romans were so impressed with Gallic military kit they resorted to wholesale plagiarism. The iconic armour of Roman republican legionaries was largely of Celtic origin.

Rome rallies against the Gauls

In 295 BCE, the Senones (a Gallic tribe) inhabiting the Adriatic coastline south of Cisalpine Gaul were part of an alliance soundly defeated by the Roman Republic in the battle of Sentinum.

This represented a watershed moment on the road to Roman hegemony in the Italian peninsula.

In 232, against the backdrop of renewed hostilities with the Cisalpine Gauls, leading Roman politician Gaius Flaminius passed legislation redistributing land won from the Senones (following their final defeat in 283) among Romans from the lower property classes.

To ease Roman colonisation, the same Flaminius in 220 commissioned the construction of the Via Flaminia, a paved speedway from Rome all the way to Rimini, at the doorstep of Cisalpine Gaul.

Fearing the same fate as the Senones, the Cisalpine Gauls united against Rome, aided by some Transalpine Gauls.

By 225, this alliance became strong enough to invade peninsular Italy, ravage Tuscany, and threaten Rome itself.

This famously triggered the Romans to muster all Roman and Italian manpower at their disposal (about 800,000 draftable men, according to ancient the historian Pliny).

Being now superior in every respect, the Romans and their Italian allies decisively defeated the Cisalpine Gauls in 223 and 222. The Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus even managed to kill a Gallic king in single combat.

The vanquished Cisalpine Gauls then joined the feared Carthaginian general Hannibal, who at the time posed a great risk to Rome and defeated its forces in many battles. They joined Hannibal en masse after he crossed the Alps to invade Italy in 218.

But Hannibal failed to vanquish Rome and was later defeated. The Roman conquest of Cisalpine Gaul continued after Roman forces defeated Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal at the Metaurus River in 207.

To secure their rich holdings in Cisalpine Gaul and the land corridor to their Spanish provinces, the Romans subsequently conquered first Liguria and next southern Gaul, incorporated as the Province of Transalpine Gaul. The area was so thoroughly colonised it is still known today as La Provence (“the province”).

Caesar’s self-interested war on the Gauls

Julius Caesar, eager to amass glory and wealth, subjugated all of Gaul in less than a decade (from 58 to 50 BCE).

He sold this outright aggression to the Senate and people in Rome as a war waged in defence of tribes allied with Rome, a necessary pre-emptive strike of sorts.

In addition to enslaving perhaps up to one million Gauls, Caesar proudly claimed to have killed well over another million, a staggering casualty rate considered by Pliny the Elder “a prodigious even if unavoidable wrong inflicted on the human race”.

Caesar got away with mass murder because he shamelessly played into lingering feelings of metus Gallicus, or “Gallic fear”.

The Roman fear of Gauls was heightened by the so-called Cimbric War that took place in earlier years, when a formidable confederacy of Germanic and Gallic tribes inflicted a series of costly defeats upon Rome, threatening Italy itself.

But Rome would triumph in the end. Under the leadership of Gaius Marius, the Romans destroyed these tribes in 102/101 BCE in Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul.

Turned into a Roman province in final stages of this war, Cisalpine Gaul eventually became so heavily Romanised it was incorporated into Roman Italy proper in 42 BCE.

Frederik Juliaan Vervaet receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. You’ve heard of Asterix and Obelix, but who really were the Gauls? And why were they such a problem for Rome? – https://theconversation.com/youve-heard-of-asterix-and-obelix-but-who-really-were-the-gauls-and-why-were-they-such-a-problem-for-rome-233447

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deryn Lee Thompson, Eczema and Allergy Nurse; Lecturer, University of South Australia

People often believe they are allergic to house dust. But of the 20% of Australians suffereing with allergies, a number are are actually allergic to microscopic house dust mites.

House dust mites belong to the same family as spiders and ticks. They measure just 0.2-0.3 mm, with 50 fitting on a single pinhead. They live for 65–100 days, and females lay 60–100 eggs in their life.

House dust mites love temperate climates and humidity. They feed off the skin cells we and animals shed, as well as mould, which they digest using special enzymes. These enzymes are excreted in their poo about 20 times a day. They also shed fragments of their exoskeletons.

All these fragments trigger allergies in people with this type of allergic rhinitis (which is also known as hay fever)

What are the symptoms?

When people with house dust mite allergy inhale the allergens, they penetrate the mucous membranes of the airways and eyes. Their body recognises the allergens as a threat, releasing chemicals including one called histamine.

This causes symptoms including a runny nose, an itchy nose, eyes and throat, sneezing, coughing and a feeling of mucus at the back of your throat (known as a post-nasal drip).

People with this type of allergy usually mouth breath, snore, rub their nose constantly (creating a nasal crease called the “dust mite salute”) and have dark shadows under their eyes.

House dust mite allergy can also cause poor sleep, constant tiredness, reduced concentration at work or school and lower quality of life.

For people with eczema, their damaged skin barrier can allow house dust mite proteins in. This prompts immune cells in the skin to release chemicals which make already flared skin become redder, sorer and itchier, especially in children.

Symptoms of house dust mite allergy occur year round, and are often worse after going to bed and when waking in the morning. But people with house dust mite allergy and pollen allergies find their year-round symptoms worsen in spring.

How is it diagnosed?

House dust mite allergy symptoms often build up over months, or even years before people seek help. But an accurate diagnosis means you can not only access the right treatment – it’s also vital for minimising exposure.

Doctor and nurse practitioners can order a blood test to check for house dust mite allergy.

Alternatively, health care providers with specialised allergy training can perform skin prick tests. This involves placing drops of the allergens on the arm, along with a positive and negative “control”. After 15 minutes, those who test positive will have developed a mosquito bite-like mark.

How is it treated?

Medication options include one or a combination of:

• daily non-sedating antihistamines
• a steroid nasal spray
• allergy eye drops.

Your health care professional will work with you to develop a rhinitis (hay fever) medical management plan to reduce your symptoms. If you’re using a nasal spray, your health provider will show you how to use it, as people often use it incorrectly.

If you also have asthma or eczema which is worsened by dust mites, your health provider will adapt your asthma action plan or eczema care plan accordingly.

If you experience severe symptoms, a longer-term option is immunotherapy. This aims to gradually turn off your immune system’s ability to recognise house dust mites as a harmful allergen.

Immunotherapy involves taking either a daily sublingual tablet, under the tongue, or a series of injections. Injections require monthly attendances over three years, after the initial weekly build-up phase.

These are effective, but are costly (as well as time-consuming). So it’s important to weigh up the potential benefits and downsides with your health-care provider.

How can you minimise house dust mites?

There are also important allergy minimisation measures you can take to reduce allergens in your home.

Each week, wash your bedding and pyjamas in hot water (over 60°C). This removes house dust mite eggs and debris.

Opt for doonas, covers or quilts that can be washed in hot water above 60°C. Alternatively, low-cost waterproof or leak proof covers can keep house dust mites out.

If you can, favour blinds and wood floors over curtains and carpet. Dust blinds and surfaces with a damp cloth each week and vacuum while wearing a mask, or have someone else do it, as house dust mites can become airborne during cleaning.

But beware of costly products with big marketing budgets and little evidence to support their use. A new mattress, for example, will always be house dust mite-free. But once slept on, the house dust mite life cycle can start.

Mattress protectors and toppers commonly claim to be “hypoallergenic”, “anti-allergy” or “allergy free”. But their pore sizes are not small enough to keep house dust mites and their poo out, or shed skin going through.

Sprays claiming to kill mites require so much spray to penetrate the product that it’s likely to become wet, may smell like the spray and, unless dried properly, may grow mould.

Finally, claims that expensive vacuum cleaners can extract all the
house dust mites are unsubstantiated.

For more information, visit healthdirect.gov.au or the Australian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy.

Deryn Lee Thompson is affiliated Loreal, Ego Pharmaceuticals and Quality Use of Medicines Alliance having received honorariums for educational talks or advisory work. Deryn has also undertaken voluntary work with Eczema Support Australia

– ref. What are house dust mites and how do I know if I’m allergic to them? – https://theconversation.com/what-are-house-dust-mites-and-how-do-i-know-if-im-allergic-to-them-240918

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Nelson, Associate Professor of Soil Science, James Cook University

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is naturally removed from the air when it reacts with certain types of rock. We can accelerate this process by crushing suitable rocks and spreading them over agricultural fields. This simple method, known as “enhanced rock weathering”, could vastly increase the rate of CO₂ removal from the atmosphere.

Modelling studies suggest billions of tonnes of CO₂ might be removed annually if crushed rocks were applied to croplands globally. With current energy-related emissions at 37 billion tonnes a year, this means enhanced weathering could contribute in a big way to reaching net zero emissions. A new industry is rapidly emerging to do just that.

But before everyone gets too carried away, it’s crucial to be able to measure how much CO₂ is captured. Both industry and governments will need accurate measurements for effective policy, regulation and reporting.

In our new research, we measured CO₂ capture in a tropical agricultural soil. We found the CO₂ capture rate was low in this soil, despite significant weathering. This means soil type needs to be carefully considered when estimating CO₂ capture rate.

What is rock weathering?

Rock rich in calcium and/or magnesium, such as basalt, can be crushed and spread over the soil to capture CO₂. The rock can be mined for this purpose or obtained as a byproduct from other mines or from gravel making.

In soil, the CO₂ dissolves to form carbonic acid, which is what makes drinks fizzy. This acid can react with the rocks, converting CO₂ into bicarbonate, which traps the carbon in solution.

Bicarbonate can be further converted in the soil and stored as solid carbonate (limestone). Or it can leach into groundwater, then rivers to the sea, where it is stored long-term as dissolved bicarbonate or as carbonate rock.

Rock weathering happens naturally on geological time scales. But for the technology to work in tackling climate change, we need to speed it up.

Existing mining equipment can be used to grind the rock, while agricultural spreaders typically used to distribute lime can spread the crushed rock over the land.

Adding crushed rock in this way can improve soil health and crop production because it neutralises soil acidity, supplies nutrients such as magnesium, calcium and phosphorus, and can help increase soil organic content.

How much CO₂ is captured?

In the Midwest United States, potential CO₂ removal rates of up to 2.6 tonnes of CO₂ per hectare per year have been estimated over a four-year period. This was based on applying 50 tonnes of finely crushed basalt per hectare every year. That rate is close to the highest natural rate reported globally, in Java, Indonesia (2.8 tonnes of CO₂ per hectare per year).

But when we applied crushed basalt to a sugarcane field in Australia, over five years at the same rate, we had very different results. Our measurements of bicarbonate and carbonate in soil and water showed very low rates of CO₂ removal.

Overall, the results from laboratory and field trials vary greatly from one study to the next. CO₂ removal estimates range from 0.02 to more than 10 tonnes of CO₂ per hectare. This variation could be due to the nature of the crushed rock and the way it was applied, the climate, soil type, cropping system and the duration of the trial. The figure also depends on the measurement method used.

Are we measuring it right?

We have now shown there can be a large gap between directly measured carbon capture and the amount estimated in other ways. Direct measurement of CO₂ removal through conversion to bicarbonate and carbonate in soil and water can be difficult and costly. So far, this is mainly done in research trials, as we did in our studies.

Other techniques are being developed to estimate in-field CO₂ removal in a way that is easier for monitoring, reporting and verifying large-scale projects. These estimates use a combination of modelling and estimates of weathering rate.

We have shown in a glasshouse study that the discrepancy between measured and estimated CO₂ capture varies a lot between soils. We found this discrepancy is largely driven by soil acidity.

In our recent field trial in an acidic soil, weathering was mostly due to acids that are stronger than carbonic acid. The added rock preferentially reacts with these stronger acids rather than carbonic acid, so rock weathering takes place, but without capturing much CO₂.

Great potential

It’s becoming increasingly clear greenhouse gases will have to be removed from the atmosphere if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. Carbon emissions must be cut, but these cuts won’t be deep enough to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. So carbon removals will need to equal remaining emissions.

Enhanced rock weathering has great potential for CO₂ removal, but we don’t yet have robust ways of measuring its effectiveness. There is a need to better understand the reactions in soil that affect CO₂ removal across different soil types and under different management. We may also need to continue directly measuring carbon capture until we have confidence in more convenient estimates.

Paul Nelson receives research funding from the Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation, Sugar Research Australia, UNDO Carbon, Consolidated Pastoral Company and the Australian Government.

Wolfram Buss 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. Spreading crushed rock over farmland can remove CO₂ from the atmosphere if we do it right – https://theconversation.com/spreading-crushed-rock-over-farmland-can-remove-co-from-the-atmosphere-if-we-do-it-right-240303

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

René Magritte is renowned for his humorous yet enigmatic art, foremost of which is the iconic bowler-hatted man. But despite his significant contribution to Surrealism – and the fame of his works – the evolution of his artistic practice isn’t widely known.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales’ Magritte exhibit marks the first major exhibition of the artist’s work in Australia, opening almost exactly 100 years after André Breton published the first Surrealist Manifesto in 1924.

The exhibition unveils four decades of Magritte’s unique artistic vision, with more than 100 works from collections across Australia, Belgium, Japan and the United States.

The man beyond the bowler hat

Magritte was born in 1898 in Lessines, Belgium. He developed a strong passion for painting early on. At just 16, he enrolled in the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he received traditional artistic training. He also worked as a graphic designer in his early career to support himself financially, creating various advertisements for magazine covers and posters.

Magritte was driven to explore and enhance his artistic practice beyond the Belgian art scene’s conservative aesthetics and limited opportunities for experimentation.

He found inspiration in magazines, journals and exhibition catalogues depicting avant-garde works. His earliest known self-portrait exemplifies his early influence by Cubism. It is a double-sided work, with one side featuring a painted portrait of Georgette Berger (who later became Magritte’s wife) playing the piano.

However, it was Magritte’s encounter with surrealist artworks (particularly Italian artist Giorgio De Chirico’s Le Chant d’amour, with its dreamlike atmosphere) which greatly impacted his practice.

From the mid-1920s, Magritte began to develop personal and poetic images featuring familiar objects rendered realistically yet set in unexpected combinations. He also introduced motifs that would appear throughout his career, such as curtains, toys, clouds and boulders. His first solo exhibition at the Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels signalled his allegiance to Surrealism.

Art as a process of reasoning

The Magritte exhibition foregrounds the artist’s work in the context of Belgian Surrealism, emphasising how he was influenced by fellow writers, philosophers and artists in Brussels.

Among these figures was the poet Paul Nougé, the founding figure of Belgian Surrealism in 1926. Nougé introduced a more scientific and rationalist perspective to the Belgian movement, differentiating it from its Parisian counterpart.

Parisian Surrealism was fascinated by psychoanalysis, focusing on the irrational and the unconscious. Belgian Surrealism, meanwhile, directed its attention towards consciousness, rationality and the search for meaning. This methodology clashed with the convictions of Parisian surrealists.

Although Magritte worked with the Parisian surrealists from 1927 to 1930 while living in Paris, he maintained a degree of independence. He considered his artistic practice as a process of reasoning.

While in Paris, Magritte developed his word-pictures, as seen in The Literal Meaning and the famous The Treachery of Images (more familiarly known as Ceci n’est pas une pipe, or This is not a pipe), which today is regarded as a landmark in the history of European modern art.

His approach relied on Nougé’s reflection on the nature and status of words and images, pointing to the arbitrary nature of language. In these works, Magritte invites us to take part in a linguistic game, making us question the relationship between an object, its name and its representative image.

Back in Brussels, Magritte explored what he considered philosophical “problems” through rigorously, almost mathematically, constructed paintings. He sought to reconcile the object represented and “the thing attached to it in the shadow of consciousness” through the mediation of the canvas.

In The Human Condition, he addresses the “problem of the window” as an object to look through and as a metaphor for traditional perspectival painting, revealing the way we perceive external realities through our own internal conceptualisation.

‘Sunlit Surrealism’ and lesser-known works

The Magritte exhibit also highlights some surprising and much lesser-known works. By the mid-1930s, the artist had gained significant recognition in Europe and beyond. However, the onset of World War II prompted him to question the relevance of Surrealism as a response to the war.

He sought new approaches to Surrealism. With “Sunlit Surrealism” he looked at images evocative of happiness, adopting an impressionist style characterised by feathery brushstrokes reminiscent of Auguste Renoir, as depicted in A stroke of luck.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, Magritte returned to the realistic style that defines his work. In his art series The Dominion of Light, he creates a paradoxical image. We view the qualities of light from opposite times of day, highlighting the ambiguity created by the coexistence of light and dark.

A continuing legacy

Magritte also influenced the next generation of artists associated with pop art and conceptual art, including those well beyond his time.

Today, his influence is evident in popular visual culture, from Pedro Almodóvar’s 2009 film Broken Embraces, to Beyoncé’s music video for Mine, which references The lovers.

Magritte’s work continues to be relevant, with its exploration of perception and the porous relationship between images and reality. This theme is highly pertinent in the age of AI, where the line between the artificial and real seems increasingly blurred.

More than 50 years after his death, Magritte continues to encourage us to reflect on how we perceive, experience and describe the world around us.

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

– ref. ‘Consciousness, rationality and the search for meaning’: how René Magritte led the Belgian surrealist movement – https://theconversation.com/consciousness-rationality-and-the-search-for-meaning-how-rene-magritte-led-the-belgian-surrealist-movement-241253

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tracey Holmes, Professorial Fellow in Sport, University of Canberra

Athletes’ voices are a necessity in the matrix of good sports governance, a message reinforced at last week’s annual Australia New Zealand Sports Law Association conference in Sydney, attended by some of the world’s best – and busiest – sports lawyers.

The timing was perfect.

It came just days after more than 100 professional female soccer players signed a letter to the sport’s global governing body, FIFA, urging them to reconsider a sponsorship deal with Saudi-owned oil giant Aramco.

The signatories, including five Australians, described the deal as “a middle finger to women’s football”, and “a stomach punch to the women’s game”, which has “set us so far back that it’s hard to fully take in”.

Just how it set back the juggernaut of women’s soccer was not sufficiently explained.

“FIFA might as well pour oil on the pitch and set it alight,” the authors continued. Emotional stuff.

Soccer in Saudi Arabia

Aramco has been targeted by the athlete activists because it is one of the world’s largest fossil fuel polluters contributing to climate change.

However, that message was almost lost in the two-page letter that focused far more on Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, its imprisonment of women’s rights activists, and its harsh laws against same sex relationships – which can result in the death penalty.

The players rightly referred to women’s soccer globally as providing a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community, which in turn has contributed to the recent phenomenal growth of the women’s game.

But the authors either chose to ignore, or were not aware of, the phenomenal growth of the women’s game in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia itself, and the role it is playing in empowering women across a broad range of sectors who less than a decade ago were not even allowed to drive.

Saudi Arabia’s current 2024-2025 semi-professional women’s soccer season is underway boasting more than 200 players from 20 nations. The season features ten teams playing 90 matches at the senior level, while more than 77,000 girls play at schools across the nation.

It is easy to claim, as many have done, that this is purely an exercise in sportswashing.

But that ignores that soccer is also helping to facilitate a fast-moving cultural shift in Saudi Arabia, and the region more broadly, while being careful not to attract the attention of some of the ultra-conservative religious leaders who remain committed to the region’s more traditional ways.

One of the teams in the Saudi Women’s Premier League is the Eastern Flames. It was originally established in 2006 with players from the Aramco community.

Despite significant hurdles for women to play sport at all, the team survived and flourished and has been elevated into the professional league.

It would be interesting to know how many of the players who signed the letter to FIFA knew of the Aramco community and how, against the odds and prevailing culture at the time, they’ve built a club from the grassroots and turned it into a Super League team.

What about the LGBTQIA+ community?

“Imagine LGBTQIA+ players, many of whom are heroes of our sport, being expected to promote Saudi Aramco during the 2027 World Cup, the national company of a regime that criminalises the relationships that they are in and the values they stand for”, the letter states.

In a global sporting world, “values” often come into conflict, particularly when conversations of inclusion and religion appear in the same sentence.

While the LGBTQIA+ community is often highlighted as a group that has benefited from soccer’s inclusive agenda, it should be recognised that members of that same group inside Saudi Arabia have no doubt benefited also.

Unlike the west, though, where exhibitions of gay pride are accepted and sometimes celebrated, in conservative Gulf societies outward displays of affection by any couple or group (including heterosexuals) are forbidden.

Those inside the LGBTQIA+ community in conservative nations have warned those in the west that their public criticisms may have adverse consequences – making them a target when they needn’t be.

In their societies, sexuality is a matter for behind closed doors, away from the authority’s public gaze.

Issues closer to home

If the letter’s initial intention was indeed to raise the issue of fossil fuel and climate change, we needn’t look as far as the Middle East. There are environmental concerns worldwide, including in Australia which, with New Zealand, hosted the most recent and widely celebrated FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023.

Earth.org recently reported that Australia’s fossil fuel exports contribute to global emissions more than any other country aside from Russia – owing particularly to the footprint of coal exports.

Australia has also been singled out for its role in what the small island nation of Tuvalu has described as a “death sentence” if Australia goes ahead with its planned fossil fuel expansion alongside other Commonwealth heavyweights, the United Kingdwom and Canada.

Many of the players who signed the FIFA-bound letter are high profile athletes from those very nations. Yet they expressed no such concerns in 2023, despite Australia’s fossil fuel industry and climate change impact.

The athletes’ voice can be a powerful tool, as history has shown. Its value though stems not from how loud it is, but how well informed it is.

Tracey Holmes 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. Is FIFA’s sponsorship deal with a Saudi-owned oil giant really ‘a middle finger’ to women’s soccer? – https://theconversation.com/is-fifas-sponsorship-deal-with-a-saudi-owned-oil-giant-really-a-middle-finger-to-womens-soccer-242109

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Pickles, Professor of History, University of Canterbury

In the final week of the US presidential election campaign, there is a real possibility a woman will make it into the top job. But why has it taken so long – and has Kamala Harris got what it takes to make history?

My research examines celebrated women in history and how, collectively, they represent women’s changing status in society. In particular, I have looked for the historical themes and patterns that explain the rise of the first elected women leaders.

Women in politics are generally assumed to be a minority, emerging from a position of disadvantage. When successful, they are considered exceptions in a masculine system that was previously out of bounds.

But due to the complex workings of gender, race, class and culture, it’s not quite that straightforward, as discussion of Harris’s biracial identity shows.

I have identified three broad groups of women who have succeeded in becoming elected leaders of their countries since Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) became the world’s first female prime minister in 1960.

Does Kamala Harris fit within any of these groups? And, if so, based on the pattern so far, does she have what it takes to become president? Or does being a global superpower mean the US demands a new form of female leadership?

Born to rule

This first group came to power largely due to old hereditary, dynastic traditions rather than through new democratic systems.

Bandaranaike was known as the “gentle widow” of Solomon Bandaranaike, the fourth prime minister of Ceylon, who was assassinated in 1959. After her came a cohort of dynastic women leaders, including three others who succeeded assassinated fathers: Indira Gandhi (India), Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan) and Park Geun-hye (South Korea).

Three others in this group – Corazon Aquino (Philippines), Violeta Chamorro (Nicaragua) and Khaleda Zia (Bangladesh) – followed their assassinated husbands into office.

There by default, coming to power to regenerate family dynasties, these women built images based on traditional mother figures, offering deliverance by “giving birth” to newly decolonised nations. In the words of her biographer, Bandaranaike was “the symbol, the figurehead that was necessary; the spark to ignite the flame”.

It took until 2016 for Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen to become the first woman leader from Asia not born into a political family.

The importance of family dynasty explains the apparent paradox of female leaders emerging in countries with extreme gender, class and ethnic inequalities, with Islamic nations being among the earliest to elect women.

While hailing from an elite political family has benefits for women leaders, the inverse may be true for Kamala Harris: not coming from a dynasty may be an advantage in a nation that prides itself on being an egalitarian, self-made melting pot.

Of course, US political dynasties have developed with the Bush and Kennedy clans. But Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in 2016 was likely due in part to voters rejecting a Clinton dynasty. Being the daughter of migrants from India and Jamaica might actually help Harris this time.

Conservative ‘honorary men’

There’s a second group of politically conservative, largely White Western women. Some, like Golda Meir (Israel) and Margaret Thatcher (United Kingdom), were elected.

But others – Kim Campbell (Canada), Jenny Shipley (New Zealand) and Theresa May and Liz Truss (UK) – were chosen by their parties during an elected term. This may reflect a general reluctance by conservative voters to embrace change and vote for women.

As such, women in this group seek to be male equals, to reach the top as “honorary men”, ready to prove their strength. Margaret Thatcher played the “iron lady” and upped her ratings during the 1982 Falklands War. Golda Meir could be cast as a nurturing grandmother who made chicken soup, or “the overbearing mother who ruled the roost with her iron hand”, as later Israeli president Chaim Herzog said.

Harris doesn’t fit within this group. Were she a Republican she might be able to present as an auntie and caring stepmother who upholds the right to bear arms. But with her appeal to the politically progressive side of US society, not fitting the conservative mould may be to her advantage.

Social change-makers

A third group of women leaders skews left and actively resists restrictive maternal and gender roles. While the great majority of women world leaders have had children, this group contains a number who have not.

Unlike those in the first two groups, they often question dominant, masculine power structures and seek reform of the political system. Generally, it is hardest for these women to be elected.

Being highly educated, with careers in academia and public service, is a common experience and route to political power for this group. For example, Gro Harlem Brundtland (Norway) trained as a medical doctor, Mary McAleese (Ireland) as a lawyer and academic, and Angela Merkel (Germany) has a PhD in quantum chemistry.

These women attempt to craft new forms of leadership. They encourage more women to join them in power, and challenge sexism, homophobia and racism. More generally, they work to transform global governance, promoting pluralism, tolerance and kindness.

Since Elizabeth Domitien was elected prime minister of the Central African Republic in 1975, more women leaders of this stripe have emerged, including Vigdis Finnbogadóttir (Iceland), Mary Robinson (Ireland), Sylvie Kinigi (Burundi), Michelle Bachelet (Chile), Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand), Julia Gillard (Australia), and Tarja Halonen and Sanna Marin (Finland).

The Harris challenge

Kamala Harris fits most obviously within this group. She is highly educated and experienced in public service. And she has not had children, unlike so many in the other two groups.

For that she has been branded a “childless cat lady”, of course, which points to perhaps her biggest obstacle: the alpha male culture in an alpha military superpower.

Unsurprisingly, rival military powers Russia and China are yet to elect a woman leader. It may be that being a social change-maker and having one’s finger on the nuclear button requires a new form of female leadership – a new-age warrior woman, perhaps.

It only remains to be seen whether the US, the world and Harris herself are ready for that role.

Katie Pickles received funding from Royal Society Te Apārangi as a James Cook Fellow to work on The Heroine with a Thousand Faces.

– ref. First among equals: how Kamala Harris must rewrite the history of female political leadership to win – https://theconversation.com/first-among-equals-how-kamala-harris-must-rewrite-the-history-of-female-political-leadership-to-win-241880

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Markus Wagner, Professor of Law and Director of the UOW Transnational Law and Policy Centre, University of Wollongong

With the US elections weeks away, the political battle is heating up, with both sides claiming the upper hand.

However, elections are not always won or lost at the polls. Increasingly, court proceedings are used to achieve desired political outcomes.

The media focuses on a handful of states, known as swing states, because they often swing between red and blue and can therefore play a major role in election outcomes. These races are tightening, with many state polls making it a contest too close to call.

Given their electoral importance, any legal challenges in these states are of potentially great significance. Some are already underway, while others could follow the November 5 vote.

A history of voter suppression

Democrats have tended to favour providing greater access to voting, whereas Republicans have, at times, attempted to restrict access to voting because of concerns over the integrity of the elections.

The issues of access and integrity are more perception than reality, according to both Democrat-leaning and Republican-leaning studies.

This has created a two-tiered system of democracy that, depending on where you live, dramatically influences how you are able to vote.

For decades, Republicans and Democrats have been divided over who has access to voting, and how voting should be administered. Some buzzwords include so-called voter ID laws, the gerrymandering of electoral districts, and curtailing early voting.

Another battleground is the closing of physical polling places.

From the polls to the courts

During the 2020 elections, legal battles were largely waged in the courts after voting day.

Then-President Donald Trump, unwilling to concede the election, filed 62 lawsuits, withdrew many of them, and lost the remainder.

Democrats now face a Republican Party and a supporting cast of characters that has drawn lessons from their failure to overturn the 2020 election results in court. Besides restricting voting access, Republicans and their allies in state legislatures are preparing the ground to restrict vote counting.

This has resulted in more than 165 lawsuits, mostly initiated by Republicans or their allies in a self-proclaimed “unprecedented legal strategy”.

Cases run the gamut from voter eligibility, to the counting of absentee ballots, to vote certification.

In response, Democrats have formed their own “voter protection” units in key swing states, hiring lawyers by the dozen.

Georgia in the spotlight

These changes have taken place in almost all the battleground states, but are most visible in Georgia, which has become ground zero in the 2024 legal election battles.

Georgia was the state Trump narrowly lost in 2020, prompting him to call Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have”.

This would have overturned the state’s election results by one vote. Raffensperger refused.

What’s changed since 2020 is that the Trump campaign and its allies have taken a much more systematic approach, laying the ground for election subversion.

Republicans have continued their efforts to limit access to voting through so-called voter purges in states like Alabama, Texas and Virginia. Election officials struck thousands of eligible voters from the electoral rolls. Courts have had to step in to reverse these endeavours.

The Georgia legislature passed bills in 2021 and 2024 expanding the powers of the Georgia State Election Board. This board is legally tasked with conducting “fair, legal and orderly elections”.

These bills aimed to radically change the appointment procedure and how elections are administered. The Georgia legislature now elects the members of the State Election Board and has removed the Secretary of State (currently Raffensperger) as the chair of that board.

The supposed non-partisan board is now dominated by staunchly pro-Trump members, which Trump called “pitbulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory”.

The board attempted to make last-minute changes on September 20 2024 to the state’s election rules. This includes that ballots (as opposed to the actual votes) be counted by hand and that the certification of election results could be delayed if local election boards doubt the validity of election results.

In a sharply worded letter and stating its exceptional nature, the Georgia attorney-general’s office warned the board it had exceeded its authority.

Such rule changes so close to an election were held to be disfavoured, based on a previous US Supreme Court judgement that pointed out:

court orders affecting elections, especially conflicting orders, can themselves result in voter confusion and consequent incentive to remain away from the polls. As an election draws closer, that risk will increase.

These rule changes were ultimately blocked by Georgia courts. The Superior Court found the resulting “administrative chaos” to be “entirely inconsistent with the obligations of our boards of elections (and the State Election Board) to ensure that our elections are fair, legal, and orderly”. Georgia’s Supreme Court declined to hear a subsequent appeal by Republicans on procedural grounds.

The possible delay in certification was similarly struck down in court:

if election superintendents were […] free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and […] refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced. Our Constitution and our Election Code do not allow for that to happen.

Similar changes are afoot elsewhere. This risks that several million legally cast votes might not be counted in the 2024 elections. This would almost certain affect the results of the election.

What’s the end game?

In the end, this strategy is all about who wins the presidency.

What makes 2024 different is that Trump’s 2020 efforts targeted the outcome of the elections. While this strategy was unsuccessful, it contributed to the atmosphere that culminated in the storming of the Congress on January 6, 2021.

In 2024, the aim is to sow doubts about the legitimacy of the election process.

This has the potential to result in a chilling effect on voting, given that US elections are turnout elections.

Extending the political battlefield to the courts to limit or remove votes, or delay the results, risks long-term damage to democracy by calling into question the legitimacy of the electoral process.

Markus Wagner 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. In 2020, Trump went to the courts after losing. This time, the legal challenges have already started – https://theconversation.com/in-2020-trump-went-to-the-courts-after-losing-this-time-the-legal-challenges-have-already-started-241266

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

The United States presidential election will be held on November 5. In analyst Nate Silver’s aggregate of national polls, Democrat Kamala Harris leads Republican Donald Trump by 48.6–47.4, a gain for Trump since last Wednesday, when Harris led by 48.8–47.2. Harris’ national lead peaked on October 2, when she led by 49.4–45.9.

The US president isn’t elected by the national popular vote, but by the Electoral College, in which each state receives electoral votes equal to its federal House seats (population based) and senators (always two). Almost all states award their electoral votes as winner-takes-all, and it takes 270 electoral votes to win (out of 538 total).

Relative to the national popular vote, the Electoral College is biased to Trump, with Harris needing at least a two-point popular vote win to be the narrow Electoral College favourite in Silver’s model.

In Silver’s poll averages, Trump is now 0.3% ahead in Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), which was tied last Wednesday. He leads in North Carolina (16) and Georgia (16) by 1.3–1.4 points and in Arizona (11) by 2.1 points. Harris leads in Michigan (15 electoral votes) by 0.7 points and in Wisconsin (ten) by 0.5 points. In Nevada (six), it’s tied.

If the election results exactly reflect the current polls, Trump would win the Electoral College by 281–251 with Nevada’s six electoral votes undecided.

The good news for Harris is that state polls haven’t moved to Trump as much as national polls in the last two weeks. If Harris regains the lead in Pennsylvania, she will probably win. But Harris would likely be better placed in Pennsylvania now if she had made the popular Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro her running mate.

Silver’s model now gives Trump a 53% chance to win the Electoral College, unchanged from last Wednesday. While Trump is barely ahead, it’s still effectively a 50–50 coin flip. There’s a 26% chance that Harris wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College. The FiveThirtyEight forecast gives Trump a 54% win probability.

There’s just over a week until the election. If there’s late movement to either Harris or Trump or either candidate outperforms their polls, that candidate could win decisively. While the election appears very close now, it may not be so close once we see results.

Silver wrote Saturday that worries about illegal immigration are a key issue for Trump supporters. In the three years that Joe Biden has been president, apprehensions at the US southwestern border surged to record highs, with 2.2 million apprehensions in the 2022 fiscal year

LNP margin extended in Queensland on late counting

With 68% of enrolled voters now counted in Saturday’s Queensland election, The Poll Bludger’s results give the Liberal National Party (LNP) 44 of the 93 seats, Labor 27, Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) three and independents one.

Including undecided seats where one party leads, it’s 53 LNP, 34 Labor, four KAP, one Green and one independent. In Saturday night’s article, the LNP led Labor by 49 seats to 38. Analyst Kevin Bonham expects the final result to be 52 LNP, 34 Labor, five KAP, one Green and one independent.

Vote shares have also moved to the LNP, as they now lead Labor by 54.1–45.9 on the estimated two-party vote, compared with 53.1–46.9 on Saturday night. Primary votes are 42.0% LNP, 32.7% Labor, 9.4% Greens, 7.8% One Nation, 2.6% KAP and 5.5% for all Others.

On the statewide two-party vote, the most accurate poll taken in the last two weeks is currently a YouGov poll that gave the LNP a 54.5–45.5 lead. Resolve gave the LNP a 53–47 lead, Newspoll gave them a 52.5–47.5 lead and uComms was the worst, giving the LNP just a 51–49 lead.

Analyst Ben Raue wrote in The Guardian that Labor is trailing in 11 of its 14 regional seats while doing much better in south-east Queensland. Right-wing parties have been gaining in regional areas in Australia and internationally in the last ten years, while the left has gained in higher-education, urban areas.

In Australia Labor can win elections if it dominates big cities except in Queensland and Tasmania. I wrote about this in April 2022 and May 2021.

ACT election final result

The ACT uses the Hare-Clark proportional representation method with five five-member electorates, for a total of 25 seats. A quota is one-sixth of the vote or 16.7%.

The final result of the October 19 election was ten Labor (steady since 2020), nine Liberals (steady), four Greens (down two) and two independents (up two). Labor retained office in coalition with the Greens; they have governed in the ACT since 2001.

ACT-wide vote shares were 34.1% Labor (down 3.7%), 33.5% Liberals (down 0.4%), 12.2% Greens (down 1.3%), 8.5% Independents for Canberra (new) and 11.7% for all Others (down 3.1%).

In Brindabella, the Liberals had 2.59 quotas, Labor 2.03, the Greens 0.54 and Independents for Canberra 0.46.

It was initially thought that postals would help the Liberals win the last seat, but they didn’t do well enough on postals, and the Greens defeated the Liberals for the last seat by 166 votes or 0.02 quotas. Bonham followed this count.

Teal wins Pittwater by bigger than expected margin

New South Wales byelections in the Liberal-held seats of Epping, Hornsby and Pittwater occurred on October 19. Labor didn’t contest any of these seats, and the Liberals retained Epping and Hornsby easily.

In Pittwater, The Poll Bludger’s election night forecast was a 54.1–45.9 win for teal independent Jacqui Scruby, but she actually won by 56.2–43.8, a 6.8% swing to Scruby since the 2023 state election. Primary votes were 54.5% Scruby (up 18.6%), 41.5% Liberals (down 3.2%) and 4.0% for a Libertarian (new). Labor and the Greens, who received a combined 17.0% in 2023, didn’t contest.

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

– ref. US presidential election remains very close; late counting in Australian elections – https://theconversation.com/us-presidential-election-remains-very-close-late-counting-in-australian-elections-242281

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Jefferson, Senior Lecturer in Education, Edith Cowan University

We are in the last stretch of the school year and just weeks away from final reports.

For some students, results may indicate serious gaps in skills or knowledge. This may be a result of circumstances outside their control, for instance, serious illness or teacher shortages. But some families may be wondering if the gaps are serious enough to consider repeating the year.

We know successful learning usually happens when we have the opportunity to rehearse, repeat and practise something multiple times.

But when it comes to getting children to repeat a year of school, research shows it is usually not a good idea.

How many students repeat?

There is little current information about the rates of repeating in Australia.

In 2014, about 7.5% of 15-year-olds had repeated one year over the course of their schooling, down slightly from 8% in 2009.

Repeating a year remains a common practice in other countries, such as France and Spain. But there has been a shift away from repeating in Australian schools.

For younger children in particular, the focus has shifted to stopping students from starting too young – rather than delaying their progression once they get to school.

Repeating does not usually work

It is well documented repeating a year typically has a negative impact on a student’s social and emotional needs.

It is supposed to help a student “catch up” but can instead harm their motivation and engagement. Counterintuitively, it can also harm their progress in literacy and numeracy if they are not motivated or interested in school.

As a 2021 review of 84 studies showed, repeating a year can see students left behind by their friends, harm a student’s confidence, and worsen their behaviour at school if they are unhappy.

It also found on average, repeaters and non-repeaters seemed to show a similar level of development – so there was no tangible benefit to repeating a year.

This is why education departments now only suggest repeating a year in “exceptional circumstances”. Particularly in the primary years, schools will work with students to help them catch up in term 4 for the following year.

What can you do instead?

So if your child is struggling academically – or with some other element at school – how can you approach it?

You can start by investigating and understanding why your child is struggling. Does your child need specialist help for a learning difficulty? Is there an issue with bullying or another social problem that is harming their progress? Or is there something else going on for them outside school?

Other things you can do include:

1. stay in touch with your child’s school: it could include casual chats with the teacher outside the classroom after school. For older students it could mean monitoring due dates for assessments on the school’s information portal

2. think about how old your child is: especially when children are younger a few months can make a huge difference. If your child is struggling, is it because they are several months younger than most of your peers? This may mean you need to be patient and know with more time they will catch up

3. ask teachers for more specific help: helping students of differing stages and abilities to learn is core work for teachers. And they can use different strategies to help students learn

4. consider a tutor: if you child needs extra help, this could be one way to assist their learning. However, it is important to choose your tutor carefully and make sure a tutor’s approach matches your child’s specific needs.

It can feel very difficult as a parent to see your child struggling or failing academically at school. Let them know it is OK. Tell them it’s what they do next that matters and they are not alone. You are here to help.

And when in doubt, communicate your concerns clearly and consistently with the school.

Sarah Jefferson 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. Is it a good idea to repeat a year at school? – https://theconversation.com/is-it-a-good-idea-to-repeat-a-year-at-school-242106

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jianxin Wang, Associate professor of finance, University of Technology Sydney

With the US presidential election on a knife edge and less than a week away, financial markets are watching with bated breath.

There’s no shortage of reasons to be nervous. Both sides have outlined radically different visions of America’s economic future, with major implications for the rest of the world.

All of this stands against the backdrop of simmering tensions with China and an ongoing crisis in the Middle East. The price of gold – a common way for investors to hedge against uncertainty – has soared to record heights.

Many have been speculating about what might be in store for the stock market and the economy – both in the United States and here in Australia.

Obviously, that depends on far more than just who is sitting in the Oval Office. However, looking at history still tells an interesting – and perhaps surprising – story.

Read more:
From mass deportations to huge tariff hikes, here’s what Trump’s economic program would do to the US and Australia

Elephants, donkeys, bulls and bears

In the United States, both sides of the political divide are subject to some oversimplifying stereotypes.

Democrats are often seen as the party of proactive government spending, favouring policies that redistribute wealth through taxation. Republicans, on the other hand, have a reputation as the business-friendly party of small government, favouring more passive policies with lower tax rates.

So, it might surprise you to learn that if we zoom out and look at a big chunk of the past century, the US economy and its stock markets have actually performed better under Democratic presidencies, on two key measures.

Research by Lubos Pastor and Pietro Veronesi from the University of Chicago examined the period between 1927 and 2015.

They found average growth in gross domestic product (GDP) was 4.86% under Democratic presidents. Under Republican presidencies, it averaged 1.7%.

Over the same period, the US share market’s “equity risk premium” was also 10.9% higher under Democratic presidents than Republicans. In the years from 1999 to 2015, it was even higher under democratic presidents – 17.4%.

This is the excess rate of return that can be earned by investing in shares above the “risk-free rate” (such as the interest rate on a savings account).

Why is it worth looking at the risk premium instead of total share market returns? Because it helps separate out the effect of interest rates.

The return on assets like shares is comprised of the risk-free rate from banks plus this risk premium. Risk-free rates are largely determined by central banks, which in most countries are independent from the government.

What might be driving this effect?

Whether this performance reflects good luck or good policies is much harder to answer. If the effect was arising from superior policy decisions, it would imply voters have been repeatedly failing to reward good government.

Pastor and Veronesi argue something different – that when the economy is weak and stock prices are low, voters are more risk-averse. That can lead them to prefer the wealth redistribution policies of the Democrats.

The last three transitions from Republican to Democratic presidencies support this theory. Bill Clinton was elected shortly after the 1990-91 recession, Barack Obama at the peak of the global financial crisis, and Joe Biden during the pandemic.

As the economy recovers from a crisis, stock prices often increase. Pastor and Veronesi’s thesis suggests that the election – and the good performance – of Democratic presidents comes down to the timing of voters’ heightened risk aversion.

Highly interlinked economies

Historically, monthly stock returns in Australia and the US have been highly correlated – my calculations show this is even more so in election years.

Correlation famously doesn’t say anything about causation, just that when we see change in one, we typically see a similar change in the other. That means some of the effects we described earlier can be felt here (and around the world), as well.

Expanding their long-term analysis internationally, Pastor and Veronesi found that the average equity risk premium of Australian stocks was also higher under Democratic presidencies in the US – by 11.3%!

Similar higher returns were also observed in the United Kingdom – 7.3%. And they were even larger in Canada, France, and Germany – all about 13%.

Two factors may help explain why what happens in the US is so wide-reaching. Stocks in these markets are globally owned. US presidential elections may reflect the cycle of global risk aversion, which in turn affects local stock markets.

These economies and financial markets are also highly integrated with the US in areas such as trade, making their economic cycles highly correlated.

A stock market boom?

Will a win by the Democrats in November usher in a stock market boom? It’s unlikely, for two reasons.

First, a win by the Democrats would be a continuation, not a transition from a Republican president. It would not represent policy changes favoured by more risk-averse voters.

Second, it would be a Democratic win in a booming economy. The US economy has been going strong since the end of the pandemic.

It added 254,000 jobs in September, the strongest job growth in six months. It also grew at an annualised pace of 3% in the second quarter of 2024, above its average of below 2% over the past decade.

Other research suggests some important caveats, too. On average, the short-term market reaction to an election does not favour the Democrats or the Republicans.

However, a surprise win by a Republican – that is, one contrary to prediction markets – is associated with 2-3% higher returns around election days.

One possible reason for this is that unlike voters, equity fund managers are more likely to be Republican-leaning. A surprise win by their favoured candidate can boost stock prices when the winner is declared.

Read more:
A new book reveals much of Trump’s success is based on a myth he is a self-made billionaire

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

– ref. How do US presidential elections affect the economy and the stock market? – https://theconversation.com/how-do-us-presidential-elections-affect-the-economy-and-the-stock-market-241805