Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Natasha Bradshaw, Senior Associate, Grattan Institute

There will be nervous executives all over Australia this week.

Come Tuesday, large private sector organisations will have their company’s gender pay gaps published for the first time for all to see, name, and shame.

As they brace for the fallout, let’s look at how what we will be told is changing, and what it will mean for you.

What is changing?

Every year, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) collects information from every employer with more than 100 employees. Until now it has published only a summary of the findings on its website, including Australia’s overall gender pay gap, and the gap by industry and employment arrangement.

But for the first time legislation enacted last year also allows WGEA to publish the gender pay gaps of individual employers.

Tuesday’s release will include each large company’s median gender pay gap, and the share of women it employs in lower- and higher-paid jobs.

Employers will have the chance to publish a statement alongside their results to provide context.

That means from Tuesday you will be able to look on the WGEA website and find the median gender pay gap of your large private sector organisation, or of an organisation you are thinking of joining, and how it stacks up against its competitors.

Why the change?

Australian women, like women elsewhere, have made astounding progress in the workforce in recent decades.

Women are both working and earning more than ever before. But progress has stalled, and the gender pay gap remains stubbornly persistent.

The Albanese government has shown its commitment to gender equity by increasing the childcare subsidy and extending paid parental leave.

But beyond this, the options for governments are limited. Most of the barriers to women getting better-paid jobs can only be broken by employers.

The public naming and shaming that will begin on Tuesday will push accountability onto employers, holding them responsible for the conditions in their workplaces.

Read more:
Four big lessons from the UK’s new gender pay gap reporting rules

Workers and bosses are going to take notice: when employer gender pay gaps were released in the UK in 2018 it was the biggest business news story of the year, with coverage rivalling the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

At a time when companies are fighting for top talent, it is going to make it more difficult for employers with large pay gaps to hire talented women.

Research shows that on average women are willing to accept a 5% lower salary in order to avoid working for the employers with the biggest gender pay gaps.

Let’s not rush to judge

While naming and shaming will help make this policy effective, we should be careful about rushing to judgement.

It is possible for an employer to be making serious efforts to improve while its gap remains large.

And some actions aimed at improving things, such as implementing a gender quota on entry-level positions, can worsen a company’s apparent gender pay gap in the short term by temporarily increasing the number of lowly-paid women.

Also, there will be firms that have a low gender pay gap because they pay both men and women poorly.

On Tuesday, we should instead look closely at whether the organisation has outlined clear steps it will take to improve, and how it compares to its competitors. In future years, we will be able to see how things have changed.

What will matter is what employers do next

Since the UK reforms were introduced in 2018, the gender pay gap has narrowed by one-fifth, with the biggest improvements coming from the worst offenders.

UK companies have also become more likely to include wage information in their job ads, equalising the starting point of wage negotiations for all applicants.

But for existing employees, the narrowing of the gap has been caused more by slower growth in men’s wages than faster growth in women’s wages, which isn’t good news for anyone looking for a pay rise.

The full effects of the Australian reforms won’t be seen for some time.

It is likely that making high-paid jobs more accessible to women will allow employers to tap into a new talent pool and encourage more highly credentialed women into the workforce, adding to productivity growth.

What is clear now is that if we want to narrow the gender pay gap, we need to know what’s happening. The avalanche of data due on Tuesday will be a start.

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

– ref. Now you’re able to look up individual companies’ gender pay gaps – https://theconversation.com/now-youre-able-to-look-up-individual-companies-gender-pay-gaps-224167

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

The government has released its Universities Accord report, produced by a committee chaired by Mary O’Kane, a former vice-chancellor at the University of Adelaide.

The recommendations will be considered by the Minister for Education, Jason Clare and the government over the coming months, although Clare has given a few hints about what his response might be on certain issues.

One proposal Clare clearly favours is for an Australian Tertiary Education Commission which the report says would “provide the leadership and stewardship necessary to transform the tertiary education system”. Clare says it would give

the ability to steer and drive reform over the long term. This [accord] is a blueprint for 20 years, not for two years – it strikes me as a good idea.

The report canvasses a range of changes to assist students cope better financially. One is to pay students for time spent in (now unpaid) placements, which are often extensive in courses such as nursing and teaching. Clare is sympathetic.

I’ve spent the last year or so in this job talking to students. They tell me about the impact that has, often having to move to do the prac – having to give up the part-time job, working in the cafe or the restaurant or wherever else, to do unpaid work, and sometimes having to give up the degree […]. The theory can’t do the prac, can’t get the qualifications. So it strikes me this is the sort of thing that governments need to work on. And as I said, this is the sort of thing that I want us to have a look at.

On why the government isn’t hastening to do more now, Clare describes why he takes the long-term view.

Often we get criticised in government for just having quick fixes or thinking about what’s around the corner, what’s the immediate problem that needs to be solved. If we’re serious about fixing things in education, you’ve got to think long term.

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Jason Clare on the future of education in Australia – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-jason-clare-on-the-future-of-education-in-australia-224369

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Natasha Bradshaw, Senior Associate, Grattan Institute

There will be nervous executives all over Australia this week.

Come Tuesday, large private sector organisations will have their company’s gender pay gaps published for the first time for all to see, name, and shame.

As they brace for the fallout, let’s look at how what we will be told is changing, and what it will mean for you.

What is changing?

Every year, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) collects information from every employer with more than 100 employees. Until now it has published only a summary of the findings on its website, including Australia’s overall gender pay gap, and the gap by industry and employment arrangement.

But for the first time legislation enacted last year also allows WGEA to publish the gender pay gaps of individual employers.

Tuesday’s release will include each large company’s median gender pay gap, and the share of women it employs in lower- and higher-paid jobs.

Employers will have the chance to publish a statement alongside their results to provide context.

That means from Tuesday you will be able to look on the WGEA website and find the median gender pay gap of your large private sector organisation, or of an organisation you are thinking of joining, and how it stacks up against its competitors.

Why the change?

Australian women, like women elsewhere, have made astounding progress in the workforce in recent decades.

Women are both working and earning more than ever before. But progress has stalled, and the gender pay gap remains stubbornly persistent.

The Albanese government has shown its commitment to gender equity by increasing the childcare subsidy and extending paid parental leave.

But beyond this, the options for governments are limited. Most of the barriers to women getting better-paid jobs can only be broken by employers.

The public naming and shaming that will begin on Tuesday will push accountability onto employers, holding them responsible for the conditions in their workplaces.

Read more:
Four big lessons from the UK’s new gender pay gap reporting rules

Workers and bosses are going to take notice: when employer gender pay gaps were released in the UK in 2018 it was the biggest business news story of the year, with coverage rivalling the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

At a time when companies are fighting for top talent, it is going to make it more difficult for employers with large pay gaps to hire talented women.

Research shows that on average women are willing to accept a 5% lower salary in order to avoid working for the employers with the biggest gender pay gaps.

Let’s not rush to judge

While naming and shaming will help make this policy effective, we should be careful about rushing to judgement.

It is possible for an employer to be making serious efforts to improve while its gap remains large.

And some actions aimed at improving things, such as implementing a gender quota on entry-level positions, can worsen a company’s apparent gender pay gap in the short term by temporarily increasing the number of lowly-paid women.

Also, there will be firms that have a low gender pay gap because they pay both men and women poorly.

On Tuesday, we should instead look closely at whether the organisation has outlined clear steps it will take to improve, and how it compares to its competitors. In future years, we will be able to see how things have changed.

What will matter is what employers do next

Since the UK reforms were introduced in 2018, the gender pay gap has narrowed by one-fifth, with the biggest improvements coming from the worst offenders.

UK companies have also become more likely to include wage information in their job ads, equalising the starting point of wage negotiations for all applicants.

But for existing employees, the narrowing of the gap has been caused more by slower growth in men’s wages than faster growth in women’s wages, which isn’t good news for anyone looking for a pay rise.

The full effects of the Australian reforms won’t be seen for some time.

It is likely that making high-paid jobs more accessible to women will allow employers to tap into a new talent pool and encourage more highly credentialed women into the workforce, adding to productivity growth.

What is clear now is that if we want to narrow the gender pay gap, we need to know what’s happening. The avalanche of data due on Tuesday will be a start.

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

– ref. From this week you’re able to look up individual companies’ gender pay gaps – https://theconversation.com/from-this-week-youre-able-to-look-up-individual-companies-gender-pay-gaps-224167

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James B. Dorey, Lecturer in Biological Sciences, University of Wollongong

After a decade searching for new species of bees in forests of the Pacific Islands, all we had to do was look up.

We soon found eight new species of masked bees in the forest canopy: six in Fiji, one in French Polynesia and another in Micronesia. Now we expect to find many more.

Forest-dwelling bees evolved for thousands of years alongside native plants, and play unique and important roles in nature. Studying these species can help us better understand bee evolution, diversity and conservation.

Almost 21,000 bee species are known to science. Many more remain undiscovered. But it’s a race against time, as the twin challenges of habitat loss and climate change threaten bee survival. We need to identify and protect bee species before they disappear forever.

Introducing the new masked bees

Pollinators abound in forests. But scientific research has tended to focus on bees living closer to the ground.

We believe this sampling bias is replicated across much of the world. For example, another related Oceanic masked bee, Pharohylaeus lactiferus (a cloaked bee), was recently found in the canopy after 100 years in hiding.

Our first decade of bee sampling in Fiji turned up only one bee from the genus Hylaeus. This bee probably belonged in the canopy so we were very lucky to catch it near the ground. Targeted attempts over the next few years, using our standard short insect nets, failed to find any more.

But this changed when we turned our attention to searching the forest canopy.

Sampling in the canopy is physically challenging. Strength and skill are required to sweep a long, heavy net and pole through the treetops. It’s quite a workout. We limit our efforts to the edges of forests, where branches won’t tangle the whole contraption.

By lifting our gaze in this way, we discovered eight new bee species, all in the genus Hylaeus. They are mostly black with stunning yellow or white highlights, especially on their faces – hence the name, masked bees.

They appear to rely exclusively on the forest canopy. This behaviour is striking and has rarely been identified in bees before (perhaps because few scientists have been looking for bees up there).

Because the new species live in forests and native tree tops, they’re likely to be vulnerable to land clearing, cyclones and climate change.

More work is needed to uncover the secrets hidden in these dense tropical treetops. It may require engineering solutions such as canopy cranes and drones, as well as skilful tree-climbing using ropes, pulleys and harnesses.

Read more:
Move over, honeybees: Aussie native bees steal the show with unique social and foraging behaviours

Michener’s missing links

The journey of bees across the Pacific region is a tale of great dispersals and isolation.

Almost 60 years ago, world-renowned bee expert Charles Michener described what was probably the most isolated masked bee around, Hylaeus tuamotuensis.

The specimen was found in French Polynesia. At the time, Michener said that was “entirely unexpected”, because the nearest relatives were, as the bee flies, 4,000km north in Hawaii, 5,000km southwest in New Zealand, and 6,000km west in Australia.

So how did it get there and where did it come from?

Our research helps to answer these questions. We found eight new Hylaeus species including one from French Polynesia. Using genetic analysis and other methods, we found strong links between these species and H. tuamotuensis.

So Michener’s bee was probably an ancient immigrant from Fiji, 3,000km away. A journey of that magnitude is no mean feat for bees smaller than a grain of rice.

Of course, there are more than 1,700 islands in the Pacific, which can serve as stepping stones for bees on their long journeys.

We don’t yet know how many new Hylaeus species might exist in the South Pacific, or the routes they took to get to their island homes. But we suspect there are many more to be found.

Read more:
Phantom of the forest: after 100 years in hiding, I rediscovered the rare cloaked bee in Australia

Our Pacific emissaries

The early origins of Fijian bees – both ground-dwelling Homalictus and forest-loving Hylaeus – can be traced to the ancient past when Australia and New Guinea were part of one land mass, known as Sahul. The ancestors of both groups then undertook epic oceanic journeys to travel from Sahul to the furthest reaches of the Pacific, where they diversified. But the Hylaeus travelled furthest, by thousands of kilometres.

These little emissaries have similarly brought together researchers across the region. We resolved difficulties sampling and gathering knowledge by working with people across the Pacific, including Fiji, French Polynesia, and Hawaii. It shows what can be accomplished with international collaboration.

Together we are making great strides towards understanding our shared bee biodiversity. Such collaborations are our best chance of discovering and conserving species while we can.

We would like to thank Ben Parslow and Karl Magnacca for their contribution to this article. We would further like to thank our collaborators and their home institutions, the Hawiian Department of Land and Natural Resources, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, University of the South Pacific, the South Australian Museum and Adelaide University.

James B. Dorey has received funding for this work from The Playford Trust as a PhD and Honours scholarship recipient, Flinders University through the AJ and IM Naylon PhD Scholarship, and the Australian Government through the New Colombo Plan . He is affiliated with both Flinders University and the University of Wollongong.

Amy-Marie Gilpin is affiliated with the School of Science and Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University. Funding to publish this work was in part provided by Western Sydney University. Amy-Marie is also a member of the IUCN Wild Bee Specialist Group Oceania.

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

– ref. Secrets in the canopy: scientists discover 8 striking new bee species in the Pacific – https://theconversation.com/secrets-in-the-canopy-scientists-discover-8-striking-new-bee-species-in-the-pacific-222599

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tapani Rinta-Kahila, Lecturer in Business Information Systems, The University of Queensland

In 2009, an Air France jet crashed into the ocean, leaving no survivors. The plane’s autopilot system shut down and the pilots, having become reliant on their computerised assistant, were unable to correct the situation manually.

In 2015, a bus driver in Europe typed the wrong destination into his GPS device and cheerfully took a group of Belgian tourists on a 1,200 kilometre detour in the wrong direction.

In 2017, in a decision later overturned on appeal, US prosecutors who had agreed to release a teenager on probation abruptly changed their minds because an algorithm ruled the defendant “high risk”.

These are dramatic examples, but they are far from isolated. When we outsource cognitive tasks to technology – such as flying a plane, navigating, or making a judgement – research shows we may lose the ability to perform those tasks ourselves. There is even a term for our tendency to forget information that is available through online search engines: the Google effect.

As new AI technologies promise to automate an increasing range of activities, the risk of “skill erosion” is growing. Our research shows how it can happen – and suggests ways to keep hold of the expertise you need, even when you don’t need it every day.

Skill erosion can cripple an organisation

My research shows the risk of skill erosion is easily overlooked. In a recent study, my team and I examined skill erosion in an accounting company.

The company had recently stopped using software that automated much of its fixed-asset accounting service. However, the accountants found themselves unable to carry out the task without it. Years of over-reliance on the software had eroded their expertise, and ultimately, they had to relearn their fixed-asset accounting skills.

While the software was rule-based (it did not use machine learning or “AI”), it was “smart” enough to track depreciation and produce reports for many tax and financial purposes. These are tasks that human accountants found very complex and tedious.

The company only became aware of skill erosion after a client found errors in the accounting team’s manual reports. With its accountants lacking sufficient expertise, the company had to commission the software provider to fix the errors.

How skill erosion happens

We found that a lack of mindfulness about the automation-supported task had led to skill erosion. The old saying, “use it or lose it”, applies to cognitively intense work as much as to anything else.

The accountants were not concerned about outsourcing their thinking to the software, since it operated almost flawlessly. In other words, they fell prey to “automation complacency”: the assumption that “all is well” while ignoring potential risks.

Read more:
AI is everywhere – including countless applications you’ve likely never heard of

This had three major consequences:

1. they lost their awareness of what automation was doing

2. they lost the incentive to maintain and update relevant knowledge (such as tax legislation), because the vendor and software did that for them

3. as the software was reliable, they no longer bothered to check the outgoing reports for accuracy.

How to maintain your skills

So, how do you prevent complacency while using AI and other automated systems? Here are three tips:

1. pay attention to what the system is doing – what inputs are used, for what purpose, and what might affect its suggestions

2. keep your competence up to date (especially if you are legally accountable for the outcomes)

3. critically assess the results, even if the final outcomes appear satisfactory.

What would this look like in practice? Here’s an everyday example: driving with the help of an AI-powered navigation app.

Instead of blindly following the app’s instructions, pay attention to road signs and landmarks, and be aware of what you are doing even when guided by the app.

Study the map and suggested route before driving to increase your “domain knowledge”, or understanding of what is around the route. This helps you relate your specific path to the broader environment, which will be helpful if you get lost or want to find alternative routes.

When you reach your destination, reflect on the route the app suggested: was it fast, was it safe, was it enjoyable? If not, consider taking a different route next time, even if the app suggests otherwise.

Is AI a necessary companion?

The case of the accounting firm also raises a bigger question: what skills are relevant and worth maintaining, and which ones should we relinquish to automation?

There is no universal answer, as professional skills change across time, jurisdictions, industries, cultures and geographical locations. However, it is a question we will have to contend with as AI takes over activities once considered unable to be automated.

Read more:
Drowning in ‘digital debt’? AI assistants can help – but we must use them carefully

Despite the struggles, the accounting manager in our case study believes the automated software is highly beneficial. In his view, his team just got caught off guard by complacency.

In a world focused on efficiency and annual or quarterly targets, organisations favour solutions that improve things in the short term, even if they have negative long-term side effects. This is what happened in the accounting case: efficiency gains overshadowed abstract concerns about expertise, until problems ensued.

This does not mean that we should avoid AI. Organisations cannot afford to miss out on the opportunities it presents. However, they should also be aware of the risk of skill erosion.

Tapani Rinta-Kahila is a recipient of the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (project number DE240100269) funded by the Australian Government. His research on this topic has previously been funded by the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation.

– ref. What happens when we outsource boring but important work to AI? Research shows we forget how to do it ourselves – https://theconversation.com/what-happens-when-we-outsource-boring-but-important-work-to-ai-research-shows-we-forget-how-to-do-it-ourselves-223981

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darcy Watchorn, PhD Candidate, Deakin University

Australia is home to some of the most spectacular and enigmatic wildlife on Earth. Much of it, however, is being eaten by two incredibly damaging invasive predators: the feral cat and the red fox.

Each year in Australia, cats and foxes kill an estimated 697 million reptiles, 510 million birds, and 1.4 billion mammals, totalling a staggering 2.6 billion animals. Since the predators were introduced more than 150 years ago, they have contributed to the extinction of more than 25 species – and are pushing many more to the brink.

Research suggests cats and foxes can be more active in areas recently burnt by fire. This is a real concern, especially as climate change increases the frequency and severity of fire in south-eastern Australia.

We urgently need new ways to protect wildlife after fires. Our study trialled one such tool: building artificial refuges across burnt landscapes. The results are promising, but researchers need to find out more.

Triple threat: cats, foxes and fire

Many native animals are well-adapted to fire. But the changing frequency and intensity of fire is posing a considerable threat to much of Australia’s wildlife.

Fire removes vegetation such as grass, leaf litter and shrubs. This leaves fewer places for native animals to shelter and hide, making it easier for cats and foxes to catch them.

We conducted our experiment in three Australian ecosystems: the forests of the Otway Ranges (Victoria), the sand dunes of the Simpson Desert (Queensland) and the woodlands of Kangaroo Island (South Australia). Each had recently been burnt by fire.

We built 76 refuges across these study areas. They were 90cm wide and up to 50m long – and backbreaking to install! They were made from wire mesh, mostly covered by shade cloth. Spacing in the mesh of 50mm allowed small animals to enter and exit from any point, while completely excluding cats, foxes and other larger animals. The shade cloth obstructed the vision of predators.

We then placed remote-sensing camera traps both inside and away from each refuge, and monitored them for periods ranging from four months to four years.

The placement of the cameras meant we could compare the effect of the refuges with what occurred outside them.

Read more:
A season in hell: bushfires push at least 20 threatened species closer to extinction

What we found

Across the three study areas, the artificial refuges were used by 56 species or species groups. This included the critically endangered Kangaroo Island dunnart, the threatened white-footed dunnart and the threatened southern emu-wren.

For around half the species, we detected more individuals inside the refuges than outside. As we predicted, the activity of small birds and reptiles, in particular, was much higher inside the refuges.

But surprisingly, reptile activity was also generally higher inside the refuges, particularly among skinks. We had not predicted that, because the shade cloth likely made conditions inside the refuges cooler than outside, and reptiles require warmth to regulate their body temperature.

Over time, the number of animals detected inside the refuges generally increased. This was also a surprise. We expected detections inside the refuges to decline through time as the vegetation recovered and the risk of being seen by predators fell.

But there were also a few complicating factors. For example, in the Otway Ranges and Simpson Desert, similar numbers of the mammals were detected inside and away from the refuges. This suggests the species didn’t consider the refuges as particularly safe places, which means the structures may not reduce the risk of these animals becoming prey.

So what’s the upshot of all this? Our findings suggest that establishing artificial refuges after fire may help some small vertebrates, especially small birds and skinks, avoid predators across a range of ecosystems. However, more research is required before this strategy is adopted as a widespread management tool.

Read more:
This critically endangered marsupial survived a bushfire – then along came the feral cats

Important next steps

Almost all evidence for an increase in cat and fox activity after fire comes from Australia, particularly the tropical north. But cats are an invasive species in more than 120 countries and islands.

That means there’s real potential for post-fire damage to wildlife to worsen globally, especially as fire risk increases with climate change.

Our results suggest artificial refuges may be a way to help animals survive after fire. But there are still important questions to answer, such as:

• can artificial refuges improve the overall abundance and survival of individuals and species?
• if so, how many refuges would be required to achieve this?
• in the presence of natural refuges – such as rocks, logs, burrows, and unburnt patches – are artificial refuges needed?
• does their effectiveness vary between low-severity planned burns and high-severity bushfires?

These questions must be answered. Conservation budgets are tight. After fires, funds must be directed towards actions that we know will work. That evidence is not yet there for artificial refuges.

Our team is busy trying to find out more. We urge other ecologists and conservationists to do so as well. We also encourage collaboration with designers and technologists to improve on our refuge design. For example, can such large refuges be made biodegradable and easier to deploy?

Solving these problems is important. It’s almost impossible to rid the entire Australian continent of cats and foxes. So land managers need all the help they can get to stop these predators from decimating Australia’s incredible wildlife.

Darcy Watchorn receives funding from the Hermon Slade Foundation, Parks Victoria, the Conservation and Wildlife Research Trust, the Ecological Society of Australia, the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council, and the Geelong Naturalists Field Club. He is a member of the Ecological Society of Australia and the Society for Conservation Biology Oceania.

Chris Dickman receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Don Driscoll receives funding from the ARC, Melbourne Water and Parks Victoria. He is affiliated with the Ecological Society of Australia and the Society for Conservation Biology.

– ref. Our native animals are easy prey after a fire. Could artificial refuges save them? – https://theconversation.com/our-native-animals-are-easy-prey-after-a-fire-could-artificial-refuges-save-them-223357

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nial Wheate, Associate Professor of the School of Pharmacy, University of Sydney

For women diagnosed with endometriosis it is often a long sentence of chronic pain and cramping that impacts their daily life. It is a condition that is both difficult to diagnose and treat, with many women needing either surgery or regular medication.

A medicine called Ryeqo has just been approved for marketing specifically for endometriosis, although it was already available in Australia to treat a different condition.

Women who want the drug will need to consult their local doctor and, as it is not yet on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, they will need to pay the full cost of the script.

Read more:
People with endometriosis and PCOS wait years for a diagnosis – attitudes to women’s pain may be to blame

What does Ryeqo do?

Endometriosis affects 14% of women of reproductive age. While we don’t have a full understanding of the cause, the evidence suggests it’s due to body tissue that is similar to the lining of the uterus (called the endometrium) growing outside the uterus. This causes pain and inflammation, which reduces quality of life and can also affect fertility.

Ryeqo is a tablet containing three different active ingredients: relugolix, estradiol and norethisterone.

Relugolix is a drug that blocks a particular peptide from releasing other hormones. It is also used in the treatment of prostate cancer. Estradiol is a naturally occurring oestrogen hormone in women that helps regulate the menstrual cycle and is used in menopausal hormone therapy. Norethisterone is a synthetic hormone commonly used in birth control medications and to delay menstruation and help with heavy menstrual bleeding.

All three components work together to regulate the levels of oestrogen and progesterone in the body that contribute to endometriosis, alleviating its symptoms.

Relugolix reduces the overall levels of oestrogen and progesterone in the body. The estradiol compensates for the loss of oestrogen because low oestrogen levels can cause hot flushes (also called hot flashes) and bone density loss. And norethisterone blocks the effects of estradiol on the uterus (where too much tissue growth is unwanted).

Read more:
A new government inquiry will examine women’s pain and treatment. How and why is it different?

Is it really new?

The maker of Ryeqo claims it is the first new drug for endometriosis in Australia in 13 years.

But individually, all three active ingredients in Ryeqo have been in use since 2019 or earlier.

Ryeqo has been available in Australia since 2022, but until now was not specifically indicated for endometriosis. It was originally approved for the treatment of uterine fibroids, which share some common symptoms with endometriosis and have related causes.

In addition to Ryeqo, current medical guidance lists other drugs that are suitable for endometriosis and some of these have also only been recently approved.

The oral medicine Dienogest was approved in 2021, and there have been a number of injectable drugs for endometriosis recently approved, such as Sayana Press in 2023.

How to take it and what not to do

Ryeqo is a once-a-day tablet. You can take it with, or without food, but it should be taken about the same time each day.

It is recommended you start taking Ryeqo within the first five days after the start of your next period. If you start at another time during your period, you may experience initial irregular or heavier bleeding.

Because it contains both synthetic and natural hormones, you can’t use the contraceptive pill and Ryeqo together. However, because Ryeqo does contain norethisterone it can be used as your contraception, although it will take at least one month of use to be effective. So, if you are on Ryeqo, you should use a non-hormonal contraceptive – such as condoms – for a month when starting the medicine.

Ryeqo may be incompatible with other medicines. It might not be suitable for you if you take medicines for epilepsy, HIV and AIDS, hepatitis C, fungal or bacterial infections, high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, angina (chest pain), or organ rejection. You should also not take Ryeqo if you have a liver tumour or liver disease.

The possible side effects of Ryeqo are similar to those of oral contraceptives. Blood clots are a risk with any medicine that contains an oestrogen or a progestogen, which Ryeqo does. Other potential side effects include bone loss, a reduction in menstrual blood loss or loss of your period.

Read more:
What’s a TENS machine? Can it help my period pain or endometriosis?

It’s costly for now

Ryeqo can now be prescribed in Australia, so you should discuss whether Ryeqo is right for you with the doctor you usually consult for your endometriosis.

While the maker has made a submission to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, it is not yet subsidised by the Australian government. This means that rather than paying the normal PBS price of up to A$31.60, it has been reported it may cost as much as $135 for a one-month supply. The committee will make a decision on whether to subsidise Ryeqo at its meeting next month.

Nial Wheate in the past has received funding from the ACT Cancer Council, Tenovus Scotland, Medical Research Scotland, Scottish Crucible, and the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, a member of the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association, and a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Nial is the chief scientific officer of Vaihea Skincare LLC, a director of SetDose Pty Ltd a medical device company, and a Standards Australia panel member for sunscreen agents. Nial regularly consults to industry on issues to do with medicine risk assessments, manufacturing, design, and testing.

Jasmine Lee 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 Ryeqo, the recently approved medicine for endometriosis? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-ryeqo-the-recently-approved-medicine-for-endometriosis-224237

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Daley, Senior Lecturer, Youth Work & Youth Studies, Social Equity Research Centre, RMIT University

Two teens were arrested in Melbourne last month after horrific video footage of them pushing an unsuspecting elderly fisherman off a pier went viral.

The “prank” appeared to have been undertaken and filmed for the purpose of social media content. The man had to be rescued by good samaritans and the teens have been charged.

Soon after this, a schoolboy made headlines after being filmed on a footbridge pouring a whole bottle of milk on women enjoying a boat ride on Melbourne’s Yarra River.

It is easy to explain this behaviour away as poor parenting, problem children or with the old rationale that “kids will be kids”. But we can better explain human behaviour by considering biological, psychological and social influences.

Read more:
Why do young children sometimes steal? And what should parents do about it?

Invisible risks, invisible consequences

Perhaps the most important factor to consider is the development of a young person’s brain. The evidence is clear that a person’s brain does not fully mature until they are well into their 20s.

The prefrontal cortex of the brain is the last part to develop fully. The function of the prefrontal cortex is higher-order tasks such as decision-making and emotional regulation. Importantly, this is the part of the brain that considers information that is not immediately obvious.

So when a child rides their bike on a footpath, the adult behind them might tell them to slow down just in case a car reverses from a driveway. But the child doesn’t foresee this risk because there is no car to be seen. The potential risk is clear to the adult but, as it isn’t immediately identifiable, it is invisible to the child.

Humans have a self-preservation instinct: when we understand the risk of death, we avoid it. When a usually sensible young man drives his car too fast, he is not consciously taking a risk. He is simply enjoying the rush of going fast. The risk is not tangible or visible, and therefore not present in his decision-making.

For the teenaged boys in the viral videos, they’re in the same prank-like mindset of an annoying older brother. It is not that they are choosing to ignore potential consequences, it’s just that not all the consequences are visible to them. They might be driven by the immediate attention of laughs or internet notoriety, but harm to others, police charges and potential school expulsion are probably not in their thought process.

Personalities formed through nature and nurture

Some people have a larger appetite for risk. One child will dive head-first into an ocean and another won’t get their feet wet.

This is likely due to a combination of environmental and biological factors: some people are more comfortable with the feeling of fear, whereas some may have had parents who were overprotective, or perhaps an early life experience of trouble near water that has left a legacy.

These factors all contribute to a person’s psychology. A person who is risk-averse is more likely to be “scared” of pranks or unsafe behaviour. This is not necessarily because they are cognitively more able to think through the potential outcomes, but because they are acting on their fear of new or unknown environments. A new situation elicits fear and, in turn, cautionary behaviour.

A young person who is less fearful will be less reluctant in new environments. So it’s not a coincidence that the “good” child who appears not to make “reckless” decisions is often the same child who struggles more with adapting to life changes, such as starting school. Similarly, the “naughty” toddler or the “class clown” might be the most adaptable and open to new environments.

Read more:
‘It’s real to them, so adults should listen’: what children want you to know to help them feel safe

The urge to fit in

Finally, our behaviour is influenced by those around us. When we are in a group we behave differently from when we are alone. We are all driven by a desire to fit in, to be liked, and sometimes we might do things we would not normally to be included.

For young people today, this is amplified through social media. Their audience is not only those right near them, but those who are in their wider digital circle. There is an instant reinforcement of a behaviour when there is a large, online audience.

Frequently, we see prankster behaviour when young people are on school holidays. They are bored and looking for entertainment.

There are few spaces that are welcoming for groups of teenagers to simply “hang out”, and there are many that are actively hostile to groups of youths. Move-on laws for example, were designed with the intention of being able to prohibit young people from gathering.

Finally, a crucial factor is the construction of gender, where boys’ larrikinism can be seen as hyper-masculine and cool, making these types of behaviours more likely to be socially endorsed.

What can be done?

Unfortunately, not a lot. You cannot expedite the development of a brain and you can’t do much about someone’s psychology. School programs might be understood by some young people but not by others, and are expensive to deliver. Nationwide organisations like Life Education, which offers a program of health education to primary school students, and Elephant Ed, which is increasingly used by schools to deliver sex education, are provided at cost to the school.

Read more:
Teenage brain matures with onset of puberty

However, social influences can be changed, albeit slowly.

If we can provide young people with social places to be where they are engaged, they will then be less bored. The Adolescent Community Reinforcement Approach (an intervention developed to reduce “antisocial” behaviours by connecting people to their communities) is based on the premise that behaviour change shouldn’t be focused on stopping a problem behaviour.

Instead, it should provide young people with opportunity for positive “prosocial activity”. So for example, offering more access to free basketball courts for young people interested in basketball gives them a positive way to spend their time.

When we continue to see young people as wild criminals who have no respect, we create a greater divide between young people and ourselves.

Kathryn Daley has received funding from FARE Australia and Melbourne City Mission. She is a member of the Women’s Correctional Services Advisory Committee. She was formerly a youth worker at the Youth Support and Advocacy Service (YSAS).

– ref. From viral social media ‘pranks’ to hooning, what makes teens behave so badly? – https://theconversation.com/from-viral-social-media-pranks-to-hooning-what-makes-teens-behave-so-badly-222392

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

A federal Newspoll, conducted February 19–23 from a sample of 1,245, gave Labor a 52–48 lead, unchanged since the previous Newspoll three weeks ago. Primary votes were 36% Coalition (steady), 33% Labor (down one), 12% Greens (steady), 6% One Nation (down one) and 13% for all Others (up two).

Anthony Albanese’s ratings were 51% dissatisfied (steady) and 43% satisfied (up one), for a net approval of -8, up one point. Peter Dutton’s net approval was down one point to -14. Albanese led Dutton as better PM by 47–35 (46–35 previously).

This graph of Albanese’s net approval in Newspoll shows there has not been a recovery since the defeat of the Voice referendum.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported last Wednesday that the wage price index rose 4.2% in the full year 2023 and 0.9% in the December quarter. This is the highest annual rise since 2009, though the quarterly rise was down from 1.3% in September.

The annual inflation rate for the full year 2023 was 4.1%, so wage rises just beat inflation. For the December quarter, inflation was up 0.6%, so wage rises exceeded inflation by 0.3%. I expect this will be good news for the government.

Labor down in Resolve poll, but would still lead

A federal Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted February 21–24 from a sample of 1,603, gave the Coalition 37% of the primary vote (up three since early December), Labor 34% (down one), the Greens 11% (down one), One Nation 6% (up one), the UAP 1% (steady), independents 9% (steady) and others 4% (up one).

Resolve does not give a two party estimate until near elections, but applying 2022 preference flows to this poll gives Labor about a 52.5–47.5 lead, a 2.5-point gain for the Coalition since December. This is easily Labor’s worst position this term in a Resolve poll, which has been very pro-Labor relative to other polls.

Despite Labor’s drop, Albanese’s net approval improved six points to -6, with 47% giving him a poor rating and 41% a good rating. Dutton was down three points to a -11 net approval. Albanese led Dutton by 39–32 as preferred PM, a narrowing from 42–28 in December. Voters supported the changes to the stage three tax cuts by a 52–14 margin.

The Liberals increased their lead over Labor on economic management from 35–27 in December to 38–27. On keeping the cost of living low, the Liberals led by 30–26 (26–21 in December).

Labor gains in Freshwater poll for a 51–49 lead

A national Freshwater poll for The Financial Review, conducted February 16–18 from a sample of 1,049, gave Labor a 51–49 lead, a one-point gain for Labor since a mid-January Freshwater poll for The Daily Telegraph. Primary votes were 38% Coalition (down one since January), 31% Labor (steady), 14% Greens (steady) and 17% for all Others (up two).

Freshwater has been Labor’s worst pollster this term, while Resolve has been its best. Results from Freshwater, Newspoll and Resolve are now closer together than previously.

Albanese led Dutton as preferred PM by 42–38 (47–38 in January). In comparisons with the December poll, Albanese’s net approval was down two points to -7, while Dutton’s was down seven to -9. Barnaby Joyce’s net approval crashed 16 points to -33.

By 44–15, voters supported the changes to the stage three tax cuts, with 26% “indifferent”. By 32–12, voters thought they would be better off under the changes, with 43% saying there would be no difference.

The cost of living is still the top issue for voters, with 69% listing it as a priority. The Coalition led Labor as best party to manage cost of living by 34–28. Since December, “crime and social order” jumped eight points to 25% to rank fifth on the list of voters’ priorities.

Net approval of the federal political parties was +1 for the Liberals, -4 for Labor, -7 for the Nationals and -19 for the Greens. Net approval of other prominent Labor ministers was +6 for Penny Wong, -3 for Jim Chalmers, -4 for Tanya Plibersek and -10 for Chris Bowen.

Morgan poll: 52.5–47.5 to Labor

In last week’s Morgan poll, conducted February 12–18 from a sample of 1,706, Labor led by 52.5–47.5, a 0.5-point gain for Labor since the previous week. Primary votes were 37% Coalition (steady), 34% Labor (down 0.5), 13% Greens (up one), 4% One Nation (down 0.5) and 12% for all Others (steady).

Queensland UComms poll has a 50–50 tie

The Queensland state election will be held in October. A UComms poll for The Courier Mail, conducted February 13 from a sample of 1,743, had Labor and the Liberal National Party tied at 50–50, a one-point gain for Labor since December. This is the first Queensland poll commissioned by The Courier Mail that has not shown a LNP lead since December 2022.

The Poll Bludger reported the primary votes were 37.3% LNP (down 0.7), 34.2% Labor (down 0.2), 12.2% Greens (down 1.1), 7.7% One Nation (up 0.4) and 3.9% Katter’s Australian Party (down 0.1). Respondent preferences were better for Labor than in December.

Labor premier Steven Miles’ ratings were 44.2% positive (up 1.5), 25.2% neutral (down 2.4) and 25.2% negative (down 2.4). LNP leader David Crisafulli’s ratings were 41.7% positive (up 3.9), 31.2% neutral (up 1.0) and 18.7% negative (down 4.1). Crisafulli led Miles as preferred premier by 51–49 (52.2–47.8 in December).

This is the second UComms poll since Miles replaced Annastacia Palaszczuk as Labor premier in December. Some of Labor’s poll problems were probably due to Palaszczuk’s unpopularity. But Labor will have been in government for almost ten years by the October election, so there may be an “it’s time” factor.

Trump wins South Carolina, UK byelections and Indonesian election

Donald Trump won the South Carolina Republican primary on Saturday (US time), defeating Nikki Haley in her home state by a 59.8–39.5 margin. He is almost certain to seal the Republican presidential nomination by March 19, when 69% of Republican delegates will have been determined. I covered this for The Poll Bludger.

I covered the two February 15 UK byelections in Conservative-held seats for The Poll Bludger. Both seats were gained by Labour on massive swings. The next UK general election is likely to be held late this year, with Labour far ahead in national polls. However, Labour was forced to disendorse their candidate for the February 29 Labour-held Rochdale byelection after nominations had closed.

I covered the February 14 Indonesian election, in which the right-wing Prabowa Subianto won the presidency with an outright majority of the vote, meaning there won’t be a runoff election.

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. Labor steady in Newspoll but down in Resolve; it’s tied in Queensland – https://theconversation.com/labor-steady-in-newspoll-but-down-in-resolve-its-tied-in-queensland-223853

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeannie Marie Paterson, Professor of Law, The University of Melbourne

Earlier this month, a Hong Kong company lost HK$200 million (A$40 million) in a deepfake scam. An employee transferred funds following a video conference call with scammers who looked and sounded like senior company officials.

Generative AI tools can create image, video and voice replicas of real people saying and doing things they never would have done. And these tools are becoming increasingly easy to access and use.

This can perpetuate intimate image abuse (including things like “revenge porn”) and disrupt democratic processes. Currently, many jurisdictions are grappling with how to regulate AI deepfakes.

But if you’ve been a victim of a deepfake scam, can you obtain compensation or redress for your losses? The legislation hasn’t caught up yet.

Who is responsible?

In most cases of deepfake fraud, scammers will avoid trying to fool banks and security systems, instead opting for so-called “push payment” frauds where victims are tricked into directing their bank to pay the fraudster.

So, if you’re seeking a remedy, there are at least four possible targets:

1. the fraudster (who will often have disappeared)

2. the social media platform that hosted the fake

3. any bank that paid out the money on the instructions of the victim of the fraud

4. the provider of the AI tool that created the fake.

The quick answer is that once the fraudster vanishes, it is currently unclear whether you have a right to a remedy from any of these other parties (though that may change in the future).

Let’s see why.

Read more:
Voice deepfakes are calling – here’s what they are and how to avoid getting scammed

The social media platform

In principle, you could seek damages from a social media platform if it hosted a deepfake used to defraud you. But there are hurdles to overcome.

Platforms typically frame themselves as mere conduits of content – which means they are not legally responsible for the content. In the United States, platforms are explicitly shielded from this kind of liability. However, no such protection exists in most other common law countries, including Australia.

Read more:
This is why Australia may be powerless to force tech giants to regulate harmful content

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is taking Meta (Facebook’s parent company) to court. They are testing the possibility of making digital platforms directly liable for deepfake crypto scams if they actively target the ads to possible victims.

The ACCC is also arguing Meta should be liable as an accessory to the scam – for failing to remove the misleading ads promptly once notified of the problem.

At the very least, platforms should be responsible for promptly removing deepfake content used for fraudulent purposes. They may already claim to be doing this, but it might soon become a legal obligation.

Read more:
The ACCC is suing Meta for celebrity crypto scam ads on Facebook. Here’s why the tech giant could be found liable

The bank

In Australia, the legal obligations of whether a bank has to reimburse you in the case of a deepfake scam aren’t settled.

This was recently considered by the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court, in a case likely to be influential in Australia. It suggests banks don’t have a duty to refuse a customer’s payment instructions where the recipient is suspected to be a (deepfake) fraudster, even if they have a general duty to act promptly once the scam is discovered.

That said, the UK is introducing a mandatory scheme that requires banks to reimburse victims of push payment fraud, at least in certain circumstances.

In Australia, the ACCC and others have presented proposals for a similar scheme, though none exists at this stage.

Read more:
Australia can learn from the UK’s experience by making banks pay for scam losses

The AI tool provider

The providers of generative AI tools are currently not legally obliged to make their tools unusable for fraud or deception. In law, there is no duty of care to the world at large to prevent someone else’s fraud.

However, providers of generative AI do have an opportunity to use technology to reduce the likelihood of deepfakes. Like banks and social media platforms, they may soon be required to do this, at least in some jurisdictions.

Read more:
Who will write the rules for AI? How nations are racing to regulate artificial intelligence

The recently proposed EU AI Act obligates the providers of generative AI tools to design these tools in a way that allows the synthetic/fake content to be detected.

Currently, it’s proposed this could work through digital watermarking, although its effectiveness is still being debated. Other measures include prompt limits, digital ID to verify a person’s identity, and further education about the signs of deepfakes.

Can we stop deepfake fraud altogether?

None of these legal or technical guardrails are likely to be entirely effective in stemming the tide of deepfake fraud, scams or deception – especially as generative AI technology keeps advancing.

However, the response doesn’t need to be perfect: slowing down AI generated fakes and frauds can still reduce harm. We also need to pressure platforms, banks and tech providers to stay on top of the risks.

So while you might never be able to completely prevent yourself from being the victim of a deepfake scam, with all these new legal and technical developments, you might soon be able to seek compensation if things go wrong.

Read more:
Australians are concerned about AI. Is the federal government doing enough to mitigate risks?

Jeannie Marie Paterson receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

– ref. So, you’ve been scammed by a deepfake. What can you do? – https://theconversation.com/so-youve-been-scammed-by-a-deepfake-what-can-you-do-223299

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Strangio, Emeritus professor of politics, Monash University

This week Scott Morrison, Australia’s 30th prime minister, will deliver his valedictory speech to the House of Representatives. As Morrison leaves parliament, it’s timely to ask where he is placed in the pantheon of Australia’s national leaders.

Already there have been unflattering verdicts on Morrison’s prime-ministerial standing. For example, in her withering account of his leadership, veteran columnist and author Niki Savva writes that among detractors, “Morrison was regarded as the worst prime minister since Billy McMahon”. Moreover, according to Savva, following the August 2022 revelation of his commandeering of five ministries during the COVID pandemic, his reputation sunk still lower: “he was worse than McMahon. Worse even than Tony Abbott, who lasted a scant two years in the job”.

Read more:
‘A blood sport feigning as government’: what the ABC’s Nemesis taught us about a decade of Coalition rule

How can we rank prime ministerial performance?

How might we know how Morrison’s record stacks up against his prime-ministerial peers? One device for evaluating comparative leadership performance is expert rankings. Australia has had a slow take-up in this field, unlike the United States, where presidential rankings have a lineage stretching back three-quarters of a century and are a veritable scholarly cottage industry.

In recent years, there have been forays into this territory in Australia, with three prime-ministerial rankings conducted by newspapers and two initiated by Monash University in 2010 and 2020. (I was the organiser of both of these Monash rankings.)

These rankings have been largely consistent in their results. The experts, mostly political historians and political scientists, have judged the nation’s greatest prime minister to be its second world war leader, John Curtin. The other leaders in the top echelon are, in rough order, Bob Hawke, Ben Chifley, Alfred Deakin, Robert Menzies, Andrew Fisher, John Howard, Paul Keating and Gough Whitlam.

At the other end of the scale, Billy McMahon, who is chiefly remembered for being defeated by Labor’s Whitlam at the December 1972 election, thereby bringing to a close the Liberal Party’s postwar ascendancy, has been consistently rated Australia’s prime-ministerial dunce. Even his biographer, Patrick Mullins, acknowledges that McMahon has become “a by-word for failure, silliness, ridicule”.

However, in the most recent of the rankings, the Monash 2020 survey, McMahon had a close competitor for bottom place: Tony Abbott. Forty-four out of 66 respondents to that survey assessed Abbott’s prime ministership a failure. Other prime ministers to the rear of the field included Abbott’s contemporaries, Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull.

Morrison was not included in the 2020 rankings because as the incumbent his prime ministership was incomplete, and so it was premature to evaluate his performance. Let us now, though, measure his record against the nine benchmarks that the experts were asked to consider in rating the nation’s leaders.

Read more:
Who were Australia’s best prime ministers? We asked the experts

So how does Morrison shape up?

The first is “effectively managing cabinet”. To date, little has been disclosed about the integrity of cabinet processes under Morrison’s stewardship. Yet, whatever the merits of that management, his scandalous breach of the norms of cabinet government by secretly assuming several ministries will irretrievably stain his reputation in this regard.

Next is “maintaining support of Coalition/party”. That Morrison avoided being deposed by his party, which was the fate of his immediate predecessors (Rudd, Julia Gillard, Abbott and Turnbull), counts in his favour. As the ABC docuseries Nemesis shows, however, his prime ministership was marked by serious frictions both within the Liberal Party and between the Liberal and National coalition partners.

“Demonstrating personal integrity”. This was not one of Morrison’s strong suits. As Savva makes searingly evident, and Nemesis also highlights, Morrison earned a reputation for being economical with the truth (including hiding his acquisition of colleagues’ ministries), for evading accountability and shifting blame (“I don’t hold a hose, mate”), and for corrupted processes under his watch (an example being the shameless pork-barrelling of the community sport infrastructure program in the lead-up to the 2019 election).

“Leaving a significant policy legacy”. Here Morrison is partly damned by his own words. In office, he insisted he was not concerned about his legacy, equating the idea with a vanity project. Indeed, an obsession with the theatre of politics and a corresponding lack of substance caused his prime ministership to come to be seen as bereft of purpose.

On the other hand, management of the COVID pandemic, however mixed, accords a significance to his time in office. AUKUS stands as the other major legacy of Morrison’s prime ministership, entrenched as it has been by his successor, Anthony Albanese. The agreement promises to influence Australia’s defence capability until the middle of this century and beyond, although only time will tell whether it enhances the nation’s security or is a dangerous white elephant.

“Relationship with the electorate”. Morrison’s record here is mixed. In his favour, he won an election (something McMahon couldn’t claim). Yet, by the time of the 2022 election, according to the Australian Election Study, he was the least popular major party leader in the history of that survey, which dates back to the 1980s.

His public toxicity was a primary factor in the Coalition’s defeat, one of his Liberal colleagues comparing the depth of public sentiment against the prime minister in 2022 to “having a 10,000-tonne boulder attached to your leg”.

“Communication effectiveness”. Styling himself as a Cronulla Sharks-supporting “daggy dad” from the suburbs, at least initially Morrison’s communication mode seemed to be well received in the community. He was relentlessly on message during the 2019 election campaign.

But the shine rapidly wore off his persona following that victory, with growing doubts about his authenticity. Rather than persuade, his habit was to hector, and rather than empathise, he exuded smugness. A series of notorious tin-eared statements, which especially alienated women voters, came to define his image. By the end he was known as the “bulldozer-in-chief”.

“Nurturing national unity”. An innovation of Morrison’s at the beginning of the pandemic was the national cabinet. Bringing together the prime minister and premiers, it worked effectively for a time, only for partisan interests over lockdowns to strain relations between Canberra and the states.

Under pressure, Morrison also flirted with divisive culture-war politics, instances being his divisive Religious Discrimination Bill and his egregious handpicking of the anti-transgender Liberal candidate Katherine Deves to contest the 2022 election.

“Defending and promoting Australia’s interests abroad”. The AUKUS pact has vehement critics, led by Morrison’s prime-ministerial peers Keating and Turnbull, who argue it jeopardises national sovereignty.

There is no denying, however, that AUKUS was Morrison’s signature foreign policy enterprise. On the other hand, Australia’s reputation as a laggard on climate change under the Coalition hurt our international standing, not least among Pacific neighbours. The Morrison government’s belated commitment to a net zero carbon emissions by 2050 target was too little, too late. Bellicose rhetoric towards Beijing also led to a deterioration in relations with the nation’s major trading partner (as well as estranging Chinese-Australian voters).

“Being able to manage turbulent times”. Here, again, Morrison’s record is at best mixed. In his favour is decisive early actions to ameliorate the COVID pandemic, headed by the JobKeeper program. As the pandemic progressed, however, his government was too often flat-footed, demonstrated by its dilatory approach to procuring vaccines. His response to natural disasters, most notably the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires, was another shortcoming, exemplified by his secret holiday to Hawaii in the midst of the crisis. Arguably, his prime ministership was doomed from that moment.

And the verdict?

Prime-ministerial reputations can take time to settle. The passing of years fleshes out historical knowledge as well as providing greater perspective on performance in office. For example, the fate of AUKUS will quite possibly affect Morrison’s standing well into the future.

Even allowing for this, it seems safe to forecast that Morrison will be rated among the least distinguished of Australian prime ministers. His government’s relatively successful early management of the COVID pandemic and the legacy of AUKUS might spare him from falling below McMahon and Abbott at the bottom of the prime-ministerial heap. But avoiding that ignominy will probably be a close-run thing.

In the past Paul Strangio received funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. As Scott Morrison leaves parliament, where does he rank among Australian prime ministers? – https://theconversation.com/as-scott-morrison-leaves-parliament-where-does-he-rank-among-australian-prime-ministers-223003

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

Flavoured nicotine pouches are being promoted to young people on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.

Although some viral videos have been taken down following a series of reports in The Guardian, clips featuring Australian influencers have claimed nicotine pouches are a safe and effective way to quit vaping. A number of the videos have included links to websites selling these products.

With the rapid rise in youth vaping and the subsequent implementation of several reforms to restrict access to vaping products, it’s not entirely surprising the tobacco industry is introducing more products to maintain its future revenue stream.

The major trans-national tobacco companies, including Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco, all manufacture nicotine pouches. British American Tobacco’s brand of nicotine pouches, Velo, is a leading sponsor of the McLaren Formula 1 team.

But what are nicotine pouches, and are they even legal in Australia?

Like snus, but different

Nicotine pouches are available in many countries around the world, and their sales are increasing rapidly, especially among young people.

Nicotine pouches look a bit like small tea bags and are placed between the lip and gum. They’re typically sold in small, colourful tins of about 15 to 20 pouches. While the pouches don’t contain tobacco, they do contain nicotine that is either extracted from tobacco plants or made synthetically. The pouches come in a wide range of strengths.

As well as nicotine, the pouches commonly contain plant fibres (in place of tobacco, plant fibres serve as a filler and give the pouches shape), sweeteners and flavours. Just like for vaping products, there’s a vast array of pouch flavours available including different varieties of fruit, confectionery, spices and drinks.

The range of appealing flavours, as well as the fact they can be used discreetly, may make nicotine pouches particularity attractive to young people.

Users absorb the nicotine in their mouths and simply replace the pouch when all the nicotine has been absorbed. Tobacco-free nicotine pouches are a relatively recent product, but similar style products that do contain tobacco, known as snus, have been popular in Scandinavian countries, particularly Sweden, for decades.

Snus and nicotine pouches are however different products. And given snus contains tobacco and nicotine pouches don’t, the products are subject to quite different regulations in Australia.

What does the law say?

Pouches that contain tobacco, like snus, have been banned in Australia since 1991, as part of a consumer product ban on all forms of smokeless tobacco products. This means other smokeless tobacco products such as chewing tobacco, snuff, and dissolvable tobacco sticks or tablets, are also banned from sale in Australia.

Tobacco-free nicotine pouches cannot legally be sold by general retailers, like tobacconists and convenience stores, in Australia either. But the reasons for this are more complex.

In Australia, under the Poisons Standard, nicotine is a prescription-only medicine, with two exceptions. Nicotine can be used in tobacco prepared and packed for smoking, such as cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco, and cigars, as well as in preparations for therapeutic use as a smoking cessation aid, such as nicotine patches, gum, mouth spray and lozenges.

Read more:
From today, new regulations make it harder to access vapes. Here’s what’s changing

If a nicotine-containing product does not meet either of these two exceptions, it cannot be legally sold by general retailers. No nicotine pouches have currently been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration as a therapeutic aid in smoking cessation, so in short they’re not legal to sell in Australia.

However, nicotine pouches can be legally imported for personal use only if users have a prescription from a medical professional who can assess if the product is appropriate for individual use.

We only have anecdotal reports of nicotine pouch use, not hard data, as these products are very new in Australia. But we do know authorities are increasingly seizing these products from retailers. It’s highly unlikely any young people using nicotine pouches are accessing them through legal channels.

Health concerns

Nicotine exposure may induce effects including dizziness, headache, nausea and abdominal cramps, especially among people who don’t normally smoke or vape.

Although we don’t yet have much evidence on the long term health effects of nicotine pouches, we know nicotine is addictive and harmful to health. For example, it can cause problems in the cardiovascular system (such as heart arrhythmia), particularly at high doses. It may also have negative effects on adolescent brain development.

The nicotine contents of some of the nicotine pouches on the market is alarmingly high. Certain brands offer pouches containing more than 10mg of nicotine, which is similar to a cigarette. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, pouches deliver enough nicotine to induce and sustain nicotine addiction.

Pouches are also being marketed as a product to use when it’s not possible to vape or smoke, such as on a plane. So instead of helping a person quit they may be used in addition to smoking and vaping. And importantly, there’s no clear evidence pouches are an effective smoking or vaping cessation aid.

Further, some nicotine pouches, despite being tobacco-free, still contain tobacco-specific nitrosamines. These compounds can damage DNA, and with long term exposure, can cause cancer.

Overall, there’s limited data on the harms of nicotine pouches because they’ve been on the market for only a short time. But the WHO recommends a cautious approach given their similarities to smokeless tobacco products.

Read more:
The missing ingredient Australia needs to kick its smoking addiction for good

For anyone wanting advice and support to quit smoking or vaping, it’s best to talk to your doctor or pharmacist, or access trusted sources such as Quitline or the iCanQuit website.

Becky Freeman is an Expert Advisor to the Cancer Council Tobacco Issues Committee and a member of the Cancer Institute Vaping Communications Advisory Panel. These are unpaid roles. She has received relevant competitive grants that include a focus on e-cigarettes/vaping from the NHMRC, MRFF, NSW Health, the Ian Potter Foundation, VicHealth, and Healthway WA; relevant research contracts from the Cancer Institute NSW and the Cancer Council NSW; relevant personal/consulting fees from the World Health Organization, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Department of Health, BMJ Tobacco Control, the Heart Foundation NSW, the US FDA, the NHMRC e-cigarette working committee, NSW Health, and Cancer Council NSW; and relevant travel expenses from the Oceania Tobacco Control Conference and the Australia Public Health Association preventive health conference.

– ref. Nicotine pouches are being marketed to young people on social media. But are they safe, or even legal? – https://theconversation.com/nicotine-pouches-are-being-marketed-to-young-people-on-social-media-but-are-they-safe-or-even-legal-223084

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dora Marinova, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University

Official dietary advice in Australia is set to warn of the climate impact of certain foods. The move has raised the ire of farmers, meat producers and others who branded it “green ideology” and a “war on meat”.

Critics say the The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), which is behind the change, is overreaching and should not expand its remit beyond providing nutritional advice. We strongly disagree.

Having explored the scientific evidence about the harm food can cause to both the planet and human health, we firmly believe environmental information about food choices should be prominent in dietary guidelines.

Human health depends on having a safe, liveable planet and the state of our planet is inextricably linked to food systems. It’s entirely sensible that consumers are informed about whether their food choices are sustainable.

‘A thorough review of the evidence’

Australia’s dietary guidelines were released in 2013. The document provides general information about the environmental sustainability of food, but it’s buried in an appendix and the recommendations are fairly inconclusive.

The guidelines are currently under review and will be updated in 2026. The NHMRC says feedback from the public suggested sustainability information should be more accessible and explicit in the new guidelines. In fact, it said one in three people surveyed nominated the change as a priority.

The NHMRC says developing or updating its guidelines involves:

a thorough review of the evidence, methodological advice on the quality of these reviews, drafting of the guidelines, public consultation and independent expert review of the final guidelines.

It said the dietary recommendations would first consider Australia-specific health impacts, followed by sustainability and other factors – an approach in line with guidelines overseas.

Critics come out swinging

Australians are among the world’s biggest meat eaters. However, recent trends indicate Australians’ beef consumption is in decline.

Meat creates almost 60% of greenhouse gas emissions from food production, and red meat has the highest environmental footprint out of all food choices.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the change to dietary guidelines has prompted opposition from some quarters. In a report in The Australian, for example, Red Meat Advisory Council chair John McKillop said the moves:

go well beyond the policy intent of the Australian Dietary Guidelines to provide recommendations on healthy foods and dietary patterns […] [the] review process must not be allowed to be used as a vehicle to drive ideological agendas at the expense of the latest nutritional science.

He said the industry’s concerns were not related to its progress on sustainability, about which it had “a strong story” to tell.

The newspaper also quoted a Central Queensland cattle farmer, who said perceived misinformation about the health impacts and sustainability of red meat production were rife in the media, public policy and nutritional advice.

Conservative media outlets also weighed in on the changes. Sydney radio station 2GB declared the move a “war on meat” and host Ben Fordham claimed farmers were being “screwed over again”.

Read more:
Meat and masculinity: why some men just can’t stomach plant-based food

The global picture

The upcoming changes are not unprecedented globally. Environmental sustainability is highlighted in the official dietary guidelines of at least ten other countries. They include Sweden which introduced climate-friendly food advice in 2015.

The title of the Swedish guidelines translates to “Find your way to eat greener, not too much and be active!” Among the recommendations are to:

Eat less red and processed meat, no more than 500 grams a week. Only a small amount of this should be processed meat.

But other nations have struggled to include sustainability advice in official dietary guidelines. In the United States, for example, lobby groups prevented the change, despite the recommendations of government-appointed nutritionists.

Dietary officials have not overreached

The Australian dietary guidelines already suggest limiting red meat consumption on health grounds.

Research has shown regular consumption of red meat, especially if it’s processed, contributes substantially to the risk of premature death. A high intake of red meat has been associated with cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, cancers and type 2 diabetes.

Adding information about the environmental effects of red meat health simply reinforces the benefits of eating less of it.

The link between food, the natural environment and health is well-established. Even before food is produced, vegetation is cleared to create space for crops and livestock. This leads to both the release of carbon dioxide and biodiversity loss, among other harms.

When it comes to meat, the digestive systems of sheep and cattle produce a lot of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gas emissions are also created when food is processed, transported, stored and disposed of. Food packaging contributes to pressure on landfill and creates pollution.

All these processes threaten human health. Researchers have called for a global transformation of food systems, to ensure they operate within Earth’s limits.

The role of NHMRC is to protect public health in Australia. It makes sense, then, that it provides consumers with information about which foods cause the least environmental damage – and by extension, are also good for their personal health.

A rightful part of the public health agenda

Dietary guidelines are a government tool to influence food consumption towards good choices. They are based on the best available evidence, and evolve along with our understanding of food and its impacts.

Of course, even if Australia’s guidelines are changed to incorporate environmental advice, this does not guarantee everyone will make healthy and sustainable food choices. Such a shift requires major behaviour changes, of which dietary guidelines are only one component.

Arming consumers with the right information about food sustainability however should be part of the federal government’s public health agenda.

Dora Marinova receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Diana Bogueva 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. A ‘war on red meat’? No, changes to Australian dietary guidelines are just a sensible response to Earth’s environmental woes – https://theconversation.com/a-war-on-red-meat-no-changes-to-australian-dietary-guidelines-are-just-a-sensible-response-to-earths-environmental-woes-223960

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Natasha Bradshaw, Senior Associate, Grattan Institute

There will be nervous executives all over Australia this week.

Come Tuesday, large private sector organisations will have their company’s gender pay gaps published for the first time for all to see, name, and shame.

As they brace for the fallout, let’s look at how what we will be told is changing, and what it will mean for you.

What is changing?

Every year, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) collects information from every employer with more than 100 employees. Until now it has published only a summary of the findings on its website, including Australia’s overall gender pay gap, and the gap by industry and employment arrangement.

But for the first time legislation enacted last year also allows WGEA to publish the gender pay gaps of individual employers.

Tuesday’s release will include each large company’s median gender pay gap, and the share of women it employs in lower- and higher-paid jobs.

Employers will have the chance to publish a statement alongside their results to provide context.

That means from Tuesday you will be able to look on the WGEA website and find the median gender pay gap of your large private sector organisation, or of an organisation you are thinking of joining, and how it stacks up against its competitors.

Why the change?

Australian women, like women elsewhere, have made astounding progress in the workforce in recent decades.

Women are both working and earning more than ever before. But progress has stalled, and the gender pay gap remains stubbornly persistent.

The Albanese government has shown its commitment to gender equity by increasing the childcare subsidy and extending paid parental leave.

But beyond this, the options for governments are limited. Most of the barriers to women getting better-paid jobs can only be broken by employers.

The public naming and shaming that will begin on Tuesday will push accountability onto employers, holding them responsible for the conditions in their workplaces.

Read more:
Four big lessons from the UK’s new gender pay gap reporting rules

Workers and bosses are going to take notice: when employer gender pay gaps were released in the UK in 2018 it was the biggest business news story of the year, with coverage rivalling the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

At a time when companies are fighting for top talent, it is going to make it more difficult for employers with large pay gaps to hire talented women.

Research shows that on average women are willing to accept a 5% lower salary in order to avoid working for the employers with the biggest gender pay gaps.

Let’s not rush to judge

While naming and shaming will help make this policy effective, we should be careful about rushing to judgement.

It is possible for an employer to be making serious efforts to improve while its gap remains large.

And some actions aimed at improving things, such as implementing a gender quota on entry-level positions, can worsen a company’s apparent gender pay gap in the short term by temporarily increasing the number of lowly-paid women.

Also, there will be firms that have a low gender pay gap because they pay both men and women poorly.

On Tuesday, we should instead look closely at whether the organisation has outlined clear steps it will take to improve, and how it compares to its competitors. In future years, we will be able to see how things have changed.

What will matter is what employers do next

Since the UK reforms were introduced in 2018, the gender pay gap has narrowed by one-fifth, with the biggest improvements coming from the worst offenders.

UK companies have also become more likely to include wage information in their job ads, equalising the starting point of wage negotiations for all applicants.

But for existing employees, the narrowing of the gap has been caused more by slower growth in men’s wages than faster growth in women’s wages, which isn’t good news for anyone looking for a pay rise.

The full effects of the Australian reforms won’t be seen for some time.

It is likely that making high-paid jobs more accessible to women will allow employers to tap into a new talent pool and encourage more highly credentialed women into the workforce, adding to productivity growth.

What is clear now is that if we want to narrow the gender pay gap, we need to know what’s happening. The avalanche of data due on Tuesday will be a start.

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

– ref. From this week, you’ll be able to look up individual companies’ gender pay gaps – https://theconversation.com/from-this-week-youll-be-able-to-look-up-individual-companies-gender-pay-gaps-224167

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gwilym Croucher, Associate Professor, Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne

The federal government has released the final report on a Universities Accord. Taking more than a year to prepare, it is billed as a “blueprint” for reform for the next decade and beyond. It contains 47 recommendations across student fees, wellbeing, funding, teaching, research and university governance. You can find the rest of our accord coverage here.

The Universities Accord final report makes recommendations that could significantly change what many Australian students pay for their higher education.

Course fees have increased dramatically in recent years for many domestic university students, burdening graduates with high debts. It is not unheard of for graduates to have debts over A$100,000.

The report is damning of the former Morrison government’s Job-ready Graduates scheme, introduced in 2021. This fuelled debts when it increased fees to some courses, such as humanities, communications and human movement.

But what should replace it?

The report says student fees should be based on lifetime earnings. But it also leaves a lot unsaid about what students will actually pay or when change might come.

What will Australian students pay?

By world standards, Australians already contribute a huge amount to the cost of their education.

Data from the OECD shows there are only a few other countries where students and their families contribute more to the total cost of tertiary education.

To make the system “fairer and better reflective of the lifetime benefits that students”, the report recommends a reversal of some or all of the fee increases introduced under Job-ready Graduates.

This would mean significant reductions for many students. For example, the cost of many subjects in an arts degree rose by 113% under the scheme. Reversing the Job-ready Graduates increases could cost the federal budget a billion dollars or more, depending on the final details.

The report recommends “Commonwealth Supported” students (most undergraduates in Australia) should still pay different amounts for different areas of study. But it says fees should reflect “projected potential lifetime earnings” for graduates.

This would return to a logic that helped set fee levels before Job-ready Graduates. In the past, lawyers have earned more on average over a lifetime than nurses, so students studying law are asked to contribute more than those studying nursing.

To simplify the system, the report suggests fees would also be divided into three tiers instead of the current four.

Better ‘HELP’

Australia’s HECS-HELP and FEE-HELP schemes for undergraduate and graduate students are the envy of many other countries. They mean students contribute to the cost of their education but remove barriers for those who cannot afford the fees upfront.

This is because students only begin to pay back their loans once they earn a certain level of income, and repayments change yearly if earnings change. There is no “real” interest on the loans, but they are pegged to inflation. This was less of an issue while inflation was low, but has recently seen student debts climb by more than 7%.

So the report recommends debts are increased each year based on whatever is lower, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or Wage Price Index (WPI): in other words, inflation or how much wages are growing. This will cost the federal budget more but would mean the growth of an individual’s debt is more closely tied to wage growth.

Read more:
The Job-ready Graduates scheme for uni fees is on the chopping block – but what will replace it?

Making sure student debts are fair

The report also asks Australian banks to view HELP loans differently from other debt, such as credit card debt, when assessing whether or not to approve a bank loan. This follows concerns graduates are not able to secure home loans due to their HELP debts.

As the review panel explain, a key feature of a HELP scheme loan is the repayments change with income and only needs to be repaid above an minimum earning threshold, so it has much better terms than other loans.

The report also recommends other ways the HELP system can improve, especially for some groups of low-income earners. At the moment, repayments are based on a debtor’s entire income, rather than income above the repayment threshold.

This means repayments can increase as incomes rise above each threshold but by more than the total increase in income. As the report notes, in 2022-23, when a person’s income was $48,360 they repay nothing of their student debt, but a $1 increase in their earnings and they had to repay $483.61.

So the report recommends we move to a marginal repayment rates approach (like in some tax systems, which applies a tax rate to each extra dollar over a threshold), to minimise the chance that some HELP debtors are actually worse off for earning more.

Further help for students

The report wants to see the government subsidise new fee-free “preparation” courses (an expanded range of what has been termed enabling courses). These are designed to prepare students to succeed in their studies and would be offered to anyone who had been accepted into government supported courses, with a Commonwealth Supported Place.

The review also wants to see financial support for students who have to do work placements to complete their degrees, such as nursing, allied health and teaching. These compulsory placements can be very costly for students. For example, recent research on social work students has found the financial burden of doing these placements can be crippling, with students having to give up paid work, travel long distances and pay for clothing.

Student income support

The report recognises one of the biggest challenges for many students, especially many underrepresented groups, is the cost of living while studying.

The current $639-a-fortnight from Youth Allowance is hardly enough for even the most meagre lifestyle. This means university can be almost impossible for many people unless they have family support or additional paid work, which can often put pressure on their studies.

The report makes specific recommendations about extending eligibility criteria for student income support payments for some part-time students as well as increasing the threshold for the parental income test for eligibility for some students.

Read more:
HECS-HELP loans have become unfair for women but there is a way to fix this

A long way off?

While the final accord report proposes some major changes, much of the detail, such as fee levels, is not included.

In fact, it suggests it should be up to a new Australian Tertiary Education Commission to sort out.

The details, not least who pays, what, when and how, are critical to the success or otherwise of the accord. They will likely shape its impact (positive or negative) for a generation to come.

Ahead of the next federal election (either this year or early next), any major new policy with a high price tag like reducing students fees could be a big ask for the government.

Establishing a complex body such as a Tertiary Education Commission will also take time. And this runs the risk that political will could falter and priorities will shift, especially if there is a change of government.

Nevertheless, this much anticipated final report has good news for many universities students who are struggling with the costs of study, even if it does not offer any immediate relief.

Gwilym Croucher is an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne

– ref. Universities Accord: many students could pay less for their higher education … eventually – https://theconversation.com/universities-accord-many-students-could-pay-less-for-their-higher-education-eventually-224240

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Hurley, Director, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

The federal government has released the final report on a Universities Accord. Taking more than a year to prepare, it is billed as a “blueprint” for reform for the next decade and beyond. It contains 47 recommendations across student fees, wellbeing, funding, teaching, research and university governance. You can find the rest of our accord coverage here.

Australian universities could get more federal government funding, in changes recommended by the Universities Accord final report. But there is little detail so far on how it will be paid for.

The accord wants to set a target to more than double the number of government-funded students by 2050. This would see the number of students grow from 860,000 to 1.8 million.

On an individual student level, the accord proposes Australia adopt a “needs-based” funding model. This means universities would receive a base amount per student. Then there would be further loadings for equity students – those from low socioeconomic backgrounds, First Nations students and students with a disability. Regional universities would also receive extra funding.

But the report is quiet on how to fund the extra places and the loadings. An international student levy, which was widely anticipated to be included as a recommendation, is not mentioned in the final report.

The detail on funding is left to a proposed Tertiary Education Commission to implement within a “funding envelope set by government”.

This sets the scene for the difficult task of designing a new funding system that will inevitably involve losers as well as winners.

Read more:
Gonski for universities: what if we funded higher education like schools?

Some universities are set to gain more than others

The accord has recommended that per student funding is changed so universities receive more money for students from equity backgrounds.

This is a similar approach to funding in Australia’s schools, introduced as part of the “Gonski” reforms a decade ago.

The Mitchell Institute modelled what a Gonski-style funding model might look like, using the categories identified by the accord and based on funding rates in the school sector.

We found the overall funding per student would increase by about 11%, or A$1.3 billion per year.

Regional universities and universities in outer-suburban areas would receive the biggest share of funding increases, as they tend to enrol more students from under-represented backgrounds. The more prestigious universities, the so-called Group of Eight, would gain the least.

Why have a new approach to funding?

The accord has proposed a needs-based funding model because, it says,

people from groups under-represented in higher education on average require greater support to succeed, often due to experiencing educational disadvantage.

The aim is to help universities improve outcomes for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. These students are less likely to to university, and less likely to finish their studies if they do, than students from more advantaged backgrounds. Peter checking this language ok

Managing funding across the system

The accord is proposing a government funding cap for each university based on the number of students. The Tertiary Education Commission would manage allocations and adjust funding every year to ensure there is “sustained and system-wide growth”.

Built into the model are other provisions intended to remove barriers to higher education access, including:

• new funding rates for courses that cover the full cost of teaching them

• fee-free preparation programs for anyone who has qualified for a government-supported university place. This is to help get students ready for their course

• freedom for universities to make more choices about their enrolments and finances, including using government-supported places for postgraduate courses. This means some expensive postgraduate qualifications could become more affordable

• extending government supported places to non-universities such as TAFEs, so they can offer higher education courses without having to charge full-fees.

International student levy not mentioned

One of the most controversial ideas from the accord’s interim report in July was an international student levy. It suggested income from international students would be used to pay for the extra funding required to support the growth in equity students.

But the international student levy is not mentioned in the final report. Instead, the accord recommends the establishment of two funds.

The first is a “Higher Education Future Fund” which would be used to support infrastructure for the sector, including student housing. The recommendation is for a fund of $10 billion, with half coming from universities and the other half from the federal government. Universities with higher non-government revenue, such as high international student income, would be expected to contribute more.

The accord also recommends a new “Solving Australia’s Challenges Fund” to reward universities that use their research expertise and capability to solve national problems. The size of this fund is unclear.

Read more:
What would a levy on international student fees mean for Australian universities?

What is next?

The proposals outlined in the accord report will likely result in a redistribution of federal government financial support in the sector.

But the report has not outlined how this will be done. Instead, the Tertiary Education Commission will be required to determine funding rates and funding caps with universities.

This is understandable because determining final funding models can be very technical work. But it does mean we lack a lot of crucial detail.

It also means a new Tertiary Education Commission (if one is set up) has a very difficult job to do in a constrained funding environment.

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. Universities Accord: ‘Gonski-style’ funding is on the table for higher education. This will see some unis gain more than others – https://theconversation.com/universities-accord-gonski-style-funding-is-on-the-table-for-higher-education-this-will-see-some-unis-gain-more-than-others-224246

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sally Patfield, Lecturer, Teachers and Teaching Research Centre, School of Education, University of Newcastle

The federal government has released the final report on a Universities Accord. Taking more than a year to prepare, it is billed as a “blueprint” for reform for the next decade and beyond. It contains 47 recommendations across student fees, wellbeing, funding, teaching, research and university governance. You can find the rest of our accord coverage here.

Equity has been an ongoing theme in Australian higher education policy for decades. Beginning with the Whitlam government in 1972, equity has often been viewed as a major challenge or “wicked problem” that needs solving.

It’s also been at the forefront of discussions about the Universities Accord, with “access and opportunity” for underrepresented groups highlighted in the review’s terms of reference.

So it’s not surprising to see equity feature prominently in the final report. In fact, “equity” is mentioned more than 200 times. But does it live up to its promise to improve access to education for all Australians?

Read more:
‘I would like to go to university’: flexi school students share their goals in Australia-first survey

What do we mean by equity?

The accord report continues the tradition of many previous federal government policies by defining equity as “parity” or “proportional representation”. This means the major goal is for the university student population to reflect more closely the demographic composition of Australian society.

For example, Australians from low socio-economic status backgrounds currently make up around 17% of enrolments in higher education but 25% of the broader Australian population. So the aim here would be to have participation rates closer to, if not at, 25%. The other key target groups are First Nations peoples, people living in regional and remote areas, and people with a disability.

At face value, this a noble pursuit. Expanding access to higher education helps expand opportunities for all Australians and can lead to more diverse voices in professions and public life.

But this is not necessarily the accord’s rationale. The report notes we need to increase enrolments from underrepresented groups to increase the number of skilled workers. As such, we end up with phrases in the final report such as “growth through equity” and “skills through equity”.

So it downplays the importance of equity as a genuine concern in its own right.

‘Lack of aspiration’ isn’t a problem

Both sides of Australians politics have long used the language of “aspiration” to suggest anybody can have a good life, as long as they just “get on with things” and try hard enough.

In 2008, the Bradley Review (the previous broad review of higher education in Australia) similarly argued one of the main barriers to increasing the enrolment of underrepresented groups was a lack of aspiration.

There is a large body of Australian research demonstrating aspiration is not the problem it has been made out to be – many young people from all different kinds of backgrounds aspire to go to university. Nevertheless, the accord continues to talk about “increasing aspiration” and “building aspiration” as a strategy for facilitating access to higher education.

The accord proposes access to higher education can be improved, in part, by strengthening careers advice in schools and enhancing familiarity with university through outreach programs.

These are important for students who are the first in their family to go to university, as they are often complete “newcomers” to higher education. But we need to move beyond seeing aspiration as a problem to be fixed.

Read more:
‘Why would you go to uni?’ A new study looks at what young Australians do after school

What can make a difference?

Despite these limitations, the accord does propose a “whole of student” approach to raising university attainment levels (from how students learn to how they are financially supported), noting it’s not enough simply to enrol disadvantaged students “hoping they succeed”.

A number of practical recommendations likely to make a positive difference to students at various stages in their university journey include:

• a significant increase in the availability of fee-free places in preparation or enabling programs, which prepare students for university study

• government financial support for compulsory work placements in teaching, nursing and other care-related fields

• a new national “Jobs Broker” to help students find appropriate part-time employment during their studies

• abolishing the Job-Ready Graduates scheme for fees, so student contributions are based on potential lifetime earnings.

Read more:
These 5 equity ideas should be at the heart of the Universities Accord

Beyond ‘bums on seats’

While these measures are welcome, we know there are longstanding challenges to getting underrepresented groups into university, including improving academic outcomes during school. Cost-of-living pressures may also continue to make university study a challenge, despite increases in government help.

But even if targets are reached, achieving parity for underrepresented groups does not necessarily make higher education equitable.

Equity is much more than physical presence or getting bums on seats. We also need to think about what students are accessing, how they are supported, and how universities ultimately value and include them.

Sally Patfield currently receives funding from the NSW Department of Education, Commonwealth Department of Education, and the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

– ref. Universities Accord: the final report mentions ‘equity’ 200 times, but can it boost access for underrepresented groups? – https://theconversation.com/universities-accord-the-final-report-mentions-equity-200-times-but-can-it-boost-access-for-underrepresented-groups-224248

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Judith Ireland, Education Editor, The Conversation, Australia

Federal education Minister Jason Clare has released the highly-anticipated Universities Accord final report, billing it as a “blueprint” to change higher education for decades to come.

It is the first broad review of the sector since 2008. As The University of Melbourne’s Gwilym Croucher has noted it “could mean the most significant changes to higher education in a generation”.

More than a year in the making, the final report is 400 pages and contains 47 recommendations.

Where did it come from?

The Universities Accord started as a pre-election promise when Labor was in opposition. In 2021, then Labor education spokesperson Tanya Plibersek proposed to

seek to end some of the political bickering over higher education policy by establishing an Australian universities accord.

As higher education expert Gavin Moodie has written, the name invokes the landmark Prices and Incomes Accord, negotiated by the Hawke government and union movement.

But when the accord process was set up by Clare in November 2022, the emphasis was more on creating “lasting reform” and a “long-term plan” for higher education.

Clare appointed an expert panel to undertake a review for the accord. It has been led by Mary O’Kane, former vice-chancellor of the University of Adelaide and includes former Labor minister Jenny Macklin and former Nationals minister Fiona Nash.

What has happened so far?

The review has involved more than 820 public submissions and 180 meetings with stakeholders. It has covered almost every aspect of higher education from student fees, to research, teaching, student and staff welfare, and international students.

The emphasis from the government and review team has been on ideas that can last for decades.

O’Kane called on contributors to “be bold. Think big and think beyond the immediate challenges”. An interim report was released in July, seeking feedback on more than 70 “spiky” policy ideas, such as a levy on international student fees (which is noticeably missing from the final document).

What’s in the final report?

The final report finds “significant change” is needed in higher education if Australia is going to have the skills and knowledge it needs to support its economy and society. It sets “ambitious targets”, including:

• increasing the tertiary education attainment rate from the current 60% to at least 80% of Australians in the workforce by 2050

• increasing the proportion of university educated Australians aged 25 to 34 from 45% to 55% by 2050.

It says to achieve this increase, the government will need to more than double the number of Commonwealth supported students at university from 860,000 to 1.8 million by 2050.

This is going to require more people from disadvantaged backgrounds (including Indigenous students, students in regional areas and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds) to go to university. The review wants to see these students achieve “participation parity” by 2050.

Read more:
These 5 equity ideas should be at the heart of the Universities Accord

More financial help for students

Other recommendations cover support for students on the way through their study as well as what happens to their loans once they graduate. These include:

• a “jobs broker” to help university students find part-time work and work experience

• increased availability of free-free preparation courses for university

• financial support for compulsory work placements

• “higher and more accessible” income support for university students

• ditching the Job-ready Graduates scheme (which made arts degrees so expensive) and replacing it with course fees based on students’ lifetime earnings

• “fairer and simpler” indexation for HELP loans.

International students

The review notes how important international students are to Australia’s economy and higher education sector (international education is Australia’s fourth largest export). The report calls for

• less reliance on just a handful of source countries

• more international students studying in regional campuses.

Read more:
We are hurtling towards a million international students in Australia – migration changes will only slow this growth, not stop it

Funding

While it didn’t include precise dollar figures in the report, the review made multiple recommendations around funding arrangements in different parts of the system. These include:

• new targets for how much Australia spends on research and development as a proportion of GDP

• a fund to support universities to solve challenges facing Australia

• developing a “pathway” to fund the “full economic cost of research”

• a new “needs based” funding system that provides extra funding to universities for educating students from disadvantaged backgrounds

• and a “Higher Education Future Fund” with contributions from universities and government to build infrastructure (like student housing).

Read more:
Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt’s big ideas for how Australia funds and uses research

What happens now?

Ultimately, the review panel wants to see a new Australian Tertiary Education Commission set up to oversee the reforms and the sector as a whole.

But it does not recommend quick change. Rather, it initially calls for a committee to oversee implementation and for a “staged approach”.

The federal government, (which has had the report since December) is now “considering” the recommendations. Clare is already managing expectations about timing. As he said on Sunday:

This is a plan not for one budget, but a blueprint for the next decade and beyond.

– ref. Universities Accord final report: what is it, and what does it recommend? – https://theconversation.com/universities-accord-final-report-what-is-it-and-what-does-it-recommend-224251

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dwan Vilcins, Group leader, Environmental Epidemiology, Children’s Health Environment Program, The University of Queensland

Bushfires are currently burning in Australian states including Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia. In some areas, fire authorities have warned residents about the presence of smoke.

Bushfire smoke is harmful to our health. Tiny particles of ash can lodge deep in the lungs.

Exposure to this type of smoke may worsen existing conditions such as asthma, and induce a range of health effects from irritation of the eyes, nose and throat to changes in the cardiovascular system.

Public health recommendations during smoke events tend to provide general advice, and don’t often include advice specifically geared at children. But children are not just little adults. They are uniquely vulnerable to environmental hazards such as bushfire smoke for a number of reasons.

Different physiology, different behaviour

Children’s lungs are still developing and maturing.

Airways are smaller in children, especially young children, which is associated with greater rates of particle deposition – when particles settle on the surfaces of the airways.

Children also breathe more air per kilogram of body weight compared with adults, and therefore inhale more polluted air relative to their size.

Further, children’s detoxification systems are still developing, so environmental toxins take longer to effectively clear from their bodies.

Read more:
The Black Summer bushfires put an enormous strain on families with young children. We can’t make the same mistakes again

Meanwhile, children’s behaviour and habits may expose them to more environmental toxins than adults. For example, they tend to do more physical activity and spend more time outdoors. Higher levels of physical activity lead to more air inhaled per kilogram of body weight.

Also, a normal and important part of children’s early play is exploring their environment, including by putting things in their mouth. This can result in kids ingesting soil, dust and dirt, which often contain environmental contaminants.

For these reasons, it’s important to consider the specific needs of children when providing advice on what to do when there’s smoke in the air.

Keeping our environments healthy

The Australian government offers recommendations for minimising the health risks from exposure to bushfire smoke. The main advice includes staying indoors and keeping doors and windows closed.

This is great advice when the smoke is thick outside, but air pollutants may still accumulate inside the home. So it’s important to air your home once the smoke outside starts to clear. Take advantage of wind changes to open up and get air moving out of the house with a cross breeze.

Kids are natural scientists, so get them involved. For example, you and your child can “rate” the air each hour by looking at a landmark outside your home and rating how clearly you can see it. When you notice the haze is reducing, open up the house and clear the air.

Read more:
Bushfires in Victoria: how to protect yourself if the air is smoky where you live

Because air pollutants settle onto surfaces in our home and into household dust, an easy way to protect kids during smoky periods is to do a daily dust with a wet cloth and vacuum regularly. This will remove pollutants and reduce ingestion by children as they play. Frequent hand washing helps too.

Healthy bodies and minds

Research exploring the effects of bushfire smoke exposure on children’s health is sparse. However, during smoke events, we do see an increase in hospital visits for asthma, as well as children reporting irritation to their eyes, nose and throat.

If your child has asthma or another medical condition, ensure they take any prescribed medications on a regular schedule to keep their condition well controlled. This will minimise the risk of a sudden worsening of their symptoms with bushfire smoke exposure.

Make sure any action plans for symptom flare-ups are up to date, and ensure you have an adequate supply of in-date medication somewhere easy to locate and access.

Kids can get worried during bushfires, and fire emergencies have been linked with a reduction in children’s mental health. Stories such as the Birdie’s Tree books can help children understand these events do pass and people help one another in times of difficulty.

Learning more about air pollution can help too. Our group has a children’s story explaining how air pollution affects our bodies and what can help.

It’s also important for parents and caregivers not to get too stressed, as children cope better when their parents manage their own anxiety and help their children do the same. Try to strike a balance between being vigilant and staying calm.

Read more:
Bushfires can make kids scared and anxious: here are 5 steps to help them cope

What about masks?

N95 masks can protect the wearer from fine particles in bushfire smoke, but their use is a bit complicated when it comes to kids. Most young children won’t be able to fit properly into an N95 mask, or won’t tolerate the tight fit for long periods. Also, their smaller airways make it harder for young children to breathe through a mask.

If you choose to use an N95 mask for your children, it’s best to save them for instances when high-level outdoor exposure is unavoidable, such as if you’re going outside when the smoke is very thick.

N95 masks should be replaced after around four hours or when they become damp.

If your child has an existing heart or lung condition, consult their doctor before having them wear an N95 mask.

Our team is currently recruiting for a study exploring the effects of bushfire smoke in children. If you live in south east Queensland and are interested in participating in the event of a bushfire or hazard reduction burn near your home, please express your interest here.

Dwan Vilcins receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand.

Nicholas Osborne has received speaking fees from Reckitt.

Paul D. Robinson receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. Bushfire smoke affects children differently. Here’s how to protect them – https://theconversation.com/bushfire-smoke-affects-children-differently-heres-how-to-protect-them-215535

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edith Jennifer Hill, Associate Lecturer, Flinders University

Mother and family YouTube creator Ruby Franke was this week sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse.

Franke came under fire from viewers many times throughout her time on YouTube for her controversial parenting, which included videos of withholding food from the children, or sharing she made her son sleep on a bean bag for seven months after pranking his younger brother.

In court, prosecutor Eric Clarke said “the children were regularly denied food, water, beds to sleep in, and virtually all forms of entertainment”.

Now, nine years after the channel started, Franke and her friend and business partner Jodi Hilderbrandt are going to prison.

Family channels are very popular on YouTube, with millions of subscribers. They feature the intimate lives of a family, are most often run by the mothers and focus on everyday family life: school, food, parenting, and occasionally discipline.

Family channels have been consistently scrutinised by the media and others online for sharing the lives of children online without their consent. While the Franke case is an extreme example, it raises important questions about sharing children’s lives online.

‘Sharenting’

Parents sharing – or, more often, oversharing – information about their children online has been called “sharenting”. Sharenting allows parents to publicly post about their children and receive praise and validation, while also providing a sense of community. Many parents online share information in low-risk ways on their private social media accounts.

However, when influencers share their children to their massive public platforms, the risks are magnified.

Read more:
Should I post photos of my children online? Here’s what new parents need to know about sharenting

Researchers worry about how this level of sharing is taking away agency from children and how it creates an online life story for them to which they cannot consent. There are also real risks of sharing children to potential predators online, with concerns about videos being saved or embedded into unsavoury websites.

To combat some of these risks, YouTube recommends parents turn off the embedding function on videos as part of its best practice guide for content with children.

In one case, YouTuber Allison Irons took her children off her channel after looking at her analytics and realising her videos were being embedded onto websites for paedophiles. After turning off the embedding function, her male viewership dropped from 40% to 17%.

Outside of legal issues, YouTube is largely a self-policing platform, where users and content creators dictate what is appropriate content within their own communities.

There have been multiple cases in which the community has decided the actions of a family channel have been inappropriate. The YouTube channel DaddyOFive shocked the community when the parents were shown “pranking” their children on camera, in a way many interpreted as abuse. The channel is no longer active.

Similarly, Myka and James Stauffer received severe backlash after posting videos about giving up their adopted child after making multiple videos sharing his face and name with their followers.

But it’s not just children of influencers who are concerned about their lives being shared online. A survey conducted in 2020 found “children were generally quite negative toward sharenting” and all children in the survey wanted their parents to ask for permission before posting content of them online.

The case against 8 Passengers

Ruby Franke and husband Kevin Franke began their YouTube channel, 8 passengers, in 2015. The channel featured the couple and their six children. At the height of the channel, they had 2.5 million subscribers and 1 billion channel views. The channel was deleted in 2022 after a series of controversies involving the channel. Ruby and Kevin have since separated.

A 2020 petition called for an investigation into the Franke parents based on elements of their videos, including one in which Ruby Franke refused to drop lunch off at school for her six-year-old daughter, stating it was her responsibility to bring food and teachers were not allowed to feed her.

In 2023, one of Franke’s young children “escaped”, according to media reports, and asked a neighbour for help, who then contacted the police, leading to this month’s court hearing.

The court heard the children had been victims of severe corporal punishment, including removal of food and bedding, and physical punishments such as being made to perform wall-sits or do manual labour in harsh weather.

Of course, not all family vloggers are the same as 8 Passengers. However, we do need to consider the ethical ramifications of sharing children online and the rights of all children on family channels.

What should family vlogging look like?

The landscape of family channels on YouTube is changing. In 2021, France implemented a law to protect the income of children online. In the United States, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act came into effect in 2021.

The world of sharing your child online is ethically complex. Sharenting could impact the development of a child’s identity formation and sense of self.

It’s imperative parents be aware of the dangers of public sharing and take the necessary steps to protect their children. Ask permission before sharing your children online, and consider the long-term effects of curating an online life for them. For more research on online child safety and education, parents should consult the Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

Read more:
Why aren’t there any legal protections for the children of influencers?

Edith Jennifer Hill 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. YouTube influencer Ruby Franke will go to prison for child abuse. What are the ethics of family vlogging? – https://theconversation.com/youtube-influencer-ruby-franke-will-go-to-prison-for-child-abuse-what-are-the-ethics-of-family-vlogging-220847

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Booth, Research assistant, University of Technology Sydney

As misinformation and radicalisation rise, it’s tempting to look for something to blame: the internet, social media personalities, sensationalised political campaigns, religion, or conspiracy theories. And once we’ve settled on a cause, solutions usually follow: do more fact-checking, regulate advertising, ban YouTubers deemed to have “gone too far”.

However, if these strategies were the whole answer, we should already be seeing a decrease in people being drawn into fringe communities and beliefs, and less misinformation in the online environment. We’re not.

In new research published in the Journal of Sociology, we and our colleagues found radicalisation is a process of increasingly intense stages, and only a small number of people progress to the point where they commit violent acts.

Our work shows the misinformation radicalisation process is a pathway driven by human emotions rather than the information itself – and this understanding may be a first step in finding solutions.

A feeling of control

We analysed dozens of public statements from newspapers and online in which former radicalised people described their experiences. We identified different levels of intensity in misinformation and its online communities, associated with common recurring behaviours.

In the early stages, we found people either encountered misinformation about an anxiety-inducing topic through algorithms or friends, or they went looking for an explanation for something that gave them a “bad feeling”.

Read more:
Three reasons why disinformation is so pervasive and what we can do about it

Regardless, they often reported finding the same things: a new sense of certainty, a new community they could talk to, and feeling they had regained some control of their lives.

Once people reached the middle stages of our proposed radicalisation pathway, we considered them to be invested in the new community, its goals, and its values.

Growing intensity

It was during these more intense stages that people began to report more negative impacts on their own lives. This could include the loss of friends and family, health issues caused by too much time spent on screens and too little sleep, and feelings of stress and paranoia. To soothe these pains, they turned again to their fringe communities for support.

Most people in our dataset didn’t progress past these middle stages. However, their continued activity in these spaces kept the misinformation ecosystem alive.

When people did move further and reach the extreme final stages in our model, they were doing active harm.

In their recounting of their experiences at these high levels of intensity, individuals spoke of choosing to break ties with loved ones, participating in public acts of disruption and, in some cases, engaging in violence against other people in the name of their cause.

Once people reached this stage, it took pretty strong interventions to get them out of it. The challenge, then, is how to intervene safely and effectively when people are in the earlier stages of being drawn into a fringe community.

Respond with empathy, not shame

We have a few suggestions. For people who are still in the earlier stages, friends and trusted advisers, like a doctor or a nurse, can have a big impact by simply responding with empathy.

If a loved one starts voicing possible fringe views, like a fear of vaccines, or animosity against women or other marginalised groups, a calm response that seeks to understand the person’s underlying concern can go a long way.

The worst response is one that might leave them feeling ashamed or upset. It may drive them back to their fringe community and accelerate their radicalisation.

Even if the person’s views intensify, maintaining your connection with them can turn you into a lifeline that will see them get out sooner rather than later.

Read more:
Out of the rabbit hole: new research shows people can change their minds about conspiracy theories

Once people reached the middle stages, we found third-party online content – not produced by government, but regular users – could reach people without backfiring. Considering that many people in our research sample had their radicalisation instigated by social media, we also suggest the private companies behind such platforms should be held responsible for the effects of their automated tools on society.

By the middle stages, arguments on the basis of logic or fact are ineffective. It doesn’t matter whether they are delivered by a friend, a news anchor, or a platform-affiliated fact-checking tool.

At the most extreme final stages, we found that only heavy-handed interventions worked, such as family members forcibly hospitalising their radicalised relative, or individuals undergoing government-supported deradicalisation programs.

How not to be radicalised

After all this, you might be wondering: how do you protect yourself from being radicalised?

As much of society becomes more dependent on digital technologies, we’re going to get exposed to even more misinformation, and our world is likely going to get smaller through online echo chambers.

One strategy is to foster your critical thinking skills by reading long-form texts from paper books.

Another is to protect yourself from the emotional manipulation of platform algorithms by limiting your social media use to small, infrequent, purposefully-directed pockets of time.

And a third is to sustain connections with other humans, and lead a more analogue life – which has other benefits as well.

So in short: log off, read a book, and spend time with people you care about.

Read more:
A month at sea with no technology taught me how to steal my life back from my phone

Emily Booth is supported by funding from the Australian Department of Home Affairs and the Defence Innovation Network.

Marian-Andrei Rizoiu receives funding from the Australian Department of Home Affairs, the Defence Science and Technology Group, the Defence Innovation Network and the Australian Academy of Science.

– ref. How people get sucked into misinformation rabbit holes – and how to get them out – https://theconversation.com/how-people-get-sucked-into-misinformation-rabbit-holes-and-how-to-get-them-out-223717

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liyana Kayali, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Sydney

Around 1.5 million Palestinian civilians are currently squeezed into the southern Gaza city of Rafah after repeatedly being forced by Israeli bombardment and ground assaults to evacuate further and further south.

The town, which originally had a population of 250,000, is now host to more than half of Gaza’s entire population. They are sheltering in conditions the UN’s top aid official has called “abysmal”, with disease spreading and famine looming.

In a military onslaught the International Court of Justice has ruled a plausible case of genocide, Israel has so far killed over 29,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Now there are increasing fears Israel’s expected ground assault on Rafah could push civilians across the border into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Originally designated as a “safe zone”, Rafah is now being targeted by Israeli airstrikes, as well. Those fleeing the violence have nowhere safe to go.

However, Egypt, the only country aside from Israel that has a border with Gaza, has rebuffed pressure to accept Palestinian refugees displaced by Israel.

Reports have indicated that Israeli officials have tried to lobby international support to compel Egypt to accept refugees from Gaza.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, however, has been adamant in refusing to allow humanitarian corridors or the entry of large numbers of Palestinians into Sinai. He has called it a “red line” that, if crossed, would “liquidate the Palestinian cause”.

In recent days, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, has validated Egypt’s position. Grandi said displacing Gazans to Egypt would be “catastrophic” for both Egypt and the Palestinians, who, he indicated, would likely not be allowed to return.

Read more:
Israeli siege has placed Gazans at risk of starvation − prewar policies made them vulnerable in the first place

Why Egypt is opposed to the idea

There are a few reasons for Egypt’s opposition.

The first is that Egypt does not want to be seen to be facilitating ethnic cleansing through the permanent resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza.

In October, a leaked document from Israel’s Intelligence Ministry included recommendations to forcibly transfer of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million out of the territory and into tent cities in Egypt’s Sinai Desert.

Government ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir have also both openly advocated the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza to make way for their replacement by Israeli settlers.

Further, in January, a conference in Israel calling for this very plan was attended by 11 members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet and 15 additional members of parliament.

While Netanyahu last month said Israel has “no intention of permanently occupying Gaza”, he hasn’t shut down talk from his ministers about it. When asked about the conference in January, for example, he said everyone was “entitled to their opinions”.

Sisi is also conscious of the strong surge of sympathy the Egyptian public has demonstrated for the Palestinians and the support they have shown for his opposition to any displacement of people across the border. This is due to feelings of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, as well as an awareness of the lessons of history.

Recalling 1947-49, when an estimated 750,000 were either expelled or forced to flee their homes by Zionist forces during the war surrounding the creation of the state of Israel, Egypt doesn’t want to be seen to be enabling another Nakba, or “catastrophe”.

The total number of refugees created by the Nakba now stands at around 6 million. According to the UN, about a third live in refugee camps, Israel having denied their right to return to their homeland.

Significantly, in November, Israel’s minister for agriculture, Avi Dichter, declared: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” adding, “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

Read more:
Why do Israelis and the rest of the world view the Gaza conflict so differently? And can this disconnect be overcome?

Egypt’s complicated relationship with Hamas

Another key concern for Egypt is its security. If Palestinians were resettled in Sinai, it could make the Egyptian territory a new base from which to launch resistance operations. This could drag Egypt into a military conflict with Israel.

In addition, Sisi has only just managed to clamp down on Islamist insurgents in North Sinai in recent years and is presumably concerned that an influx of refugees could be destabilising.

Finally, Sisi likely believes Hamas could mount opposition to his regime.

After overthrowing President Mohamed Morsi in a military coup in 2013, the Sisi regime cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood and repressed all dissent. This extended to a demonisation of Hamas, which grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch.

Between 2014 and 2016, the Egyptian military bombed and flooded tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt, at the same time as accusing Hamas of colluding with the Muslim Brotherhood against the state. It has also enforced Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Having said that, the relationship is not straightforwardly antagonistic. Hamas and Egypt have co-operated on counterinsurgency operations against the Islamic State in Sinai. Egypt has also played a role in mediating current and past ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel.

However, the latest rounds of negotiations have gone nowhere, leaving Egypt to nervously ramp up its warnings around any Israeli moves on the border.

Egypt and Israel have had a peace treaty since 1979, and their relationship has become stronger with Sisi in power. However, Egypt has threatened to suspend the peace treaty if Rafah is invaded.

Read more:
Israel-Egypt peace treaty has stood the test of time over 45 years: expert explains its significance

Where does this leave the people of Gaza?

Netanyahu has vowed to push ahead with a ground incursion of Rafah in the coming weeks.

Concurrently, Egypt has moved to fortify its border and, according to reports and satellite images, begun building a walled buffer zone of about 21 square kilometres in the Sinai. This suggests Egypt is preparing for a potential removal or exodus of Palestinians.

While it isn’t entirely clear whether this is being done in co-ordination with Israel or as a “contingency” measure, the zone would condemn Gazans to yet another densely packed open-air prison with dire human rights implications.

As much as states like Egypt and Jordan have strengthened their rhetorical opposition to Israel in the past few months, neighbouring Arab countries have done little to seriously pressure Israel to halt its military operations or significantly improve aid access to the Gaza Strip.

In fact, Egypt’s intermittent closures of the Rafah crossing have delayed the entry of desperately needed aid into Gaza. There are also reports Egyptian authorities are demanding thousands of dollars in bribes from those desperate to leave via Rafah, deepening a sense of cynicism, despair and, ultimately, abandonment.

Liyana Kayali has signed a statement of solidarity with Palestine from academics in Australian universities as well as a statement of scholars warning of a potential genocide being committed in Gaza.

– ref. Why Egypt refuses to open its border to Palestinians forcibly displaced from Gaza – https://theconversation.com/why-egypt-refuses-to-open-its-border-to-palestinians-forcibly-displaced-from-gaza-223735

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sian Troath, Postdoctoral Fellow, Political Science and International Relations, University of Canterbury

There is little doubt the National-led coalition is showing greater interest in the AUKUS security agreement, with Australian officials due to visit New Zealand later this year to brief the government.

So far, much of the discussion and analysis of New Zealand potentially joining the so-called “pillar two” of AUKUS has focused on the usual geopolitical and security narratives.

Australia is New Zealand’s only formal ally, New Zealand is already part of the Five Eyes spy network, and there are shared historical ties and values between Western states.

Like Australia, too, New Zealand has been walking a tightrope between its close trading relationship with China and its security relationship with the United States, as tension grows between the two superpowers.

Of course, perceptions of the strategic environment play a role. But they are far from the only motivating factor. In comments from the relevant ministers, and in briefing notes from department officials, it is clear economic arguments are being made in favour of New Zealand joining pillar two.

The government was elected, in part, on a platform of cutting public spending. At the same time, New Zealand under-invests in the research and development the government sees as essential for economic growth.

Given AUKUS is already a controversial initiative, any incentive to use it as a means to subsidise inadequate research, science and innovation budgets needs greater public scrutiny.

A change of heart

Under the previous Labour government, New Zealand put up a relatively ambivalent front on AUKUS.

Any involvement in pillar one (which provides for Australia to buy at least eight nuclear-powered submarines from the US and UK) was immediately ruled out, given its impact on New Zealand’s nuclear-free policies.

While the government left the door open to pillar two – which allows for collaboration on advanced technologies and building connections between defence industrial bases – there were seemingly conflicting views within the Labour Party.

While former defence minister Andrew Little seemed more open to the discussion, former foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta raised concerns about the impact it could have on New Zealand’s independence and relationships in the Pacific.

Read more:
Moving closer to Australia is in New Zealand’s strategic interest – joining AUKUS is not

In opposition, the National Party was critical of AUKUS. Its then foreign affairs spokesperson, Gerry Brownlee, said the deal would not make New Zealand safer.

Now in power, however, National and its coalition partners appear to have a newfound enthusiasm for AUKUS. Defence Minister Judith Collins made it clear the government was considering what benefits AUKUS could provide New Zealand, and what New Zealand could bring to the table.

With Foreign Minister Winston Peters, she raised these matters in their meeting with Australian ministerial counterparts at the inaugural Australia-New Zealand Foreign and Defence Ministerial Consultations (ANZMIN) in early February.

Their joint statement said AUKUS makes “a positive contribution toward maintaining peace, security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific”.

AUKUS economics

Economic factors appear to be playing a significant role in this tack towards AUKUS. A briefing by defence officials to the previous government listed eight “opportunities for New Zealand’s research community and industry”.

This focus on research is notable. Not only were the benefits outlined in the briefing, but it was also shared with the then minister of research, science and innovation.

As well as being defence minister, Collins is also minister for science, innovation and technology, as well as minister for space. It is unsurprising she would see harmony in these three portfolios when it comes to AUKUS. She has shown considerable enthusiasm for technology as a pathway to economic growth.

Read more:
New Zealand is reviving the ANZAC alliance – joining AUKUS is a logical next step

Collins has pointed to the space industry as a key sector in which New Zealand could make a contribution. Technology and space are also the areas that, in Collins’ words, “offer opportunities to New Zealand businesses and scientists”.

At the same time, the government has requested budget cuts from its departments, including a 7.5% reduction from defence. State funding for research and development has long been inadequate, and this seems unlikely to change.

Interest in AUKUS, then, exists in a broader economic context beyond the obvious strategic defence considerations.

Time for a broader debate

The government clearly hopes collaboration on AUKUS pillar two can help provide something of a cross-subsidy for both defence and related civilian research and industries.

Many of the technologies involved – including space-related technology such as that used by RocketLab – are dual-use, meaning they have both civilian and defence applications.

Indeed, for several years now Australia has been building closer links in emerging technologies between its academic sector, defence and civilian industries.

Read more:
AUKUS is already trialling autonomous weapons systems – where is NZ’s policy on next-generation warfare?

It is important to understand these economic motivations. The prospect of New Zealand joining pillar two of AUKUS is already controversial at a geo-strategic level. If one of the primary motivations is also economic, some harder questions need to be asked.

Does it make sense to fund research, science and innovation via a defence partnership? And would that justify joining a controversial defence arrangement that potentially compromises other important international relationships?

The AUKUS question in general now needs to be considered in the context of broader debates about New Zealand’s role in the world, and the role of government in society.

Sian Troath receives funding from The Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund..

– ref. Joining AUKUS could boost NZ’s poor research and technology spending – but at what cost? – https://theconversation.com/joining-aukus-could-boost-nzs-poor-research-and-technology-spending-but-at-what-cost-223719

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abby Mellick Lopes, Associate Professor, Design Studies, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney

Weather extremes driven by climate change hit low-income communities harder. The reasons include poor housing and lack of access to safe and comfortable public spaces. This makes “climate readiness” a pressing issue for governments, city planners and emergency services in fast-growing areas such as Western Sydney.

We work with culturally diverse residents and social housing providers in Western Sydney to explore how they’re adapting to increasing heat. Residents hosted heat data loggers inside and outside their homes.

Last summer was relatively mild, but we recorded temperatures as high as 40°C inside some homes. Recalling a heatwave in 2019, one resident said: “The clay had cracks in the grass that you could almost twist your ankles.”

We correlated these data with what residents and social housing providers told us about managing the heat and what is needed to do this better. Different cultural groups used different strategies. Through the project, residents shared a wealth of collective knowledge about what they can do to adapt to the extremes of a changing climate.

Read more:
Why Western Sydney is feeling the heat from climate change more than the rest of the city

Air conditioning has limitations

Official responses to climate extremes typically rely on a retreat indoors. These “last resort” shelters depend in most cases on a reliable electricity supply, which can be cut during heatwaves.

There have been efforts, but not in Australia, to establish a “passive survivability” building code. The aim is to ensure homes remain tolerably cool during a heatwave (or warm during a cold snap) even if power is cut for a number of days.

We recognise air conditioning is vital for vulnerable populations, including older people and those with health conditions, but we do not want to give up on going outside!

Outdoors, approaches such as pop-up cooling hubs for the homeless are compassionate. While important, such approaches don’t get beyond “coping”.

There’s also a risk of perpetuating a deficit narrative that sees the city’s poorest as lacking capacity to act on their circumstances. Our strengths-based action research approach looks for alternative solutions that draw on the collective knowledge and practices already found in communities.

Read more:
Australia’s first mobile cooling hub is ready for searing heat this summer – and people who are homeless helped design it

How was the research done?

Our project, Living with Urban Heat: Becoming Climate Ready in Social Housing, is part of a broader research program, Cooling the Commons. Its focus is the role of shared spaces and knowledge in designing climate-resilient cities.

We use participatory design methods. Adaptation strategies are developed by working with people who are already attuned to their place and community.

In a first step, to get a better grasp on the micro-climates at each site, residents hosted data loggers in their homes. The data show that the location, degree of urban density and type of housing influence residents’ experience of heat.

In Windsor, for example, the extremes are felt inside the home. Last summer, loggers in Windsor and Richmond recorded 69 days above 30°C. On average, temperatures inside were 6°C warmer than outside and hit 40°C four occasions.

Further east in Riverwood and Parramatta recorded lower temperatures. However, for project researcher Sebastian Pfautsch, these data also highlighted the urban heat island effect. In Riverwood, the average day and night temperatures were 25.8°C and 25.4°C respectively, as brick surfaces hold the heat.

We correlated these data with what residents and social housing providers told us about how they manage heat and comfort in their different places.

Read more:
Too many renters swelter through summer. Efficient cooling should be the law for rental homes

So how do residents manage the heat?

At bilingual design workshops across the locations, themes from the interviews between groups of residents were shared.

Residents who said “I retreat” felt trapped rather than safe in their poorly adapted homes.

“Taking comfort” meant using ice, water spray, sheets and towels to cool spaces and bodies. Chinese residents used foods such as rice porridge congee to cool down. Residents also took comfort from housing providers and neighbours checking on their wellbeing on hot days.

Residents with access to a car “chased the air”. This meant moving between air-conditioned spaces: friends’ homes, coffee shops and supermarkets.

Residents without cars used cool spots, such as public libraries, that they could get to by public transport. Others whose families have lived in the area for decades used their local knowledge to chase the “Dee Why Doctor” and other local breezes, as well as sitting in the river.

Read more:
When the heat hits, inland waters look inviting. Here’s how we can help people swim safely at natural swimming spots

Residents often return, though, to a home that has baked in the heat all day.

They had ingenious ways to get air moving with windows, doors and fans. “Making the air” was an important pattern across the groups.

Air movement was as important for bodily comfort as a cooler temperature, particularly for people who found it hard to breathe in the heat. As one participant said: “It’s stuffy in the bedroom. It’s really hard sometimes […] I feel I can’t open the window because of the smells and noise.”

Residents also created “rules” to manage the heat in their homes. These ranged from opening and closing doors and windows at certain times, to keeping lights off, to avoiding baking, to rationing air conditioning.

The groups benefited from sharing these themes. For example, the Chinese community, most of whom did not drive, had never thought of “chasing the air”. On the other hand, using congee to feel cooler was news for others.

Collective adaptation works best

In each community, sharing these approaches prompted a broader conversation about more collective forms of adaptation, including shared spaces and practices in the built and natural environments.

This research is raising questions. There is a tension, for example, between the enclosure that air conditioning requires and the movement of fresh air many residents see as healthy. What implications might this have for a cooling hubs blueprint and the future of social housing, particularly where a need for security often means blocked openings and locked doors?

Climate-readiness does not mean reinforcing inadequate technical solutions that shut us in, or barely remedial solutions. These reduce us to what philosopher Georgio Agamben termed a “bare life”, a condition that precludes the possibility of a good one. That need not be so.

Our research is trialling adaptive practices, drawing on local knowledge of cool spaces (both natural and built), and sharing these practices across cultures. It shows we can reimagine climate-readiness as part of a flourishing community.

Abby Mellick Lopes receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Program Project number: LP210200622

Cameron Tonkinwise receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Program Project number: LP210200622.

Stephen Healy receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Program Project number: LP210200622

– ref. When homes already hit 40°C inside, it’s better to draw on residents’ local know-how than plan for climate change from above – https://theconversation.com/when-homes-already-hit-40-c-inside-its-better-to-draw-on-residents-local-know-how-than-plan-for-climate-change-from-above-221870

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Kate Kelly, PhD Candidate, ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, RMIT University

Coles and Woolworths, the supermarket chains that together control almost two-thirds of the Australian grocery market, are facing unprecedented scrutiny.

One recent inquiry, commissioned by the Australian Council of Trade Unions and led by former Australian Consumer and Competition Commission chair Allan Fels, found the pair engaged in unfair pricing practices; an ongoing Senate inquiry into food prices is looking at how these practices are linked to inflation; and the ACCC has just begun a government-directed inquiry into potentially anti-competitive behaviour in Australia’s supermarkets.

Read more:
8 ways Woolworths and Coles squeeze their suppliers and their customers

Earlier this week, the two companies also came under the gaze of the ABC current affairs program Four Corners. Their respective chief executives each gave somewhat prickly interviews, and Woolworths chief Brad Banducci announced his retirement two days after the program aired.

A focus on the power of the supermarket duopoly is long overdue. However, one aspect of how Coles and Woolworths exercise their power has received relatively little attention: a growing high-tech infrastructure of surveillance and control that pervades retail stores, warehouses, delivery systems and beyond.

Every customer a potential thief

As the largest private-sector employers and providers of essential household goods, the supermarkets play an outsized role in public life. Indeed, they are such familiar places that technological developments there may fly under the radar of public attention.

Coles and Woolworths are both implementing technologies that treat the supermarket as a “problem space” in which workers are controlled, customers are tracked and profits boosted.

For example, in response to a purported spike in shoplifting, a raft of customer surveillance measures have been introduced that treat every customer as a potential thief. This includes ceiling cameras which assign a digital ID to individuals and track them through the store, and “smart” exit gates that remain closed until a purchase is made. Some customers have reported being “trapped” by the gate despite paying for their items, causing significant embarrassment.

At least one Woolworths store has installed 500 mini cameras on product shelves. The cameras monitor real-time stock levels, and Woolworths says customers captured in photos will be silhouetted for privacy.

A Woolworths spokesperson explained the shelf cameras were part of “a number of initiatives, both covert and overt, to minimise instances of retail crime”. It is unclear whether the cameras are for inventory management, surveillance, or both.

Workers themselves are being fitted with body-worn cameras and wearable alarms. Such measures may protect against customer aggression, which is a serious problem facing workers. Biometric data collected this way could also be used to discipline staff in what scholars Karen Levy and Solon Barocas refer to as “refractive surveillance” – a process whereby surveillance measures intended for one group can also impact another.

Predicting crime

At the same time as the supermarkets ramp up the amount of data they collect on staff and shoppers, they are also investing in data-driven “crime intelligence” software. Both supermarkets have partnered with New Zealand start-up Auror, which shares a name with the magic police from the Harry Potter books and claims it can predict crime before it happens.

Coles also recently began a partnership with Palantir, a global data-driven surveillance company that takes its name from magical crystal balls in The Lord of the Rings.

Read more:
Solving the supermarket: why Coles just hired US defence contractor Palantir

These heavy-handed measures seek to make self-service checkouts more secure without increasing staff numbers. This leads to something of a vicious cycle, as under-staffing, self-checkouts, and high prices are often causes of customer aggression to begin with.

Many staff are similarly frustrated by historical wage theft by the supermarkets that totals hundreds of millions of dollars.

From community employment to gig work

Both supermarkets have brought the gig economy squarely inside the traditional workplace. Uber and Doordash drivers are now part of the infrastructure of home delivery, in an attempt to push last-mile delivery costs onto gig workers.

The precarious working conditions of the gig economy are well known. Customers may not be aware, however, that Coles recently increased Uber Eats and Doordash prices by at least 10%, and will no longer match in-store promotions. Drivers have been instructed to dispose of the shopping receipt and should no longer place it in the customer’s bag at drop-off.

In addition to higher prices, customers also pay service and delivery fees for the convenience of on-demand delivery. Despite the price increases to customers, drivers I have interviewed in my ongoing research report they are earning less and less through the apps, often well below Australia’s minimum wage.

Viewed as a whole, Coles’ and Woolworths’ high-tech measures paint a picture of surveillance and control that exerts pressures on both customers and workers. While issues of market competition, price gouging, and power asymmetries with suppliers must be scrutinised, issues of worker and customer surveillance are the other side of the same coin – and they too must be reckoned with.

Lauren Kate Kelly receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. She works with United Workers Union which has members across the supermarket supply chain.

– ref. The secret sauce of Coles’ and Woolworths’ profits: high-tech surveillance and control – https://theconversation.com/the-secret-sauce-of-coles-and-woolworths-profits-high-tech-surveillance-and-control-224076

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Roycroft, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Australian National University

Australia can lay claim to two new native mammal species, discovered as part of our collaborative research published today in the journal Molecular Ecology.

Australia has some of the most unique biodiversity in the world, and our native mammals are particularly well known. For many, the iconic marsupials might be the first that come to mind – but we also boast an impressive and fascinating diversity of native rodents.

Unlike the invasive pests introduced since European colonisation, native rodents have been evolving in Australia for around five million years. With over 150 species in Australia and New Guinea found nowhere else in the world, there’s a lot to love about our native rats and mice.

Our new research adds two more species to this list, and, like many of Australia’s recently described mammals, they’ve been hiding in plain sight.

Hiding in plain sight

The two new species belong to a group of very small and aptly named Australian rodents: the delicate mice.

These dainty creatures differ from the invasive pests you might come across in your home or backyard. With adults weighing as little as six grams, they are typically smaller, and are a crucial part of Australia’s natural environment and ecosystems.

Prior to our discovery, the namesake of the group, the delicate mouse or Molinipi (Pseudomys delicatulus) was thought to be a single species spanning a massive stretch of the country – from the Pilbara in Western Australia, across parts of the Northern Territory and through Queensland down to the New South Wales border.

However, our team has now confirmed the delicate mouse is three species, not one.

We discovered this using genomic sequencing of delicate mice from across the country, combined with data on reproductive traits and high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scans.

The three species are genetically distinct. Their sperm and chromosomes also aren’t compatible, which likely prevents them from interbreeding.

Despite this, they do look quite similar to each other – which is why these two additional delicate mouse species have remained undiscovered until now.

New names for cryptic species

One of these mice gets to keep its original scientific name, so Pseudomys delicatulus now refers to the “northern delicate mouse”. The other species needed their own names.

The new “western delicate mouse” (Pseudomys pilbarensis) or Kalunyja in the Kariyarra language, occurs mainly in Western Australia, including the Pilbara, Great Sandy Desert and southern Kimberley regions.

The “eastern delicate mouse” (Pseudomys mimulus) or Kalla, in the Wik-Mungkan language, occurs through eastern Queensland and northern New South Wales, around Mount Isa in western Queensland, and on Groote Eylandt.

The western delicate mouse is the first new Pseudomys described this century. While we know a lot about Australia’s native mammals, there is still more to uncover. This discovery follows the description of two very tiny new marsupials last year, along with a host of other new marsupials and bats described since 2000.

By giving these species their own names, we’re taking the first step toward ensuring they’re given the right conservation attention.

Conserving our iconic native mammals

Native rodents are one of our most threatened mammal groups and have been disproportionately impacted by extinction since European colonisation of Australia began in 1788.

Recognising Australia’s mammals under official taxonomic names is crucial to ensure they can be assessed and prioritised for conservation listing and funding.

The northern delicate mouse has not previously been a conservation priority – but that might be because it was thought to have a distribution three times larger than it actually does. The western and eastern delicate mice haven’t had any conservation or research attention, because we didn’t know they were unique species.

As part of our research, we also showed how species in the delicate mouse group are specialised to unique Australian environments: from the arid central deserts to the northern monsoonal tropics. Given their habitat specialisations, models in our research suggest that up to 95% of current delicate mouse habitat may become unsuitable by the year 2100 under a moderate future warming scenario.

Combined with more immediate threats – predation by feral cats, habitat clearing and introduced diseases – the delicate mice may be more at risk that we previously thought.

Our discovery is significant for the future of the tiny mice, with their new names already endorsed by the Australasian Mammal Taxonomy Consortium. Recognition in government legislation is to follow.

This will allow us to reassess the conservation status of the three species, to determine what action is needed to protect them into the future.

Emily Roycroft receives funding from the Australian Research Council. This research was supported by the Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment, Native Australian Animals Trust and Bioplatforms Australia via the Oz Mammals Genomics Initiative.

– ref. We discovered two new Australian native mammals – the first of their kind this century – https://theconversation.com/we-discovered-two-new-australian-native-mammals-the-first-of-their-kind-this-century-223740

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Marchese, PhD Student at the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University

If you’re thinking about buying plant-based foods, a trip to the supermarket can leave you bewildered.

There are plant-based burgers, sausages and mince. The fridges are loaded with non-dairy milk, cheese and yoghurt. Then there are the tins of beans and packets of tofu.

But how much is actually healthy?

Our nutritional audit of more than 700 plant-based foods for sale in Australian supermarkets has just been published. We found some products are so high in salt or saturated fat, we’d struggle to call them “healthy”.

Read more:
The vegans are coming! What’s fuelling the interest in plant-based eating?

We took (several) trips to the supermarket

In 2022, we visited two of each of four major supermarket retailers across Melbourne to collect information on the available range of plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy products.

We took pictures of the products and their nutrition labels.

We then analysed the nutrition information on the packaging of more than 700 of these products. This included 236 meat substitutes, 169 legumes and pulses, 50 baked beans, 157 dairy milk substitutes, 52 cheese substitutes and 40 non-dairy yoghurts.

Read more:
4 plant-based foods to eat every week (and why science suggests they’re good for you)

Plant-based meats were surprisingly salty

We found a wide range of plant-based meats for sale. So, it’s not surprising we found large variations in their nutrition content.

Sodium, found in added salt and which contributes to high blood pressure, was our greatest concern.

The sodium content varied from 1 milligram per 100 grams in products such as tofu, to 2,000mg per 100g in items such as plant-based mince products.

This means we could eat our entire daily recommended sodium intake in just one bowl of plant-based mince.

An audit of 66 plant-based meat products in Australian supermarkets conducted in 2014 found sodium ranged from 316mg in legume-based products to 640mg in tofu products, per 100g. In a 2019 audit of 137 products, the range was up to 1,200mg per 100g.

In other words, the results of our audit seems to show a consistent trend of plant-based meats getting saltier.

Read more:
Remind me again, why is salt bad for you?

What about plant-based milks?

Some 70% of the plant-based milks we audited were fortified with calcium, a nutrient important for bone health.

This is good news as a 2019-2020 audit of 115 plant-based milks from Melbourne and Sydney found only 43% of plant-based milks were fortified with calcium.

Of the fortified milks in our audit, almost three-quarters (73%) contained the recommended amount of calcium – at least 100mg per 100mL.

We also looked at the saturated fat content of plant-based milks.

Coconut-based milks had on average up to six times higher saturated fat content than almond, oat or soy milks.

Previous audits also found coconut-based milks were much higher in saturated fat than all other categories of milks.

Read more:
Soy, oat, almond, rice, coconut, dairy: which ‘milk’ is best for our health?

A first look at cheese and yoghurt alternatives

Our audit is the first study to identify the range of cheese and yoghurt alternatives available in Australian supermarkets.

Calcium was only labelled on a third of plant-based yoghurts, and only 20% of supermarket options met the recommended 100mg of calcium per 100g.

For plant-based cheeses, most (92%) were not fortified with calcium. Their sodium content varied from 390mg to 1,400mg per 100g, and saturated fat ranged from 0g to 28g per 100g.

Read more:
Plain, Greek, low-fat? How to choose a healthy yoghurt

So, what should we consider when shopping?

As a general principle, try to choose whole plant foods, such as unprocessed legumes, beans or tofu. These foods are packed with vitamins and minerals. They’re also high in dietary fibre, which is good for your gut health and keeps you fuller for longer.

If opting for a processed plant-based food, here are five tips for choosing a healthier option.

1. Watch the sodium

Plant-based meat alternatives can be high in sodium, so look for products that have around 150-250mg sodium per 100g.

2. Pick canned beans and legumes

Canned chickpeas, lentils and beans can be healthy and low-cost additions to many meals. Where you can, choose canned varieties with no added salt, especially when buying baked beans.

3. Add herbs and spices to your tofu

Tofu can be a great alternative to meat. Check the label and pick the option with the highest calcium content. We found flavoured tofu was higher in salt and sugar content than minimally processed tofu. So it’s best to pick an unflavoured option and add your own flavours with spices and herbs.

4. Check the calcium

When choosing a non-dairy alternative to milk, such as those made from soy, oat, or rice, check it is fortified with calcium. A good alternative to traditional dairy will have at least 100mg of calcium per 100g.

5. Watch for saturated fat

If looking for a lower saturated fat option, almond, soy, rice and oat varieties of milk and yoghurt alternatives have much lower saturated fat content than coconut options. Pick those with less than 3g per 100g.

Laura Marchese receives funding from a Deakin University Postgraduate Research Scholarship and a CSIRO R+ top-up scholarship.

Katherine Livingstone receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (APP117380) and the National Heart Foundation (ID106800).

– ref. We looked at 700 plant-based foods to see how healthy they really are. Here’s what we found – https://theconversation.com/we-looked-at-700-plant-based-foods-to-see-how-healthy-they-really-are-heres-what-we-found-222991

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cris Townley, Postdoctoral research fellow, Western Sydney University

A new group of young children has just started school for the first time, with many excited about new friends, uniforms and being at “big school”.

But for trans kids, starting school can be a much more daunting process.

They have likely gone from preschools and daycare where they had the freedom to wear what they want and play what they want, whether that was dinosaurs, dolls or dress ups. The boy who likes to be Rapunzel was probably viewed as “cute” and the girl always playing pirates was encouraged to do so.

But school culture is much more cisnormative. This means schools tend to assume children can be sorted into boys and girls and everyone is comfortable in what category they are in.

Read more:
Explainer: what does it mean to be ‘cisgender’?

You can see this in formal ways, with boys’ and girls’ uniforms and toilets and in informal ways, with boys and girls making different friendship groups and playing different games at lunch.

This makes it difficult for trans children to feel as though they belong at school. Trans students often have lower levels of wellbeing and lower educational outcomes than non-trans students.

My research looks at what schools can learn from preschools and other early learning settings such as daycare centres about how to support trans students.

Read more:
4 out of 5 parents support teaching gender and sexuality diversity in Australian schools

My research

In 2023 I partnered with P-TYE, an advocacy network for parents of trans children. The study, which is currently in peer review, looked at how we can integrate support for trans children across a range of services including education, medical and mental health.

Through P-TYE and wider networks, we recruited 12 families with trans children. The children had an average age of 13 and had been recognised as trans between two and ten years.

Though interviews, I spoke to them about their experiences of childcare and school. Three themes emerged.

1. The importance of being ‘child-centred’

Early education services are “child-centred”. This means educators are trained to place a child’s “belonging, becoming and being” at the centre of their curriculum (as per the Early Years Learning Framework). This includes freely exploring gender and their identity.

As one parent told us their trans girl “had an incredible teacher” for preschool

who’d take old curtains and make things […] these three-tiered skirts that were heavy and they made beautiful sounds and they caressed you when you wore them and [my child] found such joy in these creations.

Another child showed her foster parents a photo of herself at daycare

in a dress up pushing a pram around with a baby in it. And she’s got a handbag on, jewellery and everything. She’s about three years old in the picture. And she says, this is the first time I knew I was a girl.

In contrast, trans identity in schools often means “breaking the rules”. Parents in the study described examples of schools not letting trans students express their identity.

every day she was asking, ‘why can’t I wear a dress to school’? Why do I have to go to the boys’ toilets? They’re mean to me when I’m in there.

2. Not categorising kids by gender

Parents in the study also reported how children weren’t categorised into genders by pre-school routines. As one interviewee said:

all the kids use the same toilet […] they [were called the] ‘cockatoos’ and the ‘koalas’ or whatever […] they weren’t ever separated by gender.

But at school, children faced daily choices about whether they are a boy or a girl. One parent described how a class had segregated lunch crates for boys and girls. Their trans child stood out with “this pink drink bottle with unicorns on in a sea of dinosaurs”.

Children also have to wear the correct uniform, be in the right line for sport and use the assigned toilet and can be bullied by other students when they try.

One child “survived kindergarten by walking”. She told her parent

I just realised that if I wasn’t still, I was less of a target so I just made sure in kindergarten to keep moving and I never stopped moving.

For non-binary children – who don’t feel like a boy or a girl – school brings a more complex set of difficulties.

One parent talked about a lucky dip at the school fete with boy or girl gifts. They said this signals to their child “I have to be one of these things or the other” and “tells my kid that they don’t fit in the world”.

3. Support for educators

Research shows having teachers who are positive about gender diversity is crucial for the wellbeing of trans students.

My interviews also suggested responses to trans kids often depend on individual educators and schools. Many preschool educators were supportive and “totally fine to change pronouns, like immediately”. But as one parent told the study, one educator reportedly said: “I’m not going to play this name game” and refused to use a child’s new name.

Some school teachers did make a difference. One wellbeing officer “put out all the uniforms and said, ‘which one would you like to wear?’”

At a schools sports day one trans boy was allowed to compete with the boys. As his parent said:

he’s never been a sporty kid. He came last and everything, but it made him really happy to to be in with the boys.

Another teacher was “fantastic” but “a bit old school” saying “I’ve got no idea what to do, what to call her, what to say. I’m really out to sea here.”

This suggests both early education and school teachers need access to education and resources, so whether students get support isn’t left up to chance.

Read more:
‘It’s kind of suffocating’: queer young Australians speak about how they feel at school and what they think of politicians

What should schools do differently?

Schools should take the lead from early learning environments and stop “sorting” students based on gender.

This could mean:

• having a range of uniform items children can select from as some schools already do

• more all-gender toilet facilities, where privacy is protected for all students

• preferred names and pronouns should be easy to change in school systems and teachers should use these.

Teachers also need access to resources and information so they can confidently have conversations about gender. This needs to be part of a whole-of-school approach to supporting trans students and their families.

Cris Townley is a member of the advocacy network Parents for Trans Youth Equity (P-TYE).

– ref. ‘Why can’t I wear a dress?’ What schools can learn from preschools about supporting trans children – https://theconversation.com/why-cant-i-wear-a-dress-what-schools-can-learn-from-preschools-about-supporting-trans-children-223859

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cherine Fahd, Associate Professor Visual Communication, University of Technology Sydney

House of Gods is a gripping new Australian TV drama. It reveals the inner workings of an imam’s family and community, and the corrupting effects of power, ambition and secrets on family and faith.

Set in Western Sydney, the saga commences on election day at The Messenger mosque. Sheikh Mohammad (Kamel El Basha) is a progressive, charismatic contender for the esteemed position of head cleric. But he is embroiled in controversy when a young woman unexpectedly plants a kiss on his cheek while posing with him for a selfie.

The seemingly harmless gesture swiftly snowballs into a scandal dividing the community and sparking a clash of ideologies within the mosque’s tight-knit community.

Although Sheikh Mohammad eventually emerges victorious over his conservative adversary Sheikh Shaaker (Simon Elrahi), the triumph is tainted by a startling revelation. Sheikh Mohammad’s adopted son, Isa (Osamah Sami, also co-creator and writer), has struck a clandestine deal with a corrupt official to secure his father’s win in exchange for hefty monthly payments.

The cleric’s efforts to bridge the gap between multiple generations and connect Islam with modern life in Australia is at the heart of the story. But unaware of his son’s dealings, an intricate web of lies, bribes and familial rivalry soon emerges, set against the backdrop of mosque politics.

Read more:
Black comedy, political drama and a documentary about a cult: what we’re streaming this February

The realism of lived experience

Sami’s performance as Isa is spot-on, thanks to his firsthand understanding of growing up as the son of a progressive Shi’ite cleric. His personal background brings depth and authenticity to the character, making his portrayal truly compelling.

Fadia Abboud’s direction is enriched by her deep understanding of the Arabic community, lending genuine realism to every scene. Take, for instance, the conversation between Sheikh Mohammad and the local football coach, where the historic tensions between Sunni and Shi’ite faiths are delicately portrayed. Both characters navigate their differences with respect and caution, reflecting the nuanced dynamics within their community.

The inclusion of Arab, Middle Eastern and Muslim actors adds an authentic touch to the drama. Their performances capture the cultural and social subtleties reminiscent of my own Arabic family and community. Through expressive body language, lively facial expressions, and intense physical affection, the actors animate the passionate social dynamics often characteristic of Middle-Eastern societies.

Sky Davies’ cinematography captures both private and public moments with striking compositional intention. The beautiful garden scenes where Sheikh Mohammad converses with his eldest daughter, Batul (Maia Abbas), under a luminescent grape vine, reference the central role dappled light plays in the intricate designs of mosques.

Integrity shines through the costume and set design and in the meticulous portrayal of Muslim dress and architecture. These elements reflect a profound understanding of how faith influences the transition between private and public life, adding credibility to the storytelling.

Mighty heroines

Sami was joined by co-creator and associate producer, Shahin Shafaei, and co-writer Sarah Bassiuoni. Shafaei and Bassiuoni come from Iranian and Egyptian families. Their collective experience provides valuable insights into the female experience, enriching the depiction of Muslim women beyond Western stereotypes of female oppression.

The struggles encountered by characters such as Batul, her younger sister Hind (Safia Arain), and her mysterious best friend Jamila (Priscilla Doueihy) echo real-life challenges. For instance, the scenes at the swimming pool vividly illustrate the women’s desires and rebellions, as well as their activism and resilience in advocating for women-only hours at the public pool.

Batul and Hind are mighty. Their rivalry hinges on their personal freedoms and to what extent they conform to community expectations. This ensures that they negotiate power and agency within their own cultural context – refreshingly removed from Western standards.

Sheikh Mohammad champions his daughters’ freedom, sparking discussions on gender equality and underscoring his progressive views on women’s roles in the Islamic community. A notable instance is when he appoints his daughter, Batul, as vice president of the mosque, defying traditional expectations and causing shock in the community.

Written by Arabs, featuring Arabs

The lead performances are outstanding. El Basha is a Palestinian screen and stage actor, theatre director, playwright and producer. He gained critical acclaim in 2017 when he won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 74th Venice International Film Festival. In House of Gods, the actor again shows he is adept at capturing a proud and principled man who values his dignity and honour.

House of Gods is more than just an Australian television series. It’s a bold and unflinching exploration of contemporary life that is thought-provoking, authentic and complex. With its intricate plot twists and nuanced characters, it has the capacity to showcase the depth and diversity of Australian storytelling worldwide.

Abboud remarks that House of Gods:

stood out as original and risky. Importantly, it wasn’t an ‘us’ and ‘them’ story. The dilemma didn’t come from our relationship to the West and racism. It was a powerful drama, with no big-name Anglo actor, which always seemed to be needed in shows with non-English speaking communities.

For many in the Australian Arabic community, including Abboud, seeing a project created and written by Arabs featuring Arabs as lead characters is an exciting and welcome development.

House of Gods is on ABC and iView from February 25.

Read more:
Shayda: this unflinching portrayal of domestic violence marks a profound shift in Australian cinema

Cherine Fahd 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. ABC’s House of Gods: a bold and compelling exploration of contemporary life in an Australian imam’s family – https://theconversation.com/abcs-house-of-gods-a-bold-and-compelling-exploration-of-contemporary-life-in-an-australian-imams-family-222988

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ann Kayis-Kumar, Associate Professor, UNSW Sydney

Imagine believing you owed nothing to the Australian Tax Office, and then suddenly finding out decades later that you did, and that the Tax Office had been accruing interest and penalties on it for decades.

You might think it was like Robodebt, the disgraced scheme under which the government tried to extract money from welfare recipients that was eventually found to be unlawful by a Royal Commission.

You might even call the scheme “Robotax”. This is how it is being referred to in reporting. It is eventually expected to collect debts on hold worth A$15 billion.

On Wednesday Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan said he hadn’t wanted to pursue these old (and in some cases very small) debts but had been forced to after the Australian National Audit Office told the Tax Office it had no legal authority not to chase them.

“As a regulator, we can’t purposely not conform with the law,” he told the National Press Club. “We have to, so we’re working our way through.”

Small debts climb to tens of thousands

Here’s an example, from our Tax and Business Advisory Clinic at the University of NSW.

One of our clients had previously been involved in a small business with her husband. When he tragically died she was left to look after their children on her own and told she didn’t owe the Tax Office any money.

But when she recently returned to work and lodged her tax return, a long-absent tax debt reappeared. It turns out that although she had been told it was “written off” at the time, it had only been classified as “non-pursuit”.

Non-pursuit meant it hadn’t appeared in her or her husband’s tax statements.

By the time it reappeared, she owed $37,000. The clinic was able to establish that most of this – about $29,000 – was interest and penalties.

We asked the Tax Office to waive the interest and penalties, which, to its credit, it did. It’s an option many financially vulnerable taxpayers won’t know they have and won’t know how to get without professional advice (which they can’t afford).

It gives government-funded tax clinics a valuable role.

How it happened

The Tax Office has for many years been classifying debts as “written off” or “not economical to pursue”, usually where the debts are small or it has lost contact with the taxpayer.

Commissioner Jordan told the Press Club his view had been it was “ridiculous” to spend money chasing debts as low as $2.

But a taxpayer might not realise this has happened, or might not have realised that “written off” doesn’t have its standard English meaning. Debts written off continue to exist. Without a statute of limitations on them, they cannot expire.

The Tax Office merely decided not to pursue them. On their statements, these taxpayers saw no acknowledgement of these debts and often saw a balance of “nil” on their accounts.

New advice from the Australian Government Solicitor has forced the Tax Office to collect these debts where would have preferred not to, even where the clients are old or on low incomes.

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Temporary halt

On Wednesday, the Tax Office said it had “heard the concerns raised by the community” and paused all recovery action on debts placed on hold prior to 2017, a temporary solution whose legal basis is unclear.

In Australia, there is no statute of limitations on tax debts placed on hold, even though US research has found tax debts not collected within two years of assessment are unlikely to be collected at all.

Although Australia’s Finance Minister has the power to waive individual debts, it is unclear whether this could be used to waive an entire class of debts.

And there is one class of debts the minister has no power to waive, even in cases of extreme hardship – those from businesses that have collected the goods and services tax.

The Tax Office was warned

The Commonwealth Ombudsman warned the Tax Office of a problem back in 2009 in a report entitled Re-raising Written-off Debts.

It said the Tax Office used the term “write-off” in a way that differed from the commonly understood commercial meaning

It made a number of recommendations, one of which was that the Tax Office:

notify taxpayers about the decision to write off their debt, indicating that there is an amount owing which the Tax Office has decided not to pursue at that time but may seek to do so later.

Another was that the Tax Office:

provide further information to taxpayers when a debt is re-raised. This information should include the source of the debt (including how much interest has been charged), the circumstances which caused the debt to be re-raised and how to obtain further information.

Something else that would help is a requirement to inform those affected that the Tax Office is able to remit interest and penalties – and to offer guidance about how to request this.

Ultimately, it might require legislation

Legislating to give the Tax Office permission to waive debts in certain circumstances would be the best fix, and could probably be done quickly if government ministers are willing.

As he prepared to step down after a decade as Tax Commissioner this month, Jordan pointed with pride to the Tax Office’s status as the third most trusted arm of the Australian public service.

Unless the Tax Office is given the discretion to behave with compassion towards vulnerable Australians, it risks losing that status and perpetuating cycles of debt.

We need a legislative fix. The Tax Office needs in its armoury the ability to help – rather than hinder – people in serious financial hardship. The last thing it should want to do, and want to be seen to want to do, is to squeeze blood from stones.

Ann Kayis-Kumar receives funding from the Australian Government’s Australian Taxation Office National Tax Clinic Program and the Ecstra Foundation’s Financial Capability Program.

– ref. ‘Robotax’ is a symptom of a gap in Australia’s tax laws. Here’s how to fix it – https://theconversation.com/robotax-is-a-symptom-of-a-gap-in-australias-tax-laws-heres-how-to-fix-it-223962

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Louise Grimmer, Senior Lecturer in Retail Marketing, University of Tasmania

There is no escaping Taylor Swift. Even if you try to ignore the star, she is currently everywhere. On the airwaves, on playlists, streaming services, social media, in the news, on the big screen and at a mega-stadium near you.

Devoted “Swifties” around the globe have their own lore, with the 34-year-old’s appeal crossing sex, age, class and cultural groups.

The largest US newspaper chain, Garnett, even appointed a dedicated Taylor Swift Reporter to cover her every move.

Arguably, we haven’t seen fan love (or media coverage) for a musical act on the scale of Taylor Swift since The Beatles.

What is it about her that drives unrelenting attention and adoration on such a grand scale? And could her current ubiquity actually turn out to be a threat?

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What defines the Taylor Swift brand?

Swift’s talent as a songwriter, singer and performer cemented her as a multi-award winning artist . She has been nominated for 52 Grammys and won 14, and recently made history as the only artist to win Album of the Year four times.

She is both the girl next door and a mega-star with cross-generational appeal.

And she is also a global brand.

Almost anything (or anyone) can become a brand, with its own distinctive name, term, design or symbol. But a successful brand is more than an identity: it exists solidly in the public consciousness, like Nike, Apple and Google.

To occupy such a position, the keys to success for strong brands include: consistent messaging, differentiation and brand experience.

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Taylor has crafted the all-American girl next door image by sharing consistent messaging about her personal experiences through her lyrics.

She also differentiates her brand from those of other artists by encouraging an organic fan community, complete with its own look and feel.

Fans wear album-themed colours or costumes and trade friendship bracelets.

The brand experience manifests through social media, surprise announcements, hidden “Easter eggs”, concert tours, and even the Eras Tour film. Fans are never short of an opportunity to connect with the star.

The most successful brands form an emotional connection with consumers.

In this regard, Swift’s approach is pure genius. In the lead up to the release of her album 1989 she spent time scouring the internet and selecting 89 fans who were invited to her home for exclusive listening sessions – now referred to as the 1989 Secret Sessions.

Taylor treats fans as friends with whom she shares secrets. Her lyrics, albums, videos and even her NYU honorary doctorate speech are littered with hidden messages that fans can discover, decode and discuss.

This level of shared intimacy – albeit with millions of fans– keeps Swifties engaged in speculation and builds a community of “insiders”.

Brands are also susceptible to imminent threats and risks.

The biggest threat is a moodshift

One major risk for Swift is overexposure. Could her immense popularity start to work against her?

At present the answer is an unqualified “no”, as demand for show tickets exceed supply, and local economies in concert cities enjoy soaring expenditure on everything from accommodation to nail salons and sequins to cowboy boots.

But in the long term, there is always the possibility the public’s mood could shift, leaving Swift behind.

She has already drawn criticism for expressing political opinions, for announcing the release of her new album during the Grammys, and for her private jet’s carbon emissions.

Measuring Brand Taylor

How valuable a brand is can be measured by marketers using “brand equity”. How well is it recognised? How do consumers perceive it? Is it trusted?

Brands with strong equity have much higher customer loyalty and market share.

Swift has incredibly strong brand equity as demonstrated by the economic impact on Eras Tour stops, and stores selling out of the things that Swifties use to make their tour outfits including beads, sequins, cowboy hats and sparkly boots.

Not to mention the cost of concert tickets and merchandise, and (for many fans) flights and accommodation.

We can also get a hint of Swift’s brand equity through endorsements from others. In December 2023, Forbes named Swift the world’s fifth most powerful woman, ranking her just after the European Commission President, the President of the European Central Bank and two politicians.

Where to from here?

Swift is currently riding sky high in popularity. She is well-known and well-liked, and she knows what she’s doing when it comes to marketing her brand.

The current Eras Tour and the announcement of her new album The Tortured Poets Department are continuing this momentum.

Many artists appeal to a specific generation and, as their fans age, their success and popularity usually wanes (Bros or Hanson anyone?).

For the time being at least, Brand Taylor is going strong – though there is no doubt she is mindful of threats to her brand and will need to work hard to continue to bring her fans along with her.

Read more:
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Louise Grimmer 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. Team Taylor – why Swift’s brand works so well and how it could come under threat – https://theconversation.com/team-taylor-why-swifts-brand-works-so-well-and-how-it-could-come-under-threat-223443

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics, Monash University

Much has been written about the power of Taylor Swift’s poetic lyrics to resonate deeply with her audiences. But forget poetry and literary allusions — their influence pales in comparison to the cultural impact of a resounding “yeah-nah”.

During last Friday evening’s concert, Swift’s dancer Kameron Saunders bellowed the cherished Australian phrase in response to Swift’s line “You know that we are never getting back together” — and 96,000 Swifties at the Melbourne Cricket Ground went wild.

It was enchanting to meet you — introducing ‘yeah-nah’

According to the first ever study of this little Aussie icon, “yeah-nah” arrived on the linguistic scene probably around the late 1990s. But it didn’t really come to the attention of Australians until the early 2000s, much the same time as Swift and her guitar began to rise to fame in Nashville. And, just like Swift, it’s not always been plain sailing for “yeah-nah” — a rocky start and a career marked by continual change and innovation.

Condemned by many in the early 2000s, “yeah-nah” was branded with disparaging labels such as “speech junk” — and lumped together with other “unnecessary words that clutter up our language”. “Yeah-no” was a symptom of Australia’s inarticulateness, they argued, and it should go.

Read more:
Yeah, nah: Aussie slang hasn’t carked it, but we do want to know more about it

But somehow “yeah-no” climbed out of the linguistic abyss — came back stronger than a nineties trend, as Swifties would put it — and won people’s hearts. When ABC radio stations around the country asked their listeners to send in their favourite Aussie slang expressions, “yeah-nah” came second out of more than a thousand unique phrases (it might even have come first had “mate” not got that unfair boost from other favourites like “g’day mate”).

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Now a major protagonist in William McInnes’ book Yeah, Nah!: A celebration of life and the words that make us who we are, this much loved linguistic celebrity also makes regular public appearances — popping up everywhere from car sales adverts to the branding initiatives of condom companies. It’s prominently adorned on earrings, signet rings, necklaces, T-shirts and even features in beautifully intricate needlework embroideries.

What’s ‘yeah-nah’ anyway?

“Yeah-nah” (or its more formal version “yeah-no”) is one of those highly idiosyncratic expressions dotted through our speech. Its functions have to do with hedging, politeness and solidarity, but they are complex and pinning them down is tricky. As you’d expect — it is after all the fall-out of the hidden thought processes of humans interacting with other humans.

Here are some examples to illustrate just some of its duties.

You might want to decline someone’s kind offer of assistance: “Do want a hand?” — “Yeah-nah, I’ll be fine.” To simply say “no” would be blunt.

You might want to agree with a negative question: “So you didn’t get the Taylor Swift tickets?” — “Yeah-nah, we were too slow.” A simple “yes” or “no” would be ambiguous.

You might want to indicate enthusiastic agreement: “So you enjoyed Taylor Swift?” — “Yeah-nah, she was fantastic.” The effect of “no” is to reinforce “yes” by knocking on the head any possibility of contradiction.

You start talking after a lull in the conversation: “Yeah-nah, I was hoping to go to the concert.” “Yeah-nah” strengthens rapport with your conversational partner; it suggests interest or support.

You’re under pressure to accept a compliment, but at the same time want to appear modest. “You played brilliantly today” — “Yeah-nah, I was lucky really.” “Yeah” acknowledges the compliment (not to would seem ungrateful), and the following “nah” effectively softens its impact.

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So which one did Taylor Swift’s dancer use?

The “yeah-nah” starring in the Eras tour is one of the newest functions, sometimes dubbed the “shutdown” use: an intense, sarcastic form of disagreement, which effectively shuts down the topic altogether (“Would you give me your tickets for Saturday night’s concert?” “Yeah, nah”.) The “yeah” sarcastically feints at an agreement that is clearly not possible, before the crystal-cold clarity of the disagreement is issued: “nah”. Curiously, this use has earlier and stronger documentation in US English, and only more recently has it been found in Australian English.

“Shutdown” uses have proliferated on Twitter since at least 2018 (and, yes, that an intense form of disagreement should gain momentum on Twitter is perhaps the least surprising part of this story). The strong strand of internet language feeding the development of this function is perhaps why newer studies have found this form of “yeah-no” is used predominantly by younger people.

A little surprising, really — in most other functions, Baby Boomers have been documented to be the most prolific users of “yeah-no”.

You belong with me — language binds us

Language is all about communicating (of course), but it’s also about defining the gang — and never underestimate the significance of this second function. Members of Swift’s fandom are known for weaving her song lyrics (“blank space, baby”, “red lip classic”) into their conversations. These fragments of lyrics become a kind of “clique”, or in-group recognition device — “if you’re quoting Taylor Swift, that connects us”.

Swift is certainly aware of the power of language when it comes to creating bonds, and not just through relatable lyrics and themes. She is brilliant at acknowledging local culture and using colloquial phrases to connect with her audiences. And she nailed it with “yeah-nah”.

Kate Burridge receives funding from ARC SR200200350
Metaphors and Identities in the Australian Vernacular.

Isabelle Burke receives funding from ARC SR200200350 Metaphors and Identities in the Australian Vernacular.

– ref. Are you ready for it? ‘Yeah-nah’ comes back stronger – with a little help from Taylor Swift – https://theconversation.com/are-you-ready-for-it-yeah-nah-comes-back-stronger-with-a-little-help-from-taylor-swift-224062

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Kenway, Research Group Leader, Water-Energy-Carbon, The University of Queensland

Why is there such a big gap between people, industries and government agreeing we need urgent action on climate change, and actually starting? Scope 3 emissions are a great example. These are greenhouse gas emissions that organisations can influence, but don’t directly control.

Our research has identified the benefits of tackling these emissions in Australia’s urban water sector. If we consider the energy we use to heat water, water costs us far more than we think. It’s an issue of cost of living as well as water supply and energy infrastructure.

In Victoria, for example, water utilities are the largest source (about a quarter) of scope 1 and 2 emissions from the government sector. Scope 1 emissions come from activities utilities directly control, such as driving their vehicles. Scope 2 emissions are from the energy they buy.

Our research has found the gains from pursuing scope 3 emissions from the use of water that utilities supply could be about ten times bigger than their planned reductions in scope 1 and 2 emissions.

Extrapolating from Melbourne household data suggests domestic water heating accounts for 3.8% of each person’s share of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions – on a par with the 4.1% from aviation. Our research indicates that in Melbourne alone a city-wide program to retrofit showerheads could, by reducing water and energy use, have the same impact on emissions as taking tens of thousands of cars off the road.

Such a program would cost much less than all other renewable energy investments water utilities are making. It would also save water users money.

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How to tackle scope 3 emissions

Water utilities don’t directly control scope 3 emissions, but they could influence what customers do. If they encourage more efficient water use, customers use less water and, in turn, less energy to heat it.

Water utilities account for 24% of scope 1 and 2 emissions from the Victorian government sector. While the sector has shown leadership in acting on these emissions, there is very little active accountability for, or even quantification of, scope 3 emissions.

Our research has found a Melbourne-wide program to retrofit showerheads to next-generation technology could save 12-27 billion litres (GL) of water a year (about 6% of current use).

The resulting energy savings would be 380-885GWh per year, cutting emissions by 98,000-226,000 tonnes. That equates to taking 21,000 to 49,000 cars off the roads.

Customers would also save up to $160 a year on their bills. The full economic benefit to society is more than five times the cost of the program.

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Who influences water use? Everyone

Helping customers adopt highly efficient showerheads could cut emissions at much lower cost than all other renewable energy investments water utilities are making.

Most households don’t realise hot water systems account for around 24% of their total energy use. Their total energy use for water heating is larger as it includes appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers and kettles. An even larger percentage of household energy use is “water-related” if pool filtration, rainwater tank pumps and so on are included.

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We think only of the savings on water bills, but efficient water use also affects our power bills and emissions. But communicating the link isn’t easy.

Showerhead manufacturers tell us they aren’t promoting efficient showerheads because they respond to demand. Water utilities don’t invest in them because it is a present cost for a future benefit – it doesn’t help them balance their budgets. And for policymakers it’s hard to celebrate the water and energy you don’t need to consume.

The combined impact is lack of action on saving water to reduce emissions – even though it’s a great option.

A ‘tragedy of the commons’ dilemma

Without direct control or accountability by any one organisation, we face a “tragedy of the commons” – individuals overconsuming a shared resource at the wider expense of society. The limited resource today is the ability of our planet to process greenhouse gas emissions before they change our climate.

The tragedy of the commons was used to describe externalities: costs borne by others that a decision-maker does not pay for. Examples include the future costs of increased flooding, more severe droughts and bushfires, and rising sea levels.

If we fully considered the costs and benefits to consumers and society (rather than just costs to utilities), investment priorities would change towards “least cost to the community” solutions.

Many water utilities will be carbon-neutral for scope 1 and 2 by 2025. This means they are at the global forefront of reducing emissions – but the water industry can do much more by tackling scope 3 emissions.

Committing to a scope 3 reduction challenges a water company to move toward things it can only influence rather than control. So, does it pursue all possibilities, without knowing if it can cut emissions? Or does it take a conservative approach and commit to only scope 1 and 2 emissions?

Reducing emissions from water use requires community, industry and government to act together. The stumbling block is decision-making and current legislation.

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So, what is the solution?

First, we need to call out the problem.

Second, we must find a way to ensure the reward for pursuing action is higher than the penalty for failure. A key to this will be highlighting how much cheaper and better many actions are that focus on scope 3 emissions, rather than solely “within business” strategies. We need to find solutions that are genuinely “least cost to community” rather than “least cost to individual business entities”.

Third, as a “commons”, this challenge must be communicated beyond utilities and government to communities. There needs to be broad understanding of the benefits of new approaches and of the pitfalls of a “do nothing” approach.

Big savings are up for grabs in the water industry. More broadly, all industries (from manufacturing to mining) need to consider scope 3 emissions from use of the products they sell.

Steven Kenway receives funding from the water industry, state and local government, Collaborative Research Centres and competitive funding schemes (eg The Australian Research Council). He is a long-term member of the Australian Water Association and former member of the International Water Association.

Liam Smith receives funding from several government bodies, including state water utilities and local, state and federal government environment departments. He is also a Lead Councillor on The Biodiversity Council.

Paul Satur receives funding from a number of public and private associations including water utilities, federal and state governments. He is also the CEO and co-founder of Our Future Cities Inc.

Rob Skinner 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. Emissions from households’ water use are on a par with aviation. The big cuts and savings they can make are being neglected – https://theconversation.com/emissions-from-households-water-use-are-on-a-par-with-aviation-the-big-cuts-and-savings-they-can-make-are-being-neglected-221853