Carla Zampatti middriff top and pants, 1971Photograph: Warwick Lawson
The late Carla Zampatti is celebrated in a splendid retrospective Zampatti Powerhouse at the Powerhouse Museum. Planned well before the fashion designer’s untimely death last year, the unveiling of her legacy will be bittersweet to her many fans.
Zampatti is often referred to as “Carla” by friends and those who worked for her, rather than her brand name, Carla Zampatti. Here, the simple name “Zampatti” removes the emphasis from Zampatti as designer to a simpler assertion: businesswoman, mother, philanthropist-entrepreneur.
It is a move as deft and elegant as the rest of the exhibition choices.
In one of the best-looking fashion exhibition designs Australia has seen, creative director Tony Assness serves up a dynamic vision of clothes punctuated by a vibrant red (one of Zampatti’s favourite design choices) that encourages excitement and discovery. Clothes are arranged by themes – jumpsuit, jungle, graphic, blouson, power – rather than date.
Curator Roger Leong leverages his years of experience to do a relatively new thing for Australian museums: tell the stories of clothes through the stories of women who wore them.
‘Animal’ group with close-up of beaded ‘Carla’ cape, 2016 . Zampatti Powerhouse exhibition. Photograph by Zan Wimberley.
A migrant story
Zampatti’s story is an Australian migrant story. Born Maria Zampatti in Italy in 1938 (not 1942, as is often believed), she did not meet her father, who had migrated to Fremantle, until she was 11.
In Australia, she was forced to change her name to Mary. It was claimed the other kids could not pronounce Maria. She did not finish school. When she moved to Sydney in her late 20s, she reinvented herself as Carla.
The fashion business started on a kitchen table in 1965 under the label ZamPAtti. By 1970, Carla had bought out her business partner husband, and was sole owner of Carla Zampatti Pty Ltd.
Zampatti flourished in fashion. She had a finger on the pulse, was in the right place at the right time, and knew a more glamorous role was possible for a fashion designer than the industry “rag trader”.
Zampatti Powerhouse exhibition. Photograph by Zan Wimberley.
In the 1970s, the markets suggested that the ultra-expensive haute couture was about to disappear, to be replaced by informal ranges created by a new type of designer often called a “stylist”. It was the decade of flower power, retro dressing and ethnic borrowings.
Until the 1960s, fashion had been dominated by the rise of haute couture and the “dictator-designer” system – mainly men who determined hem lengths and silhouettes for women. But in 1973, the French body governing high fashion added a new layer of designers, créateurs (literally “creators” or designers), who produced only ready-to-wear.
In 1972 Zampatti opened her first Sydney boutique, inspired by informal shops she had seen in St Tropez. Zampatti offered women bright jumpsuits, art deco looks and peasant-inspired ease.
Model promoting the Carla Zampatti Ford Laser and Ford Meteor, 1987. Photo courtesy of the Carla Zampatti archives
She aimed to provide women clothes they wanted to wear. She draped the cloth and colours on herself. Like many women designers historically, she was alert to how her clothes made women customers look and feel. Zampatti remained the fit model for the whole range and would not produce anything in which she did not look and feel well.
Zampatti saw her “clothes as a tracker of feminism”.
The 1980s cemented Zampatti’s rise to prominence. She became a household name, even designing a car for women. In this time, personal expression became more important than unified looks dictated by designers. Zampatti’s Australian designing coincided with a new development in Italy: the stylisti. Small, focused family businesses alert to the zeitgeist and understanding quality flourished. It was an approach that emphasised quality and glamour.
Zampatti identified talent. She employed well-known couturier Beril Jents on the shop floor after she had fallen on hard times. She then employed Jents to improve the cut of her designs.
Zampatti continued to embrace the services of stylists and other designers including Romance was Born, whom she recognised could take her work to the next level.
Carla Zampatti preparing models for Spring – Summer 2010 show. Photo courtesy of Prudence Upton
The stories of clothes
Worn equally by politicians and their circles on the right and the left, Zampatti injected more than power dressing into women’s wardrobes. She inspired a sense that women wore the clothes, not the clothes them.
In this exhibition we are given many examples, from Linda Burney’s red pantsuit worn for her parliamentary portrait to a gown worn by Jennifer Morrison to the White House.
Zampatti Powerhouse exhibition. Photograph by Zan Wimberley.
The exhibition viewer can turn from serried ranks of brilliantly styled mannequins and enter large “listening pods”, screening brilliantly edited videos in the manner of artist Bill Viola. The women, who include Dame Quentin Bryce and Ita Buttrose, discuss the creative mind of Zampatti or reflect on their own Zampatti wardrobe. They are amongst the best such “talking heads” I have seen in a museum.
Like many designers, Zampatti was not that interested in her own past. She did not keep substantial archives and records, which is a testament to the skills demonstrated by the museum in bringing us this show.
Zampatti never turned her back on her personal story, but she was a futurist, one who looked forward rather than backward.
In a rare piece of good news from Meta, artificial intelligence researchers at the company have just announced a scientific breakthrough. Their AI program named Cicero can now play the board game Diplomacy at a human level.
Now, before you get too excited, Cicero isn’t playing at superhuman level. It was beaten by around 10% of the humans it played against. By comparison, in previous AI milestones, like AI beating humans in chess or Go, humans have long been completely surpassed.
DeepMind’s Go-playing AI is, for example, a “Go god” – according to the Chinese grandmaster Ke Jie. Even the human Go world champion would now lose 100-0 to the computer.
Diplomacy is a simplified and abstract game, involving rival armies and navies invading, or not invading, each others’ territories. It’s fair to say it lacks the complexity and subtlety of the sort of diplomacy undertaken in the corridors of the United Nations.
Nevertheless, the news of Cicero’s performance was one in the eye for tech rivals such as Google, who owns DeepMind. The CEO and founder of DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, is a Diplomacy expert. He won the World Team Championship in 2004, and was 4th in the world in the 2006 World Championship.
I expect Hassabis would be able to beat Cicero easily because of some of the limitations I will point out shortly.
The game of Diplomacy
Diplomacy is what AI researchers call a “seven player, zero sum and deterministic game of imperfect information”. A seven player game is much harder to solve than a two player game such as chess or Go. You must consider the many possible strategies of not one but six other players. This makes it much harder to write an AI to play the game.
Diplomacy is also a game of imperfect information, because players make moves simultaneously. Unlike games such as chess or Go, where you know everything about your opponent’s moves, players in Diplomacy make moves not knowing what their opponents are about to do. They must therefore predict their opponents’ next actions. This also adds to the challenge of writing an AI to play it.
This digital Diplomacy board shows the different land and sea territories players must traverse. Wikimedia
Finally, Diplomacy is a zero sum game in which if you win, I lose. And the outcome is deterministic and not dependent on chance. Nonetheless, before victory or defeat, it still pays for players to form alliances and team up on each other. Indeed, one of the real challenges in playing the game is managing the informal negotiations with other players before making simultaneous moves.
The main reason Cicero’s performance is a scientific breakthrough is that it can both play the game well, and also perform these informal negotiations. This combination of natural language processing and strategic reasoning is a first for any game-playing AI.
Beating Cicero
A close reading of the paper Meta published about Cicero in the prestigious journal Science offers a couple of clues about how you can beat it.
First, Cicero is almost entirely honest (unlike the famous Roman it’s named after). On the other hand, Diplomacy is a game of betrayal and dishonesty. Players offer to form alliances but often instantly renege on these deals. Cicero does not. It always plays straight.
Honesty is a surprisingly effective strategy in Diplomacy – but not if your opponents know you will never betray them. This is the catch. Cicero played anonymously, so its human opponents probably wouldn’t have worked this out. But if you know this fact, it will be easy to take advantage.
Second, Cicero (this time like his namesake) is very talkative. Expert players of Diplomacy exchange twice the number of messages with other players than non-experts. The trick is to form alliances, and reassure your opponents of your intent. Cicero also exchanges twice the number messages of the human players it tends to beat.
Of course, being a bot, it is much easier for Cicero to handle six simultaneous conversations. And this, I would say, is an unfair advantage of being a computer in this scenario.
What next?
It’s not clear how Meta intends to build on this research. A computer that can reason about the beliefs, goals, and intentions of others, as well as persuade and build relationships through dialogue, is a powerful tool. It’s one that could be easily misused. Let’s not forget how several years ago Facebook (which is owned by Meta) came in for a lot of justified criticism for an experiment to manipulate users’ emotions.
Yet it’s hard to say exactly what the real-world applications of Cicero might be. After all, diplomacy in the real world is neither zero sum nor deterministic. Two countries can both agree not to go to war, and both will win.
Then there are multitudes of random factors that can change an outcome. The Spanish Armada, for example, lost more ships to unexpected summer storms than to enemy fire.
Whatever Meta’s intent, the breakthrough is another example of how large tech companies are taking over the AI race with billion dollar investments that can’t be matched by the public sector. Cicero was produced by a team of more than 25 researchers. Nobody working in a university has these sorts of resources to throw at solving a board game.
As an AI researcher at one of those universities, I am conflicted. I’m reminded of a famous graffito at Pompeii which said
A man sits on the couch, watching TV. His partner, a woman, prepares dinner, while mentally ticking off her to-do list. That includes returning her partner’s shirts she’d ordered online for him last week, and booking a GP appointment for their youngest child.
He walks in and asks her “what’s for dinner?”, then goes back to the TV.
Later that night, he’s surprised she’s not interested in sex.
The people in this scenario are a woman and a man. But it could be a woman and her child. The dynamics are very similar – one person providing instrumental and emotional care, and the other receiving that care while showing little acknowledgement, gratitude or reciprocation.
You’re reading about a man who depends on his partner for everyday tasks that he is actually capable of. Some people call this the “man-child” phenomenon.
Maybe you’ve lived it. Our research shows it’s real.
The man-child phenomenon (or perceiving a partner as dependent, as we call it) describes the blurring of roles between a partner and a child.
You may hear women describe their male partners as their “dependent” or one of their children.
When a partner starts to feel like they have a dependent child, it’s not surprising if that affects a woman’s sexual desire for him.
We set out to explore whether this might explain why many women partnered with men report low sexual desire.
Surprisingly, until our study, there were no studies that had tried to directly measure the impact of the man-child phenomenon on women’s sexual desire.
We conducted two studies with more than 1,000 women from around the world, in relationships with men. All our participants had children under the age of 12.
We asked the women to rate their agreement with statements like, “Sometimes I feel as though my partner is like an extra child I need to look after.” We also asked them about the division of household labour in their relationship, and their level of sexual desire for their partner.
We found consistent evidence that:
when women performed more household labour than their partner, they were more likely to perceive their partner as dependents (that is, the man-child phenomenon)
perceiving a partner as a dependent was associated with lower sexual desire for that partner.
When taken together, you could say women’s partners were taking on an unsexy role – that of a child.
There could be other explanations. For instance, women who perceive their partners as dependents may be more likely to do more around the house. Alternatively, low desire for a partner may lead to the partner being perceived as a dependent. So we need more research to confirm.
Our research highlights a pretty bleak snapshot of what people’s relationships can involve. And while the man-child phenomenon may not exist for you, it reflects broader gendered inequities in relationships.
Is there a man-child equivalent in same-sex relationships?
Our research was solely about relationships between women and men, with children. But it would be interesting to explore if the man-child phenomenon exists in same-sex or gender-diverse relationships, and what the impact might be on sexual desire.
One possibility is that, in relationships between two women, men, or non-binary people, household labour is more equitably negotiated. As a result, the mother-child dynamic may be less likely to emerge. But no-one has studied that yet.
In relationships between men, household labour may be more evenly split. Shutterstock
Another possibility is that one person in the relationship (regardless of gender identity) takes on a more feminine role. This may include more of the mothering, nurturing labour than their partner(s). If that was the case, we might see the man-child phenomenon in a broader range of relationships. Again, no-one has studied this.
Perhaps, anyone could be the “man-child” in their relationship.
Such future research may help explore different types of relationship dynamics more broadly.
This may help us understand what sexual desire might look like in relationships where roles are equitably negotiated, chosen, and renegotiated as needed.
We might learn what happens when household labour is valued like paid labour. Or what happens when both partners support each other and can count on each other for daily and life needs.
Women might be less likely to experience their partners as dependents and feel more sexual desire for them. In other words, the closer we are to equity in actively caring for each other, the closer we might be to equity in the capacity for feeling sexual desire with our partner.
We thank Aki Gormezano, who was a coauthor on the paper discussed in this article.
Sari van Anders receives funding from the Canada 150 Research Chair program.
Emily Harris 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Markus Luczak-Roesch, Associate Professor in Information Systems, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
Getty Images
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter as the new sole private owner has delivered plenty of material for memes. Ironically, much of the debate about Twitter is still happening on the platform itself, sometimes with Musk jumping into the conversations personally.
At the same time, a significant number of active Twitter users (mostly those focused on fair and equitable online behaviour, including researchers, journalists and digital natives) have decided to leave the platform and migrate elsewhere.
The decentralised social media ecosystem of Mastodon has been a prime beneficiary. Media have been busy explaining Mastodon and how best to quit Twitter.
But what might sound like a funny disruption in the social media landscape is actually a serious matter with important challenges for democracy in the digital age. And it raises questions about whether the New Zealand government is well equipped and advised to deal with those challenges.
Antisocial media
At the end of September, the government announced it would partner with Microsoft, Twitter and the US government to develop technologies that could reveal how algorithms influence users’ political beliefs and potential actions.
The collaboration was a direct outcome of the Christchurch Call, the initiative begun two years ago after the terrorist attacks on two mosques in the city. Its aim is to tackle the problem of online platforms acting as breeding grounds for extremist views and violence, threatening the democratic social fabric.
However, one of Musk’s first actions was to fire Twitter’s head of legal, Vijaya Gadde, and people from the machine learning, ethics, transparency and accountability team headed by Rumman Chowdhury. Seemingly, Musk considers their work and advocacy for algorithmic transparency and content moderation goes against his vision of free speech on the Twitter platform.
The entire team the New Zealand government was planning to work with disappeared. And it’s unlikely any work outlined in September will actually eventuate.
While algorithmic transparency on Twitter is important, the Christchurch Call will only be fully effective if all social media platforms are included. Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) and TikTok’s parent company Bytedance remain outside the initiative.
The young people who dominate Tiktok’s user base are regularly exposed to questionable or unacceptable content by so-called influencers. Seemingly harmless on the surface, these messages can sometimes carry misogynistic, ultra-conservative and racist themes.
The TikTok app is also known for more invasive personal data collection than Twitter. But Chinese government influence makes any algorithmic transparency or regulation of the platform highly unlikely at this stage.
Not just cables in the ground
The realistic possibility of the algorithmic transparency collaboration not leading to any real outcomes is a blow for New Zealand and other democratic countries. The issues it seeks to address are critical, but the government was arguably badly advised to partner with Big Tech players on such a fundamental project.
Platforms like Twitter and Facebook (but also large multi-national cloud computing providers) have become critical parts of countries’ digital infrastructure. They can play a formal role when they run public-sector services such as the cloud data back-ends of our national tax and immigration systems, or an informal one when they host citizen discourse and activism.
A change in acquisition can change their strategic direction, the values and culture they reflect, and their openness to use by people in certain countries or members of certain groups.
New Zealand Prime Miniser Jacinda Ardern recognises the threat and even described social media platforms in her recent UN speech as “a weapon of war” – something foreign and domestic experts have been warning about for years.
But it’s now time for the New Zealand government to acknowledge that digital infrastructure policy is no longer just about cables in the ground to get everyone connected.
It is also about developing robust national data infrastructures, similar to the European Union’s GAIA-X initiative or the Open Energy programme in the UK, which protect businesses and citizens in a global digital ecosystem. This will require real expertise in technology development and regulation.
In its recent digital strategy action plan, however, the government made no explicit commitment to fostering a national digital economy based on local technology development.
Instead, recent large investments in digital infrastructure, such as the NZ$1.3 billion single-ticketing system for public transport, suggest it is happy to look for overseas solutions.
It seems the government still sees this country as a consumer of overseas digital technology rather than a technology creator. Meanwhile, other countries such as France have moved away from outsourcing their digital infrastructure due to concerns about data sovereignty, competition and privacy.
The recent upheavals at Twitter are a reminder that New Zealand needs to shift its digital strategy. Not to do so risks putting the country’s businesses and citizens in a dangerously dependent position for decades to come. Alternatively, New Zealand can evolve to become a progressive knowledge economy with vibrant digital innovation that supports everyone to live well.
Markus Luczak-Roesch received funding from the Science for Technological Innovation National Science Challenge under the Veracity Technology spearhead project. He is also affiliated with Te Pūnaha Matatini – the Aotearoa New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence for Complex Systems.
The story of Old Blue and Old Yellow, two Chatham Island black robins that went on to save their species, is one of New Zealand’s best known conservation stories.
Once abundant on Rēkohu/Chatham Islands before European arrival, the black robin population crashed when rats invaded the archipelago. In the early 1900s, 35 black robins remained on a small island (Tapuaenuku/Little Mangere), but by 1976, only seven birds had survived.
They were moved to an adjacent, predator-free island (Maung’ Rē/Mangere) and Old Blue and Old Yellow, the only remaining breeding pair, became “Adam and Eve” for the species.
Conservation biologists worried such an extreme genetic bottleneck would lessen the species’ chances of recovery by leading to an accumulation of genetic defects. But our new genome study shows that, contrary to our expectations, harmful genetic mutations have not increased since the severe decline.
Genetic threats to small populations
When we think about species extinction, human-associated threats such as habitat degradation, overhunting or introduced predators come to mind. We intuitively understand that small populations are at greater risk of extinction than large ones.
But even when major threats are removed, more subtle problems like inbreeding can push wild species to the brink of extinction. The Chatham Island black robin (karure, Petroica traversi) illustrates these issues perfectly.
Black robins were once common throughout Rēkohu/Chatham Islands. Wikimedia/Peter de Lange, CC BY-ND
At the start of the species’ recovery, the extreme level of inbreeding, with all birds descending from one pair, is not ideal. A previous study suggested inbreeding and harmful mutations, which often accumulate in extremely inbred populations, had a severe effect on individual survival and reproduction and even slowed down the recovery of the species.
Even to non-biologists, this is not surprising. Everyone familiar with the fate of European dynasties like the Habsburgs knows that relatedness between parents can cause major issues. Charles II, for example, the last Habsburg ruler of Spain and descendent of generations of closely related ancestors, died childless at the age of 39 after lifelong health struggles.
For now, black robins appear to have escaped this fate. As of 2022, there are about 290 birds, split between two different islands.
Are black robins out of the woods?
To answer this question, we compared the genomes from birds that died in the 1800s to the genomes of birds from 2014-2019. Curiously, even though inbreeding had increased severely, we did not see an increase in the number of harmful mutations over the past 200 years.
It is possible the species has been “pre-adapted” to surviving in small populations. Living on a few small islands, inbreeding might have always been a problem. There would have always been a percentage of the population with reduced health due to damaging mutations.
With populations on several small islands in the Rēkohu archipelago, inbreeding may have always been an issue for black robins. Shutterstock/Steve Todd
Natural selection might have eliminated those individuals and their harmful mutations from the gene pool without major impacts on the overall population. With few harmful mutations left in the population when the species dwindled to only two breeding birds, the negative effects of extreme inbreeding might have been reduced.
In other words, their evolution on a small archipelago may have prepared the black robins better than large mainland species for fending off the negative effects of inbreeding.
The Chatham Island robin is not the only species to benefit from recent advances in genomics. Similar genomicstudies have shown that some highly inbred species seem to have lost a large proportion of genetically harmful defects. While genetic threats remain, these species may be doing better than we once thought.
These results are also important from a management perspective as better estimates of inbreeding and harmful mutations can help identify the most genetically healthy individuals for translocations and breeding programmes (such as for kākāpō and Swedish Arctic foxes). Genomic data can also improve or verify the accuracy of pedigrees.
The main concern for conservation managers will be to determine whether and when a recovering species like black robins or kākāpō will be able to fend for themselves. How long will they require intensive management in the form of nest surveys, supplementary feeding or even artificial rearing of chicks?
At which point can we consider a species healthy enough and resilient to diseases or other external threats? And what if the recovery stops, slows down or even reverses as new harmful mutations accumulate in the population?
We do not have answers to these questions yet. Genomics can help address some of them, but it is just one tool in the conservation toolbox. Conservation successes will come from an integration of all available sources of information, including often underused sources such as traditional ecological knowledge.
If we want to know more about how black robins behaved and lived before European predators were introduced, we also need to look for – and listen to – the stories from that time. For the black robin, as well as for other highly endangered species, it is the combination of all available information that will eventually make the difference between success and failure.
Nicolas Dussex receives funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Carl Tryggers Foundation and University of Otago.
Michael Knapp has received funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand (Rutherford Discovery Fellowship (14-UOO-007) and the University of Otago.
Repeated floods have devastated our east coast. Other extreme events are getting worse too. Since 1987 bushfires have burnt increasing areas, peaking in 2019.
This is in Australia – one of the world’s wealthiest countries. In developing countries such as Pakistan, which has been devastated by floods, the situation is much worse. COP27 ended with an agreement on “loss and damage” funding for these vulnerable countries.
Yet the scale of climate-fuelled disasters is far greater than any such fund can cover. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction predicts the world will face 560 disasters per year by 2030. Reducing emissions is a priority, of course, but even under the best-case scenarios we face compounding impacts on cities, infrastructure and services.
Incremental approaches to disaster management cannot keep up. We must plan for the worst bushfire, the worst flood, the worst drought.
This article offers four examples of potential solutions that are being developed to stop bushfires, storms and floods in their tracks.
Although ambitious, it’s the best way to prevent deaths and destruction. Only when that’s not possible should we pour all efforts into keeping people safe and minimising damage.
In the Black Summer of 2019-20, prolonged drought, high temperatures and strong winds created catastrophic bushfires that overwhelmed firefighting capabilities. Globally, dangerous fire weather days and bushfires are set to increase by 50% by 2100. This calls for a radical change in fire management.
The area burnt each year by bushfires in Australia has been increasing. Canadell et al 2021/Nature Communications, CC BY A prototype of the water glider designed to put out a small fire. ANU, Author provided
In 2019–20 vast areas were burnt – mainly because of an inability to detect and put out fires starting in remote areas before they spread and became uncontrollable. The Australian National University Bushfire Initiative is working on a new approach. It has the ambitious goal of detecting a fire starting in remote bushland within one minute and putting it out within five. We are developing GPS-guided water gliders to suppress small fires.
The ANU-Optus Bushfire Research Centre of Excellence’s high-tech solutions will include:
networks of scout drones to rapidly locate newly started fires
automated detection using artificial intelligence and cameras on towers
ground-based wireless sensors to detect fires.
Artist Elena McNee’s impression of the ANU Bushfire Initiative.
In Australia, we’re warned shortly before a severe hailstorm to put our cars under cover. Yet such warnings did not prevent damage to cars and property in January 2020, when 4-5cm hailstones caused $1.625 billion in insurance claims across south-eastern Australia.
So can we stop hailstorms? Hail suppression strategies do exist. They include cloud seeding, anti-hail guns, photovoltaics and nanomaterials.
These efforts started in 1896 with the invention by Austrian winegrower Albert Stiger of “hail cannons” – shockwave generators to disrupt hailstone formation. As recently as 2018, a factory in Mexico used hail cannons to protect cars.
Today, however, the most common intervention is cloud seeding with an aerosol of silver iodide particles. The idea is that these particles cause many smaller, harmless hailstones to form around additional ice nuclei. A 2016 review found these interactions are still not well understood.
Because we haven’t worked out how to apply the technology with consistent results, it’s hard to attract financing. Supporting the industry to scale up would help advance the technology and build investor confidence.
Some countries are already doing this. China is rapidly expanding its weather modification service to include hail suppression over an area more than one-and-a-half times the size of India. It plans a fivefold increase in the world’s biggest cloud-seeding operation.
Sponge cities and nature-based solutions to manage floods
We can’t completely stop all floods, but can we reduce their intensity? Peking University Professor Kongjian Yu developed the concept of sponge cities that use natural wetlands to absorb water before it can flow into city streets, reducing flooding.
In 2013, China launched a national sponge city initiative to transform greywater-based urban systems into more resilient nature-based water systems that retain and clean stormwater, making it available for reuse.
Could we turn flood-prone cities into sponges?
Nevertheless, last year the city of Zhengzhou suffered severe flooding and deaths, despite having the wetlands in place. Absorbing heavy rainfall in the city alone was not enough to avert disaster.
To solve urban flooding, upstream catchments must cope with a variety of extreme floods. Nature-based solutions contribute to a robust system. They can slow down flows and give rivers room to flood safely by:
reconnecting rivers to floodplain wetlands
relocating or raising houses and other infrastructure
changing land use on floodplains
reinstating ancient river channels
enhancing buffer strips along rivers.
In partnership with local councils and communities, ANU researchers are developing an Australian evidence base and guidelines for nature-based solutions to flood risk. Government agencies, insurers and NGOs will work with us to develop financial incentives.
When we build back better after floods, we may put houses on stilts or use materials that are not easily damaged by floodwaters. However, there is another solution to higher-than-expected flood levels as a result of climate change: floating houses.
The Buoyant Foundation designs and promotes floating homes attached to flexible mooring posts, which rest on concrete foundations. If the water rises, the house can float above it.
Can you imagine how different the impacts of floods in Pakistan would have been if every family had their own floating house?
Floating houses are a potential solution to higher-than-expected flood levels.
Traditional solutions to disasters are not working. We need to expect the worst and find new solutions.
There’s a lot of work to be done before some of these solutions are ready for broad adoption. Large collaborative research missions are needed to deliver large-scale solutions to avert the impacts of intensifying extreme events.
There is a lot of inertia in current approaches to disasters. We need to recognise the scale of the threat and develop transformational solutions that keep pace with climate change.
Roslyn Prinsley receives funding from the National Emergency Management Agency for research on community nature-based flood resilience. She also conceived of and led the development of the ANU Bushfire Initiative and led and wrote the proposal for the funding from Optus for the ANU-Optus Bushfire Research Centre of Excellence.
You face a dilemma. You’ve found the perfect shirt, and it’s an absolute bargain, but you notice it’s “Made in Bangladesh”. You’re conscious it was probably made using cheap labour. Do you buy it, or walk away?
Today Oxfam released its annual Naughty or Nice list. This list highlights retail brands committed to transparent sourcing, separating labour costs in price negations, and conducting a wage gap analysis to work towards paying workers a living wage.
Oxfam’s 2022 Naughty or Nice list. Oxfam, Author provided
This list is one of several resources trying to encourage ethical consumption. Yet despite concerns of sweatshop labour, and consumers claiming they’re willing to pay more for ethically-sourced clothes, there remains high demand for ultra-low-price mass-produced clothing.
The explanation lies in a psychological phenomenon called motivated reasoning. It explains how people convince themselves sweatshop labour is actually okay, as long as the product is desirable.
Consumption is an individualistic act. It allows us to distinguish ourselves through our clothing, culture, and even the entertainment we consume. Ethical consumption is when consumers consider the wider environmental and societal impacts of what they consume, including when they purchase clothing.
Revenue from the global apparel market is expected to reach US$2 trillion (about A$3 trillion) by 2026. Asia remains the garment factory of the world. It accounts for 55% of global textiles and clothing exports, and employs some 60 million workers.
And the International Labour Organisation has estimated 160 million children aged 5 to 17 were engaged in child labour at the beginning of 2020 – many of which would have worked in the fashion supply chain.
Oxfam’s What She Makes campaign is demanding that big brands pay a living wage to the women who make our clothes.
Isn’t any job better than no job?
A common defence by manufacturers that use exploitative labour arrangements is that such work is often the best option available for those workers. Workers voluntarily accept the conditions, and their employment helps with long-term economic development.
At the same time, emerging research argues sweatshops are the result of consumer choice, wherein retailers are simply responding to a demand for ultra-low-price fashion. This infers that if there was no demand, there would be no sweatshops.
But one problem with holding consumers responsible is that the vast majority aren’t aware of how their clothes are made. Despite “supply chain transparency” being credited for increasing brand legitimacy and trust, true transparency is difficult to attain, even for retailers, due to the disjointed and distant elements of how products move through the supply chain (which includes suppliers, producers, manufacturers, distributors and retailers).
Our own research into consumers’ perception of worker welfare found people struggle to connect the $5 shirt they bought with the person who made it, or how it was made.
Oxfam’s Naughty or Nice list aims to name (and essentially shame) retail brands that fail to disclose which factories they source product from, and how they manage sourcing integrity. The logic is that if consumers are aware of which brands disclose their ethical sourcing strategies, then they’ll make more informed purchase decisions.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Our brains are wired to arrive at conclusions we prefer, as long as we maintain an illusion of objectivity. And we do this even when the evidence is contrary to our beliefs.
A person can consider themselves an ethical consumer (which forms part of their “self-concept”) and still buy a $5 shirt, though they suspect it may have been made in a sweatshop. They may tell themselves “any job is better than no job” for workers, or “money saved today is money to spend on the children tomorrow”. In doing so they convince themselves they have objectively considered the purchase.
Most of us are so distant from supply chain exploitation, and so hooked on scoring a bargain, that seeing a list of “naughty” retail brands won’t change our behaviour.
Evidence of motivated reasoning
Researchers have studied how we use motivated reasoning to arrive at more preferable outcomes that help protect our self-concept.
In one experiment they examined whether participants would use economic justifications (such as “any job is better than no job”) to book a Caribbean holiday at a resort associated with questionable labour practices. They found participants were likely to rationalise their choice and take the holiday despite claims of exploitative working conditions.
In a second study they explored the link between justifications for sweatshop labour and product desirability. As predicted, economic justifications were higher for highly desirable sweatshop-made shoes. Other studies have found motivated reasoning being employed to justify keeping overpayments and self-allocating annual bonuses, among other examples.
How can you shop more ethically?
The bottom line is ethical consumption must be internally motivated. The good news is once you have this motivation, there are a number of resources to help you.
Knowledge is power
Oxfam’s Naughty or Nice report, Clean Clothes’ Brand Tracker, Fair Wear, Good On You, and Fashion Revolution’s Fashion Transparency Index are all great resources to identify which brands disclose their social policies, practices, and impacts in their operations and supply chain.
Brand accreditations
Most brands will disclose if they have their ethical credentials certified by organisations such as Ethical Clothing Australia, WRAP or Fairtrade International. These accreditations generally involve a rigorous process of independent eligibility tests, compliance with guidelines and external annual audits.
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.
It’s late November, which means the holiday sales period has well and truly begun. If you haven’t already seen your spending go up, the possibility is looming.
And you probably have some concerns about spending your money wisely. Furthermore, shopping can be a harrowing experience, and our attitudes towards money are tied up in all kinds of feelings.
Based on psychology, here are three tips to improve the way you spend your hard-earned cash this holiday season.
One of the amazing features of the human mind is that we can mentally time travel: we can imagine what the future is going to feel like. Scientists call this “affective forecasting”.
Thinking about a future trip – imagining the warm sun, the sand between your toes, finding yourself smiling – is an example of such mental time travel.
However, it turns out we’re not very good at affective forecasting. We get wrong not only the emotions we will experience, but also their intensity and duration. Lottery winners are a classic example – contrary to expectations, many are not happy, or not happy for long.
More importantly, you can derive happiness from just anticipating future experiences. For example, one study measured the happiness of 974 people going on a trip compared with 556 people not going on a trip. As you might expect, the vacationers were relatively happier – but only before the trip.
So, how can we take advantage of our capacity to mentally time travel?
Tip #1: Pay now, consume later. These days, fuelled by the rise of “buy now, pay later” options, we get to consume what we want immediately. However, this instant gratification deprives us of a key source of happiness: anticipation. A better strategy is to commit to buy something and then wait a little before actually consuming it.
At the point of purchase – notice you’re paying
An inevitability of every purchase is spending money. This represents a cost, both in terms of the monetary value but also the opportunity to buy other things.
According to one theory of shopping, we decide to buy after making a mental calculation: is the anticipated pleasure of consuming higher than the anticipated pain of buying?
This calculus is even represented in the brain. For example, one study looking at people’s brains with fMRI while they purchased food found neural activity in areas linked to higher-order, affective pain processing, which correlated with how high the price was.
How did you pay for your last meal? Did you have to dig into your wallet or purse trying to extract the appropriate combination of notes and coins? Maybe you simply pulled out a plastic card and swiped it on the reader? Or perhaps you absentmindedly touched your smartphone to the machine.
‘Tapping’ with your phone greatly reduces the pain of paying. naipo.de/Unsplash
It turns out your method of payment changes how much pain you feel. In one study, researchers asked some university employees if they would like to buy a mug at a discounted price. Half were only allowed to pay in cash, whereas the other half had to use a debit or credit card.
Those who paid in cash self-reported more pain of paying. So, how can you use this to your advantage?
Tip #2: Ramp up the pain. If you’re worried about overspending this holiday period, ramp up the pain of paying. You can do this by using cash or receiving a notification each time money leaves your account.
After the purchase – stop chasing rainbows
A fundamental feature of human beings is that we are adaptive – we easily get used to the new normal. This applies to our purchases, too. Scientists call it “hedonic adaptation”: over time, consumption of the same thing brings decreasing happiness.
Remember the day you got your smartphone? You may have felt joy as you caressed the smooth aluminium back and watched light glint off the unblemished glass. Now look at your phone. What happened to the joy?
It’s normal to experience hedonic adaptation. However, one problem is that we don’t anticipate it.
The second problem with hedonic adaptation is that the obvious solution appears to be buying something new. Maybe you need a new smartphone to replace your slightly scratched-up old one? If this is your thinking, you’ve just hopped onto the hedonic treadmill.
Now the only way to maintain your happiness is to spend more and more money to get better and better versions of everything. So, how can you get off this treadmill?
Tip #3: Buy experiences, not things. It turns out people end up happier when they buy experiences rather than things. For example, a study that tracked how older adults spent their money found that only one category of spending was related to happiness: leisure purchases, such as going on trips, seeing a movie at the cinema, and cheering at sporting events.
So, the next time you’re tossing up between buying tickets to a festival or getting the latest gadget, pick up your scratched-up smartphone and pre-purchase some festival tickets for you and your friends.
Adrian R. Camilleri does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The key analysis from the US midterms coverage over the past two weeks have been that the so-called “red wave” turned out to be a ripple and that the Republican Party underperformed. Former President Donald Trump, the theory goes, is losing: Trump-backed untraditional candidates in swing states were largely defeated, and only one US Senator has publicly endorsed the former president’s 2024 presidential bid.
The “Trump is on the wane” narrative was given further impetus this week when every one of his three appointees to the US Supreme Court agreed to a decision forcing him to hand over his tax returns to Congress.
Many seem to have concluded that the American people have spoken and the strange phase of “MAGA” politics – based on Trump’s rallying cry to “make American great again” – in America is over.
While many may wish this to be the case, it is oversimplified and selective conclusion.
The MAGA movement runs the House
Yes, the Democrats survived what many had predicted would be a 2010-style “shellacking”. Democrats have lost only nine seats in the House, and retain control of the Senate. This defies the usual midterm election losses by the president’s party – an all the more remarkable outcome given the president’s unpopularity and a struggling economy.
But that does not mean the influence of the MAGA movement and Trump-like politics are any more diluted in the chambers of the US government than before. In fact, Trumpian Republicanism has as much, if not more, significant representation in US politics than before the midterm elections.
With Democrats officially out of power in the lower chamber beginning in January 2023, Representative Kevin McCarthy will likely take the speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi (and purportedly try not to “hit her with it”, as he joked in 2021). McCarthy is long-time Trump ally whom the former president affectionately called “my Kevin” throughout his presidency. Indeed, McCarthy has little legislative accomplishments or notoriety on his own accord beyond his fundraising prowess and the support he received from the former president.
Republican and Trump-supporter Kevin McCarthy (left) will take over as Speaker of the House from Democrat Nancy Pelosi (right) in March 2023. Michael Reynolds/EPA/AAP
As House speaker, McCarthy would be second in line to the presidency. He would also have important administrative responsibilities, including determining which issues are debated and which bills are voted for on the House floor. He will also decide when such votes might occur, as well as which of the chamber’s 435 members serve on the various committees with subpoena power.
Unlike Pelosi’s decades long leadership of House Democrats, Republican leaders in the House have faced shortened tenures in recent years amid dramatic intra-party fights. These are now even more likely given the slim majority Republicans are expected to gain once all House elections are finalised.
As of this writing, it appears Republicans will only be able to lose four Republican votes without compromising their numerical advantage. This gives the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus – a congressional bloc of roughly 40 Trump-aligned House members with a reputation for derailing legislation – outsized influence in the way the McCarthy and the House majority will govern.
Beyond the Freedom Caucus, at least 140 of the elected House Republicans in the next Congress still question the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. That’s more than half of the Republican representatives in the House, and over a quarter of the total number of House representatives.
Unsurprisingly, the House Committee’s investigation into the former president’s role in the January 6 insurrection will be disbanded as of next year. Key Republican figures who voted to impeach Trump and served on the Select Committee – such as Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois – either did not seek re-election or failed to win their primaries. Those seats are now filled by two vocal Trump supporters, Harriet Hagemann in Wyoming and Mary Miller in Illinois.
Accordingly, the House Republican agenda so far appears more investigative than legislative. This has already seen House Republicans pledge to launch an investigation into a laptop belonging to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. They’ve also stated intentions to impeach several members of the Biden administration, including Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
Republicans have a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden (left) in their sights. Susan Walsh/AP/AAP
MAGA politics is still competitive and popular
Yes, most Trump-endorsed candidates did not win their Senate and governor races in swing states. But that does not mean Trump-like politics are not competitive or popular.
The Arizona governor race between so-called “Trump in a dress” Kari Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs was incredibly close. Only 0.8% of voters (just over 17,000 votes) decided the election in Hobbs’ favour.
Lake has, unsurprisingly, refused to concede the result and mounted an official legal challenge to investigate the process of election.
Slim margins were also at play in Nevada for the US Senate (0.9%, or less than 10,000 votes) between Adam Laxalt, a co-chair of Trump’s 2020 campaign in Nevada and one of the “stop-the-steal”‘s most vocal proponents, and Democrat incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto.
Then there are the races where Trump-aligned Republicans actually won their elections. More importantly, these victors replaced Republicans who were not as enthusiastic about the former president. Retiring Republican Senators Rob Portman of Ohio, Roy Blunt of Missouri and Richard M Burr of North Carolina – each known as moderate pragmatists willing to buck Trump at times – have all been replaced by Senate newcomers far more closely aligned with the former president and the MAGA movement.
Perhaps the most well-known of these is JD Vance – a proud 2020 election denier who famously said he “doesn’t really care” what happens in Ukraine. Vance won the Ohio Senate seat with a 6.6% margin. What’s more, he won by such a margin in what was once a swing state despite facing a conservative Democratic challenger in Tim Ryan, who similarly embraced populist rhetoric against free trade and China.
There are 17 Republican 2020 election sceptics now in the Senate. There is also one near miss in Adam Laxalt, and one election denier still possibly joining the list in Georgia’s Herschel Walker, pending an election run off on 6 December. Only seven GOP Senators voted to overturn the 2020 election in the hours after a mob overtook the Capitol on January 6 2021.
Ahead of this year’s midterms, Biden said “this is not your father’s Republican party.” The Republican victors of this month’s midterms are not even last year’s Republican party.
The MAGA movement ahead of 2024
From former Vice President Mike Pence to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, many Republicans traditionally loyal to Trump and his Make America Great Again movement have been less vocally supportive of Trump’s 2024 presidential ambitions.
But Trump’s power is not waning where it matters. In the 2022 primary races, Republicans largely voted for those who Trump told them to vote for – even candidates like Doug Mastriano (who suggested women who have abortions should be tried for murder) and Blake Masters (who attributed rising gun crime to black people). Trump-endorsed candidates might not have won the general elections, but they won their primaries 93% of the time.
Much like in the early days of 2016, many Republican elite are against Trump, but his supporters remain steadfast.
America’s 200-year experiment of democracy charges on. And the MAGA movement charges on alongside it.
Victoria Cooper 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.
Last week ABC journalist and physician Norman Swan suggested the heart attacks of two high profile people over the past year were unlikely to be a coincidence. The suggestion was that it was too unlikely two people in their 50s died of heart attacks after being infected with COVID for these events not to be connected.
However, without access to any other information about the health of these people, there was no basis for making this connection. And it later emerged one of the two may never have had COVID.
To Swan’s credit, he apologised immediately. But it highlights that no matter how well informed we are, all of us can be tripped up by errors of logic. These “logical fallacies” can cause us to believe with great conviction things that are either not true or highly unlikely.
The logical fallacy at play here is called the post hoc fallacy. This is one of the most common errors in thinking we are susceptible to when trying to make sense of events. It’s also one of the most frequent strategies bad actors use when intentionally spreading false information – which there has been no shortage of throughout the pandemic.
So what exactly is a post hoc fallacy?
The fallacy is that just because one event occurs before another, the first event must be the cause of the second.
One example of this is when a black cat crosses our path and something bad happens later that day, we immediately connect these two events. There is also an element of confirmation bias here – if we have preconceived beliefs, we’re more likely to make particular connections.
During the pandemic, this error in logic has been used to argue the case for groups holding diametrically opposite views. With around two-thirds of Australians previously infected with COVID and 95% double-dose vaccinated against the disease, almost any medical incident is going to be preceded by either COVID infection or vaccination, and thus can be blamed on these events.
In particular, those opposing COVID vaccines continually suggest serious medical events occurring in high-profile people must have been due to COVID vaccines, simply because those affected had been vaccinated. This simple tactic is incredibly effective, as it leverages the greatest ally of those who spread false information – fear.
However it’s not scientifically credible to infer one medical event caused the other solely on the basis of one event occurring before another. Working out the cause of a medical event requires much more evidence.
Two-thirds of Australians, or around 16.5 million people, have been infected with COVID since the beginning of the pandemic.
Heart disease is the leading killer of Australians, with more than 50,000 people having heart attacks each year. More than 10% of these are fatal.
So the fact that someone who had a heart attack may have previously been infected with COVID is not that surprising.
However, this does not discount the fact that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, may affect your risk of having a heart attack.
We already accept that COVID infection has more immediate effects on the heart. Emerging evidence also suggests there’s an increased frequency of future cardiovascular disease such as heart attack, stroke and heart failure after COVID infection. While this early evidence needs to be interpreted with some caution, these findings are clearly concerning.
Its important that we resist the urge to assume that one event causes another just because an event occurred before another.
Its also important to understand that those seeking to mislead you will use a number of tactics to induce you to make this and other errors of reasoning.
In recognising logic fallacies the hope is that you will be less susceptible to being manipulated by those spreading false information.
Hassan Vally 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.
Repeated floods have devastated our east coast. Other extreme events are getting worse too. Since 1987 bushfires have burnt increasing areas, peaking in 2019.
This is in Australia – one of the world’s wealthiest countries. In developing countries such as Pakistan, which has been devastated by floods, the situation is much worse. COP27 ended with an agreement on “loss and damage” funding for these vulnerable countries.
Yet the scale of climate-fuelled disasters is far greater than any such fund can cover. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction predicts the world will face 560 disasters per year by 2030. Reducing emissions is a priority, of course, but even under the best-case scenarios we face compounding impacts on cities, infrastructure and services.
Incremental approaches to disaster management cannot keep up. We must plan for the worst bushfire, the worst flood, the worst drought.
This article offers four examples of potential solutions that are being developed to stop bushfires, storms and floods in their tracks.
Although ambitious, it’s the best way to prevent deaths and destruction. Only when that’s not possible should we pour all efforts into keeping people safe and minimising damage.
In the Black Summer of 2019-20, prolonged drought, high temperatures and strong winds created catastrophic bushfires that overwhelmed firefighting capabilities. Globally, dangerous fire weather days and bushfires are set to increase by 50% by 2100. This calls for a radical change in fire management.
The area burnt each year by bushfires in Australia has been increasing. Canadell et al 2021/Nature Communications, CC BY A prototype of the water glider designed to put out a small fire. ANU, Author provided
In 2019–20 vast areas were burnt – mainly because of an inability to detect and put out fires starting in remote areas before they spread and became uncontrollable. The Australian National University Bushfire Initiative is working on a new approach. It has the ambitious goal of detecting a fire starting in remote bushland within one minute and putting it out within five. We are developing GPS-guided water gliders to suppress small fires.
The ANU-Optus Bushfire Research Centre of Excellence’s high-tech solutions will include:
networks of scout drones to rapidly locate newly started fires
automated detection using artificial intelligence and cameras on towers
ground-based wireless sensors to detect fires.
Artist Elena McNee’s impression of the ANU Bushfire Initiative.
In Australia, we’re warned shortly before a severe hailstorm to put our cars under cover. Yet such warnings did not prevent damage to cars and property in January 2020, when 4-5cm hailstones caused $1.625 billion in insurance claims across south-eastern Australia.
So can we stop hailstorms? Hail suppression strategies do exist. They include cloud seeding, anti-hail guns, photovoltaics and nanomaterials.
These efforts started in 1896 with the invention by Austrian winegrower Albert Stiger of “hail cannons” – shockwave generators to disrupt hailstone formation. As recently as 2018, a factory in Mexico used hail cannons to protect cars.
Today, however, the most common intervention is cloud seeding with an aerosol of silver iodide particles. The idea is that these particles cause many smaller, harmless hailstones to form around additional ice nuclei. A 2016 review found these interactions are still not well understood.
Because we haven’t worked out how to apply the technology with consistent results, it’s hard to attract financing. Supporting the industry to scale up would help advance the technology and build investor confidence.
Some countries are already doing this. China is rapidly expanding its weather modification service to include hail suppression over an area more than one-and-a-half times the size of India. It plans a fivefold increase in the world’s biggest cloud-seeding operation.
Sponge cities and nature-based solutions to manage floods
We can’t completely stop all floods, but can we reduce their intensity? Peking University Professor Kongjian Yu developed the concept of sponge cities that use natural wetlands to absorb water before it can flow into city streets, reducing flooding.
In 2013, China launched a national sponge city initiative to transform greywater-based urban systems into more resilient nature-based water systems that retain and clean stormwater, making it available for reuse.
Could we turn flood-prone cities into sponges?
Nevertheless, last year the city of Zhengzhou suffered severe flooding and deaths, despite having the wetlands in place. Absorbing heavy rainfall in the city alone was not enough to avert disaster.
To solve urban flooding, upstream catchments must cope with a variety of extreme floods. Nature-based solutions contribute to a robust system. They can slow down flows and give rivers room to flood safely by:
reconnecting rivers to floodplain wetlands
relocating or raising houses and other infrastructure
changing land use on floodplains
reinstating ancient river channels
enhancing buffer strips along rivers.
In partnership with local councils and communities, ANU researchers are developing an Australian evidence base and guidelines for nature-based solutions to flood risk. Government agencies, insurers and NGOs will work with us to develop financial incentives.
When we build back better after floods, we may put houses on stilts or use materials that are not easily damaged by floodwaters. However, there is another solution to higher-than-expected flood levels as a result of climate change: floating houses.
The Buoyant Foundation designs and promotes floating homes attached to flexible mooring posts, which rest on concrete foundations. If the water rises, the house can float above it.
Can you imagine how different the impacts of floods in Pakistan would have been if every family had their own floating house?
Floating houses are a potential solution to higher-than-expected flood levels.
Traditional solutions to disasters are not working. We need to expect the worst and find new solutions.
There’s a lot of work to be done before some of these solutions are ready for broad adoption. Large collaborative research missions are needed to deliver large-scale solutions to avert the impacts of intensifying extreme events.
There is a lot of inertia in current approaches to disasters. We need to recognise the scale of the threat and develop transformational solutions that keep pace with climate change.
Roslyn Prinsley receives funding from the National Emergency Management Agency for research on community nature-based flood resilience. She also conceived of and led the development of the ANU Bushfire Initiative and led and wrote the proposal for the funding from Optus for the ANU-Optus Bushfire Research Centre of Excellence.
Women are participating in the paid workforce more than ever before. By and large, though, they continue to work in the same jobs females have always had.
In the 35 years from 1987 to 2022, females’ share of total hours worked in Australia grew from 32% to 42%.
You might expect this to have led to a higher proportion of women in most jobs. Instead, female employment has become even more concentrated in female-dominated occupations – jobs where 70% or more of hours worked are by women.
For example, about 95% of hours by child-care workers and 91% of hours by receptionists was done by females in 2021-22, Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows. These are higher percentages than in 1987.
But women accounted for just 3% of truck-driving hours, and less than 1% of hours worked by carpenters and joiners.
Some things were better 35 years ago
In 1986-87, 37% of hours worked by women were in female-dominated jobs. By 2021-22, it was was almost 44%.
Some jobs have moved from being male-dominated to being more balanced; especially in managerial and professional occupations.
In 2021-22, 53% of hours worked by accountants were done by females, up from 16% in 1986-87. Solicitors, human resources professionals and economists, to name just a few, have seen similar changes.
But that cannot hide the overall story that occupational segregation persists in Australia.
It’s also the case that there have been few cases of female-dominated jobs becoming more balanced in the past 35 years. Phsyiotherapists and aged and disabled carers are the only exceptions.
It’s a drag on the economy
Having our labour market organised this way comes at a big cost.
Suppose we believe that innate ability to do most jobs is similar between females and males. In other words, while some people will be better accountants than nurses, and others better nurses than accountants, those proportions don’t vary much between females and males.
This means, if we want the people who are going to be the best working in any job, we need a relatively even balance of females and males. Without that, national productivity will be lower than it could be.
A 2019 study by economists Chang-Tai Hsieh and colleagues at the University of Chicago and Stanford shows just how much this can matter.
Their paper estimates 20-40% of growth in GDP per capita in the United States between 1960 and 2010 came from reducing occupational segregation by sex and ethnicity.
There is also a human cost from occupational segregation, with individuals being prevented from working in the jobs from which they will derive the greatest satisfaction.
To get rid of the costs that occupational segregation imposes, we need to remove the barriers that allow it to happen.
One barrier is getting the skills to do a job. Norms that drive the subjects boys and girls choose to study at school, or sex-based discrimination in entry to training programs, are examples of factors that create this barrier.
Another barrier can be labour-market discrimination, with hiring practices that entrench gender steretypes. A resume study published in June, for example, found male applications got 50% more callbacks in male-dominated occupations and 40% fewer callbacks in female-dominated occupations.
Addressing these barriers will take economy-wide reforms as well as dealing with specific barriers that exist for individual occupations.
It’s also important to recognise the task is not just to remove barriers on females moving into male-dominated jobs. To get the full benefits from reducing occupational segregation, males moving into female-dominated jobs has to be on the agenda as well.
Jeff Borland receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
In November 1922, a romantic drama directed by a Hungarian immigrant and starring an ex-naval officer and an obscure Swedish actress was released. The film began shooting without a finished script.
Many at Warner Brothers Studios thought the film would quickly disappear into obscurity.
It would end up winning three Academy Awards (for best picture, director Michael Curtiz, and screenplay), starred the iconic pair Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman alongside a host of recognisable supporting players, featured a lush score and evocative set design, and contained endlessly quotable lines. Its reputation grows and grows.
Casablanca has become one of Hollywood’s most beloved films.
A film of vivid moments
Casablanca is a heady mix of romance, cynicism, thrills and danger. Based on an unproduced play, Everybody Comes to Rick’s, the film mainly takes place in a night-club run by Bogart in the Moroccan city during the second world war.
Rick’s Café is where desperate refugees try to get hold of illegal exit visas to America. Complications – with Nazi officials and officious French bureaucrats – ensue.
One night, Rick’s old flame Ilsa (Bergman) turns up with her resistance leader husband in search of safe passage to the States. Cue the famous line:
Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.
It is full of vivid moments: Bogart and Bergman drinking champagne in Paris, Sydney Greenstreet in a fez, Peter Lorre trying to escape, Dooley Wilson sitting at the piano and singing THAT song.
Its production was fast-tracked to take advantage of the recent Allied invasion of North Africa. Casablanca was originally scheduled for an early 1943 release, but Warner Brothers capitalised on the resounding success of the US-led invasion, which in turn boosted box office receipts.
Casablanca would go into wide release on January 23 1943, to coincide with the Casablanca Conference, a strategic meeting between Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Casablanca’s clearest theme is that neutrality – whether in war or in love – is difficult to maintain.
At the outset, Rick is staunchly apolitical: he is jaded, unmoved by the refugee crisis unfolding around him.
But we also learn Rick has been involved in political causes, supporting losing sides against the Fascists in Spain and Ethiopia. The film traces that ambivalence through Bogart’s masterful performance. His cynicism gradually softens once Ilsa turns up, and his animosity to the Nazi chief Strasser grows.
This political about-face comes to a head in one of the greatest scenes in Hollywood cinema: the singing of La Marseillaise at Rick’s Café in full defiance of the Nazi officers belting out a German anthem.
It is a deeply patriotic and uplifting scene, and reminds us of cinema’s power to engage us, move us and make us cheer.
It also turns the night-club into a microcosm for the war, with it multinational clientele and the competing strands of partisanship, neutrality, aggression and political commitment.
For an America wary of entering the European theatre, scenes like this reminded audiences of the need to fight injustice, intolerance and belligerence.
She plays the role of a woman who never displays where her romantic allegiances lie. Should she leave with Lazslo to America, or should she go back to Rick, and rekindle a love affair that ended abruptly in Paris?
The ambiguity in Bergman’s performance is due in large part to both a script that was constantly being rewritten and Curtiz’s indecision on how the film should end. But it is also a reminder of Bergman’s greatness.
[Bergman] doesn’t simply gaze at [a man’s] eyes, as so many actresses do, their thoughts on the next line of dialogue. She peers into the eyes, searching for meaning and clues, and when she is in a close two-shot with an actor, watch the way her own eyes reflect the most minute changes in his expression.
Her scenes with Bogart exemplify this approach.
Many film historians argue Casablanca’s greatness is due to its “invisible” style: there are no flashy camera movements, or ostentatious cuts, or “look at me” acting.
French film critic André Bazin once famously attributed the success of Hollywood studio films to “the genius of the system”.
Films like Casablanca succeeded because they were made within a thriving ecosystem that placed storytelling, creative expertise, and cast and crew competence at the heart of its artistic practice.
And Casablanca’s script remains unbeatable. It’s worth remembering the lines of dialogue that have stayed with us ever since: “Here’s looking at you, kid”; “This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”; “We’ll always have Paris”; and “Round up the usual suspects”.
Scholars love the film for its Freudian intertexts, while others see the title casa blanca – “white house: in Spanish – as a symbol for American foreign policy.
The Italian novelist Umberto Eco wrote Casablanca was “not just one film. It is many films […] it is a phenomenon worthy of awe”.
Watched today, we remain in awe of its simplicity, but also of its profound depth.
Ben McCann 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.
Over the past decade, there has been a growing debate about the value of student loans and the long-term impact of debt for those entering the workforce – particularly for students who struggled to complete their studies.
In the United States, where the average student loan is US$30,000 per borrower, the Biden administration recently announced plans to cancel US$32 billion worth of loans. This move has been blocked indefinitely by the courts but it has put the spotlight squarely on student debt both in the US and elsewhere.
In New Zealand, some 70% of all students borrow from the government to study. The collective student debt is NZ$16 billion, with the average debt per borrower sitting at around $24,000.
As students rack up ever-increasing levels of debt, the question has been raised about whether low-performing students should have their loan access cut off.
Considering the debate around borrowing for study and calls for the debt to be wiped, my colleague and I investigated the effects of access to student loans on university re-enrolment, graduation and earnings for academically struggling students.
The student loan debate
Despite concerns around using student loans for study, funding higher education through government-funded loans can have advantages. At their most fundamental level, student loans reduce the cost of the tertiary education system on the broader tax base, striking a balance between public investment and individual responsibility.
Sharing costs allows the government to fund more students. Student loans can also reduce barriers to study resulting from tuition fees, offering students from lower income families access to tertiary education.
While most students who complete their qualifications will increase their earning potential and be able to pay off their debt, there is a concern for low-performing students who may accumulate a large amount of debt but fail to graduate.
Student loans account for nearly half of government expenditure on tertiary education. Students borrow roughly $10,000 for one year of full-time study, costing the government about 45 cents on the dollar. The introduction of free tuition for the first year has reduced the total amount borrowed by students but hasn’t changed the average borrowing per year – partly because the government allows students to borrow more in living and course-related costs.
Considering the significant cost to both students and taxpayers, many experts advocate restricting loan access based on student performance and expected future earnings to reduce the risk for borrowers. But is this really the best option?
Long-term benefits of student loans
The linked administrative records from the New Zealand Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) allow us to follow students for up to nine years, from the start of university into the labour market.
We began our analysis looking at the data from all students starting university in 2008-2011. Our main analysis focused in on a small subset of students whose grades were around the 50% cutoff.
To continue qualifying for a student loan in New Zealand, students must pass at least 50% of their classes after two years of study. Some 10% of students fail this requirement and are considered low-performing students.
We compared outcomes for students just above the 50% pass rate threshold to those just below. These students are similar in all aspects except for loan access. Therefore any differences in outcomes can be attributed to whether or not they were able to access a student loan.
Several findings emerged from our work. First, in what may not be a surprise, three-quarters of students struggled to find other funding and were not able to re-enrol in study without loan access.
Second, low-performing students with loan access – those who just made it over the 50% threshold – were about 60 percentage points more likely to graduate than those without, even though they take roughly six years to complete a three-year bachelor’s degree.
Third, those low-performing students who retained access to student loans earned $2,000 more per month and rose 40 percentile points in the earnings distribution of earners around age 25. This finding suggests the earning returns from a university degree for low-performing students are similar to an average degree holder.
Finally, while students who retain access to student loans initially accumulate significantly greater student loan debt – around $30,000 more than students who lose access – the student loan balance goes down rapidly once students enter the labour market.
Its important to note that New Zealand’s tertiary education sector is generally well-regulated. This is different from some other countries grappling with the issue of student loans. Our findings suggest that, instead of limiting individuals’ loan access, regulating low-quality education providers and their access to student loan dollars is more effective in places such as the US.
Individual responsibility and a public good
Even after repaying the debt, the net present value of a student loan for someone who works 30 years is estimated to be around $300,000.
Considering the life-long benefits of higher education, there is an argument to be made that low-performing students should retain student loan access, even if they are struggling to pass.
In fact, our calculation shows that providing these students with loans is a good public investment because the generated income tax will exceed the cost to the government.
Ensuring students access through the loan scheme is an effective way to guarantee access to tertiary study and, consequently, economic potential in the long run, regardless of grades.
Yu-Wei Luke Chu receives funding from the Royal Society Marsden Fund.
The Australian National University Dictionary Centre has just announced its word of the year is “teal”.
Senior researcher Mark Gwynn described it as an “easy choice”. “The colour came to represent a movement of independent and strong female voices taking on the establishment.”
Monique Ryan, the member for the Melbourne seat of Kooyong, is the giant slayer of the movement, having defeated former treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
“It’s fascinating that the now the word ‘teals’ is now a noun that everyone recognises,” she says. “That was not the case a year ago.
“I think that many communities across Australia have been really fulfilled and have been empowered by what’s happened in Australian politics in the last year.
“I don’t believe that the community independent movement will go away any time soon, And I think it’s going to be really fascinating to see what happens in the next two or three elections.”
Only a handful of teals are contesting Saturday’s Victorian election. Two are in seats within Ryan’s Kooyong electorate.
“What’s happening in Kew is fascinating,” Ryan says. “We have [Liberal] Tim Smith who’s kind of had to leave parliament under a cloud, and the election there really I think will be fought out between his anointed successor, Jess Wilson [and] Sophie Torney. [Sophie] is an independent who has been a member of that community for a long, long time, has small business experience and is well-known within Kew.”
“In Hawthorn, the sitting member is John Kennedy, who’s the Labor member. Then we have John Pesutto, former [Liberal] attorney-general, and Melissa Lowe, who’s the independent candidate. I think many people have looked to John Pesutto as a potential leader of the Liberal Party in Victoria but he’s still under a bit of a cloud. Before the last election there was disenchantment with him in Hawthorn because he supported Matthew Guy on the African gangs issue.”
Just-released election funding figures showed Ryan was one of the biggest recipients and spenders in the May election. “I celebrated the fact that I had 3762 independent single donations, individual donations to my campaign. That is extraordinary and doesn’t take into account the 11,200 people who donated to Climate 200. I challenge anyone to find more individual donors to a political campaign in Australia and I’m not embarrassed about that.”
She wants more transparency in the way that election campaigns are funded. “It’s crazy that we have to spend so much money in order to have any sort of degree of parity to try and even things up at all […] I’m fully in favour of electoral reform to cut the amount of money that is spent on elections, but it has to be done in a way that is fair.”
Asked about her first six months in parliament, Ryan says she has “loved every minute (almost) […] What stood out is how busy it is. I hadn’t probably appreciated before I came here the extent to which you have two full-time roles when you’re a parliamentarian, and for me, the electorate side of things is incredibly engaging and it’s a very busy job. [The second part is] coming to Canberra and having a presence and an influence at a national level, and I think I and the other independents have been able to do that” although they have not had the balance of power in the House of Representatives.
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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By A J Brown, Professor of Public Policy & Law, Centre for Governance & Public Policy, Griffith University
Recent developments in Australian whistleblowing cases have shown how critical it is to get our whistleblower protection laws back up to world standards.
Fortunately, there are signs the new government will press ahead with reforms – but what’s involved in truly getting these right?
The importance of whistleblowing has been reinforced by parliamentary debate over Australia’s new National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), which resumed this week. On November 10, the Joint Select Committee reviewing the government’s bill expressed unanimous support for “wider-ranging whistleblower protection reforms” to follow, including “specific” consideration of an independent whistleblower protection commission.
Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has announced reform will start within days, with some “priority amendments” to the whistleblowing law for federal public servants, even as the long awaited anti-corruption body is debated and finalised. He has also flagged there will be more to follow.
How much more, and why is it vital? A new research report, published today by Griffith University, the Human Rights Law Centre and Transparency International Australia, seeks to present a clear roadmap for getting these reforms right.
In theory, there’s strong consensus in favour of protections for “public interest whistleblowers”. These are the insiders who play a vital role in our integrity systems by speaking up about suspected wrongdoing, usually internally but also to regulators or, if necessary, publicly.
However, protecting whistleblowers often becomes much more controversial in reality, depending on whose interests are affected.
On Monday, federal independent MP Andrew Wilkie – himself a prominent former national security whistleblower – initiated a fresh parliamentary debate in support of stronger protections. He claimed some in the coal industry had lied about the quality of Australian exports. A mining industry whistleblower lay at the heart of the allegations.
Three weeks ago, former army lawyer David McBride dropped his attempted defence under the Public Interest Disclosure Act against criminal charges for releasing Defence information about war crimes in Afghanistan. Federal prosecutors claimed the information he sought to use was, itself, too secret to even be admitted in a closed court. This effectively rendered the whistleblower protection law null and void.
In June 2021, the former intelligence operative known as “Witness K” pleaded guilty to revealing alleged commercial espionage by Australia against our close neighbour Timor Leste. Again, the whistleblowing law failed to help because the categories of “intelligence information” that cannot be revealed under the act are so wide, they effectively mean nothing can be.
The attorney-general withdrew his consent for the prosecution of Witness K’s lawyer, Bernard Collaery. But he has come under international pressure to do more to end the prosecutions of McBride and Australian Taxation Office whistleblower Richard Boyle. The latter is awaiting a decision on his public interest defence, after four damaging years of charges without even yet getting to a trial.
Why we need an overhaul of whistleblowing laws
The government’s commitment to overhaul whistleblower protections is good news. But however worthwhile, the “priority amendments” recommended by a now out-of-date 2016 review involve few steps towards addressing the deeper defects in the laws.
Most of those 2016 recommendations were designed to make it easier for agencies to navigate their roles, more than improve the protections.
This is why having a forward plan for a full overhaul of federal whistleblowing laws in 2023 is so important.
High among the issues is the lack of effective machinery to enforce whistleblowers’ rights. This problem is shared not only by the public sector law, but by private sector protections in the Corporations Act 2001, reformed as recently as 2019.
A whistleblower protection authority was recommended by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services in 2017. Such an authority also formed part of the national integrity commission proposals put forward by independents Cathy McGowan and Helen Haines, and the Greens, before the 2019 and 2022 elections.
As well, our analysis shows that defective public sector protections have now spread into private sector laws, and even state laws in the case of NSW. Despite other innovations, our federal laws impose tough tests before aggrieved whistleblowers can claim civil compensation for any damage they suffer. They effectively require a criminal reprisal before this can happen.
These protections fall short of European or United States’ standards for when a whistleblower can claim for damage. They’re also increasingly inconsistent across different areas of federal regulation.
Under the Aged Care Act and National Disability Insurance Scheme Act, for example, whistleblowers can also only claim protection if deemed to have complained “in good faith”, irrespective of the truth of their information. They must also identify themselves when making any disclosure. They get no protection if they speak out publicly, even if their internal complaints have been entirely ignored.
Union whistleblowers operate under different rules again. And in many areas of federal regulation, unless they’re employees of a corporation, many whistleblowers get no protection at all.
In the US, whistleblower protections are split across more than 47 different pieces of regulatory legislation. Australia can avoid this nightmare of red tape, duplication, confusion and inconsistency.
All this is solvable if whistleblowing law reform is approached systematically, as a whole-of-government initiative – not in the rushed, piecemeal fashion that caused the problems in existing laws.
With trust in the new National Anti-Corruption Commission hinging on the ability of public and private employees to safely bring forward information, the need for comprehensive reform couldn’t be clearer.
We know what needs doing. The challenge now is how best to follow the larger roadmap for reform, beyond its first stages, and ensure this time we complete the whistleblower protection mission.
AJ Brown has received funding from the Australian Research Council and all Australian governments for research on public interest whistleblowing, integrity and anti-corruption reform through partners including Australia’s federal and state Ombudsmen, Australian Securities & Investments Commission, and other regulatory agencies, parliaments, anti-corruption and private sector bodies (see most recently ‘Whistling While They Work 2: Improving Managerial and Organisational Responses to Whistleblowing in the Public and Private Sectors’ (https://whistlingwhiletheywork.edu.au/). He was a member of the Commonwealth Ministerial Expert Panel on Whistleblowing (2017-2019), and is a board member of Transparency International, globally and in Australia. He was proposed to be called as an expert witness in the public interest defence proceedings brought by David McBride.
This shocking incident coincides with an inquiry currently underway in Sydney examining some 88 suspected murders of LGBTIQ+ people in New South Wales between 1976 and 2010.
The stark difference between the NSW murders and the Colorado Springs attack is the suspect in Colorado can be charged and prosecuted under the state’s bias-motivated crime law amended last year. These crimes are defined as intimidation, harassment or physical harm that’s motivated at least partly by bias against a person’s race, religion, nationality, age, disability or sexual orientation.
As a result, the Colorado Springs suspect is facing five counts of bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury, in addition to murder charges.
But in Australia, the victims and their families would have little such recourse. This is because the legislative framework for a substantive hate crime offence doesn’t exist, and this hinders our ability to tackle hate crimes effectively.
Although Australia doesn’t experience mass shootings at the same horrific rate as the US, we must not believe we’re immune to hate crime.
The lonely, violent deaths of innocent people detailed in the Sydney inquiry – as well as the uncountable incidents of daily discrimination, vilifications, micro-aggressions and abuse that it’s uncovering – are a common fate among people living with a disability, women, racial and religious minorities, the homeless and other groups.
Law enforcement investigations into these matters in Australia are often inadequate.
Assessing the motivation of a ‘hate crime’
Most people would view the Colorado Springs attack as a senseless crime. As a survivor said:
We were just enjoying ourselves. We weren’t out harming anyone. We were in our space, our community, our home, enjoying ourselves like everybody else does.
However, as often happens in terrorism and hate crime incidents, the targets are selected because of what they represent in the minds of the offenders.
The question of “why” an offender does what they do is one of the most obvious immediate questions in the aftermath of a hate crime. Yet understanding the motives that drive all forms of human behaviour represents a particularly difficult philosophical and practical task.
Our new research, published by the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies in October, aims to help Australian government and non-government organisations identify the motive behind hate crimes.
We present 14 lists of “bias indicators” and set out five key characteristics across these lists that could help stakeholders identify hate crime motives.
Broadly, these five categories of bias indicators are:
The offender’s use of biased language (whether what’s said during, before or after the incident displays elements of prejudice against the target group)
The offender’s background and history of offending (whether the offender has a history of similar incidents or if they’re affiliated with a hate group)
The target’s background and appearance (whether, for example, the target was wearing a visible religious garment)
The nature and context of the incident itself (whether the act was conducted in a building that’s symbolic of the target group’s identity)
The existence of a pattern of victimisation (such as whether a person from the LGBTIQ+ community is repeatedly harassed and abused over time).
The adoption of these bias indicators can help agencies collect better data on prejudice-motivated acts.
This can then constitute evidence that could be used by prosecutors and others in the criminal justice system, improving support for victims and increasing awareness of what hate crimes are, and how and why they should be reported.
Australia urgently needs to develop a new culture on how to address hate crime with an evidence-based, holistic and whole-of-society approach.
1. Evidence-based
We say evidence-based because in Australia, there’s no clear and consistent definition of hate crime across the different states. There’s also no systematic data collection about the incidence and trends in this phenomenon.
While the US passed its Hate Crime Statistics Act over 30 years ago – which requires the FBI to collect hate crime data at a federal level – Australia doesn’t have any similar requirements in place for its various police forces.
In practical terms, this means we have no idea about trends and the prevalence of hate crimes in our community because we don’t count them.
2. Holistic
It’s also important we adopt a holistic approach to tackling hate crime. This is because in Australian state and federal legislations, activities to combat bias-motivated acts are piecemeal at best – tending to protect some groups but not others.
The few laws protecting Australians from different forms of hatred – mostly threats and incitement to violence – differ substantially across states. Most of them are civil laws, and the few criminal laws set a threshold of harm that’s too high and therefore are barely used. With few exceptions, these laws typically protect members of racial and religious groups, leaving out LGBTIQ+ people, people living with a disability and others.
Although Australia has sentencing laws allowing courts to aggravate a sentence if a crime is motivated by hatred, they’re not enough to protect Australians from hate crime. In this regard, Australia is lagging behind most countries in Europe and North America.
Australia needs to address different forms of hate holistically, including racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and ableism among others.
3. Whole-of-society
We need a national hate crime strategy that promotes collaboration across civil society organisations, government agencies, researchers and the private sector.
As confirmed by the Sydney LGBTIQ+ inquiry, there’s still low trust in law enforcement among some communities. Therefore civil society organisations must play a key role in tackling hate.
What’s more, we need to step up the ability of Australian law enforcement to address hate crime. This includes improving law enforcement training and education around hate crimes in Australia, which for example we provide via the Tackling Hate project. The adoption of bias indicator manuals like ours would also assist their training programs.
It’s clear we urgently need a systemic change in the Australian approach to tackle hate crime.
Matteo Vergani receives funding from the Canadian Government, the Australian Government, the Australian Research Council. Matteo is a member of the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies and the Australian Hate Crime Network.
As the COP27 climate summit drew to a close over the weekend, it’s important to acknowledge that progress was made on climate adaptation – even if more can be done.
“Climate adaptation” is a term for how countries adapt to the impacts of climate change. It could be, for instance, by strengthening infrastructure to better withstand disasters, moving towns out of floodplains, or transforming the agriculture sector to minimise food insecurity.
As the costs of disasters climb, working out who will finance climate adaptation has become increasingly urgent for developing nations. For decades, they’ve called upon wealthy countries – largely responsible for causing the climate crisis in the first place – to foot the bill.
So let’s explore what COP27 achieved, how these achievements might translate into tangible commitments, and what must happen now to give everyone a fighting chance to survive on a hotter planet.
Adaptation & Agriculture day at COP27.
A thorny issue
The thorniest issues at climate change negotiations are about finance: who is giving, who is receiving, how is the money received and what kind of finance is made available.
Developed countries don’t have a good track record on this. In 2009, they committed to mobilising US$100 billion per year of climate finance by 2020 – a target that remains unmet.
What’s more, most climate finance so far has been directed towards helping developing nations mitigate their emissions, rather than for adaptation.
As Dina Saleh, the Regional Director of the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development, explained during the conference, failing to help rural populations adapt could lead to more poverty, migrations and conflict. She said:
We are calling on world leaders from developed nations to honour their pledge to provide the $100 billion a year in climate finance to developing nations and to channel half of that [for] climate adaptation.
Adaptation finance still falls short
The United Nations has established different funds to channel adaptation finance, including the Least Developing Countries Fund, Special Climate Change Fund and Adaptation Fund.
At COP27, eight countries pledged US$105.6 million for adaptation via the Least Developing Countries Fund and Special Climate Change Fund, including Sweden, Germany and Ireland. Others, such as the United States and Canada, expressed potential future financial commitments.
These funds are in addition to the US$413 million promised at COP26 in Glasgow last year, via the Least Developing Countries Fund. The money will target the most urgently needed adaptation efforts, such as strengthening infrastructure, social safety nets and diversifying livelihoods.
There is also a specific new funding for small-island developing states. While this development has been welcomed by the Alliance of Small Island States, it also says faster processes are needed to make the money available.
Small island nations such as Tuvalu are already experiencing severe climate impacts, and the projections are dire. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found some atoll islands are likely to experience coral bleaching every year by 2040.
These islands are also particularly vulnerable to tropical cyclones. One single large event can set development back years. For example, in 2016 tropical cyclone Winston took out over a third of Fiji’s GDP in about 36 hours.
Similarly, other highly vulnerable nations across Africa and Asia are asking for easier access to adaptation finance. The Adaptation Fund included an innovation that gave countries easier access to money, and ensured it responds directly to each country’s needs.
At COP27, this fund received over US$230 million in new pledges. However, it currently hasunfunded adaptation projects worth US$380 million in the pipeline, signalling the urgent need to ramp up finance.
Progress is edging forward
The Paris Agreement in 2015 set the “global goal on adaptation” to drive collective progress on climate adaptation worldwide. At COP27, countries agreed to develop a framework for this goal in 2023. This includes gender-responsive approaches, and science-based metrics and targets to track progress.
Another big-ticket item is the “global stocktake” on adaptation, which measures progress at the national level on fulfilling Paris Agreement obligations.
At COP27, it was noted only 40 countries so far have submitted their national adaptation plans, which identify adaptation priorities and strategies for reducing climate vulnerability. Questions remain about how to accelerate the planning, implementation and financing of these plans.
The Sharm-el-Seikh Adaptation Agenda was also launched by the two UN-appointed High-Level Climate Champions. These seek to engage non-state actors, such as cities, businesses and investors, to boost ambition for climate adaptation.
The agenda’s ultimate aim is to help 4 billion people become more resilient to climate change impacts by 2030. It has 30 adaptation outcomes to aim for, including:
protecting 3 billion people from disasters by installing smart and early warning systems in the most vulnerable communities
investing US$4 billion to secure the future of 15 million hectares of mangroves worldwide
mobilising US$140-300 billion across both public and private finance sources for adaptation.
What now?
Many pledges on adaptation finance have been made in COP26 and COP27, and the next step is to get the money where it is most urgently needed.
As climate impacts are already unfolding rapidly, communities worldwide must develop the capacity to plan for climate adaptation. This requires action at every level, and shouldn’t be left to local communities alone.
Making progress on climate adaptation in the coming years is crucial. Early action and planning can save thousands of dollars, but only if we have robust processes in place to make decisions before impacts occur. This calls for more planning, investments and collaboration across local, regional, state and international levels.
But most important is the willingness to change our mindset. We must stop operating in a business-as-usual model and push for a more sustainable world in this changing climate.
Johanna Nalau has received funding from the Australian Research Council for her climate adaptation research. She is is also a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II on the Small Islands chapter, and a Lead Author for the Summary for Policymakers. She is also the Co-chair of the Science Committee in the World Adaptation Science Program.
After a long and at times divisive public consultation process, the government has opted to make a single change to the Human Rights Act and push the “wider and more complex” issues around hate speech legislation to the Law Commission for review.
While the act will be amended to include religious communities in existing protections against speech likely to “incite hostility”, any extension of the law (including to protect the rainbow and disability communities) has been postponed for now.
Seeking the right balance between protecting freedom of expression, ensuring everyone’s rights and interests are protected, and every person can express themselves without fear, is important for all New Zealanders.
Balancing acts
This balancing act will create different categories of affected speech. For example, explicitly political figures like Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki might be penalised for his views on Islam, gender roles, homosexuality and transgender rights.
But there’s another kind of speaker who sometimes looms large in discussions of the limits of speech: the comedian. While they’re doing different things – Tamaki is trying to get us back on the path to God, comedians are telling jokes – their defences are similar.
Both argue that part of what it means for a society to be free is that people like themselves are given a degree of free rein. Barring a few exceptions – yelling “fire!” in a crowded theatre being the classic example – people need to be able to say what they want.
Members of robust liberal societies cannot be too fearful of consequences, it’s argued, because such fear allows the tyranny of opinion to compromise the pursuit of truth.
Of course, being free to say something is compatible with choosing not to use that freedom. A person can assess any particular occasion – or a general atmosphere – in terms of how a joke might be understood, interpreted and then used, and choose not to tell it. In other words, comedians can exercise a degree of responsibility.
Hard to pigeonhole: US comedian Dave Chappelle has been accused of anti-transgender prejudice. Getty Images
The Chappelle factor
US comedian Dave Chappelle has been caught in the crossfires of these debates, and was recently lambasted for a perceived anti-transgender bias in his recent Netflix specials.
But pigeonholing Chappelle is complicated by the fact that in 2005 he walked away from his own highly successful series, The Chappelle Show, because he felt it was reinforcing racial stereotypes rather than sending them up.
Crucial to Chappelle’s earlier experience, then, was the idea that not all laughs are equal. And, related to that, a comedian can make mistakes in pursuit of laughs.
Comedians are not infallible, and often wander into difficult terrain. Trying to get a laugh out of race, sex, gender or even dead babies (a dark comedy trope) is already a weird business. When it goes wrong, it is going to go wrong in a weird way, too.
This isn’t to say you can’t get good material from such subjects. But comedians might also reflect on why they have been interpreted in one way rather than another. Why are some people laughing in ways that make the comedian – and others – uncomfortable? And is that discomfort caused by mistakes they might have made themselves?
During more politically settled times, however we might define them, a “let it all hang out” approach might seem generally justifiable. A joke, after all, is a joke. If the culture isn’t a battleground of belligerent, reactionary or otherwise dangerous political forces that threaten the vulnerable, then freedom of speech should take precedence.
But if those reactionary forces are rampant, then comedians need to reflect on the role of comedy (especially the kind that fills arenas) within wider public ideas and conversations. Perhaps jokes can contribute to our perception of certain issues in subtler and more complex ways than political or religious diatribes.
Having a whole sub-genre of comedy specials making fun of trans people, for example, might contribute to mobilising certain political movements. In turn this could affect trans-people’s access to gender-affirming healthcare.
None of this means hate speech laws are necessarily the solution. Legal remedies generally involve punishment. In societies that claim to be democratic, punishment can also include the censure and opprobrium of “the people”.
Given the law claims to speak for “the people”, this can turn a matter of manners and individual responsibility into an issue of the proper use of state power. Someone who was simply spewing invective can be transformed into a martyr for their cause.
Laughter and politics
Because these are unsettled times, lobbing the grenade of the law into the mix is likely to exacerbate existing divisions and generate new problems. For better or worse, free speech is perceived as a central part of what it means to be free.
In light of next year’s election and the likely culture war it will involve, it’s perhaps not surprising the government opted to avoid entangling itself in these complicated issues.
But the fact free speech is regarded as central to what it means to be part of a free society means people saying hateful things can gain political currency. And they can use that to generate political outcomes that could harm certain groups.
The law is a blunt instrument, unsuited to remedying such complex problems. All the more reason for comedians – especially popular ones with considerable reach – to exercise caution.
David Jenkins 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.
Australian infants and toddlers are eating unhealthy amounts of sugar. This is mostly because the products marketed and sold by the processed food industry are high in sugar.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends “free sugar intake” be limited to less than 10% of our total daily kilojoules for everyone. In fact, the WHO is now considering reducing that amount down to 5% given the knowledge children’s sugar intakes remain high.
Free sugars are those added to foods and drinks, as well as sugars naturally present in honey, fruit juices, and fruit juice concentrates. Free sugars do not include natural sugars found within whole (unprocessed) fruits and vegetables or milk.
Results from the Australian National Nutrition Survey indicate toddlers aged 2–3 years consumed 11% of their total energy intake from free sugar on average. Half of the toddlers exceeded the current WHO free sugar recommendation.
Where is the sugar coming from?
The latest National Health survey also tells us sugar comes mostly from highly processed foods like bakery products, sugar-sweetened beverages, chocolate and confectionary, breakfast cereals and desserts.
These foods provide 80–90% children’s daily added sugar intake.
But it’s not just about treats. Commercial infant and toddler foods are a major source of hidden sugars in young children’s diets. These are largely ultra-processed foods that have undergone multiple industrial processes. They contain ingredients such as added sugar, salt, fat as well as additives to make them appealing. Ultra-processed foods often contain ingredients that would not be used if we made a similar product at home.
Our research shows, ultra-processed foods, particularly snack foods, are common. They comprise 85% of all foods marketed as for toddlers in Australia (as of 2019).
These ultra-processed toddler foods often contain ingredients like fruit pastes, purees or concentrates. They can sound healthy – with slogans like “made from real fruit” – but are very different from the whole fruit they come from.
Offer whole food rather than ultra-processed foods. Shutterstock
Consumers might assume these products are healthy due to the labelling and images of fruit on the package. But our body handles ultra-processed foods very differently than it does a whole food, which has had no or minimal processing.
Some toddler foods marketed as “no added sugar” or “all natural” are in some cases, up to 50% fruit sugar in the form of fruit purees or concentrates.
Some toddler milks, which are also ultra-processed, contain more sugar in the same volume than a soft drink. And nearly a third of savoury foods for toddlers contain fruit purees as well.
While this may make the food more palatable to a child, ensuring parents buy it again, it also ensures children will develop a preference for sweetness.
While there is no need to remove all free sugar, the evidence tells us most children are consuming more than is good for them. So how can we cut that down?
1. Demand accurate labelling
Honest food labelling where food manufacturers are required to reveal how much added sugar is in food products is needed. For example, a clear “added sugar” definition would ensure that all harmful sugars are included in food labels, including the highly processed fruit-based ingredients used in infant and toddler foods. You can sign up to advocate for this via the Kids are Sweet Enough campaign.
2. Pantry swaps
Replace sugar-sweetened foods with foods often already in the kitchen. Swap out the common sources of sugar including cakes, biscuits, pastries, sugar and sweet spreads with wholegrain breads, low sugar cereals (like porridge or Weet-Bix), vegetables and fruits (cut to safe swallowing size) and nut pastes. Swap sugar-sweetened beverages, sweetened dairy products and toddler milks with plain water (boiled and cooled for children over 6 months) and unflavoured cows milk (from 12 months of age).
3. Plug into places to learn more
For practical advice and support on feeding your baby or toddler, download the My Baby Now App from the App Store or Google Play.
Parents can join our free online course Infant Nutrition, or search here to see if the INFANT (INfant Feeding, Activity Play and NuTrition) Program is running in your area.
Miaobing(Jazzmin) Zheng receives funding from National Health Medical Research Council Early Career Fellowship.
Rachel Laws has previously been funded by National Health and Medical Resource Council Early Career Fellowship (2015-2017).
Jennifer McCann, Julie Woods, and Karen Campbell 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew England, Scientia Professor and Deputy Director of the ARC Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science (ACEAS), UNSW Sydney
David Crosling/AAP
The latest State of the Climate report is out, and there’s not much good news for Australians.
Our climate has warmed by an average 1.47℃ since national records began, bringing the continent close to the 1.5℃ limit the Paris Agreement hoped would never be breached. When global average warming reaches this milestone, some of Earth’s natural systems are predicted to suffer catastrophic damage.
The report, released today, paints a concerning picture of ongoing and worsening climate change. In Australia, associated impacts such as extreme heat, bushfires, drought, heavy rainfall, and coastal inundation threaten our people and our environment.
The report is a comprehensive biennial snapshot of the latest trends in climate, with a focus on Australia. It’s compiled by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO, drawing on the latest national and international climate research.
It synthesises the latest science about Australia’s climate and builds on the previous 2020 report by including, for example, information from the most recent assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
And the take home message? Climate change continues unabated. The world is warming, sea levels are rising, ice is melting, fire weather is worsening, flooding rains are becoming more frequent – and the list goes on.
What follows is a summary of major findings in three key categories – and an explanation of what it all means.
The report synthesises the latest science about Australia’s climate. Steven Saphore/AAP
1. Warming, heat extremes and bushfire
The 2020 report said Australia’s climate has warmed on average by 1.44℃ since national records began in 1910. That warming has now increased to 1.47℃. This mirrors trends across the world’s land areas, and brings with it more frequent extreme heat events.
The year 2019 was Australia’s warmest on record. The eight years from 2013 to 2020 are all among the ten warmest ever measured. Warming is happening both by day and by night, and across all months.
Since the 1950s, extreme fire weather has increased and the fire season has lengthened across much of the country. It’s resulted in bigger and more frequent fires, especially in southern Australia.
The warming climate brings more frequent extreme heat. Kelly Barnes/AAP
2. Rain, floods and snow
In Australia’s southwest, May to July rainfall has fallen by 19% since 1970. In the southeast of Australia, April to October rainfall has fallen by 10% since the late 1990s.
This will come as somewhat of a surprise given the relatively wet conditions across eastern Australia over the past few years. But don’t confuse longer term trends with year-to-year variability.
Lower rainfall has led to reduced streamflow; some 60% of water gauges around Australia show a declining trend.
At the same time, heavy rainfall events are becoming more intense – a fact not lost on flood-stricken residents in Australia’s eastern states in recent months. The intensity of extreme rainfall events lasting an hour has increased by about 10% or more in some regions in recent decades. This often brings flash flooding, especially in urban environments. The costs to society are enormous.
Warm air can hold more water vapour than cooler air. That’s why global warming makes heavy rainfall events more likely, even in places where average rainfall is expected to decline.
Also since the 1950s, snow depth and cover, and the number of snow days, have decreased in alpine regions. The largest declines are happening in spring and at lower altitudes.
Extremely cold days and nights are generally becoming less frequent across the continent. And while parts of southeast and southwest Australia have recently experienced very cold nights, that’s because cool seasons have become drier and winter nights clearer there, leading to more overnight heat loss.
Any camper will tell you how chilly it can get on a clear starry night, without the warm blanket of cloud cover.
Heavy rainfall events are becoming more intense. Jason O’Brien/AAP
3. Oceans and sea levels
Sea surface temperatures around the continent have increased by an average 1.05℃ since 1900. The greatest ocean warming since 1970 has occurred off southeast Australia and Tasmania. In the Tasman Sea, the warming rate is now twice the global average.
Ongoing ocean warming has also contributed to longer and more frequent marine heatwaves. Marine heatwaves are particularly damaging to ecosystems, including the Great Barrier Reef, which is at perilous risk of ruin if nothing is done to address surging greenhouse gas emissions.
Oceans around Australia have also become more acidic, and this damage is accelerating. The greatest change is occurring in temperate and cooler waters to the south.
Sea levels are rising globally and around Australia. This is driven by both ocean warming and melting ice. Ice loss from Greenland, Antarctica and glaciers is increasing, and only set to get worse.
Around Australia, the largest sea level rise has been observed to the north and southeast of the continent. This is increasing the risk of inundation and damage to coastal infrastructure and communities.
Rising sea levels increase the risk of damage to coastal infrastructure. David Moir/AAP
What’s causing this?
All this is happening because concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere continue to rise. The principal driver of these gases is human burning of fossil fuels. These long-lived gases form a “blanket” in the atmosphere that makes it harder for Earth to radiate the Sun’s heat back into space. And so, the planet warms, with very costly impacts to society.
The report confirmed carbon dioxide (CO₂) has been accumulating in the atmosphere at an increasing rate in recent decades. Worryingly, over the past two years, levels of methane and nitrous oxide have also grown very rapidly.
What comes next?
None of these problems are going away. Australia’s weather and climate will continue to change in coming decades.
As the report states, these climate changes are increasingly affecting the lives and livelihoods of all Australians. It goes on:
Australia needs to plan for, and adapt to, the changing nature of climate risk now and in the decades ahead. The severity of impacts on Australians and our environment will depend on the speed at which global greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced.
This point is particularly confronting, given the abject failure of the recent COP27 climate talks in Egypt to build on commitments from Glasgow only a year earlier to phase out fossil fuels.
It’s no surprise, then, that the insurance sector is getting nervous about issuing new policies to people living at the front-line of climate extremes.
While the urgency for action has never been more pressing, we still hold the future in our hands – the choices we make today will decide our future for generations to come. Every 0.1℃ of warming we can avoid will make a big difference.
But it’s not all bad news. Re-engineering our energy and transport systems to be carbon neutral will create a whole new economy and jobs growth – with the added bonus of a safer climate future.
Do nothing, and these State of the Climate reports will continue to make for grim reading.
At magnitude 5.6, this earthquake was much smaller than many other earthquakes that have caused death and destruction in Indonesia over the past few decades.
Why is this one so different? One of the main reasons the Cianjur earthquake was so destructive was its shallow depth of 10km.
This event should serve as a wake-up call to improve building practices in Indonesia, because we know from the past that much larger shallow events can occur in Java; it’s not a question of if but when.
The role of earthquake depth
Two of the most important factors that determine the intensity of ground shaking caused by an earthquake are its magnitude and distance.
Large earthquakes of greater than 50km depth can and do cause widespread damage, but the intensity of shaking is reduced because the seismic waves travel at least 50km before they reach people.
The recent Cianjur earthquake was much smaller – at magnitude 5.6, its energy was eight times smaller than the Tasikmalaya earthquake, but it did much greater damage.
The Cianjur earthquake had a greater impact because it ruptured within a few kilometres of the city of Cianjur, where the shaking was classified as “severe” (Modified Mercalli Intensity 8).
A similar comparison could be made with giant subduction zone earthquakes that occur offshore. While these can be far greater in size than this week’s Java earthquake, they are generally 100km or more distant from population centres, so they kill fewer people through building collapse.
Infrequent danger
There is another reason inland shallow earthquakes can be so devastating, particularly in Java: they occur infrequently, so most people are oblivious to the danger.
The population of Java increased by a factor of four through the 20th century, and during this time there was only one shallow earthquake in 1924 that caused nearly 800 deaths, and another four that caused between 10 and 100 deaths.
It wasn’t until 2006 that a really major event occurred: the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake, magnitude 6.3, which killed killed 5,749 people.
Elsewhere in Java there is no lived experience of a major earthquake, often stretching back several generations.
As a consequence, little attention is paid to the earthquake resilience of residential construction, so when an earthquake does occur many of the weak buildings will collapse.
A starkly different colonial past
Java’s earthquake history during the colonial era paints a starkly different picture. Our recent study shows many damaging earthquakes have occurred in Java since the 17th century. At least nine earthquakes since 1865 have caused shaking so severe they were almost certainly shallow events.
These include two earthquakes near Wonosobo in central Java in 1924 that caused catastrophic mudslides that killed nearly 900 people.
In our recent study we also documented extremely violent shaking caused by the October 25 1875 earthquake near Kunningan in West Java. An eyewitness described being thrown off a chair and saw a herd of cows being knocked off their feet.
Cirebon also experienced a damaging earthquake on 16 November 1847 which is thought to have caused a river offset of 5m, suggesting a magnitude of 7 or greater.
Cianjur, the site of this week’s earthquake, has experienced at least one damaging earthquake, on March 28 1879, which caused the collapse of several buildings in Cianjur with some loss of life.
A fact of life
Geologists understand well that earthquakes are a fact of life in Java. In work over the past two decades they have identified many faults – cracks or joints in Earth’s crust – in Java that are likely to be active, but only a handful of these have been studied in detail.
The Lembang Fault on the outskirts of Bandung, Indonesia’s fourth-largest city (population 8.8 million, as opposed to Cianjur’s 170,000), is one of the few for which geologic evidence of prehistoric earthquake activity has been established. This fault is thought to be capable of producing a magnitude 6.5–7.0 earthquake every 170–670 years.
Other active faults are known to threaten the cities of Jakarta, Surabaya and Semarang, in addition to Yogyakarta. And these are just the ones we know about.
Preparing for the next quake
Shallow earthquakes could occur that are much larger than the Cianjur earthquake, next to cities that are much larger than Cianjur. What can Indonesia do to avoid massive fatalities in such an event?
The typical answer is to improve – and enforce – building codes, forcing any new construction to be more earthquake-resilient.
Indonesia does have a building code based on a modern seismic hazard map, but it is only applied to buildings of eight floors or higher. Given the high poverty level in Indonesia, universal enforcement of the building code is regarded as impractical.
An alternative may be the adoption of simple, minimum standards for concrete strength, quality of reinforcement and other aspects of building practice that may not conform to the building code, but at least afford a higher level of protection than current practice.
Any change in building practice requires a change in culture: people have to expect more of builders, and be willing to pay for it.
Stacey Servito Martin is supported by a research scholarship from the Australian National University.
Mudrik Rahmawan Daryono and Phil R. Cummins do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Many of Australia’s natural places are in a poor state. While important work is being done to protect particular species, we must also take a broader approach to returning entire ecosystems to their former glory – a strategy known as “rewilding”.
Rewilding aims to restore the complex interactions that make up a functioning ecosystem. It involves reintroducing long-lost plants and animals to both conserve those species and restore an area’s natural processes.
You might imagine this involves an ecologist releasing cute, furry bilbies, or an endangered songbird. This is a logical assumption. Research shows a marked bias in reintroduction programs towards vertebrates, especially birds and mammals.
Meanwhile, invertebrates are often overlooked. But our new research shows rewilding with invertebrates – insects, worms, spiders and the like – can go a long way in bringing our degraded landscapes back to life.
Invertebrates are crucial to functioning ecosystems. Shutterstock
A shocking decline
Invertebrates make up 97% of animal life and drive key processes such as pollination and cycling nutrients. But they’re the focus of just 3% of reintroduction projects.
This reflects a taxonomic bias in conservation. Overseas, this has led to rewilding projects centred on large keystone mammals that alter ecosystems on a broad scale, such as wolves and bison.
Of course, traditional vertebrate rewilding projects are very important for ecosystem restoration. In Australia, for example, they are vital in restoring mammal communities decimated by cats and foxes.
But invertebrate species are declining at shocking rates around the world, especially as climate change worsens. They also need our help to re-colonise new areas.
Mammal rewilding projects are very important for ecosystem restoration, but invertebrates need help too. Bobby-Jo Photography/AAP
No beetle is an island
Picture an island in the middle of the ocean. The further from shore it is, the more animals on the mainland will struggle to reach it – especially if they’re tiny and wingless, like many invertebrates.
My colleagues and I built our study around this analogy.
Instead of islands, our research involved six isolated patches of revegetated land on farms. And instead of an ocean, invertebrates had to cross a sea of pasture which, for many litter-dwelling invertebrates, is a barren, unsheltered wasteland.
The farm sites were “biologically poor”. That is, despite the habitat quality improving following revegetation, they contained lower-than-expected invertebrate biodiversity.
We surmised that invertebrates from surrounding “biologically rich” national parks were struggling to reach and recolonise the isolated revegetation patches.
Our study involved giving invertebrates a hand to find new homes. We moved leaf litter – and more than 300 invertebrates species hiding in it – from national park sites into six revegetated farm sites in central Victoria.
We moved litter samples several times between 2018 and 2020, over different seasons. Sites were “paired”, so a national park site was paired with a revegetated one that would have been similar had degradation had not occurred.
The litter community of invertebrates is incredibly complex and can be broken into three groups: macroinvertebrates (more than 5 mm), mesoinvertebrates (less than 5 mm) and microbes. We focused on mesoinvertebrates, which mostly comprise mites, ticks, ants, beetles and springtails (small, wingless arthropods).
We found among this group, beetles were most likely to survive and thrive in their new habitat, which was much drier than the one they left. Rove beetles did particularly well.
Numbers of beetles – particularly the rove beetle, pictured – bounced back quickly after being moved. Shutterstock
Beetles are hardy little things with strong exoskeletons that protect them from drying out. In fact, as early as seven months after being moved, beetle numbers at the new sites reached levels similar to that in pristine national parks that we sourced leaf litter from.
We did not have the same success with other types of invertebrates. For example, springtails are a massive component of leaf litter communities in national parks. But they’re soft-bodied and dry out easily, so were more likely to die when moved to a new, drier environment.
Understanding why some groups are more likely to survive leaf litter transplants than others
is a vital step in the development of invertebrate rewilding. Nonetheless, our results show the relatively simple act of moving leaf litter can lead to comparatively large increases in species richness in a short time.
Moving leaf litter can quickly lead to comparatively large increases in species richness . Shutterstock
Loving our creepy crawlies
Our study showed how a simple method of rewilding with invertebrates can effectively reintroduce multiple species at once. This is an important finding.
More research into the method is needed across different types of sites and over longer timeframes. However, our method has the potential to be applied widely in the fight against global invertebrate declines.
The method is cheap and easy. In contrast, rewilding projects involving vertebrates can be hard to execute and expensive, and often require breeding animals for release.
Invertebrates are the bulk of terrestrial diversity and the backbone for proper ecosystem functioning. We need to start putting them at the centre of rewilding projects.
Recent research has challenged the assumption that humans naturally find vertebrates more engaging than invertebrates. We might be pleasantly surprised to find the public is as engaged with invertebrate rewilding projects as those focused on cute and cuddly critters.
A large review of ankle sprain studies in the journal Sports Medicine found most people who actively play sport or train can expect to have a fairly low incidence of ankle sprain per 1,000 hours of training time. But it also said:
Females were at a higher risk of sustaining an ankle sprain compared with males and children compared with adolescents and adults, with indoor and court sports the highest risk activity.
The most frequent type of ankle sprain occurs if the ligaments on the outside of the ankle are stretched or torn when the joint moves beyond the normal range of movement. This is known as an inversion or lateral ankle sprain.
The most frequent type of ankle sprain occurs if the ligaments on the outside of the ankle are stretched or torn. Shutterstock
Strong evidence from studies suggests once people sprain their ankle, they are more likely to re-sprain it. As one review of the evidence put it:
a history of lateral ankle sprain is known to disrupt the structural integrity of the ligaments and sensorimotor function, likely impairing an individual’s ability to avoid injurious situations.
Some ankle sprains might seem to be very minor, with almost no swelling or mobility problems. But some people can end up with what’s known as chronic ankle instability, where they tend to re-sprain their ankle again and again.
Another review looking at factors contributing to chronic ankle instability found
feelings of instability and recurrent ankle sprain injuries (termed chronic ankle instability, or CAI) have been reported in up to 70% of patients. The subsequent development of CAI has adverse health consequences including reduced quality of life and early-onset osteoarthritis.
Once an ankle fracture is excluded, busy hospital emergency departments often send patients home with instructions to ice the ankle and keep off it for a day or two. There’s often no advice to follow up with a physio for rehabilitation.
This is unfortunate, as evidence suggests people with a history of ankle sprains will likely:
Research suggests people who sprain their ankle may be more likely to have injuries to other joints on the same leg, or even the opposite leg. A review in the International Journal of Sports Physiotherapy noted “an ankle sprain is linked to both re-injury and subsequent injury to the contralateral side”.
Why? It may have something to do with the brain’s tremendous ability to continually adapt.
Just as extended bed rest or prolonged microgravity exposure in astronauts can cause changes in the brain and the way it relates to movement, perhaps our brains subconsciously compensate after an ankle injury.
That could be by, for example, via limping or a slight change in the way you walk; perhaps you subconsciously don’t want to challenge the ankle due to fear of re-spraining. This may put other joints or the opposite limb at heightened risk.
This neuroplasticity adds new challenges to the assessment or rehabilitation of ankle injury, and to predicting who is likely to be at increased risk of subsequent injuries.
balancing on each leg, one at a time, while throwing and catching a ball against a wall
balancing on an ankle disc or wobble board for three to five minutes daily.
Balancing exercises may help. Shutterstock
These exercises can help strengthen the muscles and ligaments in your ankle. As one literature review put it:
Proprioceptive training is a cost- and time-effective intervention that can benefit patients who have sustained a previous ankle sprain during physical activity and can subsequently reduce the risk of further complications.
Gordon Waddington owns shares in Prism Neuro Pty Ltd a perceptual neuroscience ability measurement company. He receives funding from the Medical Research Futures Fund, Australian Research Council, NSW Institute of Sport, Queensland Academy of Sport and the Australian Institute of Sport.
It’s commonly understood that having a baby can be a primary cause of later pelvic floor problems, such as bladder leakage. While giving birth can be a very special and joyful time, it can sometimes be difficult returning to day-to-day activity postpartum.
About one in three women who’ve have had a baby experience urinary incontinence. A similar proportion will have prolapse symptoms like vaginal heaviness or bulging.
You might guess that choosing a caesarean section – that is, a surgical birth via the abdomen – rather than a vaginal birth could be a sensible way to avoid such symptoms. You could assume doing so would avoid any direct stretching and trauma to the pelvic floor muscles.
However, it’s not that simple. It turns out pregnancy itself, regardless of the mode of delivery, is a significant risk factor for pelvic floor dysfunction.
During pregnancy, there is a rapid increase in pressure and strain on the pelvic floor from the growing baby and increasing fluid load. Add to this a high likelihood of constipation during and after pregnancy causing straining that further weakens already stretched muscles.
A growing belly also stretches and weakens the muscles of the abdominal wall and changes our posture, impacting core stability and the function of the trunk and pelvis.
Changes in hormones during pregnancy soften our muscles, tendons and ligaments to allow the pelvis to widen during labour and delivery. This reduces the stability of the pelvic floor and supporting tissues.
So the risk for pelvic floor compromise is already there – well before any type of delivery.
After caesarean surgery you shouldn’t lift anything heavier than your baby until the six-week check. Shutterstock
muscle damage or high-grade perineal tearing (damage to the tissues between the vagina and the anal sphinter) occurs.
A caesarean is certainly not the “easy way out” either. Recovery from a C-section, even a planned one, can be challenging as it is major abdominal surgery. It means avoiding lifting anything heavier than your baby for six weeks, not driving until medically cleared, reduced mobility, and incision pain. As with any surgery, it carries the risk of complications such as infection, reaction to the anaesthetic, surgical injury and blood clots.
There are pros and cons to both modes of delivery when considering potential long-term impacts on function. Individualised counselling with your medical provider during pregnancy is highly recommended, as everyone’s personal risk factors, circumstances and preferences are unique.
Using a risk calculator tool may be a useful starting point when discussing with your care team whether a vaginal or caesarean birth may be more suitable for you.
If you are planning a vaginal delivery, there are a few things research shows can reduce your risk of pelvic floor injury and dysfunction:
practice pelvic floor exercises during pregnancy, under the guidance of a suitably trained professional such as a pelvic floor physiotherapist
participate in supervised exercise classes specifically tailored for pregnancy and pelvic floor awareness
start perineal massage from 35 weeks of pregnancy to improve muscle flexibility and blood flow
adopt upright positions for labour and delivery if it feels right and is safe and comfortable, which may allow for gravity assistance, more efficient contractions and a widened pelvic outlet
push when you feel urges rather than following “directed pushing” from others
use a warm compress on the perineum during crowning to relax the muscles
Whether you choose to birth vaginally or via caesarean is a decision that is very personal and involves many factors. Due to unforeseen complications, sometimes this decision can be taken out of our hands so it is beneficial to be well-informed on both options.
Regardless of mode of delivery, it’s important to learn how to effectively exercise your pelvic floor muscles for prevention and treatment of pelvic floor symptoms such as incontinence and prolapse. Today’s a great day to get started.
Mischa is the Founder and Principal Physiotherapist at Pelvic Fix Physiotherapy. She is affiliated with CQUniversity as a Sessional Lecturer, Curtin University as a Physiotherapy Clinical Supervisor, and Queensland Health as a Senior Women’s Health Physiotherapist.
A fortnight after five lions escaped at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo, an amused zoo visitor captured footage of Echo the superb lyrebird as he mimicked alarm sirens and evacuation calls with astonishing accuracy.
News outlets were quick to link the lyrebird’s alarm impersonation with the lion’s great escape. But while this tale made for a great headline, the truth of this story is far more interesting.
Superb lyrebirds are arguably the bird world’s greatest mimics. Using their phenomenal voiceboxes, males will sing elaborate songs and perfectly imitate sounds made by other birds to impress prospective mates.
Not only this, they share songs in a form of cultural transmission. In the wild, some songs become more popular while others wane. Think of it as pop charts for the bush.
But Echo was bred in captivity. He wasn’t exposed to wild song culture. Instead, he learned from what he was exposed to – and that includes “songs” like the alarm call. Echo had been practising this call for years to get it that good – not just the two weeks after the lions escaped.
The ability of these birds to imitate sounds is rightly world-famous. But for their song culture to continue, we need healthy wild populations. Otherwise, they could face a future like critically endangered regent honeyeaters, which are now borrowing mating songs from other birds.
Why do lyrebirds learn human-made sounds and songs?
Many of us are familiar with the famous sequence in David Attenborough’s Life of Birds where a lyrebird accurately imitates camera clicks, a chainsaw motor and construction sounds.
Millions of people have watched this clip of a lyrebird imitating cameras and machinery.
But most watchers wouldn’t have guessed the bird’s secret – it was bred in captivity. That’s why it was so good at imitating our sounds.
Similarly, Echo of Taronga Zoo was also captive-bred. Mimicking a human-origin sound such as the alarm is a behaviour not commonly seen in the wild, other than in heavily visited areas such as in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges where wild lyrebirds may hear, say, human voices every day.
Superb lyrebirds can mimic human speech, as in this clip from Victoria’s Sherbrooke Forest. Alex Maisey, Author provided523 KB(download)
That’s because lyrebirds seem to learn which songs to sing by listening to their peers, rather than simply soaking up sounds around them like a sponge.
In Victoria’s Sherbrooke Forest, lyrebirds mimic the familiar melodic whip-crack of the whipbird above all other mimicked sounds. But in Kinglake forest just 60 kilometres north, the whipbird’s call was only the 12th most popular for local lyrebirds, while the calls of the grey shrike-thrush and laughing kookaburra took top billing.
This is culture – the songs and sounds are passed from one bird to the next, between generations, and undergo change over time.
It’s not magic – it’s a complicated organ. Our voicebox – the larynx – is in our throats. But birds have theirs – the syrinx – further down, at the bottom of their windpipes. As they breathe out, they pass air through the syrinx to make their calls and songs.
Remarkably, many songbirds can control airflow from each lung, meaning they can produce sound in mono or stereo and have greater control over the types of sound they can make. They can use one side of the syrinx, both together, or switch back and forth.
Lyrebirds take it a step further again. They have fewer pairs of muscles around their syrinx, but the ones they do have are extremely well adapted to the job of making sound. Some lyrebird researchers believe this may be the reason they can produce such an extraordinary range of sounds, but this has yet to be conclusively shown.
Lyrebirds can independently moderate the air flow through each side of their syrinx. The trachea and syringeal muscles are in yellow. Alex Maisey, Author provided
Even so, they’re not born superstars. Young lyrebirds struggle to reproduce mimicked sounds as perfectly as adult lyrebirds can. This suggests a lyrebird’s voice improves over years of practice.
Added to that is the dancing. Male courtship displays involve dance moves accompanying their song. That’s a cognitively challenging task, which is why not all of us are capable of being K-Pop stars.
To combine song and dance needs a large and well-developed brain. And that, after all, may be the point – the male’s ability to coordinate and song with dance is thought to be the key selection criteria for females choosing their mates.
So for Echo to perfect his fire alarm song, he had to practice and practice and practice to get it to the point where we can recognise it. Like humans practising a language or a musical instrument, lyrebirds must work at their songs.
Male lyrebirds have to coordinate song and dance to maximise how impressive they seem.
Why does bird culture matter?
Imagine if Echo was inspired by the lions and escaped. How would he fare in the wild? It’s unlikely he’d ever manage to impress a mate with his “evacuate now” mimicry and siren song. It’s as if a human was raised by wolves – it would be all but impossible to reintegrate.
The reason why we watch videos of Echo and find them amusing is because we are instinctively drawn to animal behaviour we can make sense of through our own. Animals acting like humans is amusing and appealing for us. But, alas, there’s a serious point here.
Take the critically endangered regent honeyeater, which once flew through box-ironbark forests in dense, raucous flocks. Now there are only 300 or so left in the wild.
With a population this low, the species loses not only genetic diversity but culture as well. Regent honeyeaters are losing their courtship songs, because the young birds simply don’t have enough peers to listen to and learn from. Without peers, some males only sing the songs of other species.
While lyrebirds are good survivors during natural disasters, there’s no room for complacency. The Black Summer fires put the superb lyrebird at real risk from habitat loss as well as introduced predators. If we’re not careful, the lyrebird too, could lose its culture and its songs.
Bullying is unfortunately a common problem in Australian schools, with surveys suggesting one in five teenagers are bullied.
While schools are responsible for ensuring a safe environment, parents are likely to be distressed and unsure about what to do if their child is being bullied.
What exactly is bullying? And how can you help your child if you are concerned?
What is bullying?
Bullying is not just kids being thoughtless or a bit mean. It is not a single act, a mistake, or a mutual disagreement.
About one in five Australian teenagers say they have been bullied in the past 12 months. Ben Den Engelsen/Unsplash
Bullying is a repeated act of aggression that is intended to cause harm. It can be physical (harming the person or their belongings), verbal (written and spoken words that cause harm), or social (isolating someone, harming their social standing, or sharing private information).
It is not a “normal” childhood experience – it is targeted and has long-lasting and serious effects for the victim.
These effects include reduced engagement in education and loneliness at school, loss of self-esteem, psychological distress, depressive symptoms, problems with sleep, suicide and suicidal ideation, non-suicidal self-injury and substance abuse.
Bullying can be overt and hidden
Bullying can be overt with observable actions like kicking or name-calling.
Or it can be covert, which is more hidden and can include whispering, exclusion, and rumours. While females and males are equally likely to have experienced bullying and are equally likely to bully, males are more likely to engage in overt physical bullying, while females are more likely to engage in covert bullying through social or cyber behaviour.
A 2019 Mission Australia survey found 21% of young people aged 15–19 reported bullying in the past 12 months. Of those who had been bullied, nearly 80% said the bullying took place at school.
More than 70% said the bullying was verbal, 61% said it was social, 36.5% said it was cyberbulling and about 20% said it was physical.
There is less concrete data about younger children’s experiences of bullying. One reason is they tend to over-report behaviours that would not be defined as bullying. For example, a young child may believe they are being bullied if someone does not want to play with them.
Bullying in this age group can also be viewed by some researchers and educators with less concern as it can be incorrectly labelled as a “normal” part of childhood.
As UK bullying expert Elizabeth Nassem notes, if children are popular they can
achieve respect, influence, admiration and leadership over their peers – sadly, at the expense of other children.
Another reason young people is bully is because they have been mistreated, experienced shame, or bullied themselves by peers, parents, or siblings. They bully others as an attempt to seek revenge and regain a sense of self-worth.
When systems exclude or shame young people, young people within the system are more likely to do the same.
How can parents help?
Bullying is a complex problem. While the onus should be on schools to fix it, parents can be empowered to support their child if they are the victim of bullying.
1. Make space for your child to tell you
Children need to talk about their experiences of bullying in order for parents to act. However, research indicates they often don’t speak out, with one study indicating only 53% of children told their teacher and 67% told their parents they were being bullied.
Research suggests young people are unlikely to tell their parents if they have been bullied. Shutterstock
Young people report they don’t tell because adult responses are often ineffective, insensitive or excessive.
They also say they fear looking weak, making the situation worse, and that adult support might undermine their sense of autonomy. In one study, children explained the main reason they wouldn’t report bullying behaviour was because they “didn’t want to be a little nark” [an informer] and lose the approval of their peers.
These findings suggest it is important to provide space for your children to talk and to be well equipped to respond when they do.
Listen to your child carefully, ask them what role they would like you to play in solving the problem. Assure them you will handle the situation sensitively and with a view to protect them from further harm.
While it can be distressing to hear your child has been bullied, it is important to process these feelings before you act so you can be calm.
Your first action should be contacting the school to report the bullying. It is not advised to contact the other child’s parents directly. This can escalate the issue, break your relationship with the parent, take away your child’s power, and the other parents may not act – so it leaves the problem unresolved.
If you are worried your child is being bullied, contact their school rather than speak to the other parents. Shutterstock
When you contact the school, ask for an investigation of the issue and a response timeline. This approach demonstrates that you are open to other perspectives and not seeking to blame anyone. It also indicates you expect an outcome.
You may also request that your child’s identity is not shared to protect them from further retaliation. If there is no response, follow up until there is a resolution. Don’t promise your child you won’t do something because if your child or another is unsafe, you need to intervene to ensure their safety.
These skills include self-regulation, social skills, and problem solving. This can enable your child stay calm and not appear distressed, to be assertive when appropriate, and to consider creative ways of resolving difficult situations.
You can also teach your child safe, practised, and planned responses they can use in instances of bullying. One example of this is “fogging”. This is a technique where the child agrees the bully may or may not be correct but does not get defensive and upset.
For example, a bully may say “your shirt is ugly”. A fogging response would be “you may be right”. With this approach the bully is not getting a reaction to their insult and therefore not meeting their need for attention and control.
4. Gather a support crew
Help your child identify safe spaces, peers and adults they can turn to for support.
They need to understand that in the middle of the bullying behaviour, they have people they can depend on who care for them. Bullies try to isolate. Your child needs to know they are not alone, they are loved, and they are supported.
If this article has raised issues for you or your child, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.
Mandie Shean 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Libby (Elizabeth) Sander, MBA Director & Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Bond Business School, Bond University
Jae C. Hong/AP
As a case study in how to implement organisational change, Elon Musk’s actions at Twitter will go down as the gold standard in what not to do.
Among other things, the evidence shows successful organisational change requires: a clear, compelling vision that is communicated effectively; employee participation; and fairness in the way change is implemented. Trust in leaders is also crucial.
Musk, the world’s richest man, appears in a hurry to make Twitter into a money-spinner. But it takes time to understand the requirements for successful organisational change. Two in three such efforts fail, resulting in significant costs, a stressed workforce and loss of key talent.
Change management never quite goes to plan. It’s hard to figure out whether Musk even has a plan at all.
Musk’s ‘extremely hardcore’ style
Since taking over Twitter on October 27, Musk has stopped employees working from home, cancelled employee lunches, and laid off about 3,700 employees – roughly half of Twitter’s workforce. Many realised they had been sacked when they could no longer access their laptops.
Just days later it emerged that Musk had a team of snoopers comb through employees’ private messages on Slack, firing those who had criticised him.
Then, on Wednesday last week, Musk sent an ultimatum to staff to pledge commitment to a new “extremely hardcore” Twitter that “will mean working long hours at a high intensity”. Employees had until 5pm the next day to accept, or take a severance package.
Musk appears not to have anticipated this reaction. As the “hardcore” deadline approached, he started bringing key staff into meetings, trying to convince them to stay.
He also walked back his working-from-home ban, emailing staff that “all that is required for approval is that your manager takes responsibility for ensuring that you are making an excellent contribution”.
It was unsuccessful. So many employees decided to leave that on Friday Twitter locked all staff out of its office until Monday amid confusion as to who actually still worked there and should have access.
Twitter has lost more than half its workforce in less than a month. Jeff Chiu/AP
Layoffs and restructuring are common in organisational change. But the way they are managed has significant effects on those who are leaving, as well as those who remain. If you want employees to be committed and to respond to a crisis, telling them they are lazy and threatening them won’t help.
But what about SpaceX and Tesla – the companies on which Musk has built his fame and fortune? Doesn’t their success prove he is a good leader?
Not so fast. There is a big difference between a mission-driven company like SpaceX and a platform like Twitter.
When there is a common mission to achieve something extraordinary or which hasn’t been done before, employees will often willingly work extremely long hours in difficult situations.
They will choose to go above and beyond and work long hours if they feel aligned with the organisation’s purpose or that their work matters. But the key point here is that they choose.
I didn’t want to work for someone who threatened us over email multiple times about only ‘exceptional tweeps should work here’ when I was already working 60-70 hours weekly.
Musk ignores the fundamentals
Both Tesla and SpaceX have many unhappy employees, with lawsuits filed over working conditions and Musk’s management style.
He has been commended for his thinking on iterative design and solving engineering problems. Challenging old models that may no longer be useful is important. But the fundamentals of leadership and organisational change are still essential – and on these, Musk falls woefully short.
While his employees – real people who aren’t billionaires and who have rent or mortgages to pay – were grappling with what being “hardcore” even means, and how that might impact their ability to have a life outside work, Musk was tweeting about his poll on whether former US president Donald Trump should be allowed back on the platform.
Then, after Trump declined to return, Musk tweeted the following:
The idea of any other chief executive sending such a message on social media almost defies belief.
Some have suggested this whole debacle is an ego trip for Musk – a theory lent credence by his attempt to get out of the deal. His actions pose a significant risk to the business even if there are still enough employees around to keep it working.
Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, who resigned on November 10, wrote last week:
Almost immediately upon the acquisition’s close, a wave of racist and antisemitic trolling emerged on Twitter. Wary marketers, including those at General Mills, Audi and Pfizer, slowed down or paused ad spending on the platform, kicking off a crisis within the company to protect precious ad revenue.
But even more powerful than the advertisers, Roth noted, are the digital storefronts of Apple and Google:
Failure to adhere to Apple’s and Google’s guidelines would be catastrophic, risking Twitter’s expulsion from their app stores and making it more difficult for billions of potential users to get Twitter’s services.
Organisations are complex, interdependent systems, underpinned by a web of behavioural processes. Creating successful change requires aligning individual, work group and organisational goals.
Even if the little blue bird is still flying for now, the people-led systems that keep it aloft are under significant threat.
Libby (Elizabeth) Sander 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.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
New Zealand Politics Daily is a collation of the most prominent issues being discussed in New Zealand. It is edited by Dr Bryce Edwards of The Democracy Project.
As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation politics team.
In this podcast Michelle and politics + society editor Amanda Dunn canvass the final sitting weeks of parliament, in which the government is battling with crossbencher David Pocock to secure its industrial relations reforms. They also discuss the Victorian election, where much attention will be on how teals and other community independents fare. Finally, this week the government receives the report, from former high court judge Virginia Bell, on Scott Morrison’s extraordinary appointment to multi-ministries.
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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan W. Marshall, Associate Professor & Postgraduate Research Coordinator, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University
West Australian Ballet/Bradbury Photography
Review: Swan Lake, West Australian Ballet
Opening this production of Swan Lake is the traditional Noongar black swan dance and the song that accompanies it.
Led by Noongar Leader Barry McGuire, the Noongar swan dance from Gya Ngoop Keeninyarra (One Blood Dancers) is a gentle, measured piece.
The five dancers come across in a line, raise their legs into a sharp angle just below the hips and push the leg down precisely – but not with the force of many Indigenous dances.
In this scene, and when they reappear throughout the ballet, each has a flexible bower or rod before their chest which is shaken gently. The nature of this object varies: at one point white feathers fan over the wounded Odette (Kiki Saito); later it is black feathers.
The placing of the Noongar dancers into a snaking line resonates with the later straight lines of ballerinas, such as the ballet’s famous cygnet dance, integrating the Noongar dancers into the choreography.
But the Noongar materials are small dramatic interjections into what is otherwise a typical late Romantic ballet. Choreographer Krzysztof Pastor reproduces something familiar with a dash of local flavour.
The European aristocratic Romantic ballet – complete with period costumes, choreographic highlights and most of Tchaikovsky’s original score – is lifted out of its original context and into a Western Australian setting. The success or otherwise depends on whether one feels this is desirable or even possible.
This is a familiar ballet, with a dash of local flavour. West Australian Ballet/Bradbury Photography
A West Australian story
It is 19th century Perth, rather than Russia. The character of Prince Siegfried becomes Sebastian Hampshire (Oscar Valdés), son of wealthy developer John Hampshire (Christian Luck), and his close friend is now Mowadji (Noongar actor Kyle Morrison).
Changes in story-line come unstuck with the character of Baron von Rothbart, originally a shapeshifting sorcerer, who becomes William Greenwood (Matthew Lehmann).
Although identified of settler descent, he is able to transform into the totemic animal of the waalitj, or wedge tailed eagle, which Noongar scholar Len Collard identifies as the most powerful bird on this Country, a “guardian of both the earth and the sun.”
Greenwood uses his evil avian magic to keep Odette under his spell as a white swan (such as one finds in Europe) until a man declares his love for her.
Greenwood also deploys Odile (sometimes played as Odette’s other self, but here a distinct character, peerlessly danced by Chihiro Nomura) the task of wooing Sebastian so Greenwood might join his dynasty with Sebastian’s.
Although she is a lone white swan on Noongar Country, Odette is protected by both the Noongar dancers and the corps de ballet of local magical black swans.
Odette is protected by the Noongar dancers. West Australian Ballet/Bradbury Photography
Dressed in black, the corps’ dance by the lake is nevertheless in the traditional mode. Rows of ballerinas crossing in complex patterns are rightly a highlight. Pastor packs an impressive troupe of over 20 ballerinas on stage without it feeling cluttered.
Lehmann as the eagle comes out less well, his beautiful but heavy costume featuring a chainmail vest making it hard to elevate his leaps. He is nevertheless an impressive, weighty presence.
A confusing marriage
Indigenous Dreaming stories often feature battles between supra-natural human-animal hybrids, some of whom are vicious and immoral, even if there are generally important lessons to be learned from dances and songs. Here, the program promotes the West Australian Ballet’s version as offering a lesson in environmentalism and Noongar wisdom.
Greenwood and John Hampshire join alliances to build their power by enslaving swans and manipulating the lovers. This leads to Sebastian trying to save Odette as she is forced into the lake. He follows her into the water and both drown. Mowadji and his friends, the dancers of Gya Ngoop Keeninyarra, bear Sebastian’s body aloft to the grave.
This is however a confusing marriage of motifs. Was Russian magic blended with that of Australia, or are Greenwood’s acts a metaphor for Russian ballet’s history in Australia? It certainly ends badly.
Polly Hilton is superb as a Spanish dancer. West Australian Ballet/Bradbury Photography
In the end, these conundrums are irrelevant. In such a classic model, the story is an excuse for dancing, not a tight narrative vehicle. The retention of ethnic dance interludes – where groups of dancers perform the traditional styles of the Hungarian czardas, a Spanish flamenco, a Neapolitan sequence and a Polish mazurka – demonstrates this. These colourful interjections (and Polly Hilton is indeed superb as the Spanish dancer) contribute nothing to the plot.
In light of this, it is hard not to see the Noongar dance as another dab of ethnic detailing in a multicoloured palette of native tropes. Placing the Noongar swan dance at the beginning does prioritise it. Played as a non-dancing part, Mowadji’s role here is that of a sidekick, gazing in admiration as Sebastian dances centre stage, even if Morrison’s magnetic presence gives his gestures considerable power.
The setting is West Australia – but the ballet is largely unchanged. West Australian Ballet/Bradbury Photography
In the end, both the strength and the weakness of the production is that Romantic ballet as a cultural and aesthetic concept remains unchanged by the addition of Noongar and Western Australian elements.
Noongar and the ballet company’s artists do not dance together. While the Noongar dancers briefly pose to Tchaikovsky’s score, the settler-descent artists do not dance to McGuire’s singing. Choreographic motifs particular to the races confront each other from across an abyss.
The West Australian Ballet’s Swan Lake is a thought-provoking, beautifully danced piece – but it does not resolve the challenges the artists set themselves.
The Swan Lake plays at His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth, until December 11.
Jonathan W. Marshall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
On July 31 2013 a constellation of US defence satellites saw a streak of light over South Australia as a rock from outer space burned through Earth’s atmosphere on its way to crash into the ground below.
The impact created an explosion equivalent to about 220 tonnes of TNT. More than 1,500km away, in Tasmania, the bang was heard by detectors normally used to listen for extremely low-frequency sounds from illegal tests of nuclear weapons.
These were two excellent indications that there should be a patch of ground covered in meteorites somewhere north of Port Augusta. But how could we track them down?
Finding meteorites is not an easy task. There is a network of high-quality ground-based sensors called the Global Fireball Observatory, but it only covers about 1% of the planet.
So, to have any chance to find a meteorite from these data, you need a little outside help.
Weather radars
In 2019, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology started making its weather radar data openly available to researchers and the public. I saw this as an opportunity to complete the puzzle.
I combed through the record of events from the Desert Fireball Network and NASA, and cross-matched them with nearby weather radars. Then I looked for unusual radar signatures that could indicate the presence of falling meteorites.
The Woomera weather radar station captured reflections from the falling meteorites. Curtin University, Author provided
And bingo, the 2013 event was not too far from the Woomera radar station. The weather was clear, and the radar record showed some small reflections at about the right place and time.
Next, I had to use the weather data to figure out how the wind would have pushed the meteorites around on their way down to Earth.
If I got the calculations right, I would have a treasure map showing the location of a rich haul of meteorites. If I got them wrong, I would end up sending my team to wander around in the desert for two weeks for nothing.
I gave what I hoped was an accurate treasure map to my colleague Andy Tomkins from Monash University. In September this year, he happened to be driving past the site on his way back from an expedition in the Nullarbor.
Thankfully, Andy found the first meteorite within 10 minutes of looking. In the following two hours, his team found nine more.
A field team from Monash University searched for meteorites in the strewn field. Monash University, Author provided
The technique of finding meteorites with weather radars was pioneered by my colleague Marc Fries in the US. However, this is the first time it has been done outside the US NEXRAD radar network. (When it comes to monitoring airspace, the US has more powerful and more densely packed tech than anyone else.)
This first search confirmed there were lots of meteorites on the ground. But how were we going to find them all?
In the end we collected 44 meteorites, weighing a bit over 4kg in total. Together they form what we call a “strewn field”.
A machine-learning algorithm identified meteorites from drone photos. Curtin Uni, Author provided
Strewn fields tell us a lot about how an asteroid fragments in our atmosphere.
That’s quite important to know, because the energy of these things is comparable to that of nuclear weapons. For example, the 17-metre asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2013 produced an explosion 30 times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
So when the next big one is about to hit, it may be useful to predict how it will deposit its energy in our atmosphere.
These systems might give us as much as a few days’ notice that an asteroid is heading for Earth. This would be too late to make any effort to deflect it – but plenty of time for preparation and damage control on the ground.
The value of open data
This find was only made possible by the free availability of crucial data – and the people who made it available.
The US satellites that detected the fireball are presumably there to detect missile and rocket launches. However, somebody (I don’t know who) must have figured out how to publish some of the satellite data without giving away too much about their capabilities, and then lobbied hard to get the data released.
Likewise, the find would not have happened without the work of Joshua Soderholm at Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, who worked to make low-level weather radar data openly accessible for other uses. Soderholm went to the trouble to make the radar data readily available and easy to use, which goes well beyond the vague formulations you can read at the bottom of scientific papers like “data available upon reasonable request”.
There is no shortage of fireballs to track down. Right now, we’re on the hunt for a meteorite that was spotted in space last weekend before blazing through the sky over Ontario, Canada.
Hadrien Devillepoix 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.
Australia’s industrial relations umpire has delayed industrial action that would have crippled Australia’s ports in the lead-up to Christmas.
But the dispute in which it has intervened – one that has dragged on since 2019 – shows the need for reform of Australia’s collective bargaining system.
The Fair Work Commission last week intervened in the protracted dispute between tugboat operator Svitzer Australia and three maritime unions after the company declared its intention to “lock out” staff in a bid to force a resolution – either by the unions caving or by the commission using its powers to arbitrate outstanding matters.
Svitzer, a subsidiary of Danish shipping giant Maersk, employs about 600 staff at 17 Australian ports. Its tugboats guide the arrival and departure of container ships carrying about 75% of Australia’s trade. The lockout would have prevented ships entering or leaving port.
Last Friday the full bench of the Fair Work Commission ordered a six-month suspension on any industrial action by Svitzer or the three unions – the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU), the Australian Maritime Officers Union (AMOU), and the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers (AIMPE).
It did so using its powers to stop industrial action that threatens to cause significant damage to the economy or part of it.
However, the commission refused Svitzer’s application to terminate the notified lockout, an outcome that could have led to the commission arbitrating the outstanding matters in dispute. Arbitration appeared to be Svitzer’s aim but was opposed by the unions.
Background to the dispute
Svitzer and the unions began negotiating a new enterprise agreement in late 2019. The company wanted changes to the agreement made in 2016 to give it greater flexibility in hiring staff. The unions opposed these changes on the basis they would lead to greater casualisation.
The process laid down by the Fair Work Act is to negotiate, with “protected industrial action” available to the parties to support their claims.
But the Act’s provisions make it particularly hard for port workers to take impactful industrial action, given the commission can suspend or terminate any action threatening to cause significant economic damage.
In February, the commission blocked 48-hour strikes slated for ten ports in Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales.
As a result, the unions have taken more low-level industrial action, such as work bans and limited stoppages, which are unlikely to attract the attention of the commission.
Svitzer’s decision to lock out workers recalls that of Qantas’s strategy in 2011, when the airline shut down its fleet to push the commission to arbitrate its dispute with unions over a new enterprise agreement. Qantas was widely considered the winner in the subsequent arbitration.
Svitzer’s motivation is to get rid of the 2016 enterprise agreement. Indeed in January it applied to have the commission terminate the agreement, which remains in force until replaced.
Termination would mean Svitzer’s employees would be covered only by award provisions and individual contracts – an effective win for the company. (This application remains before the commission.)
Will the government’s IR reforms help?
With a settlement not really any closer, the Svitzer dispute demonstrates the failure of the Fair Work Act to provide a safety valve to resolve intractable disputes.
Employment and workplace relations minister Tony Burke has argued the Albanese government’s industrial relations reforms – yet to pass the Senate – will assist in a dispute like Svitzer.
They will help, but on their own will not be enough.
The amendments will remove the ability to seek termination of an existing agreement while bargaining for a new agreement. This provision was not intended to be used as leverage during a dispute, as Svitzer has done.
The amendments also propose a new “intractable dispute mechanism”. This is different from current provisions because it does not require anyone to threaten or take potentially damaging industrial action before a party can seek arbitration by the commission.
More fixes needed
However, the bill does nothing to improve the Fair Work Act’s weak requirements for parties to bargain in “good faith”. This will continue to enable surface bargaining, leading to protracted disputes.
The provisions policing industrial action will still be among the most complex and costly in the developed world.
To ensure the Fair Work Commission is seen a fair and reasonable arbitrator, its members (appointed by the federal government) must also better reflect society, to restore faith in the institution for all parties concerned. Otherwise, unions may continue to resist arbitration, fearing the outcome will favour employers.
Moreover, despite the proposed expansion of multi-employer bargaining, the Albanese government has committed to maintaining the primacy of enterprise-level bargaining.
So suppressing workers’ pay and conditions will continue to be strategy to obtain a competitive advantage over other businesses. (Svitzer has argued its 2016 agreement means it cannot compete for port contracts.)
While the focus of our system remains the single enterprise, and workers’ pay and conditions can be used to undercut competitors, disputes like the one at Svitzer will continue to feature in the industrial landscape.
Shae McCrystal receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Analysis by Keith Rankin.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Last week the world population reached eight billion people, at least according to some sources. See these world population clocks, which do not agree: refer Worldometer and the US Census Bureau.
The growth rate of the world population is slowing. Indeed, there is a possibility that it will never reach nine billion; there are demographic ‘headwinds’ affecting both fertility and mortality.
What we do know is that the population age structures are very different in different continents, and different countries. This at a time when extreme ‘territorial fundamentalism’ has made the 2020s the most difficult decade in modern times for most people to get permission to travel to another country, let alone migrate to it. Before the nineteenth century, the main barriers were physical geography and other factors (dangers) which made long-distance travel slow, expensive and risky. The ‘other factors’ include cultural barriers which would have made it difficult for strangers – ‘strange people’ – to settle in places away from their birth localities. And, before modern times, in feudal times people were bonded to their birthlands; they were serfs bonded to their lords’ lands.
Today, as in the past, we live in times when many people of ‘working age’ live in places in which they are not economically productive; yet the barriers to resettlement – from countries with labour surpluses to countries with labour deficits – are huge. Perceived ‘land abundance’, such as territories populated ‘only’ by a few ‘natives’, is a thing of the past; but there are many places of opportunity in today’s world, with labour shortages which can be resolved by a mix of migration and skills education.
Colonisation and Decolonisation: past, future and present
In the European context, the Mediterranean Sea long represented a space around which colonisation could take place; in the context where powerful and growing mini-states could gain economies of scale and living spaces for their growing populations. Important early colonisers were the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Romans. In early times, migration meant a mix of conquest and colonisation. Settler colonies of these regional superpowers would form, and later would be trashed as power balances changed.
One important later example of classical-era colonisation reached beyond the Mediterranean Sea, namely the Roman colonisation and settlement of the island of Britannia. In the time of Julius Caesar (the ‘discoverer’ of Britannia) – 2,070 years ago – the ‘tangata whenua’ of Britannia, the British, were essentially the P-Celtic people we know today as ‘Welsh’. (There were also the Picts in much of today’s Scotland.)
Military and economic opportunities, and then demographic pressures, led to the creation of a romanised European world. Romans settled in Britannia from the forties (the 0040s that is) and native Britons were substantially romanised. The process was not unlike the nineteenth century britanisation of New Zealand. Roman Britain lasted for over 300 years as a prosperous and relatively stable example of colonisation. Further, the ’empire struck back’, meaning that increasingly the population of Rome itself were romanised non-ethnic-Romans; not unlike the anglicised South Asians prominent in British politics today. Late-Roman emperors were not always ethnic Romans; other Roman leaders were even more likely to be romanised non-Romans.
With the eventual collapse of Rome, in the fifth century, that Empire imploded. This implosion would be equivalent to a coming ‘collapse of the West’ in, say, the twenty-second century. In Britannia it was the romanised Britons who inherited the greater part of the island. Indeed, the legends of ‘King Arthur’ reflect this short and mythologised phase of British history. Times were tough in the sixth century, and not only because of empire collapse. The year CE 536 has been described as the worst ever in recorded history: refer Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’, Science, 15 Nov 2018; and Volcanic winter of 536, and Battle of Camlann, both Wikipedia.
Nevertheless, a combination of the inevitable fall of the Roman Empire and the ‘acts of God’ in the sixth century created demographic spaces. In the larger part of Britannia, the part that became England, the spaces were filled by Germanic people from places across the North Sea: Lower Saxony, Anglia, and Jutland. Most traces of Romans and Roman culture were erased. Latin was erased, and British (‘Welsh’) was marginalised to the western periphery. A new language and new culture filled the void; English (Anglaise).
Looking forward, beyond the present, to the end of the modern era – say the quarter millennium (the year 2250) – this transformation of Britannia signals a possible fate for Aotearoa New Zealand and other far-flung neo-European settlements. In this scenario, the present European hegemony (aka ‘the west’) diminishes (maybe eventually collapses). Anglo New Zealanders continue to leave throughout this late-modern period, leaving anglicised Māori and Polynesian and Asian New Zealanders to maintain an ongoing sense of Britishness. This unravelling southern outpost of the Commonwealth would then represent a demographic opportunity to new groups of colonisers. The ‘south seas’ equivalent of Lower Saxony and Anglia will most likely be places in South Asia or East Asia.
The conquest of Great Britain 2,000 years ago came from relatively afar, Italy. The conquest of New Zealand in the nineteenth century, then a land of opportunity for British people facing demographic pressure, came from as far as it possibly could have come. The next conquest of Zealandia will be from further than Rarotonga, though from closer than Britannia. Human settlement never was and never will be a simple process of one ‘tribe’ arriving in an unsettled land, staying, and fending off newcomers.
In the present era, Britannia and Zealandia represent lands of demographic opportunity, places working people want to go to as economic migrants. Historically, the two main demographic magnets have been lands and cities. In the nineteenth century, people migrated to new lands, and, there, multiplied in huge numbers. And they went to cities – new cities like Chicago and Melbourne (refer James Belich, Replenishing the Earth 2009) – and established cities like London and Paris. Unlike the new hinterlands, which facilitated human fertility, the big cities served as demographic sinks. That, however, did not mean that cities were unattractive places. Cities gave opportunities for people to express themselves through cultural interaction and creativity, rather than through monocultural pastures of human and animal reproduction.
It is urbanisation which puts an end to Malthusian (ie exponential) expansion of humanity. First, cities – especially the bigger cities – tended to be mainly characterised by their high mortality. Today, they are characterised by low fertility. The world’s population may never reach nine million, if our cities are allowed to fulfil their role as demographic magnets, given that they will continue to be demographic sinks. (That said, it only takes a pandemic to create temporary forces favouring urban depopulation and rural repopulation.)
European Centre and Periphery
The ‘Third Reich’ project, which developed in Germany in the 1930s, had two central themes. First was the inspiration from the Roman Empire, with Berlin posited as the new Rome. The second theme was ‘Lebensraum’ (living room) which meant the conquest and settlement of the lands in Eastern Europe by German people, to create a large German hinterland which would favour the multiplication of the German people at the expense of the other (mainly but not only Slavic) peoples of East Europe.
While that project failed, thankfully, it can be argued that the present European Union project is a kind of ‘Fourth Reich’, in which Berlin plays a less overt role as the centre of power. In this occurrent project the demographic forces in play are a centripetal pull towards the economic centre, and a depletion – a de-peopling instead of a re-peopling – of the European periphery. This may be called ‘reverse Lebensraum’. In the Fourth Reich, the ‘King’ (or ‘chancellor’) is a committee – or a nexus of committees – rather than a monarch or republican autocrat. The Fourth Reich is a bureaucracy rather than an autocracy. (Refer Europe’s Forbidden Colony, Al Jazeera27 Feb 2017, for an analysis of the European Union as an ‘ultra-neoliberal’ and ‘imperial’ project. ‘Colonisation’ here refers to the imperial “logic of extraction”, through which we may understand there is a process of people-mining as well as land-mining.)
The European periphery is multi-faceted. (And we note that London has broken away from this Fourth Reich, creating an independent power centre in the region.) The inner peripheries of Europe are the rural hinterlands of each EU partner nation; these are subject to significant depopulation, especially in the member countries which use the Euro currency (ie the Eurozone). As long ago as the 1970s, I recall cycling through French villages not on public transport routes, and hearing about these communities’ losses of services and young people.
Next is the periphery of the European Union itself, which includes the East, the South, and Ireland. Ireland is a kind of boom-bust special case, which is able to trade on its location, corporate tax policies, English language, and high education standards, to become a European front for American-centred multinational businesses. Ireland is a country with a long history of diaspora, and this was a key feature of its experience in the Eurozone crisis which was at its worst in 2012. The other countries which suffered substantial losses of young people and services in the early 2010s were of course the southern countries of Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal.
Now, the depopulation crisis is concentrated in the east of the European Union. All of the eastern European Union countries have lost substantial portions of their youth to the central economic hubs of Berlin and northwest Europe. (Indeed if you watch German movies on Netflix you will see many Eastern European names in the credits.) Those hubs themselves are demographic sinks, growing through ongoing human replenishment from the periphery of the Union. The eastern nations have the least financial capacity to retain their young people.
Depopulation in East Europe has been happening for a while. Shifts from rural to urban East Europe implied reduced fertility; this continues to be the main dynamic of population contraction in Russia. Now the main cities of East Europe are increasingly by-passed in favour of the privileged urban zones in the north and west. The United Kingdom was one of the most favoured destinations for East Europeans prior to Brexit. It still is, though the balance is changing with relatively more people from non-EU (Balkan, southeast European) countries risking the increasingly tortuous journey across the Strait of Dover. About twenty percent of those crossing to England in small boats this year have been from Albania, a Balkan country with fewer than three million people.
What also happened around 2015 and 2016, with the mass influx into the European Union of Syrian refugees, was that these new EU immigrants displaced immigrants from the non-EU Balkan nations. Indeed one of the ironies of non-EU east Europe is that, while both the push and the pull the demographic forces they face are the same if not stronger than those within the European Union, the presence of the EU in much of the east has made the competitive disadvantage ever harder for the youth of Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Montenegro.
The kind of economy that is emerging in East Europe is of a mix of traffickers and other service providers (many from eastern EU countries) ‘assisting’ the trafficked, meaning would-be immigrants from disadvantaged non-EU countries. The most populous of these non-EU countries feeling the push and the pull are from what might once have been called ‘Asia Minor’ or the ‘Near East’ (in addition to the ‘Middle East’, part of which is the Levant). As well as Ukraine, these include former Soviet Union countries such as Moldova, Armenia and Georgia; and, increasingly, Russia itself (noting the many anti-war refugees who have fled to places like Georgia).
Finally, the European political and economic periphery includes Africa; pretty much all of Africa, although people from southern Africa will naturally gravitate directly to the United Kingdom rather than the European Union.
Many of us of European ethnicity continue to make condescending assumptions about Africa, and Africans. (I feel privileged to have travelled in Africa, albeit a long time ago, and feel that my brief time there gives me a less unbalanced perspective on that part of the world.) At worst, too many ethnic Europeans simply assume that African nations are ‘basket cases’. Some of us continue to see Africa as the “white man’s burden”. While many realise that African countries now have the fastest growing populations in the world, few outside of that continent realise that Africa has been experiencing the world’s fastest economic growth.
Yet we see so many Africans, young Africans, risking all to ‘escape’ to Europe. We don’t bother wondering about why they are leaving Africa; we simply assume that Africa, as a continent, is chronically subject to the three checks emphasised by Malthus in 1798 – warfare, famine, disease. (Refer to this entry in Encyclopedia Britannica, and Are Malthus’s Predicted 1798 Food Shortages Coming True? 1 Sep 2008, by economist Jeffrey Sachs.)
Yes, all three do happen in Africa. But not everywhere there, all the time. What is actually driving people out of Africa this century is the same as what was driving people out of Europe in the nineteenth century; capitalist economic structural change, and the presence of people magnets outside of Africa.
The underlying circumstances of certain groups in history is known to economists as the ‘zero marginal product of labour’. What this means is, if one worker leaves an industry or a farm, the economic output of that enterprise is unaffected. Historically, this principle has been most applied to agricultural workers, especially in a ‘peasant’ context.
When industrialisation takes place in some part of the world, it is typically ‘powered’ by new industries (typically but not only urban) with a high marginal product of labour drawing people from the countryside. From a worker’s point of view, the attractant is higher wages in the new industry. Then, as the city starts to demand more from the country, farms come to be organised more as capitalist production enterprises than as rural welfare communities. Thus, push factors come into play as capitalist farmers divest themselves of unnecessary labour. Once pushed, young workers then survey the scene; if they find that the best opportunities in their own countries’ cities are already taken, they look to better opportunities in other countries.
In the nineteenth century, such people in Europe looked to far-away lands in the ‘new world’ as better bets for themselves. Better opportunities also meant better opportunities to have large families, because the economic security of rural older people lay in their own adult children. In the twenty-first century, it is no longer the availability of foreign rural lands that is the incentive. Rather it’s the opportunities of large foreign cities to provide a personal income with enough left over to remit to families in the workers’ countries of origin. First generation immigrants do have larger families, even in urban settings, than people already in those cities. Nevertheless, on balance, those bigger cities continue to be demographic sinks.
The following is an example of a Zambian radiation oncologist now working in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Stuck in a neocolonialist past: Is the migration brain drain an outdated concept? 21 Sep 2022, which featured on Deutsche Welle. Not only does she – the Zambian doctor – understand that her productivity is higher in New Zealand than in Zambia, she also actively contributes to her community in Zambia through remittances, and through an understanding that her current work in New Zealand represents an investment which, eventually, can be paid forward to her country of origin.
Globalisation versus Deglobalisation
‘Globalisation’ can be a problematic word, because many use it to mean an ideologyof global neoliberalism. That’s unfortunate, because the correct meaning of globalisation is the emergence of a world economy with diminished territorial barriers to the flows of money and especially labour. (I say especially to labour, because, even in the years before 2020, labour barriers were entrenching just as economic forces of demand and supply were creating increased demands for a globally mobile labour force.)
In today’s (sort-of) post-covid world economy, deglobalist nationalist ideologies conflict directly with economic sustainability and the requirements of the nations’ labour markets. We are now starting to understand that, in a high productivity high population world, the urban metropolises – with their economies of scale – are the most sustainable and stimulating environments for most people to live in. And we are about to start understanding that a sustainable city-dominated modern global economy will depend on reverse flows of money – for present purposes, we may call these ‘remittances’ – into the hinterland communities (such as, in the New Zealand context, Tairāwhiti and Samoa). Such remittances are not mere gifts; the hinterlands where people are raised and educated are places of investment; meaning that these ‘remittances’ are really returns on investment. Through their remittances supporting the Philippines’ economy, nurses trained in Philippines enable Philippines to continue to be a ‘nursing factory’ for the world.
The big demographic story today is not the size of the world population; but the huge geographical imbalances between labour supply and labour demand, and the barriers which prevent labour markets from clearing. Powerful global market forces will work to mitigate these; though these market corrections are to a large extent illegal and misunderstood. An activity (economic migration) which for the most of history has been legal – though in some cases has been accompanied by conquest – is now illegal for many (because of the bureaucratisation and excess of national border controls), creating needless cost and tragedy for those who are responding rationally to market forces. The barriers and the bureaucrats create ‘rent-seeking’ opportunities for smugglers.
The European Union has its own tragedy, as we saw with the Greek economic depression after the global financial crisis. This Union needs to be a fiscal union – more like the United States of America – whereby the hinterlands, international hinterlands within the European Union as well as those within each nation, need to be supported by more than private remittances. People resident in Transylvania should have comparable economic rights as residents of Thuringia.
The global economy needs to develop (preferably universal, non-bureaucratic) systems of ‘public remittances’; within its nations, within its Unions, and eventually with a fully global component. People will grow up, gain skills, work in places – commonly in cities away from their places of nurture – where they can maximise their marginal productivities; and a mix of their earnings and taxes can be ‘remitted’ to maintain the health of their source communities.
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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Research from the Who Gets to Tell Australian Stories? 2.0 report released today shows newsrooms across Australia are responsible for reinforcing and reproducing racial inequalities because they fail to represent the voices and faces of the society they serve.
Australia’s population is more diverse than ever. The latest ABS Census data shows just 54% of Australians now claim an Anglo-Celtic background. Around 25% have a non-European background, 18% have a European background, and 3% have an Indigenous background.
Yet new research from the University of Sydney, UTS Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, and Media Diversity Australia confirms the journalist workforce remains overwhelmingly Anglo-Celtic and white. The research found that almost 80% of television news and current affairs presenters on the major free-to-air networks are Anglo-Celtic. Likewise, 78% of senior network news editors are Anglo-Celtic. Just 1.3% of on-air talent on commercial networks are from a non-European background.
Concerningly, the new report shows that little progress has been made since the first report in 2020.
Particularly problematic are regional newsrooms. Regional newspapers, radio and TV stations are said to be more closely aligned with their communities than metropolitan media outlets. Regional newsrooms are also a recognised training ground for journalists and an important pathway for those seeking a foothold into Australian media more broadly.
But editors acknowledge that recruitment processes often lead to the employment of Anglo-Celtic journalists, effectively shutting the door to a more diverse workforce that will more properly represent the population it serves.
The importance of diversity in journalism
The media hold a mirror to our society – reflecting culture and helping to form opinions.
If the people framing the stories are from just one sector of society, we risk reinforcing stereotypes and reproducing inequalities. We know that a white Anglo-Celtic point of view alone is not representative of Australia in 2022.
Federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said last week that “media policy in this country has been ‘stuck in a rut’ of unambitious agendas and failed execution”, and that the media sector is urgently in need of a diversity strategy.
We argue that diversity must not only be measured in terms of media ownership, but in the diversity of the faces and voices being broadcast and published in the work produced by newsrooms nationally.
Our research shows the pathway to a career in journalism is too often blocked for Indigenous and culturally diverse faces and voices.
Regional newsrooms are a good place to start clearing the blockage.
What editors say about diversity
In the first half of 2022, we interviewed 19 editorial leaders from five regional media organisations around the country. The leaders were evenly split in terms of gender, age and experience. All identified as Anglo-Celtic.
We asked the leaders about the diversity of their audiences and if they considered cultural diversity when hiring staff.
The aim was to discover any practices that might be hindering the appointment of journalists from Indigenous and culturally diverse backgrounds, and to suggest ways to support the recruitment of a more diverse workforce.
Most of the editorial leaders described their communities as diverse, and said they would welcome having journalists from Indigenous or other culturally diverse backgrounds in their newsrooms.
One editor said
The best stories are forged by people working together to create a shared narrative. So, it’s critical that we are making sure that not everyone is like me in the room.
However, most also agreed that their newsrooms were mainly filled with white faces.
As captured by one interviewee:
It’s very easy to just start thinking from a mainstream white point of view, because that’s what our entire newsroom is made up of.
Where are the diverse faces and voices?
The editorial leaders suggested several reasons why the journalist workforce remains stubbornly Anglo-Celtic, including:
a lack of applicants from diverse backgrounds
requirements for tertiary qualifications
time pressures that meant they looked for “easy” hires
concerns about English language standards
the need to ensure new recruits would “fit” the newsroom
and a lack of industry role models.
Their responses indicate that both personal bias and structural racism – embedded in traditional recruitment strategies – could be creating barriers to journalists from Indigenous or culturally diverse backgrounds.
The editors acknowledged media organisations could do better in their efforts to recruit for diversity. But many felt the required changes were outside their scope of influence, especially given the heavy demands of local newsroom management.
This signals that senior media leadership, including media company board members, need to step up to create the conditions to support and promote newsroom diversity.
In particular, they could:
offer journalism scholarships and traineeships to students from diverse backgrounds
introduce blind-screening and skills-focused criteria to the recruitment process to minimise the risk of discrimination on racial grounds
provide a welcoming work environment that promotes role models and mentors.
Underpinning it all is the need to measure, monitor and report on diversity across the entire sector. We know that what gets measured, gets done. It’s therefore critical to monitor progress and gaps as we work towards a more inclusive and representative media.
Greater diversity isn’t just the right thing to do, it also makes good business sense. This multi-billion-dollar industry needs to start taking account of audience representation and the stories they trust, as a white Anglo-Celtic point of view alone fails to represent Australia in 2022.
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.
With COVID isolation rules largely gone, some people feel pressured to rush back to work, school, or other activities after testing positive to COVID.
If your symptoms are mild, you might be tempted to just keep (remotely) working through your infection, and quickly return to your usual exercise program so you don’t lose your fitness.
But while we might be used to bouncing back quickly after other viruses, we need to be more cautious with COVID. Aside from the risk of transmission, over-exertion can exacerbate and prolong your COVID symptoms.
Pushing too hard can set you back
Clinical guidelines recommend getting adequate rest when you’re diagnosed with COVID. Pushing yourself too hard and too early during your recovery from your initial COVID infection may set your progress back.
While around four in five people with COVID have mild illness and recover within a month, for others, it can take up to a few months or even longer.
When people have symptoms such as fatigue and/or shortness of breath for three months or more, this is called long COVID. Up to 89% of people with long COVID experience post-exertional malaise, where overdoing physical or mental activity exacerbates symptoms such as fatigue and causes new symptoms such as pain and anxiety.
So you’ve tested positive for COVID. How can you tell whether you’re well enough to get back to your usual routine?
Here are five tips:
1) Take your time
If you’re feeling sick, use your paid leave entitlements, if you have them, even it’s for a day or two to relax and unwind.
While it may be tempting to return to work quickly after COVID, avoid attending the workplace for at least seven days if you work in a high-risk setting such as health, disability and aged care. For other workers, it’s a good idea to isolate until your symptoms resolve.
If you’re feeling fatigued but want to get back to work, you might be able to start with half-days, or working for a few hours, then ramping up to your usual workload.
If you’re struggling with fatigue while recovering from COVID, a referral to an occupational therapist or physiotherapist can provide further strategies to manage this symptom.
3) Wait until you’re symptom-free for 7 days to exercise
You might feel ready to start exercising after your symptoms resolve but to avoid overexertion, it’s important to wait until you have been free of any COVID symptoms for at least seven days.
Start with light intensity exercises – where you can easily breath, maintain a conversation and feel you could sustain the activity for hours – for 10–15 minutes to begin with.
Only exercise again if you feel recovered from the previous day’s exercises, without new onset or worsening of symptoms such as fatigue and pain.
If you do experience more significant symptoms from COVID, consider roping in your friends and family. They may be entitled paid carer’s leave or even two days of unpaid carer’s leave for casual workers if they need to care someone with COVID.
If you are struggling to manage your health and other financial pressures, contact your financial institution to discuss payment plans.
If you work in a high-risk setting such as health, disability and aged care, you may also be entitled to additional government support to help you through the time when you cannot work because of COVID.
Ask family and friends for help if you’re struggling. Pexels/Andrew Neel
5) Know when to see your health provider
If you’re over 70, (or over 50 with additional risks, or are an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person aged over 30 with additional risks), talk to your GP about antiviral medicines as soon as you test positive to COVID. Antivirals reduce your chance of severe COVID requiting hospitalisation, and are ideally taken within five days of diagnosis.
If you’re managing COVID at home, use a symptom checker to see if you need medical advice for your condition.
If you have ongoing symptoms after your initial COVID infection, make an appointment with your doctor to monitor your condition and refer you onto other health professionals, where appropriate, to assist with symptom management.
While there are currently no medications to treat COVID symptoms such as fatigue, exercise-based health professionals such as physiotherapists can set you up with an exercise program and progress it accordingly to reduce fatigue and assist with breathlessness.
Mahatma Gandhi was right when he said “good health is true wealth”, so be kind to yourself when recovering from COVID.
Dr Clarice Tang receives funding from NSW Government, Department of Health and the Maridula Budyari Gumal association. She is affiliated with Western Sydney University and is a member of the Australian Physiotherapy Association, Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand and the American Thoracic Society.
After a few chaotic weeks it’s clear Elon Musk is intent on taking Twitter in a direction that’s at odds with the prevailing cultures of the diverse users who call it home.
Musk has now begun reinstating high-profile users – including Donald Trump, Alex Jones and Kanye West – who had been removed for repeated violations of community standards.
This comes off the back of a mass exodus of Twitter staff, including thousands that Musk unceremoniously fired via email. The latest wave of resignations came after an ultimatum from Musk: employees would have to face “extremely hardcore” working conditions (to fix the mess Musk created).
All of this points to a very different experience for users, who are now decamping the platform and heading to alternatives like Mastodon.
So what threats are we likely to see now? And how does one go about leaving Twitter safely?
#TwitterShutDown
With so many experienced staff leaving, users face the very real possibility that Twitter will experience significant and widespread outages in the coming weeks.
Enterprise software experts and Twitter insiders have already been raising alarms that with the World Cup under way, the subsequent increase in traffic – and any rise in opportunistic malicious behaviour – may be enough for Twitter to grind to a halt.
Aside from the site going dark, there are also risks user data could be breached in a cyberattack while the usual defences are down. Twitter was exposed in a massive cyberattack in August this year. A hacker was able to extract the personal details, including phone numbers and email addresses, of 5.4 million users.
One would be forgiven for thinking that such scenarios are impossible. However, common lore in the technology community is that the internet is held together by chewing gum and duct tape.
The apps, platforms and systems we interact with every day, particularly those with audiences in the millions or billions, may give the impression of being highly sophisticated. But the truth is we’re often riding on the edge of chaos.
Building and maintaining large-scale social software is like building a boat, on the open water, while being attacked by sharks. Keeping such software systems afloat requires designing teams that can work together to bail enough water out, while others reinforce the hull, and some look out for incoming threats.
To stretch the boat metaphor, Musk has just fired the software developers who knew where the nails and hammers are kept, the team tasked with deploying the shark bait, and the lookouts on the masts.
Can his already stretched and imperilled workforce plug the holes fast enough to keep the ship from sinking?
We’re likely to find out in the coming weeks. If Twitter does manage to stay afloat, the credit more than likely goes to many of the now ex-staff for building a robust system that a skeleton crew can maintain.
Hate speech and misinformation are back
Despite Twitter’s claims that hate speech is being “mitigated”, our analysis suggests it’s on the rise. And we’re not the only researchers observing an uptick in hate speech.
The graph below shows the number of tweets per hour containing hate speech terms over a two-week period. Using a peer-reviewed hate speech lexicon, we tracked the volume of 15 hateful terms and observed a clear increase after Musk’s acquisition.
Volume of tweets containing hate speech terms.
Misinformation is also on the rise. Following Musk’s swift changes to blue tick verification, the site tumbled into chaos with a surge of parody accounts and misleading tweets. In response, he issued yet another stream-of-consciousness policy edict to remedy the previous ones.
With reports that the entire Asia-Pacific region has only one working content moderator left, false and misleading content will likely proliferate on Twitter – especially in non-English-speaking countries, which are especially at risk of the harmful effects of unchecked mis- and disinformation.
If this all sounds like a recipe for disaster, and you want out, what should you do?
Pack your bags
First, you may want to download an archive of your Twitter activity. This can be done by clicking through to Settings > Settings and Support > Settings and Privacy > Your Account > Download an archive of your data.
It can take several days for Twitter to compile and send you this archive. And it can be up to several gigabytes, depending on your level of activity.
Lock the door
While waiting for your archive, you can begin to protect your account. If your account was public, now might be a good time to switch it to protected.
In protected mode your tweets will no longer be searchable off the platform. Only your existing followers will see them on the platform.
If you’re planning to replace Twitter with another platform, you may wish to signal this in your bio by including a notice and your new username. But before you do this, consider whether you might have problematic followers who will try to follow you across.
Check out
Once you have downloaded your Twitter archive, you can choose to selectively delete any tweets from the platform as you wish. One of our colleagues, Philip Mai, has developed a free tool to help with this step.
It’s also important to consider any direct messages (DMs) you have on the platform. These are more cumbersome and problematic to remove, but also likely to be more sensitive.
You will have to remove each DM conversation individually, by clicking to the right of the conversation thread and selecting Delete conversation. Note that this only deletes it from your side. Every other member of a DM thread can still see your historic activity.
Park your account
For many users it’s advisable to “park” their account, rather than completely deactivate it. Parking means you clean out most of your data, maintain your username, and will have to log in every few months to keep it alive on the platform. This will prevent other (perhaps malicious) users from taking your deactivated username and impersonating you.
Parking means Twitter will retain some details, including potentially sensitive data such as your phone number and other bio information you’ve stored. It also means a return to the platform isn’t out of the question, should circumstances improve.
If you do decide to deactivate, know that this doesn’t mean all your details are necessarily wiped from Twitter’s servers. In its terms of service, Twitter notes it may retain some user information after account deactivation. Also, once your account is gone, your old username is up for grabs.
Reinforce the locks
If you haven’t already, now is the time to engage two-factor authentication on your Twitter account. You can do this by clicking Settings > Security and account access > Security > Two-factor authentication. This will help protect your account from being hacked.
Additional password protection (found in the same menu above) is also a good idea, as is changing your password to something that is different to any other password you use online.
Once that’s done, all that’s left is to sit back and pour one out for the bird site.
Daniel Angus receives funding from Australian Research Council through Discovery Projects DP200100519 ‘Using machine vision to explore Instagram’s everyday promotional cultures’, DP200101317 ‘Evaluating the Challenge of ‘Fake News’ and Other Malinformation’, and Linkage Project LP190101051 ‘Young Australians and the Promotion of Alcohol on Social Media’. He is an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society, CE200100005.
Timothy Graham receives funding from the Australian Research Council for his Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE220101435), ‘Combatting Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour on Social Media’. He also receives funding from the Australian Government Department of Defence.
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
Joel Carrett/James Ross/AAP
The Victorian state election is on Saturday with polls closing at 6pm AEDT. There are 88 single-member lower house seats with members elected by preferential voting, and 40 upper house seats in eight five-member electorates.
A Resolve poll for The Age, conducted November 16-20 from a sample of about 1,000, gave Labor a 53-47 lead, a six-point gain for the Coalition since late October. Primary votes were 36% Labor (down two), 36% Coalition (up five), 10% Greens (down two), 6% independents (down six) and 12% others (up six).
I believe Resolve is now using actual ballot papers in all lower house seats (as this poll was conducted after nominations closed on November 11). As prominent independents are not running in every seat, the independent vote crashed while the “others” vote surged. The Greens may be losing votes to Animal Justice.
Labor Premier Daniel Andrews continued to lead the Liberals’ Matthew Guy as preferred premier by 48-34 (49-29 in October), but this was Guy’s highest rating in Resolve polls.
A 53-47 statewide two party win for Labor would still be a clear victory for them in the lower house, but there are two worries for Labor: the prospect of further narrowing in the final week, and the preferences of the 12% others. It’s plausible most of the others dislike Andrews.
Labor’s failure to reform upper house allows ‘preference whisperer’ to flourish
There has been recent media attention on the anti-democratic group voting ticket (GVT) system used to elect Victoria’s upper house after the leaking of the video below in which preference whisperer Glenn Druery brags about his influence.
Glenn Driuery.
As I have said before, Victorian Labor has been in government for eight years, but made absolutely no attempt to reform the upper house system by axing GVT. Druery would have no influence if above the line voters were able to direct their own preferences.
After reforms made in the last seven years in other jurisdictions, Victoria is now the only Australian jurisdiction that still uses GVT for above the line votes. At the May federal election, Victorian votes for the Senate were allocated according to voter-directed above the line and below the line preferences.
At this election, the only way for voters to direct their own preferences is to number at least five boxes below the line. Numbering can continue beyond five, but five preferences are required for a formal vote.
Analyst Kevin Bonham said the Victorian Liberals have not pushed for the axing of GVT during the previous term, and so some blame for the current situation should go to them.
But even if the Liberals had firmly advocated scrapping GVT, Labor is the government and has a big majority in the lower house of the Victorian parliament.
Liberals change preference policy to ‘put Labor last’
Before the November 2010 Victorian state election, federal and state Liberal how to vote (HTV) cards recommended preferencing the Greens ahead of Labor. Since that election, the HTV cards have put Labor ahead of the Greens. But at this election, the Liberals will put Labor last in all seats.
ABC election analyst Antony Green said that in inner Melbourne federal Labor vs Greens contests, the Greens received an average of 82% of Liberal preferences before the November 2010 election, but Labor has since received an average 66% of Liberal preferences.
This change in Liberal HTV cards will assist the Greens in inner Melbourne seats at this state election. Green said they would likely win Northcote on favourable Liberal flows after losing it narrowly in 2018.
Guy says controversial Liberal won’t be in party room, but she’ll win a seat
Candidate nominations for the state election closed on November 11, and it is now too late to replace candidates on the ballot paper. Renee Heath is the lead Coalition candidate for the Eastern Victoria upper house region, and is a senior member of the conservative City Builders Church.
On Saturday, Guy said that Heath would not sit in the Liberal party room if elected. She will still almost certainly win, as this is a conservative-leaning region that gave the Coalition two seats, Labor two and the Shooters one at the 2018 election.
The only way to vote Coalition in Eastern Victoria without voting for Heath is to vote below the line for all Liberal and National candidates other than Heath.
Election in Narracan postponed after candidate’s death
The electoral commission announced on Monday that the election in the lower house seat of Narracan will be postponed after the death of Nationals’ candidate Shaun Gilchrist.
This means Saturday’s election will only be for 87 of the 88 lower house seats, with a supplementary election to be held later in Narracan. However, voters in Narracan will still be required to vote for the upper house. The Liberals won Narracan by 60.0-40.0 against Labor at the 2018 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.
Review: D*ck Pics in the Garden of Eden, written and directed by Jeffrey Jay Fowler, The Last Great Hunt.
We see this played out in the media: famous men, a dick pic unwisely texted, reputations and careers destroyed. But what if the man is Adam and his dick pic is not to Eve but to former lover Lilith?
D*ck Pics in the Garden of Eden, written and directed by Jeffrey Jay Fowler from The Last Great Hunt, is a comedic take on the lives of Adam and Eve following their infamous exile. It explores the connection between sex, shame, body image, gender inequality – and men’s fixation with their penises.
The play opens in an Eden which is not lush paradise, but a bare stage. Billowy white curtains span the upstage area. The floor, covered in what looks like grey synthetic carpet, suggests a retail showroom. The only greenery is a panel covered with fake ferns hanging sadly in the space and an artificial indoor plant (the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil). The soundscape is muzak meets electronica.
Enter Adam (David Vikman) and Eve (Arielle Gray) in body stockings and outlandish head pieces (a vulva-like creation for Eve and phallic cone for Adam). Actors costumed as exotic animals, including a Sponge Bob/mattress hybrid, complete this diorama.
The cast are in body stockings and outlandish headpieces. The Last Great Hunt
It all looks like something you might pull together last minute for a kid’s dress up party, an aesthetic which is Play School meets school play. This is the perfect set up: the innocence before their exile to the suburbs where life is soap opera on steroids.
Several years post-exile, adult Adam (Ben Sutton) manages a sports goods store but risks losing this job if the dick pic he sent Lilith (Gray) gets out. He is on a retrieval mission.
Eve (Jo Morris) grows award-winning roses and is desperate to win again this year. Will the dick pic dash her chances?
Their adult daughter, Lulu (Joanna Tu), is auditioning for a play directed by Lilith (Iya Ware). Lulu had agreed to nudity but is now not so sure.
Their son Cain (Tyrone Robinson) is a gay porn actor living with Lucifer (Vikman). They are into threesomes, but Lucifer is finding it hard to keep up (literally).
Added to the mix is Dick Dickson (Chris Isaacs), a former relief teacher at Cain’s school now trying his hand at stand up: a career his name destined him for but which he can’t live up to. He hooks up with Lilith for some liberating S&M and then turns for Cain.
Little is left to the imagination. The Last Great Hunt
Fowler’s directorial vision is clever. Filmed live close ups of the actors on stage are projected onto the upstage curtains. Two cameras on tripods are positioned stage left and right, and actors unobtrusively take turns to film closeups of facial expressions and on occasion, fake dicks.
These two-camera close ups, a staple of soap opera, reinforced the genre and the play’s focus on the performativity of sexual and gender identity.
Rhiannon Petersen’s lighting and Connor Brown’s sound design are well integrated with Rachel Claudio’s soundscape composition and Maeli Cherel’s set and costumes.
Together they create a playful yet uncanny Eden and allow for a smooth transformation to the suburban wasteland.
Cherel’s cartoonish costumes are particularly effective. They satirise how we sculpt, inject, train, exfoliate, hide and deny our bodies to aspire to socially constructed ideals of masculine and feminine.
The play asks how do we construct the masculine and feminine? The Last Great Hunt
Body stockings are stuffed to form six packs, bulging muscles and big butts. Eve flaunts Madonna-style cone breasts and a delicate rose-shaped pudenda while Lilith is proud of her bush (a mess of black wool). The men are preoccupied with their penises.
The lewd, ludicrous fabric penises attached to their body stockings for all to see are admired, stroked, strutted, envied, filmed, photographed. They are a source of the men’s pleasure and their security blankets. They demand attention and assert power.
The cast play multiple characters, make lightning quick costume changes, act for and operate cameras while remaining grounded and present. As an audience we trust them to take us on the journey and we enjoy the ride.
The play falls down a bit around its episodic structure. Segmented into chapters, it needed stronger hooks between the parts to drive the narrative and sustain energy.
The production is bold and funny. The Last Great Hunt
D*ck Pics in the Garden of Eden is bold and funny, canvassing how societal attitudes toward sex, shame, consent, body image, gender identities, sexuality and gender inequality have been informed.
There is a lot to digest here and at times the play seemed weighed down in the attempt to get its messages across. In the program notes, Fowler says: “What I like about theatre, is that it doesn’t have to spoon feed you”.
What this play calls for is less spoon feeding.
D*ck Pics in the Garden of Eden plays at the Subiaco Arts Centre, Perth, until December 3.
Helen Trenos 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.
Suicide is a complex issue that impacts 425,000 Australians every year. That’s because up to 135 people are directly or indirectly impacted by each suicide death.
Military and emergency services personnel (such as those in the police force, fire and rescue services, and paramedics), have higher rates of suicidal thoughts, attempts, and deaths than the general Australian public. This may be because they experience repeated traumatic events and are at risk of workplace harassment and bullying.
Between January 2001 and December 2016, there were a recorded 197 suicide deaths of current or former emergency services personnel – an average of one emergency services personnel member dying every month.
Meanwhile, there were 1,600 deaths by suicide among veterans in Australia between 1997 and 2020. This equates to an average of more than one veteran dying by suicide every single week. Yet there is little understanding and limited support for their families.
The families and coworkers of military and emergency service personnel who die by suicide represent a unique group with specific needs. The loss of their loved one which may not be addressed by generic or civilian resources and services.
For example, families and peers are often left feeling conflicted about how they talk about their loved one’s job. How do they acknowledge the great work their loved one has done in their career, while also knowing that career contributed to their death?
Another issue is access to adequate social support, which can decrease grief difficulties, depression symptoms, and suicidal thoughts after a suicide. Service families may have moved a long way – interstate or even internationally – as part of supporting the personnel member’s role. This means families may have limited social support available to them, and little to no systems in place for family care.
With such a high level of impact and risk, you might assume there are policies, safeguards, and systems in place to support families and peers in the event of a serving personnel member dying by suicide. But this is not the case.
The interim report from the Royal Commission into Veterans Suicide acknowledged a lack of understanding of the impact of deaths by suicide on families and colleagues, and that the availability and accessibility of the support was too limited.
There is a need to better understand and support families and peers of both military and emergency service workers when a service member dies by suicide.
Military and Emergency Services Health Australia have begun the process of developing a national framework for supporting the bereaved families and coworkers of defence and emergency services personnel who have died by suicide, informed by lived experience.
We mapped all available grief and bereavement services who may offer support after suicide or offer support to defence or emergency services personnel and their families. We wanted to find out who, if anyone, was supporting families or coworkers in Australia when a current or former serving military member or first responder dies by suicide.
We identified 16 service providers supporting people after suicide for the general public. StandBy Support After Suicide helps individuals, families, friends and witnesses and is the most accessible provider. Six providers were identified as supporting service personnel even though they didn’t have specific suicide bereavement services. Only one service – Open Arms, a defence force-affiliated organisation – offers specific support for the families and peers of military personnel when someone dies by suicide.
For first responders as there is no service within Australia offering specific assistance to families or peers in the event of a worker’s suicide. The closest service available is offered by Fortem Australia, who provide first responder counselling services, though these are not specific to suicide bereavement.
There are no specific services for bereaved families of emergency workers who take their own lives. Pexels/Rodnae, CC BY
Building connections
Despite this lack of specific services, the civilian services currently available were open learning how they could offer better support. For some, this was about finding cultural training for staff. For others, like StandBy Suicide Support, it could mean modifying existing resources to be for military and first responder workers and their family.
Every community-based organisation we made contact with expressed interest in offering this support.
MESHA will be working with the families, peers and co-workers of services personnel who have died by suicide, alongside a needs assessment of the service providers who offer grief and bereavement support after suicide, to better understand the specific requirements for this population.
However, despite the encouraging responses from service providers, conscious efforts by federal and state governments will be needed to supply funding to these services.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. If you are the family member of a current or former serving defence or emergency services member, and you are concerned about their well-being, a list of services available to support yourself and them can be found here.
Henry Bowen works for Military and Emergency Services Health Australia, the organisation performing this study, and is the primary investigator on this work. This work was partially supported by the Prabha Seshadri Veteran and Emergency Services Mental Health Grant.
