Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Toole, Associate Principal Research Fellow, Burnet Institute

More than 54,000 children aged under five in Gaza are suffering acute malnutrition, including more than 12,800 who are severely malnourished, according to a study published in The Lancet on Wednesday.

When more than 15% of the population experiences acute malnutrition, the World Health Organization classifies this as “very high” – its most severe category. In August, the overall rate of acute malnutrition among study participants in Gaza was 15.8%.

Rafah consistently had the highest acute malnutrition rate, across the 20-month study period to August 2025, reaching 32% of children in December 2024.

Acutely malnourished children are at higher risk of severe infections and premature death. If malnutrition becomes long term, the child may develop stunting (shortness for their age) and subsequent cognitive impairment.

A child with severe acute malnutrition is also up to 11 times more likely than a healthy child to die of common childhood illnesses such as pneumonia, the single largest infectious cause of death in children worldwide.

How was the study conducted?

The researchers assessed 219,783 children aged 6–59 months for acute malnutrition – also known as wasting – which reflects recent weight loss. This study size accounts for around 64% of children in Gaza in that age group.

It was conducted in 16 UN health centres and 78 medical points established in school shelters and tent encampments across the five local areas of Gaza.

According to the WHO, the gold standard of assessing the nutritional status of a child is to measure their weight (using standard hanging scales) and their height or length. It also recommends measuring arm circumference to detect acute malnutrition in community screening settings, as numerous studies have demonstrated this is an accurate way of detecting acute malnutrition.

The Lancet study measured the children’s height and weight, as well as their mid-upper arm circumference using a standard measuring tape developed by UNICEF.

However, a number of researchers have recommended increasing the diagnostic threshold, which is currently 125 mm, which would mean more children meet the threshold for malnutrition.

The researchers in Gaza calculated what is called the Z-score for each assessed child, as is standard practice. This is the number of standard deviations above or below the median of the WHO reference population. A Z-score between -2 and -3 represents moderate acute malnutrition and a Z-score of less than -3 is severe acute malnutrition.

What did the researchers find?

The monthly prevalence of acute malnutrition ranged from 5% to 7% between January and June 2024.

After around four months of severe aid restrictions, between September 2024 and mid-January 2025, the prevalence increased from 8.8% to 14.3%. The highest prevalence was seen in Rafah (32.2%).

After a six-week ceasefire and a substantial increase in the number of aid trucks entering Gaza, by March 2025, the prevalence of wasting had declined to 5.5%.

However, an 11-week blockade occurred from March to May 2025 and severely restricted entry of food, water, medicines, fuel and other essentials. By early August 2025, 15.8% of screened children were acutely malnourished, including 3.7% who were severely wasted. This equates to more than 54,600 children in need of treatment using ready-to-use therapeutic food – a paste containing high quantities of calories and other nutrients.

Boys were more likely to be malnourished than girls, which was consistent with the pre-war period. Studies across the globe have found malnutrition rates are usually higher in boys than girls.

Was the study well conducted?

This was a longitudinal (conducted over time, in this case 20 months) cross-sectional study, which means the researchers took their measurements at certain intervals (in this case, monthly).

The authors provide extensive details of the numbers of children included, in which local area, what kind of facility (a fixed medical centre or medical point), as well as age and sex.

Two-thirds of the participants were in Khan Younis and Middle governorates, with relatively low numbers in North Gaza and Rafah, which were highly affected by military activities.

The analysis was thorough, preceded by a data cleansing process which excluded values that were implausible. Standard statistical tests were applied to the data.

The paper was peer reviewed before publication.

What do the findings mean?

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, known as the IPC scale, defines famine as a situation in which at least one in five households has an extreme lack of food and faces starvation and destitution, resulting in extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition and death. The IPC uses the same classification of acute malnutrition as the WHO.

The IPC scale defines five phases of food insecurity. Famine (phase 5) is the highest phase of the scale, and is classified when an area has 20% of households facing extreme food shortage and 30% of children are acutely malnourished.

In late August 2025, the IPC released its fifth report on Gaza. It found for the period July 1 to August 15 2025, there was famine (phase 5) for the Gaza governorate and emergency (phase 4) for Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis. It was unable to adequately assess North Gaza because of insecurity.

The food insecurity situation in Gaza is among the worst in the world, comparable with the current situation in Sudan, Yemen and Haiti. It is a man-made disaster and can be reversed by urgent human action.

The Lancet study found spikes in acute malnutrition coincided with aid blockades. A ceasefire and a complete opening to international aid are fundamental to a resolution of the food crisis.

Michael Toole receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council..

– ref. Child famine has reached the highest level in Gaza, with tens of thousands of kids affected – new study – https://theconversation.com/child-famine-has-reached-the-highest-level-in-gaza-with-tens-of-thousands-of-kids-affected-new-study-266988

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristin R. Laurens, Professor, School of Psychology and Counselling, Queensland University of Technology

Suspending or expelling a student is the most serious disciplinary measure available to schools.

Research tells us it can have a negative impact on a students’ learning, their connection to school and mental health.

Students who have been suspended are also more likely to go on to have contact with the criminal justice system due to lack of adult supervision, association with older antisocial peers, and negative impacts on essential skills like reading.

This is why student discipline policies and procedures say they should only be used as a last resort.

But how are schools using these measures?

In a new study, we tracked New South Wales public school students over a decade. We found many students were repeatedly suspended. We also found disadvantaged students were more likely to be suspended or expelled.

Our research

Our research used data from the NSW Child Development Study to track suspensions and expulsions among a group of almost 72,000 students who attended public schools in New South Wales. This represented almost one fifth of all Australian school students at the time.

It provides the first, large-scale analysis of suspension and expulsion data over a ten year period, following the same students from Year 3 to Year 12, from 2012 to 2021.

Almost 1 in 5 students were suspended during their school career

According to the NSW Department of Education, about 4% of students in the state’s public schools are suspended or expelled in any calendar year.

But these figures understate the true scale of the practice, because they do not capture the accumulation of suspensions and expulsions by the same students over more than one year.

Instead of looking at exclusions in a single year, we studied students over ten years. This showed 19% of the 72,000 students in our group were suspended or expelled at least once between Year 3 and Year 12.

In most cases, students were suspended. Less than 1% were expelled.

As noted in other Australian research, the use of suspensions/expulsions escalates in junior high school (Years 7-10). Our data also shows this pattern, with more than two-thirds (71%) of suspensions/expulsions happening during these pivotal years of school.

Why are students suspended or expelled?

Most suspensions were given for “aggressive behaviour” (52%) and “continued disobedience” (31%).

More serious categories, like “physical violence” and “persistent and serious misbehaviour” accounted for 10% and 12% of suspensions/expulsions respectively.

Illegal behaviours (involving things like weapons and drugs) contributed less than 5% of suspensions/expulsions.

Things build over time

About 40% of students who were suspended received just one suspension. But about 60% of students were suspended or expelled multiple times.

As shown in the chart below, almost half (45%) of all suspensions/expulsions went to just 13% of students who were suspended/expelled nine times or more. The highest number of suspensions/expulsions among these individuals was 54.

The earlier students were suspended/expelled, the more likely they were to be suspended/expelled again.

One in two students (54%) who were first suspended/expelled during primary school had repeat suspensions/expulsions. Only two in five students (40%) first suspended/expelled during high school had repeat suspensions/expulsions.

Children disappear from the system

A sharp drop in suspensions of students in Years 11 and 12 has been noted in previous research.

However, our research suggests there is a relationship between being suspended/expelled and leaving school early.

As shown in the chart below, by Year 12, almost half (48%) of the students who had received at least one suspension in the previous ten years were no longer enrolled in a NSW public school.

Which students are being suspended the most?

Our research shows students who are already disadvantaged are more likely to be suspended from school.

Students living in the most socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, students with unemployed parents, those living in regional, remote, and very remote areas, were all significantly over-represented in the data.

These effects became more pronounced as the number of repeat suspensions rose. For example, children of unemployed parents were almost three times as likely as their peers to experience a single suspension/expulsion, but around ten times as likely to experience 16 or more suspensions or expulsions.

Boys were also much more likely to be suspended/expelled than girls. They were about twice as likely as girls to be suspended/expelled once, but around ten times as likely to be suspended/expelled 16 times or more.

In our previous study in this sample, we found other vulnerable students, such as those with emotional and behavioural disability or maltreated children, are also overrepresented in the data.

Read more:
Expelling students for bad behaviour seems like the obvious solution, but is it really a good idea?

What does this mean?

Our findings suggest there are two different issues at play.

First, schools are turning to the “last resort” of suspending or expelling students for behaviours that can and should be managed within the school using tried and tested approaches that aim to educate a student, rather than punish or push them out.

The problem with turning to the last resort too early is students become desensitised to being suspended and schools have nothing left in the toolkit when behaviours escalate. This pattern becomes clear when children are followed over time.

Some students need more support

The second issue is some students need far more intensive academic, emotional, and behavioural support. These students are concentrated in schools serving disadvantaged communities.

System-wide improvements in behaviour management will help address low-level behaviours. But this will not help some students with disability or those who have experienced trauma who may require intensive support and educational adjustments. This is particularly so if these students are concentrated in certain schools or areas.

Here, we can learn from public school systems in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, where a comprehensive approach to supporting students’ academic, social-emotional and behavioural development has been introduced. School suspensions have been reduced and school safety, student engagement and achievement have increased.

The NSW student behaviour policy on suspensions and expulsions was revised in 2024 to place some limitations on the use of suspension and expulsion in public schools. Further research will be needed to examine the effect of that change.

However, school suspension and expulsion rates like those identified by this study are an indication some schools need more help to support the students in their local communities.

Kristin R. Laurens received funding for this research from the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, and the Medical Research Future Fund.

Lauren M. Piltz receives funding from the Australian government Research Training Programme Stipend scholarship, administered by the Queensland University of Technology.

Linda J. Graham receives funding from the Queensland government’s Education Horizon scheme.

– ref. We tracked 72,000 NSW public school students over a decade and found 19% had been suspended or expelled – https://theconversation.com/we-tracked-72-000-nsw-public-school-students-over-a-decade-and-found-19-had-been-suspended-or-expelled-267001

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Edwell, Associate Professor in Ancient History, Macquarie University

A proposed one dollar coin featuring US President Donald Trump is causing ructions across the political divide. It’s also provoking discussion in the world of ancient Roman numismatics (coin studies).

The proposed coin depicts Trump in profile on one side (the obverse). On the other side (the reverse) the president raises his fist in defiance accompanied by the words “fight, fight, fight”.

While only a draft proposal, the coin could be minted in 2026 to mark 250 years since the US declaration of independence. But an old law prohibits the “likeness of any living person” from being “placed upon any of the bonds, securities, notes, fractional or postal currency of the United States.”

More than 2,000 years ago, the depiction of living figures on Roman coins caused similar ructions.

It came at a time when the Roman republic was in trouble. The republic would crumble altogether soon after, ushering in the long period of Rome being led by emperor-kings who saw themselves as almost akin to gods.

Perhaps the American republic is at a similar stage.

Sulla’s image on a coin

Rome was said to be founded by the mythical king Romulus, who killed his own twin (Remus). The fledgling state was led by seven kings before it became a republic in about 509 BCE.

By the late second century BCE it was led by Roman general and politician Gaius Marius. Marius and his later rival, Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, broke many of the republic’s long-held conventions. They also fought Rome’s first major civil war.

In 88 BCE, while consul, Sulla marched an army on Rome to defend the city from “tyrants” (by which he meant the faction of Marius, who had ousted him). After Sulla won the civil war that followed, he held the dictatorship from 82-79 BCE. Dictatorships were only to be held for six months in times of emergency. Sulla claimed the emergency was ongoing.

As part of this he ordered a list (known as proscriptions) of enemies drawn up. Hundreds or even thousands were killed and had property confiscated.

In the same year a silver coin (called a denarius) was minted in Sulla’s name. One side featured Sulla himself riding in a four-horse chariot.

This was the first time a living person was depicted on a Roman coin. Up to this point only gods and mythological figures had that honour.

It was highly unusual.

Caesar’s challenge to the old republic

Sulla was the first but he wouldn’t be the last leader of the Roman republic to have his image on a coin.

In 44 BCE Julius Caesar went a step further. Only months before his assassination, coins appeared with Caesar’s bust dominating their obverses. Some included the words dict perpetuo meaning “dictator for life”.

By this time, Caesar and many before him, including Marius and Sulla, had broken the mould of the old republic.

Early in 44 BCE, Caesar took the dictatorship for life.

From 46-44 BCE he held the consulship, which was only meant to be held for a one-year term at a time. (Sulla held the dictatorship three years running, which partly set the scene for Caesar’s later emergence and the final breakdown of the republic.)

For many at the time, it seemed Caesar was moving the republic in the direction of monarchy. In January 44 BCE, when a throng hailed him as “rex” (king) Caesar responded, “I am Caesar and no king”. His very name was by now more powerful.

The coins of 44 BCE containing a profile bust of Caesar were an important part of his public program, and part of his challenge to republican convention.

Sulla paved the way 40 years before.

The parallels with Trump are hard to miss

Some emphasise that Caesar did not directly order his image to be placed on coins. Those wanting to curry favour read the room and Caesar did not object.

A similar scenario appears to be playing out with the coin design bearing Trump’s image.

The parallels with Trump are hard to miss. Trump has signed more than 200 executive orders in less than nine months. His predecessor Joe Biden issued 162 in his entire presidency.

Trump’s deployment of federal troops to US cities under emergency decrees provokes cries of tyranny. Sulla’s march on Rome and the proscriptions that followed drew a similar response.

The possibility of a one dollar coin depicting Donald Trump on both sides echoes the coins of Sulla and Caesar.

They might not technically break the law but they would break convention. In the process they also symbolise a notable shift in the US from democracy to autocracy.

When the “no kings!” demonstrations took place in the US earlier this year, they reminded us of a key motivation for the declaration of independence.

A coin celebrating its 250-year anniversary may well symbolise its journey to demise.

Peter Edwell receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Trump on a coin? When Julius Caesar tried that, the Roman republic crumbled soon after – https://theconversation.com/trump-on-a-coin-when-julius-caesar-tried-that-the-roman-republic-crumbled-soon-after-266887

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thea van de Mortel, Professor Emerita, Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University

Imagine you’re away from home but forgot to pack your towel, razor or toothbrush.

Should you use other people’s?

Here’s why it’s probably best not to make a habit of it.

Microbes can stay active for a while

Many disease-causing bacteria, viruses or fungi live on cloth, plastic and metal objects in your bathroom. These so-called pathogenic microbes can remain viable on these surfaces for extended periods. That is, they’re able to cause infection for days, months or years.

For example, the fungus Aspergillus can remain viable for more than a month on cloth and plastic. Some bacteria can survive on these surfaces for years. And many viruses can remain viable for hours to months on some materials such as ceramics, metals, cloth and plastics.

But what is the risk from particular items such as used towels, razors and toothbrushes?

Scientists haven’t run randomised controlled trials (the gold standard study design) to determine the risk. This would be when one group in a study is chosen at random to, say, shave their legs with someone’s used razor, and the infection rates of known pathogens compared with those randomised to a control group who didn’t.

But there are other studies that give us some clues.

Can I share towels? If you play footy, maybe not

Less robust studies suggest an increased risk of picking up a skin infection from used towels.

One report from the United States was of an outbreak of antibiotic resistant Staphylococcus aureas (or Staph, for short) in a group of high-school football players. Players who shared a towel were eight times more likely to pick up an infection.

Staph can cause the skin condition impetigo. But in rare cases it can lead to life-threatening septic shock and organs failing.

In this case, the risk of transmitting Staph was probably elevated due to potential cuts and grazes from playing a contact sport.

Another study, also from the US, followed 150 households for 12 months. Each household had a single child infected with Staph.

When household members shared towels, the risk of Staph transmission increased significantly.

You might think that microbes are washed off in the shower. While washing with soap and water reduces the number of microbes on the skin it does not completely eliminate them. And the warm, moist conditions of the average bathroom encourage microbial growth.

Even if you don’t develop an infection, becoming colonised by pathogens (when there is no damage) can be problematic.

That’s because you may be exposed to antibiotic resistant species, increasing the risk of developing antibiotic resistant infections later. These are more time consuming and expensive to treat.

How about a toothbrush? Think of the viruses

Microbes can remain viable on hard objects, such as toothbrushes. And toothbrushes can cause gums to bleed. So sharing them is discouraged as this can transmit blood-borne viruses such as hepatitis C.

Not everyone who is in a risk category for hepatitis C infection has been tested. And people can be infectious without having symptoms.

Anything that has come into contact with saliva (such as your toothbrush) may also transmit pathogens. These include herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), which causes cold sores, and Epstein-Barr virus, which causes glandular fever.

A person with no signs of HSV-1 infection can still shed viruses and cause infection.

One review found toothbrushes were contaminated with potentially pathogenic species of bacteria such as Staph, E. coli and Pseudomonas. HSV-1 was also found in sufficient numbers to cause infection. This virus can remain viable for two to six days on plastic objects.

Surely a razor’s OK? Not if you hate warts

Microbes can remain viable on hard objects such as razors too. And it’s
hard to avoid nicks when using a razor. So there’s a risk of transmitting blood-borne viruses if you share.

Razors, towels and other personal hygiene items can also spread human papillomaviruses that cause warts. So it’s no wonder dermatologists recommend each person has their own items.

Who’s at risk?

If you have cuts or grazes, this provides a portal of entry for microbes, putting you at increased risk of infection. Remember those footy players who shared towels.

Reduced immune function also increases the risk of infection. We see this in:

• babies, whose immune system is still developing

• elderly people, whose immune function declines in later life

• people taking immune suppressing medications, such as cancer drugs, oral corticosteroids and drugs taken after an organ transplant

• people with type 2 diabetes, because increased blood glucose levels damage the function of immune cells and associated molecules.

However, the overall risk of contracting an infection is low on any one occasion. And if you’re sharing a towel, razor or toothbrush with a partner, you’ll be in regular close contact and sharing microbes anyway.

But it’s still a good idea to avoid making a habit of sharing other people’s used bathroom items.

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

– ref. 3 bathroom items you shouldn’t really share, according to an expert – https://theconversation.com/3-bathroom-items-you-shouldnt-really-share-according-to-an-expert-264109

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

It’s been eight days since a partial US government shutdown began on October 1, owing to a failure by Congress to agree to a new budget by the September 30 deadline.

Democrats are refusing to help to pass a budget unless health insurance subsidies are extended, while Republicans and President Donald Trump want a budget passed without these subsidies. There does not appear to be any progress towards ending the shutdown.

Analyst G. Elliott Morris has reported polls that have Republicans and Trump blamed for the shutdown by six to 17 points more than Democrats. In a YouGov poll for CBS News, by 40–28 respondents said the Democratic positions were not worth the shutdown, and by 45–23 they said the same of the Republican positions.

In analyst Nate Silver’s US national poll aggregate, Trump has a net approval of -9.4, with 52.7% disapproving and 43.3% approving. His net approval dropped two points in late September, but the shutdown hasn’t changed it yet.

Trump’s net approval on the four issues tracked by Silver are -4.7 on immigration, -15.3 on the economy, -15.6 on trade and -27.4 on inflation. His net approval on trade and inflation has risen in the last two weeks.

In November 2026 all of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate will be up for election at midterm elections. Morris’ generic ballot average has Democrats leading Republicans by 44.9–42.1. Democrats have led narrowly since April.

In polling conducted before the shutdown started, Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer averaged a net favourability of -20.5 according to Silver, making him the least popular of the six party leaders (Trump, Vice President JD Vance and the Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders).

Schumer’s poor ratings are due to weak ratings from Democratic-aligned voters. A Pew poll gave him an overall 50–21 unfavourable rating, including 39–35 unfavourable with Democrats. There’s pressure on Schumer from his own party to fight Trump harder. If Democrats are perceived to have caved to Republicans, Schumer is likely to be blamed by other Democrats.

How do shutdowns affect the US economy?

There have been 11 US government shutdowns since 1980, with seven of them lasting five days or less. The longest shutdown (35 days) occurred during Trump’s first term after Democrats gained control of the House in November 2018 elections.

Shutdowns are economically damaging, but past shutdowns haven’t lasted long enough to do great damage, and the economy rebounds once the shutdown is over.

Shutdowns result in far less government economic data. The September jobs report was to be released last Friday, but this won’t happen until after the shutdown finishes.

Despite the shutdown, the benchmark US S&P 500 stock index surged to a new record high in Wednesday’s session, and is up 4% in the last month. The stock market has been supporting Trump since it rebounded from April lows.

Why is there a shutdown when Republicans control both chambers?

Republicans won the House of Representatives by 220–215 over Democrats at the November 2024 elections and currently hold it by 219–213, with two special elections to occur later this year. A Democrat who won a September 23 special election has not yet been formally certified the winner.

Republicans also hold a 53–47 majority in the Senate.

In the Senate, legislation usually needs to clear a 60-vote “filibuster” threshold. The filibuster allows at least 41 senators to indefinitely delay legislation they disagree with. To reach 60 votes, Republicans need at least seven Democratic senators to vote with them.

The filibuster is not part of the US Constitution, and the majority party could eliminate it. But some Republican senators are probably worried about what Democrats would do if they won the presidency and majorities in both chambers of Congress.

The filibuster cannot be applied to all legislation. Trump’s “big beautiful bill” passed the Senate using “reconciliation” by 51–50 on Vance’s tie-breaking vote. But reconciliation is a cumbersome process that isn’t appropriate for a normal budget bill.

Ipsos poll on Trump’s troop deployments

Trump has deployed national guard troops on home soil in Chicago, Illinois, and attempted to also do this in Portland, Oregon. The national guard has assisted before, during environmental disasters and protests, but Trump’s deployments are against the wishes of the affected states’ governors.

In an Ipsos US national poll for Reuters, respondents thought by 58–25 that the president should only deploy troops to areas with external threats. By 48–37, they did not think the president should be able to send troops into a state if its governor objects.

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

– ref. Trump’s ratings steady as the US government shutdown drags into a second week – https://theconversation.com/trumps-ratings-steady-as-the-us-government-shutdown-drags-into-a-second-week-266884

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jill Sheppard, Senior Lecturer, School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University

Sussan Ley’s challenge as opposition leader is to keep her party united and ready to govern in the event that the government loses public favour. That is, they need to be a ready alternative government.

Voters evaluate governments on the basis of what they’ve done, but also what they promise to do next. Opposition parties start on the back foot, as governments have greater public visibility and can use public money to ingratiate themselves with voters. Ley is particularly up against it, with only 51 members in her party room and little public confidence the party has any chance of winning the next federal election.

Inevitably though, the money runs dry or the government’s mistakes start to pile up. That’s when an opposition needs to be in a credible position to persuade swinging voters that they are a better option than the government. This broadly involves three stages: establishing competence, offering an alternative vision of government, and surviving the campaign.

Competence in opposition

The first stage – establishing competence – is where Ley and the Liberals now find themselves. Ley comes to the job with some question marks, having resigned as health minister in 2017 amid accusations of misusing publicly-funded travel.

On the plus side, her early moves to reinstitute formal policy development processes inside the party (including on “net zero” and nuclear energy) signal competence.

Former opposition leader Peter Dutton was competent in his own way, leading a defeated and fractious party room through a full parliamentary term with little public dissent and no serious challenges to his authority. However, this came at the expense of any real policy agenda, and that contributed to their defeat at the 2025 election.

The more difficult task is to combine competence and vision, and this is where we introduce Andrew Hastie.

Hastie, as a recent member of the shadow cabinet and now backbencher, is less concerned with establishing competence than with offering his own vision of a Liberal government. He attributed his decision to resign as shadow minister for home affairs to a lack of autonomy over the party’s immigration policy. He appears to have no patience for deliberative policy development processes. It has also been reported that Dutton accused Hastie of being “on strike” in the lead-up to the election.

Hastie’s position has been compared to that of Tony Abbott, but as opposition leader, Abbott was actually quite conciliatory.

Before the 2013 election, he committed to support the NDIS, Labor-led education reforms and the National Broadband Network. He offered stability and competence, particularly in contrast to six years of Labor in-fighting under Rudd and Gillard. His more conservative excesses (and awkward idiosyncrasies) came post-election.

Balancing competence and vision

Kevin Rudd – whom Abbott defeated in 2013 – offers the best recent example of an opposition leader successfully balancing competence with vision. It might be argued that Rudd’s “John Howard-lite” vision at the 2007 election was less ambitious than electorally strategic. Still, his political style differentiated him from Howard, whose government was 11 years old, fractious, and had little energy for new policy.

Before Rudd came Howard himself, who won government from Paul Keating and Labor in 1996 with a mix of competence and conservative vision. The Liberal Party had been in opposition for 13 years, lost an “unloseable” election in 1993, and rotated through a series of unpopular and gaffe-prone leaders.

Howard was awkward in front of a camera but respected by his colleagues. He successfully sold the electorate on his vision of nationalism, economic prudence, and blue-collar ambition.

Hastie seems in lockstep on the second part of Howard’s approach. His Instagram posts, public statements, and pre-parliamentary career in the military all point to a traditionally conservative vision.

Winning the campaign

Hastie’s criticism of Ley seems to boil down to her insistence on competence at the expense of vision. However, Ley’s deliberative processes might yet produce a platform that concords with Hastie’s personal vision. If so, she will have ticked “competence” and “vision” on the opposition leader checklist, and Hastie may have limited his career unnecessarily.

An alternative outcome is that Ley’s Liberal Party deliberates over the next year or so and agrees on a platform that is more moderate than Hastie (and fellow conservatives Jane Hume, Angus Taylor and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price) wants.

Hastie is wrong if he thinks winning from a centrist position is impossible, although it tends to require an incompetent government. Rudd defeated a moribund government whose two most senior figures openly despised each other. Abbott toppled Rudd in his second stint as prime minister after Rudd was deposed by and then deposed Julia Gillard. In the absence of a similar breakdown in Anthony Albanese’s Labor government, Hastie might be onto something.

In political science we call this valence politics. There are many issues on which all voters generally agree: everyone wants fewer wars, good quality education, affordable healthcare, for instance. Parties can differentiate themselves on their ability to tackle these valence issues, or they can propose an alternative vision.

By tacking to the centre, the Liberals will need to demonstrate that they are more competent than Albanese’s government. Choosing vision over competence – Hastie’s apparent preference – is not for the faint-hearted.

Jill Sheppard receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Competence and vision: how to be a successful opposition – https://theconversation.com/competence-and-vision-how-to-be-a-successful-opposition-266888

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Rose, Adjuct Lecturer, University of Adelaide

Two decades after Timor-Leste gained its independence, the country is a complicated and qualified success story. Poverty and deep economic problems persist, but the country boasts a thriving democracy. Its ascension to the ASEAN regional bloc will come later this month.

As this milestone approaches, however, a senior official with oversight over the national intelligence agency has gone public with explosive claims that Timorese institutions are allegedly being bought by organised crime.

His concerns come after a recent UN report that describes in vivid detail a sophisticated attempt by figures linked to triad gangs in China and Southeast Asia to allegedly establish a base of operations in the Timorese region of Oecusse-Ambeno.

If the allegations are true, they could pose the one of the greatest tests for Timor-Leste in its short history. Is its democracy robust enough to confront the challenge?

Allegations of corruption

Agio Pereira is the Timorese minister of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. He is one of the most powerful elected officials in his country.

On September 21, Pereira published on Facebook what he called A Manifesto for the Defence of Timor-Leste. In it, he claims to have
“undeniable and damning evidence” that US$45 million (A$68 million) has been brought (in some cases flown) into the country by “transnational criminal syndicates from Cambodia, Malaysia, Macau and Hong Kong”.

He says the money was allegedly used to influence regulatory bodies to grant “fraudulent licences” and set up “protected enclaves” where “illegal gambling, cyber-scam centres and human trafficking would be able to operate under state protection”.

He said the country faces a simple choice:

Will we be a sovereign nation governed by democratic laws and institutions, or will we become a criminal state owned by foreign mafia syndicates?

Pereira also listed numerous demands, including:

• the revocation of any licences that may have been granted to criminal networks
• government cooperation with international law enforcement to dismantle the networks
• an investigation of all officials who have allegedly taken any money.

Pereira did not provide any evidence in the post to back up his claims, but especially given his status and oversight of the national intelligence service, many are taking his claims seriously.

In response to the allegations, President José Ramos-Horta told me via WhatsApp:

I always said Timor-Leste does not have homegrown organised crime. […] But Timor-Leste, being still a fragile country, is very attractive to organised crime from Asia.

I have full confidence in our authorities with support from Australian Federal Police and from Indonesian police in tackling the challenges by organised crime.

Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao also took a measured response to the allegations. He told local media Pereira would be given a chance to raise the issue with the government directly.

On October 1, he was given his chance, addressing a meeting of Timor-Leste’s Counsel of Ministers. This resulted in the swift approval of a draft resolution cancelling all existing licences granted for online gambling and betting operations and prohibiting any new licences from being issued.

But Pereira’s other key demand – an investigation into officials accused of taking money from organised crime syndicates – appears not to have been addressed.

Scammers taking root

Cyber-scammming is a booming industry in Southeast Asia, bringing in billions of dollars in revenue annually.

Illegal gambling and scam centres have proliferated in recent years in “special economic zones” in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and the Philippines. The organised crime groups behind them are constantly looking for new bases of operations where local officials can be persuaded to look the other way, or lack the capacity to stop them.

Although Timor-Leste is small, it’s important due to its strategic location (just a 1.5-hour flight from Darwin) and the fact Australia and its allies are increasingly competing for influence there with China. Australia cannot afford to ignore any threat to the security of a fledgling democracy on its doorstep.

Pereira’s manifesto came in the wake of an August 25 raid on a suspected scam centre in Oecusse-Ambeno, where 30 foreign nationals from Indonesia, Malaysia and China were detained. The head of the regional government, Rogerio Lobato, was given notice two days later.

Oecusse, as it’s commonly known, is a rugged coastal exclave on the western half of Timor island, surrounded by Indonesia. Once extremely isolated, Oecusse was granted autonomy in 2014 and a special economic zone was established to spur foreign investment.

The report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in September described how organised crime groups took advantage of the region’s loose regulatory structures late last year to allegedly establish an “Oecusse Digital Centre”. It reads:

The Special Administrative Region of Oecusse-Ambeno (RAEOA), Timor-Leste appears to have already been targeted by criminal networks through FDI [foreign direct investment].

As Timor-Leste prepares to join ASEAN in October 2025, the reported infiltration of RAEOA and its national ID system by convicted cybercriminals poses a serious security risk.

The report notes that Timor-Leste shares “stark similarities” with the development of the scam industry in Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines, which have now become notorious hubs for cyber fraud, drug trafficking and human trafficking.

In his message to me, Ramos-Horta declined to address the allegations surfaced by the UN report, saying:

I know well the work of UN agencies. They should focus more on solid research and less on allegations against individuals because this is not their mandate.

In his manifesto, Pereira appears to suggest operations like the one recently raided in Oecusse are made possible through the bribery of Timorese officials. He says directly this influence is occurring on a scale that risks state capture.

Reactions to Pereira’s allegations

It’s unclear why Pereira chose to appeal directly to the people rather than take his concerns to others in the government.

Nelson Belo, director of the civil society and security monitoring organisation Fundasaun Mahein, criticised Pereira’s choice to go public. He said as a minister, he should “lead and act within the law”.

Belo’s group had also recently warned of the risks transnational organised crime groups could pose to the country.

Abel Pires, a former government minister and former member of Timor-Leste’s Council of Defence and Security, had a different view.

He reasoned that because “the problem may involve too many people within the system”, Pereira might have had no choice but to go public.

He also called the cancellation of gambling licences a positive step, but said there must be an independent investigation into Pereira’s allegations.

On the street, the allegations have fed into frustration with official greed and incompetence, which fuelled recent student demonstrations against government waste.

That a leading minister felt he needed to go public with the accusations to have them taken seriously by his own government is telling.

The potential subversion of Timor-Leste’s institutions by organised crime is a serious threat to the country’s security. Its government – as well as Australia’s – would do well to pay heed.

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

– ref. Organised crime may be infiltrating Timor-Leste’s government. One minister is sounding the alarm – https://theconversation.com/organised-crime-may-be-infiltrating-timor-lestes-government-one-minister-is-sounding-the-alarm-265879

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne-Marie Laslett, Professor, Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, La Trobe University

Globally, up to one in three women who live with a male partner report he is a heavy drinker. Evidence shows men’s drinking increases the severity and frequency of violence towards women and harms to children.

Yet in Australia and worldwide, most policies to address gender violence still fail to consider the significant role alcohol plays.

Our new research, published last week, reviewed and analysed the evidence in three major international reviews about men’s drinking.

We wanted to understand the range of impacts that men’s heavy drinking has on women and children worldwide. We also examined whether alcohol policies and interventions specifically address these harms.

Our study shows the impact on women and children is profound – but the harms are often understudied and overlooked. Here’s what we found.

Women carry the burden

We already knew that men’s heavy drinking exacerbates physical violence, leads to more intimate partner violence experienced by women, and to more severe injuries.

However, our new research reveals a much wider range of harms that occur to women when men drink heavily. Heavy drinking can include binge drinking and alcohol dependence.

The psychological impact on women can be profound. We found men’s heavy drinking can contribute to controlling behaviour and irrational sexual jealousy towards partners, sexual aggression and coercion, and emotional abuse that includes humiliating or insulting the partner.

Women also reported alcohol-related harms that are not widely studied or understood. These included women experiencing social isolation and economic abuse, where household resources are diverted to the man’s drinking.

Financial problems for the family can have serious flow-on effects. For example, buying alcohol may not leave enough money for essentials such as food and clothing. Money issues can trigger conflicts which then escalate into violence towards women.

Men’s alcohol use can also lead to missed work or unemployment. This can reduce the family income and put more pressure on women to work extra hours, often alongside existing caregiving duties. They may then be at risk of other harmful situations or exploitation, such as being forced into sex work – reported by some women in lower income countries.

Children become more unsafe

The impact of men’s heavy drinking on children has been even less well studied than its effect on women.

Yet our research shows when men drink heavily, their children are more likely to experience neglect, poor mental health, disrupted schooling and family instability – all of which negatively affects their development.

Men who drink heavily often prioritise alcohol over their children’s needs and this can create dysfunctional family environments. Their children are also more likely to become the targets of violence and witness violence against others.

As a consequence of these sometimes unstable and unsafe family environments, children may often feel less emotionally close to fathers who drink heavily. Evidence shows fathers who drink heavily are less involved in parenting.

A gap in policy

Alcohol research and policy, and general policies, seldom target the diverse impacts of men’s drinking on women and children.

Our study highlights an uncomfortable reality: to prevent violence against women and children, we also need to focus on men’s drinking – and the wider social and economic inequalities that contribute to harms to women and children.

We need interventions that explicitly target the social norms around masculinity, including those that encourage and normalise heavy drinking and reward aggression.

But we also need to address other societal factors that can amplify problematic aspects of men’s heavy drinking – including men’s histories of trauma, mental health and social disadvantage – without diminishing their individual accountability.

Addressing the link between alcohol and gender violence

In Australia, the current National Plan to End Gender Based Violence pays minimal attention to alcohol.

However, in 2024, the federal government led a rapid review into preventing gender violence. It drew specific attention to the role of alcohol and called on states and territories to change their liquor regulations. For instance, by restricting alcohol sales, delivery timeframes and advertising.

Our research supports these recommendations. And suggests we need more nuanced alcohol strategies that are tailored to specifically address harms from men’s drinking and consider when, why and how men drink.

Strategies to reduce harmful alcohol use should be integrated with broader gender-based violence prevention. For instance, by combining interventions for men who are in treatment for alcohol problems and use violence, and reducing alcohol consumption at home, for example, by limiting home delivery.

Men’s heavy drinking can be seriously harmful for women and children. This means we can’t address the epidemic of men’s violence in our community without tackling alcohol use head on.

For information and advice about family and intimate partner violence contact 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732). If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, contact 000. Men’s Referral Service (call 1300 766 491) offers advice and counselling to men looking to change their behaviour.

For free and confidential advice about alcohol and other drugs call the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015.

Anne-Marie Laslett receives funding from the Australian Research Council, and the National Health and Medical Research Council. She is affiliated with Alcohol Change Victoria, a cross-sector coalition of leading organisations united in their call for action on alcohol harms.

Cassandra Hopkins receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program and the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Ingrid Wilson is a member of the The Foundation for Alcohol and Research and Education (FARE)’s Advisory Committee, which has been funded by the federal government to review their national framework for action to prevent alcohol-related family violence, developed by FARE in 2015. She receives a nominal fee for this work.

– ref. Women and kids often pay a heavy price when men drink. Our gender violence plan should reflect this – https://theconversation.com/women-and-kids-often-pay-a-heavy-price-when-men-drink-our-gender-violence-plan-should-reflect-this-266372

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eli Levenson-Falk, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Electrical and Computer Engineering, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Quantum mechanics describes the weird behavior of microscopic particles. Using quantum systems to perform computation promises to allow researchers to solve problems in areas from chemistry to cryptography that have so many possible solutions that they are beyond the capabilities of even the most powerful nonquantum computers possible.

Quantum computing depends on researchers developing practical quantum technologies. Superconducting electrical circuits are a promising technology, but not so long ago it was unclear whether they even showed quantum behavior. The 2025 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to three scientists for their work demonstrating that quantum effects persist even in large electrical circuits, which has enabled the development of practical quantum technologies.

I’m a physicist who studies superconducting circuits for quantum computing and other uses. The work in my field stems from the groundbreaking research the Nobel laureates conducted.

Big, cold, quantum

In their 1984 and 1985 work, then-Ph.D. student John Martinis, then-postdoctoral researcher Michel Devoret and UC Berkeley professor John Clarke showed that even large electrical circuits could exhibit quantum behavior. They used a circuit made from niobium and lead. When cooled to a few degrees above absolute zero, these metals become superconductors. A superconductor is a material that carries a current without generating any heat.

Martinis, Devoret and Clarke showed that in a superconductor, the voltages and currents are governed by quantum mechanics. The circuit has quantized – meaning discrete and indivisible – levels of energy, and it can be in superpositions of multiple states.

Any physical system can be described by a state, which tells you everything there is to know about that system. Quantum mechanics shows that a state can have certain quantized values of things that can be measured. An example is energy: A particular system could have energy 1 or energy 2, but nothing in between. At the same time, a quantum system can be in a superposition of more than one state, much like you can add different amounts of red/green/blue to get any color in a pixel of an image.

Importantly, the laureates showed that researchers can describe one of these superconducting circuits as if it’s a single quantum particle. This simple behavior is what makes superconducting circuits so useful as a technology.

Today, superconducting circuits are used to study fundamental quantum physics, to simulate other physical systems and to test protocols for ultraprecise sensing. For instance, the Devoret group recently demonstrated a near-ideal microwave amplifier based on a superconducting circuit. Microwave amplifiers are widely used in communications, radar and scientific instruments.

The Martinis group has used superconducting circuits to emulate a group of electron-like particles. This type of simulation is a key technique in studying fundamental physics.

In my own group, we recently used a superconducting circuit to demonstrate a protocol for measuring a magnetic field more sensitively than standard techniques. Quantum sensors measure physical quantities with extreme precision, from biological activity to gravity anomalies.

But by far the biggest application of superconducting circuits is as a platform for quantum computing.

Superconducting quantum computers

Multiple quantum systems can interact with each other and become entangled, so that they act like a single system. This combination of quantization, superposition and entanglement is what gives quantum computers their power.

In quantum computing technology, researchers use a quantum system – a quantum bit or qubit – that can be in only two states. Qubits need to be coherent. This means that if we put it in a particular state, we want it to stay there and not get randomly scrambled to another state. Qubits need to be controllable. This means that researchers should be able to get a qubit to change state as needed and get it to interact with other qubits. And qubits need to be scalable, meaning that we need to make a lot of them.

Many technologies show promise, such as arrays of atoms in a vacuum, trapped ions, trapped electrons in seminconductors, and photons controlled by optical circuits. But all technologies make trade-offs, sacrificing coherence, controllability or scalability to improve something else.

The simplicity and flexibility of superconducting circuits mean that by changing the design of the circuit, researchers can get almost any qubit behavior we want, and that behavior is easy to predict. This hits the technological sweet spot for quantum computing. More obviously quantum technologies, such as trapped atoms, are so small that they can be hard to control and interact with. Superconducting qubits are big enough to be easy to control, simple enough to be reliable and quantum enough to make the whole thing work.

Today, academic research groups like mine develop new types of superconducting qubits, look for ways to make them more coherent, try to improve our control of them, and develop techniques to make them easier to scale up. Companies and government labs take these academic results along with their own basic research and apply them, doing the difficult engineering to create large-scale quantum processors for practical use.

Superconductor pioneers

Unsurprisingly, the Nobel laureates made and continue to make huge contributions beyond their work in the 1980s. In addition to their academic work, Martinis formerly headed the Google quantum processor effort and now has his own company, while Devoret now assists with the Google effort. Clarke, now retired, also did much of his late-career work on quantum circuits. And they have had major impacts on my career and on so many others.

I had the privilege to do a panel discussion with Devoret on May 22, 2025. He made a memorable claim: Picking an academic adviser can be even more of a big deal than picking a spouse, because “you can’t divorce your adviser.”

It’s often joked that half the researchers in the field of quantum superconductors can trace an academic lineage to Clarke. I can do it twice: My Ph.D. adviser, Irfan Siddiqi, was advised by Devoret, and Clarke was my secondary adviser. And one of my proudest accomplishments as a grad student was not panicking when Martinis snagged me after I gave a talk to grill me on the details.

Today they are honored for their work, and tomorrow I and the other researchers they trained will do our best to continue it.

Eli Levenson-Falk 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.

– ref. Nobel Prize in physics awarded for ultracold electronics research that launched a quantum technology – https://theconversation.com/nobel-prize-in-physics-awarded-for-ultracold-electronics-research-that-launched-a-quantum-technology-266979

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emery Schubert, Professor, Empirical Musicology Laboratory, School of the Arts and Media, UNSW Sydney

If you’ve watched the movie KPop Demon Hunters and see the word “golden”, what happens?

Pause and think about it for a moment.

For those unfamiliar, nothing will come to mind. But if you’ve heard the song of the same name, you may start hearing a fragment of the tune repeating in your head, over and over. You might even mouth or sing the words “we’re goin’ up, up, up”.

Did that happen to you? If so, you just experienced “involuntary musical imagery”, colloquially known as an earworm.

More than 90% of the population experience earworms, and researchers are beginning to understand how they work, why they happen, what they tell us about the brain, and even how to get rid of them – if you want to.

Baby shark, doo doo doo

The humble earworm has taught music psychologists that repeated fragments of music are recycled from the same mental storage location. In Golden, the music accompanying the words “we’re goin’ up, up, up” is repeated several times.

The most earworm-inducing feature is “contiguous” repetition: a fragment of the music that repeats immediately and without delay, like the repeating chorus of a pop song.

Baby Shark, Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, and many, many other songs contain such repetition, and have gone through periods of mass exposure – another important ingredient for earworms because it increases familiarity.

When a song becomes an earworm, the mind repeats the musical phrase, seemingly indefinitely. That’s because the way music recall is organised in the mind is not like a sound file or tape recording that plays from beginning to end.

Rather, the music is efficiently organised into “pockets” based on familiarity and similarity, with some pockets recycled where possible.

Exposure to the music binds the various pockets together through the mental network, not unlike a series of instructions: “start with this introduction, play the verse through twice, then go to the chorus and repeat it four times, go to the next section, back to the verse, repeat that”, and so on.

These “instructions” are a crucial part of the earworm story.

How it’s done, done, done

Several triggers can initiate an earworm: recently having heard some or all of the song, or even just hearing or seeing a relevant phrase (like in this article), or hearing another song that sounds similar.

Habits and environmental triggers can play a role too. For example, if you’re on the bus listening to music every morning, a song fragment might jump into your head one morning even if your playlist is off.

There’s a deeper reason for this. Earworms are more likely to start their musical wriggles when a particular set of brain regions is activated, called the default mode network. The network is associated with daydreaming and mind-wandering, allowing intrusive and repetitive thoughts to surface more easily.

When it comes to song recall, this network is like a naughty, antisocial sibling who picks their favourite part of the song and spends all night in their room listening to it, over and over again.

The parts of the brain involved in focused attention that know how many times the song fragment should be played – and what should come next – are locked out of the default mode network’s room.

When a song has strong repetition, that becomes the network’s focus. The instructions for mentally replaying the song become more akin to “when you reach the end of the fragment, go back and play it again”, with the “correct” number of repetitions and the other parts of the song nowhere to be seen.

The mind is freewheeling, circling around the repeated fragment with no reason to stop.

Mamma mia, here we go again

Some researchers have found people enjoy their earworms, but there are also reports of song fragments being stuck in people’s heads for hours and even days. What if you’ve just had enough of Golden?

To evict an unwanted earworm, you need to disengage your default mode network. One method is to sing the song aloud to other people. The social engagement deters the network from activating, but at the expense of some embarrassment. So … effective, but not always optimal.

Another approach is to replace the song by another, less repetitive one, to keep the looping desires of the default mode network at bay. Happy Birthday and God Save the King are examples of songs that don’t have the kind of repetition that suits earworms.

Software company Atlassian even published a 40-second audio track that’s supposed to squash earworms, based on the principles explained above. With such a tune, there is no contiguous repetition for the earworm to hook on to.

Earworms are providing insights into how music is organised, but they can also bring pleasure by repeating the music you’re enjoying.

If you have a bad relationship with those pesky sound loops, and none of the above tips worked, here’s a final bit of advice. Listen to lots of different music and grow to love your inner earworm.

Emery Schubert receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Why do some songs get stuck in our heads so easily? The science of earworms – https://theconversation.com/why-do-some-songs-get-stuck-in-our-heads-so-easily-the-science-of-earworms-265863

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher K. Woolley, Post-doctoral Researcher in Ecology, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

New Zealand’s land animals are not well protected when land is developed for new uses. Recent and proposed policy changes risk putting many species at further risk, and native lizards are particularly vulnerable.

New Zealand has more than 120 species of native lizards in two families: skinks and geckos.

As a group, lizards are widespread across the country and many occur in cities. While some species have strong habitat preferences, others live in a wide range of habitats, including non-native and weedy vegetation.

These habitat characteristics mean lizards are often present in places destined to be cleared, degraded or disturbed for development.

All but four lizard species are threatened or at risk. The pressures imposed by human land uses are a serious threat to them.

Two primary statutes determine how lizards are managed during land-use activities. The Wildlife Act 1953 provides protection from hunting and killing and the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) requires the sustainable management of resources. However, both have significant shortcomings in policy and implementation when it comes to preventing the loss of native lizards, and both are under review.

Policy issues

Our recent research explores some of the issues affecting native lizards during changing land use.

One of the problems with having different laws at play is that authorisation of activities and monitoring of compliance are split between several agencies.

The Department of Conservation (DOC) is in charge of the Wildlife Act and the Ministry for the Environment and various local authorities deal with applications under the RMA.

This means no one agency has complete regulatory oversight. While DOC has the authority to prosecute anyone who kills or disturbs lizards while clearing land for development, this almost never happens because there is rarely enough evidence or public interest.

Developers are far more aware of the need to gain resource consent from councils who regulate land use than a Wildlife Act authority from DOC. In many cases, DOC will not even be aware lizard habitat is being cleared.

Under the RMA, councils are required to protect significant areas of indigenous vegetation and habitat for indigenous fauna. In most cases, this is done by designating “significant natural/ecological areas” (SNAs). The criteria used to assess these areas vary among regional policies, but typically include values of representativeness, diversity, rarity and size of the area.

Because we lack knowledge of where lizards exist, these protected areas only cover a fraction of lizard habitat. This is especially true where lizards are present at sites of otherwise low ecological value (for example, weedy non-native vegetation or rank grass).

Outside of SNAs, rules often allow activities such as vegetation clearance and earthworks with few or no conditions. No ecological assessments are required. The fate of any lizards present therefore rests on developers and contract ecologists being aware and proactive about the need to manage them.

As a result, there is little consideration given to lizards during most land-use activities.

Issues in practice

Even when timely consideration is given to lizards and plans are made for their management, we lack evidence that the tools commonly used to mitigate impacts actually work.

Over the past 15 years, the capture and relocation of lizards away from the site of development (mitigation translocation) has become common practice. But international evidence shows translocations of lizards and other reptiles have high rates of failure.

Measuring the population outcome of a lizard translocation is difficult. Because lizards are commonly released at sites where other lizards may already be present, it is usually impossible to know whether the translocated individuals survive and breed at the new site.

Likewise, there is little evidence that attempts to improve the habitat at release sites by adding rockpiles or plantings, or even predator control, help to increase the population.

The breadth of these problems and the involvement of multiple actors and agencies makes protection of lizards and other wildlife during land-use changes challenging.

Both the Wildlife Act and the RMA are currently under review. The proposed reform of the Wildlife Act aims to clarify protection for native wildlife and to add better tools to address current and future threats to species. We argue any new law must ensure native species receive protection regardless of land ownership and the location of habitat.

This could be achieved through stronger monitoring and compliance auditing by DOC, requiring better evidence for the success of mitigation and compensation practices, and better integration with the RMA and resource consenting practices.

Underpinning all of this is the need for more information about where lizards live, so they don’t disappear without us even noticing.

Christopher K. Woolley receives funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment’s Endeavour Fund. He is affiliated with the Society for Research of Amphibians and Reptiles.

Jono Sylvester practices as a lawyer in resource management and works for Corcoran French. He advises a range of clients including in local government, private clients and non-governmental organisations. His contributions to this article were done in his personal capacity.

Nicola Nelson receives funding from Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment’s Endeavour Fund. She is affiliated with the Society for Research of Amphibians and Reptiles.

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

– ref. NZ’s native lizards are at risk from land development – future policy must ensure better protection – https://theconversation.com/nzs-native-lizards-are-at-risk-from-land-development-future-policy-must-ensure-better-protection-264765

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Reihana Mohideen, Principal Advisor, Just Energy Transition and Health, Nossal Institute for Global Health, The University of Melbourne

For the first time, renewables have toppled coal as the world’s leading source of electricity, in keeping with International Energy Agency projections for this historic shift.

But progress is uneven. The shift away from fossil fuels has slowed in the United States and the European Union – but accelerated sharply in developing nations.

China attracts headlines for the sheer scale of its shift. But many smaller nations are now taking up clean energy, electric vehicles and battery storage at remarkable speed, driven by governments, businesses and individuals.

Importantly, these moves often aren’t about climate change. Reasons range from cutting dependence on expensive fossil fuels and international market volatility to reducing reliance on unreliable power grids to finding ways to boost livelihoods.

Pakistan’s enormous solar boom is partly a response to spiking power prices and grid unreliability. Meanwhile Pacific nations see clean energy as a way to slash the crippling cost of importing diesel and expand electricity access.

My research has given me insight into the paths four countries in South Asia have taken to seize the benefits of clean technology, each shaped by unique pressures and opportunities. All are moving rapidly, blending necessity with ambition. Their stories show the clean energy path isn’t one-size-fits-all.

Bhutan: from hydropower giant to diversified energy

The landlocked Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has long relied on hydroelectricity. But the country faces a persistent challenge: seasonal variability.

Most of Bhutan’s plants are run-of-the-river, meaning they don’t have large dams. As a result, power generation drops sharply during dry winter months when river flows are low, particularly between January and April.

At the same time, rapid industrialisation has driven up demand for power, outstripping winter capacity. Climate change is expected to worsen this variability.

During these months, Bhutan shifts from its role as clean-energy exporter to an importer, buying electricity from India. But imports aren’t a long-term solution.

To secure reliable supply year-round, Bhutan’s government is diversifying energy sources. To that end, up to 300 megawatts of solar is expected to be installed, potentially as soon as next year. Bhutan’s first utility-scale solar farm is under construction.

Over time, Bhutan will blend hydro with solar, wind and biomass to create a more balanced clean energy mix.

Nepal: electric cars in Kathmandu

Nepal has long imported all its petrol from India. But when India launched an unofficial blockade in 2015, vital supplies and fuel tankers stopped coming. Fuel prices surged. People queued for days at petrol stations, while black-market prices soared and public transport collapsed. Households, already enduring many hours of daily blackouts, faced even worse conditions.

The crisis exposed Nepal’s deep vulnerability. The mountainous nation makes its own electricity, largely through hydropower. But it had to import petrol.

In 2018, authorities launched an ambitious program to shift to electric vehicles and free the nation from dependence on imports. Electric vehicles would charge on domestic hydropower and reduce Kathmandu’s well-known air pollution. The plan called for electric vehicles to reach 90% share of new commuter vehicle sales (including popular two-wheelers) by 2030.

This year, the electric vehicle share for new four-wheel vehicles reached 76%, jumping rapidly in just the past year. Exemptions and incentives have supported this growth. As electric vehicles surge, new charging station and maintenance businesses have emerged.

It’s not all smooth sailing. A protest movement recently overthrew Nepal’s government, creating uncertainty. Analysts warn stable government policy and infrastructure investment will be essential.

Sri Lanka: innovation emerging from crisis

Between 2022 and 2023, a serious economic crisis hit Sri Lanka. Citizens reeled from severe energy shocks, such as fuel shortages, 12-hour blackouts and punishing electricity price hikes of over 140%. Half a million people were disconnected from the grid as they were unable to pay.

The crisis showed how fragile the island nation’s energy system was. Authorities looked for better options. Hydroelectricity has long been a mainstay, but solar and wind are growing rapidly.

Sri Lanka runs on about 50% renewables, with hydro the largest contributor by far. By 2030, the goal is to reach 70% renewable energy.

While renewables offer cheap power, they have to be coupled with energy storage and new systems to integrate them into the grid.

In response, universities, international partners and companies have worked to integrate renewable energy in the grid, developing artificial intelligence-based systems to improve reliability and supply to consumers. For instance, they can reduce voltage fluctuations associated with high uptake of rooftop solar. Importantly, some of these projects have a gender focus, prioritising women-led small enterprises and training for women engineers.

The crisis may prove a turning point by exposing vulnerabilities and pushing Sri Lanka to adopt new energy solutions.

Maldives: bringing solar to diesel-dependent islands

Few countries are more vulnerable to fossil fuel dependence than the Maldives. Spread across 1,000 islands, the nation relies on imported diesel for power generation, with high transport costs and exposure to oil price swings.

In 2014, Maldivian authorities launched the Preparing Outer Islands for Sustainable Energy Development project as part of a plan to reach net-zero by 2030. The project focuses on around 160 poorer islands further from the capital, progressively replacing a reliance on diesel generators with solar arrays, battery storage and upgraded power grids.

Women’s economic empowerment is a priority, as women-led enterprises run solar systems and utilities train female operations officers. The Maldives government released a 2030 roadmap, which has a welcome focus on the “just energy transition” – ensuring communities benefit equitably.

For the Maldives, renewables are more than an environmental choice — they are a lifeline for economic survival and resilience.

Lessons from the margins

While these energy transitions rarely make global headlines, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives show how smaller economies are finding their own pathways to cleaner, more resilient energy.

Their reasons to act stem from different crises, from blockades to economic upheaval. But each nation is working to turn challenge into opportunity.

Reihana Mohideen has previously consulted for the POISED project in the Maldives.

– ref. Renewables have now passed coal globally – and growth is fastest in countries like Bhutan and Nepal – https://theconversation.com/renewables-have-now-passed-coal-globally-and-growth-is-fastest-in-countries-like-bhutan-and-nepal-263047

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marg Rogers, Senior Lecturer, Early Childhood Education; Post Doctoral Fellow, Manna Institute, University of New England

Imagine living in a town where three or more families are competing for a single early learning place. This is the reality for many families in regional, rural and remote Australia. Experts call these areas “childcare deserts”.

A 2024 study found about 24% of Australians live in a childcare desert. This rises to 43% of those in regional areas and more than 80% in remote areas.

When we talk about access to early education, we often – understandably – focus on its beneficial impact on children’s development. But what about the impact on families with young children? And, in particular, parents’ health?

In our new research, we found a lack of access to early education can also touch many parts of family health and wellbeing.

Our research

Our research uses data from a previous study designed by parent advocacy group, The Parenthood.

In 2022 and 2023, The Parenthood spoke to 155 parents in childcare deserts to understand their experiences. Participants came from all around the country, with the majority from New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.

In our study, we re-analysed this data, with a focus on the World Health Organization’s “determinants of health”. These are different factors that shape our health – and include where we live, gender, our income and education level, and our relationships with friends and family.

We used The Parenthood’s data as it was a rich source of parents’ stories. And we used the determinants of health as a comprehensive way to understand families’ health and wellbeing.

Income and social status

As the WHO explains, higher income and social status are linked to better health outcomes.

In our study, parents described how their income and sense of self were impacted when they struggled to pay early education fees, or find work to suit the available early education days.

Some had to “choose between paying the car repayments, rent, food or childcare” if they worked in low paying jobs. Others talked of the challenges of finding “any work based on our limited days in care”, meaning they couldn’t progress in their careers.

Many spoke of the grief of giving up careers they had spent time and money training for, knowing the community needed their essential work skills. This affected their identity, with one stating they felt “subjugated and valueless”.

Many parents spoke of chronic stress of not being able to access an early learning place. As one parent noted:

This has had a direct and long-lasting impact on my work, our family budget and […] my mental health.

Another explained:

One daycare [said] I was 170th on their list […] This added pressure [after] my rough postpartum ride.

Education

As the WHO notes, low education levels are linked with poor health, more stress and lower self-confidence.

Our study found education for both parents and children were affected if they didn’t have access to early education.

Parents said they couldn’t attend “additional days” or “mandatory training” at work. Others said trying to study and completing large practical placement hours were “enormously challenging” or said studying was impossible. One parent reported even getting an hour’s break from caring to attend driving lessons was difficult.

Others spoke about how a lack of access to early education – and interacting with educators and other children – had an impact on their children’s development of critical skills such as speech. This also impacted their transition to school.

Social support networks

Greater support from families, friends and communities is also linked to better health outcomes. But if parents had to be home with children all the time, our study showed they missed out on the social and psychological benefits of work.

If they did manage to get back to work even for a day, they noted it provided positives, such as “space, clarity, purpose and, maybe most importantly, adult social interaction”.

Another acknowledged:

To get back into the workforce would be good for my social and emotional wellbeing.

Gender gaps

We know health can be impacted by gender issues, such as women’s financial dependence on men and power imbalances in relationships.

The gendered impact of childcare deserts was also obvious in the study – as many women were the primary carers. They talked about being left at home with a youngest child while the older (less needy) child accompanied their father on the farm. One woman explained:

I had to cease my career and become the primary carer. [That] affected me […] personally and professionally.

The differences in income between women and men were stark. As one woman noted:

My husband [is] the main financial provider for our home.

Another shared:

[I’m] more dependent on my partner than I would like.

What now?

Our study shows how the health of parents and children is at risk without access to early learning. In childcare deserts, families miss out on many supports.

As governments seek to expand access to services, these gaps in quality early education should be recognised and addressed.

As one parent noted, a lack of access to early education “costs” low-income families, women and children’s learning and development. “It perpetuates privilege” – privilege associated with where you live, the type and hours of the work you do and your gender.

The authors acknowledge the work of Maddy Butler for collecting the data, and co-investigator, Navjot Bhullar from the University of Canberra.

Marg Rogers receives funding from the Commonwealth Government for a Postdoctoral Fellowship with the Manna Institute.

Michelle Gossner receives funding from the Australian Rotary Health/Rotary District 9640 PhD Scholarship.

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

– ref. ‘I was 170th on their list’. What are the health impacts for families who can’t access daycare? – https://theconversation.com/i-was-170th-on-their-list-what-are-the-health-impacts-for-families-who-cant-access-daycare-266673

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julia Cook, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Newcastle

Achieving the so-called “Australian dream” of home ownership is increasingly difficult for members of younger generations. Census data shows that rates of home ownership have fallen from 64% in 1971 to 50% in 2021 among 30–34-year-olds, and from 50% to 36% for 25–29-year-olds.

The reasons for this have been well canvassed in this housing series. This article focuses on some of the more unorthodox arrangements I have come across in my years spent researching young adults’ pathways into home ownership.

This article is part of The Conversation’s series on buying a first home.

We’ve asked experts to unpack some of the biggest topics for first-home buyers to consider – from working out what’s affordable and beginning the search, to knowing your rights when inspecting a property and making an offer.

Buying a property as a ‘tenant in common’

Due to the high cost of housing relative to incomes, those in dual-income households are comparatively more likely to enter home ownership.

Most of my research participants over the years have purchased with a spouse or significant other as joint tenants. This means they hold an equal share of the equity in the property, and the property will immediately pass to the other if one person dies.

However, a minority of participants have purchased with someone other than a spouse, and have done so as “tenants in common”. This means they can own distinct and potentially unequal shares of the property, and there is no right of survivorship.

Data on the prevalence of these arrangements is limited. However, a recent industry survey found that 5.7% of their respondents had purchased property with a sibling, 4% had purchased with a friend, and another 2.1% had purchased with an extended family member.

When I first spoke to Sophia, aged 32, she explained she had purchased an investment property with her twin sister at the age of 25. At that time, both sisters were single, and Sophia said:

We trust each other, so we would only buy with each other, you know.

When I spoke to Sophia initially in 2022 she was happy with this arrangement. However, by 2024, her circumstances had changed. Both Sophia and her sister were in relationships, and Sophia had just begun maternity leave.

Sophia’s sister and her partner wanted to move into their shared property and pay rent to Sophia for the portion she owned. Sophia was concerned about this arrangement because she did not feel comfortable enforcing periodic rent increases on her sister. She planned to rely on the rental income to extend her maternity leave.

While buying with a sibling or friend may provide a means of getting your foot on the property ladder, it can be nevertheless accompanied by some well-documented challenges.

Another way in: rentvesting

The strategy of buying an investment property while living in a rental property (termed “rentvesting”) has come up frequently in my research.

Indeed, analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics data in 2024 found that rentvestors accounted for 6.85% of the first home buyer market.

When I spoke to Madeline, aged 33 and living in Sydney, she could not afford to buy an apartment in her local area. After consulting with her mortgage broker, she decided to instead buy a property in Western Australia as an investment.

While Madeline was very positive about this arrangement, it is important to note she was living in a property owned by her partner, to whom she paid rent. In this way, she was buffered from some of the challenges faced by those living in the private rental sector, such as frequent rent rises or one-year leases.

Alternative ways to save a deposit

Living rent-free in the family home is a well-established means of accelerating the rate of saving for a deposit. However, this option is not available to everyone.

Genevieve, aged 29, had migrated from France and did not have the option of living with family while saving for a deposit. So she decided to start house sitting. She organised her house-sitting engagements through an app and, over time, developed a network of home owners who trusted her to care for their pets and houses while they travelled.

After just over two years of house sitting, Genevieve was able to purchase an apartment. However, she described negotiating her house-sitting arrangements as “basically a part-time job”, and reflected on the fact she had no fixed address during this time and was “basically homeless”, highlighting the underlying precarity of her living situation.

Throughout my time researching young adults’ pathways into home ownership I have come across a range of unusual or unorthodox arrangements. Some other examples include living in tiny homes or alternative dwellings such as shipping containers, or asking parents to “invest” in their homes (although these arrangements are rarely formalised, leaving open the question of when any gains might be realised).

These home ownership strategies all share two things in common: their viability is highly contingent on individual circumstances, and those who engage in them successfully have a relatively high degree of privilege and social support.

While these strategies are successful for some, they are not necessarily possible or appropriate for most aspiring first home owners. This highlights the need to resist promoting individual solutions to a challenge that is structural in nature, and to continue to advocate for a fairer and more accessible housing system.

Editor’s note: All names used in this article are pseudonyms to protect research participant privacy.

Disclaimer: This article provides general information only and does not take into account your personal objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is not intended as financial advice. All investments carry risk.

Julia Cook receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a member of the Australian Sociological Association (TASA) and International Sociological Association (ISA).

– ref. Buying with a sibling or rentvesting: some unorthodox approaches to buying a first home – https://theconversation.com/buying-with-a-sibling-or-rentvesting-some-unorthodox-approaches-to-buying-a-first-home-265571

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ruari Elkington, Senior Lecturer in Creative Industries & Chief Investigator at QUT Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC), Queensland University of Technology

Famed Australian director Bruce Beresford loves opera. If you weren’t aware of this before watching his new film, The Travellers, you most likely will be by the time the credits roll.

It would be reductive to suggest this movie is one big ad for opera’s ability to unite rural Australia. Yet, the way in which Beresford folds this art form into The Travellers across 97 minutes is at once beguiling, heartfelt and at times quite on the nose.

Despite this occasional clunkiness, Beresford has written and directed a film sure to please the broad swathe of Australian cinemagoers who know and care for popular Australian actor Bryan Brown’s big screen career.

The local film landscape

Australians are, unsurprisingly, a natural audience for Australian feature films. We make quite a few, by global standards, and these films continue to find receptive audiences both here and overseas.

Our domestic box office for locally produced films remains stubbornly low compared to other
nations. Nonetheless, there seems to be a strong desire for recognisably Australian screen stories, particularly on mobile and TV screens.

It’s easy to find Australians who say they enjoy local film. But getting audiences to show up during the crucial first week of a film’s theatrical release is hard.

The first week in the box office sets up a film’s success in the screen space; session times and word of mouth allow a film to actually stay in cinemas and be found by audiences. As one industry adage goes: like a parachute, if your film doesn’t open, it’s death.

The gap between how much audiences say they want to support local film, and how much actually do, can partly be linked to a struggle to understand what actually constitutes “Australian” film.

Let’s take the body horror Together, released in July, as an example. The degree to which this film was understood as an Australian feature varied greatly.

The film was shot in Melbourne, but set in Washington, United States. And while it was written and directed by Australian filmmaker Michael Shanks, it starred American actors Dave Franco and Alison Brie. It is both very Australian, and yet almost unrecognisable as an Australian film.

An ode to opera

The Travellers, on the other hand, is very recognisably Australian, from the establishing shot of Perth, to the next shot of the iconic Qantas 737 touching down to return protagonist Stephen Seary (Luke Bracey) to his troubled West Australian family. Beresford has compellingly and unashamedly anchored his story in an Australia many of us recognise.

Alongside his substantial film credits (including Driving Miss Daisy, Mao’s Last Dancer and Ladies in Black), Beresford is also an accomplished opera director.

In The Travellers, which he both writes and directs, he revels in telling the tale of acclaimed stage designer Stephen Seary, who returns to his regional hometown to attend to his dying mother, Enid (Christine Jeffery), and his recalcitrant, curmudgeonly father, Fred (Bryan Brown).

Just as ballet was displayed so beautifully in Mao’s Last Dancer (2009) as vibrant, contemporary and accessible, Beresford’s portrayal of opera (albeit not the Australian staging of opera) can’t be faulted in its love for the form.

The Travellers feels very much of a piece with Australian writer/director Bill Bennett’s successful 2024 theatrical release The Way, My Way, a semi-autobiographical film that chronicles Bennett’s efforts to complete the Camino de Santiago trail in Spain.

Tonally, both films share what might be described as a “heightened naturalism”. In The Travellers, this works well in scenes where Brown plays the well-recognised archetype of an older, grumpy, blokey dad.

But this tone is less effective in other scenes, such as when a minor character has to convincingly throw a punch at Stephen – or when we have to suspend disbelief as a live stream of Verdi’s La Traviatta holds an outback pub transfixed.

In one of the film’s several moments of opera boosterism, two industry folk gently rib each other on the state of Australian opera, which is “still staging the same six operas every year”. This is followed by a telling hypothetical: “what if they showed the same six films in cinemas every year?”

There won’t be five other titles much like The Travellers in Australian cinemas this year, or any other year. Its window to be seen is brief, not unlike the Verdi arias Beresford so carefully captures in the film.

But those who do see it will be rewarded with a gently unfurling yarn that delivers on the promise of Beresford’s and Brown’s brand of prestige Australian drama.

The Travellers is in cinemas from today.

Ruari Elkington receives funding from the Queensland government’s Department of Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation (DETSI), Screen Queensland, The Embassy of France in Australia, and the Cinema Association Australasia.

– ref. Bruce Beresford’s The Travellers blends opera and the outback in a heartfelt story about homecoming – https://theconversation.com/bruce-beresfords-the-travellers-blends-opera-and-the-outback-in-a-heartfelt-story-about-homecoming-266586

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

Social cohesion in Australia has been under serious pressure in the last few years. The deadly October 7 attacks on Israel two years ago and the ensuing war in Gaza have pulled at the fabric of Australian society.

Added to these pressures are increasing anti-immigration rhetoric, including anti-immigration protest marches and Liberal rebel Andrew Hastie saying he felt Australians were becoming “strangers” in their own country because of immigration.

Joining the podcast this week is the University of Technology Sydney’s Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Andrew Jakubowicz. Jakubowicz is an expert on multiculturalism, who’s been involved in many documentaries, studies and reports – and who describes multiculturalism in Australia today as “fragile, but under repair”.

Jakubowicz says while we’ve dealt with multiculturalism issues as a nation for generations, the recent Middle East conflict has raised “the tideline of hate speech”.

We’ve always had issues around questions of intergroup relations. And I go back long enough to be able to remember the Indo-Chinese, the first arrival of the Muslims, the struggles which broke out in Australia when the Yugoslav Federation broke up.

[…] Multiculturalism, when it’s worked best, recognises those tensions and then tries to resolve them through an equitable incorporation of people into the life of the community. And most of the time that works. We’ve not really been challenged in quite the way we are being challenged at the moment by what’s occurring in the Middle East […] It’s really hard, much harder than anything we’ve had to deal with before.

The issues in the Middle East […] affect two broad communities very intensely. They affect everyone else, not so much […] But the effect of that conflict is to generally raise […] the tideline of hate speech in the society. And that’s very, very difficult to manage.

On where multiculturalism is today, Jakubowicz says there’s been a breakdown in trust within some communities.

I think the level of tension and particularly between some communities is very much higher than it’s been. But we’ve already seen issues around the sort of levels of multicultural trust during COVID. There were many communities who felt very badly done by during the COVID pandemic lockdowns, which already eroded the trust.

[…] Multicultural societies, in fact, all societies, more or less, or democratic ones, work on the basis of how much trust there is between people […] The higher the level of trust, the more […] ‘social capital’ there is that you can build on.

Jakubowicz says some of the federal government’s current approach – such as setting up a ministry of multicultural affairs under Anne Aly, and a separate office of social cohesion under a different minister, Tony Burke – was “bizarre” and created “a structure for dynamic inertia”.

Jakubowicz also shares his thoughts on the two reports given to the government by its envoys to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia.

They’re very different documents in the way they’re structured and they think about the world […] I think what they do extremely well is they capture the sense of pain and astonishment and shock and fear which exists in both the Jewish and Muslim communities at the moment.

[…] What I find the most interesting is that neither of them really […] recognise the pain of others in the society. They look well at the pain of those for whom they’re concerned, but they don’t recognise that we live in a society in which other people feel pain for other reasons. And that developing collaborations between different communities depends initially at least on both sides recognising and respecting the sort of pain that the others have.

And if you don’t do that, you end up with something which is far too inward looking and which fails to adequately recognise that we have to have a society in which people collaborate – not in which they spend their time screaming at each other.

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Andrew Jakubowicz on repairing our ‘fragile’ multicultural nation – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-andrew-jakubowicz-on-repairing-our-fragile-multicultural-nation-266990

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Partlett, Associate Professor of Public Law, The University of Melbourne

The commissioner of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), Paul Brereton, is once again facing criticism for his handling of a potential conflict of interest.

On Tuesday in a Senate estimates hearing, NACC Chief Executive Philip Reed faced difficult questions about why the NACC commissioner did not fully disclose to parliament the extent of his ongoing relationship with the inspector-general of the Australian Defence Force (ADF).

This disclosure failure is far more than a small detail. It comes after a 2024 finding by the NACC inspector that Brereton engaged in “officer misconduct” in relation to a conflict of interest concerning the Robodebt scandal.

This again brings into question the commissioner’s ability to effectively manage conflicts of interest and avoid the perception of bias. In particular, it shows the defensive strategy Brereton and his team have taken to responding to these types of questions is backfiring.

To repair trust in his leadership and ensure the effectiveness of the NACC, Brereton must change course and be far more transparent and proactive.

Off to a bad start

In 2023, the Robodebt Royal Commission referred six officials involved in the scandal to the NACC for determinations of whether they engaged in “corrupt conduct”.

Prior to making this determination, Brereton publicly declared a conflict of interest on these referrals and stated he would remove himself from the decision-making process.

In June 2024, the NACC announced it would not be investigating the six officials.

Read more:
The National Anti-Corruption Commission turns 2 – has it restored integrity to federal government?

After receiving hundreds of complaints about this decision, the inspector of the NACC – the watchdog of the watchdog – published a report finding the commissioner failed to fully remove himself from the decision-making process.

This failure, the report concluded, was “officer misconduct” because it could have led a reasonable person to think the decision not to investigate was biased.

From bad to worse

This year, members of parliament began to raise a new potential concern about the commissioner: the nature of his ongoing relationship with the ADF.

The precise details of this relationship are also important to public perception because of the large number of defence-related matters the NACC must consider.

In response to a range of formal questions from parliament, Brereton disclosed that he remained part of the ADF Reserve but had formally resigned his post at the Inspector General for the ADF.

In September, however, we learned this didn’t fully capture the nature of his continuing relationship with the ADF.

In particular, media reporting found a much closer relationship, including that the commissioner was continuing to provide “critical” capability to the Inspector General in an informal capacity.

This ongoing relationship raises concerns not just because of the nature of the NACC’s work. It also raises the possibility the commissioner failed to reveal the whole truth to parliament.

The watchdog’s trust problem

More broadly, these matters raise concerns the commissioner doesn’t understand how to effectively build public trust in his leadership.

The NACC was established in 2022 to restore public trust in the exercise of public power. This trust is crucial to the ongoing health of Australian democracy.

To perform its important duties, the NACC commissioner must be broadly trusted.

On this issue, Brereton has some making up to do.

This is not just because of the Robodebt case. It’s also because concerns about his leadership are eroding overall trust in the NACC.

The inspector of the NACC, Gail Furness, testified to Senate estimates on Tuesday. She said she didn’t expect the sheer volume of complaints that she has received over the past two years. These included complaints about slow processing times.

She also said the number of “quite complex matters” was “increasing”. This included, Furness said, 55 complaints she had recently received concerning the commissioner’s “ongoing engagement” with defence.

Defend and deflect

To date, the commissioner and his team have adopted a defensive strategy to this trust problem. Their strategy includes downplaying or minimising these concerns.

In 2024, the NACC even included on its website a page characterising some concerns as “misinformation”.

More recently, in response to the undisclosed relationship with the inspector general, Brereton simply stated:

any perceived or actual conflict of interest that arises is managed appropriately.

On Tuesday in Senate estimates, NACC CEO Philip Reed said:

if public confidence is being impacted, it’s not our work […] it’s actually the amount of negative material that emerges about us that we have virtually no means of addressing.

Building trust

The perceptions of bias at the root of this trust problem cannot be “managed appropriately”, downplayed or classified as misinformation. To really build trust, the NACC and its leadership team must fundamentally change course.

First, they must openly and fully acknowledge to the public anything that involves even a minor potential for a conflict of interest. A good start would be a public announcement that Brereton is severing all ties to the ADF.

Second, they must make it clear to the public how the commissioner is distancing himself from matters involving conflicts of interest. This must include far more details about how Brereton (or anyone else in the NACC leadership team) is being fully excluded from the decision-making process when a conflict of interest is declared.

It’s not too late for the NACC and its leadership team to regain public trust and perform the role they are paid to do: safeguard trust in public power.

The stakes are high. We need only look to the United States today to see the terrible consequences of low levels of trust in government.

Hopefully Brereton and his team will take this opportunity to change course.

William Partlett is the Stephen Charles Fellow at the Centre for Public Integrity.

– ref. Australia’s anti-corruption commissioner has a trust problem. He needs to change course to fix it – https://theconversation.com/australias-anti-corruption-commissioner-has-a-trust-problem-he-needs-to-change-course-to-fix-it-266991

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlyn Forster, Associate Lecturer, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

As the weather starts to warm in Australia, you might notice the pleasant flutter of butterflies in your garden during the day. And perhaps if you’ve left a porch light on during the night, you will see a flurry of moths have gathered around it.

To an untrained eye, these fluttering insects can seem similar. And indeed, both are from the order of insects called Lepidoptera, which roughly translates to “scaly wings”. That’s because the wings of butterflies and moths are covered in microscopic scales. These scales are important for providing these insects with their beautiful colours, and they’re the cause of the “dust” that often comes off moths when handled or found in the back of a pantry.

But there are some key differences between these two kinds of creatures. So what makes a moth a moth and a butterfly a butterfly?

What is a moth?

When we think about moths, we’re often thinking about little, brown, (definitely not) boring insects in our pantries, and flying around our porch lights. However, there is so much variation in this group of insects, given there are about 22,000 species in Australia.

Moths generally have straight antennae. But if they’re males, their antennae are often fluffy and feather-like. These fluffy antennae are used to help them find mates from large distances.

Most moths are nocturnal, preferring to fly at night. And many flowers are adapted to be pollinated by night-flying insects such as moths. Dragonfruit, for example, benefit from pollination by moths and the flowers bloom at night.

Because they fly at night, moths can’t use the same visual cues, such as sunlight, that butterflies use to navigate. Instead, they use a range of non-visual cues to know where they are in the dark. For example, Australian bogong moths, which can travel up to 1,000 kilometres during their migrations, are known to use magnetic fields and stars to navigate.

Many moths are excellent at camouflage. Historically, there have been stories surrounding how peppered moths became darker due to the industrial revolution, but there are much more impressive moths! For example, moths from the genus Eudocima manage to look like a curled leaf with completely flat wings. Bee hawk-moths can trick us into thinking they’re bees.

Due to the significant amount of time they spend camouflaging and travelling at night, there’s less value to moths to be extremely colourful. So many moth species are duller in colour than their flamboyant cousins, the butterflies.

They’re also less hungry. Generally speaking, lepidopterans have a long coiled mouthpart to help them feed on nectar (and sometimes other things, including corpses).

However, many moths spend so much time feeding as caterpillars, that as adult moths they don’t have mouthparts. They live short adult lives that include mating and starving to death.

What is a butterfly?

Butterflies are the charismatic, popular members of the insect world, and with good reason. They come in a range of colours, and can be large and relatively easy to see. However, there are a lot less butterflies in Australia compared to moths, approximately 450 species.

So what makes a butterfly a butterfly?

The main factor that determines a butterfly is its clubbed antennae. Unlike those of moths, butterfly antennae consist of a long thread with a bead at the end. However, this can be pretty hard to see while they are fluttering around!

Butterflies are also day flying. This drastically changes how they look and behave in comparison to moths. Butterflies come in a range of bright and beautiful colours because they can be seen during the day.

Some butterflies are colourful simply to attract mates. Some, such as monarch butterflies, have aposematic displays, which aim to warn off predators by advertising the butterfly’s potential to be poisonous. Others, such as European swallowtails use deimatic displays, aimed to startle predators by imitating something scary like a face.

There are also examples of caterpillars that mimic bird poo, but that’s less of a defining factor.

There are always exceptions to the rules

We can’t talk about moths without discussing some of the species that don’t necessarily follow all the rules. There are many brightly coloured moths, including the Madagascan sunset moth and the heliotrope moth.

To make things more confusing there are also groups of moths that have hardly any scales on their wings, including clearwing moths.

Not all moths fly around at night, either. Tiger moths, for example, are frequently seen flying during the daytime, and are brightly coloured.

So sometimes, it can be really hard to determine where the line is between a moth and a butterfly.

How can we help moths and butterflies?

Our fluttering insects face many threats, including pesticide use, climate change and habitat loss. Planting a range of flowers in your garden can help provide food and habitat for moths and butterflies.

You can also get involved in citizen science, by uploading sightings of insects you see on apps like iNaturalist. If you’re interested in learning more about the grand travel of bogong moths, take photos of ones you see and upload them to Bogong Watch.

Caitlyn Forster previously received funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with Invertebrates Australia.

– ref. What’s the difference between moths and butterflies? Look at their antennae – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-difference-between-moths-and-butterflies-look-at-their-antennae-266368

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Old, Associate Professor in Biology, Zoology and Animal Science, Western Sydney University

Wombat noses and whiskers don’t just make them adorable. Both are unique sensory organs essential for navigation, foraging and communication. They’re crucial to wombat survival in complex environments. The two different types of wombats are even named and classified according to their noses and whiskers.

Our recent research on wombat whiskers and noses reveals how these unique structures help wombats navigate underground and thrive in their habitats. Well-loved wombats are still full of surprises.

Understanding why wildlife species have specific anatomical features and how they use them helps scientists understand more about their place and importance in the environment. It ultimately helps us conserve these incredible species.

The need for a nose

Wombats are found in every part of Australia, except the Northern Territory.

Like many other marsupials, female wombats have pouches. The joey lives in the pouch for several months, permanently attached to the teat and becomes independent between 18 months and two years of age. Wombats live for around 20 years but have been known to survive more than 30 in captivity, such as elderly Wain, who is about 36 years old and lives in a zoo in Japan.

A wombat’s snout, or nose, is one of its most important and recognisable features. Wombats are classified and named based on the presence or absence of a rhinarium, the hairless area around the nostrils. The two hairy-nosed wombat species lack a rhinarium, while bare-nosed wombats have one.

In other animal species, the rhinarium is important for sensing touch and temperature, and for chemical detection. Dog rhinaria are thought to be used for heat detection, while the wet rhinaria of cows are associated with many glands thought to support olfaction (detecting smells and scents).

Shaping our environment

Wombats are ecosystem engineers – animals that significantly shape their environment. Within their range, wombats have multiple burrows they can share. Their digging turns over the soil, providing aeration and drainage, and supporting plant growth. Their burrows also provide shelter for other species, such as possums and birds.

paraphrased here for ease of reading and to avoid repetition, OK Mammals use whiskers – specialised hairs associated with sensory receptors – to help navigate. Whiskers are particularly important in nocturnal animals and those that dig and live in burrows, such as wombats. Receptors convert whiskers’ movement into signals sent to the brain, which allow the animal to obtain important information from their environment, such as where they are in the burrow.

paraphrased here for ease of reading and to avoid repetition, OK Wombats also use whiskers, along with scent, to help find grass, their favourite food.

Whiskers to navigate

Hairy-nosed wombats have a broader snout compared to bare-nosed wombats, which may increase the available space for whiskers.

When we examined and compared the whiskers on southern hairy-nosed wombats with bare-nosed wombats we found southern hairy-nosed wombats had longer and thicker whiskers. There were also significantly more whiskers on the muzzle and above the eyes compared to bare-nosed wombats.

We think this might be because hairy-nosed wombats excavate larger and more complex warrens than bare-nosed wombats. They may also rely more on their whiskers to navigate or when interacting with other wombats in shared burrows.

A strong sense of smell

Like many other marsupials, wombats have a large olfactory bulb, a part of the brain associated with smelling. The size of an olfactory bulb corresponds to an animal’s ability to detect and process smells, providing further evidence of the importance of scent for wombats to help find food and detect predators.

Famously, wombats have cube-shaped poo. They often deposit their poo at burrow entrances and in unique areas such as on rocks, branches and tufts of grass. It’s likely they use their poo to mark their territory, just as rabbits do.

Like all marsupials investigated to date, wombats have a vomeronasal organ alongside their olfactory system. This is a separate smelling organ that detects pheromones, which are mostly used as chemical messages between wombats sharing a burrow. Importantly, pheromones support social interactions, including mother-young bonding and when wombats are ready to mate.

Just like cats and cattle, wombats exhibit a Flehmen response. This is when the animal curls back its upper lip, exposes its front teeth and inhales deeply. This behavioural response helps wombats process interesting smells by concentrating them in the nasal cavity.

The primary function of a nose is to act as an opening to allow air to flow in and out of the lungs. But aninoses – what are these? do you mean ‘noses’? also cool or warm, and moisten the air entering the body.

The nasal cavity is therefore moist and covered in mucous, and other secretions, which reduce bacteria and viruses from entering the lungs and causing infections and disease.

Surviving on a whisker and a prayer

Australia’s beloved wombats have evolved many features that let them thrive and act as ecosystem engineers.

Our research shows how important their snouts and whiskers are in supporting their lives, from identifying burrow mates and predators to finding food and navigating complex burrow systems in the dark. Without this, wombats would not survive.

Wombats are under pressure on multiple fronts, including being killed on roads and suffering from sarcoptic mange, a parasitic skin infection.

The more we know about these creatures, the better equipped we are to help them thrive.

Julie is an Associate Editor at Australian Mammalogy, a member of the Australian Mammal Society, and a Director on the Board of The Wombat Foundation.

– ref. Whiskers for warrens: why wombats have such whiskery snouts – https://theconversation.com/whiskers-for-warrens-why-wombats-have-such-whiskery-snouts-266351

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Conrad Pilditch, Professor of Marine Sciences, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

A new law that almost triples the protected area in the Hauraki Gulf Tīkapa Moana – New Zealand’s largest marine park at more than 1.2 million hectares, surrounding Auckland and the Coromandel peninsula – is something to be celebrated.

But it comes with compromises, and it is especially disappointing that some forms of commercial fishing will continue in some areas.

This week, parliament passed the Hauraki Gulf/Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill into law. It increases areas under some form of protection from 6% to 18% by extending two existing marine reserves and adding 12 high protection areas and five seafloor protection areas.

These new areas add to the diversity of habitats under protection, including under-represented soft sediment ecosystems, and provide new opportunities for customary management. While fishing will be restricted in 18% of the gulf, there is a carve-out for commercial ring-net fishing in high protection areas.

This diminishes their status as protected areas and makes it more difficult for New Zealand to fulfil its promise under the Global Biodiversity Framework to protect 30% of the marine environment by 2030.

We should also recognise this is only a starting point in restoring the mauri (life force) of the gulf. Animals that live in the gulf’s water column remain vulnerable, and given the rate of environmental change in New Zealand’s waters, we need to fast-track the conservation process.

Levels of protection

The new legislation has three forms of protection.

Marine reserves are complete no-take zones. High protection areas (HPAs) allow for restoration activities and provide for customary practices of tangata whenua. Seafloor protection areas (SPAs) protect habitats on the seabed, but they allow for activities that don’t damage them, such as non-bottom fishing.

All three forms of protection share a common theme in restricting large-scale seafloor disturbances from bottom trawling and dredging, large-scale removal of non-living material such as sand, and dumping or discharge of waste.

The protection of the seafloor is critical to preserving the many benefits we gain from its ecosystems, including carbon storage, the processing of excess nutrients, provision of food for fish, and nursery habitats.

HPAs value Māori management and support the restoration of nature and culture. This opens up opportunities to undertake active restoration to accelerate passive recovery. Such activities may include large-scale kina (sea urchin) removal and re-seeding of shellfish populations.

Many of the HPAs are alongside areas where significant restorative efforts are happening on land. This acknowledges land-sea connections and these areas will hopefully become successful examples of what integrated management can achieve.

Lessons from NZ’s oldest marine reserve

The Cape Rodney-Okakari Point (Goat Island) Marine Reserve at Leigh became New Zealand’s first legislated marine reserve 50 years ago.

This reserve, on the north-east coast of the Hauraki Gulf, will quadruple in size under the new law. It has taught us many lessons about how coastal reef ecosystems are affected by human activity and how marine reserves benefit people, including fishers.

For example, we know that marine reserves maintain populations of predators, such as large lobsters and snapper, which stop sea urchins from becoming too abundant and over-grazing coastal kelp forests.

The ability to protect large snapper has also demonstrated that size matters in fish reproduction. The marine reserve contributes disproportionately to the snapper population across a large part of the gulf. If this is scaled with the new protection area, it should lead to a more productive fishery that will benefit all.

The expansion of the Cape Rodney-Okarkai Point Marine Reserve and the Te Whanganui-A-Hei Marine Reserve at Hahei will open up new opportunities for learning about connections between reef and soft-sediment habitats and how they influence biodiversity.

Fast-tracking marine conservation

Overfishing, pollution, climate change and invasive species mean marine ecosystems are changing rapidly. Management responses must do so as well.

Successive State of the Gulf Reports have documented the continued decline of its ecosystems. This new legislation builds on decades of efforts to protect the gulf. It follows the 2016 Sea Change/Tai Timu Tai Pari marine spatial plan and the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Act 2000 which provided special recognition for the gulf but no additional protection.

During times of rapid environmental change, we need strong connections between science, policy and management. Otherwise, we’re at risk of missing the connections and processes responsible for ecological tipping points.

This new law must not be the end to marine protection and restoration of the Hauraki Gulf. Early European settlers reported an abundance
of fish, invertebrates, whales and dolphins and we are a long way from these historical baselines.

The new measures protect from some important forms of stress, namely overfishing and seafloor disturbance, but there are many others that continue to affect the gulf, including those that begin on land. Unless we work to substantially reduce the flow of sediment, nutrients and microplastics into the gulf, recovery will be slow.

We also need to remember what these new measures do not protect: the fish, marine mammals and seabirds that live or move through the water column or depend on it.

Our research and experience so far highlights the need to apply systems thinking to the management of marine environments. This means recognising and accounting for the dependencies between the ecological health and economic and social wealth of the Hauraki Gulf.

Conrad Pilditch receives funding from the Department of Conservation, MBIE, regional councils and PROs. He is affiliated with the Mussel Reef Restoration Trust, the Whangateau Catchment Collective and New Zealand Marine Sciences Society.

Simon Francis Thrush receives funding from MBIE and philanthropy. He is affiliated with the Royal Society New Zealand, NZ Marine Sciences Society and Whangateau Harbour Care.

– ref. Protected areas in the Hauraki Gulf nearly triple under a new law – but it comes with a catch – https://theconversation.com/protected-areas-in-the-hauraki-gulf-nearly-triple-under-a-new-law-but-it-comes-with-a-catch-266900

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Lamarche-Beauchesne, Senior Lecturer in Fashion Enterprise, Torrens University Australia

For decades, animal rights activists, campaigners and ethical designers have fought to strip fur fashion of its glamour and expose the cruelty behind it.

From bold celebrity-led protests to quiet shifts in consumer values, these efforts have slowly reshaped the fashion landscape.

Now, one of the industry’s most influential gatekeepers, Condé Nast – publisher of Vogue, Vanity Fair and Glamour – has announced it will no longer feature “new animal fur in editorial content or advertising” across its titles.

The decision, which includes exceptions for what are outlined as “byproducts of subsistence and Indigenous practices”, marks a symbolic turning point within the fashion media landscape due to Condé Nast’s global reach.

It is especially significant given Vogue’s legacy in glamorising fur and its historically unwavering support under former editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, one of fur’s most powerful advocates in fashion media and a long-time target of the anti-fur movement.

Wintour remains involved at Condé Nast in the role of chief content officer, and as Vogue’s global editorial director.

Anti-fur campaigns

The announcement by Condé Nast follows a nine-month campaign led by the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade. This activist group staged more than a hundred protests targeting Condé Nast executives, editors and affiliated businesses.

Demonstrations ranged from picketing outside the homes of Vogue editors to disruptive actions inside stores linked to Condé Nast through board affiliations.

While this campaign undoubtedly influenced the publisher’s decision, it was likely the culmination of anti-fur advocacy dating back to the early 20th century.

The long tail of the movement

Animal rights activism in fashion can be traced back to the late 19th century, when the feather trade decimated bird populations and led to the extinction of species prized for their plumage.

Anti-fur activism followed. It gained momentum in the 1970s, and with the founding of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in 1980.

Through high-profile campaigns exposing the cruelty of fur farms, PETA enlisted celebrities and models to pose nude in its iconic “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” ads.

These efforts led to tangible change. Calvin Klein dropped fur in 1994, citing animal advocacy. Since then, fur-free policies have become a relatively easy win for brands navigating the increasingly complex ethics of animal materials.

A new standard for luxury fashion

Several US states have banned fur sales, and fur farming is now outlawed in countries including the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Austria, Italy and Norway.

Condé Nast’s new position places it alongside other media and fashion leaders. Elle magazine went fur-free in 2021. Major luxury brands such as Max Mara, Burberry, Chanel, Prada, Valentino and Versace have adopted similar policies, as have retailers including David Jones (Australia), Macy’s (US), Nordstrom (US), Saks Fifth Avenue (US) and Hudson’s Bay (Canada).

In 2022, French luxury conglomerate Kering also committed to a fur-free policy across its brand portfolio.

The largest remaining holdout is LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE) – the parent company of Dior and Fendi – which faces mounting pressure to follow suit.

The fur paradox

Despite these shifts, fur remains a fascination within fashion, and periodic revivals are still celebrated in the press.

TikTok’s 2024 “mob wives” aesthetic, featuring oversized fur coats and animal prints, sparked a return of fur on winter runways. Singer Sabrina Carpenter even wore a special edition Louis Vuitton fox fur coat on the day of the Met Gala.

This paradox reflects fashion’s cyclical and often contradictory nature. Faux fur and faux shearling are increasingly used to replicate the luxury aesthetic without the ethical baggage. Yet debates about the environmental impact of synthetic fur complicate this narrative.

What’s next?

Condé Nast’s fur-free stance comes at a time when many fashion brands are rethinking or rolling back their sustainability commitments.

Some industry observers worry climate goals are being deprioritised. Ralph Lauren, for instance, has dropped its net-zero emissions target. Also, the Vestiaire Collective, a platform for pre-loved luxury item resale, has started monetising its activities by selling carbon credits, demonstrating the difficulty of navigating current market conditions.

Still, there are signs of progress. Stella McCartney’s Summer 2025 Paris Fashion Week show featured feather alternatives made of plant-based materials.

This year also marked the first Australian Fashion Week in which fur, feathers and exotic leathers were banned from catwalks.

Animal rights advocates, such as Collective Fashion Justice founder Emma Hakansson, continue to push for the industry to reduce its use of leather, wool and other animal-derived material.

This space is dynamic and evolving. Whether Condé Nast’s decision is a tipping point, or another fashion fad, remains to be seen.

Rachel Lamarche-Beauchesne has previously received funding from the federal government, and has been an electoral candidate for the Animal Justice Party. She is also the founder of plant-based micro-brand Les Plantes.

– ref. Condé Nast bans fur after decades of protest. Is it a turning point, or another fashion fad? – https://theconversation.com/conde-nast-bans-fur-after-decades-of-protest-is-it-a-turning-point-or-another-fashion-fad-266885

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Moss, Senior Lecturer in History, UNSW Sydney

After a slight delay, Australia and Papua New Guinea formally signed a defence treaty this week committing the two nations to come to each other’s aid if one is faced with an attack.

According to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the treaty also allows for up to 10,000 Papua New Guineans to join the Australian Defence Force (ADF). Some Australians may in turn join the PNG Defence Force.

This is a monumental change for the ADF and for its relationship with PNG. But it is far from an unprecedented one.

In fact, Australia has a long history of not only working with PNG on defence, but also of Papua New Guineans being an integral part of Australia’s armed forces. This history can now be a source of vital lessons for the two countries’ newly expanded cooperation.

A long history of serving together

Many Australians might remember the “fuzzy wuzzy” angels, the term (now considered derogatory) given to Papua New Guineans who carried supplies and wounded Australian soldiers on stretchers in the second world war.

These men were essential to victory against the Japanese, but laboured under tough conditions and were often forcibly conscripted.

Around 4,000 Papua New Guinean men also served as soldiers in defence of Australia in the war. These men participated in Australia’s first battles along the Kokoda Track, and almost every one after that.

In 1951, a new unit of Papua New Guineans was created as part of the Australian Army in response to rising Cold War tensions. Named the Pacific Islands Regiment, this unit had about 3,000 Papua New Guineans serving in it, along with support units, at the time of independence in 1975.

This meant around one in 11 members of the regular Australian Army were Papua New Guinean.

In turn, around 500 Australians were serving with the Australian Army’s forces in PNG at any time during the 1960s and 1970s.

Papua New Guinean units were not a foreign part of the Australian Army: until PNG’s independence, Papua New Guineans were Australian citizens, albeit treated as distinctly second class because of their race.

As such, these soldiers were an integral and integrated part of the Australian Army, as much a part of it as the Royal Australian Regiment.

The same applied to the small Papua New Guinean naval unit based at Manus Island, which was part of the Royal Australian Navy. PNG officers trained in Australia, and PNG sailors gained experience on Australian ships.

These units were a vital part of defending Australia, particularly when tensions were high with Indonesia in the early 1960s. During that time, PNG soldiers were the first line of Australia’s defence should war have broken out.

After independence, the PNG Defence Force was formed. Some Australians stayed on to guide the new force, but from then on, it was PNG’s own.

Overcoming problems

The pact signed by Albanese and PNG Prime Minister James Marape will see the two countries bind their forces closely together again.

The treaty allows for both recruitment and integration of personnel into each country’s defence forces, along with more interoperability in logistics and procurement.

There are many important lessons that can be learned from the past to ensure this integration is seamless.

The most crucial of these is ensuring understanding between Australian and Papua New Guinean soldiers.

In 1961, for instance, there were some discipline issues in the Pacific Islands Regiment. PNG soldiers were unhappy with their poor pay and conditions, which prompted some to march towards Port Moresby in protest, disobeying orders to stay at the barracks.

Australian Army officials acknowledged their role in these problems, including a year-long delay in addressing pay concerns and poorly trained Australian officers, few of whom spoke local languages.

The army’s response to these issues was education. From the 1960s to 1975, the army initiated a concentrated education program for PNG soldiers, including everything from civic studies to current affairs.

At the same time, the army acknowledged that understanding the backgrounds, languages, cultures and needs of the Papua New Guinean soldiers was essential to creating an effective force. This saw an effort to ensure that only the best Australian officers were sent to PNG, and these men would learn Tok Pisin as soon as they arrived.

Papua New Guinean officers were also recruited from 1963 to build a cohort of leaders who deeply understood the men under their command.

These efforts created a focused, disciplined and educated force that was handed over to an independent PNG in 1975. This is one of the unsung achievements of the Australian Army.

Read more:
With new PNG defence treaty, Australia is delivering on its rhetoric about trust at a critical time

What we can learn today

It will be just as important today for Australian defence personnel to understand the PNG soldiers they’ll be working with. Education programs focusing on history, culture and language, coupled with experience working together, will be crucial to the treaty’s success.

We should celebrate the diversity these soldiers will bring to the ADF. These soldiers will enhance the ADF’s ability to operate with the people and unique geography of the Pacific region.

Efforts should be also made to recruit more PNG officers and non-commissioned officers so the ADF can lead and work with them.

One final element will be reintegrating PNG’s military history with our own, demonstrating that Papua New Guineans have already contributed a great deal to the defence of both our countries.

There are many questions still to be answered, such as exactly how this integration will work and what it will mean for PNG’s own defence force.

However, Papua New Guineans are not new arrivals to the defence of Australia. They have been defending us since 1940.

Tristan Moss has previously received funding from the Australian Department of Defence and the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Australia-PNG defence treaty: what we can learn from history to make this new alliance work – https://theconversation.com/australia-png-defence-treaty-what-we-can-learn-from-history-to-make-this-new-alliance-work-266784

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Meyer, Senior Lecturer, Anatomy and Pathology in the College of Medicine and Dentistry, James Cook University

Imagine two scenarios. In the first, you’re hiking uphill on a warm day, beads of sweat rolling down your forehead. In the second, you’ve just remembered you have an exam tomorrow and now the palms of your hands are cold and damp.

Both involve sweating but the causes and implications are different.

One scenario produces hot sweat, the other cold sweat. So what’s the difference?

What is hot sweat?

This type of sweat is also called thermoregulatory sweat. It’s the body’s natural response to increased core body temperature, which most often comes from physical exertion. As sweat evaporates from the skin, it cools down the body to help prevent overheating.

When you’ve been exercising, or are outside on a hot day, your body warms up, then sends a message to the hypothalamus region of your brain.

Your hypothalamus likes to keep your body in an optimum temperature range. So to reduce heat stress it sends signals down the spinal cord and into peripheral nerves (nerves outside the spinal cord and brain). This stimulates secretion of sweat from the eccrine glands in your skin.

Humans have millions of eccrine glands, which are packed at a density of 250–550 glands per square centimetre on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. Places where you have hair (such as the face, trunk and limbs) have a lower density of eccrine glands.

Sweat from eccrine glands is mostly water and salt.

What is cold sweat?

Cold sweat is also called psychological sweat. It appears when you’re experiencing stress, anxiety, fear or pain.

These activate the amygdala, the brain region that helps you feel and respond to emotions. The amygdala then activates the hypothalamus.

The hypothalamus performs multiple functions simultaneously. It sends signals down the spinal cord and into peripheral nerves to stimulate eccrine glands in the skin.

It also sends a message to the adrenal glands sitting above the kidneys to release norepinephrine (also called noradrenaline) and epinephrine (adrenaline) hormones. These hormones travel through the blood and affect a different type of sweat gland in the skin, the apocrine glands.

Apocrine glands are mainly in the armpit, breasts, face and perineum (where the external genitalia are). Sweat from apocrine glands contains lots of lipids (fats), proteins, sugar and ammonia.

As cold sweat triggers eccrine and apocrine glands, you can sweat all over your body.

Which type smells more?

Sweat itself – whether hot or cold – does not smell. But when bacteria on your skin feed on sweat, this produces volatile organic compounds. And it’s these that smell. Blame bacteria such as Corynebacterium, Staphyloccocus and Cutibacterium.

A small study from Japan showed stress, not exercise, triggered unpleasant body odours in people who normally don’t have body odour.

That’s probably because bacteria prefer the cold sweat from apocrine glands. It’s a tasty meal, full of fat, protein and sugars.

Another study analysed the results of 26 earlier studies involving 1,652 people. This showed that when we’re frightened, we give off specific smells via our sweat.

So yes, fear and stress really do have a distinctive smell that should warn others to stay away.

In a nutshell

The terms hot and cold sweat don’t refer to the temperature of the sweat itself. The fluid released is always at body temperature.

Producing hot sweat is normal and an effective way for your body to lose heat. Cold sweat signals to others that you’re distressed in some way.

If you’re concerned about your sweating, see your GP. This is especially important if you start sweating more, less, or differently on either side of your body, without changing your lifestyle.

Amanda Meyer is affiliated with the American Association for Anatomy and the Global Neuroanatomy Network.

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

– ref. What’s the difference between hot sweat and cold sweat? – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-difference-between-hot-sweat-and-cold-sweat-264037

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Hronis, Clinical Psychologist, Lecturer and Research Supervisor, Graduate School of Health, University of Technology Sydney

Advice about cutting down on dopamine is everywhere right now. From “dopamine fasting” to “anti-dopamine parenting” and even “raw-dogging” flights (going without any screens, books or music), TikTok influencers claim these practices have rewired their brains.

Modern life constantly bombards our brains with stimulation, through scrolling feeds, video games, email pings and sugary snacks. This keeps dopamine – the neurotransmitter linked to reward and motivation – in steady circulation.

Over time, this constant activation can leave us desensitised, chasing even more stimulation just to feel “normal”. Everyday life begins to seem bland by comparison.

So it’s no surprise people have tried to come up with ways to reset their dopamine and change their behaviour. But do these strategies actually work?

Can you actually detox from dopamine?

No, you can never actually “detox” from dopamine itself. A detox involves eliminating a chemical from your body. If you go through an alcohol detox, for example, you stop drinking and allow your body to rid itself of alcohol-related toxins.

In the context of dopamine, a detox is impossible. Dopamine is naturally occurring and plays a significant role in various aspects of human physiology. It’s involved in the pleasure and reward centre of the brain, as well as in motivation, movement, arousal and sleep.

If we were to completely detox from dopamine, we wouldn’t be able to function, let alone stay alive.

“Dopamine detoxes” have involved people intentionally avoiding behaviours or substances that trigger quick bursts of dopamine, such as gaming, social media, sugary foods or online shopping. These “pleasure detoxes” usually occur over a short, set period of time: around 24 hours.

A 24-hour dopamine detox might feel hard and like something significant is happening. People report uncomfortable urges, cravings and sometimes even feelings of fatigue, anxiety or irritability during the process. The discomfort can lead some to believe that they are successfully “resetting” their brains.

While a dopamine detox may feel intense, most people won’t experience any meaningful, lasting improvements by abstaining for a day or two. Dopamine regulation is a complex process influenced by many factors, and it doesn’t undergo a sudden reset in a short 24-hour period.

Research suggests that after the period of abstinence, old habits and urges often return, unless people actively build new routines and coping strategies that engage healthier reward pathways.

So what can you do instead?

If you want to change your relationship with dopamine-driven behaviours or substances, be prepared for this to take longer that 24 hours.

Substituting “fast dopamine” rewards with “slow dopamine” activities can gradually restore the brain’s sensitivity to pleasure and help life feel rich again.

This might involve returning to activities that naturally require more patience and effort, such as creative projects, exercising or learning something new.

But it can also include other pleasurable experiences, such as connecting with someone face-to-face, or listening to music you love.

These activities can activate dopamine pathways, as well as the release of other neurotransmitters, such as oxytocin and serotonin, which contribute to a positive mood.

The popularity of dopamine detoxes reflects a desire to feel better, regain motivation and reconnect with pleasures in a world overloaded by stimulation. But there’s no reset button for the brain’s dopamine system. Luckily, we can switch to longer-term rewards from movement, music, connection and stretching ourselves in other ways.

Anastasia is the author of The Dopamine Brain

– ref. What is a ‘dopamine detox’? And do I need one? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-dopamine-detox-and-do-i-need-one-254813

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Coral Gartner, Director, NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence on Achieving the Tobacco Endgame, The University of Queensland

Reports of illegal tobacco crimes have sharply increased in Australia in recent years. Organised crime syndicates believed to be behind tobacco smuggling operations have also infiltrated the retail sector.

There have been more than 250 firebombings of tobacconists and other shops across Australia since March 2023. Owners have been threatened to “earn or burn”: either sell tobacco illegally for the syndicate, hand over the keys to their shop, or have it burnt down.

Some arson attacks are between rival syndicates vying for control of the illegal market. There have also been murders – including an innocent bystander killed in Melbourne in an arson attack – associated with these “turf wars”.

While all states and territories are grappling with how to respond to this growing problem, some are much further ahead than others.

Steep fines and even jail for landlords

Since June, landlords in South Australia have been able to terminate the leases of tenants using their premises to sell illegal tobacco or vape products.

The state’s landlords are also being held to account. Those who turn a blind eye to illegal tobacco sales in their premises can now be fined up to A$10,000 for a first offence, with corporations facing a $25,000 fine.

But Queensland looks set to introduce even tougher penalties for landlords than South Australia. Under proposed new laws, Queensland landlords who don’t evict tenants who use their premises to sell illegal tobacco and vapes would face a maximum fine of more than $160,000, one year in jail – or both.

Landlords trading as a corporation would also risk a maximum fine of more than $800,000 under new civil penalties that would be easier to enforce than chasing a criminal prosecution.

The new Queensland laws are being reviewed by a parliamentary committee, with public submissions closing this Friday. Its final report is due on November 7.

The Shopping Centre Council of Australia supports Queensland’s proposal, saying it’s a model for other states because they “give landlords the backing and protections they need”.

Meanwhile, New South Wales has already introduced lease termination powers for landlords. It’s also reviewing whether to introduce penalties for landlords who knowingly lease their premises to illegal tobacco and vape suppliers.

Which states are lagging on action?

All states and territories now have tobacco retailer licensing schemes. But there are big differences in the offences and penalties for retailers found selling or possessing illegal tobacco and vapes.

At the higher end, maximum penalties include large fines (such as $2.1 million for individuals committing a first offence in South Australia involving a large quantity of illicit tobacco or vapes) and substantial jail time (such as 15 years’ imprisonment for illicit tobacco sales in Victoria).

Like South Australia, New South Wales can close tobacco retailers for up to 12 months.

Queensland’s proposed reforms would also extend the duration of on-the-spot closure orders to three months (up from 72 hours), or up to 12 months through the courts (up from a maximum of six months).

But Western Australia, Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory are lagging. They all impose much weaker penalties for retailers caught selling illegal tobacco products.

They also haven’t acted to make it easier for landlords to end leases of illegal tobacco sellers.

What else do we need to do nationally?

All states and territories need adequately resourced enforcement officers and laws that support swift action against retailers involved in illegal sales.

A key feature of Queensland’s planned approach is the focus on rapid enforcement measures, such as large on-the-spot fines and immediate closure orders, rather than relying on lengthy court processes.

When Queensland authorities find illegal tobacco or vaping products in retail outlets, the proposed reforms would also allow them to seize all smoking products onsite. This measure would speed up enforcement action by avoiding the time-consuming process of determining the legal status of every product in the shop.

There are many more policy changes that could further help control illegal tobacco and vape sales. Priorities include:

Reducing legal sales licences: we recommend all states and territories cap and reduce the number of tobacco retailer licences that are issued.

The market has too many tobacco retailers for a declining consumer base. So at a minimum, no retailer licences should be issued to new applicants.

This would also prevent crime syndicates from simply obtaining a new licence under a different name when a licence is cancelled or a closure order is imposed.

Minimum prices: setting a minimum retail price for tobacco products would help authorities rapidly identify retailers involved in illegal tobacco sales.

Making cash sales harder: ATMs are commonly found in retail outlets selling tobacco illegally, because the machines enable cash transactions. We suggest that – like the new penalties for landlords – ATM providers should face large penalties if they don’t immediately remove their machines from premises found selling tobacco illegally.

Australia now has an Illicit Tobacco and E-cigarette Commissioner, Amber Shuhyta. As Shuhyta has said, simply reducing the federal tobacco tax would not reduce this illegal market.

Improving the ability of state and territory authorities to take faster, more meaningful action against retailers supplying tobacco illegally offers a far more promising approach.

Coral Gartner receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, and Australian Institute of Criminology. She has been engaged as an expert for the Australian government in litigation. She is a member of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco and the Public Health Association of Australia and is the Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board for the BMJ Journal, Tobacco Control. She is a member of Project Sunset, which is a non-profit network of tobacco control researchers and advocates who support phasing out the general retailing of commercial tobacco products.

Cheneal Puljević receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Australian Institute of Criminology, Queensland Police Service, Cancer Council Victoria, and Metro South Health.

Michaela Estelle Okninski is affiliated with the Australasian Association of Bioethics and Health Law.

– ref. Queensland landlords could soon face jail for ignoring illegal tobacco. What are other states doing? – https://theconversation.com/queensland-landlords-could-soon-face-jail-for-ignoring-illegal-tobacco-what-are-other-states-doing-266895

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cameron Shackell, Sessional Academic, School of Information Systems, Queensland University of Technology

The electrification boom of the 1920s set the United States up for a century of industrial dominance and powered a global economic revolution.

But before electricity faded from a red-hot tech sector into invisible infrastructure, the world went through profound social change, a speculative bubble, a stock market crash, mass unemployment and a decade of global turmoil.

Understanding this history matters now. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a similar general purpose technology and looks set to reshape every aspect of the economy. But it’s already showing some of the hallmarks of electricity’s rise, peak and bust in the decade known as the Roaring Twenties.

The reckoning that followed could be about to repeat.

First came the electricity boom

A century ago, when people at the New York Stock Exchange talked about the latest “high tech” investments, they were talking about electricity.

Investors poured money into suppliers such as Electric Bond & Share and Commonwealth Edison, as well as companies using electricity in new ways, such as General Electric (for appliances), AT&T (telecommunications) and RCA (radio).

It wasn’t a hard sell. Electricity brought modern movies, new magazines from faster printing presses, and evenings by the radio.

It was also an obvious economic game changer, promising automation, higher productivity, and a future full of leisure and consumption. In 1920, even Soviet revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin declared: “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.”

Today, a similar global urgency grips both communist and capitalist countries about AI, not least because of military applications.

Then came the peak

Like AI stocks now, electricity stocks “became favorites in the boom even though their fundamentals were difficult to assess”.

Market power was concentrated. Big players used complex holding structures to dodge rules and sell shares in basically the same companies to the public under different names.

US finance professor Harold Bierman, who argued that attempts to regulate overpriced utility stocks were a direct trigger for the crash, estimated that utilities made up 18% of the New York Stock Exchange in September 1929. Within electricity supply, 80% of the market was owned by just a handful of holding firms.

But that’s just the utilities. As today with AI, there was a much larger ecosystem.

Almost every 1920s “megacap” (the largest companies at the time) owed something to electrification. General Motors, for example, had overtaken Ford using new electric production techniques.

Essentially, electricity became the backdrop to the market in the same way AI is doing, as businesses work to become “AI-enabled”.

No wonder that today tech giants command over a third of the S&P 500 index and nearly three-quarters of the NASDAQ. Transformative technology drives not only economic growth, but also extreme market concentration.

In 1929, to reflect the new sector’s importance, Dow Jones launched the last of its three great stock averages: the electricity-heavy Dow Jones Utilities Average.

But then came the bust

The Dow Jones Utilities Average went as high as 144 in 1929. But by 1934, it had collapsed to just 17.

No single cause explains the New York Stock Exchange’s unprecedented “Great Crash”, which began on October 24 1929 and preceded the worldwide Great Depression.

That crash triggered a banking crisis, credit collapse, business failures, and a drastic fall in production. Unemployment soared from just 3% to 25% of US workers by 1933 and stayed in double figures until the US entered the second world war in 1941.

The ripple effects were global, with most countries seeing a rise in unemployment, especially in countries reliant on international trade, such as Chile, Australia and Canada, as well as Germany.

The promised age of shorter hours and electric leisure turned into soup kitchens and bread lines.

The collapse exposed fraud and excess. Electricity entrepreneur Samuel Insull, once Thomas Edison’s protégé and builder of Chicago’s Commonwealth Edison, was at one point worth US$150 million – an even more staggering amount at the time.

But after Insull’s empire went bankrupt in 1932, he was indicted for embezzlement and larceny. He fled overseas, was brought back, and eventually acquitted – but 600,000 shareholders and 500,000 bondholders lost everything.

However, to some Insull seemed less a criminal mastermind than a scapegoat for a system whose flaws ran far deeper.

Reforms unthinkable during the boom years followed.

The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 broke up the huge holding company structures and imposed regional separation. Once exciting electricity darlings became boring regulated infrastructure: a fact reflected in the humble “Electric Company” square on the original 1935 Monopoly board.

Lessons from the 1920s for today

AI is rolling out faster than even those seeking to use it for business or government policy can sometimes manage properly.

Like electricity a century ago, a few interconnected firms are building today’s AI infrastructure.

And like a century ago, investors are piling in – though many don’t know the extent of their exposure through their superannuation funds or exchange traded funds (ETFs).

Just as in the late 1920s, today’s regulation of AI is still loose in many parts of the world – though the European Union is taking a tougher approach with its world-first AI law.

US President Donald Trump has taken the opposite approach, actively cutting “onerous regulation” of AI. Some US states have responded by taking action themselves. The courts, when consulted, are hamstrung by laws and definitions written for a different era.

Can we transition to AI being invisible infrastructure like electricity without a another bust, only then followed by reform?

If the parallels to the electrification boom remain unnoticed, the chances are slim.

Cameron Shackell works primarily as a Sessional Academic at the QUT School of Information Systems. He also works one day a week as CEO of Equate IT Consulting, a firm using AI to analyse brands and trademarks.

– ref. Today’s AI hype has echoes of a devastating technology boom and bust 100 years ago – https://theconversation.com/todays-ai-hype-has-echoes-of-a-devastating-technology-boom-and-bust-100-years-ago-265492

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Qiang Tang, Associate Professor, Computer Science, University of Sydney

Nowadays data breaches aren’t rare shocks – they’re a weekly drumbeat. From leaked customer records to stolen source code, our digital lives keep spilling into the open.

Git services are especially vulnerable to cybersecurity threats. These are online hosting platforms that are widely used in the IT industry to collaboratively develop software, and are home to most of the world’s computer code.

Just last week, hackers reportedly stole about 570 gigabytes of data from a git service called GitLab. The stolen data was associated with major companies such as IBM and Siemens, as well as United States government organisations.

In December 2022, hackers stole source code from IT company Okta which was stored in repositories on GitHub.

Cyberattackers can also quietly insert malicious code into existing projects without a developer’s knowledge. These so-called “software supply-chain” attacks have turned development tools and update channels on git services into high-value targets.

As we explain in a new conference paper, our team has developed a new way to make git services more secure, with very little impact on performance.

The gold standard

We already know how to keep conversations private: secure messenger services such as Signal and WhatsApp use end-to-end encryption, which locks messages on your device and only unlocks them on the recipient’s device. This protects the data even if the service platform is hacked, which is why it’s considered the gold standard to protect data.

But git services, which are widely used by major tech companies and startups, currently don’t use end-to-end encryption. The same is true for most of the other tools we use to work together, such as shared documents.

Because git services allow a huge number of collaborators to work on the same project at the same time, the software codes they host are constantly written and updated at a very rapid rate. This makes using standard encryption impractical. To do so would take up too much bandwidth to transmit all of the data for even one word change, and make the services very inefficient.

But our new encryption method overcomes this challenge.

Striking an important balance

The method we have developed uses what’s known as “character-level encryption”. This means only edits to a software code stored on the git service are treated as new data to be encrypted – rather than the entire code.

Think of it as encrypting the tracked changes in a word document, instead of a new version every time.

This method strikes an important balance. It keeps the updated code private and secure while reducing the amount of communication between user and git services, as well as the amount of storage required.

Importantly, this new method is also compatible with existing git services, making it easy for people to adopt. It also doesn’t interfere with other functions of git servers, such as hosting, saving bandwidth and indexing, so people can keep using these servers as they normally would – just with the added benefit of extra security.

A broader end-to-end encrypted internet

This new tool is currently free and open-source for all users. It can be installed easily like a patch when using git services, and will run in the background as users access git services just like before.

But this is just the starting point for a broader shift towards online collaboration that is secured by end-to-end encryption.

Extending the same guarantees to shared documents, spreadsheets and design files is possible, but will require sustained research and investment.

One complication to ensure security is managing encryption keys or credentials for users to decrypt encrypted data. Fortunately, our previous research shows us how to create a secure cloud storage system that will allow users to safely store their credentials.

Just as importantly, we must balance security with compliance and accountability. Universities, hospitals and government agencies are required to retain and, in some cases, provide lawful access to certain data. Meeting these obligations, without weakening end-to-end encryption, pushes us to research new techniques.

The goal is not secrecy at all costs, but verifiable controls that respect both privacy and the rule of law.

We don’t need a brand new internet to get there. We need pragmatic upgrades that fit the tools people already use – paired with clear, provable guarantees.

Messaging proved that end-to-end encryption can scale to billions. Code and cloud files are next, and with continued research and targeted investment, the rest of our everyday collaboration can follow.

So before too long, you will hopefully be able to work on a shared document with colleagues with the peace of mind that it, too, has gold standard security.

Qiang Tang receives funding from Google via Digital Future Initiative to support the research on this project.

Moti Yung works for Google as a distinguished research scientist.

Yanan Li is supported by the funding from Google via Digital Future Initiative for doing this research at the University of Sydney.

– ref. The world’s most sensitive computer code is vulnerable to attack. A new encryption method can help – https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-most-sensitive-computer-code-is-vulnerable-to-attack-a-new-encryption-method-can-help-266236

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amit Arora, Associate Professor in Public Health, Western Sydney University

Thousands of residents in Dubbo and Wellington, in western New South Wales, haven’t had fluoride added to their tap water for nearly seven years.

After a public outcry, the council’s fluoridation equipment is being repaired and replaced, with fluoride expected to be restored to their drinking water by the end of the year.

In contrast, Far North Queensland’s Cooktown and Gympie councils have stopped fluoridating their water, despite a large body of evidence showing it’s a safe and effective way to prevent tooth decay.

Where you live determines your access to fluoridated tap water

Australia first added fluoride to drinking water in 1953, starting in Beaconsfield, Tasmania. Other places soon followed, including Sydney in 1968.

Queensland was the last state to fluoridate drinking water, and mandated it in 2008. But this didn’t last long. In 2012, the Newman government allowed each council to decide whether to fluoridate its supply – and opt out if their community opposed it due to costs or safety concerns.

Today, about 90% of Australians drink fluoridated water. But it’s just 72% in Queensland

In NSW, councils must follow state government-regulated water fluoridation requirements.

The Victorian, South Australian, Australian Capital Territory and Tasmanian governments also ensure drinking water is fluoridated.

Western Australian and Northern Territory governments allow for limited community-based decision-making.

What can happen if you stop drinking fluoridated water?

1. You will reduce the protective effects of fluoride

Fluoride works in three ways. First, it fills the microscopic gaps in the lattice-like tooth surface. This makes the tooth harder to dissolve when exposed to acids in our food.

Second, it acts like a scavenger to find minerals in our saliva to fill the microscopic cavities or holes that are forming.

Finally, it stops cavity-forming bacteria from digesting the sugar and carbohydrates we consume. Starving the bacteria stops them from multiplying on your teeth and gums.

2. You may end up with cavities and infected teeth.

Fluoride in drinking water reduces the number of cavities in teeth.

My research in Lithgow NSW showed every second child had holes in their teeth before fluoride was added to their water.

People who live in fluoridated regions have fewer cavities in their teeth are less likely to need a tooth removed because of an infection, than those who live in fluoridated areas.

3. You will have to improve your oral hygiene practices

Despite their best efforts, two-thirds of people miss at least six teeth even if they brush twice a day.

Low concentration of fluoride in drinking water compensates for areas we might miss and complements toothbrushing.

4. You may spend more money (and time) at the dentist

Drinking fluoridated water is cost-effective and protective.

For every A$100 a council spends fluoridating water, a resident saves up to A$1,800 in potential dental treatment costs.

Fluoridated water helps kids and adults who can’t visit the dentist often.

How safe is fluoride in drinking water?

Fluoride is carefully added to our drinking water at water treatment plants at a dose of around one drop of fluoride per 50 litres of drinking water.

Fluoride in drinking water has been the subject of extensive scientific investigation for more than 70 years. In those years, studies have consistently shown the benefits for oral health.

In 2017, a review from Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council concluded community water fluoridation is a safe, effective and equitable to help prevent tooth decay.

In 2024, the United States Centres for Disease Control reiterated that community water fluoridation is safe, effective and cost-efficient method for preventing tooth decay and improving oral health.

Similarly, the 2024 update by the United Kingdom Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology endorsed the safety of water fluoridation.

What about its effects on IQ?

Drinking fluoridated water has no effect on IQ, despite claims from US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior that it is linked with IQ loss. This is one of the reasons RFK wants it removed from US drinking water.

Kennedy has cited multiple studies for his IQ claim, including a recent highly publicised and criticised report.

The studies were mostly conducted among Chinese and Indian children living in rural areas. The intelligence tests used in the studies excluded some of the domains typically used to measure IQ.

Many of the studies did not account for contaminants known to reduce IQ, such as lead, and were conducted in nations with poorly controlled fluoride levels in the water. In countries such as Australia and New Zealand, the fluoride levels are controlled.

Read more:
Is fluoride really linked to lower IQ, as a recent study suggested? Here’s why you shouldn’t worry

Is my water fluoridated?

If you’re unsure whether your drinking water contains fluoride, check your state or territory health department’s website – many have maps or lists of fluoridated areas.

You can also contact your local council, water supplier or check your annual water quality report for fluoride levels.

Amit Arora received funding from National Health and Medical Research Council from 2012 to 2019. He undertook the child oral health survey in Lithgow prior to the implementation of water fluoridation. He is a dental practitioner member (Teaching and Research) on the Dental Board of Australia.

Arosha Weerakoon is a member of the Australian Dental Association. She is the principal dentist and owner of a private dental practice located in regional Queensland.

– ref. Some towns are cutting fluoride from water supplies. Here’s what this means for locals’ teeth – https://theconversation.com/some-towns-are-cutting-fluoride-from-water-supplies-heres-what-this-means-for-locals-teeth-266501