Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Frew, Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University

Just beneath your feet, an ancient and silent alliance endures. This alliance between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi is one of the oldest biological partnerships on Earth.

Going back almost half-a-billion years, this relationship paved the way for plants to make it onto land. These early plants, simple and without the complex root systems of plants today, forged an alliance with fungi. This alliance has been instrumental to the evolution of plant life and has helped shape our ecosystems.

These fungi grow into roots where the plants supply them with the carbon (as sugar and fat) they need to survive. The fungi extend thin root-like threads called mycelia into the soil to make expansive networks that can access nutrients beyond the reach of plant roots.

But these hidden microbes do more than just help plants get nutrients. Plants are constantly dealing with insect pests and diseases, and have done for a long time. To deal with this, they evolved sophisticated defences. AM fungi can dramatically enhance these defences.

So could plants be picking their fungal allies based on their ability to enhance defences against pests and diseases? We recently explored this question and proposed hypotheses around how this could happen. The answer could have huge implications for making agriculture more sustainable.

Harnessing the ancient alliance

Considering the benefits AM fungi can provide plants, it’s no surprise there has been a lot of interest in using them in environmental management. Studies show AM fungi can have huge benefits for ecosystem restoration by supporting the establishment of native plant communities. Their importance to ecosystem function makes it clear mycorrhizal fungi should be included in conservation efforts.

In agricultural systems, fungi can increase crop growth, nutrient uptake and yields. These benefits have been a major focus for researchers since the 1950s.

While there is ample evidence of the benefits AM fungi can provide for crops, results in the field are inconsistent. There can be a mismatch between the nutritional needs of the crops and the ability of the fungi that are present or introduced to the soil to meet those needs.

Do plants pick their fungal partners for defence?

Within the roots of a single plant, numerous fungal species can co-exist, forming complex communities. The species that make up these communities may each offer different capabilities – some are better at defence, while others are better at nutrient uptake. The benefit a plant gets from its fungal partners is, in part, determined by which species are present within its roots.

We can apply AM fungi to the soil but this doesn’t mean these fungi will actually partner up with the plant.

So what determines which fungi gain entry to the roots? Do plants have a say in this? And, if so, how do they choose? These questions have long been on the minds of ecologists and biologists.

At the core of this relationship is a complex exchange system. Plants provide the fungi with carbon they need, and the fungi provide benefits to the plants.

Research has shown a plant will play favourites (at least in some cases) with the fungi. They will partner up and give more carbon to the fungi that provide the most nutrients.

Yet there are significant challenges to exploiting these nutritional benefits in agriculture, where large inputs of nutrients are added to the soil. This can limit our ability to use the fungi in this way by removing plant reliance on the fungi for nutrients.

But can we exploit this partnership for plant defences? Globally, insect pests consume up to 20% of the major grain crops alone.

Given that we know plants can play favourites, could they select their fungi to boost defence? We have developed hypotheses to try to better understand this question, to set the stage for future research.

A complex question with big implications

There are many complications. When a plant is under attack by pests, this compromises its ability to supply carbon to its fungal allies, as its carbon resources are strained. It is still not known how these changes affect the plant’s “choice” of fungal partners.

We need a better understanding of how such choices happen and how herbivores can interfere with the ability of plants to reward those fungi providing the most benefit.

However, if plants can pick out the fungi that help them fight off pests and diseases, it could change the way we think about nature’s partnerships. It has big implications for farming, conservation and restoring damaged environments.

Knowing how plants select fungal allies would pave the way for better-defended crops, reducing the need to apply synthetic pesticides. It would open up exciting possibilities for helping ecosystems recover and thrive.

The possibility that plants can identify and select fungi based on the benefits they derive opens up exciting new frontiers in ecological research. As we explore these underground interactions, we inch closer to harnessing the potential of one of the Earth’s oldest symbioses. It is a reminder of the complex relationships that maintain life on the planet, connections that are as important today as they were 500 million years ago when the first plants reached for the sun above and the fungi below.

Adam Frew receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the British Ecological Society.

Carlos Aguilar-Trigueros receives funding from the Research Council of Finland and the Humboldt Foundation (Germany).

Jeff Powell receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the NSW Department of Planning and Environment and the Future Food Systems Limited Cooperative Research Centre.

Stephanie Watts-Fawkes receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Natascha Weinberger 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. If plants can pick fungi to help fight pests and diseases, it opens a door to greener farming and ecosystem recovery – https://theconversation.com/if-plants-can-pick-fungi-to-help-fight-pests-and-diseases-it-opens-a-door-to-greener-farming-and-ecosystem-recovery-221994

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katharina Naswall, Professor of Organisational Psychology, University of Canterbury

Most workers will be familiar with this scene: a meeting that goes round and round on a topic – one that may not be important to the priorities of the company. People leave the meeting frustrated and unheard. And the whole experience is repeated the next time everyone meets.

But does this have to be inevitable? Or is there a better way to organise how we interact within teams to support effective decision making?

Team decision making is thought to be critical for organisational success. Yet there are often real challenges that lead to conflict and confusion.

In our ongoing research, we define effective team decision making as a process of understanding a complex problem, identifying alternative solutions, and finally selecting the most appropriate option to meet the team’s objectives.

For this process to work, it is essential there is a culture that promotes diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. This leads to increased experience, intelligence, competence and task-relevant knowledge, as well as better overall problem solving capacity for the team.

Creating a safe environment

But creating an environment where team members feel safe to share their thoughts and opinions, especially if they are not in line with the majority view, is often easier said than done.

This is where the concepts of psychological safety and independent thinking come into play.

Psychological safety means team members can express their ideas and opinions without the fear of negative responses. It permits challenging others – even those in a position of power.

Read more:
Why too many fearless people on a team make collaboration less likely

When team members operate in an environment with high psychological safety, they are more likely to share their diverse perspectives and ideas. This leads to better decision making.

Independent thinking means team members are encouraged to share their perspectives without modifying or moderating them.

This enables them to collectively engage in critical thinking and challenge the status quo. It can lead to more innovative and creative solutions and can also foster a sense of ownership and buy-in among team members.

By supporting independent thinking, teams can develop a culture of continuous improvement and adaptability, essential in today’s rapidly changing business environment.

Feeling safe and included

Our study investigated the relationships between positive team culture factors – psychological safety and independent thinking, as well as inclusion, and their impact on effective team decision making.

Participants from 35 New Zealand-based decision-making teams completed an online survey asking them to recall a complex decision faced by their group. They were also asked whether their group demonstrated effective decision making.

Read more:
Team-building exercises can be a waste of time. You achieve more by getting personal

We found participants who described higher levels of psychological safety were more likely to report effective decision making. For example, over 60% of those who agreed to the statement “I feel safe offering new ideas, even if they aren’t fully formed plans” also agreed with the statement “the selected solutions were of high quality”.

Feeling psychologically safe and able to communicate without fear of negative consequences is important for effective decision making.

Effective decision making was also more likely when team culture encouraged independent thinking. This suggests that to function effectively, teams need different perspectives to improve how information is processed and complexity is addressed. This is further enabled by a psychologically safe environment.

Our findings related to inclusion were mixed and dependent on how it was defined. When inclusion means the appropriate participation of team members in the decision-making process, it was associated with effective decision making.

But when inclusion was defined as being “perceived as an esteemed member of the group and belonging”, it was not significantly related to effective decision making.

Read more:
How showing your emotions at work can make you a better leader

So perhaps feeling “truly part of the team” is not essential, so long as team members are brought into the decision-making process whenever they can add value.

We also found longer tenure within a particular team was positively associated with effective decision making. Familiarity with colleagues has been shown to be especially helpful in ambiguous, uncertain and changing work environments.

Understanding team dynamics for better results

Our study shows both psychological safety and independent thinking are important for effective team decision making.

Leaders play a crucial role in promoting psychological safety within their teams. They can model behaviours that support psychological safety by exhibiting vulnerability, being authentic, and being willing to listen and discuss new and innovative ways of doing things.

Read more:
The five most common mistakes a growing company makes – and how to fix them

It is essential leaders make creating a positive team culture a priority – one that fosters psychological safety and encourages team members to share their unique viewpoints.

Leaders can do this by:

1. Following an effective decision-making process. This involves considering the team’s objectives, understanding the problem or opportunity being addressed, applying a range of perspectives, considering more than one potential solution, and selecting solutions that are best aligned with the team’s objectives.

2. Fostering psychological safety by having a shared set of values and a clear vision to support constructive discussion. Encourage curiosity instead of allowing defensiveness, and frame decision making as a team sport – not a win (or loss) for the individuals whose ideas are supported (or discarded).

3. Supporting independent thinking and expression by allowing team members to share their view before they are exposed to the views of others. This could involve a poll, or pre-meeting written contribution. Leaders should also avoid unduly influencing team members by sharing their view first, or by very narrowly framing the scope for team discussion.

Following this approach, leaders can unlock effective decision making and improve overall performance – banishing unproductive team meetings for good.

This research was supported by Callaghan Innovation R&D Fellowship.

This research was supported by Callaghan Innovation R&D Fellowship.

– ref. Frustrated by tedious and unproductive meetings? These 2 proven strategies can help teams work smarter – https://theconversation.com/frustrated-by-tedious-and-unproductive-meetings-these-2-proven-strategies-can-help-teams-work-smarter-217434

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samina Yasmeen, Director of Centre for Muslim States and Societies, The University of Western Australia

Pakistanis will head to the polls on Thursday to elect a new parliament and prime minister at a time of renewed political turbulence in the country.

The country’s popular former leader, Imran Khan, has been sentenced three separate times in recent weeks to lengthy jail terms. The timing before this week’s election is intended to send a message: the military wants him out of politics using a judicial pathway.

The military, which has directly and indirectly controlled Pakistan’s politics for seven decades, appears determined to reopen the political space for two other parties in the lead-up to the vote.

These are the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, led by three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, and the Pakistan People’s Party, led by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of former president Asif Ali Zardari and assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

So, with Khan in prison and barred from running, which party is likely to win the election and what challenges lie ahead for the new government?

Read more:
Pakistan election: the military has long meddled in the country’s politics – this year will be no different

Khan’s downfall

Khan, a former cricket star, led the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party to victory in the 2018 elections. But he lost the support of the military and was ousted in April 2022 through a no confidence vote in the National Assembly.

Since then, his party, PTI, has remained immensely popular. It dominated byelections in late 2022 to fill seats in the National Assembly that had been left vacant when PTI lawmakers resigned en masse to protest his ouster.

Last year, Khan was barred from politics for five years after being convicted on corruption charges. He maintains the charges were politically motivated. Then came the sentences handed down this year (it’s unclear if they will be served concurrently):

• ten years in prison for breaching the Official Secrets Act

• 14 years in prison for failing to disclose gifts received from foreign leaders, selling them and then not disclosing the amounts earned

• seven years in prison for being in an un-Islamic marriage.

With Khan barred from standing for office and no support from the military, PTI seems very unlikely to secure enough seats to return to power.

The electoral commission made things even more difficult by blocking the party’s use of the cricket bat symbol to identify its candidates. In a country with low levels of literacy, many people rely on these symbols when they cast their ballots.

The commission has instead allocated individual symbols to PTI’s candidates. This will create confusion among PTI’s supporters, who will need to know which symbols have been given to which candidates in their specific electorates.

Given the support among the youth for Khan and the PTI leadership urging its supporters to vote in the elections, the party’s candidates may still secure seats in the national and provincial assemblies. Their chances of forming a government, though, are virtually nil.

The return of an exiled former leader

Sharif, now 74 years old, is considered the frontrunner to be prime minister again – for a fourth time.

Sharif owes his initial entry into politics to the military regime led by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s. His relationship with the military since the 1990s, however, has vacillated between being cordial and antagonistic.

In fact, Sharif blamed former military and spy chiefs for orchestrating his ouster from power in 2017 when he was convicted of corruption. He was subsequently disqualified for life from participating in Pakistan’s politics.

Now he has returned from self-imposed exile to stage another political comeback. With his relationship with the military back in a “cordial” phase, the courts immediately overturned his corruption convictions when he returned to Pakistan late last year, paving his way to run in the election.

Sharif has since introduced the slogan “Pakistan ko Nawaz do”, with the dual meaning of “Give Nawaz to Pakistan” and “Be Generous to Pakistan”.

Bhutto, just 35 years old, hails from a political dynasty, which has laid the groundwork for his rise to power. As the foreign minister in the coalition government that ousted Khan, he has made his mark and is presenting himself as a symbol of new thinking (nai soch) in Pakistan.

Both candidates have been holding rallies across the country, but it remains unclear if either will be able to win a national election. PML-N is strong in Punjab in the east and PPP’s support comes mostly in Sindh in the far south-east.

As such, Pakistan appears to be heading for a coalition government, which will have to address several challenges facing the country.

A struggling economy and spiralling inflation

The most pressing issue for the new government will be to prevent further economic decline and improve the living conditions of ordinary citizens.

Pakistan’s GDP growth rate has fallen from 5.8% in 2021 to about 0.3% in 2023. At the same time, inflation has spiked against the backdrop of devastating floods in 2022, the rise in oil prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the demands of the International Monetary Fund for more sensible economic planning and the removal of unrealistic subsidies. Rates increased from 8.9% in 2021 to a whopping 29.7% in December 2023.

Meanwhile, the rate of people living in poverty in Pakistan has climbed to nearly 40%, more than five percentage points higher than fiscal year 2022.

The new government will also need to revisit Pakistan’s foreign policy. Khan’s allegations of US meddling in Pakistan’s politics soured the country’s relations with Washington, while his less-than-enthusiastic approach to Chinese investment projects strained relations with Beijing.

Even the Gulf states that traditionally had good relations with Pakistan began to recalibrate their south Asian strategies, with a clear tilt towards India.

The new government will also have to devise a new approach to Afghanistan. Despite the euphoria shared by some, particularly Khan, upon the return of the Taliban to government, Islamabad’s relations with Kabul have been affected by the new regime’s reluctance to address the rise in attacks by the Pakistani Taliban (often referred to as Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, or TTP) and other groups.

Read more:
Is terrorism returning to Pakistan?

But the most significant challenge for the new government will be the growing cynicism among Pakistanis around the legitimacy of the electoral process.

Khan’s downfall has drawn attention to the military’s ever-present need to control the government. And this has led to ordinary citizens openly criticising the military, a phenomenon unheard of before. A small minority of people in private gatherings are even questioning the legitimacy of the idea of Pakistan.

The new government will need to work hard to cement its legitimacy in such circumstances. Failing to do that would plunge Pakistan into yet another round of instability.

Samina Yasmeen 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. With Pakistan’s most popular politician in jail and cynicism running high, can a new leader unite the country? – https://theconversation.com/with-pakistans-most-popular-politician-in-jail-and-cynicism-running-high-can-a-new-leader-unite-the-country-222147

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brian Choo, Postdoctoral fellow in vertebrate palaeontology, Flinders University

More than 380 million years ago, a sleek, air-breathing predatory fish patrolled the rivers of central Australia. Today, the sediments of those rivers are outcrops of red sandstone in the remote outback.

Our new paper, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology,
describes the fossils of this fish, which we have named Harajicadectes zhumini.

Known from at least 17 fossil specimens, Harajicadectes is the first reasonably complete bony fish found from Devonian rocks in central Australia. It has also proven to be a most unusual animal.

Meet the biter

The name means “Min Zhu’s Harajica-biter”, after the location where its fossils were found, its presumed predatory habits, and in honour of eminent Chinese palaeontologist Min Zhu, who has made many contributions to early vertebrate research.

Harajicadectes was a fish in the Tetrapodomorpha group. This group had strongly built paired fins and usually only a single pair of external nostrils.

Tetrapodomorph fish from the Devonian period (359–419 million years ago) have long been of great interest to science. They include the forerunners of modern tetrapods – animals with backbones and limbs such as amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.

For example, recent fossil discoveries show fingers and toes arose in this group.

Read more:
When fish gave us the finger: this ancient four-limbed fish reveals the origins of the human hand

Devonian fossil sites in northwestern and eastern Australia have produced many spectacular discoveries of early tetrapodomorphs.

But until our discovery, the poorly sampled interior of the continent had only offered tantalising fossil fragments.

A long road to discovery

Our species description is the culmination of 50 years of tireless exploration and research.

Palaeontologist Gavin Young from the Australian National University made the initial discoveries in 1973 while exploring the Middle-Late Devonian Harajica Sandstone on Luritja/Arrernte country, more than 150 kilometres west of Alice Springs (Mparntwe).

Packed within red sandstone blocks on a remote hilltop were hundreds of fossil fishes. The vast majority of them were small Bothriolepis – a type of widespread prehistoric fish known as a placoderm, covered in box-like armour.

Scattered among them were fragments of other fishes. These included a lungfish known as Harajicadipterus youngi, named in honour of Gavin Young and his years of work on material from Harajica.

There were also spines from acanthodians (small, vaguely shark-like fish), the plates of phyllolepids (extremely flat placoderms) and, most intriguingly, jaw fragments of a previously unknown tetrapodomorph.

Many more partial specimens of this Harajica tetrapodomorph were collected in 1991, including some by the late palaeontologist Alex Ritchie.

There were early attempts at figuring out the species, but this proved troublesome. Then, our Flinders University expedition to the site in 2016 yielded the first almost complete fossil of this animal.

This beautiful specimen demonstrated that all the isolated bits and pieces collected over the years belonged to a single new type of fish. It is now in the collections of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, serving as the type specimen of Harajicadectes.

A strange apex predator

Up to 40 centimetres long, Harajicadectes is the biggest fish found in the Harajica rocks. Likely the top predator of those ancient rivers, its big mouth was lined with closely-packed sharp teeth alongside larger, widely spaced triangular fangs.

It seems to have combined anatomical traits from different tetrapodomorph lineages via convergent evolution (when different creatures evolve similar features independently). An example of this are the patterns of bones in its skull and scales. Exactly where it sits among its closest relatives is difficult to resolve.

The most striking and perhaps most important features are the two huge openings on the top of the skull called spiracles. These typically only appear as minute slits in most early bony fishes.

Similar giant spiracles also appear in Gogonasus, a marine tetrapodomorph from the famous Late Devonian Gogo Formation of Western Australia. (It doesn’t appear to be an immediate relative of Harajicadectes.)

They are also seen in the unrelated Pickeringius, an early ray-finned fish that was also at Gogo.

The earliest air-breathers?

Other Devonian animals that sported such spiracles were the famous elpistostegalians – freshwater tetrapodomorphs from the Northern Hemisphere such as Elpistostege and Tiktaalik.

These animals were extremely close to the ancestry of limbed vertebrates. So, enlarged spiracles seem to have arisen independently in at least four separate lineages of Devonian fishes.

The only living fishes with similar structures are bichirs, African ray-finned fishes that live in shallow floodplains and estuaries. It was recently confirmed they draw surface air through their spiracles to aid survival in oxygen-poor waters.

That these structures appeared roughly simultaneously in four Devonian lineages provides a fossil “signal” for scientists attempting to reconstruct atmospheric conditions in the distant past.

It could help us uncover the evolution of air breathing in backboned animals.

Brian Choo receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is employed by Flinders University.

Alice Clement receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is employed by Flinders University.

John Long receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

– ref. A 380-million-year old predatory fish from Central Australia is finally named after decades of digging – https://theconversation.com/a-380-million-year-old-predatory-fish-from-central-australia-is-finally-named-after-decades-of-digging-219397

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Ordway, Associate Professor Sport Management and Sport Integrity Lead, University of Canberra

For many, elite sport is the quintessential human endeavour. It drives ferocious competition, captures unconditional tribal loyalty, and rewards the victors with fame and fortune.

As the Olympic motto declares, the limits of human performance are there to be tested – faster, higher, stronger. But what would happen if the boundaries were not just pushed, but abandoned altogether?

That’s what PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel wants to do, putting some cash into lawyer Aron D’Souza’s concept of an “Enhanced Games”, where drug testing is out the window and anything goes.

Will venture capital make the Enhanced Games a reality? Despite rhetoric about making sport safer and “the medical and scientific process of elevating humanity to its full potential”, the games are out to make money.

The case for enhancement

The argument in favour of “enhanced” sport declares the current system dishonest and ineffective, as drug use is supposedly already widespread. It calls for athletes to make their own body-boosting decisions, and for their excellence to be rewarded with a more equitable share of the sport-entertainment loot.

As drug use in sport is here to stay, the argument goes, athletes should be permitted to use every advantage they can to secure success. In the world of hyper-commercialised, spectacle-driven sport theatre, athletes and fans alike are desperate to find out what can be done when anything is possible.

Costs to participants

As experts in sport management and integrity, we have a few concerns with this proposed venture.

It’s not that we’re averse to “thinking outside the box” to shake up existing systems, which are sometimes inequitable and unfair. And we agree there’s always more that can be done to reduce the harm elite athletes’ bodies endure.

However, any enhanced entertainment value would come at a cost to the participants. There’s no shortage of evidence demonstrating the dangers of pharmaceutical abuse for performance enhancement, let alone what might happen when used in experimental combinations and dosages.

Read more:
Why it’s time to legalise doping in athletics

Let’s not pretend this will be a kind of harm-reduction strategy to combat banned substance use in sport either, a bit like decriminalising cannabis.

In the Enhanced Games, athletes would be rewarded for “excellence”. That means the race to dope, where inevitably more is better, will not be limited to medicines that have been approved for human use.

What’s sport for?

In addition to damage to athletes, there’s also the damage to sport.

We’d like to think that most committed sport fans would prefer to watch athletes, not injectable avatars. But this event is designed as instantly accessible consumer fodder, not a treat for sporting aficionados.

The Enhanced Games suggests the path to victory is via what many sport fans would regard as cheating. Instead of promoting success via persistence, resilience and hard work, it suggests there is a “magic pill” or “silver bullet” for every challenge.

Even if we leave aside the significant health risks of a “go for it” open category of sport (which presents deal-breaking legal and medical ethics concerns anyway), it challenges the very essence of what sport should be about.

Perhaps we’re being idealistic, but what’s the point of sport if it isn’t at least aiming to be authentic? The main thing these games will “enhance” is the existing problems with elite sport.

More inequality and prospects for exploitation

The idea of the Enhanced Games seems to proceed from the premise that all participants are adults who can make fully informed decisions about their own short-term goals and long-term health in ways that will affect only themselves. This is unlikely to reflect the reality.

Elite sport is not conducted on a level playing field. Access to money, knowledge, power and technology already gives some athletes an edge over others, and the Enhanced Games would exacerbate these inequalities.

The Enhanced Games proposal does not set out how the increased risk to athletes exploited for commercial gain will be managed. The games also proposes to include events in which the burgeoning elite competitors are young and vulnerable, such as gymnastics and swimming, which may have serious implications for these children and their carers.

Winning – but at what cost?

Sport has never been a “win at all costs” proposition. Sport should be part of a society that cares about respect, fun, friendship, health, learning new skills and vitality.

If only the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists could concentrate their money and efforts on bringing the joy of sport to disadvantaged people and help support building thriving communities.

In years to come, we hope to look back on the Enhanced Games with as much interest as sprinter Ben Johnson’s 1998 novelty race against two horses. (Johnson, notoriously banned from normal competition for life after failing multiple drug tests, came third.)

Catherine Ordway has been appointed as a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Social
Science Research Expert Advisory Group (SSREAG) and previously worked for the Australian
Sports Anti-Doping Authority (precursor to Sport Integrity Australia). The University of Canberra has a Memorandum of Understanding with Sport Integrity Australia and is researching several co-funded projects, including on anti-doping.

The University of Canberra has a Memorandum of Understanding with Sport Integrity Australia and is researching several co-funded projects, including on anti-doping.

– ref. Venture capitalists are backing a ‘steroid Olympics’ to find out what happens when athletes are doped to the gills – https://theconversation.com/venture-capitalists-are-backing-a-steroid-olympics-to-find-out-what-happens-when-athletes-are-doped-to-the-gills-222869

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

iuThere are two things the prime minister needs to get into his head about tax. One is that saying he won’t make any further changes no longer works. The other is that negative gearing doesn’t do much to get people into homes.

Anthony Albanese seemed to have taken the first point on board when he spoke to The Insiders on Sunday.

Rather than promising flat out not to change the rules around negative gearing, he merely said he was

supportive of the current rules, we have not considered changes to them

But he was less careful when it came to the virtues of negative gearing. He said there was

a whole lot of analysis that says they encourage investment in housing, the key when it comes to housing is housing supply.

His official advisers in the treasury don’t think negative gearing does much to increase the supply of supply of housing – or, if they do, they omitted it from the six-page briefing note headed “negative gearing”, prepared to help the treasurer answer questions about it in parliament.

Our rules reward bad management

Negative gearing is a particularly Australian tax benefit, which – unlike in other countries – benefits dud landlords: those who can’t make money by renting out properties.

If they lose money (by paying out more in interest, maintenance and other expenses than they are receiving in rent) we let them offset that loss, not only against income from other investments, but also against income from their wage or salary.

It means they can cut their wage for tax purposes, cutting the tax they pay on it. And at the same time, they can hang on to a property they can later sell for a profit, which will be taxed at only half the normal rate, thanks to Australia’s 50% discount on capital gains.

It isn’t allowed in the United Kingdom or the United States. There, if you are a landlord who can’t make money, you can offset your losses against profits from other investments – but not against your wage.

In Canada you can offset rental losses against wages, but there must have been an “an intention to make a profit”. That would probably rule out most Australian negative gearers.

Most gearers don’t build homes

In Australia, an astounding one million of us negatively gear – more than one in nine taxpayers. In 2020-21 they claimed losses amounting to $8.7 billion – 3.5% of the income tax collected – meaning that if they didn’t do it (if they didn’t claim for what seem to be deliberate losses) the rest of us could pay less tax.

What Albanese said on the weekend was half right. Negative gearing encourages investment. Most months, more than one in three new home loans is for an investment property.

But most of those loans don’t increase supply – the thing Albanese says matters.

That’s because the overwhelming bulk of investor home loans go to “investors” planning to buy existing homes – to bid against and likely beat would-be owner-occupiers.

In December 2023, only 23% of the loans to investors was used to build a home or buy a newly-build home. In November only 19%.

As a means of getting more homes built, negative gearing leaks like a sieve. As a means of ensuring Australians continue to rent, rather than buy, it’s effective.

In the 20 or so years since the headline rate of capital gains tax was halved, supercharging negative gearing, the proportion of Australian households renting has climbed from 26% to 30%. If those extra renters become owners, an extra 400,000 Australians would be in homes they could call their own.

How to get better value from gearing

The really bizarre thing is that Albanese has it in his power to ensure negative gearing does exactly what he said it did – supercharge the building of houses.

All he would need to do is what Labor promised to do in 2016 and again in 2019. In those elections, Bill Shorten went to voters promising to limit the use of negative gearing to newly-built homes.

As Shorten put it, taxpayers would

continue to be able to deduct net rental losses against their wage income, providing the losses come from newly constructed housing.

The sieve would no longer leak. Every dollar of tax lost to a negative gearer would help build a home.

What would have happened if Shorten had got his way: if Australia both focused the use of negative gearing and cut the capital gains discount as he had proposed?

Modelling just published in Australian Economic Papers finds the share of households who own their home rather than renting it would have climbed 4.7%.

That’s security worth having, especially if it is accompanied by more homes.

An idea whose time is coming?

Australia’s Treasury has begun publishing estimates of the cost of the present unfocused system of negative gearing. Its latest, released last week, puts the cost at $2.7 billion per year, to which should probably be added a chunk of the $19 billion per year lost as a result of the capital gains concession.

The estimates are new. Until Jim Chalmers became treasurer, his department didn’t publish estimates of the cost of rental deductions.

Chalmers is far from the first treasurer to be curious about what the concession does. Scott Morrison expressed concern about the “excesses” of negative gearing.

And Morrison’s predecessor, Joe Hockey, said on leaving parliament that negative gearing should be skewed towards new housing, so “there is an incentive to add to the housing stock rather than an incentive to speculate on existing property”.

Albanese is normally cautious. But as he is showing us right with his rejigged Stage 3 tax cuts, there are times when he is not.

If he really wants to throw everything he has got at building more homes, he knows what to do.

Peter Martin is Economics Editor of The Conversation.

– ref. How Albanese could tweak negative gearing to save money and build more new homes – https://theconversation.com/how-albanese-could-tweak-negative-gearing-to-save-money-and-build-more-new-homes-222739

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Thomas, Lecturer in Middle East Studies, Deakin University

In recent weeks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeated his rejections of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, saying:

I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over all the territory west of Jordan – and this is contrary to a Palestinian state.

While Netanyahu has never been in favour of a two-state solution, it has had significant support from governments around the world for decades, including the United States, the United Kingdom, European nations, Australia, Canada, Egypt and others.

However, the two-state solution is now further away than it has ever been, with some even proclaiming it “dead”.

But what actually is the two-state solution and why do so many see this as the only resolution to the conflict?

What is the two-state solution?

The two-state solution refers to a plan to create a Palestinian state separate from the state of Israel. The goal is to address Palestinian claims to national self-determination without undermining Israel’s sovereignty.

The first attempt at creating side-by-side states occurred before the independence of Israel in 1948. The year before, the United Nations passed Resolution 181 outlining a partition plan that would split the Mandate of Palestine (under British control) into separate Jewish and Arab states.

The UN’s proposed borders never materialised. Shortly after Israel declared independence, Syria, Jordan and Egypt invaded, sparking the first Arab-Israeli war. More than 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from the new state of Israel, fleeing to the West Bank, Gaza and surrounding Arab states.

Read more:
The Nakba: how the Palestinians were expelled from Israel

In recent decades, there have been many different views on what shape a Palestinian state should take. The 1949 “green line” was seen by many as the most realistic borders for the respective states. This line was drawn during the armistice agreements between Israel and its neighbours following the 1948 war and is the current boundary between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza.

However, following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel captured and occupied the West Bank and Gaza, along with East Jerusalem and Golan Heights. Most current discussions of the two-state solution now refer to creating two states along “the pre-1967 borders”.

This would mean the new Palestinian state would consist of the West Bank prior to Israeli settlement, and Gaza. How Jerusalem would be split, if at all, has been a significant point of contention in this plan.

Why is statehood so important?

The kind of statehood referred to in the two-state solution, known as state sovereignty in international politics, is the authority given to the government of a nation within and over its borders.

State sovereignty was formalised through the League of Nations (the precursor to the UN) and it gives governments complete control to administer laws within their borders, allows them to conduct relations with other states in formal bodies, and protects them from invasion by other states under international law. This status is derived from mutual recognition from other states.

This is something many of us take for granted. The vast majority of people on Earth live in or legally fall under the jurisdiction of a sovereign state.

Read more:
Israel-Palestinian conflict: is the two-state solution now dead?

The state of Israel was formally established in 1948 through the political project of Zionism – the movement to establish a Jewish homeland. The aim was to create a sovereign state – with borders, a government and an army – that would give the Jewish people a political voice and a place free from antisemitic violence.

But it was not until other countries established diplomatic ties with Israel – along with its accession to the UN in 1949 – that it achieved state sovereignty similar to other countries. More than 160 members of the UN now recognise Israel; those who do not include Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Since the end of the Six-Day War in 1967, more than 5 million Palestinians who are not citizens of another nation have been stateless. The West Bank and Gaza Strip remain in an institutional limbo – best described as semi-autonomous enclaves under the ultimate control of Israel.

While 139 members of the UN recognise a state of Palestine, the governing bodies in the West Bank and Gaza (the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, respectively) do not have control over their own security or borders.

As such, the self-determination of Palestinians through the creation of a sovereign state has been a cornerstone of Palestinian political action for decades.

The closest the two sides got – the Oslo Accords

For a time in the early 1990s, significant progress was being made toward a two-state solution. Negotiations began largely as a result of Palestinian uprisings across the West Bank and Gaza. Beginning in 1987, they were known as the First Intifada.

In 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) Yasser Arafat met in Oslo and signed the first of two agreements called the Oslo Accords. At the time, this was not seen as a meeting between equals. Rabin was head of a sovereign state and Arafat was leader of an organisation that had been designated a terror group by the US.

But the leaders were able to formalise an agreement, following major concessions from both sides, that laid the groundwork for the creation of a separate Palestinian state. While the accord did not expressly mention the 1967 borders, it did refer to “a settlement based on UN Security Council Resolution 242” in 1967, which called for the withdrawal of Israel’s armed forces “from territories occupied in the recent conflict”. Arafat, Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres all received Nobel Peace Prizes afterwards.

The Oslo II Accord was signed in 1995, detailing the subdivision of administrative areas in the occupied territories. The West Bank, in particular, was divided into parcels that were controlled by Israel, the Palestinian Authority or a joint operation – the first step toward handing over land in the occupied territories to the Palestinian Authority.

But just six weeks later, Rabin was shot dead by a Jewish nationalist aggrieved by the concessions made by Israel.

Negotiations between the two sides slowed and political will began to sour. And over the next few decades, the two-state solution has only become harder to achieve for various reasons, including:

• the rise of conservative governments in Israel and lack of effective political pressure from the US

• the shrinking political influence of the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas and the rise of Hamas in Gaza, which caused a political split between the two Palestinian territories

• Hamas’ vows to annihilate Israel and refusal to recognise the Israeli state as legitimate

• the continued growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which has turned the territory into an ever-shrinking series of small enclaves connected by military checkpoints

• dwindling support among both Israelis and Palestinians for the model

• continued political violence on both sides.

And of course there is Netanyahu – no individual has done more to undermine the two-state solution than the current Israeli leader and his party. In 2010, a leaked recording from 2001 came to light where Netanyahu claimed to have “de facto put an end to the Oslo accords”.

What alternatives are there?

There aren’t many alternatives and all of them have significant problems.

Some are now advocating for a “one-state solution,” in which Israeli citizenship would be granted to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to create a democratic, ethnically pluralist state.

Although Arabs already make up around 20% of Israel’s current population, the one-state solution would not be politically feasible. According to Zionist ideology, Israel must always remain a majority Jewish state and granting Palestinians citizenship in the occupied territories would undermine this.

Another kind of one-state solution is not feasible for a different reason. The most far-right ministers in Israel’s parliament have championed an idea to expand complete sovereign control over the West Bank and Gaza and encourage mass Jewish settlement in these areas. Such action would draw the ire of the international community and human rights organisations and would be seen as tantamount to ethnic cleansing.

The other option is the status quo. The Hamas attack on October 7 and subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza have shown us that this is not a solution either.

Andrew Thomas 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. Explainer: what is the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? – https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-the-two-state-solution-to-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-221872

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Backholer, Co-Director, Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition, Deakin University

An affordable daily diet has edged too far away for many Australians. Food prices have risen sharply since 2021, fuelling cost of living pressures and food insecurity. Some 3.7 million Australian households experienced food insecurity in 2023 – 10% more than in 2022.

Food prices have always been a challenge for many Australians. This is especially true for people on low incomes, refugees, people living in rural areas, single mothers, and people with disability. A basic healthy diet can cost city-dwelling families who are doing it toughest roughly one-third of their income.

So what is the Australian government doing to ease the cost of a supermarket shop? Let’s take a look.

Read more:
Amid allegations of price gouging, it’s time for big supermarkets to come clean on how they price their products

First, how much have food prices increased, and why?

Food prices peaked in December 2022, with an average shopping basket costing 9.2% more than in 2021. Although food prices have eased since that peak, they remain significantly higher now compared to before the pandemic.

Almost all food categories have been hit, but many healthy foods appear to have increased in price at almost double the rate of discretionary (unhealthy) foods.

The COVID pandemic, climate events such as floods and bushfires, and international conflicts have all contributed, to varying degrees. These events have placed undue pressure on food supply chains through food shortages, increased fuel, energy and transport costs and a shortage of workers from farm to fork.

Big supermarkets have also been scrutinised recently. In Australia, supermarkets can set prices, with little transparency. This is against a backdrop of one of the most powerful and concentrated grocery sectors in the world, severely limiting competition.

Claims of supermarket price gouging have inspired public outrage, particularly given the two supermarket giants each pocketed more than A$1 billion in profits in 2022-2023.

Read more:
Are you living in a food desert? These maps suggest it can make a big difference to your health

So what is the government doing to ease the pressure?

The government’s Standing Committee on Agriculture undertook an inquiry into food security in Australia in 2023, and came up with 35 recommendations. While many of these recommendations may indirectly influence food prices, only one explicitly addressed food prices: to provide subsidies for remote community stores so fresh food can be sold at an affordable price. These recommendations are yet to be implemented.

At the end of 2023, the Senate Select Committee on Supermarket Prices was established to “inquire into and report on the price setting practices and market power of major supermarkets”. Submissions to the inquiry recently closed, with the final report due in May.

In early 2024, the government announced an independent review of the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct to ensure the grocery retailers and wholesalers are dealing fairly with suppliers. Although not specifically focused on the shelf price of food, a fairer deal between retailers and suppliers may flow to lower prices for consumers.

Most recently, the Albanese government formally issued a directive to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to carry out a 12-month investigation into supermarket prices. This will have more teeth than other inquiries, allowing the ACCC to use legal powers to gather information, including from the supermarkets themselves.

If wrongdoing is uncovered, the ACCC has the power to take the supermarkets to court. The pressure from the inquiry may also lead to supermarkets voluntarily lowering food prices, in a similar way to previous inquiries.

Read more:
The cost of living is biting. Here’s how to spend less on meat and dairy

What are other countries doing?

In Greece, the government has temporarily forced supermarkets to reduce prices on basic products. For example, the price of at least one type of bread would be lowered and advertised to shoppers at this lower rate. The Greek government has also provided low-income households with a monthly allowance to support grocery costs, among other measures.

The French government has worked with the food sector to secure a commitment from 75 companies to cut their prices. It has also promised regular price checks at supermarkets to ensure prices fall, with financial penalties if they don’t.

In Spain, the value added tax on basic foods, such as fruits, vegetables, pasta and cooking oils, has been eliminated or lowered. Government tax revenue will be reduced for these items, but retained for other non-basic foods (similar to the GST in Australia).

What next for Australia?

The multi-year food price crisis has revealed the vulnerability of our food system. We need to recover from where we are, but we must do so in a way that ensures a more resilient food system with stable food prices over time.

While it’s too early to know what will come of the various food price inquiries, the government is and should continue to provide general cost-of-living support. The recent revised Stage 3 tax cuts are an example of increasing the flow of money to those who need it most, easing pressure at the supermarket checkout.

Read more:
Trying to spend less on food? Following the dietary guidelines might save you $160 a fortnight

Further support for vulnerable households could be implemented by expanding existing social safety nets through increasing income support payments.

The fate of food prices in Australia is, at least for now, uncertain. But one thing is for sure. Unless the government steps up to ease the pressure, too many Australians will keep struggling to put food on the table.

Kathryn Backholer receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Heart Foundation, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization, the National Health and medical Research Council, The Ian Potter Foundation, QUIT Victoria, and The Responsible Gambling Foundation.

Christina Zorbas receives funding from the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

– ref. We’re in a food price crisis. What is the government doing to ease the pressure? – https://theconversation.com/were-in-a-food-price-crisis-what-is-the-government-doing-to-ease-the-pressure-222368

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

Australia looks set to adopt fuel-efficiency standards after the Albanese government on Sunday revealed options for the long-awaited policy. The government says the reform would lead to more cars that are cheaper to run, eventually saving Australians about A$1,000 per vehicle each year.

The announcement comes a decade after the Climate Change Authority first proposed such a standard for Australia. The United States has had such a policy since the 1970s and the European Union implemented mandatory standards in 2009.

The Coalition has already sought to stoke fears among tradies and regional voters by claiming Labor’s policy threatens to take utes off the road. Labor’s policy is designed to address this concern – but the opposition looks likely to continue this scare campaign.

More generally, history tells us the road to fuel-efficiency reform in Australia is a bumpy one. The Albanese government has hazards to negotiate before its proposal becomes law.

A carbon price, by another name

Labor has outlined three options for a fuel-efficiency target, ranging from weak to aggressive. It describes its preferred middle-ground option as the sensible compromise.

The policy design for each of the options would set a national limit, averaged across all new cars sold, stipulating grams of CO₂ that can be emitted for each kilometre driven. This measure depends on fuel efficiency: that is, the amount of fuel burnt per kilometre. The designs differ in the stringency of the targets, the speed of the changes and the treatment of different vehicle classes.

The limit would not apply to individual cars. Instead, each supplier of new light vehicles to Australia would have to make sure the mix of vehicles does not exceed the limit. Low-efficiency vehicles could still be sold, but car dealers would have to balance this out by selling enough high-efficiency vehicles, such as electric vehicles.

Car suppliers that outperform the targets would earn credits that could be sold to those falling short. This system is similar to Australia’s renewable energy target for electricity and the safeguard mechanism for industry pollution.

All three are effectively a carbon price (though the political toxicity of that term means the government would never characterise them as such). Nonetheless, should the fuel-efficiency standards be implemented, Australia would end up with three carbon prices, one for each major energy use.

The government says the preferred option would lead to a saving of 369 million tonnes of CO₂ by 2050.

Read more:
Who’s holding back electric cars in Australia? We’ve long known the answer – and it’s time to clear the road

What about utes?

One tricky path the policy must navigate is allowing for the supply of both small and large vehicles without further exacerbating the trend towards oversized vehicles on our roads.

The government’s preferred option achieves this by allowing higher – but still limited – emissions for heavier vehicles such as utes, vans and SUVs, to account for their natural tendency to use more fuel.

Heavier vehicles are a sticking point in forming vehicle emissions policy in Australia. Who could forget then-prime minister Scott Morrison’s 2019 claim Labor’s electric vehicle policy would “end the weekend” by banning larger cars used to tow boats and the like.

Following Labor’s policy announcement on Sunday, Nationals leader David Littleproud picked up where Morrison left off, saying:

If you take away particularly utes, they’re tools of trade, particularly for people, not just tradies in the cities, but also people in the bush. And if you put a tonne on the back of an electric ute at the moment, you don’t get far.

Anticipating the Coalition scare campaign, the Labor government’s preferred option has been designed with the aim of ensuring a wide range of conventional utes remain on the market.

In the medium term, we can also expect the trend towards larger vehicles to be weakened by measures in Labor’s last federal budget to roll back vehicle tax breaks for small and medium businesses. But that change doesn’t come into effect until mid-year, which means there may be a rush on larger vehicle purchases until then.

Read more:
Electric utes can now power the weekend – and the work week

Ghosts from the past

Labor’s preferred policy option is broadly similar to that put forward by the Climate Change Authority in 2014. Then, the Coalition government appeared to consider the proposal for a time. But it eventually dropped the idea – in part, presumably, due to lobbying by interest groups including the car industry.

There are signs those same groups are gearing up again. The Federated Chamber of Automotive Industries, for example, said on Sunday the government’s targets will “be a challenge” to meet and may lead to more expensive vehicles, or gaps in the supply of utes and SUVs.

But the proposed policy has been welcomed by climate change advocates, the electric vehicle industry and motoring groups. The NRMA described them as “responsible and achievable”, saying “a business-as-usual approach meant that Australian families and businesses were not benefiting from the best technology designed to reduce fuel consumption”.

Progress, at last

The government intends to consult on its preferred model before introducing the legislation, with a view to enacting the policy in January 2025.

Assuming the policy is adopted, Australia would finally shed its unenviable status as the only developed country without such such standards. But we will still be at the back of pack, far behind the EU and only catching up to the US in 2028.

Despite the difficulties, it seems likely Australia will have fuel-efficiency standards in the near future. As with most measures to reduce emissions, the best time to introduce the policy was ten or more years ago. But the second-best time is now.

John Quiggin was a Member of the Climate Change Authority at the time it proposed a fuel efficiency standard

– ref. Labor’s fuel-efficiency standards may settle the ute dispute – but there are still hazards on the road – https://theconversation.com/labors-fuel-efficiency-standards-may-settle-the-ute-dispute-but-there-are-still-hazards-on-the-road-222875

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Tookey, Professor of Construction Management, Auckland University of Technology

Cyclone Gabrielle caused chaos one year ago. Repairs due to that storm and the Auckland floods have required substantial time and resources. Hawkes Bay, parts of Auckland and the Coromandel all still bear the scars of the worst storm to hit New Zealand this century.

The good news is that most initial repairs are complete. The bad news is that the restored infrastructure is just as vulnerable as it was prior to Gabrielle. Restoring infrastructure to the way it was before a natural disaster is not necessarily the best approach for a resilient future.

Cyclone Gabrielle simultaneously exposed New Zealand’s dependence on “horizontal” infrastructure (electricity and roading networks, for example), and how tenuous and potentially prone to damage it is.

The cyclone also revealed the flaws in the country’s planning and consenting processes. There is a history of developing new housing in flood-prone areas – particularly in Auckland. A year after Gabrielle, New Zealand needs to look to the future of climate risk, policy creation and infrastructural investment.

Both the previous and current governments have expressed concerns over future climate impacts. Yet climate risk and related infrastructure investment were comparatively minor themes in the various election debates of 2023.

New Zealand now needs to ask some serious long-term questions:

• How frequently will it be exposed to the costs and chaos of weather events?

• How should it respond to those risks?

• What are the infrastructural investment priorities?

• How should it sequence its responses?

• And how will we pay for these measures?

Read more:
Landslides and law: Cyclone Gabrielle raises serious questions about where we’ve been allowed to build

Political agreement in theory

Failing to ask – let alone answer – those questions means New Zealand can’t plan, can’t build and can’t budget.

In October 2016, the National-led government’s environment minister Paula Bennett announced the ratification of the Paris Climate Accord. The treaty became legally enforceable in New Zealand in 2020 while Jacinda Ardern was prime minister.

Fundamentally, the commitment to addressing climate change is a point of agreement across the political spectrum.

Having ratified the Paris Accord, cuts to the country’s emissions are legally enforceable and time-bound. But New Zealand’s infrastructural planning, investments and commitments remain vague.

Read more:
Massive outages caused by Cyclone Gabrielle strengthen the case for burying power lines

The Ardern government produced “Adapt and Thrive: Building a climate-resilient Aotearoa New Zealand” in August 2022. There was little coverage of this consultation document at the time or since, and the general public is largely unaware of it.

Adapt and Thrive advocates multiple strategies in response to climate change, including “avoid, protect, accommodate, retreat”. All elements of this plan have planning, legislative and resource implications.

But central to the report is the idea of “managed retreat” from flood-prone areas. The report indicates 300,000 dwellings will be directly affected by adverse weather events in the future. At least NZ$100 billion worth of property has been flagged as directly at risk, affecting 72,000 New Zealanders.

It is fair to say that the cost of new housing and infrastructure designed to protect at-risk communities, as well as service relocated ones, will be spectacularly expensive.

Can NZ ‘adapt and thrive’?

It is now time for New Zealand to decide to what degree it wishes to ameliorate the effects of climate change.

If this is a national priority, then planning, budgeting and sequencing need to be committed to. Hundreds of billions of dollars will be needed over a multi-decade, integrated programme of planning, compulsory purchase and infrastructure construction.

With the change of government, however, will that plan be put into action? There are aspects of it that make this questionable.

The different treatment of stakeholder groups around compensation during “managed retreat” will be problematic for the new governing coalition.

For example, Adapt and Thrive proposes 50% compensation for businesses and rental property owners, with zero compensation for bach or second home owners. Relocated communities’ resilience in terms of jobs, economic activity and housing will become contentious.

Adapt and Thrive also proposes limiting of rights of appeal for affected communities. The extensive planning and procurement processes involved make it hard to imagine the right to appeal being entirely quashed. Inevitably, the process of planning, financial commitments and appeals will be drawn out.

Read more:
NZ cities urgently need to become ‘spongier’ – but system change will be expensive

Time for big decisions

To say Adapt and Thrive will be challenging to put into effect is an understatement. If the policy is going to be reconsidered, so be it.

But New Zealand has pressing infrastructural investment needs to facilitate growth and sustainability. The planning and procurement needed to implement such policy is time-consuming and costly. Irrespective of political orientation, there is an absolute need to prioritise it.

Given the huge financial consequences, and inevitable trade-offs in social programmes, education, defence and other budget priorities, a time frame for making big decisions is essential.

Failure to do so will inhibit future growth and housing provision, reduce cost-effectiveness, as well as threaten the sustainability of communities in vulnerable areas. Cyclone Gabrielle made it clear that kicking this particular can down the road is not acceptable.

John Tookey 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. One year on from Cyclone Gabrielle, NZ still needs a plan to fix its failing infrastructure – https://theconversation.com/one-year-on-from-cyclone-gabrielle-nz-still-needs-a-plan-to-fix-its-failing-infrastructure-221864

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa J. Hackett, Lecturer, Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, University of New England

King Charles III has been diagnosed with cancer. This is an unexpected announcement: it is unusual for the royal family to release details of medical conditions to the public.

“Don’t let the daylight in” was how British essayist Walter Bagehot advised the British monarchy to deal with the public in 1867. “[A]bove all things our royalty is to be reverenced […] its mystery is its life,” he wrote.

For Queen Elizabeth II this attitude framed her response to public information about the royals, quipping “never complain, never explain”. Maybe this explains why Princess Kate’s recent abdominal surgery has not been disclosed to the public, with media reports saying she is “determined to keep her medical details private”.

In revealing the fragility of the royal body much of the mystique about them as anointed by God fades away. But the royals’ health has, occasionally, been the subject of official news, and, more commonly, the subject of gossip.

Henry VIII’s ‘soore legge’

Henry VIII’s (1491–1547) health was well-documented and discussed in state-papers and diplomatic dispatches of the day.

In his early years, he was known for his robust health. In his later years, he would be described as “cursed” by his deteriorating health.

As Henry aged, his access to fine food led to an increase of weight. Doctors today might diagnose him with obesity, and it has been speculated by contemporary medical historians he suffered from hypertension and Type II diabetes.

This disease, which can lead to diabetic neuropathy and serious foot complications, could account for the persistent and odorous ulcers on his “sorre legge”, as described by his contemporaries.

Knowledge about Henry’s health was not widespread. The king had sequestered himself in his private apartments. Even his attending physicians did not keep notes, perhaps concerned about being accused of treason in the volatile politics of the time. Most of our knowledge today is gleaned from diplomatic reports sent by diplomats to their own leaders.

Read more:
Henry VIII’s notes in prayer book written by his sixth wife reveal musings on faith, sin and his deteriorating health – new discovery

Queen Anne’s lupus

Queen Anne (1665-1714) had 17 pregnancies, 11 of which resulted in miscarriages or stillbirths, with the remainder all dying in childhood. Despite the regularity of her failed pregnancies, her physician, John Radcliffe, repeatedly declared she was in good health and her miscarriages were due to “the vapours”, a vague diagnosis often attributed to aristocratic women.

It is now believed Anne may have been afflicted with the autoimmune condition lupus.

For Anne’s contemporaries, the name of the illness perhaps mattered less than the real political issue it presented: who would become monarch after her? With no heirs, there was real political fear her Catholic half-brother James Francis Edward Stuart (“The Old Pretender”) would claim the throne.

But the law excluded Catholics from the taking the crown, and ensured Anne would be succeed by her second cousin, George I of Hanover and Britain.

George III and mental illness

George III (1738–1820) famously suffered from bouts of mental illness, more recently been speculated to be caused by Porphyria, a hereditary blood disorder.

Throughout his illness bulletins were issued by his doctors informing the public of his condition.

These were kept deliberately vague, with the aim to reassure the public rather than divulge details. His repeated bouts of illness mean his health was a constant in the media of the time, with frequent, at times twice-daily, updates during episodes.

His illness called into question his ability to be monarch, a situation eventually resolved by the installing of his son, later George IV, as Prince Regent.

Read more:
Who owns the royal body? Public interest in royal health reveals anxieties about our rulers

A family of haemophilia

Queen Victoria has been called the “Grandmother of Europe” due to her many descendants. This also came with a deadly legacy, haemophilia, given the moniker “the royal disease”.

Haemophilia is an inherited disorder which mostly affects males, where the blood does not clot properly. This can lead to severe or spontaneous bleeding which can be dangerous if not treated properly. While the illness can be managed well today, in Victoria’s time little was known about it.

It is believed Victoria passed on the trait to three of her nine children, at a time when life expectancy for those who had the disease was just 13 years old. Two of her daughters were asymptomatic carriers, however her fourth son Prince Leopold (1853-1884) was afflicted with the disease.

While the royal family were careful to manage what information was publicly released about his illness, his status meant it garnered public attention. It was covered in medical journals of the time, and later in newspapers.

As knowledge of the illness grew, both the public and members of the royal family were able to use it to guide decisions on marriages to limit its spread.

A new approach

In the days leading up to Elizabeth’s death on 2022, the media reported her as resting “comfortably” and provided no information on the nature of her illness. Even her death certificate failed to reveal her cause of death, other than as old age.

Charles has signalled he wants to do monarchy differently than his mother. After his recent prostate surgery, his office stated he wanted to inspire men to look after their prostates. Anecdotal evidence suggests more men have sought medical tests in response which is being called the “King Charles effect”.

Now, the announcement of Charles’s cancer diagnosis signals a new approach by the royals.

Read more:
What happens if King Charles can no longer perform his duties?

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The royals have historically been tight-lipped about their health – but that never stopped the gossip – https://theconversation.com/the-royals-have-historically-been-tight-lipped-about-their-health-but-that-never-stopped-the-gossip-222873

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vinh Thai, Professor, RMIT University

Despite most businesses around the world returning to some form of normal after the pandemic, supply chain problems continue to disrupt the manufacturing and availability of new and second hand cars.

This disruption has caused vehicle prices to sky-rocket, adding to cost-of-living pressures already being experienced by most Australians.

Car prices in Australia rose throughout 2023 with an average increase of almost 20% since April 2020, even faster than the consumer price index.

The increase has varied depending on the model, but the biggest increases – of about 25% – have been in the small car sector.

This resembles the situation in Europe where the prices of the cheapest models produced by the five biggest carmakers have increased by an average of 41% since 2019.

The impact of supply not matching demand

The availability and cost of buying new cars in Australia have been impacted by both demand and supply issues.

On the demand side, many new orders have been delayed by time lost during the lockdowns followed by strict social distancing requirements holding up work at all stages of the manufacturing process.

This has been worsened by new car demand increasing across all markets. In Europe, new vehicle registrations rose 11% in October 2023 for 14th consecutive month. The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries in Australia also recorded breaking new vehicles sales in August 2023 with 15.4% increase compared to the same period in 2022.

Read more:
What the Red Sea crisis could mean for the electric vehicle industry and the planet

There has also been an ongoing global shortage of semiconductors to make
computer chips. Not only are these chips commonly used in household devices, they are essential as cars are increasingly automated and electric vehicles become popular.

Geopolitical tensions

The shortage and associated hold ups, has been exacerbated by confict in the Middle East, particularly the Israel-Hamas war as Israel is a major supplier of chips to the world.

Shipping delays caused by the need to re-route car carriers due to attacks by Houthi rebels on ships operated by supporters of Israel in the conflict have also held up supply.

A shortage of the special RORO (roll on, roll off) shipping carriers used to transport cars has added to delays. While demand for car carriers has grown 37% since 2019, the fleet has barely grown.

Problems at the Australian end

When shipments do finally arrive at the Australian ports, they face port congestion. This is caused by several factors:

• large amounts of cargo arriving at Australian ports and terminals at the same time as previously delayed exports are being sent offshore

• higher demand for quarantine checks after pests and seeds were found in 1000s of vehicles being brought in from Asia and Europe last year

• insufficient labour to conduct biosecurity checks and handle cargo

• industrial action, such as the ongoing dispute at DP World-operated ports, affecting productivity.

A second hand solution?

Understandably, when there is a shortage of new cars and prices are high, consumers have turned to second-hand cars which are already in the country. However, this has led to a supply-demand imbalance, reducing the availablity and increasing the cost of this once cheaper option.

The longer the wait for new cars and the higher the costs, the greater the pressure on the second-hand car market.

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Some strategic customers may worsen the problem by registering to buy several different cars and then only buying the first one that arrives, therefore jacking up the demand and slowing down the process. They may also demand a high price for their used car, putting a vehicle out of reach for some would-be buyers.

It will take time to resolve

Supply will gradually catch up with demand, therefore easing the problem. But the current global geopolitical tensions and industrial action on the wharves, makes it difficult to predict when this will happen.

In the short term, the Albanese government may need to intervene to deter unhealthy trading practices. This could be achieved in the short term by imposing higher taxes on people who register to buy more cars than they need for personal use.

Vinh Thai 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. Finding a reasonably priced new car is almost impossible. And the second hand market is not much better – https://theconversation.com/finding-a-reasonably-priced-new-car-is-almost-impossible-and-the-second-hand-market-is-not-much-better-221607

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jess Melbourne-Thomas, Transdisciplinary Researcher & Knowledge Broker, CSIRO

From Kakadu to Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef, to Sydney Opera House and the convict sites, Australia’s list of World Heritage places is incredibly diverse. Each site represents the culture, nature and history of this land, in its own way.

But climate change threatens these sites. Many heritage values are already being eroded. On-ground managers of these and other protected places need practical guidance on how to understand these impacts and respond effectively.

We developed a climate change “toolkit” for World Heritage properties with site managers and Traditional Owners. To our knowledge, it is the first time such guidance has been co-developed and tested with World Heritage property managers and Indigenous experts in this country.

Bringing climate science and Indigenous knowledge systems together promises to produce better results for heritage protection as the climate changes. And there is no time to waste. We must act fast to address these threats to Australia’s unique and special places of global significance, so their World Heritage values can be enjoyed for generations to come.

Mounting climate threats to heritage

Our new research explored climate impacts at three very different sites:

1. Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory
2. Australian Convict Sites, scattered around the country
3. Willandra Lakes Region, southwest New South Wales.

The vast tropical Kakadu National Park is one of four Australian properties listed for both outstanding cultural and natural values. Cave paintings, rock carvings and archaeological sites date back tens of thousands of years. Tidal flats, floodplains, lowlands and plateaus provide habitat for many rare or endemic plants and animals.

But Kakadu is vulnerable to rising sea levels, leading to coastal erosion and saltwater entering wetlands. The region is also experiencing more extreme temperatures and heatwaves, changing fire regimes, more intense cyclones, and increasingly intense extreme rainfall events.

The Convict Sites consist of 11 properties around Australia. Fremantle Prison lies 5,500km west of Arthur’s Vale Historic Area in the east. The Old Great North Road in the north is 1,500km from the Port Arthur Historic Site in the south.

Many convict sites are on coasts and islands where wave action and sea level rise are increasingly damaging structures, landscapes and cultural materials. Convict sites are also vulnerable to storms and bushfires because the buildings are so old.

The arid Willandra Lakes Region contains fossil remains of a series of lakes and sand formations, along with archaeological evidence of human occupation dating back 45,000–60,000 years.

Hot and dry conditions are causing erosion of topsoil, increasingly exposing Aboriginal cultural heritage.

Read more:
Climate change must be a catalyst for reform of the World Heritage system

Tapping into deep knowledge

We worked closely with these sites to develop and test our new toolkit.

An Indigenous Reference Group of Traditional Owners from a number of World Heritage sites in Australia contributed their expert knowledge. This includes practical guidance such as how to engage with and enable Indigenous leadership so Traditional Owners can participate in or lead climate vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning. The toolkit also describes using the right knowledge for the right Country (showing respect for traditional knowledge) and establishing agreements to ensure Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights are protected.

Effectively addressing climate impacts on World Heritage values requires the deep knowledge, values and worldviews of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. This includes practices such as cultural burning to reduce the risk of intense bushfire, or cultural knowledge of long-term changes in water cycles. Tapping into this deep understanding of connections between nature and culture can help support the management of spiritual, living landscapes.

Adapting to climate change

World Heritage site managers can take a broad range of practical actions to adapt to climate change.

These actions, such as firefighting or invasive species control, may not be new. They just need to be undertaken more often or intensely.

Other variations on existing actions may include greater emphasis on physical separation between flammable vegetation and assets such as larger firebreaks, or responding to new invasive species, possibly including shifting ranges of invasive native species.

Some new management actions will be required, such as flood protection, relocating assets and new technological interventions. In cases where climate change is likely to lead to changes in the values of a site, there may be a need to reevaluate management objectives and strategies (such as accommodating new groups of organisms or “ecological communities”, letting some populations decline, and managed retreat of shorelines).

There may also be a need to consider vulnerability at different scales, sometimes across larger areas. In some cases, managers may aim to retain certain values across a wider landscape while accepting local change.

Read more:
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Looking ahead

Managers, stakeholders and rights-holders of World Heritage sites and other protected places, such as Ramsar wetlands and marine protected areas, can now use the toolkit to plan for current and future climate threats. They can focus on the parts most useful to them, depending on their capacity and needs. Ultimately, this resource will help protect Australia’s cultural and natural heritage.

The following people were members of the Indigenous Reference Group and are coauthors of our research paper: Bianca McNeair, Lance Syme, Chrissy Grant, Nicholas Pedrocchi, Patricia Oakley, Amy Stevens, Denis Rose, Erin Rose, Jade Gould, John Locke and Lynda Maybanks.

Jess Melbourne-Thomas received funding for this work from the Australian Commonwealth Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

Brenda Lin received funding for this work from the Australian Commonwealth Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

Lance Syme is Principal Archaeologist at Kayandel Archaeological Services, providing cultural heritage and archaeological consulting services throughout New South Wales. He is now working part-time for the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on World Heritage. Funding for the work described in this article came from the Australian Commonwealth Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

Mandy Hopkins received funding for this work from the Australian Commonwealth Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. This led to further support for vulnerability assessments from Budj Bim world heritage property management.

– ref. Climate change will strike Australia’s precious World Heritage sites – and Indigenous knowledge is a key defence – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-will-strike-australias-precious-world-heritage-sites-and-indigenous-knowledge-is-a-key-defence-222393

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor emerita, University of Sydney

King Charles III’s cancer diagnosis will turn minds to the question of what happens if he becomes unable to fulfil his constitutional duties. Buckingham Palace has announced he will continue performing his official paperwork and his weekly meetings with the prime minister throughout his treatment.
But what happens if he becomes seriously ill?

There are three options: counsellors of state, regency and abdication.

Counsellors of state

First, King Charles can delegate some or most of his royal functions to counsellors of state, as happens most commonly when he is travelling overseas. Two counsellors of state act jointly in exercising royal powers such as assenting to laws, receiving ambassadors and holding Privy Council meetings.

The counsellors of state are the spouse of the sovereign and the next four adults in line of succession to the throne – being Queen Camilla, Prince William, Prince Harry, Prince Andrew and Princess Beatrice.

However, Prince Harry is excluded while he is outside the United Kingdom, and in practice Prince Andrew and Princess Beatrice are not called on to act as they are not “working royals”.

As this left only Queen Camilla and Prince William to perform the role, a law was passed in the UK in 2022 to add Princess Anne and Prince Edward to the list.

Counsellors of state may carry out most of the sovereign’s functions while he is ill, but they cannot dissolve parliament, except on his instruction, and they cannot create peers. Whether they can appoint a prime minister remains a matter of debate. Most significantly, they cannot exercise powers with respect to the King’s other realms, such as Australia.

Regency

The second option is a regency. This occurs if the King “is by reason of infirmity of mind or body incapable for the time being of performing the royal functions”. The sovereign does not control when or for how long a regency occurs. Instead, it is initiated by a declaration of three or more of: the sovereign’s spouse, the lord chancellor, the speaker of the House of Commons, the lord chief justice of England and the master of the rolls.

The UK’s Regency Act requires Prince William to be regent, as he is the next adult in line of succession to the crown. The regent has the powers of the King with respect to the United Kingdom, but cannot change the order of succession to the crown.

The Regency Act does not give the regent powers in relation to realms such as Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand resolved the problem by inserting a section into its Constitution Act which provides that whoever is made regent under the law of the UK may perform the royal functions of the sovereign with respect to New Zealand. Australia, however, has done nothing in this regard, so a British regent would have no powers with respect to Australia.

Read more:
What are the legal and constitutional consequences for Australia of Queen Elizabeth II’s death?

Abdication

The final option for an incapacitated monarch is abdication. This leads to difficult questions about how an abdication would operate in relation to each of the realms.

When King Edward VIII abdicated in 1936, it was achieved by both a signed instrument of abdication and the enactment of legislation to which the various realms, including Australia, assented. This is not possible today, as the UK can no longer legislate with respect to Australia.

Abdication would therefore raise difficult questions about whether there needed to be a separate abdication of the King of Australia, to trigger the application of the rules of succession that are now part of Australian law, or whether covering clause 2 of the Constitution, which defines the sovereign by reference to Queen Victoria’s “heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom”, would apply.

Because of the potential constitutional messiness of dealing with the King’s role in his 14 realms beyond the United Kingdom, it is likely abdication would be avoided.

Consequences for Australia

If King Charles were incapacitated and counsellors of state or a regent were appointed, would this cause any real problem in Australia?

The King’s only remaining substantial powers with respect to Australia are the appointment and removal of the governor-general and the state governors. The governor-general’s term is expected to expire in the middle of the year. If King Charles were then seriously ill and unable to appoint a new governor-general, no one could do so, as neither counsellors of state nor a regent could do so.

Instead, the current governor-general, David Hurley, could choose to continue in office, as there is no formal termination of his office until he is replaced.

Alternatively, he could resign and his office could be filled on a temporary basis by a state governor as administrator, as is the usual practice when there is a vacancy in the office. If the office of a state governor becomes vacant, the lieutenant-governor, who is often the chief justice of the state, can exercise the governor’s functions.

However, if a regency were to continue for a long time – perhaps years – this could become unsustainable.

The other consideration is that if there is a regency, there is no power to dismiss a governor-general. So if a constitutional crisis arose, such as that in 1975 with the dismissal of the Whitlam government, the governor-general would know that he or she could act without the prospect of dismissal on the advice of the prime minister. This unbalances the constitutional pressures that are deliberately built into the system, giving a stronger hand to the governor-general and weakening the position of the prime minister.

Read more:
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The problem could be addressed in the same way as the rules of succession to the throne were changed in 2015 to remove gender discrimination. It would involve each state enacting a law requesting the Commonwealth to enact a law that recognised the authority of a regent to exercise the sovereign’s powers with respect to Australia.

While it is not essential to fix this problem, it would still be wise, as a matter of orderly constitutional housekeeping, to address it before any real difficulties arise.

Anne Twomey has received grant funding from the Australian Research Council and occasionally does consultancy work for governments, Parliaments and inter-governmental bodies. She has also written books about the constitutional aspects of the Crown.

– ref. What happens if King Charles can no longer perform his duties? – https://theconversation.com/what-happens-if-king-charles-can-no-longer-perform-his-duties-222870

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kit Messham-Muir, Professor in Art, Curtin University

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains themes and references to historical events which may be distressing.

Yhonnie Scarce, a Kokatha and Nukunu artist, has emerged in recent years as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists. Yhonnie Scarce: The Light of Day, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, curates a survey of significant works by Scarce from the last few years.

The exhibition presents a “best-of” for a wider West Australian public who may not be familiar with the South Australian artist. At the same time, it’s an opportunity for Western Australia’s art followers to see a range of works not previously assembled in Perth.

A translucent shower

The exhibition is installed across two levels, conjoined through an architectural void that invites spectacle. In this void, Scarce’s glistening Thunder Raining Poison (2016-17) hangs from the ceiling by hundreds of wires.

Scarce’s works are so steeped in the contemporary art idiom that, despite the centrality of glass throughout this exhibition, we might not at first consider her a “glass artist”. Yet in Thunder Raining Poison, and in her two other “cloud” works, Cloud Chamber (2020) and Death Zephyr (2016), the artist draws our attention to the fragility and beauty of the material.

Each of these cloud works are clusters of hanging glass yams. This potato-like tuberous root vegetable, which urban-dwelling Australians may not be familiar with, grows throughout the bush.

In Scarce’s aesthetic and material, yams signify death. The sensitivity of the exhibition’s themes, and perhaps the low lighting, seem to demand quiet in the space. In this silence we hear the gentle chiming of the hand blown yams, reinforcing their fragility.

Hanging in clusters, these clear and black glass yams evoke the dynamism of clouds collapsing into sheets of rain – black rain – falling after the nuclear bomb tests that were carried out on Scarce’s traditional lands in South Australia, between 1952 and 1963. Born in Woomera, Scarce is descended from the Lake Eyre Kokatha people and the Southern Flinders Ranges Nukunu people.

The works resonate with another Indigenous work in the gallery’s collection that isn’t currently on display: Lin Onus’s installation work, Maralinga (1990), which depicts an Aboriginal woman and children facing, in horror, a mushroom cloud signified by radioactive symbols. Yet Scarce’s material dialect is much more poetic.

Nuclear colonialism

Australian nuclear colonialism is a recurrent theme in the exhibition, with the upstairs gallery including three of Scarce’s Glass Bomb works from the Blue Danube series (2015).

Perhaps the most poignant work with this theme is Fallout Babies (2016). Set in a corner space, this work is partially surrounded by a floor-to-ceiling photograph of a graveyard with the buried bodies of children from communities that were exposed to the fallout from the bomb testing. The bodies are metaphorically represented by bulbous glass plums, which speak of fertility and promise.

Hollowing Earth (2016-17) is made of materials quite literally infused with trace amounts of uranium. It glows a luminous green under the black-lit gallery. The glass vessels in Hollowing Earth represent bush bananas, another recurrent bush food in Scarce’s aesthetic cypher. The glass surfaces of many of these voluminous glowing bodies are torn while the glass is still hot and malleable.

Read more:
As the world pushes for a ban on nuclear weapons, Australia votes to stay on the wrong side of history

Bush bananas also appear in the work In The Dead House (2020), a work previously installed in the old mortuary in Adelaide Botanic Gardens as part the 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. Laid out on a vintage mortuary trolley, fragile glass bodies are ripped wide open.

The work references early 20th century Adelaide coroner, Ramsay Smith, who profited from exporting Aboriginal remains to British museums. Smith is notorious for having decapitated the corpses – and the bush bananas echo heads and bodies that have been violently disgorged.

Moments of gentle beauty

Yhonnie Scarce: The Light of Day includes some moments of gentle beauty found in the love of family and tragic ancestry. Both Remember Royalty (2018) and Dinah (2016) belong to stories of trauma, institutionalised racism and inhumane colonial abuse. But these are also moments in this exhibition that actively seek to restore pride that was once brutally taken.

Dinah includes a cropped photograph of the artist’s great grandmother, Dinah Coleman, taken in the 1920s without her consent. She was at Koonibba, a Lutheran mission near Ceduna, South Australia.

As the wall text notes, the photo was quite possibly taken by the anthropologist Norman Tindale, who visited in 1924. This suggests it was an anthropological image that subjected Dinah to a dehumanising scientific gaze. Scarce’s cropped photograph of Dinah restores her dignity and humanity.

Similarly, Remember Royalty takes images of Scarce’s close ancestors and enlarges them on fine vintage fabrics. They look out at an audience in 2024, returning their gaze as equals. Not surprisingly, this complex and sensitively presented work was acquired by London’s Tate Modern gallery in 2022.

As with the other works in this exhibition, we have the opportunity to contemplate this work in its raw yet visually seductive materiality, before this and the other works are once again dispersed.

Yhonnie Scarce: The Light of Day is at the Art Gallery of Western Australia until May 19.

Read more:
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Kit Messham-Muir is the Lead Chief Investigator on ‘Art of Peace’, a three-year ARC Linkage project in partnership with the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) and National Trust (NSW) and in collaboration with academics from University of New South Wales, University of Melbourne, University of the Arts London and California State University. Art of Peace receives a Linkage Project grant (LP210300068) from the Australian Research Council over three years (2023-2026). He is not involved in any way with the curation or exhibition of Yhonnie Scarce: The Light of Day at AGWA.

– ref. Yhonnie Scarce’s glass works are a glistening, poignant exploration of how nuclear testing affected First Nations people – https://theconversation.com/yhonnie-scarces-glass-works-are-a-glistening-poignant-exploration-of-how-nuclear-testing-affected-first-nations-people-221868

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Woods, Professor of Health Economics, University of Technology Sydney

Australia’s subsidised aged care services now help around 1.5 million older people to receive care and support. Taxpayers contributed A$28 billion to the various programs in 2022-23. And yet the system is governed by an act that was first passed in 1997.

A lot has changed over the past two and a half decades – more people are living longer with chronic conditions and impairments that necessitate care, more of that care helps people stay in their own home, older people have more choice and control, and quality and safety are subject to tighter regulation and improved enforcement.

These and many other reforms are welcome. But as a result, the 1997 Aged Care Act has become a patchwork of change upon change. So when is the new act due, and what does it aim to achieve?

Read more:
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What we know so far

Following the report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, the government is rewriting the act with a view to it commencing on July 1 2024 – less than five months from now.

Parts of an initial draft of the act have been released for public consultation. The proposed act adopts a rights-based approach to caring for older Australians, and consolidates and simplifies multiple pieces of existing legislation.

Some of the improvements will include:

• establishing a complaints commissioner to increase the independence and transparency of investigating aged care complaints

• increasing whistleblower protections so older people, their families and aged care workers feel comfortable about exposing unacceptable treatment from a provider

• streamlining access to aged care through a single-assessment process, rather than older people having to be assessed by different organisations depending on their particular care needs.

But several significant issues have yet to be addressed. The partial draft of the act lacks any provision relating to the proposed fees, payments and subsidies, or about how people with different needs will be prioritised and how aged care places will be allocated to them.

The act also makes many references to the government making rules about how the aged care system will actually operate. As always, the devil is in the detail but the rules have not yet been made public.

Read more:
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The new act also attempts to address the fundamental concern that Australia’s Constitution doesn’t provide the federal government with powers to make laws specifically for “aged care”. This is unlike the government’s powers over banking, marriage, the age pension and many other matters.

Instead, the act attempts to patch together a range of other powers, such as for providing sickness and hospital benefits and making binding international treaties (including disability support) under its external affairs powers.

It is unclear whether this approach will make the system too complex, compared with seeking agreement from the states to refer their powers to the federal government, or to enact a common set of laws on which both levels of government agree.

Federal Parliament will have the final say on what the act will contain and when it is passed.

How does this fit with other recent changes?

The new act aims to provide an enduring structure that brings the current aged care system, including recent reforms, into a single consistent regulatory regime.

The newly introduced residential care workforce standards, for instance, will be carried over to the new act. They include the requirement for 24/7 cover by registered nurses so nurses are always available to care for a resident when needed, at any time of the day or night.

The new levels of care minutes that nurses and other personal care workers must provide to residents will also be part of the new act.

The act will also include the Star Ratings for individual aged care homes. These help inform residents about the quality of the care their homes provide.

Read more:
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Will this be it for a while?

The recent changes to aged care are not the end of the decade-long reform journey.

In the immediate future there will be changes to payment arrangements for care as the government responds to the – yet to be released – report of the Aged Care Task Force.

Following that, a new Support at Home program is being designed to consolidate and streamline the current home care packages, short-term restorative care and respite care. Having already been deferred twice in recent years, the current proposed start date is July 1 2025.

The drafting of a modern, simplified act is an important opportunity to provide the best legislative regime for caring for older Australians.

But such an opportunity comes only once every decade or two. While the new legislation needs to put older people at its centre, it must also facilitate a system that is sustainable and sufficiently robust to support them to access subsidised care when they need it.

The broad framework is there, but there are less than five months to get the details right.

Read more:
Aged-care funding reforms must ensure users pay their fair share

Michael Woods is Professor of Health Economics at the UTS Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation. He is Policy Advisor to the UTS Ageing Research Collaborative (UARC) and Chairs the Editorial Board of Australia’s Aged Care Sector. He undertakes policy research for the Commonwealth Government and the aged care sector. Michael was a former Deputy Chair of the Productivity Commission. He has no funding or other conflicts of interest related to this article.

Eugenia Tsihlis is a Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of Law at UTS, within the UTS Ageing Research Collaborative (UARC). She has contributed to the Australia’s Aged Care Sector reports and UARC submissions in response to the proposed new Aged Care Act. Eugenia has no funding or other conflicts of interest related to this article.

– ref. Changes are coming for Australia’s aged care system. Here’s what we know so far – https://theconversation.com/changes-are-coming-for-australias-aged-care-system-heres-what-we-know-so-far-222757

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tamika Worrell, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Critical Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University, Macquarie University

It is well documented that Australian teachers face challenges incorporating Indigenous perspectives and content in their classrooms. The approach can sometimes be somewhat tokenistic, as if the teacher is “ticking a box”. We need a more culturally responsive teaching workforce.

Generative AI is advancing at a fast pace and quickly finding a place within education. Tools such as ChatGPT (or Chatty G as the kids say) continue to dominate conversations in education as these technologies are explored and developed.

There are many concerns around academic integrity and things to consider on how to best introduce and control this technology in practice.

As teachers continue to look for ways to meet Indigenous content requirements, it makes sense they would turn to generative AI to assist them in an area they struggle with. But using these tools could do more harm than good.

Indigenous peoples’ concerns around AI

Indigenous people have raised a range of concerns around generative AI. These include the risks these technologies pose for Indigenous people and knowledges.

For example, AI-generated art is causing a significant threat to Indigenous peoples’ incomes, art and cultural knowledges.

The lead image of this article was created using the generative AI platform Midjourney. The prompts included the terms Indigenous, artwork, colourful, artificial intelligence, Aboriginal, Western Sydney and painting styles.

This shows that with AI, anyone can easily produce “Indigenous-style” art and content. This poses a threat to Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights.

With AI being trained on vast data sets primarily from the western corpus of knowledge, there are also concerns relating to Indigenous data sovereignty – the right to “govern the collection, ownership and application of data about Indigenous communities, peoples, lands and resources”.

Generative AI can also perpetuate misinformation that harms Indigenous communities. This happened during the Voice referendum campaign, when fake, AI-generated images of Indigenous “no” voters were published on social media.

Importantly, there is also the potential impact to Country due to the environmental costs of data centres – an issue that must be addressed as more generative AI tools come online.

Read more:
The environmental cost of data centres is substantial, and making them energy-efficient will only solve half the problem

How do these concerns translate into the classroom?

All students should see themselves reflected in the classroom. This especially applies to Indigenous students, as attested by Closing the Gap targets for educational attainment.

A 2022 report by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership states:

The legacy of colonisation has undermined Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ access to their cultures, identities, histories and languages. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students have not had access to a complete, relevant and responsive education.

Children need both “windows and mirrors” in the classroom. American education scholar Rudine Sims-Bishop has aptly put this in the context of children’s literature:

When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read, or when the images they see are distorted, negative or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part.

Students need to see themselves reflected in the curriculum, including the technologies used.

By using generative AI, teachers risk perpetrating and promoting inaccuracies and spreading false information instead of meaningfully engaging with Indigenous values and knowledge systems.

This can potentially harm the student–teacher relationship, which is incredibly important, particularly for Indigenous students.

Late last year, the Australian government released a framework for generative AI in schools. It offers “guidance on understanding, using and responding to generative AI” to everyone involved in Australian school education.

The framework also affirms the necessity of respecting Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights. But we need more extensive work to ensure teachers can do this appropriately. Currently, there is a lack of research that looks at the intersection between generative AI and Indigenous content inclusion in the classroom.

Indigenous futures and AI

Generative AI, and other forms of AI, have extensive potential to benefit Indigenous people and their communities. Many Indigenous people are engaging with the technologies to this effect.

For example, you can take a virtual trip to the Torres Strait Islands, spend time at the AI Marae in New Zealand or engage with the Indigenous Protocols and AI Laboratory

But to make room for what is seemingly an inevitable future that involves AI, work needs to be done in policy and professional bodies to ensure Indigenous inclusion at all levels – from development to use.

Teachers and students must be supported with the necessary resourcing to promote critical thinking when engaging with generative AI. Teachers will look to the relevant government bodies, whereas students will look to their teachers for guidance.

It is clear we need further guidance on Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights, and culturally appropriate AI use for educators.

Generative AI still has much to learn, and Indigenous knowledges have much to teach it.

Tamika Worrell 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. Generative AI in the classroom risks further threatening Indigenous inclusion in schools – https://theconversation.com/generative-ai-in-the-classroom-risks-further-threatening-indigenous-inclusion-in-schools-222254

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Ritchie-Tyo, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Monash University

When a tropical cyclone forms, people who live in its path anxiously monitor news of its direction – and strength. If a Category 5 storm with wind speeds of 250 kilometres per hour is heading for you, you prepare differently than you would for a Category 1 with wind speeds of 65 km/h.

In a hotter world, cyclones are expected to become less common but more intense when they do form. That, according to new research, means it might be time to consider introducing a Category 6 to the hurricane scale used in the United States to better communicate the threat.

But do cyclone scales need a new category for more severe storms? Only one hurricane in the Western Hemisphere has yet gone past the 309 km/h winds the researchers nominate for a Category 6. And the whole idea of storm scales, including Australia’s own tropical cyclone scale, is that Category 5 storms are those likely to do catastrophic damage. It’s hard to see what a Category 6 could offer.

What is worth exploring is how we can better communicate what specific threats a given storm poses. Is it carrying more water than average, making flooding a bigger risk? Or are unusually intense winds likely to bring more water ashore in storm surges?

In December, Cyclone Jasper made landfall as a Category 2 storm in northern Queensland. Despite being at the lower end of severity, it dumped huge volumes of water and triggered devastating floods. Residents and farmers criticised the Bureau of Meteorology for not fully conveying the size of the threat. More specific warnings could help.

What are storm scales for?

The world’s tropical cyclone warning centres classify cyclones using simple intensity scale systems based on maximum wind thresholds. Cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons are different names for the same tropical storms.

There are several different intensity scales in use. The Saffir-Simpson scale is used by the US National Hurricane Center for hurricanes forming in the central and eastern North Pacific and North Atlantic basins. Different scales are used in the Australian, North Indian, Southwest Indian, and western North Pacific basins. Importantly, every scale in use is open-ended, meaning their final category is based on winds greater than a certain threshold – but with no upper limit.

Tropical cyclones can pose many threat to us while at sea, as they approach and make landfall, and even afterwards.

These threats include the intense winds near the eye of the tropical cyclone, the ring of damaging winds which can extend hundreds of kilometres from the eye, wind-driven high seas, storm surge, heavy rainfall and associated flooding and mudslides.

We can’t say one of these is definitively more deadly or damaging than any other threat. Tropical Cyclone Oswald, a 2013 Category 1 storm, led to heavy rainfall and flooding through Queensland and New South Wales, while the 1992 Category 5 Hurricane Andrew caused catastrophic wind damage – but little rain or storm surge damage when it hit Florida.

Read more:
Cyclone Ilsa just broke an Australian wind speed record. An expert explains why the science behind this is so complex

So do we really need a Category 6?

The researchers suggest a Category 6 on the Saffir-Simpson scale would be for storms with winds over 86 metres per second (309 km/h).

They suggest five tropical cyclones have now passed that threshold since 2013. Certainly, Hurricane Patricia (2015) would meet that threshold. But this is the only one which meets their criteria in the last 40 years, as it was well observed by US aircraft missions. The other four were not in the Western Hemisphere – they were typhoons affecting Asia. In these areas, meteorologists do not use aircraft reconnaissance to confirm wind speeds. Estimates of wind speeds can vary substantially. That means the wind speeds of these four cannot be verified.

To make their case, the researchers also use the maximum possible intensity a tropical cyclone could reach in a given environment. It’s useful to scientists because it can be directly calculated from climate projections and is often used to explore how tropical cyclone intensity might change in the future. But it has an important limitation – tropical cyclones rarely reach their maximum potential intensity.

In their original formulation of the Saffir-Simpson scale, Herb Saffir and Bob Simpson described a Category 5 hurricane making landfall as one which would cause catastrophic destruction of all infrastructure. The Australian Tropical Cyclone Scale has different thresholds but similar reasoning for a Category 5 storm.

Based on the understanding that winds at Category 5 and above lead to catastrophic outcomes, it’s hard to see how adding a Category 6 would help the public. If a Category 5 means “expect catastrophic consequences”, what would Category 6 mean?

How can we best communicate cyclone threats?

Scientists came up with tropical cyclone intensity scales as a way to clearly communicate the nature and size of the damage likely to occur. They are not intended to be comprehensive, as they’re based on a single wind speed valid only for the area near the eye, where the most intense winds occur.

Fundamentally, these scales are meant to measure how well our buildings and infrastructure can survive the wind force and also protect us. If our building codes, evacuation plans, and other protective strategies ever improved to the point where Category 5 storms no longer lead to catastrophic loss, it might make sense to introduce a Category 6. But we’re not at that point. The catastrophic loss from a Category 5 or Category 6 would look the same: catastrophic.

What we should do is explore whether we can improve the scale in different ways. Can we keep their simple, effective messages while also capturing the different threats a weather system like this can pose?

Read more:
Even weak tropical cyclones have grown more intense worldwide – we tracked 30 years of them using currents

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

– ref. Is it time for a Category 6 for super cyclones? No – warnings of floods or storm surges are more useful – https://theconversation.com/is-it-time-for-a-category-6-for-super-cyclones-no-warnings-of-floods-or-storm-surges-are-more-useful-222736

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vivienne Lewis, Assistant professor – Psychology, University of Canberra

How many of us recall having to calculate our body-mass index (BMI) as children at school, prompting comparisons of our weight with that of our peers? Or perhaps we remember references to calories and diets in the classroom.

Now, the Australian curriculum is changing how children and young people are educated about their bodies and what they eat, in a bid to prevent eating disorders.

Hundreds of references to terms including BMI, weight, calories and diets have been removed from school resources by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, replaced with terminology such as “balanced nutrition”.

As a clinical psychologist specialising in the treatment of children and young people with body image and eating disorders, I welcome these changes. Given what we know about the links between weight stigma and the development of eating disorders, they’re long overdue.

Weight stigma starts early

Weight stigma and diet culture are rife in our society.

People will often use words such as “fat” and “guilt” to cast shame over their own or others’ body size and food choices. On the flip side, the latest diets and other weight loss techniques are regularly hot topics of conversation among friends and colleagues.

Evidence shows this sort of talk around children and young people can be very damaging, in some cases contributing to the development of disordered eating. So in the school environment we need to be especially mindful of the language we use around people’s bodies and food.

Read more:
These 3 factors predict a child’s chance of obesity in adolescence (and no, it’s not just their weight)

Children learn about their bodies and nutrition when they start school, and this can be where a lot of misinformation (such as being fearful of certain foods because they’re deemed to be “bad” for us) and stigma begins. Peer teasing for size, weight and shape is common and increases the risk of a child or young person developing an eating disorder.

I treat many adults who have severe eating disorders partly as a result of growing up in a society that overvalues thinness, promotes dieting for weight loss, and shames people who are overweight or obese. Much of this appears to have come from the influences of their schooling.

Fostering positive body image

We’ve known for a long time that early intervention through educating our children about well-being and positive mental health strategies is important to reduce the incidence of severe mental health conditions.

For eating disorders specifically, positive role modelling by adults around how we talk about our own and others’ bodies is crucial.

This can include describing people for their interests and qualities rather than their appearance, and teaching children about gratitude and respect towards each other.

Research shows learning about body acceptance and appreciation is important for both males and females in developing a positive body image. Those children and young people who have a positive relationship with their bodies and food are much less likely to develop eating disorders.

Teachers have an important role in educating our children about body respect and having a healthy relationship with their bodies and eating.

This can be achieved through actions including avoiding comments about people’s appearances, talking about food for its function in our bodies, and not attaching moral values (such as “good” or “bad”) to the foods we eat. Indeed, the curriculum overhaul warns teachers against using these descriptors.

How to talk about food with kids

Learning about the importance of feeding our bodies and listening to our body’s needs is important for children.

We need to talk about food for its function in our bodies (such as carbohydrates for energy and fats for our brain). We should talk about foods we eat to help us concentrate and fuel our bodies as well as making us strong and helping us feel well.

The curriculum changes appear to be designed to connect nutrition to physical and mental health in these ways.

Read more:
Using BMI to measure your health is nonsense. Here’s why

Food should also be presented as an enjoyable and a social activity (for example, sharing food with others).

Everyone’s appetite is different at different times and that’s OK. Helping children understand how to respond to their appetite and knowing when they’re hungry and full is important, as we know this helps with issues such as restrictive and binge eating, two common disordered eating behaviours.

Everyone has a role

Hopefully we are on the way to saying goodbye to the harm of weight stigma and diet talk in schools.

The biggest challenge is that we live in an appearance-obsessed world with a diet culture and many people have a fixed way of thinking about food and bodies that’s hard to shift. As adults we have to work really hard to be better role models.

While teachers play a crucial role, children also need other adults to go to who make them feel understood and accepted. Being a positive role model means listening to children’s concerns, and being be mindful of the way you talk about yours and others’ bodies, as well as the sort of language you use around eating and food.

Dr Vivienne Lewis works for the University of Canberra and runs her own Clinical Psychology practice.

– ref. No more BMI, diets or ‘bad’ foods: why changing how we teach kids about weight and nutrition is long overdue – https://theconversation.com/no-more-bmi-diets-or-bad-foods-why-changing-how-we-teach-kids-about-weight-and-nutrition-is-long-overdue-222605

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Malcolm McCulloch, Professor, The University of Western Australia

Global temperatures have already exceeded 1.5°C warming and may pass 2°C later this decade, according to a world-first study I led. The worrying findings, based on temperature records contained in sea sponge skeletons, suggest global climate change has progressed much further than previously thought.

Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions drive global warming. Obtaining accurate information about the extent of the warming is vital, because it helps us understand if extreme weather events are more likely in the near future, and whether the world is making progress in reducing emissions.

To date, estimates of upper ocean warming have been mainly based on sea-surface temperature records, however these date back only about 180 years. We instead studied 300 years of records preserved in the skeletons of long-lived sea sponges from the Eastern Caribbean. In particular, we examined changes in the amount of a chemical known as “strontium” in their skeletons, which reflects variations in seawater temperatures over the organism’s life.

Keeping the average global temperature rise below 1.5°C since pre-industrial times is a goal of the 2015 Paris climate deal. Our research, published in Nature Climate Change, suggests that opportunity has passed. Earth may in fact have already reached at least 1.7°C warming since pre-industrial times – a deeply troubling discovery.

Getting a gauge on ocean heat

Global warming is causing major changes to the Earth’s climate. This was evident recently during unprecedented heatwaves across southern Europe, China and large parts of North America.

Oceans cover more than 70% of Earth’s surface and absorb an enormous amount of heat and carbon dioxide. Global surface temperatures are traditionally calculated by averaging the temperature of water at the sea surface, and the air just above the land surface.

But historical temperature records for oceans are patchy. The earliest recordings of sea temperatures were gathered by inserting a thermometer into water samples collected by ships. Systematic records are available only from the 1850s – and only then with limited coverage. Because of this lack of earlier data, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has defined the pre-industrial period as from 1850 to 1900.

But humans have been pumping substantial levels of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since at least the early 1800s. So the baseline period from which warming is measured should ideally be defined from the mid-1700s or earlier.

What’s more, a series of exceptionally large volcanic eruptions occurred in the early 1800s, causing massive global cooling. This makes it more difficult to accurately reconstruct stable baseline ocean temperatures.

But what if there was a way to precisely gauge ocean temperatures over centuries in the past? There is, and it’s called “sclerosponge thermometry”.

Read more:
A climate expert explains the Northern Hemisphere’s weird, wild summer – and what it means for Australia

Studying a special sponge

Sclerosponges are a group of sea sponges that resemble hard corals, in that they produce a carbonate skeleton. But they grow at a much slower rate and can live for many hundreds of years.

The skeletons incorporate a number of chemical elements including strontium and calcium. The ratio of these two elements varies during warmer and cooler periods. This means sclerosponges can provide a detailed diary of sea temperatures, down to a resolution of just 0.1°C.

We studied the sponge species Ceratoporella nicholsoni. They occur in the Eastern Caribbean, where the natural variability of upper ocean temperatures is low which makes it easier to tease out the effects of climate change. We wanted to investigate temperatures in a part of the ocean known as the “ocean mixed layer”. This is the upper part of the ocean, where heat is exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean interior.

We looked at temperatures going back 300 years, to see whether the current time period which defines pre-industrial temperatures was accurate. So what did we find?

The sponge records showed nearly constant temperatures from 1700 to 1790 and from 1840 to 1860 (with a gap in the middle due to volcanic cooling). We found a rise in ocean temperatures began from the mid-1860s, and was unambiguously evident by the mid-1870s. This suggests the pre-industrial period should be defined as the years 1700 to 1860.

The implications of these findings are profound.

What does this mean for global warming?

Using this new baseline, a very different picture of global warming emerges. It shows human-caused ocean warming began at least several decades earlier than previously assumed by the IPCC.

Long-term climate change is commonly measured against the average warming over the 30 years from 1961 to 1990, as well as warming in more recent decades.

Our findings suggest that in the interval between the end of our newly defined pre-industrial period and the 30-year average mentioned above, the temperatures of the ocean and land surface increased by 0.9°C. This is far more than the 0.4°C warming the IPCC has estimated, using the conventional timeframe for the pre-industrial period.

Add to that the average 0.8°C global warming from 1990 to recent years, and the Earth may have warmed on average by at least 1.7°C since pre-industrial times. This suggests we have passed the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement.

It also suggests the overriding goal of the agreement, to keep average global warming below 2°C, is now very likely to be exceeded by the end of the 2020s – nearly two decades sooner than expected.

Our study has also produced another alarming finding. Since the late 20th century, land-air temperatures have been increasing at almost twice the rate of surface oceans and are now more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. This is consistent with well-documented decline in Arctic permafrost and the increased frequency around the world of heatwaves, bushfires and drought.

Read more:
‘Australia is sleepwalking’: a bushfire scientist explains what the Hawaii tragedy means for our flammable continent

We must act now

Our revised estimates suggest climate change is at a more advanced stage than we thought. This is cause for great concern.

It appears that humanity has missed its chance to limit global warming to 1.5°C and has a very challenging task ahead to keep warming below 2°C. This underscores the urgent need to halve global emissions by 2030.

Malcolm McCulloch receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. ‘A deeply troubling discovery’: Earth may have already passed the crucial 1.5°C warming limit – https://theconversation.com/a-deeply-troubling-discovery-earth-may-have-already-passed-the-crucial-1-5-c-warming-limit-222601

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Kean, Lecturer in Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney

When students walked through the sandstone gates of Sydney’s Newington College for the first day of school last week, they were met by protesters.

A group of parents and former students had gathered outside this prestigious school in the city’s inner west, holding placards decrying the school’s decision to become fully co-educational by 2033.

Protesters have even threatened legal action to defend the 160-year-old tradition of boys’ education at the school. One told Channel 9 they fear the change is driven by “woke […] palaver” that will disadvantage boys at Newington.

Newington is not the only prestigious boys school to open enrolments to girls. Cranbrook in Sydney’s east will also go fully co-ed, with the decision sparking a heated community debate.

This debate is not a new one. What is the history behind the single-sex vs co-ed divide? And why does it spark so much emotion?

Read more:
As another elite boys’ school goes co-ed, are single-sex schools becoming an endangered species?

What is the history of the debate?

Schools like Newington were set up at a time when the curriculum and social worlds for upper-class boys and girls were often quite different. Boys and girls were thought to require different forms of education for their intellectual and moral development.

The question of whether it’s a good idea to educate boys and girls separately has been debated in Australia for at least 160 years, around the time Newington was set up.

In the 1860s, the colony of Victoria introduced a policy of coeducation for all government-run schools. This was despite community concerns about “moral well-being”. There was a concern that boys would be a “corrupting influence” on the girls. So schools were often organised to minimise contact between boys and girls even when they shared a classroom.

Other colonies followed suit. The main reason the various Australian governments decided to educate boys and girls together was financial. It was always cheaper, especially in regional and rural areas, to build one school than two. So most government schools across Australia were established to enrol both girls and boys.

One notable exception was New South Wales, which set up a handful of single-sex public high schools in the 1880s.

These were intended to provide an alternative to single-sex private secondary schools. At that time, education authorities did not believe parents would agree to enrol their children in mixed high schools. Historically, coeducation has been more controversial for older students, but less so for students in their primary years.

A changing debate

By the 1950s, many education experts were arguing coeducation was better for social development than single-sex schooling. This was at a time of national expansion of secondary schooling in Australia and new psychological theories about adolescents.

In following decades, further debates emerged. A feminist reassessment in the 1980s argued girls were sidelined in co-ed classes. This view was in turn challenged during the 1990s, with claims girls were outstripping boys academically and boys were being left behind in co-ed environments.

Which system delivers better academic results?

There is no conclusive evidence that one type of schooling (co-ed or single sex) yields better academic outcomes than the other.

Schools are complex and diverse settings. There are too many variables (such as resourcing, organisational structures and teaching styles) to make definitive claims about any one factor. Many debates about single-sex vs co-ed schooling also neglect social class as a key factor in academic achievement.

What about the social environment?

Research about the social outcomes of co-ed vs single-sex schools is also contested.

Some argue co-ed schooling better prepares young people for the co-ed world they will grow up in.

Others have suggested boys may fare better in co-ed settings, with girls acting as a counterbalance to boys’ unruliness. But it has also been argued boys take up more space and teacher time, detracting from girls’ learning and confidence.

Both of these arguments rely on gender stereotypes about girls being compliant and timid and boys being boisterous and disruptive.

Key to these debates is a persistent belief that girls and boys learn differently. These claims do not have a strong basis in educational research.

Read more:
We can see the gender bias of all-boys’ schools by the books they study in English

Why such a heated debate?

Tradition plays a big part in this debate. Often, parents want their children to have a similar schooling experience to themselves.

For others it’s about access to specific resources and experiences. Elite boys schools have spent generations accumulating social and physical resources tailored to what they believe boys are interested in and what they believe is in boys’ best interests. This includes sports facilities, curriculum offerings, approaches to behaviour management and “old boys” networks.

Many of these schools have spent decades marketing themselves as uniquely qualified to educate boys (or a certain type of boy). So it’s not surprising if some in these school communities are resisting change.

More concerning are the Newington protesters who suggest this move toward inclusivity and gender diversity will make boys “second-class citizens”. This echoes a refrain common in anti-feminist and anti-trans backlash movements, which position men and boys as vulnerable in a world of changing gender norms. This overlooks the ways they too can benefit from the embrace of greater diversity at school.

As schools do the work to open up to more genders, it is likely they will also become welcoming to a wider range of boys and young men.

Jessica Kean receives funding from an Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative grant ‘Australian Boys: Beyond the Boy Problem’.

Helen Proctor receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Kellie Burns previously received funding from the University of Sydney, Equity Prize.

– ref. Why do we have single sex schools? What’s the history behind one of the biggest debates in education? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-we-have-single-sex-schools-whats-the-history-behind-one-of-the-biggest-debates-in-education-222603

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Holland, Associate Professor, Macquarie University

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains the name and images of a deceased person.

In the many tributes that have flowed since the announcement of Lowitja O’Donoghue’s death on February 4 at age 91, many commentators have noted her leadership and commitment to public life over many years.

Of her many public roles, chairing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (1990-2005) across the first six years of its life stands out. No other Indigenous leader has occupied a similar position before or since.

What can we learn from her leadership?

An activist and trailblazer

Removed, marginalised and discriminated against from birth, in a country that refused to recognise her identity or aspirations, O’Donoghue’s political maturation came early when she moved to Adelaide to become a trainee nurse in the 1950s.

There she joined the Aborigines Advancement League and helped spearhead campaigns for civil rights.

Read more:
Indigenous trailblazer Lowitja O’Donoghue dies aged 91

In 1967 she joined the Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Affairs, rising to become regional director from 1975-79. In 1977, O’Donoghue was appointed the inaugural chair of the National Aboriginal Conference (NAC) and subsequently appointed as chair of the Aboriginal Development Commission.

She was also chair of Aboriginal Hostels Ltd from 1982-90 and a founding member of the Council of Aboriginal Women of South Australia.

In 1984, she was commissioned by Aboriginal Affairs Minister Clyde Holding to consult with Indigenous communities about a new consultative organisation to replace the NAC. A key recommendation of her report was the establishment of regional assemblies across Australia, a model that became central to ATSIC.

Inaugural chair of ATSIC

O’Donoghue was regarded as the logical choice for inaugural chair of ATSIC. A statutory body, combining representative, advisory and administrative functions, ATSIC was unlike all previous representative bodies for Indigenous Australians.

She steered a board of 17 regional commissioners, along with an extra two commissioners appointed by the minister. There were also between 600 and 800 regional councillors (including chairpersons) in 35 regions across Australia, prosecuting a national position while catering to regional concerns.

She liaised with a chief executive and the minister, and an administrative wing of about 1,000 public servants. She and the board administered 50% of the federal government’s budget in Aboriginal affairs, dispensing something in the order of 6,000 grants to about 1,500 incorporated Indigenous organisations by the mid 1990s.

Read more:
Many claim Australia’s longest-running Indigenous body failed. Here’s why that’s wrong

O’Donoghue took to the task with gusto and hope. Her first order of business was steering a national Aboriginal response to the 1991 report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which she described as the “most important social document of the 20th century”. She attended as many regional council meetings as she could and, in an historic cabinet meeting in 1991, was among a small group that presented a report to Paul Keating on Aboriginal priorities.

Negotiating Mabo

Not long after this, O’Donoghue was required to steer ATSIC’s response to the Mabo decision. This was no small task, as it unleashed a torrent of discontent across Australia and resistance in many quarters.

O’Donoghue, ATSIC and other Aboriginal representatives developed a list of bedrock demands. Compromises were made, but under O’Donoghue’s determined steerage, ATSIC hung on to several demands, notably the retention of the threatened Racial Discrimination Act.

Read more:
Australian politics explainer: the Mabo decision and native title

This was a highlight of her career, not least because it demonstrated that ATSIC was no “toothless tiger” and showcased the acumen of a rising Aboriginal political sector.

Later, ATSIC pushed for the development of a social justice package in order to cater to “the dispossessed” – the majority of Aboriginal people unable to benefit from native title law.

After extensive community consultation in conjunction with the Reconciliation Council, an historic document was produced, Recognition, Rights and Reform, calling for institutional , structural, collaborative and co-operative change.

Social justice was predicated on moving from welfare to rights, from dependency to autonomy and from government assistance to self-determination. A major theme in the report was a desire to redefine Indigenous Australians’ relationship with governments. ATSIC measured all its programs in terms of social justice. With this document, they hoped to achieve it by 2001.

Taking Indigenous advocacy around the world

In O’Donoghue’s papers in the National Library of Australia are several large bound volumes of her published speeches during her time at ATSIC, the writing and delivery of which constituted an important part of her advocacy. Particularly impressive is the diverse audiences she pitched to: the Royal Institute of Public Administration, various industry and professional associations, business and economic forums, health professionals, politicians and public servants.

She always impressed on her audience the immense task of ATSIC, reminding them of its political and financial constraints, and arguing that it would take time to turn around 200 years of dispossession.

She regularly spoke at the UN. In 1993, the international year of the world’s Indigenous peoples, she spoke at the World Conference on Human Rights at Vienna. She told her audience not to underestimate the serious nature of human rights abuses in Australia, noting that “as Aboriginal people we ask no more than the basic human right of being given the opportunity to determine our own future”.

In his PhD thesis on Indigenous engagement with the UN, Indigenous scholar Graeme La Macchia shows how in the development of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, member states became anxious about words like self-determination. He shows how O’Donoghue held firm, arguing that nothing short of political self-determination and economic empowerment would suffice for the world’s Indigenous people.

A profound legacy

In her farewell address, O’Donoghue described her time at ATSIC as intense, exhilarating and, at times, exhausting.

The final months of her tenure were marred by a hostile relationship to an incoming Coalition government looking to reform ATSIC, and a constant repetition of ATSIC’s alleged accountability crisis in the public domain, what she described as “the myth of the wasted millions”.

This did not detract from the fact that this Yankunytjatjara woman from Central Australia rose to become the longest-serving leader of the longest running Indigenous political organisation of the postwar era.

ATSIC was a pioneering institution, observed across the globe. We should know and remember her considerable contribution to this important part of our political history.

Alison Holland receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DP230100714 – Policy for Self-Determination: the Case Study of ATSIC) with Distinguished Professor Larissa Behrendt, Associate Professor Daryl Rigney, Dr Kirsten Thorpe and Lindon Coombes.

– ref. How Lowitja O’Donoghue’s activism and leadership changed advocacy on Indigenous affairs in Australia – https://theconversation.com/how-lowitja-odonoghues-activism-and-leadership-changed-advocacy-on-indigenous-affairs-in-australia-222727

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Donald Rothwell, Professor of International Law, Australian National University

The Chinese-Australian academic and writer, Yang Hengjun, has been detained in China for five years on suspicion of spying for Australia.

A secret trial was held in 2021 with no family, friends or Australian consular officials permitted in the courtroom. The verdict was then delayed at least seven times, according to Amnesty International.

Today, his fate has finally been made clear: Yang received a suspended death sentence which can be commuted to life in prison after two years of good behaviour.

Espionage is a capital crime in China, so it is unsurprising he faces the death penalty, though the precise nature of the charges against him have never been made clear. He has always denied the espionage charges against him, as has the Australian government.

Australia will undoubtedly continue to put diplomatic pressure on China to release Yang, but does he have any rights remaining under international law? And how often does China actually use the death penalty?

Yang’s background

Yang was born in China and previously worked in the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of State Security.

He later moved to Australia, where he became a citizen in 2002, and then to the US where had been a visiting scholar at Columbia University from 2017. In recent years, he had been a spy novelist and political commentator.

Yang had been detained in China previously in 2011, but was quickly released ahead of a visit to China by then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said today Australia would continue to advocate on Yang’s behalf at the highest levels, calling the news of his sentence “harrowing”.

Yang’s health has also been failing in recent months. He told supporters he thought he might die in prison from a cyst on his kidney that wasn’t being treated properly.

Read more:
Why ‘Democracy peddler’ Yang Hengjun has been detained in China and why he must be released

How frequently is the death penalty used in China?

China has a notorious record of imposing the death penalty for a number of different offences. Just how many people are executed, though, is anybody’s guess.

Amnesty International has been actively monitoring capital punishment cases globally for a number of years. While there has been a downward trend in the number of countries that retain the death penalty and actually carry out executions, reliable data on China is impossible to attain.

As such, Amnesty no longer includes any Chinese figures in its annual Global Death Penalty reports. Various estimates put the number of executions in the country to be in the “thousands” per year.

Last year, the European Union delegation to China reported:

The estimated number of death sentences and executions in China exceeds by far that of all other countries taken together. In contradiction to international standards, China also applies capital punishment in the case of non-violent offences.

Read more:
China’s new anti-espionage law is sending a chill through foreign corporations and citizens alike

Does Yang have any rights left under international law?

Yang can still appeal his sentence through the Chinese legal system, which effectively provides him with certain levels of protection until his appeals have been exhausted. However, criminal appeals in China are rarely successful.

Yang’s ill-health would also not provide any additional legal grounds for his release. Diplomatically, though, this would be a basis for Australia to continue to advocate for his release on humanitarian grounds.

However, unlike the high-profile case of two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were also accused of espionage and detained by China from 2018–21, Australia has no bargaining chip to secure Yang’s release.

Kovrig and Spavor had been arrested shortly after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese national, was detained in Canada on a US arrest warrant. The two men were released hours after Meng was also released from Canadian custody.

Is there anything Australia can do for Yang now?

Unusually, Yang’s death sentence has been suspended for two years pending good behaviour, after which his sentence may be converted to a life sentence. This is significant as convictions for a capital offence in China are typically followed quickly by an execution.

Yang’s Australian citizenship will have no doubt have been taken into account in this instance.

Read more:
Why has China released detained Australian journalist Cheng Lei?

Legally, however, Australia’s options at this point are very limited. Any formal efforts by Australia to provide Yang with diplomatic protection under international law are constrained while his legal case is still playing out.

Once this has occurred, Australia has no further legal procedures it can use to help Yang, unless China is agreeable to referring the dispute over the imposition of the death penalty to an international court or tribunal.

As China is traditionally reluctant to refer any matters that relate to its sovereignty, including its judicial sovereignty, to any international courts or tribunals, this does not feel like a realistic option.

Has China treated Yang with procedural fairness?

Australia has been consistent in calling for Yang to receive the “basic standards of justice, procedural fairness and humane treatment under international law”, through both the Morrison and Albanese governments.

These rights are deeply entrenched in modern human rights law, including under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

These rights include the right to a fair trial, open and transparent proceedings, the ability to access legal representation, and the capacity to mount a legal defence. Anyone accused of a crime is also entitled to humane treatment while they await trial, a verdict and sentencing.

Australia had very few options to ensure Yang was being afforded these rights in China. Australian diplomats could only rely on the Agreement on Consular Relations, which guarantees consular access rights for anyone detained in either country.

China has respected some of the minimum entitlements under this agreement, which has enabled consular staff to meet with Yang and monitor his wellbeing, though China restricted access during the peak periods of the COVID-19 lockdown.

However, Yang was not provided with any other rights he is entitled to under international law. At the time of his trial in 2021, the Law Council of Australia said:

The seriousness of the charges against Dr Yang render the protracted deprivation of legal assistance even more egregious, falling well short of international fair trial standards.

And as Amnesty International notes, China has not put forth any evidence to support its assertion that Yang was, indeed, a spy.

Donald Rothwell receives funding from Australian Research Council

– ref. Does Yang Hengjun have any legal hopes left after receiving a suspended death sentence in China? – https://theconversation.com/does-yang-hengjun-have-any-legal-hopes-left-after-receiving-a-suspended-death-sentence-in-china-222750

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Ghin, Research fellow, Future Of Work Lab, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Melbourne

More than 20 million Australians have at least one long-term health condition, 63% of whom are in the workforce.

The causes of chronic illness are complex and are often unconnected to a person’s work. But at times, the continued exposure to work stressors can lead to or exacerbate chronic health conditions including musculoskeletal disorders, heart disease, anxiety and depression.

Our research found 73% of people believed their chronic illness was at least partially caused or worsened by their job. Almost one in five people believed work entirely caused or worsened their illness.

These findings accord with data from Safe Work Australia which indicates health conditions (particularly mental health) account for an increasing proportion of serious workers’ compensation claims.

Read more:
The impact of work on well-being: 6 factors that will affect the future of work and health inequalities

Our research also found people with chronic illness were likely to report various forms of workplace discrimination, including being rejected from a job (63%), being treated unfairly in the workplace (65%) and harassment (52%).

So what are employees getting so wrong? And what are the solutions to improving working conditions for people with chronic illnesses?

Employers’ responsibilities have grown

In 2022, Safe Work Australia updated its work health and safety regulations to include specific guidelines on the management of “psychosocial” hazards in the workplace.

A psychosocial hazard is anything that can cause psychological and physical harm, including the design or management of work and workplace interactions or behaviours.

Common examples include job demands, low job control, poor support, lack of role clarity, exposure to traumatic events, harassment and bullying. The failure to eliminate or minimise psychosocial hazards can cause work-related stress, resulting in poor health outcomes for workers.

Organisations need to improve their engagement and management of chronically ill workers to meet their legal obligations.

How employers are getting it wrong

Few organisations have sophisticated approaches to managing employees who are chronically ill. And managers often feel ill-equipped to effectively support chronically ill employees.

Instead, there is a tendency to rely on outmoded human resource and occupational health and safety systems originally designed to accommodate short-term absences and acute illnesses.

Return-to-work policies tend to fall short because they assume a phased and linear return to full working capacity. This is often not the case for people with chronic illness, whose symptoms may be degenerative or fluctuate over time.

Chronically ill workers are rarely considered in organisational diversity and inclusion policies and procedures. At best, they may be incorporated into umbrella disability policies, which can be problematic as people with chronic illness do not necessarily self-identify as “disabled”.

Many chronically ill workers fly under the radar. This is partly because organisations don’t collect this data but it’s also due to the often invisible nature of chronic illness. Someone living with conditions such as long COVID or endometriosis, for example, may present as unimpaired to their colleagues. However, they will often be dealing with complex, fluctuating symptoms that are largely invisible at work.

Workers may also choose not to disclose their illness due to fears of being stigmatised, treated differently, or passed over for promotion. Our research on leaders living with chronic illness found only 18% fully disclosed their illness to their employer. Almost three-quarters of leaders with chronic illness (73%) deliberately hid their illness at work.

Read more:
Should you tell your boss about your mental illness? Here’s what to weigh up

What can employers do?

Here are three ways employers can begin to proactively meet their obligations to workers with chronic illness.

1. Make adjustments

Workers with chronic illness sometimes experience fluctuations in their condition which can impact their ability to complete tasks or meet deadlines. It may be necessary for managers to consider sensitively discussing a revised work schedule, the delegation of time-sensitive tasks, or discuss implementing reasonable adjustments to improve workflow.

These can be challenging conversations, but engaging with them directly means employers can allocate the resources they need to meet their business objectives, while also reducing employee experiences of overwhelm.

2. Accept reasonable requests

Workers with chronic illness may require reasonable adjustments, such as flexible working, to enable them to perform to the best of their ability.

Take these requests at face value and minimise the administrative hurdles associated with approving such accommodations. Failing to do so is likely to erode trust, entrench feelings of not being supported and increase an employee’s psychological distress.

3. Train managers

Managers may sometimes deny a request for a reasonable adjustment based on the belief that this creates a precedent for all team members. Decisions like these can compound feelings of stress, as they may be experienced as a lack of procedural fairness by employees living with chronic illness.

With appropriate training, managers are more likely to recognise that chronically ill workers are generally not seeking “special treatment”, but ways to work more effectively within their changed capacities.

By recognising the value of employees of all abilities, and proactively and systematically addressing the needs of their chronically ill workforce, employers can minimise extended workplace absences and improve the productivity of their workforce.

Read more:
Symptoms of menopause can make it harder to work. Here’s what employers should be doing

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Millions of Australians have a chronic illness. So why aren’t employers accommodating them? – https://theconversation.com/millions-of-australians-have-a-chronic-illness-so-why-arent-employers-accommodating-them-219612

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Tingay, John Curtin Distinguished Professor (Radio Astronomy), Curtin University

Mars has been a source of myth, lore and inspiration since antiquity. It is also an interesting place to research – a legitimate candidate for us to find some form of alien life.

Since the 1960s, Mars has been a popular destination for space missions. Now, for the first time, NASA has invited the private sector to submit proposals on commercial Mars missions.

These missions would range from carrying various payloads to the red planet, to providing communications relay services. No talk of a Mars astronaut just yet.

But do people still want to go to Mars? Absolutely. One question is, what is the best way to get people there? Another question – should we?

Modern exploration of Mars

Since 1960, there have been 50 missions with scientific and technical objectives related to Mars. Thirty-one of these have been deemed successful, which is not a bad strike rate.

There have also been plenty of spectacular failures, like the crash of the Schiaparelli lander in 2016.

These missions have returned a wealth of information about Mars – its atmosphere, orbit, geology and more. According to some parts of the internet, they have also returned amazing images of “faces” on its surface, “doors” in rocky cliffs and “fossilised bones”.

In all cases, geologists had more mundane explanations (rocks). But such public interest shows that Mars truly occupies our imaginations.

A typical interplanetary space mission costs at least a billion US dollars, so the world’s major space agencies have spent no less than US$50 billion on Mars over the years. And this is just to send cameras, rovers and landers. To send people to Mars would be next level.

Read more:
Our long fascination with the journey to Mars

A better way to do business?

NASA is starting to explore different ways to undertake space missions. For decades, NASA and other space agencies around the world have spent large sums on in-house planning, development, prototyping and production for space missions.

In the 2020s, the technologies that enable and support space exploration are increasingly being developed in the commercial world. An example most people will be familiar with is Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Many of the SpaceX objectives have Mars and beyond as the ultimate goal – “making humanity interplanetary”.

The development of the Falcon rockets by SpaceX, Starlink satellites, and the Starship rocket could not be further from NASA’s historical model. Where the NASA approach has been conservative, SpaceX makes lots of changes fast, iterates quickly, and learns quickly from failure.

And SpaceX is not alone. There is a growing industry of commercial providers of access to space, particularly in the United States.

NASA’s current roadmap involves going “back to the Moon” to re-establish a human presence with the Artemis program, then on to a human presence on Mars. In this roadmap, the concept of leveraging commercial providers has taken hold.

Instead of in-house development, NASA is moving in favour of specifying requirements and then assessing the solutions commercial providers might supply in a competitive process.

Read more:
All-UK astronaut mission shows that private enterprise is vital to the future of space exploration

Pros and cons

It appears that now, even compared to 20 years ago, such an approach has become much more viable, as demonstrated by SpaceX. In theory, it could be cheaper and more efficient.

Likely the bigger positive effect will be the substantial stimulus to the commercial sector. With companies innovating to meet the requirements of space missions, the technology spin-offs will potentially have more economic and social impact than getting to Mars itself.

There is a good history of this from the development of technologies for space and from mega-science projects more generally.

However, it is very early days and the commercial approach has to prove itself. There is always an argument that once you start to cease in-house development at a place like NASA, capabilities start to gradually decay. Time will tell. The first steps – reaching the Moon – will go a long way in testing the approach.

Read more:
Humans are going back to the Moon to stay, but when that will be is becoming less clear

But should humans go to Mars?

Mars entered the modern psyche as a place of mystery, promise and danger. This was illustrated vividly more than 100 years ago by H.G. Wells in the novel The War of the Worlds. The number of books, songs, TV shows and movies about Mars is enormous, containing some great (and not so great) art.

Should humans go to Mars? Musk wants to do it, sure. In the 2010s, the Dutch Mars One startup selected 100 volunteers to travel to Mars on a one-way ticket and raised millions of dollars before going bankrupt in 2019. There will always be some cross-section of society wanting to live on Mars.

Some will argue that before humans become interplanetary and start to “mess up” another planet, we should make sure Earth is looked after. Others point out that space exploration should do more to include sustainability.

Despite this debate, if the history of human exploration is anything to go by, you only need a tiny fraction of the population to be motivated enough to do it. If they also have the capital, it will happen.

I can’t see that Mars will be much different.

Steven Tingay 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. NASA is looking for commercial Mars missions. Do people still want to go to Mars? – https://theconversation.com/nasa-is-looking-for-commercial-mars-missions-do-people-still-want-to-go-to-mars-222607

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

In September, Timor-Leste will mark a quarter century since its vote for independence from Indonesia, the conclusion of a 24-year long struggle that left few Timorese families untouched.

Reconciliation with its giant neighbour stands out as one of Timor-Leste proudest achievements, but as 2024 begins, a long simmering border dispute, in which a border hamlet faces the prospect of its land being transferred to Indonesia, is stirring both political strife and ghosts many hoped were at rest.

Read more:
Timor-Leste election offers an extraordinary lesson in how to build a stable democracy

Where is the land?

The area in question is a hamlet called Naktuka. It’s around 1,000 hectares of rare old-growth forest and rice fields on the western edge of Timor-Leste’s Oecusse (also spelled Oecussi) Enclave. Oecusse is 800 square kilometres of rugged coast and mountains some 70 kilometres west of the rest of Timor-Leste.

Although Naktuka is home to only around 60 families, and a four hour drive along a coastal track from the nearest major town, to the people of Oecusse it is anything but marginal. Its forests are the domain of Oecusse’s king (usif), and the place he periodically gathers the Enclave’s clans to celebrate their identity as “people of the dry land” (Atoni Pah Meto) and subjects of their legendary forebear, Lord Benu (Ama Benu). For them, Naktuka is pah le’u (sacred land).

However, in the wake of recent border negotiations between Indonesia and Timor-Leste, concerns have been raised over how much longer they will be free to access it.

At the end of 2023, Naktuka was visited by a team from the Timor-Leste’s government who oversaw the placement of around 76 metal stakes (estaka) along a line some 350 meters inland from the frontier. Suspicions quickly grew it was to be a new border.

Such a border would cede around 270 hectares of forest and rice fields to Indonesia.

Subsequent developments didn’t allay concerns. On February 1 2024, the head of the technical team working on the border said the stakes did not represent a new frontier, but were being used to assess where one might be placed.

Coupled with an announcement by the CNRT Media Centre, mouth-piece of Timor-Leste’s ruling party, that a “win-win” solution could involve dividing Naktuka in half and giving away around 500 hectares, this was cold comfort.

Read more:
Cash for the winner, the loser for dinner: cockfighting in Timor Leste is a complicated game

They even posted a map from the Indonesian Geospatial Information Agency showing how it might look.

In Timor-Leste, this has resulted in an angry backlash. The signing of the border agreement, which was to have occurred in Jakarta in late January, has been postponed.

A small hamlet on a divided island

Recent questions over the ownership of Naktuka stem from unresolved negotiations over the border between Timor-Leste and Indonesia, created when the latter regained its independence in 2002.

While Naktuka is governed by Timor-Leste, in 2005, Timor-Leste signed an agreement confirming the status of around 95% of its border with Indonesia, with a small number of areas to be clarified later. Naktuka was one. The reason goes back at least 120 years.

In 1904, when the Dutch and Portuguese moved to finalise the division of Timor, they differed in their interpretation where Oecussi’s borders should be. By 1915 the question was effectively settled. The Portuguese put down milestones and proceeded to govern Naktuka for 50 years.

Read more:
ASEAN leaders give ‘in-principle’ support for Timor-Leste’s membership. What does this actually mean?

With the Indonesian invasion of 1975, Naktuka, along with the rest of Portuguese Timor, became part of the province of Timor Timur. In 1999 it voted in Timor-Leste’s independence referendum and was incorporated, as a former part of both Portuguese Timor and Timor Timur, into Timor-Leste.

Indonesia argues that as Naktuka should not (arguably) have become part of Portuguese Timor 110 years ago, it should not be part of Timor-Leste now. Suffice to say this is not an argument that makes such sense to the people who live there today, or many of their compatriots.

Naktuka is remote and poor. After independence its people got on with life. Their days revolved around rice farming and their role as caretakers of the land, including the king’s forest, site of the royal feast of ‘seu puah (the communal betel nut harvest). The population grew, slowly, and in many ways Naktuka was similar to any other hamlet in Timor-Leste.

And yet, periodic incidents reminded people of their limbo. In 2013, the Timor-Leste Police were prevented from building a guard-post. Indonesian soldiers would come across the frontier, often just bored, but an unpleasant reminder of the occupation. In 2012 there was even a murder which local media reported was committed by people from across the border. The Indonesian press carried the occasional article about citizens of Timor-Leste settling illegally in an area they called “disputed”, but to residents was simply home.

There’s no doubt the intentions of Timor-Leste government in seeking a permanent fix on its western border are good, but the idea it can do so by ceding land is surprisingly out of touch with reality. In Timor-Leste sovereignty is sacred, literally, as is the principle of consent and consultation on matters relating to land. Any solution to the situation in Naktuka that ignores this is very unlikely to work.

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. Sovereignty is sacred: in Timor-Leste’s remote Oecusse Enclave, a border dispute threatens to open old wounds – https://theconversation.com/sovereignty-is-sacred-in-timor-lestes-remote-oecusse-enclave-a-border-dispute-threatens-to-open-old-wounds-222384

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Larkin, Senior Lecturer in Musicology, University of Sydney

The sheer familiarity of The Magic Flute, Mozart’s most-performed opera, can blind one to its inherent oddness. It draws on a range of influences, from ancient Egyptian symbolism and freemasonry to European politics (the character of the Queen of the Night has been read as a covert allusion to former Austrian Empress Maria Theresa).

Librettist Emanuel Schikaneder has created something that is part allegory, part dream and part fairy tale. That this mish-mash elicited some of Mozart’s greatest and most popular music should shake up ingrained notions of classical music as something po-faced and humourless.

Embracing silliness

Unlike the three Italian opere buffe that Mozart composed to the libretti of Lorenzo da Ponte, The Magic Flute avoids recitative – sung speech – in favour of spoken German dialogue. In the recording I first got to know, Klemperer’s legendary version from 1964, only the sung portions were included. This tilted the work’s balance away from the silly and towards the sublime.

A new production by Kate Gaul for Opera Australia does not shy away from pantomime silliness from the start. The monster threatening Tamino (Michael Smallwood) is rendered as a silhouette projected by a child with a torch, and Papageno (Ben Mingay) is first seen in the stalls engaging with audience members before making his way to the stage.

Key to bringing out the humour is presenting the opera in English. The translation by Gaul and Michael Gow has some chortle-worthy lines. “Am I hard of hearing, or is no one volunteering?” sings Papageno as he vainly seeks a woman – any woman – to satisfy his romantic urges. This character is given a decidedly ocker makeover, complete with an esky and allusions to beers and barbies.

Thankfully, more serious moments for other characters – including Sarastro’s arias (sung with gravitas by David Parkin) and Pamina’s lament (heart-rendingly performed by Stacey Alleaume) – are allowed to unfold without forcing the comedy.

Read more:
Barrie Kosky’s The Magic Flute is a contemporary spectacle, despite the opera’s outdated attitudes

Campy costumes and an ornamental set

Opera Australia’s previous Magic Flute by Julie Taymor reduced the overture to its opening three chords. It is a relief to hear it in full in this production, directed with sureness of touch by Teresa Riveiro Böhm. The orchestra provides a fulsome sound and crisp articulation over the evening, with just a handful of uncoordinated moments between the pit and stage.

Special commendations are due to the flautist and glockenspiel player for their fine solos (the latter was a role taken on by Mozart for the first performance). Weirdly, Tamino held his on-stage flute up in the air instead of miming, creating an odd disconnect between sight and sound. By contrast, the enforced response of Monostatos (Kanen Breen) and his henchmen to the sound of the magic bells was a hilarious spasm of dancing, macarena moves included.

The costumes by Anna Cordingley are eclectic. Cordingley uses guano-stained tradie attire for the bird-catcher Papageno, simple blueish outfits for Tamino and Pamina, red overalls and outsized glasses for Monastatos, and a gaudy gold cloak for Sarastro. All the villains are changed into tie-dye hippy clothes for the final chorus.

The Queen of the Night (Giuseppina Grech) asserts her pantomime villain credentials with her platinum blonde hair, vampish fur and feather costume. Outdoing even this for connoisseurs of camp is the late appearance of Papagena (Jennifer Black) in a Brazilian-carnival-style bird costume.

Michael Yeargan’s set has a three-sided exterior surrounding grass, with ornamental entrances on each side. Shiny ribbon curtains represent the fire and water tests, with other curtains repeatedly drawn across the middle of the stage for projections and byplay between characters.

Read more:
The tale of two queens: flipping the script on the ‘princess culture’ in opera

Spell-casting performances

Needless to say, the Queen of the Night’s two arias are among the most applauded. Grech conquers the stratospheric coloratura with aplomb. But for me, the standout voice belongs to Alleaume, who brings a burnished legato to Pamina’s arias, but also playfulness in the ensembles.

Ben Mingay is a seasoned musical theatre performer and aside from some roughness in tone quality, he takes on the role of Papageno with assurance and brings out the humour and humanity of the character.

Smallwood has a pleasing light lyrical tenor as Tamino – less forceful than some exponents of the role, but tuneful and exemplary in his diction.

The three spirits, extended and demanding roles for child singers, are sensibly double cast, and the opening night trio of Abbey Hammond, Zev Mann and James Valanidas demonstrate sureness of ensemble and decent acting chops. The adult trio of Ladies, Jane Ede, Indyana Schneider and Ruth Strutt, work very well together.

Of his big numbers, Parkin as Sarastro (and Speaker) is probably most satisfactory in the aria, Within these sacred halls, which sits higher in his register. His brave but unwise decision to go for the final unwritten low “E” reveals his problematic bottom register, which is often distorted with vocal fry.

Breen brings his trademark comic gifts to Monostatos who, like the other villains, is welcomed into the fold at the end. Gregory Brown and Nathan Lay are solid priests.

Whether one enjoys a laugh, or finely sung sentimental numbers, this production has something for everyone. It may not have solved all the conundrums of the work, but at least one gets to appreciate Mozart’s genius uncut.

Opera Australia’s The Magic Flute is at the Sydney Opera House until March 16.

David Larkin 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. Campy, playful and funny: Opera Australia finds the joy in The Magic Flute, Mozart’s most-performed opera – https://theconversation.com/campy-playful-and-funny-opera-australia-finds-the-joy-in-the-magic-flute-mozarts-most-performed-opera-221595

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carolina Loch, Senior Lecturer in Oral Biology, University of Otago

The diet of early anthropoids – the ancestors of apes and monkeys – has long been debated. Did these early primates display behaviours and diets similar to modern species, or did they have much humbler beginnings?

Research on early anthropoids has often suggested a diet high in soft fruits. But some species seem to have had a more varied diet, containing harder foods such as seeds and nuts.

Our latest research reveals a different story, one that highlights the dominant role of soft fruits. This likely encompassed various types that were ripe and high in sugar, as evidenced by the presence of tooth decay in some individuals.

This has important implications for understanding how our earliest ancestors adapted and evolved.

Tracking anthropoid evolution

When discussing the primate family tree, it is crucial to address the common confusion arising from the everyday use of terms such as “ape” and “monkey”.

Humans, for instance, are typically excluded from the ape category, and apes are not generally considered monkeys. Yet humans are nested within the ape family tree, which in turn is nested within the broader monkey group, however this is defined.

Read more:
Revelations from 17-million-year-old ape teeth could lead to new insights on early human evolution

All of these primates (humans, apes, and monkeys) are collectively called anthropoids, and we all share a common anthropoid ancestor that lived around 40 million years ago.

Genetic and molecular studies, along with fossil evidence, indicate the period from 40 to 25 million years ago was a critical phase for the evolution and spread of anthropoid primates.

The early portion of this period marks when Afro-Eurasian monkeys and apes (Catarrhini) diverged from monkeys native to the Americas (Platyrrhini). The latter part of this period witnessed further divergence between Afro-Eurasian monkeys (Cercopithecoidea) and apes (Hominoidea).

Fossils of our earliest ancestors

The Fayum Depression in the Western Desert of Egypt offers one of the largest and best-preserved collections of fossil primates from this time frame. Between 35 and 29.2 million years ago (when the fossils used in this study were deposited), the Fayum sat on the lush northern coast of Africa.

The terrestrial rocks of the Fayum preserve the remnants of ecosystems that laid the groundwork for Africa’s modern biodiversity. They also capture a pivotal window in primate evolution.

Several of the anthropoid primates from the site may represent either the direct ancestors of all (or some) living anthropoids. Or they were close relatives of this common ancestor.

Fossils of these early anthropoids are relatively abundant in the Fayum, with some species known from dozens of partial skulls and jaws. Because of this, the Fayum offers a fascinating glimpse into the behaviour and life of our early ancestors.

Dietary interpretations

Dental evidence is a powerful tool in palaeontology. Our new study examined dental wear and disease in fossilised teeth from five Fayum anthropoid primates: Aegyptopithecus, Parapithecus, Propliopithecus, Apidium and Catopithecus.

We focused on tooth chipping patterns and dental caries (also known as cavities), key indicators in fossils of dietary habits.

Our findings indicate a predominantly soft fruit diet in early anthropoids, different to some earlier research suggesting a more varied diet, including hard foods.

Read more:
Human ancestors had the same dental problems as us – even without fizzy drinks and sweets

A mere 5% of teeth show chipping (minor enamel fractures). This is substantially lower than the frequency observed in most modern anthropoids, where chipping frequencies range from 4% to 40% of teeth.

Additionally, the presence of dental caries, notably in Propliopithecidae (the extinct primate family that includes Aegyptopithecus and Propliopithecus), is consistent with the regular consumption of soft, sugary fruits.

This research also lends support to previous studies suggesting an arboreal (tree-living) lifestyle for early anthropoids. Terrestrial primates often exhibit higher chipping prevalence due to more varied diets and accidental grit consumption when feeding on the ground, none of which was evident in our findings.

Adaptation and evolution

The preference for soft fruits likely had significant impacts on exploration of ecological niches, and even in the development of eyesight in anthropoid primates. This includes colour vision that likely evolved as a need for finding ripe fruit among the foliage.

It would have also influenced the shape of their teeth, social behaviours and foraging strategies, setting the stage for an adaptive radiation, leading to the global spread and diversification of monkeys and apes.

This rapid evolution of diverse species from humble anthropoid beginnings was likely in response to new ecological opportunities opening up.

Other primates more distantly related to us, in the primate suborder Strepsirrhini, which includes lemurs and lorises, split off from the ancestors of anthropoids millions of years earlier.

Unlike anthropoids, Strepsirrhini show a large variation in diet during the same time interval. The diets of fossil lemurs and lorises likely consisted of hard and tough foods, insects, gum, leaves and fruits.

In contrast, our own ancestors took a long time to move away from a diet based on soft fruits. Our journey into the past to unravel the lives of our ancestors continues, with each fossil adding a new piece to the puzzle of early primate evolution.

Matthew Robert Borths receives funding from the United States National Science Foundation and the Institute for Museum and Library Services.

Carolina Loch and Ian Towle do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Our ancient primate ancestors had an appetite for soft fruits – and their diet shaped human evolution – https://theconversation.com/our-ancient-primate-ancestors-had-an-appetite-for-soft-fruits-and-their-diet-shaped-human-evolution-220218

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Grose, Climate Projections Scientist, CSIRO

In 2023, we saw a raft of news stories about climate tipping points, including the accelerating loss of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the potential dieback of the Amazon rainforest and the likely weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Ocean Circulation.

The ice sheets, Amazon rainforest and the Atlantic ocean circulation are among nine recognised global climate tipping elements. Once a tipping point is crossed, changes are often irreversible for a very long time. In many cases, additional greenhouse gases will be released into the atmosphere, further warming our planet.

New scientific research and reviews suggest at least one of Earth’s “tipping points” could be closer than we hoped. A milestone review of global tipping points was launched at last year’s COP28.

What will these tipping points mean for Australia? We don’t yet have a good enough understanding to fully answer this question.

Our report, released overnight, includes conclusions in three categories: we need to do more research; tipping points must be part of climate projections, hazard and impact analyses; and adaptation plans must take the potential impacts into account.

Read more:
Climate tipping points are nearer than you think – our new report warns of catastrophic risk

What are climate tipping points?

Climate scientists have known for a while, through paleoclimate records and other evidence, that there are “tipping elements” in the climate system. These elements can undergo an abrupt change in state, which becomes self-perpetuating and irreversible for a very long time.

An example is the loss of Greenland ice. Once ice is lost, climate feedbacks lead to further loss, and major ice loss becomes “committed”. It becomes unlikely the ice sheet will reform for tens of thousands of years and only if the climate cools again.

Triggering climate tipping points would lead to changes in addition to those commonly included in climate projections. These changes include a significant rise in sea level at double the rate (or even more) of usual projections, as well as extra warming, altered weather systems, climate variability and extremes.

Triggering one tipping point may trigger other tipping points. If that happens, the cascading impacts would push many systems outside their adaptive capacity.

Cutting fossil greenhouse gas emissions is the most important thing we can do to limit warming and the risk of triggering tipping points. The faster we reduce emissions, the better our chances.

But as the planet continues to warm, we must consider the consequences of triggering some, or several, tipping points for Australia and the resulting risks for society. We need to have the right tools for adaptation planning to consider these risks.

Read more:
Antarctic tipping points: the irreversible changes to come if we fail to keep warming below 2℃

Grappling with deep uncertainties

There’s a major gap in the research literature around the implications of tipping points for the southern hemisphere and Australia. Researchers from Australian science agencies and universities came together last year to consider what global climate tipping points could mean for Australia.

We launched our report last night at the national conference of the Australian Meteorological & Oceanographic Society. We identified several priority areas for the research community, risk analysts and policymakers.

We considered the nine global climate tipping points – and one of the most relevant regional tipping points for Australia, coral reef die-offs – as defined in a recent scientific review.

Read more:
What will happen to the Greenland ice sheet if we miss our global warming targets

For almost all tipping points, we don’t understand all the relevant processes. There are deep uncertainties about what conditions would trigger tipping points, how they would play out and their likely impacts.

Along with recognising the most urgent point – that deep emission cuts will limit the chances of triggering tipping points – our conclusions cover three areas.

1. We need more research

We need to expand research on paleoclimate records, theory and process understanding, observations, monitoring and modelling. Australia leads world-class research, including on Antarctica, the Southern Ocean, the carbon cycle, weather processes and ecosystems. It is essential we support and expand the work, bringing a southern hemisphere perspective to global efforts.

2. Climate projections, hazard and impact analyses must include tipping points

Triggering some climate tipping points would have direct impacts on our coasts, ecosystems and society. In an interconnected world, other tipping points would have major indirect impacts – through climate migration, conflict, disrupted trade and more.

We need credible projections of what the climate looks like if tipping points are triggered. Our climate impact and risk analyses should illustrate what it really means for us. Given the limited state of knowledge, the “storyline” approach – linking past, current and future unfolding of events in a narrative or pathway framework – is particularly useful, informed by all the available evidence.

3. We need to consider what it means for adaptation

We can consider where, when and how we can act to reduce potential impacts if tipping points are triggered. Appropriate risk management accounts for likelihood, consequence and timeframe.

For example, planning for major coastal infrastructure with a long lifetime and low tolerance for failure could draw on the sea-level projections of “low likelihood, high impact” storylines that include the west Antarctic ice sheet collapsing. This would safeguard critical infrastructure against one worst-case risk. Of course, there is much more to adaptation than this.

We still have much to learn, but we cannot wait for perfect knowledge before we start planning. It’s clear the risks are real and cannot be ignored.

We need to focus on what we can do to avoid triggering tipping points, manage risk and build our climate resilience. There are also positive tipping points in technology, economy and society that are part of the solution. If we get it right, positive change can happen more rapidly than we might think.

Read more:
Climate ‘tipping points’ can be positive too – our report sets out how to engineer a domino effect of rapid changes

Michael Grose receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program and the Australian Climate Service.

Andy Pitman receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

– ref. Dangerous climate tipping points will affect Australia. The risks are real and cannot be ignored – https://theconversation.com/dangerous-climate-tipping-points-will-affect-australia-the-risks-are-real-and-cannot-be-ignored-222282

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Economic Policy, Grattan Institute

The Albanese government decision to revise the Stage 3 tax cuts has ignited a political firestorm.

The government argues revising the plan to give bigger tax cuts to low-and middle-income earners struggling with the cost of living justifies breaking an election promise.

The opposition says the changes will make bracket creep worse in the long term because they will increase tax revenue by $28 billion over 10 years, relative to the original Stage 3 tax cuts.

The short-term winners and losers from the new tax plan are well documented.

People with taxable incomes of less than about $146,486, or nearly 90% of all taxpayers, will get either the same or a larger tax cut under the new plan.

Whereas the 10% with the highest incomes will get smaller tax cuts than under the original Stage 3 plan. The tax cut for people who earn more than $200,000 a year will be roughly halved, from $9,075 to $4,529 a year.

Read more:
Stage 3 stacks up: the rejigged tax cuts help fight bracket creep and boost middle and upper-middle households

Bracket creep will reduce the value of these tax cuts over time

Australia’s tax scales are not indexed to wages growth or inflation. That means as our incomes rise, Australians pay a higher proportion of their income in tax.

Even if wage growth doesn’t push a taxpayer into a new tax bracket, most taxpayers will still end up paying more tax, because a larger share of their income will be subject to their highest income tax rate.

Over time, this so-called “bracket creep” increases average tax rates across the income distribution as wages grow.

And one consequence of keeping the 37% tax bracket for incomes between $135,000 and $190,000 is average tax rates will rise more quickly for some upper-income earners than they would have under the original Stage 3.

The share of taxpayers with a taxable income between $135,000 and $190,000 is expected to rise from 7% in 2024-25 to 13% in 2033-34 due to bracket creep.

Middle Australia still wins in the long term too

Grattan Institute’s analysis shows the vast bulk of Australian taxpayers will benefit from the revised tax package, despite the impact of bracket creep over the next decade.

For example, the typical (that is, median) taxpayer, with a taxable income of about $59,000 in 2024-25, can expect to pay $804 less in tax next year. As will someone on the average taxable income of about $79,000 in 2024-25.

And both can expect to pay cumulatively $8,040 less in tax over the next decade, compared to if the original Stage 3 tax cuts remained in place.

Overall, we estimate about 83% of taxpayers can expect to pay the same or less tax over the next decade than they would have under the original Stage 3 plan, despite the impact of bracket creep.

While the share of taxpayers facing a higher average tax rate each year under the new tax plan will grow over time – rising about the top 10% today to around 22% by 2033-34 – the accumulated savings over time means many higher-income earners will still be better off over the next decade.

But high-income earners will pay substantially more tax over the next decade under the government’s plan than under Stage 3.

Someone with a taxable income higher than 95% of all Australians – or about $197,000 in 2024-25 – will pay about $45,000 more in tax over the decade than if the Stage 3 tax cuts remained in place.

The budget is the biggest loser

But the biggest loser from the new tax plan may end up being the federal budget.

The government’s tax plan is expected to cost the budget more than $20 billion a year, or 1% of GDP. The Stage 3 plan would have cost about the same.

And the budgetary cost will be larger still if a future Coalition government were to keep the Stage 3 tax cuts for high-income earners and keep the bigger tax cuts for low and middle-income earners under Labor’s revised package.

That would increase the cost of the tax plan from $20 billion a year to up to upwards of $30 billion a year, and by up to an extra $115 billion over the decade.

The government’s tax plan will make it harder for this and future governments to meet community demands for more spending in areas such as healthcare, aged care, disability care, and defence.

These tax cuts could cost middle Australia more than it thinks.

Read more:
The 2 main arguments against redesigning the Stage 3 tax cuts are wrong: here’s why

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

Joey Moloney 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. Middle Australia wins from the government’s tax plan, but the budget is the biggest loser – https://theconversation.com/middle-australia-wins-from-the-governments-tax-plan-but-the-budget-is-the-biggest-loser-222383