Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Wellings, Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations, Monash University

Fresh from his time at the UN General Assembly in New York, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s world tour now takes him to London. There he will be primed to give some political advice to his beleaguered counterpart, Keir Starmer.

Australia is enjoying a moment in the sun in the United Kingdom. Some have noted an “Australianisation” of British politics. “Stop the boats” is the most high-profile instance of policy transfer – on that occasion from Australia’s Tony Abbott to former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak. So those surrounding Starmer will no doubt be interested in Albanese’s destruction of the Coalition in May’s federal election. Starmer might also share some pointers on upwardly managing US President Donald Trump.

The meeting of the two prime ministers takes place against a backdrop of a double challenge facing centre-left parties and liberal democracies more broadly. That challenge is to bring the United States back into the anti-Russian camp, while responding effectively to the surge in support for illiberal democracy and an energised far right within their own electorates.

These two challenges are interrelated because, until he invaded Ukraine, the radical right generally admired Putin and Russia’s model of authoritarian social order.

The first of these challenges is essentially strategic. At a time when what we used to think of as “the West” is fragmenting, AUKUS is a way of keeping the Americans in the Western camp. The Australians and Britons share this ambition. Manufacturing a sense of commonality is easier to do in a confrontation with China, specifically over Taiwan and in trade, where such a strategy has broad bipartisan support in the US.

However, whether this is in Australia’s interests is a moot point. After an unusually quiescent period, voices questioning the wisdom of AUKUS are being heard.

Whatever its merits, AUKUS is the point at which British and Australian interests now most closely align. The UK-Australian Free Trade Agreement is no doubt delivering some benefit to some people, but is purpose was primarily political: to enable Boris Johnson’s government to claim there was trading life after Brexit. Trade in goods between the UK and Australia was hardly likely to set the world on fire, but it was another point of post-Brexit UK-Australia connection.

Australia does have some engagement with the Euro-Atlantic theatre in which the challenge to the rules-based international order is most pointed. Australian troops in the UK help train Ukrainian soldiers, as Russian incursions into NATO air and sea space increase.

Trump’s state visit to the UK seems to have met its diplomatic brief and kept the famously capricious president in the anti-Russian orbit – at least for now.

However, he was literally rolling out the red carpet to Putin in August, so seeking consistency in this area is a hard task.

Recently imposed US tariffs on India – itself experiencing democratic backsliding but nonetheless previously in the anti-China camp – have pushed New Delhi towards China; a feat of diplomacy to be marvelled at given the two nations were fighting each other in 2020. This volatility in the Indo-Pacific makes life harder for Australian strategists. In such times it’s nice to have friends like the UK, even if they are far away.

This friendship extends to domestic politics. Albanese’s visit coincides with the British Labour party’s annual conference. Fresh from his election victory in May. the Australian prime minister may have some advice for his British counterpart on how to effectively see off a challenge from radical-right politics on a low base of voter support.

Like the Australian Labor Party, the British Labour party swept to power in a landslide, but on a low percentage of support. This meant support for the incoming Labour government was broad, but shallow. The vote was essentially a rejection of the Conservatives rather than a positive endorsement of Starmer’s Labour. Such weak enthusiasm as there was has since evaporated, leaving the British prime minister with alarmingly low approval levels and – you guessed it – rumblings of a prime ministerial spill if things don’t improve.

Admittedly, things are never easy for Labour leaders. It is said the left always faces four main challenges: wealthy interests, political elites, the media, and itself.

The UK’s recognition of Palestinian statehood – aligning it with Australia, Canada and France, but against the US – will go some way towards placating the left of the Labour party. However, it still faces a challenge from the Jeremy Corbyn co-led new party, which immediately gained huge interest from disillusioned Labour supporters – and almost as quickly seemed to split along personality lines.

But another, and possibly more serious, threat comes from the surge in support for the radical-right party Reform UK. Reform has positioned itself successfully to the right of the Conservatives (hard to believe, but true) while seemingly capturing support from those for whom the Labour government seemed like a cruel continuation of austerity policies that hit the disabled and single-parent families.

When the Labour government seemingly went on its summer holiday it ceded the political stage to Brexit champion Nigel Farage and fellow disruptors on the far-right. A summer of discontent focused on asylum seekers culminated in the far-right led Unite the Kingdom rally in London. The Labour government, scared of losing votes to Reform, was noticeably silent about this challenge from the far-right.

So as Albanese and Starmer meet, the UK possibly stands on the brink of a political change to match those of France, Italy and Canada. All of these countries saw their mainstream centre parties replaced by others. Reform could certainly supplant the Conservatives as the main right-wing party, but it poses a challenge to Labour too.

Any advice from the masterfully uninspiring Australian prime minister would probably be welcome.

Ben Wellings 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. Albanese and Starmer to meet for a frank exchange of views (and possibly some political advice) – https://theconversation.com/albanese-and-starmer-to-meet-for-a-frank-exchange-of-views-and-possibly-some-political-advice-265751

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amra Lee, PhD candidate in Protection of Civilians, Australian National University

Aid workers face more difficult and dangerous conditions in carrying out their work than ever before. The United Nations declared 2024 the worst year on record, with 385 aid workers killed in 20 countries. That was, in turn, almost 100 more deaths than in 2023.

As Deputy UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Joyce Msuya briefed the UN Security Council:

We have become numb to this violence. Being shot at is not – I repeat, NOT – part of our job.

In 2025, 300 aid workers have been killed as of September. Most these deaths were driven by unrestricted warfare in Gaza that has since been classified a genocide, followed by Sudan and South Sudan. The use of drones, praised for their precision, was responsible for killing seven aid workers in the World Central Kitchen convoy in Gaza, including Australian Zomi Frankcom.

Attacks on international aid workers attract high levels of attention and calls for accountability. However, the overwhelming majority of deaths and injuries are local aid workers who leave behind families and dependants often reliant on their income.

Why the global initiative matters

More than 100 states have signed the Australian-led declaration to protect aid workers at this week’s UN General Assembly meeting in New York.

While some may be sceptical of the power of a declaration at this time, it nonetheless offers a glimmer of hope for humanity in an otherwise highly contested and polarised geopolitical environment.

Attacks on aid workers have not only increased, they have become more brutal. This is due to unrestricted warfare being normalised, including new patterns of harm from remotely controlled drones killing aid and healthcare workers across Palestine, Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, Mali, Sudan and Ethiopia.

The glaring lack of legal accountability for increasing deliberate attacks and targeting of aid workers has enabled impunity. If it weren’t for the work of a few dedicated actors, including the Aid Work Security database and Legal Action Worldwide, we wouldn’t even know how many aid workers had been killed, injured, detained – and denied justice.

Accountability starts with reliable data and reporting. It must be followed by timely, impartial investigations and justice through national and international mechanisms.

Protecting aid workers is vital for protecting civilians

Soaring global conflict and declining respect for international law have contributed to record aid worker death tolls since 2023. In 2024, nearly half of aid worker deaths were in Gaza.

The multilateral laws, norms and institutions that support it are facing their greatest test since the creation of the UN at the end of the second world war. This includes laws and norms designed to save civilians in war zones by facilitating safe and timely humanitarian access. As Foreign Minister Penny Wong says,

We know that to protect civilians, we must also protect aid workers who deliver the food, water and medicine civilians need to survive.

The normalisation of unrestricted warfare alongside dramatic shifts in US foreign policy is stretching the institutions, laws and norms designed to protect civilians and those sent to help them. Aid workers have shouldered this burden quietly, reluctant to speak out due to fear of punitive measures from those who would deny them access to the civilian populations they serve.

The increase in attacks on aid workers also points to antagonism to the presence of aid workers in war zones, and their independent assessment and reporting of the terrible toll war takes on people’s lives.

This is why reinforcing member states’ commitment to international law obligations and fundamental humanitarian norms is vital at this time.

Beyond declaration to protection

Renewed political commitment by member states to protect aid workers and reinforce existing obligations under international law is both welcome and urgently needed.

The effectiveness of the initiative will be seen in pursuing accountability for aid worker attacks internationally and domestically. It will also be evident in how well it can address the longstanding impunity that has enabled the escalating danger of aid work.

And it will be measured by whether local aid workers on the frontlines receive the necessary technical and financial support to reduce the rising threats they face.

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

– ref. Aid workers around the world are in greater danger than ever. Will a new UN declaration protect them? – https://theconversation.com/aid-workers-around-the-world-are-in-greater-danger-than-ever-will-a-new-un-declaration-protect-them-265861

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

International politics is centre stage again, with world leaders in New York this week for the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly. On the forefront of the agenda has been the recognition of a Palestinian state.

Australia joined several other countries in recognising Palestine, despite warnings from both the United States and Israel. The Opposition is openly critical of the government’s move.

To discuss what’s going on at the UN, conflict in the Middle East and what Australia should be doing about it, we’re joined by research scholar at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Ian Parmeter.

Parmeter is a former diplomat, who worked in various countries in the Middle East and Russia, including as Australian ambassador to Lebanon. He stressed he was speaking as an analyst, not an advocate.

On how significant Australia’s recognition of Palestine is, Parmeter said:

I think the best way to look at it is what would be the converse be. If Australia and the other states had done nothing, it would essentially be condoning Israel’s actions in Gaza, and for that matter the West Bank with the expansion of settlements that’s occurring there.

Parmeter said Israel had global sympathy after Hamas’ October 7 attacks, in which almost 1,200 people died and 251 men, women and children were taken hostage, which was “the worst individual attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust during the second world war”.

But over the past two years, he said the escalating death toll in Gaza had ramped up public pressure on all governments, including in Australia, to intervene.

The Harbour Bridge March was particularly dramatic and it underlined, I suspect, for the Albanese government that it really did need to start responding to the way Australians were feeling about this.

The other aspect that I think in terms of justifying what all of these states are doing in recognising [Palestine] is to underline to Israel that it cannot wish [the] Palestinian problem away, that it’s going to stay and it will need to be dealt with by Israel.

Asked about the prospects of Israel and Palestine ever being able to peacefully co-exist as two neighbouring, separate states, Parmeter said “the two-state solution looks further and further away”.

[Israel’s] Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu has said, when he was reacting to the recognition of Palestine by all of these states early this week, ‘I’ve got a message for you – there will never be a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean’. And he certainly means that.

So if there is to be some sort of settlement, it’s going to have to be a very creative one. And it’s very hard to see how that might happen at this time. But the real issue is that the issue is not going to go away, so it’s very important for Israel to start thinking hard about solutions.

[…Instead] we are potentially headed towards what has been called a ‘one-state solution’, which would be Israel ruling over all of the land of Israel, plus the West Bank and Gaza.

On the Australian prime minister finally booking a date for a formal meeting with US President Donald Trump on October 20, Parmeter said it comes with risks but is still necessary.

It’s very difficult to make forecasts about meetings that leaders hold with President Trump in the Oval Office. I mean, as we’ve seen, they can go off in directions that neither side perhaps anticipated at the start.

[…] I think we have bigger issues that we would want to discuss, clearly the trade aspects of tariffs and to see if we can perhaps get them reduced or some sort of agreement worked out on them. And AUKUS of course, which is a much bigger issue as far as the government is concerned.

At that stage […] it will be getting on for at least six weeks since the announcement about the Palestinian state and everything will have moved on. I’m not sure that that issue will play very large at that time. But I caveat that by saying it’s extremely hard […] to forecast what’s going to happen in those Oval Office meetings.

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: former diplomat Ian Parmeter on an Israel-led ‘one-state solution’ – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-former-diplomat-ian-parmeter-on-an-israel-led-one-state-solution-265981

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elliot Varoy, Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, University of Sydney

You’re neck-deep in IKEA assembly instructions. Furniture parts lie strewn across the floor. Your new purchase sits half-complete in front of you, mocking your fruitless hours. As an uninterested partner walks in, you let the frustration out:

“I’ve done everything correctly! Look:

1. connect A with B using M1 screws
2. connect B with C with the M3 bolt using the key
3. join BC with D using… wait.”

You suddenly realise you haven’t joined BC with D. It all starts to click into place (literally), et voilà, you’re finished.

It’s a universal experience: the moment you try to explain a problem out loud, it all begins to make sense.

Software engineers call it “rubber duck debugging”. So, where did this term come from and why is it so effective?

Explaining aloud

This well-known software engineering term has its origins in a story told in The Pragmatic Programmer, a book by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas.

The gist of it is that one should obtain a rubber duck, and use it when your code isn’t working – and you don’t know why.

Explain to the duck what your code is supposed to do, and then “go into detail and explain things line by line”.

Soon, the moment of revelation strikes: you realise, as you speak aloud, that what you meant to do and what you actually did are two very different things.

I often bring up rubber duck debugging in my introductory programming lessons, to help students when they can’t understand why their code won’t work.

Despite its roots in programming, the ideas that underpin the rubber duck approach apply to programmers and non-programmers alike.

Why does it work?

Most of us think out loud as we learn with our first books, reading aloud as we go. There’s something illuminating about articulating aloud that helps you “hear” the problem your brain has thus far been unable to detect.

And research by US scholars Logan Fiorella and Richard Meyer has examined how learning can be enhanced through the act of teaching others.

Their experiments found that when students learn the contents of a lesson as though they are going to teach it to others – and then actually teach it to others – they “develop a deeper and more persistent understanding of the material”.

Teaching others forces us to break the material down into conceptual pieces, integrating it with our existing knowledge and organising it in logical ways.

Their research also identifies “self-explaining” as an evidence-based learning strategy.

That’s why our little yellow friend is so helpful; in explaining the problem aloud to your rubber duck, you are teaching it as well.

The rubber duck and their blank, cute face

But why a rubber duck?

Well, talking to a human can come with certain limits.

Humans are contextual, with previous thought and experience; they may miss your mistakes because they’ve assumed something about your previous attempts to solve the problem. They may have internal biases that make it hard for them to see where you’ve gone wrong.

A rubber duck, however, has none of this. As silly as it might look, rubber ducking forces you to explain things in precise detail to that blank (cute) face looking back at you.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be a duck. Any old object (or uninterested party, as I seem to keep finding) will do in a pinch. Some researchers even advocate replacing the duck with a large language model such as ChatGPT. The AI chatbot can, they argue, “act as a virtual, hyper-intelligent, ever-present programming partner to a software engineer” wanting to walk through their code line by line to find errors – and suggest fixes, too.

Others have experimented with a modified rubber duck that, when the user presses a button, nods or offers brief, neutral replies to your explanations. The interactivity, the researchers argue, might make people feel more comfortable talking to a duck.

So, next time you’re stuck on a problem at work, suffering writer’s block or trying to make sense of a convoluted email chain, try turning to a little yellow duck.

See if explaining your problem aloud to them can help you arrive at the answer.

Elliot Varoy 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. Stuck on a problem? Talking to a rubber duck might unlock the solution – https://theconversation.com/stuck-on-a-problem-talking-to-a-rubber-duck-might-unlock-the-solution-261675

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wendy Stone, Professor of Housing & Social Policy, HHAUS Housing, Homelessness & Urban Studies, Swinburne University of Technology

In the face of Australia’s housing crisis and current cost-of-living pressures, young people today continue to miss out on housing opportunities earlier generations could largely grasp.

The prospect of owning a home in the foreseeable future is out of reach for many young people. Census data shows rates of young adults buying a home have been declining since the 1980s.

But even an affordable rental property is not a given, with younger age the strongest predictor of “rental stress” – paying more in rent than is deemed liveable by standard measures.

In our own research, published last year, we interviewed female and gender diverse Australians aged between 18 and 30 about their housing experiences. Many, such as this woman in her late 20s, described the mental toll of housing precarity:

The constant cycle of living in a place for a year, getting a massive rent increase, having to find a new place and move again is exhausting, financially unsustainable and demoralising.

For young adults, unmet housing aspirations can negatively affect identity, mental health and wellbeing, and their ability to plan for the future.

What’s more, all this means young people often live at home with their parents for longer than in years gone by, which, for some, can present additional challenges.

How does staying at home longer affect wellbeing?

Recent Australian survey data showed 54% of young men aged 18–29 and 47% of young women in the same age group are still living under the same roof as at least one of their parents.

For some young adults, multigenerational living for longer periods works well, even when driven by the cost of living. They may benefit from a mix of private and shared spaces in the family home, and extra care and support.

For other young adults, the inability to secure affordable, accessible and independent housing can affect mental health and wellbeing. As a woman in her late 20s told us in our 2024 research:

It’s like you don’t pay with money to live with family […] but you pay with your mental health.

Another participant, a non-binary person in their early 20s, explained:

Even now I’m like learning how to like be my own person while still being under my parents’ roof […] still living at home is a bit emotionally kind of weird.

Young people aren’t the only generation affected

The impacts of declining housing affordability are intergenerational. Parents of young adults may now be at midlife, and facing their own difficulties. Many midlife adults are approaching retirement age with mortgages or rental costs.

Some in this demographic, sometimes called the “sandwich generation”, may be living with and caring for older generations, and perhaps children as well.

Young people, too, sometimes need to provide in-home care and housing-related financial support for older family members. One participant in our research, a young woman in her early 20s, acutely felt the burden of helping her single mother pay the mortgage:

I honestly don’t want to end up […] getting married anytime soon because when I wanna be with my partner, I wanna be able to help him with, if we end up having a house or renting or whatever, not having to think about my mum and her mortgage and what’s gonna happen to her.

The effects of housing precarity may also flow on to future generations. Millennials and members of Gen Z are having fewer children than their predecessors, in part because of housing costs.

As a non-binary person in their mid-20s told us:

The biggest negative impact of being stuck on the lowest end of the rental market is that it severely limits my ability to plan to start a family. My partner and I both want a child but are terrified of the idea of not being able to afford rent with a new baby and limited family support.

Read more:
Australian parents are helping their kids buy a first home with less money, but more rent-free living

Solutions rely on looking at the whole picture

There’s no doubt younger generations are missing out on housing advantages that were more widely available to their parents’ and grandparents’ generations, and for many, this is taking a toll on their wellbeing.

But to inform improved housing policy and innovation, we should consider the housing challenges of one generation in relation to those of other generations. Ideally, this will mean policy interventions can address different generations’ challenges pertaining to housing at the same time.

When housing models innovate to include intergenerational components, wellbeing effects can be magnified. Community-led housing models, such as co-housing, housing co-operatives and collaborative forms of home ownership, are gaining momentum in Australia. These have been linked to wellbeing benefits across different life stages.

A large national study exploring the benefits of living in rental housing co-operatives in the community housing sector is a case in point. Findings show residents across different ages and life stages identify the intergenerational care, friendship, exchange, and support of mixed-generation housing as a core aspect that makes their housing a home.

Purpose-built environments, for example where aged care accommodation is co-located with childcare, enabling regular interactions between different generations, have also shown benefits across age groups. Intergenerationally focused urban planning and housing design has the potential to reduce isolation and loneliness among older generations, and increase support and connectivity for children and young people.

But we also need adaptation, to tweak policies and housing stock we already have. This could mean, for example, adjusting policies to make share housing a better option at any life stage, or adapting dwellings for multigenerational living.

This article is part of a series, Healthy Homes.

Wendy Stone receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), the Victorian government, Housing for the Aged Action Group, YWCA Australia, the Brian M. Davis Charitable Foundation and Kids Under Cover.

Zoe Goodall has received funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), the Victorian government, the Brian M. Davis Charitable Foundation, Kids Under Cover, and YWCA Australia.

– ref. Young people are saving on rent by staying at home longer, but ‘you pay with your mental health’ – https://theconversation.com/young-people-are-saving-on-rent-by-staying-at-home-longer-but-you-pay-with-your-mental-health-263730

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Niusha Shafiabady, Associate Professor in Computational Intelligence, Australian Catholic University

For more than a century, global geopolitics has revolved around oil and gas. Countries with big fossil fuel reserves, such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, have amassed significant wealth and foreign influence, helping shape the world order.

But the global shift toward renewable energy is challenging these power structures. As the world transitions away from oil and gas, renewable energy resources promise to become the new basis for geopolitical influence.

Nations with a bounty of sun and wind, and the capacity to export that energy, have much to gain. So too do nations endowed with critical minerals, and the means to produce the technology required in a low-carbon world.

Say goodbye to the “pertrostates” of old, and welcome the rise of the “electrostate”. China is heading the charge – and Australia, if it plays its cards right, could be at its heels.

A shift is underway

Petrostates are nations rich in oil, gas and coal, and which are heavily dependent on revenue from extracting and exporting these commodities.

Australia is a major exporter of gas and coal. But it lacks the core features of a petrostate – centralised state control of production, the ability to order export cuts, and heavy fiscal reliance on oil and gas rents. Instead, publicly owned resources are developed by private firms under regulation, which gives the government regulatory influence rather than coercive “petro-power.”

World economies have traditionally needed fossil fuels to operate. So, petrostates have used their control of these resources to gain leverage in diplomatic talks, influence global energy prices and create alliances with other nations.

For example, the security partnership between Saudi Arabia and the United States is underpinned by the US’ need for Saudi oil. And moves by Russia to cut gas supply to Europe in 2022 was widely seen as a retaliation for sanctions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

But these fortunes are changing. The Middle East, Russia and the United States gained power in the age of oil. Now, in the age of renewables, a new cohort of electrostates is emerging.

What is an electrostate?

The term “electrostate” describes a nation that dominates the energy transition. Instead of oil wells or gas fields, its influence comes from commanding positions in supply chains that underpin electrification. These include:

• critical minerals (such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earths)

• battery production and recycling

• semiconductors and digital infrastructure

• clean energy technologies (such as solar, wind and electric vehicles).

China leads the way in clean energy innovation and development.

It processes about 60% of the world’s lithium and cobalt. It also refines more than 90% of rare earth elements used in electric vehicles, wind turbines and “smart” electricity grids.

Chinese firms CATL and BYD produce more than half of the global supply of lithium-ion batteries – and this capacity is expanding rapidly. What’s more, BYD recently overtook Tesla as the world’s largest EV manufacturer, supported by a vast domestic market.

China produces about 80% of the world’s solar panels, and dominates wind turbine supply chains. And through its Belt and Road Initiative, China has secured access to overseas mines, ports and energy projects.

None of this happened by chance. It’s the result of a deliberate, state-backed strategy executed over two decades.

Beijing combined industrial policy, subsidies and long-term investment with a willingness to absorb early losses for strategic gain. The result? China is now the indispensable player in the global energy transition.

This matters for the world

The rise of electrostates reshuffles the global energy map.

Just as the European Union once worried about maintaining supplies of Russian gas, now it worries about over-dependence on Chinese batteries, critical minerals and fuel cells.

The US, EU, Japan, India and others are racing to reduce reliance on China. Initiatives such as the US Inflation Reduction Act, the EU Critical Raw Materials Act and the Quad’s supply chain cooperation are all responses to China’s dominance.

China has already used its control of the renewables supply chain to exert global influence. For example, earlier this year it restricted exports of seven rare earth elements needed to produce technologies such as electric vehicles. The move was considered a retaliation to tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump.

Australia’s opportunity

Australia, too, has big electrostate potential. The continent holds some of the world’s largest reserves of lithium, nickel and rare earths. We already supply more than half of global lithium.

But much work is needed to seize this opportunity.

First, rather than just exporting raw minerals, Australia must invest in domestic refining, battery manufacturing and recycling. This would keep more jobs and income in Australia and reduce our reliance on overseas suppliers.

Strategic partnerships are crucial. Australia needs to broaden and deepen cooperation with nations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This would enable us to supply different parts of the world and build domestic manufacturing and processing capacity.

Governments and the private sector must also invest in innovation. That means supporting research in next-generation batteries, hydrogen and electricity grids to maintain technological leadership.

Throughout the expansion, companies extracting critical minerals and producing clean energy should meet high environmental and social standards. This will maintain public trust and international credibility.

All this requires smart policy and international collaboration. Decisions taken in Canberra over the next decade will determine whether Australia depends on electrostates – or becomes one.

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. Goodbye petrostates, hello ‘electrostates’: how the clean energy shift is reshaping the world order – https://theconversation.com/goodbye-petrostates-hello-electrostates-how-the-clean-energy-shift-is-reshaping-the-world-order-264267

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

With Spinal Tap II: The End Continues hitting cinemas, now is the perfect moment to revisit its precursor, one of most influential and hilarious comedy films ever made, 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap.

Directed by Rob Reiner and co-written by Reiner and the stars of the film, Christopher Guest (as Nigel Tufnel), Michael McKean (David St. Hubbins) and Harry Shearer (Derek Smalls), the mockumentary film follows a fictional British heavy metal band on a disastrous tour of the United States.

As audiences dwindle, equipment fails and egos clash, the band’s decline satirises rock’n’roll excess and the absurdities of the music industry.

Widely acknowledged as a cult classic, the film codified the “straight-faced” style of mockumentary that became central to modern comedies such as The Office and Modern Family.

Its dry and absurdist tone, handheld camerawork, faux interview format and largely improvised dialogue were inspirational for many contemporary comedy creators, including Ben Stiller, Mike Schur and Ricky Gervais. It also established a tone and style Guest would return to throughout his filmmaking career, in movies such as Waiting For Guffman (1996), Best In Show (2000) and A Mighty Wind (2003).

The band which could exist

Beyond pure nostalgia and the legacy of the mockumentary style, This Is Spinal Tap remains a cult favourite because of the clever and farcical way it skewers and satirises rock excess.

As Roger Ebert stated, although the band does not exist,

the best thing about this film is that it could. The music, the staging, the special effects, the backstage feuding and the pseudo-profound philosophizing are right out of a hundred other rock groups and a dozen other documentaries about rock.

In the early 1980s, MTV was on the rise. Rock tour documentaries from bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and The Band established new conventions of “rock reality” in films such as The Song Remains The Same (1976), Black and Blue (1980) and The Last Waltz (1978). The culture of excess surrounding some of these artists provided fertile ground for parody.

Ego clashes, overblown stage shows and catastrophic tours were commonplace. Spinal Tap’s deadpan mockumentary style was both a timely satire, and an authentic cultural commentary.

The brilliance of the film goes beyond its ribald satire. Of vital importance is the skilful musicianship of the cast. Even if they are a joke, Spinal Tap can play. The great rock riffs sustain the silliness of the lyrics in songs like Sex Farm and Big Bottom.

In addition, Guest and McKean slyly navigate a bromance at the heart of the film between their characters, Nigel and David.

When David’s girlfriend, Jeanine (June Chadwick) arrives to join the tour, things really go off the rails, leading to an acrimonious breakup between the bandmates.

Their reunion at the film’s conclusion reveals that the film is truly a love story between two vain yet endearing buffoons.

Going to 11

Moments such as Nigel boasting about his amplifier going “to 11”, Derek’s airport security incident, the band getting lost on the way to the stage, and the 18-inch (instead of 18-foot) Stonehenge stage prop have become iconic. But there are so many great gags on the periphery, layered through the largely improvised dialogue.

A personal favourite occurs during an early band interview. Reflecting on a series of strange deaths that have afflicted Spinal Tap’s drummers throughout the years, and acknowledging that their first drummer died in “a bizarre gardening accident”, Tufnel states “the authorities said best leave it unsolved really”.

There are also subtle visual jokes embedded through the film: the sudden emergence of cold sores for each band member in the early stages of the tour (at roughly the same time the band’s groupies enter the frame); the band being second billed behind an Amusement Park Puppet Show as the tour falls apart; Nigel needing to quickly tune the violin he’s using to augment an overblown guitar solo.

Online lists such as Cracked’s “50 funniest moments in This Is Spinal Tap” demonstrate the sheer volume of funny moments.

Modern audiences would no doubt recognise the film’s style being mimicked in contemporary works such as The Office, Parks and Recreation, Summer Heights High and What We Do in the Shadows.

Its influence has been directly acknowledged in the lead-up to the release of the sequel by creators who owe a debt to its clever format.

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues reunites Tufnel, St. Hubbins and Smalls, now estranged, 41 years after the original film.

They are reluctantly coming back together for one final concert they are legally bound to perform. Documentarian Marty Di Bergi (Reiner) returns to showcase their legacy, modern mishaps and the realities of being an ageing rocker.

It is an apt sequel in a world where legacy bands and artists such as The Rolling Stones, Springsteen and McCartney are still performing in their 70s and 80s.

The sequel is not just a reunion gig. It is a reminder of why the original remains one of the sharpest and most influential comedies ever made – and one well worth a revisit.

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

– ref. Why This Is Spinal Tap remains the funniest rock satire ever made – https://theconversation.com/why-this-is-spinal-tap-remains-the-funniest-rock-satire-ever-made-264591

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tingrei Tan, Sydney Horizon Fellow and ARC Future Fellow, Quantum Control Laboratory, University of Sydney

For almost a century, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle has stood as one of the defining ideas of quantum physics: a particle’s position and momentum cannot be known at the same time with absolute precision. The more you know about one, the less you know about the other.

In a new study published in Science Advances, our team demonstrates how to work around this restriction, not by breaking physics but by reshaping uncertainty itself.

The result is a breakthrough in the science of measurement that could power a new generation of ultra-precise quantum sensors operating at the scale of atoms.

Moving uncertainty around

The uncertainty principle makes clear there will always be a minimum amount of uncertainty in measurements. But you can think of it like air in a balloon: the air cannot escape, but you can freely move it around inside.

Similarly, when measuring position and momentum, the total amount of uncertainty is fixed. But we can redistribute it between the two.

Traditionally, this trade-off means making a choice. You can measure position precisely but lose information about momentum, or vice versa.

Our work takes a different approach. We push the uncertainty into a sensing range that is unimportant.

To understand this, let’s try another analogy: imagine a clock with only one hand. If it’s the hour hand, we know the hour exactly but only roughly know the minutes. If it’s the minute hand, we can read minutes precisely but do not know the hour.

We apply this same idea to quantum measurements. We redistribute the uncertainty so that we can simultaneously track small changes in position and momentum around a chosen point, even if we do not know the absolute location of the point itself.

With this, we can detect very tiny changes in both position and momentum at once, beyond the limit of any classical sensor.

Using error-correcting codes for quantum sensing

How did we do this? We repurposed techniques originally designed to protect quantum computers from noise to enhance the precision of measurement devices. This idea was first proposed in a theoretical study in 2017.

We performed our experiment using a trapped ion. This is a single electronically charged atom held in place and controlled with electric and magnetic fields.

We prepared the ion in “grid states”, a kind of quantum state originally developed for error-corrected quantum computing. We then used these states as a sensor to measure tiny signals, in a way similar to how one would detect errors in a quantum computer.

This crossover between quantum computing and quantum sensing is the key idea behind our work.

Our experiment showed we can measure an uncertainty in a signal corresponding to half a nanometre, roughly about the size of an atom.

We can also measure extremely small forces, measured in yoctonewtons – that’s a trillionth of a trillionth of a newton. That’s like measuring the weight of about 30 oxygen molecules.

Why does it matter?

Being able to measure extremely small signals has profound implications. Counterintuitively, measuring the minuscule can help us improve our understanding on the grandest scale.

Quantum sensors already help gravitational-wave observatories detect cosmic events such as colliding black holes. Our work opens the door to even greater sensing capabilities, potentially deepening our understanding of astrophysical objects.

This experiment is still within the confines of a physics laboratory. It’s not a gadget you’ll see in the shops tomorrow. But we are confident this new way to make precision measurements will lead to a whole generation of ultra-sensitive quantum sensors.

Tingrei Tan receives funding from Australian Research Council, US Office of Naval Research, US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Wellcome Leap.

Christophe Valahu receives funding from Australian Research Council, US Office of Naval Research, US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Wellcome Leap.

– ref. A new twist on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle can sharpen quantum sensors – https://theconversation.com/a-new-twist-on-heisenbergs-uncertainty-principle-can-sharpen-quantum-sensors-265761

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole L. Asquith, Professor, University of Tasmania, Queensland University of Technology

In the coming week, the Tasmanian parliament will consider two bills that will cement Tasmania as the Rainbow Isle.

The laws, which have bipartisan support, will provide compensation for those historically convicted of homosexuality and cross-dressing offences. They also expand hate crime provisions to LGBTQIA+ people.

This is nation-leading reform to enforce the rights of LGBTQIA+ people. Tasmania is the first jurisdiction in the country to offer compensation for those affected by these now-abolished crimes.

This is especially significant given the state’s fraught history of criminalising homosexuality and cross-dressing up until the end of the last century.

The redress scheme comes after Australia-first gender recognition laws in 2019, and the official recognition of asexual and agender people in all of the Tasmanian government’s activities with community since 2023.

The government is also pursuing sentencing reforms to give judges the power to impose tougher sentences for hate crimes against LGBTQIA+ people (and others). These changes go beyond those in other states by allowing courts to take “demonstrated hostility” into account.

A violent, traumatic history

Tasmania has not always been a leader in advocating for the rights of LGBTQIA+ people.

By 1990, most Australian states had decriminalised homosexuality, with South Australia leading the change in 1975.

But it was not until 1997, under significant national and international pressure, that Tasmania decriminalised male same-sex relationships. Same-sex relationships between women were never criminalised.

Before 1997, relationships between men in Tasmania were punishable by up to 21 years in prison, which was the harshest penalty in the western world. Tasmania was also the only Australian state to criminalise cross dressing.

It’s estimated approximately 100 men were convicted for “unnatural sexual intercourse” and “gross indecency” between 1945 and the mid-1980s.

In 1991, the Australian government had signed onto the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This enabled people to submit complaints about rights violations in their home countries to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Tasmanian man Rodney Croome, along with his partner at the time, Nick Toonen, submitted the first Australian complaint to the commission in 1994. Their local efforts to change Tasmania’s punitive laws on male same-sex relationships had been unsuccessful.

In Toonen vs Tasmania, the commission found the state of Tasmania had violated his right to privacy and distinguished between people on the basis of sexual activity, sexual orientation and identity. Both these things meant gay men were not equal under the law.

This paved the way for the landmark federal Human Rights (Sexual Conduct) Act, which overrode the Tasmanian law criminalising homosexuality.

A High Court ruling in Croome vs Tasmania followed. It found the Commonwealth government had the power under an international treaty to enact legislation decriminalising homosexual acts in Tasmania.

The United Nations case also mandated anti-LGBTQIA+ discrimination laws, which set an international precedent for the decriminalisation of same-sex relationships across the world.

A rainbow transformation

As the current legislation was tabled in parliament, advocacy group Equality Tasmania noted that many victims of the state’s former laws suffered loss of employment, housing, family and friends.

Many left the state forever. All lived with the trauma of public ignominy and criminal stigma. Some still do.

According to legal scholar Allen George, the homosexual and cross dressing expungement laws offer a form of “therapeutic justice”.

Therapeutic justice is justice that considers not just the law, but the social conditions as well, especially those that affect the wellbeing of victims.

While there is no compensation adequate for the harms caused by the now-abolished laws, advocates say the redress scheme will help make up for the pain and loss victims experienced, and:

send a message that the Tasmanian government is taking responsibility for the injustice its predecessors inflicted.

Croome, who is now a LGBTQIA+ rights activist, says Tasmania has been transformed from “Bigots Island to the Rainbow Isle”.

Victim-survivors can have their charges, convictions or both expunged under existing legislation, and will automatically receive a payment.

They will be eligible for $15,000 for a charge, $45,000 for a conviction, and $75,000 if they were sentenced to detention or psychiatric care.

These amounts were supported by expert advice to a 2024 inquiry by the Tasmanian parliament’s Gender and Equality Committee after it reviewed similar schemes in Europe and Canada.

Could other states follow?

This redress for past harms could lead to similar law reform across Australia.

Other states and territories are likely to consider following Tasmania’s lead and enact redress schemes for those arrested under their former anti-gay laws.

The Commonwealth may also consider redress for harms inflicted in the past.

Read more:
An inquiry has recommended Australia legislate a Human Rights Act. Here’s why we need one

The Tasmanian reform may also initiate an overdue debate in Australia about how we as a nation respond to past injustices and work towards the prevention of human rights violations.

This case highlights the patchwork of inconsistent LGBTQIA+ rights across the country. This inconsistency may only be resolved by a comprehensive, national Bill of Rights or Human Rights Act.

This broader agenda will extend Australian governments’ consideration of the human rights of all Australians.

The authors would like to thank Rodney Croome for his insights and knowledge of historical and contemporary LGBTQIA+ law reform

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. Tasmania will compensate people for historical LGBTQIA+ convictions. Could others follow suit? – https://theconversation.com/tasmania-will-compensate-people-for-historical-lgbtqia-convictions-could-others-follow-suit-265956

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

With Anthony Albanese now having his long-awaited meeting with United States President Donald Trump locked in and announced by the White House, the prime ministerial attention will turn to managing an unpredictable encounter.

Having the October 20 face-to-face in Washington presents both more opportunities and extra risks than if it had been on the sidelines of this week’s United Nations leaders’ week.

Trump has not gone out of his way for the convenience of the Australian prime minister. Albanese, already scheduled to attend a round of international summits, will have to make a special trip to the US to see the president (just short of a year after Trump’s election).

Being in Washington will presumably enable the PM to speak to a range of administration figures.

But being in the White House makes it more of an “occasion”, encouraging Trump to be performative, positively or negatively. And if it comes with a room full of journalists, it can turn into a circus.

Albanese will put Australia’s core interests – primarily AUKUS (currently being reviewed by the Americans), regional security, and tariffs – to the fore in the discussion. One issue will be whether the Americans renew efforts for Australia to lift its defence spending. The government has recently come out with a range of defence initiatives – will there be more heading towards October 20?

Albanese will hope his obvious differences with the president – notably on Palestine and climate change – can be sidelined. Those two issues have been highlighted by the prime minister at the UN this week.

Australia, with a clutch of other countries, announced formal recognition of Palestine.

Albanese is promoting Australia’s push for investment for green energy and Australia is lobbying other countries to pressure Turkey to withdraw so we and Pacific countries can host the UN climate conference (COP) next year. Albanese told a news conference there was no outcome on the COP yet.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who is also in New York, described the COP as “the biggest trade fair in the world”. Bowen is an enthusiast for obtaining the conference but some others around the government believe it could be more trouble than it is worth.

The COP, which would be held in Adelaide and attract tens of thousands of people, is a potential logistical nightmare, given there would be little more than a year to organise it and co-ordination with the Pacific countries would be testing.

Trump has attacked the decision on Palestine, seeing it as rewarding terrorism.

His attitude on climate was summed up in his line to the UN General Assembly: “If you don’t get away from this green energy scam, your country is going to fail”. He denounced renewables as a “joke”.

Asked whether his claims on climate and energy could affect investment and public perceptions in Australia, Albanese was dismissive. “President Trump gave a speech. He’s entitled to give that speech and to put his views. I don’t think that there are any views that he hasn’t said before.”

Centrally, Albanese in Washington will be wanting and needing to establish a good personal relationship with Trump.

In his rambling UN address, Trump said “I only do business with people I like”. It was a joke – sort of, but not really.

After the October meeting had been confirmed, Albanese (who later had a word with Trump at the president’s gala reception for world leaders) was inclined to lord it over journalists, who’d pursued him for months about when a meeting would happen. “As I’ve said, President Trump agreed to a meeting some time ago. We had another chat about it on the phone [recently],” he said. The prime minister wanted to make it all seem smooth and under control, but organising the October 20 get-together has been a nightmare for Australian officials, Albanese’s office and the Australian ambassador in Washington, Kevin Rudd.

In coming days Albanese, who goes to the United Kingdom for the second leg of his trip, will be able to get some tips on handling Trump from Keir Starmer. The British Labour prime minister has built a personal rapport with Trump, who quips amiably about their political differences.

For all the challenges of the Trump meeting, Albanese is likely to go into it confident. Since his triumphant election win, he seems very sure of himself about most things.

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

– ref. View from The Hill: Albanese’s Trump meeting is in the diary – now it’s a matter of managing it – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-albaneses-trump-meeting-is-in-the-diary-now-its-a-matter-of-managing-it-265854

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip C. Almond, Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought, The University of Queensland

If you believe that the end of the world is at hand, then you really need to know what the rapture is. Simply put, the rapture is the belief that, at any moment, Jesus Christ will descend from heaven to the sky and “rapture” all those who truly believe in Him into heaven. Those among the faithful who have already died will rise from the dead and also be translated into heaven.

Evangelical Christians on TikTok have been predicting the rapture will come this week. When the rapture happens, believers think the rest of us will be left behind, not knowing where many of those we know have gone. For this reason, it is often known as “Left Behind theology”.

For the followers of Left Behind theology within conservative Evangelical Protestantism, significant parts of the Bible – the books of Revelation and Daniel in particular – refer to events that are yet to happen at the end of the world. These are the return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and God’s final judgement of all humanity into the saved and the damned.

But for the rapture in particular, the First Book of Thessalonians (4.16–17) in the New Testament is the crucial text:

For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up [raptured] in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.

Tribulation

The rapture is the first of two ideas that Left Behind theology has added to the traditional Christian story of the end of the world. The second is the Tribulation.

According to most Left Behind theologians, the rapture will be followed by a period of seven years of Tribulation on earth, based on some complicated calculations around the text of Daniel 9.24–27.

This is the age of the Antichrist, the son of Satan – a human figure soon to reveal himself.

He will be a global earthly ruler opposed to Christ and pretending to be him. He it is who is called in the Bible “the beast rising out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads” (Revelation 13.1), “the little horn” (Daniel 7.8), and “the lawless one” (2 Thessalonians 2.3) whose number is 666 (Revelation 13.18).

Christians who have been raptured into heaven are immune from these seven years of natural disasters, wars, famine and the persecutions of the Antichrist.

The kingdom upon earth

After the seven years of the Tribulation, Christ will return with his saints to fight and defeat Satan, the Antichrist, and his forces at the battle of Armageddon.

Most followers of Left Behind theology believe that Christ will then set up his kingdom upon earth and reign from Jerusalem for a millennium or a thousand years. He will govern the earth with his Christian followers, along with those Jews who have recognised Christ as the Messiah during the time of the Tribulation.

The eventual conversion of the Jews during this time explains, in part at least, the commitment to and support of many Evangelical Protestant Christians to the continuation of the State of Israel until the time of Tribulation when the Jews convert to Christianity.

At the end of the thousand years, Satan will be released and there will be a final but short rebellion against God, after which Satan will be defeated. Then God will judge everyone for eternal happiness in heaven or eternal misery in hell.

A relatively recent innovation

In the history of Christian thought, the idea of the rapture before the Tribulation is a relatively recent innovation.

We can date it to the 1830s and the theology of the Anglican John Nelson Darby (1800–82), a member of the Protestant Plymouth Brethren, and the founder of the group still known as the Exclusive Brethren. But it was popularised in Protestant circles in the United States by its inclusion in the notes of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909.

The Bible of C.I. Scofield (1843–1921) was the main source for the idea of the rapture until The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey (1929–2024) in 1970, a work that has sold over 28 million copies and has been translated into 54 languages. “Someday,” declared Lindsey,

a day that only God knows is coming to take away all those who believe in Him. He is coming to meet all true believers in the air. Without benefit of science, space suits, or interplanetary rockets, there will be those who will be transported into a glorious place more beautiful, more awesome, than we can possibly comprehend.

But it was the series of Left Behind books (1995–2007) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, with over 65 million books sold, along with its movie franchise, that has most popularised the idea of the rapture and the Tribulation that follows it.

To many of us, the world appears a place of tribulation. “’Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,” as John Donne (1572–1631) eloquently put it.

The idea of the rapture seems to reflect the utopian dream of many that they may be translated from this Earth to a better place until they can return to a world of justice, compassion and decency that seems so absent from the present one.

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

– ref. What is the rapture, and why does TikTok believe the end is coming? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-rapture-and-why-does-tiktok-believe-the-end-is-coming-265748

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Carson, 2024 Oxford University visiting research fellow RIJS; Professor of Political Communication., La Trobe University

Twenty-one years after Facebook’s launch, Australia’s top 25 news outlets now have a combined 27.6 million followers on the platform. They rely on Facebook’s reach more than ever, posting far more stories there than in the past.

With access to Meta’s Content Library (Meta is the owner of Facebook), our big data study analysed more than three million posts from 25 Australian news publishers. We wanted to understand how content is distributed, how audiences engage with news topics, and the nature of misinformation spread.

The study enabled us to track de-identified Facebook comments and take a closer look at examples of how misinformation spreads. These included cases about election integrity, the environment (floods) and health misinformation such as hydroxychloroquine promotion during the COVID pandemic.

The data reveal misinformation’s real-world impact: it isn’t just a digital issue, it’s linked to poor health outcomes, falling public trust, and significant societal harm.

Misinformation and hydroxychloroquine … and floods

Take the example of the false claims that antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine was a viable COVID treatment.

In Australia, as in the United States, political figures and media played leading roles in the spread of this idea. Mining billionaire and then leader of the United Australia Party, Clive Palmer, actively promoted hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment. In March 2020 he announced he would fund trials, manufacture, and stockpile the drug.

He placed a two-page advertisement in The Australian. Federal Coalition MPs Craig Kelly and George Christensen also championed hydroxychloroquine, coauthoring an open letter advocating its use.

We examined 7,000 public comments responding to 100 hydroxychloroquine posts from the selected media outlets during the pandemic. Contrary to concerns that public debate is siloed in echo chambers, we found robust online exchanges about the drug’s effectiveness in combating COVID.

Yet, despite fact-checking efforts, we find that facts alone fail to stop the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories about hydroxychloroquine. This misinformation targeted not only the drug, but also the government, media and “big pharma”.

To put the real-world harm in perspective, public health studies estimate hydroxychloroquine use was linked to at least 17,000 deaths worldwide, though the true toll is likely higher.

The topic modelling also highlighted the personal toll caused by this misinformation spread. These include the secondary harm of the drug’s unavailability (due to stockpiling) for legitimate treatment of non-COVID conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, leading to distress, frustration and worsening symptoms.

In other instances, we saw how misinformation can hurt public trust in institutions and non-government organisations. Following the 2022 floods in Queensland and New South Wales, we again saw that despite fact-checking efforts, misinformation about the Red Cross charity flourished online and was amplified by political commentary.

Without repeating the falsehoods here, the misinformation led to changes in some public donation behaviour such as buying gift cards for flood victims rather than trusting the Red Cross to distribute much-needed funds. This highlights the significant harm misinformation can inflict on public trust and disaster response efforts.

Misinformation ‘stickiness’

The data also reveal the cyclical nature of misinformation. We call this misinformation’s “stickiness”, because it reappears at regular intervals such as elections. In one example, electoral administrators were targeted with false accusations that polling officials rigged the election outcome by rubbing out votes marked with pencils.

While this is an old conspiracy theory about voter fraud that predates social media and it is also not unique to Australia, the data show misinformation’s persistence online during state and federal elections including the 2023 Voice referendum.

Here, multiple debunking efforts from electoral commissioners, fact-checkers, media and social media seem to have limited levels of public engagement compared to a noisy minority. When we examined 60,000 sentences on electoral topics from the past decade, we detected just 418 sentences from informed or official sources detected 418 sentences from informed sources.

Again, high-profile figures such as Palmer have played a central role in circulating this misinformation. The chart below demonstrates its stickiness.

Curbing misinformation

Our study has lessons for public figures and institutions. They, especially politicians, must lead in curbing misinformation, as their misleading statements are quickly amplified by the public.

Social media and mainstream media also play an important role in limiting the circulation of misinformation. As Australians increasingly rely on social media for news, mainstream media can provide credible information and counter misinformation through their online story posts. Digital platforms can also curb algorithmic spread and remove dangerous content that leads to real-world harms.

The study offers evidence of a change over time in audiences’ news consumption patterns. Whether this is due to news avoidance or changes in algorithmic promotion is unclear. But it is clear that from 2016 to 2024, online audiences increasingly engaged with arts, lifestyle and celebrity news over politics, leading media outlets to prioritise posting stories that entertain rather than inform. This shift may pose a challenge to mitigating misinformation with hard news facts.

Finally, the study shows that fact-checking, while valuable, is not a silver bullet. Combating misinformation requires a multi-pronged approach, including counter-messaging by trusted civic leaders, media and digital literacy campaigns, and public restraint in sharing unverified content.

Andrea Carson has received funding from Meta to research misinformation and from the ARC to study political trust.

Justin Phillips received research funding from Meta to study misinformation.

– ref. Facebook data reveal the devastating real-world harms caused by the spread of misinformation – https://theconversation.com/facebook-data-reveal-the-devastating-real-world-harms-caused-by-the-spread-of-misinformation-265742

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa M. Given, Professor of Information Sciences & Director, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, today outlined an updated list of platforms that may fall under the social media age restrictions that will take effect later this year.

While Australians expected platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube to be included, this new list demonstrates the legislation’s reach is even broader.

Which platforms will be required to restrict access for under 16s?

When the legislation was first introduced, the government explained it would use the definition of social media outlined in Australia’s Social Media Services Online Safety Code.

The law, which comes into effect on December 10, will restrict people under 16 from holding accounts on many social media platforms.

Recently, the eSafety Commissioner introduced self-assessment guidance for companies to determine whether their platforms would be considered age-restricted.

Under this guidance, companies will be required to restrict access to platform accounts for users under 16 where:

• material is accessible to, or delivered to, Australian users
• users can post material
• users can link to, or interact with, other users
• online social interaction is the sole, or significant, purpose of the platform.

The eSafety Commissioner has written to an “initial list” of 16 companies (including Facebook, TikTok and YouTube) advising they may fall under the social media definition that requires age restrictions.

However, the commissioner also reached out to several other platforms. These included messaging and gaming platforms WhatsApp, Discord and Twitch. Also on the list were software sharing platform GitHub, dating app company Match (which owns Tinder), message board Reddit and image-sharing platform Pinterest, among others.

What does this mean for platforms designed to engage children?

Lego Play and Roblox were also included. These platforms host games and creative tools used by many children under 16.

Earlier this month, Roblox (which has more than 380 million users globally) committed to new safety measures to address risks posed by online grooming.

The new measures include making children’s accounts private by default and ensuring adults are prevented from engaging with child users without parental consent.

However, Roblox has now been flagged as likely to meet the definition of an age-restricted platform. It may need to block children under 16 from having accounts.

Will some platforms be excluded from age restrictions?

The self-assessment guidance also outlines specific circumstances in which social media platforms can be excluded from the restrictions. Under the legislation, services are excluded where the sole or primary purpose is to enable:

• communication by messaging, email, voice or video calling
• playing online games
• sharing information about products or services
• professional networking or professional development
• supporting education (including between educational institutions and students/parents)
• supporting health (including between healthcare providers and people accessing services).

These exclusions require self-assessment by individual platforms. This is why the eSafety Commissioner has asked companies to make their case, in writing, and provide evidence as to why they believe they should be exempt.

WhatsApp, for example, may argue its primary purpose is communication by messaging. Lego Play may argue it is mainly an educational tool.

Companies will only have a few weeks to make their case for exclusion before the restrictions are in place.

What happens next?

In the coming weeks, we will learn more about which platforms will be included – and excluded – from age restrictions. But today’s list is only a start. There will likely be others identified through the self-assessment process.

What’s not yet clear is what happens when there is conflict over a platform’s self-assessment.

The eSafety Commissioner has flagged she is already “bracing for legal challenges” on this point. She explained the focus will first be on platforms with the greatest number of users and, therefore, the highest potential for harm.

So Australians may have some clarity about which platforms fall under – or outside – the legislation on December 10. However, some uncertainty is likely to continue well into 2026.

Lisa M. Given receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Association for Information Science and Technology.

– ref. Social media age restrictions may go further than you thought. Here’s how – https://theconversation.com/social-media-age-restrictions-may-go-further-than-you-thought-heres-how-265969

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lister Staveley-Smith, Professor at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), The University of Western Australia

Most of the ordinary matter in the universe is hydrogen. But surprisingly, less than 20% of this hydrogen sits inside galaxies. The rest lies in the vast spaces between them – the so-called intergalactic medium.

This cosmic reservoir is thought to fuel the birth of new stars, as gas slowly falls into galaxies over billions of years. Yet much of that material doesn’t stay put: supernova explosions and powerful outflows from supermassive black holes can fling gas back out into intergalactic space.

The push-and-pull between inflows and outflows is central to understanding how galaxies grow and change over cosmic time. Probing this balance is one of the aims of the WALLABY survey, carried out using the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia.

A new discovery from WALLABY, published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, sheds new light on the cosmic cycle of matter into, through and out of galaxies.

What is WALLABY?

Despite its name, WALLABY isn’t about animals. It’s a somewhat contrived acronym – Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY – for a large survey of neutral hydrogen (the atomic form of hydrogen) across nearly half the southern sky. The ASKAP telescope is sensitive enough to detect hydrogen in and around galaxies up to a billion light years away.

Because it’s a “blind” survey, WALLABY doesn’t target known galaxies. Instead, it scans huge patches of sky – each night covering an area about 150 times the size of the full Moon.

A galactic bridge

We then use automated algorithms to search for signs of hydrogen in the resulting data. One such search revealed an unusual gas bridge linking two otherwise unremarkable galaxies on the outskirts of the Virgo cluster, in the constellation Virgo. The bridge, at least 160,000 light years long, likely formed through tidal interactions between two dwarf galaxies known as NGC 4532 and DDO 137.

These tides are the cosmic equivalent of Earth’s ocean tides, but on a vastly larger scale and made of hydrogen rather than water. Gas pulled from the galaxies now stretches between them, filling the surrounding intergalactic space.

Such bridges are hard to detect because they contain few stars. But we have a local example: the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, are joined by a 70,000-light-year-long gas bridge.

An extraordinary tail

The newly discovered bridge also helps explain a long-standing puzzle: an enormous gas tail streaming away from the dwarf galaxies NGC 4532 and DDO 137, first detected more than 30 years ago with the Arecibo telescope. This tail is ten times longer than the bridge and is the largest ever observed from a galaxy system.

New observations suggest that while tidal forces created the bridge and the envelope of gas around the galaxies, the spectacular tail was produced by another process.

As the pair of galaxies plunges into the Virgo cluster, they encounter extremely hot, thin gas that fills the cluster. The galaxies’ motion through this medium produces ram pressure – much like the resistance felt when cycling into a strong headwind – which strips gas from them and sweeps it out behind.

Remarkably, the gas density required for this effect is only around ten atoms per cubic metre, a value consistent with new measurements from the eROSITA X-ray telescope. Thanks to the galaxies’ high infall speed – more than 800 kilometres per second – this sparse medium is enough to create the vast tail.

The bigger picture

These two galaxies are just a fraction of the 200,000 WALLABY expects to detect by the end of its survey. Each discovery adds to our picture of how gas flows in and out of galaxies, enriching the intergalactic medium and shaping galactic evolution.

Together, they will help astronomers untangle the so-called baryonic cycle – the continuous recycling of matter between galaxies and the space around them.

Lister Staveley-Smith receives research funding from ICRAR, the Western Australian government, and the University of Western Australia.

– ref. What a newly discovered gas bridge between galaxies tells us about the cosmic cycle of matter – https://theconversation.com/what-a-newly-discovered-gas-bridge-between-galaxies-tells-us-about-the-cosmic-cycle-of-matter-265760

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn Arianrhod, Affiliate, School of Mathematics, Monash University

The Irish mathematician and physicist William Rowan Hamilton, who was born 220 years ago last month, is famous for carving some mathematical graffiti into Dublin’s Broome Bridge in 1843.

But in his lifetime, Hamilton’s reputation rested on work done in the 1820s and early 1830s, when he was still in his twenties. He developed new mathematical tools for studying light rays (or “geometric optics”) and the motion of objects (“mechanics”).

Intriguingly, Hamilton developed his mechanics using an analogy between the path of a light ray and that of a material particle. This is not so surprising if light is a material particle, as Isaac Newton had believed, but what if it were a wave? What would it mean for the equations of waves and particles to be analogous in some way?

The answer would come a century later, when the pioneers of quantum mechanics realised Hamilton’s approach offered more than just an analogy: it was a glimpse of the true nature of the physical world.

The puzzle of light

To understand Hamilton’s place in this story, we need to go back a little further. For ordinary objects or particles, the basic laws (or equations) of motion had been published by Newton in 1687. Over the next 150 years, researchers such as Leonard Euler, Joseph-Louis Lagrange and then Hamilton made more flexible and sophisticated versions of Newton’s ideas.

“Hamiltonian mechanics” proved so useful that it wasn’t until 1925 – almost 100 years later – that anybody stopped to revisit how Hamilton had derived it.

His analogy with light paths worked regardless of light’s true nature, but at the time, there was good evidence that light was a wave. In 1801, British scientist Thomas Young had performed his famous double-slit experiment, in which two light beams produced an “interference” pattern like the overlapping ripples on a pond when two stones are dropped in. Six decades later, James Clerk Maxwell realised light behaved like a rippling wave in the electromagnetic field.

But then, in 1905, Albert Einstein showed some of light’s properties could only be explained if light could also behave as a stream of particle-like “photons” (as they were later dubbed). He linked this idea to a suggestion made by Max Planck in 1900, that atoms could only emit or absorb energy in discrete lumps.

Energy, frequency and mass

In his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect, where light dislodges electrons from certain metals, Einstein used Planck’s formula for these energy lumps (or quanta): E = hν. E is the amount of energy, ν (the Greek letter nu) is the photon’s frequency, and h is a number called Planck’s constant.

But in another paper the same year, Einstein introduced a different formula for the energy of a particle: a version of the now-famous E = mc ². E is again the energy, m is the mass of the particle, and c is the speed of light.

So here were two ways of calculating energy: one, associated with light, depended on the light’s frequency (a quantity connected with oscillations or waves); the other, associated with material particles, depended on mass.

Did this suggest a deeper connection between matter and light?

This thread was picked up in 1924 by Louis de Broglie, who proposed that matter, like light, could behave as both a wave and a particle. Subsequent experiments would prove him right, but it was already clear that quantum particles, such as electrons and protons, played by very different rules from everyday objects.

A new kind of mechanics was needed: a “quantum mechanics”.

The wave equation

The year 1925 ushered in not one but two new theories. First was “matrix mechanics”, initiated by Werner Heisenberg and developed by Max Born, Paul Dirac and others.

A few months later, Erwin Schrödinger began work on “wave mechanics”. Which brings us back to Hamilton.

Schrödinger was struck by Hamilton’s analogy between optics and mechanics. With a leap of imagination and much careful thought, he was able to combine de Broglie’s ideas and Hamilton’s equations for a material particle, to produce a “wave equation” for the particle.

An ordinary wave equation shows how a “wave function” varies through time and space. For sound waves, for example, the wave equation shows the displacement of air, due to changes in pressure, in different places over time.

But with Schrödinger’s wave function, it was not clear exactly what was waving. Indeed, whether it represents a physical wave or merely a mathematical convenience is still controversial.

Waves and particles

Nonetheless, the wave-particle duality is at the heart of quantum mechanics, which underpins so much of our modern technology – from computer chips to lasers and fibre-optic communication, from solar cells to MRI scanners, electron microscopes, the atomic clocks used in GPS, and much more.

Indeed, whatever it is that is waving, Schrödinger’s equation can be used to predict accurately the chance of observing a particle – such as an electron in an atom – at a given time and place.

That’s another strange thing about the quantum world: it is probabilistic, so you can’t pin these ever-oscillating electrons down to a definite location in advance, the way the equations of “classical” physics do for everyday particles such as cricket balls and communications satellites.

Schrödinger’s wave equation enabled the first correct analysis of the hydrogen atom, which only has a single electron. In particular, it explained why an atom’s electrons can only occupy specific (quantised) energy levels.

It was eventually shown that Schrödinger’s quantum waves and Heisenberg’s quantum matrices were equivalent in almost all situations. Heisenberg, too, had used Hamiltonian mechanics as a guide.

Today, quantum equations are still often written in terms of their total energy – a quantity called the “Hamiltonian”, based on Hamilton’s expression for the energy of a mechanical system.

Hamilton had hoped the mechanics he developed by analogy with light rays would prove widely applicable. But he surely never imagined how prescient his analogy would be in our understanding of the quantum world.

Robyn Arianrhod 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. 100 years before quantum mechanics, one scientist glimpsed a link between light and matter – https://theconversation.com/100-years-before-quantum-mechanics-one-scientist-glimpsed-a-link-between-light-and-matter-261551

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

United States President Donald Trump is well advanced in his systematic campaign to undermine the American media and eviscerate its function of holding him and others in power to account.

Since the late 18th century this function has often been called the fourth estate. It’s the idea the media is a watchdog over the other three estates which, in modern democracies, are parliament, the executive government and the judiciary.

In the US, Trump has had considerable success in weakening the other three.

His Republican Party controls both Houses of Congress, and they have shown no sign of wishing to restrain him.

He has stacked the executive government with cronies and ideological fellow travellers, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr (and his anti-vaccination agenda) as secretary of health, a brief stint by Elon Musk as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defence secretary.

He has secured the support of the Republican Party to stack the Supreme Court with politically aligned judges who have routinely struck down lower court decisions against Trump, most notably in the matter of deporting migrants to countries other than their homelands.

Pulling funding, applying pressure

The fourth estate’s turn started in March, when Trump stripped federal funding from Voice of America, a public broadcasting service with a global reach, because it was “anti-Trump” and “radical”.

These cuts also hit two other projections of American soft power, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia.

In July, he cut funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in a move that ended all federal support for National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting service and their member stations.

Now he has turned to the private sector media. He does not have the power to cut their funding, so he is taking a different approach: financial shake-downs and threats to the foundations of their business.

In October 2024, even before he was elected, Trump sued the Paramount company for US$10 billion (about A$15 billion). He alleged an interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 election campaign had been “deceptively edited” by the CBS television network, a Paramount subsidiary.

In February 2025, after he had been sworn in as president, Trump upped the ante to US$20 billion (A$30 billion).

The case was considered by lawyers to have no legal merit, but at that time, Paramount was anxious to merge with Skydance Media, and this was subject to regulatory approval from the Trump administration.

So Paramount was vulnerable to, how shall we say? Blackmail? Extortion? Subornation?

A busy, dangerous July

On July 2, Paramount settled with Trump for US$16 million (A$24 million), which ostensibly is to go towards funding his presidential library.

On July 17 Paramount’s CBS network announced its longtime Late Show would be cancelled from May 2026 after its presenter Stephen Colbert, an outspoken critic of Trump, condemned the corporate cave-in. The Trump administration approved the merger shortly after.

Subsequently the House of Representatives Judiciary and Energy and Commerce committees announced an investigation into whether the $16 million settlement constituted a bribe.

Also in July, Trump sued Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal for defamation arising from an article linking Trump to the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. He claimed the now-familiar amount of US$10 billion (A$15 billion) in damages.

Legal experts in the US say Trump has next to no chance of winning. In the US, public figures who sue for defamation have to prove that the publisher was motivated by malice, which means they published either knowing the material to be untrue, or not caring whether it was true or not.

This case is never likely to end up in court, nor is it likely that Trump will see a red cent of Murdoch’s money. The two men need each other too much. To borrow a phrase from the Cold War, they are in a MAD relationship: Mutually Assured Destruction.

Coming to heel, one by one

Rupert Murdoch was a guest at Windsor Castle at the recent banquet given for Trump by King Charles.

Considering Murdoch’s bitter history with the Royal Family, it is difficult to imagine Buckingham Palace inviting him without Trump’s urging. It may have been a sign of rapprochement between the two men.

Meanwhile Trump has set his sights on The New York Times, suing it for defamation and claiming US$15 billion (A$27 billion).

Referring to the Times’ endorsement of Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, he said it had become a “mouthpiece for the Radical Left Democrat Party”.

This case faces the same difficulties as his suit against the Wall Street Journal. The question is whether the Times will stand its ground or whether, like Paramount, it caves.

Among the big three US newspapers, the Times is the only one so far not to have been intimidated by Trump. The other two, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, refused to endorse a candidate at the election on instructions from their owners, Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong respectively, both of whose wider business interests are vulnerable to Trumpian retribution.

Read more:
Two of the US’s biggest newspapers have refused to endorse a presidential candidate. This is how democracy dies

The Post’s decision was condemned as “spineless” by its celebrated former editor Marty Baron.

Now Disney is in the firing line. It owns another of the big four US television networks, ABC. On September 17, it pulled its late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Kimmel had responded to White House accusations that leftists were responsible for the assassination of Charlie Kirk, saying:

we hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.

In what had all the hallmarks of a preemptive buckle, ABC and two of its affiliate networks took Kimmel off air indefinitely after Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission, said his agency might “take action” against the network because of Kimmel’s comments.

Kimmel is returning to TV, but the damage is already done.

Read more:
Jimmy Kimmel’s cancellation is the latest sign we’re witnessing the end of US democracy

Over at cable network MSNBC, its senior political analyst Matthew Dowd was fired after he had uttered on air the blindingly obvious statement that Kirk’s own radical rhetoric may have contributed to the shooting that killed him.

This cable network is no longer part of the main NBC network, so it can’t be said that NBC itself has yet come to heel.

Within 24 hours of Brendan Carr’s veiled threat, Trump stripped the veil away and made the threat explicit. Trump said of the national networks:

All they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed, they’re not allowed to do that. They’re an arm of the Democrat party. I would think maybe their licence should be taken away.

Whether cancelling a licence would breach the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects freedom of speech, is a question that might ultimately come before the Supreme Court. Given the present ideological proclivities of that court, the outcome would be by no means certain.

So Trump now has two out of three national newspapers, and two out of the big four national television networks, on the run.

Only one national newspaper and two national networks to go, and one of those is Murdoch’s Fox News, Trump’s most reliable cheerleader.

Denis Muller 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. Lawsuits, cancellations and bullying: Trump is systematically destroying press freedom – https://theconversation.com/lawsuits-cancellations-and-bullying-trump-is-systematically-destroying-press-freedom-265848

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Beard, Associate Professor in Public Health, University of Sydney

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Australia free of measles in 2014.

Historically, high childhood measles vaccination coverage and thorough follow-up of suspected cases have helped prevent outbreaks.

But in the last six weeks, a growing outbreak in Queensland – along with cases and clusters in Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales – shows measles can still spread here.

In 2021, no cases were recorded in Australia. But case notifications have continued to climb since, with 57 reported in 2024 and 122 so far in 2025 – and it’s only September. Some of these cases are in children too young to be vaccinated, but most are in adults.

So, what’s going on? Is Australia at risk of losing its herd immunity with lower vaccination rates? Let’s unpack the evidence.

What is herd immunity?

Measles is one of the most contagious human diseases. Symptoms generally include red sore eyes, a runny nose, cough and fever. The distinctive rash usually doesn’t appear until a few days into the illness, meaning the infection may spread to others before measles is suspected.

An unvaccinated person with measles will on average transmit the virus to 12–18 people in a non-immune population. This reproductive rate is six times higher than the original strain of COVID-19.

For this reason, the WHO recommends at least 95% of the total population receive two doses of the measles vaccine in childhood.

This is to create “herd immunity”.

This means a large proportion of the population is immune, either through vaccination or previous infection, protecting the most vulnerable – including those who can’t get vaccinated.

The measles vaccine contains a very weakened form of measles virus. So it can’t be given to people whose immune systems will struggle to contain it, for example, those undergoing chemotherapy.

The measles “herd immunity threshold” is 93–95% in the total population. It is higher for measles than many other diseases because it is so contagious.

If immunity falls below this level, infection may start to spread more widely and large outbreaks can occur.

How do vaccines work in Australia?

Australia has had a nationally funded measles vaccination program since 1972.

The measles vaccine is recommended in two doses, either in combination with mumps and rubella (as MMR vaccine) or with varicella to also prevent chickenpox (the MMRV vaccine).

Under the National Immunisation Program, children get the first dose (MMR) at 12 months and the second (MMRV) at 18 months of age.

Infants as young as six months can safely receive the MMR vaccine for free in certain cases, such as when travelling to countries where measles is occurring.

This currently includes many countries across the world, including in North America and the United Kingdom.

Are vaccination rates going down?

In Australia, immunisation rates in Australia had been increasing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2002, the proportion of five year-olds who’d had two doses of the measles vaccine was just 82%. By the time the pandemic arrived, in 2020, this had risen to 96.8% – and was 94% among two year-olds.

However, since 2020 rates of “fully vaccinated” young children – meaning they have had most recommended vaccines – have fallen year on year.

The proportion of two year-olds who’d had two doses of the measles vaccine fell to 93% in 2023.

The timeliness of measles vaccination has also fallen. Around one in three children now get their first dose late. This means more children are at risk of catching measles at a younger age, when the disease tends to be more serious.

These trends are concerning.

In terms of overall herd immunity, the impacts at this stage may be relatively small. But measles immunity gaps are much greater in some parts of Australia, such as the north coast of New South Wales and the Gold Coast in Queensland.

Measles immunity is also lower in some adults, because vaccination rates were lower when they were children. A second dose of measles vaccine was not added to the National Immunisation Program until 1992.

Read more:
Why people born between 1966 and 1994 are at greater risk of measles – and what to do about it

Why is coverage dropping?

There is a mix of reasons vaccination coverage has been falling in Australia since the COVID-19 pandemic.

These include an increase in questions about the need for, safety and effectiveness of vaccines.

The enormous rise in false and misleading information can sow doubt about the benefits of recommended vaccines.

Concerns about vaccination should be addressed in a respectful way, making use of accurate and up-to-date information, such as that available on the Sharing Knowledge About Immunisation (SKAI) website.

But we also need to minimise practical barriers to accessing vaccination, such as the cost, or difficulty making or getting an appointment.

To maintain herd immunity, we need to ensure all adults under 60 and children from one year are two dose measles vaccinated.

In Australia, free catch-up measles vaccination is available for anyone born after 1966 who doesn’t have proof of two doses of measles vaccine.

Amid a global resurgence of measles and more cases in travellers, supporting international efforts to boost immunisation rates in all countries is critical. This will further reduce the chance of outbreaks here.

We would like to thank Zoe Croker for assistance in drafting this article.

Kristine Macartney administers Australian and NSW Government funding to the NCIRS and NCIRS receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), and Gavi the Vaccine Alliance.

Frank Beard 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. New measles cases in Queensland show ‘herd immunity’ is more important than ever – https://theconversation.com/new-measles-cases-in-queensland-show-herd-immunity-is-more-important-than-ever-265850

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Strong, Associate Professor, Music Industry, RMIT University

Last week, Spain joined Ireland, Slovenia, Iceland and the Netherlands in announcing it will not take part in Eurovision 2026 if Israel is allowed to participate. Other countries such as Belgium and Finland have indicated they are considering withdrawing. Boycotting countries would not send an act, pay to participate or be able to vote.

Spain is one of Eurovision’s “big five” competitors. The broadcasters from Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy make the largest financial contributions to the contest, and their acts are guaranteed a spot in the grand final each year.

The addition of one of the big five to the boycott raises the stakes for the contest. The inclusion of Spain will likely increase the legitimacy of the protest and put pressure on countries to declare their position.

Spain’s announcement coincided with a United Nations inquiry calling the events unfolding in Gaza a genocide. In supporting the Spanish broadcaster’s decision, the country’s culture minister Ernest Urtasun equated allowing Israel to continue to compete with looking away from the atrocities being committed.

He said

if Israel takes part, and if we don’t manage to get it thrown out, then we’ll have to take steps [such as withdrawing]. I don’t think we can normalise Israel’s participation in international forums as if nothing’s happened.

Previous controversies

Germany, another of the big five, has been critical of the boycott. On Saturday, their culture minister Wolfram Weimer referred to the foundations of Eurovision, designed to unify people through song after the second world war, to argue against excluding Israel.

He said

It’s precisely because Eurovision was born on the ruins of war that it should not become a scene of exclusion.

Austria, the host for 2026, has similarly made an appeal to the peaceful and collaborative nature of the event in a plea for countries to not drop out.

However, the hosts may find themselves with an easier job if Israel does not compete. The previous two events have been marred by significant controversy. Pro-Palestinian protesters were on the streets in host cities Basel, Switzerland, in 2025, and Malmo, Sweden, in 2024, and were subject to at times violent crackdowns by police.

In the arena, there were reports of tensions between the Israeli delegation and those from other countries, and fans tried to stage protests during the Israeli performance.

Who decides on who participates?

Israel is a member of the body that organises Eurovision, the European Broadcasting Union, an alliance of public service media organisations. Australia’s SBS is an associate member.

Broadcasters decide on who the act will be for their country (sometimes using a public vote), and help fund the event. The EBU has the final call on which countries can take part, and what songs can be performed, including demanding changes to songs deemed too political.

The EBU have pushed the deadline for countries to commit to taking part in the May 2026 competition from early October to mid-December, as it continues a consultation process with broadcasters over Israel’s inclusion.

Governments recognise the contest’s utility as a form of diplomacy, and the countries that are participating in the Eurovision boycott have all strongly criticised Israel’s actions in Gaza.

The actions of the broadcasters who have said they will boycott the event reflect their nations’ positions. National broadcasters are unlikely to ignore national policies and relationships when acting in an area like this that will attract international attention.

Russia’s removal from the 2022 contest is being used as a precedent for the EBU sanctioning a country. In announcing their decision to block Russia from participating, the EBU stated

in light of the unprecedented crisis in Ukraine, the inclusion of a Russian entry in this year’s Contest would bring the competition into disrepute.

In response, Russia has announced plans to revive the Intervision song contest, the USSR’s cold war era answer to Eurovision, further deepening a reemerging political divide.

However, using Eurovision as a sanction may be more effective with Israel. Israel’s participation in international cultural events such as Eurovision is an effort at cultural diplomacy. These platforms allow Israel to present itself as progressive and cool.

In particular, Israel’s use of queer performers at Eurovision has been criticsed as “pinkwashing” – displaying support for the LGBTQIA+ community to construct an image of tolerance and morality.

While the UN declaration that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza already makes that image hard to maintain, condemnation from cultural institutions keeps the issue in the spotlight.

Where to for Australia?

Pressure has been building on Israel politically over the last 24 months. This week Australia recognised Palestine as a state. However, the destruction of Gaza continues, with renewed offensives on a desperate population.

Calls are beginning for Australia to join the boycott.

While this would be a decision made by SBS, which is officially independent from the government, there will be many factors influencing what they do. A boycott could create diplomatic tensions. There may also be backlash for SBS amid efforts to combat antisemitism which critics say risks conflating antisemitism with legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and constraining free speech on Gaza.

But some Australians are holding small hope that maybe SBS can show the way forward for our government and sanction Israel – even if just at a song contest.

Catherine Strong is affiliated with the Defend Dissent Coalition.

– ref. Countries are threatening to boycott Eurovision over Israel’s inclusion. How will Australia respond? – https://theconversation.com/countries-are-threatening-to-boycott-eurovision-over-israels-inclusion-how-will-australia-respond-265747

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nial Wheate, Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

The US government has announced controversial guidance on the prevention and treatment of autism in children.

New health recommendations aim to discourage pregnant women from taking the painkiller paracetamol – also known as acetaminophen and by the brand name Tylenol – to prevent autism.

The recommendations also include using the drug leucovorin to treat speech-related difficulties that children with autism sometimes experience.

So what is leucovorin and what does the science say about its ability to treat autism?

What is leucovorin?

Leucovorin is a form of folic acid, a B vitamin our bodies usually get from foods such as legumes, citrus fruits and fortified grains.

The medication is most often used in cancer treatment. It’s typically used alongside the chemotherapy drug fluorouracil, a cancer treatment that stops cancer cells from making DNA and dividing. Leucovorin enhances the effects of fluorouracil.

Leucovorin is also used to reduce the toxic side effects of methotrexate, another chemotherapy drug.

Methotrexate works by blocking the body’s use of folate, which healthy cells need to make DNA. Leucovorin provides an active form of folate that healthy cells can use to make DNA, thereby “rescuing” them while methotrexate continues to target cancer cells.

Because methotrexate is also used to treat the skin condition psoriasis, leucovorin can also be used as a rescue agent during treatment for this autoimmune condition.

Why is folate important?

Because folate is essential for making DNA and other genetic material, which cells need to grow and repair properly, it’s especially important during pregnancy.

This is because insufficient folate is linked to the development of spina bifida, a condition where a baby’s spine does not develop correctly. For this reason, women are advised to take folic acid supplements before conception and during the early months of pregnancy.

Folate is also important for supporting the production of red blood cells and overall brain function.

Why is it being considered to treat autism?

The recommendation to use leucovorin to treat autism seems to stem from a theory that low levels of folate in the brain can lead to a condition called cerebral folate deficiency.

Children with cerebral folate deficiency don’t usually display symptoms for the first two years. Then they show signs of speech difficulties, seizures and intellectual disability.

As the signs of autism are similar and it usually presents at around the same age, some people have proposed a link between cerebral folate deficiency and autism.

What does the evidence say?

So can giving children folate, in the form of leucovorin, help them to function better with autism? The evidence says maybe yes, and here’s what we know so far.

A review of the evidence in 2021 analysed the results of 21 studies that used leucovorin for autism or cerebral folate deficiency. Children who took the drug generally had improved autism symptoms. But the authors also said more studies were needed to confirm the findings.

Since then, a small 2024 study involved about 80 children aged two to ten years with autism. Half took a daily maximum dose of 50mg of folinic acid (similar to leucovorin), the other half took a placebo. Children given folinic acid showed more pronounced improvement when compared with those who took the placebo.

A similar 2025 study examined the same dose of folinic acid given to Chinese children with autism. Those given folinic acid had greater improvement in a type of social skill known as social reciprocity when compared with children given placebo.

While promising, none of these trials are at the level to change medical practice. We’d need further, larger studies before doctors can make a proper recommendation.

Like all drugs, leucovorin has side effects. The most serious or common are severe allergic reactions, seizures and fits, and nausea and vomiting.

In a nutshell

Overall, the latest health recommendations are not yet backed by sufficient evidence.

While the US Food and Drug Administration will now allow doctors to prescribe leucovorin to treat autism symptoms, the Australian government should not change its prescribing guidance.

Support for people with autism should continue to follow evidence-based best practice until the data from clinical trials of leucovorin is more robust.

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

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

– ref. What is leucovorin, the drug the Trump administration says can treat autism? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-leucovorin-the-drug-the-trump-administration-says-can-treat-autism-265849

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zoe Goodall, Research Associate, HHAUS research group, Swinburne University of Technology

Sharehousing has traditionally been a rite of passage for many young people and students in Australia, but is also increasingly common among all age groups.

Conflicts with landlords – over issues such as repairs, leaks or mould – are too often part of the renting experience. Our new research explores how renting is complicated for sharehouses – where relationships between housemates can vary from a tight-knit group of friends who share everything and care for each other, to renting a room from a stranger.

Our paper, published today in the journal Housing, Theory and Society, is based on interviews with 25 sharehouse tenants in Melbourne.

We found that achieving “housing justice” is often no simple matter for people living in a sharehouse. Problems with housing conditions, between housemates, and the landlord or real estate agent, can overlap and compound each other.

When faced with these issues, sharehouse tenants can pursue legal action, attempt to negotiate, move out, or just put up with it. But these strategies can cause problems for tenants, especially when not not everyone in the sharehouse agrees on the way forward.

Mould and other housing problems

Many participants spoke about living – currently or previously – in poor-quality housing. One enduring theme that emerged was the problem of mould.

Penelope (all names changed to protect identities) said she’d lived in a sharehouse that was “decrepit” and

excessively damp and mouldy, to the point where all of our furniture and clothes and stuff started to get mould on it.

She considered taking the landlord to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) but “didn’t end up getting all the way to VCAT, because it’s extremely difficult.”

In the end, Penelope and her housemate had to leave the house

very urgently because our stuff was starting to get ruined.

They were temporarily homeless, while the landlord and real estate agent “got away with it” and continued to rent out the house.

Lucas, meanwhile, described the futility of trying to negotiate with property managers who would not respond to maintenance requests, meaning he had to put up with “untenable” housing:

There’s definitely been times where I’ve just felt like, all I have to do is grit my teeth and take it. Because otherwise, I’m just gonna lose.

Sharing as a source of both solidarity and conflict

Housemate relationships are at the heart of sharehousing.

One positive aspect of these relationships is that they may help build solidarity when experiencing problems with housing quality or other conflicts with the property manager.

One participant, Sarah, told of how her housemate successfully secured compensation from their property manager after the landlord started major renovations while she and her housemates were still living there. Seeing her housemate gain compensation enabled her to do the same.

On the other hand, relationships with housemates can complicate attempts to achieve justice.

Stacey, another interviewee, reported how efforts to negotiate with a property manager eventually led to “internal conflict within the house”, and how one housemate became hostile during the process.

Another interviewee, Tayler, also experienced problems with a landlord who was also his housemate, which intensified the conflict.

One participant, Jess, had also experienced domestic violence from a housemate.

I had to, I left before the lease was up. Like I moved back in with my parents because it was so bad. But I continued paying rent because […] I just didn’t want to deal with the further consequences of that.

While Jess was able to move out in this scenario, others described how this wasn’t possible due to a shortage of affordable housing. For example, Janet described how she’d prefer to move out rather than confront a housemate, but didn’t always have the option:

I’ve only left when I’ve had the capacity to do so. Often I’ve had to stay quite a lot longer than I would have liked to, because [I] don’t have the option to move, can’t afford it or nothing available.

Relationships and regulations

Regulations surrounding renters and landlords are framed in a way that assumes there are two parties in a dispute: the tenant and the property owner.

This renders the relationships within sharehousing invisible. Yet, there is clear evidence they impact the way tenancy disputes are managed and addressed.

For example, one interviewee named May was invited to move into a sharehouse by her friend. However, the friend’s property manager said May could not move in if she brought her cat (which is illegal in Victoria).

This shows how sharehousing depends on relationships between housemates and relationships with the property manager. May was aware of the need to put up with this to secure housing:

renters aren’t in a position of power. So, you kind of have to play the game just to have a roof over your head.

Relationships matter when we think about renting problems. While this research focused on sharehousing, there are implications for other renter households especially where conflict or even family or intimate partner violence occur.

Our future research will look at possible policy solutions to better capture the nuances of sharehousing in Australia.

Zoe Goodall has received funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), the Victorian government, the Brian M. Davis Charitable Foundation, Kids Under Cover, and YWCA Australia. She is a recipient of an Australian government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Deb Batterham has received funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) and the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council (ARC). She previously worked for Launch Housing which is a provider of Specialist Homelessness Services and is a registered Community Housing provider.

– ref. Managing mould, housemates, and landlords: new research reveals sharehousing horror stories – https://theconversation.com/managing-mould-housemates-and-landlords-new-research-reveals-sharehousing-horror-stories-265851

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Wood, Professor, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead Clinical School, University of Sydney

United States President Donald Trump has urged pregnant women to avoid paracetamol except in cases of extremely high fever, because of a possible link to autism.

Paracetamol – known as acetaminophen or by the brand name Tylenol in the US – is commonly used to relieve pain, such as back pain and headaches, and to reduce fever during pregnancy.

Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration today re-affirmed existing medical guidelines that it’s safe for pregnant women to take paracetamol at any stage of pregnancy.

Paracetamol is classified as a Category A drug. This means many pregnant women and women of childbearing age have long used it without increases in birth defects or harmful effects on the fetus.

It’s important to treat fevers in pregnancy. Untreated high fever in early pregnancy is linked to miscarriage, neural tube defects, cleft lip and palate, and heart defects. Infections in pregnancy have also been linked to greater risks of autism.

How has the research evolved in recent years?

In 2021 an international panel of experts looked at evidence from human and animal studies of paracetamol use in pregnancy. Their consensus statement warned that paracetamol use during pregnancy may alter fetal development, with negative effects on child health.

Read more:
Take care with paracetamol when pregnant — but don’t let pain or fever go unchecked

Last month a a group of researchers from Harvard University examined the association between paracetamol and neurodevelopmental disorders including autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in existing research.

They identified 46 studies and found 27 studies reported links between taking paracetamol in pregnancy and neurodevelopmental disorders in the offspring, nine showed no significant link, and four indicated it was associated with a lower risk.

The most notable study in their review, due to its sophisticated statistical analysis, covered almost 2.5 million children born in Sweden between 1995 and 2019, and was published in 2024.

The authors found there was a marginally increased risk of autism and ADHD associated with paracetamol use during pregnancy. However, when the researchers analysed matched-full sibling pairs, to account for genetic and environmental influences the siblings shared, the researchers found no evidence of an increased risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability associated with paracetamol use.

Siblings of autistic children have a 20% chance of also being autistic. Environmental factors within a home can also affect the risk of autism. To account for these influences, the researchers compared the outcomes of siblings where one child was exposed to paracetamol in utero and the other wasn’t, or when the siblings had different levels of exposure.

The authors of the 2024 study concluded that associations found in other studies may be attributable to “confounding” factors: influences that can distort research findings.

A further review published in February examined the strengths and limitations of the published literature on the effect of paracetamol use in pregnancy on the child’s risk of developing ADHD and autism. The authors noted most studies were difficult to interpret because they had biases, including in selecting participants, and they didn’t for confounding factors.

When confounding factors among siblings were accounted for, they found any associations weakened substantially. This suggests shared genetic and environmental factors may have caused bias in the original observations.

Working out what causes or increases the risk of autism

A key piece to consider when assessing the risk of paracetamol and any link to neurodevelopmental disorders is how best to account for many other potentially relevant factors that may be important.

We still don’t know all the causes of autism, but several genetic and non-genetic factors have been implicated: the mother’s medication use, illnesses, body mass index, alcohol consumption, smoking status, pregnancy complications including pre-eclampsia and fetal growth restriction, the mother and father’s ages, whether the child is an older or younger sibling, the newborn’s Apgar scores to determine their state of health, breastfeeding, genetics, socioeconomic status, and societal characteristics.

It’s particularly hard to measure the last three characteristics, so they are often not appropriately taken into account in studies.

Other times, it may not be the use of paracetamol that is important but rather the mother’s underlying illness or reason paracetamol is being taken, such as the fever associated with an infection, that influences child development.

Read more:
Autism is not a scare story: What parents need to know about medications in pregnancy, genetic risk and misleading headlines

I’m pregnant, what does this mean for me?

There is no clear evidence that paracetamol has any harmful effects on an unborn baby.

But as with any medicine taken during pregnancy, paracetamol should be used at the lowest effective dose for the shortest possible time.

If you’re pregnant and develop a fever, it’s important to treat this fever, including with paracetamol.

If the recommended dose of paracetamol doesn’t control your symptoms or you’re in pain, contact your doctor, midwife or maternity hospital for further medical advice.

Remember, the advice for taking ibuprofen and other NSAIDS when you’re pregnant is different. Ibuprofen (sold under the brand name Nurofen) should not be taken during pregnancy.

Nicholas Wood previously received funding from the NHMRC and has held a Churchill fellowship.

Debra Kennedy 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. It’s OK to use paracetamol in pregnancy. Here’s what the science says about the link with autism – https://theconversation.com/its-ok-to-use-paracetamol-in-pregnancy-heres-what-the-science-says-about-the-link-with-autism-265768

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Thomas, Honorary Lecturer in Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

Three million years ago, an extinct relative of todays’s great penguins – emperors and kings – lived in Aotearoa New Zealand.

We know this because our new study describes a spectacular fossilised skull of a great penguin found on the Taranaki coast.

Overall, it is 31% longer than the skull of an emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri), which can be more than a metre tall and weigh upwards of 35 kilograms.

Compared to emperor penguins, however, the Taranaki great penguin had a much stronger and longer beak. It probably looked more like a king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus), only much bigger.

At the time, the world was warmer than today. But when the climate cooled, this penguin vanished.

We argue the cold wasn’t to blame because crested and little penguins in New Zealand weathered the same change and remained. Great penguins shifted south and today live in the frozen wastes of Antarctica. So what drove their ancient relative to extinction?

The sediments that now form beach-side cliffs in South Taranaki were deposited at a time when global temperatures were about 3°C above those of the pre-industrial era. Fossils from this period are transforming our understanding of how biodiversity might respond to rising temperatures.

For example, Aotearoa was home to box fish and monk seals, both of which are still (sub)tropical species today. In a strange contradiction, they coexisted with great penguins – now only found in much colder climates – in ancient New Zealand.

The northernmost breeding colonies of king penguins today are around latitude 46.1°S in the subantarctic Crozet Islands, where seawater temperatures reach 3-10°C. From there, it only gets colder towards the higher latitudes where emperor penguins live.

Three million years ago, Aotearoa’s great penguins extended as far north as 40.5°S, where South Taranaki was located then. They foraged in waters that were 20°C, much warmer than their relatives experience today.

This balmy existence ended with the Pleistocene ice ages around 2.58 million years ago. Ice extent and sea level shifted back and forward as temperatures fluctuated and ultimately ratcheted downwards. But why would such cooling eradicate giant penguins, which thrive under polar conditions today, from New Zealand?

Giant aerial predators

Fossil evidence for giant penguins in Aotearoa is limited and the exact reasons for their demise remain unclear. Even so, their sheer presence suggests they were less constrained by sea surface temperatures than previously thought. Another mechanism must be at play.

Up until about 500 years ago, Aotearoa was the hunting ground of the giant Haast’s eagle and the huge Forbes’ harrier. These were big raptors. They included large birds like moa in their diet. Their ancestors arrived from Australia inside the last three million years.

Based on what we see with living great penguins, the Taranaki great penguin almost certainly formed large exposed colonies along the coast. These could have been easy targets for a giant eagle or harrier hunting from the air.

By contrast, the smaller penguins still found in Aotearoa today have more cryptic breeding behaviour. They nest in burrows, natural crevices and dense vegetation, and tend to cross beaches at night, which may have helped them avoid aerial predators.

Predation on land is just one hypothesis, though, to help explain why these penguins became extinct in the region while others survived. Other possibilities include changes in the marine environment.

We know that reduced food availability can be devastating for penguins, but it is challenging to see why this would single out the great penguins.

Importantly, our study provides new insight into the habitat tolerances of great penguins. Both king and emperor penguins today can withstand temperatures up to 20°C higher than those they usually forage in.

Three million years ago, their relative experienced such warmth. As the world continues to warm, we need to remember that the geographic range of a species can change as circumstances change.

The marine ecosystem of Aotearoa will move into the habitable zone of many new species, making investigations of the last warm period more important than ever before.

We would like to acknowledge our research co-author Dan Ksepka from The Bruce Museum, Kerr Sharpe-Young for discovering the fossil, and Ngāti Ruanui and Ngāruahine for supporting the collection and research of fossils from their rohe.

Daniel Thomas has received funding from Massey University.

Alan Tennyson and Felix Georg Marx 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. Close relatives of emperor penguins lived in NZ some 3 million years ago. What caused their extinction? – https://theconversation.com/close-relatives-of-emperor-penguins-lived-in-nz-some-3-million-years-ago-what-caused-their-extinction-265585

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eliza Middleton, Senior Ecologist, University of Sydney

Spring in Australia has arrived like a celebration. Magpies are warbling in the morning, wildflowers are bursting open across bushland, and the air is humming with life as tiny creatures have stirred back into action after the winter: bees darting between flowers, dragonflies skimming across ponds, and swarms of flying ants mating.

But we are largely blind to Australia’s insects, and more specifically, what has happened to them over years and decades. That’s because Australia – despite having some of the richest insect biodiversity on the planet – doesn’t have long-term datasets about insects. And because of this, we don’t have a coordinated way to know whether our native bees, butterflies, or even pest species are stable, declining, or booming.

But we can all help address this knowledge gap, and now is the perfect time of the year to do so.

Huge changes in insect numbers

Depending on where we look, and which insects we look at, we are seeing huge changes in insect populations.

For example, Europe’s long-running insect monitoring programs, such as the Krefeld study in Germany, have revealed dramatic declines in flying insect biomass, with losses of up to 75% over three decades.

The lack of similar monitoring programs and long-term data about insect populations in Australia is already having consequences. Take the bogong moth.

Once so abundant its migrations darkened the skies of eastern Australia, its numbers have plummeted by more than 99% in some areas in recent years. The mountain pygmy possum, an endangered species that depends on these moths for spring feeding, is now struggling to survive without its main food source.

This cascading effect is a stark reminder that when insect populations collapse, everything that depends on them – plants, animals, even people – can feel the impact.

Yet, we only noticed the bogong moth crash after it happened. Without consistent monitoring, we simply don’t have a baseline to detect change early – let alone prevent it.

Why spring matters for data collection

Spring is when insect life explodes into action. It’s when pollinators emerge to feed and breed, when decomposers such as beetles and flies begin their crucial work recycling nutrients, and when countless species begin to build the food webs that sustain ecosystems through the year.

Miss the spring data collection window, and you miss the moment when insect activity is at its peak. It’s like trying to understand traffic flow in a city by observing it at 3am instead of during peak hour.

Without good insect data, we can’t track shifts in emergence times that are changing due to warming temperatures (aphids are emerging up to a month earlier in the United Kingdom), or notice if key species are missing altogether.

That makes it harder to support agriculture, manage ecosystems, or respond to biodiversity loss in a meaningful way.

The need for a national monitoring network

For years Australian entomologists have been calling for a national insect monitoring network, one that collects regular, standardised data across ecosystems and seasons.

Without better baseline data, we simply lack the capacity to detect or respond to significant declines.

While not a fully fledged national network, initiatives such as Butterflies Australia demonstrate the potential of citizen science to contribute to long-term monitoring through standardised protocols and broad public participation.

Beyond conservation and risk detection, a national monitoring network would also play a critical role in discovering new species. Many of Australia’s invertebrates remain undocumented, and ongoing monitoring can lead to significant scientific discoveries.

One recent discovery came from a citizen science project where students helped identify a previously unknown wasp species in suburban Perth. This highlights the potential of a national-scale approach to not only track what we know, but also uncover what we don’t know.

What you can do

While Australia still lacks a national insect monitoring network, you can help fill the data gaps right now. Whether you’re a budding naturalist, a student, or simply curious about the life around you, there are ways to get involved in building the baseline scientists urgently need.

The Christmas Beetle Count runs every summer and involves taking photos of Christmas beetles to help researchers understand if their populations have declined. From this initiative, we have been able to see Christmas beetles that have not been observed in decades.

The Great Southern Bioblitz is a big citizen science project, where users of iNaturalist are encouraged to upload photos of all kinds of nature to the website. Its goal is to increase our knowledge of southern hemisphere nature.

If you’ve got kids and want to observe nature, the app Seek provides a safer environment for children to take photos and contribute to citizen science.

On a more local scale, you can join a local initiative run by some councils and environmental groups, such as Moth Night and the Sutherland Shire Beetle Hunt.

Insects are the unsung heroes of our ecosystems, pollinating crops, recycling nutrients, feeding birds, and much more. By getting involved in citizen science, you’re not just collecting data, you’re laying the groundwork for a national monitoring system Australia urgently needs, and ensuring we notice what’s changing before it’s too late.

Eliza Middleton received funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with Accounting for Nature, and is a forum member of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures.

Caitlyn Forster is affiliated with Invertebrates Australia.

– ref. Spring air is humming with insects. But we’re blind to what’s happening to them – https://theconversation.com/spring-air-is-humming-with-insects-but-were-blind-to-whats-happening-to-them-265200

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Harrison Brennan, Director, Sydney Policy Lab, University of Sydney

The upcoming social media ban for people aged under 16 continues to be hotly debated.

Bans in public policy are a blunt instrument with a mixed track record of success. Some issues are better suited to a ban than others.

So what determines the success or failure of banning and what can be done instead?

A brief history

Bans, differing in scope, method and duration, have featured in public policy over time and across a range of areas. These have mostly been aimed at preventing harm.

These can be blanket bans (such as recreational vaping), or efforts to strongly disincentivise certain things.

Gun control laws worked to disincentivise gun ownership. Following the national gun buyback scheme after the Port Arthur Massacre, there was not a single mass shooting in Australia for more than 20 years.

Australia was also the first country in the world to introduce plain packaging for tobacco products. The move aimed to discourage people from taking up smoking and reduce the appeal for those who already smoked.

A 2015 independent study found 25% of the decline in smoking prevalence was attributable to plain packaging.

Slow off the mark

In other areas, preventative action has been slow at state and federal levels.

For instance, when the Whitlam government first moved in 1973 to phase out tobacco advertising, the United Kingdom and United States had already banned it.

The connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer had been evident since the 1920s. Two studies had been published in the 1950s linking smoking to lung cancer, but the tobacco lobby had been searingly strong.

Today, Australians suffer the highest losses and greatest harm due to gambling per adult anywhere in the world.

But Australian governments have lacked the political will to do much about it, including banning gambling ads.

How do we change behaviour?

Something all these policies have in common is the aim to change people’s behaviour to reduce harm.

But key to this is establishing whether you need policy to change a population’s behaviour, or policy to change the behaviour of individual people, or both.

In the field of public health, for instance, the most important thing to work out is whether you are dealing with sick individuals (treating the person at high personal risk of disease) or a sick population (which means focusing on modifying environmental or societal factors causing disease across the population).

By focusing on solutions at the level of the individual, we have often led public policy astray by neglecting to address the broader picture.

So how can make policy for all of society?

We can learn a lot about societal solutions from a somewhat unlikely case study: reducing salt intake.

Salt is an essential micronutrient and a much-needed preservative. But high salt consumption is linked to elevated blood pressure and hypertension, largely due to the sodium contained in salts.

Many studies have researched peoples’ blood pressure problems and left it up to them to change their daily habits

But can we act at a population level instead?

In a community-wide salt replacement initiative in northern Peru, in which one of the authors of this article took part, we swapped regular salt for another salt containing potassium and less sodium.

We made this replacement in households, shops, bakeries. And with food street vendors, community kitchens and restaurants. It was a “mass replacement” for the entire population.

The result was not only reduced high blood pressure in all villages, including in young adults, but was also fewer new cases of hypertension. The reduced availability of salt led to better outcomes at the individual, population and system levels.

Social media, like salt, is also widely available and part of everyday life. Asking people not to use it for their own good is rarely effective in the face social pressure. This is why restricting access to those under 16 is a good example of policy to reduce harm at the population level.

Providing real alternatives

But as any parent or salty food fan will know, when you take something away, you need to offer something in its place.

The Peru study didn’t ban salt, it replaced it. When supermarkets phased out plastic bags, biodegradable or paper ones were provided instead. People trying to drink less can buy non-alcoholic alternatives.

For broad restrictions to be effective, there needs to be, among other things, an alternative: something that actually fulfils the deep, underlying human needs that were fuelling use in the first place.

This is a central challenge to the social media ban. If the desired replacement is real social connection, there needs to be a clear way to achieve it. Accessible and engaging after-school care has high potential in this regard.

Framing the debate

The way we talk about banning something also contributes to its effectiveness and public support.

Preventative action can be perceived as either prohibition or abolition.

Prohibition means stopping someone from doing something, potentially something they used to be able to do. That can create a sense of deprivation.

Alternatively, if people believe something is worth abolishing (not just prohibiting), they think it allows them to have greater freedom to live lives they value.

The ban on single-use plastics focuses on harm reduction for the environment. Although it took some 20 years for all states and territories to ban them, it’s been relatively uncontroversial. The benefits are significant and the substitutes feel good.

One of the challenges with the social media ban is the way it is seen (by adults and kids alike) as the adults taking something away from the kids, thereby prohibiting it.

Instead, the government could frame the ban differently. They could say by abolishing social media use for under 16 year olds, it gives kids the best possible childhood, free of online harm.

Overall, good public policy to reduce harm assesses whether the action should be individual or society-wide, offers an effective replacement and frames the change positively. As we head towards the December 10 implementation of the social media ban, these will be important factors for the government to consider.

Kate Harrison Brennan was an advisor to Prime Minister Julia Gillard. She has received funding from the Paul Ramsay Foundation for the Australia Cares project at the Sydney Policy Lab. The Sydney Policy Lab has: a project with funding from a Social Determinants of Health Innovation Grant from the Ramsay Hospital Research Foundation; a partnership with SEED Futures, engaged on primary prevention in the early years; and a project with the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney on Beyond the Bell – rethinking after school hours in Australia. Kate serves on the Advisory Council of SEED Futures.

Jaime Miranda acknowledges having received funding support from the Academy of Medical Sciences, Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, Bloomberg Philanthropies (via University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health), FONDECYT, British Council, British Embassy and the Newton-Paulet Fund, DFID/MRC/Wellcome Global Health Trials, Fogarty International Center, Grand Challenges Canada, International Development Research Center Canada, Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, National Cancer Institute, National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, National Health and Medical Research Council, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institute on Aging, National Institute for Health and Care Research, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institute of Mental Health, NSW Health, Medical Research Future Fund, Swiss National Science Foundation, UK Research and Innovation, Wellcome, World Diabetes Foundation and the World Health Organization.

He is affiliated with the following academic organisations: Professor at the Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, and founding Director of the CRONICAS Centre of Excellence in Chronic Diseases, both at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (Peru); Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (UK); Lown Scholar at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (USA); and Distinguished Fellow at The George Institute for Global Health (Australia). He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the InterAmerican Heart Foundation (IAHF); and member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research at the World Health Organization.

– ref. Banning something to reduce harm is a tricky business. Here’s what works – https://theconversation.com/banning-something-to-reduce-harm-is-a-tricky-business-heres-what-works-265498

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Pate, Senior Lecturer in Physiotherapy, University of Technology Sydney

Most children bounce back from pain after an injury or illness. But for one in five – approximately 877,000 children in Australia – the pain continues.

Clinicians call this chronic or persistent pain, meaning pain that lasts longer than three months. Chronic pain in children such as headaches or abdominal pain may be caused by an injury or underlying condition (for example, arthritis). But pain without a known cause is also common.

For a new report commissioned by Chronic Pain Australia, published on Sunday, we surveyed 229 children, young people and families about their experiences of living with chronic pain.

They told us chronic pain affects every aspect of their lives – from sport, school and friendships, to parents’ ability to work. But it often remains invisible.

What kids and families told us about chronic pain

The 2025 National Kids in Pain Report included 53 responses from children and young people who live with chronic pain and 176 responses from caregivers. The aim was to explore their experiences of chronic pain and how much it affected day-to-day life.

The report paints a stark picture: pain disrupts schooling, erodes friendships, reshapes family life, and places enormous strain on national productivity.

It revealed consistent issues, including:

• diagnosis delays: 64% of families had waited more than three years for a diagnosis, and many had never received one

• school disruption: 83% of children had missed classes because of pain, and more than half had fallen behind academically

• sleep and mental health: 84% struggled with sleep, while more than 80% experienced anxiety, low mood or other psychological impacts

• family and economic costs: almost half of carers had reduced work hours or left employment. One in five parents had resigned, and one in 20 were fired

• gender disparities: girls were disproportionately affected, representing 57% of cases.

The annual economic toll is conservatively estimated at A$15 billion. But perhaps most troubling is how long children waited for their pain to be believed.

One parent told us:

She first complained of pain when was eight, but we didn’t get a formal diagnosis until she was nearly 12. By then she had already missed so much school and was falling behind socially.

Families reported they were repeatedly dismissed, told it was anxiety (71%), “growing pains” (54%) or attention-seeking (35%).

These stigmatising responses can break trust in health-care systems and schools. One young person told us:

I wish someone had believed me earlier. Waiting years made everything worse – school, friends, even just believing in myself.

Invisibility has consequences

Chronic pain in Australia remains largely invisible because it is not formally recognised as a condition or tracked in national health data. This means it is not considered in how health services are planned and funding is allocated.

Although the World Health Organization recognised chronic pain as a distinct condition in 2019, Australia has yet to align with this recommendation.

In paediatric care, this leaves significant gaps.

There are only nine paediatric pain clinics across Australia, and none at all in Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

There are promising signs in New South Wales. New guidance in 2025 sets out how specialised paediatric pain services should deliver coordinated, culturally safe care and connect with schools. The next step is consistent implementation and shorter wait times, especially outside cities.

But federally, the government has moved away from a national plan to specifically manage pain, to a broader approach that focuses on chronic conditions. This risks further erasing pain from national health policy and planning.

Read more:
Australians are in more pain – and our new data shows it’s not just due to ageing

But we know what works

Parents and carers must often navigate referrals for specialists, waiting lists and school adjustments, while also juggling jobs and other children. Caregivers are frequently stressed and their work is disrupted.

But when care is coordinated – connecting health professionals with schools and giving families clear plans to manage pain – parents’ health and work outcomes improve.

International and Australian guidelines for managing chronic pain in children advocate a practical mix of approaches, including:

• age-appropriate movement with pacing (very gradually increasing physical activity)

• sleep support

• skills for managing flare-ups

• psychological therapies that reduce fear and build confidence, and in some instances can reduce pain and disability

• using medicines carefully when needed.

For schools, making “reasonable adjustments” is already a federal requirement under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education – even if the child does not have a formal diagnosis.

When clinics, families and schools work together on flexible timetables, safe places to rest, and ways to participate remotely, young people can keep learning and stay connected while recovery unfolds.

Recognising chronic pain

We already have evidence-based solutions to deliver better care for young people living with pain. What’s missing is national recognition of this experience and its impact.

Australia should follow the World Health Organization by classifying chronic pain as a distinct condition. This is the first step to fully recognising – and then addressing – paediatric pain.

Children and their carers want what any of us would want: to go to school, play sport, and live a life not dominated by pain.

Joshua Pate has received speaker fees for presentations on pain and physiotherapy. He receives book royalties.

Mark Hutchinson oversees program of work funded by NHMRC, MRFF, ARC, DSTG, DMTC, USDA, MLA, SIF and NIH. He is employed by Adelaide University. He is affiliated with the Australian Pain Solutions Research Alliance as chair of the board, he chairs the Safeguarding Australia through Biotechnology Response and Engagement (SABRE) Alliance advisory board, he is a Member of the Prime Minister’s National Science and Technology Council and he is a board member of Australia’s Economic Accelerator. He serves as an advisor to Alyra Biotech and to the Australian Wool Sustainability Scheme.

– ref. Not just ‘growing pains’: 1 in 5 Australian kids live with chronic pain, but it’s often invisible – https://theconversation.com/not-just-growing-pains-1-in-5-australian-kids-live-with-chronic-pain-but-its-often-invisible-265680

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steve Turton, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Geography, CQUniversity Australia

Australia’s worrying future under climate change was laid bare last week when the first National Climate Risk Assessment was released. It revealed extreme heat, fires, floods, droughts and coastal inundation already threatens lives and livelihoods – and will wreak further havoc in coming decades.

Much media attention focused on the effects in the continent’s south, where most Australians live. But the assessment found Northern Australia will be hardest hit on many fronts, including extreme heat.

This has major implications. Big plans are afoot to turn Northern Australia into Asia’s “food bowl”, as part of broader development for the region. It would involve building large-scale irrigation, dam and water infrastructure to increase agricultural production, create jobs and boost local economies.

But any discussion about transforming Northern Australia must confront the climate hazards threatening the region’s prosperity.

What’s the food bowl idea?

Northern Australia comprises roughly 53% of Australia’s land mass.

Turning the region into a food bowl would involve irrigating savannas and other ecosystems across northern parts of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. The concept dates back decades, but gained momentum in 2015 when the Abbott government released a national white paper on developing Northern Australia.

Efforts to bring the plan to fruition are continuing. In 2018 for example, CSIRO released analysis of Northern Australia’s water resources and agricultural potential. And last year, a business case was developed for a major irrigation area in Far North Queensland.

The vision has been criticised due to concerns about river ecosystems, economic feasibility and Indigenous rights.

A decade ago, I challenged the Northern Australia development agenda from a climate change perspective. While proponents pointed to a bright future for the north – with new roads, rail, dams and food production – I argued climate change may eventually make large parts of the region unlivable.

Since then, changes in climate across the north have confirmed many concerns I described.

More frequent and intense extreme weather poses the biggest climate risk for the region. Northern Australia is largely tropical and subtropical, so global heating effects will be more pronounced. This will force natural, social and economic systems into uncharted climate territory.

Research already shows people, food production and nature will be vulnerable to higher-intensity cyclones, more intense heatwaves, floods, droughts, bushfires and other climate harms.

The new climate risk report paints an even more dire future for the region.

Danger in store for the north

As the risk assessment made clear, the world is on track to heat by at least 2.7°C by the 2090s if we don’t change course. In light of this, the report says:

Northern Australia is likely to experience escalating challenges as its proneness to hazards increases as global temperature rise. This will put pressure on
health, critical infrastructure, natural species and ecosystems, and primary industries. It will also pose additional challenges to emergency responders.

Extreme weather events, including heatwaves, bushfires, flooding and tropical cyclones, will intensify safety and security risks, potentially resulting in loss of life, destabilisation of community structures, and increased migration away from high-risk areas.

The number of heatwave days is projected to increase across Australia – but particularly in the north.

Global heating is already affecting the production of some tropical tree crops, including mangoes and avocados. These crops need periods of cooler winter weather to flower and bear good fruit.

Livestock grazing is the economic lifeblood for many communities in the north’s tropical savannas. The risk assessment notes changes in temperature and water can worsen pasture for livestock. Increasing thermal stress in northern cattle herds is also a significant threat.

The risk assessment also raises concerns about other primary industries, many of which exist in the north. Changes in practices may buy more time. Much will depend on future carbon emissions.

Supply chains – such as storage, transport and distribution – are crucial for getting agricultural produce to consumers. Extreme weather, such as Cyclone Jasper in 2023, is already disrupting supply chains in the north. This will only worsen.

And an agriculture industry needs people. But the risk assessment says without action, some areas of the north may become unliveable and uninsurable. Floods, tropical cyclones and bushfires can leave communities isolated, and these and other hazards pose serious health risks.

What must happen now

Northern Australia has much to lose if carbon emissions keep rising and global heating continues. Adaptation and innovation may allow human communities and industries to survive for a while. But at some stage, crucial tipping points will be breached.

This will degrade the natural assets underpinning the north’s food, fibre and tourism industries.

Australia, like the rest of the world, must continue the journey to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. This includes meeting Australia’s new pledge to reduce emissions by 62–70% below 2005 levels by 2035.

Unless global warming is dramatically curbed, Northern Australia is unlikely to prosper in the second half of this century – and grandiose plans to turn the region into a food bowl will turn to dust.

Steve Turton has received funding from the Australian Government.

– ref. Dangerous climate change threatens Northern Australia’s big ‘food bowl’ dreams – https://theconversation.com/dangerous-climate-change-threatens-northern-australias-big-food-bowl-dreams-265727

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Richardson, Senior Lecturer in Culinary Arts & Gastronomy, Auckland University of Technology

Come on, baby, light my fire.

We can be pretty sure Jim Morrison wasn’t referring to BBQ when he wrote those famous lyrics – but he may as well have been. As the weather starts to warm across the country, throngs of people will take to the great outdoors to bask in the sun, crack open a cold one and, inevitably, fire up the grill.

It’s a pattern we all know well. But it tends to overshadow another often overlooked pattern, concerning who is holding the tongs?

Traditional masculinity continues to have a stronghold on BBQ. Even as other forms of cooking are (unfairly) treated as “womens’ work”, cooking meat on an open flame is largely framed as an activity for men.

How might we explain these gendered dynamics?

Which came first, the human or the fire?

According to English anthropologist Richard Wrangham, the ability to control fire, and therefore cook food, was the key driver in human evolution. In Wrangham’s words, “we humans are the cooking apes, the creatures of fire”.

Gender division in food and cookery is nothing new. Our prehistoric ancestors structured their society around food. There’s a common perception these early societies were simply split into two groups of “man the hunter” and “woman the gatherer”.

Reality, however, was far more nuanced, with many experts suggesting communal wellbeing overrode distinct gender division. And increasing evidence suggests that, despite their child-rearing responsibilities, women would have hunted, just as men would have gathered.

Today, it is women who do the majority of household cooking in Australia.

The original barbies

In terms of food preparation, butchering predates cooking, and can be traced back to about 2.6 million years ago.

Filleting meat into smaller pieces made it easier to chew and digest large mammals such as mammoths, which allowed meat to become part of our diets early on. There is indirect evidence that homo erectus’ anatomy diverged from non-human primates some 1.9 million years ago because of this shift in diet.

While it’s unclear exactly when humans started to control and manipulate fire, evidence of cooking in the Levant region goes as far back as 780,000 years.

There was even an entire mammoth economy around the end of the last ice age (27,000 years ago), which involved procurement, carcass transport, butchery, food preparation and storage.

Meat was cold-smoked in smokehouses, allowing it to be consumed fresh, or stored long-term. But experts are divided as to who did the cooking. Did the hunters bring their catch back to the group to cook, or did they cook it at the kill site? The general consensus is it was probably both.

Why are BBQs such a sausage fest?

Not only do women do most of the cooking today, they also spend the most time hunting and gathering (from the supermarket). However, this gap is narrowing – particularly in certain demographics.

The genderisation of food remains strong in the retail industry, and extends to advertising and marketing. When did you last see an ad that showed a woman in charge of the BBQ?

Barbecue cookbooks consistently have covers featuring men. There’s not a single woman to be found on the covers of the top 50 best-selling BBQ and grilling books on Amazon.

And just as you’re more likely to see cake mixers on special for Mother’s Day, you’re more likely to see BBQ-related products on sale for Father’s Day.

This gender divide is also noticeable in the professional hospitality industry.

Chef Lennox Hastie of Sydney’s Firedoor restaurant is someone who knows a thing or two about fire. Hastie told us:

There’s no denying that, historically, fire has been wrapped up in a kind of rugged mythology – primal, elemental, often masculine. But some of the oldest, most enduring fire traditions have always been in the hands of women – it’s the industry that’s been slow to catch up. […] Fire doesn’t care who you are. It doesn’t respect ego. It requires attentiveness, intuition, patience – qualities that aren’t gendered.

Although deliberate fire starting, or arson, is a male dominated crime, there’s no evidence men are biologically wired, or pathologically driven, toward fire-setting.

Their over-representation in arson may be better explained by social, behavioural and psychological risk factors, including peer influence, antisocial personality traits, and a lack of emotional regulation.

Peacocking at the grill

Backyard BBQ as we know it is a relatively recent thing, gradually infiltrating our lifestyles in the 1950s and becoming firmly embedded with the introduction of the gas BBQ in the 1960s.

In many ways it is the modern equivalent of the Sunday roast; it fulfils the role of social and cultural ritual and reflects aspects of prestige, generosity and patriarchy. All of this plays into hegemonic masculinity, which frames men as the dominant sex in society: the provider, the carver, the griller.

In contrast, everyday cookery tends to be seen as domestic work, more in service of family wellbeing than a show of social status. It is an unpaid and often undervalued part of the invisible labour that still falls largely on woman.

It’s difficult to give precedence to just one of the multitude of theories that try and explain mens’ dominance over the BBQ. But there is a high chance historical social stereotypes and gendered expectations have a role to play.

Either way, best to keep a fire extinguisher handy.

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. Women do the most cooking at home. So why do men get to hog the BBQ? – https://theconversation.com/women-do-the-most-cooking-at-home-so-why-do-men-get-to-hog-the-bbq-260419