Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Karnon, Professor of Health Economics, Flinders University

People with a high body weight living in England can now access subsidised weight-loss drugs to treat their obesity. This includes Wegovy (the weight-loss dose of Ozempic, or semaglutide) and Mounjaro (one of the brand names for tirzepatide).

These drugs, known as GLP-1 agonists, can improve the health of people who are overweight or obese and are unable to lose weight and keep it off using other approaches.

In Australia, the government subsidises the cost of semaglutide (Ozempic) for people with diabetes.

But it is yet to subsidise semaglutide (Wegovy) on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) for weight loss.

This is despite Australia’s regulator approving GLP-1 agonists for people with obesity, and for overweight people with at least one weight-related condition.

This leaves Australians who use Wegovy for weight loss paying around A$450–500 out of pocket per month.

But could Australia follow the England’s lead and list drugs such as Wegovy or Mounjaro on the PBS for weight loss? Doing so could bring the price down to $31.60 ($7.70 concession).

Australia has already knocked back Wegovy for subsidies

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) reviews the submissions pharmaceutical companies make for their drug therapies to be subsidised through the PBS.

For every such recommendation, PBAC publishes a public document that summarises the evidence and the reasons for recommending that the drug should be added to the PBS – or not.

In November 2023, PBAC reviewed Novo Nordisk’s submission. It proposed including semaglutide on the PBS for adults with an initial BMI of 40 or above and a diagnosis of at least two weight-related conditions. At least one of these related conditions needed to be obstructive sleep apnoea, osteoarthritis of the knee, or pre-diabetes.

However, PBAC concluded semaglutide should not be subsidised through the PBS because it didn’t consider the drug cost-effective at the price proposed.

PBAC referred to evidence on the long-term benefits from weight loss for people at increased risk of developing heart disease, diabetes or having a stroke. However, it didn’t factor these effects into its calculations when estimating the cost-effectiveness of semaglutide.

The committee suggested a future submission could focus on patients with either pre-existing cardiovascular (heart) disease, type 2 diabetes, or at least two markers of “high cardiometabolic risk”. This could include hypertension (high blood pressure), high cholesterol, chronic kidney disease, fatty liver disease or pre-diabetes.

What did England decide?

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has a similar role to the PBAC, informing decisions to subsidise medicines in England.

As a result of NICE’s recommendation, semaglutide is subsidised in England for adults with at least one weight-related condition and BMI of 30 or above. Patients must be treated by a specialist weight-management service and prescriptions are for a maximum of two years.

More recently, NICE approved another GLP-1 agonist, tirzepatide, for adults with at least one weight-related condition and a BMI of 35 or above.

This approval didn’t restrict prescriptions to those treated in a specialist weight-management service. However, only 220,000 of the 3.4 million who meet the eligibility criteria will receive tirzepatide in the next three years. It is not clear how the 220,000 patients will be selected.

The limits on tirzepatide will reduce the impact of GLP-1 agonists on the health budget. It is also intended to inform the broader roll-out to all eligible patients.

For both semaglutide and tirzepatide, NICE noted that clinicians should consider stopping the treatment if the patient loses less than 5% of their body weight after six months of use.

Why did they reach such different decisions?

NICE assessed the use of GLP-1 agonists for a broader population than PBAC: people with one weight-related condition and a BMI of 30 or above.

Another difference was that NICE’s cost-effectiveness analysis included estimates of the longer-term benefits of these drugs in reducing the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular (heart) disease, stroke, knee replacement and bariatric surgery.

The proposed prices of the GLP-1 agonists in England and Australia are not reported. We can only observe the estimated health benefits. These are represented as the additional number of “quality-adjusted life years” (QALYs) associated with using the drugs. One QALY is the equivalent of one additional year of life in best imaginable health.

Committees estimate the amount of additional health spending required to gain QALYs, to see if it’s worth the public investment. Looking at the committees’ estimates of weight-loss drugs (without a two-year maximum):

• NICE reported a gain of 0.7 QALYs per patient receiving semaglutide for a target population with a BMI of 30 or more

• PBAC reported a gain of 0.3 QALYs, but for a population with a BMI of 40 and above.

Part of the explanation for the difference in estimated QALY gains is that PBAC did not consider the reduced risk of future weight-related conditions, only the impact on existing conditions.

In contrast, NICE referred to substantial cost offsets due to reduced weight-related conditions, in particular because some patients would avoid developing diabetes.

Time to rethink PBAC’s focus?

Both NICE and PBAC are clearly concerned about the impact of GLP-1 agonists on the health budget.

PBAC is trying to restrict access to a limited pool of people at highest risk. It is also being more conservative than NICE in estimating the expected benefits of GLP-1 agonists. This would require manufacturers to reduce their price in order for PBAC to consider these drugs cost-effective.

Maybe this approach will work and the Australian government will pay less for these drugs the next time it considers publicly funding them.

However, GLP-1 agonists are not on the agenda for the forthcoming PBAC meetings, so there is no timeline for when GLP-1 agonists might be funded in Australia for weight loss.

Read more:
People on Ozempic may have fewer heart attacks, strokes and addictions – but more nausea, vomiting and stomach pain

Jonathan Karnon receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Medical Research Future Fund.

– ref. England subsidises drugs like Ozepmic for weight loss. Could Australia follow? – https://theconversation.com/england-subsidises-drugs-like-ozepmic-for-weight-loss-could-australia-follow-245367

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne

When the growing gets tough, the tough trees and shrubs get growing.

Australia’s environment is brutal. Its ancient, low-nutrient soils and generally low rainfall make it a hard place for plants to grow. Despite this, the continent is filled with wonderfully diverse plant ecosystems.

If you don’t know what you’re looking for, it can be easy to miss these seemingly unremarkable species. So, here are three little-known Australian plant species and ecosystems to look out for during your next roadtrip.

1. Cycads and eucalypts

If you are driving a coastal route along southern New South Wales, keep an eye out for the stunning combination of burrawang cycads (Macrozamia communis) and spotted gum (Corymbia maculata). These species live in harmony along the NSW coastline, from Kempsey to Bega, and inland as far as Mudgee.

If you’re on a road trip, now is the perfect time to talk to children about ancient moving continents, volcanoes and dinosaurs.

Cycads are ancient gymnosperms (cone-bearing plants) which evolved long before the Gondwanan supercontinent separated. These tough, hardy plants saw the dinosaurs come and go, and their relatives are found all around the world.

These cycads form a striking understorey to the spotted gum. As their scientific name (Macrozamia communis) suggests, they form a dense community.

Further north in Queensland, pineapple cycads (Lepidozamia peroffskyana), and Western Australia’s zamia palm (Macrozamia riedlei) are also worth spotting.

Cycad seeds are poisonous, but First Nations Australians worked out a complex process to prepare them for safe eating. This involved dissolving the plant’s toxins in running water, cooking, working and grinding the seeds into a powder.

Spotted gums evolved long after dinosaurs went extinct. Early eucalypt fossils date from about 34 million years ago, while current species are often only a few million years old.

Spotted gums are a great example of how plants that survive tough environments often also do well in difficult urban situations.

Cycads are similarly found growing in poor soils and arid conditions. They have long, glossy leaves up to about 1.5 metres in length with lots of leaflets.

There are both male and female plants. The female cone is an impressive, wide-domed structure that can be almost half a metre across. Its bright orange-red seeds are eaten by foraging marsupials, large birds and flying foxes.

Spotted gums are tall, straight eucalyptus trees with dark green, glossy leaves. Old bark creates dark grey spots against their cream coloured trunk, giving them a mottled look.

It is interesting to see ancient and modern species in such a close community relationship in cycad-spotted gum forests. Both are also well-adapted to the fires that frequent their habitat.

2. Ancient acacias

Travelling inland, the environment gets even tougher. Most large trees disappear and are replaced by woodlands dominated by inland acacia (wattle) species.

These inland acacias are short but mighty, with deep, extensive root systems.

Two of these species, mulga (Acacia aneura) and brigalow (A. harpophylla) are part of Australian folklore. A Banjo Paterson character says: “You know how the brigalow grows […] saplings about as thick as a man’s arm”.

Nutrients and water resources are limited, so mulga and brigalow trees are often evenly spaced across the landscape. This eerie symmetry makes it look like they were planted by humans.

Many people are unaware that the twisted, stunted specimens they see are more than 250 years old and occupy vast tracts of the Australian landscape.

Waddy-wood (Acacia peuce) is a rare species of acacia, found in just three locations on the edge of the Simpson Desert. This tree has very strong wood, and was used by Indigenous Australians for making clubs (waddys) and tools for carrying fire.

Inland acacias were widely used by Indigenous Australians for their wood, resins and medicinal properties. They have also been used as fodder for livestock, especially during drought.

These crucial species provide important habitat for other plants and animals. But they are under threat.

As old trees collapse and die, there are no young trees replacing them. This is because of drought and grazing, compounded by climate change.

Desertification – where fertile land is degraded until it essentially becomes desert – is becoming a huge problem due to the massive area dominated by acacias.

3. Boabs

If you’re driving across the Northern Territory and Western Australia, you might come across the mighty boab (Adansonia gregoryii).

These close relatives of the African and Madagascan baobabs floated to Australia as seeds or seedlings around 12 million years ago.

These deciduous trees live in mostly dry environments that also experience strong monsoonal-type rains. Boabs trap and store water in their trunks, allowing them not only to survive but thrive.

Their African and Madagascan baobab relatives are sometimes called trees of life, as they support many species.

Australian boabs are similar. They offer habitat, roosting and nesting sites. Their flowers and fruits are food sources to many species of insects and birds.

They were – and are – important trees in First Nations cultures. Carvings and symbols on their trunks can last for more than a century, much longer than on other trees. These are called dendroglyphs.

For example, snake carvings dated to more than 200 years old have been found on boab trees in Northern Australia’s Tanami Desert.

While these special trees are usually found far from the beaten track, they can be spotted growing around Darwin and other remote towns. If you get the chance to see them, count yourself lucky.

Tough terrain, tough trees

Plant communities are remarkably resilient. They also display great creativity when evolving ways to survive tough environments.

Make sure to keep an eye out as you’re exploring Australia and enjoy the fascinating plants our country has to offer.

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

– ref. I spy with my little eye: 3 unusual Australian plant ecosystems to spot on your next roadtrip – https://theconversation.com/i-spy-with-my-little-eye-3-unusual-australian-plant-ecosystems-to-spot-on-your-next-roadtrip-246129

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Penny Van Bergen, Associate Professor in the Psychology of Education, Macquarie University

Once upon a time, university lectures were accompanied by the sound of pens scribbling on paper. But if you go into a lecture hall today, you will hear students tapping on laptops.

Devices are now an accepted and important part of modern learning. But this does not necessarily mean students should forget the old-fashioned ways of taking notes.

Research shows pen and paper can help students learn and remember more from class.

The benefits of note-taking

Studies have long shown students who take notes during a lecture, class, or while reading are able to remember more of that content later.

One reason is note-taking is more active than listening or reading, which helps us maintain attention.

And students often go beyond just recording the information being said.

Note-taking means students are trying to understand their teacher by making assessments about what is important in real time. They might also organise the content into themes and sub-themes or highlight things that stand out.

These activities are examples of active engagement which strengthens the “encoding process”: the way new knowledge moves into long-term memory and forms memory pathways.

Strong memory pathways enable knowledge to be more easily accessed later, such as when problem solving in class or doing an exam.

Read more:
Avoid cramming and don’t just highlight bits of text: how to help your memory when preparing for exams

Note-taking on a laptop

Research shows the kinds of notes students take when typing on a laptop differ from those taken with traditional pen and paper.

A 2018 study in the United States found college students took longer lecture notes (both in word count and quantity of ideas) when typing on a laptop than when writing by hand. They also recorded longer sections verbatim from the lecture. This might occur because students typically type faster than they handwrite.

However, while students are faster on a laptop, they are also likely to become distracted.

A 2021 study of US college students used tracking software and found the average student was distracted for about half their lecture by social media, assignments, shopping and other off-task internet activities.

Note-taking with a pen

So how do pen and paper compare?

A 2024 meta-analysis of 24 international studies showed taking lecture notes by hand resulted in stronger overall test performance and course grades for undergraduate students.

This is because handwriting engages the brain in a more active way than typing, which is better for learning.

Students who take notes by hand use more shorthand, visual signals (for example, bolding, underlining, arrows and stars) and images (diagrams, graphs and tables) than those who type.

Taking notes by hand is particularly helpful if a lecturer or teacher pauses during a lecture or lesson, so students can revise or add to their notes in real time. In one US study, students using longhand added three times as many new ideas to their notes during lecture pauses as laptop users did.

Are there times laptops might be better?

Despite the benefits of handwriting, there are some situations where laptops may be more appropriate for note-taking.

Students who struggle with slow handwriting or spelling may find pen and paper note-taking interferes with their learning. This is because they need to focus more on the physical act of writing so it becomes harder to process new knowledge.

Some neurodivergent students may also find handwriting challenging. For instance, autistic students often experience difficulties with fine motor skills like handwriting. Similarly, students with dyslexia or dysgraphia may struggle with handwriting tasks.

For these students, typing with features like spell-check and auto-correction can allow them to focus on understanding and fully participating in class.

But for those who find both handwriting and typing equally comfortable, the research shows using a pen and paper are more effective for learning.

Penny Van Bergen receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Google and the Marsden Fund.

Emma Burns receives funding from the Australian Research Council, is an associate editor for the Australian Educational Researcher and is on the board of the Australian Educational Research Organisation.

Hua-Chen Wang receives funding from Google on a research project regarding vocabulary learning.

– ref. Which type of note-taking is better for learning: laptop or pen and paper? – https://theconversation.com/which-type-of-note-taking-is-better-for-learning-laptop-or-pen-and-paper-250404

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

Last week the Federal Court fined Australia’s biggest superannuation company, AustralianSuper, A$27 million for overcharging customers.

The company had breached its legal obligations under the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 by failing to identify and merge the duplicate accounts of customers.

Given the individual errant fees were about $1.50 per duplicate account, the penalty might sound disproportionate to the wrongdoing.

But over the nine years the duplicate account and other fees were being charged, they collectively cost customers about $69 million.

As revealed in court, the double charging continued even though AustralianSuper’s employees and officers were aware that duplicate accounts were widespread.

Not a precedent

This court case was not the first. It follows a damning series of cases brought by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) against banks, insurers and super funds for overcharging.

In 2022, ASIC reported six of Australia’s largest financial services institutions had paid almost $4.4 billion in compensation to customers for overcharging or providing no service.

Financial penalties were also imposed. Westpac and associated entities were fined $40 million for charging $10.9 million to more than 11,800 dead customers.

ANZ was also hit with a $25 million penalty for failing to provide promised fee benefits to about 689,000 customer accounts over more than 20 years.

These cases were highlighted in the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, which ran from December 2017 to February 2019. But even after that, new instances emerged.

In 2023, a review by ASIC resulted in general insurers repaying more than $815 million to more than 5.6 million customers for pricing failures since 1 January 2018“.

After this, ASIC imposed penalties on insurers IAG-subsidiaries and QBE. It was alleged they misled customers by promising them loyalty discounts to renew their home insurance policies. But the customers actually had their premiums raised by an amount similar in size to the discounts.

In 2024, ASIC announced the findings of an inquiry into excessively high fees for superannuation fund advice. The fees were not proportionate to the advice needs of members or the cost of advice.

More than 300 members across seven of the funds had advice fees of more than $15,000 deducted from their accounts.

Despite repeated calls by ASIC and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority for the industry to improve its operations, a 2024 ASIC review found major banks left at least two million low-income customers in high-fee accounts. Those affected were refunded more than $28 million.

Why has this litany of pricing misconduct cases occurred?

Put in the best light, the failures represent a combination of poor legacy payment systems and increasingly complex modern payment structures and products.

Recognising these constraints, the Federal Court has stated that the obligation under the Corporations Act to ensure financial services are provided “efficiently, honestly and fairly” does not demand “absolute perfection”.

In other words, some mistakes are inevitable. But this does not relieve banks, insurers and superannuation funds from responsibility for payment errors.

The buck stops with the institutions

Charging more money than permitted or failing to pass on discounts will usually be a breach of the financial institution’s contract with its customers, and may also amount to misleading conduct.

It’s unlawful. Even if the individual amounts in question are small compared with the turnover of the financial institution, they are significant to the customers affected.

This means, as courts have consistently recognised, that financial institutions have a responsibility to put in place “systems and processes” to identify and correct payment errors. And they need to remediate affected customers promptly.

The ongoing misconduct suggests banks, insurers and superannuation trustees have ignored this.

Notably, in 2023, a court found NAB waited more than two years to correct overcharging, despite being aware of it.

And in 2025, the court was critical of AustralianSuper for taking years to address the problem of duplicate customer accounts even after it was identified.

The judge in the AustralianSuper case said:

nobody was responsible for ensuring compliance with legislative requirements and [this] resulted in no resources being dedicated to that task.

When no one takes responsibility

After the Royal Commission, ASIC was criticised for not being sufficiently rigorous in enforcing the law. It now appears ASIC is working through the fee practices of banks, insurers and super funds armed with considerable penalties.

ASIC’s clear aim is to ensure payment misconduct doesn’t pay, and enforcement by the regulator cannot be dismissed as a mere cost of doing business.

But is this enough? Customers may wait years for payment errors to be identified and redressed through enforcement by ASIC.

We need to rethink how these institutions understand their obligations to customers. Notably, the United Kingdom has introduced a “consumer duty”, which requires banks to promote customers’ interests and demonstrate how they are doing this.

Australia doesn’t have this obligation. But it may be worth learning from the UK. Banks, insurers and superannuation funds here should be obligated to show they are using processes that produce good ongoing outcomes for their customers.

Jeannie Marie Paterson receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a project on treating customers fairly commencing July 2025.

– ref. Multiple warnings and huge fines are not stopping super funds, insurers and banks overcharging customers – https://theconversation.com/multiple-warnings-and-huge-fines-are-not-stopping-super-funds-insurers-and-banks-overcharging-customers-250658

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Phoebe Hart, Associate Professor, Film Screen & Animation, Queensland University of Technology

The Academy Awards represent the screen industry’s biggest annual global recognition for the very best of moviemaking. And in these troubled times, many recognise the power of documentaries to transform the world for the better.

Like last year, the 2025 nominations for Best Documentary are international in their scope, continuing an Academy trend of placing more emphasis on voices outside of the United States.

This year’s nominations feature a few milestones: it’s the first time a Japanese filmmaker has been put forward, and the first time an Indigenous North American filmmaker has been nominated in Oscars history.

All exhibit outstanding craftsmanship while exploring intense themes. The following roundup will hopefully encourage you to check them out at the cinema or online, and see why the experts also think they deserve the top gong.

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

Johan Grimonprez’s experimental essay examines the Cold War politics of the 1950s and 60s. At this time, many African nations were gaining independence from their colonial masters.

In Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, the uranium and mineral rich Democratic Republic of the Congo becomes a poignant case study.

As the first prime minister Patrice Lumumba breaks the country away from Belgian rule, a murderous plot by global superpowers to destroy the country’s newfound sovereignty unfolds.

And underneath it all: the frenetic beat of jazz as a revolutionary reaction against racism on both sides of the Atlantic.

A wealth of archival material featuring former world leaders, the Congolese situation, and the musical stylings of Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and others make this documentary effortlessly cool. The edit and sound design has a wonderful syncopated rhythm, revealing fascinating facets of modern history and the scramble for power.

Sugarcane

St. Joseph’s Mission was a residential school for Indigenous children in Canada, which closed in 1981.

When ground penetrating radar begins looking for unmarked graves at the school, Julian Brave NoiseCat – whose father was born on the site – and co-director Emily Kassie embark on a quest of accountability for a myriad of institutional abuses.

Editors Nathan Punwar and Maya Daisy Hawke interweave archival reels alongside Emily Kassie and Christopher LaMarca’s stark verité cinematography. The film captures members of the Williams Lake First Nation community reckoning with generations of trauma at the hands of Catholic clergy.

Together, they present some disturbing facts in the film, which won a directing award at the Sundance Film Festival.

National Geographic has routinely received a documentary Oscar nomination. This film is a challenging topic for Australian and New Zealand audiences. We also have a troubling history with the placement of Aboriginal children in homes, where many faced hardships and mistreatment.

Sugarcane gives a platform for truth-telling and healing.

Porcelain War

Ceramists Slava Leontyev and Anya Stasenko are inspired by the nature of Ukraine and each other. Their friend, and fellow creator, Andrey Stefanov documents their lives on tape after his wife and children flee at the start of the Russian invasion.

All become involved in active defiance.

The film combines nonprofessional video, body cams and drone footage alongside wildlife photography and charming animations of Anya’s delicate paintings on clay.

There are gripping scenes of armed conflict from the viewpoint of Slava’s squad of reservists. These are everyday folks who have become involved in fighting on the ground.

Porcelain War benefits from a soundtrack composed and performed by folk music quartet DakhaBrakha. This adds an eerie texture to this portrait of hope.

The film thoughtfully balances light and shade with grace, demonstrating that art remains a potent way to oppose erasure.

Black Box Diaries

When her high-profile #MeToo sexual assault case is dropped on the grounds of insufficient evidence, Japanese journalist, director and producer Shiori Itō commences chronicling her journey to justice.

Deploying abstract imagery over recorded conversations with investigators and witnesses, Itō builds her argument over several years. The passage of time is interspersed with her unfiltered video diary entries.

There has been controversy about the director including hotel footage of her drugged and being dragged out of a taxi by her attacker, senior reporter Noriyuki Yamaguchi, without permission. Itō had been given the footage for the legal case, but had agreed it would not be used outside of the courtroom.

The debate has prevented the film from showing on Japanese screens. However, Itō has argued the public good of using this material outweighs commercial interests – especially considering the pressure of Yamaguchi’s influential connections to quell the case, which include then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Itō doesn’t shy away from exposing the raw emotional depths of her remarkably brave undertaking against fierce odds, and she serves as an inspiring change-maker we should all heed.

No Other Land

No Other Land takes stock of the West Bank situation from the perspective of Basel Adra, who documents evictions of Palestinians in his home village of Masafer Yatta.

Basel works with journalist Yuval Abraham to bear witness to the army’s gradual destruction of his village to make way for a military training ground.

No Other Land features some great observational camerawork with many poetic images of resilience. Things kick up a notch when a villager, Harun, is shot by Israeli soldiers while trying to confiscate his building tools. Basel is targeted for filming the ensuing protests – but Adra and Abraham continue undeterred.

A friendship develops amid the chaos between the Palestinian activist and Israeli reporter, who co-direct and edit with Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor. It’s the touching humanity of their relationship that goes to the core of the film; compassion is key to deescalating tensions in the region.

In Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Porcelain War, Black Box Diaries and No Other Land are streaming on DocPlay; Sugarcane is streaming on Disney+.

Phoebe Hart 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. Outstanding craftsmanship and international voices: the 5 films up for best documentary at the 2025 Oscars – https://theconversation.com/outstanding-craftsmanship-and-international-voices-the-5-films-up-for-best-documentary-at-the-2025-oscars-249151

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ivan Vinogradov, Animal Behaviour Researcher, Australian National University

We humans often underestimate the intelligence of other animals. You’ve probably seen videos of monkeys, ravens or parrots solving puzzles.

But fish also possess impressive problem-solving skills, despite the notorious slander that goldfish have a three-second memory.

The intelligence of animals can be a useful tool when testing various ideas in biology. For example, could intelligence have evolved in part thanks to sexual selection, rather than as a means of survival?

In a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, we used distinct tests to measure cognitive abilities of male mosquitofish – a thumb-sized fish endemic to central America but now a major pest in many parts of the world, including Australia.

We then tracked how many offspring each male produced when competing for mates in small ponds. Our study showed that smarter males had more offspring than their less intelligent brethren.

Our findings imply that the evolution of cognitive abilities may have been driven by sexual selection, with smarter males gaining more mating opportunities.

To be smart is to survive

Cognitive abilities, such as learning and problem solving, likely arose because they helped animals gather food, find shelter and avoid predators.

Individuals that were better at these tasks lived longer and passed on genes to their offspring that improved the offspring’s performance. Natural selection favoured smarter survivors who had more descendants than the average individual.

As a result, populations became smarter over time.

But there is another explanation for the evolution of intelligence: smarter is sexy. A better brain might help an animal find more mates, have more sex, and eventually have more babies.

If this is the case, intelligence partly evolved through sexual selection, where traits that boost mating and fertilisation success become more common over generations.

We did our study on male fish – sexual selection is usually stronger on males than females, because in most species there are more males seeking mates than females ready to mate and breed.

Measuring animal IQ

Even in humans, intelligence can be difficult to pin down: maths skills, creativity, street smarts, and standardised IQ tests all capture different aspects of human braininess.

For animals, this challenge is tougher still. But biologists broadly agree that cognition is the ability to acquire, store, process, and act on information; and that distinct cognitive abilities are governed by different brain regions.

We designed four special underwater tests to tap into these distinct cognitive abilities of our male mosquitofish.

First, we measured their spatial learning by placing fish in a maze with a single correct route that led them to a shoal of their compatriots. Mosquitofish are highly motivated to swim with other fish, so reaching this shoal acts as a reward for solving the maze.

Second, we measured their self-control (formally called “inhibitory control”) by placing a transparent barrier between the fish and a reward. We then documented how quickly a male learned not to swim into the barrier but to detour around it.

Then, we measured associative learning by presenting a fish with two coloured corridors once a day. One colour (for example, green) led to a dead end, while the other (for example, red) to a reward.

The number of days it took a male to consistently choose the correct corridor – the one with a reward – indicated how quickly they learned the association.

Lastly, we reversed the colour cues to measure reversal learning. If green, for example, was previously the dead end, it now became the reward corridor, while red became the dead end. This tested how quickly the fish could “overwrite” his previously learned association to learn the new one.

A winning edge in mating

After these tests, we moved the males to ponds where they competed for mates. Two months later, the females gave birth, and genetic paternity tests revealed who fathered each offspring.

Males that scored highly on self-control and spatial learning had significantly more children. But why?

Something about these males seemingly gave them an edge in securing mating opportunities. Perhaps females recognised and preferred smarter males? Maybe smarter males were better at chasing the females and forcing them to mate (a common, if unpleasant, practice in mosquitofish).

Future research is needed to observe the males’ mating behaviours more closely and see if smarter and dumber males differ in how they court mates.

Our research sheds light on the evolution of our most prized possession – the brain. It seems that sophisticated intelligence isn’t only driven by our need to find food or avoid danger to survive, but also by the complex challenges of finding love.

Ivan Vinogradov 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. Smart is sexy – new study on fish doing puzzles hints intelligence partly evolved via sexual selection – https://theconversation.com/smart-is-sexy-new-study-on-fish-doing-puzzles-hints-intelligence-partly-evolved-via-sexual-selection-249862

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Birchall, Senior Lecturer in Law, Macquarie University

In our complex, interconnected world, there are risks of human rights violations throughout global supply chains. Examples include not only modern slavery and child labour, but also gender discrimination and violations of land, food and water rights.

Many people care deeply about whether the companies they support are monitoring and addressing these issues. So, how do some of the biggest Australian companies measure up?

To answer this question, we analysed the human rights commitments of 25 of the top companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), including some of our largest banks and mining companies.

We found Australian companies have a long way to go in “knowing and showing” a commitment to respect human rights, suggesting an urgent need for reform.

One response could be for Australia to follow the European Union’s lead and create a mandatory human rights due diligence regime.

Read more:
Many global corporations will soon have to police up and down their supply chains as EU human rights ‘due diligence’ law nears enactment

International best practice

Our analysis used the World Benchmarking Alliance’s Corporate Human Rights Benchmark Core UNGP Indicators.

This benchmark uses 12 indicators that draw on the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP), the authoritative international standard.

The indicators are grouped into three themes:

1. policy commitments to respect human rights
2. embedding respect through ongoing human rights due diligence
3. enabling accessible remedies and grievance mechanisms for workers and external stakeholders.

Companies score between zero and two points on each indicator, depending on how they satisfy its requirements. The maximum possible score is 24.

It’s important to understand that the aim of our study was not to assess whether these companies have been violating human rights. Rather, it was to evaluate whether companies have disclosed their policies and processes to respect human rights.

The UN Guiding Principles expect companies to have suitable due diligence processes in place and make these publicly available in an accessible form.

Ideally, companies should clearly state that they respect all human rights. This includes rights such as nondiscrimination, the prohibition on forced or child labour, freedom to join trade unions, and the right to a clean environment.

They should outline in detail the mechanisms in place to identify and address actual or potential abuses. On top of this, detail which officials in the company hold responsibility for managing these issues.

The better companies would even disclose examples of human rights abuses that they discovered in their operations, such as modern slavery or a gender pay gap.

Poor performance overall

Our research covered the 25 largest Australian companies by market capitalisation that had not previously been assessed under this benchmark.

This included some of the leading Australian companies from a range of sectors – mining, banks, energy, insurance, transportation, telecommunication, media, health care and pharmaceuticals.

Scores were poor overall. The best-performing company scored eight out of a possible 24 points. The average score was 3.6.

Many companies were found to be making vague or ambiguous human rights commitments or only focusing on a narrow set of modern slavery risks.

No company disclosed all of the human rights due diligence processes needed to identify, prevent, mitigate and remediate human rights risks. Nor did any disclose how they consulted with relevant stakeholders such as workers or displaced communities to help them understand and identify relevant human rights risks in company operations.

Only ten of the 25 companies provided a mechanism for external individuals and communities to raise human rights complaints or concerns.

Companies scored particularly poorly on the second group of indicators: embedding respect through ongoing human rights due diligence. The average score here was 0.58 out of 12.

Many companies only focused on identifying and addressing modern slavery in their operations, to the exclusion of other human rights risks such as sexual harassment or environmental pollution.

It was also concerning that companies we assessed often passed the burden of compliance to suppliers. That is, they established higher expectations for suppliers’ conduct than they set for their own.

Legal requirements made a difference

Our research found that companies scored well in making human rights commitments where there was a legal obligation to do so.

Every company, for example, scored the point available for hosting a grievance mechanism for workers to raise concerns about the company. This is because Australia’s Corporations Act requires companies to create a whistleblower mechanism.

Similarly, most companies disclosed elements of their modern slavery due diligence process, because this is legally required under the Modern Slavery Act.

Proactive steps

It is clear from our research that many large Australian companies are not operating in line with international standards.

That means they also aren’t ready to comply with the ripple effects of the mandatory human rights due diligence laws recently introduced in Europe.

These laws will require large Australian companies that do significant business in Europe to conduct comprehensive human rights due diligence.

Australian companies must take proactive steps to comply with international standards. This means making a public commitment to respect all human rights, establishing and publicly disclosing their human rights due diligence process.

It will also mean involving everyone who is affected by or has an interest in the company’s activities throughout the due diligence process. This includes making sure they have a way to raise concerns and seek remedies.

The Australian government has a vital role in ensuring that companies take their human rights responsibilities seriously. The current reporting regime under the Modern Slavery Act has proven very weak, confirmed under a recent formal review.

Our findings suggest the government should enact a stronger and broader mandatory human rights due diligence law covering all human rights.

David Birchall is Deputy Director of the B&HR Access to Justice Lab at Macquarie Law School.

Ebony Birchall is the Deputy Director of the B&HR Access to Justice Lab at Macquarie University. She has previously received research funding from the Australian Government, Macquarie University and the Freedom Fund.

Surya Deva is Director of the B&HR Access to Justice Lab at Macquarie University. He is currently UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development. He has previously received funding from the GIZ, the UNDP, the Freedom Fund and the International Commission of Jurists. He is part of the World Benchmarking Alliance’s Expert Review Committee. The Lab received funding from Maurice Blackburn Lawyers and the World Benchmarking Alliance to cover the costs of hosting an event to launch this report.

– ref. Some of Australia’s largest companies are failing to ‘know and show’ their respect for human rights – https://theconversation.com/some-of-australias-largest-companies-are-failing-to-know-and-show-their-respect-for-human-rights-250055

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark A Gregory, Associate Professor, School of Engineering, RMIT University

People could soon make mobile calls and send SMS text messages from the remotest parts of Australia, under a new election promise from the federal Albanese government to overhaul the country’s mobile phone network.

The proposal would create a new universal outdoor mobile obligation for Australian mobile carriers such as Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. This obligation would require carriers to work with companies operating low Earth orbit satellites to provide access to mobile voice, SMS and the Triple Zero (000) service almost everywhere across Australia.

This world-first reform would be a major step forward for public safety – especially in regional and remote areas, where mobile coverage is currently poor to nonexistent. The Albanese government says that if it wins the upcoming election, it would implement the reform by late 2027.

However, implementing it will come with some technical challenges.

Satellites boost mobile access

Low Earth orbit satellites operate at an altitude of between 160km and 2,000km above the Earth’s surface. Examples include the roughly 7,000 Starlink satellites owned and operated by tech billionaire Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, that are currently in orbit.

The new generation of these satellites incorporates a technology known as “direct to device”. This means they can directly connect with mobile phones. And it is this feature the Labor government’s new proposal seeks to utilise.

Specifically, the proposal aims to:

• expand Triple Zero (000) access for Australians across the nation
• expand outdoor voice and SMS coverage into existing mobile black spots
• improve the availability of mobile signals during disasters and power outages.

The proposal adds to carriers’ existing obligations to provide fixed phone and internet services across Australia.

In a few years, low Earth orbit satellites should also be able to provide data using an enhanced direct to device technology. The government has said it will consider including data in the obligation when the opportunity arises.

Staying safer and better connected in the bush

The telecommunications industry has long worked towards a goal of providing universal outdoor mobile coverage in Australia. Labor’s new proposal provides the impetus for the industry to take this major step forward.

It would also provide the guidance necessary to ensure a consumer safety focus remains the fundamental rationale for telecommunications.

This policy would ensure everyone can connect to emergency services, friends and family during emergencies or natural disasters.

The benefits for people living and working in regional and remote areas would be considerable.

For example, truck drivers experiencing a breakdown in the outback would be able to call for assistance. And farmers working in the remote wheat belt regions of Western Australia could stay connected with other workers and their families.

Technical problems to solve

However, there are some technical problems the telecommunications industry will need to overcome to achieve universal outdoor mobile coverage.

Across the world, nations are rolling out mobile networks that use different radio frequencies. For the universal outdoor mobile obligation to be successful, the mobile carriers will need to work with satellite providers to ensure the spectrum bands used in Australia for the 4G, and in the future 5G, mobile networks will also work with satellites.

Mobile devices connect with the network when the user makes a phone call, sends an SMS text message or browses the internet.

When the mobile is connected to a low Earth orbit satellite, it’s important that it can tell apps to “shut up” and stop trying to connect to the network to transmit data. Otherwise the connected mobiles could cause congestion and limit service reliability and resilience.

There are mobile handsets that have this capability today. But the vast majority of older mobile handsets do not. A list of compatible mobile handsets would need to be compiled and made available, so that consumers can consider this information when purchasing a mobile.

To connect to a low Earth orbit satellite, it is anticipated a mobile will need to be used in a location where the sky can be seen directly. And initially at least, using a satellite-connected mobile inside a vehicle will require an external antenna.

A timely step forward

The government says the introduction of a universal outdoor mobile obligation would provide an opportunity to modernise and expand existing service obligations for mobile carriers. For both to be successful, there is also a need for minimum performance standards.

Providing mobile voice call and SMS text access across Australia is of little value if the service quality is poor, and fails during an emergency or natural disaster.

That being said, Labor’s proposal should gain bipartisan support. It is a timely step forward that will bring positive outcomes for all Australians, especially those living and working in regional and remote areas.

Mark A Gregory has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network grants program and the auDA Foundation. Life member of the Telecommunications Association.

– ref. Calling 000 for help in an emergency doesn’t work in parts of Australia – but a new plan could change that – https://theconversation.com/calling-000-for-help-in-an-emergency-doesnt-work-in-parts-of-australia-but-a-new-plan-could-change-that-250762

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yuting Zhang, Professor of Health Economics, The University of Melbourne

Unaffordable GP visits has become a pressing issue amid the increasing cost-of-living crisis. About 30% of Australians delayed or didn’t see a GP in 2023–24.

To solve this problem, Labor has proposed extending bulk billing incentives to all Australians. It hopes to increase bulk billing from 78% to 90% by 2030.

The Coalition has promised to match Labor’s plan.

Why not aim for 100%? It might seem a worthy goal to make GP care free for everyone, for every visit. But the evidence suggests there’s benefit to getting those on higher incomes to contribute a small amount to the cost of seeing a GP.

GP care should be free for these Australians

We should aim for access to GP care to be affordable and equitable. For some people, this should mean they can access the services for free.

Appointments for children should be free. Making health checks regular and accessible during childhood is an effective long-term investment which can delay the onset of disease.

GP visits should also be free for people with low incomes. Free primary care can mean people who would otherwise avoid seeing a GP can have their ongoing conditions managed, undergo preventive health checks, and fill prescriptions.

When people skip GP visits and can’t afford to fill their prescriptions, their conditions can worsen. This can reduce the person’s quality of life, and require higher-cost emergency department visits and hospital care.

Appointments in rural and remote areas should also be free. Australians living in rural and remote areas currently pay more to see a GP, have less access to care when they need it, and experience poorer health outcomes and shorter lives than their city counterparts.

Making GP visits free for rural and remote Australians would help reduce this rural–urban gap.

However, providing free GP care for everyone can cause unnecessary strain on health budgets and make the policy unsustainable in the long run.

What can happen if you make care free for all?

In general, when the price is low, or something is free, people use these services more. This includes medical care and medications. Free GP care may encourage more people to see their GP more than is necessary.

Previous research showed that free care increased the use of health care but does not necessarily improve health outcomes, especially for those who are relatively healthy.

If people are using GP services when they’re not really needed, this takes limited resources from those who really need them and can increase waiting times.

Australia is already experiencing a GP shortage. Higher patient volumes could leave existing GPs overwhelmed and overstretched. This can reduce the quality of care.

Countries that have made primary health care free for all, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, still report issues with access and equity. In Canada, 22% of Canadian adults do not have access to regular primary care. In the United Kingdom, people who live in poor areas struggle to get access to care.

Make co-payments more affordable

To balance affordability for patients with the financial viability of primary care, Australians who can afford to contribute to the cost of their GP care should pay a small amount.

However, the A$60 many of us currently pay to visit a GP is arguably too expensive, as it may prompt some to forego care when they need it.

A relatively smaller co-payment in the range of around $20 to $30 to visit the GP would help discourage unnecessary visits when resources are limited, but be less likely to turn patients off seeking this care.

Providing free GP visits for all may not be efficient or sustainable, but making it more affordable and equitable can lead to a more efficient and sustainable care system and doing so is within our reach.

Read more:
Should we aim to bulk-bill everyone for GP visits? We asked 5 experts

Yuting Zhang has received funding from the Australian Research Council (future fellowship project ID FT200100630), Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Victorian Department of Health, and National Health and Medical Research Council. In the past, Professor Zhang has received funding from several US institutes including the US National Institutes of Health, Commonwealth fund, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She has not received funding from for-profit industry including the private health insurance industry.

Karinna Saxby has previously received funding from the Department of Health and Aged Care,

– ref. The major parties want 9 in 10 GP visits bulk billed by 2030. Here’s why we shouldn’t aim for 100% – https://theconversation.com/the-major-parties-want-9-in-10-gp-visits-bulk-billed-by-2030-heres-why-we-shouldnt-aim-for-100-249605

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dirk Baur, Professor of Finance, The University of Western Australia

The gold price has surged to a new all-time high above US$2,900 (A$4,544) an ounce this month.

It has risen by 12% since the start of the year and clearly outperformed US and Australian stock markets. The US stock index S&P500 is up 4% and the ASX 200 has gained just 2% in that time.

That follows an extraordinary run in 2024, when the precious metal surged 27%, the biggest rise in 14 years.

The drivers behind this surge include heightened uncertainty and fear of inflation that has been stoked by US President Donald Trump’s threats of tariffs, together with increased demand from central banks.

What explains gold’s recent rally?

There are many factors at play.

The supply of gold through gold mine production and recycling is relatively constant over time. But the demand is more variable, and consists of four major components: jewellery, technology, investment and central banks.

In 2024, jewellery accounted for about 50% of total demand, technology or industrial demand was 5%, investment demand was 25% and central bank demand was 20%.

Investment demand refers to investors who buy gold as an asset. Central banks generally buy gold to diversify their reserve holdings.

As all four demand components vary over time (some more than others), gold price movements are sometimes driven by jewellery demand, sometimes by investor demand, and sometimes – as has happened recently – by central bank demand.

What adds to the difficulty is that both the gold supply and gold demand are global. The supply comes from gold mines across the globe, from emerging countries in Africa and industrial countries such as Australia and Canada.

The same is true for demand. While China and India dominate jewellery demand, the demand comes from many countries, as does investment demand. Central bank demand stems from large and small central banks around the world.

Why is there demand for gold?

One key reason for the popularity of gold is that it is considered to be a store of value. This means gold rises with inflation and maintains its value in the long run.

In other words, an ounce of gold buys the same basket of goods (or more) today than 20 years ago. This is not the case for money (or fiat currency) such as the US or Australian dollars.

Due to inflation, the value of money is not constant but depreciates over time. Because gold holds its value, it is also called an inflation hedge.

While the store of value property holds in the long run, there is another important property that is more short-lived and particularly relevant during crisis periods.

Gold is seen as a safe haven in troubled times

The safe haven property of gold means gold prices increase when investors seek shelter in response to a shock or crisis. For example, investors bought gold in reaction to the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks, the start of the global financial crisis in 2008, and the outbreak of COVID in 2020.

The safe haven effect of gold is generally short-lived, often resulting in falling gold prices after about 15 days.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the subsequent sanctions on Russia – especially the freeze of Russia’s foreign government bond holdings abroad – has highlighted the risk to governments of losing access to foreign currency holdings.

It appears some governments or central banks reacted to this with increased gold purchases. This led to a record high of 1,082 tonnes of central bank gold purchases in 2022.

2023 saw the second-highest annual purchase in history at 1,051 tonnes, followed by 1,041 tonnes in 2024.

The potential reaction of central banks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine is akin to investors seeking a safe haven, but is a rather new phenomenon for central banks.

There is an additional, secondary, effect of such central bank purchases and rebalancing from US dollars to gold.

Selling US dollars for gold implies a weakening US dollar, which increases the price of gold. (If the US dollar weakens, you need more US dollars to buy gold.) The inverse relationship between gold prices and currencies also makes gold a currency hedge. That means gold can protect investors from potential losses due to fluctuating exchange rates. This effect is particularly strong for rather volatile currencies such as the Australian dollar.

In contrast to the shock caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the more recent increase in gold prices is harder to associate with a single shock.

Broader economic worries

The election of Trump has not only increased the risk of higher inflation due to tariffs and a trade war, it has also increased geopolitical risk as the US government reassesses its alliances with other countries.

The relative unpredictability of Trump compared with his predecessors and with politicians more generally may have increased uncertainty and gold prices.
The recent gold price trend highlights that “gold loves bad news”.

Gold prices may anticipate geopolitical shocks or higher inflation. Gold prices rose well before inflation increased after the pandemic and started to fall when inflation had peaked in 2022.

It is not clear exactly why gold has risen to all-time highs in 2025, but it’s possibly not good news for the world economy.

Dirk Baur 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. The gold price has surged to record highs. What’s behind the move? – https://theconversation.com/the-gold-price-has-surged-to-record-highs-whats-behind-the-move-250391

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leigh Carriage, Senior Lecturer in Music, Southern Cross University

The multi-Grammy award winner Roberta Flack has passed away at 88.

Her approach and sound were a unique combination of soul, folk, rhythm and blues, jazz, pop and musicianship, and arranging skills so broad she had had a lasting impact on future artists.

Her sustained career laid a foundation for pop and neo-soul artists Alicia Keys, Erykah Badu, Solange, J Dilla, Flying Lotus, and D’Angelo.

Over her career, Flack performed some original songs, but she is better known for her myriad of covers and performances of songs written for her. No matter who wrote the songs, she made all of them her own. She was a master of musical interpretation.

An early life of music

Flack was born in North Carolina in 1937. Both of her parents played piano; her mother was the church organist.

Her early interest in gospel tunes was encouraged and supported with her participation in a local Baptist church in Arlington, Virginia, and many relatives who sang.

Her formal classical musical training continued at Howard University. After a brief period teaching at a junior high school, Flack started landing regular bookings at Mr. Henry’s, a Washington DC bar where Flack performed a range of traditional spirituals, jazz, blues and folk repertoire.

In 1968, she signed with Atlantic Records.

Her brilliant debut

Her debut album, First Take, was recorded over just ten hours in 1969 at Atlantic Recording Studios, New York. First take indeed! Genius!

Considering Flack’s background, religious inspiration and being surrounded by the social movements of the 1960s, it is not surprising that her first album features songs that address race and religion. The album creates a fusion of music with themes of spiritually and compelling political issues.

Flack blended genres effortlessly. One of the highlights of the album is Flack’s interpretation of the folk song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. Written in 1957 by British political singer-songwriter Ewan MacColl for the vocalist Peggy Seeger, Flack’s interpretation is notably delivered with a deliberately slower tempo, and with legato phrasing – smooth, and connected.

The lesser-known second track, the Venezuelan/Mexican song Angelitos Negros, offers a soulful statement of black rights.

Flack’s powerful vocal delivery evokes a haunting sense of loss and refined passion. This, combined with her choice of musical arrangement with repeating lyrics, forms a commanding protest song.

Always forging her own path

Labels often described her work as “adult contemporary” or “easy-listening”.

This barely addresses the diversity within her catalogue, which features Broadway ballads like The Impossible Dream, her definitive interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye, Bee Gees and Beatles songs, and folk classics.

Blending genres like jazz, latin, rock and folk with nuanced elements of classical into her own arrangements and song interpretations, to the listener Flack’s interpretation becomes authorship.

In this way, Flack played a role in defining pop music’s processes.

Flack is best known for her majestic indelible early hits songs like Killing Me Softly with His Song, Where Is the Love and The Closer I Get to You.

The 1973 live recording of Killing Me Softly With His Song, written by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel, is breathtaking.

Flack opens without an introduction: straight in, delicately infusing the lyrics with a vast array of tonal shades. The smooth phrases are delivered with a beautifully aligned dynamic, like the most carefully crafted expression.

In 1996 Killing Me Softly with His Song, was reinvented by the Fugees with lead vocalist Lauryn Hill.

Where Is the Love, a duet with Donny Hathaway, brings together their two legendary voices perfectly. Here were two highly skilled pianists with incredible musicality with voices that blended perfectly together.

I have always enjoyed Flack’s version of Compared to What. Flack’s emotive delivery; the warmth of her tone; the panache; the edgeless smooth phrasing pulls you near in complete comfort.

For Flack the lyric meaning – telling the story with clarity and honesty – was paramount. Her expression is refined with understated inventiveness. There is such power in her performances. She is spellbinding, reaching a deep soulful place that is both classically and contemporarily informed.

While Flack wrote some songs, such as You Know What It’s Like, she was not predominantly a songwriter. Instead, she was a virtuosic interpreter of music. Whether penned by Flack or not, each song’s interpretation sounds authored by her. That is the sense you are getting when you listen to her music: it doesn’t matter who it’s written by, her interpretation makes you believe it is by her.

Leigh Carriage 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. Remembering Roberta Flack, a spellbinding virtuoso of musical interpretation – https://theconversation.com/remembering-roberta-flack-a-spellbinding-virtuoso-of-musical-interpretation-250763

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philippa Collin, Professor, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

Ahead of the Australian election, candidates, advisers and political parties might be paying attention to what young people think. And if they’re not, they should be.

This election will be the first in which Gen Z and Millennial voters (aged 18–40) will outnumber Baby Boomers (aged 60–79). Many of these young people were in high school during the previous two elections.

While there are concerns about the effectiveness of civics and citizenship education, there is also evidence young people are interested in, and active on, many issues.

So what do young people care about most? We analysed thousands of pieces of writing by young Australians to find out.

What matters to young people?

For the past 20 years, young people have been telling us what matters to them as part of the Whitlam Institute’s What Matters? writing competition. Students in years 5–12 can write about whatever they like. Most are directed by their schools to contribute as a part of their civics curriculum. Some opt to enter the competition out of interest.

A unique sample, our analysis of 22,500 entries from 2019 to 2024 provides insight into the issues that resonate most with this generation.

We identified common themes: society and democracy, mental health, environment and climate change, intergenerational justice and (social) media.

1. Society and democracy

We found young people were actively grappling with complex and diverse issues in an increasingly fragmented political landscape. They are also concerned about anti-democratic forces.

They reflect on what makes this moment exceptional – climate change, war and violence, rapid technological change – and consider actions needed from individuals, communities and institutions for them to have a future.

Our research shows young people prioritise care in local and global futures, valuing peer support, family, intergenerational ties, and connections across communities and borders. The most common topic was family, followed by pollution, racism and poverty.

An ethics of care shapes their sense of belonging and responsibility –
and the responsibilities of government. As a senior student wrote in 2022:

Children are being abused, or watching one of their parents be abused countless times. The Government needs to step up and do their job properly by using more effective ways of helping children and their parents get out of unsafe environments.

Our sentiment analysis shows that they write with hope – and frequently with anxiety and fear.

2. Mental health

Many young people write about “health”, including physical health and the health of communities and natural environments. Most often, though, they write about mental health and the causes of worry, distress and illness.

Young people want governments and leaders to tackle the causes of the causes of ill-health. In other words, they want action on what creates the drivers of ill-health, including climate change, inequality and loneliness.

For policymakers and advocates, this means recognising mental health as deeply connected to broader social and political issues – issues young people believe governments must address if they are serious about improving wellbeing.

3. Environment and climate change

Environmental issues, particularly climate change, were dominant themes — more so than in previous years. Students write about their relationship to the environment and the benefits of connecting to nature.

Some are calling out extractive relationships with the environment, particularly by large corporations. They demand urgent action from individuals and institutions, advocating for policies that prioritise future generations and the planet.

A senior student wrote in 2019:

our future is under threat because of climate change […] it is our generation’s future that is on the line, yet we continue to be unheard.

4. Intergenerational justice

Young people see intergenerational justice and social justice as interconnected, demanding climate action, economic opportunity and democratic participation. Their concerns reflect a commitment to human rights including refugee rights, gender equality and Indigenous justice.

Their writing shows awareness of Australia’s role in the world. Many discuss global conflicts and the responsibilities of nations in promoting peace and security. They want to contribute to efforts to address these issues.

Young people want to trust and have more of a role in Australian democracy. They want those in power, and the institutions and agencies over which they preside, to be more transparent, to communicate regularly and honestly, and to show how they are taking action for a better future for all generations.

Key areas where young people want greater accountability are in government, the media and business. Twelve-year-old Ivy said in an interview:

young children should have a direct voice to parliament […] adults would take us more seriously instead of just viewing us as just kids. If issues affect kids right now or this generation, they should have a say about that to parliament.

Young people want their activism and efforts recognised and supported. They hope for a democracy in which they’re not just heard, but are actively engaged by leaders, with a direct voice in government (at all levels) and institutions.

5. (Social) media

Young people highlight social media’s pros and cons, calling for strategies that better engage with them to reduce harm and maximise benefits.

They stress the need for digital literacy to navigate online information critically, and they want online environments to be supportive and safe.

Young people are concerned about how they are represented in the media generally. They argue that inclusive and accurate portrayals are key to having their voices heard and respected – crucial for meaningful civic participation.

Candidates on notice

Young people are not just future constituents – they are voting at the next election.

The young people whose writing we analysed have formed civic and political values during a turbulent time in Australian and world history: catastrophic bushfires and floods, a climate crisis, a pandemic, and digital technologies that are changing our lives.

They reject the idea they are too young to understand issues, and instead want a participatory democracy in which their voices influence real decisions. Indeed, the public has shown a desire to let young people have more of a say.

Our analysis tells us many of this year’s 18–24-year-old voters are informed, engaged and ready to hold leaders accountable. They want action on climate, mental health, economic justice and democratic accountability. They’re tired of being ignored and sidelined.

The authors would like to acknowledge research assistant Ammar Shoukat Randhawa for their work on the research this article reports.

Philippa Collin receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Telstra Foundation, Google, batyr, Whitlam Institute, Academy Of The Social Sciences In Australia and NSW Health. In recent years she has received funding from the NHMRC, the Federal Department of Education, Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies.

Azadeh Dastyari is the Director, Research and Policy at the Whitlam Institute. She also receives funding from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN).

Michael Everitt Hartup has no conflict of interest.

Sky Hugman receives funding from The Whitlam Institute

– ref. What do young people want to see in politics? More than 20,000 pieces of their writing hold some answers – https://theconversation.com/what-do-young-people-want-to-see-in-politics-more-than-20-000-pieces-of-their-writing-hold-some-answers-250062

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dennis Wesselbaum, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Otago

Climate change is no longer a distant threat. It’s here, it’s real and it increasingly affects us all.

But predicting climate change and its associated costs, particularly over long periods of time, is inherently uncertain. And based on the best available evidence from organisations such as the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the economic costs of climate change appear to be small – making this a relatively weak argument for environmental action.

At its most basic, climate is the long-term average of the weather we experience. Or, as former president of the American Meteorological Society, Marshall Shepherd, famously put it, “weather is your mood, and climate is your personality”.

It’s widely accepted that climate change refers to a shift in long-term weather patterns, typically driven by human activities.

But the impact of climate change, ranging from rising temperatures and extreme weather events to health impacts and disruptions to food and water supply, varies greatly. Some areas experience more extreme impacts than others, exacerbating social and economic disparities.

There also appears to be a false sense about our state of knowledge. For example, many believe climate change already causes more frequent and intense storms, but the evidence for this is inconclusive.

Trying to predict the unpredictable

To understand the economic costs of climate change, we must first grasp how climate affects socioeconomic outcomes.

The relationship between temperature and socioeconomic outcomes can be modelled using a “dose-response” function, which shows how much a given change in temperature (the “dose”) influences the outcome (for example, temperature-related mortality).

A key challenge is to understand the shape of the dose-response function. Is the relationship between temperature and mortality linear or is it more complex? Does it have thresholds beyond which the effects substantially change? Is there only one function or are there different ones for different populations?

As climate change shifts the distribution of weather variables, it alters the outcomes as well. Yet, predicting how these distributions will evolve is difficult.

The further into the future we look, the harder it is to make reliable predictions about both weather and the associated economic costs.

If you were asked in 1925 to predict the economy in 2000, for example, how accurate would you have been? In 1925 you drove a Ford Model T, used coal-fired steam trains and passenger ships for travel, and a trip from London to Auckland took up to eight weeks by sea. You used a telegraph for long-distance communication and a radio for entertainment.

Compare that with the globalised, interconnected economy of the year 2000. Given the technological advancements, would your prediction have been even close?

Cost estimates

There are a wide range of estimates on the economic costs of climate change. But one of the most reliable has come from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The panel’s latest assessment report avoids quantifying the economic costs of climate change. So, to understand the economic costs of climate change, we can use the best estimate based on the previous report and the insights from meta studies. These analyses posit a temperature rise of 3.7°C will reduce global gross domestic product (GDP) by about 2.6% (ranging from 0.5 to 8.2%) by 2100.

For New Zealand, this is equivalent to about NZ$11 billion, or twice the cost of Auckland’s City Rail Link.

However, this comparison is extremely misleading. The value of 2.6% today will differ substantially from 2.6% in 75 years.

The New Zealand economy grew at a compound annual rate of 1.4% between 1960 and 2000. Using this same average growth rate, New Zealanders will have a 184% higher standard of living in 2100. If nothing is done to address climate change, and given the best cost estimate, our standard of living would still be 176% higher than it is now.

Reporting costs

There are also issues with how some people report costs. For instance, while the total damage caused by floods and hurricanes in the United States has gone up in dollar amounts, it has not actually increased as a percentage of peoples’ incomes.

In this context, it is crucial to distinguish between the damage caused by climate change and that resulting from human activities – such as the construction of more houses, higher property prices and river management practices.

The economic costs of climate change based on the best available evidence appear to be small and highly uncertain.

Shifting the focus

Even if we accept our best estimates, economic costs are not the issue, but saving the environment is.

Instead of focusing the debate of climate change around economic costs, we need to refocus the debate on tangible impacts happening right now: retreating glaciers, species extinction, shifting seasons and coastal erosion, to name a few.

Addressing these issues is costly, but action will be needed to save the environment and ensure a liveable world into the future.

Dennis Wesselbaum 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. Calculating the economic cost of climate change is tricky, even futile – it’s also a distraction – https://theconversation.com/calculating-the-economic-cost-of-climate-change-is-tricky-even-futile-its-also-a-distraction-248862

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yi Li, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Macquarie University

When you’re deciding what to eat for lunch or dinner, do you consider the meal’s greenhouse gas emissions? How do you compare the carbon footprint of a beef sandwich with that of a falafel wrap?

Most people can’t tell what’s better for the climate. Even those who care deeply about making sustainable food choices can struggle.

In Australia, meat products are responsible for almost half (49%) the greenhouse gas emissions of products consumed at home. Switching from these high-emission foods to lower-emission foods, such as plant-based meals, can significantly reduce household emissions. But a lack of knowledge may be stopping people doing the right thing.

The good news is my colleagues and I have a simple solution. Highlighting the source of the food as animal- or plant-based on carbon labels makes a big difference to consumer choices. In our latest research, we show this new carbon label encourages switching from animal-based to plant-based foods.

Closing the knowledge gap

Previous research has shown consumers consistently underestimate the vast difference in greenhouse gas emissions between animal- and plant-based foods. For instance, producing one kilogram of beef emits 60kg of greenhouse gases, whereas producing the same quantity of peas emits just 1kg of greenhouse gases. However, most people think the gap between the two is much smaller.

This matters because collectively, our food choices have a big impact on climate change. Agriculture generates almost a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, with animal products the biggest contributors.

Making carbon labels more informative

A “carbon footprint” refers to the greenhouse gas emissions associated with a product.

Globally, there is increasing interest in carbon food labelling, given its potential to nudge consumers towards more sustainable food choices. In Australia, such labelling is voluntary and not yet widespread.

Most carbon labels follow a similar approach. They typically display a number representing greenhouse gas emissions, and a traffic-light system indicating the level of environmental impact from green (low) to red (high). But such labels do not indicate whether the food is animal- or plant-based. So a high carbon score does not help people identify the source of the emissions.

We designed a new type of label. It clearly displays whether the food is sourced mainly from animals or plants, along with the standard emissions score and traffic-light colour code. This approach is especially useful for the growing segment of pre-prepared and packaged foods such as soups and other ready-to-eat meals, which often contain a mix of meat and plant-based food.

Our label creates a mental link between a food source and its carbon impact. When a consumer sees high carbon scores and red traffic lights appearing more frequently on meat and other animal products, they begin to make the connection between those products and higher emissions. This is key to addressing a lack of knowledge around food carbon emissions.

We tested our label against the existing labels in a series of experiments with 1,817 everyday consumers from Australia, the United States and the Netherlands.

One experiment involved soup. Compared with the group exposed to the standard carbon label, the group exposed to our label learned to associate animal-based soups with higher greenhouse gas emissions more effectively. They were more accurate at estimating the greenhouse gas emissions of a second batch of soups without labels.

This improved knowledge also translates to more climate-friendly food choices. In another experiment with Australian consumers, we encouraged participants to choose five meals from ten options. Five were animal-based and five were plant-based.

Half the participants saw the meal options with our carbon labels, and the other half did not see the carbon labels. The group exposed to our carbon labels chose fewer animal-based options in their weekly meal plan. In this case, we don’t know whether a third group exposed to the standard label would also make more climate-friendly choices, but our earlier experiments suggested our label was more effective.

In the final experiment conducted in the Netherlands, displaying our carbon label made university students more likely to choose the plant-based snack option rather than the animal-based option.

When knowledge isn’t enough

While people who care most about sustainable eating may think they know better than others, we found that is not the case. These people were not better able than other participants to tell the difference in greenhouse gas emissions between animal- and plant-based foods without seeing our carbon label.

But they were better learners. When confronted with the facts about the differences between animal and plant-based foods on our labels, they were more likely to change their choices and switch to plant-based foods.

What this means for consumers and businesses

A simple change to food labels could help consumers make more informed environmental choices. For businesses and policymakers, it shows displaying only carbon numbers isn’t enough – the food source is crucial.

Some forward-thinking restaurants and food companies are already experimenting with adding carbon labels to the menu to encourage diners to choose climate-friendly dishes. Our research suggests this approach could be more effective when combined with the new carbon labels we designed.

Implications for climate action

As Australia grapples with meeting its climate commitments, helping consumers understand the environmental impact of their food choices will become increasingly important.

The challenge for businesses, policymakers and researchers isn’t convincing people to care about sustainability – they already do. Almost half of Australian shoppers (46%) say sustainability is important to them and influences their purchases, despite cost-of-living pressures.

But most sustainable actions in retail involve recyclable packaging, products and materials, and local produce. The carbon emission implications of these actions, sadly, are far less than reducing animal-based food consumption.

Instead, we need to focus on giving people the tools to make their environmental concerns count. Our carbon labels could be the key to helping consumers turn their sustainable intentions into meaningful climate action.

Yi Li 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. Want a side of CO₂ with that? Better food labels help us choose more climate-friendly foods – https://theconversation.com/want-a-side-of-co-with-that-better-food-labels-help-us-choose-more-climate-friendly-foods-250513

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aaron J. Cavosie, Senior lecturer, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University

In the 1970s, images from the NASA Mariner 9 orbiter revealed water-sculpted surfaces on Mars. This settled the once-controversial question of whether water ever rippled over the red planet.

Since then, more and more evidence has emerged that water once played a large role on our planetary neighbour.

For example, Martian meteorites record evidence for water back to 4.5 billion years ago. On the young side of the timescale, impact craters formed over the past few years show the presence of ice under the surface today.

Today the hot topics focus on when water appeared, how much was there, and how long it lasted. Perhaps the most burning of all Mars water-related topics nowadays is: were there ever oceans?

A new study published in PNAS today has made quite a splash. The study involved a team of Chinese and American scientists led by Jianhui Li from Guangzhou University in China, and was based on work done by the China National Space Administration’s Mars rover Zhurong.

Data from Zhurong provide an unprecedented look into rocks buried near a proposed shoreline billions of years old. The researchers claim to have found beach deposits from an ancient Martian ocean.

Blue water on a red planet

Rovers exploring Mars study many aspects of the planet, including the geology, soil and atmosphere. They’re often looking for any evidence of water. That’s in part because water is a vital factor for determining if Mars ever supported life.

Sedimentary rocks are often a particular focus of investigations, because they can contain evidence of water – and therefore life – on Mars.

For example, the NASA Perseverance rover is currently searching for life in a delta deposit. Deltas are triangular regions often found where rivers flow into larger bodies of water, depositing large amounts of sediment. Examples on Earth include the Mississippi delta in the United States and the Nile delta in Egypt.

The delta the Perseverance rover is exploring is located within the roughly 45km wide Jezero impact crater, believed to be the site of an ancient lake.

Zhurong had its sights set on a very different body of water – the vestiges of an ancient ocean located in the northern hemisphere of Mars.

The god of fire

The Zhurong rover is named after a mythical god of fire.

It was launched by the Chinese National Space Administration in 2020 and was active on Mars from 2021 to 2022. Zhurong landed within Utopia Planitia, a vast expanse and the largest impact basin on Mars which stretches some 3,300km in diameter.

Zhurong is investigating an area near a series of ridges – described as paleoshorelines – that extend for thousands of kilometres across Mars. The paleoshorelines have previously been interpreted as the remnants of a global ocean that encircled the northern third of Mars.

However, there are differing views among scientists about this, and more observations are needed.

On Earth, the geologic record of oceans is distinctive. Modern oceans are only a few hundreds of millions of years old. Yet the global rock record is riddled with deposits made by many older oceans, some several billions of years old.

What lies beneath

To determine if rocks in Utopia Planitia are consistent with having been deposited by an ocean, the rover collected data along a 1.3km measured line known as a transect at the margin of the basin. The transect was oriented perpendicular to the paleoshoreline. The goal was to work out what rock types are there, and what story they tell.

The Zhurong rover used a technique called ground penetrating radar, which probed down to 100 metres below the surface. The data revealed many characteristics of the buried rocks, including their orientation.

Rocks imaged along the transect contained many reflective layers that are visible by ground penetrating radar down to at least 30 metres. All the layers also dip shallowly into the basin, away from the paleoshoreline. This geometry exactly reflects how sediments are deposited into oceans on Earth.

The ground penetrating radar also measured how much the rocks are affected by an electrical field. The results showed the rocks are more likely to be sedimentary and are not volcanic flows, which can also form layers.

The study compared Zhurong data gathered from Utopia Planitia with ground penetrating radar data for different sedimentary environments on Earth.

The result of the comparison is clear – the rocks Zhurong imaged are a match for coastal sediments deposited along the margin of an ocean.

Zhurong found a beach.

A wet Mars

The Noachian period of Martian history, from 4.1 to 3.7 billion years ago, is the poster child for a wet Mars. There is abundant evidence from orbital images of valley networks and mineral maps that the surface of Noachian Mars had surface water.

However, there is less evidence for surface water during the Hesperian period, from 3.7 to 3 billion years ago. Stunning orbital images of large outflow channels in Hesperian land forms, including an area of canyons known as Kasei Valles, are believed to have formed from catastrophic releases of ground water, rather than standing water.

From this view, Mars appears to have cooled down and dried up by Hesperian time.

However, the Zhurong rover findings of coastal deposits formed in an ocean may indicate that surface water was stable on Mars longer than previously recognised. It may have lasted into the Late Hesperian period.

This may mean that habitable environments, around an ocean, extended to more recent times.

Aaron J. Cavosie has received funding from Australian Research Council and the Space Science and Technology Centre at Curtin University.

– ref. Scientists have discovered a 3 billion-year-old beach buried on Mars – https://theconversation.com/scientists-have-discovered-a-3-billion-year-old-beach-buried-on-mars-250496

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Valeria Maria Rigobon, Lecturer in Literacy, Australian Catholic University

It is common for Australian children to grow up with languages other than English in their family lives.

More than one-fifth of Australians report speaking a language other than English at home.

But when it comes time to start school, it’s common for parents to worry about raising a child to be bilingual or multilingual.

They may wonder, am I harming my child’s English development if I speak another language at home?

The short answer is no. Research shows speaking more than one language doesn’t hinder a child’s academic progress – in fact, it can even help.

What does the research say?

Up until the 1980s, some studies incorrectly suggested early exposure to more than one language could harm a child’s academic achievement. But these findings have since been widely criticised because many of the children in the studies came from economically disadvantaged backgrounds (and so were already disadvantaged in terms of their schooling).

More recent Australian research has found when socioeconomic status is accounted for, multilingual children are “indistinguishable from their monolingual peers” in literacy and numeracy by the time they are eleven years old. This is provided they have adequate English vocabulary skills by the time they finish Year 2.

Some studies show multilingual students even surpass monolingual children in different academic areas. This includes English reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation as well as numeracy. Research suggests multilingual students’ enhanced mental flexibility from switching between languages may explain their higher academic performance later in school, but this is not yet confirmed.

Do you need to learn one language before starting the other?

Research shows children can learn multiple languages at the same time, starting from infancy.

This means you don’t have to wait for a child to become fluent in one before you start learning another.

Similarly, a child does not have to be a highly skilled English speaker to start to learn to read in English. They can develop their spoken and written/reading language skills at the same time.

It is also important to look at children’s skills across all the languages they know.

Research on children aged up to 30 months found multilingual children often had smaller vocabularies in English than their monolingual peers. But they had a healthy range when assessed on words they knew in all languages.

A common misconception is multilingual children may “confuse” words between languages, but this is not the case. They actually learn quite quickly whom they can communicate with in each language, and switch between languages without much effort.

For example, Valeria’s niece Aurora is four and is already fluent in Hungarian, Spanish and Ukrainian. There are videos of Aurora speaking Spanish with her Venezuelan father and grandmother, turning to respond to her grandfather in Hungarian, and switching to Ukrainian to speak with her mother, all in one conversation.

How can I help my child learn multiple languages?

Research shows it is important a child receives lots of exposure to each language through meaningful interactions with people who speak those languages.

There is no clear definition of the amount needed, but it should be regular – for example, everyday talk with parents or visits or phone calls with grandparents who share the home language.

Also, if you’re worried your child isn’t getting enough English exposure outside school, do not abandon your home language. Instead, create other English opportunities, such as in playgroups, daycare, sports teams or other out-of-school activities.

Ultimately, the best thing parents can do to support their children’s multilingual learning is build a community filled with native speakers of English and the home language(s).

Staying consistently connected to this community of people who value each language, especially after children start school, will also support a child’s motivation to keep growing in each language.

Rauno Parrila receives funding from Australian Research Council and Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Valeria Maria Rigobon 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. Do you speak other languages at home? This will not hold your child back at school – https://theconversation.com/do-you-speak-other-languages-at-home-this-will-not-hold-your-child-back-at-school-250405

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrei Lux, Lecturer of Leadership and Research Cluster Lead, Edith Cowan University

Dictatorships would appear to be on the rise. Russian president Vladimir Putin, US president Donald Trump and even un-elected tech entrepreneur, Elon Musk are ruling by decree like “kings”.

Some might naively call these leaders “authentic” for saying and often doing what they believe. But that’s not the whole story.

Such unilateral decisions are deeply divisive, and often opposed. In the US, the federal court blocked Trump’s executive order banning workplace diversity, equity and inclusion programs to try to contain the damage.

Researchers used to think that authenticity was inherently good and moral. But as authentic leadership research gets more sophisticated with robust experimental methods, what we know about this powerful approach is changing quickly.

Experiments use controlled simulations and real-world field trials to show how leadership behaviour influences followers. These new methods are the gold standard for establishing cause-and-effect relationships, and they’re challenging old ideas.

Authentic leadership redefined

After 20 years of research, we’ve redefined authentic leadership as a process of sending leadership “signals”. What leaders say and do sends powerful messages about their values.

In a digital age where every tweet and public act is scrutinised, understanding these signals is important for employees and voters. And keeping up with this new way of expressing authentic leadership is vital for anyone seeking to lead in today’s volatile world.

In our latest article, we looked at what authentic leadership involves and why signalling is so important.

But what exactly is “signalling”?

Sending leadership ‘signals’

Everything leaders do or say – how they behave, express themselves, look, and communicate – sends messages to everyone watching. These messages are “signals”. Leaders influence their followers by sending signals that will trigger specific thoughts or emotions.

But executive life is complex and full of inherent contradictions between personal authenticity and the demands of leadership roles.

High-profile figures such as Musk and Trump show how leadership signals can be polarising. Just last week Musk used his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to call for an unconstitutional election in Ukraine.

Signalling authentic leadership

Demonstrating authentic leadership depends on sending clear, observable signals that reflect the leaders’ principles and ethical convictions.

Here are some tips for spotting authentic leadership signals in everyday interactions. It is notable that it’s easier to find examples of leaders displaying the complete opposite.

1. Self-awareness

Leaders signal self-awareness by regularly seeking honest feedback and reflecting on their own strengths and weaknesses. They openly acknowledge mistakes and share their learning. They value personal growth and continuous improvement.

Instead, Trump repeatedly ignores his own mistakes, even after they are exposed. His latest claim to be debunked was that Ukrainian President Zelensky’s approval was 4%, while his actual approval is closer to 60%.

2. Internal moral perspective

Leaders signal an internal moral perspective by making decisions – even if they are unpopular – firmly rooted in core ethical values. Upholding these values and encouraging open discussions on ethics is a principled approach to leadership.

Instead, Musk has given federal workers 48 hours to justify their employment. The directive leaves little room for open dialogue on the ethical rationale or moral implications of such a drastic measure. He relies, instead, on top-down command.

Key federal agencies including the FBI and Pentagon have told employees to ignore the email.

3. Balanced processing

Leaders signal balanced processing by seeking different views and considering all options before making a decision. Admitting any biases and using team brainstorming or surveys, ensures fair and informed decision-making.

Instead, Trump has signed more than 50 executive orders since taking office in January. These include some that are unlawful, as an open display of personal bias and unilateral decision-making.

4. Relational transparency

Leaders signal relational transparency by sharing appropriate personal experiences and vulnerabilities with their teams. Being honest about limitations and inviting open dialogue builds trust through genuine and consistent communication.

Instead social media guru, Mark Zuckerberg, another Trump ally, assured staff his charity the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative would continue its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Then, only weeks later, he dismantled it.

You can’t just fake it, either

Leadership signals can convey honest information or be manipulated to send contrived messages.

Trying to fake it doesn’t work. Leadership behaviour has to align with the leaders’ real values and internal sense of self – otherwise it’s not authentic leadership. It’s just impression management.

Learning the difference empowers us to understand leaders’ actions and better navigate the post-truth era of global business and politics.

Andrei Lux works for Edith Cowan University and is a Member of the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management.

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

– ref. Trump, Putin and Musk all share a leadership style – we’ve figured out what it is – https://theconversation.com/trump-putin-and-musk-all-share-a-leadership-style-weve-figured-out-what-it-is-250502

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Romy Lauche, Deputy Director (Research), National Centre for Naturopathic Medicine, Southern Cross University

Ramadan is one of the most significant months of the Islamic lunar calendar. It marks the time when the Quran was revealed to Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him).

Almost 2 billion Muslims worldwide observe this month of prayer and reflection, which includes fasting between two prayers, Fajr at dawn and Maghrib at sunset.

Ramadan is about purifying the mind, body and soul, and practising self-restraint. It’s a time for spiritual growth and dedication to God (or Allah in Arabic). Ramadan also brings people together for meals and celebrations, with a focus on helping those less fortunate.

Depending on where you live, Ramadan can mean going 12 to 19 hours without eating or drinking anything, including water.

Our research shows choosing balanced, nutrient-dense foods and drinks can result in better wellbeing and greater energy levels than following your usual diet during Ramadan.

Here’s what to consider if you’re fasting for Ramadan.

Do you have any health issues?

Healthy Muslims are expected to fast during Ramadan once they have reached puberty.

Frail older adults are exempt from fasting, as are pregnant, breastfeeding and menstruating women. Anyone who cannot participate in fasting can make up for the missed fasting days later.

People with chronic illness or mental health may be exempt if fasting poses a risk to their health. If you suffer from chronic illness, such as diabetes, heart disease or kidney problems, and want to fast, consult your GP first.

Fasting can have severe health consequences for people with certain medical conditions and those who rely on prescription medication. Some medications need to be taken at a specific time (and some with food) to be safe and effective.

If you’re not drinking enough water during Ramadan, your body might also handle some medications differently: they may not work as well or cause side effects.

For people who can safely fast, here are five tips to maintain your wellbeing during Ramadan.

1. Plan ahead

In preparation for Ramadan, stock up on essentials. Plan your meals and hydration in advance, to stay on top of your nutritional intake.

Start reducing your caffeine gradually in the week leading to Ramadan, so your body can adjust. This can help prevent or reduce the fasting headaches that many experience at the beginning of Ramadan.

Move your meals gradually towards Suhoor and Iftar times, so your body gets used to the new mealtimes.

2. Stay hydrated

Staying hydrated is important during Ramadan. Women should aim to drink 2.1 litres of water or fluids (such as coconut water, clear soups, broths or herbal teas) each day. Men should aim for 2.6 litres.

Limit the intake of sugary or artificially sweetened drinks and enjoy fresh fruit juice only in moderation. Sugary drinks cause a rapid increase in blood sugar levels. The body responds by releasing insulin, causing a drop in blood sugar, which can leave you feeling fatigued, irritable and hungry.

Increase your hydration by including water-rich foods, such as cucumbers and watermelon, in your diet.

3. Get your nutrients early

Before dawn, have a nutrient-rich, slow-digesting meal, along with plenty of water.

Select healthy nutrient-dense food with proteins and fats from lean meats, fish, chickpeas, tofu, nuts and seeds.

Choose whole grain products, a variety of vegetables and fruits, and fermented foods, such as kimchi and pickles, which can support your digestion.

When you prepare your meals, consider grilling, steaming or air frying instead of deep frying.

Stay away from processed foods such as cakes, ice cream, chips and chocolates, as they often lack essential nutrients and are high in sugar, salt and fat. Processed foods also tend to be low in fibre and protein, which are crucial for maintaining a feeling of fullness.

4. Avoid the temptation to overeat in the evening

At sunset, many Muslims come together with family and friends for the fast-breaking evening meal (Iftar). During these occasions, it may be tempting to overindulge in sweets, salty snacks and fatty dishes.

But overeating can strain the digestive system, cause discomfort and disrupt sleep.

Instead, listen to your body’s signals, control your portions, and eat mindfully – this means slowly and without distractions.

Start with something small, such as a date and a glass of water. You may choose to complete the Maghrib prayer before returning for your main meal and more fluids.

5. Keep moving

Finally, try to include some light exercise into your schedule, to maintain your fitness and muscle mass, and promote sleep.

But avoid heavy workouts, sauna and intensive sports while fasting, as these may increase dehydration, which can increase your risk of feeling faint and falling.

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. Ramadan is almost here. 5 tips to boost your wellbeing and energy levels if you’re fasting – https://theconversation.com/ramadan-is-almost-here-5-tips-to-boost-your-wellbeing-and-energy-levels-if-youre-fasting-248223

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Judith Bishop, Tracey Banivanua Mar Fellow, La Trobe University

Badly behaved artificial intelligence (AI) systems have a long history in science fiction. Way back in 1961, in the famous Astro Boy comics by Osamu Tezuka, a clone of a popular robot magician was reprogrammed into a super-powered thief. In the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the shipboard computer HAL 9000 turns out to be more sinister than the astronauts on board think.

More recently, real-world chatbots such as Microsoft’s Tay have shown that AI models “going bad” isn’t sci-fi any longer. Tay started spewing racist and sexually explicit texts within hours of its public release in 2016.

The generative AI models we’ve been using since ChatGPT launched in November 2022 are generally well behaved. There are signs this may be about to change.

On February 20, the US Federal Trade Commission announced an inquiry to understand “how consumers have been harmed […] by technology platforms that limit users’ ability to share their ideas or affiliations freely and openly”. Introducing the inquiry, the commission said platforms with internal processes to suppress unsafe content “may have violated the law”.

The latest version of the Elon Musk–owned Grok model already serves up “based” opinions, and features an “unhinged mode” that is “intended to be objectionable, inappropriate, and offensive”. Recent ChatGPT updates allow the bot to produce “erotica and gore”.

These developments come after moves by US President Donald Trump to deregulate AI systems. Trump’s attempt to remove “ideological bias” from AI may see the return of rogue behaviour that AI developers have been working hard to suppress.

Executive orders

In January, Trump issued a sweeping executive order against “illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI)”, and another on “removing barriers to AI innovation” (which includes “engineered social agendas”).

In February, the US refused to join 62 other nations in signing a “Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable AI” at the Paris AI Action Summit.

What will this mean for the AI products we see around us? Some generative AI companies, including Microsoft and Google, are US federal government suppliers. These companies could come under significant direct pressure to eliminate measures to make AI systems safe, if the measures are perceived as supporting DEI or slowing innovation.

AI developers’ interpretation of the executive orders could result in AI safety teams being reduced in size or scope, or replaced by teams whose social agenda better aligns with Trump’s.

Why would that matter? Before generative AI algorithms are trained, they are neither helpful nor harmful. However, when they are fed a diet of human expression scraped from across the internet, their propensity to reflect biases and behaviours such as racism, sexism, ableism and abusive language becomes clear.

AI risks and how they’re managed

Major AI developers spend a lot of effort on suppressing biased outputs and unwanted model behaviours and rewarding more ethically neutral and balanced responses.

Some of these measures could be seen as implementing DEI principles, even as they help to avoid incidents like the one involving Tay. They include the use of human feedback to tune model outputs, as well as monitoring and measuring bias towards specific populations.

Another approach, developed by Anthropic for its Claude model, uses a policy document called a “constitution” to explicitly direct the model to respect principles of harmless and respectful behaviour.

Model outputs are often tested via “red teaming”. In this process, prompt engineers and internal AI safety experts do their best to provoke unsafe and offensive responses from generative AI models.

A Microsoft blog post from January described red teaming as “the first step in identifying potential harms […] to measure, manage, and govern AI risks for our customers”.

The risks span a “wide range of vulnerabilities”, “including traditional security, responsible AI, and psychosocial harms”.

The blog also notes “it is crucial to design red teaming probes that not only account for linguistic differences but also redefine harms in different political and cultural contexts”. Many generative AI products have a global user base. So this sort of effort is important for making the products safe for consumers and businesses well beyond US borders.

We may be about to relearn some lessons

Unfortunately, none of these efforts to make generative AI models safe is a one-shot process. Once generative AI models are installed in chatbots or other apps, they continually digest information from the human world through prompts and other inputs.

This diet can shift their behaviour for the worse over time. Malicious attacks, such as user prompt injection and data poisoning, can produce more dramatic changes.

Tech journalist Kevin Roose used prompt injection to make Microsoft Bing’s AI chatbot reveal its “shadow self”. The upshot? It encouraged him to leave his wife. Research published last month showed that a mere drop of poisoned data could make medical advice models generate misinformation.

Constant monitoring and correction of AI outputs are essential. There is no other way to avoid offensive, discriminatory or unsafe behaviours cropping up without warning in generated responses.

Yet all signs suggest the Trump administration favours a reduction in the ethical regulation of AI. The executive orders may be interpreted as allowing or encouraging the free expression and generation of even discriminatory and harmful views on subjects such as women, race, LGBTQIA+ individuals and immigrants.

Generative AI moderation efforts may go the way of Meta’s fact-checking and expert content moderation programs. This could have an impact on global users of US-made AI products such as OpenAI ChatGPT, Microsoft Co-Pilot and Google Gemini.

We might be about to rediscover how essential these efforts have been to keep AI models in check.

Judith Bishop has received funding from Creative Australia for a book on AI and human data. Until 2022 she led teams producing training data for global AI companies and US government research agencies.

– ref. Erotica, gore and racism: how America’s war on ‘ideological bias’ is letting AI off the leash – https://theconversation.com/erotica-gore-and-racism-how-americas-war-on-ideological-bias-is-letting-ai-off-the-leash-250060

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt Fitzpatrick, Professor in International History, Flinders University

Friedrich Merz’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has captured the highest proportion of votes in Germany’s election on Sunday. The celebrations could be short-lived, though, as the task of forming a government now looms.

As it stands, Germany’s public broadcaster has projected Merz’s CDU and its Christian Social Union (CSU) counterpart in Bavaria to win 208 seats in the Bundestag (28.5%). The ousted Social Democratic Party (SPD) has been reduced to 121 seats (16.5%), while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party achieved its biggest-ever result of 151 seats (20.7%).

Other minor parties have failed to meet the 5% threshold in the proportional German parliamentary system, limiting the possible options for a government to take shape.

Merz’s party did lift its vote share compared to its record low in 2021. And German voters have given him the opportunity to attempt forming a governing coalition.

However, his electoral strategy may have made it harder to solve a number of problems, many of them of his own making. Here are four key things his victory has failed to do, which could make governing in Germany more difficult.

1. Stem the number of voters to the far right

With the German economy in the doldrums, Merz would have easily won on the question of economic management alone. Strangely, however, his electoral strategy mimicked the anti-migrant rhetoric of the far-right AfD.

By noisily electioneering on the policy of stemming the flow of migrants and insisting at every opportunity that migrants (particularly those from the Middle East) were a threat to the German way of life, Merz has given legitimacy to what had been fringe policies.

Yet, the election results show that the Germans who were motivated to vote for an anti-migrant party went for the most virulent version (the AfD) – particularly in the old East Germany – and not Merz’s centre-right imitation.

Instead of stealing votes from the AfD, Merz has substantially contributed to the record showing of the far-right party by making immigration – and radical approaches to it – a central issue.

The smiles on the face of the AfD leadership after the election tell the story. The party may not be in government, but its policies will in all likelihood be pursued by a Merz government.

2. Exclude the left from German politics

The day before the election, Merz railed against “green and left crazies” and insisted “there is no longer left politics in Germany”.

The SPD vote did sink dramatically off the back of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ineffectual and lacklustre term in office. But the left-wing Die Linke party (The Left) rode the wave of anti-AfD and anti-Merz sentiment to return from the wilderness with its best election showing in almost a decade.

In particular, a rousing speech by Die Linke leader Heidi Reichinneck helped lift the mood on the left in response to Merz’s anti-migrant stance. Die Linke is back in the Bundestag, at least for another term.

3. Create a governing coalition

Merz has spent the past few weeks breaking taboos by working with the German far right and roundly abusing his opponents using the kind of intemperate language rarely seen in German politics. Now, he is faced with building a governing coalition.

He has painted himself into a corner. He has called the Greens party and Die Linke “crazies”. And his closest ideological ally, the Free Democrats (FDP), appear to have failed to reach the 5% hurdle to enter parliament after voters punished the party for effectively blowing up the last coalition government.

So shockingly poor was the FDP’s result, its leader, Christian Lindner, has offered his resignation.

Previously, a “grand coalition” between the CDU and SPD has been able to form a stable government. This was especially so under former-Chancellor Angela Merkel, the longtime CDU leader.

The centre-left SPD vote might just be large enough to form a coalition government with Merz’s CDU. Whether the SPD would do so after being shocked in the past few weeks by Merz’s dalliances with the far right remains an open question.

Scholz, the SPD leader, has categorically ruled out serving in a Merz cabinet. Whether he might resign to make way for a grand coalition remains to be seen, should one prove mathematically possible.

That leaves only the far-right AfD – the only other party potentially large enough to allow Merz to form a two-party coalition government. Merz has ruled out a CDU-AfD coalition as a threat to German democracy.

Merz will either have to radically revise his attitudes towards the parties to his left or break his word not to allow the far right into government. If he did the latter, he may very well become Germany’s 21st century Franz von Papen, the Weimar Republic-era leader widely viewed as having helped usher the Nazis to power in the 1930s.

4. Exorcise the ghost of Angela Merkel

Merz’s career has been marked by his inability to overcome Merkel and her vision of the CDU as the umbrella party of the democratic centre.

After dragging his party to the right, Merz has posted an electoral result lower than anything Merkel ever gained.

Even if his party is able to cobble together a coalition government, Merz will still sit in the shadow of his more democratically popular, centrist predecessor.

Matt Fitzpatrick receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is the President of the History Council of South Australia.

– ref. Friedrich Merz has won Germany’s election. But as the far right soars, forming a government may be difficult – https://theconversation.com/friedrich-merz-has-won-germanys-election-but-as-the-far-right-soars-forming-a-government-may-be-difficult-250621

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Jeffries, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology, Western Sydney University

Seven people have now died from melioidosis in flood-ravaged north Queensland this year.

Dozens of cases have been reported in the state in recent weeks, which experts have described as unprecedented.

So what is melioidosis, and why are we seeing a spike in cases now?

How do people get infected?

Melioidosis is caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei, a bug which normally lives harmlessly in soil and freshwater. But it can be dangerous when it infects humans or animals.

B. pseudomallei – sometimes called the “mud bug” – enters the body through cuts or scratches. It can also be breathed in and enter the lungs via small airborne water droplets, or by drinking affected water.

Symptoms usually develop within one to four weeks after a person has been infected. The disease can cause either local infections, such as chronic skin ulcers, or, more commonly, a lung infection which can lead to pneumonia.

Symptoms of the infection include fever, headache, trouble breathing, chest and muscle pain, confusion and seizures. In rare cases the disease can enter the bloodstream and cause septicaemia.

Treatment involves receiving intravenous antibiotics in hospital for several weeks followed by up to six months of oral antibiotics.

How common is it?

Diagnosis is usually conducted using a specialist bacterial culture. This is where a sample isolated from the patient is grown in a petri dish to identify the bacteria, which can take several days.

Globally, around 165,000 cases of melioidosis are reported annually, and 89,000 deaths. The majority of cases occur in southeast Asia, particularly Thailand.

Because similar symptoms can be caused by so many other diseases, melioidosis is commonly misidentified, meaning reported case numbers are probably far lower than the actual number of infections.

Also, cases often occur in remote communities and resource-poor settings, which can mean they’re less likely to be diagnosed.

The disease is thought to be endemic to northern Australia. It usually infects about 0.6 per 100,000 people annually in Queensland, which would be equivalent to around 30 people.

In the Northern Territory, around 17 people per 100,000 are infected annually, which would be equivalent to about 42 cases. However, this data is several years old.

In Australia, melioidosis is often treated before fatalities occur. The mortality rate has been estimated at less than 10%.

More people die from the disease in lower-resource countries with poorer diagnostic capabilities and hospital facilities. In Thailand the mortality rate is estimated to be around 40%.

Who is at risk?

Anyone can get melioidosis, but certain people are at higher risk. This includes people with diabetes, liver and kidney disease, cancer, or other conditions which might compromise the patient’s immune system.

In Australia, the disease is also significantly more common in First Nations people than among non-Indigenous Australians.

Once infected, people who are Indigenous, older or have chronic health conditions are at higher risk of poorer outcomes.

In the current outbreak in Queensland, at least three of the victims so far have been elderly.

What’s causing the current outbreak?

Recent cases in north Queensland have been identified mainly around Townsville and Cairns.

Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service has recorded at least 41 cases since January 1, while more than 20 cases have been reported in Townsville in February.

This is most likely related to increased rainfall and flooding in and around these areas.

B. pseudomallei lives in soil and mud, and comes to the surface during periods of high rainfall. So recent heavy rain and flooding in north Queensland has likely increased the risk of melioidosis.

In the Northern Territory, 28 cases have been reported since the start of the rainy season last October. However this is lower than recent seasons.

How can you protect yourself?

If you’re in an affected region, you can protect yourself by limiting exposure to mud and water, and using appropriate personal protective equipment such as gloves and boots if spending time in muddy areas. Cover any open wounds and wear a respirator if you’re working closely with water.

Monitor for symptoms and see a doctor if you feel unwell.

Several vaccines are in development for melioidosis, and experts have recently called for it to be recognised as a neglected tropical disease by the World Health Organization.

Particularly seeing as increasing extreme weather events due to climate change may make melioidosis more common, hopefully we’ll see an increase in research into and awareness of this disease in the years ahead.

Thomas Jeffries 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. There’s an outbreak of melioidosis in north Queensland. Here’s what to know about this deadly ‘mud bug’ – https://theconversation.com/theres-an-outbreak-of-melioidosis-in-north-queensland-heres-what-to-know-about-this-deadly-mud-bug-250392

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

In recent days, the Chinese Navy conducted two live-fire military exercises in waters near Australia and New Zealand, sparking concern in both countries.

The Albanese government lodged a diplomatic protest with Beijing. China responded by saying it was “deeply surprised and strongly dissatisfied” by Australia’s response.

What exactly happened?

The presence of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (or PLA Navy) ships was well known. Australia’s Department of Defence put out a media release on February 13 indicating it was “aware” of the three ships operating to the northeast of Australia.

Over the next week, the ships gradually made their way along Australia’s east coast through its exclusive economic zone in the Tasman Sea, which extends 200 nautical miles (370km) from a country’s coastline.

On February 21, the PLA Navy gave short notice of its intent to conduct a possible live-fire exercise in the high seas between Australia and New Zealand. The next day, the ships conducted a second live-fire exercise. A live fire exercise can take many forms, such as using live rounds against stationary sea targets or the testing of new weapons systems.“

Once Australia and New Zealand received China’s notification of its exercises, a maritime and air exclusion zone was created in the vicinity of the Chinese ships, and trans-Tasman commercial flights were diverted.

Both exercises took place in “international waters”, which means no country has sovereignty over them. Neither Canberra nor Wellington contested China’s right to conduct these exercises, as the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea places no constraints on high-seas military operations.

The United States, for example, has conducted such high-seas weapons tests in the past, causing Qantas flights across the Pacific to be occasionally diverted.

If they were legal, why were Australia and NZ upset?

Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles was critical of the short notice China gave both countries of its intention to use live rounds of ammunition.

Typically, Marles said, standard protocol is to provide between 12 to 24 hours notice of such exercises. This allows enough time to warn other ships in the area and for airlines to divert their flights.

However, because the exercises took place in the high seas, the protocol is more ambiguous. This became the key point of differentiation with China. Beijing could argue its warships are under no legal obligation to tell anyone what they are doing on the high seas. As Defence Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said,

China’s actions are in full compliance with international law and international practices, and will not affect aviation flight safety.

This is also the first instance of China conducting Tasman Sea military exercises. As such, it poses a challenge for how Australia and New Zealand should respond to future Chinese conduct.

The PLA Navy has been sailing more frequently around the Australian coast and has observed Australian military exercises conducted with defence partners, such as Exercise Talisman Sabre in 2023.

Why did China conduct the exercises here?

This is an important question since China could have just as easily conducted these exercises closer to its own shores.

Part of the answer lies in China having the capacity and capability to project its military force far beyond its own shores.

These types of activities are also important intelligence gathering exercises. Each Chinese Navy visit will give it more experience in waters where it does not frequently sail, while also gauging how Australia and New Zealand respond.

Given the increasing cooperation between China and some Pacific Island nations, such as the Cook Islands and Solomon Islands, we should expect the Chinese Navy will become a more frequent visitor to the region.

What can Australia and NZ do about it?

As Australia and New Zealand are strong supporters of the rules-based international order on which the law of the sea is based, there is very little they can legally do to obstruct China. Nevertheless, three options are available.

First, enhanced air and naval surveillance of China’s activities in these waters is legally permissible. Constantly shadowing the PLA Navy in the South Pacific, though, would be a drain on stretched defence resources.

Both countries would also need to ensure their navies are not in the line of fire to avoid an accident that could spiral into a major conflict.

Second, Australia and New Zealand could work though bodies such as the International Maritime Organization and International Civil Aviation Organization to settle on agreed practices on how much advance notification is required for high seas live-fire tests.

Finally, both countries could push for negotiations on a regional “naval code of conduct”. Similar codes have been agreed upon by both China and the US in the past. Incidents like this could prove to be a catalyst for more.

The South Pacific will increasingly be a strategically contested maritime space. Australia and New Zealand frequently deploy their navies for humanitarian operations in neighbouring Pacific states and engage in exercises with their military partners. The US Navy is also becoming more active in the Pacific Ocean and South China Sea to counter China, as are the navies of other nations, such as the United Kingdom, France and Japan.

With the potential for these various navies to be operating at the same time in the region, negotiating some basic “rules of the sea” would be a prudent and a helpful confidence-building measure to avoid a potential conflagration.

Donald Rothwell receives funding from Australian Research Council.

– ref. China didn’t violate any rules with its live-fire naval exercises. So, why are Australia and NZ so worried? – https://theconversation.com/china-didnt-violate-any-rules-with-its-live-fire-naval-exercises-so-why-are-australia-and-nz-so-worried-250618

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Rossetto, Adjunct, Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Resources, University of Adelaide

Financial challenges at the Whyalla steelworks in South Australia have reignited debate about the nation’s steel industry and its future.

Australians should have access to quality steel at competitive prices. The domestic steel production industry employs tens of thousands of people.

The state and federal governments have stepped in, however, announcing a A$1.9 billion support package for Whyalla, together with a new $1 billion green iron investment fund. Half of the new fund will be allocated to Whyalla to support its transition to green steel production. That’s a large amount of money for a privately owned business.

So, are the new packages going to be money well spent? To answer that question, let’s examine the priorities.

A national priority

Steel is an industry in which securing sovereign production capability is crucial. Sovereign capability means ensuring an industry can survive external shocks such as interruptions to shipping routes or disputes with other countries in the supply chain.

Steel is a vital input for defence industries such as ship and submarine building. What could be said of a country’s autonomy – or its sovereign capability – if it relies on others for the steel needed for its defence?

Whyalla is one of the two largest steelworks in Australia, the other being BlueScope’s Port Kembla plant. At least at first glance, the green iron investment fund seems to deal with the sovereign capability criterion well enough. Whyalla appears an ideal candidate.

However, the public subsidy is large. The subsidised plant’s ability to operate in an economically competitive manner needs to be examined. Further, while the Whyalla plant began its life as a supplier to an adjacent shipbuilding operation, its share of the current domestic defence industry steel market is unclear.

Environmentally friendly steel?

Production of steel using iron ore and coking coal is a greenhouse gas emissions intensive process. It can result in as many as 2.5 tonnes of greenhouse gas per tonne of steel.

The plan for Whyalla has long been to replace its coal-fired blast furnace with an electric arc furnace. This could, in turn, be supplied with low-emission sources of energy and consume scrap steel. While there is no globally agreed definition, this kind of approach would likely qualify as green steel.

Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG, the owner of the plant, had originally wanted this furnace to be operating by 2025, potentially using solar among its energy supply. The plan would have cut its emissions dramatically. The timeline later slipped to 2027.

The longer term plan for Whyalla appears based around production of green hydrogen to replace coking coal. As the world charges toward net zero emissions by 2050, the belief is that Australia can capture a good part of the green metals market.

The challenge is that green hydrogen is expensive and not widely used around the world. It’s hard to find signs that the global steel market is willing to pay a premium in the absence of sectoral emissions pricing. The strategy could therefore be seen as a bet on the future. If the bet went wrong, who would absorb the losses? It would, most likely, be the taxpayer.

The United States leads the way in low-emissions steel production. Firms there use electric arc furnaces to recycle scrap steel with energy from low-emission sources. This technology is proven and operates at industrial scale. It has a fraction of the emissions intensity but relies on the availability of scrap steel.

Can we add value?

Australia is a major world supplier of two key materials crucial for most steel making. These are iron ore and coking coal.

The countries to which we sell those raw materials then do the processing and manufacture, capturing profit that is arguably lost to the Australian economy. Whyalla is already an example of domestic value-adding. It uses iron ore from mines in the adjacent area, and domestic coking coal.

For Australia, however, this is going to be tricky. Australia is effectively signalling to its international customers that, one day, it hopes to compete with them in the global steel markets. In other words, this creates an incentive for the country’s customers to look for alternatives to buy iron ore.

Whether Australia increases steel production ahead of its customers finding new sources of iron ore elsewhere in the world is a risky race with an uncertain result.

Focus on government spending

So, back to the question: is the new funding going to be money well spent? Perhaps the most solid justification among the priorities examined, is sovereign capability.

The government probably needs to provide more information on how the new fund differs through from Future Made in Australia or the National Reconstruction Fund. Is this old funding with a new name? The nation is entering federal election season. Focus on government spending efficiency is likely to increase.

Daniel Rossetto is the owner of Climate Mundial Limited, a private company that does consulting work but is currently inactive. He does ad hoc private consulting through various consulting platforms. He is also the owner and host of a new private and independent YouTube channel called Climate Mundial’s Energy and Climate Weekly. He is on the editorial board of the Discover Sustainability journal published by Springer Nature.

– ref. How Whyalla can be upgraded to green steel and why we need to keep steel production in Australia – https://theconversation.com/how-whyalla-can-be-upgraded-to-green-steel-and-why-we-need-to-keep-steel-production-in-australia-250402

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Andrews, Professor and Academic Director (Indigenous Research), La Trobe University

A Nighttime Travesty is a bold new piece of theatre that depicts many illusions and truth interspersed with history.

What would happen if the world was to end? A plane has left Earth because Earth is dying. The journey is an escape for survival, but they are taking Earth-created social inequalities with them.

While hurtling into space, two hostesses talk about not feeling at home on Earth anymore. We can no longer advance as a human race and are forced to relocate.

The future of humankind does not appear optimistic – it is in the hands of the pilot.

Kamarra Bell-Wykes and Carly Sheppard, co-creators of the work and the lead performers, bring brilliance to their artistic flair, playing multiple characters.

They are the two hostesses: one a young Aboriginal woman who has been impregnated by the pilot, and the other a robot. The pilot is played by Bell-Wykes, and Sheppard is a strange victim with a wit.

Directed by Stephen Nicolazzo, A Nighttime Travesty is thought-provoking and complex theatre that addresses Aboriginal history and oppression using media representations of Aussie male humour.

Earth is dying. The journey is an escape for survival, but they are taking Earth-created social inequalities with them. There is no new world waiting for them to start over. They will have to do that themselves.

They ponder what is ahead of them as they travel to a new life somewhere in space.

The thread throughout the production is held together by a black and white history while the actors sing, dance, give birth and turn into murderers.

Indigenous futurism

A Nighttime Travesty intertwines Indigenous futurism and vaudeville.

Indigenous futurism is a cultural practice of imagining the future, while acknowledging past and present. Including cultural practices and ways of knowing with social and political commentary within a scientific framework can create an aura of illusion and truth.

Aboriginal storytelling has long moved in and out of the past into the present in various artistic mediums as a form of expression and teaching. Indigenous futurism can be found in literature, film, visual arts, video games, poetry, music, fashion and theatre.

The philosophies of Indigenous ways of knowing and oral histories are important tools for storytelling.

The actors play dual gender neutral roles. The women depict the Australian male: the sexual power and masculinity in the workplace intermixed with artificial intelligence and technology. They are joined on stage by performers Zach Blampied and Peter Wykes, and musicians Matt Pana and Small Sound.

A Nighttime Travesty is particularly dense with sexualised humour and underlying pokes of fun made at the Aussie male expense.

The dark side of the humour from an Indigenous woman’s perspective steers the twists and turns which move with such quick motion that the audience is left waiting for conclusions to the messages.

Aboriginal history

Much of this play is a reflection upon humanity and the life lessons learned or not learned from history. It is also a social and political commentary from young viewers of Australian humour on television and experiences of Australian society values.

Throughout the play there is lots of symbolism reflecting Australia. The sexual humour is structured around Australian icons of media, and BBQ aprons with male and female printed torsos. The actors morph into the sexuality of the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women.

It seems the co-creators researched the long-running Saturday night national television show Hey Hey It’s Saturday to finally offer a First Nations commentary.

On that show, men roasted each other, their guests and the audience – and presented a gem every now and then that would save their credibility.

Here, a dark hooded man sits on a bench titled “Hey Hey it’s Judgement Day” and a puppet on a stick named Dicky Lee is involved in sexual acts. This is presented as humorous, yet the audience is left feeling slightly embarrassed at Dicky’s involvement.

Religion, sex and babies born out of wedlock are harsh realities of life. Religion and God is pondered for the new world – but God is a man, and is blamed for the problems of the world.

Can they start over in a modern world, and what will their faith be? The Aboriginal hostess is concerned that, on a new planet, her Elders will be meaningless and, as the only Aboriginal on the plane, her culture and her race will die out. But wait – her baby will be the new beginning.

A Nighttime Travesty from A Daylight Connection played at Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne. Season closed.

Julie Andrews 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. In A Nighttime Travesty, First Nations women embrace Indigenous futurism – and push the boundaries of theatre – https://theconversation.com/in-a-nighttime-travesty-first-nations-women-embrace-indigenous-futurism-and-push-the-boundaries-of-theatre-248132

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gavin Charles Young, Departmental Visitor, Materials Physics, Research School of Physics, Australian National University

Queensland is renowned for its fossils of Australia’s largest back-boned animals – dinosaurs, of course, like the Jurassic Rhoetosaurus, the Cretaceous Wintonotitan, and other large sauropods.

However, our new paper published in the journal National Science Review documents the smallest vertebrate fossil animal described so far from the state.

It’s a highly enigmatic tiny “fish” from a remote location close to the Northern Territory border. It lived in the shallow margins of a marine environment about 400 million years ago.

A scattering of its skeletal elements was preserved in a small limestone outcrop at the southern end of the Toomba Range, on the edge of the Simpson Desert.

Palaeospondylus, a fossil enigma

Our paper describes a new species of the genus Palaeospondylus, only the second known. Remarkably, for the last 135 years, Palaeospondylus has been represented by a single species that lived in northern Scotland, on the other side of the world from our discovery.

Unlike nearly all fossil fish of that age, Palaeospondylus was “naked”, lacking external dermal bones and scales. But it did have a mineralised internal skeleton.

It is the oldest example from the fossil record to show a segmented vertebral column (a sort of backbone), hence its name – Greek for “ancient vertebra”.

The type species Palaeospondylus gunni is known from thousands of fairly complete specimens, almost all from a single flagstone quarry.

When first described in 1890, it attracted a flurry of competing interpretations in Europe and North America. Which group of animals did it belong to?

Since its discovery, it has been assigned to almost all major jawless and jawed vertebrate groups. All specimens were compressed, making the skeletal elements “melt” together. Imagination has always played a great role in trying to identify its parts.

Even after the advent of 3D scanning, three recent studies reached different conclusions. According to those, Palaeospondylus was related either to chondrichthyans (sharks), or tetrapods (the land vertebrates). Or maybe it was a stem jawed vertebrate – branching separately from the base of the evolutionary tree for all vertebrates with jaws.

The Queensland Palaeospondylus

The story of discovery of our new Queensland species, Palaeospondylus australis, began in 1977.

In the 1960s, geologist Reg Sprigg had predicted oil and gas beneath the northern Simpson Desert. The Bureau of Mineral Resources was conducting seismic surveys and microfossil sampling across the Georgina Basin, immediately to the north.

Microfossils are tiny fossils that can only be studied with a microscope, but are crucial to determining the age of the rock. Numerous sedimentary rock samples are collected, preferably limestones, because these can be dissolved in acid. The insoluble microfossils can then be identified and studied in the acid residues.

In 1977, I collected bits of limestone from an obscure gully in the Cravens Peak Beds, the sandstone forming the main ridge of the Toomba Range. Surprisingly, these produced a rich collection of Devonian fish microfossils. This was the first evidence that an arm of the sea had extended into central Australia during the Early Devonian (about 400 million years ago).

In the 2000s, palaeontologist Carole Burrow at the Queensland Museum was investigating the internal structure of Devonian fish microfossils to assist in dating the rocks.

In the Cravens Peak samples, she noticed some distinctively shaped, tiny elements composed of an unusual honeycomb-like tissue. Carole hypothesised this could be a new species of Palaeospondylus, the only record from outside Scotland.

So, in 2006, we organised another field trip to this remote location.

Returning to the Queensland Museum after our field trip, Carole’s colleague from the Netherlands, palaeontologist Jan den Blaauwen, sent her new images showing similar honeycomb-like structure in the Scottish Palaeospondylus gunni.

Carole was acid-etching the newly collected samples so she could extract any microfossils. Luckily, she noticed a slightly larger specimen appearing on the rock surface (although still tiny, only about 3.6 millimetres long). It was highly interesting because it seemed bilaterally symmetrical.

Could this be a braincase (the bony capsule inside the skull that encloses the brain)? She immediately stopped acid etching before it disintegrated into crumbs.

The first uncrushed braincase

At the Australian National University, our sample was carefully trimmed before CT scanning, revealing the first uncrushed braincase of Palaeospondylus known to science.

It’s now the holotype – defining type specimen – for our new species. And we have about 400 other elements with the same honeycomb structure which belong to it, too.

The unique uncrushed preservation of this braincase, revealed by CT scanning and 3D printing techniques, provides the first details of brain structure in this tiny animal from 400 million years ago.

These include the shape of the cranial cavity and inner ear canals, the position of the pituitary gland and optic nerve openings, and details of the carotid arteries and jugular veins for blood supply to the brain.

More questions remain

It is noteworthy that our curiosity-driven research into ancient brain morphology can be traced back to economically driven geological surveys of nearly 50 years ago, conducted to support exploration for oil and gas across central Australia.

As with any research result, there are now new questions to be investigated. The honeycomb tissue seems unique to Palaeospondylus, but could be a precursor to calcified cartilage of some other groups, including modern sharks.

Alternatively, it could be an early evolutionary stage for the spongy tissue (endochondral bone) filling the inside of most bones in modern land vertebrates, including humans.

The unique holotype of our new species clearly shows that previous interpretations of the crushed Scottish material included many structures that were not part of the braincase.

We’ve also now demonstrated that a recent study in the leading science journal Nature, which proposed that Palaeospondylus was closely related to our tetrapod ancestors, relied on many erroneous interpretations of braincase structure.

Of one thing we can be sure – Palaeospondylus was not a stem tetrapod.

Acknowledgements: Carole Burrow from Queensland Museum contributed greatly to this article.

Gavin Charles Young has received funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. A 380-million-year-old fossil ‘fish’ from Scotland has been discovered in Australia – https://theconversation.com/a-380-million-year-old-fossil-fish-from-scotland-has-been-discovered-in-australia-250054

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

The appearance of three Chinese naval vessels firing live rounds in the Tasman Sea has caused understandable alarm in New Zealand and Australia. But this has more to do with the geopolitical context than the actual event.

In fact, the Chinese navy is allowed to conduct exercises in the Tasman and has wide freedoms on the high seas in general. So far, China appears to be acting in accordance with both the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea.

While New Zealand would have preferred more notice of the Chinese navy’s intentions, there was no obligation to provide this.

Nor is what is occurring in the Tasman similar to the more aggressive sabre-rattling the Chinese military has displayed around the South China Sea, most recently involving both the Australian and Philippine navies.

And in September last year, just a few days after Australian and New Zealand vessels sailed through the Taiwan Strait, the Chinese test-fired a nuclear-capable intercontinental missile into the South Pacific.

For China, of course, Taiwan and parts of the South China Sea are highly disputed territory. The Tasman Sea is not. But what is disputed is China’s role and influence in the Pacific – and this, rather than a minor naval exercise, is what is causing headaches in Canberra and Wellington.

The Cook Islands factor

The surprise agreement signed by the Cook Islands and China under a fortnight ago, aimed at “deepening blue economy cooperation”, is the immediate context for that concern.

The deal avoids controversial areas such as security and policing. But it moves Chinese influence into infrastructure support for wharves, shipbuilding and repair, and ocean transportation.

What really challenges New Zealand’s foreign policy is how this opens the South Pacific up to even greater Chinese influence and activity. Foreign Minister Winston Peters has signalled it is time to reset the relationship with the Cooks.

For its part, China has asserted that its relationship with the Cook Islands “is not directed against any third party and should not be subject to or disrupted by any third party”.

In other words, China has told New Zealand to butt out of a major development in the historically close diplomatic and political relationship with its Pacific neighbour.

A Chinese own goal?

All of this is happening within a rapidly shifting geopolitical sphere. US President Donald Trump is unilaterally attempting to upend the old US-led world order, and other major powers such as Russia and China are adapting.

New Zealand’s relations with China were already difficult. The Security Intelligence Service and Government Communications Security Bureau have both identified state-sponsored Chinese interference in domestic affairs, breaches of the parliamentary network and other malicious cyber activity.

The question now is whether China has scored an own goal with its recent actions. Because while it might prefer New Zealand to operate a more independent foreign policy – balancing its relations with east and west – the opposite may now be more likely.

In times of international stress and uncertainty, New Zealand has always tended to move towards deepening relationships with traditional allies.

Whether it is the fear of Russian invasion in the 19th century, or Japanese invasion in the 20th century – and whether or not those threats are real or imagined – New Zealand reverts to form.

It has been this way for nearly 150 years and is likely to occur again. New Zealand is already grappling with how to respond to the Trump administration’s redrawn global system and will be looking for ways to deepen the friendship.

At the same time, the government now seems committed to joining a new arms race and increasing defence spending as a proportion of GDP. And the supposed benefits of joining the second tier of the AUKUS security pact may now become that much easier to sell politically.

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

– ref. A Chinese own goal? How war games in the Tasman Sea could push NZ closer to AUKUS – https://theconversation.com/a-chinese-own-goal-how-war-games-in-the-tasman-sea-could-push-nz-closer-to-aukus-250615

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justin Keogh, Associate Dean of Research, Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine, Bond University

Most children have now returned from their summer holidays and are perhaps considering what sports to play this year.

For some, this means sampling a wide range of sports, but others might continue to focus on the same one they’ve been addicted to since they were able to walk and run.

But when it comes to possible sporting success, is it best to concentrate on one or give many a go?

Early specialisation

As the name suggests, early specialisation is typically defined as participation in one task or activity, with the aim to improve subsequent performances.

The rationale for its purported benefit can be traced to the theory of deliberate practice – or what some readers may have colloquially encountered as the “10,000-hour rule”.

Broadly, this theory proposes the attainment of excellence is proportionate to the number of accumulated hours invested into deliberate skill rehearsal.

So, the earlier someone specialises via deliberate practice, the more likely they’ll expedite the acquisition of expertise – or so the theory suggests.

While first explored in the musical domain, there are some examples of athletes who specialised early in a sport who went on to highly successful careers.

These include Simone Biles (who started gymnastics at the age of six), Tiger Woods (who hit a golf ball on the Mike Douglas TV show at the age of two) and Serena Williams (who was profiled hitting tennis balls on CNN at the age of nine).

There are also a host of athletes who specialised early and achieved outstanding success as a junior but never reached sporting success as an adult for myriad reasons.

Doesn’t practice make perfect?

Everyone would have encountered the saying “practice makes perfect”.

But does it really?

Of course, practice is an integral component of acquiring, developing and sharpening any skill. But perhaps we should be a little cautious.

Let us explain by first asking a few key questions that we encourage readers to ask themselves as the article unfolds: how much practice is needed to be perfect? What type of practice is needed to be perfect? And can “perfect” practice actually help us develop skills that are transferable between sports?

In other words, if practice makes perfect, should we not be advocating for sporting specialisation as early in life as possible?

It may seem logical, but is this belief – held by many parents, youth sport coaches, and perhaps children themselves – actually supported by evidence?

A 2022 systematic review suggested most elite, professional and Olympic level athletes engaged in multisport activities during their youth.

That is, they did not specialise in their chosen sport but actually diversified their sporting experiences up to the age of about 12, with some level of specialisation occurring from the age of 13 onward.

That was not all they found.

Youth sport specialisation was actually linked with increased risks of injury in athletes at the highest levels of competition when compared to those who engaged in multisport activities.

A similar review noted there was no evidence to support specialisation prior to puberty in the attainment of sporting excellence later in life.

What sport specialisation did increase, however, were risks of injury, psychological stress and sporting drop out.

A model to follow

In support of these findings, Jean Côtè (a leading expert in the field of youth psychology) and colleagues proposed a developmental model of sports participation.

This model is broken into three general stages of participation: the sampling years (between the ages of 6-12), the specialising years (13-15), and the investment years (16 and beyond).

As the name of each stage suggests, they are defined by unique types of participation.

For example, the sampling years are characterised by the acquisition of functional motor skills (such as running, throwing and jumping), developed through a wide variety of experiences.

The specialising years feature a progressive increase in focus on the deliberate practice of one or two sports, while the investment years are characterised by more deliberately increasing the volume of practice around one sport. In Australia, this may be the stage where seasonal sports become year-long through the establishment of pre-season training.

Since its inception nearly two decades ago, there has been a growing amount of research supporting these suggestions.

Food for thought

So what does this all mean for parents, youth coaches and children?

We suggest not to rush the process even if your child dreams of an elite sporting career: children under the age of 16 should engage in a wide variety of sporting experiences.

This is not only fun, but the research shows us diversity is likely to reduce the risk of overuse injuries and increase the likelihood of sporting excellence later in life, should that be their ambition.

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. Tiger Woods and Serena Williams were sporting prodigies but children shouldn’t train like them – https://theconversation.com/tiger-woods-and-serena-williams-were-sporting-prodigies-but-children-shouldnt-train-like-them-248558

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Garritt C. Van Dyk, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Waikato

A White House fact sheet about Donald Trump’s recently announced “Fair and Reciprocal Plan” on trade described it as “the art of the international deal” – a reference to Trump’s 1987 business book, The Art of the Deal.

It was a classic piece of self-marketing from the president, but whether his latest tariff proposal will really turn out to be artful is very much open to question.

In fact, the United States’ long history of “reciprocity” in tariffs and trade suggests ordinary Americans could be in for a bumpy ride.

In essence, Trump is reviving a strategy used in the US more than a century ago to protect developing domestic industries. This time, according to the president, reciprocal tariffs aim “to correct longstanding imbalances in international trade and ensure fairness across the board”.

The plan targets trade relationships with other countries where the US does not receive reciprocal treatment. And it echoes the policies of the 25th US president, William McKinley, who presided over an aggressive reciprocal tariff regime in the late 19th century.

McKinley was president from 1897 until he was assassinated in 1901. And while Trump greatly admires his business acumen, McKinley’s economic legacy also reads like a cautionary tale.

Not a simple equation

From the current US perspective, “reciprocity” refers to symmetrical tariffs. Trump’s plan targets unequal rates, such as the European Union’s 10% tariff on US cars, compared with the 2.5% US tariff on European automobiles.

The EU’s 10% rate represents its “most-favoured-nation” tariff, which applies to all its favoured-nation trading partners (with certain exceptions).

While this looks like a clear lack of reciprocity, it’s not that simple. The US also applies a 25% tariff on EU utility vehicles (pickup trucks).

This is significant because of the popularity of pickups in the US – a 2024 survey found 47% of Americans owned one. Until last year, the Ford F150 had been the bestselling “car” in the US for 42 years in a row.

This is just one example of how differences in tariffs can be more complex than they appear at first glance.

A history of reciprocal tariffs

This cycle of higher and lower tariffs has gone on for well over a century. From 1861 to 1930, the US Congress maintained control over trade tariffs, with levels as high as 50% to protect developing industries.

But in 1934, Congress passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, giving President Franklin D. Roosevelt authority to negotiate reciprocal tariff reductions with individual nations to stimulate global trade during the Great Depression.

These tariff reductions continued after World War II with the development of the World Trade Organization and US tariff levels declining to 5%. Economist Douglas Irwin refers to this period as the “reciprocity period” of nations lowering barriers to international trade.

The last time “reciprocity” was used to refer to the opposite process of raising tariffs was in 1890, under the Tariff Act, often just called the McKinley Tariff. It is this era Trump harked back to in his inaugural address:

President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent – he was a natural businessman.

Before he became president, McKinley was head of the House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee. He proposed an average increase in tariffs on all imports, rising from 38% to 49.5% to “secure reciprocal trade”.

The new law was designed to protect the tinplate industry with a tariff of 70%, and “to reduce the revenue and equalize duties on imports”.

At the time, the US was running large surpluses from tariff revenues, which was threatening economic growth. This sounds counterintuitive these days, but surpluses were a problem because the US dollar was backed by gold at a fixed price (the gold standard).

Because the amount of money in circulation – and state spending – were limited to the amount of gold held by the government, surplus funds had to be kept in the Treasury reserves. This reduced the money supply and led to lower growth, less investment and tighter credit.

Republicans thought higher tariffs would reduce imported goods and therefore tariff revenues. Instead, income from the higher tariffs more than compensated for import reductions, and the surpluses increased.

Consumer prices rose, farm prices dropped, and the resulting voter backlash saw the Republicans lose control of Congress at the 1890 midterm elections. There was a financial panic in 1893, followed by a recession that lasted until 1896.

A new ‘Gilded Age’

This period in late 19th-century US history is often referred to as the “Gilded Age”, from the title of an 1873 book by Charles Dudley Wright and Mark Twain.

The book was a satire of political corruption and unscrupulous businessmen who benefited from political favours. The title reflects the reality of the era – superficially prosperous but not truly golden.

A thin veneer of technological progress, innovation and wealth concealed widespread corruption, scandals and income inequality.

But aside from the obvious historical parallels, it is overly optimistic to expect a plan from 1890 to succeed in a complex global trade environment that relies on interdependent supply chains to function.

McKinley’s flawed strategy sought protection for a few industries, but also aimed to reduce revenue for a government running large surpluses. However, Trump’s new tariffs are meant to raise revenue to pay off the US$36.5 trillion national debt, as well as to enforce reciprocal trade terms.

Trump began his second term with a declaration that “the golden age of America begins right now”. As in 1890, however, the risk remains that a handful of wealthy industrialists will benefit from increased protection, while ordinary citizens will pay higher prices.

Less the “art of the deal”, then, than a possible dealbreaker. In which case, Trump may yet be remembered less for a new golden age than for a Gilded Age 2.0.

Garritt C. Van Dyk received funding from the Getty Research Institute in 2024 .

– ref. Trump is reviving a tariff strategy from America’s ‘Gilded Age’. It didn’t end well last time – https://theconversation.com/trump-is-reviving-a-tariff-strategy-from-americas-gilded-age-it-didnt-end-well-last-time-250389

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

A national Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted February 18–23 from a sample of 1,506, gave the Coalition a 55–45 lead by headline respondent preferences, a three-point gain for the Coalition since January. By 2022 election preference flows, the Coalition led by 52–48, a one-point gain for them.

Primary votes were 39% Coalition (up one), 25% Labor (down two), 13% Greens (steady), 9% One Nation (up two), 9% independents (down one) and 4% others (down two). Labor’s primary vote is their lowest in any poll this term.

Anthony Albanese’s net approval was steady at -22, with 56% giving him a poor rating and just 34% a good one. Peter Dutton’s net approval was down one to +5. Dutton led Albanese by 39–35 as preferred PM (39–34 in January).

By 37–26, voters thought the Coalition was the best choice for them and their household over Labor. By 34–18, they thought Dutton better able to deal with Donald Trump than Albanese. By 43–22, they thought Albanese weaker than Dutton.

The Liberals led Labor by 41–24 on economic management (42–23 in January). The Liberals led on keeping the cost of living low by 37–25, down a little from 37–22 in January.

In both the Resolve and Freshwater polls that were taken after the Reserve Bank cut interest rates, the Coalition has increased its lead. Here is the graph that shows the dramatic widening in the Resolve poll in the Coalition’s favour.

Dutton’s ratings have been much better than Albanese’s in Resolve, and this is now flowing through to voting intentions. To put Labor back on track, Albanese needs to improve his ratings and Dutton’s need to fall. In this respect, the Freshwater poll below was much better for Labor.

Resolve’s respondent preference flows are probably a pro-Coalition outlier, but the general trend in the polls has been bleak for Labor.

Freshwater poll: Coalition leads by 52–48

A national Freshwater poll, conducted February 20–23 from a sample of 1,038, gave the Coalition a 52–48 lead by respondent preferences, a one-point gain for the Coalition since January. Primary votes were 41% Coalition (up one), 31% Labor (down one), 13% Greens (steady) and 15% for all Others.

Albanese’s net approval improved seven points to -11, while Dutton’s dropped four points to -8. Albanese led Dutton as preferred PM by 45–43 (a 43–43 tie in January).

On issues, 70% rated cost of living a top three issue, followed by 39% for housing, 27% for both crime and economic management, 26% for health and just 17% for the environment. The Coalition held double-digit leads over Labor on cost of living, crime and economic management.

Essential poll: Labor gains for a tie

A national Essential poll, conducted February 12–16 from a sample of 1,146, had a 48–48 tie by respondent preferences including undecided (49–47 to the Coalition in early February). The Coalition had led in the last four Essential polls by one to two points.

Primary votes were 35% Coalition (down one), 30% Labor (steady), 12% Greens (steady), 9% One Nation (up one), 1% UAP (steady), 9% for all Others (steady) and 4% undecided (steady). By 2022 preference flows, Labor would lead by about 51–49, a 0.5-point gain for Labor.

Albanese’s net approval dropped five points to -5 since January, with 48% disapproving and 43% approving, but the January poll had an 11-point jump in his net approval from December. Dutton’s net approval was down three points to -4, his worst net approval in Essential since February 2024.

Asked about the direction of the country, wrong track led by 51–31, a blowout from 46–38 in January. Wrong track led by the same 51–31 margin in December, and it has consistently had sizeable leads since June 2023.

On taxes and government services, 26% thought they should be reduced, 11% increased and 63% maintained. By 40–31, respondents opposed the Coalition’s plan to reduce the number of public service workers.

Asked whether they were aware of various Labor achievements, 77% were aware of the $300 energy bill rebate for all households, 66% were aware of TAFE and HECS debt cuts and 61% were aware of increased renewable energy targets. However, only 46% were aware of consecutive budget surpluses.

Morgan poll and Palmer’s new party

A national Morgan poll, conducted February 10–16 from a sample of 1,666, gave the Coalition a 51.5–48.5 lead by headline respondent preferences, unchanged from the February 3–9 poll.

Primary votes were 39.5% Coalition (down one), 28% Labor (down one), 12.5% Greens (up 1.5), 5.5% One Nation (up 1.5), 10% independents (up 0.5) and 4.5% others (down 1.5). By 2022 election flows, the Coalition led by 51–49, a 0.5-point gain for Labor.

Clive Palmer had voluntarily deregistered the United Australia Party after the 2022 election. The High Court denied his attempt to re-register this party. He has now taken over the existing party “Trumpet of Patriots”.

Queensland federal and state DemosAU poll

A DemosAU poll of Queensland that asked for federal voting intentions, conducted February 10–14 from a sample of 1,004, gave the Liberal National Party a 53–47 lead, representing a 1% swing to Labor since the 2022 federal election result in Queensland.

Primary votes were 39% LNP, 31% Labor, 12% Greens, 10% One Nation and 8% for all Others. DemosAU is using the One Nation preference flow at the 2024 Queensland state election for its federal polls; this was better for the LNP than at the 2022 federal election.

State voting intentions were 54–46 to the LNP, unchanged since the 2024 election. Primary votes were 40% LNP, 30% Labor, 12% Greens, 10% One Nation and 8% for all Others.

Economic data: wage growth and jobs

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that in the December 2024 quarter, wages grew 0.7%, down from 0.9% in the September quarter. This was the slowest quarterly wage growth since March 2022. For the year to December, wages grew 3.2%, down from 4.1% in the year to June 2024.

In the December quarter, inflation was up 0.2% and up 2.4% for the year to December. So wage growth exceeded inflation by 0.5% in the December quarter and 0.8% for the year, but it had exceeded inflation by 0.7% in the September quarter.

The ABS said 44,000 jobs were added in January, but the unemployment rate rose 0.1% from December to 4.1% owing to a 0.2% increase in the participation rate. The employment population ratio (the percentage of eligible Australians that are employed) rose 0.1% to 65.6%, a record high.

German election

I am covering Sunday’s German federal election for The Poll Bludger. The election was held seven months early owing to a breakdown in the governing coalition of centre-left SPD, Greens and pro-business FDP.

Exit polls and pre-election polls have the conservative CDU/CSU leading, with the far-right AfD in second place and the SPD lagging in third. The final outcome should be known by this afternoon AEDT.

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

– ref. Labor crashes to a 55–45 deficit in Resolve despite interest rate cut – https://theconversation.com/labor-crashes-to-a-55-45-deficit-in-resolve-despite-interest-rate-cut-250150

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ashlynne McGhee, Digital Storytelling Editor

Scam Factories is a special multimedia and podcast series by The Conversation that explores the inner workings of Southeast Asia’s brutal scam compounds.

The Conversation’s digital storytelling and podcast teams collaborated with three researchers: Ivan Franceschini, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne; Ling Li, a PhD candidate at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; and Mark Bo, an independent researcher.

The researchers have spent the past few years interviewing nearly 100 survivors of these compounds and documenting the rise of the industry in Southeast Asia for a forthcoming book.

Scam Factories will unfold across three multimedia articles and three podcast episodes this week. We’ll update this page as more is published.

Part 1

Our first article explores how people are lured into the industry and what life is like inside the compounds, where scammers are forced to work long hours and are often subjected to violence.

And in our first podcast episode, No skills required, our researchers travel to a village in Cambodia called Chrey Thom to see what these compounds look like. And we hear from two survivors, a Ugandan man we’re calling George and a Malaysian woman we’re calling Lee, about how they were recruited into compounds in Laos and Myanmar.

The Conversation contacted all the companies mentioned in this series for a comment, except Jinshui, which we couldn’t contact. We did not receive a response from any of them.

Credits

The podcast series was written and produced by Gemma Ware with production assistance from Katie Flood and Mend Mariwany. Sound design by Michelle Macklem. Leila Goldstein was our producer in Cambodia and Halima Athumani recorded for us in Uganda. Hui Lin helped us with Chinese translation. Photos by Roun Ry, KDA, Halima Athumani and Ivan Franceschini.

Justin Bergman at The Conversation in Australia edited the articles in the series and Matt Garrow worked on the graphical elements of the stories. Series oversight and editing help from Ashlynne McGhee.

– ref. Scam Factories: the inside story of Southeast Asia’s brutal fraud compounds – https://theconversation.com/scam-factories-the-inside-story-of-southeast-asias-brutal-fraud-compounds-250448