Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sussex, Associate Professor (Adj), Griffith Asia Institute; and Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

Time for an early announcement: Vladimir Putin has won the upcoming Russian presidential election on March 15–17. It’s hardly a spoiler. Russian elections have been performative exercises in phoney democracy for many years now, and this latest round of theatre promises to be no different.

Official state analysts peg Putin’s likely support at around 75%. His only rivals are state-permitted and largely endorse both his platform and leadership. They include the Communist Party’s ageing Nikolai Kharitonov, who is polling around 4%, and Leonid Slutsky, the comparatively spry candidate from the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (it’s actually an ultra-nationalist party), who is polling about the same.

Perhaps the most “liberal” candidate on the ballot is Vladislav Davankov, the deputy chair of the State Duma – Russia’s lower house of parliament. Davankov has called for peace talks in Ukraine “on our terms, and with no roll-back”, and his main campaign slogan is the rather vague “Yes to changes!”. He is expected to receive perhaps 5% of the vote.

As Russians obediently line up to cast what amounts to little more than a mandatory expression of fealty, the only real questions worth asking are:

• is there any semblance of opposition left?

• and what kind of leader Putin will be in his fifth full term as president?

No real opposition figures left

There is increasing evidence that Putin will become even more repressive. The Kremlin has overseen the elimination or marginalisation of any charismatic individual who might serve as a hub for popular opposition, and hence pose a threat to Putin – either on the ballot, or off it.

The death of Alexei Navalny in a Siberian prison camp certainly sent that message, underscored by the arrests of several people who attended his funeral.

But throughout Putin’s tenure, plenty of other challengers, dissidents or opponents have been executed or attacked. They include:

• Boris Nemtsov, the popular moderate politician assassinated in 2015

• Anna Politkovskaya, the human rights journalist shot dead in her apartment in 2006

• Natalya Estemirova, the anti-war activist kidnapped and killed in 2009

• Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer who uncovered evidence of massive corruption and died after being beaten and denied medical care in 2009

• Aleksandr Litvinenko, the former intelligence agent poisoned with polonium in 2006

• Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who were poisoned with Novichok in the United Kingdom in 2018

• and the convenient plane crash that killed Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin last year.

Other potential challengers have been ostracised or imprisoned. Nemtsov’s protégé, Vladimir Kara-Murza, for example, was arrested in 2022 and subsequently imprisoned for 25 years.

And so far this year, the Kremlin has jailed the elderly human rights campaigner Oleg Orlov for “discrediting the military”; issued an arrest warrant for the exiled Russian author Boris Akunin for being a “foreign agent”; and labelled the exiled Russian chess grand master Garry Kasparov an “extremist and terrorist”.

In just the last day, Navalny’s former chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, has been hospitalised in Lithuania after being sprayed in the face with tear gas and beaten repeatedly with a hammer.

Elections mean very little

The Kremlin has persisted with the charade of free elections throughout Putin’s rule, but with recent changes to this year’s ballot, those who have proven too popular have found themselves disqualified.

The ex-TV journalist Yekatarina Duntsova, for example, was barred from running due to “violations” in the paperwork for her candidacy. She had been widely scorned as a Kremlin stooge, even though she planned to run on an anti-war platform.

So, too, was Boris Nadezhdin, who attracted significant attention for his pledge to end the war in Ukraine peacefully. But he also ran afoul of Russia’s Central Electoral Commission, which alleged he had failed to collect the necessary 100,000 signatures to qualify as a candidate.

In the end, the political pantomime around who gets to contest Russia’s elections really doesn’t matter.

There has been ample evidence of systemic electoral fraud in Russia for years. This includes ballot stuffing, “carouselling” (bussing voters to different booths to vote multiple times) and simple vote-rigging.

As early as 2011, United Russia – Putin’s de facto party of power in the parliament – was winning an unlikely 99% of the vote in Chechnya.

In the 2018 presidential elections, millions of votes were recorded in districts that had surprisingly precise turnout figures of 85%, 90% and 95%. Some 1.5 million votes (about 2% of the total) simply appeared as “extras” after the final day of voting.

Evidently irked by repeated findings from monitors for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) about the lack of freedom in Russian elections, the Kremlin simply denied them access in 2024.

Putin the autocrat

It is often said that a marker of authoritarian governments is they generally tend to tolerate dissent. Autocratic governments, on the other hand, do not. That’s because they are the sole custodians of political power. Anyone seeking to challenge that is – by definition – an enemy.

Putin is embracing the autocratic type in his next stanza as president. That makes him incredibly dangerous. Now 71 years old, he has deliberately not anointed a successor, but has bound the fortunes of Russia’s leadership cadres to his own via political blood pacts.

Read more:
What can we expect from six more years of Vladimir Putin? An increasingly weak and dysfunctional Russia

He has created a polity comprised of serfs who compete for his attention, among whom he can place no trust. As the embodiment of Russia’s political gravity, his expectations of utter loyalty will increase. Every failure and setback will only serve to deepen a despotic determination to nourish his delusions of grandeur.

As Russia’s electoral circus unfolds in slow motion, we are already witnessing signs of this. In recent days, former president Dmitry Medvedev prominently displayed a future map of Ukraine. The majority of it was swallowed by Russia, with Medvedev noting that “historic parts of Russia need to come home”.

Around 40% of government spending is now going to the war in Ukraine. And alarm bells have sounded in both Europe and the US that Putin’s ultimate aim is to fracture the West, either through war or the threat of it.

The only way to respond to Putin, therefore, is to resist him as vigorously as possible. After his sham election, he will preside over a regime that may exude strength, but is both fragile and brittle. Should this edifice come down, the results will be both terrible and terrifying for Russians.

But it increasingly seems that will be Putin’s legacy: not as Russia’s champion, but its wrecker.

Matthew Sussex has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Fulbright Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Lowy Institute and various Australian government departments and agencies.

– ref. Russia is about to hold another presidential election. It needn’t bother – https://theconversation.com/russia-is-about-to-hold-another-presidential-election-it-neednt-bother-225645

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Wilson, Co-founder and director of Hate & Extremism Insights Aotearoa (HEIA) and director, Master of Conflict and Terrorism Studies, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

As our research has previously revealed, the man who attacked two mosques in Christchurch in 2019, killing 51 people, posted publicly online for five years before his terrorist atrocity.

Here we provide further information about Brenton Tarrant’s posting. This article has two main goals.

First, by placing his online posting against his other online and offline activities, we gain a far more complete picture of the path to his attack.

Second, we want to show how his online community played a role in his radicalisation. This is important, as the same can happen to others immersed in that community.

In combining his online and offline activity here we do not seek to attribute blame to those who might have been expected to detect this behaviour. It is exceptionally difficult to identify terrorists online.

And yet, history is full of difficult problems that have been overcome. We use the benefit of hindsight to provide greater understanding of Tarrant’s pathway than has previously been available.

The aim is to prevent similar attacks by better understanding how such people act and how they might be detected.

Read more:
Christchurch terrorist discussed attacks online a year before carrying them out, new research reveals

Words and deeds

In the timeline below, we focus on Tarrant’s activity in 2018, following his first visit to Dunedin’s Bruce Rifle Club on December 14 2017, until his final overseas trip in October. It is for this period that we have the most comprehensive online posting history.

In 2024, we have both the benefit of hindsight and the accumulation of information relating to the attack. However, this triangulation of online and offline activities illustrates the ways those contemplating terrorist violence might act.

We can now see, for example, that Tarrant bought high-powered firearms on three occasions over a six-week period in March and April 2018. And he posted publicly twice on the online imageboard 4chan about his plans for racially motivated violence, and his veneration of a perpetrator of a similar attack.

Tarrant therefore not only “leaked” his plans for violence, he did so at the very moment he was buying weapons for it.

Read more:
The road to March 15: ‘networked white rage’ and the Christchurch terror attacks

Over 20 days in July and August, Tarrant presented to hospital with gunshot wounds, and began selling weapons online under the username Mannerheim (the name of a Finnish nationalist leader revered for defeating the communists in the country’s civil war).

He also posted publicly about his anger at the presence of mosques in South Island cities (claiming one had replaced a church). He wrote “soon” when another poster suggested setting fire to these places of worship.

A month later he attempted to sell weapons on online marketplace TradeMe, using a prominent white nationalist slogan – “14 Words” – in his username. (Strangely, this clear red flag was mentioned only once in the royal commission report on the attacks.)

TradeMe removed one of these advertisements for violating its terms of use. That caused Tarrant to move to another forum – NZ Hunting and Shooting Forums – to complain.

Read more:
Can ideology-detecting algorithms catch online extremism before it takes hold?

Extremist community

Our study has also revealed how important the 4chan community is to the radicalisation of individuals like Tarrant. In contrast to the fleeting human interaction he had with others as he travelled the world, 4chan was Tarrant’s community.

4chan’s /pol/ (politically incorrect) board became his home. Here he interacted with others over long periods, imagining he was speaking to the same people over months and years, and assuming many of them had become his friends.

We have found that, while creating a sense of belonging and community, /pol/ also works to create extremists in both direct and indirect ways.

Its anonymous nature (users are assigned a unique ID number for each thread, rather than a username) has two effects. One is well known, the other identified in our study.

First, anonymity encourages behaviour that would be absent if the poster’s identity was known. Second, anonymity is frustrating for those who wish to “be someone”, who crave respect and notoriety.

We have documented the way Tarrant (and others) strive to gain status in a discussion, only to have to start again when they move to a new thread and are given a new ID. This lack of ongoing recognition is agonising for some individuals, who go to lengths to obtain respect.

Read more:
Violent extremists are not lone wolves – dispelling this myth could help reduce violence

Anonymity and peer respect

And just like a real-world fascist movement, /pol/ venerates violent action as necessary for the vitality and regeneration of the community.

When a terrorist attack, school shooting or other violent event occurs, users celebrate these events in so-called “happening” threads. These threads are longer, more emotional and excited than any other discussions. Participants often claim the individual at the centre of the event is “/ourguy/” (a reference to the /pol/ board).

The threads are also highly anticipatory: many users believe this event will finally push society into violent chaos and race war.

These dynamics are closely connected. For those who seek recognition and status on the bulletin board, such as Tarrant, the excited attention and adoration given to those who perpetrate high-profile violence is the clearest path to the peer respect that the anonymity of the board otherwise denies them.

As harrowing as this finding is, we contend that gaining respect from their online community is in itself a crucial motivation for some perpetrators of far-right terrorism.

The nature of this extreme but easily accessible corner of the internet means any hope Tarrant was a one-off – and that this won’t happen again – is misguided.

The authors acknowledge the expert contribution of tactical and forensic linguist and independent researcher Julia Kupper. More information about our study will be released at heiaglobal.com. Our research was approved by the University of Auckland Human Participant Ethics Committee. A paper based on this study has been submitted for peer review and publication.

Chris Wilson is the director and co-founder of Hate & Extremism Insights Aotearoa (HEIA).

Ethan Renner, Jack Smylie, and Michal Dziwulski 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. Christchurch attacks 5 years on: terrorist’s online history gives clues to preventing future atrocities – https://theconversation.com/christchurch-attacks-5-years-on-terrorists-online-history-gives-clues-to-preventing-future-atrocities-225273

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Davis, Chair of Women’s Health, Monash University

Despite decades of research, navigating menopause seems to have become harder – with conflicting information on the internet, in the media, and from health care providers and researchers.

Adding to the uncertainty, a recent series in the Lancet medical journal challenged some beliefs about the symptoms of menopause and which ones menopausal hormone therapy (also known as hormone replacement therapy) can realistically alleviate.

So what symptoms reliably indicate the start of perimenopause or menopause? And which symptoms can menopause hormone therapy help with? Here’s what the evidence says.

Remind me, what exactly is menopause?

Menopause, simply put, is complete loss of female fertility.

Menopause is traditionally defined as the final menstrual period of a woman (or person female at birth) who previously menstruated. Menopause is diagnosed after 12 months of no further bleeding (unless you’ve had your ovaries removed, which is surgically induced menopause).

Perimenopause starts when menstrual cycles first vary in length by seven or more days, and ends when there has been no bleeding for 12 months.

Read more:
Perimenopause usually begins in your 40s. How do you know if it has started?

Both perimenopause and menopause are hard to identify if a person has had a hysterectomy but their ovaries remain, or if natural menstruation is suppressed by a treatment (such as hormonal contraception) or a health condition (such as an eating disorder).

What are the most common symptoms of menopause?

Our study of the highest quality menopause-care guidelines found the internationally recognised symptoms of the perimenopause and menopause are:

• hot flushes and night sweats (known as vasomotor symptoms)
• disturbed sleep
• musculoskeletal pain
• decreased sexual function or desire
• vaginal dryness and irritation
• mood disturbance (low mood, mood changes or depressive symptoms) but not clinical depression.

However, none of these symptoms are menopause-specific, meaning they could have other causes.

In our study of Australian women, 38% of pre-menopausal women, 67% of perimenopausal women and 74% of post-menopausal women aged under 55 experienced hot flushes and/or night sweats.

But the severity of these symptoms varies greatly. Only 2.8% of pre-menopausal women reported moderate to severely bothersome hot flushes and night sweats symptoms, compared with 17.1% of perimenopausal women and 28.5% of post-menopausal women aged under 55.

So bothersome hot flushes and night sweats appear a reliable indicator of perimenopause and menopause – but they’re not the only symptoms. Nor are hot flushes and night sweats a western society phenomenon, as has been suggested. Women in Asian countries are similarly affected.

Depressive symptoms and anxiety are also often linked to menopause but they’re less menopause-specific than hot flushes and night sweats, as they’re common across the entire adult life span.

The most robust guidelines do not stipulate women must have hot flushes or night sweats to be considered as having perimenopausal or post-menopausal symptoms. They acknowledge that new mood disturbances may be a primary manifestation of menopausal hormonal changes.

The extent to which menopausal hormone changes impact memory, concentration and problem solving (frequently talked about as “brain fog”) is uncertain. Some studies suggest perimenopause may impair verbal memory and resolve as women transition through menopause. But strategic thinking and planning (executive brain function) have not been shown to change.

Who might benefit from hormone therapy?

The Lancet papers suggest menopause hormone therapy alleviates hot flushes and night sweats, but the likelihood of it improving sleep, mood or “brain fog” is limited to those bothered by vasomotor symptoms (hot flushes and night sweats).

In contrast, the highest quality clinical guidelines consistently identify both vasomotor symptoms and mood disturbances associated with menopause as reasons for menopause hormone therapy. In other words, you don’t need to have hot flushes or night sweats to be prescribed menopause hormone therapy.

Often, menopause hormone therapy is prescribed alongside a topical vaginal oestrogen to treat vaginal symptoms (dryness, irritation or urinary frequency).

However, none of these guidelines recommend menopause hormone therapy for cognitive symptoms often talked about as “brain fog”.

Despite musculoskeletal pain being the most common menopausal symptom in some populations, the effectiveness of menopause hormone therapy for this specific symptoms still needs to be studied.

Some guidelines, such as an Australian endorsed guideline, support menopause hormone therapy for the prevention of osteoporosis and fracture, but not for the prevention of any other disease.

What are the risks?

The greatest concerns about menopause hormone therapy have been about breast cancer and an increased risk of a deep vein clot which might cause a lung clot.

Oestrogen-only menopause hormone therapy is consistently considered to cause little or no change in breast cancer risk.

Read more:
Making sense of menopausal hormone therapy means understanding the benefits as well as the risks

Oestrogen taken with a progestogen, which is required for women who have not had a hysterectomy, has been associated with a small increase in the risk of breast cancer, although any risk appears to vary according to the type of therapy used, the dose and duration of use.

Oestrogen taken orally has also been associated with an increased risk of a deep vein clot, although the risk varies according to the formulation used. This risk is avoided by using estrogen patches or gels prescribed at standard doses

What if I don’t want hormone therapy?

If you can’t or don’t want to take menopause hormone therapy, there are also effective non-hormonal prescription therapies available for troublesome hot flushes and night sweats.

In Australia, most of these options are “off-label”, although the new medication fezolinetant has just been approved in Australia for postmenopausal hot flushes and night sweats, and is expected to be available by mid-year. Fezolinetant, taken as a tablet, acts in the brain to stop the chemical neurokinin 3 triggering an inappropriate body heat response (flush and/or sweat).

Unfortunately, most over-the-counter treatments promoted for menopause are either ineffective or unproven. However, cognitive behaviour therapy and hypnosis may provide symptom relief.

Read more:
Lots of women try herbs like black cohosh for menopausal symptoms like hot flushes – but does it work?

The Australasian Menopause Society has useful menopause fact sheets and a find-a-doctor page. The Practitioner Toolkit for Managing Menopause is also freely available.

Susan Davis is an NHMRC Leadership Investigator and Head of the Women’s Health Research Program Monash University. She holds research funding from the NHMRC, the MRFF and the Heart Foundation She has given educational presentations ( her own work) for Theramex, Besins Healthcare, Mayne Pharma and Abbott Laboratories and has served on Advisory Boards for Theramex, Astellas, Besins Healthcare, Mayne Pharma, Abbott Laboratories and Gedeon-Richter.

– ref. What are the most common symptoms of menopause? And which can hormone therapy treat? – https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-most-common-symptoms-of-menopause-and-which-can-hormone-therapy-treat-225174

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

Treasurer Jim Chalmers will say lower commodity prices and a softening labour market mean this year’s revenue upgrade will be modest, when he outlines on Thursday the government’s strategy for the May 14 budget.

At the same time, Chalmers will all but confirm the budget will be in the black, declaring, “We are still shooting for a second surplus”.

He also will indicated the government is likely to bank a maller proportion than prteviously of what revenue upgrade there is. In earlier budgets it banked almost all of it. This time, he says, “we’ll bank what we can” of the upgrade.

Chalmers’ first two budgets were each helped by revenue upgrades of more than $100 billion, but there won’t be any such bonanza this year.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: Treasurer Jim Chalmers prepares a new ‘growth’ script for his third budget

“In fact we are even looking at much less than the $69 billion we booked in the latest mid-year budget update,” Chalmers will tell a Committee for Economic Development of Australia function.

On the commodities front, the iron ore price has been falling. “In the last week alone it has fallen by almost 10% due to concerns about the demand for steel in China,” Chalmers says in his address, part of which was released ahead of delivery. Earlier this week, it was trading at less than $94 a tonne.

“Its current price is around 20% cent lower than it was this far out from last year’s budget.”

Thermal coal has been on the general path Treasury assumed in the December mid-year budget update. But its present price is about a third lower than this time last year.

The strong labour market contributed a good part of the revenue upgrades of the previous budgets.

Chalmers says while the labour market remains resilient, it is softening. “So we won’t get the very substantial revenue upgrades we’ve seen from outperforming expectations here.

“At the end of last year, there were 14.2 million Australians in work – this is around 500,000 more than Treasury was forecasting at the time of the election.

“We welcome this, but we don’t expect to get such upside forecast surprises this time around.”

Chalmers says the three biggest drivers of the government’s strategy for this budget are “global uncertainty, persistent cost of living pressures, and slowing growth”.

“These pressures necessitate an approach to the third budget which is a little bit different, but not a lot different, to the first two,” he says.

“There will still be a premium on what’s responsible, affordable, meaningful and methodical.

“There will still be a primary focus, but not a sole focus, on inflation.”

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

– ref. Jim Chalmers warns budget revenue upgrades will be modest but flags expected surplus – https://theconversation.com/jim-chalmers-warns-budget-revenue-upgrades-will-be-modest-but-flags-expected-surplus-225665

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lizzie Speechley, Behavioural Ecologist, The University of Western Australia

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering Australia’s iconic magpies, you know these birds are intelligent creatures. With their striking black and white plumage, loud warbling voices and complex social behaviours, magpies possess a level of avian brilliance that fascinates birders and scientists alike.

But what enables these clever birds to thrive? Are their sharp cognitive abilities innate – something coded into their genetic makeup? Or are magpie smarts more a product of their environment and social experiences?

In a new study, we shed light on the “nature versus nurture” debate – at least when it comes to avian intelligence.

Bigger social groups, smarter birds

Our study focused on Western Australian magpies, which unlike their eastern counterparts live in large, cooperative social groups all year round. We put young fledglings – and their mothers – through a test of their learning abilities.

We made wooden “puzzle boards” with holes covered by different-coloured lids. For each bird, we hid a tasty food reward under the lid of one particular colour. We also tested each bird alone, so it couldn’t copy the answer from its friends.

Through trial and error, the magpies had to figure out which colour was associated with the food prize. We knew the birds had mastered the puzzle when they picked the rewarded colour in 10 out of 12 consecutive attempts.

We tested fledglings at 100, 200 and 300 days after leaving the nest. While they improved at solving the puzzle as they developed, the cognitive performance of the young magpies showed little connection to the problem-solving prowess of their mothers.

Instead, the key factor influencing how quickly the fledglings learned to pick the correct colour was the size of their social group. Birds raised in larger groups solved the test significantly faster than those growing up in smaller social groups.

Fledglings living in groups of ten or more birds needed only about a dozen tries to consistently pick the rewarded colour. But a youngster growing up in a group of three took more than 30 attempts to learn the link between colour and food.

How the social environment shapes cognition

Why would living in a larger social group boost cognitive abilities? We think it probably comes down to the mental demands that social animals face on a daily basis, such as recognising and remembering group members, and keeping track of different relationships within a complex group.

Magpies can learn to recognise and remember humans, too. The bird populations we work with live in the wild, but they recognise us by our appearance and a specific whistle we make.

A young magpie living in a group gets plenty of mental exercise recognising and remembering numerous individuals and relationships. Working to make sense of this stream of social information may boost their ability to learn and solve problems.

Our findings go against the idea that intelligence is something innately “set” within an animal at birth, based solely on genetic inheritance. Instead, we show how cognition can be shaped by the environment, especially in the first year after leaving the nest when young magpies’ minds are still developing.

While we focused specifically on Australian magpies, the implications of our research could extend to other highly social and intelligent species.

Lizzie Speechley 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 surprising key to magpie intelligence: it’s not genetic – https://theconversation.com/the-surprising-key-to-magpie-intelligence-its-not-genetic-225654

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

Last week, the ABC’s Four Corners investigated the alleged toxic culture towards women at Sydney’s elite boys Cranbrook School.

The investigation covered harassment and bullying of female staff and other bad behaviour. After further developments, the headmaster, Nicholas Sampson, had resigned by week’s end.

The scandal has brought back a debate about whether single-sex schools are fit for purpose and the culture they foster.

To discuss this and what leads some men and boys to treat women badly and too often violently, we’re joined by Michael Flood, professor at the School of Justice at Queensland University of Technology. Flood researches masculinity and gender justice, interpersonal violence and engaging men in violent prevention.

On the Cranbrook revelations, Flood says:

It certainly didn’t surprise me because this is hardly the first time that stories of sexual harassment and sexism and the sexual objectification of girls and women have emerged, both from schools in general and from elite boys’ private schools in particular.

While the issue is prevalent throughout society, Flood explains why elite institutions have particular troubles.

Certainly, there’s very good research to show that you get higher levels of sexual violence and domestic violence in contexts where there are norms of entitlement, norms of being born to rule.

You also get high levels of sexist and harassing and violent behaviour in cultures where there’s a code of silence, a code that you don’t dob, […] you don’t tell on your mates, you cover up and protect your mates.

On getting transparency in schools, Flood describes why it’s a hard task.

Some schools operate as closed shops where they don’t want to be held accountable for poor behaviour by students. And when that behaviour does occur, it’s very tempting for the leaders of those institutions to portray this as the function of a few bad apples, you know, kind of isolated incidents.

While one might expect, after all the recent community debate, that young men would have better attitudes to women than their elders, flood explains why that isn’t the case,

We can’t simply assume that young men have better attitudes then older generations of men or other people, because the fact is they don’t. So, for example, the highest rates of sexual violence offending in Australia are among young men 15 to 19.

Young men, in their late teens and early 20s, in fact, often have poorer attitudes to sexual violence and domestic violence than slightly older cohorts of men, then men in their late 20s, men in their 30s and 40s

What can be done to combat these behaviours in our young men?

Parents have a vital role to play. And funnily enough, fathers have a particularly vital role to play. And, you know, the first thing I think that parents in general and fathers in particular can do is role model equity, role model respect.

A second thing that I think parents can do is have those conversations and they […] can be awkward or embarrassing conversations, but have conversations about pornography, have conversations about relationships, have conversations with […] older children and young people, about consent and respect. And so on.

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Masculinity expert Michael Flood on boys and men behaving badly – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-masculinity-expert-michael-flood-on-boys-and-men-behaving-badly-225659

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Park Thaichon, Associate Professor of Marketing, University of Southern Queensland

Until now, you might have thought of electric vehicles as inner suburban toys. Teslas and Polestars are expensive, leaving them as playthings for wealthier Australians and out of reach for the mortgage belt.

But that’s no longer the case. As residents in the outer suburbs reel from price rises seemingly everywhere, more and more are turning to electric vehicles (EVs) to slash their fuel bill.

Last year, EV orders for outer suburban residents (43%) overtook inner suburban residents (39%) for the first time. Rural and regional residents accounted for 18% of orders.

Avoiding petrol costs is one reason. But there are other good reasons, from easier parking and charging, to lower maintenance. And as our research into why people buy EVs has shown, there’s an even more fundamental reason – car buyers now know more about EVs and feel more familiar with the technology.

Outer suburbs rely on cars

The further you get from the city centre, the more likely you are to have to drive. Distances are longer and public transport drops off. Research from 2020 shows most outer suburban residents who commute have to travel between 10 and 30 kilometres. Every workday return commute costs these workers about A$36 in car running costs, or $180 a week – and this figure will likely have risen since.

So while the initial upfront cost of an EV may put some people off, others run the numbers on how much they spend on petrol – and how much they would save by going electric.

Petrol prices have surged in recent years due to armed conflict in Europe and the Middle East. This affects outer suburban, rural and regional residents the most, given they cover the most distance.

This is a major reason why more outer suburbanites are going electric. Electricity is much cheaper than petrol, especially if you make it yourself with solar. Outer suburban residents are more likely to have solar on their rooftops than inner suburban residents in Sydney and Melbourne.

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows the majority of electric vehicle owners live 20 to 60km away from their city’s CBD.

The most popular EVs in Australia last year (Tesla Model Y, Model 3 and BYD’s Atto) can drive between 400 and 500km before needing a recharge. The all-important range has grown substantially in recent years, and now mean suburban residents can commute, shop and go out without worrying about finding a place to charge.

In fact, the outer suburbs are better placed than inner suburbs in terms of charging cheaply. In the inner suburbs, space is at a premium and many houses do not have off-street parking. That makes it hard to recharge your car from your home. But outer suburban homes tend to have off street parking or a garage, which means you can charge cheaply at home.

This is to say nothing of the environmental benefits by avoiding what comes out of the tailpipe of an internal combustion car: carbon dioxide, PM2.5 particles dangerous to our health, and many other nasties.

Read more:
Australia’s electric vehicle numbers doubled last year. What’s the impact of charging them on a power grid under strain?

EVs versus the cost of living

At present, many of us are reining in expenses, cutting back on extracurricular activities and putting off holidays to cope with the surging cost of everything – especially mortgages.

It would make financial sense for many of us to switch to EVs to take advantage of much cheaper running and maintenance costs. But the higher up-front cost of EVs has long been a disincentive.

What’s changing now is that cheaper EVs are arriving from the likes of the world’s second-largest EV manufacturer, China’s BYD and other Chinese brands such as MG. Tesla has cut its prices, too.

In Australia, the cheapest EVs now start from A$40,000, though most still cost $60,000–$90,000.

The secondhand market is growing too, as government fleet EVs come up for sale and as early adopters buy new cars and sell their old.

What are governments doing?

Subsidies, tax credits, and local charging infrastructure are making it easier for residents on the outskirts to transition towards greener transport.

Some state governments are trying to accelerate adoption with a range of incentives for EV owners, from subsidies to cheaper registration. The interest was so strong in Victoria and South Australia that these governments have wound back some subsidies. By contrast, Queensland is offering a generous $6,000 rebate for new EV owners.

At a federal level, the proposed new vehicle efficiency standards will encourage carmakers to sell more fuel-efficient vehicles. If these standards come in, they will likely penalise fuel-guzzling cars and make fuel misers cheaper. They will also likely increase the number of EVs and other zero-emissions vehicles in the Australian market.

Read more:
What would a vehicle efficiency standard for new cars cost – or save – Australian drivers?

What’s next?

Outer suburban residents are buying electric vehicles for very good reasons: financial prudence, practicality and a cleaner future.

Petrol is a substantial expense for many who live in car-dependent suburbs. If you can stop buying it and get the same thing you want – transport – with far cheaper running costs, why wouldn’t you?

Read more:
Electric vehicles are suddenly hot − but the industry has traveled a long road to relevance

Park Thaichon 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. Petrol, pricing and parking: why so many outer suburban residents are opting for EVs – https://theconversation.com/petrol-pricing-and-parking-why-so-many-outer-suburban-residents-are-opting-for-evs-225565

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Naomi Smith, Lecturer in Sociology, University of the Sunshine Coast

Outside of two grainy paparazzi photos, Catherine, Princess of Wales, hasn’t been seen in public since Christmas Day 2023, when she attended a church service at Sandringham.

In January, Kensington Palace announced Kate Middleton (as she’s more popularly known) was to undergo “planned abdominal surgery” and wasn’t expected to return to public duties until after Easter.

Social media have been awash with speculation about Catherine’s health and whereabouts. Limited information has dripped out of Kensington Palace, inadvertently intensifying scrutiny. The information void has prompted onlookers to fill the space with their own theories.

As scrutiny reaches a fever pitch, we ask: why is the Palace’s typical media playbook no longer working?

Not so ‘unprecedented’

This isn’t the first time rumours about the British royal family have attracted public interest.

Anne Boleyn (circa 1501-1536), the second of six wives of Henry VIII, was executed after being found guilty of adultery, incest and treason. While historians differ in their interpretation of Anne’s guilt or innocence, it’s clear the charges were at least partially the result of gossip instigated by rival factions seeking power at the English court.

The long-reigning Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was widely regarded as as a loyal wife and mother. Yet she too became the target of gossip regarding her close friendship with Scottish servant John Brown after her husband, Prince Albert, died in 1861.

Then there were the rumours about Diana, Princess of Wales: that her son Harry was the product of an affair, that she was pregnant with Dodi Fayed’s child at the time of her death in 1997, and that her death wasn’t accidental.

The Palace typically refuses to comment on these kinds of sensational rumours. Sometimes, though, it will reject gossip via trusted media sources, as was the case in late 2018 when it denied there was a feud between Catherine and Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex.

The Palace’s strategic communications

The royal family has gradually adjusted to new media and technologies, though not as quickly as the public might like.

On one hand, the Palace continues its age-old tradition of announcing major news on a noticeboard at the gates of Buckingham Palace. On the other, a previous tendency to hide serious illnesses – such as the cancer that claimed King George VI’s life in 1952 – has been tempered by a more forthcoming approach.

Read more:
The royals have historically been tight-lipped about their health – but that never stopped the gossip

When Queen Camilla underwent a hysterectomy in 2007, the media were informed on the day of the surgery. The Palace was similarly open in its acknowledgement of Catherine’s hospitalisation for hyperemesis gravidarum (severe nausea and vomiting) during her first pregnancy in 2012. It announced her second pregnancy in 2014 earlier than planned due to the same condition.

On some level, we’ve become accustomed to such updates.

Internet sleuthing and a manipulated image

In response to limited information about Catherine’s health, memes stepped in to fill the space. Users on X joked about her recovering from a Brazilian butt lift, or growing out her bangs.

There were also more serious claims that she was in a coma, or dead, or getting a divorce.

In the midst of this speculation, TMZ published a grainy photo of Catherine in the passenger seat of a car near Windsor Castle. She wears large, dark glasses in the long-distance shot. It could be anyone, internet sleuths point out.

Significantly, no major UK news outlets published the photo, as per Kensington Palace’s request. This is partly driven by a desire to preserve access to the Palace in the long term. UK news outlets are also constrained by the Editor’s Code of Practice and the UK’s right-to-privacy legislation, which applies to the royal family. Nonetheless, the snap was widely circulated online.

The situation escalated further when Catherine shared a photo of her and her children on Instagram in honour of Mother’s Day. The public quickly realised the image was at best poorly photoshopped or at worst AI-generated. Online sleuths identified strangely shaped and misplaced hands, odd shadows and unseasonal plant life.

The Associated Press, Getty Images, AFP and Reuters subsequently issued “kill notices” on the image, stating concerns it had been digitally manipulated. In response, Kensington Palace released a brief statement from Catherine, who explained that as an amateur photographer she likes to “occasionally experiment with editing”. The photo had previously been attributed to the Prince of Wales.

Old media PR won’t work in a new media world

The situation with Catherine’s absence from public life exposes the limits of old media strategies in a “new media” world.

The Palace is used to being able to control media coverage through the royal rota, a select group of press outlets in the UK given access to royal events. It typically doesn’t comment on the record in response to gossip and speculation. Yet the interest in Catherine’s health has prompted a number of statements to the press.

These old media strategies don’t seem to be working, with news outlets that are part of the royal rota reporting critically on the manipulated image.

In a world increasingly plagued by synthetic and AI-generated images, it seems the Palace releasing a digitally manipulated image has also undermined the public’s trust in it, adding fuel to the fire.

The public has become increasingly sensitised to AI-generated images over the past year, and is generally much more sceptical and switched on. At the same time, the release of the first post-surgery image of Catherine was always going to attract scrutiny online. It seems the Palace was unprepared for this.

Read more:
Yes, Kate Middleton’s photo was doctored. But so are a lot of images we see today

Most social media users also treat royal rumours similarly to other types of viral celebrity gossip and conspiracy theorising, and evidence suggests the royal family’s popularity is declining over time.

Chaotic, fast-paced social media platforms such as X and TikTok are breeding grounds for misinformation – and #KateGate is arguably the first time the Palace has felt the full force of new-age online conspiracy.

Recent events demonstrate the Palace can no longer rely on favoured newspapers avoiding tricky topics. Now, everyone online can act as a reporter – and a sleuth – and the Palace will need to be much more forthcoming if it wants to preserve its image.

Read more:
The power and pleasure – and occasional backlash – of celebrity conspiracy theories

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. Where’s Kate? Speculation about the ‘missing’ princess is proof the Palace’s media playbook needs a re-write – https://theconversation.com/wheres-kate-speculation-about-the-missing-princess-is-proof-the-palaces-media-playbook-needs-a-re-write-225562

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexa Delbosc, Associate Professor in Transport, Monash University

Interest in shared e-bikes and e-scooters, or “micromobility” devices, has skyrocketed in Australia. Every capital city and over 25 local councils have trialled shared e-scooter systems through private operators including Lime, Beam and Neuron.

Public perceptions of these programs are extremely mixed. Some people still think of these small electric personal vehicles as a passing fad. Or, worse, they see them as a source of transport system disruption, public space anarchy and traffic injury.

The truth is more nuanced. Shared scooters and bicycles are gradually being integrated into the transport system of our cities. Brisbane has led the way, followed by Melbourne.

Yet some are still wondering whether shared micromobility systems are simply a fun form of transport for young, mostly male and high-income tourists, or do they benefit a broader set of users?

Our new research across cities in three different countries paints a very different picture. Our findings suggest subsidised micromobility programs can provide significant benefits to vulnerable user groups.

Most shared operators provide discounted rides to low-income customers. In partnership with Lime, we were able to find out how “Lime Access” customers use shared e-scooters and e-bikes and how this compares to non-subsidised customers.

Read more:
Five years on, Brisbane’s e-scooters and e-bikes are winning over tourists and residents as they open up the city

These schemes can help ease disadvantage

We surveyed more than 1,000 respondents in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. We found Lime Access customers were five times as likely as non-subsidised riders (35% versus 7%) to use shared scooters and bicycles for daily travel. They were twice as likely to use them for essential trips (such as shopping or commuting) and to connect with public transport (44% versus 23%).

Half of Lime Access customers said one benefit of micromobility was that it allowed them to “get somewhere without a car”. This finding suggests these programs can help support a car-free or car-light lifestyle. This, in turn, makes transport systems more sustainable.

These benefits were highlighted by open-ended survey responses, such as:

As someone on a low income who does not own a car, it feels very liberating to be able to take a scooter to an area that is not serviced by public transport whenever I like. (Melbourne, Australia)

Read more:
Thinking of swerving high fuel prices with an e-scooter or e-bike? 5 crucial questions answered

People with disabilities also benefit

In our study, we did not directly ask about disability. However, a number of Lime Access customers wrote about how the program allows them mobility despite medical conditions or physical disability.

Many of those disabilities are “invisible” – the casual observer is unlikely to notice them. Yet for the riders, the electric motor of the e-scooter or e-bike reduced the fatigue and strain they would experience walking or riding a standard bike.

I have kidney problems so the scooter saves me from fatigue of long walks. (Christchurch, New Zealand)

For some respondents, their physical disability prevented them from driving a car. Shared micromobility filled the gap, helping them get to essential destinations.

I’m ADA, which basically is handicapped, and I cannot walk all over like I used to be able to. Lime provides me independence I wouldn’t have without it! With the low-income program you offer, it literally saves me! I wouldn’t be able to get groceries or run errands or do most anything I do because of Lime. (San Francisco, California)

Read more:
The old road rules no longer apply: how e-scooters challenge outdated assumptions

What can governments do to maximise the benefits?

Our study found shared e-scooters and bikes aren’t just for tourists to go joyriding. With the right frameworks and incentives in place, they can benefit vulnerable groups in society. In this way, they help create more equitable transport systems.

Yet these subsidised programs are relatively unknown and little-advertised. Only 24% of our respondents had ever heard of them.

The challenge remains: how to reach more travellers who could benefit from reduced-fare programs, without undermining the financial viability of operators? Unlike public transport services and even taxi services, there is no government support to encourage shared micromobility operators to expand their programs.

In the United States, city governments have been proactive in embedding equity requirements into service contracts with micromobility providers. For example, Washington DC reduces the fees it charges micromobility operators, with the reduction based on the proportion of travel by low-income customers.

Read more:
E-bike incentives are a costly way to cut carbon emissions, but they also promote health, equity and cleaner air

In Australia, local and state governments should be moving beyond how to regulate these programs to also focus on how to better integrate them into our transport system. With the right incentives in place, we can maximise the benefits of micromobility for people who are most in need of affordable and accessible transport solutions.

Alexa Delbosc conducted this project in collaboration with Lime. Calvin Thigpen, an author on the research paper, is an employee of Lime. Lime provided access to distribute the survey to Lime customers and did not provide any financial support for the study. Dr Thigpen only became involved in the project during late-stage paper writing and qualitative data analysis.

– ref. E for equity? E-scooter and e-bike schemes can help people on low incomes and with disabilities – https://theconversation.com/e-for-equity-e-scooter-and-e-bike-schemes-can-help-people-on-low-incomes-and-with-disabilities-224844

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jedrzej Bialkowski, Professor and Head of Department, Economics and Finance, University of Canterbury

Global stock prices dropped across the board late last year, by between 10% and 15% in a matter of weeks.

Fears of a recession took hold after a series of interest rate increases, stubborn inflation and geopolitical tensions in Europe and the Middle East. Uncertainty gripped the market and eroded investor sentiment, only for markets to bounce back and finish the year on a high.

Stockmarket history is full of similar periods characterised by either extreme levels or dramatic changes in stock prices. This creates patterns that are difficult to reconcile with asset-pricing models. These models are based on the assumption that prices always reflect reasonable expectations about future cash flows determined by rational investors.

But investors are not always rational. Rather, a large body of academic literature shows market-wide sentiment can cause prices to depart from their true values.

In an ongoing collaboration between the University of Canterbury and the New Zealand Shareholder Association (NZSA), we have developed the NZ Retail Investor Sentiment Index as a representative survey of retail investors in New Zealand.

The goal is to understand the behaviour of New Zealand’s investors and how they compare with their overseas colleagues when predicting the patterns of the stockmarket.

Measuring market sentiment

Market sentiment refers to the overall attitude of investors. It is commonly summarised as bullish (expecting increasing prices), bearish (expecting decreasing prices), or neutral (expecting no or only little changes in price). Such sentiment is not always based on fundamentals such as revenue, profitability and growth opportunities.

Several studies show investor sentiment predicts stock returns and can be used as a contrarian signal since subsequent returns tend to be relatively high when sentiment is low and vice versa. Therefore, a contrarian investor would buy stocks when sentiment is low and sell stocks when sentiment is high.

Read more:
Mood, music and money: what our Spotify playlists reveal about the emotional nature of financial markets

Every week since January 2020, we asked registered members of the NZSA whether they expected the stockmarket to increase (bullish), decrease (bearish) or stay the same (neutral) over the next six months. The NZSA has about 1,200 members, a quarter of whom receive email invitations to participate in the survey.

Our index is constructed similarly to those in the United States and Europe, which are often cited in the media and widely used in research. All these benchmarks provide insights into the mood of investors and shed light on the short-term outlook for the local equity market.

2024 forecast for the NZ equity market

During the first four weeks of this year, expectations that stock prices will rise over the next six months remained elevated at 40%. In other words, 40% of the surveyed investors believe the NZ equity market will increase in the first six months of 2024. At the same time, bearish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will fall over the next six months, fluctuated around 16%.

So, despite the mounting global and local uncertainties, retail investors are optimistic about the equity market. Bullish sentiment is stronger and bearish sentiment weaker than the historical average levels of 28% and 36%, respectively.

On the back of last year’s strong market performance and a better-than-expected economy, investor optimism carries forward.

However, since sentiment is known to be a contrarian indicator, informed investors should be cautious going further into the new year.

Why investor sentiment matters

In general, investor sentiment affects the demand (buying) and supply (selling) of stocks. At the aggregate level, this can affect stock prices and volatility.

Understanding the level and changes in the overall attitude or mood of investors therefore has important implications for investors to make better investment decisions.

At the same time, policymakers should monitor and include investor sentiment in their decision-making to reduce undue market volatility. Research has shown sentiment as a determinant of stock prices is driven by rational factors, such as inflation, overall market return and dividend yield, and less rational factors.

Read more:
It’s the ‘vibe’ of the thing: the critical art of measuring business and consumer confidence

Regulators typically focus on the former, which by extension contributes to maintaining stability in sentiment and associated price volatility induced by fundamentals.

But changes in sentiment unrelated to fundamentals are just as important. They can occur without warning and spread widely through the market. This has been found to play an important role for price run-ups and corresponding corrections that can have negative impacts on the functioning of the financial market and asset price bubbles and monetary policy.

Considering the importance of investor behaviour for the wider economy, the patterns identified by our index give us a road map to better understand the ups and downs of the New Zealand stock exchange.

Prof Jedrzej Bialkowski is a member of the American Finance Association (AFA), European Finance Association (EFA), Financial Management Association (FMA), Western Finance Association (WFA) and Institute of Finance Professionals New Zealand (INFINZ).

Moritz Wagner is a member of the American Finance Association (AFA), European Finance Association (EFA), Financial Management Association (FMA), Institute of Finance Professionals New Zealand (INFINZ) and the Nez Zealand Shareholder Association (NZSA).

– ref. Be wary of the ‘vibes’: positive investor sentiment doesn’t necessarily match the true value of stocks – https://theconversation.com/be-wary-of-the-vibes-positive-investor-sentiment-doesnt-necessarily-match-the-true-value-of-stocks-223861

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milad Haghani, Senior Lecturer of Urban Mobility, Public Safety & Disaster Risk, UNSW Sydney

The Pitch Music and Arts Festival in Moyston, Victoria, was cancelled while festival-goers were already on site this weekend, after an extreme fire danger warning was issued.

Cancellations like these have become all too familiar.

The live music and festival industry is currently struggling with significant challenges, including expensive insurance premiums and the cost of living crisis impacting ticket sales.

In particular are the challenges associated with climate change, as extreme weather events becoming more frequent, severe and unpredictable.

I looked at news reports over 2022 and 2023 and found at least 22 music festivals in Australia cancelled or disrupted due to extreme weather conditions.

This trend of weather-related interruptions appears to be on the rise: over the seven years between 2013 and 2019, only ten music festivals in Australia were affected by extreme weather.

Severe weather impacts on music festivals and concerts have ranged from delays and cancellations, to the evacuation of venues and areas mid-festival or mid-performance. This will be a growing challenge for the industry.

Read more:
Climate change is transforming Australia’s cultural life – so why isn’t it mentioned in the new national cultural policy?

Death, injury and cancellations

This is not limited to Australia, and not all extreme weather-related events result in a cancellation. In my research, I also looked at where and why events were being cancelled in the United States, finding at least 21 cancellations in 2022–23.

I also found similar cases in New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands.

In November, we saw the tragic death of a fan due to extreme heat at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in Brazil.

Read more:
Taylor Swift’s Brazil concert was hammered by extreme heat. How to protect crowds at the next sweltering gig

There were more than 100 hospitalisations following a hailstorm at a Louis Tomlinson concert in Colorado last June.

At a Taylor Swift performance in Sydney, fans were temporarily evacuated and the show was delayed due to lightning strikes.

In Australia, severe weather has recently led to the postponement of major events such as the abrupt ending to Sydney’s Good Things festival due to a storm in December, and cancellation the of Strawberry Fields festival, scheduled for October 2022, due to flooding in southern NSW.

Extreme weather events are closely linked to climate change. This trend is likely going to get worse. Australia has witnessed a marked increase in the intensity, frequency and duration of heatwaves over the past 67 years, with a significant uptick observed in recent decades.

The environmental impact of festivals

There has not yet been a comprehensive carbon footprint audit of the Australian music industry, but we do know how much music can contribute to carbon emissions through research in the UK.

The UK’s live music industry produces 405,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually.

The primary sources of these emissions are audience travel, accounting for 43%, and the operations of live music venues, contributing another 23%. This means nearly three-quarters of industry’s emissions are linked to live music performances.

The average touring DJ is responsible for 35 tonnes of CO₂ a year – more than 15 times the personal carbon budget recommended for individuals and nearly eight times the average.

In 2019 alone, 1,000 touring DJs took more than 51,000 flights around the world, generating as much CO₂ as over 20,000 households.

Music festivals can make a change

There are signs of a growing consciousness within the live music industry towards mitigating environmental impacts.

The UK’s live music sector has committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2030.

In Australia Woodford Folk Festival and WOMADelaide have banned single-use plastics and promote recycling to minimise waste.

The live music industry can reduce its environmental impact by adopting more renewable energy, and using sustainable transport options for artists and audiences.

Engaging audiences in sustainability efforts, such as incentivising carbon offset contributions, can also amplify impact.

Other environmental concerns at festivals are less obvious but also important. Attendees often enjoy wearing glitter, not realising it is made of microplastics. Switching to biodegradable glitter is a practical solution.

Festivals also see waste from abandoned low-quality camping gear. These one-time-use tents and accessories contribute to environmental degradation and create waste management challenges. There needs to be more efforts in educating attendees on the importance of sustainable camping practices and encouraging the use of high-quality, reusable camping gear.

Read more:
The environmental cost of abandoning your tent at a music festival

Tree planting has emerged as a popular strategy for music festivals and bands to offset their carbon footprint and contribute positively to the environment.

Incorporating carbon offsets into ticket pricing or offering them as voluntary options presents strategy for festivals and artists to mitigate their environmental impact.

Challenges such as rising supply chain costs and the cost of living are testing the viability of festivals. Amid these challenges, severe weather can introduce additional uncertainties.

It is important the event industry and festival-goers acknowledge their contributions to these escalating challenges, and take proactive steps towards greening music festivals.

Milad Haghani receives funding from the Australian Research Council (Grant No. DE210100440).

– ref. Australian music festivals are increasingly impacted by climate change. But is the industry doing enough to mitigate its impact? – https://theconversation.com/australian-music-festivals-are-increasingly-impacted-by-climate-change-but-is-the-industry-doing-enough-to-mitigate-its-impact-225183

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Partlett, Associate professor of public law, The University of Melbourne

There is very little drama in Russia’s upcoming presidential election this weekend. We all know Vladimir Putin will win. The only real question is whether he will receive more than 75% of the vote.

It could be tempting to see these results as a sign of the strength of the Russian system. Recent gains by the Russian army in Ukraine seem to further support this.

But my own research – soon to be published in a forthcoming book – shows the election results and Russia’s military gains in Ukraine hide a much more problematic reality for the country.

Russia’s system of government is not only undemocratic, rights abusing and unpredictable. It is also increasingly dysfunctional, trapped in a cycle of poor quality and weak governance that cannot be solved by one man, no matter how much power he has.

The constitutional dark arts

The weakness stems from the hyper-centralisation of power in Russia around the president.

This centralisation is the product of an increasingly common logic that I call the “constitutional dark arts”. This logic generally holds that democracy and rights protection are best guaranteed in a constitutional system that centralises authority in one elected leader. This line of thinking is present in many populist, authoritarian countries, such as Hungary and Turkey.

The foundation of this kind of system in Russia is the 1993 Constitution. It was drafted by then-President Boris Yeltsin and his supporters (many in the West) as an expedient for dismantling communism and implementing radical economic reforms. As such, it contains a number of rights provisions and democratic guarantees, alongside provisions that centralise vast power in an elected Russian president.

Yeltsin (and his Western supporters) described this system as democratic because it made the president answerable to the people. They also argued that rights provisions would allow courts to limit any abuses by the centralised state.

These reformers hoped Yeltsin could use this concentrated power to build democracy in Russia. Thirty years later, however, we can see how this use of the “constitutional dark arts” backfired spectacularly.

Since 2000, Putin has ruthlessly deployed this centralised authority to eliminate any checks on power. He has also transformed elections, the media and the courts from sources of accountability into mechanisms to project the image of strong presidential power.

The upcoming presidential election is just the most recent example.

Poor quality governance in Russia

Although this centralised system has allowed Putin to dominate politics, it fosters weak and poor governance, particularly outside Moscow. At least two factors are at play.

First, centralised decision-making in Russia is often made using incomplete or false information. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is an example. It was based on intelligence that the operation would be over quickly and Ukrainians would likely welcome Russian forces.

Second, centralised directives are delegated to under-resourced, incompetent and weak institutions. Russia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was disastrous, in large part due to the poorly resourced regional authorities who were overwhelmed by a crisis of this scale.

This dysfunction has been a central message of the political movement led by the opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Before his death last month, Navalny and his team harshly criticised the corruption and weakness of the Russian regime and its inability to fix roads, provide health care and adequately pay teachers or doctors.

This message was potent, making Navalny the first opposition politician to build a broad coalition that spanned Russia’s 11 time zones.

This broad coalition frightened the Kremlin to such an extent that it led to Navalny’s poisoning in August 2020. Although it remains to be seen how his political movement responds to his death, this central criticism of the government remains one of its most potent messages.

Although it’s impossible to get independent polling on domestic issues during the Ukraine war, it does appear Putin and his administration are concerned about this weakness. In his February 29 address to parliament, Putin tacitly acknowledged these problems, promising new national projects to improve infrastructure, support families and enhance the quality of life.

These kind of promises, however, are unlikely to be implemented. Putin has traditionally promised these kinds of changes around presidential elections. But, when it comes to implementing them, Russia’s regional sub-units are often given no resources to do so.

With so much money now going to the war, it is unlikely the latest set of promises will be any different.

Read more:
Alexei Navalny had a vision of a democratic Russia. That terrified Vladimir Putin to the core

An increasingly dysfunctional Russia

With Putin soon to start his fifth presidential term, this centralisation and personalisation of power is only going to increase.

Externally, this centralisation is likely to produce an increasingly unpredictable Russia, led by a man making decisions on the basis of an increasingly paranoid world view and incorrect or manipulated information. As former German Chancellor Angela Merkel once described Putin, he is really “living in another world”.

This is likely to lead to more foreign policy adventurism and aggression. It will likely foster harsher repression of any dissenting voices inside Russia, as well.

We are also likely to see an increasingly dysfunctional Russia, one in which roads, housing, schools, health care and other infrastructure will continue to deteriorate, particularly outside of Moscow.

Read more:
More corrupt, fractured and ostracised: how Vladimir Putin has changed Russia in over two decades on top

This extends to the military, which remains weak despite its recent battlefield gains. For instance, Russia’s overly centralised command structure has decimated the officer class and led to stunning losses of equipment. Although Russia has managed to muddle through by relying on its vast human and industrial resources, these systemic problems are taking a serious toll on its fighting capacity.

Despite escalating repression, these problems pose an opportunity for a democratic challenger, particularly when Putin is inevitably replaced by another leader.

Russia’s dysfunctional government is also an important reminder for Western media, policymakers and commentators. While it should not serve as a reason for complacency, highlighting Russia’s poor governance is an important tool in combating the Kremlin’s carefully curated image of power and control.

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

– ref. What can we expect from six more years of Vladimir Putin? An increasingly weak and dysfunctional Russia – https://theconversation.com/what-can-we-expect-from-six-more-years-of-vladimir-putin-an-increasingly-weak-and-dysfunctional-russia-224259

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Accredited Practising Dietitian, University of South Australia

Made from fermented apples and naturally high in acetic acid, apple cider vinegar has been popular in recent years for its purported health benefits – from antibacterial properties to antioxidant effects and potential for helping manage blood sugars.

Its origins as a health tonic stretch much further back. Hippocrates used it to treat wounds, fever and skin sores.

An experimental study, released today, looks into whether apple cider vinegar could be effective for weight loss, reduce blood glucose levels and reduce blood lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides).

The results suggest it could reduce all three – but it might not be as simple as downing an apple cider vinegar drink a day.

Read more:
Is apple cider vinegar really a wonder food?

What did they do?

A group of scientists in Lebanon did a double-blinded, randomised, clinical trial in a group of overweight and obese young people aged from 12–25 years.

Researchers randomly placed 30 participants in one of four groups. The participants were instructed to consume either 5, 10 or 15ml of apple cider vinegar diluted into 250ml of water each morning before they ate anything for 12 weeks. A control group consumed an inactive drink (a placebo) made (from lactic acid added to water) to look and taste the same.

Typically this sort of study provides high quality evidence as it can show cause and effect – that is the intervention (apple cider vinegar in this case) leads to a certain outcome. The study was also double-blinded, which means neither the participants or the scientists involved with collecting the data knew who was in which group.

So, what did they find?

After a period of three months apple cider vinegar consumption was linked with significant falls in body weight and body mass index (BMI). On average, those who drank apple cider vinegar during that period lost 6–8kg in weight and reduced their BMI by 2.7–3 points, depending on the dose. They also showed significant decreases in the waist and hip circumference.

The authors also report significant decreases in levels of blood glucose, triglycerides, and cholesterol in the apple cider groups. This finding echoes previous studies. The placebo group, who were given water with lactic acid, had much smaller decreases in weight and BMI. There were also no significant decreases in blood glucose and blood lipids.

From animal studies, it is thought the acetic acid in apple cider vinegar may affect the expression of genes involved in burning fats for energy. The new study did not explore whether this mechanism was involved in any weight loss.

Is this good news?

While the study appears promising, there are also reasons for caution.

Firstly, study participants were aged from 12 to 25, so we can’t say whether the results could apply to everyone.

The statistical methods used in the study don’t allow us to confidently say the same amount of weight loss would occur again if the study was done again.

And while the researchers kept records of the participants’ diet and exercise during the study, these were not published in the paper. This makes it difficult to determine if diet or exercise may have had an impact. We don’t know whether participants changed the amount they ate or the types of food they ate, or whether they changed their exercise levels.

The study used a placebo which they tried to make identical in appearance and taste to the active treatment. But people may still be able to determine differences. Researchers may ask participants at the end of a study to guess which group they were in to test the integrity of the placebo. Unfortunately this was not done in this study, so we can’t be certain if the participants knew or not.

Finally, the authors do not report whether anyone dropped out of the study. This could be important and influence results if people who did not lose weight quit due to lack of motivation.

Read more:
Turns out the viral ‘Sleepy Girl Mocktail’ is backed by science. Should you try it?

Any other concerns?

Apple cider vinegar is acidic and there are concerns it may erode tooth enamel. This can be a problem with any acidic beverages, including fizzy drinks, lemon water and orange juice.

To minimise the risk of acid erosion some dentists recommend the following after drinking acidic drinks:

• rinsing out your mouth with tap water afterwards
• chewing sugar-free gum afterwards to stimulate saliva production
• avoiding brushing your teeth immediately after drinking because it might damage the teeth’s softened top layer
• drink with a straw to minimise contact with the teeth.

Read more:
Apple cider vinegar: is drinking this popular home remedy bad for your teeth? A dentist explains

Down the hatch?

This study provides us with some evidence of a link between apple cider vinegar and weight loss. But before health professionals can recommend this as a weight loss strategy we need bigger and better conducted studies across a wider age range.

Such research would need to be done alongside a controlled background diet and exercise across all the participants. This would provide more robust evidence that apple cider vinegar could be a useful aid for weight loss.

Still, if you don’t mind the taste of apple cider vinegar then you could try drinking some for weight loss, alongside a healthy balanced and varied dietary intake. This study does not suggest people can eat whatever they like and drink apple cider vinegar as a way to control weight.

Read more:
Great time to try: pickling

Evangeline Mantzioris is affiliated with Alliance for Research in Nutrition, Exercise and Activity (ARENA) at the University of South Australia. Evangeline Mantzioris has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, and has been appointed to the National Health and Medical Research Council Dietary Guideline Expert Committee.

– ref. An apple cider vinegar drink a day? New study shows it might help weight loss – https://theconversation.com/an-apple-cider-vinegar-drink-a-day-new-study-shows-it-might-help-weight-loss-225567

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick D. Nunn, Professor of Geography, School of Law and Society, University of the Sunshine Coast

One afternoon last year, we sat in a village hall in Fiji chatting to residents about traditional ways of forecasting tropical cyclones. One man mentioned a black-winged storm bird known as “manumanunicagi” that glides above the land only when a cyclone is forming out to sea. As the conversation continued, residents named at least 11 bird species, the odd behaviour of which signalled imminent changes in the weather.

As we were leaving later that evening, an elder took us aside. He was pleased we had taken their beliefs seriously and said many older Pacific people won’t talk about traditional knowledge for fear of ridicule.

This reflects the dominance of science-based understandings in adapting to climate change and its threats to ways of life. Our new research suggests this attitude should change.

We reviewed evidence on traditional knowledge in the Pacific for coping with climate change, and found much of it was scientifically plausible. This indicates such knowledge should play a significant role in sustaining Pacific Island communities in future.

A proven, robust system

Our research was co-authored with 26 others, most Pacific Islanders with long-standing research interests in traditional knowledge.

People have inhabited the Pacific Islands for 3,000  years or more and have experienced many climate-driven challenges to their livelihoods and survival. They have coped not by luck but by design – through robust systems of traditional knowledge built by diverse groups of people over time.

The main short-term climate-related threats to island livelihoods in the Pacific are tropical cyclones which can damage food crops, pollute fresh water and destroy infrastructure. Prolonged droughts – common during El Niño events in the southwest Pacific – also cause widespread damage.

Traditional knowledge in the Pacific explains the causes and manifestations of natural phenomena, and identifies the best ways to respond. It is commonly communicated orally between generations.

Here, we describe such knowledge relating to animals, plants, water and sky – and show how these beliefs make scientific sense.

It’s important to note, however, that traditional knowledge has its own intrinsic value. Scientific explanations are not required to validate it.

Read more:
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Reading the ocean and sky

Residents of Fiji’s Druadrua Island interpret breaking waves to predict a cyclone as long as one  month before it hits. In Vanuatu’s Torres Islands, 13 phrases exist to describe the state of the tide, including anomalies that herald uncommon events.

These observations make scientific sense. Distant storms can drive ocean swells onto coasts long before the winds and rain arrive, changing the usual patterns of waves.

In Samoa, ten types of wind are recognised in traditional lore. Winds that blow from the east (matā ‘upolu) indicate the imminent arrival of heavy rain, possibly a tropical cyclone. The south wind (tuā’oloa) is most feared. It will cease to blow, it is said, only when its appetite for death is sated.

Many Pacific Island communities believe a cloudless, dark blue sky signals the arrival of a tropical cyclone. Other signs include unusually rapid cloud movements and the appearance of “short rainbows”.

These beliefs are supported by science. Rainbows are sometimes “shortened” or partly obscured by a distant rain shower. And Western science has long recognised changes in clouds and winds can signal the development of cyclones.

In Vanuatu, a halo around a moon signals imminent rainfall. Again, this belief is scientifically sound. According to Western science, high thin cirrus clouds signal nearby storms. The clouds contain ice crystals through which moonlight is filtered, creating a halo effect.

Read more:
‘Teaching our children from books, not the sea’: how climate change is eroding human rights in Vanuatu

The wisdom of animals and plants

As mentioned above, birds are are said to herald weather changes across the Pacific.

In Tonga, when the frigate bird flies across the land – unusual behaviour for an ocean species – it signals a tropical cyclone is developing. This traditional knowledge is captured in the logo of the Tonga Meteorological Service. Birds are similarly interpreted in Fiji and northern Vanuatu.

This belief stacks up scientifically. One study in North America, for example, showed golden-winged warblers dodged tornadoes by detecting shifts in infrasound. Another study, which included data on frigate birds in the Pacific, found seabirds appeared to circumvent cyclones, probably by sensing wind strength and direction.

Traditional knowledge about insect behaviour in the Pacific Islands is also used to predict wet weather.

Bees, wasps and hornets usually build nests in tree branches. When nests are built close to the ground, Pacific Islanders know the forthcoming wet season will be wetter than normal, probably due to more tropical cyclones. This type of nest-building may prompt residents to make appropriate preparations such as storing food.

Studies suggest insect behaviour can predict changes in weather. For example, a study of wasp nesting in French Guiana found their ability to quickly move nests to more sheltered locations may help them survive wet years.

Across the Pacific, common signs of impending wet weather are found in the behaviours of some plants. The central shoot of the plantain, for example, will be conspicuously curled instead of straight.

This can be explained scientifically by a process in which plant leaves close to protect their reproductive organs from extreme weather.

Planning for a warmer future

Since colonisation imposed Western worldviews around the world, traditional knowledge has been sidelined. This is true of the Pacific Islands, where in some places, traditional knowledge is all but forgotten.

But both Western and traditional knowledges have their pros and cons. Science-based knowledge, for example, is generic and often can’t realistically be applied at local scales.

As climate change impacts worsen, optimal planning for island peoples should combine both approaches. This will require open-mindedness and a respect for diverse sources of knowledge.

Patrick D. Nunn receives funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) via the Australia Pacific Climate Partnership (APCP), the Australian Research Council, and the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research.

Roselyn Kumar receives funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) via the Australia Pacific Climate Partnership (APCP)

– ref. Pacific Islanders have long drawn wisdom from the Earth, the sky and the waves. Research shows the science is behind them – https://theconversation.com/pacific-islanders-have-long-drawn-wisdom-from-the-earth-the-sky-and-the-waves-research-shows-the-science-is-behind-them-225088

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Natalie Krikowa, Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology Sydney

This article contains spoilers and discussions of trauma and homophobia.

On the surface, All of Us Strangers, directed by Andrew Haigh, is a dark and twisty love story. Underneath, there is the often-present storyline seen in queer cinema: that of trauma and tragedy.

All of Us Strangers follows lonely middle-aged gay man Adam (Andrew Scott), struggling to come to terms with his tragic past and sexuality. Adam is a screenwriter, attempting to use his craft to work through his trauma, but his solitary life is interrupted by his new neighbour Harry (Paul Mescal).

Through a dreamworld-like exploration, Adam experiences the companionship and love accepting his homosexuality would bring, all the while visiting his dead parents in an “I see dead people” Sixth Sense fashion.

Ultimately, the story ends with the realisation Harry, like Adam’s parents, was actually dead all along, and the film leaves us wondering if Adam himself is a ghost, too.

LGBTIQA+ audiences are accustomed to seeing themes of loss, grief, homophobia and tragedy play out on screen, and this film is no exception. While it explores these themes through a beautiful, haunting ghost story, gorgeous cinematography, affective music score and captivating performances, it still reinforces the narrative queer people cannot live happy lives.

Read more:
All of Us Strangers: coming to terms with the grief and trauma of being gay in the 1980s

Queer representation

Queer representation in mainstream media has historically been marred by negative stereotypes, tokenistic representation and death. In my recent interactive documentary, Queer Representation Matters, queer media scholars and queer screen storytellers share how queer characters are often relegated to roles characterised by tragedy or trauma, perpetuating harmful tropes like “bury your gays”.

Bury your gays is a storytelling trope that sees LGBTQI+ characters die, often to propel the story forward for a cis, heterosexual character. We can first find these stories in late 19th century literature such as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).

It gained traction in the early 20th century, in Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour (1934) and Vin Packer’s Spring Fire (1956) (although she doesn’t die, just ends up institutionalised), and continues to appear in novels, plays, films and on television.

Films such as The Hours (2002), Philadelphia (2003), Brokeback Mountain (2005), A Single Man (2009) and Black Swan (2010) are all films about a queer character who suffers and dies.

You may remember some of these much-loved, yet killed-off TV characters: Villanelle from Killing Eve (2018–2022), Poussey Washington from Orange is the New Black (2013–2019) and Lexa from The 100 (2014–2020).

Online queer news site, Autostraddle, have compiled a list of the 230+ dead queer female TV characters, which continues to be updated with each death.

Essentially, for queer people, it starts to feel like you can’t have queer representation without someone dying tragically at the end.

A 2023 report from Screen Australia shows only 7.4% of main or recurring characters on Australian scripted TV from 2016–2021 were identifiably LGBTQI+, and although there have been improvements in representing more complex and inclusive queer stories on Australian television, we remain quite conservative in depicting queer sex and diverse genders.

Queer people will have different and complicated responses to queer death on screen. The result of the bury your gays trope is many queer people are left feeling that being queer means you are destined for tragedy. Witnessing another queer death on screen can make us revisit past wounds and experiences.

Read more:
We studied two decades of queer representation on Australian TV, and found some interesting trends

We need diverse stories

Tropes will always exist in storytelling, but by having more diverse queer filmmakers telling more diverse queer stories, audiences will have a more balanced narrative about queer life (and life expectancy).

So, do these themes of trauma, tragedy and queer death mean films like All of Us Strangers fall into the bury your gays trope? Not necessarily, no. Here, Harry’s death is not propelling a straight character’s story forward.

It is also necessary to have sad stories about queer characters. Stories that show the queer experience in different social and historical contexts are important to understanding the struggle for LGBTQI+ liberation.

While All of Us Strangers may reinforce the narrative queer people cannot live happy lives, there are moments of tenderness, vulnerability and hope in the film. The true value of the story lies in its creation by gay filmmaker Haigh.

When a gay man is able to tell the story his way, the story becomes more authentic.

Haigh’s ability to create truthful conversations between Adam and his parents, cross-generational romance, and the desire to heal persisting wounds, demonstrates the value of the authentic lived experience.

It is important to reflect the tragic queer lived experiences. But when these stories are saturating our big and small screens we are not seeing the alternative – the queer resilience, resistance, joy, hope, creativity, potential and triumph.

We need to see stories that challenge the narrative that being queer ultimately leads to pain, trauma and tragedy. We need to see we can also live long and happy lives, so we can believe we can have the happy ever after.

Read more:
All of Us Strangers: heartbreaking film speaks to real experiences of gay men in UK and Ireland

Natalie Krikowa 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. All of Us Strangers buys into tropes of tragic queer lives – but there is hope there, too – https://theconversation.com/all-of-us-strangers-buys-into-tropes-of-tragic-queer-lives-but-there-is-hope-there-too-224853

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adriana Dutkiewicz, ARC Future Fellow, University of Sydney

Our existence is governed by natural cycles, from the daily rhythms of sleeping and eating, to longer patterns such as the turn of the seasons and the quadrennial round of leap years.

After looking at seabed sediment stretching back 65 million years, we have found a previously undetected cycle to add to the list: an ebb and flow in deep sea currents, tied to a 2.4-million-year swell of global warming and cooling driven by a gravitational tug of war between Earth and Mars. Our research is published in Nature Communications.

Milankovitch cycles and ice ages

Most of the natural cycles we know are determined one way or another by Earth’s movement around the Sun.

As the German astronomer Johannes Kepler first realised four centuries ago, the orbits of Earth and the other planets are not quite circular, but rather slightly squashed ellipses. And over time, the gravitational jostling of the planets changes the shape of these orbits in a predictable pattern.

These alterations affect our long-term climate, influencing the coming and going of ice ages. In 1941, Serbian astrophysicist Milutin Milankovitch recognised that changes in the shape of Earth’s orbit, the tilt of its axis, and the wobbling of its poles all affect the amount of sunlight we receive.

Known as “Milankovitch cycles”, these patterns occur with periods of 405,000, 100,000, 41,000 and 23,000 years. Geologists have found traces of them throughout Earth’s deep past, even in 2.5-billion-year old rocks.

Earth and Mars

There are also slower rhythms, called astronomical “grand cycles”, which cause fluctuations over millions of years. One such cycle, related to the slow rotation of the orbits of Earth and Mars, recurs every 2.4 million years.

The cycle is predicted by astronomical models, but is rarely detected in geological records. The easiest way to find it would be in sediment samples that continuously cover a period of many millions of years, but these are rare.

Much like the shorter Milankovitch cycles, this grand cycle affects the amount of sunlight Earth receives and has an impact on climate.

Gaps in the record

When we went hunting for signs of these multimillion-year climate cycles in the rock record, we used a “big data” approach. Scientific ocean drilling data collected since the 1960s have generated a treasure trove of information on deep-sea sediments through time across the global ocean.

In our study, published in Nature Communications, we used sedimentary sequences from more than 200 drill sites to discover a previously unknown connection between the changing orbits of Earth and Mars, past global warming cycles, and the speeding up of deep-ocean currents.

Most studies focus on complete, high-resolution records to detect climate cycles. Instead, we concentrated on the parts of the sedimentary record that are missing — breaks in sedimentation called hiatuses.

Read more:
How plate tectonics, mountains and deep-sea sediments have maintained Earth’s ‘Goldilocks’ climate

A deep-sea hiatus indicates the action of vigorous bottom currents that eroded seafloor sediment. In contrast, continuous sediment accumulation indicates calmer conditions.

Analysing the timing of hiatus periods across the global ocean, we identified hiatus cycles over the past 65 million years. The results show that the vigour of deep-sea currents waxes and wanes in 2.4 million year cycles coinciding with changes in the shape of Earth’s orbit.

Astronomical models suggest the interaction of Earth and Mars drives a 2.4 million year cycle of more sunlight and warmer climate alternating with less sunlight and cooler climate. The warmer periods correlate with more deep-sea hiatuses, related to more vigorous deep-ocean currents.

Warming and deep currents

Our results fit with recent satellite data and ocean models mapping short-term ocean circulation changes. Some of these suggest that ocean mixing has become more intense over the last decades of global warming.

Deep-ocean eddies are predicted to intensify in a warming, more energetic climate system, particularly at high latitudes, as major storms become more frequent. This makes deep ocean mixing more vigorous.

Deep-ocean eddies are like giant wind-driven whirlpools and often reach the deep sea floor. They result in seafloor erosion and large sediment accumulations called contourite drifts, akin to snowdrifts.

Can Mars keep the oceans alive?

Our findings extend these insights over much longer timescales. Our deep-sea data spanning 65 million years suggest that warmer oceans have more vigorous eddy-driven circulation.

This process may play an important role in a warmer future. In a warming world the difference in temperature between the equator and poles diminishes. This leads to a weakening of the world’s ocean conveyor belt.

Read more:
Even temporary global warming above 2℃ will affect life in the oceans for centuries

In such a scenario, oxygen-rich surface waters would no longer mix well with deeper waters, potentially resulting in a stagnant ocean. Our results and analyses of deep ocean mixing suggest that more intense deep-ocean eddies may counteract such ocean stagnation.

How the Earth-Mars astronomical influence will interact with shorter Milankovitch cycles and current human-driven global warming will largely depend on the future trajectory of our greenhouse gas emissions.

Adriana Dutkiewicz receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Dietmar Müller and Slah Boulila 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. New evidence for an unexpected player in Earth’s multimillion-year climate cycles: the planet Mars – https://theconversation.com/new-evidence-for-an-unexpected-player-in-earths-multimillion-year-climate-cycles-the-planet-mars-225454

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – Authors: Michael Legg, Professor of Law, UNSW Sydney, and, Vicki McNamara Senior Research Associate, Centre for the Future of the Legal Profession, UNSW Sydney.

We’ve seen deepfake, explicit images of celebrities, created by artificial intelligence (AI). AI has also played a hand in creating music, driverless race cars and spreading misinformation, among other things.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that AI also has a strong impact on our legal systems.

It’s well known that courts must decide disputes based on the law, which is presented by lawyers to the court as part of a client’s case. It’s therefore highly concerning that fake law, invented by AI, is being used in legal disputes.

Not only does this pose issues of legality and ethics, it also threatens to undermine faith and trust in global legal systems.

Read more:
Lawyers are rapidly embracing AI: here’s how to avoid an ethical disaster

How do fake laws come about?

There is little doubt that generative AI is a powerful tool with transformative potential for society, including many aspects of the legal system. But its use comes with responsibilities and risks.

Lawyers are trained to carefully apply professional knowledge and experience, and are generally not big risk-takers. However, some unwary lawyers (and self-represented litigants) have been caught out by artificial intelligence.

AI models are trained on massive data sets. When prompted by a user, they can create new content (both text and audiovisual).

Although content generated this way can look very convincing, it can also be inaccurate. This is the result of the AI model attempting to “fill in the gaps” when its training data is inadequate or flawed, and is commonly referred to as “hallucination”.

In some contexts, generative AI hallucination is not a problem. Indeed, it can be seen as an example of creativity.

But if AI hallucinated or created inaccurate content that is then used in legal processes, that’s a problem – particularly when combined with time pressures on lawyers and a lack of access to legal services for many.

This potent combination can result in carelessness and shortcuts in legal research and document preparation, potentially creating reputational issues for the legal profession and a lack of public trust in the administration of justice.

It’s happening already

The best known generative AI “fake case” is the 2023 US case Mata v Avianca, in which lawyers submitted a brief containing fake extracts and case citations to a New York court. The brief was researched using ChatGPT.

The lawyers, unaware that ChatGPT can hallucinate, failed to check that the cases actually existed. The consequences were disastrous. Once the error was uncovered, the court dismissed their client’s case, sanctioned the lawyers for acting in bad faith, fined them and their firm, and exposed their actions to public scrutiny.

Read more:
AI is everywhere – including countless applications you’ve likely never heard of

Despite adverse publicity, other fake case examples continue to surface. Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, gave his own lawyer cases generated by Google Bard, another generative AI chatbot. He believed they were real (they were not) and that his lawyer would fact check them (he did not). His lawyer included the cases in a brief filed with the US Federal Court.

Fake cases have also surfaced in recent matters in Canada and the United Kingdom.

If this trend goes unchecked, how can we ensure that the careless use of generative AI does not undermine the public’s trust in the legal system? Consistent failures by lawyers to exercise due care when using these tools has the potential to mislead and congest the courts, harm clients’ interests, and generally undermine the rule of law.

What’s being done about it?

Around the world, legal regulators and courts have responded in various ways.

Several US state bars and courts have issued guidance, opinions or orders on generative AI use, ranging from responsible adoption to an outright ban.

Law societies in the UK and British Columbia, and the courts of New Zealand, have also developed guidelines.

In Australia, the NSW Bar Association has a generative AI guide for barristers. The Law Society of NSW and the Law Institute of Victoria have released articles on responsible use in line with solicitors’ conduct rules.

Many lawyers and judges, like the public, will have some understanding of generative AI and can recognise both its limits and benefits. But there are others who may not be as aware. Guidance undoubtedly helps.

But a mandatory approach is needed. Lawyers who use generative AI tools cannot treat it as a substitute for exercising their own judgement and diligence, and must check the accuracy and reliability of the information they receive.

Read more:
Do you trust AI to write the news? It already is – and not without issues

In Australia, courts should adopt practice notes or rules that set out expectations when generative AI is used in litigation. Court rules can also guide self-represented litigants, and would communicate to the public that our courts are aware of the problem and are addressing it.

The legal profession could also adopt formal guidance to promote the responsible use of AI by lawyers. At the very least, technology competence should become a requirement of lawyers’ continuing legal education in Australia.

Setting clear requirements for the responsible and ethical use of generative AI by lawyers in Australia will encourage appropriate adoption and shore up public confidence in our lawyers, our courts, and the overall administration of justice in this country.

Vicki McNamara is affiliated with the Law Society of NSW (as a member).

Michael Legg 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. AI is creating fake legal cases and making its way into real courtrooms, with disastrous results – https://theconversation.com/ai-is-creating-fake-legal-cases-and-making-its-way-into-real-courtrooms-with-disastrous-results-225080

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charlie Huang, Co-leader, Sustainable Global Business Operations and Development Research Group, School of Management, RMIT University

Australia’s largest export, iron ore, has long been a powerhouse of economic growth. Over the past two decades, its contribution to our national income has surged from just A$8 billion in 2005 to over A$124 billion today.

But the Australian iron ore industry faces a major challenge as its biggest customers – China’s steel mills – move to drastically reduce their carbon footprint.

The issue lies in the purity of our product. Most of Australia’s current iron ore exports are not classed as high grade. Typically, the lower the iron content of an ore is, the more energy is required to refine it.

Our competitors – countries such as Brazil and Guinea with higher-grade ores in relative abundance – are positioned to become the steel industry’s suppliers of choice.

Australia could adapt its production to meet this change in demand. But if it doesn’t do so quickly, it may find itself left behind in the new green economy.

Iron ore’s biggest customer cleans up its act

China is the largest importer of Australian iron by a hefty margin. Australia shipped 736 million tonnes – more than 80% of iron ore exports – to China in 2022.

Last year, China’s steel mills made up the majority of global steel production. But they were also a major polluter, accounting for about 15% of China’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

They’re now facing a double whammy of decarbonisation pressures.

At home, the Chinese government has mandated the steel industry reduce its emissions as part of China’s wider “dual carbon” goals. These will require emissions to peak before 2030 and for the country to become carbon neutral by 2060.

And internationally, upcoming tariffs on carbon-intensive steel imports are set to make producing “dirty” steel much costlier.

Australian ore doesn’t make the grade

Making steel with low-grade iron ore isn’t at all carbon friendly.

For one, it consumes vastly more energy in the traditional steelmaking process. My analysis shows that using one tonne of low-grade ore can emit over 200 kilograms more carbon dioxide in a blast furnace than high-grade.

A high level of impurities in low-grade ore also significantly reduces the efficiency of the process.

Reducing the use of low-grade ore has become a priority for Chinese steel mills, significantly affecting iron ore’s demand profile.

Much of the iron ore exported by competing nations like Brazil and Guinea is high-grade, containing more than 65% iron. But most of Australia’s current exports fall below that threshold, between 56% and 62%.

New technologies

A number of new and emerging steelmaking technologies offer the promise of significantly lower emissions.

But common to all of them is a need for higher-grade iron ore than Australia produces.

There are four new steelmaking technologies in use or under construction by a number of Chinese steel corporations, including the world’s biggest steelmaker – China Baowu Group. These include:

• hydrogen-enriched carbon recycling and oxygen furnace (HyCROF)

• hydrogen reduction and electric smelting process (HyRESP)

• hydrogen metallurgy

• green hydrogen zero carbon fluidized bed iron making technology.

Here’s how these technologies could help China reduce its carbon emissions:

Increased use of steel scraps

Global demand for steel is forecast to increase to 2.2 billion tonnes by 2050.

But that won’t all translate into greater demand for our iron ore.

Overall demand for iron ore could be reduced by the increasing availability and use of steel scraps or “recycled steel”, such as scrapped vehicles, white goods and machinery.

Using one tonne of recycled steel for steelmaking saves 1.4 tonnes of iron ore and avoids about 1.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

New tariffs on carbon

A number of legislative measures are on the horizon for the global steel industry, which produced about 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2022.

One such international measure, the European Union’s Cross-Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), has further accelerated a global drive toward sustainable steelmaking.

This legislation acts as a carbon tariff on imports to the EU, initially aimed at carbon-intensive products such as steel. It will be fully in force by 2026.

EU importers of steel products will be required to pay an import carbon tax, at a price set by the EU, based on the differences in carbon emissions between traditional steel mills and the EU’s emission benchmarks.

Being forced to charge higher prices for carbon-intensive steel products will incentivise non-European steel mills to accelerate their transition to green steel.

What lies ahead

The global transition to green steelmaking is bound to shape the future of Australia’s iron ore industry. Reduced demand for Australia’s low-grade iron ore could put pressure on its producers’ revenue, or even force some smaller iron ore miners to shut down.

But it also presents opportunities. Here are two ways Australia could ride the wave:

1. Substantially increase production and export of magnetite.

Australia is abundant in magnetite, an ore type which differs in composition from hematite or “direct shipping ore” (DSO). Magnetite has a low iron content (between 30 and 40%), but can be processed to a higher grade through a process of removing impurities known as “beneficiation”. This process is energy intensive, but could become economically viable if we continue to see rapid uptake of renewable energy.

2. Build direct reduction plants here in Australia.

Unlike the traditional blast furnace process, which uses coal as a source of energy, the direct reduction process uses hydrogen to reduce iron ore into iron without melting it.

There has been much hype around Australia’s potential to produce cheap hydrogen with renewable energy. But if we pull it off, we could stand at the forefront of the green steel revolution as a global production hub of direct reduced iron.

Decisions made by Australia’s major iron ore producers and political leaders will shape the outcome of this global shift. Rather than fear the transition, Australia could take on a leading role.

Read more:
‘Green’ or ‘blue’ hydrogen – what difference does it make? Not much for most Australians

Charlie Huang 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. China’s green steel push could crush Australia’s dirty iron ore exports – https://theconversation.com/chinas-green-steel-push-could-crush-australias-dirty-iron-ore-exports-219299

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Terruhn, Senior Research Fellow, University of Waikato

The number of people living in emergency housing in Aotearoa New Zealand has grown exponentially over the last eight years – but plans to rely on the private rental sector ignore fundamental realities of renting.

Established in 2016, the emergency housing programme – short-term housing for people with nowhere to stay – was meant to be a stop-gap measure. There are now 3,000 active tenancies as a lack of affordability and shortages in housing place pressure on low-income renters.

The coalition government recently announced a “shake-up” of the sector. People seeking access to emergency housing will need to prove they have made “a reasonable effort” to secure a home in the private rental sector. The government will also be cutting back on the length of emergency housing grants.

Our research on the factors that shape people’s housing outcomes, experiences and journeys shows the private rental sector can often exacerbate housing precarity.

The government’s proposals don’t take into account the realities of households or the way the private rental sector itself is a key contributor to housing inequalities. Private renting cannot be viewed as an easy solution for the emergency and wider housing crisis.

Housing discrimination is widespread

Our survey of 800 residents across seven neighbourhoods in Auckland, Hamilton and Christchurch revealed experiences of housing discrimination are widespread in Aotearoa New Zealand.

A staggering 70% of renters in our survey felt people were treated unfairly when trying to rent or buy a home in Aotearoa New Zealand. Nearly half of all renters reported directly experiencing discrimination when trying to rent a home.

The study also showed discrimination is intersectional. Socio-economic status, family status as well as race/ethnicity combined to create clear disadvantages for people trying to secure a home. Notably, Māori and Pasifika respondents were more likely overall to report experiences of discrimination.

Read more:
As NZ struggles to resolve its long-running housing crisis, investors should be taxed for keeping homes empty

When asked for examples to illustrate their experiences of discrimination, renters and owners alike provided stories of struggling to secure private rental housing at some point in their lives. These included being judged, dismissed and ignored by landlords or property managers as well as a sense of “not having a chance” in a housing market in which “applying for a home felt harder than applying for a job”.

Being a low-income household, a Work and Income New Zealand client, a family with a larger number of children or a sole parent and being Māori or Pasifika, often contributed to the experience of being excluded from much of the private rental sector.

The instability of renting

This situation is made worse by the instability of rental housing.

Renters are frequent movers. Our survey results show a mere 12% of private rental tenants have lived in only one home over the past ten years. This stands in stark contrast to 47% of owner-occupiers but also 39% of public housing tenants. Conversely, 40% of all renters have lived in four or more homes over the past ten years.

This high mobility is closely entwined with insecure tenancies. Having a tenancy ended by the landlord was one of the most common reasons survey respondents provided for moving house.

As such, renters’ housing journeys are severely constrained by the imbalance between them and private landlords. Not only may renters find themselves on the move when they did not wish to, but they are forced into securing a new rental under pressure and at their own cost.

It takes time and effort to secure a home, especially one that is affordable and suitable for a household’s needs.

Our survey shows 27% of renters took four months or more to find their current home – longer than the most common notice period of 90 days, which the government is planning to reduce to 42 days in some circumstances. Close to a quarter of renters viewed 11 homes or more and 25% applied for more than ten rental properties.

These periods of time and number of applications suggest that even renters who are not on the cusp of dire housing need take months to find a rental home.

Private rental sector is not a solution

Our survey adds to international research that demonstrates the impact of housing precarity.

Recent research in Aotearoa and the United Kingdom has shown private renting adversely affects renters’ health and wellbeing.

These effects were primarily attributed to the stress caused by insecure tenancies. Moreover, a Western Australian initiative to require public housing applicants to prove they had tried to get a private rental was dismantled following a 2004 inquiry.

The inquiry revealed evidence of discrimination against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander applicants. It concluded “it was humiliating for [Aboriginal people] to face often blatant discrimination from agents or owners”.

Read more:
Yes, NZ landlords gain from the repeal of interest deductibility rules – but it was a flawed law from the outset

In all likelihood, these issues will also be disproportionately felt by Māori who are more likely to be renters and experience severe housing deprivation.

The emergency housing crisis can only be responded to through immediate secure housing support for those in need and a medium and long-term focus on building safe, secure and stable housing for all New Zealanders.

Responding to the emergency housing crisis with greater reliance on the private rental sector amounts to fighting fire with fire. It seeks stability where none exists.

The government’s proposal that people seeking emergency housing demonstrate “reasonable effort” to find private housing risks exposing people to more housing deprivation, stress and discrimination that will, in all likelihood, lead some to homelessness.

Jessica Terruhn receives funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for the WERO research programme. She is affiliated with Renters United.

Francis L Collins receives funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. He has previously received other funding from Te Apārangi Royal Society of New Zealand.

– ref. ‘Applying for a home felt harder than applying for a job’: NZ private rentals won’t solve need for emergency housing – https://theconversation.com/applying-for-a-home-felt-harder-than-applying-for-a-job-nz-private-rentals-wont-solve-need-for-emergency-housing-225459

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

In his strongest speech yet on the Coalition’s commitment to pursuing nuclear power, Peter Dutton dug deep into the past to try to discredit Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen.

“Our nation is diminished in having Chris Bowen as the federal Energy Minister”, Dutton told a business conference in Sydney on Tuesday. Apart from showing “complete irreverence for the truth”, Bowen was “a modern-day Rex Connor”.

Dutton inserted a qualification to his disparaging of the one-time minerals and energy minister: Connor “believed in nuclear energy”.

The potency of invoking the Connor name to sledge Bowen is dubious. Most people in the general community today wouldn’t have heard of him, unless they’re seniors, mining industry buffs, or know their Whitlam government history.

Connor was at the centre of that government’s notorious loans affair, hanging around a telex late in the night seeking (unsuccessfully) a huge foreign loan through a shady intermediary. He was boldly ambitious in policy – though those ambitions were often unrealised and unrealistic – and politically divisive. He was conventionally known as “The Strangler”.

Bowen is the minister driving the massive energy transformation modern Australia is undergoing. The Connor sledge might be over-the-top, but Dutton and Bowen are in each other’s sights, and it will be an “anything goes” battle until the election.

Dutton told his audience the government didn’t have “a credible pathway” to zero emissions by 2050.

“I believe that too many leaders, CEOs, and inner-city advocates have burrowed so deeply down this rabbit hole to a renewables wonderland that they have lost all sense of objectivity,” he said.

“Instead of having a proper debate about what’s in our country’s best interests, Mr Bowen acts like a child and dismisses everything he disagrees with as a ‘scare campaign’.

“His behaviour is symptomatic of his government whose energy policy is grounded in ideology rather than pragmatism.”

With his ever-more enthusiastic embrace of nuclear, Dutton is making the energy transition a point of the sharpest difference between the government and opposition for the 2025 election.

Read more:
View from The Hill: Peter Dutton talks up nuclear replacements for coal-fired generators

“Under the Coalition’s plan, Australians will get cheaper power, consistent power and increasingly cleaner power,” he said.

Undeterred by pushback from Labor and scepticism from many experts about cost and impracticability, Dutton said: “If there was ever a time to consider nuclear energy, it is now”.

Not that he’s promising a quick fix.

“Of course, we can’t switch on a system tomorrow. It’s a long journey ahead,” which would involve a Coalition government ramping up gas.

Earlier, when the Coalition was focused on small nuclear reactors, a “DO YOU WANT A REACTOR IN YOUR BACK YARD?” scare campaign was obvious. Now Dutton is talking about a limited number of nuclear facilities at sites where coal-fired power stations will be closing down.

He said there would be only “in the vicinity of about six sites where new nuclear technologies could be placed”. These would be “on, or near the sites, of decommissioned or retiring coal-fired power plants using the existing grid”, thus avoiding the currently planned massive roll-out of new transmission lines.

Labor paints the opposition as ideologically opposed to renewables. Dutton maintained it supported renewables having a significant role in the system. But the government’s “renewables only” policy was “an engineering feat of pure fantasy”, and “economically and environmentally damaging”.

“Labor sees nuclear power as a competitor to renewables.

“We see nuclear power as a companion to renewables.”

Tapping into the discontent in some regional about transmission lines and windfarms, Dutton also sought to bring morality into the mix.

“There’s a moral element to this argument as well – pitching one Australian against the other, whether you live in a capital city or whether you live in a regional area.”

Dutton contested the critics’ argument about price; as for waste, he said “all the used-fuel produced by the US nuclear industry since the 1950s would fit in the area the size of a football field, to a depth of about nine meters”.

“Australia is the only country in the top 20 economies which hasn’t embraced domestic nuclear power or is taking steps to do so,” he said.

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

– ref. View from the Hill: Dutton sledges Bowen as today’s Rex Connor – but who remembers Rex? – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-dutton-sledges-bowen-as-todays-rex-connor-but-who-remembers-rex-225563

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hayley O’Neill, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine, Bond University

Intermittent fasting has become a popular dietary approach to help people lose or manage their weight. It has also been promoted as a way to reset metabolism, control chronic disease, slow ageing and improve overall health.

Meanwhile, some research suggests intermittent fasting may offer a different way for the brain to access energy and provide protection against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease.

This is not a new idea – the ancient Greeks believed fasting enhanced thinking. But what does the modern-day evidence say?

Read more:
I want to eat healthily. So why do I crave sugar, salt and carbs?

First, what is intermittent fasting?

Our diets – including calories consumed, macronutrient composition (the ratios of fats, protein and carbohydrates we eat) and when meals are consumed – are factors in our lifestyle we can change. People do this for cultural reasons, desired weight loss or potential health gains.

Intermittent fasting consists of short periods of calorie (energy) restriction where food intake is limited for 12 to 48 hours (usually 12 to 16 hours per day), followed by periods of normal food intake. The intermittent component means a re-occurrence of the pattern rather than a “one off” fast.

Food deprivation beyond 24 hours typically constitutes starvation. This is distinct from fasting due to its specific and potentially harmful biochemical alterations and nutrient deficiencies if continued for long periods.

4 ways fasting works and how it might affect the brain

The brain accounts for about 20% of the body’s energy consumption.

Here are four ways intermittent fasting can act on the body which could help explain its potential effects on the brain.

1. Ketosis

The goal of many intermittent fasting routines is to flip a “metabolic switch” to go from burning predominately carbohydrates to burning fat. This is called ketosis and typically occurs after 12–16 hours of fasting, when liver and glycogen stores are depleted. Ketones – chemicals produced by this metabolic process – become the preferred energy source for the brain.

Due to this being a slower metabolic process to produce energy and potential for lowering blood sugar levels, ketosis can cause symptoms of hunger, fatigue, nausea, low mood, irritability, constipation, headaches, and brain “fog”.

At the same time, as glucose metabolism in the brain declines with ageing, studies have shown ketones could provide an alternative energy source to preserve brain function and prevent age-related neurodegeneration disorders and cognitive decline.

Consistent with this, increasing ketones through supplementation or diet has been shown to improve cognition in adults with mild cognitive decline and those at risk of Alzheimer’s disease respectively.

Read more:
Does it matter what time of day I eat? And can intermittent fasting improve my health? Here’s what the science says

2. Circadian syncing

Eating at times that don’t match our body’s natural daily rhythms can disrupt how our organs work. Studies in shift workers have suggested this might also make us more prone to chronic disease.

Time-restricted eating is when you eat your meals within a six to ten-hour window during the day when you’re most active. Time-restricted eating causes changes in expression of genes in tissue and helps the body during rest and activity.

A 2021 study of 883 adults in Italy indicated those who restricted their food intake to ten hours a day were less likely to have cognitive impairment compared to those eating without time restrictions.

3. Mitochondria

Intermittent fasting may provide brain protection through improving mitochondrial function, metabolism and reducing oxidants.

Mitochondria’s main role is to produce energy and they are crucial to brain health. Many age-related diseases are closely related to an energy supply and demand imbalance, likely attributed to mitochondrial dysfunction during ageing.

Rodent studies suggest alternate day fasting or reducing calories by up to 40% might protect or improve brain mitochondrial function. But not all studies support this theory.

4. The gut-brain axis

The gut and the brain communicate with each other via the body’s nervous systems. The brain can influence how the gut feels (think about how you get “butterflies” in your tummy when nervous) and the gut can affect mood, cognition and mental health.

In mice, intermittent fasting has shown promise for improving brain health by increasing survival and formation of neurons (nerve cells) in the hippocampus brain region, which is involved in memory, learning and emotion.

There’s no clear evidence on the effects of intermittent fasting on cognition in healthy adults. However one 2022 study interviewed 411 older adults and found lower meal frequency (less than three meals a day) was associated with reduced evidence of Alzheimer’s disease on brain imaging.

Some research has suggested calorie restriction may have a protective effect against Alzheimer’s disease by reducing oxidative stress and inflammation and promoting vascular health.

When we look at the effects of overall energy restriction (rather than intermittent fasting specifically) the evidence is mixed. Among people with mild cognitive impairment, one study showed cognitive improvement when participants followed a calorie restricted diet for 12 months.

Another study found a 25% calorie restriction was associated with slightly improved working memory in healthy adults. But a recent study, which looked at the impact of calorie restriction on spatial working memory, found no significant effect.

Read more:
Yes, intermittent fasting can boost your health, but how and when to restrict food consumption is crucial

Bottom line

Studies in mice support a role for intermittent fasting in improving brain health and ageing, but few studies in humans exist, and the evidence we have is mixed.

Rapid weight loss associated with calorie restriction and intermittent fasting can lead to nutrient deficiencies, muscle loss, and decreased immune function, particularly in older adults whose nutritional needs may be higher.

Further, prolonged fasting or severe calorie restriction may pose risks such as fatigue, dizziness, and electrolyte imbalances, which could exacerbate existing health conditions.

If you’re considering intermittent fasting, it’s best to seek advice from a health professional such as a dietitian who can provide guidance on structuring fasting periods, meal timing, and nutrient intake. This ensures intermittent fasting is approached in a safe, sustainable way, tailored to individual needs and goals.

Alongside her academic role, Hayley O’Neill works as a wellness consultant.

– ref. Does intermittent fasting have benefits for our brain? – https://theconversation.com/does-intermittent-fasting-have-benefits-for-our-brain-223181

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University

Rumours and conspiracies have been swirling following the abdominal surgery and long recovery period of Catherine, Princess of Wales, earlier this year. They intensified on Monday when Kensington Palace released a photo of the princess with her three children.

The photo had clear signs of tampering, and international wire services withdrew the image amid concerns around manipulation. The princess later apologised for any confusion and said she had “experimented with editing” as many amateur photographers do.

Image editing is extremely common these days, and not all of it is for nefarious purposes. However, in an age of rampant misinformation, how can we stay vigilant around suspicious images?

What happened with the royal photo?

A close look reveals at least eight inconsistencies with the image.

Two of these relate to unnatural blur. Catherine’s right hand is unnaturally blurred, even though her left hand is sharp and at the same distance from the camera. The left side of Catherine’s hair is also unnaturally blurred, while the right side of her hair is sharp.

These types of edits are usually made with a blur tool that softens pixels. It is often used to make the background of an image less distracting or to smooth rough patches of texture.

Five of the edits appear to use the “clone stamp” tool. This is a Photoshop tool that takes part of the same or a different image and “stamps” it onto another part.

You can see this with the repeated pattern on Louis’s (on the left) sweater and the tile on the ground. You can also see it with the step behind Louis’s legs and on Charlotte’s hair and sleeve. The zipper on Catherine’s jacket also doesn’t line up.

The most charitable interpretation is that the princess was trying to remove distracting or unflattering elements. But the artefacts could also point to multiple images being blended together. This could either be to try to show the best version of each person (for example, with a smiling face and open eyes), or for another purpose.

How common are image edits?

Image editing is increasingly common as both photography and editing are increasingly becoming more automated.

This sometimes happens without you even knowing.

Take HDR (high dynamic range) images, for example. Point your iPhone or equivalent at a beautiful sunset and watch it capture the scene from the brightest highlights to the darkest shadows. What happens here is your camera makes multiple images and automatically stitches them together to make an image with a wider range of contrast.

While face-smoothing or teeth-whitening filters are nothing new, some smartphone camera apps apply them without being prompted. Newer technology like Google’s “Best Take” feature can even combine the best attributes of multiple images to ensure everyone’s eyes are open and faces are smiling in group shots.

On social media, it seems everyone tries to show themselves in their best light, which is partially why so few of the photos on our camera rolls make it onto our social media feeds. It is also why we often edit our photos to show our best sides.

But in other contexts, such as press photography, the rules are much stricter. The Associated Press, for example, bans all edits beyond simple crops, colour adjustments, and “minor adjustments” that “restore the authentic nature of the photograph”.

Read more:
Three images that show wartime photographs can have greater impact than the written word

Professional photojournalists haven’t always gotten it right, though. While the majority of lens-based news workers adhere to ethical guidelines like those published by the National Press Photographers Association, others have let deadline pressures, competition and the desire for exceptional imagery cloud their judgement.

One such example was in 2017, when British photojournalist Souvid Datta admitted to visually plagiarising another photographer’s work within his own composition.

Concerns around false or misleading visual information are at an all-time high, given advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, this year the World Economic Forum named the risk of misinformation and disinformation as the world’s greatest short-term threat. It placed this above armed conflict and natural disasters.

What to do if you’re unsure about an image you’ve found online

It can be hard to keep up with the more than 3 billion photos that are shared each day.

But, for the ones that matter, we owe it to ourselves to slow down, zoom in and ask ourselves a few simple questions:

1. Who made or shared the image? This can give clues about reliability and the purpose of making or sharing the image.

2. What’s the evidence? Can you find another version of the image, for example, using a reverse-image search engine?

3. What do trusted sources say? Consult resources like AAP FactCheck or AFP Fact Check to see if authoritative sources have already weighed in.

Read more:
Deepfakes: How to empower youth to fight the threat of misinformation and disinformation

T.J. Thomson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is an affiliate with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society. Thomson collaborated with the Australian Associated Press in 2021 to produce fact-checking resources for its “Check the Facts” campaign.

– ref. Yes, Kate Middleton’s photo was doctored. But so are a lot of images we see today – https://theconversation.com/yes-kate-middletons-photo-was-doctored-but-so-are-a-lot-of-images-we-see-today-225553

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Swerissen, Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University

Aged care financing is a vexed problem for the Australian government. It is already underfunded for the quality the community expects, and costs will increase dramatically. There are also significant concerns about the complexity of the system.

In 2021–22 the federal government spent A$25 billion on aged services for around 1.2 million people aged 65 and over. Around 60% went to residential care (190,000 people) and one-third to home care (one million people).

The final report from the government’s Aged Care Taskforce, which has been reviewing funding options, estimates the number of people who will need services is likely to grow to more than two million over the next 20 years. Costs are therefore likely to more than double.

The taskforce has considered what aged care services are reasonable and necessary and made recommendations to the government about how they can be paid for. This includes getting aged care users to pay for more of their care.

But rather than recommending an alternative financing arrangement that will safeguard Australians’ aged care services into the future, the taskforce largely recommends tidying up existing arrangements and keeping the status quo.

No Medicare-style levy

The taskforce rejected the aged care royal commission’s recommendation to introduce a levy to meet aged care cost increases. A 1% levy, similar to the Medicare levy, could have raised around $8 billion a year.

Read more:
Government’s aged care report proposes older Australians pay more but eschews a levy

The taskforce failed to consider the mix of taxation, personal contributions and social insurance which are commonly used to fund aged care systems internationally. The Japanese system, for example, is financed by long-term insurance paid by those aged 40 and over, plus general taxation and a small copayment.

Instead, the taskforce puts forward a simple, pragmatic argument that older people are becoming wealthier through superannuation, there is a cost of living crisis for younger people and therefore older people should be required to pay more of their aged care costs.

Separating care from other services

In deciding what older people should pay more for, the taskforce divided services into care, everyday living and accommodation.

The taskforce thought the most important services were clinical services (including nursing and allied health) and these should be the main responsibility of government funding. Personal care, including showering and dressing were seen as a middle tier that is likely to attract some co-payment, despite these services often being necessary to maintain independence.

The task force recommended the costs for everyday living (such as food and utilities) and accommodation expenses (such as rent) should increasingly be a personal responsibility.

Making the system fairer

The taskforce thought it was unfair people in residential care were making substantial contributions for their everyday living expenses (about 25%) and those receiving home care weren’t (about 5%). This is, in part, because home care has always had a muddled set of rules about user co-payments.

But the taskforce provided no analysis of accommodation costs (such as utilities and maintenance) people meet at home compared with residential care.

To address the inefficiencies of upfront daily fees for packages, the taskforce recommends means testing co-payments for home care packages and basing them on the actual level of service users receive for everyday support (for food, cleaning, and so on) and to a lesser extent for support to maintain independence.

It is unclear whether clinical and personal care costs and user contributions will be treated the same for residential and home care.

Making residential aged care sustainable

The taskforce was concerned residential care operators were losing $4 per resident day on “hotel” (accommodation services) and everyday living costs.

The taskforce recommends means tested user contributions for room services and everyday living costs be increased.

It also recommends that wealthier older people be given more choice by allowing them to pay more (per resident day) for better amenities. This would allow providers to fully meet the cost of these services.

Effectively, this means daily living charges for residents are too low and inflexible and that fees would go up, although the taskforce was clear that low-income residents should be protected.

Read more:
We need a new way to pay for aged care. But it can’t shut out those on low incomes

Moving from buying to renting rooms

Currently older people who need residential care have a choice of making a refundable up-front payment for their room or to pay rent to offset the loans providers take out to build facilities. Providers raise capital to build aged care facilities through equity or loan financing.

However, the taskforce did not consider the overall efficiency of the private capital market for financing aged care or alternative solutions.

Instead, it recommended capital contributions be streamlined and simplified by phasing out up-front payments and focusing on rental contributions. This echoes the royal commission, which found rent to be a more efficient and less risky method of financing capital for aged care in private capital markets.

It’s likely that in a decade or so, once the new home care arrangements are in place, there will be proportionally fewer older people in residential aged care. Those who do go are likely to be more disabled and have greater care needs. And those with more money will pay more for their accommodation and everyday living arrangements. But they may have more choice too.

Although the federal government has ruled out an aged care levy and changes to assets test on the family home, it has yet to respond to the majority of the recommendations. But given the aged care minister chaired the taskforce, it’s likely to provide a good indication of current thinking.

Read more:
Lump sum, daily payments or a combination? What to consider when paying for nursing home accommodation

Hal Swerissen is Deputy Chair of the Bendigo Kangan Institute which provides training in aged care

– ref. What will aged care look like for the next generation? More of the same but higher out-of-pocket costs – https://theconversation.com/what-will-aged-care-look-like-for-the-next-generation-more-of-the-same-but-higher-out-of-pocket-costs-225551

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

Guernsey number 37 belonged to Aboriginal star football player Adam Goodes when he played for Sydney Swans. Goodes was loved by the AFL and spectators, admired for his skill and leadership for most of his outstanding career. Goodes loved his job and he was a role model for younger generations.

But something went wrong.

It was May 2013, the “Indigenous Round”. Goodes’ team was playing against Collingwood. A 13-year-old Collingwood fan yelled at Goodes and called him “an ape”.

Overhearing this, Goodes asked security to have the girl removed from the stadium. There were supporters of Goodes and supporters of the girl. The media focus was intense.

In 2014, Goodes was awarded Australian of the Year. This fitted the climate: get things back on track; do something positive.

In 2015, after kicking a goal, Goodes celebrated with a cultural dance in front of Collingwood fans. The dance ended when Goodes threw an imaginary spear. Performed by Aboriginal men across Australia, the “spear dance” symbolises when men are facing other men from a different clan/tribe for war – like teams facing each other before the siren.

The dance was mistaken to represent something else by AFL spectators across Australia: a war dance and spearing all white people.

From then, Goodes was booed across Australia whenever he played. The intensity of the media and the debates raging made him hate being on the football field.

After 18 years of playing elite football – 372 games, 464 goals, two Brownlow Medals, two premierships – Goodes left the game in silence.

Today Goodes is a mentor and a cultural warrior outside the game. He has established a foundation to support youth with their identity and culture while at school and university.

The incidents are referenced in the play 37, from playwright Nathan Maynard. We watch a local football team gathered around a television to watch the game that ended it all for Goodes.

The best player of the team, Jayma (Ngali Shaw), is Aboriginal, and arrives to watch the game proudly wearing the Swans Indigenous Round guernsey with 37 on the back. Jayma is confronted by negative comments made about Goodes.

Then they watch Goodes celebrate with the spear dance.

The banter is no longer funny and the tension and disregard to the Aboriginal player honouring his idol is an insult to the team.

Read more:
The AFL sells an inclusive image of itself. But when it comes to race and gender, it still has a way to go

Pushed to the edge

Australia loves sport – even more so with a good drama. 37 has it all and more: history, gems of insight into black and white aspirations, cultural dance, swearing, sporty actors, young and old men in their element as they bond to play football with hopes of winning a premiership.

Directed by Isaac Drandic, 37 opens with Jayma showing us the Marngrook, the Gunditjmara/Aboriginal word for a team game kicking and marking a possum-skin ball. The game would go on for days. Jayma and Sonny (Tibian Wyles) identify as “Marngrook cousins”; a minority in a majority non-Aboriginal team.

Like Goodes, the team starts out great: they bond and have a great time. As the play progresses, Aboriginal and white relations change and mateship is put to the test.

The team dream about winning the premiership, and we watch them in the locker room where the players change pre- and post-game. There are hopes and aspirations for every team member, but the Aboriginal players carry burdens the other team members do not.

The Jayma’s father has a history with the football club – he was a star player in the team – but didn’t show up for the final game – costing the club a premiership. There are other stories of parents and their behaviour. The team learns of the contract the Aboriginal players signed to be paid for playing; Sonny explains the contract is helping his family to pay rent, buy food and items for the kids.

The highs and lows of 37 are centred around winning the premiership. As the season progresses they are winning, but the mateship becomes less friendly. What starts as happy banter changes. The jokes take on a sinister tone. How long will these team mates tolerate such personal comments? Even the coach, “The General” (Syd Brisbane), gets pushed to the edge when his wife is targeted.

When the siren sounds, aggression on the footy fields subsides – but for the Aboriginal players, the confusion and disappointment lingers.

Levelling the playing field

Maynard tackles difficult topics, using his talent to poke and prod the audience to witness the uncomfortable perspectives around the Goodes incident, raising ideas about family, success and trauma.

It is a wonderfully athletic cast – a spectacular fast warm-up shows the cast’s sporting skills, and Drandic carefully plays with tension. We observe how Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal team mates try to support each other against other team members’ comments that leave us stunned – but then another comment is made and we’re even more stunned.

But some things said can not be diffused, not even by the cultural awareness program a team member was ordered to attend.

Among the racial backlash, and in a tribute to Goodes, the Marngrook Cousins perform a mesmerising spear dance to illustrate their pride and strength.

Respect and disrespect clash throughout the play leaving us guessing and bracing ourselves – even, perhaps, embarrassed. I walked away from the show in awe of Maynard’s ability to apply history to the stage. I hope audiences can keep learning about Goodes, and continue levelling the playing field against racism in sport.

37 is at the Melbourne Theatre Company until April 5.

Read more:
The long and complicated history of Aboriginal involvement in football

Julie Andrews is a member of the Rumbalara Aboriginal Football and Netball Association.

– ref. Respect and disrespect clash throughout 37 – a brilliant new play exploring Australian Rules Football – https://theconversation.com/respect-and-disrespect-clash-throughout-37-a-brilliant-new-play-exploring-australian-rules-football-225340

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

Guernsey number 37 belonged to Aboriginal star football player Adam Goodes when he played for Sydney Swans. Goodes was loved by the AFL and spectators, admired for his skill and leadership for most of his outstanding career. Goodes loved his job and he was a role model for younger generations.

But something went wrong.

It was May 2013, the “Indigenous Round”. Goodes’ team was playing against Collingwood. A 13-year-old Collingwood fan yelled at Goodes and called him “an ape”.

Overhearing this, Goodes asked security to have the girl removed from the stadium. There were supporters of Goodes and supporters of the girl. The media focus was intense.

In 2014, Goodes was awarded Australian of the Year. This fitted the climate: get things back on track; do something positive.

In 2015, after kicking a goal, Goodes celebrated with a cultural dance in front of Collingwood fans. The dance ended when Goodes threw an imaginary spear. Performed by Aboriginal men across Australia, the “spear dance” symbolises when men are facing other men from a different clan/tribe for war – like teams facing each other before the siren.

The dance was mistaken to represent something else by AFL spectators across Australia: a war dance and spearing all white people.

From then, Goodes was booed across Australia whenever he played. The intensity of the media and the debates raging made him hate being on the football field.

After 18 years of playing elite football – 372 games, 464 goals, two Brownlow Medals, two premierships – Goodes left the game in silence.

Today Goodes is a mentor and a cultural warrior outside the game. He has established a foundation to support youth with their identity and culture while at school and university.

The incidents are referenced in the play 37, from playwright Nathan Maynard. We watch a local football team gathered around a television to watch the game that ended it all for Goodes.

The best player of the team, Jayma (Ngali Shaw), is Aboriginal, and arrives to watch the game proudly wearing the Swans Indigenous Round guernsey with 37 on the back. Jayma is confronted by negative comments made about Goodes.

Then they watch Goodes celebrate with the spear dance.

The banter is no longer funny and the tension and disregard to the Aboriginal player honouring his idol is an insult to the team.

Read more:
The AFL sells an inclusive image of itself. But when it comes to race and gender, it still has a way to go

Pushed to the edge

Australia loves sport – even more so with a good drama. 37 has it all and more: history, gems of insight into black and white aspirations, cultural dance, swearing, sporty actors, young and old men in their element as they bond to play football with hopes of winning a premiership.

Directed by Isaac Drandic, 37 opens with Jayma showing us the Marngrook, the Gunditjmara/Aboriginal word for a team game kicking and marking a possum-skin ball. The game would go on for days. Jayma and Sonny (Tibian Wyles) identify as “Marngrook cousins”; a minority in a majority non-Aboriginal team.

Like Goodes, the team starts out great: they bond and have a great time. As the play progresses, Aboriginal and white relations change and mateship is put to the test.

The team dream about winning the premiership, and we watch them in the locker room where the players change pre- and post-game. There are hopes and aspirations for every team member, but the Aboriginal players carry burdens the other team members do not.

The Jayma’s father has a history with the football club – he was a star player in the team – but didn’t show up for the final game – costing the club a premiership. There are other stories of parents and their behaviour. The team learns of the contract the Aboriginal players signed to be paid for playing; Sonny explains the contract is helping his family to pay rent, buy food and items for the kids.

The highs and lows of 37 are centred around winning the premiership. As the season progresses they are winning, but the mateship becomes less friendly. What starts as happy banter changes. The jokes take on a sinister tone. How long will these team mates tolerate such personal comments? Even the coach, “The General” (Syd Brisbane), gets pushed to the edge when his wife is targeted.

When the siren sounds, aggression on the footy fields subsides – but for the Aboriginal players, the confusion and disappointment lingers.

Levelling the playing field

Maynard tackles difficult topics, using his talent to poke and prod the audience to witness the uncomfortable perspectives around the Goodes incident, raising ideas about family, success and trauma.

It is a wonderfully athletic cast – a spectacular fast warm-up shows the cast’s sporting skills, and Drandic carefully plays with tension. We observe how Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal team mates try to support each other against other team members’ comments that leave us stunned – but then another comment is made and we’re even more stunned.

But some things said can not be diffused, not even by the cultural awareness program a team member was ordered to attend.

Among the racial backlash, and in a tribute to Goodes, the Marngrook Cousins perform a mesmerising spear dance to illustrate their pride and strength.

Respect and disrespect clash throughout the play leaving us guessing and bracing ourselves – even, perhaps, embarrassed. I walked away from the show in awe of Maynard’s ability to apply history to the stage. I hope audiences can keep learning about Goodes, and continue levelling the playing field against racism in sport.

37 is at the Melbourne Theatre Company until April 5.

Read more:
The long and complicated history of Aboriginal involvement in football

Julie Andrews is a member of the Rumbalara Aboriginal Football and Netball Association.

– ref. Respect and disrespect clash throughout 37 – a brilliant new play exploring a local football team – https://theconversation.com/respect-and-disrespect-clash-throughout-37-a-brilliant-new-play-exploring-a-local-football-team-225340

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Harper, Pro Vice Chancellor, Centre for Organisational Change and Agility, Torrens University Australia

Many of us have done leadership training for work, come back to the office and thought: “That was a huge waste of time”. Or returned with the best of intentions but realised, six months on, we never actually used any of skills we learned on the course.

So, what makes leadership development programs effective?

We spent months researching leadership and management courses, in an effort to develop a new way of thinking about it.

Our new paper, published in the journal Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, argues there are five key ingredients needed to make leadership training worthwhile.

So, what do managers need to know before spending money and time on sending their staff off to leadership training?

Read more:
3 things we need to get right to ensure online professional development works

1. The employee must want to be there

Effective leaders are self-motivated learners. Basically, if the staff member isn’t motivated, they won’t learn. So there is no point in managers sending unwilling staff members off to leadership training.

Our research suggests staff need to self-nominate for leadership development courses. Those who put their hand up to this kind of training will be intrinsically motivated learners.

2. Managers need to let staff use their new leadership skills at work

Many leadership courses give guidance on how to approach certain challenges at work, such as managing conflict or leading a change process.

But this guidance is of little value if the staff member doing the training can’t practise their newfound skills.

Managers need to ensure the skills staff members learn at training can be applied and practised. That means giving your staff the time, opportunities and support to use what they learned at leadership training.

Managers need to give their staff who have done leadership training the opportunity to take on new challenges at work in a psychologically safe context (staff will also need their regular workload reduced so they can do this new work).

For example, the leadership program could run concurrently with a workplace change such as implementing a new system or process. The person doing the leadership training could be supported by their boss to take carriage of this implementation.

3. Managers need to cultivate a continuous learning mindset

Effective learning at work requires a combination of skills. These include:

• self-awareness about one’s learning style

• being open to new learning methods and technologies

• being able to change the way you do things at work when new opportunities arise

• being able to regularly reflect on learning experiences, successes and failures.

In practice, this means managers need to treat leadership training not as a one-off but as part of a broader culture of learning at work.

Managers can support this culture of learning this by, for example, having monthly meetings at which staff can talk openly and constructively about what’s worked lately, what hasn’t, and why. Managers can also ensure staff are given adequate training on new technologies, so they feel more confident about technological change at work.

Managers may also want to find ways to offer different types of learning opportunities at work. Some staff members will thrive in a group work environment; others will prefer to study a manual themselves, watch an instructional video or do a short online course.

If managers cultivate a culture of continuous learning at work, it means that when staff go off to leadership training, they will be more able to absorb and apply the lessons.

4. Managers need to ensure training is delivered by good facilitators

A crucial feature of leadership training is ensuring there is a high-quality facilitator.

A good course facilitator doesn’t just give a lecture and then answer questions. They also help participants find appropriate applied learning projects, help them learn self-reflection skills, and provide coaching and feedback.

They also play a crucial role in supporting individual and group learning.

In practice, this means managers need to do some due diligence before sending staff off to a leadership training course.

That might involve reading reviews, getting feedback from people who have already done the course, and carefully checking the credentials of the facilitator.

5. Organisations need both individual leaders and collective leadership

Successful organisations don’t just have good individual leaders. They also need collective leadership. That means developing a culture at work that values:

• learning

• innovation

• being adaptable

• being able to deal with continuous change.

Managers can foster this culture of collective leadership at work by facilitating honest, safe conversations about innovation and change.

It means making all staff aware it’s everyone’s job to identify ways the organisation can improve, rather than just relying on one or two leaders.

It’s crucial managers find leadership training courses that can embed this message into their training.

Change is all around us, whether that’s climate change, economic change or technological change with the development of AI. The workplaces that will survive and thrive in this era of rapid change are those that take skills development seriously.

Treating leadership training as a box-ticking exercise won’t cut it. Good leadership training is crucial to developing good leadership, but managers need to make sure the course is actually worth it in the first place.

Read more:
Elon Musk’s ‘hardcore’ management style: a case study in what not to do

Ros Cameron is a fellow of AHRI Australian Human Resources Institute.

Gregory Harper 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. Ever been on a lousy leadership course? Good leadership training needs these 5 ingredients – https://theconversation.com/ever-been-on-a-lousy-leadership-course-good-leadership-training-needs-these-5-ingredients-210711

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

Guernsey number 37 belonged to Aboriginal star football player Adam Goodes when he played for Sydney Swans. Goodes was loved by the AFL and spectators, admired for his skill and leadership for most of his outstanding career. Goodes loved his job and he was a role model for younger generations.

But something went wrong.

It was May 2013, the “Indigenous Round”. Goodes’ team was playing against Collingwood. A 13-year-old Collingwood fan yelled at Goodes and called him “an ape”.

Overhearing this, Goodes asked security to have the girl removed from the stadium. There were supporters of Goodes and supporters of the girl. The media focus was intense.

In 2014, Goodes was awarded Australian of the Year. This fitted the climate: get things back on track; do something positive.

In 2015, after kicking a goal, Goodes celebrated with a cultural dance in front of Collingwood fans. The dance ended when Goodes threw an imaginary spear. Performed by Aboriginal men across Australia, the “spear dance” symbolises when men are facing other men from a different clan/tribe for war – like teams facing each other before the siren.

The dance was mistaken to represent something else by AFL spectators across Australia: a war dance and spearing all white people.

From then, Goodes was booed across Australia whenever he played. The intensity of the media and the debates raging made him hate being on the football field.

After 18 years of playing elite football – 372 games, 464 goals, two Brownlow Medals, two premierships – Goodes left the game in silence.

Today Goodes is a mentor and a cultural warrior outside the game. He has established a foundation to support youth with their identity and culture while at school and university.

The incidents are referenced in the play 37, from playwright Nathan Maynard. We watch a local football team gathered around a television to watch the game that ended it all for Goodes.

The best player of the team, Jayma (Ngali Shaw), is Aboriginal, and arrives to watch the game proudly wearing the Swans Indigenous Round guernsey with 37 on the back. Jayma is confronted by negative comments made about Goodes.

Then they watch Goodes celebrate with the spear dance.

The banter is no longer funny and the tension and disregard to the Aboriginal player honouring his idol is an insult to the team.

Read more:
The AFL sells an inclusive image of itself. But when it comes to race and gender, it still has a way to go

Pushed to the edge

Australia loves sport – even more so with a good drama. 37 has it all and more: history, gems of insight into black and white aspirations, cultural dance, swearing, sporty actors, young and old men in their element as they bond to play football with hopes of winning a premiership.

Directed by Isaac Drandic, 37 opens with Jayma showing us the Marngrook, the Gunditjmara/Aboriginal word for a team game kicking and marking a possum-skin ball. The game would go on for days. Jayma and Sonny (Tibian Wyles) identify as “Marngrook cousins”; a minority in a majority non-Aboriginal team.

Like Goodes, the team starts out great: they bond and have a great time. As the play progresses, Aboriginal and white relations change and mateship is put to the test.

The team dream about winning the premiership, and we watch them in the locker room where the players change pre- and post-game. There are hopes and aspirations for every team member, but the Aboriginal players carry burdens the other team members do not.

The Jayma’s father has a history with the football club – he was a star player in the team – but didn’t show up for the final game – costing the club a premiership. There are other stories of parents and their behaviour. The team learns of the contract the Aboriginal players signed to be paid for playing; Sonny explains the contract is helping his family to pay rent, buy food and items for the kids.

The highs and lows of 37 are centred around winning the premiership. As the season progresses they are winning, but the mateship becomes less friendly. What starts as happy banter changes. The jokes take on a sinister tone. How long will these team mates tolerate such personal comments? Even the coach, “The General” (Syd Brisbane), gets pushed to the edge when his wife is targeted.

When the siren sounds, aggression on the footy fields subsides – but for the Aboriginal players, the confusion and disappointment lingers.

Levelling the playing field

Maynard tackles difficult topics, using his talent to poke and prod the audience to witness the uncomfortable perspectives around the Goodes incident, raising ideas about family, success and trauma.

It is a wonderfully athletic cast – a spectacular fast warm-up shows the cast’s sporting skills, and Drandic carefully plays with tension. We observe how Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal team mates try to support each other against other team members’ comments that leave us stunned – but then another comment is made and we’re even more stunned.

But some things said can not be diffused, not even by the cultural awareness program a team member was ordered to attend.

Among the racial backlash, and in a tribute to Goodes, the Marngrook Cousins perform a mesmerising spear dance to illustrate their pride and strength.

Respect and disrespect clash throughout the play leaving us guessing and bracing ourselves – even, perhaps, embarrassed. I walked away from the show in awe of Maynard’s ability to apply history to the stage. I hope audiences can keep learning about Goodes, and continue levelling the playing field against racism in sport.

37 is at the Melbourne Theatre Company until April 5.

Read more:
The long and complicated history of Aboriginal involvement in football

Julie Andrews is a member of the Rumbalara Aboriginal Football and Netball Association.

– ref. Respect and disrespect clash throughout 37 – a brilliant new play exploring Aussie rules football – https://theconversation.com/respect-and-disrespect-clash-throughout-37-a-brilliant-new-play-exploring-aussie-rules-football-225340

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Doug Drury, Professor/Head of Aviation, CQUniversity Australia

On Monday, LATAM Airlines flight 800 from Sydney to Auckland experienced what officials are describing as a “technical fault” that meant the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner “just dropped” without any warning.

The aircraft pitched downward very quickly, causing some passengers and crew members who were not wearing seatbelts to hit the ceiling, and leaving at least 50 people injured. The flight landed without further incident and the injured passengers and crew were transferred to local hospitals.

So what happened? And should air passengers be concerned?

The short answer is there’s no need to worry – if anything, it seems the plane’s safety systems worked as intended. The real takeaway from the story is you should always wear your seatbelt while seated, just like the cabin crew have been telling you.

Keep perspective

When we plan a trip, we usually have adventure or work on our minds as we wing our way to our destination. We think about what types of activities we’ll do, like hiking or water sports, and where we can find great meals.

Most of us never think about what is happening up front in the cockpit as we watch a movie or enjoy the in-flight meal. We generally don’t feel the need to worry about the flights as we feel confident we’ll get to our destination without a problem. Airline incidents are rare when you consider how much travelling is taking place around the globe.

Read more:
Could climate change have played a role in the AirAsia crash?

On peak travel days, there can be more than 16,000 planes in the air at any time. There are around 4 billion air travel passengers each year, and the number is expected to double by 2035 by some estimates.

The vast majority of these flights pass without incident. However, when an emergency does occur it receives a lot of attention – a lot more attention than the far more frequent crashes or other accidents that happen on our roads, for example.

So when you do hear about an incident on a plane, the first thing to do is keep it in perspective.

What happened on LATAM 800?

Authorities have not released a lot of detail on the cause of the incident, beyond saying it was a “technical fault”. As LATAM Flight 800 originated in Australia, the transportation investigation teams from Australia, New Zealand, Boeing and LATAM will scrutinise the incident to better understand what happened.

Modern airliners have redundant systems for flight-critical controls. If one fails, it can be transferred to the backup automatically or manually by the flight crew.

One passenger stated that one of the pilots said his instruments went blank, he lost control briefly, and the backup system returned the aircraft back to normal operations.

If the aircraft experienced a sudden loss of electrical power – from a generator failure, for example – it would cause the autopilot to fail as well. This could have caused the aircraft to abruptly change its flight configuration and descend rapidly.

Whatever happened in this case, it seems the redundant systems on the 787, which includes six backup generators, were able to rapidly return all systems to normal.

Wear your seatbelt

LATAM 800 is an example of why we should always wear seatbelts when we are seated on an airplane. While technical faults of this kind are rare, turbulence is a much more common occurrence that can lead to injuries for unsecured passengers.

The US Federal Aviation Administration has reported that, in the United States, 30 passengers and 116 crew members were hospitalised due to in-flight injuries caused by turbulence between 2009 and 2021.

Crew members are most susceptible due to the nature of their job. The Federal Aviation Administration states the annual cost to the global aviation industry due to turbulence injuries is US$100 million.

Climate change and turbulence

With climate change heating up our atmosphere every year, we can expect more turbulence. Wind speeds at the altitudes where most aircraft fly are increasing, causing more turbulence.

Read more:
What is air turbulence?

This type of turbulence is known as “clear air turbulence” and is difficult to predict or see with current aircraft technologies. Researchers have found that severe clear air turbulence over the North Atlantic increased by 55% from 1979 to 2020.

For airlines, more turbulence will mean more wear and tear on aircraft. But for travellers, the bottom line is clear: always follow the safety instructions from the cabin crew, and keep your seatbelt fastened at all times when seated.

Doug Drury 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. LATAM flight 800 ‘just dropped’ in mid-flight, injuring dozens. An expert explores what happened, and how to keep yourself safe – https://theconversation.com/latam-flight-800-just-dropped-in-mid-flight-injuring-dozens-an-expert-explores-what-happened-and-how-to-keep-yourself-safe-225554

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Damien O’Meara, PhD Candidate, Media and Communications, Swinburne University of Technology

Television is experiencing a boom of queer representation, and Australian series are no exception. Our new study reveals how trends in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and nonbinary (gender and sexually diverse) scripted stories have developed onscreen over the 2000s and 2010s.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, Australia was considered relatively radical in its representations of gender and sexually diverse people. We’re credited with the first positive portrayal of a gay man, Don Finlayson (Joe Hasham), in the soap opera Number 96 (1972–77).

We also portrayed the first lesbian kiss, between Vicki Stafford (Judy Nunn) and Felicity Baker (Helen Hemingway) in the pilot episode of The Box (1974–77), two weeks before the UK’s first televised lesbian kiss.

By the 1990s, queer character appearances shifted to predominantly once-off stories in medical and crime dramas. But things have changed substantially since then.

Gay and bisexual men

Between 2000 and 2019, Australian-scripted television represented gay men more regularly than bisexual men. Specifically, our research found 44 series featuring gay men and only three featuring bisexual men.

Similar to trends in US television throughout the 2000s, many of these examples focused on characters “coming out” as gay – a popular storytelling device.

While bisexual coming-out narratives were rare, one notable exception was the character Sammy Lieberman (Thom Green) in Dance Academy (2010–13), who rejects labels others try to put on him.

Although we found a prominence of coming-out narratives, we also saw an increase in already out characters. Previously, gay and bisexual men were commonly written into one-off storylines in which coming out seemed like the only available narrative. Now they’re often shown with complex lives and other sources of drama.

The avoidance of gay intimacy onscreen remains prominent; we noted a tendency to use camera movements and cuts to avoid showing gay sex scenes. But some series are pushing these boundaries. For instance, season three of Please Like Me included a meaningful and critically acclaimed sex scene between Josh (Josh Thomas) and Arnold (Keegan Joyce).

Read more:
With Moonlight’s Oscar win, Hollywood begins to right old wrongs

Lesbian and bisexual women

While there is a significant number of lesbian and bisexual women in Australian scripted television, they appear in fewer series overall compared with gay and bisexual men. Of a total 38 series, we found 32 with lesbians and 15 with bisexual women. Nine of the series included both.

Trends for lesbian and bisexual women often focus on characters who are assured of their sexuality, or who engage in temporary exploration as a “passing phase”. Coming-out narratives are rare for these women.

For example, Charlie Buckton (Esther Anderson) in Home and Away (1988–) temporarily explores attraction to out lesbian Joey Collins (Kate Bell). The relationship isn’t mentioned again after Joey is written out and Charlie returns to dating men.

Alongside this theme of temporary attraction is a troubling trend of unnamed bisexuality, wherein we identified bisexual women, but the bisexuality wasn’t clearly named.

That said, we do note instances where this is due to a resistance to labels. As Bridget (Libby Tanner) tells Bea (Danielle Cormack) in Wentworth (2013–21): “Fuck the labels.”

There are also several examples of lesbian and bisexual women raising families. In 2003, a two-part episode of Blue Heelers (1994–2006) focuses on a custody dispute between a lesbian couple and their sperm donor. These stories often incorporate themes of same-sex IVF and adoption, reflecting legal changes in Australia throughout the decades.

However, in All Saints (1998–2009), Charlotte Beaumont (Tammy Macintosh) – who is originally written as a lesbian and later rewritten as bisexual – becomes pregnant after sleeping with a man.

Transgender and non-binary people

Until recently, and with rare exceptions, out gender-diverse characters have been largely invisible in Australian scripted television.

We found eight series with transgender women, three with transgender men, and one with a non-binary person. Within our study, only one of these characters appeared before 2010.

Most transgender storylines included some focus on self-identity, with the character either coming out or asserting their identity with others. Some stories also included romantic attraction, although almost all were in a heterosexual framing. One exception was Chris (Harvey Zielinski) in Starting From… Now (2014–16) – a trans man who is pansexual.

From 2018 onwards, all gender-diverse characters were portrayed by out actors who aligned with their identity. Before this, only Robyn Ross (Carlotta) in Number 96 and Chris in Starting From… Now were played by out transgender actors.

The emergence of queer story worlds

Australian scripted television has moved away from representing solitary gay or lesbian figures, and towards more inclusive representations that portray queer characters belonging to a shared community. We found increasing instances of these characters appearing in regular, recurring and one-off stories in the same series.

We also found an increase in series that are set in queer story worlds. Outland (2012) was the first Australian series to feature an entirely gay and lesbian ensemble of characters.

Similarly, Starting From… Now is a web series that follows a group of lesbian women living in Sydney’s Newtown. The final two seasons were picked up by SBS in 2016 and, along with Wentworth, contribute significantly to the number of lesbian and bisexual women appearing onscreen.

The queer story world has been featuring even more from 2020 onward, in particular through digital-first and pilot initiatives for talent from underrepresented communities. These initiatives are giving more opportunities to queer creatives, resulting in series such as Iggy & Ace 5eva (2021) and All My Friends Are Racist (2021).

The appearances of gender and sexually diverse stories in Australian television continue to change. We hope our research can provide a starting point for further analysis of these decades and those to come.

Read more:
Peppa Pig has introduced a pair of lesbian polar bears, but Aussie kids’ TV has been leading the way in queer representation

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. We studied two decades of queer representation on Australian TV, and found some interesting trends – https://theconversation.com/we-studied-two-decades-of-queer-representation-on-australian-tv-and-found-some-interesting-trends-224645

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Speck, Emerita Professor, Art History and Curatorship, University of Adelaide

Ruth Mackenzie is the new artistic director of the Adelaide Festival of Arts, and for her first Adelaide gig she has brought in two heavyweights: performance artist Marina Abramović and avant-garde artist and musician Laurie Anderson. Both were major events, very much of the moment.

The Marina Abramović Institute’s Takeover featured nine performance artists over three days.

To begin at the beginning, audience members are instructed to arrive at 11am each day. We are ushered into a compelling virtual presentation, where Abramović inducts us into being a participative community.

She tells us performance is the most difficult of the art forms, that you need to abandon time and surrender to the moment. Then she runs the audience through a series of Tibetan breathing exercises to make us attuned to reading the mysteries and personal language of performance artists.

Durational performance

Mike Parr’s Portrait of Marina Abramović is the most extreme. A blind painting event, his eyes remain closed for the entire 12 hours. His aim was to paint four black squares, one on each side of a constructed white cube gallery space, in homage to Russian constructivist painter Kazimir Malevich’s 1915 Black Square.

Like Malevich, Parr says his blind painting is the creation of nothingness with a view to a rebirth. But he departs from Malevich: Parr is currently driven by the reality of the shocking events in Gaza, as set out in the painted text which starts on the walls of the show: “free Palestine” and “Gaza is a Warsaw ghetto”.

These sentiments are amplified in his “vision” statement distributed at the performance. His impassioned text says:

the Jewish diaspora rise up to join hands, to relinquish the obscene policies of its political leadership […] to demand justice, freedom, prosperity for the Palestinian people and an end to the oppression and antisemitism of the apartheid.

Over the next 12 hours, Parr paints four black squares – at times from perilously high up on a ladder – to be covered with red paint in homage to Abramović’s former Yugoslavian communist background, then covered again with black. The painted squares, complete with drips of red paint running down to the floor, remained after the performance for viewers to ponder their meaning, along with a video of the entire event.

Place and Country

Less sensational but equally demanding was the durational performance by Collective Absentia, a Bangkok-based group in a work entitled Our Glorious Past, Our Glorious Present, Our Glorious Future: Our Glorious Spring.

A member of their collective sat with his head covered and immobile in the middle of a passage-way, meditating on non-violent forms of resistance to ongoing political events in Myanmar.

All attendees at the event had to walk past and around this performance. Most stopped and connected with the sentiment of non-violent forms of resistance. One person even sat directly opposite the performer and meditated.

Christian Thomson’s postcolonial performance, Wait in Gold, involved him slowly and methodically pinning gold painted native daisies to every item of his exterior clothing so that he transforms from human into a larger flower form connected to Country. In this moving performance, he is responding to the denial of a voice as a result of the 2023 referendum outcome, and seeking refuge in the safety of Country.

In Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo’s absorbing durational work, Amnesia, she slowly covers a large black board with a set of chalk markings. At each mark made, she utters “I’m sorry”.

The mark making is interspersed with her taking off her black shirt, placing it with other discarded shirts, and sewing a new one to put on. At other times she abandons mark making and moves across the floor, writhing as if in deep remorse, again uttering “I’m sorry”.

The promotional material accompanying her performance points to the work as an inner exploration of “untold narratives and forgotten realities of the past”. Her felt emotion in the performance is deeply persuasive, but I kept wondering about the amnesia from which Suryodarmo is recoiling: is it a deeply personal journey, or more?

Read more:
Marina Abramović retrospective celebrates the grand dame of performance art – but questions the genre’s future

Encounters with AI

In a different vein, Laurie Anderson’s exhibition I’ll be your mirror is an encounter with AI. Taking phrases from her song O Superman and her late husband Lou Reed’s song I’ll be your mirror, Anderson has generated intriguing text which hangs in five panels in the Adelaide Circulating Library, the city’s original lending library.

The AI generated conversations between Anderson and Reed, who passed away in 2013, oscillate between the surreal and the eerie with phrases such as

There’s a mirror in the room
And when I look at night
It reflects nothing back to me.

The Bible is on display and open at Psalms 84-88, but hanging above the Bible is AI generated text based on biblical phrases, displayed as Genesis 1: 26-31.

A section from that text reads:

Some nights now Noah dreams he sees his boat leave the dock
It’s just another day on planet Earth
Only this time it’s with an animal friend.

As an adjunct to the exhibition of 21st century textual artefacts set amid 19th texts, Anderson held a virtual public conversation with the machine generating gurus she worked in Adelaide – the takeaway message being what machines generate depends on the input.

The exhibition is utterly intriguing, but novice viewers need an introduction to what they are about to encounter.

Read more:
From Duchamp to AI: the transformation of authorship in art

Catherine Speck, with Joanna Mendelssohn, Catherine De Lorenzo and Alison Inglis, has received funding from the ARC to investigate Australian art exhibitions.

– ref. Art of the moment: experiencing Marina Abramović and Laurie Anderson at the Adelaide Festival – https://theconversation.com/art-of-the-moment-experiencing-marina-abramovic-and-laurie-anderson-at-the-adelaide-festival-223455

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Martin, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Deakin University

Australia currently has the most restrictive tobacco and vaping policies in the developed world. Australian smokers are taxed at one of the highest rates among comparable nations, with taxes set to further increase at rate of 5% per year. Meanwhile, Australia is the only country to have a prescription model for accessing vaping products.

These policies have begun to attract international attention. The UK government, for example, recently announced increased taxes on tobacco and vaping products, while the Labour opposition has vowed to emulate Australia’s prescription model if it wins this year’s election.

Australia’s policies have been backed by some medical experts as a means to drive down and eventually eliminate smoking and vaping. There has been much alarm around youth vaping, in particular.

While arguably well-intentioned, the increasing taxes and restrictions on cigarettes and vaping products have resulted in an unintended and dangerous outcome – the rise of a lucrative and expanding black market for these products.

Read more:
Albanese government launches war on vaping, declaring it the ‘number-one behavioural issue in high schools’

Tobacco ‘war’ unfolding in Victoria

Emerging black markets tend to attract established organised crime groups, which have the capacity to use violence to enforce contracts, collect debts and threaten competitors.

Over the past six months, for instance, there have been more than 40 firebombings of stores selling illicit tobacco and vapes across Victoria. In October, police said the killing of Melbourne man in a drive-by shooting was also linked to the underworld war over illegal tobacco products. Reports of standover tactics and extortion targeting tobacco shop owners are also on the rise.

According to police, this serious criminal activity is being committed at the behest of rival criminal networks who are engaged in a “turf war” for control of the lucrative trade.

Since October, police have searched almost 70 stores believed to be involved in the illegal tobacco trade, seizing more than 100,000 vapes with an estimated street value of A$3.2 million, along with 3.2 million cigarettes.

While most of the violence associated with the black market appears to be taking place in Victoria, this is a national problem. Last month in Sydney, health authorities seized over 30,000 vapes and 118,000 cigarettes with a estimated street value of $1.1 million.

These numbers may sound impressive, but they represent a drop in the ocean of the total black market. Authorities estimate the size of the illicit vape market could be worth up to $500 million in Victoria alone.

The economics of the black market

The black market for illicit tobacco and vaping products has been driven by economic forces on both the supply and demand side.

On the demand side, smokers are disproportionately concentrated among lower socio-economic groups. Many are unable or unwilling to pay the ever-increasing prices for cigarettes.

People who vape are also largely rejecting the government’s prescription model, with 87% reporting they source their vapes illegally.

This demand is only likely to increase as cigarette prices increase further and prescription vapes become even less appealing with the introduction of new flavour restrictions.

On the supply side, economic models suggest traffickers of illicit products are attracted to opportunities that present the lowest risks and highest rewards.

Similar to drugs like cocaine, the importation of illicit tobacco offers attractive profits. The difference is that while importing large quantities of cocaine can lead to substantial prison sentences, the penalties for the importation of illicit tobacco are not as severe.

Vapes are similarly low risk and highly profitable. They can be purchased wholesale from China for as little as $2.50 and sold “on the street” in Australia for more than ten times that amount.

The limits and dangers of prohibition

These economic realities suggest it is unlikely law enforcement agencies will be able to effectively tackle the black market under current government settings.

The Australian Border Force is already stretched beyond capacity tackling the booming illicit drug market. So, even if eight out of ten consignments of illicit vapes are intercepted at the border (an unrealistically high proportion on the best of days), the two that make it through are sufficient for traffickers to make a profit.

And while law enforcement agencies have made inroads with arrests of black marketeers and seizures of their products, these are often quickly replaced so trafficking operations can continue unabated.

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As previous examples of prohibition on alcohol and other drugs have demonstrated, the dangers of black markets extend beyond systemic violence. Other harms include the influx of inferior and adulterated products, which can pose even more health risks than legal tobacco products. Young people also have greater access to vapes as black market retailers ignore restrictions on sales to minors. (It should be noted, though, that many retailers may be doing so under duress.)

Added to this is the risk of criminalisation of consumers. A teenager in NSW was recently arrested, for example, following an altercation with police over his possession of a vape.

Then there is the lost tax revenue from tobacco goods sold under the counter, which the Taxation Office estimated at $2.3 billion in 2021-22.

The Australian public and policymakers, as well as other countries considering emulating our policies, need to be mindful of these risks and the implacable economic forces that are driving the black market.

Australia’s tobacco and vaping policies have transformed two largely legal and peaceful markets into increasingly dangerous and uncontrolled ones. The situation could even get worse in the absence of meaningful legislative reform, enhanced multi-agency cooperation, nationally consistent policy platforms and the winding back of some restrictions.

As the history of prohibition has taught us time and again, there is a “sweet spot” in restricting the sale of harmful products – one that limits access and reduces harm, but is not so onerous as to create a large black market. The violence unfolding on our streets suggests our current tobacco and vaping polices are failing to strike this balance.

Dr Martin has received funding from the Australian Institute of Criminology and the National Health and Medical Research Centre for research into illicit markets.

David Bright receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Institute of Criminology.

– ref. Australia’s restrictive vaping and tobacco policies are fuelling a lucrative and dangerous black market – https://theconversation.com/australias-restrictive-vaping-and-tobacco-policies-are-fuelling-a-lucrative-and-dangerous-black-market-225279