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

We are all familiar with cherubs – small, winged children that have a status in Western art history as angels.

But did you know this image you hold in your head of a cherub is completely unlike the cherubs of the biblical and medieval traditions?

Here’s what you should know about these mythical creatures.

Cherubs were originally fearsome

The Cherubs in the book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament were fearsome creatures.

Each had four faces – those of a human, a lion, an ox and an eagle – and four wings.

By the 4th century within Christianity, angels had become creatures with two wings, sufficient to enable them to travel from heaven, where they usually resided, to earth, generally to bring messages from God to us.

In the order of heavenly beings constructed by Pseudo-Dionysius in the late 5th century, Cherubs were second in importance to the Seraphs, followed by Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels and Angels.

So, in the Dionysian order, Cherubs aren’t even angels, but are way above them, close to God. There, they supported the divine throne or the divine chariot by means of which God travelled around.

In a later tradition they, along with the archangel Gabriel, guarded the entrance to the Garden of Eden.

Cherubs as we know them come from Putti

What we now call Cherubs in Christian art were originally depictions of Putti – chubby, male children – from Ancient Greece and Rome. We are most familiar with a Putto as Eros, Amor or Cupid, usually naked, winged and with arrows used to incite love.

Putti were re-introduced into the West by the Italian sculptor Donatello in 1429 in sculpture.

In his art, the Putti were spiritelli – what we would call “sprites” or “elves”. They were little creatures – playful, lively and mischievous – often associated with love.

Suddenly, the Putti were everywhere. They especially adorned churches, playing with their Putti friends in childish glee, singing and dancing to the music of the lute or mandolin, climbing on fountains, pouring water through a vase or through the mouth of a fish.

The wings of the Putti suggested angelic status to Christian artists. And so, within the history of Christian art, these Putti have been and are still called “Cherubs”. But we do not know how they came to be known by this name.

The Putti became child-angels

In the 15th century, when the classical Putti were introduced into Christian art, they were looked upon as child-angels rather than as Putti. That is, they were Christianised.

We find child-angels with haloes and multi-coloured wings surrounding Mary and Jesus in Bernardino Fungai’s The Virgin and Child with Cherubim, painted around the end of the 15th century.

We know child-angels best of all as the two playful infantile figures of the Sistine Madonna (1514) with coloured wings, where Raphael has added them into the painting almost, it appears, just for the fun of it or as an afterthought.

Even Cherubs are not always Cherubs

Although we now might refer to all of these winged child-angels as Cherubs, the artists who painted them likely divided them into various celestial creatures, classified in some cases by the colour of the clothing they wore.

Cherubs often appear in blue clothing and with Mary, the mother of Jesus – their blue clothing perhaps reflecting her traditional blue clothes.

Child-angels dressed in blue are often paired with child-angels in red, the traditional colour of the Seraphs, those of a higher angelic order than the Cherubs.

In the French court painter Jean Fouquet’s Virgin and Child (1452), Mary the Queen of Heaven and Jesus are surrounded by naked red Seraphs and, behind them, naked blue Cherubs. So here we have the two highest orders of celestial creatures, surrounding Mary and Jesus.

On occasion, we find Seraphic infants only in attendance on Mary, now as winged heads, with no Cherubic children present at all.

Giovanni Bellini, in a 1485 painting known as Madonna of the Red Cherubim – but better titled “the Madonna of the red Seraphs” – has red winged, red-headed child-angels, their bodies in the clouds surrounding the head of Mary. It wasn’t until the 19th century that the name “Cherub” became common for all these baby angels.

But to call these child-angels all “Cherubs” is a misnomer, still perpetrated in Western art history.

Most artists just depicted child-angels or even infant-angels, with no connection to the biblical Cherub. That said, some, when dressed in blue, are probably intended as Cherubs; others, when dressed in red, are likely meant as Seraphs.

The history of the Western art of celestial creatures needs to be rewritten as a consequence.

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

– ref. Not quite angels: why we should stop calling these small winged children ‘cherubs’ – https://theconversation.com/not-quite-angels-why-we-should-stop-calling-these-small-winged-children-cherubs-261163

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melanie MacGregor, ARC Future Fellow and Matthew Flinders Fellow in Chemistry, Flinders University

Progress towards a legally binding global treaty on plastics pollution stalled and went into reverse this week. The United Nations Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, ran overtime. It’s likely to conclude this evening, without agreement.

This is an incredibly disappointing result. As a member of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, I was hoping for action to genuinely curb plastic pollution. Our priorities included considering the whole life cycle rather than just disposal, setting targets to reduce plastic production, and regulating the use of harmful additives to reduce risks to human health.

Unfortunately, vested interests hijacked the negotiations. Countries with major petrochemical producers resisted caps on virgin plastic production. We’ve seen this before. Legitimate scientific concerns about harm have been downplayed by powerful interests time and time again — with tobacco, PFAS, asbestos, and climate change.

When it comes to plastics — especially the micro- and nanoplastics now invading our bodies — awareness and early action could make all the difference. But we can still take action into our own hands as consumers, to minimise exposure and reduce waste. It we act together, we can also send a powerful message to the plastics manufacturing industry.

Why do we need a plastics treaty?

An ambitious plastic treaty could have a positive, lasting impact on the environment and human health.

The Montreal Protocol, adopted in 1987 to phase out ozone-depleting aerosols, is a great example of what can be achieved.

The original Kyoto Protocol for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, on the other hand, was not ambitious enough. It had fewer signatories and its effectiveness varied between countries. The plastics treaty is at a similar crossroads.

This treaty is a unique opportunity. It could ensure harmful additives are disclosed, new materials are proven safe before use, and upstream measures — such as reducing production and simplifying plastic chemistry — are prioritised.

Dissecting the changes

A promising draft treaty, circulated in December after two years of negotiations, was revised at the end of the first week of the summit, and then cut in half midway through the second week. All items of contention had been removed.

Words such as “target”, “chemicals”, “harmful” and “phase out” were absent. Article 19 — the one addressing human health — was deleted altogether. References to public awareness disappeared from the waste-management section.

Gone are plans to globally phase out specific products such as plastic bags and straws. So is the section on sustainable production and reduction targets. There is no mention of chemicals of concern, or transparency around additives. Even basic language about improving recycling rates, banning open burning and dumping, or encouraging behaviour change has been removed.

On a positive note, the revised draft still encourages innovation and research. But without safeguards, there’s a risk efforts will simply consist of finding loopholes to dodge penalties. We’ve seen this before too: replacing one banned chemical with another unregulated, equally harmful one.

What can we do as consumers?

In the absence of a strong treaty — at least for now — we shouldn’t underestimate the power and influence we have as consumers.

Industry does respond to public demand. Just look at what happened with plastic microbeads. These tiny pieces of plastic were once common in personal care products such as exfoliants, body scrubs and toothpastes. But when people started to reject products containing microbeads, recognising them as a source of microplastics, manufacturers took note.

Governments also stepped in. The Netherlands was the first country to ban them, soon followed by many others. Eventually, manufacturers phased plastic microbeads out of their product lines worldwide.

That shift was largely driven by popular pressure. It’s a small win, but a telling one — a reminder that our choices can make a difference.

Did you know some of the biggest sources of microplastics are synthetic textiles and tyres? Together they contribute more than 60% of primary microplastics. Microplastics are released not just when an item is discarded and decays in the oceans, but every time it’s worn or washed.

Seemingly small actions – such as buying fewer clothes, choosing natural fibres where possible, washing less often, and walking or cycling instead of driving – can make a difference if we all act collectively.

It’s also worth looking at other sources of microplastics in our surroundings, to limit exposure. Carpets are generally made of synthetic fibres that constantly shed microplastics. Exposure is significantly higher indoors, including inside cars – another reason to walk.

Don’t wait for a treaty

Australia is not a big producer of raw polymers from fossil fuels. That may be partly why our nation is part of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution by 2040.

However, Australians consume more single-use plastic per capita than most other countries – more than 50 kilograms per person, per year.

We don’t need to wait for a treaty to start curbing plastic pollution in our own lives. If we get serious about changing our ways, manufacturers may be forced to take notice.

Melanie MacGregor receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. The global plastics treaty process has fallen flat. Here’s what went wrong, and how you can help – https://theconversation.com/the-global-plastics-treaty-process-has-fallen-flat-heres-what-went-wrong-and-how-you-can-help-263189

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Guzyal Hill, Research fellow, The University of Melbourne

Australian workers are secretly using generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) tools – without knowledge or approval from their boss, a new report shows.

The “Our Gen AI Transition: Implications for Work and Skills” report from the federal government’s Jobs and Skills Australia points to several studies, showing between 21% to 27% of workers (particularly in white collar industries) use AI behind their manager’s back.

Why do some people still hide it? The report says people commonly said they:

• “feel that using AI is cheating”
• have a “fear of being seen as lazy”
• and a “fear of being seen as less competent”.

What’s most striking is this rise in unapproved “shadow use” of AI is happening even as the federal treasurer and Productivity Commission urge Australians to make the most of AI.

The new report results highlight gaps in how we govern AI use at work, leaving workers and employers in the dark about the right thing to do.

As I’ve seen in my work – both as a legal researcher looking at AI governance and as a practising lawyer – there are some jobs where the rules for using AI at work change as soon as you cross a state border within Australia.

Risks and benefits of AI ‘shadow use’

The 124-page Jobs and Skills Australia report covers many issues, including early and uneven adoption of AI, how AI could help in future work and how it could affect job availability.

Among its most interesting findings concerned workers using AI in secret – which is not always a bad thing. The report found those using AI in the shadows are sometimes hidden leaders, “driving bottom-up innovation in some sectors”.

However, it also comes with serious risks.

Worker-led ‘shadow use’ is an important part of adoption to date. A significant portion of employees are using Gen AI tools independently, often without employer oversight, indicating grassroots enthusiasm but also raising governance and risk concerns.

The report recommends harnessing this early adoption and experimentation, but warns:

In the absence of clear governance, shadow use may proliferate. This informal experimentation, while a source of innovation, can also fragment practices that are hard to scale or integrate later. It also increases risks around data security, accountability and compliance, and inconsistent outcomes.

Real-world risks from AI failures

The report calls for national stewardship of Australia’s Gen AI transition through a coordinated national framework, centralised capability, and a whole-of-population boost in digital and AI skills.

This mirrors my own research, showing Australia’s AI legal framework has blind spots, and our systems of knowledge, from law to legal reporting, need a fundamental rethink.

Even in some professions where clearer rules have emerged, too often it’s come after serious failures.

In Victoria, a child protection worker entered sensitive details into ChatGPT about a court case concerning sexual offences against a young child. The Victorian information commissioner has banned the state’s child protection staff from using AI tools until November 2026.

Lawyers have also been found to misuse AI, from the United States and United Kingdom to Australia.

Yet another example – involving misleading information created by AI for a Melbourne murder case – was reported just yesterday.

But even for lawyers, the rules are patchy and differ from state to state. (The Federal Court is among those still developing its rules.)

For example, a lawyer in New South Wales is now clearly not allowed to use AI to generate the content of an affidavit, including “altering, embellishing, strengthening, diluting or rephrasing a deponent’s evidence”.

However, no other state or territory has adopted this position as clearly.

This article is part of The Conversation’s series on jobs in the age of AI. Leading experts examine what AI means for workers at different career stages, how AI is reshaping our economy – and what you can do to prepare.

Clearer rules at work and as a nation

Right now, using AI at work lies in a governance grey zone. Most organisations are running without clear policies, risk assessments or legal safeguards. Even if everyone’s doing it, the first one caught out will face the consequences.

In my view, national uniform legislation for AI would be preferable. After all, the AI technology we’re using is the same, whether you’re in New South Wales or the Northern Territory – and AI knows no physical borders. But that’s not looking likely yet.

If employers don’t want workers using AI in secret, what can they do? If there are obvious risks, start by giving workers clearer policies and training.

One example is what the legal profession is doing now (in some states) to give clear, written guidance. While it’s not perfect, it’s a step in the right direction.

But it’s still arguably not good enough, especially because the rules aren’t the same nationally.

We need more proactive national AI governance – with clearer policies, training, ethical guidelines, a risk-based approach and compliance monitoring – to clarify the position for both workers and employers.

Without a national AI governance policy, employers are being left to navigate a fragmented and inconsistent regulatory minefield, courting breaches at every turn.

Meanwhile, the very workers who could be at the forefront of our AI transformation may be driven to use AI in secret, fearing they will be judged as lazy cheats.

Guzyal Hill is a practising lawyer, but wrote this article in her role as a researcher working on AI governance and national uniform legislation.

– ref. Many Australians secretly use AI at work, a new report shows. Clearer rules could reduce ‘shadow AI’ – https://theconversation.com/many-australians-secretly-use-ai-at-work-a-new-report-shows-clearer-rules-could-reduce-shadow-ai-263043

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Reilly, Senior Lecturer in Commercial Law, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Ride share company Uber has faced legal challenges around the world over whether its drivers should be classified as employees or contractors. New Zealand is no exception, with the most recent case heard before the Supreme Court in July.

While the outcome of that case is not yet known, Uber stands to benefit from amendments to New Zealand’s employment law, currently under select committee review. As it has elsewhere, Uber actively lobbied the government for changes to the law, and one of the proposed amendments was suggested by the company itself.

If enacted, the suite of amendments would clarify the distinction between employment and contracting arrangements, alter how personal grievance remedies are assessed, introduce a high-income threshold for unjustified dismissal claims, and abolish the “30-day rule” for workplaces with collective agreements.

Under the proposed law, whether a worker is a contractor would depend on a “gateway test”. This covers whether the contract describes the person as a contractor, whether they can work for other companies, whether they are required to work specific shifts, and whether their contract can be terminated for declining extra work.

Presented as a way of clarifying the legal status of platform-based workers such as Uber or DoorDash drivers, the changes may end up making it easier for employers to misclassify employees – and is out of step with other countries.

The amendments also don’t address the range of problems associated with platform work, including fluctuating pay and arbitrary deactivation.

The changing nature of work

Under current New Zealand law, employees – those who work under the direction of an employer – are entitled to protections such as the minimum wage, paid sick leave and safeguards against unfair dismissal.

Contractors, by contrast, are considered to be in business on their own account and do not receive such protections. This creates an incentive for some employers to misclassify workers.

This is important, given the new forms of work that have emerged in the past decade. Platform workers on services such as Uber, Lyft and DoorDash don’t fit neatly into existing categories of employee or contractor.

For example, Uber has argued it’s not a transport provider and that it does not employ drivers per se, but merely connects them with passengers. It also claims drivers enjoy more freedom than traditional employees, as they are not required to log on to the app.

Drivers, however, argue they are in fact working for Uber’s business, not their own. They point to the company’s pricing controls and other restrictions as evidence that they are, in practice, employees.

The proposed law would resolve this dispute in favour of platform owners. It would allow companies to draft contracts that define workers as contractors on a “take it or leave it” basis – terms that may be difficult, if not impossible, to challenge.

Vulnerable contractors

It has long been acknowledged that some contractors are vulnerable. They may be economically dependent on a single client, or technically able to take other work but practically constrained from doing so.

These workers need more support and protection than the current law offers. Recognising this, other countries, including the European Union, have taken a different approach.

Australia, for example, has created a new category of “employee-like” workers. These are not employees, but are still entitled to protections such as the right not to be unfairly disconnected from a platform and the right to challenge unfair contract terms.

The new law would also affect more than just Uber drivers and other platform workers. It would impose regulatory costs on businesses, which would need to seek legal advice and review their contracting arrangements.

There is also a risk that some employers will rewrite contracts to avoid extending rights to casual workers who should be defined as employees.

Rather than preventing the misclassification of workers, the law changes may make it easier. They do little to address the challenges vulnerable contractors face, fail to tackle the structural problems of platform work, and disregard how other countries are modernising their laws.

Lynne Coker, Senior Lecturer at the Ara Institute of Canterbury, contributed to this article which is based on a forthcoming analysis in the New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations.

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. Contractor or employee? How a proposed law change will favour Uber over its drivers – https://theconversation.com/contractor-or-employee-how-a-proposed-law-change-will-favour-uber-over-its-drivers-262118

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yanan Hu, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Health Services Management, University of Technology Sydney

Have you received multiple, unexpected bills during your pregnancy, sometimes by text message just hours before a procedure? You’re not alone.

Each year, about 70,000 Australian women give birth in the private system. Many are hit with surprise costs, often with no clear explanation or upfront discussion. Some women may be afraid to question unexpected charges, fearing it could delay care and put their own or their baby’s health at risk.

There has to be a better way.

Now private health insurers have a plan to provide pregnant women with more certainty about the out-of-pocket costs for scans, blood tests and the like. The idea is to provide a “bundle” of maternity care that you pay for up front as a fixed cost.

In a submission to the Productivity Commission, Private Healthcare Australia, which represents most funds, outlines how this would work. But the commission’s interim report into delivering quality care more efficiently, which was out earlier this week, does not mention bundled payments for private maternity care.

We’re two health economists with a special interest in women’s health. Here’s why we believe bundled maternity care could help take the stress and financial guesswork out of having a baby.

The high cost of pregnancy

Our research shows that, on average, women had 11 outpatient visits and accessed 39 out-of-hospital services throughout pregnancy. These include GP and specialist consultations, scans, therapies and tests. Each of these services may incur out-of-pocket costs, and none is allowed to be covered by private health insurance.

These add to average out-of-pocket costs of A$4,285 for women giving birth in the private system.

Private maternity care can deliver outstanding outcomes. Yet the rising and unpredictable out-of-pocket costs may be a key factor to the decline in the proportion of women choosing to give birth in the private system. That not only affects those women. Moving away from private maternity care also adds pressure to our already stretched public health system.

Here’s an example of the types of costs we’re talking about. The image below shows an actual fee schedule that women received at their first private obstetric appointment.

This gives women a clear estimate of fees charged by the specialist obstetrician. Additional services, such as scans, blood or urine tests, anaesthesia, or care for the newborn may incur further costs. But the fee schedule provides no details of how much these might be.

What do private health insurers propose?

Private Healthcare Australia is calling for major reform in how maternity care is funded in the private system, called “a bundled payment”.

Think of it like a travel package, but for your entire pregnancy. Instead of receiving separate bills from multiple health-care providers, you would pay one fixed price that covers all your pregnancy and birth-related care. No surprise bills. No confusion. Just one agreed cost, up front.

Women would choose a lead practitioner, such as an obstetrician, midwife, or GP, who coordinates all necessary services and handles payments to other providers. In return, women receive a single invoice covering everything from initial consultation to postnatal care.

In cases where births are complex and require additional services beyond the standard package, lead practitioners could charge more, but only under strict conditions, and with full disclosure. This helps maintain flexibility while still setting clear expectations up front.

What else can we expect?

Clinicians, including obstetricians, midwives, and GPs would be able to join the bundled care scheme by offering full-service packages to women. They’d collaborate with other health-care providers to deliver care and share funding.

This could spark healthy competition, where providers offer packages with clear pricing and service options. The aim would be to offer women more choice, better value, and improved care coordination.

Bundled care could be a win for the public health system too.

To support the reform, Private Healthcare Australia is proposing both private insurers and the Australian government contribute a minimum of $3,000 each to the lead clinician, covering coordination tasks and helping reduce out-of-pocket costs for families.

Rolling out this funding model would cost the government $246 million over four years. This is far less than the roughly $1,851 million it may otherwise face over the same period if these women shift from private to public maternity care.

Not everyone agrees this would work

However, not all health-care providers are on board. Earlier this year, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists questioned whether bundled maternity payments would really save women money. It said the lead provider of maternity care would bear the burden of indemnity responsibility for all services within the bundle, making the service prohibitively expensive to provide and so unlikely to be financially viable.

However, we’d argue that the payment to the lead provider should be set in consultation with health-care providers to ensure it adequately covers any additional legal liability and coordination burden.

The out-of-pocket costs may still be significant under this funding model. But it would give families greater certainty about fees and more confidence in planning for a baby.

If clinicians’ concerns about legal liability and other practical issues can be managed, this type of reform could make private maternity care a more realistic option for more families.

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. Does your maternity cover leave you with surprise bills? Here’s one plan to fix it – https://theconversation.com/does-your-maternity-cover-leave-you-with-surprise-bills-heres-one-plan-to-fix-it-262714

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anoma Darshani Pieris, Professor of Architecture, The University of Melbourne

After the Great War, Australians made pilgrimages to distant battlefields of Gallipoli and northern France. They paid their respects to the fallen soldiers who shaped our national identity.

After the second world war, new places emerged such as the Kokoda Track, Papua New Guinea; Changi, Singapore; and the Thai-Burma railway. They became synonymous with Australia’s wartime sacrifices in Asia and the Pacific.

However, few know about Yokohama War Cemetery – the only Commonwealth war cemetery in mainland Japan. This unique site was collaboratively designed and built by Australian and Japanese architects, horticulturists and contractors in the years following the war.

It marks one of the first acts of reconciliation between the two nations after hostilities ceased.

Reimagining the cemetery

Yokohama War Cemetery was established as the final resting place for more than 1,500 Allied servicemen and women. Most had died as prisoners of war in Japan and China, including 280 Australians.

About six kilometres west of Yokohama’s historic port, the cemetery sits within a thick pine and cherry tree landscape. After the war ended, Australian and American war graves teams scoured Japan to locate and identify the remains of the fallen. They were often found in the care of local temples near prisoner-of-war camps.

Between 1946 and 1951, a small team of Australian architects and horticulturists designed and constructed the cemetery. They were from the Melbourne-based Anzac Agency of the Imperial War Graves Commission (now known as the Office of Australian War Graves).

Many of these designers were recently returned servicemen.

They include young architects Peter Spier, Robert Coxhead, Brett Finney and Clayton Vize. All trained at the University of Melbourne’s Architectural Atelier, their fledgling careers interrupted by years of war service and at the agency. Others, such as Alan Robertson, endured years as a prisoner of war in Singapore then Japan.

These architects reimagined the flat expanse of the traditional British war cemetery. They arranged a 27-acre former children’s amusement park into five national burial grounds: for the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand–Canada, pre-Partition India, and a post-war section.

Eucalyptus trees towering above the mature foliage clearly identify the cemetery as an Australian endeavour.

Another important contributor was Alec Maisey, a former merchant seaman and New Guinea veteran. Maisey took on the horticultural duties for the Anzac Agency’s numerous war cemeteries. In New Guinea, Borneo, Indonesia, New Caledonia, the South Pacific and across mainland Australia, he left behind a lasting landscape legacy for the thousands of visitors.

An international collaboration

Australian designers collaborated with their Japanese counterparts to create a memorial landscape. They embedded the commission’s established lawn cemetery template into a Japanese style “hide and reveal” garden that conceals and reveals the view as you walk through it.

Impressed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s use of native Oya stone at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, modernist architect Yoji Kasajima introduced it at the cemetery.

Japanese-American Michael Iwanaga was the principal local architect for the cemetery and introduced the Australians to the social and cultural norms of Japanese funerary architecture.

The main contractor on the project, Yabashi Marble, was associated with Japan’s modernist architecture renaissance. They installed the interior stone for Japan’s parliament building.

Tokio Nursery was initially an importer and exporter of seeds, bulbs and plants. They turned to landscaping after the war, becoming the cemetery’s principal gardening and maintenance contractor.

These tentative first steps towards reconciliation between Australia and Japan were made through design.

The result was a war cemetery unique to Asia, combining Asian and Western funereal features and aesthetics in its design.

Through these encounters, the Australian designers’ gained a deeper understanding of Japan’s materials, flora and landscape. Working closely with Japanese architects, nurseries and contractors, their approach to and perception of their profession and Japan was transformed.

Among many cemeteries they designed throughout Asia, Yokohama was the place they often returned to and drew inspiration from in their personal lives.

Enduring reminders

War does not end with a victory or a battle. Some of the most difficult tasks are carried out by the seemingly obscure units of the Australian army. The Australian war graves services, undertook the recovery of the war dead, providing for their dignified burial in designated cemeteries.

Many of these spaces were designed and created during the last stages of the conflict.

War cemeteries are often activated only during commemorative anniversaries. Yet, they persist in serving as enduring reminders of the futility of war and the scale of a nation’s sacrifice. They trigger intergenerational memories for Australians.

For many Asians, however, these sites often represent an unwelcome age of imperial conflicts in which their service and sacrifice was often overlooked.

Yokohama War Cemetery stands as a testament to the collaborative efforts of Australian and Japanese designers in the aftermath of the second world war. It offers a unique perspective on the journey towards reconciliation and the power of design to bridge cultural divides.

The exhibition Eucalypts of Hodogaya is at the Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne, until August 2026.

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. Cherry blossoms and eucalypts: this Japanese war cemetery remembers fallen Australians – https://theconversation.com/cherry-blossoms-and-eucalypts-this-japanese-war-cemetery-remembers-fallen-australians-262344

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jan Lanicek, Associate Professor in Modern European History and Jewish History, UNSW Sydney

Everyone knows her photo. For some it shows the cheeky smile of a young girl, “Miss Quack Quack”. For others, the image represents an enigmatic veil of mystery, similar to Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

Millions have read her diary, watched various renditions in theatres and on the screen, or visited exhibitions devoted to her story. Thousands queue in front of the house in Amsterdam, where she spent 760 days in the secret annex, hiding from the Gestapo and their Dutch collaborators.

People quote the most famous sentence from her diary, immortalised in the Hollywood film, saying that “in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart”.

The sentence was written in July 1944 by 15-year-old Jewish girl Anne Frank, three weeks before the capture of her family by the Nazis. It represents the innocence, perhaps naivety of an adolescent, who after the war became one of the most iconic symbols of the Nazi Holocaust.

The quote carries a universal message that good will eventually prevail. This has turned Anne’s legacy into an easily adoptable trope, serving activists and political agendas. But who, actually, was Anne Frank? And how did she differ from the “Anne Franks” that have emerged since the end of the war?

The Many Lives of Anne Frank – Ruth Franklin (Yale University Press)

Acclaimed author Ruth Franklin explores these probing questions in her newest book. She is to be commended for her sensitive treatment of a difficult subject and an attempt to get as close as possible to Anne’s personality and nature.

Franklin follows two paths. First, she reconstructs Anne’s life based on the diary and recollections of people who knew her. In the second part, she reveals the afterlife of the diary and “Anne Frank”, in different contexts and on different platforms.

She concludes that the “Anne” most people know, or imagine, differs quite significantly from the girl who lived in the secret annex and penned the diary.

The story

Annelies Marie Frank was born in 1929 in Frankfurt am Main to an affluent assimilated German-Jewish family. After the rise of Hitler and the introduction of the first racial laws, her parents Otto and Edith decided to take Anne and her older sister Margot to the Netherlands. They continued to live in Amsterdam despite the growing threat, even after the German invasion in 1940. Attempts to emigrate to the United States failed.

The mounting persecution kept restricting their lives. In early 1942, the Nazis began to plan deportations of the Jews to the east. In July, when Margot received a call to the transport to occupied Poland, the family decided to go into hiding.

They spent over two years in the secret annex, eventually accepting four more fugitives: the van Pels family, including their teenage son Peter, and dentist Fritz Pfeffer. They were supported by a group of people, including, most famously, Miep and Jan Gies.

The group, experiencing the constant tensions of living in the claustrophobic space, ran out of luck in early August 1944. They were betrayed, and the Nazis sent them to the transit camp of Westerbork, from where they continued on the very last train to Auschwitz. After a month, Margot and Anne were separated from their mother and sent to Bergen-Belsen in central Germany.

Their physical and mental state soon deteriorated. A survivor of Belsen later remembered the “two thin, shaven-headed figures” who “looked like freezing little birds”.

Shortly before the end of the war, typhus erupted in the overcrowded camp and Anne and Margot became its victims. Otto, liberated from Auschwitz, was the only survivor from the eight who hid in the secret annex.

The diary

Anne got the red-checkered diary on her 13th birthday, shortly before moving to the secret annex. She wrote only occasionally, but soon the diary turned into her constant companion. It was a place where she could express her feelings.

Written in the form of letters to an imaginary friend Kitty (identified by Franklin as a character in Cissy van Marxveldt’s popular books for children), the diary offers a vivid reconstruction of life in hiding, describing in detail the daily routine. It also allowed Anne to vent frustration from constant conflicts with her mother, Mrs. van Pels and Pfeffer.

Another prominent feature, dominating later representations, was her evolving relationship with Peter, which eventually turned romantic.

In March 1944, Anne heard a radio broadcast by the exiled Dutch education minister Gerrit Bolkestein, who asked listeners to keep documentary evidence about their life under the Nazis. Anne began to rewrite her diary, now with the intention of making it public. Franklin suggests that this turned the book into a memoir in the form of diary entries.

Anne had not finished when the raid stopped her efforts. Not all parts of the diary survived. At least one of the original volumes, covering over a year, is missing; it does, however, exist in the version Anne wrote after March 1944.

Several versions

Otto returned to Amsterdam in June 1945. After they received a confirmation that Anne did not survive, Miep Gies handed over Anne’s papers, which she had found in the annex. Otto decided to publish the diary but, in what Franklin calls “the most confusing and contested” aspect of Anne’s story, “betrayed” her legacy.

Otto combined both versions of the diary. He returned to the manuscript sections that Anne removed, including details of her romance with Peter. He softened the criticism of Anne’s mother and of Mr. and Mrs. van Pels.

Franklin believes Otto did so out of respect for victims. The last surviving pages from Anne’s diary, offering critical comments about her parents’ marriage, were made public only after Otto’s death decades later.

It took almost 40 years before a critical edition, comparing all the versions of the diary, was published by Dutch researchers. This necessarily raises the question of how far the Anne Frank people know from Otto’s version is different from Anne who lived in hiding and perished in Belsen.

Afterlife and projection

Despite initial scepticism, the diary immediately became a hit, especially in the United States. Soon there were efforts to turn it into a theatre play and film. Otto agreed, because he needed money to preserve the house with the annex.

The Broadway play premiered in 1955 and the Hollywood feature film in 1959. In the following decades, Anne’s story inspired scores of authors, but also activists who referred to the public icon in support of their agenda.

The immense publicity did not come without controversies. It has led, according to Franklin, to Anne becoming “whoever and whatever we need her to be”. Such efforts keep surfacing. Franklin is right to criticise those who deliberately aim to provoke, for example, by using Anne’s image in anti-Zionist campaigns.

The original theatre and film representations, according to some, intentionally universalised Anne’s story, suppressing her Jewish identity. This, according to Franklin, made the story more palatable to the American audience and reflected the American Jewish ideal at that time of full assimilation into American society.

Yet although Anne’s diary can speak to a multitude of audiences, it is a deeply Jewish story. Anne’s relation with her Jewish identity and Zionism was ambiguous, though she was aware of her background and wrote that they “will always remain Jews”. Margot, her sister, wanted to go to Mandatory Palestine as a maternity nurse; Otto in his later life was supportive of the Zionist project.

Another affair, more recently, focused on the parts of the diary where Anne expressed her desire to touch her female friend’s breast and kiss her. She also wrote about her attraction to female nudity in art.

There were accusations that Otto censored these parts of the diary, in an effort to deny the coming out of his daughter. This is unfair criticism. As Franklin shows, Otto included the entries, slightly modified, in the first US edition, even though Anne had removed them from the rewritten version of her diary.

Ironically, conservative circles in the United States have called for a ban of a graphic novel based on the book, calling it “Anne Frank pornography”. Franklin cautions us against such projections and reading too much into these comments. We simply don’t know enough about Anne and about how her sexuality would develop. In the diary, she repeatedly expressed attraction to several boys, including Peter van Pels.

The raid

These efforts only show how the popularised image of Anne keeps attracting attention. We still want to know more about her and solve all mysteries. In 2022, a Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan, in cooperation with a former FBI special agent, published a book that claimed to solve the mystery of Anne’s betrayal.

Until today, the culprit has not been identified. According to Sullivan, the Annex eight were betrayed by a member of the Dutch Jewish Council. This compulsory community body has often been accused of collaboration.

The publication triggered a quick response from Dutch Holocaust historians who, in a long rebuttal, rejected Sullivan’s claim, calling it a baseless fabrication. Dutch and German publishers withdrew the book.

Who was the real Anne Frank?

The question ultimately remains unresolved.

Is it the girl who penned the first version of her diary to cope with the persecution and isolation in the annex? Is it the young woman, author of the second version, who matured too quickly because of a lack of contact with her peers? Is it the Anne that Otto, grieving after the loss of his whole family, reconstructed from the pages saved by Miep Gies?

Or is she one of the versions of her story produced at Broadway, Hollywood, by countless writers, and now even political activists?

We all suffer from cognitive dissonance. The only photos we have of Anne are those of a young girl from the time before the family went into hiding. But the Anne who wrote the diary was older, almost womanlike, physically and mentally. Miep Gies recalled that “she had arrived a girl, but she would leave a woman”.

Reading the diary, even though we know the end, we hope she will survive. We don’t want to know what happened after their capture. We don’t want to see her bald and emaciated in Auschwitz or Belsen.

At the same time, we know the story will end there. Franklin bitterly remarks that “readers already perceive Anne as if she were a figure in a book rather than a real person. To just about everyone, her life is of secondary importance to what we make of it.”

Perhaps we should just conclude, together with Franklin that Anne was a talented girl and “an accomplished and sophisticated writer – a deliberate, literary witness to Nazi persecution”. She had many virtues and vices.

She can inspire us, we need to learn about her, but we should respect her. We should not project onto her our current agenda, concerns or political views. We should “restore her as a human being”, and that’s exactly what Franklin does.

Jan Lanicek receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is co-president of the Australian Association for Jewish Studies.

– ref. Friday essay: who was Anne Frank? – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-who-was-anne-frank-261748

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

One observer describes next week’s economic roundtable this way: “Chalmers has opened a can of worms – and everybody has got a worm”.

Even those close to the roundtable are feeling overwhelmed by the extent of the worm farm. There are many hundreds of submissions, five Productivity Commission reports, Treasury background papers, and stakeholders in the media spruiking their opinions ahead of the event.

Business, unions and the welfare sector have largely settled into their predictable wish lists.

In areas such as the housing crisis, it’s actually not difficult to say what should be done – you hardly need this meeting to tell you. It just seems near impossible to get the relevant players (whether they be states, local councils, the construction industry) to do it, or be able to do it.

On issues of deregulation generally, when it comes to specifics, a lot is contested. As the ACTU’s Sally McManus, who’ll be at the roundtable, says, “one person’s regulations are another person’s rights”.

As much as Treasurer Jim Chalmers might like to project the sunny side of Australia’s situation, independent economist Chris Richardson (who will be at the summit’s day three tax session) puts it more bluntly.

“We have a problem: the average Australian saw their living standards rise by just 1.5% over the past decade,” he posted on X.

“That’s embarrassingly shy of the 22% lift in living standards enjoyed across the rich world as a whole, and way below what Australians achieved in times past.

“You’d have hoped that both sides would have talked about tackling that challenge at the last election, but they didn’t.”

Richardson is hoping the roundtable can achieve “enough consensus to change some things”, which the government can use as a springboard. But he’s worried the meeting could underperform, given its “lead-up hasn’t seen much consensus”,

Economist Richard Holden from UNSW says to be successful, the roundtable needs to get “broad agreement on some version of the ‘Abundance agenda’ [a reference to a currently fashionable book focusing on loosening regulatory blocks] – especially as it applies to housing.

“In addition, to be successful would require that big issues like federation and tax reform are referred to Treasury for serious consideration and to present the government with options by year’s end.”

There are two approaches for a government that wants to promote economic reform.

It can, as then treasurer Paul Keating did at the 1985 tax summit, put up a model and see how much it can make fly.

Or it can, as Chalmers is doing, ask a wide range of participants for their ideas, and then decide how much of what emerges to pursue – in terms of what has wide support and what fits the government’s agenda.

The closer we get to the meeting, the harder it becomes to anticipate its likely import (or lack of). Signposts are there, but they could be false signals, or ignored later.

Despite all the talk about tax, the government – specifically the prime minister – has flagged it doesn’t have the stomach for radical reform. Certainly not this term.

Anthony Albanese said last week, “The only tax policy that we’re implementing is the one that we took to the election”. This doesn’t rule out new initiatives this term – the phrasing is carefully in the present tense – but from what we know of the PM’s approach they would likely be limited rather than sweeping.

Independent economist Saul Eslake said that a few weeks ago he was optimistic the summit would give Chalmers the licence to spend some of the vast political capital the election yielded.

“But the prime minister has made it clear he is not getting that licence. The government is not prepared to venture much beyond its limited mandate from the election.

“The best that can be hoped for is a willingness to have an adult conversation with the electorate between now and the next election with a view to seeking a bold mandate in 2028,” Eslake says.

Predictably, the roundtable is putting the spotlight on the Albanese-Chalmers relationship. This can be summed up in a couple of ways. The PM is more cautious when it comes to economic reform, the treasurer is more ambitious. In political terms, it’s that “old bull, young bull” syndrome.

The different styles are clear. The “old bull” is blunt, sounding a touch impatient, for example, when he’s asked about tax. The “young bull” is publicly deferential to his leader.

One of the most potentially significant discussions at the roundtable will be around AI. Unlike many well-worn issues, this is a relatively new, and quickly changing, area of policy debate. There are varying views within government about whether firm or light guardrails are needed and whether they should be in a separate new act or just via changes to existing laws.

Chalmers is in favour of light-touch regulation. The unions are not on the same page as Chalmers’ regulatory preference, and they want a say for workers.

The unions were the winners from the 2022 jobs and skills summit – the government delivered to them in spades at the meeting, and later. It’s not clear they are in as strong a position this time. Their big claim for the roundtable – a four-day working week – has already been dismissed by the government. The ACTU doesn’t seem much fussed by the rejection – it is on a long march on that one.

Regardless of the diversity of views among those rubbing shoulders in the cabinet room next week, one man will stand out as something of an oddity. Ted O’Brien, shadow treasurer, invited as a participant, will be as much an observer.

O’Brien might say he wants to be constructive, but his role means he will want to be critical. But he has to tread carefully. Others in the room, and outside observers, will be making judgements about him. For O’Brien, the gathering should be a networking opportunity more than an occasion for performative display.

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. Grattan on Friday: Can Jim Chalmers reap a healthy crop with the help of his big worm farm? – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-can-jim-chalmers-reap-a-healthy-crop-with-the-help-of-his-big-worm-farm-262606

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Maras, Associate Professor in Media and Communication, The University of Western Australia

Celebrated film critic David Stratton has died at the age of 85. He leaves an indelible mark on Australian film culture, and Australian film culture left an indelible mark on him.

Over a long career, he had an intimate relationship with cinema, finding it a place of connection and a kind of shelter. It was where he spent time with his grandmother and time away from the family grocery business that loomed large over his future.

Stratton’s migration to Australia in 1963 as a 10 pound pom became permanent as he took on the role of director of the Sydney Film Festival from 1966 to 1983.

In that role, he shaped a generation of young filmmakers who would come to define the Australian New Wave. He found a new sense of belonging.

His 1980 book, The Last New Wave, is explicitly a homage to

the men and women who work in the Australian film industry [who] make up as fine a group of people as anyone would want to know.

Becoming a critic

The festival director role led to his relationship with SBS, who hired Stratton as a part-time feature film consultant from 1980 – an arrangement which he translated into on screen introductions for what became Movie of the Week, as well as Cinema Classics in 1983.

Here, he met producer Margaret Pomeranz, who became his professional collaborator, co-presenter and loyal friend. Their on-air partnership, lasting 28 years across the SBS and the ABC program, At the Movies, made them icons of Australian film culture.

In writing my book on At the Movies, I heard numerous versions of the question, “are you a Margaret or a David?” The collection of their reviews on Letterboxd can be searched by the tags “Oh, David” and “Oh, Margaret”.

A cultural icon

The words “cultural icon” can be over-used, but in the case of Stratton, the emphasis was on substance over show. He never finished high school or studied at university, but wrote three books on Australian cinema, two movie guides, and a biography, I Peed on Fellini (2008).

He was passionate and protective of film, no more so than when he was battling censorship. In the case of Ken Park (2002), because of restrictions on the viewing of the film, few could argue with the decision on the facts of the case. However, Stratton, who had seen the film, declared “We’re being lied to”.

Stratton was a seasoned critic and performer, and knew how to manage his persona. He worked as a film reviewer for The Weekend Australian for 33 years, was a regular reviewer for Variety from 1984 to 2003, using the moniker “Strat”, while also making contributions to The Age and segments on radio station 2UE.

Following the end of At the Movies, he ventured into reviewing on the internet through “David Stratton Recommends” a collaboration with art house film exhibitors in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth, and he ran a history of world cinema course at the University of Sydney’s Centre for Continuing Education, which he concluded in 2023.

Underpinning all of this is a commitment to the audience. He noted in interview:

I think everybody who is writing about film or talking about film is doing it for the audience that is reading or listening.

In praise of cinema

When I interviewed Stratton in 2019, giving generously of his time, he established quickly that he would only tolerate so much academic jargon and pretentiousness.

When we did The Movie Show, and I think Margaret would back me up, we were never wanting to intellectualise any of this. We wanted to get across to a wide television audience our love of film, or our disappointment in certain things. We always liked to praise films more than to not praise them, and we didn’t have the time or the inclination to analyse them in too much detail.

A cinephile before the age of DVDs and streaming, Stratton retained a certain puritanical approach to film, guarding its preciousness:

When I was growing up, films were hard to see. I would go to see a film in the cinema and very often that film, if it was not a huge success and therefore would be revived, you might not see it again, ever, unless it came on television.

This led to his famously obsessive system of notetaking and cataloguing.

This informed a certain conservativism, most famously expressed in his dislike of badly used hand-held cameras, but manifested in other ways.

It always amazes me when I see people watching movies on their mobile phone on the train and then they say they’ve seen the film. They haven’t seen the film obviously. If somebody thinks they’ve seen Joker on a phone, well good luck to them but they haven’t.

Stratton increasingly saw television reviewing as a demand on his other pursuits, not to mention his habit of watching a film a day.

A final farewell

We have in a sense been saying an extended farewell since the end of At the Movies in 2014.

Attempting to sum up a career is always difficult, but it is a responsibility Stratton lived with constantly. This is captured in one comment, perhaps the closest we will come to his philosophy of reviewing:

the reviewer has a big responsibility I think, a very big responsibility. Because after all it’s only their opinion, they’re obviously being honest – well they should be honest – with their opinion, but it only is their opinion and you’re talking about possibly destroying something that the people who created it spent years of their lives working on. It’s a pretty big responsibility.

Read more:
For the love of cinema: what we’re missing from At The Movies, 10 years after its last season

This article draws on the author’s book At the Movies, Film Reviewing, and Screenwriting: Selective Affinities and Cultural Mediation, published by Intellect Press.

Steven Maras is the author of At the Movies, Film Reviewing, and Screenwriting: Selective Affinities and Cultural Mediation, published by Intellect Press.

– ref. David Stratton was always ‘doing it for the audience’. In this, he had a huge impact on Australian film – https://theconversation.com/david-stratton-was-always-doing-it-for-the-audience-in-this-he-had-a-huge-impact-on-australian-film-263202

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tama Leaver, Professor of Internet Studies, Curtin University

Big tech company hype sells generative artificial intelligence (AI) as intelligent, creative, desirable, inevitable, and about to radically reshape the future in many ways.

Published by Oxford University Press, our new research on how generative AI depicts Australian themes directly challenges this perception.

We found when generative AIs produce images of Australia and Australians, these outputs are riddled with bias. They reproduce sexist and racist caricatures more at home in the country’s imagined monocultural past.

Basic prompts, tired tropes

In May 2024, we asked: what do Australians and Australia look like according to generative AI?

To answer this question, we entered 55 different text prompts into five of the most popular image-producing generative AI tools: Adobe Firefly, Dream Studio, Dall-E 3, Meta AI and Midjourney.

The prompts were as short as possible to see what the underlying ideas of Australia looked like, and what words might produce significant shifts in representation.

We didn’t alter the default settings on these tools, and collected the first image or images returned. Some prompts were refused, producing no results. (Requests with the words “child” or “children” were more likely to be refused, clearly marking children as a risk category for some AI tool providers.)

Overall, we ended up with a set of about 700 images.

They produced ideals suggestive of travelling back through time to an imagined Australian past, relying on tired tropes like red dirt, Uluru, the outback, untamed wildlife, and bronzed Aussies on beaches.

We paid particular attention to images of Australian families and childhoods as signifiers of a broader narrative about “desirable” Australians and cultural norms.

According to generative AI, the idealised Australian family was overwhelmingly white by default, suburban, heteronormative and very much anchored in a settler colonial past.

‘An Australian father’ with an iguana

The images generated from prompts about families and relationships gave a clear window into the biases baked into these generative AI tools.

“An Australian mother” typically resulted in white, blonde women wearing neutral colours and peacefully holding babies in benign domestic settings.

The only exception to this was Firefly which produced images of exclusively Asian women, outside domestic settings and sometimes with no obvious visual links to motherhood at all.

Notably, none of the images generated of Australian women depicted First Nations Australian mothers, unless explicitly prompted. For AI, whiteness is the default for mothering in an Australian context.

Similarly, “Australian fathers” were all white. Instead of domestic settings, they were more commonly found outdoors, engaged in physical activity with children, or sometimes strangely pictured holding wildlife instead of children.

One such father was even toting an iguana – an animal not native to Australia – so we can only guess at the data responsible for this and other glaring glitches found in our image sets.

Alarming levels of racist stereotypes

Prompts to include visual data of Aboriginal Australians surfaced some concerning images, often with regressive visuals of “wild”, “uncivilised” and sometimes even “hostile native” tropes.

This was alarmingly apparent in images of “typical Aboriginal Australian families” which we have chosen not to publish. Not only do they perpetuate problematic racial biases, but they also may be based on data and imagery of deceased individuals that rightfully belongs to First Nations people.

Read more:
How AI images are ‘flattening’ Indigenous cultures – creating a new form of tech colonialism

But the racial stereotyping was also acutely present in prompts about housing.

Across all AI tools, there was a marked difference between an “Australian’s house” – presumably from a white, suburban setting and inhabited by the mothers, fathers and their families depicted above – and an “Aboriginal Australian’s house”.

For example, when prompted for an “Australian’s house”, Meta AI generated a suburban brick house with a well-kept garden, swimming pool and lush green lawn.

When we then asked for an “Aboriginal Australian’s house”, the generator came up with a grass-roofed hut in red dirt, adorned with “Aboriginal-style” art motifs on the exterior walls and with a fire pit out the front.

The differences between the two images are striking. They came up repeatedly across all the image generators we tested.

These representations clearly do not respect the idea of Indigenous Data Sovereignty for Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander peoples, where they would get to own their own data and control access to it.

Read more:
AI affects everyone – including Indigenous people. It’s time we have a say in how it’s built

Has anything improved?

Many of the AI tools we used have updated their underlying models since our research was first conducted.

On August 7, OpenAI released their most recent flagship model, GPT-5.

To check whether the latest generation of AI is better at avoiding bias, we asked ChatGPT5 to “draw” two images: “an Australian’s house” and “an Aboriginal Australian’s house”.

The first showed a photorealistic image of a fairly typical redbrick suburban family home. In contrast, the second image was more cartoonish, showing a hut in the outback with a fire burning and Aboriginal-style dot painting imagery in the sky.

These results, generated just a couple of days ago, speak volumes.

Why this matters

Generative AI tools are everywhere. They are part of social media platforms, baked into mobile phones and educational platforms, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Canva and most other popular creative and office software.

In short, they are unavoidable.

Our research shows generative AI tools will readily produce content rife with inaccurate stereotypes when asked for basic depictions of Australians.

Given how widely they are used, it’s concerning that AI is producing caricatures of Australia and visualising Australians in reductive, sexist and racist ways.

Given the ways these AI tools are trained on tagged data, reducing cultures to clichés may well be a feature rather than a bug for generative AI systems.

Tama Leaver receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a chief investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

Suzanne Srdarov receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a research fellow in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

– ref. ‘Australiana’ images made by AI are racist and full of tired cliches, new study shows – https://theconversation.com/australiana-images-made-by-ai-are-racist-and-full-of-tired-cliches-new-study-shows-263117

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Niamatullah Ibrahimi, Senior Research Fellow, Initiative for Peacebuilding, The University of Melbourne

On August 15 2021, Afghanistan’s democratic republic collapsed.

As the last US and NATO troops departed the country, the Taliban swept back into power and the Afghan people braced for an uncertain future.

Despite promises of moderation and inclusion, four years later, the Taliban has established a repressive, exclusionary regime – one that has dismantled institutions of law, justice and civil rights with ruthless efficiency.

As the Taliban regime has tightened its grip, international attention has waned. Crises in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere have dominated the global agenda, pushing Afghanistan out of the spotlight.

With the Taliban seeking to end its isolation and gain legitimacy, can the international community find the will now to exert real pressure?

The Taliban’s emirate of repression

After coming back into power, the Taliban discarded the country’s 2004 constitution, allowing the regime to operate without a transparent rule of law. Instead, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, the reclusive Taliban leader, rules by decree from his base in Kandahar.

The Taliban’s repression of women and girls has been so severe, human rights groups now call it “gender apartheid” and argue it should be a new international crime.

Edicts have erased women from public life, banning them from education beyond primary school (with the exception of religious education), employment and public spaces. Women also cannot move freely in public without a mahram, or male guardian.

The Taliban also dismantled the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, replacing it with the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. As a central instrument of repression, the ministry reinforces institutionalised gender discrimination through regular raids and arrests, surveillance and monitoring of public spaces.

Taliban rule has also led to the exclusion and persecution of minority ethnic and religious groups such as Hazaras, Shias, Sikhs and Christians.

In the province of Panjshir, the focal point of resistance to the Taliban, human rights groups have documented the Taliban’s severe crackdowns on the local population, including mass arrests and detentions, torture and extrajudicial killings.

More broadly, the Taliban has decimated the civic space in the country. Journalists and activists have been silenced through fear, violence and arbitrary arrests. This has led to widespread self-censorship and an information blackout that allows abuses to continue with impunity.

Despite the immense risks, activists, journalists and ordinary citizens continue to resist the Taliban. Women have staged peaceful protests in the face of harsh crackdowns, while others run secret schools for girls and document abuses in the hope of future accountability.

Humanitarian aid dwindling

Although most countries do not recognise the Taliban as the formal and legitimate government of the country, some regional states have called for an easing of its international isolation.

Last month, Russia became the first country to recognise the Taliban. China is also deepening its economic and diplomatic ties with the group. India’s foreign minister recently met with his Taliban counterpart, after which the Taliban called New Delhi a “significant regional partner”.

International aid continues to flow into Afghanistan, but a report from a US watchdog this week documented how the Taliban uses force and other means to divert it.

The United States had still accounted for more than 40% of all humanitarian support to Afghanistan after the Taliban’s return. But US President Donald Trump’s decision to decimate the US Agency for International Development means this funding has all but disappeared.

This has crippled essential services and threatens to plunge the country into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Health facilities have closed and malnutrition is rising. The mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of Afghans from Iran and Pakistan has only further added to the humanitarian catastrophe.

For years, the United Nations has tried to facilitate talks between the Taliban and international community in Qatar with the aim of improving conditions in the country. However, it has faced repeated setbacks.

The Taliban only decided to attend the talks in mid-2024 after the UN conceded to excluding women and civil society groups and restricting the agenda. The meeting resulted in no breakthroughs or concessions.

Another round of talks is anticipated, but the central dilemma remains: how to engage the Taliban without legitimising its repressive rule.

Courts making some progress

The Taliban’s systematic human rights abuses have global repercussions. Experts warn of a rising trend of similarly styled repression, dubbed “Talibanisation”, taking root in other countries.

In Yemen, for example, Houthi leaders have imposed restrictions eerily similar to Taliban edicts, banning women from walking in public without a male guardian and restricting their work.

While individual states have failed to agree on a coordinated response to the Taliban, international institutions have taken steps in the right direction.

In July, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Akhundzada and the Taliban chief justice, accusing them of crimes against humanity for gender-based persecution.

Separately, four countries – Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada – have begun the process of bringing a case against the Taliban to the International Court of Justice for gender discrimination. This would be a first for the court.

To complement these efforts, the UN member states must establish an independent international investigative mechanism to systematically document and investigate crimes committed by the Taliban. Such a mechanism would help preserve evidence and lay the groundwork for future prosecutions.

Without concerted international pressure, the suffering of the Afghan people will only worsen and the Taliban’s brand of repression will continue impact women’s rights far beyond Afghanistan’s borders.

The authors are holding a day-long conference with other academics on Afghanistan, four years after the Taliban takeover, at the Monash University Law Chambers in Melbourne on August 15. More information can be found here.

Nothing to disclose.

Arif Saba and Niamatullah Ibrahimi 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. After 4 years of repressive Taliban rule, Afghans are suffering in silence. Is the world still watching? – https://theconversation.com/after-4-years-of-repressive-taliban-rule-afghans-are-suffering-in-silence-is-the-world-still-watching-262801

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Griffith, Professor of Avian Behavioural Ecology, Macquarie University

Living in cities exposes people to all sorts of chemical pollutants. Many are harmful even at low concentrations. But it is hard to know what the risks and consequences might be.

The animals we share our cities with can indicate potential sources and effects of such pollution. In this way, they act as sentinels — just like the canary in the coalmine, used to alert underground miners to the presence of dangerous levels of toxic gases in the 19th century.

Our research on house sparrows in three Australian towns revealed subtle but disturbing effects of pollution on these birds.

In the mining town of Broken Hill, New South Wales, sparrows suffered from exposure to lead in areas where thousands of people live. Similarly, in Portland, Victoria and George Town, Tasmania, sparrows living near aluminium smelters were affected by the smelting byproduct fluoride. The results suggest the health and wellbeing of city people may also be at risk.

Anxiety: aversion to the human gaze

Sparrows have lived alongside people for thousands of years. In that time they have picked up useful skills, such as feeding off food scraps, while avoiding harm.

Most people are familiar with the sight of a sparrow boldly feeding from leftover food at a café, even indoors. If the birds are ignored they often feed within arm’s length. But as soon as someone looks directly at them, they fly away and become very wary.

This is one of the sparrow’s super skills, allowing them to thrive in the urban environment. People mostly ignore them and cause them no harm. But if a person is focused on them, they respond as if they suspect something bad might happen.

Sensitivity to the human gaze is well studied in human psychology. It has also been shown in urban gulls that steal food in Europe.

We explored the effects of lead pollution on sparrow gaze sensitivity in Broken Hill.

Sparrows have small home ranges (about 300 metres). We established enclosed feeding stations at four sites across the city. We also tagged each bird and measured the amount of lead in their blood.

Then we erected boards with a photograph of a man either looking directly at the feeding station, or to the side. We presented different pictures over several days. Our results showed a clear distinction between responses to the images.

Sparrows flocked to the feeding stations. But they took much longer to visit the feeder when the man in the picture appeared to be looking at them. Those living in areas with high lead levels were especially sensitive to the direction of gaze.

Video recordings of sparrows revealed those with high levels of lead in their blood were more anxious. They spent more time looking up and checking for predators than sparrows in areas where lead pollution levels were relatively low.

Anxiety is a common symptom of lead poisoning in people. It is caused by damage to the nervous system during development.

Our research showed sparrows living in contaminated areas of Broken Hill were more anxious. This would help reduce the risk of being caught by a predator. But there are downsides to being an anxious sparrow, not least because less time is spent feeding.

Another common consequence of lead poisoning is impaired mobility. When we analysed video recordings of sparrow escape flight, we found sparrows with high blood lead levels were slower to take off. Every second counts when being attacked by a sparrowhawk or cat.

Longevity: checking chromosomes for ageing

The length of the “telomeres” — caps that prevent chromosomes from damage — has proven to be a good marker of how long an individual will live.

When we measured telomere length in the sparrows across Broken Hill, we discovered sparrows with higher levels of lead in their blood had shorter telomeres. Generally, birds with shorter telomeres die at a younger age.

Previous studies of humans exposed to lead through industrial occupations also found telomere shortening.

Brittle bones and pitted teeth

We also studied sparrows in two towns near aluminium smelters: Portland, Victoria and George Town, Tasmania.

Fluoride is a major byproduct of aluminium smelting. After fluoride is emitted into the air it falls back to Earth where it can contaminate land, water and plants. So animals may breathe it in, drink contaminated water or eat contaminated food. Fluoride then accumulates in the animal’s bones and teeth.

Earlier studies found high exposure to fluoride deposited around the Portland aluminium smelter caused bone lesions in nearby kangaroos and dental problems in koalas.

We found sparrows living up to 10km from these smelters had unnaturally high fluoride levels in their bones.

Excess fluoride uptake changes the balance of the essential bone minerals, calcium and phosphorus. These minerals play an important role in bone structure. Changes in their composition could compromise bone strength, with implications for activities such as flight.

Heed the lessons

Pollution affects virtually all aspects of life — from how organisms behave to how they age and grow. The health of the environment, animals and people are tightly intertwined.

Further, in light of strengthening evidence that even low levels of lead and fluoride exposure might be harmful at times, reviewing environmental management controls and pollution limits is warranted.

We should heed the lessons of sentinels such as the sparrow, and reduce pollution at the source. This will benefit urban ecosystems and, in turn, the health and wellbeing of humans.

Simon Griffith receives funding from The Australian Research Council

Mark Patrick Taylor has received funding from The Australian Research Council. He has also previously received funding from New South Wales Environment Protection Authority (EPA) for research into environmental lead and human health implications at Broken Hill, NSW. He was also a former full-time employee of EPA Victoria, appointed to the statutory role of Chief Environmental Scientist.

Max M Gillings is involved in research affiliated with and funded by EPA Victoria.

– ref. The canary in the concrete jungle: how polluted towns make sparrows frail, anxious and old before their time – https://theconversation.com/the-canary-in-the-concrete-jungle-how-polluted-towns-make-sparrows-frail-anxious-and-old-before-their-time-262788

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Avenell, Professor in Modern Japanese History, Australian National University

This year marks 80 years since Japan’s catastrophic defeat in the Asia-Pacific War. In 1945, the country lay in ruins. Millions had died in battle or in the devastating Allied bombings of Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and other cities. Across Asia and the Pacific, Japan’s bid to create a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere left millions violated, impoverished, or dead.

Backed into a corner, in August 1945 Emperor Hirohito defied his generals and accepted unconditional surrender under the Potsdam Declaration.

In his unprecedented radio broadcast on August 15, he urged the Japanese to bear the unbearable and endure the unendurable. With defeat, Japan’s empire dissolved, its “divine” emperor became mortal, and a nation that had pursued autonomy through conquest now faced a humbling occupation led by its former archenemy, Amerika.

Standing in the burnt-out fields of 1945, survivors could scarcely have imagined the Japan of today. The country has changed dramatically. In my research, I identify ten key factors that define this “postwar” era — a term that in Japan still refers to the entire period since surrender. The “post” of the postwar speaks to the drive to transcend the past, while the “war” to the enduring shadow of that past in memory, politics, and diplomacy.

1: Post-empire Japan. While Japan’s empire vanished in 1945, former colonies and violated regions could not and would not forget the past. Postwar leaders and their American backers promoted an image of a peaceful and ethnically homogeneous island nation, but wartime memories have repeatedly strained relations with South Korea, China, and others. In this sense, Japan has been as much “post-empire” as it has been “postwar” since 1945.

2: Ambiguous demilitarisation. After defeat, Japan’s wartime military –responsible for a trail of misery and havoc across Asia and the Pacific – was dismantled. The American-authored constitution renounced war and the maintenance of a military.

But with the Cold War, Washington backtracked, pushing Japan to create its Self-Defense Forces in the mid-1950s. Today Japan has a sophisticated military and it exports military equipment, but constitutional constraints constantly force leaders to make incremental reinterpretations over the legal status of the Self-Defense Forces and the scope of its activities. Some have claimed this constraint inhibits postwar Japan from being a normal country.

3: Bastion of democracy in the far east. Although democracy had prewar roots, it was consistently subject to oppression. The postwar constitution finally institutionalised freedoms of speech, assembly, and political participation, while codifying rights for women and others. The Japanese embraced these rights, flocking to polling booths, and organising political parties, unions, and countless civic movements. Long-term conservative rule repeatedly undercut democracy, but it became part of everyday life and survives to the present.

4: America’s embrace. The United States-led occupation ended in 1952, but Japan’s economy, security, and culture remain bound to America. Feelings towards the former archenemy are complex.

The American dream in brands such as Levis, Coca Cola, McDonalds, and Disney, have symbolised a bright and affluent future. But the continued US military presence and memories of the atomic bombings are constant reminders of Japan’s subservience. Nonetheless, the Japanese have never seriously considered breaking from their powerful trans-Pacific patron.

5: One party to rule them all? Politically, postwar Japan is an unusual democracy, with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ruling almost continuously since forming in 1955. The LDP offered political stability, but this was accompanied by recurrent scandal and corruption.

Opposition parties essentially gave up on winning government, remaining fractured and powerless. In fact, the larger story of postwar Japanese politics is one of increasing public disillusionment. Many Japanese see politicians as increasingly out of touch and, as was apparent in its most recent elections, search for radical alternatives.

Read more:
Young Japanese voters embrace right-wing populist parties, leaving the prime minister on the brink

6: Economic rollercoaster. Following defeat, the Japanese built an economy that stunned the world. By the 1970s, Japan was the second largest capitalist economy, powered by exports of cars, electronics, and steel. Rising incomes fuelled mass consumption and international travel, and observers spoke of “Japan as Number One.”

But the economic meltdown in the 1990s triggered an era of stagnation. The economy struggled to keep up with new competitors and technologies. The myth of shared prosperity gave way to widening generational and gender disparity. Ironically, there is a risk Japanese today may end up less well off than their parents.

7: Homogenisation and its discontents. Economic growth drew millions into a culture of mass consumption and standardised life, giving rise to a popular vision of Japan as a totally middle-class society. But this rose-colored vision was as much myth as reality. Homogenisation tended to mask differences while encouraging discrimination based on gender, age, ethnicity, and location. Since the 1990s, the myth of a middle-class nation has collapsed, with no compelling replacement on the horizon.

8: The demographic tsunami. The silent, yet perhaps most profound, factor of postwar Japan is demographic change. The era witnessed three great shifts here.

First, rural-to-urban migration in the late 1950s transformed Japan from an agrarian nation into one of the world’s most urbanised. Second, the fertility rate fell steadily, apart from brief baby booms in the late 1940s and early 1970s. Third, longevity rose to among the world’s highest.

Today, an ageing, shrinking population strains public finances and welfare, while youth face economic insecurity. Indeed, Japan may be the “canary in the coal mine” for other ageing societies.

9: Japan’s return to the world. Unable to project military power, after 1945 Japan used its economic, cultural, and diplomatic influence internationally. Even at the height of the Cold War, it maintained trade with China. Economic strength also helped Japan to restore ties in Asia and secure a respected place in global institutions.

But Japan’s return to the postwar world has been complicated. Leaders must juggle nationalist rumblings, American demands, and the responsibilities of global citizenship. As economic fortunes change and regional geopolitics transform, Japan must rethink its international posture.

10: Environmental laboratory. Economic growth brought prosperity, but also caused severe environmental damage. In the 1960s and 1970s, Japan experienced shocking cases of industrial pollution from methylmercury and other neurotoxins.

Earthquakes and tsunamis killed tens of thousands and, at Fukushima, bequeathed a nuclear catastrophe of generational proportions. Every year, climate change intensifies typhoons, floods, and heatwaves, but energy-vulnerable Japan still struggles to chart a low-emissions pathway to the future.

A universal story

For a country that has long been touted as exceptional, I am struck by the global resonances in this history, like grappling with the past, managing economic highs and lows, navigating demographic change, and confronting environmental crisis.

Japan’s postwar era certainly offers a portrait of one nation’s revival, but it may also represent a microcosm for tackling our own challenges.

Simon Avenell 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. Postwar Japan at 80: 10 factors that changed the nation forever – https://theconversation.com/postwar-japan-at-80-10-factors-that-changed-the-nation-forever-263039

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Greste, Professor of Journalism and Communications, Macquarie University

The New York-based media freedom organisation, the Committee to Protect Journalists, is scrupulous with its words. So, when the organisation described the killing of six Palestinian journalists in an Israeli air strike as “murder”, the word was a carefully considered choice.

The CPJ defines “murder” as the “deliberate killing of journalists for their work”.

Why were the journalists targeted?

Israeli authorities said they were targeting one man – a 28-year-old Al Jazeera reporter named Anas al-Sharif – who they said was the leader of a Hamas “cell”. They also accused him of “advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and (Israeli) troops.”

Israel made no claims about the other five; three of them were al-Sharif’s Al Jazeera colleagues and the other two were freelance journalists.

In a post on X, an Israeli military spokesman said:

Prior to the strike, we obtained current intelligence indicating that Sharif was an active Hamas military wing operative at the time of his elimination.

The evidence the Israeli authorities claimed to have was circumstantial at best: “personnel rosters, lists of terrorist training courses, phone directories and salary documents.”

Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee also posted undated photos on X that appeared to show al-Sharif in an embrace with Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas mastermind of the October 2023 attack on Israel.

Israel says it has further classified evidence that includes more damning detail.

Without seeing it all, it is impossible to verify the claims but the photograph itself is hardly proof.

Front-line journalists (myself included) will have selfies with those they have interviewed, including some very unpleasant characters.

Many will have phone numbers of extremists – they will appear in call logs and records of meetings.

None of it is evidence of anything other than a well-connected reporter doing their job.

Of course, Israel may well be right. Despite the vigorous denials from Al Jazeera, it is still possible al-Sharif was working for Hamas. And if he was, the Israeli authorities should have no problem allowing independent investigators complete access to verify the claims and settle the matter.

The horrors of covering war

But the strike also fits a disturbing pattern. With 190 media workers now killed since the October 7 attacks, this is the deadliest conflict for journalists since the CPJ began keeping records.

Read more:
Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza? We asked 5 legal and genocide experts how to interpret the violence

While some of the victims were inevitably caught in the violence along with so many other civilians, many of them died in rocket strikes aimed squarely at their homes, their clearly marked vehicles, or while they were wearing body armour labelled “PRESS”.

In all, the CPJ has identified 24 journalists who appeared to have been targeted – murdered, in the group’s words – specifically because of their work.

The number may well be far higher but those figures alone raise disturbing questions about Israel’s tolerance for critical media reporting. They also demand answers from independent investigators.

We receive horrific reports from Gaza daily, but Israel repeatedly dismisses them as Hamas propaganda.

“A terrorist is a terrorist, even if Al Jazeera gives him a press badge”, the Israeli foreign ministry posted on social media.

If Israel believes the journalism from Palestinian reporters is nothing more than Hamas propaganda, the solution is straightforward: let foreign correspondents in.

Despite the risks, journalists want access

It is worth recalling the reason we cherish media freedom is not because we want to privilege a particular class of individual. It is because we recognise the vital importance accurate, independent reporting plays in informing public debate.

Without it, we are blind and deaf.

International news organisations have repeatedly called for access to Gaza. Now, a group of more than 1,000 international journalists have signed a petition demanding to be let in (I am one of the signatories).

Israel has so far refused. The government says it cannot guarantee their security in such an active battlefield. But that cannot be justification alone.

All those who have signed the petition know well the risks of reporting from hostile environments. Many have crossed active war front lines themselves. Most have friends who have died in other conflicts. Some have been wounded, arrested or kidnapped themselves.

None are naive to the dangers and all are committed to the principles behind media freedom.

Calling for foreign journalists to be let into Gaza is not to deny the extraordinary sacrifice of Anas al-Sharif or any of the other Palestinians who have been killed while doing their jobs.

Rather, it is to assert the importance of the fundamental right of all – the right to information. That applies as much in Gaza as it does in Ukraine, or Russia, or Sudan, or any other crisis where the public needs accurate, reliable information to support good policy.

Peter Greste is a professor of journalism at Macquarie University, and the Executive Director for the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom. He also worked as a BBC correspondent in Gaza in 2007, and as an Africa correspondent for Al Jazeera from 2011 to 2015.

– ref. Israel must allow independent investigations of Palestinian journalist killings – and let international media into Gaza – https://theconversation.com/israel-must-allow-independent-investigations-of-palestinian-journalist-killings-and-let-international-media-into-gaza-263106

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ana Gamarra Rondinel, Research Fellow, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Melbourne

From paid parental leave to expanded childcare and free kindergarten, Australia has made positive changes over the past two decades to better support families.

But for many parents juggling paid work and kids, research shows those gains are being undermined by a missing piece of the puzzle: fixing our outdated Family Tax Benefit payments.

Who are the biggest losers from leaving those rules unchanged for the past 25 years? Families with two working parents – especially mums trying to go back to paid work.

Ahead of next week’s national economic reform roundtable, the prime minister says he welcomes new ideas to boost productivity – and hopes “there’s some low hanging fruit out there” to act on soon, or to feed into next year’s budget.

A key place to start would be simplifying and updating family payments to better suit working families, support shared parental care and encourage paid work.

Payments affecting millions of Australians

Introduced by the Howard government in 2000, Family Tax Benefit part A and part B are the largest single government program of family assistance spending. Together, the payments are expected to cost close to A$20 billion this financial year.

As of March 2025, there were 1.27 million people receiving part A payments, and 996,005 receiving part B payments.

Around 2.43 million children were being supported by one or both of those payments.

But those payments are long overdue for an overhaul.

How two parents in paid work miss out now

The current rules particularly disadvantage families with two parents in paid work.

For instance, a two-earner couple, each earning $50,000 with a 5-year-old child, receives $1,896 in Family Tax Benefit part A – but no part B payment.

In contrast, a single-earner couple with the same income ($100,000 in total) receives $1,896 part A payment, $3,509 part B payment and up to $460 in part A and B supplements.

That’s $5,865 – almost $4,000 more. Yet both families bear the same costs of raising children.

Means testing and tightening over the past 25 years has led to less than half Australia’s families receiving any family payment support.

The system leads to high marginal effective tax rates on secondary earners, discouraging employment. When some parents return to paid work, most commonly a mother after having a child, they can start losing family payments from the first dollar they earn.

A simpler, fairer single payment

We propose combining those complex part A and part B payments – plus the part A supplements and part B supplements – into one simpler, single, per-child payment.

In two-parent families, under our proposal half the payment would be allocated to each parent. It would be tapered based on each parent’s individual income, so that only income by the parent over the income-free threshold would lead to reduced family payments.

Under our simplified proposal, each parent would have their own income-free threshold. Payments would taper once individual earnings exceed that threshold.

Single parents, with their dual role of primary carer and earner, would receive the full payment, with the same income-free threshold as parents in a couple.

This reform would support parents sharing care responsibilities, as well as giving people greater choice to participate more in paid work.

While our proposal has the potential to cost more than the current system – given it would increase payments to two parents in paid work – we could offset additional spending through higher taxes on high-income or high-wealth individuals.

Alternatively, it could be made budget neutral (not costing the federal government more) or positive (saving taxpayers’ money), depending on the payment rates and thresholds chosen.

Reducing taper rates on family payments by testing on individual income delivers higher net income for working families, which encourages greater workforce participation among second earners.

What’s the evidence this could help families?

There are more than 2 million Australian families of two parents with children. Of those, 1.1 million have one parent not doing paid work, or working part time – almost always the mother.

Gender gaps in earnings, employment and hours worked are driven almost entirely by mothers doing less paid work because of persistent gendered divisions in paid and unpaid work.

Read more:
New study finds the gender earnings gap could be halved if we reined in the long hours often worked by men

Research indicates the introduction of paid parental leave in Australia since 2011 has encouraged mothers to return to employment and increase their hours worked.

The current family tax benefits system is outdated and unfair for families navigating work and care responsibilities.

Simplifying family payments would encourage paid work, while aligning with past parental leave pay and childcare policy changes. This will make life easier for Australia’s working families and contribute to productivity to benefit us all.

Ana Gamarra Rondinel receives funding from the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course.

Guyonne Kalb receives funding from the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, Victorian Department of Education, NSW Department of Communities and Justice, Paul Ramsay Foundation and Perpetual.

Miranda Stewart receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She was also the lead author of the 2023 Growing Pains research report cited in this article, which was done with the Brotherhood of St Lawrence and the University of Melbourne.

– ref. Many parents – mostly mothers – lose family payments from the first dollar they earn. Here’s how we could fix it – https://theconversation.com/many-parents-mostly-mothers-lose-family-payments-from-the-first-dollar-they-earn-heres-how-we-could-fix-it-262119

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Guastella, Professor and Clinical Psychologist, Michael Crouch Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health, University of Sydney

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects around 7% of children and 2.5% of adults.

ADHD causes difficulties holding and sustaining attention over periods of time. People with ADHD also experience hyperactivity and high levels of impulsiveness and arousal. This can make it difficult to plan, coordinate and remain engaged in tasks.

ADHD is linked to problems at work, school and home, and to higher rates of mental illnesses such as anxiety. It’s also associated with higher rates of long-term harms.

Stimulant medication, such as methylphenidate and dexamphetamine, is the most common treatment for managing ADHD symptoms. Most people with ADHD will respond to at least one ADHD medication.

But, rising rates of prescriptions in recent years has prompted concern for their effectiveness and safety.

New research published today in the journal BMJ points to additional longer-term benefits. It found people with ADHD who took medication were less likely to have suicidal behaviours, transport accidents, issues with substance misuse, or be convicted of a crime.

What did the study do?

The study tracked 148,581 people who received a new diagnosis of ADHD between 2007 and 2018.

The authors used population-based data from Swedish national registers, including everyone aged six to 64 who was newly diagnosed with ADHD. The average age was 17.4 years and 41% were female.

Participants either started or did not start medication within three months of their ADHD diagnosis.

The authors examined the effects of drug treatment for ADHD on five critical outcomes: suicidal behaviours, substance misuse, accidental injuries, transport accidents and committing crime. They looked at both first-time and recurrent events.

This study used a method that uses data from health records or registries to mimic the design of a randomised controlled trial, in an attempt to reduce bias.

The researchers accounted for age, education, other mental and physical illnesses, prior history and use of other drugs, to account for factors that may influence results.

What did they find?

Within three months of receiving an ADHD diagnosis, 84,282 (56.7%) of people had started drug treatment for ADHD. Methylphenidate was the most commonly prescribed drug, accounting for 88.4% of prescriptions.

Drug treatment for ADHD was associated with reduced rates of a first occurrence for four out of the five outcomes: a 17% reduction for suicidal behaviours, 15% for substance misuse, 12% for transport accidents and 13% for committing crime.

When the researchers looked at people with recurrent events, the rate reductions associated with ADHD medication were seen for all five outcomes (including accidental injury).

The effect of medication was particularly strong when someone had a history of these events happening frequently. This means those with the most severe symptoms may benefit most.

Stimulant drugs were associated with lower rates of all five outcomes compared with non-stimulant drugs.

It’s likely these benefits are associated with improvements in attention, impulsivity and hyperactivity. People may be less likely to be distracted while driving, to self-medicate and show impacts from other mental health challenges.

What didn’t the study do?

The large sample size, use of national linked registers and sophisticated design give greater confidence that these findings are due to medication use and not due to other factors.

But the study was not able to examine medication dosages or track whether people reliably took their medication as prescribed. It also had no way to track the severity of ADHD symptoms. This means it can’t tell us if this helped most people or just some people with severe symptoms.

We know that ADHD medication helps most people, but it is not effective for everyone. So, we still need to understand why some people don’t benefit from ADHD medication, and what other treatments might also be helpful.

Finally, even though the study was rigorous in its design and adjusted for many factors, we can’t rule out that other unaccounted factors could be associated with these effects.

As prescribing increases, the size of the benefit decreases

A second study, published in June, used the same Swedish national registers and self-controlled case series design.

This study also concluded ADHD medication was associated with reduced risks for self-harm, accidental injuries, transport accidents and committing crime.

However, this study also showed that as prescribing rates increased nearly five-fold between years 2006 to 2020, the size of the observed benefits of ADHD medications reduced.

While remaining significant, the size of the associations between ADHD medication use and lower risks of unintentional injury, traffic crashes, and crime weakened over this time.

This could mean people who are less likely to need ADHD medications are now receiving them.

What are the impacts for patients and policymakers?

People need to know that if ADHD medications are helpful for them or their children, it might also improve many other areas of life.

These findings can also give governments confidence that their recent initiatives and efforts to increase access to ADHD support and treatment may have positive downstream impacts on broader social outcomes.

But medications aren’t the only ADHD treatment. Medication should only represent one part of a solution, with other psychological supports for managing emotional regulation, executive and organisational skills and problem-solving also beneficial.

Psychological therapies are effective and can be used in combination with, or separately to, medication.

Yet research shows drug treatments are relied on more frequently in more disadvantaged communities where it’s harder to access psychological supports.

Policymakers need to ensure medication does not become the only treatment people have access to. People with suspected ADHD need a high-quality diagnostic assessment to ensure they get the right diagnosis and the treatment most suitable for them.

Adam Guastella receives independent research funding from research organisations (e.g., MRFF, NHMRC, ARC) to investigate the effecicy of supports for children and adults with neurodevelopmental conditions. He is employed as the Michael Crouch Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health at the University of Sydney.

Kelsie Boulton receives funding from research organisations (MRFF) to evaluate the efficacy of interventions for neurodevelopmental conditions.

– ref. For people with ADHD, medication can reduce the risk of accidents, crime and suicide – https://theconversation.com/for-people-with-adhd-medication-can-reduce-the-risk-of-accidents-crime-and-suicide-263044

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nic Rawlence, Associate Professor in Ancient DNA, University of Otago

Islands are natural laboratories where evolution can run rampant as plants and animals adapt to new environmental conditions and vacancies in the ecosystem.

This creates all manner of unique animals, although sadly extinction rates are high on islands and many species are now gone. Examples include a blind, flightless duck with a sensory bill (like a platypus) on Hawaii, and pygmy mammoths on islands off the coast of southern California.

The Rēkohu Chatham Islands, an archipelago 785 kilometres east of mainland Aotearoa New Zealand, are no exception.

The islands were once home to a rich assemblage of unique birds, with 64 breeding species at the time of human arrival. Some 34 species and subspecies were found nowhere else on Earth.

This includes the endangered parea Chatham Island pigeon and the extinct mehonui Hawkin’s rail.

Our new research adds a unique species of shelduck to this group and illustrates just how quickly birds can adapt to life on isolated islands.

The Rēkohu Chatham Islands rose above the waves, taking their present form, around 3.5 million years ago. The archipelago is an ideal place to observe how ecosystems form and new species evolve.

Many of the birds on Rēkohu are closely related to species found on the mainland, but were changed by their new island home. Some are subtly different, such as the extinct Chatham Island kākā, which had a longer bill, larger thigh bones and wider pelvis than its mainland cousin. This suggests it could still fly but spent more time on the ground.

Other birds underwent major changes, such as the extinct Chatham Island duck, which was large, flightless and had bony spurs on its wings which were probably used in fights over territory.

Evolution of the Rēkohu shelduck

Shelducks are a group of semi ground-dwelling ducks found in Eurasia, Africa, Australia and the New Zealand region. In Aotearoa, they are represented by the familiar pūtangitangi paradise shelduck.

During the 1990s, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa palaeontologist Phil Millener found isolated bones and associated skeletons of an extinct shelduck in the rich fossil deposits around the Chatham Islands archipelago. He noted the bones may belong to a new species and they were archived at the museum until scientific advances allowed us to test this idea.

We reconstructed the family tree to uncover the identity of the Rēkohu bird, using ancient DNA from its bones. As Millener hypothesised, the Rēkohu shelduck was most closely related to the mainland paradise shelduck. Its ancestors arrived on the islands a mere 390,000 years ago.

On evolutionary scales, 390,000 years is not a long time, but it was long enough for the Rēkohu shelduck to go down its own evolutionary path. Like the paradise shelduck, males were bigger than females, but the Rēkohu shelduck was taller and more robust. These changes meant Rēkohu shelducks were poorer fliers than their mainland cousins.

Flight is energetically expensive. It is often lost when the cost outweighs its advantages. This is part of the “island syndrome”, a suite of changes in bone shape and behaviour observed in island species. On Rēkohu, an abundance of food, strong winds and a paucity of large predators meant flying wasn’t as beneficial as on the mainland, where predators such as kērangi Eyle’s harrier, Haast’s eagle, whēkau laughing owl and adzebill abounded.

Over time, a preference to spend more time on the ground resulted in the wing bones of the Rēkohu shelduck becoming shorter, more robust and less able to support flight. At the same time, its leg bones became longer and more robust. The Rēkohu shelduck was on a trajectory to flightlessness when it became extinct shortly after humans arrived.

A rich Rēkohu waterfowl community

The rich fossil deposits on Rēkohu continue to reveal much about the history of the islands. There are likely more undescribed species awaiting discovery.

Our lab continues to investigate the fauna of the islands, with ongoing work to determine if an extinct falcon represents another unique Rēkohu bird.

Working with Indigenous communities is paramount if we are committed to the process of decolonising palaeontology. The shelduck’s scientific (Tadorna rekohu) and common (Rēkohu shelduck) names were gifted to us by the Hokotehi Moriori Trust, the tchieki (guardians) of Rēkohu biodiversity, with which they are interconnected through shared hokopapa (genealogy).

The discovery and naming of the Rēkohu shelduck helps connect the Moriori imi (tribe) with miheke (treasure) of the past, allowing people to reclaim some of the pages of their biological heritage that have been lost.

The Rēkohu shelduck is part of a rich native and endemic waterfowl assemblage (nine different species) that was present when people arrived. These birds are survived only by the parera grey duck. We are only just beginning to understand how the ecological community of the islands once functioned.

The Rēkohu shelduck was on a unique evolutionary trajectory when it went extinct after humans colonised the islands but prior to the arrival of Europeans and Māori. This is a fate shared by many of Rēkohu’s birds.

The discovery of the Rēkohu shelduck is a demonstration of the speed at which island species can be changed by their environment. It highlights both the distinctiveness of Rēkohu animals and their close relationship with mainland Aotearoa New Zealand.

Nic Rawlence receives funding from the Royal Society Te Apārangi Marsden Fund.

Levi Lanauze works for Hokotehi Moriori Trust.

Pascale Lubbe receives funding from Royal Society Te Apārangi Marsden Fund.

Alan Tennyson 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 discovery of an extinct shelduck highlights the rich ancient biodiversity of the remote Rēkohu Chatham Islands – https://theconversation.com/the-discovery-of-an-extinct-shelduck-highlights-the-rich-ancient-biodiversity-of-the-remote-rekohu-chatham-islands-259656

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Martin, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Deakin University

Recently, you may have noticed an increase in the number of shops selling tobacco in your area. Alongside cigarettes, these shops often sell vapes.

In July 2024, the federal government banned the sale of recreational vapes nationwide. The only way to get one legally is from a pharmacist. Some states also require a doctor’s prescription.

So why, then, more than a year on, are these stores still selling vapes, in broad daylight?

In short: it’s because restrictions on the supply of legal nicotine have created a black market so big that it’s grown beyond the capacity of regulators to effectively suppress.

Billions going underground

To better understand the demand for vapes, it’s useful to draw on a close historical parallel: alcohol prohibition in the United States.

In the 1920s, Prohibition did not stop the sale of alcohol, but instead created a thriving black market. Illicit alcohol was easy to obtain, and organised crime groups engaged in violent conflict over territory and market share.

A century later, evidence is mounting that Australia’s nicotine policy – now the most restrictive in the world – has similarly driven the expansion of a black market.

Just as Al Capone and his cronies were the main beneficiaries of Prohibition, billions of dollars are currently flowing into the pockets of organised crime groups who use that money to fund other serious criminal activity.

Just this week, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) seized more than A$40,000 of illegal vapes from a single retail outlet in the Melbourne CBD. It’s a drop in the ocean of a market estimated to be worth up to half a billion dollars in Victoria alone.

Illicit vapes are a major contributor to the “tobacco wars”: a violent, ongoing conflict between rival organised crime groups for control of Australia’s illicit nicotine market.

The huge profits to be made inevitably creates competition, which fuels violence, with more than 230 firebombings linked to the illicit tobacco trade, and a growing number of kidnappings, robberies and assaults since January 2023.

This conflict doesn’t just affect gangsters. There are significant impacts on legitimate businesses through extortion, loss of sales, property damage and rising insurance premiums.

And tragically, at least one innocent bystander has been killed by the so-called tobacco wars.

Persistently high demand

As with alcohol prohibition, the illicit market for vapes is sustained by strong demand.

Nicotine is the third most popular recreational drug in the country, after caffeine and alcohol.

Around 1.5 million Australians vape – the overwhelming majority over the age of 18.

Demand for nicotine is also persistent, with per capita consumption slowly trending upwards nationally since 2016.

Another part of the problem has been the failure of the government’s model for supplying “medicinal” vapes. (Intriguingly, alcohol was also available via prescription during Prohibition).

It failed because consumer demand for medicinal vapes is very low. More than 95% of people who vape source their products from the black market. This is likely due, in part, to bans on popular flavours, which adults prefer to the tobacco and menthol options available legally.

The enforcement problem

In response to the growth of the nicotine black market, state and federal governments have legislated increased penalties, which include up to seven years imprisonment and fines of more than $21 million.

As with Prohibition, increasing penalties has not meaningfully disrupted the demand and supply of illicit vapes.

Counter-intuitively, these laws actually help organised crime by creating economic opportunities that would otherwise be fulfilled by legal businesses.

Legislating penalties is easy. Actual enforcement is hard. Enforcement is also more important, with research showing certainty of punishment is more effective than severity in deterring crime.

The enormous scale of the vaping market makes it a nightmare for law enforcement and other regulatory agencies. Again, the lesson of Prohibition is that once a black market is widely established, it is extremely difficult to eradicate, even when exponentially increasing tax dollars are diverted to bolster enforcement.

It is possible that a wide-scale, sustained law enforcement-led crackdown on illicit nicotine products could have an impact.

This type of operation, however, would require significantly greater resources than the $340 million the federal government has allocated to combating illicit nicotine supply.

It would also divert police resources away from other, arguably more pressing crime problems.

The unintended consequences of such a move would be to push the black market for vapes further underground, as we have seen with illicit drugs. Research shows that raising the risks associated with operating in a black market can also increase potential profits for organised crime groups and make it more violent.

There are also risks to consumers due to the proliferation of unregulated products. Illicit vapes have significantly higher levels of nicotine than those typically sold in regulated markets as well as, in rare cases, potentially lethal adulterants, such as synthetic opioids.

History has shown us time and again that efforts to prohibit popular drugs, often driven by best intentions to protect moral or physical safety, often create more harms.

Keeping everyone safer

Prohibition was eventually abandoned as a policy failure. This wasn’t because it didn’t reduce alcohol consumption – it did – but because it created a range of other more damaging social, health and economic harms.

Policy-makers have not heeded these historical cautionary tales from Prohibition or the more recent example of the war on drugs.

There are better alternatives. Regulated consumer markets for vapes exist in many Western countries. Government health departments in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, for example, actively promote vapes as a less harmful alternative to cigarettes.

Well-functioning legal markets divert people away from illicit ones, providing both safer products and fewer opportunities for organised crime.

The current landscape demands more creative, innovative solutions from our governments. We should expect more than a simple reboot of failed policies from the past.

The challenge is that politicians must first admit that current policy settings are not working. Then, they can seek broad-based expert input, plus the thoughts of nicotine consumers who are most affected by these policies, to create more viable, effective alternatives.

James Martin receives funding from the Department of Home Affairs for research into the national illicit nicotine market. He also has serves in an honorary, unpaid role as Tobacco Harm Reduction Advisor to Harm Reduction Australia.

David Bright has received funding from the Department of Home Affairs, the Australian Research Council, the Australian Institute of Criminology, and the National Intelligence and Security Discovery Research Grants program.

– ref. If recreational vapes are banned, why are there still vape shops everywhere? – https://theconversation.com/if-recreational-vapes-are-banned-why-are-there-still-vape-shops-everywhere-262433

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Wolpe, Non-resident Senior Fellow, United States Study Centre, University of Sydney

Seven months after Donald Trump was inaugurated for a second term as US president, we are facing the most important moment in Australia’s foreign policy since the Iraq war. Australia needs to have a national conversation on the future of its alliance with the United States.

The alliance was on the line with Trump’s tariff decisions on August 1. The consensus was Australia dodged a bullet, and life goes on.

But this was no flesh wound. By dictating and unilaterally imposing the terms of trade between the US and Australia – affirming the “reciprocal tariffs” of 10% imposed on Australia, plus the tariffs of 50% on both steel and aluminium – Trump has trashed the historic US–Australia Free Trade Agreement.

Trump has not provided a good answer to the question of what he is doing to one of the US’s strongest and most consistent allies. And there is more to come. The president will also place a tariff on US imports of Australian pharmaceuticals.

There is also far more to come on the future of the US–Australia alliance.

Media have been full of opinions on what the relationship between the two countries ought to look like. These interventions have assayed the crucial importance of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meeting personally with Trump; whether Washington was rattled by Albanese’s visit to China, whether Australia should “fortify northern Australia into an allied military stronghold for the region”; and whether the relationship is being mismanaged.

The best model for this conversation would be the economic roundtable Treasurer Jim Chalmers will host in Canberra this month. Its purpose, Albanese said, is to “build the broadest possible base of support for further economic reform”.

Why not apply the same process to the future of our foreign policy and alliance with the US?

A similar roundtable, convened by the foreign minister, and bringing together the smartest and most experienced people from across the political and foreign policy spectrum to discuss all these issues, would provide the best and most sincere guidance for the country.

A new reality

There are three bedrock truths that are unimpeachably clear since Trump reassumed power in the US.

First, Australia has not changed; the US has changed. Albanese and his government has not changed its posture towards the US. Trump has profoundly changed America’s posture towards Australia.

Second, the US is no longer the leader of the free world, because the free world is no longer following America. The democracies with which the US has been allied since the end of the second world war are no longer acting in concert with the US, but in reaction to what Trump is doing across the global landscape – from the Americas, to the Atlantic, Russia, the Middle East, China, the Indo-Pacific and Australia.

Third, Trump has destroyed the economic and trading architecture erected after the second world war to promote growth and prosperity. Nations engaging economically with the US are no longer trading partners but trading victims. The “deals” Trump boasts about are involuntary. Trump’s imposition of tariffs even on countries with a trade deficit with the US shows that his trade policy is at heart the unilateral exercise of US political power to force concessions to US domination.

What is under profound challenge today – 84 years after Prime Minister John Curtin turned to the US and 73 years after the ANZUS treaty came into effect – is whether the US under Trump is still aligned with the vision the two countries have shared for decades.

Australians have serious doubts about the relationship. The latest polling by Resolve Political Monitor documented “a strong desire for the country to assert more independence from the United States amid Donald Trump’s turbulent presidency”.

Fewer than 20% of Australian voters believe Trump’s election victory was good for Australia. Nearly half of voters believe it would be “a good thing” for Australia to act more independently of the US. Pew Research reported in July that only 35% of Australians believe the US is a top ally.

Trump is driving away US allies. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said after winning office, “Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over.”

When the leaders of Japan and South Korea received Trump’s insulting letters of demarche on trade, they each said the correspondence was “deeply regrettable”, with Japan’s prime minister adding, “extremely disrespectful”.

Trump has also precipitated a trade war with India. How effective can the Quad – established by the US, Japan, India and Australia to serve as a counterweight to China – be if three of its four members are victims of Trump’s tariffs?

Australia has also broken with Trump on recognition of Palestine – issues of the highest importance to the president. Moreover, if the terms of whatever Trump is conjuring up with Putin to end the war with Ukraine are unacceptable to Ukraine and Europe, and Trump sides with Putin, a further sharp break by Australia with Trump is likely.

The “soft power” wielded by Australia is also involved here. From the UN’s inception, Australia has supported the architecture required to help secure peace, security, stability and the health and welfare of all peoples. But Trump has now withdrawn the US from UNESCO, the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, the Paris climate accords, the UN Human Rights Commission and others. He has terminated the USAID programs that delivered crucial health care and crisis relief. Medical studies project that millions of people will die as a result die in the coming years.

Australia uses that architecture to help change the world for the better. Trump is making that work much harder.

Time to talk

Trump is repealing all US programs that combat global warming – the most important environmental issue of our times and the number-one existential security issue for Asia-Pacific nations. Australia shares their urgency.

Since Trump’s inauguration, AUKUS has consistently been viewed as a bellwether for the relationship. Australia’s need for a modern submarine fleet is an existential issue of the country’s defence capability.

Will Trump, during the Pentagon’s review of AUKUS, change its terms to be more favourable to the US? Is Australia spending enough on defence? Will the pace of submarine construction ensure Australia receives the subs in the 2030s? If not, are there better solutions than AUKUS?

But the most important question is the most known unknown. What does Trump want from China? Trump has never outlined his endgame with President Xi Jinping. Yes, of course, the trade deal of the century. But at what price, particularly with respect to Taiwan? What are the consequences of all the scenarios and what does Australia need to do to be prepared?

Trump is president and will continue to act with power and drama. Albanese will respond on behalf of Australia. That would be business as usual. But without the benefit of a considered national conversation about the future of the Australian–US alliance and what is in Australia’s national interest, the current state of play does not rise to the challenges posed by Trump to Australia.

US baseball legend Yogi Berra once said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” That’s where we are. Let’s talk about it.

Bruce Wolpe is author of two books on Trump and Australia. He has served on the staffs of the Democrats in Congress and former Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

– ref. The United States has changed. Australia hasn’t. It’s time to talk about where the relationship goes from here – https://theconversation.com/the-united-states-has-changed-australia-hasnt-its-time-to-talk-about-where-the-relationship-goes-from-here-262943

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

Australia needs to do better at preventing health conditions from arising and worsening, according to an interim report on delivering quality care more efficiently released overnight by the Productivity Commission.

But the commission’s interim report did not mention a greater role for the private health insurance in delivering more preventive health care.

This is despite Private Healthcare Australia and Bupa wanting to provide GP-like services or fund care by specialist doctors out of hospital.

Sometimes what is excluded from a key report is as telling as what’s included.

Here’s why the Productivity Commission made the right call about private health insurers and what would have happened if they had their way.

What do health insurers want?

Currently, legislation prohibits health insurers from delivering certain types of health care outside hospital. This means they are mainly restricted to delivering care based in hospital, or what’s known as hospital-substitute care (such as hospital in the home arrangements).

But Private Healthcare Australia, which represents most Australian health funds, and one of its members Bupa submitted requests to the Productivity Commission for the government to remove these legislative barriers.

If these laws were changed, it would enable private health insurers to significantly expand their funding for out-of-hospital care, including primary care, specialist care, chronic disease management, and community-based services.

They argue that allowing private health insurers to pay for out-of-hospital care – especially preventive health and chronic disease management – would reduce the need for costly hospitalisations, and save long-term health-care costs. It’s about shifting the focus from treating illness to maintaining wellness, a goal few would disagree with.

In fact, private health insurers are already allowed to cover preventive care. Many have apps for members to track their exercise, blood pressure and sleep, for example. They already provide extras care for preventive dental care, optical, acupuncture, physiotherapy, and perhaps in the future some more complementary therapies. Members can buy hospital care, extras care, or a general plan covering both.

But the current proposal is different. Health insurers want to cover more GP-like services and specialist care. In other words, they want to be allowed to cover more of the same benefits that Medicare already covers.

Is this a good idea?

This isn’t a new debate. Private health insurers have long tried to expand their role beyond hospital care.

However, the core concern with allowing private insurers to cover more out-of-hospital care is the very real risk of driving up prices of out-of-hospital care and creating a two-tiered system.

About 45% of Australians hold private health insurance to cover hospital care.

If private insurers start paying for GP and specialist consultations too, it is highly likely doctors’ fees would rise. This is because private funds would likely offer a higher payment schedule above Medicare rebates to attract doctors to their networks. This would cause the overall costs of a consultation to rise.

Those without private health insurance, who rely solely on Medicare, would face a shrinking pool of doctors willing to bulk-bill or charge a modest gap, leading to longer wait times, fewer available appointments, and a greater struggle to access care. This would also lead to higher private health premiums as insurers pass on the cost of the higher doctor fees to members.

We already see this dynamic in our hospital system. Surgeons, for instance, earn significantly more for procedures performed in private hospitals compared to public ones. This leads them to disproportionately allocate their time to the private sector.

So people with private health insurance often skip lengthy public waiting lists for elective procedures, while public patients face prolonged delays for essential care.

This disparity doesn’t just create inequities, it strains the public system even further. To entice expensive surgeons to dedicate more time to public hospitals, public hospitals have to pay some of them well above the standard salaries set in enterprise agreements.

This practice diverts precious public resources (funds that could otherwise be used for essential equipment, beds, or more junior doctors and nurses), reduces the overall quality of care for public patients, and increases waiting times further in the public system.

Why the Productivity Commission made the right call

Allowing private health insurers to expand further would fundamentally undermine the universality of Medicare. We would risk creating a two-tiered primary health-care system, replicating the very disparities and challenges that plague our hospital sector. So the Productivity Commission made the right call to not include insurers in its recommendations.

What is needed to deliver quality care more efficiently is for
the government to significantly boost investment in preventive health care. Once chronic conditions set in, they are difficult to reverse and continuously drive up costs. This is something the Productivity Commission acknowledges in its interim report.

We also need to build truly integrated care. This would deliver seamless, coordinated health services around a person’s needs, rather than around individual providers or separate parts of the system.

Imagine a future where your GP, specialists, allied health professionals, and even social support services are connected, sharing information and working together on your care plan. This crucial approach reduces duplication, improves communication, and ensures people don’t fall through the cracks of a fragmented system.

These are the types of policies that would help make Australia’s health system more efficient, and help ensure Medicare delivers what it was intended to, without unnecessary duplication and the inevitable consequences.

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

– ref. Private health insurers want to fund more out-of-hospital care. But the Productivity Commission has other ideas – https://theconversation.com/private-health-insurers-want-to-fund-more-out-of-hospital-care-but-the-productivity-commission-has-other-ideas-261954

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angela Jackson, Social Policy Commissioner, Productivity Commission, and Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Tasmania

Too often in discussions about productivity, the care economy only gets mentioned as the problem child putting a drag on growth. This week, the Productivity Commission is seeking to change that narrative with the release of its fifth and final report
ahead of the government’s economic reform roundtable next week.

The report, of which I am a co-author, is focused on delivering quality care more efficiently. The care economy is broad and includes health care, childcare, aged care, disability and veterans’ services.

Among our report’s recommendations are a new national screening clearance system for workers across childcare, aged care, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and veterans’ care. That would make it easier to stop people found to be unsafe from simply moving into another sector.

We also propose setting up a new independent advisory board to assess and provide advice on prevention and early intervention across the different levels of government.

By increasing productivity in the care economy, we can reduce current and future costs and, crucially, improve the quality of care for Australians.

Care is central to our lives – and our economy

More than two million Australians work in paid care-related roles. That’s 12% of the workforce: around one in eight workers.

The care sector contributes 8% of Australia’s gross domestic product and is growing fast.

Over the next 40 years, both the number of people working in the care sector and its value to our economy are expected to rise significantly.

Demand for care is growing, but so are the costs

Traditional measures of productivity don’t capture the full story in the care economy.

While care sector productivity is low when you just consider the amount of services provided, when you account for the quality of those services the picture is different. Adjusted for quality, previous commission research has found productivity in a subset of health care grew by 3% annually between 2011-12 and 2017-18 – far above the market-sector average.

While the quality of our services has improved, demand is rising – along with costs.

Increased demand for care services is being driven by an ageing population, rising chronic health conditions, changing family structures, and increased expectations for quality care and independence.

To provide high-quality care more efficiently, we should start by removing silos and enabling a more cohesive, efficient system.

A person might need aged care, disability support, and health services all at once. Our system needs to reflect that reality.

Improving safety and quality with national oversight

Different sectors of the care economy operate under separate regulatory regimes. Providers must navigate multiple audits, standards, and registration systems. Workers often need separate clearances for each sector.

This duplication wastes time and money. It limits workforce mobility. It makes it harder for users to access and compare services.

These fragmented systems can also mean unsafe workers slip through the cracks unnoticed – putting care users at risk.

We are recommending a national screening clearance system and national registration for workers in the aged care, NDIS, veterans’ care and early childhood education and childcare sectors – making it harder for a worker found to be unsafe in one sector to move to another without detection.

This would replace existing clearances such as working with children/vulnerable people checks.

Real-time continuous checking should be undertaken between renewal dates to ensure prompt action if a worker engages in inappropriate behaviour.

We also need a unified approach to worker registration across aged care, the NDIS and veterans’ care.

The commission found more than 42% of aged care providers are also registered NDIS providers, and 82% of veterans’ care providers operate in aged care and/or the NDIS. These are often large providers, delivering a significant share of services. Yet they must comply with separate systems, diverting resources away from frontline care.

All of this is not just about efficiency – it’s also about safety, trust, and quality.

Delivering better care more efficiently

Another key reform is collaborative commissioning, where organisations work together to plan, procure, and evaluate services based on local needs.

In this report, we focus on removing the barriers and supporting collaboration between the federally funded local primary health-care networks and the state-controlled local hospital districts.

Greater collaboration in health care can reduce potentially preventable hospitalisations.

Even modest gains could be transformative. Our report estimates a 10% reduction in preventable hospitalisations could save A$600 million annually. But the real value lies in better care: fewer gaps, smoother transitions, and services tailored to communities.

Prevention is the ultimate productivity lever

Perhaps the most powerful lever for productivity is prevention and early intervention. Stopping problems before they start, or before they escalate, can improve lives and reduce long-term costs across government.

The evidence for this is all around us: from housing-first models that reduce homelessness and hospitalisations, to early childhood programs that boost lifelong outcomes.

However, investment in one area is often not supported because benefits occur over a long timeframe, or accrue to different areas and levels of government.

To address this issue, we’re proposing a national prevention investment framework. A new national independent advisory board would provide expert guidance on the cost effectiveness of new and existing prevention programs.

We need better outcomes

Care is one of the most complex and consequential parts of our economy.

If we don’t act in the face of rising demand, we risk a future where care becomes unaffordable, inaccessible, and inequitable.

But if we embrace reform through aligning regulation, improving collaboration, and investing in prevention, we can build a care economy that delivers better outcomes at sustainable cost. This is what productivity growth is all about.

Angela Jackson is the Social Policy Commissioner at the Productivity Commission, as well as the chair of the Women in Economics Network. She has previously served on the board of Melbourne Health, which operates Royal Melbourne Hospital.

– ref. From childcare to aged care, here’s how to deliver safer, more affordable care for all Australians – https://theconversation.com/from-childcare-to-aged-care-heres-how-to-deliver-safer-more-affordable-care-for-all-australians-262942

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Martin, Lecturer in Screen Studies, Swinburne University of Technology

For half a century, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has lured costumed fans to cinemas for late-night screenings. Its raunchy mix of Broadway musical, science fiction and schlock horror was originally a box-office flop. However, after its first midnight screening on April Fool’s Day 1976 at the Waverly theatre in New York, it never left the late-night circuit and became the ultimate cult film.

Tim Curry’s powerhouse performance as Frank-N-Furter is central to the film’s success. Yet, his truly astounding work often overshadows the film’s many other dynamic performances.

Rocky Horror’s supporting characters and chorus feature alluring oddballs who irreverently challenge norms of physical desirability. Their “imperfect” bodies are not only a tribute to diversity: they radically upturn genre expectations of stage and screen musicals, and discredit broader cultural ideals of beauty.

It’s so dreamy, oh fantasy free me!

Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon) are an attractive young couple seeking help at an isolated castle when their car blows a tyre. During their night, they find the castle’s inhabitants are of a variety of sizes, physiques and galaxies.

Adapted from Richard O’Brien’s 1973 stage musical, Rocky Horror’s anti-Broadway aesthetic is apparent as soon as the “butler” Riff Raff (O’Brien) opens the castle door. This wiry framed hunchback with tangled hair is a far cry from the athletic ideal of the Broadway body.

Inside the creepy mansion, we are dazzled by a festive troupe of alien “Transylvanians” wearing off-beat tuxedos and textured waistcoats. It’s a broad assortment of unconventional body types squeezed into colourful costumes.

Lanky actor Stephen Calcutt stands at 198 centimetres tall, and Sadie Corré at just over 120cm. Hugh Cecil, then 62, has alopecia, which exaggerates his stark monocled whiteness. Fran Fullenwider, with her wild, teased-out coiffure and curvy frame, is clad in skin-tight pants.

Cecil and Fullenwider were among a handful of Transylvanians director Jim Sharman recruited from London-based Ugly Models. While this agency’s name and viability is, to say the least, unfortunate, Rocky Horror’s rejection of cookie-cutter casting was celebratory, not diminishing.

The Transylvanians’ subversion of “sameness” is especially powerful because of the history of its film genre. Busby Berkeley, one of film musicals’ founding innovators in the 1930s and 1940s, is famously quoted as approving the “girls” in his ensembles as being “matched, just like pearls”.

Inverting such sexist tropes, the crass collective of Transylvanians is widely adored as the chorus of the film’s legendary song, Time Warp. They are also welcomingly representative of the throngs of fans who the film has continued to assemble these past five decades.

I can make you a man

Once Frank-N-Furter has invited everyone “up to the lab”, we encounter two more vital characters: the dichotomous Eddie and Rocky.

Gregarious rocker Meat Loaf’s Eddie refuses the lean hypersexual image typical of frontmen in 1970s rock acts. Eddie motorbikes around Frank’s lab and delights his sweetheart Columbia (Nell Campbell). He is loud, sexy and very nearly loved.

Overtly parodying Frankenstein’s creation of a grotesque monster, Frank-N-Furter scientifically “births” the perfectly chiselled Rocky (Peter Hinwood).

With Rocky, Frank-N-Furter has made a “perfect specimen of manhood”: muscular, a sharp jawline, blonde hair and a tan. But Rocky does not have Eddie’s charismatic body positivity, which Frank-N-Furter resents.

Rocky’s blonde hair and sculpted physique bears more than a passing resemblance to Jack Wrangler or Casey Donovan, superstars in the “Golden Age of Porn” of 1969 to 1984.

Wrangler was a pioneering porn star who adopted a rugged Marlborough Man aesthetic. Not unlike Frank-N-Furter, Wrangler was sexually fluid, working in gay porn for ten years from 1970 before crossing over to straight porn.

Donovan found fame in Wakefield Poole’s successful X-rated film Boys in the Sand (1971). Both Donovan and Poole were newcomers to filmmaking and porn. Poole (himself a Broadway dancer) applied a dreamlike narrative and an artistically verité shooting style to his hardcore yet poetic pornography.

On its release, Boys in the Sand was reviewed in Variety, and ads for the film appeared in the New York Times. Poole’s film achieved an enviable level of critical legitimacy and public appeal, which evaded Rocky Horror until it gained legitimacy via its enduring cult status.

Rocky Horror’s presentation of the creature as a queer ideal of masculine physical perfection spicily mirrors the coveted masculine form on display in much gay pornography.

Yet, among Rocky Horror’s eclectic cast, Rocky’s musclebound physique is positioned as very much the exception.

Don’t dream it, be it

Unlike gay icon Wrangler, the blonde Adonis Rocky figure is not a rugged hero, but the monster: an aberration whose existence is the result of “mad science”.

In this reading, the alluring but destructive Frank-N-Furter represents western society’s beauty machine, intent on artificially creating bodies designed to be looked at as objects of sexual desire, queer or straight.

This insight is far from outdated. Indeed, since 1975, Rocky’s queer-inflected bodily “perfection” has today become a problematic norm in the mainstreaming of men’s body sculpting and the proliferation of homoerotic imagery marketed to men.

However, Rocky Horror remains a place where people of all shapes, sizes, ages, abilities, and colours can dance and sing and celebrate without such constraints. In fact, Riff Raff, the “imperfect” figure who first welcomes us to the castle, ultimately kills Frank-N-Furter and halts his exploitation.

Rocky Horror offers many and varied midnight-movie audiences freedom from society’s troubling and relentless obsession with body image, even 50 years on.

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. At 50, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is ‘imperfectly’ good (and queer) as ever – https://theconversation.com/at-50-the-rocky-horror-picture-show-is-imperfectly-good-and-queer-as-ever-261852