Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ettore Camerlenghi, PhD student, Monash University

Multilevel societies are among the most complex societies known in nature. They are organised like Russian nesting dolls – individuals belong to family groups, which belong to clans, which belong to tribes.

At each level, the relationships between these social units (individuals, families, clans and tribes) are stable and predictable.

Such a social structure, which has been described in some primates , whales, elephants and more recently in birds, has likely characterised much of human evolution. In fact, it’s still common among many hunter-gatherer societies around the world.

Even though multilevel societies are documented across the animal world, it’s not entirely clear what their benefits are.

One hypothesis, based on observations of two populations of contemporary hunter-gatherer people, is that living in a multilevel society allows people to simultaneously have different types (levels) of cooperative relationships.

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To share is human, to collaborate divine

In our research, published today in Current Biology, we tested this hypothesis in a wild population of superb fairy-wrens, a familiar little songbird across southeastern Australia’s parks and gardens.

Living together means helping each other out

Superb fairy-wrens live in multilevel societies in which breeding groups – between two and six birds – represent the lowest social level, with tight social bonds among individuals.

During the non-breeding season, neighbouring breeding groups associate closely with a few other breeding groups, and these “supergroups” then associate to form communities (the highest social level). As a result, these birds develop social relationships of varying levels of intensity.

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(The most social) bird of the year: why superb fairy-wren societies may be as complex as our own

To make it possible to track those complex relationships, we attached different-coloured leg bands to superb fairy-wrens in our study population so we could recognise all individuals through binoculars. While we are attaching their bands, we recorded any birds that gave distress calls, distinctive calls that individuals use to seek help when they’re in imminent danger, for example from a predator.

Other wrens commonly respond to such calls and try to help, for example by approaching the predator and giving alarm calls. They may also use a distraction tactic called a “rodent-run”. To do this, birds approach the threat to within striking range, assume a hunched posture, and scurry back and forth like a mouse. This distracts the predator, and this “altruistic distraction display” places the bird that performs it at high risk.

Here we tested whether altruistic responses to calls for help vary across the distinct social levels of the society, akin to food sharing among hunter-gatherers, but with much higher stakes.

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To simulate a predator threatening a fellow wren, we presented a stuffed kookaburra – a fierce predator of small birds, including fairy-wrens – while playing back a distress call recorded from a local fairy-wren. We then recorded the responses of all wren-witnesses.

For each breeding group, we tested if social relatedness affected how willing birds were to help another in distress. We played back, on different occasions, a distress call from an individual within the same breeding group, one from the same community, or one from an unfamiliar individual outside the community.

We found that superb fairy-wrens were more likely to heed the calls for help from birds of the same breeding group. They responded less fervently, taking fewer risks and never performing rodent-runs, when a merely familiar wren – from the same community – called for help.

As for strangers? They ignored them completely. So being part of a complex society lets the birds carefully “dose” their cooperative assistance.

Like birds, like people

This pattern mirrors what was previously found in hunter-gatherers. Here, food is shared mostly by people from the same household, followed by members of the same cluster of households. The least sharing happens between members of the same camp – the highest social level of their multilevel society.

Similarly, living in a multilevel society helps the wrens to distinguish whom to cooperate with and how much. The cooperation at different social levels likely has different social functions, too.

For example, cooperative relationships between breeding group members might increase group cohesion, survival and reproduction. At the community level, alliances between neighbouring breeding groups are likely to help the birds defend against predators better, and to have less aggression between groups.

Humans and superb fairy-wrens belong to very distant branches within the tree of life (our common ancestor lived at least 200 million years ago. Nevertheless, the pattern of cooperative behaviour shown by these little songbirds is astonishingly similar to ours.

This suggests the complex cooperative patterns we see in our own society may have emerged independently many times in different species, and first appeared millions of years before we set the first foot on this planet.

Acknowledgements: we thank Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment and the Ecological Society of Australia, the Australian Research Council, The Australian National University (ANU), the University of Zurich, the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and Monash University for support. We are grateful to our colleagues Robert Magrath, Sergio Nolazco and Damien Farine who co-authored this study, and thank Robert Magrath for co-authoring this article.

Anne Peters receives funding from Australian Research Council.

Ettore Camerlenghi 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. Fairy-wrens are more likely to help their closest friends but not strangers, just like us humans – https://theconversation.com/fairy-wrens-are-more-likely-to-help-their-closest-friends-but-not-strangers-just-like-us-humans-198231

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scarlett Howard, Lecturer, Monash University

As we progress through life, we learn many essential behaviours from more experienced people around us. For example, through observing adults, we go from being babbling babies, to using single words, to speaking in full sentences.

This is an example of social learning. And it turns out it isn’t unique to our species.

Honeybees also have a language, expressed through dance, which they use to communicate the location and quality of food sources to hive mates. This behaviour plays a crucial role in the functioning of a hive, which can sometimes have more than 60,000 bees.

Today, a new study published in Science reveals honeybees perfect this dance language by learning from more experienced bees.

What is the ‘waggle dance’?

In 1973, Professor Karl von Frisch won the Nobel Prize in Physiology for decoding the dance of the honeybee, termed the “waggle dance”. This dance consists of a series of movements forager honeybees perform to nest mates in a hive.

The dance communicates various information about a bee’s foraging trip, including the food source’s distance and direction from the hive, angle from the sun, and the quality of the resource. It’s performed in a repetitive figure eight movement.

The forager positions herself perpendicular to the Sun in the direction of the food source, thereby demonstrating its direction. She also performs a “vibration” through the centre of the figure eight, which demonstrates how far the source is.

This behaviour is an interesting example of a complex, informative and co-operative communication style among insects. But, until now, experts didn’t know the extent to which it is learnt, as opposed to innate.

Nature vs nurture?

To find out, a team of researchers from China and the US put some bees to the test. They created hives containing young novice bees (one day old) that had never seen a waggle dance before, and hives containing both novice bees and experienced bees (20 days old).

They placed the hives 150 metres away from a feeder of sugar water: the food source. This placement was important, as it would allow the researchers to assess how accurately the forager bees were dancing to convey information to their hive mates.

The team observed the first dances of novice bees, in both the novice and mixed colonies. Then, after another 20 days, they observed them again.

They found the first dances of bees in the novice colonies overestimated the distance of the food source, were less accurate in communicating direction and were more disordered compared to the first dances of novice bees from the mixed colonies.

After 20 days, when the dancers from both types of colonies were more experienced, the bees in the novice hive had decreased their directional errors and their dances were less disordered. However, they still underperformed compared to their counterparts in the mixed colonies.

Early experience sets a bee up for life

These findings show the waggle dance is indeed innate, since it was performed by novice honeybees that had never seen it before.

However, bees that had undergone social learning from more experienced foragers were more accurate and ordered dancers. Even after gaining foraging and dancing experience, the bees in the novice colonies could not dance as well as those that had undergone social learning.

Therefore, the opportunity to observe experienced bees dancing at a young age will determine a bee’s capability to perform accurate dances for the rest of its short life.

We know from past studies there are different dialects across honeybee species – and dialects indicate a language has been at least partially learned. This new research strengthens the evidence for social learning among honeybees, prompting interesting new questions about how nature and nurture overlap to form this social insect’s complex culture.

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Scarlett Howard receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and has previously received funding from Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship, RMIT University, Fyssen Foundation, L’Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science Young Talents French Award, Deakin University, Monash University, Hermon Slade Foundation, and the Australian Academy of Sciences. She is affiliated with Pint of Science Australia.

– ref. Is the honeybee’s iconic waggle dance learned or innate? New research provides the answer – https://theconversation.com/is-the-honeybees-iconic-waggle-dance-learned-or-innate-new-research-provides-the-answer-201297

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Toole, Associate Principal Research Fellow, Burnet Institute

On March 11 2020 the World Health Organization classified COVID as a pandemic. Three years on, it remains just that.

As much as we don’t want it to be, and as much as it is off the front pages, COVID is still very much with us.

But how bad has it really been? And, more importantly, what have we learned that could help us accelerate a real and sustained exit?

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Friday essay: COVID in ten photos

COVID has hit us hard

There was a slow initial global response to what we now call SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID. This allowed the virus to get a foothold, contributing to unexpectedly rapid viral evolution.

Three years into the pandemic, with the removal of almost all mitigation measures in most countries, it’s clear the virus has hit the world very hard. So far, almost 681 million infections and more than 6.8 million deaths have been reported.

This is perhaps best visualised by its impact on life expectancy. There were sharp declines seen across the world in 2020 and 2021, reversing 70 years of largely uninterrupted progress.

The excess mortality driving this drop in life expectancy has continued. This includes in Australia, where over 20,000 more lives than the historical average are estimated to have been lost in 2022.

Read more:
Thousands more Australians died in 2022 than expected. COVID was behind the majority of them

Not just COVID deaths

The indirect impacts on the health systems in rich and poor countries alike continue to be substantial. Disruptions to health services have led to increases in stillbirths, maternal mortality and postnatal depression.

Routine child immunisation coverage has decreased. Crucial malaria, tuberculosis and HIV programs have been disrupted.

A paper out this week highlights the severe impact of the pandemic on mental health globally.

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My kids are behind with their vaccines. How do they catch up?

Then there’s long COVID

Meanwhile, more evidence of long COVID has emerged around the world. At least 65 million people were estimated to be experiencing this debilitating syndrome by the end of 2022.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates 5-10% of people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2 will develop long COVID, with symptoms persisting more than three months. That’s between 550,000 and 1.1 million Australians, based on the more than 11 million cases reported so far.

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We got some key things wrong about long COVID. Here are 5 things we’ve learnt

COVID highlighted inequalities

The pandemic has also had a huge economic impact, both directly and indirectly.

The United States alone spent US$4 trillion on its response. Economists have estimated the pandemic will contribute an average 0.75% reduction in GDP in countries with high infection rates and high productivity in 2025.

Studies in the United Kingdom, US and Australia show COVID has had a disproportionate impact – including higher death rates – in disadvantaged communities and ethnic minorities.

The causes range from high exposure in low-paid jobs to inadequate access to health care. And poorer countries have fared terribly on all fronts from COVID, including inequitable access to vaccines.

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There’s no end in sight

We cannot assume there will be a natural exit to the pandemic, where the virus reaches some benign endemicity, a harmless presence in the background.

In fact, there is little indication anything like that is imminent.

In Australia, since the beginning of January, more than 235,000 COVID cases have been reported, almost as many as in 2020 and 2021 combined. Since the start of January, there have been 2,351 COVID-related deaths, more than twice as many as in the whole of 2020 and around the same as in the whole of 2021.

What needs to happen next?

The future response can be practically distilled into three overlapping actions.

1. Politicians need to be frank

Our political leaders need to communicate frankly with the public that the pandemic is not over. They need to stress we still have an exceptional problem on our hands with acute disease as well as worrying concerns about long COVID. It’s crucial politicians acknowledge sufferers and those who have died. They need to do this while delivering the good news that addressing COVID does not require lockdowns or mandates.

If our politicians did this, the public would be more likely to have their booster vaccines, get tested and treated, and adopt measures such as improving indoor ventilation and wearing high-quality masks.

The health system also needs to be greatly strengthened to deal with long COVID.

Read more:
Yes, masks reduce the risk of spreading COVID, despite a review saying they don’t

2. Avoiding infections is still important

Suppressing the virus is still important. We still can and should reduce the burden of newly acquired COVID and, therefore, long COVID. We have the tools to do this.

We need full recognition that COVID is transmitted largely through the air. As this just-published article in the journal Nature discusses, there are things we can do right now to ensure we all breathe air that is safer, not just from SARS-CoV-2 but from other respiratory viruses.

Read more:
Ventilation reduces the risk of COVID. So why are we still ignoring it?

3. Adopt new knowledge and technology

We should be focusing on the science and be ready to adopt new knowledge and products rapidly.

Just a few days ago we had trials of a promising new approach to treat long COVID with the diabetes drug metformin.

There is also intriguing research that has identified persistent infection as a potential underlying cause of organ damage and disease after COVID and in long COVID. This suggests anti-viral drugs such as Paxlovid may have an important role to play in reducing the impact of chronic disease.

Many types of new COVID vaccines are being trialled, such as versions administered by nasal spays, which may be game changers.

Read more:
COVID nasal sprays may one day prevent and treat infection. Here’s where the science is up to

The virus won’t fix itself

As we enter the fourth year of the pandemic, we must not leave it up to the virus to fix itself.

The biggest lesson of the past three years is there’s little chance that is going to work, at least without an intolerably high cost.

Rather, we can end the pandemic by choice. We know what to do. But we are simply not doing it.

Michael Toole receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Brendan Crabb and the Institute he leads receives research grant funding from the National Health & Medical Research Council of Australia, the Medical Research Future Fund, DFAT’s Centre for Health Security and other Australian federal and Victorian State Government bodies. He is the Chair of The Australian Global Health Alliance and the Pacific Friends of Global Health, both in an honorary capacity. And he serves on the Board of the Telethon Kids Institute, on advisory committees of mRNA Victoria, the Sanger Institute (UK), the Institute for Health Transformation (at Deakin University), The Brain Cancer Centre (Australia), the WHO Malaria Vaccine Advisory Committee; MALVAC, and is a member of OzSAGE, all honorary positions.

– ref. Three years into the pandemic, it’s clear COVID won’t fix itself. Here’s what we need to focus on next – https://theconversation.com/three-years-into-the-pandemic-its-clear-covid-wont-fix-itself-heres-what-we-need-to-focus-on-next-201181

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wesley Morgan, Research Fellow, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University

This week, the Albanese government is attempting to reform the safeguard mechanism to try to make it actually cut emissions from our highest polluting industrial facilities.

Experts and commentators see Labor’s plan as a cautious, incremental change that doesn’t yet rise to the urgency of the intensifying climate crisis. But it could generate momentum after a wasted decade of climate denial and delay under the previous government. Done right, it could set our biggest industrial polluters on a pathway to cut their emissions and be a springboard for more ambitious changes.

But there’s one glaring problem. Under the government’s proposed rules, there is still no requirement for polluters to actually cut their emissions at the sites where they are released into the atmosphere. Instead, companies can choose to buy carbon credits or offsets to meet their obligations. Incredibly, there would be no limit on the number of offsets companies can use.

You’ve probably heard about Australia’s rubbery offset schemes and questions of integrity. But there’s an even more fundamental problem. One tonne of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is not the same as one tonne of carbon stored in the tree trunks of a newly planted forest.

The carbon in coal, gas and oil has been safely stored underground for extraordinary lengths of time. But when trees take carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere, they may only store it for a short period.

There is simply no way around it. Avoiding the worst of climate change means stopping the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. Offsets will not save us. In fact, unlimited use of offsets could see even more emissions, if coal and gas companies “offset” emissions and ramp up exports.

Why can’t we rely on nature to pull carbon dioxide from the air?

In 2023, many policymakers still believe we can adequately offset emissions. It would certainly be easier if we could keep burning fossil fuels and offsetting them by planting forests. But it doesn’t work. It’s simply not possible to fully “offset” billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from burning of coal, oil and gas by regrowing forests, increasing the amount of carbon in soils or other measures.

That’s because the carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels is fundamentally different to the way carbon is stored above ground in trees, wetlands and in the soil.

Carbon is everywhere on Earth — in the atmosphere, the ocean, in soils, in all living things, and in rocks and sediments. It is constantly being cycled through these different parts. Carbon is also being continually exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean’s surface. Together these processes make up the earth’s “active” carbon cycle.

When we burn fossil fuels, we release carbon locked away for millions of years (hence “fossil” fuels), pumping vast new volumes of carbon into the active carbon cycle. This is very clearly altering the balance of carbon in the Earth system and faster than ever recorded in the Earth’s geological history. Planting trees does not lock carbon away again deep underground. Instead, the introduced fossil carbon remains part of the active carbon cycle.

To compound the problem, much of the carbon stored in land-based offsets does not stay stored. Forests can easily be destroyed by fire, disease, floods and droughts, all of which are increasing with climate change.

Offsets are a last resort – nothing more

Despite these issues, offsets will still have a small role. Some emissions cannot be avoided or reduced at present, given low-emissions technologies for industries like steelmaking are still scaling up. But these offsets must be strictly limited and set to progressively decline over time, as opportunities for genuine emissions reductions – at the source – are developed and rapidly scaled.

Unfortunately, paying for offsets is the first and only thing many large companies are doing about their harmful emissions.

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If we allow fossil fuel companies to offset their emissions without limit, they will keep along a business as usual track or even expand their operations. That, in turn, will mean significantly more emissions when Australian fossil fuels are burned overseas.

Our leaders must avoid the offset trap

It’s taken Australia decades too long, but we’re finally past climate denial, perhaps due to unprecedented fire and floods. Our leaders tell us it’s now about finding solutions. Well, offsets are not a solution. There is no substitute to actually ending the routine burning of fossil fuels.

We all want our comfortable lives to continue with a minimum of change. Offsets seem to deliver that. But all they really do is offset our guilt and responsibility. They cannot solve the central problem which is that every year, we add another 33 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.

The atmosphere doesn’t respond to good intentions or clever schemes. All it responds to is the volume of greenhouse gases which trap ever more heat.

If Labor is to make the safeguard mechanism fit for purpose, it must focus on genuine emissions reductions at the source.

What Australia does matters a great deal to the world’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis. If Australia became the first major fossil fuel exporter to embrace a future as a clean energy superpower, it will demonstrate it is possible – and that it comes with benefits like new industries, cleaner air and energy security.

First, though, we have to give up on offset pipe dreams. The only thing that matters is cutting emissions.

Read more:
Now we know the flaws of carbon offsets, it’s time to get real about climate change

Wesley Morgan is a senior researcher with the Climate Council. This article was drafted in collaboration with Climate Council senior researchers Simon Bradshaw and Ashleigh Croucher.

– ref. A tonne of fossil carbon isn’t the same as a tonne of new trees: why offsets can’t save us – https://theconversation.com/a-tonne-of-fossil-carbon-isnt-the-same-as-a-tonne-of-new-trees-why-offsets-cant-save-us-200901

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine de Fontenay, Honorary Fellow, Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne

Aged care is being hit both ways by the ageing of Australia’s population. While population ageing is increasing the number of Australians in need of formal care, it’s also reducing the proportion of working age people able to provide formal care.

To help bridge the gap, we are going to need to make it easier for working age Australians to provide informal care for parents and partners living at home.

The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety suggested a way. In 2021, it asked the government to examine requiring employers to offer unpaid extended leave for carers of older Australians.

In February 2022 the government asked the Productivity Commission to conduct the examination. I was one of the two commissioners appointed to lead it, and last week we released our position paper.

Here’s what we found, and how you can have your say.

Growing demand for informal care

We discovered there’s a lot of informal care already. Most older Australians who require assistance get it through informal care – 62% according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

About half of this informal care is provided by partners, about 30% by daughters, and 24% by sons.

Calculations by Deloitte Access Economics suggest if this informal care was charged for, it would cost A$78 billion per year. But it is set to become more scarce.

As more people live longer, the needs of the oldest Australians will grow and become harder to manage without considerable support. And as families become smaller, there will be fewer family members to help.

Deloitte Access expects the need for informal care to grow by 23% to 2030, while the number of informal carers grows only 16%.

Examining extended unpaid carer’s leave

When my father was diagnosed with dementia, I was incredibly lucky to have ample leave balances, his wife as his primary carer, and the resources to privately pay for formal care while we waited for a government-provided home care package.

But many aren’t that lucky. Many carers state that they have unmet needs for leave, financial assistance, physical assistance and respite.

The National Employment Standards applying to workers covered by the Fair Work Act require employers to offer 10 days per year of paid carer leave, which is bundled with sick and personal leave and accumulates when not used, as well as “up to two days per episode” of unpaid leave.

In addition, workers can take up to two days of compassionate leave when an immediate member of the family or household dies or develops a life-threatening illness. This is paid for permanent employers and unpaid for casual workers.

Read more:
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Many employers offer more. But what’s missing from the legislative requirements is unpaid extended carers leave, available for months rather than days.

It is available for new parents. The legislative requirement is 12 months of unpaid leave, with the right to request an additional 12 months.

But after much investigation, we found that extending the option to the carers of older Australians would do little to close the care gap, little to help the majority of carers, and little to keep carers in the workforce.

Few people would use it

The model we developed based on parental and other leave standards (and the need to avoid undesirable consequences) provided three to 12 months of unpaid leave for carers of older people who have worked for at least 12 months for their current employer, after giving four weeks’ notice.

We found between 7,000 to 17,000 employees would use it each year, less than 0.1% of the workforce.

About half of those who used the entitlement would have provided care anyway, leaving their jobs if necessary.

We estimated it would produce only 4,000 to 8,000 extra informal carers.

And many don’t want unpaid extended leave. What they told us they want is workplace flexibility, with the income and relief from caring it offers.

Read more:
Carers’ leave could help us look after elderly parents and stay in work

That said, mandated extended unpaid leave would benefit the older people who would be cared for, and would benefit the carers who took it, reducing their costs of searching for a job after their extended absences.

But it would impose costs on employers: disrupting workplaces, requiring the recruitment of new temporary staff, and leaving employers uncertain about which of their workers would stay.

For businesses with high turnover of relatively unskilled labour, these costs would be low. In more specialised businesses, the limited evidence (mainly from parental leave) suggests these costs would be significant.

We need carers to know their new rights

The good news for carers is that changes to the Fair Work Act due to begin in June will strengthen employees’ rights to request flexible work.

Under the amendments, employers will only be permitted to refuse requests for flexible work if they have:

• discussed the request with the employee

• genuinely tried to reach an arrangement

• not been able to come to an agreement

• considered the consequence to the employee of refusing the request for flexible work, and

• a reasonable business grounds for refusing the request.

The government should ensure that carers are aware of these and other rights through its Carer Gateway.

It should also ensure informal carers get support from the formal sector, with formal carers available to provide care at times and in ways informal carers cannot.

Informal care needs formal support

Waiting lists for formal home care packages at one stage climbed to 15 months in some categories and have come down considerably, but there is more to be done in reducing waiting lists.

Carers also need access to respite care for the older Australians they care for, to give them a break, especially respite care in the home.

And they need support for a wider range of relationships.

Carers can usually only access leave to care for immediate family members or members of their households. This excludes broader kinship networks for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, care relationships in “families of choice” for LGBTI seniors, and care for aunties and close friends.

We can do more to support carers. I was personally lucky to get a good deal of support. We ought to make sure we are all that lucky.

You can make a written submission on the carer’s leave paper until March 28. You can also register here to watch online or attend the March 20 and 21 public hearings.

Catherine de Fontenay is a Commissioner at the Productivity Commission.

– ref. Carers of older Australians need more support – but we found unpaid extended leave isn’t the best solution – https://theconversation.com/carers-of-older-australians-need-more-support-but-we-found-unpaid-extended-leave-isnt-the-best-solution-201109

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

Of the ten films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, six are really good. That’s a high percentage for a year – 2022 – in which most cinematic offerings seemed drab.

This year sees films that are less moralistic than usual and less pretentious. The worst thing you can say about the worst film is that it’s boring. In other words, there are no absolute duds, although there is only one true standout, with over-length continuing to hamstring otherwise excellent films.

It seems like producers, in their desire to differentiate their product from TikTok videos, turn everything into a Ben Hur-scale epic.

The standout: The Banshees of Inisherin

The Banshees of Inisherin is an absolute masterpiece, and my pick for Best Picture (and one of the best films of the year).

Writer-director Martin McDonagh has made a career out of Irish schtick, and his films (like those of his brother) sometimes feel like caricatures of themselves. But The Banshees of Inisherin takes a different turn, moving away from a narrow focus on the Irish character towards the form of drama itself.

The narrative begins from a simple premise: what if your best friend decided, one day, randomly, they never wanted to speak to you again? It opens with begrizzled old fiddler Colm (Brendan Gleeson) cutting off his relationship with the younger, painfully average, Pádraic (Colin Farrell). It’s 1923, near the end of the Irish Civil War, on the fictional isle of Inisherin, and Pádraic is at a loss regarding what he should do.

The whole thing begins firmly in the realm of the kind of hokey Irish-banter film that has made the McDonaghs global Irish exports. There are lots of absurd moments and jokes, Farrell in peak form – before slowly progressing into the kind of bloody, weird hallucinogenic fantasy that a Greek tragedian like Aeschylus might have come up with.

Some might decry its deviation from naturalism and realism, but it embodies its point. In the same way Colm decides life on an island in Ireland is boring, the film seems to decide, after the first third, that realism is boring, and livens things up with some garish self-mutilation, arson, a dead dog. The film seems to suggest that the bitterness and permanence of war, of the tragic and tragedic, endows mundane life with the energy to keep going, and forms the basis of all vital art. And, as Colm realises, life isn’t worth living without art, without an aesthetic vision overlaying everything. The dialogue is, like the work of the best playwrights, hyper-real, funny, tender and savage.

McDonagh’s film is remarkable for its grandness of vision, for its willingness to look at and interrogate its very form and medium in a commercial context that, nonetheless, never feels like an essay or treatise.

Other strong contenders

Women Talking is likewise a cinematic work. Faithful to the title, the narrative follows a group of women having a debate over the course of a day as they decide whether or not they should band together and leave their Mennonite-style community when they realise that the beings who are routinely raping and impregnating them are not, as they’ve been told by their religious leaders, demons, but the men of the community.

Buoyed along by the voice over of a young witness to the discussion, the tone oscillates effectively between melodrama and fable, and the film works well as an immersive piece of cinema, with points that are genuinely suspenseful – such as when they decide to leave the community and have to prepare before the men, who have gone to the city to post bail for the attackers, return.

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All the cinema (and sequels) we have to look forward to in 2023

There are also some strikingly eerie images, and the performers are excellent. It’s great seeing Judith Ivey on the big screen again, and Ben Whishaw is exceptional as the sensitive school-teacher scribe who is minuting their discussion. At the same time, it is a film that mainly involves people sitting around and talking, so there are sections that become tedious.

Women Talking is a strong film, and its ambience of fantasy and fable allow us to forgive its sentimentality as captured in the closing image of a baby with the voiceover sounding like a social media post: “Your story will be different from ours.”

Two-thirds of writer-director Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness is excellent – it’s the kind of misanthropic farce with which he is now associated, joyfully anarchic in its perpetual assault on bourgeois sensibilities.

The narrative follows a young couple, Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean), as they go on a luxury cruise. It’s the kind of cruise where Nutella is flown in by helicopter and dropped into the ocean in a Pelican case for retrieval.

Their occupations as models/influencers ensure that, unlike the rest of the supremely affluent people on the boat, they don’t have to pay for anything. Their already fragile relationship is further strained as the eccentric characters on board are carefully introduced. There’s Vera (Sunnyi Melles), the “egalitarian” passenger who insists the whole crew have a swim, and have fun while doing it, or Dimitry (Zlatko Buric), the obese and excessive Russian oligarch who made his fortune in fertiliser.

The whole thing descends into a vulgar mess during the captain’s dinner. The seas become moderately rough and the vomit starts to spray, counterpointed to the haute cuisine being served. Pirates then board the ship, it’s blown up and sinks, and the survivors are stranded on a deserted tropical island.

This final third on the island seems interminable. The film painfully overstates all the points already made in the first two-thirds. As with The Banshees of Inisherin, this is a grandly designed film, making no effort to please everyone. Woody Harrelson is sensational as the drunk Marxist captain, as is Zlatko Buric as his anti-communist drinking pal. The film is unwilling to rest on moral cliches or depend on moral pleasures, and this makes it worthwhile in today’s media ecology.

Netflix’s new production of Eric Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, is a very good – if not particularly inspired – war film. The hypnotic music adds a surreal quality to the images of carnage. We see bodies under ash forming macabre shapes, gnarled figures tangled up in barbed wire illuminated by flare light filtered through smoke – and many other striking images.

The film adeptly captures the slaughter and misery of trench warfare in World War I from the perspective of enthusiastic, patriotic, impressionable German youth. It’s all very well done, but – given the pantheon of excellent “war is hell” films that have appeared over the past 100 years – seems strangely unnecessary, even anachronistic.

Unusually, two action films have been nominated for Best Picture this year: Top Gun: Maverick and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Both labour to be rousing crowd-pleasers, so their popularity is understandable, and both work as throwbacks to the high adventure films of the 1980s.

In the case of Top Gun this is self-evident – it’s a sequel to Tony Scott’s fabulously popular film of 1986. But where Scott’s film is superbly stylish, including all the signature tropes that made him one of the great action auteurs of the 1980s and ‘90s – backlit curtains blowing in the wind, an abundance of haze used in most shots, sparse but effective slow motion – Joseph Kosinski’s film feels derivative and pointless.

It’s thoroughly enjoyable, but also lacks the formal coherence and originality of Scott’s film. Its popularity – its nomination for Best Picture(!) – more than anything suggests that audiences are primed for well-made genre films that don’t try too hard to be clever.

Everything Everywhere All at Once, directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, similarly works well as a romp, a comedic action yarn. It’s funny but with some touching sequences, has charming cutesy characters, and is overlaid with an air of nostalgia (including featuring Jamie Lee Curtis in a role that fronts up to her younger self in True Lies). But it is similarly derivative as well as overlong and pretentious, with its protestations towards philosophy (like The Matrix) a touch silly (but unlike The Matrix, at least this has a sense of humour about itself).

Both Top Gun and Everything Everywhere All at Once play like full-bodied old-fashioned adventures – enjoyable but also completely unchallenging, lacking the formal inventiveness that made many of these kinds of films striking in the 1980s.

Dull, dull, dull

The narrative of the much-discussed Tàr is sufficiently interesting, but one wonders why so many of the formal choices by both director Todd Fields and Cate Blanchett in the lead are so dull?

Blanchett plays a kind of James Gatz/Jay Gastby-esque self-made woman, Lydia (but really Linda) Tàr, a conductor of international repute, world renowned for her interpretations of Mahler (wink wink, he was “cancelled” by the Nazis).

As the film unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that, even though she (rightly) espouses a kind of ad hominem philosophy that demands that we void ourselves of ego in engaging with art and with masters of the past, she actually cares more about identity than many of those around her. She makes professional hiring decisions based solely on the person of the applicant (rather than on their artistry), to satisfy her sexual predilections. She can chastise a “bipoc” student for outrightly rejecting Bach because he thinks he was a bad guy (which is, of course, absurd), but then chooses musicians for her orchestra based on sexual appeal.

It becomes increasingly difficult to empathise with her when it’s revealed that she has gone so far as to blacklist ingenues who (perhaps) have refused to sleep with her, resulting in a suicide. But by the end of the film we cannot help feeling something for her nonetheless – she has lost her career, her child (with whom she has a wonderful relationship), and her sense of self.

Blanchett is fine in the lead, effectively capturing the character’s combination of arrogance and fragility of ego, but also everything about her performance is run of the mill. And this is generally the problem with the film: aside from its annoying topicality, there’s nothing formally interesting about it.

It is stylistically dull, and for a film about music there is nothing compelling about its soundtrack or score. It’s the kind of film that works almost wholly through exposition, involving discussions of Schopenhauer being a bad dude but his philosophy still being good, for example.

Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis has likewise enjoyed immense popularity. Like most of Luhrmann’s films, while it has a certain infectious energy in the performances and staging at the beginning, it quickly become tedious.

There’s a lot of visual noise in Elvis, and this is the point (showing the relationship between hype and human in the Elvis Presley mythography), but it doesn’t make for an engaging film. Tom Hanks’ irritating performance as the Colonel – knowing, cynical, wry, doing a hackneyed accent – makes parts of it almost unbearable.

Butler is fine as Elvis, as everyone keeps pointing out, but Elvis Presley was better as Elvis – more charismatic and compelling than Butler’s karaoke version. I would prefer Elvis’ performance in a bad movie (say, Easy Come Easy Go) over Butler in this movie every day of the week.

The Fabelmans was similarly enjoyable enough – it’s charming and sweet – but the whole thing is dependent on our knowledge that it’s director Steven Spielberg’s virtual autobiography. There’s not really any genuine drama (although it probably seems like it for Spielberg, because he lived through it) – the only thing that happens is a middle-class family breaks up because the wife-mother has an affair.

There’s just not enough drama to sustain the narrative on its own terms – thus, this depends upon our knowledge extraneous to the film, which seems ironic, given Spielberg’s penchant for arresting style and imagery throughout his career. In other words, the thing that has driven his career – his capacity to create immersive standalone worlds – is absent in his new acclaimed film.

Avatar: The Way of Water is similarly a dull and overlong entry in a dull series. Fans of Avatar may disagree, but this film is almost the inverse of The Fabelmans – this seems to depend too much on our investment in James Cameron as a director, and as a kind of cinematic wizard creating an original world, while the actual substance of the narrative is rudimentary.

Best Film of 2022?

My pick for best film of 2022 would be Kirill Serebrennikov’s Tchaikovsky’s Wife, a hilarious and deeply unnerving examination of the fraught life of the title character in her unreasonable obsession with the composer.

There are a handful of other excellent films that won’t see representation in the ceremony, as usual. For horror afficionados it would be hard to beat Parker Finn’s sadistic schlocker Smile, a kind of cruel meditation on the social media age.

Likewise, Luca Guadagnino’s teen vampire flick Bones and All is a smashing take on the genre, and The Passengers of the Night is a delightful French coming-of-age drama anchored by the unstoppable Charlotte Gainsbourgh.

Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love is one of the most striking documentaries in recent years, following the romance between Katia and Maurice Krafft as they travel around the world documenting volcanoes.

Dosa’s film has been nominated for Best Documentary but not Best Picture, although there’s no rule precluding non-fiction films from this award.

That being said, The Banshees of Inisherin is up there with these films, and most of the other nominees work well as pieces of cinema, which is seldom the case with films nominated for Best Picture these days.

Ari Mattes 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. Banshees, wives, women and mavericks: our predictions for the Oscars 2023 best pictures – https://theconversation.com/banshees-wives-women-and-mavericks-our-predictions-for-the-oscars-2023-best-pictures-198772

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

One of those closely watching the extraordinary legal face-off between independent Monique Ryan and her former high-profile staffer, Sally Rugg, will be Josh Frydenberg, who lost Kooyong to the “teal” at last year’s election.

The outcome of the case, going to whether Rugg was forced to work unreasonable hours, could have significant ramifications for parliamentary staffs’ conditions.

But Frydenberg will be focused on whether the fight takes paint off Ryan.

Now in the private sector, Frydenberg hasn’t declared whether he will run again for Kooyong, but he hasn’t lost his political ambition.

He didn’t put his hand up for the Aston byelection, but then insiders didn’t expect him to. He’s concentrated on Kooyong – anyway the Liberals needed a woman in Aston.

If Frydenberg could regain his seat and Peter Dutton lost the 2025 election, one scenario for the Liberals would be for Frydenberg to take over the leadership and position the party to be competitive for the 2028 poll.

There are a lot of “ifs” involved, not least the 2025 result in Kooyong. Its boundaries will be affected by a redistribution. Ryan has another two years to dig in, and independents can be hard to dislodge.

Still, the teals were elected in very special circumstances, helped by the acute unpopularity of Scott Morrison, and some could be vulnerable next time. Ryan might be one of those.

Frydenberg would benefit if the economy were central at the election. But he’d need to make a decision on contesting relatively early, and run a savvier campaign than last time, when he unwisely derided his opponent as a “fake” independent.

There are those who cast doubt on how well Frydenberg would do as leader. Critics argue it’s hard to know what he stands for and that he wants to be popular with everyone. On the other hand, as a former treasurer and former energy minister, he has a wealth of front-line experience.

Frydenberg started out with the label of a conservative, but became more centrist. In 2018 he won the Liberal deputyship overwhelmingly. He carries baggage from the Morrison years, including what some saw as excessive loyalty to the then PM (he was also loyal to PMs Abbott and Turnbull).

Whatever his limitations, however, a Liberal party defeated in 2025 wouldn’t be replete with leadership talent.

Speculation about the significance of a Frydenberg return carries with it the assumption Dutton is doomed to failure. Caveats are required. I recalled being sceptical when Tony Abbott was elected leader. Then he nearly won his first election, and cleaned up at his second.

Read more:
Word from The Hill: Another rate rise; support for super tax hike; PM’s India trip; Rugg V Ryan

That said, it would be difficult at present to find anyone who’d put any money on Dutton.

Meanwhile he and his party are struggling for a strategy.

Dutton is, on a range of issues, adopting the “just say no” approach. The Liberals are opposing the legislation for implementing the government’s emissions reduction target (the safeguard bill), and bills for the national reconstruction fund (a kick-start for manufacturing), and a fund to generate a money stream to help provide affordable housing.

The “say no” strategy means Labor can counter Liberal attacks on the government over, for example, energy prices, by pointing out the Coalition voted against legislation last year to curb price rises.

Dutton jumped on the government’s superannuation tax rise, but the subsequent polling did not meet Liberal hopes they were on a winner. Newspoll showed strong support (64%) for the change, including 54% of Coalition voters.

While the Coalition is pursuing negative tactics (as Abbott did in opposition), this doesn’t extend to everything. There is important bipartisanship, for instance, on AUKUS. With the deal on the nuclear-powered submarines to be unveiled next week, Dutton on Thursday reaffirmed the opposition “will support the decisions of the government under AUKUS”.

However, one test coming up will be on the level of defence spending in the budget. Will the opposition say it should be higher than whatever the government settles on?

On the Voice to Parliament, Dutton has yet to declare a formal position. But he’s had nothing positive to say about it, and his party room would have a majority against. If the Liberals oppose it, that’s likely to go down poorly with younger voters.

Among the Liberals’ multiple problems is a weak team, which also lacks balance.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: Trimming the tail of the superannuation tax tiger is no easy task

Senior people such as Liberal deputy Sussan Ley and shadow treasurer Angus Taylor are poor performers.

The moderates were decimated at the election, and those left are failing to act as a cohesive influence.

Backbencher Bridget Archer speaks out on issues, but comes across as reflecting and protecting her seat rather than having wider clout within the party.

The Liberals’ Senate leader, Simon Birmingham, is a heavyweight moderate who is not the driving force he should be. Former foreign minister Marise Payne, also a moderate, is neither seen nor heard publicly.

Valuable parliamentary seats are taken up by people with extreme positions, such as senators Gerard Rennick from Queensland and Alex Antic from South Australia.

Scott Morrison is in another category, but should make way for new blood.

The challenge of recruiting good potential candidates and getting them selected is only likely to get worse at a time when a political career has become unattractive to many, and the party erects road blocks to the best and brightest.

At the grass roots, it is vulnerable to infiltration by fundamentalist religious groups. Organisationally, it’s riven by factionalism and incompetent, with the Victorian, NSW and Western Australian divisions dysfunctional. Dutton needs to tackle this, but it’s a near-impossible task.

Among Dutton’s problem is Dutton himself.

As leader, the right-winger has shown himself pragmatic and managed to hold the party together. He is an asset in his home state of Queensland, where Labor is weak. But it is hard to see him making inroads in the south, especially in the progressive state of Victoria. Observers are looking to Aston to give an early reading.

Labor holds government by a very narrow margin, but as things stand now, Dutton’s only route to victory in 2025 would require the Albanese government – which faces some tough economic problems – to fail lamentably in the next two years.

Not impossible. Labor went into minority government in 2010 after a good win in 2007. Malcolm Turnbull turned Abbott’s 2013 landslide into a close result in 2016.

But if Albanese doesn’t squander power, the Liberals would be pitching for a two-stage comeback at best. And Frydenberg just might be back in the play.

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: Could Josh Frydenberg still have a path to the Liberal leadership? – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-could-josh-frydenberg-still-have-a-path-to-the-liberal-leadership-201463

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Foster, Professor, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

The United Kingdom’s Illegal Migration Bill, introduced in the House of Commons this week, will look very familiar to Australians.

If passed, the bill would see asylum seekers who arrive in the UK without a visa deemed “illegal” and prohibited from applying for protection under the refugee system. Any claim for protection will be deemed “inadmissible”, and anyone arriving “illegally” will be removed to their home country or a so-called “safe” third country.

The bill also grants enhanced detention powers to the government while removal arrangements are under way. In other words, it lifts directly from the Australian handbook when it comes to punitive refugee policy, including the potentially devastating human impact and disregard for human rights.

The similarities extend to political spin as well as policy. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has firmly backed the bill, vowing this week to “fight” for the legislation. He made his address behind a lectern emblazoned with the slogan “stop the boats” – the same three-word slogan that helped former Australian Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott win the 2013 federal election, and launched a particularly dark chapter in refugee policy in Australia.

While the UK government notes that irregular migrant arrivals have “increased notably” since 2019, it is imperative to consider the origin of those seeking asylum.

Afghans consist of the largest nationality group to have crossed the English Chanel in recent months, consistently increasing since the resurgence of the Taliban.

Countries do not exist in a vacuum. When wars and conflict erupt, people are forced to flee elsewhere. This is the fundamental premise upon which the Refugee Convention was drafted in the aftermath of the second world war.

The dark history of Australia’s refugee policy

The reintroduction of regional processing of asylum seekers in Australia in 2012 followed a long history of turning back boats at sea. The turn-backs were drastically stepped up in the immediate aftermath of the 2013 election under the guise of Operation Sovereign Borders.

Both policies remain in place under the new Labor government at an estimated cost of $9.65 billion over the past decade for offshore processing alone. Australia’s policy of sending asylum seekers to third countries – Nauru and Papua New Guinea – has been found to contravene human rights by numerous international bodies.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet labelled the centres “an affront to the protection of human rights”. The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor called the offshore regime “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”.

Australian law provides that an application for a protection visa is not valid if made by an “unauthorised maritime arrival”. It also stipulates that such arrivals “must” be removed to a regional processing country.

The UK bill similarly places a duty on the secretary of state to remove any person who arrives without authority, irrespective of their claim for protection under refugee law. This amounts to a dangerous repudiation of the UK’s obligations under international refugee law to respect the doctrine of non-refoulement. It’s a cornerstone principle that protects refugees from being returned to a place where they may suffer harm.

This is but one of the more drastic ways in which the UK bill contravenes human rights law. Home Secretary Suella Braverman has acknowledged she cannot guarantee the bill is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

Concerningly, the UK bill further authorises the secretary to “make arrangements for the removal” of an unaccompanied child who arrives alone.

Removal of children is sadly commonplace in the Australian experience, with devastating impacts. More than 8,000 pages of leaked incident reports from Australia’s detention camps on Nauru in 2016 (known as the “Nauru files”) detailed numerous cases of child abuse and sexual assault suffered on the island. More than 1,000 of the leaked reports documented harm to children.

There’s no denying the issue of refugees arriving by sea is complex. But within the tangle of competing arguments, some things are simple. There’s no excuse for harming people.

With the UNHCR estimating the “vast majority” of those arriving in the UK via the English Channel would be accepted as refugees if their claims were fairly determined, this bill undermines the fundamental system of international protection. It represents a dangerous trend by governments eager to follow the lead of Australia’s punitive policy.

Read more:
Changes to temporary protection visas are a welcome development – and they won’t encourage people smugglers

The human toll is too high

Beneath the intellectual discussion of human rights violations lies the devastating human impact of the Australian policy Britain seeks to replicate. Over the past ten years, we’ve represented and heard from many who have suffered irreparable harm from Australia’s refugee policy.

Among them were children who have attempted self-harm and speak about no longer wanting to live. A tall, gentle man who lost his eye and suffered blunt facial trauma while witnessing his friend die during a riot in detention on Manus Island. A wife who watched on helplessly as her husband self-immolated on Nauru. He died in agonising pain two days later from burns the inquest into his death heard were “very survivable”. There were also pregnant women medically evacuated to Australia with life-threatening conditions, shaking on the hospital bed as they recall their ordeal and clutch their newborn.

We have witnessed families separated across oceans; fathers who missed the birth of their children. The ongoing physical and mental harm suffered by refugees in Australia cannot be overestimated – nor can the damage to the soul of the nation.

The Australian experience of deterring and punishing people seeking asylum by boat should serve as a warning rather than a blueprint for the UK. Australia represents an example of a dangerously inhumane and exorbitantly costly policy that has damaged its human rights standing globally. But, more fundamentally, it’s an example of the devastating human toll that will ensue if this bill is passed into law.

Michelle Foster receives funding from Australian Research Council.

Katie Robertson 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. UK moves to copy Australia’s cruel asylum-seeker policy – and it will have the same heavy human toll – https://theconversation.com/uk-moves-to-copy-australias-cruel-asylum-seeker-policy-and-it-will-have-the-same-heavy-human-toll-201390

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Cresswell, Adjunct professor, UNSW Sydney

Macquarie Island, around 1,500km southeast of Tasmania, is more than just a remote rocky outcrop. In fact, it’s the only piece of land on the planet formed completely from ocean floor, which rises above the waves to form peaks that teem with penguins and other bird species, some of them found nowhere else on Earth.

These are just some of the reasons why this unique island, and the seas that surround it, have globally significant conservation values. Our new independent assessment of these values forms the scientific evidence base of Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s announcement last month of plans to significantly increase protections for the waters surrounding Macquarie Island.

By comprehensively assessing the available data on the marine ecosystems and the many species that live on and around Macquarie Island, our report reveals a subantarctic environment that is crucial for breeding and feeding for millions of seabirds and thousands of marine mammals.

Macquarie Island and its surrounding seas (to a distance of 5.5km) are already protected as a Tasmanian reserve, and the area (this time including seas to a distance of 22km) is also a World Heritage Area. A Commonwealth marine park also covers most of the southeast quadrant of the island’s “economic exclusion zone”, including a sanctuary zone and two seafloor management zones.

The federal government’s proposed expansion of the marine park would cover the island’s entire economic exclusion zone, increasing the area of Australia’s marine sanctuaries by more than 388,000 square kilometres, an increase larger than the area of Germany.

An outstanding spectacle

Macquarie Island is the exposed crest of the 1,600km-long undersea Macquarie Ridge, which makes Macquarie Island the only piece of land in the world formed entirely of oceanic crust.

Macquarie Ridge is one of only three such ridges that impede the eastward flow of a current called the Antarctic Circumpolar Circulation, resulting in distinct differences between the west and east sides of the ridge, which are used in different ways by different species.

The oceanography is further divided north to south by two major ocean fronts, the Sub-Antarctic Front and the Polar Front, creating three distinct bodies of water. They are closer here than anywhere else in the Southern Ocean, and as they interact with the Macquarie Ridge create at least six different large-scale oceanographic habitats.

This creates an outstanding spectacle of wild, natural beauty and a diverse set of habitats supporting vast congregations of wildlife, including penguins and seals. Fifty-seven seabird species, including four species of penguins and four species of albatross, have been recorded on Macquarie Island, and 25 of these species have been observed breeding there. The royal penguin and the Macquarie Island imperial shag live nowhere else on Earth.

The ridge includes a series of undersea mountains that act as “stepping stones” linking subantarctic and polar animals on the sea floor, such as brittlestars.

Read more:
Enjoy them while you can? The ecotourism challenge facing Australia’s favourite islands

Needing more protection

Our report shows the area around Macquarie Island is not well represented by the current marine park. In particular, the entire area to the west, and most of the northern and southern parts of the Macquarie Ridge, are not protected by the current marine park, but will be included in the proposed expansion.

Our report also considers several options for protecting the area’s unique ecosystems and concludes that the most sensible approach, given the available data, would be to declare the whole area around the Macquarie Ridge as a marine park, increasing the protection outside the current sanctuary zone, while allowing the current fishery to continue in a habitat protection zone.

This provides the simplest, most expeditious reserve design that is relatively easy to implement, achieves environmental protection and sustainable fishing, recognises the importance of the entire Macquarie Island region, and provides the most resilience to climate change.

Direct human impacts in the area are predominantly due to fishing and marine debris, although climate change is an ever-present threat too. The fishery targets the deepwater Patagonian toothfish using bottom longlines, mostly in the central zone of the Macquarie Ridge. This fishery is generally well regarded for its best-practice fishing methods and commitment to positive environmental outcomes, and this fishing activity would continue under the new plans.

But if new fisheries were allowed to develop targeting midwater species, or new industries such as seabed mining were permitted, these could directly impact the seabirds, marine mammals and other species that live in these areas.

The proposal put forward by Minister Plibersek protects all of the Commonwealth waters in two different zones of a marine park, effectively tripling the size of the current marine park. It protects the marine domain and allows the current fishery to continue without significant changes to current practices or catches.

Restrictions on any potential future fisheries would be determined by the distribution of “sanctuary zones” which would preclude fishing, and “habitat/species zones”, which could accommodate sustainable fishing. Mining would be precluded under either category of protection.

Read more:
Disruption over Macquarie Island calls for some clever Antarctic thinking

What next?

The government’s proposal signals a clear priority for protection over development in this area. A period of public consultation on the proposal will commence in March. Any future development of the marine park would need to be orderly and careful, including prior consideration of environmental impacts. Any changes to the current fishery management arrangements should ensure that the changes maintain or enhance conditions for a long-term sustainable fishery.

More broadly, our report also demonstrates the potential for, and importance of, compiling the most up-to-date available data for any region prior to any formal review process to update Australia’s marine park network.

The authors thank Anthony D. M. Smith for his contribution to this article and the report on which it’s based.

Ian Cresswell received funding from the Australian Marine Conservation Society and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Andrew John Constable has received Funding from the Australian Marine Conservation Society and Pew Charitable Trusts.

Nic Bax has received funding from the Australian Marine Conservation Society and the Pew Charitable Trusts

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

– ref. Penguin paradise and geological freak: why Macquarie Island deserves a bigger marine park – https://theconversation.com/penguin-paradise-and-geological-freak-why-macquarie-island-deserves-a-bigger-marine-park-201368

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Xanthe Mallett, Forensic Criminologist, University of Newcastle

Madeleine McCann, the British girl who vanished as a three-year-old from her family’s holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007, was back in the news recently as yet another person claimed to be her. It’s a phenomenon fuelled by social media – in 2020 a TikTok trend emerged in which women uploaded images to compare themselves to Madeleine.

The latest claim was quickly debunked by police, but it raises an interesting question: why do some cases stick in the public consciousness? What generates the ongoing engagement and interest?

Put this into the context that two people under the age of 18 go missing every hour in Australia. That’s 48 every single day.

In the United Kingdom, of the 353,000 missing person incidents reported annually, almost 215,000 relate to children. Of these, 98% will be found within 2 days, while the other 2% will remain missing for more than a week – and, as in Madeleine’s case, some will stay missing for years.

The case of Madeleine McCann

I was living in the UK when Madeleine was abducted, and remember vividly the photos of her, and the constant live news coverage from the scene.

And I remember the interviews with Madeleine’s parents. I was working in a forensic centre, and I can recall conversations with criminal psychologists and forensic practitioners about the parents – we were all of the same mind. They were behaving exactly as parents would if their child had been abducted. Their body language, verbal cues, everything said they were telling the truth.

But their innocence was not accepted by everybody, and some people were suspicious because of the parents’ apparent determination to stay in the spotlight. For me, the reason was clear – keeping Madeleine on page 1, at the beginning of every news bulletin, constantly in the public eye and on the public’s mind, was their best chance of getting her back. They were trying to use the world’s media to help find their daughter.

Sadly, it failed, and we still don’t know what happened to Madeleine, or why, and ultimately who is responsible.

But it was that media strategy, fuelled by the parents’ intelligence, perseverance and strength, that made Madeleine a worldwide story. Add to that the pictures of Madeleine constantly circulated in the media, an innocent, angelic, blonde-haired child, and she has become part of the world’s collective conscience.

Madeleine is what social scientists would call an “ideal victim”, a term coined by criminologist Nils Christie as “a person or category of individuals who, when hit by crime, most readily are given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim”.

Once her face was implanted on our public consciousness, the story played into every parent’s worst nightmare: their child being taken by a predator, without leaving a trace, and never seen again.

Madeleine McCann and the ideal victim

It wasn’t that the circumstances around Madeleine’s disappearance were different to others, but the family that changed the script by how they responded. That’s why the whole world knows her name.

The term “ideal victim” can be a little confronting, and criminologists are not saying they are a good choice – but rather that the victim wasn’t engaging in any risky behaviour, they weren’t involved in any criminal activity, they were in essence totally blameless for what happened to them.

This is complicated framing, as people’s unconscious and conscious bias plays into how we judge a victim’s culpability, and ultimately how much we care about them as a victim or survivor.

I’ve spoken about this “weighing of human worth” and our associated interest in some cases over others before. In an earlier piece for The Conversation , I discussed the notion of “White women’s syndrome” and why there is always more media and public interest when a young, attractive, Caucasian female vanishes, when compared to a woman of colour for example.

I used the media storm around Gabby Petito to illustrate this: Gabby was another “ideal victim” – young, innocent, vulnerable, and the target of an abusive, controlling man.

Read more:
The Gabby Petito case has been exploited by the media. We need to stop treating human tragedy as entertainment

But how has that level of public attention on the case, dissection almost, expressed itself? Well, if you type ‘Madeleine McCann’ into a Google search, you will return around 26,200,000 hits.

Channel 9 created a podcast, which releases new episodes every time there is a “breakthrough”. Dozens of other podcast series have produced episodes on the case.

A comparable Australian story

William Tyrrell is Australia’s Madeleine. William was also three years old when he vanished from his step-grandmother’s home in New South Wales in 2014. Like Madeleine, he vanished without a trace, and there were images of William available in the media, showing a gorgeous little boy, the very picture of innocence.

Who can forget the little boy in the Spider-Man suit? Another ideal victim, and one the media – and the public – took to their hearts.

But not all children get the same attention. Do you know the name of Bradford Pholi, a ten-year-old Indigenous boy who disappeared after leaving his family home in Sydney on Boxing Day in 1982?

It’s likely Bradford was murdered, and a $100,000 reward was offered in 2009. While his siblings remain hopeful one day they will find out what happened to their brother, I doubt his face is one you will recognise.

I have never seen it age-progressed to see what Bradford would look like now, as has been done for both Madeleine and William.

Stories about First Nations children do not generate the same attention as that seen for white children, a sad truth and one that must be recognised and faced. Why are we less engaged with stories like Bradford’s? This is a question I wrestle with as a criminologist and as a person.

Madeleine’s disappearance changed missing children’s cases forever

One positive that can be taken away from Madeleine’s case is that the media strategy used by her parents has changed the ways families of missing children interact with the media.

To gain interest and keep the search front and centre for the missing children, the family has to engage and face the media pack, as hard as that is under such an extremely stressful situation. They need to be the voice for their missing child.

Read more:
Cleo Smith has been gone almost a week. Why missing children cases grip the nation

It worked in the case of Cleo Smith, the four-year-old who was abducted while camping with her mother and de facto father in regional Western Australia in 2021. Again, the world watched and breathed a collective sigh of relief when 18 days later Cleo was found.

Sadly, the media strategy has not paid off, yet, in Madeleine’s case, but the world lives in hope that one day we will find out what happened to her.

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

– ref. The case of missing Madeleine McCann still grips the world – but why? – https://theconversation.com/the-case-of-missing-madeleine-mccann-still-grips-the-world-but-why-200727

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna DeMello, Research Fellow, University of Otago

New Zealand’s smokefree law, which came into effect in January, introduces several world-first endgame measures, including removing most nicotine from smoked products, disallowing product sales to anyone born on or after January 1 2009, and a major reduction in the number of tobacco retail outlets nationwide (from about 6000 to 600).

Several studies reporting associations between greater retailer density and higher tobacco use among both adults and adolescents support this measure.

As researchers working on these issues, we were keen to know how people who smoke perceived the retail reduction measure, and how they would respond and adapt once it was implemented.

Our open-access research unearthed new insights into the potential effects fewer outlets would have on people who smoke. We were particularly interested in speaking with Māori, who bear a disproportionate burden of harm from smoking.

We interviewed 24 adult participants from Dunedin (Otepoti) and Hamilton (Kirikiriroa). We used web-based, interactive maps to illustrate the potentially large drop in retailers in these locations, compared with the current number of outlets. For Dunedin, the number of outlets in our scenario dropped from around 80 to just 3.

Read more:
New Zealand is introducing law to create a smokefree generation. Here are 6 reasons to support this policy

Impacts on daily life, wellbeing and equity

Although many expected to be able to purchase tobacco during regular shopping trips, people who did not live near a designated retailer felt the changes would disrupt their lives. They raised concerns about fuel costs, travel difficulties and risk of increased judgement.

While some expected to budget more carefully in response to the changes, others anticipated purchasing tobacco in bulk (buying a week’s supply at once) in the short term, if they could afford it. Some worried that having extra tobacco on hand could increase smoking.

As discussions evolved, many participants thought they would reduce their smoking, or quit, as access became less convenient. They anticipated better health and felt becoming smokefree would foster their physical and mental wellbeing. As one explained:

It would be a really good way for me to cut down. I’m over it … Why do I put something into my body that’s harming me? Self-harm, isn’t it?

Nonetheless, others were adamant their smoking would not change, either because they thought addiction ruled this out or because they resisted change imposed by others.

Most thought the measure would help people planning to quit and those who had recently given up smoking, as it would make tobacco less ubiquitous. They also expected reduced availability to prevent youth uptake, an outcome they strongly supported.

Participants anticipated youth would experience a “healthier, better world” where tobacco no longer threatened their wellbeing, independence and resilience.

Yet many remained concerned about people who had smoked longer-term and felt they would struggle to quit and could perhaps sacrifice necessities (food and power) to continue smoking. One said:

The younger generation … target them, that’s great, but people who have been smoking their entire lives … I think it’s extremely unfair for them.

A large majority believed the changes would burden people experiencing material hardship and mental ill health. They thought these people would experience reduced physical, mental and whānau wellbeing. Participants strongly endorsed greater community-level support, which they thought could help people managing difficult life circumstances.

Read more:
Forget tobacco industry arguments about choice. Here’s what young people think about NZ’s smokefree generation policy

Taking a wider approach

Participants’ contributions illustrate the complex and contradictory responses smokefree policies elicit. While they supported quitting (many participants hoped to eventually become smokefree) and preventing youth uptake, their concerns illustrate another, less comfortable perspective which sees the new measures as a potential threat to those who are vulnerable and addicted.

Our findings highlight the importance of community mobilisation, enhanced cessation support and strong Māori leadership, as signalled in the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan.

In particular, the responses highlight the need for approaches that go beyond biomedical, health-focused thinking. Addressing the concerns raised in our research could assuage our participants’ worries and minimise maladaptive responses – but only if the approaches used are comprehensive and culturally meaningful.

Anna DeMello 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. NZ’s smokefree law will reduce the number of tobacco retailers – here’s what people who smoke think of that – https://theconversation.com/nzs-smokefree-law-will-reduce-the-number-of-tobacco-retailers-heres-what-people-who-smoke-think-of-that-200436

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Greening, Professor, Microbiology, Monash University

It may sound surprising, but when times are tough and there is no other food available, some soil bacteria can consume traces of hydrogen in the air as an energy source.

In fact, bacteria remove a staggering 70 million tonnes of hydrogen yearly from the atmosphere, a process that literally shapes the composition of the air we breathe.

We have isolated an enzyme that enables some bacteria to consume hydrogen and extract energy from it, and found it can produce an electric current directly when exposed to even minute amounts of hydrogen.

As we report in a new paper in Nature, the enzyme may have considerable potential to power small, sustainable air-powered devices in future.

Bacterial genes contain the secret for turning air into electricity

Prompted by this discovery, we analysed the genetic code of a soil bacterium called Mycobacterium smegmatis, which consumes hydrogen from air.

Written into these genes is the blueprint for producing the molecular machine responsible for consuming hydrogen and converting it into energy for the bacterium. This machine is an enzyme called a “hydrogenase”, and we named it Huc for short.

Hydrogen is the simplest molecule, made of two positively charged protons held together by a bond formed by two negatively charged electrons. Huc breaks this bond, the protons part ways, and the electrons are released.

In the bacteria, these free electrons then flow into a complex circuit called the “electron transport chain”, and are harnessed to provide the cell with energy.

Flowing electrons are what electricity is made of, meaning Huc directly converts hydrogen into electrical current.

Hydrogen represents only 0.00005% of the atmosphere. Consuming this gas at these low concentrations is a formidable challenge, which no known catalyst can achieve. Furthermore, oxygen, which is abundant in the atmosphere, poisons the activity of most hydrogen-consuming catalysts.

Isolating the enzyme that allows bacteria to live on air

We wanted to know how Huc overcomes these challenges, so we set out to isolate it from M. smegmatis cells.

The process for doing this was complicated. We first modified the genes in M. smegmatis that allow the bacteria to make this enzyme. In doing this we added a specific chemical sequence to Huc, which allowed us to isolate it from M. smegmatis cells.

Read more:
Antarctic bacteria live on air and make their own water using hydrogen as fuel

Getting a good look at Huc wasn’t easy. It took several years and quite a few experimental dead ends before we finally isolated a high-quality sample of the ingenious enzyme.

However, the hard work was worth it, as the Huc we eventually produced is very stable. It withstands temperatures from 80℃ down to –80℃ without activity loss.

The molecular blueprint for extracting hydrogen from air

With Huc isolated, we set about studying it in earnest, to discover what exactly the enzyme is capable of. How can it turn the hydrogen in the air into a sustainable source of electricity?

Remarkably, we found that even when isolated from the bacteria, Huc can consume hydrogen at concentrations far lower even than the tiny traces in the air. In fact, Huc still consumed whiffs of hydrogen too faint to be detected by our gas chromatograph, a highly sensitive instrument we use to measure gas concentrations.

We also found Huc is entirely uninhibited by oxygen, a property not seen in other hydrogen-consuming catalysts.

To assess its ability to convert hydrogen to electricity, we used a technique called electrochemistry. This showed Huc can convert minute concentrations of hydrogen in air directly into electricity, which can power an electrical circuit. This is a remarkable and unprecedented achievement for a hydrogen-consuming catalyst.

We used several cutting-edge methods to study how Huc does this at the molecular level. These included advanced microscopy (cryogenic electron microscopy) and spectroscopy to determine its atomic structure and electrical pathways, pushing boundaries to produce the most highly resolved enzyme structure yet reported by this method.

Enzymes could use air to power the devices of tomorrow

It’s early days for this research, and several technical challenges need to be overcome to realise the potential of Huc.

For one thing, we will need to significantly increase the scale of Huc production. In the lab we produce Huc in milligram quantities, but we want to scale this up to grams and ultimately kilograms.

However, our work demonstrates that Huc functions like a “natural battery” producing a sustained electrical current from air or added hydrogen.

As a result, Huc has considerable potential in developing small, sustainable air-powered devices as an alternative to solar power.

The amount of energy provided by hydrogen in the air would be small, but likely sufficient to power a biometric monitor, clock, LED globe or simple computer. With more hydrogen, Huc produces more electricity and could potentially power larger devices.

Another application would be the development of Huc-based bioelectric sensors for detecting hydrogen, which could be incredibly sensitive. Huc could be invaluable for detecting leaks in the infrastructure of our burgeoning hydrogen economy or in a medical setting.

In short, this research shows how a fundamental discovery about how bacteria in soils feed themselves can lead to a reimagining of the chemistry of life. Ultimately it may also lead to the development of technologies for the future.

Chris Greening receives funding from the Australian Research Council, National Health & Medical Research Council, Human Frontiers Science Program, and Australian Antarctic Division.

Ashleigh Kropp receives funding from the Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship from the Australian Government.

Rhys Grinter receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), and the National Health the Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

– ref. Electricity from thin air: an enzyme from bacteria can extract energy from hydrogen in the atmosphere – https://theconversation.com/electricity-from-thin-air-an-enzyme-from-bacteria-can-extract-energy-from-hydrogen-in-the-atmosphere-200432

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick F Walsh, Professor Intelligence and Security Studies, Charles Sturt University

A recent Wall Street Journal article reported on new, classified intelligence from the US Department of Energy about the origins of COVID. It concluded with “low confidence” that the pandemic may have been due to a lab leak in Wuhan, China, rather than a natural disease transmission from animal to human.

The report is the latest chapter in a long saga about the origins of the pandemic, involving conflicting assessments from intelligence, policy and scientific communities around the globe.

The debate over the origins of COVID began early in the pandemic, with a lot of pressure being placed on the intelligence community by then-US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to lay blame on the Chinese government.

In May 2021, the Biden administration tried to resolve some of the conflicting intelligence and data points about the origins of COVID by tasking the US intelligence community to do a 90-day review on the available information.

An unclassified version of this review was then released in October 2021. It was published by the peak body within the US intelligence community – the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The report shows a consensus among eight US intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council (which provides longer-term strategic analysis for the president) that COVID was not a bioterrorism incident.

However, there was disagreement among the agencies around the two most probable origins of COVID:

• it was the result of animal-to-human transmission

• it was the result of an accidental laboratory leak, likely from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

No agency was named in the unclassified report, though four agencies, as well as the National Intelligence Council, have reportedly concluded (also with low confidence) that the origins were from natural transmission. Two others (the FBI and Department of Energy) have now assessed it as a lab leak. Two agencies remain undecided, including, reportedly, the CIA.

Why is intelligence conflicting?

This lack of consensus among intelligence agencies and low levels of confidence on their assessments are due to many factors.

The variations in analytical judgements are mostly due to how each agency interprets what are, at best, fragmented intelligence sources. There’s also the question of how intelligence analysts comprehend complicated scientific research.

Several scientific studies that examined environmental testing for COVID at the live animal and seafood market in Wuhan and early patient cases living nearby have provided strong evidence of a natural transmission of the virus. That is, the scientific evidence leads to the market as the probable epicentre of the epidemic.

Read more:
The COVID lab leak theory is dead. Here’s how we know the virus came from a Wuhan market

Yet, the scientific and epidemiological data itself is also incomplete. In particular, analysts haven’t identified which animal the virus likely “jumped from” to infect humans. More genetic data and a better understanding of how coronaviruses are transmitted naturally are required to fill the information gaps, notably in the initial cases in Wuhan.

According to US officials, Beijing has not been willing to provide full access to data requests from Western governments – or to the World Health Organization.

What needs to change before the next pandemic

The Department of Energy report highlights an even greater issue that has received less attention. The US intelligence community and its other “Five Eyes” partners (Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand) must improve their intelligence collection methods and analysis of health security threats and dangers, including from potential pandemics.

Four things will help improve the capabilities of the intelligence community and hopefully bring greater confidence in their assessments of the causes of future health emergencies and pandemics.

1. Better health intelligence collection and analysis

As pandemics become more frequent, our intelligence agencies need better risk, threat and hazard assessment methodologies to drive more robust, evidence-based collection and analysis of intelligence.

This means improving ways to combine traditional intelligence sources (often qualitative in nature) with scientific evidence to better assess the potential intent, capability and impact of threats and health hazards.

2. Fostering stronger ties with the scientific community

The intricacy of future pandemic threats and possible weaponisation of biotechnology will require intelligence agencies to foster a more purposeful and consistent interaction with the scientific community.

The US intelligence community has a track record here, but it and other Five Eyes countries will require even more strategic, coordinated outreach from the relatively closed intelligence world to the scientific community.

Greater workforce expertise in microbiology, genetics, virology and public health is also required within the intelligence community.

3. Creating a robust national health security strategy

Each agency cannot feasibly develop the capabilities to improve its intelligence collection and analysis on its own. A whole-of-government approach is required to iron out each agency’s roles, functions and mandates for future health security risks.

We advocate for a national health security strategy, much like the national cybersecurity strategies in each Five Eyes country, to improve governance and coordination across intelligence agencies in the health security space.

4. Conducting a 9/11 commission-style review

Lastly, to develop stronger post-COVID national health security measures, we need full independent reviews of how the intelligence community and key public health agencies worked throughout the pandemic in the US and its allies.

Such reviews could include what was done well and lessons to be learned that can be fed into national health security strategies.

Ideally, a review would also examine any evidence of politicising intelligence. Politics have always influenced intelligence gathering and analysis, not just during COVID.

For example, the assessment of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 shows how politics can negatively affect the ability of intelligence agencies to provide independent, non-biased advice to policy makers.

Recent calls for the equivalent of a 9/11 commission into COVID so far have not gone anywhere in Washington. It is not too late for such a review to take place. But realistically, given the fractured political climate in the US, the possibility of establishing an independent commission seems more difficult than in the other Five Eyes countries.

What this means is that we’re missing an opportunity to improve our intelligence agencies, which is acutely needed before the next global pandemic event.

Read more:
It’s getting harder for scientists to collaborate across borders – that’s bad when the world faces global problems like pandemics and climate change

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. Disputes over COVID’s origins reveal an intelligence community in disarray. Here are 4 fixes we need before the next pandemic – https://theconversation.com/disputes-over-covids-origins-reveal-an-intelligence-community-in-disarray-here-are-4-fixes-we-need-before-the-next-pandemic-201166

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sora Park, Professor of Communication, News & Media Research Centre, University of Canberra

Australian media have been widely criticised for not representing the diversity of the community they speak to and write for – nor, importantly, the people they report on. Our latest research shows that while the news industry is beginning to address its lack of diversity, there is still much work to be done.

Findings are showcased in the Valuing Diversity in News and Newsrooms report, released today. The analysis is based on a national online survey of 2,266 Australians and 196 journalists, combined with in-depth interviews with 27 journalists about their views on diversity in the news and in newsrooms.

Australia is a multicultural country. Half (48%) the population has at least one parent born overseas. Almost one-third (28%) were themselves born overseas. One in four lives in a non-English-speaking household.

However, the report shows only 39% of Australians believe everyone is treated equally, regardless of their ethnic or cultural background.

A key reason respondents may feel this is a sense of not being seen or heard in the news. Feeling equally valued and heard is an essential ingredient of social cohesion.

However, when asked about fairness and amount of coverage, less than half (46%) say the news covers culturally diverse people fairly. Only 44% say there is enough coverage of issues relevant to them, while 41% say the news is impartial and unbiased when reporting on these groups. These figures drop significantly among audiences from non-European, non-Anglo or Indigenous backgrounds.

Most Australians consider the news media to be doing a good job of covering the most important stories of the day (76%) and reporting stories accurately (70%). However, only around half say that news organisations are doing a good job of giving voice to the underrepresented (54%), with 38% saying they are doing a bad job at this.

Journalists are generally critical of the state of diversity in the industry. Only 30% of journalists say there is enough ethnic or cultural diversity in their news organisation. Around one in ten say they have experienced discrimination based on their ethnic or cultural background, and 47% of women journalists say they have experienced discrimination because of their gender. Only around half say their news organisation is doing a good job of producing news content for ethnically diverse audiences.

Why are we not seeing diversity in the news? Some of the answers can be found in the structure, practices and cultures of news organisations.

First, there are simply too few people from different cultural backgrounds in newsrooms across Australia.

According to Census 2021, only about 9% of journalists are from a non-Anglo or non-European background. A study that analysed 103 news programs over two weeks in June 2022 found 78% of presenters, commentators and reporters had an Anglo-Celtic background.

Second, competing news values often push diversity down the priority list.

Most journalists we interviewed agreed inclusive reporting is good journalism. In the survey, we asked journalists which area of newsroom diversity they would like to prioritise: “ethnic and cultural diversity” was ranked the top.

However, when they are on the job and making reporting decisions, understandably they prioritise relevance to their audience (91%) first. Compared to other news values such as exclusivity (47%), capturing attention (42%) or surprise and novelty (38%), only 29% say it is very or extremely important that news includes voices from multicultural communities.

Third, the “glass ceiling and sticky floor” phenomenon is persistent. We found people from ethnically or culturally diverse backgrounds seeking a career in journalism continue to face discrimination.

Overall, 43% of journalists agree there are barriers to getting a job in their organisation because of ethnic or cultural background. And the majority (69%) of journalists from non-Anglo/non-European backgrounds say they have experienced barriers to career progression because of their ethnic or cultural background.

More than two-thirds “somewhat” or “strongly agree” their organisation’s junior level is doing a good job with employee diversity (67%). In stark contrast, only 23% “somewhat” or “strongly agree” that senior levels at their organisation are doing well with employee diversity.

Fourth, there is not enough training and support from the organisation.

Over half (52%) of journalists say their news organisation has policies relating to language use about ethnically diverse communities. About half (49%) also say their organisation collects or monitors staff diversity. However, only 39% received training on how to cover issues of diversity in the past year.

The journalists we interviewed cautioned against inclusion as a “box-ticking” exercise, and labelling people from diverse backgrounds. A journalist from an Asian background talked about an inclusivity workshop where participants were all non-white, emphasising the importance of making sure journalists from all cultural backgrounds receive adequate training.

News organisations have made significant efforts to improve newsroom diversity in recent years. Despite this, we still have a long way to go in shifting the culture, removing unconscious bias and making space for journalists from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Trust and engagement with the news media are directly related to audiences’ perceptions of adequate and fair representation. So for news organisations seeking to regain audience trust, it is vital to have journalists from diverse cultural backgrounds telling stories from their experience.

Sora Park receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Google News Initiative, Australian Community Media and Australia Council for the Arts.

Jee Young Lee receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Google News Initiative, Australian Community Media and Australia Council for the Arts.

Kieran McGuinness has received funding from Google News Initiative and the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

– ref. Australia’s media improve on diversity – but there’s still a long way to go – https://theconversation.com/australias-media-improve-on-diversity-but-theres-still-a-long-way-to-go-200452

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Malouff, Associate Professor, School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences, University of New England

You have made a momentous decision: you will seek psychological treatment for your depression, anxiety, substance abuse, or other mental health issue.

Your mind then may turn to the question of what type of treatment would best suit you. To even ask this sophisticated question, you need to realise there are various types of psychological treatment. To make a wise choice, you must understand what each type of therapy provides.

Let’s look at several types of psychotherapy (also known as talking therapy) that have the potential to help with almost any mental health problem.

Read more:
Think therapy is navel-gazing? Think again

1. Cognitive behaviour therapy

Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is a common type of therapy where the therapist explores the thoughts and behaviours that relate to your therapy goal.

Let’s suppose you have been feeling depressed for months. Relevant thoughts might be that no one likes you and that you are worthless. Relevant behaviours might include staying in your home and avoiding contact with others.

The therapist would likely help you challenge the accuracy and usefulness of those thoughts and find replacement thoughts. The therapist might encourage you to do more for fun and to interact more with others.

Read more:
Explainer: what is cognitive behaviour therapy?

2. Acceptance and commitment therapy

In acceptance and commitment therapy, you would instead be asked to accept your negative thoughts as yours (regardless of whether they are accurate) and also accept your negative emotions.

The therapist would encourage you to look at your thoughts and emotions as separate from you so you can examine them more objectively. Acceptance might reduce your negative feelings about yourself.

The therapist would explore your values and encourage you to commit to acting according to them. If you value kindness, for instance, the therapist might encourage you to show kindness to others.

3. Psychodynamic therapy

A psychodynamic therapist would help you explore your childhood, searching for traumas and difficulties with your parents.

If you felt unloved by your parents as a child, you would consider whether your parents provide a fair representation of the entire world.

You might consider to what extent you deserve love now as an adult. You might also gain insight into how your early experiences colour your current expectations, and affect your emotions and behaviour.

You might find yourself transferring to the therapist your feelings toward your parents and then realise that others are not your parents and you are no longer an unloved child.

4. Narrative therapy

In narrative therapy, you would explore the stories of your life, particularly the stories that seem to persist.

If you were an outsider in school, reluctant to join in social activities, you may think of yourself as a loner. As an adult, even though you engage fully and successfully in social interactions at work, you may continue to think of yourself as a loner.

In other words, the story you tell yourself remains unchanged despite your social success at work, and you feel depressed about being alone.

In becoming aware of the story of your life, you create distance from the story and you may find ways to change the story (the narrative). In essence, you rewrite the story in a realistic way to develop toward being the person you want to be.

Read more:
Psychologists are starting to talk publicly about their own mental illnesses – and patients can benefit

5. Person-centred therapy

In person-centered therapy, sometimes called supportive counselling, the therapist would listen attentively, try hard to understand life as you experience it and try to understand and even feel your emotions.

The therapist would show caring and an interest in helping you, in the expectation that you can find your own way to overcome feeling depressed.

A mix of styles to suit you

You can ask potential therapists what type of therapy they provide. Many will say they are eclectic, meaning they try to choose methods to suit each client and specific problem. They may combine methods of different therapy types.

They may also use popular methods such as mindfulness training that do not fit any specific therapy type. Mindfulness training involves focusing on your breathing and being aware of the here and now.

You can request an eclectic therapist to provide a certain type of therapy or certain therapy methods. Once the therapist gets to know you, you can discuss your preferences and decide on the therapy methods to use.

Read more:
Meditation and mindfulness offer an abundance of health benefits and may be as effective as medication for treating certain conditions

How can you decide which one?

You might wonder which type of therapy usually works best. The answer is unclear. Much depends on the specific client, the problem and the therapist.

Most types of therapy work moderately well for treating people with depression. Psychotherapy also appears to be reasonably effective for other types of psychological problems.

CBT has the strongest evidence for treating a broad range of psychological problems (including post-traumatic stress disorder). However, CBT has the most evidence in part because it is heavily studied (for example to treat specific phobias).

Acceptance and commitment therapy is also backed by substantial evidence, as is psychodynamic therapy.

The effects of narrative therapy and person-centred therapy have not been studied so much.

Some people, including those with depression or psychosis, can benefit by receiving psychotherapy and taking medication prescribed by a GP or psychiatrist.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

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

– ref. I think I need therapy. Here are 5 types of psychotherapy to help with almost any mental health problem – https://theconversation.com/i-think-i-need-therapy-here-are-5-types-of-psychotherapy-to-help-with-almost-any-mental-health-problem-199197

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Rae, Honorary Professorial Fellow, School of Chemistry, The University of Melbourne

Can bushfire smoke reduce the concentration of ozone in the stratosphere? A decade ago, we might have been sceptical. But there’s a growing body of research showing a clear link.

Last year, MIT expert Susan Solomon and colleagues published a groundbreaking study showing the 900,000 tonnes of bushfire smoke and particles emitted during Australia’s 2019–20 Black Summer did, in fact, thin out the ozone umbrella that protects us.

Ozone floats around 20–25 kilometres above our heads, acting like airborne sunscreen. Its concentration is tiny – up to 15 parts per million – but it is highly effective at blocking damaging ultraviolet-B rays from the sun. Without this layer, many plants would die, while humans and other animals would be afflicted with skin cancers.

The Black Summer fires burned so much forest and scrub across the country they produced massive pyrocumulus clouds. The fires were making their own weather, sending plumes of smoke into the higher reaches of our atmosphere, where smoke particles interacted with ozone. That single Australian summer of fire took out 1% of the atmosphere’s ozone – damage that will take a decade to fix.

Now, Solomon’s researchers have found out how smoke actually does it. In their new research, they detail the chemistry involved. This research is important, as we enter what’s been dubbed the Pyrocene – the age of fire – with bushfires already growing in size and intensity as the world heats up.

So how does smoke break ozone?

Australians became all too familiar with the sight and smell of bushfire smoke over the Black Summer. But what’s in it?

Particles in bushfire smoke are carbonaceous, consisting of burnt and partly burnt vegetable material alongside sulfates – compounds which can be pumped into the atmosphere by volcanoes, fossil fuel burning, or bushfires.

The problem is, these carbonaceous particles bind well to substances like hydrogen chloride which comes from the chemical compounds found in living plants. Other compounds with chlorine are also involved in the smoke, such as the reactive chlorine nitrate and hypochlorous acid.

Read more:
Bushfire smoke is everywhere in our cities. Here’s exactly what you are inhaling

The tiny smoke particles act as transport, carrying these substances containing chlorine up higher and higher to the stratosphere. Once there, chlorine sets about destroying ozone, molecule by molecule. Each chlorine atom can take apart hundreds of ozone molecules, meaning a small amount can have a disproportionate impact.

To find this out, Solomon and her colleagues relied heavily on models of the atmospheric chemistry. Their results agreed well with experimental observations made by satellite. So, although the chemical interactions have not been fully shown, the overall picture is probably correct.

You might remember it was chlorine atoms at the heart of our fears about the hole in the ozone layer. Almost 50 years ago, scientists discovered our protective ozone layer was thinning – and connected it to the chlorine-dense chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in spray cans and refrigerators.

The area of greatest loss was dubbed the “ozone hole”, which still appears over Antarctica each year in spring in smaller form.

The way we responded to the loss of stratospheric ozone is remarkable, in retrospect. In 1987, nations agreed to the Montreal Protocol, banning CFC manufacture and use. It worked, and concentrations of ozone are now recovering by around 1% a year. That figure is about what was lost during the Black Summer.

What does this mean for the future?

It means the ozone layer will be slowly degraded by wildfire smoke. Fires burn in both northern and southern hemispheres, and their smoke is swept around the globe by natural processes. That means we’re likely to see falling ozone concentrations in new places rather than just around the South Pole. Affected areas would include the mid-latitudes around the equator, where billions of people live.

Ozone does replenish itself. It’s continuously formed and destroyed in the stratosphere. The net balance of these competing processes has – until now – been a steady but small concentration of ozone. This layer makes life possible by absorbing the worst of the ultraviolet light pouring down from the sun and giving us a measure of protection from skin-damaging radiation.

A hotter world is one with more fire in it, affecting areas like Siberian tundra, Californian mountains and Kenyan grasslands.

This research is yet another warning about the perils of unmitigated climate change. Bushfire smoke could undo the good work of the Montreal Protocol.

In retrospect, achieving this protocol seems relatively straightforward: ban one class of chemicals. To stop bushfire smoke eating away at our ozone umbrella means reversing climate change. And that is something we are struggling to do.

Read more:
Repairing ozone layer is also reducing CO₂ in the atmosphere – new study

Ian Rae was for 15 years a member of technical advisory groups to the Montreal Protocol

– ref. Bushfire smoke eats up the ozone protecting us from dangerous radiation. The damage will increase as the world heats up – https://theconversation.com/bushfire-smoke-eats-up-the-ozone-protecting-us-from-dangerous-radiation-the-damage-will-increase-as-the-world-heats-up-201375

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gavin R. Slemp, Associate Professor, Centre for Wellbeing Science, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne

About three quarters of Australian teachers experience substantial stress in a typical work week, according to a 2021 survey. Another 2019 Australian study showed more than half suffer from anxiety, and about one in five meet the criteria for moderate to severe depression.

It’s not surprising, then, that increasing numbers of teachers are leaving the profession. Meanwhile, enrolments for education degrees have been declining.

Teachers in Australia and around the world are under-resourced and burning out, reinforcing the urgent need for policy initiatives to improve their working conditions. But can anything else be done?

Our research shows one way teachers may be able to take more control over their wellbeing at work is by “job crafting”.

Read more:
Australia has a plan to fix its school teacher shortage. Will it work?

What is job crafting?

Job crafting is about making noticeable changes to your job to make it more engaging and meaningful. These are changes you make yourself of your own initiative and they can be small or large. The idea is employees “craft” their jobs so it more closely aligns with what they value and how they perceive themselves.

Job crafting emerged in management research in 2001, and has since been studied in a range of occupations. There are at least three different ways employees can craft their work:

• Task crafting is about changing the number, scope, sequence, or types of tasks in a job

• Relational crafting is about making changes to how you relate to people at work

• Cognitive crafting refers to changing how you interpret or think about your work.

Studies show job crafting is associated with employee wellbeing, engagement and performance. Studies also show when employees are trained to use job crafting strategies, they show increased performance and work engagement.

Read more:
Australian teachers are dissatisfied with their jobs but their sense of professional belonging is strong

Our research

In 2022, we conducted 46 in-depth interviews with teachers across all levels in Australia about how they used job crafting. Teachers told us they used job crafting in multiple ways, including by modifying the tasks they did with students and by involving other teachers in their classes.

One primary school teacher spoke about how he combined his hobby of playing cards with his maths lessons.

I bring a lot of those card games into class with the kids and we find the maths in the games […] I think they can definitely sense my passion for the games and that makes them more excited. I’ve had quite a few parents say, ‘My child now loves maths because of the way you play the games,’ which is really nice.

Another primary school teacher spoke of how they emphasised their love of reading in their teaching – and sought out new ways to read with their students through collaborating with other teachers.

Just because I love reading books, after lunch we might read a book, or go to another [teacher’s] class and read a book with their kids, and [that teacher] will come to mine. It means I get to meet new kids and they’ve got someone different in front of them, and my kids also have someone different in front of them.

A secondary teacher gave us another example of how they work with colleagues during the day, to change classroom dynamics:

I love saying to the other teachers, ‘Hey, do you want to drop into my class because I think you’ll like it’ or ‘This kid misses you, he hasn’t seen you in ages, do you want to come swing by?’ It’s so nice to have other adults in the room […] And [for] teachers that you have really good relationships with, you can then model what a healthy relationship looks like to the kids.

‘Helping human beings’

Other teachers spoke of how they used cognitive crafting by expanding their ideas of what they consider to be the role of a teacher. As one primary teacher noted:

I see myself as helping human beings grow rather than teaching academic knowledge.

A secondary teacher also talked of the importance of thinking beyond the daily “grind” of their job:

I think teachers can, especially when they’ve been teaching for a while, kind of get into a bit of a grind. And it’s just they see teaching as delivering content. But I don’t see it that way. To me, teaching is all about building relationships with my students and using the content as a vehicle to build those relationships and to hopefully get them to where they need to be in later life.

Cognitive strategies such as this are key to connecting the job to a larger purpose. This gives work more meaning, which is essential for employee wellbeing.

What helps job crafting?

Our interviewees also spoke of the things that helped and hindered their job crafting.

They told us having too many time pressures and administrative burdens made it difficult to try new approaches. They also said a lack of time, rigid systems, and a lack of autonomy within their schools made it difficult to be creative. One secondary teacher noted:

If you’ve been teaching for a while, or even if you’re a grad teacher, you spend a lot of time, you know, just surviving. Then to have the energy to think about changing things, even if it is for the better, it’s difficult.

Teachers said they needed time to reflect on their work. They also said they needed school leaders to support their ideas, so they felt safe and free to take risks, which research shows is important for job crafting.

One primary teacher noted how many teachers are fearful of being judged at work.

We preach mistakes being okay and risk-taking with our kids, but we don’t really with our staff. We like our staff to be neat and ordered and to tick the right boxes […]. So I think that whole idea of taking risks and challenging educational philosophies would allow people to be more curious in that space.

Job crafting works, but we need to do more

Our research shows teachers are using job crafting to make their jobs more manageable, more enjoyable and more effective.

They also told us the overall school environment can either support these different approaches – or make it too difficult to try.

While job crafting has significant potential to help teachers in stressful jobs, it is important to note that improving teacher wellbeing is a shared responsibility. And it is up to schools, government and the broader community to better support the important work teachers do.

Kelsey J. Lewis contributed to the research in this piece.

Gavin R. Slemp has previously participated in a research project that was partially funded by the Victorian Department of Education and Training’s Strengthening Teachers Initiative.

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

– ref. Our research shows how ‘job crafting’ can help teachers manage and enjoy their stressful work – https://theconversation.com/our-research-shows-how-job-crafting-can-help-teachers-manage-and-enjoy-their-stressful-work-200087

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

Treasurer Jim Chalmers sparked a political row when he announced a tax hike on superannuation concessions for accounts with balances over $3 million, from 15% to 30%, to begin in 2025. Polling indicates the move has broad support from the public, although any change to super is always controversial. Opposition leader Peter Dutton has promised the change would be reversed by a Coalition government.

Mike Callaghan, a former treasury official, chaired the Retirement Income Review that was handed to the Morrison government in 2020.

Callaghan sees the Chalmers’ change to super as “an important step”.

“I think one of the most encouraging things is the fact that this issue regarding equity and sustainability of superannuation, and the measure, has taken place now because it’s a very controversial topic […] The fact that we have seen movement is very encouraging.”

“There’s a lot more that needs to be done in terms of improving the equity and sustainability of the retirement income system and superannuation in particular.

“The unfortunate thing is, given the controversy around it, it might kerb enthusiasm […] towards some more significant changes for some time. That could be the downside of this.”

The superannuation tax concessions are skewed heavily towards higher income earners. Observers have noted that superannuation has become an inheritance vehicle in many cases. Ageing Australians are passing their assets to family rather than using the “nest egg” for their retirement. Callaghan sees this as a “significant issue”.

“It’s fine if people want to leave an inheritance to their children, but what we’re seeing now is that’s not generally a conscious decision of people. We’re seeing across the system now, people not drawing [superannuation savings] down to use them for the intended purpose, which was to support the standard of living in retirement.

“The problem is […] that people don’t know what to do to make the best use of the assets they have in retirement. A lot of it is ignorance, a lot of it is confusion, a lot of it is that having a savings mentality has been drummed into them. Build up your nest egg. Don’t spend your nest egg.”

People need advice to navigate the system “and they’re not getting the advice. The biggest deficiency we’ve seen that’s leading to this outcome, I think, is that people don’t get advice. I think it’s about only 10% of retirees actually get advice entering retirement.

“They need a positive push that they do need advice. When you see the surveys of why people don’t get advice, they say ‘it’s too costly’ and they say, ‘but I don’t have that big financial asset, so I’m not one that has that need for financial advice’. There’s the other one of lack of trust.”

Home ownership is a major factor in what life will be like for retirees. “If you own your own house, you don’t have to pay rent and you have a substantial asset […] that you can draw on to support your retirement.”

But Callaghan doesn’t think younger people should be able to access their super for a house deposit. “While [having a home is] important, solving the problem of helping first home owners get into housing is not going to be solved by tweaks to the superannuation system. It’s not going to achieve its objective at all, as many people say, it’s likely to just add extra pressure to house prices and there is a cost, this very significant cost to the individual of letting them access superannuation.”

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Chair of Retirement Income Review, Mike Callaghan, on reforming superannuation – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-chair-of-retirement-income-review-mike-callaghan-on-reforming-superannuation-201393

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giselle Newton, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

Last week, the Queensland government accepted in principle recommendations from a 2022 inquiry into the rights of donor-conceived people.

Donor conception is a technique to facilitate pregnancy using donated sperm and/or eggs.

Queensland is among the least progressive jurisdictions in Australia on donor conception. To date, it has no legislation governing donor conception, despite a senate inquiry recommending in 2011 that jurisdictions which didn’t yet have a statutory scheme in place should establish one “as a matter of priority”.

The government’s response to the inquiry indicated it supports allowing donor-conceived people to know the identity of their donor and siblings once they turn 18, regardless of when they were born.

In 2016, Victoria passed legislation enabling donor-conceived people to access identifying information about their donor. South Australia is also currently considering amendments to improve the operation of its donor conception register, and Western Australia is developing new legislation following a 2019 independent review.

Here’s why the Queensland government should move to implement the recommendations of the inquiry as soon as practicable.

Changing attitudes

Donor conception has been practised in Australia since at least the 1940s. Historically, doctors promised donors anonymity and encouraged parents to keep their treatment a secret.

But attitudes have changed. We now know anonymity isn’t in the best interests of donor-conceived people. Best practice is to allow donor-conceived people to have identifying information about their donors, regardless of when they were born.

Identifying information includes the donor’s full name, and is in addition to non-identifying information already provided such as cultural background, occupation and physical features. Many donors now also support this.

Read more:
Victoria’s world-first change to share sperm or egg donors’ names with children

Since 2004, ethical guidelines by Australia’s peak medical and health research body have prohibited the anonymous donation of sperm and eggs. However, these guidelines don’t have the legal force of legislation and don’t have an impact on those conceived before 2004.

Research with donor-conceived people, and evidence provided to parliamentary inquiries, has shown fertility clinics are often unable and/or unwilling to provide accurate information. This might include, for example, denying donor-conceived people access to donor conception records even when donors have consented, and giving incorrect information about siblings.

Over the years, many donor conception records have been modified or destroyed. This has often occurred to protect anonymity, but is also due to questionable past practices such as sperm mixing, donors’ identities not being verified, and recruitment of medical students in exchange for course credits.

5 reasons for urgent reform

Establishing a centralised, government-held register would bring Queensland in line with other jurisdictions that already recognise the rights of donor-conceived people. This includes Victoria, South Australia, NSW (for those born after 2010), and Western Australia (for those born after 2004).

This will also help pave the way for an equitable national standard and a national donor conception register, an approach supported by the Fertility Society of Australia and New Zealand.

There are five reasons legislating this as soon as possible in Queensland is essential.

1. Legislation needs to respond to technological advances. Donor-conceived people are already able to identify donors through informal channels following the rapid growth of direct-to-consumer DNA testing, coupled with social media. But DNA data is highly sensitive and donor-conceived people should have official pathways to information that don’t require them to exchange their personal data for information to large corporations.

2. Donor-conceived people who find out about their conception during early childhood have more positive attitudes towards their conception and better wellbeing compared to donor-conceived people who discover later in life. One of the inquiry’s recommendations was that birth certificates be annotated when a person is donor-conceived. This would discourage deception. The UK government is currently considering allowing donor-conceived people to contact their donor before 18.

3. Many donor-conceived people want to meet their donor and donor siblings. In everyday conversations, we often discuss our families, genetics, and resemblance. It’s unsurprising that donor-conceived people are interested in knowing about their genetic heritage to understand themselves and their cultural background. Knowing who one’s siblings are is also important to avoid sexual relationships.

4. Dealing with health issues often requires knowledge of one’s genetic heritage. If a donor-conceived person learns of a genetic condition, they may want to notify their donor and siblings.

5. Many donors want to find out about, and meet, their donor-conceived (adult) children. Many donors make themselves identifiable to their donor-conceived children. Reasons may include believing the donor-conceived person is entitled to information about their identity, wanting to provide avenues to seek information, or curiosity about how many people were conceived following their donation and their identities.

Some people have concerns about removing anonymity. But the conditions of anonymity promised by doctors were never legally binding. This legislation is retrospectively being applied to a period when there was no legislation.

Another concern is that it could jeopardise the number of people willing to donate sperm or eggs. But research suggests shifts from anonymous to identifiable donation aren’t detrimental to donor numbers. Rather, the type of people who donate changes. For example, this may encourage more donors in their 30s rather than late teens or early 20s.

Read more:
DNA test kits are changing donor-conceived families

Donor-conceived advocacy

Donor-conceived people have long been speaking out to agitate for reform in donor conception.

This reform is the result of decades of advocacy, and represents a key moment to enshrine donor-conceived people’s rights in legislation.

If this article raises issues for you and you need support, please contact Donor Conceived Australia.

Giselle Newton received funding under the Australian government’s Research Training Program. Giselle holds an appointment as Adjunct Associate Lecturer at the Centre for Social Research in Health at UNSW Sydney. Giselle is a donor-conceived woman and is a member of Donor Conceived Australia. Giselle contributed to the Inquiry into Matters Relating to Donor Conception Information 2022 (QLD).

Caitlin Macmillan has received Australian Government’s Research Training Program funding. Caitlin contributed to the Inquiry into Matters Relating to Donor Conception Information 2022 (Qld) and the Inquiry into Assisted Reproductive Treatment Practices in Victoria 2020 (Vic.)

Katharine Gelber has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. She contributed to the Inquiry into Matters Relating to Donor Conception Information 2022 (Qld).

– ref. Qld agrees to allow donor-conceived people the right to know the identity of their donor. Here’s why it’s important – https://theconversation.com/qld-agrees-to-allow-donor-conceived-people-the-right-to-know-the-identity-of-their-donor-heres-why-its-important-201081

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giuseppe Carabetta, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney

The court case against federal independent parliamentarian Monique Ryan by her former chief of staff Sally Rugg will, according to Rugg’s lawyers, open the door to legal action “by every Australian worker experiencing exploitation because of a contractual obligation to perform undefined ‘reasonable additional’ hours”.

Given the pecularities of the case, that’s unlikely. But the case will put the spotlight on an important, but rarely tested, question of what “reasonable” overtime means.

Rugg is seeking compensation in the Federal Court for “adverse action” by Ryan against her for refusing to work more than 70 hours a week. Ryan denies Rugg’s allegations. So far, it’s a classic battle of claim and counter-claim.

The outcome will turn on what “reasonable” means (as well as matters of evidence and credibility). There is no simple definition of this in Australian workplace law, even though it is pivotal to what the Fair Work Act says about working overtime.

Nor are there many tribunal or court decisions setting precedents to guide the Federal Court’s ruling.

What the Fair Work Act says

Under Section 62 of the Fair Work Act, an employer must not request or require a full-time employee to work longer than 38 hours a week, “unless the additional hours are reasonable”.

An employee may refuse to work additional hours “if the request is unreasonable”. This is essentially what Rugg says she sought to do.

What determines whether a request is reasonable or unreasonable? Section 62 sets out ten (non-exhaustive) factors that must be taken into account:

• any risk to employee health and safety from working the additional hours
• the employee’s personal circumstances, including family responsibilities
• the needs of the workplace or enterprise in which the employee is employed
• whether the employee is entitled to receive overtime payments, penalty rates or other compensation for, or a level of remuneration that reflects an expectation of, working additional hours
• any notice given by the employer of any request or requirement to work the additional hours
• any notice given by the employee of his or her intention to refuse to work the additional hours
• the usual patterns of work in the industry, or the part of an industry, in which the employee works
• the nature of the employee’s role, and the employee’s level of responsibility
• whether the additional hours accord with averaging terms that are applicable under an award or enterprise agreement or agreed with the individual employee
• any other relevant matter.

These considerations apply to all workers, regardless of their salary level or whether they are covered by awards or other industrial instruments.

Read more:
Our culture of overtime is costing us dearly

Past court decisions

While case law is slim, one judgement almost certain to be mentioned is the Federal Court’s 2022 ruling in Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union v Dick Stone Pty Ltd.

This claim for compensation was brought by the meatworkers’ union on behalf of Samuel Boateng, a migrant from Ghana who was employed as a knife-hand and labourer by Dick Stone Meats in Sydney.

Boateng’s contract required him to work 50 “ordinary hours” a week (2am to 11.30am on weekdays, and 2am to 7am on Saturdays) plus “reasonable additional hours” as requested.

The union argued the contract contravened both the Meat Industry Award 2010 and the Fair Work Act. Justice Anna Katzmann agreed. She ruled it was possible for an employee to agree to ordinary work hours above 38 hours, but the onus was still on the employer to ensure those additional hours were reasonable.

She affirmed that:

What is reasonable in any given case depends on an evaluation of the particular circumstances of both the employee and the employer having regard to all relevant matters including those matters mandated for consideration in section 62.

In Boateng’s case, Katzmann concluded the requirement to work 12 hours more than the 38-hour standard was, in the overall circumstances, unreasonable. Three factors were given particular weight:

• the health and safety risks associated with lengthy shifts in a role requiring the use of knives
• the fact the employee did not hold a managerial or supervisory role that might warrant additional hours
• the fact the employee was not being paid overtime rates in accordance with the award.

Further, while the 50-hour week aligned with the employer’s operational needs, this did not necessarily make the additional hours reasonable from the employee’s perspective.

Rugg’s case is different

The outcome in the Boateng case has limited application to a dispute involving a white-collar worker working long hours on high wages.

As Ryan’s chief of staff, Rugg was in a managerial role. Her base salary was $136,000, with a “top-up” allowance of about $30,000 for “reasonable additional hours” (but no overtime payments).

That said, the case does confirm general principles. What is “reasonable” involves a balancing of various factors, including the needs or circumstances of each party. The “weighting” given to different indicators might also vary depending on the individual job. There is no magic touchstone.

Read more:
Most of us who work long hours like the jobs we are in. Those who don’t, change jobs quickly

Much will turn on matters of degree. Factors that will weigh in Rugg’s favour are the amount of work hours required relative to her income, and her personal circumstances including her family responsibilities. Health and safety risks are likely to feature also.

Factors Ryan’s lawyers will seek to highlight are the nature of her employment, level of responsibility, and established patterns and standards of work within the industry – provided these can be verified.

The distinctive nature of Rugg’s position and demands means any judgement will have limited application to “regular” employees.

Nonetheless, the case will be significant in offering some rare (and much-needed) guidance both for employers and employees on what “reasonable additional work hours” means.

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

– ref. What are ‘reasonable’ hours? The Ryan-Rugg legal stoush may help the rest of us know – https://theconversation.com/what-are-reasonable-hours-the-ryan-rugg-legal-stoush-may-help-the-rest-of-us-know-201093

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giuseppe Carabetta, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney

The court case against federal independent parliamentarian Monique Ryan by her former chief of staff Sally Rugg will, according to Rugg’s lawyers, open the door to legal action “by every Australian worker experiencing exploitation because of a contractual obligation to perform undefined ‘reasonable additional’ hours”.

Given the pecularities of the case, that’s unlikely. But the case will put the spotlight on an important, but rarely tested, question of what “reasonable” overtime means.

Rugg is seeking compensation in the Federal Court for “adverse action” by Ryan against her for refusing to work more than 70 hours a week. Ryan denies Rugg’s allegations. So far, it’s a classic battle of claim and counter-claim.

The outcome will turn on what “reasonable” means (as well as matters of evidence and credibility). There is no simple definition of this in Australian workplace law, even though it is pivotal to what the Fair Work Act says about working overtime.

Nor are there many tribunal or court decisions setting precedents to guide the Federal Court’s ruling.

What the Fair Work Act says

Under Section 62 of the Fair Work Act, an employer must not request or require a full-time employee to work longer than 38 hours a week, “unless the additional hours are reasonable”.

An employee may refuse to work additional hours “if the request is unreasonable”. This is essentially what Rugg says she sought to do.

What determines whether a request is reasonable or unreasonable? Section 62 sets out ten (non-exhaustive) factors that must be taken into account:

• any risk to employee health and safety from working the additional hours
• the employee’s personal circumstances, including family responsibilities
• the needs of the workplace or enterprise in which the employee is employed
• whether the employee is entitled to receive overtime payments, penalty rates or other compensation for, or a level of remuneration that reflects an expectation of, working additional hours
• any notice given by the employer of any request or requirement to work the additional hours
• any notice given by the employee of his or her intention to refuse to work the additional hours
• the usual patterns of work in the industry, or the part of an industry, in which the employee works
• the nature of the employee’s role, and the employee’s level of responsibility
• whether the additional hours accord with averaging terms that are applicable under an award or enterprise agreement or agreed with the individual employee
• any other relevant matter.

These considerations apply to all workers, regardless of their salary level or whether they are covered by awards or other industrial instruments.

Read more:
Our culture of overtime is costing us dearly

Past court decisions

While case law is slim, one judgement almost certain to be mentioned is the Federal Court’s 2022 ruling in Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union v Dick Stone Pty Ltd.

This claim for compensation was brought by the meatworkers’ union on behalf of Samuel Boateng, a migrant from Ghana who was employed as a knife-hand and labourer by Dick Stone Meats in Sydney.

Boateng’s contract required him to work 50 “ordinary hours” a week (2am to 11.30am on weekdays, and 2am to 7am on Saturdays) plus “reasonable additional hours” as requested.

The union argued the contract contravened both the Meat Industry Award 2010 and the Fair Work Act. Justice Anna Katzmann agreed. She ruled it was possible for an employee to agree to ordinary work hours above 38 hours, but the onus was still on the employer to ensure those additional hours were reasonable.

She affirmed that:

What is reasonable in any given case depends on an evaluation of the particular circumstances of both the employee and the employer having regard to all relevant matters including those matters mandated for consideration in section 62.

In Boateng’s case, Katzmann concluded the requirement to work 12 hours more than the 38-hour standard was, in the overall circumstances, unreasonable. Three factors were given particular weight:

• the health and safety risks associated with lengthy shifts in a role requiring the use of knives
• the fact the employee did not hold a managerial or supervisory role that might warrant additional hours
• the fact the employee was not being paid overtime rates in accordance with the award.

Further, while the 50-hour week aligned with the employer’s operational needs, this did not necessarily make the additional hours reasonable from the employee’s perspective.

Rugg’s case is different

The outcome in the Boateng case has limited application to a dispute involving a white-collar worker working long hours on high wages.

As Ryan’s chief of staff, Rugg was in a managerial role. Her base salary was $136,000, with a “top-up” allowance of about $30,000 for “reasonable additional hours” (but no overtime payments).

That said, the case does confirm general principles. What is “reasonable” involves a balancing of various factors, including the needs or circumstances of each party. The “weighting” given to different indicators might also vary depending on the individual job. There is no magic touchstone.

Read more:
Most of us who work long hours like the jobs we are in. Those who don’t, change jobs quickly

Much will turn on matters of degree. Factors that will weigh in Rugg’s favour are the amount of work hours required relative to her income, and her personal circumstances including her family responsibilities. Health and safety risks are likely to feature also.

Factors Ryan’s lawyers will seek to highlight are the nature of her employment, level of responsibility, and established patterns and standards of work within the industry – provided these can be verified.

The distinctive nature of Rugg’s position and demands means any judgement will have limited application to “regular” employees.

Nonetheless, the case will be significant in offering some rare (and much-needed) guidance both for employers and employees on what “reasonable additional work hours” means.

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

– ref. What are ‘reasonable’ hours? The Ryan-Rudd legal stoush may help the rest of us know – https://theconversation.com/what-are-reasonable-hours-the-ryan-rudd-legal-stoush-may-help-the-rest-of-us-know-201093

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scott Williams, PhD Candidate in Biochemistry, La Trobe University

Over the millions of years crocodiles and their relatives have roamed our planet, they have evolved robust immune systems to help combat the potentially harmful microbes in the swamps and waterways they call home.

Our study, recently published in Nature Communications, takes a closer look at antimicrobial proteins called defensins, found in saltwater crocodiles. These proteins play a key role in the reptiles’ first line of defence against infectious disease.

As the threat of antibiotic-resistant microbes grows, so does our need for new and effective treatments. Could the defensins of these beasts hold the answers to help create a new wave of life-saving therapeutics?

What are defensins?

Defensins are small proteins produced by all plants and animals. In plants, defensins are usually made in the flowers and leaves, whereas animal defensins are made by white blood cells and in mucous membranes (for example in the lungs and intestines). Their role is to protect the host by killing infectious organisms.

Research into the defensins of different plant and animal species has found they can target a broad range of disease-causing pathogens. These include bacteria, fungi, viruses and even cancer cells.

The most common way defensins kill these pathogens is by attaching themselves to the outer membrane – the layer that holds the cell together. Once there, defensins create holes in the membrane, causing the cell contents to leak out, killing the cell in the process.

What’s special about crocodile defensins?

Despite living in dirty water, crocodiles rarely develop infections even though they often get wounded while hunting and fighting for territory. This suggests crocodiles have a potent immune system. We wanted to better understand how their defensins have adapted over time to protect them in these harsh environments.

By searching through the genome of the saltwater crocodile, we found that one particular defensin, named CpoBD13, was effective at killing the fungus Candida albicans – the leading cause of human fungal infections worldwide. Although some plant and animal defensins have previously been shown to target Candida albicans, the mechanism behind CpoBD13’s antifungal activity is what makes it unique.

That’s because CpoBD13 can self-regulate its activity based on the pH of the surrounding environment. At neutral pH (for example, in the blood) the defensin is inactive. However, when it reaches a site of infection which has a lower, acidic pH, the defensin is activated and can help clear the infection. This is the first time this mechanism has been observed in a defensin.

Our team discovered this mechanism by revealing the structure of CpoBD13 using a process called X-ray crystallography. This involves “shooting” lab-grown protein crystals with high-powered X-rays, which we were able to do at the Australian Synchrotron.

Are fungi really a threat to human health?

In comparison to bacterial and viral infections, fungal infections are often not seen as serious. After all, pandemics throughout human history have only ever been caused by the former. Indeed, fungi are most commonly known in the general public for causing athlete’s foot and toenail infections – hardly life-threating conditions.

But fungi can pose severe problems to human health, particularly in people with impaired immune systems. Globally, approximately 1.5 million deaths per year are attributed to fungal infections.

Our current arsenal of antifungals is limited to only a handful of drugs. Furthermore, we haven’t had a new class of antifungal treatments since the early 2000s. To make matters even worse, overuse of the antifungal medicines we do have has led to some drug-resistant fungal strains.

Rising global temperatures have also made once cooler regions more hospitable to pathogenic fungi. Climate change has even been linked with the emergence of new drug-resistant species, such as Candida auris.

Read more:
Explainer: what is Candida auris and who is at risk?

A long way from crocs to the clinic

In the hunt for new medicines, our study and those like it are important for finding potential future antibiotics. By characterising the defensins of crocodiles, we have provided the groundwork needed to develop CpoBD13 into an effective antifungal. However, undertaking clinic trials is a long and costly process. From the initial discovery, it can take between five and 20 years to get a new drug approved.

Currently, protein-based treatments can sometimes unintentionally harm a person’s healthy cells. By using our knowledge of the crocodile’s defensins, we could potentially engineer other proteins to take on CpoBD13’s pH-sensing mechanism. Thus, they would only “turn on” upon reaching the infection.

Although there is much work to do before we see crocodile defensins in the clinic, we hope to one day harness the unique primal power of the crocodile’s immune system to aid in the global fight against infectious disease.

Mark Hulett receives funding from the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, Medical Research Future Fund.

Scott Williams 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. Crocodiles are uniquely protected against fungal infections. This might one day help human medicine too – https://theconversation.com/crocodiles-are-uniquely-protected-against-fungal-infections-this-might-one-day-help-human-medicine-too-201290

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Pearse, Lecturer, Australian National University

This fortnight, Australia’s parliament is considering an amendment to the safeguard mechanism, which is the main way we’ve tried to cut emissions over the last nine years. As you may already know, it hasn’t done what it was meant to do.

The mechanism was meant to force our largest greenhouse gas polluters to buy carbon credits if they emitted over a baseline. But almost no one ever paid, as the baselines were set very high. That’s why Labor wants to tighten up Australia’s overly flexible carbon trading scheme as part of this bill.

But to pass it, the government needs support from most of the crossbench, which is unlikely, or from the Greens, given the Coalition has refused to support it. Australia’s third largest party has offered to “support the bill tomorrow” – if the Albanese government agrees to stop all new coal and gas projects.

Labor won’t agree to this. But it will need to negotiate to have any chance of success.

Are the Greens grandstanding, as some commentators have suggested? Hardly: they’re negotiating hard to try to get the best outcome for the climate.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: Adam Bandt is wedged by Greens’ overreach on emissions legislation

The trouble with negotiating strong carbon market rules

If the Greens were in power, they might choose a different approach. But they are limited by what Labor is offering: the ability to improve the rules of Australia’s carbon market.

In 2023, our methods of driving down emissions are still limited. Labor has decided to focus on improving the safeguard mechanism, which is a baseline-and-credit carbon offset scheme first legislated by the Abbott Coalition government in 2014.

Because of very loose baselines given to the 215 major emitters covered by the scheme, emissions actually grew. The previous government also bought carbon credits through the flawed Emissions Reduction Fund.

What Labor proposes is to make the mechanism function more like the carbon market set up by the Rudd/Gillard Labor governments over a decade ago.

How? By adding rules to allow new flexibility options for crediting and trading of carbon rights. The current safeguard bill also adds a “reserve” carbon budget for new fossil fuel projects, which would allow them to be built.

At the same time, the Chubb review into our carbon offset laws is recommending more oversight into the scheme following integrity questions.

In sum, though, climate change minister Chris Bowen’s proposed amendments are still too flexible.

If Labor gets its amendments through unchanged, big industrial emitters will likely be able to avoid actually having to reduce how much carbon dioxide and methane they can pump into the skies through loose baselines and unlimited offsets.

Is ‘no new coal and gas’ viable?

Since the early 2000s, the environment movement have campaigned for “no new coal”. As the gas industry surged in the 2010s, environmentalists called for limits on fracking and exports.

It’s entirely reasonable for the Greens to push the government to come clean about plans for emissions-intensive industries. Mining workers want to know what the future will hold. Labor voters are also wondering.

The Greens want a managed transition plan out of thermal coal by 2030 and coking coal (used for steelmaking) by 2040, with packages to help workers change jobs. They want Australia to be the first major fossil fuel exporter to limit production.

That’s what they want. But what can they get, given carbon-pricing mechanisms like the safeguard mechanism leave these decisions to the market?

This week, the Greens and the Coalition are forcing the government to release its modelling of the future of emissions-intensive industries.

How big does the government expect fossil fuel production facilities to be in the future? How much will big emitters rely on offsetting rather than reductions at the source?

Trading offset reform for no new coal and gas?

Crossbencher David Pocock is pushing for reforms on carbon offsets. But the Greens have offered to “put aside” their concerns about offsets if Labor moves to ban new fossil fuel projects.

If the Greens were successful in strengthening safeguard rules to introduce a zero-carbon limit on all new coal and gas mines, new fossil fuel projects would have to find carbon offsets for 100% of their emissions each year. But if Labor keeps refusing this approach, compromise may have to come elsewhere.

Greens leader Adam Bandt says they are making “an offer, not an ultimatum”. They want to bargain.

What could this look like?

Labor might seek to group Pocock and the 12 Green senators together to negotiate limits on permissible carbon offsets. If so, the Greens would end up where they were in 2009–11, trying to ensure carbon market rules minimise use of offsets.

What are the most likely deals we could see?

We could see four other compromises. In order of likelihood, they are:

Pausing new coal and gas mine approvals until environmental laws are stronger

Our biodiversity and environment laws are not up to the task. Labor has pledged to fix them.

Making federal environmental laws stronger is arguably a clearer way to reducing fossil fuel expansion. Why? These laws overlay state planning laws which keep churning out new mining licences. The Greens will want influence here.

The ‘climate trigger’

The Greens want to create a climate trigger modelled on the “water trigger” negotiated by former independent MP Tony Windsor.

A climate trigger, if it got up, would mean future projects would be assessed on greenhouse impact. But it wouldn’t be the same as a direct ban on new coal and gas. The Greens have a climate trigger bill before parliament, which would permit the climate change minister to reject large mines.

Replacing offsets

Offsets are often rubbery. But there are other ways to finance carbon cuts. A decarbonisation fund could permit democratic decision-making about carbon and biodiversity improvements.

Given carbon offset credits have political risks for the government and corporations, there’s merit to returning to fixed carbon pricing.

Negotiate with the states about fossil fuel industry transition

Labor could offer to negotiate with the states about managing the path away from coal and gas. Talking about what we have to do to stay in our carbon budget could foster parliamentary good faith and end finger pointing.

Climate wars – or real progress?

The Greens have a long history of pushing back against weak climate policy. Labor, in turn, has a history of criticising what they see as doctrinaire refusal. But when the cameras are off, these two parties have managed to achieve compromise and progress. It’s happened before, and it will most likely happen again.

Rebecca Pearse receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Recovery and Resilience Agency.

– ref. The Greens aren’t grandstanding on a new coal and gas ban – they’re negotiating well – https://theconversation.com/the-greens-arent-grandstanding-on-a-new-coal-and-gas-ban-theyre-negotiating-well-201287

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grant Duncan, Associate Professor, School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University

It’s been a difficult time for senior public servants recently – at least it has been for those willing to express their political views publicly. One has been sacked, another offered his resignation, and yet another has been questioned by a parliamentary select committee.

In an election year perhaps we can expect heightened sensitivities around the principle of public sector neutrality. Especially so, given those in the spotlight are all ministerial appointees to crown entity boards, not career officials.

These appointments blur the supposedly clear boundary between elected office-holders and professional public servants.

The case of Rob Campbell, former chair of Te Whatu Ora/Health NZ and the Environmental Protection Authority, seems the most clear-cut. His LinkedIn post likening the National Party’s Three Waters policy to a “thin disguise for the dog whistle on co-governance” was one thing. But his refusal to accept he’d done anything wrong was a bridge too far for the powers that be.

Things have gone better for former Labour MP Steve Maharey, who offered his resignation as chair of Pharmac, ACC and Education New Zealand for publishing what could be read as politically partial views. The government has said he will not lose his jobs.

And another former Labour MP, Ruth Dyson, now deputy chair of the Earthquake Commission and Fire and Emergency New Zealand, is also under scrutiny for apparently partisan Twitter comments. It’s safe to say the the nation’s newsrooms are now trawling the social media accounts of all senior civil servants and appointees.

Faceless bureaucrats?

On the face of it, the standards of conduct for people employed in the state sector – especially at senior levels – are clear. They’re expected to act with neutrality and impartiality, and not to take sides with political parties – even (or especially) if they have a past association with one.

They should be able to continue to serve after a change of government. New Zealand doesn’t follow the American model where an incoming president appoints about 4,000 civil servants. Instead, we rely on non-partisan professionals whose tenure isn’t tied to elections.

But these tensions and sensitivities about what people can and can’t say also exist in private enterprise. Any director or chief executive would be unwise to publish private opinions about political or economic affairs that might harm the reputation of the company.

Read more:
The balancing act: how much free speech should our public servants have?

Even a bottom-rung employee can face the sack for commenting online about their employer. Free speech comes with conditions attached, especially so for the public service.

One counter argument is that public servants’ impartiality is only a pretence anyway. And, as one commentator put it recently, “we should expect them to speak the truth to us, as they see it”. Indeed, we should criticise those who fail to do so, and not care if it upsets politicians.

That would be a major culture change for our Westminster-style system. But New Zealand has had prominent public servants who were admired as outspoken public intellectuals. The question is, where is the line and how do we define the terms?

Public intellectuals

One historical figure who rose high within the public service but expressed political views was
Edward Tregear (1846–1931). He was already a prominent intellectual when appointed the first secretary of the Labour Department by the Liberal government in 1891.

He drove pioneering labour and social reforms, but was often outspoken and found himself at odds with the government following the death of the prime minister, Richard Seddon, in 1906. He retired in 1910.

Clarence Beeby (1902–98) was a prominent psychologist and researcher with a strong commitment to public education and human rights when he was appointed director of education by Peter Fraser in 1940.

Labour’s educational reforms came to be identified with Beeby as much as with Fraser, which would have annoyed the prime minister. Beeby continued under the subsequent National government, however. Overall, his scholarship had wide influence and was recognised internationally.

The economist Bill Sutch (1907–75) worked under ministers of finance in the 1930s while also actively engaging in public life. He published two important books on New Zealand in the early 1940s (Poverty and Progress, and The Search for Security).

This independence caused some friction with Fraser, but Sutch worked for New Zealand at the United Nations. In 1958, he became permanent secretary for the Department of Industries and Commerce.

Read more:
To restore trust in government, we need to reinvent how the public service works

The new rules

Campbell’s online comments and Maharey’s op-ed columns probably aren’t at the same level of sustained achievement as those three exemplary civil servants’ publications. But they do raise important questions. Are today’s ministers and the public services commissioner too precious about political opinions? And are opposition MPs going to be hoist with their own petard once they’re in office?

Since the State Sector Act 1988, our system has tried to draw a clear line between ministers, who set high-level policy and have to justify it publicly, and public servants, who advise ministers and implement their decisions. Public servants should provide ministers with free and frank advice, but publishing personal opinions isn’t on.

Read more:
Will the High Court ruling on public servant’s tweets have a ‘powerful chill’ on free speech?

There’s always a grey area, however. Campbell breached the code of conduct, but was sacking him in proportion with the offence? Those in a position to decide thought that it was.

Given the public controversy, Maharey did the right thing to pre-emptively offer his resignation. What distinguishes him from Campbell is that he recognised the awkward political problem.

But is it so big a problem that heads should roll? Is the country better or worse off for its intolerance of intellectual and political independence of thought in the state sector?

Whatever the answer, under present arrangements we won’t see public servants like Tregear, Beeby or Sutch again. But Campbell and Maharey can write what they like in retirement.

Grant Duncan 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. NZ has a history of prominent public servants who were also outspoken public intellectuals – what’s changed? – https://theconversation.com/nz-has-a-history-of-prominent-public-servants-who-were-also-outspoken-public-intellectuals-whats-changed-201370

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emilie Vallee, Senior Lecturer in Veterinary Epidemiology, Massey University

When Cyclone Gabrielle hit New Zealand in February, it left a trail of destruction across the North Island. At least 11 people died, and more than 10,000 were displaced. Bridges were washed out (35 in the Hastings district alone), roads closed and communications cut.

With potable water and wastewater systems damaged and land covered in silt, there is another consequence that may yet appear – diseases, or more specifically, zoonoses that spread between animals and people.

Floods and their aftermath are a time of higher risk for disease spread. While we do not have much data specific to New Zealand, due partly to the difficulty of diagnosing and reporting diseases during times of crisis, we can use information from overseas to predict which diseases may flare up after floods.

First, the tummy bugs

The first group of diseases for which we expect to see a rise in case numbers soon after floods is gastroenteritis caused by water-borne pathogens. GPs in Auckland are reporting an increase in cases since the Auckland anniversary weekend floods.

Many pathogens survive in the gastrointestinal tract of animals and are released in their feces. Rain and floods facilitate their transmission by providing an environment through which they sometimes enter the food chain or water supply.

In 2016, Hawke’s Bay experienced a campylobacteriosis outbreak transmitted through the urban water supply that affected more than 6,000 people. The outbreak occurred just after heavy rain, which likely caused water contaminated with sheep feces to enter a bore.

Read more:
Floods create health risks: what to look out for and how to avoid them

Salmonellosis cases are also likely to rise during summer floods, aided by higher temperatures. The risk is particularly high as cases in dairy cattle have been steadily increasing during the past eight years.

Local branches of Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand in affected areas have been proactive in communicating these risks and prevention measures, including the importance of wearing protective gear during the cleanup.

Then, leptospirosis

About a week to a month after floods, rodent-born disease outbreaks can start to appear.

Floods disturb the habitat of rodents, including rats, and they can be attracted to food waste around people’s homes. This was regularly observed after floods in Queensland last year and in Auckland earlier this year.

In New Zealand, our main concern is the bacterial disease leptospirosis. Brown rats carry one of the variants, livestock several others, and, once the bacteria are shed in the animals’ urine, they can survive in water and soil for several days. This ability to survive in flood water means the risk of infection is increased for all variants, including those traditionally associated with ruminants and pigs.

Auckland has reported an increase in leptospirosis cases in February, likely linked with the floods at the end of January. Hawke’s Bay was already a known leptospirosis hotspot that could worsen.

The clinical signs of leptospirosis can vary a lot and it is important people seek medical attention when they feel unwell as it can be treated with antibiotics. People can get infected through contact with urine or a contaminated environment, via the mouth or nose or uncovered skin cuts.

Leptospirosis outbreaks in dogs can also happen. While they are rarely a source of infection for people in New Zealand, dogs can act as sentinels. The New Zealand Veterinary Association (NZVA) provides advice to owners of companion animals.

Finally, the mosquitoes

New Zealand is likely (at least for now) safe from the final group of diseases emerging after floods: vector-borne diseases.

We don’t have the disease-carrying insects or viruses known to cause outbreaks, but our Fijian neighbours and many other countries often report dengue outbreaks after floods.

Climate change is making it easier for both the insect carriers and viruses to establish in New Zealand, so we should not ignore this as a potential future threat.

Read more:
How to mozzie-proof your property after a flood and cut your risk of mosquito-borne disease

How to protect ourselves

Vaccination, early detection and treatment of livestock, which act as a reservoir for many of the pathogens above, are effective ways of protecting humans.

Cattle can be vaccinated against three variants of bacteria causing leptospirosis and four types of Salmonella. But vaccination does not cover all the strains and is more difficult in the current situation when fencing has been destroyed and some communities can only access veterinary medicine by helicopter.

The use of personal protective equipment and good hand hygiene for any outdoor activity that involves contact with animals or flood water and soil is the best way to prevent diseases. Rodent control, including rapid disposal of food waste, is also more important than ever.

Read more:
58% of human infectious diseases can be worsened by climate change – we scoured 77,000 studies to map the pathways

It is important people seek medical care rapidly, both for themselves and their animals when they are unwell. This is how they can access appropriate treatment, but also how surveillance can happen, so New Zealand starts learning its own lessons on health risks associated with floods.

Our cities, population structures, farming systems and wildlife species are different from overseas, so having local data is crucial. This will help during the next heavy rain and floods – and there is no doubt there will be many more.

We would like to acknowledge the contribution by Masood Sujau.

Emilie Vallee receives funding from The Wellcome Trust for the project CliZod – Digital Technology Development Award in Climate Sensitive Infectious Disease Modelling number 226044/Z/22/Z. She works at the Tāwharau Ora School of Veterinary Science at Massey University.

Barry Borman, Deborah Read, and Masako Wada 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. First the floods, then the diseases — why NZ should brace for outbreaks of spillover infections from animals – https://theconversation.com/first-the-floods-then-the-diseases-why-nz-should-brace-for-outbreaks-of-spillover-infections-from-animals-201162

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Burnett, Honorary Associate Professor, ANU College of Law, Australian National University

Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers has attracted controversy by proposing to update 30-year-old superannuation laws with a definition of the purpose of superannuation as being to fund a dignified retirement. There is a clear lesson here for other reforms to make policy objectives clear, even when they seem obvious. One important example is Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s Nature Positive Plan.

Plibersek’s department began consulting last week on new National Environmental Standards. She will table these later in the year, along with a bill to replace Australia’s most significant environmental law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

The standards will be the “beating heart” of the reforms. They will set out in some detail just what has to be protected and the circumstances in which development can be approved. It is essential these standards rest on solid foundations, including a clear statement of purpose.

You may be surprised to hear mandatory standards are new territory for environmental laws regulating development. Existing federal and state laws are mostly built around regulatory process and ministerial discretion. Typically, they tell ministers to consider ill-defined principles like “ecologically sustainable development”, but lack any real “bottom line”.

This leads to “black box” decision-making, in which decisions are unpredictable beforehand and opaque afterwards. This lack of transparency does little for the environment, which continues to deteriorate due to increasing pressures from climate change, habitat loss, invasive species, pollution and resource extraction.

Read more:
Our laws fail nature. The government’s plan to overhaul them looks good, but crucial detail is yet to come

Tough calls ahead

Plibersek faces some tough calls in developing the standards. If strong and clear, they will protect nature and make it harder to get developments approved. But if the standards lack a clear statement of purpose and carry over rubbery phrases and weak offset requirements, then it will be business as usual, freshly wrapped.

For these new standards, we must get the basics right. One basic is to gather enough environmental information to make properly informed decisions.

The government is acting on this need with its plan to set up an independent environment protection agency (EPA), including a dedicated data division. However, it has yet to put serious money on the table. Making up for lost decades of patchy data gathering will be expensive and time-consuming.

Read more:
‘Complete elation’ greeted Plibersek’s big plans to protect nature – but hurdles litter the path

Lack of clarity makes for ineffective law

Another one of the basics is to properly define ecologically sustainable development (ESD) as the foundation of environmental policy. The existing words on ESD in the EPBC Act are hard to divine. They trace their roots to the early 1990s and reflect the state of knowledge, and the compromises, of that era.

In fact, the EPBC Act does not even attempt to define “ecologically sustainable development”. Instead, it requires the environment minister to take into account five “principles of ecologically sustainable development”.

This disaggregation is part of the problem. Among other things, it forces the minister, in deciding whether to approve the clearing of koala habitat, for example, to consider an obscure principle that “improved valuation, pricing and incentive mechanisms should be promoted”.

This is a high-level policy principle advocating “market-based instruments”, such as a carbon price. It does not belong in a decision about clearing native vegetation.

I am now a researcher but in a former life (2007-12) was responsible for the administration of the EPBC Act. I have gone back over several hundred statutory EPBC Act “recommendation reports”. In these reports, environment officials provide formal advice to the minister about whether to approve a development.

I found very few instances where ESD principles made a substantive difference to the advice. It’s not surprising, given the obtuse approach of the legislation to ecologically sustainable development.

Read more:
Environment laws have failed to tackle the extinction emergency. Here’s the proof

How to breathe new life into ESD

That is not to say we should abandon ecologically sustainable development. Properly defined, it can provide an overarching statement as to what environmental laws are designed to achieve and what development can be approved.

In the broad, ecologically sustainable development should mean keeping the environment healthy, so future generations can enjoy the same quality of life as we do. It would follow that development should not harm anything essential to a healthy environment.

It is important that we not simply roll the current principles into the National Environmental Standards without reflection.

One of the principles, the precautionary principle, can stand alone. It’s about risk management, to be applied when environmental knowledge is limited, which is often. It means, in context, that if a development risks serious or irreversible environmental damage, don’t approve it.

Read more:
This is Australia’s most important report on the environment’s deteriorating health. We present its grim findings

With that done, the central intent of ecologically sustainable development can be met by having the standards require that each decision maintain the diversity of life and the integrity of ecosystems affected by development. Ecological advice would be needed on how to do this in each case.

The gist of such a rule is to keep nature in good working order. That means maintaining viable populations of species and the essentials of ecosystems – their composition, structure and function.

The other three ESD principles deal with policy integration, intergenerational equity and market-based instruments. These principles are important but do not belong in the standards. They should be rehoused in a major policy statement, such as an environmental white paper.

It is often said with regulatory reforms such as the Nature Positive Plan that the devil is in the detail. That can be true, but in this case the devil is more in the basics. Get the basics right, and the rest is just detail.

Peter Burnett held a number of senior leadership positions in the federal Department of Environment from 2000 to 2013. From 2007-12, his responsibilities included administration of the EPBC Act.

– ref. Get the basics right for National Environmental Standards to ensure truly sustainable development – https://theconversation.com/get-the-basics-right-for-national-environmental-standards-to-ensure-truly-sustainable-development-201092

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Radha O’Meara, Lecturer in Screenwriting, The University of Melbourne

The stories of people with disability rarely make it onto Australian screens. This isn’t surprising when we look at the ways disabled people are treated in the Australian screen industry.

Workers with disability in the screen industry commonly face stigma, stereotyping, exclusion, bullying and harassment.

As one producer with disability told us:

For me the number one barrier has probably been stigma – people assuming that it’s going to be more difficult to have you working on the production.

However, experience of disability can have positive impacts on work. Disabled filmmakers make valuable contributors to Australian screen production and culture.

As another producer told us:

We solve problems better than anyone; we do it every minute every day, living in a world not made for us. Can you imagine the asset this is on your creative team?

For our new report, Disability and Screen Work in Australia, we surveyed more than 500 screen workers with and without disability.

Our report is the first in-depth research into the experiences of and attitudes towards people with disability in the Australian screen industry.

Read more:
Disability and dignity – 4 things to think about if you want to ‘help’

An inaccessible and prejudiced industry

Nearly one in five Australians lives with disability and the Australian screen industry employs more than 200,000 people.

Workers with disability contribute to all parts of the industry, in production, distribution and exhibition. Disabled people work as writers, producers, directors, performers and crew.

Despite the diversity of their experiences, roles and talents, screen workers with disability commonly encounter similar discrimination in the workplace.

Disabled people working in the Australian screen industry are paid much less. Among our survey respondents, most screen workers with disability (58%) are paid less than $800 per week, while most workers without disability (57%) are paid more than $1,250 per week.

Compared to screen workers without disability, workers with disability are more likely to be on short-term and casual contracts, to be working without pay, and to be unemployed.

Many screen workers with disability report a widespread lack of understanding about accessibility in the industry.

We spoke to one producer who uses a wheelchair. He found the physical barriers he faced were not noticed by his employer and he was expected to “overcome” these barriers. “It hampers your ability to work effectively,” he said.

Many respondents reported difficulties talking about access requirements at work. Employers are frequently inflexible when presented with options such as working from home or using different technologies.

Read more:
Australia is lagging when it comes to employing people with disability – quotas for disability services could be a start

Positive impacts of disability

Despite these barriers, many respondents said the screen industry benefits from the skills they have because of their experience of disability.

Nearly half of respondents with disability (47%) say their disability status impacts their screen work positively.

One screenwriter without disability said:

employers often see just the costs/difficulties, and not the benefits of having disabled writers in rooms or involved in projects.

Screen workers with disability told us they bring unique skills and perspectives that stem from navigating inaccessible environments. They demonstrate creative thinking, problem-solving, teamwork and empathy.

Ade Djajamihardja is a disability activist and founder of A2K Media, a production company that prioritises disability pride in their purpose, identity and activity. He works as a producer with “unapologetic acceptance” of his own disability status and that of his collaborators.

This means respecting the skills and talents workers with disability bring, and providing access requirements without resistance and judgement. This allows employers to fulfil their legal responsibilities and allows workers with disability to do their jobs effectively.

Screen workers with disability are crucial to telling authentic stories about disability, helping represent the diversity of our community. The disabled respondents to our survey noted they often see characters with disability on screen created and performed by people without disability, which stand out because they are inaccurate and stereotyped.

One screenwriter told us:

I think the more #ownstories that we can have in screen media the better. Things like insisting on [disability] representation in writing teams is a really good step in the right direction.

The screen industry’s future

Far from building an industry full of the most skilled people, the Australian screen industry excludes and marginalises people with disability.

One producer sees potential in the screen industry becoming more welcoming to disabled people:

I work in the creative industries. We need to be better at creatively working through these sorts of issues.

The people we surveyed suggested many ways to improve inclusion in Australia’s screen industry. They highlight easier access to reasonable adjustments, clear lines of communication and responsibility in workplaces, and targeted funding for creatives with disability.

Most importantly, survey respondents repeatedly call for greater understanding of disability issues. People with disability would like it to be normal to talk about accessibility in the workplace.

With employment discrimination a key focus of the current disability royal commission, the proposed Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplaces should provide leadership in prioritising accessibility and inclusion.

Disability inclusion also requires the urgent attention of everyone working in the screen industry. As one actor said:

We deserve empowerment and to sit at the table too. Even if we need a ramp to get to the table or subtitles to understand.

Read more:
Pay, safety and welfare: how the new Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplaces can strengthen the arts sector

This research was funded by Melbourne Disability Institute at the University of Melbourne and A2K Media.

– ref. ‘The number one barrier has probably been stigma’: the challenges facing disabled workers in the Australian screen industry – https://theconversation.com/the-number-one-barrier-has-probably-been-stigma-the-challenges-facing-disabled-workers-in-the-australian-screen-industry-200345

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Seale, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney

The vast majority of Australian children are up-to-date with their vaccines. But vaccination rates have dipped slightly over the past few years.

Fewer health checks, reduced access to routine health care during lockdowns, and fear of COVID have been the main reasons.

If that’s been the situation for your family, you can still catch up. Here’s how to check which vaccines are due for your children and how to organise appointments.

Read more:
Needles are nothing to fear: 5 steps to make vaccinations easier on your kids

Which shots are due?

If you are unsure which vaccines are given at different ages:

• look up the vaccine schedule, officially called the National Immunisation Program Schedule. This lists the recommended free vaccines at various ages

• download a vaccine scheduling app. Some states have an app you can download to create a personal vaccine schedule for your children, with reminders of what’s due and when

• chat to your GP. The next time you see a GP (for any reason), you can ask about vaccines and which ones are due.

Read more:
Health Check: are you up to date with your vaccinations?

I think we’re behind. How do I check?

If you think your child has missed a shot but want to check, obtain your child’s immunisation history statement using:

• your Medicare online account through myGov or

• the Medicare app.

You can also call the Australian Immunisation Register (1800 653 809) and ask for your child’s immunisation history statement to be sent to you. This can take up to 14 days to arrive in the post.

If your child is over the age of 14, they can get their immunisation history statements themselves.

If you’re not eligible for Medicare, you can still get your immunisation history statement online through myGov.

In very rare cases, a vaccine may have been given but not recorded on the Australian Immunisation Register.

If you think this may be the case, check your child’s baby health book, as information may have been recorded there. You may also need to check with the GP who gave the vaccine.

Read more:
Getting vaccinated at the pharmacy? Make sure it’s recorded properly

OK, we are behind. What now?

If there are no written records available of past vaccination, your child will be offered catch-up vaccines appropriate for their age.

But children who missed their recommended vaccines in childhood can also still receive them free before they turn 20.

Depending on the child’s age, you can go to your local doctor, pharmacy, hospital immunisation clinic, local council or see a community health nurse.

Find your local health service using this search engine.

Read more:
No, combination vaccines don’t overwhelm kids’ immune systems

I may need an interpreter

Catch-up vaccinations are free. But we understand that families who speak a language other than English can face challenges navigating the health system, including accessing vaccines.

If this applies to your family, or someone you know, you or they can use an interpreter to talk to the GP about catch-up vaccinations.

This is a free phone service, covering more than 150 different languages. Call 131 450.

Read more:
Nearly 1 in 4 of us aren’t native English speakers. In a health-care setting, interpreters are essential

I have a large family. Any tips?

If you have multiple children, the GP or practice nurse will tell you how many appointments you will need to ensure your children are up-to-date with their vaccines.

Here are some tips to help things run smoothly:

• bring an extra adult (if possible) to sit outside the clinic with children not being immunised. This reduces the risk of distractions in the clinic

• try to ring ahead to let the GP surgery know they need catch-up vaccines. This allows the team time to work out a catch-up schedule

• if you have records of vaccines given overseas speak to the surgery about dropping records in before the appointment. Again, this will allow the nurse to work out the catch-up schedule before you arrive

• in some situations, you may be able to have slightly longer gaps between vaccines to reduce the number of visits needed. This will depend on the situation. The GP or practice nurse will be able to determine if this is possible based on what vaccines are needed.

How about flu or COVID shots?

Beyond the vaccines on the National Immunisation Program, some children are also recommended a flu and COVID shot, depending on their age.

Children aged 6 months and older are also recommended to receive a yearly influenza vaccine (free for kids 6 months to under 5 years). If they are older than 10 years, they can get this flu vaccine at either a GP clinic or pharmacy.

COVID vaccination is currently recommended for children aged 6 months up to 5 years only if children have special medical or other needs, including a very weak immune system, disability, or complex or multiple health conditions.

Most children aged 5-17 years are recommended to have two doses of a COVID vaccine.

If your child has not received a COVID vaccine and you want some help deciding, there’s online help depending on the age of your child.

For more information about vaccines and catch-up vaccination, call the National Immunisation Information Line on 1800 671 811. For specific medical advice, see your health-care provider.

Holly Seale is an investigator on research studies funded by NHMRC and has previously received funding for investigator driven research from NHMRC and NSW Ministry of Health, as well as from Sanofi Pasteur, Moderna and Seqirus.

Abela Mahimbo has previously received funding from GSK for investigator driven research.

Jane E Frawley 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. My kids are behind with their vaccines. How do they catch up? – https://theconversation.com/my-kids-are-behind-with-their-vaccines-how-do-they-catch-up-199595