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AI has potential to revolutionise health care – but we must first confront the risk of algorithmic bias

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mangor Pedersen, Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Auckland University of Technology

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is moving fast and will become an important support tool in clinical care. Research suggests AI algorithms can accurately detect melanomas and predict future breast cancers.

But before AI can be integrated into routine clinical use, we must address the challenge of algorithmic bias. AI algorithms may have inherent biases that could lead to discrimination and privacy issues. AI systems could also be making decisions without the required oversight or human input.

An example of the potentially harmful effects of AI comes from an international project which aims to use AI to save lives by developing breakthrough medical treatments. In an experiment, the team reversed their “good” AI model to create options for a new AI model to do “harm”.

In less than six hours of training, the reversed AI algorithm generated tens of thousands of potential chemical warfare agents, with many more dangerous than current warfare agents. This is an extreme example concerning chemical compounds, but it serves as a wake-up call to evaluate AI’s known and conceivably unknowable ethical consequences.

AI in clinical care

In medicine, we deal with people’s most private data and often life-changing decisions. Robust AI ethics frameworks are imperative.

The Australian Epilepsy Project aims to improve people’s lives and make clinical care more widely available. Based on advanced brain imaging, genetic and cognitive information from thousands of people with epilepsy, we plan to use AI to answer currently unanswerable questions.

Will this person’s seizures continue? Which medicine is most effective? Is brain surgery a viable treatment option? These are fundamental questions that modern medicine struggles to address.

As the AI lead of this project, my main concern is that AI is moving fast and regulatory oversight is minimal. These issues are why we recently established an ethical framework for using AI as a clinical support tool. This framework intends to ensure our AI technologies are open, safe and trustworthy, while fostering inclusivity and fairness in clinical care.




Read more:
AI is transforming medicine – but it can only work with proper sharing of data


So how do we implement AI ethics in medicine to reduce bias and retain control over algorithms? The computer science principle “garbage in, garbage out” applies to AI. Suppose we collect biased data from small samples. Our AI algorithms will likely be biased and not replicable in another clinical setting.

Examples of biases are not hard to find in contemporary AI models. Popular large language models (ChatGPT for example) and latent diffusion models (DALL-E and Stable Diffusion) show how explicit biases regarding gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic status can occur.

Researchers found that simple user prompts generate images perpetuating ethnic, gendered and class stereotypes. For example, a prompt for a doctor generates mostly images of male doctors, which is inconsistent with reality as about half of all doctors in OECD countries are female.

Safe implementation of medical AI

The solution to preventing bias and discrimination is not trivial. Enabling health equality and fostering inclusivity in clinical studies are likely among the primary solutions to combating biases in medical AI.

Encouragingly, the US Food and Drug Administration recently proposed making diversity mandatory in clinical trials. This proposal represents a move towards less biased and community-based clinical studies.

Another obstacle to progress is limited research funding. AI algorithms typically require substantial amounts of data, which can be expensive. It is crucial to establish enhanced funding mechanisms that provide researchers with the necessary resources to gather clinically relevant data appropriate for AI applications.

We also argue we should always know the inner workings of AI algorithms and understand how they reach their conclusions and recommendations. This concept is often referred to as “explainability” in AI. It relates to the idea that humans and machines must work together for optimal results.

We prefer to view the implementation of prediction in models as “augmented” rather than “artificial” intelligence – algorithms should be part of the process and the medical professions must remain in control of the decision making.




Read more:
Biased AI can be bad for your health – here’s how to promote algorithmic fairness


In addition to encouraging the use of explainable algorithms, we support transparent and open science. Scientists should publish details of AI models and their methodology to enhance transparency and reproducibility.

What do we need in Aotearoa New Zealand to ensure the safe implementation of AI in medical care? AI ethics concerns are primarily led by experts within the field. However, targeted AI regulations, such as the EU-based Artificial Intelligence Act have been proposed, addressing these ethical considerations.

The European AI law is welcomed and will protect people working within “safe AI”. The UK government recently released their proactive approach to AI regulation, serving as a blueprint for other government responses to AI safety.

In Aotearoa, we argue for adopting a proactive rather than reactive stance to AI safety. It will establish an ethical framework for using AI in clinical care and other fields, yielding interpretable, secure and unbiased AI. Consequently, our confidence will grow that this powerful technology benefits society while safeguarding it from harm.

The Conversation

Mangor Pedersen receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand and the Australian Medical Research Future Fund.

ref. AI has potential to revolutionise health care – but we must first confront the risk of algorithmic bias – https://theconversation.com/ai-has-potential-to-revolutionise-health-care-but-we-must-first-confront-the-risk-of-algorithmic-bias-204112

Teaching and research are the core functions of universities. But in Australia, we don’t value teaching

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sally Patfield, Senior Research Fellow, Teachers and Teaching Research Centre, University of Newcastle

Yan Krukau/Pexels

This article is part of our series on big ideas for the Universities Accord. The federal government is calling for ideas to “reshape and reimagine higher education, and set it up for the next decade and beyond”. A review team is due to finish a draft report in June and a final report in December 2023.


Teaching and research are the two core functions of Australian universities.

But teaching has long been treated as the poor cousin of higher education. It is generally considered low status, given little professional recognition, and sometimes even seen as the domain of those academics who are not successful researchers.

Indeed, the Universities Accord terms of reference, released in November 2022, didn’t explicitly include teaching as a priority theme for review. It was only mentioned in passing in relation to access and affordability.

It was more prominently included in the accord discussion paper released in February this year. This noted:

Strength in higher education teaching is a critical element in ensuring strength in the sector as a whole.

While this ambition reaffirms the core role of teaching, this goal must now be taken seriously. This needs to be through national and institutional commitments to support quality teaching.

The devaluing of teaching in higher education

Teaching lies at the heart of creating a high-quality learning environment and producing a high calibre of graduates.

Yet the teaching of university students has long been devalued in Australian higher education.

Academics are supposed to teach well, but it’s assumed simply being a subject expert is enough. Significantly, most undergraduate teaching is now done by casual academics, who are frequently paid exclusively to teach but receive no professional development to do so.




Read more:
‘Some of them do treat you like an idiot’: what it’s like to be a casual academic


Despite federal government talk about wanting to ensure better outcomes for students, industry and the community, cuts to national teaching initiatives have also signalled a disregard for teaching.

For example, in 2016, the Coalition government cut funding to the Office for Learning and Teaching, a peak body that drove quality and innovation in university teaching. Since then, there has been no equivalent body to replace it.

Teaching also takes a backseat to research as an indicator of success. In international rankings, the “best” universities are commonly the most research-intensive. Within institutions, academics also say research is highly regarded when applying for promotion, with relatively little merit given to teaching performance.

A woman writes on a whiteboard.
Academics are supposed to teach well, but it’s assumed simply being a subject expert is enough.
Christina Morillo/Pexels

What does ‘quality teaching’ mean?

Renewed commitment to teaching at university requires an urgent shift from narrow understandings of what constitutes “quality teaching” across the sector.

Quality teaching has many different meanings in higher education, but few – if any – get to the heart of supporting academic staff to deliver effective teaching.

The national Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching focus on three different areas of quality: the student experience, graduate outcomes and employer satisfaction. These indicators speak to different stakeholder concerns and outcomes – which are important in and of themselves – but don’t provide any clarity or guidance on what constitutes “good teaching”.

Student evaluations and teaching awards are marketed by universities as evidence of “quality teaching”. However, evaluations do little more than reveal student biases. They reflect perceptions of a teacher rather than anything to do with their actual teaching. And awards only allow a small number of academics to be recognised as “good teachers”.

These examples demonstrate how the management of teaching has become the dominant focus rather than the practice of teaching.




Read more:
Australian unis could not function without casual staff: it is time to treat them as ‘real’ employees


A new way to ensure quality teaching

The Universities Accord could signal a genuine commitment to quality teaching if it reinstated a peak national body focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education.

At an institutional level, the accord must also invest in the professional development of academics, including casual staff.
Our research shows this can be achieved by providing a strong conceptual understanding of what quality teaching looks like in the university classroom.

In 2019–2020, we trialled the Quality Teaching Model as a mechanism to underpin teaching professional development with 27 academics. The QT Model is an evidence-based, practical framework to help academics generate constructive feedback and develop meaningful evidence to transform teaching and learning. This approach was adapted from a model education academics James Ladwig and Jenny Gore developed for the New South Wales Department of Education for use in schools.

The QT Model focuses attention on three core dimensions of “good” teaching practice. These are:

  1. intellectual quality: developing deep understanding of important ideas

  2. quality learning environment: ensuring positive classrooms that boost student learning

  3. significance: connecting learning to students’ lives and the wider world.

We worked with academics from a range of disciplines and at different career stages across designated teaching periods.
When interviewed, participants reported the QT Model helped them feel their teaching was valued. They reported it reinvigorated many aspects of academic work, including course planning, collaboration within and across disciplines, and improving students’ learning experiences.




Read more:
Our study found new teachers perform just as well in the classroom as their more experienced colleagues


Where to from here?

The key legislation guiding higher education in Australia mandates academics should not only have relevant disciplinary knowledge, but also skills in contemporary teaching, learning and assessment.

A book with marked by coloured tabs on a table.
We need to prioritise the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Cottonbro Studio/Pexels

But supporting quality teaching has always been a struggle.

The accord is a crucial opportunity to ensure universities deliver their core function of teaching. This is possible and achievable by reinvesting in the scholarship of teaching and learning, along with meaningful professional development in teaching for all academic staff.

This will require a strong commitment from government and the university sector.

Australian academics are already stressed, face huge workloads and are part of a workforce that has been casualised and endured mass redunancies. They also have to cope with the challenges of online learning and uncertainty around what Artificial Intelligence means for teaching and learning.

University students can’t receive a quality education without quality teaching. It is high time we recognise this and do something meaningful about it.

The Conversation

Sally Patfield currently receives funding from the NSW Department of Education and the Paul Ramsay Foundation. The study on which this piece is partially based was funded through the Vice-Chancellor’s Strategic Initiatives Fund at the University of Newcastle.

Elena Prieto-Rodriguez receives funding from from the Australian Research Council, Paul Ramsay Foundation, NSW Roads and Maritime Services, Glencore Coal Assets Australia, Google Australia, GHD, Bradken Resources, Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group, BHP Billiton and the NSW Department of Education.

Jenny Gore receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Paul Ramsay Foundation and NSW Department of Education. With University of Newcastle colleague, James Ladwig, she developed the Quality Teaching Model for the NSW Department of Education.

ref. Teaching and research are the core functions of universities. But in Australia, we don’t value teaching – https://theconversation.com/teaching-and-research-are-the-core-functions-of-universities-but-in-australia-we-dont-value-teaching-203657

Government to spend $11.3 billion over four years to fund 15% pay rise for aged care workers

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

Tuesday’s budget will include $11.3 billion over four years to fund the 15% pay rise aged care workers will receive from July 1.

The rise was awarded by the Fair Work Commission. Labor committed at last year’s election to fully fund a rise in pay for this sector.

Given acute staff shortages, it is hoped that the higher wages will attract more workers.

The pay rises will benefit more than 250,000 people.

A registered nurse on a level 2.3 award wage will receive an extra $196.08 a week – more than $10,000 a year.

A personal care worker on a level 4 (aged care award) or a home care worker on a level 3.1 (social, community, home care and disability services award) will get an extra $141.10 weekly – more than $7300 annually.

Recreational officers and chefs in the sector also are in line for increases.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said that “for too long, those working in aged care have been asked to work harder for longer without enough reward, but with this budget that changes”.

Aged Care Minister Anika Wells said that “fair wages play a major role in attracting and retaining workers”.

Aged care is now the fifth-largest area of federal government spending.
This financial year the cost of aged care will increase from $24.8 billion to an estimated $29.6 billion (23%).




Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: NDIA chair Kurt Fearnley on ‘fundamental’ reform of the disability scheme


There are about 1.5 million recipients of aged care in Australia, with growing pressures on the system ahead as the population ages.

In a round of Wednesday media appearances, Chalmers reiterated next week’s budget would contain “substantial cost-of-living relief”.

“It’ll prioritise the most vulnerable. It won’t just be limited by age, and it will be responsible.”

Chalmers said the budget would forecast the economy slowing considerably but not going into recession.

“The budget will be a difficult balancing act, between providing the cost-of-living relief that people need, being conscious of the pressures on the budget and all of that debt that we inherited, but also making sure that we can grow our way out of this slowing economy by investing in things like energy and laying some of these foundations for growth in our economy.”




Read more:
Word from The Hill: Another rate rise, higher tax on cigarettes, and likely JobSeeker boost for over-55s


Chalmers said the budget would also contain efforts “to get people into work if they want to work, including in communities where there has been for too long entrenched disadvantage”.

“We’ve got colleagues working on the job agency system to make sure that if people want to work, they can grab the opportunities of an economy that’s got unemployment currently running at three and a half per cent.”

The Conversation

Michelle Grattan 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. Government to spend $11.3 billion over four years to fund 15% pay rise for aged care workers – https://theconversation.com/government-to-spend-11-3-billion-over-four-years-to-fund-15-pay-rise-for-aged-care-workers-204919

Politics with Michelle Grattan: NDIA chair Kurt Fearnley on ‘fundamental’ reform of the disability scheme

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

The federal government is trying to contain the exploding cost of the landmark National Disability Insurance Scheme – especially difficult given the fears of vulnerable people who rely on it.

National cabinet’s decision last week to aim to reduce the cost increase from the current 14% annually down to 8% by 2026 received a sharp reaction from disability advocates. This financial year the NDIS will cost more than $35 billion, two thirds paid by the federal government.

The government has flagged areas for change and there is also a review being done.

In this podcast, former Paralympian Kurt Fearnley, chair of the National Disability Insurance Authority, which implements the scheme, discusses its issues and the road ahead.

Fearnley says the NDIS broadly “is working really well”, while acknowledging parts need significant overhaul if it is to be financially sustainable.

“There are parts of the scheme that would require pretty fundamental reform” – but that reform will need to “walk hand in hand” with participants.

The government has announced more than $720 million over four years for the NDIA: Fearnley says: “It will allow us to build an agency that is better positioned to answer and respond to the participant in a quick away, but also be able to build an agency that is better positioned to ensure that we are focused on the outcomes that we all fought for.”

“This scheme has been working for a lot of communities. Unfortunately, it’s also had its complications with ensuring that we are engaging with First Australians in a way that is appropriate, that allows the Indigenous Australians the ability to be able to thrive on this scheme.”

“So there’s lots of areas of reform, but it will all hinge on whether or not we’re able to create a system that has the participants’ voice heard at every step.”

A key area of reform is making the scheme less complex. Fearnley recounts a situation he experienced recently as an example.

One mother “broke down, she was in tears describing her interactions between the agency and a service provider. We encourage an evidence-based approach to the experience of the child within the scheme. And then this parent is speaking about how they felt like their child was considered an ATM to a third party service.

“Choice and control is beautiful to one and tough for others. We have built this incredible system […] It is there servicing 590,000 people, all with there unique experience with disability, and it’s the choice and control element that I think could be overwhelming for a new participant.

“It’s fundamentally reforming in an incredible, bloody amazing, empowering concept for an individual with disability who was never, in many instances, never asked what they want out of life.

But disability is “one of the most complex experiences in life. As a person with a disability, I’ve been able to find my pathway over a long period of time. And that’s where I think the choice and control element is amazing. But I do think it has its challenges in other parts.”

The Conversation

Michelle Grattan 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. Politics with Michelle Grattan: NDIA chair Kurt Fearnley on ‘fundamental’ reform of the disability scheme – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-ndia-chair-kurt-fearnley-on-fundamental-reform-of-the-disability-scheme-204922

Job creation isn’t always a good thing. Hobart’s new stadium can only make Tasmania’s housing crisis worse

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

The Albanese government’s announcement it will provide $240 million for a new stadium in Hobart has not had the favourable reception it might have hoped.

Those concerned with the proper operation of the federal system can point out that this kind of funding is the concern of state and local governments.

Anthony Albanese's Twitter account spruiks the federal funding for Tasmania.

Twitter, CC BY

Concerns about process are reinforced by the sorry history of “sports rorts”. Both Labor and Liberal federal governments have funded sports facilities to curry political favour.

To be fair, it is hard to see this project as targeted at a particular seat, but presumably the aim was to win support in Tasmania as a whole. Even compared with the dubious economics of sporting events such as the Formula 1 Grand Prix and the Olympic Games, stadium developments stand out as boondoggles.

Extensive research in the US is summarised by the conclusion that over the past 30 years, building sports stadiums has been a profitable undertaking for large sports teams, at the expense of the general public.

While there are some short-term benefits, the inescapable truth is the economic benefit of these projects for local communities is minimal. Indeed, they can be an obstacle to real development.




Read more:
Devils in the detail: an economist argues the case for a Tasmanian AFL team – and new stadium


Making the business case

The economic case for the Hobart Stadium is startlingly thin. The only clear-cut benefit attributable to the project is that the new Tasmanian AFL team will play its home games there, replacing the small number of AFL rounds played at Hobart’s existing stadium, Bellerive Oval.

In 2022, eight AFL men’s games were played in Tasmania – four at Bellerive, four at UTAS Stadium in Launceston. A local AFL team will play 11 home games.

The state government’s business case estimates that 5,000 interstate visitors will attend seven matches a year. It seems safe to assume some will fly in and out on the same day, and that few will stay more than two nights.

If we allow an average of one night per visitor, that’s 35,000 bed nights, or an increase of about 0.3% in current visitor nights for Tasmania (about 11 million a year in 2022).

Against that must be offset the Tasmanians who will travel to Melbourne and elsewhere for away games.

What about housing?

All of this is par for the course for projects of this kind. The big problem for both state and federal governments is that it comes at a time of a housing crisis.

The federal government’s press release contains some vague references to housing developments associated with the project. But this is little more than the sort of PR spin we’d expect from, for example, the proponents of a new coal mine.

The numbers here are quite startling. The centrepiece of federal Labor’s election platform was a $10 billion fund for housing, providing $500 million year to support social housing. (Labor’s bill is currently held up in the Senate, with the Coalition opposed, and the Greens demanding stronger action.)




Read more:
Labor’s proposed $10 billion social housing fund isn’t big as it seems, but it could work


If this $500 million were allocated proportionally by population, Tasmania would get about $10 million a year. The Commonwealth’s $240 million contribution to the stadium would cover this expenditure until nearly 2050. The total public outlay on the Hobart stadium (with $375 million from the Tasmanian government) would cover most of this century.

At a time of extreme fiscal stringency, such a massive outlay on a luxury project is very hard to justify.

What about job creation?

No serious benefit-cost analysis of this project has been made. Instead, supporters have relied on announcing the number of jobs it will create – 4,200 jobs during construction and 950 jobs when operational.

Such numbers are questionable. To make them bigger, governments typically count on the “multiplier effect” of work created for suppliers of various kinds. This is a long-standing tradition taken to new heights by the Albanese government. The announcement of the AUKUS submarine project, for example, was all about the jobs it would create.




Read more:
$18 million a job? The AUKUS subs plan will cost Australia way more than that


But wait a moment. At the same time as trumpeting the creation of jobs for construction workers, the government is seeking to solve Australia’s “skills shortage” arising from historically low unemployment.

Tasmania’s unemployment rate is 3.8%, marginally above the average for Australia, but lower than at any time since the economic crisis of the 1970s. This low rate represents a situation of full employment, where numbers of unemployed workers and job vacancies are roughly equal.

In such circumstances, creating a job means luring a worker away from another. If the new job is on a major construction project, that means one less worker available to build housing.

As I argue in my book, Economics in Two Lessons (Princeton University Press, 2019), the true costs of wasteful public expenditure are opportunity costs – the alternatives that are foregone.

Multiplier effects make opportunity costs even larger. The project diverts the workers employed directly, and takes all kinds of resources that could otherwise be used for socially useful purposes. This diversion of necessary resources is the truly pernicious aspect of publicly subsidising projects like the AFL stadium.

Tasmania, like the rest of Australia, does not need government action to create any more jobs, particularly in construction. It needs to ensure skilled workers are employed where they can be most valuable.

The Conversation

John Quiggin 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. Job creation isn’t always a good thing. Hobart’s new stadium can only make Tasmania’s housing crisis worse – https://theconversation.com/job-creation-isnt-always-a-good-thing-hobarts-new-stadium-can-only-make-tasmanias-housing-crisis-worse-204806

Can vaping help people quit smoking? It’s unlikely

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Chapman, Emeritus Professor in Public Health, University of Sydney

Shutterstock

Australian Health Minister Mark Butler has announced a major policy shift on vaping. Its two primary objectives are to make it harder for children and non-smokers to access vapes and to allow people trying to quit smoking to access nicotine vapes with a prescription.

Vapes are unquestionably popular, with many who vape saying they are trying to quit or to cut down on cigarettes. “Recreational” vapers of any age with no interest in quitting will find themselves frozen out.

But can vapes actually help significant numbers of people quit smoking? The evidence suggests it’s unlikely.




Read more:
A potted history of smoking, and how we’re making the same mistakes with vaping


Myth of the ‘hardened smokers’

First, let’s bust a widely believed myth. With smoking at an all time low, some experts argue today’s smokers are the die-hard addicts: frequently relapsing smokers who just can’t quit.

Whenever this hypothesis has been tested it has been found wanting. In nations where smoking prevalence has fallen most, we would expect (if the hypothesis was true) that indicators of hardened smokers (such as average number of cigarettes smoked per day) would be rising because the remaining smokers would be over-represented by heavy, addicted smokers.

But according to a 2020 review of 26 studies:

Some have argued that a greater emphasis on harm reduction or intensive treatment approaches is needed because remaining smokers are those who are less likely to stop with current methods. This review finds no or little evidence for this assumption.

In other words, there is no evidence long-term smokers are impervious to the suite of tobacco control policies and campaigns that have driven hundreds of millions of smokers around the world to quit.

Ashtray close up
The idea that ‘hardened smokers’ can’t quit is a myth.
Shutterstock

Vapes don’t help smokers cut back

The idea that vaping helps people smoke fewer cigarettes isn’t supported by the evidence. Studies of the number of cigarettes foregone by vapers who still smoke have shown that, compared with smokers who never vape, the average daily cigarette consumption is very similar.

Data from 2019 from the United Kingdom government’s annual Opinions and Lifestyle Survey also show the average number of cigarettes smoked daily by smokers who vape (8 a day) is almost identical to that by smokers who have never vaped (8.1 a day).

A 2018 paper considered the surge in e-cigarette use in England and whether this was reducing the number of cigarettes being smoked at the population level across the country. The authors concluded:

No statistically significant associations were found between changes in use of e-cigarettes […] while smoking and daily cigarette consumption. Neither did we find clear evidence for an association between e-cigarette use […] specifically for smoking reduction and temporary abstinence, respectively, and changes in daily cigarette consumption.

If use of e-cigarettes […] while smoking acted to reduce cigarette consumption in England between 2006 and 2016, the effect was likely very small at a population level.

How effective are vapes in quitting?

The most recent Cochrane review of randomised controlled trials compared vaping with nicotine replacement therapy (such as drugs, gums and patches). It found about 82% of people who vape are still smoking when followed up six or more months later.

This was better than those using nicotine replacement therapy: 90% were still smoking.

Neither nicotine replacement therapy or vapes are hugely disruptive of smoking. You certainly wouldn’t be confident using a drug for any health issue that had a 82-90% failure rate.




Read more:
Drugs, gums or patches won’t increase your chances of quitting


GP listens to patient
Nicotine replacement therapies aren’t very effective at helping people quit.
Shutterstock

Randomised controlled trials also poorly reflect the ways vapes and nicotine replacement therapy are used in the real world and aren’t representative of all smokers wanting to quit.

A review of 54 randomised controlled trials on quitting smoking, for example, found two-thirds of smokers with nicotine dependence would have been excluded from clinical trials by at least one criterion. This may result in participation biases, which reduce the applicability of the results to smokers at large, or even smokers at large who want to quit.

This, and other factors, make randomised controlled trials likely to overestimate effectiveness, as I outline in chapter two of my book.

What does the real-world evidence show?

The best evidence we have about how vapes perform comes from studies where large numbers of vapers are followed for several years. The US Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) project, for example, has been collecting national cohort data on 46,000 Americans since 2013.

As the PATH data below show, when randomly selected groups of vapers are followed up at 12 months, the most common outcome is those who were smoking and vaping at the beginning of the study period will still be vaping and smoking at the end of the 12 months.

The most common outcome is those who were smoking and vaping at the start were still doing both 12 months later.
Data from the US Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) project

I’ve summarised 16 other reviews and expert group conclusions of the evidence published since 2017. Words like “low quality”, “inconclusive”, “insufficient”, “weak”, “low level” and “limited” abound.

The upshot?

The prescription vapes access scheme’s most important population effect is likely to be that it will massively reduce access to vapes by children. State governments will start hitting retailers illegally selling with massive fines and Border Security will do the same with importing suppliers.

Taiwan fines sellers a maximum of US$1.65 million, with a minimum of US$330,000. The current maximum fine in New South Wales is currently only A$1,600. Such a fine would barely raise dust in big retailers’ petty cash drawers.

Based on the research, we might expect 10-18% of vapers using the prescription scheme to quit within 12 months (with some relapse expected), but many more will quit unassisted.

Preventing new generations of kids from becoming addicted to nicotine and more likely to start smoking is a huge policy advance that is hugely welcome.




Read more:
Vaping and behaviour in schools: what does the research tell us?


The Conversation

Simon Chapman 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. Can vaping help people quit smoking? It’s unlikely – https://theconversation.com/can-vaping-help-people-quit-smoking-its-unlikely-204812

60 years of The Australian Ballet and 90 years of ‘Australian’ ballet: Identity asks us to reflect on Australian dance today

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yvette Grant, PhD (Dance) Candidate and Dance History Tutor, The University of Melbourne

Daniel Boud/The Australian Ballet

When The Australian Ballet was founded in 1962, its charter stated that, alongside international repertoire and visiting international choreographers, it must engage Australian choreographers and produce Australian works.

But what does “Australian” look like in ballet?

In 1989, dancer, teacher, choreographer and director of The Ballet Guild (later Ballet Victoria) Laurel Martyn was asked about what it meant for ballet to be Australian:

It’s Australian because it comes out of our experience, what we think, how we do things […] It must come out of our own lives, our own way of seeing.

Martyn had choreographed her first Australian ballet in 1941. The project of creating Australian ballet is not a new one.

In 1964, Robert Helpmann claimed his ballet The Display was the first Australian ballet, because it was the first with an Australian score, designer, story and choreographer.

His ballet met all those criteria with its Aussie rules football, machismo, bush picnics and lyrebirds – but there had been many much earlier than his.

Like Helpmann’s ballet, some focused on Australian cultural life, such as Kira Bousloff’s The Beach Inspector (1958) and Rex Reid’s The Melbourne Cup (1963).

Others celebrated Australian industry. Joanna Priest’s The Lady Augusta (1946) was about the maiden voyage of a steamship along the Murray River to transport wool. Valrene Tweedie’s Wakooka (1955) was about life on a sheep station.

Still others looked to the rich natural environment, such as Martyn’s Voyageur about Australian migratory birds (1956).

And there were those that appropriated Australian Indigenous culture in their attempt to create an identity of this place. The most infamous of these was Beth Dean’s Corroboree with white dancers in blackface performing for Queen Elizabeth II in 1954.

Since then, Australian ballet has radically transformed the way that it includes First Nations identity in its construction of what it means to be Australian. The 1989 founding of Bangarra Dance Theatre was key to this new Australian identity in dance.

A reflection of this transformation was The Australian Ballet’s 1997 work Rites, a creation of then Bangarra artistic director Stephen Page. Page brought the two companies together in a First Nations’ reimagining of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

At The Australian Ballet’s 30th anniversary in 1992, the company staged an Australian reimagining of The Nutcracker, choreographed by Graeme Murphy.

Murphy’s ballet told a story of the importance of migration to Australia: a history of how war in Europe had led many Russian dancers to stay, enriching our cultural landscape and firmly setting ballet’s roots in this country.

Now, for its 60th anniversary, the company is again asking what is an “Australian ballet”. This time it’s answering the question with a two-part program Identity. Identity features Wiradjuri man Daniel Riley’s THE HUM, a collaboration with Australian Dance Theatre, and Alice Topp’s Paragon, which brings back to the stage many company alumni.

Both works demonstrate an approach to creating an Australian ballet that, as the program suggests, “explores the community of the stage”. They each return to Martyn’s statement that for ballet to be Australian it must come from us.

Who is on that stage as part of that community, then, becomes critical.




Read more:
Explainer: what is contemporary dance?


THE HUM

THE HUM has a powerful First Nations presence including choreographer Riley, composer Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, costume designer Annette Sax and dancer Karra Nam, and engages a conversation not only with white settler Australia but also between contemporary dance and ballet.

Dancers encounter each other with a deep breath in. Holding their gaze, they drop twice at the knees with two short sharp outbreaths: confrontation and common ground.

Dancers on stage under a neon orange sun.
THE HUM brings together dancers of The Australian Ballet and Australian Dance Theatre.
Daniel Boud/The Australian Ballet

Black rock formations that frame the stage are turned around and repurposed, their constructed nature exposed, a metaphor for our inherited Australian identity.

Neon lights and projected computer-generated images combine with the natural moon, water and tree branches, reminding us we are both of country and city in the 21st century.

Dancers
Who is on the stage as part of a community becomes critical.
Daniel Boud/The Australian Ballet

THE HUM shows a community where members are finally facing each other but haven’t yet worked out who they are together – although they know where to begin. The audience is equally tasked with this provocation.

Paragon

In Paragon, Topp shows us who The Australian Ballet has been in footage, images, dance styles and in the returning dancers who carry the company’s history in their bodies. These include Marilyn Rowe, who had her debut with the company in 1965, Simon Dow, who joined in 1974, and Lucinda Dunn, who danced with the company for 24 years until 2014.

Topp also shows us who we might be into the future in the bodies of the company’s young dancers.

And in bringing these elements together on the one stage, she shows us where we are now.

David McAllister
Paragon brings company alumni to the stage with the current crop of dancers.
Daniel Boud/The Australian Ballet

The work exudes a combination of strength and tenderness. Avoiding any trumpet blowing, it offers a thoughtful and sometimes playful celebratory reflection: achingly nostalgic yet its own contemporary work.

Divided into 12 parts, it juxtaposes lyrical pas de deux in Grecian white with powerful ’80s Spartacus-style male corps de ballet in black; almost floating 19th-century ladies in long gold ball gowns moving through elegant formations with sets of duos in studio wear moving independently or in canon.

Amber Scott and Adam Bull
Paragon is achingly nostalgic yet its own contemporary work.
Daniel Boud/The Australian Ballet

The ages of the dancers are highly visible. Older and younger bodies dance on the ballet stage together, demanding our attention. Much like THE HUM, Paragon is a result of this community, an honouring of ancestors and a revelation of ever-present history.

The Australian identity is a work in progress, but in Identity it is heartening to witness that one of our iconic cultural institutions is up for the challenge.

Identity is at the Sydney Opera House until May 20, and then at Arts Centre Melbourne June 16-24.




Read more:
5 Australian women choreographers you should know (and where to see them in 2023)


The Conversation

Yvette Grant receives funding from an Australian Commonwealth Scholarship.

ref. 60 years of The Australian Ballet and 90 years of ‘Australian’ ballet: Identity asks us to reflect on Australian dance today – https://theconversation.com/60-years-of-the-australian-ballet-and-90-years-of-australian-ballet-identity-asks-us-to-reflect-on-australian-dance-today-203931

Samoa Observer: 2023 World Press Freedom Day – reflection, celebration

EDITORIAL: By the Samoa Observer editorial board

There will be celebrations as well as self-contemplation in newsrooms around the world today to mark World Press Freedom Day 2023, with the Fourth Estate facing some of its biggest challenges yet.

It was only close to two years ago when Samoa’s constitutional crisis tested the resolve of the media industry, with the nation, as well as families and households, split along political party lines, to also put further pressure on journalists and media practitioners who were working hard on the frontlines to keep the nation abreast of the historical political developments.

Battered and exhausted from the weeks of political turmoil at that time, sandwiched between two political camps, the task of informing the nation and its citizens of a new government was left to the Samoan media industry.

Samoa Observer
SAMOA OBSERVER

It was our job to pick up the pieces and report back to the nation as best as we can on what just occurred and to continue to give the message of hope and assurance to the general population that the seat of government didn’t change, it was just that the custodianship of the seat of government had changed hands.

And the journey of this great nation continues nonetheless.

So just over two years after the last general election, the trigger of the constitutional crisis, this newspaper demonstrates its ongoing commitment to improvement and growth by launching a new design to give our readers a more content-rich experience.

New features include “funday” pages and “news in numbers” while keeping a foot in the digital world with QR codes for “today’s top 10 stories” at a touch of a button on your smartphones.

Core business
This newspaper’s core business of informing, educating, and empowering its readership with the latest news and information has not changed.

In fact, the goal post hasn’t changed too with this newspaper committed to the values upheld by its founder, Gatoaitele Savea Sano Malifa to seek the truth, hold governments to account, and report without fear or favour.

The celebration of World Press Freedom Day 2023 today revolves around the theme “Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of expression as a driver for all other human rights”.

We believe the theme of today’s celebrations, set by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), succinctly highlights the importance of freedom of expression and its intrinsic link to the media and how it is through freedom of expression that we get to promote all other human rights.

According to UNESCO, four fundamental freedoms are outlined in the Preamble of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights: freedom of speech, freedom of belief, freedom from fear, and freedom from want.

But it is the freedom of speech that comes first as it is the fundamental freedom that enables all the other rights.

“The right to freedom of expression and its corollary, the right to access information, allow us to seek, receive and impart information, ideas, concepts, and beliefs across borders and cultures.

Essential role
“And in this exercise, the media and journalists play an essential role: they help verify and disseminate facts, they create spaces for ideas to be debated and for the voiceless to be heard, and they render complex matters intelligible for the public at large.”

And we hope too for more press conferences convened by leaders in the government to enable us in the media to do our jobs and a better understanding and appreciation of the role of the media and its contribution to Samoa’s development.

On that note, we take this opportunity to wish our colleagues in Samoa’s media industry Happy World Press Freedom Day 2023 celebrations.

Seeing colleagues appear on television, listening to them on the radio, or seeing their bylines in their online content confirms that we’ve just got on with the business of informing the nation despite the challenges we’ve faced.

And there is no better gift to this nation of 200,000 than to maintain our focus on our primary responsibility to bring them news on issues that directly impact their lives.

Even though we fall and stumble sometimes, as we go about our work to keep the country informed, let’s strive to better ourselves for the good of our readers, listeners, and viewers.

The Samoa Observer has traditionally been one of the leading Pacific newspapers fighting for press freedom.This editorial was published on 3 May 2023 – World Press Freedom Day — and is republished with permission. 

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Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

What do white staff do in remote Indigenous art centres?

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Una Rey, Senior Industry Affiliate, RMIT University

Shutterstock

In April, The Australian published the results of a four-month investigation into white staff “interference” at Tjala Arts, a member of the APY Arts Centre Collective of Indigenous art centres across South Australia.

It included a video of an art centre manager painting on Yaritji Young’s canvas, to “juice it up” a bit.

The ongoing media commentary has been divisive and confusing. One question it raises is what do art managers and studio assistants actually do in remote Indigenous community art centres?



50 years of arts centres

Remote art centres are central to today’s internationally successful Indigenous contemporary art industry. They typically have a white art centre manager and other staff overseen by an Indigenous board.

Papunya Tula Artists in Central Australia, incorporated in 1972, is the common ancestor of the publicly funded art centre model.

Papunya Tula marked the transition from the paternalism of the mission era to Indigenous self-determination, supported by the establishment of the Aboriginal Arts Board.

On May 3 1973, a press release from Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s office announced:

Aboriginals have been given full responsibility for developing their own programs in the arts under a new Government policy to revitalise cultural activities through the Australian Council for the Arts.

What followed was a revolution, led by and for Aboriginal artists, with non-Indigenous staff employed to mediate with the art world.

Today, this workforce are mostly young women with degrees in visual art or arts management. They operate in around 90 Aboriginal-owned collectives across remote Australia. Staff turnover is high, and recruitment is a perennial task.




Read more:
40 years on: how Gough Whitlam gave Indigenous art a boost


A cross-cultural thing

The troubling fact is not that “Aboriginal art is a white thing”, as Aboriginal artist and activist Richard Bell famously declared in 2002. Rather, Aboriginal art is “a cross-cultural thing”, bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous creative workers together.

Despite the shared goal and triumphs of the cultural industries in celebrating Indigenous art, the shadow of Australia’s colonisation is never far away.

The conditions in remote art centres have evolved since the 1970s, but the practicalities are essentially the same. Art centre staff support the artists socially, culturally and logistically to ensure artists are happy to create their work in a culturally safe space.

Staff also manage the external demands of the market, exhibition schedules, bureaucratic accountability (to funding bodies and institutions, for example) and advocacy.

Studio assistance involves purchasing art materials, stretching and priming canvas, harvesting raw material such as ochre, bark or timber, as well as packing, freighting and distributing the work and travelling with artists to exhibitions.

The level of support depends on an individual artist’s needs. Art centres often include the elderly and artists with a disability. Some artists have a strong creative drive; some work slowly or inconsistently.

Whatever the art form, good work takes considerable time. Art production is frequently interrupted “mid-canvas” to attend to other business such as cultural events, funerals or medical treatment.




Read more:
Aboriginal art: is it a white thing?


A collaborative space?

The APY Art Centre Collective management strongly denied allegations of any interference with the paintings or “the Tjukurrpa” (the Aṉangu term for their comprehensive spiritual belief system). Their website currently states hands-on assistance, such as “underpainting”, is common practice.

Selecting colours and mixing paint, priming and delegating canvases, washing brushes and general maintenance, as well as regular discussion and responsiveness to the art are all part of the studio assistant’s role.

Some aesthetic influence on the final product is only natural, but painting directly on the canvas is never part of the job description. Undeclared, many would consider it fraudulent.

In 1997, when I first went to work in a Western Desert art centre, the message from the artists was simple: sell our paintings, and be straight with us.

It was also clear the paintings offered for sale – to public institutions, knowledgeable collectors and souvenir buyers – would be of a certain standard.

“Quality control” is an ambivalent term, but it is implied and expected in the job.

In 1996 Kathleen Petyarre won the lucrative Telstra Art Award for her painting Storm in Atnangkere Country II. It was later revealed she was “assisted” by her white partner.

Following an inquiry, Petyarre retained her rightful authorship of the work, but this prompted art centres to recognise “creative labour”, when delegated by the artist and particularly among family, as culturally accepted practice — which should be attributed accordingly.

The right to determine who gets to collaborate on artwork, and how, applies to artists worldwide. The studios of Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst are extreme examples of art making being undertaken by studio assistants. So too, Aboriginal artists enjoy workshops with specialists in fields as varied as printmaking, bronze casting, animation or glassmaking.

It’s up to the artists first, and the institutions, curators, the market and art critics next, to evaluate such collaborations and exchanges case by case.

Cultural narratives and daily realities

A key role in art centres is “taking the story”. This is where art centre staff document the artist’s painting with a photo and the related Tjukurrpa or Country.

These “certificates of authenticity” documenting culturally important stories guarantee the works as genuine Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander works. They also underpin the marketing, promotion and interpretation of many contemporary art exhibitions from remote communities.

It’s the disconnect between these purist cultural narratives and the realities of the busy cross-cultural studios that puts the artists, their staff and the entire industry in such a paradoxical position.

Trust and ethics lie at the heart of these working relationships. It’s impractical to create more rules and impossible to enforce the ways artists and staff interact in art centre settings, but it’s time to acknowledge these exchanges with a new story.




Read more:
Beware red flags and fakes: how to buy authentic First Nations designs that benefit creators and communities


The Conversation

Una Rey is editor of Artlink.

ref. What do white staff do in remote Indigenous art centres? – https://theconversation.com/what-do-white-staff-do-in-remote-indigenous-art-centres-204746

Alone Australia contestants are grappling with isolation and setbacks. Here’s what makes a winner

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa A Williams, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, UNSW Sydney

Will it be Gina? SBS TV

The winner of the reality TV show Alone Australia
will need more than “survival skills” to succeed. They will also need to draw on a host of psychological strengths.

Will the winner be the one who shows the most mental toughness or “grit”? Will it be the one who copes with being socially isolated in the Tasmanian wilderness for weeks? How about the contestant who takes a moment to feel awe watching a sunset?

I’m a social psychology researcher, specialising in the dynamics between social interactions and emotions. Here’s what happens when you take away those social interactions, and some thoughts on who’s most likely to thrive.




Read more:
What Alone Australia tells us about fear, and why we need it


Remind me, what’s Alone Australia?

Alone Australia on SBS TV involves ten contestants who are dropped into the wilds of a Tasmanian winter. Each has ten chosen items (from an approved list) and kilos of recording equipment.

Aside from medical check-ins, they have no social contact. Over the coming days and weeks, they film themselves building a shelter, making fire, and finding food and water. Some thrive, some clearly struggle.

Contestants can choose to “tap out” or can be removed for medical reasons. The contestant who lasts the longest wins A$250,000.

Contestants were selected on the basis of having survival skills and a personality likely to be engaging on camera.

But success on the show will likely also stem from a range of psychological capacities – and perhaps a bit of good luck.




Read more:
Woman spends 500 days alone in a cave – how extreme isolation can alter your sense of time


Mental toughness is key

Contestants face a gruelling environment. They are repeatedly challenged by the terrain and weather, as well as by hunger and setbacks.

Here, “mental toughness”, which is related to the popular idea of “grit”, plays a role.

Mental toughness is a group of personality characteristics originally identified in elite and successful athletes. It relates to coping with the pressures of competition, as well as setting and following through on training and performance goals.

Athletes higher in mental toughness tend to perform better. Mentally tough military recruits are more likely to be selected to join special forces.

Mike, contestant on Alone Australia, in Tasmanian wilderness
Will it be Mike?
SBS TV

Can mental toughness be cultivated in the moment? It appears so. Thinking back to past failures tends to spur people to stick to current tough goals. Future thinking also plays a role. Imagining a future in which you are confident and in control builds self-reported toughness.

We know mentally tough people use a few “performance strategies”. These include talking positively to themselves (either out loud or in their mind), controlling their emotions, and intentionally staying relaxed. People can practise and draw on these strategies in the face of adversity. Mentally tough people also avoid negative thinking such as leaning into thoughts of failure or engaging in self-blame.

But mental toughness has limits. When fatigued, mental toughness no longer predicts perseverance towards a difficult physical goal. Instead, underlying fitness levels appear to be critical.




Read more:
Grit or quit? How to help your child develop resilience


Combating loneliness is crucial

The main premise of the show – and its namesake – is total social isolation.

Research highlights the difference between social isolation (lack of opportunity for social interaction) and loneliness (the distressing feeling that one’s social needs aren’t being met). A person can be socially isolated but not feel lonely or feel lonely even in the presence of others.

Not everyone has the same needs for social interaction. Indeed, some people place high value on solitude and generally need less interaction to avoid loneliness.

But there’s a caveat. “Social anhedonia” (markedly low interest in and reward from interpersonal connection) is associated with poor functioning.

Even people who don’t prefer solitude can get creative about fulfilling social needs when people aren’t around.

Humans tend to anthropomorphise (or perceive as human) non-human objects and animals when feeling lonely.

You might remember Wilson the volleyball from the movie Cast Away. Wilson kept the lead character company during his years being stranded on an island.

People can also remember past, or anticipate future, social interactions. This “social daydreaming” may help people cope when their friends and family are not around.




Read more:
The politics of the castaway story


How about awe and pride?

Emotional experiences also likely have a role in pushing some contestants to endure longer. Others have written about the role of fear on the show (in a nutshell, fear has its place and isn’t to be avoided).

But research also points to the potential benefits of positive emotions in this situation, such as awe and pride.

Kate, contestant in Alone Australia, in Tasmanian wilderness
Will it be Kate?
SBS TV

Natural environments are in no short supply for contestants on the show. In fact, nature is nearly all they see. And nature is a prime trigger of
awe – the positive emotional experience when witnessing extraordinary things that are vast and complex.

Awe is linked to a variety of beneficial outcomes, including higher self-reported wellbeing, physical health, critical thinking and humility.

Most of us are familiar with pride – the emotional experience associated with achievement. Pride isn’t just felt upon attaining a goal, but also when making progress along the way.

Despite pride’s bad rap (for instance, as a deadly sin), my own research links the experience of pride to pursuing goals. People work harder at a goal when they’re feeling proud of earlier accomplishments.

One key to unlocking the benefits of positive emotions such as pride and awe is to mindfully find the opportunities to experience them. Specifically, savouring the moment is a documented strategy for intentionally increasing the experience of positive emotions such as awe and pride.




Read more:
Personalities that thrive in isolation and what we can all learn from time alone


Are you a future Alone Australia winner?

If you’re thinking of applying for future seasons of Alone Australia, you might be wondering if you have what it takes.

Given time, you can build both your survival and psychological skills.

You can develop mental toughness, your capacity to combat loneliness while socially isolated, and your ability to savour positive emotions such as awe and pride.




Read more:
What is hedonism and how does it affect your health?


The Conversation

Lisa A. Williams receives funding from the Australian government (Australian Research Council; Department of Industry, Science, and Resources).

ref. Alone Australia contestants are grappling with isolation and setbacks. Here’s what makes a winner – https://theconversation.com/alone-australia-contestants-are-grappling-with-isolation-and-setbacks-heres-what-makes-a-winner-204264

In a bad fire year, Australia records over 450,000 hotspots. These maps show where the risks have increased over 20 years

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rick McRae, Adjunct Professor, School of Science at UNSW Canberra, UNSW Sydney

The bushfire outlook for many parts of Australia has changed drastically over the past decade. Environmental conditions have transformed, producing larger and more destructive bushfires.

The frequency of bushfires that alter the atmospheric conditions around them has also increased. Nowhere was this more evident than during the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020.

As we continue to experience the effects of climate change, these environmental changes and destructive fire events will only become more prevalent.

Thanks to satellite imaging data collected over the past 20 years, we can map and quantify the region-by-region impact of climate change and how this has affected the prevalence of fire in different parts of Australia. With more accurate bushfire modelling, we can assist fire services and land managers to determine where they need to refocus their efforts as we adjust to the long haul of adaptation to climate change.

To this end, the maps in this article show where fires occurred in two consecutive decades, and show the changes between them. They also show regions where those changes exceed a threshold, indicating a significant increase in fire activity. This enables better-targeted fire risk management.




Read more:
200 experts dissected the Black Summer bushfires in unprecedented detail. Here are 6 lessons to heed


Two decades of satellite fire monitoring

More than 20 years ago NASA launched two satellites, (Terra in 1999 and on Aqua in 2002), to monitor the Earth’s surface with specialised sensors. One sensor, MODIS (MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), was able to see both smoke plumes and the infrared signature of fires. An algorithm was developed to classify image pixels containing fire, producing a set of “hotspots”.

Both satellites have lasted well beyond their planned mission durations. This is significant for fire managers, who now have two decades of continuous hotspot data.

Mapping Australia’s fire hotspots

For many years I have been analysing MODIS data from the perspective of seasonality. I have been looking at when fires occurred and whether that reflected expectations. The aim is to validate seasonal bushfire outlooks.

Map showing peak seasons for fire activity around Australia
Peak fire activity seasons for zones around Australia.
Author analysis of NASA data, Author provided

The past 20 years of annual seasonality reviews are now available online. Each year the previous 12 months’ data were compared against those from a set time range or control period. This was a decade-long period covering a mix of El Niño and La Niña years, indicating “average” conditions.

Recently, we passed the end of the second decade of MODIS data. This opened the prospect of comparing two decades (starting in July 2002 and in July 2012) and looking for differences.

Map showing ratio of hotspots in 2019-20 to the decade average for zones around Australia
The ratio of hotspots in 2019-20 to the first decade average for zones around Australia.
Author analysis of NASA data, Author provided

In a year with a lot of fire, Australia creates more than 450,000 hotspots. This makes the 20 years of MODIS data an irreplaceable tool for seamless, quantitative assessments of fire dynamics across Australia. The datasets are freely available online and have been used to create useful products to assist fire managers.

Several caveats apply to hotspot datasets. Low-intensity fires (especially well-planned, hazard-reduction burns), fires under heavy cloud cover, and fire runs that burn out quickly may not produce a hotspot. The latter was the case for many of the worst fire events during the Black Summer fires.

There is also no way to separate wildfire from planned fire. This has to be a goal, as both contribute to the fire regime but the balance varies a lot between regions. Future burn planning may become a major challenge as big wildfire events like Black Summer put much of the landscape into a single fire age. This makes burning difficult until the forest recovers.




Read more:
Fire management in Australia has reached a crossroads and ‘business as usual’ won’t cut it


To determine how fire activity had changed between the first and second decades of data, hotspots were aggregated into grid-cells. Each spanned half a degree of both latitude and longitude.

Map showing hotspot counts for the first and second decade of the past 20 years
Hotspot count maps for decade one (left) and decade two (right). Larger symbols indicate higher counts.
Author analysis of NASA data, Author provided

By comparing the number and ratio of hotspots in the grid-cell count from decade one to that from decade two, we could determine where fire frequency was changing the most.

Map of hotspot count ratios based on first and second decade of satellite data
Hotspot count ratios from decade one to decade two, showing where fire activity has increased and decreased.
Author analysis of NASA data, Author provided

Some areas, such as eastern New South Wales, have a very high ratio of change between the first and second decade, reflecting Black Summer. Some areas, such as Arnhem Land, have a very high hotspot count and a slight increase from the first decade to the second, which may produce a significant challenge in future.




Read more:
We are professional fire watchers, and we’re astounded by the scale of fires in remote Australia right now


To encompass the effects of both high counts and high ratios, a threshold was set and any region that exceeded this was an area that needed the most attention.

This produced a set of geographic regions with consistent patterns.

Map combining decade two hotspot count and inter-decadal ratios (left) is used to create map showing regions of change (right).
Combinations of decade two hotspot counts and inter-decadal ratios (left) used to create regions of change, coloured separately (right).
Author analysis of NASA data, Author provided

The impacts detailed in the interactive map below (click on the dots for details) must be considered as longer-term management issues for the highlighted regions.



Year-to-year fire patterns have been showing extreme swings in recent years, which may swamp the longer-term trends. However, these trends have picked up many of the key operational challenges, including fire thunderstorms, of recent years.

These challenges are evident in forests in the south-east and south-west of Australia, south-east Queensland, central Tasmania and the tropics.




Read more:
Firestorms and flaming tornadoes: how bushfires create their own ferocious weather systems


Hotspot mapping in the future

Challenges as we move forward include developing ways to merge the MODIS data with data from the next generation of satellites, and to separate data for wildfire and prescribed burning.

This and other work will allow us to better anticipate what the next decade will bring.

The Conversation

Rick McRae was a senior emergency manager in the ACT for over three decades, and has now retired. He is now a Visiting Fellow at UNSW Canberra.

ref. In a bad fire year, Australia records over 450,000 hotspots. These maps show where the risks have increased over 20 years – https://theconversation.com/in-a-bad-fire-year-australia-records-over-450-000-hotspots-these-maps-show-where-the-risks-have-increased-over-20-years-204679

The AFL needs real cultural change. Can the new chief deliver it?

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle O’Shea, Senior Lecturer, School of Business, Western Sydney University

A long, competitive recruitment process to name a new Australian Football League chief executive has concluded with the appointment of an AFL insider.

By its own admission, the AFL has chosen a safe pair of hands in Andrew Dillon. AFL Commission Chair Richard Goyder described him as “an exceptional football person who had been involved in virtually every major decision across the AFL for many years”. To be exact, Dillon has been in the AFL for 23 years

Since 1897, 13 men have served as CEO of the AFL or its precursor, the Victorian Football League. All have been white, with an average age of 49 at the start of their tenure.

To be sure, Dillon is immensely qualified, but did the AFL miss an opportunity to transform Australia’s national sport with a history-making hire?

The bold pick: a woman in the role

The AFL had a chance to name a woman to the role, with an excellent candidate in Kylie Watson-Wheeler. She was unanimously appointed president of the Western Bulldogs in 2020 and also serves as senior vice president and managing director of the Walt Disney Company Australia & New Zealand.

The AFL continues to see double-digit growth in women’s grassroots football participation, in addition to sizeable commercial gains and future possibilities emanating from the AFL Women’s League.

Of the eight current serving AFL commissioners, two are also women (Helen Milroy and Gabrielle Trainor). And they are not the first to sit at the decision-making table. Sam Mostyn’s 2005 appointment as the league’s first female commissioner was a transformational moment, but she faced resistance and criticism in the job – highlighting the game’s complex cultural problems.

The AFL’s 2022-24 gender equity action plan set lofty aspirations for gender representation across the codes. But research shows the numbers of female hires often conceal the gendered workplace cultures and informal practices that can prevent women from progressing in sport management careers.




Read more:
‘Jobs for the boys’: women don’t get a fair go in sports administration


Dillon has refuted suggestions that his appointment is the result of the “AFL boys club”. Reflecting the AFL’s espoused diversity and inclusion strategy, he quickly turned the spotlight to “his talented, diverse workforce”.

Diversity is vital for developing the AFL, but the league needs to consider the structural and cultural barriers to attracting this diverse talent in the first place.

Dillon will also need to be sensitive to genuine equity and inclusion – an enduring problem for the AFL.

It is promising to see that Laura Kane will be the acting executive general manager of football, and she is expected to be among the candidates to fill the role permanently. But only time will tell if we will see real change in the codes’ hiring decisions.

Sexual harassment on and off the field

Historically, AFL House has not been a safe haven for women. Sports journalist Michael Warner’s 2021 book, The Boys Club: Power, Politics and the AFL, unearthed numerous egregious claims about the game’s treatment of female administrators.

As is often the case in male-dominated organisations, women’s voices have been quieted in the AFL through the use of payouts and nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) when they’ve made complaints of sexual harassment or bullying.

There are dangers for women on the field, as well. A 2022 report commissioned by the AFL (but not publicly released) reported that female and non-binary umpires were subjected to sexual abuse, assault and racial slurs at all levels of the game. The AFL offered a formal apology to the umpires.




Read more:
It’s not all about gender or ethnicity: a blind spot in diversity programs is holding equality back


These allegations came after the 2017 revision of the AFL’s policy for managing complaints and incidents, which sought to address the poor and inconsistent manner in which complaints levelled by women had been managed. The revised policy provides clear supportive processes for those making complaints, together with formal and transparent procedures for complaint management.

The number of complaints is higher now than under the 2005 policy, according to the AFL.

In another positive step, a recent pay deal almost doubled the salaries of AFLW players (albeit under a one-year collective bargaining agreement). The minimum AFLW wage increased from $20,239 to $39,184, though this is still well below other women’s professional sporting leagues.

AFLW players also remain on precarious six-month contracts and most still rely on income from outside sources. While a step forward, the AFL’s commitment to ensuring AFLW players are the best paid female athletes in Australia by 2030 will require much more attention.

Racism and homophobia need to be dealt with, too

In his first comments since being named to the role, Dillon said he had no intention of trying to fast-track or interfere with the inquiry into allegations of historic racism at Hawthorn.

Although he mentioned getting “the right outcome at the right time”, his statement lacked any mention of the deep personal costs and ongoing trauma for the people involved. This is a deeply concerning omission in response to an issue that continues to cast a dark shadow over the league since the allegations were made public last September.

And last month, in a span of less than 24 hours, racial and homophobic abuse was directed at four separate AFL players.

While the outgoing AFL chief executive, Gillon McLachlan, made calls to stop this sort of abuse from happening, it’s clear the sport needs wholesale cultural change.

Is Dillon the man for the job? Will his leadership be bold enough and his team diverse enough to put real action behind the promises? We are hopeful it is.

The Conversation

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. The AFL needs real cultural change. Can the new chief deliver it? – https://theconversation.com/the-afl-needs-real-cultural-change-can-the-new-chief-deliver-it-204761

Why tobacco companies’ warnings about a black market are inflated – and misleading

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janet Hoek, Professor of Public Health, University of Otago

Shutterstock/NeydtStock

Tobacco companies claim to be transforming their business by “reducing the health impact” of their products. Yet they often oppose the very policies that could achieve this goal.

British American Tobacco NZ supplies about two thirds of the New Zealand tobacco market. The company opposed policies outlined in the smokefree law that came into force in January this year. Instead, it proposed non-regulatory approaches.

Among a suite of objections, the company claimed denicotinisation, reduced availability of tobacco, and the introduction of a smokefree generation would lead to serious unintended consequences. These included a tobacco black market that would fuel “drug trafficking, money laundering and other nefarious activities”.

Independent research analysing the data tobacco companies use to support these claims has documented numerous problems with the data collection, analysis and presentation. The effect has been to inflate estimates of illicit tobacco trade.

Other international studies have examined the role tobacco companies themselves play in supporting illicit trade by attempting to control a global track and trace system and undermining the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products.

Analyses of industry behaviour in low and middle-income countries found overwhelming historical evidence of the industry’s complicity in illicit trade. For more than two decades, studies have questioned tobacco companies’ claims that black market trade results from high taxation and noted how these companies are often the main beneficiaries of illicit trade.




Read more:
Smoke and mirrors: why claims that NZ’s smokefree policy could fuel an illicit tobacco trade don’t stack up


Who gains from black market scaremongering?

There are obvious risks to relying on industry evidence. In 2006, a US court found international tobacco companies acted with “intent to defraud or deceive” the public about the harms from smoking for decades.

A New Zealand lobby group supported by tobacco companies appears not to have critically reviewed industry evidence but instead amplified the claims. Its submission during the consultation process for New Zealand’s smokefree legislation erroneously argued the measures would amount to prohibition. It drew incorrect parallels with alcohol prohibition in the US.

Nicotine products will in fact remain available, either as approved treatments (such as nicotine replacement therapies) or through vaping products. Prohibition arguments are as baseless as they are misleading.

How do people who smoke view illicit tobacco?

We recently completed a study involving in-depth interviews with 24 people who smoke. Very few of them reported personal interest in illicit tobacco products or had purchased illegally imported or stolen tobacco. The wide availability of other nicotine products in Aotearoa New Zealand may explain their comments.

Although few had used illegally-traded tobacco, nearly all had accessed and smoked homegrown tobacco. However, none had enjoyed using what some call “chop chop” and instead described homegrown tobacco as “vile” and “feral”. Rather than seeing homegrown tobacco as a long-term alternative once measures under the smokefree law are implemented, participants viewed using this tobacco as unpleasant and unsafe.




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


We found numerous contradictions in how participants expected an illicit market to evolve. Some thought it would grow, yet had little idea how people would access it. Some envisaged black market products being more expensive, while others thought they would be less so. Several expressed concern about the safety of sourcing and smoking product obtained through a black market.

These contradictions and the participants’ unfamiliarity with illegally imported tobacco suggest tobacco companies and lobby groups may overstate the problem. Rather than opt for non-regulatory approaches over measures predicted to reduce smoking prevalence very quickly, we should instead actively manage any threat illicit tobacco may pose.

The government has allocated funding to a specialist team that will monitor and disrupt illicit tobacco. Ideally, this funding will enable greater X-ray surveillance of imports from countries identified as potential sources of illicit tobacco. New Zealand could also sign the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products to access international illicit supply data.




Read more:
NZ’s smokefree law will reduce the number of tobacco retailers – here’s what people who smoke think of that


While improving monitoring and surveillance is important, reducing the size of any illicit market is arguably the strongest response to the alleged threat. The fewer people who smoke, the smaller the potential market size. The smaller the market, the less rewarding illicit trade will be.

The most potent response to claims that illicit tobacco trade will increase is to implement measures predicted to lead to a rapid drop in smoking prevalence. Far from creating a case to dismantle measures outlined in the law, tobacco companies’ claims provide a compelling rationale for implementing the policies as rapidly and comprehensively as possible.

The Conversation

Janet Hoek receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand and New Zealand Cancer Society; she has previously received grants from the Royal Society Marsden Fund. She co-directs ASPIRE Aotearoa, a research centre whose members undertake research to inform and evaluate smokefree policies. She is also a member of the Health Coalition of Aotearoa Smokefree Expert Advisory Group.

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. Why tobacco companies’ warnings about a black market are inflated – and misleading – https://theconversation.com/why-tobacco-companies-warnings-about-a-black-market-are-inflated-and-misleading-204272

‘Calm before the storm’ – PNG’s Bryan Kramer vows to fight on

PNG Post-Courier

Dissident Papua New Guinean politician and former cabinet minister Bryan Kramer has vowed to fight on in his campaign against corruption, saying the National Court ruling to dismiss him as an MP was “the calm before the storm”.

“The decision to dismiss me was expected and of course, it is certainly not the end of the issue as I have already been working on an appeal to challenge both the rulings on verdict and penalty in the National Court,” he told reporters in Port Moresby

Kramer, a former police minister then justice minister, was responding to the decision on recommendations for his dismissal and a fine of K10,000 (NZ$4600).

“Today’s decision in no way diminishes my resolve in the fight against corruption nor will it keep me from informing the public on issues of national importance or exposing high-level corruption,” he said.

“In my view it’s the calm before the storm.”

In a statement later in the day Kramer explained the court decision saying: “Today (1/5/23) the Leadership Tribunal handed down its ruling on the penalty in relation to the finding of guilt of the seven (7) counts of misconduct in office against me.

“The Tribunal categorised the seven counts of misconduct into two main categories in determining whether there is serious culpability (wrongdoing on my part) warranting my dismissal from office or recommending a lesser penalty of a fine or suspension of no more than three months without pay.

“Category 1 included counts 1 and 2 that related to my Facebook publications scandalising the judiciary.

Conflict of interest claim
“Count 1 being the publication insinuating a conflict of interest by the Chief Justice.

“Count 2 related to accusing [former prime minister] Peter O’Neill and his lawyer of soliciting the assistance of the Chief Justice and submitting a fabricated document to mislead the court that the warrant of arrest was defective.

“Category 2 included the remaining 5 counts that related to the decisions of the Madang District Development Authority Board in the application of the District Services Improvement Programme (DSIP) Funds in renting office space for the establishment of a project office to deliver district projects at the ward level, paying electoral staff who were involved in implementing the projects and establishing a ward project staff structure without obtaining approval from the Secretary of Personnel Management and engaging an associate company that was paid K3000 [NZ$1400] a fortnight.

“In short, the Tribunal recommended a penalty of dismissal from office in relation to counts 1 and 2 and a fine of K2000 for each of remaining 5 counts, a total fine of K10,000.

“Based on the Tribunal’s finding on guilt on seven counts handed down on 21 February 2023, today’s ruling for dismissal was expected.

“The decision recommending dismissal from office will be delivered to the Speaker who will then recommend to the Governor General (GG) to adopt the Tribunal’s recommendation to dismiss me from office.

“The decision of the GG will be gazetted and takes effect. At that point I will no longer be a Member of Parliament.”

Kramer Report publisher
Bryan Kramer, well known as a social media strategist and publisher of the anti-corruption Kramer Report, has been a cabinet minister in Prime Minister James Marape’s government since 2019, holding the police, justice and then immigration portfolios.

Leader of the Allegiance Party, Kramer was returned to Parliament at last year’s elections with sizable majority in the Madang Open seat.

Republished with permission.

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Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Historic pro-independence party poll victory in French Polynesia – video

By Stefan Armbruster

A pro-independence party has decisively won elections in French Polynesia, marking a historic shift in one of France’s Pacific territories.

Veteran politician Oscar Temaru’s Tavini Huira’atira party has secured an outright majority, putting future relations with France on the negotiating table along with its ambitions in the Pacific region.

SBS News reportage with some footage from TNTV, NC La 1ere and TV5MONDE.

Thanks to producers Marcus Megalokonomos and Francesca De Nuccio.

Stefan Armbruster is SBS World News’ Brisbane-based Pacific correspondent. Republished with permission.

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Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A new monarch who is a divorcee would once have scandalised. But Charles’ accession shows how much has changed

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

Jon Super/AP/AAP

King Charles III is the first British monarch who has previously had a civil marriage and a civil divorce.

In 1981, Charles, then the Prince of Wales, married Lady Diana Spencer in a fairytale wedding watched by 750 million people worldwide.

However, the royal couple separated in 1992 and they were divorced in 1996. The marriage had spectacularly broken down.

Charles and Diana’s marriage in 1981 ended with separation in 1992 and divorce in 1996.
AP/AAP

Charles later went on to marry his long-time love interest Camilla Parker-Bowles. They married in a civil ceremony in 2005. This broke with the tradition of royal family members getting married in an Anglican church ceremony.

The extramarital relationship of Charles and Camilla prevented them from being remarried in church. But there was a subsequent service of prayer and dedication. Queen Elizabeth II declined to attend the wedding, reportedly because it conflicted with her role to uphold the Christian faith as supreme governor of the Church of England.

The accession of Charles to the throne is not only politically significant, but also carries religious importance. Charles is the “defender of the faith” and the supreme governor. Charles’ status as a divorcee puts him at odds with his religious roles.




Read more:
King Charles, defender of faith: what the monarchy’s long relationship with religion may look like under the new sovereign


Royal divorces

King Henry VIII was infamous for having six wives in the 16th century. He annulled his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon. This meant the marriage was never legally valid to begin with.

King George IV was almost successful in divorcing his wife Queen Caroline in 1820. At the time, divorce could only be granted by Act of Parliament. The trial took place in the House of Lords. The king accused his wife of committing adultery as grounds for divorce. However, Prime Minister Lord Liverpool eventually withdrew the divorce bill due to political pressure.

King Edward VIII was forced to abdicate in 1936 because he wanted to marry an American divorcee Wallis Simpson. This conflicted with his role as supreme governor.

Henry VIII knew a thing or two about divorce.
English History

While Charles was in a similar position to his great-uncle in his marriage to Camilla, they lived in different worlds. The Conservative government and the Church of England simply could not tolerate Edward’s marriage to a divorcee. It was viewed as an affront to morality.

Similarly, Princess Margaret was pressured to not marry the divorcee Group Captain Peter Townsend. As the sister of the queen, the marriage would have been scandalous in some circles.

Queen Elizabeth called 1992 the “annus horribilis” (horrible year) for the royal family. Her three children Prince Charles, Princess Anne and Prince Andrew’s marriages had all broken down. Divorce by then had become increasingly acceptable in society.




Read more:
Australia has a new head of state: what will Charles be like as king?


Royal civil marriage

Charles had to seek his mother’s permission to marry Camilla. The Royal Marriages Act 1772 stipulated that all descendants of King George II were required to seek the consent of the sovereign to marry.

This law was repealed in 2013. Only the first six persons in the line of succession now have to seek the sovereign’s permission to marry.

There was controversy at the time whether a member of the royal family could legally marry in a civil ceremony. The Marriage Act 1836 permitted civil marriages. But the law stated this did not apply to members of the royal family.

The British government released a statement declaring Charles could legally enter into a civil marriage. The view was the Marriage Act 1949 had repealed the previous legislation. The government also argued there was a right to marry under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The civil marriage of Charles and Camilla symbolised the changing values of society. The view of marriage had shifted from a moral commitment to a celebratory union. This marked the modernisation of the monarchy over tradition.

The civil marriage of Charles and Camilla symbolised the changing values of society.
Alastair Grant/AP/AAP

A modern monarchy

The accession of a divorcee as king a generation earlier would have been unpalatable to many. But Charles embodies the modern character of monarchy and the liberal values of wider society.

Charles has recently affirmed his commitment to Anglican Christianity. This is an acknowledgement of his constitutional role in the Act of Settlement 1701. Only Protestant Christians can claim succession to the crown.

It also affirms his role as nominal ruler of the Church of England. The monarch still appoints bishops on the advice of the prime minister. Anglicanism is the official state religion of England.




Read more:
Beheaded and exiled: the two previous King Charleses bookended the abolition of the monarchy


Yet Charles is also pushing for a modern monarchy. He has viewed himself as a defender of diversity. Upholding a space for multifaith practice and expression of secular ideals form part of the agenda of his reign.

The monarchy faces a tension between modernity and tradition. As a divorced and remarried monarch, Charles III represents the reinvention of the crown, an ancient institution that seeks to embrace its role in a multicultural, religiously diverse and more open and tolerant society.

The Conversation

Henry Kha 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. A new monarch who is a divorcee would once have scandalised. But Charles’ accession shows how much has changed – https://theconversation.com/a-new-monarch-who-is-a-divorcee-would-once-have-scandalised-but-charles-accession-shows-how-much-has-changed-204544

Two trillion tonnes of greenhouse gases, 25 billion nukes of heat: are we pushing Earth out of the Goldilocks zone?

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew King, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, The University of Melbourne

Shutterstock

Since the 18th century, humans have been taking fossil fuels out of their safe storage deep underground and burning them to generate electricity or power machinery.

We’ve now converted coal, oil and gas into more than two trillion tonnes of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and added them to the atmosphere.

The current result? The average temperature at the planet’s surface is about 1.2℃ hotter than in the pre-industrial era. That’s because adding new carbon to the world’s natural carbon cycle has caused an imbalance in the amount of energy entering and leaving the Earth system.

To warm the entire planet takes an extraordinary amount of extra energy. Recent research shows we’ve added the energy of 25 billion nuclear bombs to the Earth system in just the last 50 years.

Billions of nuclear bombs to produce 1.2℃ of heating – so what? It seems small, considering how much temperature varies on a daily basis. (The world’s average surface temperature in the 20th century was 13.9℃.)

But almost all of this energy to date has been taken up by the oceans. It’s no wonder we’re seeing rapid warming in our oceans.

earth from space
Life on Earth is possible because we’re in a sweet spot – not too hot, not too cold.
NASA, CC BY

The Goldilocks zone

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. It gets hot, at an average temperature of 167℃. But it has no atmosphere. That’s why the second planet, Venus, is the hottest in the solar system, at an average of 464℃. That’s due to an atmosphere much thicker than Earth’s, dense in carbon dioxide. Venus might once have had liquid oceans. But then a runaway greenhouse effect took place, trapping truly enormous quantities of heat.

One reason we’re alive is that our planet orbits in the Goldilocks zone, just the right distance from the Sun to be not too hot and not too cold. Little of the Earth’s internal heat gets through to the cold crust where we live. That makes us dependent on another source of heat – the Sun.




Read more:
Global carbon emissions at record levels with no signs of shrinking, new data shows. Humanity has a monumental task ahead


When the Sun’s light and heat hits Earth, some is absorbed at the surface and some is reflected back out into space. We see some of the energy emitted by the Sun because the Sun is hot and hotter objects emit radiation in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Because Earth is much cooler than the Sun, the radiation it emits is invisible, at long infrared wavelengths. Much of this energy goes out into space – but not all. Some gases in our atmosphere are very effective at absorbing energy at the wavelengths Earth emits at. These greenhouse gases occur naturally in Earth’s atmosphere, and keep the planet warm enough to be habitable. That’s another Goldilocks zone.

Earth energy budget
Incoming radiation from the sun is reflected or absorbed by Earth. There is a net imbalance where more energy is absorbed than emitted by the planet and this causes warming.
NASA, CC BY

And then there’s a third Goldilocks zone: recent history. All of human civilisation has emerged in the unusually mild 10,000 years after the last ice age, when the climate has been not too hot and not too cold across much of the world.

But now, we are at very real risk of pushing ourselves outside of the comfortable climatic conditions which allowed humans to expand, farm, build cities and create.
The energy dense fuels which made industrial civilisation possible come with an enormous sting in the tail. Burn now, pay later. Now the bill has become apparent.

How do we know this is real? Satellites measure the rate at which Earth’s surface radiates heat. At any one moment, thousands of Argo robotic floats dot our oceans. They spend almost all of their lives underwater, measuring heat, and surface to transmit data. And we can measure sea level with tide levels and satellites. We can cross-check the measurements between all three approaches.

Climate change: more energy comes in than goes out

Greenhouse gases are potent. You only need small concentrations to get a big effect.

We’ve already boosted the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by about 50%, and added considerable volumes of methane and nitrous oxide as well. This is pushing our life-sustaining greenhouse effect out of balance.

A recent study suggests the energy imbalance is equivalent to trapping roughly 380 zettajoules of extra heat from 1971–2020. (The period between 1971 and the present accounts for about 60% of all emissions).

One zettajoule is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules – a very big number!

Little Boy, the nuclear bomb which destroyed Hiroshima, produced energy estimated at 15,000,000,000,000 joules. This means the effect of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions in that 50-year period to 2020 is about 25 billion times the energy emitted by the Hiroshima nuclear bomb.

If we’ve trapped so much extra heat, where is it?

To date, almost every joule of extra energy – about 90% – has gone into our oceans, particularly the top kilometre of water. Water is an excellent heat sink. It takes a lot of energy to heat it, but heat it we have. Hotter oceans are a major contributor to coral bleaching and sea level rise.

sea surface temperature
Where’s the heat? In our oceans. This sea surface temperature map shows the temperature anomalies above or below the long term average at 30th April 2023.
NOAA, CC BY

It takes a long time to get this much heat into the oceans, and once it is there it doesn’t disappear. Reversing global warming entirely may not be feasible. Just to stop temperatures going any higher means correcting the imbalance and bringing CO2 levels down towards the pre-industrial level of 280ppm.

If we can reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, we will most likely stop further global warming and carbon dioxide concentrations will slowly start to drop.

Realistically, this means rapid, large-scale reduction of emissions and deployment of carbon capture to compensate for the emissions we can’t eliminate.

To go further and cool the planet back down towards a pre-industrial climate would require net-negative emissions, meaning we would have to draw even more carbon back out of the atmosphere than any lingering emissions.

Unfortunately, we aren’t there yet. Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are at near-record highs. But clean energy production is accelerating. This year might be the first time emissions from power begin to fall.

We’re in a race, and the stakes are as high as they could possibly be – ensuring a liveable climate for our children and for nature.




Read more:
In hot water: here’s why ocean temperatures are the hottest on record


The Conversation

Andrew King receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program.

Steven Sherwood receives funding from the Australian Research Council

ref. Two trillion tonnes of greenhouse gases, 25 billion nukes of heat: are we pushing Earth out of the Goldilocks zone? – https://theconversation.com/two-trillion-tonnes-of-greenhouse-gases-25-billion-nukes-of-heat-are-we-pushing-earth-out-of-the-goldilocks-zone-202619

Coronations – real and imagined – on the screen: the outrageously disrespectful, the controversial and the tasteful

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marcus Harmes, Professor in Pathways Education, University of Southern Queensland

Alex Bailey/Netflix

Information about King Charles III’s coronation is coming out bit by bit from who will do what to the choice of music and the coronation emoji design.

One fact was never in doubt: we can watch it on television.

Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 drew 20 million viewers on the BBC. Behind the scenes there were fierce arguments about televising the service. Prime Minister Winston Churchill opposed the idea.

The 27-year-old queen insisted there would be cameras inside Westminster Abbey. But one thing was clear: the cameras would avert their gaze at the most sacred moment of the ceremony.

Everyone agreed the anointing, the moment the monarch becomes sacred, was too holy for television cameras.

In 2023, coronation planners feel the same: the cameras will again avert their gaze as Archbishop Justin Welby anoints Charles III.

But while this will only be the second British coronation to be televised, popular culture has provided many opportunities to see fictional depictions.




Read more:
Picking up a King Charles III coronation commemorative plate? You’re buying into a centuries-old tradition


Coronations on the screen

Elizabeth (1998) about Queen Elizabeth I had a major set piece as the crown was placed on the queen’s head even as there was turmoil in her 16th-century kingdom.

In close-up, Elizabeth closes her eyes and draws on her inner strength as the crown and sceptre are handed to her and her political enemies watch with hostility.

In England My England (1995) the coronation of Charles II in 1685 is farcical, as the king processes behind an ancient and tottering archbishop.

The King’s Speech (2010) showed behind-the-scenes preparation for George VI’s coronation in 1937, including George’s concerns at speaking without a stutter.

The tasteful planning in 1953 to preserve the holiness of the coronation contrasts with other versions of the coronation on British television. British television’s respect in 1953 has given way to parody, comedy and sensationalism.

One of the most outrageously disrespectful depictions of a televised coronation is a 1977 episode of the famous comedy series The Goodies. The Goodies made their parody of the coronation in the year of Elizabeth’s silver jubilee in an episode packed with bizarre and disrespectful comedy.

The actual royal family are injured when performing an entertainment routine and so it is up to one of the Goodies, Tim Brooke-Taylor, to impersonate the injured queen in a re-creation of the coronation.

Another Goodie (also a man) takes the place of Princess Anne. Because of budget cuts, everyone at Westminster Abbey is a cardboard cut-out.

In a chase scene between the royal family and the Goodies, the false Princess Anne leaps on the back of the Archbishop of Canterbury and makes him canter around a field.

There was more comedy and more disrespect in King Ralph (1991), which not only showed the death by electrocution of the entire royal family but also the crown placed on the head of a loud-mouthed American slob who was the only surviving heir to the throne. He then promptly wore it in a bubble bath.

More serious in tone, The Crown in 2016 showed what the BBC’s cameras did not in 1953 with close-up views of the most sacred moments of the ceremony. The high-definition cameras make viewers close and intimate when the 1953 ceremony was veiled and sacred.

In 2009 the drama series The Queen showed Elizabeth II’s accession and coronation not as holy but as part of domestic drama and scandal.

Like both the comedy of the Goodies and the drama of The Crown, it showed both a coronation and a royal family that had shifted from the sacred to the profane. Public ritual masked the private dramas in the royal family including Princess Margaret’s liaison with a divorced man.

Most serious of all, the 2017 television film King Charles III imagined a near future where Charles comes to the throne only to cause political chaos through erratic and unconstitutional acts.

Controversial because it showed Charles’s reign as brief and turbulent, and forced to abdicate by William, the film ends with Charles disgruntled and cast aside, gate-crashing William’s coronation and slamming the crown down on William’s head.

Charles III’s coronation will be a magnificent spectacle. But today’s television viewers will also know the real-life soap opera behind the scenes of today’s royal family. Whether we laugh at comedy or are absorbed by drama, we have seen television as less than respectful of sacred mysteries.




Read more:
From fairytale to gothic ghost story: how 40 years of biopics showed Princess Diana on screen


The Conversation

Marcus Harmes 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. Coronations – real and imagined – on the screen: the outrageously disrespectful, the controversial and the tasteful – https://theconversation.com/coronations-real-and-imagined-on-the-screen-the-outrageously-disrespectful-the-controversial-and-the-tasteful-204539

NZ industry burns the equivalent of 108 litres of petrol every second – that has to reduce to meet our carbon targets

Windflow Technology Ltd's prototype windmill, erected in Gebbies Pass, Banks Peninsula, New Zealand. Named Neil after one of the company's founders, Neil Cherry, who died of motor neuron disease (a.k.a. ALS) around the time of its construction. Image: Wikimedia.org Dual-licensed under the GFDL and CC-By-SA-2.5, 2.0, and 1.0

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Gordon Walmsley, Senior Lecturer in Process and Energy Engineering, University of Waikato

Getty Images

New Zealand burns the equivalent of 108 litres of petrol every second in coal and natural gas to generate heat for industrial processes. This burning of fossil fuels for industrial heat generates 28% of New Zealand’s energy-related emissions.

Industry needs vast quantities of heat for a wide range of activities, including to process staple foods, to manufacture materials for building homes, and to produce packaging for everyday goods.

But it’s very clear that to achieve a net-zero carbon economy by 2050, we need to ramp up the use of renewable energy technology to generate industrial heat, instead of burning fossil fuels.

The government is using a carrot-and-stick approach to drive the transition to low-carbon and renewable energy. The “stick” requires industry to phase out coal boilers for low and medium temperature heat applications by 2037. New natural gas exploration has also effectively ended, which will lead to future decreases in gas supply.

The “carrot” is the Government Investment in Decarbonisation Initiatives fund. The results so far are significant, with industry turning to tried and true solutions: energy efficiency gains, biomass boilers, electrode boilers and heat pumps, sometimes combined with electrical or thermal batteries.

These technologies are clean and green, but they are also scalable to industrial needs. Let’s have a look at what these different options are.

4 options for industry

The first option – increasing energy efficiency – is where all industrial businesses should start their decarbonisation journeys. It reduces the need to supply heat in the first place. Minimising heat demand also means replacement boilers can have smaller capacities, reducing investment costs.

The second option is to use biomass boilers. Over the past couple of years, biomass boilers have been rolled out to several large industrial sites.

These boilers burn biofuels, usually a byproduct of the wood processing sector such as sawdust, wood chips and wood pellets, to generate the required steam and hot water for a site. Fonterra, for example, is currently building a new 30-megawatt biomass boiler at its Waitoa site.




Baca juga:
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Biomass boilers provide a like-for-like replacement for fossil fuel boilers. But their use is not straightforward. No one really knows what the future availability of low-cost biomass will be due to the rapid expansion of the market in recent years, uncertainty around biomass sources and increase in demand.

The third option is to use electrode boilers. These are cheap to install but they use electricity as the energy source. The cost of this heat is typically three times more expensive than from fossil fuels. Industry is also often exposed to the electricity spot market where price varies dramatically both daily and seasonally, which presents both a risk and opportunity.

Dairy manufacturer and supplier Open Country Dairy, aided by “smart control” technology from Simply Energy, recently installed an electrode boiler alongside its existing coal boiler. The electrode boiler turns off when the electricity price is high, shifting load to coal, and turns back on when the price is sufficiently low. This is a cost-effective solution but invariably an interim measure as coal phases out.

The fourth option – heat pumps – uses a different type of technology. On paper, industrial heat pumps have the potential to achieve over two to three times the performance levels of biomass or electrode boilers, although often at lower heating temperatures. Better performance means proportionately lower operating costs. Current heat pump technology can service heating up to about 90°C.

Meat processing sites like ANZCO and Silver Fern Farms, both near Christchurch, are using heat pumps to recover and upgrade waste heat from their chillers to generate the hot water they need. This is another smart way of using conventional technology.




Baca juga:
Climate explained: could biofuels replace all fossil fuels in New Zealand?


In the future, we need heat pumps to far exceed 90°C to increase their applicability to a wider range of industrial site. In Europe, many current technology demonstration units can now provide heating up to 150°C using an HFO refrigerant (synthetic fluorinated greenhouse gases) or CO₂.

HFO refrigerants were positioned as the answer to ozone-depleting gases but recent research expresses concerns about them degrading into “forever chemicals” with serious implications for human and environmental health. The European Union now plans to rapidly phase out and ban their use by 2026.

MAN Energy Solutions, which has recently partnered with Fonterra, offers a CO₂ heat pump that can also generate hot water at 150°C at a heat-to-electricity-use performance ratio of nearly three. This means it only uses one third of the electricity to generate the same amount of heat as an electrode boiler.

These four options all have critical roles to play in decarbonising New Zealand industry. Different sites will demand different solutions that will often combine multiple approaches to achieve the most cost-efficient solution.

Need for local solutions

Traditionally, New Zealand has been an energy technology importer. However, high demand for cutting-edge boiler and heat pump technology in much larger markets in Europe and elsewhere could make it difficult for New Zealand businesses to access necessary plant and technical support without long wait times.

If we could develop and manufacture our own, we could provide customised solutions for New Zealand industry. Many of the associated “green” manufacturing jobs would also be located here at home.




Baca juga:
Time to tap in to an underused energy source: wasted heat


Decarbonising industrial heat presents a massive challenge but also an opportunity. The challenge is to make the energy transition quickly enough to limit climate change while keeping the energy costs sufficiently low to stay in business.

As we make this transition, we also need a paradigm shift in attitude and ambition towards research, development and manufacturing pathways for advanced technology to maximise the benefit to New Zealand Inc.

The Conversation

Timothy Gordon Walmsley receives funding from MBIE.

James K Carson receives funding from MBIE.

ref. NZ industry burns the equivalent of 108 litres of petrol every second – that has to reduce to meet our carbon targets – https://theconversation.com/nz-industry-burns-the-equivalent-of-108-litres-of-petrol-every-second-that-has-to-reduce-to-meet-our-carbon-targets-204525

New Medicare reforms won’t fix everything but they start to tackle the system’s biggest problems

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Breadon, Program Director, Health and Aged Care, Grattan Institute

AAP/Tracey Nearmy

Federal Health Minister Mark Butler has long said Medicare is in the worst shape it’s been in decades. Premiers have come to successive national cabinet meetings saying primary care is failing – and demanding reform and investment.

Fortunately, the policies Minister Butler outlined today at the National Press Club to strengthen Medicare live up to challenge. These reforms will be funded with a total of A$2.2 billion

They certainly won’t fix everything. But instead of kicking the can down the road, or just addressing superficial symptoms, they start to tackle some of the biggest challenges in general practice: outmoded technology, GPs working with little support, a broken funding model, and restrictive regulations.




Read more:
Health and housing measures announced ahead of budget, and NDIS costs in first ministers’ sights


Diagnosing the problem

There are many visible and urgent crises in health care, ranging from falling rates of bulk-billing to overwhelmed hospital emergency departments. But the minister zeroed in on the one big structural failure driving many of these problems: Medicare hasn’t kept up with the health needs of Australians.

Medicare was established in the 1980s. Today, Australians are living longer, often with chronic diseases. Chronic diseases – such as heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and depression – are the leading cause of illness and death. Almost half of Australians have one chronic condition; more than half of Australians over 65 have two or more.

Doctor takes her patient's blood pressure
Almost half of Australians have a chronic health condition.
Unsplash/CDC

As Minister Butler noted, Medicare has not kept up and has “started to show its age”. A system designed for quick, one-off consultations with doctors isn’t a good fit for the more complex range of ongoing care and support many patients need today.

To update Medicare, the minister announced three areas of reform.

1. Modernising digital systems

With people likely to have multiple health conditions, and to see a range of professionals across the health system, it’s more important than ever for patients and clinicians to have relevant and up-to-date health information. That helps clinicians understand their patients’ needs. It also means patients don’t have to provide the same information again and again, or have duplicated, wasteful tests.




Read more:
My Health Record is meant to empower patients – but with little useful information stored, is it worth saving?


Australia’s digital systems are outdated, hard to use and ineffective. MyHealth record, our main digital health tool, is only used by a small minority of specialists, private hospitals and allied health providers. According to Minister Butler, only one in ten specialists use it, and only one in five radiology test results (such as X-rays or MRIs) are uploaded.

Computer systems in practices and hospitals usually can’t talk to each other, and often they aren’t connected to MyHealth Record.

To start to address this, more than $950 million will be spent on digital health, including keeping the Digital Health Agency running and improving MyHealth record.

2. Building bigger teams

To respond to the growing complexity of people’s health needs, most countries are moving towards “multidisciplinary” teams in general practice. Those teams might include nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists, psychologies and administrative roles. This approach can improve care and take pressure off GPs.

As with digital systems, Australia is well behind other countries. Our GPs are more likely to work on their own, or with little support. That’s because the way we fund general practice is stuck in the past, mostly restricted to paying GPs for disconnected, one-off consultations.

The Workforce Incentive Program, which funds general practices to hire a range of different health professionals, will be increased. For small clinics, and in areas with too little care to go around, Primary Health Networks (regional bodies responsible for improving primary care) will fund and attract allied health professionals and nurses to work in GP clinics.

But the biggest change is a new way of funding care. Our outdated fee-for-service system rewards rushed consultations, is complex and confusing for doctors, and blocks team-based care. For clinics and patients who choose to participate, a new system dubbed My Medicare will change that.

Patients will register with a preferred practice. The practice will then get a budget for treating them, on top of fees for each visit. Getting a patient-centred budget alongside visit fees will give care teams the flexibility to plan and deliver care in new and better ways.

Registering with a clinic will support strong relationships between patients and their care teams. Funding will be focused on that relationship, not on isolated visits, and will reflect the work of the whole care team, not just the GP.

3. Unlocking workforce skills

Along with measures to attract nurses to primary care settings, there will be a review of the barriers that stop health professionals using all their skills.

Australia has a thicket of inconsistent regulations and complex funding rules that result in double-handling, high costs, wasted talent and GPs having to do too much. The review is an opportunity to clear many of these barriers away, and make sure that workforce roles reflect the best evidence about how to provide safe, high-quality care.

Pharmacists will also do more, with new funding for free vaccinations and expansions to treatment for people addicted to opioids. And there will be more training places in primary care for nurses, and efforts to attract nurses who have left the profession back into general practice.




Read more:
Should pharmacists be able to prescribe common medicines like antibiotics for UTIs? We asked 5 experts


Evolution not revolution – and a team effort

The breadth of the proposals is important – there will be little progress without improvements in all those areas.

At the National Press Club, Minister Butler said “remaking Medicare for the 21st century will take persistent evolution, not overnight revolution”.

That incremental approach is important too, including making the most complex reform, My Medicare, voluntary. These changes will be hard, so participating clinicians and patients must be convinced of the benefits, willing to change, and ready for inevitable setbacks.

Nurse shows a patient a pamphlet
The Medicare reform process will be incremental.
Unsplash/CDC

The reforms won’t satisfy everyone, but this might be the biggest opportunity for primary care reform in a generation.

The minister remarked on the “pointy elbows and loud voices” of the various professional groups in health care that provided input through his Strengthening Medicare Taskforce. This package needs the support of all the workforce groups involved in primary care, and a strong voice for patients. Hopefully they will work together to make sure these reforms succeed.




Read more:
Here’s why pharmacists are angry at script changes – and why the government is making them anyway


The Conversation

Peter Breadon’s employer, Grattan Institute, has been supported in its work by government, corporates, and philanthropic gifts. A full list of supporting organisations is published at www.grattan.edu.au.

Lachlan Fox’s employer, Grattan Institute, has been supported in its work by government, corporates, and philanthropic gifts. A full list of supporting organisations is published at www.grattan.edu.au.

ref. New Medicare reforms won’t fix everything but they start to tackle the system’s biggest problems – https://theconversation.com/new-medicare-reforms-wont-fix-everything-but-they-start-to-tackle-the-systems-biggest-problems-204800

Tahiti’s pro-independence ‘blue wave’ back at helm with decisive win

SPECIAL REPORT: By Ena Manuireva

Mā’ohi Nui’s blue wave of the pro-independence Tavini Huir’atira has won its bet — to be back in the helm of the country alone with this convincing victory.

With such a decisive result, the 57 parliamentary seats in the Territorial Assembly will be distributed as follow: 38 seats (including the majority premium of 19 seats) will be allocated to Oscar Temaru’s Tavini while the autonomist alliance of Tapura-Amuitahira’a will collect 16 seats and the last 3 seats go to A here ia Porinetia.

The second and final round had a participation of nearly 70 percent, higher than the 2018 elections which was around 67 percent. Tavini Huira’atira led its closest challenger by more than 8000 votes in the provisional results.

This win is a political tour de force with noticeable achievements that need to be mentioned.

Firstly, the Tavini Huira’atira has run alone in a voting system intentionally designed for an autonomist victory, and even the last-minute alliance between sworn enemies — the outgoing President Édouard Fritch and former President Gaston Flosse did not sway the electorate this time.

This comfortable majority of 38 seats will put an end to the political “nomadism” that saw previous parliamentarians cross the floor to join the opposition, triggering endless votes of no confidence.

This was the case in 2004 when the Tavini Huira’atira was in power with a coalition partner.

Opposition scaremongering
Secondly, Tavini Huira’atira has communicated during its campaign that the binary political argument instigated by the main opposing party that independence equals poverty while autonomy means more finance from France is pure scaremongering.

By staying away from that argument, Tavini Huira’atira was able to concentrate on its main message — to give back to the Mā’ohi people ownership of their land and the natural resources.

Thirdly, Tavini Huira’atira has well understood that this election was about coming first, whether by 1 vote or 1000 votes and organising relentless electoral campaigns throughout Mā’ohi Nui has paid dividends.

How the French Polynesian elections played out
How the French Polynesian elections played out in the second and final round yesterday with a commanding win for Oscar Temaru’s pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira. Image: Polynésie 1ère TV screenshot APR

Once more Oscar Temaru, despite his age (78), has spearheaded those political meetings and rallies like he did during those antinuclear protests some 50 years ago.

Along with those political engagements, putting Moetai Brotherson forward as the new president has ensured the transition to a younger generation to run the country, but most of all a political figure with no condemnation, a quality upon which the Tavini has run its campaign.

In his final speech from his town hall of Faa’a, Oscar Temaru thanked all the trusted constituents who have shown their support for the past 50 years.

He also said that the good old days were over, signaling to the French administration that the dialogue would be under new terms as equal partners.

Many non-voters
There were more than 210,000 registered voters but only 144,000 actual votes which still shows a high rate of the population did not vote.

Where did it go wrong for the autonomist parties?

As expected, a dejected Tapura-Amuitahira’a party and an ex-president-to-be Édouard Fritch said that this defeat was the price that the autonomist platform was paying for not being united and de facto handing the victory to the independence party.

He acknowledged himself that his alliance with Flosse could have given him around 42 percent of the ballots, but in the end the strategy did not work and they only got 38.5 percent.

Fritch bitterly acknowledged that the population — who he insists are a majority of autonomists — would carry the image of an independent country because Tavini would be in power at the Territorial Assembly.

He said that the future of this country was not independence; it needed to remain with their trusted partner within the French Republic.

His disappointment is without doubt aimed at the other autonomist party of A Here ia Porinetia, which decided to run alone and rejected any alliance with Fritch and Flosse.

Opened the door
Tavini can thank the two leaders of A here ia Porinetia, Nicole Sanquer and Nuihau Laurey, for opening the door to victory and running the country.

The new challenges for Fritch and Flosse will be to rebuild the autonomist platform and be an opposition party that will defeat the independence party in the next elections because Mā’ohi Nui is not ready to be independent.

A mea culpa for unpopular measures and actions that the outgoing government had carried out, especially during the covid-19 pandemic, did not feature as reasons for this defeat.

On the contrary, Fritch doubled down, insisting that the independence party had “lied” to the people regarding their ultimate objective — “get rid of France”.

As for Édouard Fritch’s ally, Gaston Flosse, when interviewed regarding the autonomist defeat, he branded the soon-to-be president Moetai Brotherson “a liar” along with Oscar Temaru, and the next president of the Assembly Antony Geros.

The situation prompted the interviewer to cut short the interview.

The newly created and alternative autonomist platform, A here ia Porinetia, has acknowledged their voters totalled around 25,000 and they will have three representatives in the Territorial Assembly.

Constructive, watchful opposition
They want to be a constructive and watchful opposition that will hold the new local government accountable. Nuihau Laurey has rejected an offer made by Moetai Brotherson to work in his government.

French Overseas Minister Gerald Darmanin has congratulated Oscar Temaru and Moetai Brotherson for their victory and stressed that “the Polynesians have voted for change and the French government is acknowledging this democratic choice”.

Here are the likely next steps following this election:

May 1 is Labour Day in Ma’ohi Nui but the official results of the election will be presented in a round press by the representative of the High Commissioner that will spell out the names of those who will sit in the Assembly from all three parties.

On the May 11 all the Assembly representatives will take their seats as members of Parliament. They will first elect a new president of the Territorial Assembly who is most likely to be Antony Geros, the mayor of Paea, a district that voted overwhelmingly blue.

The autonomist party might present a candidate from their ranks to stand against Antony Geros but this is very unlikely to happen as the opposition party do not have the numbers.

Following the election of the Assembly president (Speaker in the Westminster system), the next most important election to take place will be that of the new President of the territory.

Good for democracy
In this presidential election, Édouard Fritch will likely present himself as the candidate to stand against Moetai Brotherson as it is good for democracy and decorum to have two opposing candidates.

The new President will be elected and will already have formed his new government. He will present the new ministers of his local administration to the public.

It is customary to present the new cabinet either at the actual Presidential Palace in Tarahoi or wherever the new president decides to take residence.

In 2004, Oscar Temaru refused to take residence in the Presidential Palace which he described as an “opulent house made for a dictator” and it was not the house of the people.

Moetai Brotherson has already given some names for his new government and is keen to keep the equality of gender parity but hinted at more women. He also mentioned being interested in taking on the Ministry of New Technologies.

Other likely posts:

  • Eliane Tevahitua will be Vice-President and who could inherit the Culture and Heritage ministry;
  • Vannina Ateo, who was general secretary for Tavini, will inherit the Civil Service ministry;
  • Rony Teriipaia, an academic and expert in the Tahitian language,  will be Education Minister; and
  • Jordy Chan, who has an engineering background, will be Minister for Big Works and Equipment.

A lot of work awaits this new administration, but the Tavini team seems ready to run the country alone.

Ena Manuireva is an Aotearoa New Zealand-based Tahitian doctoral candidate at Auckland University of Technology and a commentator on French politics in Ma’ohi Nui and the Pacific. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report.

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Word from The Hill: Another rate rise, higher tax on cigarettes, and likely JobSeeker boost for over-55s

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

As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation’s politics team.

In this podcast Michelle and politics + society editor Amanda Dunn discuss the Reserve Bank’s Tuesday interest rate rise (this time 25 basis points), the 11th increase in a year.

They also canvass a likely boost to JobSeeker payments for people aged 55 and over in next week’s budget, part of the government promised cost-of-living relief package. The budget will deliver a hit to cigarette smokers, with a 5% rise in excise for each of three years, bringing in $3.3 billion in revenue for the government. Health Minister Mark Butler announced the increase in a Tuesday speech that also flagged a comprehensive push to crack down on the vaping scourge.

The Conversation

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. Word from The Hill: Another rate rise, higher tax on cigarettes, and likely JobSeeker boost for over-55s – https://theconversation.com/word-from-the-hill-another-rate-rise-higher-tax-on-cigarettes-and-likely-jobseeker-boost-for-over-55s-204814

Presented with a JobSeeker finding too clear to ignore, he changed the subject: how Jim Chalmers is shaping the budget

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

What was Treasurer Jim Chalmers thinking?

Late last year he set up a committee he specifically asked to tell him how bad JobSeeker was.

The exact words in its terms of reference required it to advise him on the “adequacy, effectiveness and sustainability of income support payments”.

It is true that he was sort of forced to. Independent Senator David Pocock made the committee a condition of supporting an unrelated industrial relations bill in the Senate. Its findings had to be published a fortnight before each budget.

Yet Chalmers chose to set a group whose findings would be hard to ignore. He put on it one of Australia’s pre-eminent experts in the adequacy of payments, Professor Peter Whiteford; one of Australia’s pre-eminent experts in labour markets, Professor Jeff Borland; and one of Australia’s pre-eminent experts in calculating disadvantage, Associate Professor Ben Phillips.

To give the “interim economic inclusion advisory committee” extra heft, he added the head of the trade union movement, the head of the Businesses Council, the head of the Council of Social Service and the head of the Treasury.

In short, Chalmers set up a committee he couldn’t ignore. So why is he now so keen to talk about everything but its number one recommendation?

Impossible to ignore

Sometimes committees like these end up making so many recommendations that a minister can pick and choose from them.

And this committee did make 37 recommendations, as Finance Minister Katy Gallagher noted this week saying she was “not going to be able to do everything”.

But, unusually, this committee went out of its way to make sure one recommendation stood out above all others.

It reported that, given its short timeframe, it had:

decided to concentrate on the needs of the largest
number of Australians experiencing poverty and disadvantage today, namely people
on JobSeeker, Youth Allowance and related working-age payments.

It found every available indicator showed the current rates of JobSeeker and related payments were seriously inadequate, whether measured against payments overseas, against the minimum wage, against pensions, or against poverty lines.


Report of the Interim Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee

Measured against other members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Australia’s JobSeeker payment for a newly-unemployed single was the third worst.

When the higher rates of rent assistance available overseas were taken into account, it became the absolute worst.

Whereas a quarter of a century ago Australia’s unemployment payment was roughly in line with the pension, decades of lifting one in line with prices and the other in line with wages have left us with a base JobSeeker rate of $347 a week ($49.51 per day), compared to a base age pension of $485 a week ($69 per day).

Too little to get medicines or work

Job seekers told the committee that $347 per week is so low, they kept looking around their homes for things to sell. Some had to choose between medicines and electricity. Some could fill only some of their prescriptions. Others could barely afford the petrol to get to medical appointments.

The committee’s findings echoed those of the OECD, which found 12 years ago Australia’s unemployment payment had fallen so low compared to costs as to raise “issues about its effectiveness” in helping the unemployed find jobs.

The committee’s number one recommendation – more important than any other – was that the government

as a first priority, commit to a substantial increase in the base rates of the JobSeeker Payment and related working-age payments

It didn’t ask for JobSeeker and associated payments to be lifted to the pension rate straight away, although it did suggest that the ultimate goal should be 90% of the pension. Ben Phillips has calculated that would cost $5.7 billion per year, which is less than 1% of total government spending.

What the committee didn’t want was a tiny increase along the lines of the $25 a week ($3.60 per day) the Coalition delivered when the coronavirus payments ended in 2021, without a commitment to build to something substantial.

So what is the government now doing in response? Chalmers and Gallagher appear to have decided it’s best to talk about something else.

Changing the subject

Seven News has reported that, while it won’t touch the base rate of JobSeeker and associated payments, the Albanese government will increase the rate for Australians aged 55 and over who have been out of work for some time.

That’s even less of a commitment than it seems.

There are 920,640 Australians on JobSeeker and Youth Allowance (which is a lower rate of JobSeeker for young Australians and is also paid to apprentices and students). Only 236,280 of them are aged 55 and over.

Many of those 236,280 are aged 60 and over, and already get a boosted JobSeeker payment; an extra $26 per week ($3.70 per day) after they have been out of work for nine months.




Read more:
Top economists want JobSeeker boosted $100+ per week, tied to wages


If all Chalmers is planning is to extend the extra for the long-term unemployed aged 60 and over to the long-term unemployed aged 55 and over, it will cost little, and deny the vast bulk of those on $49.51 per day hope that things will improve.

Chalmers appeared to verbal his committee on Tuesday by saying it had found women over 55 are the most vulnerable group amongst unemployed Australians.

While the committee did say that (and while 56% of the Australians on JobSeeker in that age group are women), it could not have been clearer in recommending that the base rate of JobSeeker and associated payments be lifted for all Australians.

Chalmers says we ought to wait to see what is in the budget, which is fair enough. But if a commitment to do what his personally selected group of experts has recommended isn’t in this budget, the committee is likely to recommend it again two weeks before the next budget, and again two weeks before the next.

The treasurer has put himself on notice.




Read more:
Boosting JobSeeker is the most effective way to tackle poverty: what the treasurer’s committee told him


The Conversation

Peter Martin 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. Presented with a JobSeeker finding too clear to ignore, he changed the subject: how Jim Chalmers is shaping the budget – https://theconversation.com/presented-with-a-jobseeker-finding-too-clear-to-ignore-he-changed-the-subject-how-jim-chalmers-is-shaping-the-budget-204754

Kicking the gas can down the road: why a gas price cap is the worst way to protect energy consumers.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ariel Liebman, Ariel Liebman Director, Monash Energy Institute and Professor of Sustainable Energy Systems, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University

Gareth Fuller/PA via AP

The federal government’s plan to extend the gas price cap is not surprising, given fundamental market issues remain.

For as long as the war in Ukraine continues, Australian gas will attract premium prices overseas. So the “temporary” $12 per gigajoule cap on wholesale domestic prices – intended to protect local energy users – will no longer be lifted in December, but will stay for a further 18 months at least.

This is just kicking the can down the road, rather than developing a coherent energy policy.

A price cap is the worst of all credible options to establish market or price stability. It creates perverse incentives to continue with inefficient industry and residential energy use practices. It also delays progress towards emissions reduction and transition to renewable energy.

The optimal regulation of natural gas markets has been well studied and applied internationally, and state and commonwealth governments would be well advised to learn from such expertise. The government should, at the very least, consult a range of experts and develop a variety of policy options.

These options should include a gas reservation policy and a new tax on excess gas industry profits that would be shared among consumers.

In tandem, the government should also institute a first principles review of all energy market frameworks, as this issue (among others) shows the fundamental assumptions underpinning current energy market frameworks no longer hold.




Read more:
Surging energy prices are really going to hurt. What can the government actually do?


Introducing a code of conduct

The extension of the gas price cap is just one part of the Albanese government’s proposed mandatory code of conduct (gas code).

It’s worth noting the consultation paper, released on April 26 states the gas code “will ensure domestic prices are reasonable by establishing a price anchor through:

  • a price cap, initially set at $12/GJ
  • conditional exemptions from the price cap for producers on the basis of satisfactory voluntary enforceable supply commitments or being a small producer who exclusively supplies the domestic market.

So large gas producers can apply to exceed the price cap. That might explain the term “price anchor”.




Read more:
Yes, the government’s price cap is overly generous to gas producers. But it was necessary


The draft code has already been subject to consultation with gas producers and big industrial users over recent months. Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen told the ABC this was about striking “the right balance”.

Large gas producers are being asked to make submissions on the supply and price commitments they would be prepared to make in the context of the proposed exemption framework by May 8.

Submissions on the second and final round of consultation will close on May 12.

Wholesale electricity prices have come down since caps on coal and gas price caps were introduced. (The wholesale electricity price is heavily influenced by the gas price).

But the wholesale gas price for the first quarter of this year is still the highest Q1 price on record. The average price across all Australian Energy Market Operator markets in March was $9.43/GJ, the lowest since January 2022 which was $8.81/GJ. The quarterly average price across all AEMO markets was $11.86/GJ, compared to $9.93/GJ in Q1 2022.

Retail prices for electricity and gas continue to increase.

A fragile framework in need of repair

The relatively minor reduction in gas supply, due to sanctions on Russia, exposed the delicate balance of supply and demand, and the fragility of the global fossil energy system. In the long term, the solution is clear: move to renewables that are not subject to short term supply-demand shocks, and are now cheaper than coal and gas.

The switch to renewables also has another significant benefit – decentralising the production of electricity from concentrated sources of fossil fuels. This can start to address some of the key sources of geopolitical instability related to oil and gas in the middle east, Russia and similar sources.

However, in the short term, the Australian government must curb the worst excesses of the unfettered free market in natural gas and retail electricity. We must give Australians short term relief by decoupling the Australian natural gas market from global markets for a limited period.

The price cap is a poor attempt to do this, but the only sure way is a domestic reservation policy. This would reserve a proportion of gas produced on the east coast for the domestic market.

Western Australia already has one, which mandates 15% of the gas extracted in the state must stay there. That’s why WA gas prices are cheaper. Now the east coast of Australia needs a strong gas reservation policy.

A double whammy

Coupling domestic gas and electricity markets to the extremely volatile and constrained international market is not in the national interest.

It is a double whammy, because not only are power prices overinflated, the resulting profits are not taxed appropriately.

We must fix this, properly.

The Conversation

Australian Research Council, ARENA, DFAT, and a range of Australian energy utilities and energy resources companies,

ref. Kicking the gas can down the road: why a gas price cap is the worst way to protect energy consumers. – https://theconversation.com/kicking-the-gas-can-down-the-road-why-a-gas-price-cap-is-the-worst-way-to-protect-energy-consumers-204752

‘Kidfluencer’ culture is harming kids in several ways – and there’s no meaningful regulation of it

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Jane Archer, Senior Lecturer, Communication, Edith Cowan University

Shutterstock

Parents share content of their children for myriad reasons, including to connect with friends and family, and to seek validation or support.

However, some parents also do this for commercial gain. They manage their children as social media “kidfluencers” – allowing them to work with brands to market products to other children (and adults).

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s latest interim report for the Digital Platforms Services Inquiry has acknowledged key issues relevant to kidfluencers, including privacy concerns and possible labour exploitation issues.

Our research, published recently in the M/C Journal, further highlights how the kidfluencer culture opens the door for possible child exploitation and a host of other problems.

There is a clear need for regulation in this space – and achieving it will require a considered, collective effort.

Is YouTube the world’s most popular babysitter?

Speaking to Forbes in 2019, Eyal Baumel, the chief executive of Yoola (a management company which also manages digital child stars), described YouTube as “the most popular babysitter in the world”.

Since then, the COVID pandemic has prompted a surge in screentime for kids, who are being marketed toys as well as other products normally targeted to adults.

Product lines for kids are big business. In 2021, the global toys market was projected to grow from about US$141 billion to $230.6 billion by 2028.

It’s now common to see YouTube kidfluencers marketing toys to other kids through toy “reviews”. But these videos aren’t the same as traditional product reviews. They’re mash-ups that blur the lines between three major genres: reviews, branded content and entertainment.

The most popular toy review channels have millions of subscribers, and their hosts are some of YouTube’s top earners. Ryan’s World is probably the most well-known channel in this genre. Conservative estimates suggest 10-year-old Ryan Kanji’s family earns about US$25 million each year.

Instakids are on the rise

Apart from YouTube (now more popular among kids than television), a significant number of kids and teens are also spending time on Instagram.

According to a 2021 report by child protection organisation Thorn, about 40% of children under age 13 (out of some 750 interviewed) said they’d used Instagram. This is despite the platform ostensibly only being for people aged 13 and older.

For our latest research, we analysed the Instagram accounts of two Australian influencer siblings to better understand the nature of child-to-child marketing in 2023.

Pixie Curtis, age 11, started her online toy store Pixie’s Pix during COVID, when toy sales rose globally. This came after initial success selling hair bows through Pixie’s Bows, a business managed by her mother, PR entrepreneur and reality TV personality Roxy Jacenko.

Pixie’s Instagram account (which has about 136,000 followers), and her brother Hunter’s (20,000 followers), have been used to promote Pixie’s Pix toys as well as other brands and products.

And although Pixie recently “retired” from the toy shop business, she continues to promote products, including her original line of hair bows and other brands’ skincare and beauty products.

Our research identifies key areas of concern, including:

  • a lack of online privacy for kidfluencers, who have many aspects of their lives publicised online
  • the commodification of children, and the enabling of a culture geared at up-selling them products and services
  • the gendered marketing of toys and an increased focus on appearance for girls (which can be harmful for their self-esteem)
  • the “stealth” marketing of toys and other products through advertorials.



Read more:
3 ways app developers keep kids glued to the screen – and what to do about it


Regulation is needed now

So far, the French government appears to be the only one that has taken tangible action to regulate the labour of child social media influencers. Under French law, children below age 16 can only work limited hours, and their earnings must be safeguarded in an account made accessible when they turn 16.

France is also considering legislation to regulate “sharenting” – a portmanteau of sharing and parenting that describes the practice of consistently posting content about one’s children on social media.

In the US, the Coogan Act (named after child star Jackie Coogan) was signed into law in 1939 to regulate child labour in the entertainment industry, but no equivalent laws have been enacted for child social media stars.

Nonetheless, the problems surrounding kidfluencing are starting to gain attention around the world.

Last year a UK House of Commons report investigated the implications of influencers targeting children with advertorials, especially those that provide little to no disclosure of the post being an ad.

The committee made several recommendations, including promoting young people’s social media literacy, developing a code of conduct for influencer marketing, and strengthening the powers of the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority and Competition and Markets Authority.

As a result, the UK’s Department for Education is now “open to exploring legislative ways of improving employment protection for child influencers”.




Read more:
Is 13 too young to have a TikTok or Instagram account?


The unintended consequences of regulation

In January, Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) held its first Summit on Youth Safety and Wellbeing. It might be trying to get on the front foot as regulators continue to scrutinise platforms on issues relevant to young people’s social media use.

But regulating in the kidfluencer space won’t be easy. In March, Utah introduced laws to stop children under 18 having access to social media without parents’ explicit consent – but critics have pointed out the potential negative consequences.

Teens use social media for important connections, including with friends and online support groups. Vulnerable teens may become isolated without online support from their peers. Beyond that, social media provide kids with a sense of enjoyment and identity. Taking this away could do more harm than good.

More work is needed to determine what effective regulation would look like. While parents and educators have a role to play to increase children’s social media literacy, digital platforms and businesses should also step up.




Read more:
‘Anorexia coach’: sexual predators online are targeting teens wanting to lose weight. Platforms are looking the other way


The Conversation is commissioning articles by academics across the world who are researching how society is being shaped by our digital interactions with each other. Read more here

The Conversation

I am an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

Kate Delmo 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. ‘Kidfluencer’ culture is harming kids in several ways – and there’s no meaningful regulation of it – https://theconversation.com/kidfluencer-culture-is-harming-kids-in-several-ways-and-theres-no-meaningful-regulation-of-it-204277

Here’s why your freezer smells so bad – and what you can do about it

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Enzo Palombo, Professor of Microbiology, Swinburne University of Technology

TY Lim/Shutterstock

Most people would expect a freezer can keep perishable food fresh and safe from spoilage for many months. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

Have you ever noticed a funky smell in your freezer? Where does it come from and what can be done to fix the problem?

Hardy microbes and pungent chemicals

There are several causes for bad smells coming from your freezer. Typically, the culprits are microbes – bacteria, yeasts and moulds.

Although a freezer dramatically slows down the growth of most common spoilage microbes, some can still thrive if the temperature rises above -18℃ (the recommended freezer temperature). This can happen if there is a power outage for more than a few hours, or if you put something hot straight in the freezer.

Food spills and open containers provide an opportunity for microbes to get to work. It’s also worth noting that many microbes will survive freezing and start growing again once conditions are favourable – for example, if you remove the food, partially thaw it, and return it to the freezer.

Two things happen when food breaks down. First, as microbes start to grow, several pungent chemicals are produced. Second, the fats and flavours that are part of the food itself can and will be released.

These are generally referred to as volatile organic compounds (VOCs). They are the pleasant aromas that we sense when we eat, but VOCs can also be produced by bacteria.

For example, many of us would be familiar with the smells that come from fermentation – a microbial process. When fermenting a food, we intentionally contaminate it with microbes of known characteristics, or provide conditions that favour the growth of desirable microbes and subsequent production of aromatic compounds.

By contrast, uncontrolled food spoilage is problematic, especially when the contaminating microbes can cause disease.

Close-up of chopsticks picking up a piece of kimchi from a white bowl
Kimchi is one of the foods we deliberately allow to be ‘contaminated’ in order to produce the intense flavour.
Nungning20/Shutterstock

Freezing changes the food

It is not only microbial growth that can lead to undesirable odours. There’s a suite of chemical processes happening in the freezer, too.

Freezing causes physical changes to foods, often enhancing their breakdown. Many of us would be familiar with “freezer burn” on meats and other foods, as well as ice crystals on frozen food.

This phenomenon is called “salt rejection”. Depending on how rapidly something is frozen, salts can sometimes be concentrated, as pure water freezes at a higher temperature than water with things dissolved in it – like sugars and salts. On a large scale, this happens to icebergs in the ocean. As the sea water freezes, salt is removed. Thus, the iceberg is composed of fresh water, and the surrounding sea water becomes a saltier and denser brine.

In a similar way, as water in food freezes, organic molecules are concentrated and expelled. If these are volatile, they move about the freezer and stick to other things. Where they end up depends on what else is around.

Some of the volatiles like water. We call them “hydrophilic” or water loving; those are the ones that will make your food taste bad. Other are more water-hating or “hydrophobic” and they stick to things like silicone ice cube trays, making them go smelly.

Domestic freezers are commonly attached to a refrigerator, and this provides another opportunity for smells to move through the systems. The two units share a single cooling source and airflow channel. If your fridge has foul odours from the food inside (natural or after microbial spoilage), it is very likely they will migrate to your freezer.




Read more:
How colour-coding your fridge can stop your greens going to waste


Help, my freezer smells!

There are some simple steps you can take to stop your freezer from smelling.

First, try to prevent odours from developing in the first place by covering the food. If you place food in an airtight container (glass is best), it will dramatically slow the release of any aromatic compounds produced by bacteria or the food itself. Covered food is also less likely to absorb smells and flavours from other foods around it.

If the smells have already developed, you can eliminate them by following a few simple steps, including a thorough clean.

  • Remove all items from the freezer and inspect the foods for any spoilage, freezer burn or unpleasant odours.

  • Discard anything that has developed ice crystals and store the rest in a cooler box while attending to the freezer itself. You should also inspect the fridge and discard any bad-smelling foods.

  • Once you have removed all items, take out the shelves and clean up spills or crumbs.

  • Wipe down all surfaces using warm soapy water or a mix of two tablespoons of baking soda with warm water.

  • Wash all the shelves and ice compartments and let them dry completely.

If the smells are not removed with these simple cleaning steps, the freezer may require a deep clean, which involves turning off the unit and letting it “breathe” for a few days.

Placing some baking soda inside the freezer before adding food can help to absorb any residual odours. For serious smells where crevices or insulation are contaminated, you may need a service technician.

In short, even though we think freezers keep things “fresh”, microbes can still proliferate in there. Make sure to clean your freezer now and then to keep your food safe and healthy.

The Conversation

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. Here’s why your freezer smells so bad – and what you can do about it – https://theconversation.com/heres-why-your-freezer-smells-so-bad-and-what-you-can-do-about-it-203058

‘Too much money is spent on jails and policing’: what Aboriginal communities told us about funding justice reinvestment to keep people out of prison

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona Allison, Research Fellow, Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research, University of Technology Sydney

Shutterstock

Justice reinvestment emerged in the United States more than 20 years ago as a way to reduce mass incarceration and its vast costs by addressing the social drivers of imprisonment.

Through justice reinvestment, communities identify and develop responses to issues that feed high rates of re-incarceration locally, resourced through a “reinvestment” of funds drawn from prison budgets. The focus is often on better access for ex-prisoners to essentials such as accommodation and reducing inequity at a community level in health, education and other outcomes.

The Albanese government is currently implementing its 2022 commitment to A$81 million in funding to support justice reinvestment initiatives in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

The New South Wales government also recently pledged $9.8 million for Aboriginal-led justice reinvestment initiatives in Kempsey and Nowra.

But what does “reinvestment” mean in practice? Who decides what gets funded and how?

To find out more, we spoke with Aboriginal communities in the NSW towns of Bourke, Moree and Mount Druitt.

Our report, produced alongside these Aboriginal communities, aims to convey their understanding of justice reinvestment.

This work invites government to co-design with community what “reinvestment” means, led by those Aboriginal communities where local solutions are already underway.




Read more:
‘A life changing experience’: how adult literacy programs can keep First Nations people out of the criminal justice system


Investing in Aboriginal-led solutions

We heard that current criminal justice approaches are not working in Aboriginal communities like Moree and Mt Druitt. Far too many Aboriginal people are taken off-country to be locked up away from family, employment and schooling.

This fractures community and cultural connections and other elements of a healthy, thriving Aboriginal community. The scale at which this occurs does more harm than good and drives re-incarceration. As one Moree community member told us:

They just come out worse. It’s like setting them up to fail. Like, it doesn’t fix it at all. Do you know anyone that’s gone to jail and come out and been good, like better?

Aboriginal people in Moree and Mount Druitt know what’s needed to turn this around. One Moree community member said:

As we’ve been saying for years, we’re the only ones that can tell people what’s wrong, what’s the best way to fix it. And we’re the only ones that can actually do it.

These communities have developed Aboriginal-led justice reinvestment governance structures and programs that strengthen culture and self-determination. They aim to improve life opportunities to keep more Aboriginal people – particularly young people – out of custody.

In Mount Druitt, justice reinvestment includes Mounty Yarns, a project led by local young people with both lived experience of incarceration and ideas about how to reduce contact with the justice system that they want heard:

We don’t want the next generation to go through what we went through. We want to be a voice so others don’t have to keep repeating their stories.

Mounty Yarns leaders speaking out in Mount Druitt about their experiences of the justice system and ideas for change.

Aboriginal communities like Moree and Mount Druitt need increased access to resources and decision-making to implement their solutions.

They are calling for backing to put their ideas in motion, including partnerships, programs and interventions they identify as crucial to preventing offending.

These ideas, once implemented, may work well quickly, take time to succeed or perhaps struggle. Increasing community agency is a crucial outcome in itself, regardless.

Mounty Yarns. Just Reinvest NSW.

Funding justice reinvestment

Diverting funding from prisons to resource justice reinvestment in communities like Moree or Mount Druitt is appealing to Aboriginal people. They want divestment from what they see as highly punitive institutions that have long caused significant harm.

One idea for a source of funding might be a state-level mechanism requiring the NSW government to deposit an annual levy into a justice reinvestment fund.

Funds could potentially be drawn from justice spending allocations, calculated on the basis of the number of Aboriginal people imprisoned in NSW in the year in question.

Aboriginal people would determine where this money is spent, with priority given to justice reinvestment and other Aboriginal community-led and prevention-focused approaches likely to reduce over-representation.

As this is achieved, the levy will reduce, as will justice and related costs for government.

Importantly, the enormous social and economic costs for Aboriginal people of mass incarceration would also be averted. As one Mount Druitt community member told us:

What’s the outcome of prison spending? A criminal record. There’s lots of things they can do before they chuck them into jail but that’s the first option out here. Help him reconnect with his family, his culture. You could do a lot of things with that money.

Aboriginal people in Mount Druitt and Moree told us of other ways to “invest” in community-led ideas for change.

They want funding decisions to be informed by community knowledge of which services and programs will best contribute to outcomes likely to help keep Aboriginal people out of prison.

One Mount Druitt community member told us:

We’ve got no control here in Western Sydney. We need to have more of a say when we’re getting in funding here. How is that funding going to be distributed?

They have also identified “tipping points” that push Aboriginal people into the justice system. These include inappropriate or biased police decisions about bail, inadequate post-release support and school exclusions for younger people. They are calling for government reform in these areas.

Achieving change

The message from our report is clear: Aboriginal communities want to determine their own priorities for change and to lead that change. This is crucial to reducing Aboriginal over-representation.

Commitment by governments to funding justice reinvestment initiatives is definitely a positive step in the right direction.

Alongside funding, reform to government ways of working and policy will also be essential to ensuring justice reinvestment has the best chance of success.




Read more:
Australian governments should follow the ACT’s lead in building communities, not prisons


The Conversation

Fiona Allison completed research on reinvestment as a consultant for Just Reinvest NSW. As an academic at Jumbunna, she is also involved in the co-design process informing implementation of the federal government commitment to justice reinvestment.

Daniel Daylight works for JustReinvest NSW.

Thomas Duncan works for JustReinvest NSW.

ref. ‘Too much money is spent on jails and policing’: what Aboriginal communities told us about funding justice reinvestment to keep people out of prison – https://theconversation.com/too-much-money-is-spent-on-jails-and-policing-what-aboriginal-communities-told-us-about-funding-justice-reinvestment-to-keep-people-out-of-prison-200531

Vaping and behaviour in schools: what does the research tell us?

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Becky Freeman, Associate Professor, School of Public Health, University of Sydney

Shutterstock

In a major speech today, Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said vaping has become “the number one behavioural issue in high schools”.

The government today proposed a suite of reforms aimed at reducing vaping.

But what does the evidence show about the prevalence of vaping in schools and the kind of behavioural issues associated with it?

My colleagues and I have been researching teen vape use through the Generation Vape study. We’ve been tracking teenagers’ knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours about using vapes (also known as e-cigarettes).

This has involved interviewing and surveying young people across Australia aged 13–17, their parents and carers and secondary school teachers, principals and administrators.

Here’s what we know so far.




Read more:
Albanese government launches war on vaping, declaring it the ‘number-one behavioural issue in high schools’


How prevalent is vaping in high schools?

Of the 721 young people we have surveyed so far:

  • 32% had ever vaped (we call these people “ever-vapers”)

  • 54% of ever-vapers had never smoked cigarettes before starting vaping

  • ever-smokers were seven times more likely to be ever-vapers than those who had never smoked (in other words, young people who have tried smoking are much more likely to have tried vaping)

  • ever-vapers were 18 times more likely to be ever-smokers than those who had never vaped (in other words, young people who had ever tried vaping were significantly more likely to have ever tried smoking).

Most of our respondents said the main factor driving their vaping was flavouring and taste.

In other words, about one in three teenagers have tried vaping. Only a few years ago it was really rare, but it’s exploded in use.

We also asked about frequency of vaping. We found 10% typically used vapes on six or more days a month, but the fact that most are occasional users suggests we have a window of opportunity to act now before these people become addicted.

Occasional users told us they are trying vaping because they are curious, are interested in experiencing the hit from nicotine, and don’t imagine themselves getting addicted. Unfortunately, they often do find soon themselves addicted, which is why a public health response is so urgently needed.

Our data also shows:

  • more than half of those trying a vape for the first time are under age 16

  • more than half of ever-vapers reported using a vape they knew contained nicotine

  • vaping is seen as a socially acceptable behaviour separate and unique from smoking.

One 17-year-old ever-vaper told us “no-one” buys the non-nicotine devices

because they don’t give you head spins, so they are pointless. It’s almost like wasting money.

Another 17-year-old past vaper told us:

Oh, you can get ones without nicotine but I don’t think they’re very popular […] it tells you when you buy a vape how much nicotine’s in it. It’s usually 5%.

Vapes are small and easy to hide.
Shutterstock

What are teachers, principals and school administrators saying?

In our surveys and interviews with teachers, principals and school administrators, we found:

  • 58% of teachers have confiscated vaping products from students two or more times a week

  • 86% of teachers are concerned or very concerned about students vaping in their school

  • 62% of teachers are aware of vaping products being sold on school grounds.

Teachers reported feeling they had to police students by searching bags and pencil cases, and that having to manage vaping as a disciplinary issue took time away from teaching.

Principals and school administrators talked about having to

  • use school funds to install vape detectors in school toilets

  • liaise with parents of children caught vaping

  • think about safety issues presented by people coming to the school gate to sell vapes to students.

If children are addicted, we don’t want to see them kicked out of school. It’s not their fault they have become addicted to these products. That’s why we need a public health response rather than a punitive response.

One principal told us:

it’s probably the single most disruptive thing in our school at the moment.

A different teacher said:

even when you catch them they deny to your face and then you have argue […]
it becomes a massive issue and 40 minutes of your life is taken away just with this
one thing when you should be doing other things as a teacher.

Another principal said:

We can bring it up with the kids as much as we want, but I think we need a little bit of traction there beyond school too.

What kind of behaviour issues are linked to vaping in school?

Teens who vape regularly reported:

  • experiencing nicotine withdrawal while at school, which can feel like anxiety or stress (many told us they vape for their mental health, not understanding the stress is linked to the addiction)

  • sneaking out of class to vape

  • feeling distracted and finding it difficult to focus in the classroom

  • feeling stressed about needing to hide their device and their vaping while at school.

One 17-year-old told us:

I’d see people at school […] at nine o’clock in the morning going, “Oh do you have a vape? Do you have a vape? I need one. I haven’t had one all day”, and begging people for it […] so I think it’s mostly an addiction thing with people who are heavy users.

What is the evidence telling us is needed?

The evidence tells us we really need to get these products out of the hands of young people. That’s why making them harder to buy is vital.

About 80% of our respondents told us it was easy to get vapes; it was common knowledge who sold them at school or that certain people would sell them by the school gate.

That’s why the importation ban in the government reforms is so important, and why it’s crucial states and territories work with the federal government to get vapes out of corner shops and petrol stations. It’s about reducing access so kids aren’t exposed to it as they are walking to school.

Is it really the number one behavioural issue in high school?

It’s impossible to say. But certainly the data is telling us it is a very big issue.

Of the teachers we surveyed, 86% said they were “highly concerned” about vaping at school. In interviews, teachers often described vaping as the key issue they are dealing with outside the classroom.

Schools have to deal with so many issues, so if we can reduce this one or even take it off their plate altogether then we should.




Read more:
We asked over 700 teens where they bought their vapes. Here’s what they said


The Conversation

Becky Freeman is an Expert Advisor to the Cancer Council Tobacco Issues Committee and a member of the Cancer Institute Vaping Communications Advisory Panel. These are unpaid roles. She has received relevant competitive grants that include a focus on e-cigarettes/vaping from the NHMRC, MRFF, NSW Health, the Ian Potter Foundation, VicHealth, and Healthway WA; relevant research contracts from the Cancer Institute NSW and the Cancer Council NSW; relevant personal/consulting fees from the World Health Organization, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Department of Health, BMJ Tobacco Control, the Heart Foundation NSW, the US FDA, the NHMRC e-cigarette working committee, NSW Health, and Cancer Council NSW; and relevant travel expenses from the Oceania Tobacco Control Conference and the Australia Public Health Association preventive health conference.

ref. Vaping and behaviour in schools: what does the research tell us? – https://theconversation.com/vaping-and-behaviour-in-schools-what-does-the-research-tell-us-204794

From ‘technicolour yawn’ to ‘draining the dragon’: how Barry Humphries breathed new life into Australian slang

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Howard Manns, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, Monash University

Yui Mok/AP/AAP

If slang is the people’s poetry, then Australia lost a poet last week.

Barry Humphries breathed life into Australia’s “slanguage” – but it was often an imagined life. When it comes to their lexicon, Australians take pride in skirting the thin line between reality, romanticisation and furphies. Humphries took linguistic invention to extremes – plucking words and phrases out of obscurity, but also pushing or exceeding acceptability.

In this way, Humphries joined others who have guided Australia into a sense of nationhood by contributing words, attitudes and a few porkies to our national lexicon.

“Slangy philosophers” in Australian history

Slangy philosophers emerge at Australia’s key points, and elevate certain words, phrases and verse to help us make sense of our national experience.

In his 1898 dictionary, E.E. Morris famously noted the impoverished state of “Austral English”: “there never was an instance in history when so many new names were needed, and there never will be such an occasion again.”

Australia’s slangy philosophers have historically risen to the occasion. Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson wrote on topics of billies boiling, mateship and waltzing Matilda. However, they didn’t always agree on whether and to what degree the bush should or might be romanticised.

Poets Henry Lawson (left) and ‘Banjo’ Paterson were early contributors to the development of a peculiarly Australian vernacular.
Royal Australian Historical Society

Lawson was perhaps the less sentimental of the pair, writing in his poem The City Bushman (1892):

Don’t you fancy that the poets better give the bush a rest,
Ere they raise a just rebellion in the over-written west?

A certain romanticisation of Australian ways of speaking, and disagreement about those ways of speaking, seem to be part of Australia’s linguistic landscape. During a great period of Australian myth-making (1890-1925), newspapers and magazines such as the Argus, Australian Tit-Bits and the Bulletin enabled the public to write letters or stories and debate one another.

Readers aggressively debated Australian word etymologies – and the degree to which these words were or were not Australian. For instance, a Bulletin writer by the name of “Blue Duck” dismissed the emerging Australian slang, writing, “Much Australian slang is simply cockney flash, introduced every mailboat by stewards”.

While Mr. B. Duck might be overstating the case, his comment hints at a wider truth. Many aspects of the Australian lexicon first emerge in Britain, or in the imaginations of our middle-class citizens or artists.

For instance, C.J. Dennis’s fictional larrikin Ginger Mick – one of Australia’s original slangy philosophers – had a style of speaking that was more a middle-class flight of fancy — some argue more cockney than Australian.

But Mick’s imagined ways of speaking became loved by Australians, and played a role in our emerging nationhood. We might argue that Barry Humphries and Bazza McKenzie did the same, albeit in a different era.

Humphries and the lexicon of New Nationalism

Barry Humphries’s Bazza McKenzie character emerged during Australia’s New Nationalism in the 1960s/1970s. In linguistic terms, this was an era of growing colloquiality in Australian English.

Linguists Peter Collins and Xinyue Yao linked the identifiable rise in Australian colloquialisms from 1961-1991 to:

an upsurge of nationalistic fervor in Australia at this time, epitomised most colourfully and infamously in the cult of “Ockerdom” of the 1970s, and heralding the decline of Britishness in Australia.

In other words, while Australians have long been noted to speak more colloquially than their American and British counterparts, this bloomed during the era of New Nationalism — and shows little signs of stopping.

Bazza McKenzie – in the British magazine Private Eye – leaned into the Ockerdom of the era. Humphries noted that

words like cobber and bonzer still intrude as a sop to Pommy readers, though such words are seldom, if ever, used in present-day Australia.

However, Bazza might have thrown such words a lifeline. Humphries took pride in giving old Aussie words and phrases a second life, drawing inspiration from school days, public life or friends like “Shearing Bill, who had spent most of his life in the outback […] collecting arcane vernacular”.

In 1965, Humphries noted he’d first heard chunder in Victoria’s elite private schools ten years earlier (though it was already being used “by the Surfies, a repellent breed of sunbronzed hedonists […]”). When it hit the big screen chunderama style, it was Bazza who popularised its (probably false) origin story, the nautical warning for others to “watch under” – successful slang is usually buttressed by tall etymological tales.

Bazza, taboo and the Australian lexicon

Of course, Humphries – especially through Bazza McKenzie – didn’t just breath fresh life into old Australian words, but coined many of his own. Slang generally flourishes wherever things go bump in the night, and Humphries had in his sights Victorian taboos around body parts and bodily effluvia. These taboos guided our public imagination (or euphemism) at least into the 1980s, and for some beyond.

Humphries coined or popularised cheeky ways to discuss vomiting (for example, technicolour yawn, liquid laugh (down the great white telephone)), urinating (such as drain the dragon, point Percy at the Porcelain) and masturbation (for example flog the lizard, jerking the gherkin). He was also a master of the frankenphrase – pulling together bits and pieces of the Australian lexicon, and reinventing them.

Through Bazza, Humphries took phrases based on ugly as […] to new levels, popularising a shift away from religious connotations of “ugly” (such as ugly as the devil, ugly as sin) toward containers and orifices as the standard of comparison (for example, ugly as a hatful of arseholes) – in Australia at least.

In some cases, Humphries went too far, especially for modern sensibilities – his character Sir Les Patterson deliberately sought to offend. Humphries popularised more than a few pejorative terms for marginalised people – words that we won’t repeat here.

Beer-swilling Bazza and our slang from ‘Down Under’

Not only did Humphries change Aussie slang, he changed the way we thought about it. Colin Hay cites the influence of Bazza McKenzie on Men at Work’s iconic song “Down Under”:

He’s a master of comedy and he had a lot of expressions that we grew up listening to and emulating. The verses were very much inspired by a character he had called Barry McKenzie, who was a beer-swilling Australian who travelled to England, a very larger-than-life character.

To survive, slang expressions require what Ben Zimmer once described as a “perfect lexicographical storm”. We think there are usually four things that create this storm, and successful Bazza-isms have them all: celebrity endorsement, handiness, imagination and a magic furphy or two.

Sure, Bazza’s wondrous contributions may not be part of most people’s active vocab, they do belong to a kind of (national) lexical Wunderkammer – loved, admired and trotted out as stellar examples of Australian slang.

The Conversation

Howard Manns receives funding from ARC SR200200350.

Isabelle Burke receives funding from ARC SR200200350.

Kate Burridge receives funding from ARC SR200200350.

Simon Musgrave receives funding from ARC SR200200350.

ref. From ‘technicolour yawn’ to ‘draining the dragon’: how Barry Humphries breathed new life into Australian slang – https://theconversation.com/from-technicolour-yawn-to-draining-the-dragon-how-barry-humphries-breathed-new-life-into-australian-slang-204542

Emotional abuse is a pattern of hurtful messages – building parenting skills could help prevent it

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Divna Haslam, Senior Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology

Unsplash/Luke Pennystan, CC BY

When people think about child maltreatment, many think of physical or sexual abuse. But a key finding of our Australian Child Maltreatment Study, published last month, is that emotional abuse is widespread and associated with similar harms as sexual abuse.

It is an overlooked type of child maltreatment that requires urgent attention.




Read more:
Major study reveals two-thirds of people who suffer childhood maltreatment suffer more than one kind


What is emotional abuse?

Emotional abuse is a pattern of parent behaviour and interactions that communicate (verbally or non-verbally) to the child they are worthless, unloved, unwanted or that their only value is in meeting someone else’s needs.

It can include verbal hostility (insults, humiliation, hurtful name calling), rejection (such as parents or carers saying they hate a child, don’t love them, or wished they were dead) or denying emotional responsiveness (consistently ignoring or withholding love or affection).

Emotional abuse is a repetitive pattern of hostile interactions, as opposed to occasional angry words in an otherwise loving and nurturing relationship.

How common is emotional abuse?

Our research found 30.9% of Australians experienced emotional abuse during their childhood.

Rates among young people aged 16–24 years are even higher (34.6%) suggesting it may be increasing.

More women experienced child emotional abuse than men, and there are higher rates of emotional abuse among gender diverse people.

The messages that emotional abuse sends children are hurtful. For example, one in ten young people had a parent tell them they hated them, didn’t love them, or wished they had never been born. We found most emotional abuse extended over a period of years.

The paradox of emotional abuse is that it comes from the most important adult(s) in a child’s life. And this hurt occurs while a child’s sense of self-worth and identity is developing. It negatively influences the way children perceive themselves for many years – potentially throughout their lifetime.

What is the impact of emotional abuse?

Compared to Australians who were not maltreated in childhood, and after adjusting for demographics and other co-occurring forms of child maltreatment, adults who experienced emotional abuse in childhood are:

  • 1.9 times as likely to have a major depressive disorder
  • 2.1 times as to have generalised anxiety disorder
  • 2.0 times as likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder.

In the past year they are:

There are links between people who experience emotional abuse and obesity, binge drinking alcohol and cannabis-dependence. These findings back up other studies worldwide that show the physical and mental health harms associated with emotional abuse of children. These come with substantial personal, social, and economic costs.




Read more:
Paramedics could sound early warnings of child abuse or neglect – but they need support and more training


How can we reduce emotional abuse?

A comprehensive approach is required, starting with broad policy change, and encompassing a range of strategies including parenting interventions, mental health interventions and population education approaches.

Fundamentally, emotional abuse is about parent-child interactions. Evidence-based parenting supports should be widely available and easily accessible. Supports that aim to enhance positive, loving parent-child relationships, teach non-abusive parenting strategies, combat negative attributions, and enhance parental confidence are likely to be most effective for the prevention and treatment of child maltreatment.

These programs teach parents why children behave as they do and provide practical strategies for communicating with children and showing affection, encouraging positive behaviour and using clear, calm limit-setting and discipline to manage problem behaviour.

However, there is more evidence available for physical abuse prevention and further research on what works for specific types of maltreatment, and for whom, is needed.

There is evidence the right kind of help can prevent psychological aggression in some parents. This has not been studied at a wider population level but is possible. To do this a blend of supports of different intensities would be needed. This could include public health campaigns using mass and social media similar to the Slip Slop Slap campaign which resulted in reductions in melanoma rates.

Prevention and early intervention programs could be delivered through pre-schools and schools. More intensive support for high-needs families could be offered through maternal and family health services, allied health professionals and mental health specialists.

man is carrying small child and both look happy near grassy field
Early parenting support could prevent harm.
Unsplash, CC BY

All children deserve a loving environment

Population studies of parenting interventions have demonstrated reductions in rates of physical abuse across whole communities, indicating even parents who do not actively attend parenting programs benefit from the their availability. This likely occurs through changing social norms and social contagion effects. Since these focus on strengthening parent-child relationships and reducing known parental risk factors, its likely they would also reduce rates of emotional abuse. More research in this area is sorely needed.

Parenting support must be embedded within broader social and policy changes designed to support families. These include those focused on reducing financial strain and food insecurity, and those that aim to increase access to high-quality childcare, education, and health and mental health services.

All children deserve to be raised in loving, safe, nurturing environments. Emotional abuse should not remain a “silent” form of child maltreatment. It must not be ignored just because the harm is not physical or sexual. We must prioritise the reduction of emotional abuse alongside other forms of child maltreatment – starting with the parents and carers at risk of inflicting it.


For parenting support contact Parentline. The Australian government has also made an evidence-based online parenting program available for free.

The Conversation

Dr Haslam has received a range of grants and funding including from the Australian government. In addition to her primary employment at QUT she holds an honourary research position at the University of Queensland’s Parenting and Family Research Centre. The Parenting and Family Support Centre is partly funded by royalties stemming from published resources of the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program, which is developed and owned by The University of Queensland (UQ). Royalties are also distributed to the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences at UQ and contributory authors of published Triple P resources. Triple P International (TPI) Pty Ltd is a private company licensed by Uniquest Pty Ltd on behalf of UQ, to publish and disseminate Triple P worldwide. Dr Haslam has no share or ownership of TPI. Dr Haslam receives royalties from TPI. TPI had no involvement in the writing of this article. She is a member of the Parenting and Family Research Alliance.

The Parenting and Family Support Centre is partly funded by royalties stemming from published resources of the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program, which is developed and owned by The University of Queensland (UQ). Royalties are also distributed to the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences at UQ and contributory authors of published Triple P resources. Triple P International (TPI) Pty Ltd is a private company licensed by Uniquest Pty Ltd on behalf of UQ, to publish and disseminate Triple P worldwide. Dr Morawska has no share or ownership of TPI. Dr Morawska receives royalties from TPI.TPI had no involvement in the writing of this article. Dr Morawska is an employee at UQ. Dr Morawska is a member of the Parenting and Family Research Alliance.

James Graham Scott receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council.

ref. Emotional abuse is a pattern of hurtful messages – building parenting skills could help prevent it – https://theconversation.com/emotional-abuse-is-a-pattern-of-hurtful-messages-building-parenting-skills-could-help-prevent-it-203556

French Polynesia set for president who favours independence after election

By Walter Zweifel, RNZ Pacific reporter

French Polynesia’s pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira party has won the election for a new 57-member Territorial Assembly, paving the way for Moetai Brotherson to become president.

Unofficial final results show the party led by its founder Oscar Temaru won 44.3 percent, thereby repeating its win in the first round of voting two weeks ago.

The pro-autonomy coalition list formed 12 days ago between the ruling Tapura Huira’atira and the opposition Amuitahiraa came second with 38.5 percent while another autonomist party A Here Ia Porinetia secured 17.2 percent.

As the list winning most votes, the Tavini gets 19 of the 57 seats as a bonus, securing a total of 38 seats.

The Tapura-led list won 16 seats and A Here Ia Porinetia three.

The Tavini victory ends the 10-year dominance of the Assembly by the Tapura.

The new Assembly, which has been elected for a five-year term, is expected to meet in the next two weeks to elect a new assembly president and then a territorial President.

Majority of women
The Tavini candidate for the presidency Moetai Brotherson said he is likely to appoint a majority of women when he forms his government after confirming that Eliane Tevahitua will be the vice-president.

Temaru topped the Tavini list but decided before the election not to seek another term as president.

Tahitian pro-independence presidency hopeful Moetai Brotherson
Tahitian pro-independence presidency hopeful Moetai Brotherson . . . likely to appoint a majority of women when he forms his government after confirming that Eliane Tevahitua would be the vice-president. Image: 1er TV

The Tapura leader and outgoing president Édouard Fritch said despite the Tavini victory, a majority of French Polynesians favour autonomy.

The Amuitahiraa leader, Gaston Flosse, said his coalition, which joined the Tapura for the second round, did not “lose” the election and denounced Temaru as a liar.

During the campaign, Fritch and Flosse warned of chaos should the Tavini come first.

Brotherson said the election results show people were not fooled, knowing that independence would not happen next week.

As president, Brotherson said he would represent all the people and seek a dialogue with France as a partner on the basis of mutual respect.

France refuses over UN
French Polynesia has been on the UN decolonisation list since 2013 but France has to date refused to acknowledge the UN decision and refuses to engage in a UN supervised process.

Observers said the Tapura lost support over displeasure with the government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic.

Last year, Fritch and former vice-president Tearii Alpha were both fined for flouting covid rules they put in place.

Alpha, who was vice-president at the time, invited 300 people, including all cabinet members, to his wedding at the height of restrictions.

In what was a surprise last year, the Tavini candidates beat the Tapura candidates to win all three of French Polynesia’s seats in the French National Assembly.

The last pro-independence politician to hold the presidency was Temaru who held the post for a fifth time between 2011 and 2013.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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Parliament protest report shows NZ police have come a long way since 1981 – but practice and law must still improve

Image Gettys, via The Conversation.

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

 

Getty Images

As the recent report of the Independent Police Conduct Authority made clear, the 2022 occupation of parliament grounds was very different from earlier protests in New Zealand. That doesn’t mean something similar can’t happen again.

Given the role of disinformation, eroding social cohesion, anger and opaque funding in fuelling that protest, it would be prudent for police in particular be better prepared in future.

At the occupation’s peak, there were approximately 3,000 protesters, 2,000 vehicles in surrounding streets, and 300 structures illegally erected in and around parliament. The protest lasted 24 days, with more than 300 arrested.

What happened in Wellington was far from the largest or longest protest Aotearoa has seen, nor the only one to turn violent. The anti-Springbok tour protest in 1981, for example, lasted 56 days, involving more than 150,000 people in more than 200 demonstrations in 28 centres.

Some 1,944 protesters were charged with various crimes. The use of violence by police confronting determined crowds was at times excessive, indiscriminate and largely unaccountable.

But what happened in 2022 was very different to 1981. The Wellington protest happened in the wake of the US Capitol insurrection, “freedom rallies” in Australia and a “freedom convoy” in Canada. New Zealand saw a combination of all three, including death threats against politicians and journalists.




Read more:
The extremism visible at the parliament protest has been growing in NZ for years – is enough being done?


Intelligence agencies warned that a small number of the protesters were “likely” to support an extremist ideology and could become violent. And the final day of the occupation was one of fury and destruction.

While police didn’t use tear gas as they had in 1981, they did employ tools that weren’t available then, including sponge rounds and pepper spray with extended ranges. Nonetheless, the violence that followed was still extreme, with 154 injuries to police, 47 requiring medical attention.

The 1981 Springbok tour protests tested police tactics and oversight, and both were found wanting.
Getty Images

Rebuilding trust

The reputational damage to the police from the 1981 protests was terrible. The police had been used as a political chess piece, without independent external oversight. Later cases of disgraceful conduct ate away at police prestige even more.

Reversing that trend and rebuilding public trust required decades of work, a new Policing Act, and the establishment of the Independent Police Complaints Authority in 1989 (later to become the Independent Police Conduct Authority, or IPCA).

A considerable amount of that rebuilt trust and credibility was put on the line during the parliament protest. Perhaps remarkably, no one died. And while we recently saw New Zealand’s first conviction for sabotage over anti-COVID mandate actions, there were no acts of terrorism during the Wellington protests.

Parliament was not stormed, unlike the US Capitol, and no emergency laws were used, as they were in Canada. Out of 1,905 complaints received by the IPCA, police actions were found to be unjustified in only eight cases.

Rioters fight to gain access to the US Capitol, January 6 2021.
Getty Images

Improved practice and law

Despite this largely admirable outcome, it’s clear improvements are still needed. In particular, police need to be better prepared. No officer should be put in a highly volatile situation without protective equipment fit for purpose.

While police were legally entitled to defend themselves and use proportionate force, the fact they had to improvise with fire extinguishers and fire hoses to keep violent protesters at bay heightened the risk of injury on both sides.




Read more:
Recent COVID-19 court cases show New Zealand’s Bill of Rights Act is not as strong as some might wish


The obvious next step would be to introduce water cannons. These are used overseas to disperse rioters, while providing better protection to police. Given the risk of serious injury or death, however, their adoption and use would need to follow best practice in a society that upholds the right to peaceful protest.

The law also needs to be updated. While protest and dissent must be welcomed within the parliamentary precinct, it must be orderly, non-violent and not involve occupation. That means parliamentary trespass laws must be updated to manage large events, rather than relying on repeated warnings to specific individuals.

Police powers to seize vehicles being used to blockade the precinct also need revisiting. It should not be possible for someone whose vehicle has been removed to simply retrieve it and return to the same location.




Read more:
The parliament occupation is over – now New Zealand needs new laws to protect the ‘epicentre of its democracy’


And while police must have robust arrest protocols and conform with the Bill of Rights Act, the current arrest laws were not fit for purpose in the kind of mass public disorder witnessed at parliament.

Although about 300 protesters were arrested, 170 had the charges withdrawn for several main reasons: an inability to identify the arresting officer and link the arresting officer to the arrested person; insufficient documentation about what an arrested person had done; and insufficient evidence to prove the charges.

The lesson for future similar events is that greater numbers of officers must be available for deployment, with improved processing and evidence collection systems.




Read more:
Protesting during a pandemic: New Zealand’s balancing act between a long tradition of protests and COVID rules


Police independence

For police to retain their integrity and public support, they must act independently and impartially. The police commissioner must remain independent of the police minister in maintaining public order, enforcing the law and pursuing prosecutions.

This independence is a core constitutional principle in New Zealand.

This is crucial, given some police felt aspects of the parliament operation resulted from political pressure. That concern was not upheld by the IPCA, which determined certain “uncomfortable conversations” and “high levels of frustration” expressed by some in authority did not cross the line.

While positive, it should also serve as a warning. Police autonomy in operational matters, subject to independent external review not undue influence by politicians, must never be compromised.

The Conversation

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

ref. Parliament protest report shows NZ police have come a long way since 1981 – but practice and law must still improve – https://theconversation.com/parliament-protest-report-shows-nz-police-have-come-a-long-way-since-1981-but-practice-and-law-must-still-improve-204674

Australians should be wary of scare stories about New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal

ANALYSIS: By Michael Belgrave, Massey University

Australian Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s recent claim that New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal has veto powers over Parliament was met with surprise in New Zealand, especially by the members of the tribunal itself.

That’s because it is just plain wrong.

As the debate around the Voice to Parliament ramps up, we can probably expect similar claims to be made ahead of this year’s referendum. But the issue is so important to Australia’s future that such misinformation should not go unchallenged.

From an Australian perspective, New Zealand may appear ahead of the game in recognising Indigenous voices constitutionally. But that has certainly not extended to granting a parliamentary power of veto to Māori.

The Waitangi Tribunal was originally established as a commission of inquiry in 1975, given the power only to make recommendations to government. And so it remains. The Crown alone appoints tribunal members and many are non-Māori.

As with all commissions of inquiry, it’s up to the government of the day to make a political decision about whether or not to implement those recommendations.

Liberal Party's Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price
Country Liberal Party’s Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price . . . her recent claim that New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal has veto powers over Parliament is “just plain wrong”. Image: Senator Price’s FB

Deceptive and wrong
Price’s claim echoed a February article and paper published by the Institute of Public Affairs, aimed at influencing the Voice referendum. Titled “The New Zealand Māori voice to Parliament and what we can expect from Australia”, it was written by the director of the institute’s legal rights program, John Storey.

The paper makes a number of assertions: the Waitangi Tribunal has a veto over the New Zealand parliament’s power to pass certain legislation; the Waitangi Tribunal was established to hear land claims but its brief has expanded to include all aspects of public policy; and the Waitangi Tribunal “shows the Voice will create new Indigenous rights”.

The last of the statements is deceptive and the others are completely wrong. The Waitangi Tribunal’s jurisdiction was largely set in stone by the New Zealand parliament in 1975 when it was established.

Far from investigating land claims, it initially wasn’t able to examine any claims dating from before 1975. Parliament changed the tribunal’s jurisdiction in 1985, giving it retrospective powers back to 1840 (when the Treaty of Waitangi/te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed).

The tribunal then started hearing land claims. But in its first decade, it focused on fisheries, planning issues, the loss of Māori language, government decisions being made at the time and general issues of public policy.

Honouring the Treaty
Honouring the Treaty: New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins at the 2023 Waitangi Day commemorations. Image: Getty Images

Historic grievances
Over the past 38 years, the tribunal has focused on what are called “historical Treaty claims”, covering the period 1840 to 1992. In 1992 a major settlement of fishing claims began an era of negotiation and settlement of these claims, quite separate from the tribunal itself.

With the majority of significant historic claims now settled or in negotiation, that aspect of the tribunal’s work is coming to an end. It has returned to hearing claims about social issues and other more contemporary issues.

Far from expanding its jurisdiction, the tribunal’s powers have been steadily reduced in recent decades. In 1993, it lost the power to make recommendations involving private land — that is, land not owned by the Crown.

In 2008, it lost the power to investigate new historical claims, as the government looked to close off new claims that could undermine current settlements.

There is one area where the tribunal was given the power to force the Crown to return land. The 1984-1990 Labour government set a policy to rid itself of what were seen as surplus Crown assets.

A deal was struck between Māori claimants and the Crown to allow the tribunal to make binding recommendations to return land in very special cases.

This compromise was not created by the tribunal but through ambiguity in legislation, which was resolved in favour of Māori claimants in the Court of Appeal. The ability to return land has almost never been used and is being progressively repealed across the country as Treaty settlements are implemented in legislation.


Wide political support
Storey quotes a number of tribunal reports, which make findings about the Crown’s responsibilities, as if these findings are binding on the Crown or even on Parliament. This is not the case. The Waitangi Tribunal investigates claims that the Crown has acted contrary to the “principles of the Treaty”.

The Waitangi Tribunal establishes what those principles are, but they are binding on neither the courts nor Parliament. Having made findings, the tribunal makes recommendations — not to Parliament, as Storey suggests, but to ministers of the Crown.

Some recommendations are implemented, others are not.

Where there is a dispute between the Crown and Māori, the tribunal has often recommended negotiation rather than make specific recommendations for redress.

Storey has elsewhere referred to the tribunal as a “so-called advisory, now binding, Māori Voice to Parliament” that has “decreed” certain things. In the longer paper he does admit the “tribunal cannot dictate the exact form any redress offered by government must take”.

But he then falls back on the notion of a “moral veto” — that its status is so elevated that parliament is forced, however reluctantly, to do its bidding.

Yet not only does the Crown ignore tribunal recommendations as it chooses, it refuses even to be bound by the tribunal’s expert findings on history in negotiating settlements.

The Waitangi Tribunal will remain a permanent commission of inquiry because there is wide political support for its work. Nor can be it held solely responsible for increasing Māori assertiveness or political engagement with government, even if this was in any way a bad thing.

A larger social shift has taken place in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past few decades. No fiat from the Waitangi Tribunal has eliminated the cultural misappropriation of Māori faces and imagery — something Storey warns could mean “tea towels with a depiction of Uluru/Ayers Rock, or boomerang fridge magnets, would become problematic”.

The Waitangi Tribunal has often done no more than make Māori histories, Māori perspectives and Māori values accessible to a non-Māori majority. It has certainly had no power to control where debates on Indigenous issues fall.The Conversation

Dr Michael Belgrave is professor of history, Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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How close are we to reading minds? A new study decodes language and meaning from brain scans

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christina Maher, Computational Neuroscientist and Biomedical Engineer, University of Sydney

Shutterstock

The technology to decode our thoughts is drawing ever closer. Neuroscientists at the University of Texas have for the first time decoded data from non-invasive brain scans and used them to reconstruct language and meaning from stories that people hear, see or even imagine.

In a new study published in Nature Neuroscience, Alexander Huth and colleagues successfully recovered the gist of language and sometimes exact phrases from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain recordings of three participants.

Technology that can create language from brain signals could be enormously useful for people who cannot speak due to conditions such as motor neurone disease. At the same time, it raises concerns for the future privacy of our thoughts.

Language decoded

Language decoding models, also called “speech decoders”, aim to use recordings of a person’s brain activity to discover the words they hear, imagine or say.

Until now, speech decoders have only been used with data from devices surgically implanted in the brain, which limits their usefulness. Other decoders which used non-invasive brain activity recordings have been able to decode single words or short phrases, but not continuous language.




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We’ve been connecting brains to computers longer than you’d expect. These 3 companies are leading the way


The new research used the blood oxygen level dependent signal from fMRI scans, which shows changes in blood flow and oxygenation levels in different parts of the brain. By focusing on patterns of activity in brain regions and networks that process language, the researchers found their decoder could be trained to reconstruct continuous language (including some specific words and the general meaning of sentences).

Specifically, the decoder took the brain responses of three participants as they listened to stories, and generated sequences of words that were likely to have produced those brain responses. These word sequences did well at capturing the general gist of the stories, and in some cases included exact words and phrases.

The researchers also had the participants watch silent movies and imagine stories while being scanned. In both cases, the decoder often managed to predict the gist of the stories.

For example, one user thought “I don’t have my driver’s licence yet”, and the decoder predicted “she has not even started to learn to drive yet”.

Further, when participants actively listened to one story while ignoring another story played simultaneously, the decoder could identify the meaning of the story being actively listened to.

How does it work?

The researchers started out by having each participant lie inside an fMRI scanner and listen to 16 hours of narrated stories while their brain responses were recorded.

These brain responses were then used to train an encoder – a computational model that tries to predict how the brain will respond to words a user hears. After training, the encoder could quite accurately predict how each participant’s brain signals would respond to hearing a given string of words.

However, going in the opposite direction – from recorded brain responses to words – is trickier.

The encoder model is designed to link brain responses with “semantic features” or the broad meanings of words and sentences. To do this, the system uses the original GPT language model, which is the precursor of today’s GPT-4 model. The decoder then generates sequences of words that might have produced the observed brain responses.

A table showing stills from an animated film next to descriptions of the action decoded from fMRI scans.
The decoder could also describe the action when participants watched silent movies.
Tang et al. / Nature Neuroscience

The accuracy of each “guess” is then checked by using it to predict previously recorded brain activity, with the prediction then compared to the actual recorded activity.

During this resource-intensive process, multiple guesses are generated at a time, and ranked in order of accuracy. Poor guesses are discarded and good ones kept. The process continues by guessing the next word in the sequence, and so on until the most accurate sequence is determined.

Words and meanings

The study found data from multiple, specific brain regions – including the speech network, the parietal-temporal-occipital association region, and prefrontal cortex – were needed for the most accurate predictions.

One key difference between this work and earlier efforts is the data being decoded. Most decoding systems link brain data to motor features or activity recorded from brain regions involved in the last step of speech output, the movement of the mouth and tongue. This decoder works instead at the level of ideas and meanings.

One limitation of using fMRI data is its low “temporal resolution”. The blood oxygen level dependent signal rises and falls over approximately a 10-second period, during which time a person might have heard 20 or more words. As a result, this technique cannot detect individual words, but only the potential meanings of sequences of words.

No need for privacy panic (yet)

The idea of technology that can “read minds” raises concerns over mental privacy. The researchers conducted additional experiments to address some of these concerns.

These experiments showed we don’t need to worry just yet about having our thoughts decoded while we walk down the street, or indeed without our extensive cooperation.

A decoder trained on one person’s thoughts performed poorly when predicting the semantic detail from another participant’s data. What’s more, participants could disrupt the decoding by diverting their attention to a different task such as naming animals or telling a different story.




Read more:
Our neurodata can reveal our most private selves. As brain implants become common, how will it be protected?


Movement in the scanner can also disrupt the decoder as fMRI is highly sensitive to motion, so participant cooperation is essential. Considering these requirements, and the need for high-powered computational resources, it is highly unlikely that someone’s thoughts could be decoded against their will at this stage.

Finally, the decoder does not currently work on data other than fMRI, which is an expensive and often impractical procedure. The group plans to test their approach on other non-invasive brain data in the future.

The Conversation

Christina Maher 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. How close are we to reading minds? A new study decodes language and meaning from brain scans – https://theconversation.com/how-close-are-we-to-reading-minds-a-new-study-decodes-language-and-meaning-from-brain-scans-204691

Journalists reporting on the Voice to Parliament do voters a disservice with ‘he said, she said’ approach

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

Lukas Coch/AAP

For much of the past two decades, polarisation and hyper-partisanship have weakened Western democracies, most notably in the United States and Britain. Australia has not escaped, although the consequences here have been nothing as compared with Brexit or the insurrection in Washington on January 6, 2021.

Social media has been the primary agent of this democratic dysfunction, but parts of the professional mass media have also contributed.

Impartial news reporting is an antidote to polarisation. The Voice referendum, with its impassioned arguments on both sides, presents the Australian media with an opportunity to show their capacity for truth-telling and impartiality.

While the overall performance so far is patchy, there does seem to be a lessening in the polarisation that was such a significant feature of federal political reporting between the overthrow of Kevin Rudd by Julia Gillard in 2010 and the defeat of the Morrison government in 2021.

A straw in the wind was a column by Chris Mitchell, the former editor-in-chief of The Australian, in a recent commentary on coverage of the referendum. While supportive of the referendum’s critics, he made an appeal to both sides to respect the other.

It was an important point. As the Harvard political scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have argued in their book How Democracies Die, it is lack of respect for the opposing side that has been so corrosive of democracy, especially in the US, over the past two decades.

There are other signs the Australian media are approaching the task of covering the referendum in a way that serves the public interest. Many platforms, for example the Canberra Times and the ABC, have published factual and straightforward “explainers” setting out the basics of the referendum.

This is one way in which the media are doing their essential job of providing the public with a bedrock of reliable information. Another is by tracking public opinion through polls, and these have been reported at frequent intervals, revealing a slow but steady increase in support for the Voice proposal.

The latest YouGov poll is particularly informative because it shows results state-by-state as well as nationally. On those data, the “yes” side has majority support nationally and in four of the six states, which meets the double-majority requirement for a referendum to succeed.

So far so good in terms of coverage. But achieving impartiality in news is also challenging the media to abandon some bad old habits, and not everyone so far is up to the task.

There are plentiful examples where journalists have succumbed to the temptation to fall back on the simplest, safest yet professionally inadequate way to achieve impartiality: by simply reporting what someone says and then finding someone else to oppose it.

It is tempting because it saves time and does not demand independent evaluative thinking. It is professionally inadequate because it is journalism as stenography, rightly dismissed nowadays as “he said, she said” journalism.

The result is that absurd or far-fetched propositions go unchallenged other than by an opposing political voice. When this happens, journalism’s evaluative element goes missing, leaving the audience to figure out the rights and wrongs for themselves.

Maintaining impartiality does not require the media to publish nonsense, and certainly does not require them to publish nonsense without drawing attention to the facts or contrary evidence.

The starkest examples come from stories about the scope and power of the proposed Voice.

There is plenty of material against which to test what people say about this:

  • the final report of the Indigenous Voice Co-design group, which is the basis for the government’s approach

  • submissions to the parliamentary select committee inquiring into the matter from constitutional experts

  • the opinion of Commonwealth Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue, contained in his submission to that inquiry

  • the exact wording of the proposed constitutional amendment.

The best of the reporting so far imposes these tests. A good example was the challenge on Melbourne commercial radio 3AW by Tony Jones to Sussan Ley, deputy leader of the Liberal Party, who opportunistically seized on the approach of Anzac Day to say the Voice could seek to alter Australia’s national public holidays.

The worst of the reporting does not impose these tests. An example was a front-page story in The Australian, amplified by Sky News, in which Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said the Voice could offer advice on interest rates.

Attempts like this to panic the population have their parallels in the scaremongering over native title 30 years ago.




Read more:
Australian politics explainer: the Mabo decision and native title


Then, the likes of Jeff Kennett, as Liberal premier of Victoria, promoted the populist furphy – which he later repudiated – that native title represented a threat to people’s backyard.

The proposed new section 129 of the Constitution, which would establish the Voice, states the function of the Voice in these terms:

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Commonwealth Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The key word is “representations”. As various legal opinions make clear, this word was carefully chosen in preference to “advice” because it has less forceful connotations.




Read more:
What happens if the government goes against the advice of the Voice to Parliament?


A second argument against the Voice – that its representations would lead to a cascade of litigation – can be tested against the opinions of Professor Emerita Anne Twomey, Donaghue and other constitutional law experts, who say this would not happen.

A third argument is that the Voice is a mechanism to enshrine racial difference as a feature of the Constitution.

The final report of the co-design group argues Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are, in practice, the only racial groups in Australia for whom laws are made exclusively. The implication is that racial difference is already part of the basis for law-making in certain circumstances, and that fairness dictates those people directly affected by such laws should have a say in their formulation.

People who put forward arguments against the Voice deserve a fair hearing. Inconsistencies in the wording of some of the documentation raise legitimate questions, and it is also legitimate to question why the executive government has been included alongside the parliament as an institution to which the Voice can make representations.

However, impartiality requires that where answers to these questions exist, they should be reported, not left hanging in the air for the audience to make of it what they will. With an issue as ripe for polarisation as the Voice, that is not good enough.

The Conversation

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

ref. Journalists reporting on the Voice to Parliament do voters a disservice with ‘he said, she said’ approach – https://theconversation.com/journalists-reporting-on-the-voice-to-parliament-do-voters-a-disservice-with-he-said-she-said-approach-204361

Here’s why pharmacists are angry at script changes – and why the government is making them anyway

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Cutler, Professor and Director, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University

Shutterstock

Australians will soon be able to fill two months’ supply of medicines at their community pharmacy, rather than one, for 325 common medicines. This change is expected to halve the cost of prescriptions for six million Australians.

The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has taken exception to the government’s policy change, warning it will create medicine shortages and make pharmacies financially worse off.

The president of the guild wept at the thought of pharmacies going under because of reduced income from dispensing fees and co-payments.

Mark Butler, the federal minister for health and aged care, was deft in his response, advising Australians to:

take advice around medicine supply and medicine shortages from our medicines authorities rather than the pharmacy lobby group.

This argy-bargy between the government and the guild is not uncommon.

What is uncommon is the public dismissal from a health minister of the guild’s views. This government is using its political capital to push health reform forward and doesn’t seem afraid to ruffle a few feathers.

What is the Pharmacy Guild of Australia?

The guild is an influential peak body registered under the federal Fair Work Act 2009. It acts like a union for community pharmacy (also known as chemists) owners. It provides resources to help pharmacists improve their small businesses, but most of its membership value comes from advocating for community pharmacy owners.

The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia is a separate group which represents all pharmacists, including those who work in hospitals and those who don’t own the pharmacy they work in.

The guild and the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia negotiate five-year agreements with the government on remuneration and funding for supplying Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) medicines in the community and for delivering pharmacy programs to support patients.

Known as Community Pharmacy Agreements, the first was signed in 1990, while the most recent seventh Community Pharmacy Agreement was signed in 2020. That agreement is due to expire in 2025, potentially costing A$25 billion over five years. Of this, $16 billion will be paid for by the government and $9 billion will be paid for by patients.




Read more:
Explainer: what is the Community Pharmacy Agreement?


How does the guild wield its power?

The guild is nearly 100 years old. It understands health care and how health policy is made. It has a reputation for shaping government health policy envied by many a health care peak body.

It doesn’t have authority over government policy. It asserts its influence through its soft power by shaping community preferences to get patients behind what it wants. This stems from community pharmacy’s reach into every corner of Australia and the inherent trust between a pharmacist and a patient. It undertakes its own research to generate ideas and to criticise government policy when it suits.

Pharmacist explains a medicine to a mother holding a young child
Pharmacies are found in all corners of the country.
Shutterstock

The guild also takes a more direct approach to influencing government policy. The Australian Electoral Commission reported the guild was the 13th largest political donor in 2021–22, donating $578,000 to political parties across 88 separate donations. This was in an election year, which almost doubled its donations compared to the previous year.

What policies has the guild influenced?

The recent extent of the guild’s power is reflected in favourable policy outcomes for community pharmacies, despite these sometimes being unfavourable for taxpayers or patients.

The guild convinced the government to provide community pharmacies and pharmaceutical wholesalers with an extra $225 million in the 2017–18 budget because prescription volumes were lower than expected within the sixth Community Pharmacy Agreement. This was a simple cash grab by pharmacies from taxpayers.

The guild also won a contentious policy back-flip in 2018 by getting the government to retain the Pharmacy Location Rules, arguing they provide “certainty and stability” for pharmacy small business.




Read more:
What is the Pharmacy Guild of Australia and why does it wield so much power?


What are the Pharmacy Location Rules?

The Pharmacy Location Rules are an agreement between the Australian government and the Pharmacy Guild of Australia. They place restrictions on where a new pharmacy can be established or where an existing pharmacy can be relocated. Pharmacies must meet location based criteria to be approved by the Australian Community Pharmacy Authority to receive pharmaceutical benefits.

The Pharmacy Location Rules do not allow new pharmacies to open within 1.5 kilometres or 10 kilometres of an existing pharmacy depending on the location, distance to the nearest pharmacy, and the number of supermarkets and medical practitioners in the area. Unless exempt, they do not allow pharmacies to be relocated from the town in which the approval was originally granted.

shelf of common medicines
The Pharmacy Location Rules determine where new pharmacy retailers can set up.
Unsplash/Franki Chamaki

While no research has directly examined the impact, this policy has likely inflated consumer costs due to a restricted competitive pharmacy environment.

The Pharmacy Location Rules were introduced in the first Community Pharmacy Agreement to help larger pharmacies generate efficiencies and profit through scale. The rules sweetened accompanying restrictions on PBS remuneration from the government. They have been included in each subsequent Community Pharmacy Agreement.




Read more:
Relaxing pharmacy ownership rules could result in more chemist chains and poorer care


The Pharmacy Location Rules were meant to expire in 2015 after the government initiated Competition Policy Review recommended they “should be removed in the long term interests of consumers”. Instead, the guild pulled back on a threat made to the government to launch a major campaign on another policy initiative, in exchange for delaying the removal of the location rules for five years.

Upon further lobbying, the Pharmacy Location Rules sunset clause was removed after the guild formed a Pharmacy Compact with the government in 2017.

Pharmacy policies that benefit consumers

Some government policy change has aligned guild and patient interests.

Community pharmacists are increasingly providing services traditionally delivered by GPs. Pharmacists can now administer flu and COVID vaccines, and state trials allowing pharmacists to dispense oral contraception and antibiotics without a prescription are gaining favour.

This push towards greater scope of practice is embedded in the current and prior Community Pharmacy Agreements. But it threatens GP revenues.

The Australian Medical Association, the peak body for doctors, recently took a swing at the guild. It outlined ways to improve pharmacy competition in a government submission, which included removing Pharmacy Location Rules and getting pharmacies to compete on medicine prices through discounting.

What does this all mean for patients?

The government has assured the guild that the $1.2 billion savings from allowing patients to fill two months’ supply of medicines will be invested directly back into pharmacies.

Savings will be used to further expand the scope of practice for pharmacists, potentially informed by a National Scope of Practice Review to start in 2023.

Despite this assurance, the guild will fight. It has already canvassed 2,500 “voters” across Australia on the budget proposal. In addition to reduced dispensing fee revenue, having patients with chronic diseases reduce their pharmacy visits by half means the opportunity to sell other products sitting on shelves is also halved.

Substantial health reform is on the horizon, but it won’t be painless. Policy change can upset embedded business models. It can impact livelihoods if providers don’t respond to their new regulatory environment. In the coming whirlwind of power struggles, wouldn’t it be nice if the government and providers worked together to put the patient first?




Read more:
Should pharmacists be able to prescribe common medicines like antibiotics for UTIs? We asked 5 experts


The Conversation

Henry Cutler 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. Here’s why pharmacists are angry at script changes – and why the government is making them anyway – https://theconversation.com/heres-why-pharmacists-are-angry-at-script-changes-and-why-the-government-is-making-them-anyway-204028

Wild-caught seafood is often untraceable – and some industry players don’t want that to change. Here’s why

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Thompson, Lecturer in Human Geography, Monash University

Shutterstock

The wild-caught fish you buy was landed far away from cameras or scrutiny. So how do you know it really is what the label says? How do you know it was caught in a sustainable fishery? Even in regulated fisheries like Australia’s, the answer is, broadly, you don’t.

That’s because most wild-caught seafood is untraceable. Yes, it could have been caught sustainably by pole and line fishers. But it could have been relabelled as a different fish altogether. Worldwide, seafood fraud is rampant. That’s why conservationists ask fish buyers to use apps like GoodFish to check.

And while technologies now exist to solve this problem and make opaque supply chains transparent, our new research suggests many players in the Australian industry are not interested in change – particularly large wholesalers, processors and fish markets.

prawn dinner
Where did the prawns on your plate come from – and how do you know?
Shutterstock

What did we find?

We interviewed people who work in seafood supply chains in Australia – from fishers and aquaculture companies to seafood traders and restaurants.

These insiders believed bigger supply chain actors were often not doing the right thing, by concealing trade information, manipulating prices, and with little concern about product origin.

Fishers and fish farmers explained that once their catch departs for the big seafood markets, they “lose control of the supply chain”, have “no idea where they go”, and that it’s “impossible to keep track of any of it”.




Read more:
Where is your seafood really from? We’re using ‘chemical fingerprinting’ to fight seafood fraud and illegal fishing


Our interviewees told us a degree of food fraud still exists. This is when a species is incorrectly labelled by name, origin or how it was caught.

This can be accidental, or done deliberately to mask certain information or to justify selling it at a higher price. For example, critically endangered species such as the school shark are being mislabelled as gummy shark – which is sustainably caught in Australia.

Chefs told us about regularly seeing species labelled as locally caught when they knew they were out of season in their state.

Fish farmers told us cheap overseas fish of questionable quality would often be sold as their fish. As one barramundi farm representative told us:

It honestly really frustrates and upsets me because you do all this work and your barramundi is happily substituted.

Fishers, fish farmers, and restaurants were largely supportive of traceability technologies. But they feared a backlash from the wholesalers on which their sales relied. Some interviewees reported experiences of threatening, bullying and cajoling from some wholesalers.

As one interviewee told us:

I know that these guys [wholesalers], right or wrong, can hold me to ransom. If they don’t buy my fish, we don’t have ability to send [high volumes] to anyone else.

How would traceability improve the situation?

At present, tracking where fish, prawns, shellfish and other seafood come from relies on largely paper-based systems. These are prone to human error, negligence, or manipulation.

In an effort to fix the problem, several traceability platforms have been developed in Australia. These tend to rely on blockchain, where encrypted “blocks” of product, trade, and price data are stored along a digital “chain” which is publicly visible.

This data is linked to a QR code on individual fish or boxes of fish. Data added include the species name, time of catch, product weight, and the time of each physical handover point – with new data being verified against preexisting data in the chain. Traders and consumers can scan these QR codes to access information on the seafood product in front of them.

In short, digital tracing of seafood would create a transparent trading environment by making public how the market operates, from buyers and sellers to the prices paid, and the ability to track seafood from ocean to plate.

A system like this would also give fishers more power. At present, wholesalers are often able to name a price that fishers simply have to accept.

Fishers would much prefer to be able to set their own prices. Traceability technology could help here too, to give fishers a sense of which seafood products are in demand right now and allow them to price their products accordingly.

seafood tracing
What if seafood was trackable from ocean to plate?
Sascha Rust, Author provided

Australia should embrace greater seafood transparency

Estimates of food fraud in global fisheries range widely, from 20% up to 90%. That is to say, we know there’s a real problem here – we just don’t know exactly how large. But we do know there are very real problems in the world’s wild-caught fisheries.

Australia could have a role here to demonstrate what good fisheries can look like. At present, our fishing authorities are primarily concerned with catch regulations at sea.

There’s not enough focus on what happens next. Our label-based traceability systems are weak compared to the European Union which has the strict import laws and seafood labelling standards that conservationists in Australia are pushing for.

But digital technology could offer something even better. While the EU’s solution is positive, it’s been criticised by scholars for being overly bureaucratic and not delivering the same depth of information.

Could it happen? Yes – but it would have to happen over the protests of those who would be disadvantaged, such as some seafood wholesalers.

One way it could happen is if the government adds more information disclosure requirements to laws governing fair competition. This would give the market the nudge required to see traceability technologies more rapidly adopted.

If nothing is done, Australia’s seafood industry could become less viable since illegal fishing practices would remain difficult to identify, putting strain on fish stocks. But we are optimistic that innovators will eventually succeed in bringing together enough actors across the supply chain to make the shift to digital traceability happen.

While many academics, disruptors and commentators often laud blockchain as a way to rapidly drive sustainable change, our research suggests this will only occur if the most influential supply chain actors see value in using it.




Read more:
Blockchains can trace foods from farm to plate, but the industry is still behind the curve


The Conversation

This article is based on research co-authored with my industry partner Sascha Rust, who currently works for a digital technology developer operating in the Australian seafood industry. I undertook the data collection, interviews and analysis independently.

ref. Wild-caught seafood is often untraceable – and some industry players don’t want that to change. Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/wild-caught-seafood-is-often-untraceable-and-some-industry-players-dont-want-that-to-change-heres-why-204195

An epic global study of moss reveals it is far more vital to Earth’s ecosystems than we knew

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David John Eldridge, Professor of Dryland Ecology, UNSW Sydney

Dylan Shaw/Unsplash

Mosses are some of the oldest land plants. They are found all over the world, from lush tropical rainforests to the driest deserts, and even the wind-swept hills of Antarctica.

They are everywhere; growing in cracks along roads and pathways, on the trunks of trees, on rocks and buildings, and importantly, on the soil.

Yet despite this ubiquity, we have a relatively poor understanding of how important they are, particularly the types of moss that thrive on soil.

New global research on soil mosses published today in Nature Geoscience reveals they play critical roles in sustaining life on our planet. Without soil mosses, Earth’s ability to produce healthy soils, provide habitat for microbes and fight pathogens would be greatly diminished.

Soil moss with fruiting bodies (capsules). David Eldridge, Author provided.

A global survey of soil mosses

The results of the new study indicate we have probably underestimated just how important soil mosses are.

Using data from 123 sites across all continents including Antarctica, we show that the soil beneath mosses has more nitrogen, phosphorus and magnesium, and a greater activity of soil enzymes than bare surfaces with no plants.

In fact, mosses affect all major soil functions, increasing carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling and the breakdown of organic matter. These processes are critical for sustaining life on Earth.

Our modelling revealed that soil mosses cover a huge area of the planet, about 9 million square kilometres – equivalent to the area of China. And that’s not counting mosses from boreal forests, which were not included in the study.

The strength of the effect mosses have on soil depends on their growing conditions. They have the strongest effect in natural low productivity environments, such as deserts. They are also more important on sandy and salty soils, and where rainfall is highly variable.

Not unexpectedly, mosses have the strongest effects on soils where vascular plants – those that contain specialised tissues to conduct water and minerals – are sparse.




Read more:
Silver moss is a rugged survivor in the city landscape


An intimate connection

Mosses lack the plumbing that allows vascular plants to grow tall and pull water from beneath the soil. This keeps them relatively short, and means they develop an intimate connection with the uppermost soil layers.

Mosses are extremely absorbent and can attract airborne dust particles. Some of these particles are incorporated into the soil below. It is not surprising then that they have such a strong effect on soils.

Our modelling shows that, across the globe, mosses store 6.4 gigatonnes more carbon than soils without plant cover.

Losing just 15% of the global cover of soil mosses would be equivalent to global emissions of carbon dioxide from all land use changes over a year, such as clearing and overgrazing.

A forest floor with rich green moss cover seen in the foreground
Without mosses, the world’s ecosystems wouldn’t thrive nearly as well.
Eric Prouzet/Unsplash

Not all mosses are equal

We also found some mosses are more effective at promoting healthy soils than others. Long-lived mosses tended to be associated with more carbon and greater control of soil pathogens.

The ability of mosses to provide ecosystem services and support a diverse community of microbes, fungi and invertebrates was strongest in locations with a high cover of mat- and turf-forming mosses such as Sphagnum, which are widely distributed in boreal forests.

Soils are a huge reservoir of soil pathogens, yet the soil beneath mosses had a lower proportion of plant pathogens. Mosses can help to reduce the pathogen load in soils. This ability may have originated when mosses evolved as land plants.

A special group in the desert

A special type of moss flourishes in deserts. They either live hard (perennial mosses) or die young (annual mosses).

Mosses in the family Pottiaceae are uniquely suited to life under dry and inhospitable conditions. Many have specialised structures that allow them to survive when water is scarce. These include boat-shaped leaves with long hairy tips that help to funnel water into the centre of the plant. Some mosses twist around their stem to reduce the area exposed to the sun and conserve moisture.

Long hair points on the leaves of Campylopus sp.
David Eldridge, Author provided

Desert mosses also protect the soil against erosion, influence how much water moves through the upper layers and even alter the survival chances of plant seedlings.

Other mosses have special moisture-absorbing cells (papillae) that swell up and provide them with a moisture reserve when conditions are dry.

Papillae on the leaf of the moss Crossidium davidai.
David Eldridge, Author provided

Our global study showed that mat- and turf-forming mosses such as Sphagnum had the strongest positive effects on the diversity of microbes, fungi and invertebrates, and on critical services such as nutrient supply. Predictably, longer-lived mosses supported more soil carbon and had greater control of plant pathogens than short-lived mosses.

Protect the mosses

Overall, our work shows mosses influence important soil processes and function in the same way vascular plants do. Their effects may not be as strong, but their total cover means mosses are potentially as significant when summed across the whole globe.

But mosses are under increasing threats globally; disturbance by livestock, overharvesting, land clearing and even changing climates are the greatest threats.

We need a greater acknowledgement of the services that soil mosses provide for all life on this planet. This means greater education about their positive benefits, identifying and mitigating the main threats they face, and including them in routine monitoring programs.

Soil mosses are everywhere, but their future is far from secure. They are likely to play increasingly important roles as vascular plants decline under predicted hotter, drier and more variable global climates.




Read more:
Antarctica’s ‘moss forests’ are drying and dying


The Conversation

David John Eldridge receives funding from The Hermon Slade Foundation.

Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo receives funding from the British Ecological Society, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and Junta de Andalucía.

ref. An epic global study of moss reveals it is far more vital to Earth’s ecosystems than we knew – https://theconversation.com/an-epic-global-study-of-moss-reveals-it-is-far-more-vital-to-earths-ecosystems-than-we-knew-203141

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