Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Usmar, Lecturer in Critical Media Literacies, Auckland University of Technology

With the coalition government’s ban of student mobile phones in New Zealand schools coming into effect this week, reaction has ranged from the sceptical (kids will just get sneakier) to the optimistic (most kids seem okay with it).

In a world where nearly everyone has a smartphone, it’s to be expected nearly everyone will have an opinion. The trick is to sort the valid from the kneejerk, and not rush to judgement.

Anecdotally, schools that implemented the ban ahead of the deadline have reported positive changes in attention and learning. The head girl of Hornby High School in Christchurch said the grounds are now “almost louder during intervals and lunches”. Her principal said, “I wish we had done the phone ban five years ago.”

On the other hand, hard evidence in favour of banning phones in schools has been found to be “weak and inconclusive”. But the policy’s aim to create a “positive environment where young New Zealanders can focus on what matters most” is not without merit.

Above all, the policy raises a crucial question: is an outright ban the most effective approach to addressing the problem of digital distraction and its impact on education?

Connection and distraction

Since Monday, students have had to store their phones in bags or lockers during school hours. As in the pre-digital era, parents can now only contact their children through the school office.

The aim, according to the National Party’s original election promise, is to “eliminate unnecessary disturbances or distractions” and improve student achievement, which by various measures has declined over the past three decades.

While avoiding generalised assumptions, we know many young people can’t put their devices down, as both a recent Education Review Office report and a 2021 OECD survey concluded.

Read more:
We looked at all the recent evidence on mobile phone bans in schools – this is what we found

In one US survey in 2022, approximately one-third of teachers asked students to put away their phones five to ten times per class, while nearly 15% asked more than 20 times.

So, it’s hard to argue phones aren’t a distraction, or that social media-fuelled bullying and isolation don’t warrant critical examination of digital habits. At the same time, phones have their constructive uses, from organising schedules for the neurodivergent, to facilitating social interactions and learning.

No phone ban advocate is arguing that limiting phone use in schools is a silver bullet for related issues around cyberbullying, mental health and behavioural challenges. But the personal device’s capacity to distract remains a legitimate concern.

Meaningful digital engagement

The heart of the debate lies in education’s evolving landscape. The push to ban phones does not extend to digital devices in general, after all. Their utility in learning environments is well recognised.

But as we embrace artificial intelligence and other technological advances in education, we must also ask: at what point does reliance on these digital tools begin to erode critical thinking skills?

The future job market, filled with roles that do not yet exist, will undoubtedly require those skills. Therefore, distinguishing between meaningful digital engagement and detrimental distraction is crucial.

Perhaps the better question is: would fewer distractions create the opportunity for young people to be more curious about their learning?

Read more:
Do smartphones belong in classrooms? Four scholars weigh in

Curiosity: the engine of critical thinking

Curiosity is essential for educational success, citizenship and media literacy in the digital age. But curiosity is stifled by distractions.

Education research is heading towards treating curiosity as a “provocation” – meaning we should, in effect, “dare” young people to be more curious. This involves encouraging mistakes, exploration – even daydreaming or being creatively bored.

All of this is challenging with the current level of distractions in the classroom. On top of that, many young people struggle to cultivate curiosity when digital media can provide instant answers.

Read more:
How smartphones weaken attention spans in children and adults

Consider the distinction between two types of curiosity: “interest curiosity” and what has been termed “deprivation curiosity”.

Interest curiosity is a mindful process that tolerates ambiguity and takes the learner on their own journey. It’s a major characteristic of critical thinking, particularly vital in a world where AI systems are competing for jobs.

Deprivation curiosity, by contrast, is characterised by impulsivity and seeking immediate answers. Misinformation and confusion fuelled by AI and digital media only exacerbate the problem.

Making room for real life

Where does this leave the phone ban in New Zealand schools? There are some promising signs from students themselves, including in the OECD’s 2022 report on global educational performance:

On average across OECD countries, students were less likely to report getting distracted using digital devices when the use of cell phones on school premises is banned.

These early indications suggest phone bans boost the less quantifiable “soft” skills and vital developmental habits of young people — social interactions, experimentation, making mistakes and laughing. These all enhance the learning environment.

Read more:
Banning cellphones in classrooms is not a quick fix for student well-being

Real life experiences, with their inherent trials and errors, are irreplaceable avenues for applying critical thinking. Digital experiences, while valuable, cannot fully replicate the depth of human interaction and learning.

Finding the balance is the current challenge. As a 2023 UNESCO report advised, “some technology can support some learning in some contexts, but not when it is over-used”.

In the meantime, we should all remain curious about the potential positive impacts of the phone ban policy, and allow time for educators and students to respond properly. The real tragedy would be to miss the learning opportunities afforded by a less distracted student population.

Patrick Usmar 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. Will New Zealand’s school phone ban work? Let’s see what it does for students’ curiosity – https://theconversation.com/will-new-zealands-school-phone-ban-work-lets-see-what-it-does-for-students-curiosity-228893

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

Foreign investment proposals with implications for Australia’s strategic or economic security will face tougher scrutiny, under a policy overhaul to be announced by Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Wednesday.

At the same time, the government will process faster proposals in non-sensitive areas from known investors with a good compliance record.

Among them will be foreign investors in build-to-rent properties.

Chalmers, outlining the new “risk-based” approach for foreign investment in a speech released ahead of delivery, says national security threats are increasing as geopolitical competition intensifies.

“Risks to Australia’s national interests from foreign investment have evolved at the same time as competition for global capital is becoming more intense,” he says.

Foreign investment is where “the stovepipes of economic and national security have often failed to meet in the past”.

The revamped policy is partly driven by a need to respond to a more threatening and expansive China, but also reflects a generally changing international environment with its intense competition for investment capital.

More monitoring of sensitive investments

The treasury will be given more resources to scrutinise investment proposals in critical infrastructure, critical minerals, critical technology, and those involving access to sensitive data, as well as those near defence sites.

Its investment compliance team will be bolstered to ensure better monitoring and enforcement of conditions placed on investments, including on-site visits.

Treasury will also be provided with additional resources to detect and call in investments that come to pose a concern to national security over time.

In an effort to ensure foreign investors pay their proper tax, there will be greater scrutiny of overly-complicated tax arrangements.

“We will update the framework on emerging risks,” the treasurer will say.

“This will improve the conditions we put on transactions, how we respond more quickly to behaviour designed to avoid scrutiny, and make sure that all this aligns with our other regulatory frameworks.”

There will be greater efforts across government to identify and deal with emerging risks.

For low-risk investors, approval times and compliance costs will shrink.

In assessing an application to be low risk, treasury will consider the investor, the target of the investment and the structure of the transaction.

Less paperwork will be required of repeat investors where the ownership information hasn’t changed.

Treasury will have a target of processing 50% of cases within the initial statutory timeframe of 30 days from January 1 2025.

The changes to the foreign investment rules will “strengthen where we need to and streamline where we can, to make it more robust, more efficient and more transparent,” Chalmers says.

Guardrails around Future Made in Australia

In his speech, to the Lowy Institute, Chalmers also outlines guardrails around the government’s new Future Made in Australia interventionist industry policy.

The latest initiative in this policy has been a $940 million joint Commonwealth-Queensland investment in a quantum computing venture, PsiQuantum, announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday.

“Where markets are nascent or don’t yet exist, there can be a case for targeted, temporary support to crowd in private investment – especially in industries that meet strict criteria,” Chalmers says.

“For us, this rigour will be imposed by the Future Made in Australia Act that the PM flagged last month.”

Five tests will be set for where and how the government acts, Chalmers says.

“First, is the industry one where we can be competitive, and more productive?

“Second, does it contribute to an orderly path to net zero?

“Third, can it build the capabilities of our people and especially our regions?

“Fourth, will it improve Australia’s national security and economic resilience?

“And fifth, does it recognise the key role of the private sector and deliver genuine value for money for government?”

The Future Made in Australia Act will also establish criteria for two streams of projects in line for government assistance.

• A national interest stream, where domestic sovereign capability is needed to protect national security interests or ensure the economy is resilient enough to shocks. This would focus on only the most critical risks, not all risks.

• A net zero transformation stream, where industries support decarbonisation, and there is a reasonable prospect of a comparative advantage.

“Our initial focus – on refining and processing critical minerals, producing renewable hydrogen, exploring production of green metals and low carbon liquid fuels, and supporting targeted manufacturing of clean energy technologies including value adding in the battery supply chain – reflects this rigour,” Chalmers says.

“Critical technologies like quantum computing are essential here.”

But, with considerable criticism coming of the government’s interventionist approach, Chalmers is anxious to spell out what he sees as the limits of the policy.

“Nobody is claiming we have the scale to compete in every industry.

“Nobody is saying that these interventions will be permanent, or that we should retreat from trade, or make every one of the goods that we need here.

“Nobody is saying we need to outspend or compete dollar for dollar with the scale or internal markets of bigger economies.

“And nobody is saying that this will involve solely public investment.

“Public investment, important and substantial, is a key – to help unlock the hundreds of billions of private capital we’ll need to deploy.”

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. Chalmers outlines a more ‘risk-based’ foreign investment policy and guardrails around Future Made in Australia – https://theconversation.com/chalmers-outlines-a-more-risk-based-foreign-investment-policy-and-guardrails-around-future-made-in-australia-229001

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Ferrie, A/Prof, UTS Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research and ARC DECRA Fellow, University of Technology Sydney

The Australian government has announced a pledge of approximately A$940 million (US$617 million) to PsiQuantum, a quantum computing start-up company based in Silicon Valley.

Half of the funding will come from the Queensland government, and in exchange, PsiQuantum will locate its planned quantum computer in Brisbane, with a regional headquarters at Brisbane Airport.

PsiQuantum claims it will build the world’s first “useful” quantum computer. Such a device could be enormously helpful for applications like cracking codes, discovering new materials and drugs, modelling climate and weather, and solving other tough computational problems.

Companies around the world — and several national governments — are racing to be the first to solve the quantum computing puzzle. How likely is it Australia’s bet on PsiQuantum will pay off?

Quantum 101

Quantum computers are computers that run quantum algorithms. These are step-by-step sets of instructions that change data encoded with quantum information. (Ordinary computers run digital algorithms, step-by-step sets of instructions that change digital information.)

Digital computers represent information as long strings of 1s and 0s. Quantum computers represent information as long lists of numbers. Over the past century, scientists have discovered these numbers are naturally encoded in fine details of energy and matter.

Read more:
Hype and cash are muddying public understanding of quantum computing

Quantum computing operates fundamentally differently from traditional computing. It uses principles of quantum physics and may be able to perform calculations that are not feasible for digital computers.

We know that quantum algorithms can solve some problems with far fewer steps than digital algorithms. However, to date nobody has built a quantum computer that can run quantum algorithms in a reliable way.

A bet on light

Researchers around the world are trying to build quantum computers using different kinds of technology.

PsiQuantum’s approach uses individual particles of light called photons to process quantum data. Photon-based quantum computers are expected to be less prone to errors than other kinds.

The Australian government has also invested around A$40 million in Sydney-based Silicon Quantum Computing. This company aims to encode quantum data in tiny particles trapped in silicon and other familiar materials used in current electronics.

A third approach is “trapped ions” — individually captured electrically charged atomic particles, which have the advantage of being inherently stable and all identical. A company called IonQ is one taking this track.

However, many believe the current leading approach is artificial atoms based on superconducting circuits. These can be customised with different properties. This is the approach taken by Google, IBM, and Rigetti.

There is no clear winning technology. It’s likely that a hybrid approach will eventually prevail.

The timeline set by PsiQuantum and supported by federal endorsements aims for an operational quantum computer by 2029. Some see this projected timeline as overly optimistic, since three years ago PsiQuantum was planning to meet a deadline of 2025.

Progress in quantum technology has been steady since its inception nearly three decades ago. But there are many challenges yet to overcome in creating a device that is both large enough to be useful and not prone to errors.

Politics before progress?

The announcement represents a significant commitment to advancing quantum computing technology both within Australian borders and worldwide. It falls under the Albanese government’s “Future Made in Australia” policy.

However, the investment risks being overshadowed by a debate over transparency and the selection process.

Criticisms have pointed to a lack of detailed public disclosure about why PsiQuantum was chosen over local competitors.

Read more:
Australia may spend hundreds of millions of dollars on quantum computing research. Are we chasing a mirage?

These concerns underscore the need for a more open dialogue about government spending and partnership selections to maintain public trust in such large-scale technological investments.

Public trust is difficult to establish when little to no effort has been made to educate people in quantum technology. Some claim that “quantum literacy” will be a 21st-century skill on par with digital literacy.

An Australian quantum future

Australia has made its quantum hardware bet. But even if the hardware works as planned, it will only be useful if we have people who know how to use it — and that means training in quantum theory and software.

The Australian Quantum Software Network, a collaboration of more than 130 of the nation’s leading researchers in quantum algorithms, software, and theory — including myself — was launched in late 2022 to achieve this.

The government says the PsiQuantum project is expected to create up to 400 specialised jobs, retaining and attracting new highly skilled talent to both the state and country. The media release also contains the dramatic forecast that success could “lead to up to an additional $48 billion in GDP and 240,000 new jobs in Australia by 2040.”

Efforts like the Sydney Quantum Academy, the Australian Centre for Quantum Growth, and my own quantum education startup Eigensystems, which recently launched the Quokka personal quantum computing and quantum literacy platform, will help to meet this goal.

In the coming decade, education and training will be crucial, not only to support this investment but also to expand Australia’s expertise so that it may become a net exporter in the quantum industry and a substantial player in the global race for a quantum computer.

Christopher Ferrie is a co-founder of Eigensystems and a member of the Australian Quantum Software Network. He has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Business Strategy and Innovation.

– ref. Australia just made a billion-dollar bet on building the world’s first ‘useful’ quantum computer in Brisbane. Will it pay off? – https://theconversation.com/australia-just-made-a-billion-dollar-bet-on-building-the-worlds-first-useful-quantum-computer-in-brisbane-will-it-pay-off-228992

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hunter Bennett, Lecturer in Exercise Science, University of South Australia

If you spend a lot of time exploring fitness content online, you might have come across the concept of heart rate zones. Heart rate zone training has become more popular in recent years partly because of the boom in wearable technology which, among other functions, allows people to easily track their heart rates.

Heart rate zones reflect different levels of intensity during aerobic exercise. They’re most often based on a percentage of your maximum heart rate, which is the highest number of beats your heart can achieve per minute.

But what are the different heart rate zones, and how can you use these zones to optimise your workout?

Read more:
Thinking of using an activity tracker to achieve your exercise goals? Here’s where it can help – and where it probably won’t

The three-zone model

While there are several models used to describe heart rate zones, the most common model in the scientific literature is the three-zone model, where the zones may be categorised as follows:

• zone 1: 55%–82% of maximum heart rate

• zone 2: 82%–87% of maximum heart rate

• zone 3: 87%–97% of maximum heart rate.

If you’re not sure what your maximum heart rate is, it can be calculated using this equation: 208 – (0.7 × age in years). For example, I’m 32 years old. 208 – (0.7 x 32) = 185.6, so my predicted maximum heart rate is around 186 beats per minute.

There are also other models used to describe heart rate zones, such as the five-zone model (as its name implies, this one has five distinct zones). These models largely describe the same thing and can mostly be used interchangeably.

What do the different zones involve?

The three zones are based around a person’s lactate threshold, which describes the point at which exercise intensity moves from being predominantly aerobic, to predominantly anaerobic.

Aerobic exercise uses oxygen to help our muscles keep going, ensuring we can continue for a long time without fatiguing. Anaerobic exercise, however, uses stored energy to fuel exercise. Anaerobic exercise also accrues metabolic byproducts (such as lactate) that increase fatigue, meaning we can only produce energy anaerobically for a short time.

On average your lactate threshold tends to sit around 85% of your maximum heart rate, although this varies from person to person, and can be higher in athletes.

In the three-zone model, each zone loosely describes one of three types of training.

Zone 1 represents high-volume, low-intensity exercise, usually performed for long periods and at an easy pace, well below lactate threshold. Examples include jogging or cycling at a gentle pace.

Zone 2 is threshold training, also known as tempo training, a moderate intensity training method performed for moderate durations, at (or around) lactate threshold. This could be running, rowing or cycling at a speed where it’s difficult to speak full sentences.

Zone 3 mostly describes methods of high-intensity interval training, which are performed for shorter durations and at intensities above lactate threshold. For example, any circuit style workout that has you exercising hard for 30 seconds then resting for 30 seconds would be zone 3.

Striking a balance

To maximise endurance performance, you need to strike a balance between doing enough training to elicit positive changes, while avoiding over-training, injury and burnout.

While zone 3 is thought to produce the largest improvements in maximal oxygen uptake – one of the best predictors of endurance performance and overall health – it’s also the most tiring. This means you can only perform so much of it before it becomes too much.

Training in different heart rate zones improves slightly different physiological qualities, and so by spending time in each zone, you ensure a variety of benefits for performance and health.

Read more:
Treadmill, exercise bike, rowing machine: what’s the best option for cardio at home?

So how much time should you spend in each zone?

Most elite endurance athletes, including runners, rowers, and even cross-country skiers, tend to spend most of their training (around 80%) in zone 1, with the rest split between zones 2 and 3.

Because elite endurance athletes train a lot, most of it needs to be in zone 1, otherwise they risk injury and burnout. For example, some runners accumulate more than 250 kilometres per week, which would be impossible to recover from if it was all performed in zone 2 or 3.

Of course, most people are not professional athletes. The World Health Organization recommends adults aim for 150–300 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week, or 75–150 minutes of vigorous exercise per week.

If you look at this in the context of heart rate zones, you could consider zone 1 training as moderate intensity, and zones 2 and 3 as vigorous. Then, you can use heart rate zones to make sure you’re exercising to meet these guidelines.

What if I don’t have a heart rate monitor?

If you don’t have access to a heart rate tracker, that doesn’t mean you can’t use heart rate zones to guide your training.

The three heart rate zones discussed in this article can also be prescribed based on feel using a simple 10-point scale, where 0 indicates no effort, and 10 indicates the maximum amount of effort you can produce.

With this system, zone 1 aligns with a 4 or less out of 10, zone 2 with 4.5 to 6.5 out of 10, and zone 3 as a 7 or higher out of 10.

Heart rate zones are not a perfect measure of exercise intensity, but can be a useful tool. And if you don’t want to worry about heart rate zones at all, that’s also fine. The most important thing is to simply get moving.

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

– ref. What are heart rate zones, and how can you incorporate them into your exercise routine? – https://theconversation.com/what-are-heart-rate-zones-and-how-can-you-incorporate-them-into-your-exercise-routine-228520

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Will McCallum, PhD Candidate – School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University

Earlier this year, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of not supporting Operation Sovereign Borders – the military-led border security operation that has “closed Australia’s borders to unauthorised maritime arrivals”.

It’s a proven line of attack from the Coalition, who claimed to have “stopped the boats” – almost all of which originate from Indonesia – during their tenure. The trope of a northern coastline in need of protection from a foreign “other” has resonated with many Australians for some time.

In the course of producing Waŋgany Mala (2024) – a documentary made in collaboration with Anindilyakwa and Gumatj people in northeast Arnhem Land – we learned that many First Nations peoples don’t typically subscribe to a land-sea distinction.

Instead, the land-seascape is crisscrossed with songlines that transcend this division. Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly, authors of the book Songlines: The Power and Promise, explain that songlines can act as navigational paths in the cartographic sense – but more fundamentally they encode knowledge of country, art and ceremony that is shared across generations.

Furthermore, the Knowledge Holders with whom we worked celebrated the time when boats from across the Indonesian archipelago weren’t intercepted.

The precolonial ‘Makassan’ tale

Just three weeks after ousting his predecessor Scott Morrison, Albanese became the first prime minister to visit Indonesia’s third-largest city, Makassar, in South Sulawesi.

Albanese made reference to the so-called Makassan seafarers who set off for Australia from Sulawesi, the Aru Islands, West Timor and Rote Island.

These seafarers would spend up to six months of the year harvesting trepang (sea cucumber) alongside people in northeast Arnhem Land (a land they called Marege’) and the Kimberly (Kai Jawa). Their highly valuable catch would eventually reach the dinner tables of China’s Qing dynasty.

More than 600 or so years before European colonies were established on the continent, the Makassans created a language with First Nations peoples, they traded tools and other goods, they intermarried, and as a recent ABC Compass episode showed, many Aboriginal people travelled across the Indonesian archipelago. Some stayed in Indonesia permanently.

The Makassan fleets were eventually taxed by the Australian colonial authorities, and then banned in 1907.

Over the past 100 years, the Timor and Arafura seas have become a literal and figurative space to be defended against boats transporting asylum seekers or illegal foreign fishing vessels.

But while the boats may no longer be arriving in Australia’s “exclusive economic zone”, stories of past connection and agency hold enormous value for local Nations.

Read more:
The stories of Australia’s Muslim Anzacs have long been forgotten. It’s time we honour them

Pride and agency

“Makassans were good to us […] it was a good time because the Aboriginal people weren’t angry, and the Makassans were happy,” says Edith Mamarika, an Indigenous Knowledge Holder and Anindilyakwa elder.

Mamarika is one of the oldest people living on Groote Eylandt, the largest island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. She never met Makassans, but her relatives did, and she knows the fishers were only given permission to stay at the beach after exchange and agreement was secured.

She shared her stories with us as we documented the construction of a traditional Indonesian sailing vessel, or pinisi, filming in Tana Beru all the way from the early selection of hardwood, to its eventual maiden voyage to Makassar.

The documentation shows the resilience of these UNESCO-recognised boat-building techniques. As we filmed, however, a more important story emerged: the experience of one of the building crew, Nirmala Syarfuddin Baco.

Today’s Makassans

Nirmala was born in Ambon, Maluku, but was forced to flee as a child during religious violence in 1999.

Her family settled in Baubau, southeast Sulawesi, but she eventually landed in Makassar where she studied marine science, inspired by her father who had spent much of his life assisting the Indonesian navy in stopping people from fishing using explosives.

Twenty-nine years old, fervently religious and the only woman in the boat-building and sailing crew, Nirmala has a challenging experience.

Her role is to manage finances and equipment deliveries, but she is invariably tasked with jobs such as preparing coffee or lunch for the crew. She also endures regular “playful” suggestions about sleeping arrangements once the boat is on the water.

Mala is fascinated by the histories shared by Edith Mamarika and other Knowledge Holders, and has ambitions to sail the new pinisi into Australian waters.

Amplifying older stories

What makes the Makassan story so compelling for a filmmaker is how it collides and competes with Australia’s more popular origin story: one of British explorers on tall sailing ships making “first contact”.

That is just one part of Australia’s story, and there are many more that could be amplified. Across northeast Arnhem Land there are very old stories about Indonesian men and women who have left an indelible mark on Country.

As Gumatj leader and Bawaka homelands custodian Timmy Djawaburarrwanga says at the end of our film: “my feeling is that this land always will be for Indonesians”.

Waŋgany Mala will be screened in Australia and Europe later this year.

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. Long before politicians called to ‘stop the boats’, First Nations people welcomed arrivals from Indonesia – https://theconversation.com/long-before-politicians-called-to-stop-the-boats-first-nations-people-welcomed-arrivals-from-indonesia-228614

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominique Condo, Senior Lecturer in Sports Nutrition, Deakin University

There was, perhaps unsurprising, outcry from some sections of the sports media when it was revealed the AFL was removing body composition testing (including skinfold testing) in its junior (under the age of 18) talent pathways system, coming soon after the league moved to stop publishing player weights.

“The world has gone mad,” said former Essendon champion Matthew Lloyd, while ex-playing and coaching great Paul Roos stated: “This is just farcical … they [skinfold tests] are such a minor thing, to take them away seems ludicrous.”

So is this a sign AFL players have “gone soft”, or is there good reason for it?

Player weights – public or private?

Athletes, like anyone else, have the right to privacy regarding personal information such as their weight. By no longer publishing player weights, the AFL may be aiming to respect players’ privacy and promote a more confidential approach to sensitive information.

Publishing player weights can also contribute to a culture that emphasises body image, potentially placing pressure on some athletes to maintain a certain physique and possibly impacting mental health and self-esteem.

It’s vital to understand the underlying philosophy of AFL body composition policies is to “first, do no harm” – aiming to promote positive outcomes for all individuals. So if keeping player weights private helps some athletes who may have body image concerns, even if they are the minority, it is worth the change.

Some critics have argued knowing a player’s weight can help from a performance perspective – coaches, commentators and even fans can compare player match-ups to estimate performance outcomes and capabilities. But the impact of weight on football performance is not clear.

Also, most AFL players will tell you their published weight hasn’t been updated since they were drafted, and therefore is unlikely to be valid.

Read more:
Spotting the signs of disordered eating in youth: Tips for parents and caregivers

What about skinfold testing?

The AFL’s decision to stop skinfold testing in junior talent pathways is for the same reasons – to prioritise the health and wellbeing of athletes.

Skinfold testing involves measuring the thickness of fat at various sites on the body with a caliper.

It has been a longheld part of football culture. Within an AFL club, these tests have historically been carried out semi-regularly by qualified staff to provide a quantitative measure of an athlete’s physical condition.

But while many athletes are unaffected by skinfold testing, there are some who can be significantly impacted, leading to a poor relationship with food and body image, and increasing the risk of eating disorders.

At the elite level, sports dietitians or qualified medical staff carry out the assessments and can recognise signs of disordered eating or body image issues in players and can therefore ensure appropriate support is put in place.

But at non-elite levels, this is more challenging as resources and expertise are often limited. As a result, there is likely a higher risk among these younger athletes, which is a big reason the AFL has changed its approach.

Is skinfold testing helpful when it comes to assessing fitness?

Body composition assessment, including skinfold testing, can be a helpful tool in fitness testing and optimising player performance, but it is important to recognise the limitations.

Although the evidence is clear that lean mass and body fat distribution can impact speed and endurance-based performance (which are important elements of team sports such as AFL), the correlation to overall performance on a football field – requiring high skill execution, strength and decision-making – is unknown and primarily based on anecdotal evidence.

Skinfold testing can be helpful in an elite sport environment to track changes over time and monitor the effectiveness of training programs and nutritional interventions. For example, if a recruit starts a strength program for the first time, monitoring skinfolds and weight can help track progress and provide insight into modifications.

Skinfold testing can also help identify athletes who may be at risk of undereating or those with an eating disorder.

How widespread are body issues in sport?

Body image concerns and anxieties are prevalent in elite sport, although there is very limited published research with exact estimates, mainly due to the challenge in capturing this type of data (often due to athlete access and the sensitive nature of the topic).

However, we are starting to see more published research emerge and athletes talking openly about the topic.

There are several factors that can contribute to body image concerns in elite sport and at junior levels. These concerns often come from a pressure and desire to perform, which can lead to an unhealthy focus on an athlete’s physique to meet the demands of their sport and gain a competitive edge.

Media and public scrutiny can also contribute to these anxieties, in particular athletes who are in the spotlight or in high-profile sports and are compared to other athletes, and unrealistic standards of what an athlete “should look like”.

It is a common thought that athletes in weight-class or aesthetic sports, or endurance-based sports where there may be a power-to-weight ratio advantage, will be at higher risk of body image issues and eating disorders. However, a recent study reported athletes, regardless of sport or gender may be affected by eating disorders.

Other factors such as uniform expectations, injury and transition out of sport can also contribute to these concerns.

It is important to note body image issues and anxieties are not limited to a specific gender, age, background or athletic ability – athletes from the same sport can have different experiences for a variety of reasons that can impact their mental health, performance and overall wellbeing.

Read more:
NZ gymnasts can now wear shorts over their leotards – why is this a big deal for female athletes?

What are other sports doing?

Globally, there has been a broad shift in sports culture towards promoting positive body image, mental health, and holistic athlete development, which has led to changes in how body weight and body composition are assessed and discussed.

In recent years there has been an increased awareness of the potential negative impacts of emphasising body composition on athletes’ mental health and wellbeing. This was demonstrated in the independent panel reports on Swimming Australia and Gymnastics Australia that highlighted concerns regarding a potential over-emphasis of physique in sport environments.

In response, body positive campaigns, education and support programs have been a focus for many sports and organisations, such as the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS)‘s Eating Disorder and Body Composition Assessment considerations and Eating Disorder in Sport program.

It’s evident there has been a big shift in sporting culture and while body weight and skinfold testing may still be used as part of fitness assessments, there are efforts to minimise the emphasis on these measures and prioritise a more holistic approach to athlete assessment.

Dominique Condo works for Richmond Football Club and collaborates with the AFL on the Mental Health and Wellbeing Collaborate Group and Eating Disorder/Disordered Eating Working Party.

– ref. Does the AFL ban on skinfold testing avoid fat shaming – or has footy ‘gone soft’? – https://theconversation.com/does-the-afl-ban-on-skinfold-testing-avoid-fat-shaming-or-has-footy-gone-soft-228515

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shireen Morris, Associate Professor and Director of the Radical Centre Reform Lab at Macquarie University Law School, Macquarie University

Foreign interference in Australian democracy poses a growing risk to our national sovereignty.

It refers to coercive, corrupt or deceptive activities by or on behalf of a foreign actor designed to undermine Australia’s democracy.

It can involve foreign actors secretly cultivating and manipulating Australians to influence their decision-making, or distorting our public discourse by spreading misinformation or disinformation on social media.

Australia’s Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, implemented in 2018 by the Turnbull government, is supposed to prevent foreign interference through increased transparency. But it’s not working – and a recent review of this scheme is unlikely to fix the flaws.

Read more:
Turnbull government shrinks Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme register

How does the scheme currently work?

The legislation that created the scheme established a public online register of “foreign influence”.

Australians must register “communications activities”, and lobbying and disbursement activities, undertaken on behalf of a “foreign principal”. There are criminal penalties for non-compliance.

But the scheme is not working to increase transparency or prevent foreign interference. The registration site attracts little traffic, and most Australians probably don’t know it exists.

As we have argued before, the complex registration requirements could chill free speech.

It may discourage normal international engagement, creating onerous red tape for Australians who are not doing anything wrong.

‘Abject failure’

Last month, a parliamentary review noted the scheme’s “significant flaws”.

It found the scheme had “failed to achieve its intended purpose” of increasing “visibility of the nature, level and extent of foreign influence on Australia’s government”. This is despite onerous compliance requirements.

The report noted more transparency in foreign influence has been achieved through ordinary investigative journalism and parliamentary inquiries. It conceded the “abject failure of enforcement” of the act.

Even the scheme’s creator, Malcolm Turnbull, last year admitted most information being reported is “benign” and “barely worth” registering. Yet he noted representatives of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department (which experts say works to advance China’s influence and power internationally through overt and covert activities) are not registering, despite operating in Australia.

The registration scheme is ineffective in its design. Why would any foreign actor who is trying to secretly undermine Australian democracy voluntarily disclose their activities, in compliance with the legal system they seek to subvert?

The review admitted no criminal prosecutions have been undertaken for offences under the act, despite criminal penalties for failure to register.

Conversely, the scheme has forced former prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott to register their mostly already-public international activities.

Yet the registration requirements are so complex that former prime ministers, universities and other entities have needed legal advice and departmental assistance to understand their registration obligations. What hope do ordinary Australians have?

The confusing registration requirements risk chilling free speech and dampening productivity.

Citizens might be scared away from healthy international engagement, such as speaking at international conferences or collaborating with academics overseas. Or they might ignore the registration requirements altogether, making the laws meaningless.

A poorly designed scheme

Potential foreign influence in the Voice referendum was notably not captured by the scheme, with a 2023 Senate Committee warning the scheme was inadequate to combat the real risks of “malign foreign interference” in the referendum.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) reportedly found accounts on X (formerly known as Twitter), which appeared to be connected to the Chinese Communist Party, sharing negative referendum content. An ASPI researcher said:

We assess this network is very likely linked to the Chinese government and is part of a broader covert campaign to undermine Australia’s social cohesion and trust in government through X.

The registration scheme is not tailored to expose such activity.

The “no” campaign group, Advance, also reportedly partnered with Texas-based marketing and fundraising company, RJ Dunham & Co. This is not registered either, though it’s not clear it should have been, due to the complexity of the registration requirements.

‘Mere tinkering’

The bipartisan review of the scheme called for “substantial reform”. “Mere tinkering” was not enough, it said.

Yet the complex recommendations the review produced seem like tinkering. They complicate, rather than simplify, the registration scheme.

There are no ideas on how to address foreign interference via social media, which is a key issue.

While some recommendations expand registration requirements, which may increase the administrative burden on Australians wanting to engage internationally, others clarify or widen exemptions. Some clarify key definitions and suggest further review of the scheme.

The suggestion the department should register those who have failed to register, or not complied with the act, exacerbates productivity concerns.

As Turnbull told the review committee:

every time parliament passes a law that imposes regulations and compliance on people, that’s a cost to business. It’s distracting business people and citizens from more useful applications of their time, and it does the same thing in the public service.

The review committee’s recommendations are unlikely to fix this, and may make it worse.

Let’s start again

Australia should abolish the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme and start again.

It does little to combat foreign interference, which is partly (though currently ineffectively) addressed through complex foreign interference and espionage laws, and foreign donation laws.

Yet it potentially chills free speech, undermines productivity and discourages international engagement.

Read more:
Agents of foreign influence: with China it’s a blurry line between corporate and state interests

Shireen Morris is Director of the Radical Centre Reform Lab at Macquarie University Law School which has previously received philanthropic funding. She was an expert and advocate for a constitutional Voice. Shireen is a Committee Member at the John Curtin Research Centre and a Research Fellow at Per Capita Think Tank.

Sarah Sorial is a Professor of Law at Macquarie University and is a member of the Macquarie University Center for Ethics and Agency.

– ref. ‘Abject failure’: why Australia’s scheme to curb foreign influence doesn’t work and can’t be fixed – https://theconversation.com/abject-failure-why-australias-scheme-to-curb-foreign-influence-doesnt-work-and-cant-be-fixed-228292

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jodi Rowley, Curator, Amphibian & Reptile Conservation Biology, Australian Museum, UNSW Sydney

In winter 2021, Australia’s frogs started dropping dead. People began posting images of dead frogs on social media. Unable to travel to investigate the deaths ourselves because of COVID lockdowns, we asked the public to report to us any sick or dead frogs.

Within 24 hours we received 160 reports of sick and dying frogs, sometimes in their dozens, from across the country. That winter, we received more than 1,600 reports of more than 40 frog species.

We needed help to investigate these deaths. We asked people across New South Wales to collect any dead frogs and store them frozen until travel restrictions eased and we could pick them up for testing. Hundreds of people stepped up to assist.

What could be causing these deaths? Aside from the obvious suspect, disease, many people wondered about pesticides and other chemicals. One email we received pondered:

Maybe a lot of these Green Frogs that are turning up dead have in fact died from chemicals.

Another asked:

Is there any relationship between chemicals being used to control the current mice plague in Eastern Australia and effects on frogs?

In our newly published research, we detected pesticides in more than one in three frogs we tested. We found a rodenticide in one in six frogs.

Pesticides have been shown to be a major cause of worldwide declines in amphibians, including frogs and toads. In the case of the mass deaths in Australia, we don’t believe pesticides were the main cause, for reasons we’ll explain.

Read more:
Dead, shrivelled frogs are unexpectedly turning up across eastern Australia. We need your help to find out why

What did the research find?

As soon as travel restrictions eased, we drove around the state with a portable freezer collecting these dead frogs. We began investigating the role of disease, pesticides and other potential factors in this awful event.

We tested liver samples of 77 frogs of six species from across New South Wales for more than 600 different pesticides. We detected at least one pesticide in 36% of these frogs.

Our most significant discovery was the rodenticide Brodifacoum in 17% of the frogs. This is the first report of rodenticides – chemicals meant to poison only rodents – in wild frogs.

We found it in four species: the eastern banjo frog (Limnodynastes dumerilii), green tree frog (Litoria caerulea), Peron’s tree frog (Litoria peronii) and the introduced cane toad (Rhinella marina).

How did these poisons get into frogs?

How were frogs exposed to a rodenticide? And what harm is it likely to be causing? Unfortunately, we don’t know.

Until now, frogs weren’t known to be exposed to rodenticides. They now join the list of non-rodent animals shown to be exposed – invertebrates, birds, small mammals, reptiles and even fish.

It’s possible large frogs are eating rodents that have eaten a bait. Or frogs could be eating contaminated invertebrates or coming into contact with bait stations or contaminated water. Whatever the impact, and the route, our findings show we may need to think about how we use rodenticides.

Two pesticides detected in frogs were organochlorine compounds dieldrin and heptachlor. A third, DDE, is a breakdown product of the notorious organochlorine, DDT.

These pesticides have been banned in Australia for decades, so how did they get into the frogs? Unfortunately, these legacy pesticides are very stable chemicals and take a long time to break down. They usually bind to organic material such as soils and sediments and can wash into waterways after rain.

As a result, these pesticides can accumulate in plants and animals. It’s why they have been banned around the world.

We also found the herbicide MCPA and fipronil sulfone, a breakdown product of the insecticide fipronil. Fipronil is registered for use in agriculture, home veterinary products (for flea and tick control) and around the house for control of termites, cockroaches and ants. MCPA has both agricultural and household uses, including lawn treatments.

What are the impacts on frogs?

There’s very little research on the impact of pesticides on frogs in general, particularly adult frogs and particularly in Australia.

However, from research overseas, we know pesticides could kill frogs, or cause sub-lethal impacts such as suppressing the immune system or malformations, or changes in growth, development and reproduction. Pesticides are considered a threat to almost 700 amphibian species.

Unfortunately for them, frogs do have characteristics that make them highly likely to come into contact with pesticides.

Most frog species spend time in both freshwater systems, such as wetlands, ponds and streams (particularly at the egg and tadpole stage), and on the land. This increases their opportunities for exposure.

Second, frogs have highly permeable skin, which is likely a major route for pesticides to enter the body. Frogs obtain water through their skin – you’ll never see a frog drinking – and also breathe through their skin.

Our findings are a reminder that frogs are sensitive indicators of environmental health. Their recognition as bioindicators, or “canaries in the coalmine”, is warranted.

Frogs and other amphibians are the most threatened group of vertebrates on the planet. More research is needed to determine just how our use of pesticides is contributing to ongoing population declines in frogs.

So, were pesticides the major driver of the mass frog deaths in 2021? We don’t believe so.

We didn’t detect pesticides in most frogs and the five pesticides detected were not consistently found across all samples. It’s certainly possible they contributed to this event, along with other factors such as disease and climatic conditions, but it’s not the smoking gun.

Our investigation, with the help of the public, is ongoing.

Chris Doyle, from the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, contributed to this article.

Jodi Rowley has received funding from the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, Perth Zoo, the Australian Museum Foundation and other state, federal and philanthropic agencies.

Damian Lettoof 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. We found pesticides in a third of Australian frogs we tested. Did these cause mass deaths? – https://theconversation.com/we-found-pesticides-in-a-third-of-australian-frogs-we-tested-did-these-cause-mass-deaths-228194

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wasay Majid, Research Assistant , University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

New Zealand’s accommodation supplement scheme is facing scrutiny, with Social Development Minister Louise Upston recently saying “there is merit in considering whether the current settings are fair and sustainable long-term”.

The means-tested accommodation supplement is a weekly payment helping households with rent, board, or mortgage costs. Following a NZ Herald Official Information Act request, the government revealed in the year to January 31 2024, it paid out NZ$2.34 billion to 364,000 renters and mortgage holders.

Yet despite rising rents and an increase in accommodation supplement recipients, government spending on the supplement actually decreased by $37 million last year. In fact, the scheme rarely exceeds its annual budget.

And my own research shows it’s become an important part of many New Zealanders’ household budgets. Government spending on the supplement directly affects people’s spending on food.

So before the government makes any significant changes, it is worth understanding how the accommodation supplement works now – and how the government could make it fairer.

How the accommodation supplement works

The accommodation supplement can be traced back to New Zealand’s welfare reforms in the early 1970s. In 1975, the Labour government of the day introduced the “additional benefit” – a supplementary allowance for housing costs and special expenses. This evolved into the “accommodation benefit” in 1981, which later became the accommodation supplement in 1993.

The accommodation supplement is calculated with a negative income tax formula. So for eligible taxpayers earning below a specific income threshold, the supplement is a cash payment deposited directly into their bank account, allowing people to spend it as they see fit.

The payment can increase or decrease independently of rent and mortgage costs. If a recipient’s income, tax credits, other sources of income, or personal savings increase, supplement payments decrease – and vice versa. Annual revisions of the main benefit can also lower supplement payments. Simply put, the supplement functions as an income maintenance scheme.

Read more:
NZ’s housing market drives inequality – why not just tax houses like any other income?

Accommodation supplement eligibility is based on income and wealth levels of households, not rents or housing choices.

My own recent research on the accommodation supplement has shown supplements do not distort the rental market by pushing up prices.

Current policy settings

Maximum payment settings for the accommodation supplement have been revised only twice since being set 1993. That is, clients’ payments can not exceed the maximum payment for years on end and essentially remain capped for around 13 years.

Current settings divide New Zealand into four geographical areas for rental payments, ranging from the most expensive (urban centres such as Auckland, for example) to the least expensive (rural communities). Even if the policy was revised to adjust payment settings annually to fairly reflect rent changes, compensation would not take into account local rent variations.

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

Capped maximum payments mean recipients depend on their income and not the supplement to cushion rent rises, keeping government spending on the supplement to around 0.5% of the gross domestic product.

Research from the United Kingdom found reducing housing allowances does not lower rents, but may cause overcrowding. Whereas maintaining the supply of accommodation allowances in the United States helps low-income households stay in their homes despite rent increases.

The flaws in the system

If the government wanted to make accommodation supplement work better to help the 364,000 renters and mortgage holders who rely on it today, there are three key issues it needs to address.

1. The supplement does not provide relief proportionate to market rents and housing affordability. Rents have increased, but the accommodation supplement has not.

2. Means and asset testing disqualifies couples from the supplement if they have cash assets exceeding $16,200 (for singles, the limit is $8,100). This is 1.75% of today’s median house price, restricting a couple’s ability to save for a mortgage deposit while receiving the supplement. This limit was around 17% of the median house price when it was last adjusted in 1988.

3. Finally, the supplement has a mixed impact on recipients. It allows homeowners accessing the supplement to build housing equity, while renters can’t accumulate enough for a home deposit, widening wealth disparities. The supplement also benefits banks as they can use supplement eligibility to assess mortgage applicants.

Widely recognised as a measure to address rising rental costs, the accommodation supplement needs to be more responsive to changes in rental expenses.

Rather than scrapping the supplement, or reducing the number of people who receive it, changes can be made to ensure the policy is more effective in helping New Zealanders with housing during the current cost-of-living crisis.

Wasay Majid 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. 364,000 New Zealanders rely on an accomodation supplement – but these 3 flaws need fixing – https://theconversation.com/364-000-new-zealanders-rely-on-an-accomodation-supplement-but-these-3-flaws-need-fixing-227667

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Schmidt, Professor of Chemistry, UNSW Sydney

The icebreaker of many a barbeque conversation is something like “what do you do for a crust?”

“I teach chemistry at university,” is what we usually reply. Then silence. Our new friend will usually go on to say they either hated or did terribly in chemistry at school.

Or, depending on what’s been in the news lately, they might start talking about parabens in shampoo, or BPA in plastic poisoning our dogs, or the “forever chemicals” PFAS in everything.

Chemistry, it must be admitted, has an image problem.

Chemistry’s image problem

By the age of six, many children already have negative feelings about the word “chemical”.

Ask the average person what a chemical is, and they’re likely to tell you it’s something bad. Products advertise themselves as “chemical-free” – an assertion that makes no scientific sense (since everything in the world is made of chemicals) but resonates with the consumer.

The media often doesn’t help chemistry’s image. Positive news stories about science are often about a breakthrough cure for some disease, years before it might eventually be approved for use in patients, or the latest nifty-looking thing we’ve noticed up in space.

Stories about chemistry, on the other hand, are often negative: toxic chemical spill from train derailment; ammonia leak sparks evacuation; residents told to stay inside as warehouse fire spreads toxic smoke.

The modern world is built on chemistry

However, everyone in the world owes much of their present standard of living to advances made by chemists. Without the Haber-Bosch process for creating fertiliser from nitrogen in the air, half the world’s population would not have enough to eat. All modern medicines, from aspirin to RNA vaccines, owe their discovery to chemistry.

The lithium batteries that enable so many portable electronic devices – yep, chemistry. We could go on.

And indeed we will.

The materials that allow the manufacture of just about everything you see were developed by chemists. The isolation of metals from ore is chemistry. The synthesis of lightweight plastics, polymers and composites is chemistry. The purification of silicon, enabling the computer and internet revolution, not to mention solar panels, is chemistry. Energy-efficient lighting due to white LEDs owes its development to yet more chemistry.

Chemistry has itself been enabled by advances in other disciplines, notably physics. The discovery of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century advanced our theoretical understanding of chemistry, and many chemical reactions and behaviours can now be predicted using sophisticated computer programs.

At the same time, chemists’ study of molecules and atoms provided crucial data to physicists looking for that deeper understanding.

Chemistry and the future

Chemists are also working on solutions for the future.

Take batteries. The lithium on which today’s rechargeable batteries run is a scarce element. It is difficult to isolate, and its extraction is not without environmental drawbacks. Many chemists are working on alternatives. The batteries of the future might be based on sodium, for example, or some other chemistry yet to be developed.

The next generation of solar cells needs new materials. These are being synthesised by chemists, and rapidly tested in devices. Chemists have discovered materials that can work with silicon to pull more usable energy from sunlight, and that can make solar cells extremely lightweight and flexible.

Read more:
Green chemistry is key to reducing waste and improving sustainability

If we are to produce hydrogen as a clean fuel, we will need new catalysts to make the required chemical reactions faster.

Chemists continue to work hand in hand with clinicians on solutions to treating diseases, from rare conditions to unfortunately common cancers. We are developing new antibiotics, and antimicrobial coatings for medical devices.

Chemists also study the natural world, and how we affect it. Climate change might have its roots in chemical reactions releasing CO₂ into the atmosphere, but stabilising the climate will also require chemists to invent new ways to capture and store CO₂, or convert it to something else.

The central science

Even leaving aside the countless crucial applications of chemistry, fundamental chemical research born from pure curiosity is of vital importance. This work leads to solutions for problems we don’t yet know we are going to have.

Chemistry is sometimes seen as an “old” science: one that’s taught in high school but doesn’t prepare students for jobs in the real world. At best, chemistry is often seen as something that will get you a job in a horribly polluting industry.

But not always. At a kid’s birthday party the other day, a couple of GPs asked one of us what we did. Instead of the usual response to the mention of chemistry, the reply came as a pleasant surprise: “You enable the whole field of medicine,” they said.

As we have seen, chemistry is a subject that is at the core of past and future advances in society. It is still the central science.

Timothy Schmidt receives funding from The Australian Research Council and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

Jason Dutton receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

– ref. Think all chemicals are bad? From our food to your phone, modern life relies on them – https://theconversation.com/think-all-chemicals-are-bad-from-our-food-to-your-phone-modern-life-relies-on-them-227768

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Asher Flynn, Associate Professor of Criminology, Monash University

Sexual harassment is often considered to be a person-to-person act, but new research shows Australians are also experiencing and perpetrating workplace harassment in large numbers through technology.

Our latest study shows one in seven Australian adults surveyed reported having engaged in workplace tech-based sexual harassment. One in eight reported having engaged in both tech-based and in-person sexual harassment at work.

The research, launched today by ANROWS, is the first national study to investigate the perpetration of workplace tech-based sexual harassment. We found hostile motivations underpinning the behaviour, including wanting to frighten and humiliate victims.

Tech-based workplace harassment is common

We conducted a national perpetration survey with 3,345 Australian adults (18-65 years) who had participated in paid or voluntary work in the last 15 years. We also interviewed 20 industry stakeholders, including employer representatives, technology providers, regulators and workplace and online safety experts; and ran focus groups with 28 young adults (18-39 years).

The most common types of tech-based sexual harassment at work reported were:

• sending someone sexually suggestive or explicit comments via technologies (such as emails, SMS messages or social media)

• repeatedly inviting someone to go out on dates via technology

• making sexually explicit phone calls.

When engaging in these behaviours, perpetrators used their work email (31%), personal phone or mobile (29%), personal email (26%), and work phone or mobile (25%). The majority of perpetrators said that their behaviour was a “one-off” incident (60%).

However, one in three acknowledged that they had engaged in tech-based sexual harassment towards a colleague on more than one occasion.

The findings align with other research on workplace harassment. According to 2022 figures from the Australian Human Rights Commission, one in three Australians have experienced workplace sexual harassment in the past five years. The same study found women (41%) are more likely to report experiencing workplace sexual harassment than men (26%).

To date, workplace sexual harassment has centred primarily around in-person or face-to-face forms of unwelcome and/or threatening sexual conduct. But as our reliance on technology in workplaces has increased, so too have tech-based forms of workplace sexual harassment. That is, sexual harassment that is perpetrated using mobile, online and other digital technologies in a workplace context.

What is workplace tech-based sexual harassment?

Workplace tech-based sexual harassment can include a wide range of behaviours within and beyond the physical location of the workplace. It can take place during or after working hours.

It can include:

• unwelcome sexual advances, comments and jokes
• sexual requests
• relational pursuit (including monitoring or stalking behaviours)
• sexually explicit and abusive communications
• threats of physical violence such as rape
• the non-consensual taking, sharing or threat to share nude or sexual images (also known as image-based abuse).

Harassment can be instigated by co-workers, contractors, suppliers, customers, clients, and members of the community. It can include, for example, sharing sexually suggestive or explicit comments or images about a public or high-profile figure, such as a journalist or politician, due to their work.

Read more:
Reports of ‘revenge porn’ skyrocketed during lockdown, we must stop blaming victims for it

Is gender an issue?

Clear gendered patterns emerged in the study. These included that men (24%) were significantly more likely than women (7%) to report engaging in tech-based sexual harassment at work. Men (10%) were more likely than women (3%) to report engaging in both tech-based and in-person workplace sexual harassment. It also most commonly occurred when the gender composition of the workplace was male-dominated (45%) or had roughly equal numbers of men and women (38%), as opposed to the workplace composition being female-dominated (16%).

There were also gendered differences in perceptions of how the behaviour would be viewed and experienced by the victim. Overall, men were significantly more likely than women to minimise a victim’s perceptions of the act, for example, by thinking the person would be flattered or okay with it. Men were also more likely to hold negative feelings towards the victim, such as wanting to humiliate or frighten them.

Read more:
Can the government get its workplace harassment laws right? Its bill is a missed opportunity

Why do people sexually harass in the workplace?

One of the key findings to emerge from the study was the high rates of hostile motivations underpinning the behaviour. More than one in four of those who had engaged in tech-based sexual harassment at work said they did so to: “frighten” (30%), “humiliate” (30%), “express their anger towards” (30%), “hurt the feelings of” (30%) or “annoy” (31%) the victim.

The high level of hostile motivations challenges some of the common myths around sexually harassing behaviour. For example, it is often thought that someone engages in sexual harassment because they want to have a sexual or personal relationship with the person. Instead, our findings highlight how these behaviours form part of a pattern of sexual violence designed to humiliate, degrade and cause harm to the victim.

We also found similar patterns in the indicators of perpetration. Those respondents with a high endorsement of sexist and gender-discriminatory attitudes, such as “women often flirt with men just to be hurtful” and “in the workplace, men generally make more capable bosses than women”, were over 15 times more likely to report perpetrating tech-based sexual harassment at work than those with low endorsement of these attitudes.

Similarly, respondents with a high endorsement of sexual harassment myths, such as believing “women enjoy being hit on at work” or that “stopping sexual harassment at work is as simple as telling your colleague you’re not interested”, were almost five times more likely to report engaging in tech-based sexual harassment at work than those with low endorsement of these myths.

This suggests that there are cultural and social norm challenges to be addressed by governments and workplaces in preventing sexual harassment of this kind.

Of further concern, less than half (39%) of those who disclosed engaging in tech-based sexual harassment at work said that a formal report or complaint had been made against them for their behaviour. This finding suggests there is a significant problem with workplace cultures and highlights potential gaps in appropriate internal and external responses.

Where to from here?

Employers, technology providers, and government policy and legislation must take a combination of actions to address tech-based sexual harassment at work. These include

• clarity in workplace policies
• greater awareness of the changing nature of workplace sexual harassment (including the use of technologies)
• improved reporting options for victims and bystanders in the workplace
• proportional and consistent responses to those who use tech-based sexual harassment at work
• proactive steps to improve workplace cultures that promote equality and respect.

There are a range of challenges, particularly given how significantly workplace communication has changed in recent years. At the same time, industry (employer, technology platforms and government) responses have yet to keep pace.

Read more:
Half of migrant and refugee women we spoke to have been sexually harassed in Australian workplaces

However, new laws introduced in 2022 require employers to take proactive steps to eliminate sexual harassment. In addition, the Australian Human Rights Commission has new powers to investigate and enforce compliance.

These changes may provide the opportunity for new actions and responses to address and prevent tech-based sexual harassment in the workplace.

Asher Flynn receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Criminology Research Council and Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety.

Anastasia Powell receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS). Anastasia is also a director of Our Watch (Australia’s national organisation for the prevention of violence against women), and a member of the National Women’s Safety Alliance (NWSA).

Lisa J. Wheildon receives funding from the Criminology Research Council and Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety.

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– ref. Tech-based sexual harassment at work is common, male-dominated and often intended to cause harm – https://theconversation.com/tech-based-sexual-harassment-at-work-is-common-male-dominated-and-often-intended-to-cause-harm-228102

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fron Jackson-Webb, Deputy Editor and Senior Health Editor

Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are taking drugs like Ozempic to lose weight. But what do we actually know about them? This month, The Conversation’s experts explore their rise, impact and potential consequences.

You’ve no doubt heard of Ozempic but have you heard of Wegovy? They’re both brand names of the drug semaglutide, which is currently in short supply worldwide.

Ozempic is a lower dose of semaglutide, and is approved and used to treat diabetes in Australia. Wegovovy is approved to treat obesity but is not yet available in Australia. Shortages of both drugs are expected to last throughout 2024.

Both drugs are expensive. But Ozempic is listed on Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Schedule (PBS), so people with diabetes can get a three-week supply for A$31.60 ($7.70 for concession card holders) rather than the full price ($133.80).

Wegovy isn’t listed on the PBS to treat obesity, meaning when it becomes available, users will need to pay the full price. But should the government subsidise it?

Wegovy’s manufacturer will need to make the case for it to be added to the PBS to an independent advisory committee. The company will need to show Wegovy is a safe, clinically effective and cost-effective treatment for obesity compared to existing alternatives.

In the meantime, we asked five experts: when supplies resume, should governments subsidise drugs like Ozempic for weight loss?

Four out of five said yes

Here are their detailed responses:

This is the last article in The Conversation’s Ozempic series. Read the other articles here.

Disclosure statements: Clare Collins is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow and has received research grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the Australian Research Council (ARC), the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), the Hunter Medical Research Institute, Diabetes Australia, Heart Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, nib foundation, Rijk Zwaan Australia, the Western Australian Department of Health, Meat and Livestock Australia, and Greater Charitable Foundation. She has consulted to SHINE Australia, Novo Nordisk (for weight management resources and an obesity advisory group), Quality Bakers, the Sax Institute, Dietitians Australia and the ABC. She was a team member conducting systematic reviews to inform the 2013 Australian Dietary Guidelines update, the Heart Foundation evidence reviews on meat and dietary patterns and current co-chair of the Guidelines Development Advisory Committee for Clinical Practice Guidelines for Treatment of Obesity; Emma Beckett has received funding for research or consulting from Mars Foods, Nutrition Research Australia, NHMRC, ARC, AMP Foundation, Kellogg and the University of Newcastle. She works for FOODiQ Global and is a fat woman. She is/has been a member of committees/working groups related to nutrition or food, including for the Australian Academy of Science, the NHMRC and the Nutrition Society of Australia; Jonathan Karnon 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; Nial Wheate in the past has received funding from the ACT Cancer Council, Tenovus Scotland, Medical Research Scotland, Scottish Crucible, and the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance. He is a fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, a member of the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association and a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Nial is the chief scientific officer of Vaihea Skincare LLC, a director of SetDose Pty Ltd (a medical device company) and a Standards Australia panel member for sunscreen agents. Nial regularly consults to industry on issues to do with medicine risk assessments, manufacturing, design and testing; Priya Sumithran has received grant funding from external organisations, including the NHMRC and MRFF. She is in the leadership group of the Obesity Collective and co-authored manuscripts with a medical writer provided by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.

– ref. When supplies resume, should governments subsidise drugs like Ozempic for weight loss? We asked 5 experts – https://theconversation.com/when-supplies-resume-should-governments-subsidise-drugs-like-ozempic-for-weight-loss-we-asked-5-experts-228780

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

April has been a bad month for the Australian environment. The Great Barrier Reef was hit, yet again, by intense coral bleaching. And Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek delayed most of her Nature Positive Plan reforms.

True, Plibersek did reject the controversial Toondah Harbour proposal, but only after a near decade-long grassroots campaign to save the wetland from an apartment and retail development deemed clearly unacceptable by her own department.

Rather than fall back into old patterns of developers versus conservationists, we have a rare chance to find a compromise. Labor’s embrace of “Nature Positive” – a promising new environmental restoration approach – opens up the possibility of a grand bargain, whereby developers and business get much faster approvals (or rejections) in exchange for ensuring nature as a whole is better off as a result of our activities.

Sustainable development was meant to save us

First, a quick recap. We were meant to have put the era of saving the environment one place at a time to bed a long time ago. Around 1990, governments worldwide took to the then-novel idea of sustainable development. We even had a special Australian variant, ecologically sustainable development, which our federal and state governments backed unanimously. This led to a national strategy and incorporation into well over 100 laws, including flagship laws like the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, passed in 1999.

The basic idea was, and is, sound: encourage development to improve our quality of life, while maintaining the ecological processes on which life depends.

Read more:
Australia’s long-sought stronger environmental laws just got indefinitely deferred. It’s back to business as usual

But it’s not what ended up being legislated. The 1990’s laws did not require developers to make their projects sustainable. Typically, sustainable development was watered down into principles ministers only had to “consider”.

Meanwhile, our ecosystems have continued to go downhill. And in a 2020 review of the laws, Graeme Samuel pronounced the EPBC Act a failure.

Nature, positive?

When Labor was elected in 2022, it promised a new goal: “Nature Positive”.

This idea is no mere slogan. Nature positive is a serious policy idea. Think of it as the biodiversity counterpart to net zero emissions.

The goal is ambitious: stop the decline by 2030 and set about restoring what has been lost for a full recovery of nature by 2050. Rather than ticking boxes on whether principles had been considered, regulators would answer a much more basic question: will this development deliver a net positive outcome for nature?

Measuring progress is core to nature positive. We would take an environmental snapshot at the outset and track the gains and losses from there.

Like sustainable development before it, nature positive has been adopted with gusto by the Australian government, internationally and domestically.

In 2022, Plibersek committed to “stop the slide” and to “bake [the Nature Positive reforms] into law”.

Now, suddenly, we have lost momentum. The crucial part of the reforms – embedding nature positive in stronger environment laws – has been kicked down the road.

Plibersek has blamed complexity, extensive consultation and the need to get it right. Others see political concerns.

Could we strike a grand environmental bargain?

By pushing these laws back, Plibersek has effectively turned the already extended consultation process into an open-ended negotiation. Given consultation will keep running indefinitely, we’re now in the realm of regulatory co-design, previously only on offer to First Nations representatives for new cultural heritage protection laws.

Co-design implies proceeding by consensus. It would be politically embarrassing to run a consultation over years only to bring down the policy guillotine.

Consensus in turn raises the possibility of a grand environmental bargain, built around nature positive. Could this work? Might environment groups settle for a limited form of nature positive? Might business, in return for much faster approvals or rejections, support much stronger legal protection, especially for particularly vulnerable or important ecosystems?

Samuel certainly thinks so. At a recent Senate Inquiry, he recounted telling a meeting during his review:

If you each stick to your aspirations 100%, you’ll end up getting nothing. If you’re prepared to accept 80%-plus of your aspirations, you’ll get them, and that will be a quantum leap forward from the abysmal failure that we’ve had for two and a half decades

What might an 80% agreement look like?

If we are to turn decline into recovery, we need to ensure each natural system is intact. That is, it retains the minimum level of environmental stocks (such as animals, plants and insects) and flows (such as water, nutrients) needed to sustain ecological health.

Such thresholds for ecological health are everywhere. For example, keeping the platypus off the endangered list would involve maintaining its population close to current levels and working out how much of its riverbank habitat should be conserved.

For policymakers, this suggests environmental laws should define minimum viability thresholds. Some thresholds would be absolute; others would be crossable in one location provided equivalent restoration was done in another.

Environmental groups could take satisfaction that thresholds would be maintained in most cases. Ecosystems would function, rivers would flow. But governments would still override thresholds for important economic and social reasons, say to approve a critical minerals project.

What’s in it for corporate Australia? Business would gain upfront certainty about what can be approved and quicker approvals for projects. Environmental litigation would fall. But development options would be narrowed and offsets would become more expensive.

The government would achieve a key goal: major environmental reform. But it would have to say no more often, and be transparent about crossing environmental thresholds.

It would have to finance the science and planning needed. And it would need to boost investment in environmental restoration, to compensate for using override powers and for the cumulative impact of smaller-scale activities.

A grand bargain along these lines would not deliver nature positive in full. We’d still be losing nature due to climate change. But it might go close enough to offer hope of long-term recovery.

Is such a deal feasible? It depends on how players read the incentives for compromise. For example, business will not want to be locked out of prospective development areas, but will also be worried about the possibility of a minority Labor government dependent on the Greens next year.

Nature positive in Australia is down – but opportunity remains.

Read more:
Out of alignment: how clashing policies make for terrible environmental outcomes

Peter Burnett is a member of the Biodiversity Council, an independent expert group founded by 11 Australian universities to promote evidence-based solutions to Australia’s biodiversity crisis. This article does not necessarily reflect the Council’s views.

– ref. It’s time to strike an environmental grand bargain between businesses, governments and conservationists – and stop doing things the hard way – https://theconversation.com/its-time-to-strike-an-environmental-grand-bargain-between-businesses-governments-and-conservationists-and-stop-doing-things-the-hard-way-228620

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Lewi, Professor, Architecture, The University of Melbourne

Australian university students are beginning to set up encampments on campus, in solidarity with college protesters in the United States. Protesters are calling for the divestment of funding from weapons manufactures and Israeli universities. But these protests are just the latest in a decades-long history of political action on Australian campuses.

We have been researching the legacy of protest and activism on campuses in the 1960s and ‘70s as part of a broader study on the building of Australia’s modern universities in the post-WWII decades.

Australian universities have long been sites of protest. These have encompassed issues directly impacting students and their learning, such as assessments and curriculum, to broader concerns resonating with international politics and social movements. And while Australian students engaged with international political issues, one specific feature of the postwar countercultural protest movement revolved around the perceived shortcomings of the new university campuses being built.

Today’s students join this legacy of activists who helped shape higher education and the Australian cultural landscape.

A ‘breeding ground’ for social protest

News of international student protests in 1968 spread rapidly to Australia. Dramatic scenes of 20,000 students marching in Paris against capitalism and American imperialism and violent escalations at Berkeley in California on civil rights, free speech and the Vietnam war were watched intently.

Read more:
Be realistic – demand the impossible: the legacy of 1968

Local activism in the early 1970s was equally transformative. Young Australians were engaged in debates around seismic social issues such as Vietnam, the weaponising of world conflicts, anti-capitalism, feminism, gender and race rights.

The Australian tertiary sector was experiencing rapid change. Just seven universities teaching 30,000 students in the late 1940s increased to more than 200,000 students by the early 1970s.

This expansion strained establishment aspirations of higher education as an elite preserve. Surges in student numbers and new campus building only helped to fuel dissatisfaction with perceived outmoded teaching, governance and pastoral care.

Bleak new campuses were characterised by some students as claustrophobic and impersonal. These concerns intersected with growing animosity towards functionalist “concrete architecture”, carrying associations of alienation and the destruction of what came before. This concern was shared by US, UK, French and Canadian students on new universities were experiencing similar expansion.

In the face of more prevalent campus surveillance – alongside outdated gender segregation, curfews in colleges and prosaic matters like free car parking – new buildings and spaces were co-opted in unintended and uncontrolled ways. Students barricaded themselves into offices and disrupted lectures. Blank building facades and empty paved areas became backdrops for impromptu happenings, banners and protest artworks. Campus perimeters defined marching routes out into the neighbouring communities.

Campuses gained notoriety in the popular press as settings for transgressive social behaviours and a “breeding ground” for social protest movements, including the pivotal Aquarius Festival staged at Australian National University in 1971.

Protests across the country

The location of Australian universities had an impact on the nature and intensity of their social action.

At the older, more traditional sandstone campuses, protests were often enacted away from the campus and filtered into the surrounding urban areas.

In Brisbane in 1967, more than 4,000 rallying students and staff left the St Lucia campus and headed to the city to demonstrate against draconian laws curtailing public gatherings without a permit. This ended with an estimated 120 arrests.

From 1968 onwards, students in Sydney and Melbourne marched into city centres. These actions peaked with the Vietnam Moratorium rallies in Melbourne involving an estimated 70,000 people.

New postwar Australian campuses on the urban fringes were host to many actions. Monash University became known as Australia’s equivalent flashpoint to the modernist Nanterre campus in Paris.

Monash’s Forum, adjacent to the new slab blocks of the student union and administration buildings, was one of the more notorious and inhospitable open spaces. It was the site of mass sit-ins, temporary stages, lampooning of academic leadership and the odd Kombi van on the lawns.

La Trobe University was a potent site for action on its raw campus, created out of ex-agricultural and industrial areas in Melbourne’s north.

Today, it features extensive gardens and inspired landscape reserves. Before this masterplan matured, the reality of life was very different. The first 480 students commenced on campus with just the library administration and one residential college completed in 1967.

Spaces such as the university’s central Agora and the colleges saw ongoing protests and rallies, fuelled by reportedly heavy-handed policing.

A series of sit-ins occupied administration offices in July 1971. Students barricaded the entrances to deliver their deputation to the university council. They rallied against internal governance, the conditions in the new colleges (including the standard of food), alongside shared external issues amid competing political ideologies.

At the University of New England in New South Wales, protests coalesced over challenges to segregation in campus colleges. There was a growing gulf of social and religious attitudes between university authorities and the new student body.

At Flinders University in South Australia, the central Registry Building was occupied in an epic month-long siege in 1974, sparked in part by a divisive Vice Chancellor accused of “working for the interests of US domination of Australia”.

Other complaints focused on exam assessments and out-of-touch academics. One resident of the new Flinders’ University Hall building wrote:

The Hall was designed on the basis that it should be as functional and inexpensive as possible. The result reminds one more of a prison than a college; long corridors with little cells on either side, grey brick walls wherever you go.

The campuses of today

These and many other episodes of resistance, protest and activism on Australian campuses rapidly deescalated by the mid-1970s.

However, these events produced a new generation of voices that demanded a response, not only politically, economically and culturally, but also physically in terms of tempering the stark reality of many new campuses.

Today, in the face of increasing financial pressures on students, renewed political, social and environmental tensions and escalating international conflicts, we are witnessing campuses again as potent settings for physical actions.

Read more:
Middle East student dialogue: As an expert in deep conflict, what I’ve learned about making conversation possible

Hannah Lewi has received funding from the ARC for this project.

Andrew Saniga has received funding from the ARC for this project.

– ref. Vietnam, brutalist architecture, fees and Gaza: how student protests shaped Australian universities – https://theconversation.com/vietnam-brutalist-architecture-fees-and-gaza-how-student-protests-shaped-australian-universities-228621

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marco de Jong, Lecturer, Law School, Auckland University of Technology

Details released by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet under the Official Information Act reveal New Zealand officials have been considering involvement in AUKUS from the outset.

On the same day the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and United States was announced on September 16 2021 (New Zealand time), New Zealand officials gathered in Wellington for the first of two joint-agency meetings to discuss “Tier 2 AUKUS” – since restyled in official parlance as “pillar two”.

At the time, New Zealand’s non-involvement was put down to the pact’s central purpose of supplying nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, and New Zealand’s prohibition of nuclear-powered vessels in its territorial waters.

Then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said: “We weren’t approached, nor would I expect us to be.”

It wasn’t until March 2023 that possible “non-nuclear” involvement in technology sharing was publicly discussed in New Zealand, during a visit by US National Security Council coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, Kurt Campbell.

However, the newly released information – provided following an Official Information Act request – shows “Tier 2 AUKUS” meetings took place at Defence House in Wellington on September 16 and 23, 2021.

A month later, on October 22, New Zealand government ministers were advised

there are likely to be significant opportunities [for] future cooperation with AUKUS […] beyond the submarines, particularly in the cyber and artificial intelligence areas.

Lack of detail and transparency

The existence of these previously undisclosed meetings and their “tier 2” agenda suggest AUKUS was always intended to expand.

They also raise significant questions about whether associate members might be subordinated within the pact, and whether accommodating associates is intended to add a multilateral legitimacy that enhances both the pact’s authority and credibility.

The notion of a “tiered” system runs counter to recent rhetoric around AUKUS. “Pillar two” has been presented as a standalone technology-sharing arrangement, carefully delineated from pillar one’s nuclear-powered submarine deal.

Read more:
Have New Zealanders really been ‘misled’ about AUKUS, or is involvement now a foregone conclusion?

This also highlights the lack of specific detail around the proposed benefits of pillar two involvement. As it stands, we know remarkably little about the “advanced capabilities” being developed through AUKUS, due to the secrecy surrounding the pact from the beginning.

Initially conceived as enhancing “joint capabilities and interoperability” between the three AUKUS members, what became pillar two has since been presented as an industrial programme focused on emerging technologies and job creation.

Now, it appears the technology is being used to draw in prospective members with promises of opportunities for their aerospace and research sectors.

Read more:
AUKUS is supposed to allow for robust technology sharing. The US will need to change its onerous laws first

Technology sharing in practice

Australian critics have argued AUKUS is not a jobs programme, but a strategic initiative that could lock members into exclusive US trade controls, jeopardise research independence, and prevent international research and development collaboration.

These concerns recently led former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr to describe pillar two as “cobbled together” and no more than “fragrant, methane-wrapped bullshit”.

Read more:
AUKUS is already trialling autonomous weapons systems – where is NZ’s policy on next-generation warfare?

Pillar two technologies are also designed to be interoperable with US forces. So far, there are no assurances that intelligence or data from AUKUS partners would not be used by autonomous weapons systems or nuclear command, control and communications infrastructure.

Indeed, the US has made “integrated deterrence” a core objective of its defence policy, including how it works with “allies and partners”.

Pillar one of AUKUS sets a precedent whereby Australia will be the first non-nuclear weapons state to receive highly-enriched, weapons-grade fissile material and nuclear-powered submarines.

Read more:
Joining AUKUS could boost NZ’s poor research and technology spending – but at what cost?

Pillar two technologies, including AI, are already contributing to the modernisation of US and UK nuclear weapons command and delivery systems.

Broader AUKUS interoperability will see foreign nuclear-capable bombers and submarines “rotated” indefinitely through Australia.

Opponents of AUKUS argue this violates the spirit and the letter of the Treaty of Rarotonga, which establishes a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific and bans the use, possession, storage and – crucially – stationing of nuclear weapons.

No limited involvement

AUKUS has clear implications for New Zealand’s non-nuclear security and close defence relationship with Australia. But to date, New Zealand has not sought to challenge Australian assurances around non-proliferation and compliance with the Treaty of Rarotonga.

Strikingly, it appears New Zealand officials – not AUKUS members – designated pillar two as “non-nuclear”, while formulating public messaging about potential involvement in March 2023.

New Zealand has taken a leading role in nuclear disarmament, through domestic nuclear-free legislation and support for international treaties. Framing pillar two as technically “non-nuclear” could compromise such advocacy in future.

Read more:
Moving closer to Australia is in New Zealand’s strategic interest – joining AUKUS is not

Prospective partners under pillar two must recognise there can be no genuinely limited involvement in AUKUS. Participation tacitly supports Australian acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, the maintenance of US primacy in the Pacific region, and potentially dangerous confrontation with China.

It also puts New Zealand offside with other key partners.

Few Pacific nations see AUKUS as addressing the principal security threat of climate change, or accept it as having a “non-nuclear” component. ASEAN states view it as establishing an unhelpfully adversarial relationship with China.

AUKUS aims to expand a tiered, de facto alliance through integrated, nuclear-enabling technologies. For New Zealand, this raises serious questions about whether there is any meaningful distinction between pillar one and pillar two.

Marco de Jong is affiliated with Te Kuaka, an independent group promoting a progressive foreign policy for Aotearoa.

Emma Shortis is Senior Researcher in International and Security Affairs at The Australia Institute, an independent think tank.

– ref. NZ started discussing AUKUS ‘Tier 2’ involvement in 2021, newly released details reveal – https://theconversation.com/nz-started-discussing-aukus-tier-2-involvement-in-2021-newly-released-details-reveal-228776

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rick Sarre, Emeritus Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, University of South Australia

The rate of women killed by their partners in Australia grew by 28% from 2021–22 to 2022–23, according to new statistics released today by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC).

There were 34 women killed in intimate partner incidents in the financial year 2022–23, which is the equivalent of 0.32 per 100,000 people. The year before, the rate was 0.25 such homicides per 100,000.

Historically, the rate of women killed by their partners has been on the decline since the late 1980s and early 1990s. It has decreased by 66% over the past 34 years, according to the AIC.

However, the uptick in the homicide rate last year – coupled with the sharp rise in women killed in the first four months of 2024 – are cause for mounting concern for all Australians.

Historically low overall homicide rate

The AIC released two reports on statistics emerging from its National Homicide Monitoring Program, a database that has been in operation since July 1989.

The institute reports 232 overall homicide incidents were recorded by Australian state and territory police between July 1 2022 and June 30 2023, which resulted in 247 homicide victims.

The Australian homicide rate (0.87 deaths per year per 100,000 population) remains historically low. There has been a 52% reduction in homicide incidents since 1989‒90, indicative of a long-term downward trend in unlawful killings.

The report reveals police, prosecutors and courts are doing a good job, with 90% of cases being resolved through the justice system. That is, only 10% of homicide incidents in 2022‒23 were not “cleared,” meaning cases where an offender has yet to be identified, a suspect has not yet been charged, or a person is declared missing and police believe it’s linked to foul play.

A closer look at the figures

There are important features of the latest data that require further examination.

First, there is a significant gender disparity: in 2022-23, 87% of homicide offenders were male, while 69% of homicide victims were male. Predominantly, men are killing men.

And while men were most likely to be killed by a friend, acquaintance or some other person who was not a family member, women were more likely to be killed by a former or current partner (49% of all victims).

There is also a massive First Nations disparity in terms of victims and offenders.

Forty-nine of the homicide victims in Australia identified as First Nations (35 men and 14 women) – that is, 20% of victims.

The homicide victimisation rate of Indigenous men was more than seven times higher than non-Indigenous men at 7.65 per 100,000 people, compared to just 1.04 per 100,000. The disparity does not change with gender. The homicide rate was 3.07 per 100,000 for Indigenous women, compared with 0.45 per 100,000 for non-Indigenous women.

Of the 260 homicide offenders in 2022–23, 28% identified as First Nations.

These statistics merit repeating. First Nations people (3.8% of the population) comprised 20% of victims and 28% of perpetrators in homicide cases. That is an unacceptable state of affairs, which should be causing policymakers enormous concern.

Also noteworthy was that the recent rise in the homicide rate is mirrored in the domestic and family violence data found in police reports.

The number of people reporting sexual assaults has continued to increase over the past five years. According to the 2024 report of the Productivity Commission, the rate of victimisation in sexual crimes in 2022 was 124 per 100,000 population. In 2016, the rate was 95 per 100,000.

Why statistics require the right interpretation

From a criminologist’s perspective, there are a few things to bear in mind when considering these statistics.

The first is that interpretations of official crime data always require caution. There are various reasons for this:

• much (if not most) crime is not reported to police or discovered by police

• there are biases in the criminal justice system (especially when it comes to police discretion)

• definitions of crime and counting rules and methods will differ according to jurisdiction

• the data are usually generalised across state and territory jurisdictions, rather than presented as pertaining to specific cities, towns and regions.

Moreover, long-term trends are often ignored in the rush to analyse short-term crime rate fluctuations.

Having said that, homicide figures are usually the most accurate when tracking crime trends, given the obvious nature of the crime. So, making policy based on these data should be easier, one would think.

But this is not always the case. We need to bear in mind the impact of the institutional responses we are likely to offer when interpreting the data.

Read more:
We’re all feeling the collective grief and trauma of violence against women – but this is the progress we have made so far

For example, how do we reduce or eliminate the seemingly unrelenting number of murders perpetrated by men against their intimate partners? How do we reduce or eliminate the massive disparity of violence affecting some Indigenous communities? One might think the best response is to arrest more people and lock more people up for longer.

Such an approach should, however, be a last resort. We need to recognise that every dollar spent in criminal justice services is a dollar that’s not spent on women’s shelters, education programs for young men on the importance of respect for women, and programs to improve the living standards and educational and employment opportunities for those who identify as First Nations. That’s where our dollars ought to be spent.

A decade ago, the American criminologist Elliott Currie talked about the importance of allocating resources designed to bring about what he referred to as “transformative intervention.” This involves:

helping people to move beyond the individualistic, often exploitative, often uncaring cultural orientations […] and to begin to relate differently to themselves, to those around them, and to the larger community (and the planet): to nurture alternative ways of looking at the world and their place in it that […] will be less violent, less predatory and less exploitative.

Such a transformation is something we need to take into account here in Australia as a matter of priority.

Rick Sarre 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. New homicide statistics show surge in intimate partner killings – and huge disparity in First Nations victims – https://theconversation.com/new-homicide-statistics-show-surge-in-intimate-partner-killings-and-huge-disparity-in-first-nations-victims-228890

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Blakers, Professor of Engineering, Australian National University

As Australia’s rapid renewable energy rollout continues, so too does debate over land use. Nationals Leader David Littleproud, for example, claimed regional areas had reached “saturation point” and cannot cope with more wind and solar farms and transmission lines.

So how much land is needed to fully decarbonise energy in Australia? When we switch completely to solar and wind, do we have the space for all the panels, turbines and power lines?

I’ve done the sums. All we need is 1,200 square kilometres. That’s not much. The area devoted to agriculture is about 3,500 times larger at 4.2 million square kilometres. The area of land that would be taken away from agriculture works out at about 45 square metres per person – about the size of a large living room.

We can ditch fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse emissions with negligible impact on agriculture. And in many cases, farmers can be paid for hosting renewable energy infrastructure while continuing to run sheep and cows or grow crops.

Read more:
The Nationals want renewables to stay in the cities – but the clean energy grid doesn’t work like that

The challenge of the energy transition

Electricity consumption in Australia is currently about 10 megawatt-hours (MWh) per person per year.

Decarbonising Australia’s economy will require electrifying many technologies that currently derive their power from burning fossil fuels. Then we need to ensure the electricity grid runs entirely on renewables.

When we electrify transport, heating and industry, annual electricity consumption per capita doubles. But we will need even more electricity to decarbonise aviation and shipping. So it’s reasonable to assume electricity consumption must triple if we are to complete decarbonisation, to 30MWh per person per year.

This would logically be achieved in three stages, starting with the easiest to achieve:

Stage 1: Solar and wind displace coal and gas from the electricity system. The federal government target of 82% renewable electricity by 2030 puts us firmly on track to decarbonise electricity. This trend is already well underway as shown by the graph below.

Stage 2: Clean electricity is used to electrify transport (electric vehicles), heating (electric heat pumps) and industrial heat (electric furnaces). This off-the-shelf technology could largely replace petrol and gas within a decade with negligible impact on the cost of running vehicles and heating homes.

Stage 3: The chemical industry is decarbonised. Clean electricity is used to make ammonia, iron, steel, plastics, cement, and synthetic aviation and shipping fuel.

Where will this clean power come from?

Virtually all new generation capacity in Australia over the past decade has been in solar and wind. Together, solar and wind have risen from about 6% of electricity generation in 2014 to 33% today. Solar and wind provide the cheapest electricity.

Most solar power in Australia today comes from rooftop solar panels. These panels don’t require any extra land. But the area of rooftop is limited. In coming years, ground-mounted solar farms will become ever more important.

We’ll also need more wind farms. Each wind farm contains dozens of turbines and spans dozens of square kilometres. But only a small fraction of the land is lost to farming.

And it’s best to spread the solar farms and wind farms throughout the settled areas of Australia, to reduce the effect of local cloud and wind lulls.

Most solar and wind farms are located on sheep and cattle farms inland from the Great Dividing Range. Here there is plenty of sun and wind, and it’s not too far away to transmit electricity to the cities via high-voltage power lines.

Read more:
Renewables need land – and lots of it. That poses tricky questions for regional Australia

So how much land do we need?

Typically, only about 1% of land covered by a windfarm is actually lost to farming. In most cases, farmers run livestock or continue cropping around the turbine towers and access roads.

Similarly, because solar panels are spaced apart, the area spanned by a solar farm is often two to three times the actual area of the panels themselves.

The panels are typically spaced to avoid losses from shading. As an added bonus, it means rain and sunlight can fall between them, allowing grass to grow and livestock to graze and shelter.

About 10,000km of new transmission lines will also be required for the energy transition. This sounds like a lot but amounts to just 37 centimetres per person.

Again, the area of land that would be taken away from agriculture for wind turbine towers and access roads is relatively small.

A further small area of land will be dedicated to new storage such as pumped hydro power and batteries.

The total area spanned by the solar farms, wind farms and all the other infrastructure is about 22,000 square km (mostly the land between the turbines in windfarms). But agriculture could continue largely as normal on most of this land.

By my calculations, the total area taken away from agriculture to power a 100% renewable energy (zero fossil fuel) economy is about 45 square metres per person. Considering Australia’s total population of 27 million people, that means the total land area required is 1,200 square km. The area currently devoted to agriculture is about 3,500 times larger than this.

Farmers can earn extra income

Mining companies are often permitted to mine land without the consent of the landowner.

Solar and wind farm developers do not have the same rights. They must agree on lease fees with landowners before gaining access to land. These fees are typically tens of thousands of dollars per year per turbine.

In the case of transmission lines, hosts in Victoria are paid A$200,000 per kilometre over eight years.

The transition to renewable energy has attracted opposition from some residents living near proposed infrastructure. But this can be overcome.

Successful solar and wind farm companies gain community acceptance through genuine transparency, particularly early in the project, to ensure no information vacuum is created and then filled with misinformation.

Paying neighbours as well as the renewable energy host farm, and establishing community funds, is also helpful.

Read more:
Win-win: how solar farms can double as havens for our wildlife

Plenty of land to share

The expansion of renewable energy infrastructure will be concentrated in Australia’s regional areas. But we can also expect new energy capacity from elsewhere, such as expanded rooftop solar and new offshore wind farms, which reduces the amount of land needed for the energy transition.

The location of good areas for solar and wind farms is shown in the Australian National University’s renewable energy heatmaps, which takes account of the solar and wind resources, proximity to transmission lines, and protected land. Farmers in areas coloured red can command higher prices for leasing land to solar and wind farm companies.

In short, Australia has far more than enough land to host the solar farms and wind farms required for the renewable energy revolution.

Read more:
Despairing about climate change? These 4 charts on the unstoppable growth of solar may change your mind

Andrew Blakers receives funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

– ref. No threat to farm land: just 1,200 square kilometres can fulfil Australia’s solar and wind energy needs – https://theconversation.com/no-threat-to-farm-land-just-1-200-square-kilometres-can-fulfil-australias-solar-and-wind-energy-needs-223183

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan C. Walsh, Sessional Academic, The University of Queensland

In recent decades, governments the world over have increasingly taken action to address the dark history of witch-hunting. In western Europe, memorials to victims have been erected at sites in Bamberg (Germany), Vardø (Norway) and Zugarramurdi (Spain). Many states have also taken to issuing national apologies, with some even granting posthumous pardons.

The witchcraft exoneration movement isn’t simply about addressing past injustices. Violence directed at suspected witches persists across the world today and, alarmingly, seems to be intensifying.

The 2023 Annual Report of the United Nations Human Rights Council asserts that each year, hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people are harmed in locations such as sub-Saharan Africa, India and Papua New Guinea because of belief in witchcraft.

One 2020 UN report states at least 20,000 “witches” were killed across 60 countries between 2009 and 2019. The actual number is likely much higher as incidents are severely under-reported. These sobering statistics indicate a need for urgent government action.

The exoneration movement

State-issued exoneration for victims of witchcraft persecution isn’t a modern concept. The most notable example was in the aftermath of the Salem witch trials (1692–93), in which at least 25 people (mostly women) were executed, tortured to death, or left to die in jail.

In the decades that followed, the citizens of Salem submitted petitions demanding a reversal of convictions for those found “guilty” of witchcraft, and compensation for survivors. In 1711, Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley agreed to these demands.

More recently, many states have moved to recognise and make amends for their historical involvement in witch-hunting. On International Women’s Day 2022, Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon issued a national apology to people accused of witchcraft between the 16th and 18th centuries.

In 2023, Connecticut lawmakers passed a motion to exonerate the individuals executed by the state for witchcraft during the 17th century. This motion is the result of grassroots campaigning by descendants and groups such as the Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project.

However, as historian Jan Machielsen warns, the exoneration process can also be problematic. For instance, apologies or pardons may ignore the central role of communities in historical witch-hunts.

Most witchcraft accusations emerged from neighbourly disputes and involved active participation by both the community and authorities. Even when European states ceased persecution in the 18th century, community-level violence continued.

Nonetheless, advocates for witchcraft exoneration projects argue that state pardons are more important than ever, not least because they can help address ongoing witchcraft-related violence.

Why is modern witchcraft violence growing?

Modern witchcraft persecutions are driven largely by religious fundamentalism and are further exacerbated by factors such as civil conflict, poverty, and resource scarcity. Biblical passages such as Exodus 22:18 are clear on the matter: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”.

In particular, the growth of Pentecostalism in developing nations has played a central role in fuelling witch-hunts.

Pentecostal evangelising has effectively demonised many cultural traditions – superimposing a strict religious attitude towards magic onto societies that have long accommodated such beliefs. This is evident in the ongoing crusade led by Helen Ukpabio, founder of the notorious Nigerian church Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries.

Witchcraft-related violence has also been a growing concern in the United Kingdom, particularly within the African disapora. One of the most shocking cases was the 2010 death of 15-year-old Kristy Bamu in London.

Bamu was tortured by his older sister and her partner for days, as they believed he was a witch. On Christmas Day, Bamu was forced into a bath for an exorcism, where he drowned. In response to such horrific cases, London’s Metropolitan Police launched The Amber Project in 2021 to address increasing incidents of child abuse linked to belief in witchcraft and spirit possession.

Misogyny has also been a prevalent factor in historical witchcraft prosecutions and remains so today. According to the UN, “women who do not fulfil gender stereotypes, such as widows, childless or unmarried women, are at increased risk of accusations of witchcraft and systemic discrimination”.

Witchcraft accusations are often a means to exert control over the bodies of women and girls, while maintaining male-dominated power structures. Accusations also play a role in human trafficking by making it easier to drive victims out of their communities.

Read more:
Most witches are women, because witch hunts were all about persecuting the powerless

Global witchcraft prosecutions

Belief in harmful magic and/or witchcraft exists across many societies. India has a long history of witch-hunting and continues to be plagued by this terrible injustice. One victim was Salo Devi, a 58-year-old woman from a small village in the state of Jharkhand. In 2023 she was beaten to death by her neighbours for allegedly bewitching a baby.

Papua New Guinea and sub-Saharan Africa are also hotspots for witchcraft-related violence.

Violence isn’t just used as a punishment against accused witches, but is often part of the remedy. Attempts at counter-witchcraft or exorcisms have been a significant source of harm, particularly for children.

Cultural beliefs surrounding disabilities and misunderstood conditions such as albinism have also been used as justification for beatings, banishment, limb amputation, torture and murder.

So prevalent is such violence that in 2021 the UN Human Rights Council issued a historic special resolution calling for the “elimination of harmful practices related to accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks”. This resolution urges member states not only to condemn these practices but also to take action to abolish them.

What can be done?

The UN and numerous non-government organisations are implementing programs to educate communities at risk of witchcraft-related violence. Leo Igwe, a Nigerian human rights activist and director of Advocacy for Alleged Witches, has played a central role in increasing public awareness of this violence. More voices like his are needed. At the same time, increased recognition is only the beginning.

The UN has issued numerous denouncements and a few states have introduced anti-witchcraft bills. Additional legal protections, multi-agency task forces and national apologies will help bring more attention to this pressing issue.

Above all, it’s necessary to address the beliefs and motivations that underpin witchcraft accusations. By doing so, we can reverse the alarming rate of witchcraft-related deaths recorded each year.

Read more:
Witchcraft in Ghana: help should come before accusations begin

Brendan C. Walsh 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. ‘Witches’ are still killed all over the world. Pardoning past victims could end the practice – https://theconversation.com/witches-are-still-killed-all-over-the-world-pardoning-past-victims-could-end-the-practice-228613

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kara Dadswell, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Victoria University

Ask your son or daughter, niece, or nephew to draw you a picture of a sport coach. They will most probably draw a man. Why?

Our latest research published in the Psychology of Sport and Exercise Journal suggests children’s beliefs are shaped by what they experience.

When it comes to sports, they mostly experience men as coaches. However, our study shows when children are exposed to more women coaches, their perceptions and attitudes shift positively, challenging the traditional image of a coach.

In Australia, women account for only 15% of accredited high-performance sport coaches, with similar under-representation in community sport.

So where are all the women?

Read more:
From forced kisses to power imbalances, violence against women in sport is endemic

Why women coaches are so scarce

Research has identified numerous reasons why few women coaches exist, with gender bias often at the centre of discussions.

The historical and dominant view in society is a qualified coach is someone who is tough, aggressive and emotionally focused on competitive success – traits which are typically associated with men.

This view is effectively a bias. We can be aware of the biases we hold, or they can be unconscious to us, unknowingly impacting our behaviour.

Such biases impact efforts to bring more women into sports leadership roles including a coach, as they may be viewed as less capable compared to men.

Social cognitive theory suggests biases are formed through our social interactions. From a young age, children begin to categorise the world around them through their early social experiences, and young children participating in sport can start to form schemas (preconceived ideas) of sport-related concepts (such as their coaches).

With men over-represented in coaching roles, it is no wonder children learn to associate men with coaching. This ultimately reinforces the dominant societal view that men are more suited to these roles.

This is a real problem, as girls may internalise a belief that there is no place for them in sport leadership, or worse, toxic ideas that underpin violence against women may persist.

What can be done?

So, can we shift the bias? To put it simply, yes.

Increased visibility of, and experience with, women as coaches, particularly at a young age, will serve to change the idea of what a sports coach “looks like” in the mind. This can ultimately minimise the deeply ingrained societal stereotype that sport leaders are men.

In our latest research, our team investigated the attitudes of 75 children (4-17 years old) and their parents towards women in coaching roles in community sport.

Across all sports, 96% of children had been coached by a man, compared to 65% who had been coached by a woman. This difference was even larger if we removed children who played netball or participated in swimming, as these were the only sports predominantly coached by women.

In a nutshell, the children were biased.

They were twice as likely to select a man’s face when asked to choose who looked like they would make the “best” coach from a series of faces of men and women.

Unsurprisingly, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree – children’s attitudes, both positive and negative, towards women as coaches very much aligned with their parents’ attitudes.

Read more:
NZ gymnasts can now wear shorts over their leotards – why is this a big deal for female athletes?

A reason for optimisim

Our study demonstrated that despite the relatively limited experience children had with women as coaches, when they had been coached by a woman, they were happier with the prospect of being coached by a woman in the future.

In addition, children who had previously been coached by a woman (compared to those who hadn’t) were three times more likely to choose a woman when asked to select the face they thought would make the “best” coach.

The bottom line is, children need to be coached by women as well as men. And the earlier, the better.

Quick tips for sports clubs

Changing attitudes and addressing biases is not a quick fix though. It requires consistent action from different angles, and time.

However, there are some simple and practical things sport clubs can implement to do their bit:

• Expose children at an early age to women coaches
• Influence positive parental attitudes towards women as coaches
• Attract and retain more women as coaches.

Sport clubs should examine the level of exposure children in their clubs have of women as coaches and consider setting targets.

Investing in the promotion of women coaches can assist in influencing parental attitudes. For example, showing images and achievements of women coaches on club promotional materials such as websites, social media and newsletters.

It’s crucial to provide an inclusive and welcoming environment with opportunities for women to become and remain as coaches in sport.

We recommend viewing a checklist of recommendations in the full research summary.

This research was funded by the Victorian Government through the Change Our Game Research Grants Program

The authors of this piece received funding for this study from the Victorian government, Change Our Game program.

– ref. Most kids are only coached by men in junior sport – women need to be part of the picture, too – https://theconversation.com/most-kids-are-only-coached-by-men-in-junior-sport-women-need-to-be-part-of-the-picture-too-228397

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Rinehart, Professor, Child and Adolescent Psychology, Director, Krongold Clinic (Research), Monash University

“Charlie” is an eight-year-old child with autism. Her parents are worried because she often responds to requests with insults, aggression and refusal. Simple demands, such as being asked to get dressed, can trigger an intense need to control the situation, fights and meltdowns.

Charlie’s parents find themselves in a constant cycle of conflict, trying to manage her and their own reactions, often unsuccessfully. Their attempts to provide structure and consequences are met with more resistance.

What’s going on? What makes Charlie’s behaviour – that some are calling “pathological demand avoidance” – different to the defiance most children show their parents or carers from time-to-time?

Read more:
What is ‘parent training’ for families of children with ADHD?

What is pathological demand avoidance?

British developmental psychologist Elizabeth Newson coined the term “pathological demand avoidance” (commonly shortened to PDA) in the 1980s after studying groups of children in her practice.

A 2021 systematic review noted features of PDA include resistance to everyday requests and strong emotional and behavioural reactions.

Children with PDA might show obsessive behaviour, struggle with persistence, and seek to control situations. They may struggle with attention and impulsivity, alongside motor and coordination difficulties, language delay and a tendency to retreat into role play or fantasy worlds.

PDA is also known as “extreme demand avoidance” and is often described as a subtype of autism. Some people prefer the term persistent drive for autonomy or pervasive drive for autonomy.

What does the evidence say?

Every clinician working with children and families recognises the behavioural profile described by PDA. The challenging question is why these behaviours emerge.

PDA is not currently listed in the two diagnostic manuals used in psychiatry and psychology to diagnose mental health and developmental conditions, the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) and the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11).

Researchers have reported concerns about the science behind PDA. There are no clear theories or explanations of why or how the profile of symptoms develop, and little inclusion of children or adults with lived experience of PDA symptoms in the studies. Environmental, family or other contextual factors that may contribute to behaviour have not been systematically studied.

A major limitation of existing PDA research and case studies is a lack of consideration of overlapping symptoms with other conditions, such as autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional defiant disorder, anxiety disorder, selective mutism and other developmental disorders. Diagnostic labels can have positive and negative consequences and so need to be thoroughly investigated before they are used in practice.

Classifying a “new” condition requires consistency across seven clinical and research aspects: epidemiological data, long-term patient follow-up, family inheritance, laboratory findings, exclusion from other conditions, response to treatment, and distinct predictors of outcome. At this stage, these domains have not been established for PDA. It is not clear whether PDA is different from other formal diagnoses or developmental differences.

Finding the why

Debates over classification don’t relieve distress for a child or those close to them. If a child is “intentionally” engaged in antisocial behaviour, the question is then “why?”

Beneath the behaviour is almost always developmental difference, genuine distress and difficulty coping. A broad and deep understanding of developmental processes is required.

Interestingly, while girls are “under-represented” in autism research, they are equally represented in studies characterising PDA. But if a child’s behaviour is only understood through a “pathologising” or diagnostic lens, there is a risk their agency may be reduced. Underlying experiences of distress, sensory overload, social confusion and feelings of isolation may be missed.

So, what can be done to help?

There are no empirical studies to date regarding PDA treatment strategies or their effectiveness. Clinical advice and case studies suggest strategies that may help include:

• reducing demands
• giving multiple options
• minimising expectations to avoid triggering avoidance
• engaging with interests to support regulation.

Early intervention in the preschool and primary years benefits children with complex developmental differences. Clinical care that involves a range of medical and allied health clinicians and considers the whole person is needed to ensure children and families get the support they need.

It is important to recognise these children often feel as frustrated and helpless as their caregivers. Both find themselves stuck in a repetitive cycle of distress, frustration and lack of progress. A personalised approach can take into account the child’s unique social, sensory and cognitive sensitivities.

In the preschool and early primary years, children have limited ability to manage their impulses or learn techniques for managing their emotions, relationships or environments. Careful watching for potential triggers and then working on timetables and routines, sleep, environments, tasks, and relationships can help.

As children move into later primary school and adolescence, they are more likely to want to influence others and be able to have more self control. As their autonomy and ability to collaborate increases, the problematic behaviours tend to reduce.

Strategies that build self-determination are crucial. They include opportunities for developing confidence, communication and more options to choose from when facing challenges. This therapeutic work with children and families takes time and needs to be revisited at different developmental stages. Support to engage in school and community activities is also needed. Each small step brings more capacity and more effective ways for a child to understand and manage themselves and their worlds.

Read more:
My kid is biting, hitting and kicking. I’m at my wit’s end, what can I do?

What about Charlie?

The current scope to explain and manage PDA is limited. Future research must include the voices and views of children and adults with PDA symptoms.

Such emotional and behavioural difficulties are distressing and difficult for children and families. They need compassion and practical help.

For a child like Charlie, this could look like a series of sessions where she and her parents meet with clinicians to explore Charlie’s perspective, experiences and triggers. The family might come to understand that, in addition to autism, Charlie has complex developmental strengths and challenges, anxiety, and some difficulties with adjustment related to stress at home and school. This means Charlie experiences a fight, flight, freeze response that looks like aggression, avoidance or shutting down.

With carefully planned supports at home and school, Charlie’s options can broaden and her distress and avoidance can soften. Outside the clinic room, Charlie and her family can be supported to join an inclusive local community sporting or creative activity. Gradually she can spend more time engaged at home, school and in the community.

Read more:
The National Autism Strategy is urgently needed. Does the government’s new draft do enough to help those in crisis?

Nicole Rinehart receives funding from: National Health and Medical Research Council, Aspen Pharma Australia, J&S Wenig Family Philanthropy, Krongold Family Philanthropy, MECCA M-Powered Collective, Victorian Department of Education, NSW Department of Education, Grace & Emilio Foundation, Moose Children’s Foundation, National Disability Insurance Scheme ILC-DSS, Ferrero Corporate Social Responsibility, Australian Football League, Queensland Ballet.

David Moseley receives funding from: National Health and Medical Research Council, Aspen Pharma Australia, J&S Wenig Family Philanthropy, Krongold Family Philanthropy, MECCA M-Powered Collective, Victorian Department of Education, NSW Department of Education, Grace & Emilio Foundation, Moose Children’s Foundation, National Disability Insurance Scheme ILC-DSS, Ferrero Corporate Social Responsibility, Australian Football League, Queensland Ballet.

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

– ref. What is pathological demand avoidance – and how is it different to ‘acting out’? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-pathological-demand-avoidance-and-how-is-it-different-to-acting-out-225170

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hendri Yulius Wijaya, PhD Student in Political Science (Joint Supervision with Business School), The University of Melbourne

Around the world, more and more companies are publishing sustainability reports – public scorecards detailing their impacts on society and the environment.

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports outline the positive and negative effects of a company’s activities, and the steps they’re taking in response.

Companies publish these reports as their own documents. But often, externally hired consultants play an invisible role in gathering data and framing it in a positive narrative the public will find easy to digest.

And getting these reports independently evaluated – “external assurance” – is still not required by many regulators around the world. As a result, they can allow companies to “greenwash”.

This could be by only disclosing information that makes a company look “sustainable” to the public. Or by only reporting on categories that paint them in a good light, and excluding the less flattering ones.

Read more:
How Australian companies can fudge their numbers to show social and environmental progress

The problems inherent in this process create a blind spot for society. We urgently need to shine a light on consultants’ unseen involvement in sustainability reporting.

The business of polishing ‘facts’

It’s increasingly becoming mandatory for large publicly traded companies to disclose their social and environmental performance, particularly across Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

In Australia, such reporting is voluntary, but widespread. As many as 98% of top Australian companies published sustainability reports last year. Consulting firms have quickly expanded their existing lines of service to capture this growing market opportunity.

Consultancies legitimise their expertise by offering businesses a range of frameworks and discourses. These convey the benefits of implementing sustainability measures and show how they could boost profitability.

But use of the firms has attracted heavy criticism.

One argument is that consulting firms actually undermine their own sustainability services by continuing to do work for major companies in polluting industries, such as the oil and gas sector.

Another is that consulting firms’ contributions to sustainability are largely superficial. It’s too easy for companies to engage them just to tick boxes – perhaps to meet certain global standards or frameworks in bad faith, or create the impression they are responsible companies in other ways.

Problems with the process

Drawing on the lead author’s previous experience as a sustainability reporting professional in Indonesia, we wanted to take a closer look at these criticisms.

To examine the issue properly, we need to recognise that a power imbalance can arise between external consultants and the companies that hire them when sustainability reports are treated as an end in themselves or “time-bound projects”.

This attitude stands in stark contrast to the continuous strategy of measurement and disclosure that is required to create meaningful change at a company.

First, with such a narrow view of reporting, consultants are treated as simply a service provider – they are hired to complete a report within a given timeframe. But this limits their exposure to a company’s overall operations. Consultants have to rely on information passed on to them by employees, or they distribute oversimplified, generic forms for the organisation’s members to quickly fill in.

Who they get to speak with to gather this information is also completely at the whim of their client. Under these constraints and tight deadlines, it’s difficult for them to perform meaningful data analysis.

Second, in practice, “reporting” often actually means “selecting which information shall and shall not be presented to the public”.

Using external consultants to prepare a report might seem like it would offer an unbiased or independent perspective. But the reports are heavily scrutinised by company management, who ultimately make the final decision about what to include.

And third, pressure to comply with certain regulations and standards can make companies shortsighted. Consultants are tasked with ensuring a company “ticks the box” and fulfils its reporting requirements. But if this is the primary incentive, the information presented can be superficial and lack context.

A deeper contextual analysis is necessary to describe what lies behind the raw numbers, including a company’s challenges, improvement targets and the path forward.

Read more:
Sustainability schemes deployed by business most often ineffective, research reveals

What needs to change?

Consultants can still play a key role in the global move to ESG reporting. But the industry’s approach needs to change.

For one, sustainability reports cover a wide range of ESG topics – from climate to social inclusion. It is impossible for a single consultant to tackle all of them simultaneously. Companies should ensure there is a diverse range of experts in the teams they hire.

More countries could also pass laws requiring “external assurance” – independent, standardised cross checking of companies’ sustainability reports.

Meanwhile, companies and consultants need to return to the underlying principle of sustainability reporting: it’s not just about producing marketing material. Faced with a very real global crisis, it’s a key way to measure the impacts, risks and challenges of doing business, and present a company’s action plan to address them.

It’s important to be sceptical when the information in a sustainability report only shows good performance. Nobody is perfect. Neither is any business.

Read more:
Explainer: what is corporate social responsibility or CSR – and what do investors need to know?

Hendri Yulius Wijaya is a member of the Indonesian Employers Association (APINDO)’s SMEs Sustainability Committee

Kate Macdonald 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. ‘Invisible’ consultants help companies write sustainability reports. Here’s why that’s a problem – https://theconversation.com/invisible-consultants-help-companies-write-sustainability-reports-heres-why-thats-a-problem-228092

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Natali Pearson, Senior Lecturer, Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, University of Sydney

A lot of the recent talk about maritime issues in Southeast Asia has focused on issues such as security, the Blue Economy, law enforcement and climate change. But there’s one maritime challenge that’s gone underdiscussed: underwater heritage.

We are co-investigators on a research project called Reuniting Cargoes: Underwater Cultural Heritage of the Maritime Silk Route.

Since the 1960s, Southeast Asia has seen a big rise in both commercial and illicit salvage of underwater cultural heritage. These items are often taken from unprotected sites and sold through middlemen and auction houses to collectors and museums. In this process, the connection to their original locations is lost or obscured, diminishing their cultural and historical significance.

This project aims to address that challenge by working out which object came from what shipwreck, and how it came to be out of the water and in collections.

To do this, we need to figure out where an item originally came from by applying the latest methods of archaeological science. Talking with local communities and authorities is another important way of gathering information about which shipwreck a particular object might have come from.

Learning more about and reconnecting items like this can change how communities relate to them. It can enhance everyone’s understanding of these artefacts beyond their commercial value.

Read more:
The race to save up to 50 shipwrecks from looters in Southeast Asia

What we are doing

We are studying two ceramic collections.

The first is in Australia, consisting of about 2,300 objects purchased from antique markets across Indonesia by a private collector over many decades.

The second is in Indonesia, consisting of about 230,000 objects. This collection was amassed by the Indonesian government and is now at a shipwreck artefact warehouse in Jakarta.

Our goal is to work out which shipwrecks the items came from.

Why?

Ancient shipwrecks, sunken cargoes and the submerged past are underwater cultural heritage.

A 2001 UNESCO convention prioritises protection and preservation of these sites, and international cooperation to achieve those goals. The central idea is that cultural heritage (including the kind found underwater) can help foster local, national and regional identity.

We see taking these “orphaned objects” languishing in private or institutional collections and reconnecting them with their original countries and communities as an important part of that broader goal.

Shipwrecks and their cargo can be sites of conflict

From South America to the South China Sea, state and non-state actors (such as curious tourists or people seeking to profit from shipwrecks) are making various claims on ancient shipwrecks. Some are motivated by nationalism, others by money.

It’s also important to remember local communities engage with heritage in unique ways. What makes sense to policy makers, scientists or communities in one place won’t always make sense to those in another place.

Our project seeks to reconnect “orphaned” objects – cultural objects that have been recovered unethically, illegally or in some other problematic way. One example is underwater sites that have been commercially salvaged (meaning items that were recovered and then sold for profit) rather than scientifically excavated.

Identifying the original find-spots for these orphaned objects won’t be without its scientific, political and legal challenges.

But challenges can also represent opportunities. This project requires collaboration between Indonesian and Australian project partners. That builds capacity on both sides. Along the way, we’re helping develop mechanisms that could guide the return of other heritage items more broadly to their places of origin.

Maritime heritage tourism and sustainable development

Shipwrecks are fascinating scientifically and historically. But they can also reveal local, national and international tensions.

Take, for example, the 9th century shipwreck discovered in 1998 in waters near Belitung Island, Indonesia. Indonesian laws at the time clearly allowed commercial operators to salvage shipwrecks in its territorial waters, even if this went against international standards established by UNESCO.

Then there’s the 18th century Spanish ship, the San José, which lies in the waters of the Caribbean and is the subject of a multi-country legal fight over who should get the treasure it carried.

On the other hand, shipwrecks have political value. They can bring people together around shared goals or identities. They can be better integrated into sustainable development strategies, including through community-based marine tourism.

Marine heritage tourism initiatives will enable local communities to benefit financially from heritage. Adopting environmentally sustainable practices can also help protect marine ecosystems and ensure the long-term viability of underwater cultural heritage.

This will help to grow local economies by offering different kinds of jobs, not just fishing, while also minimising underwater cultural heritage looting and illicit trafficking.

Successful initiatives along these lines are already underway in Indonesia, in places such as Karawang, Abang Island and Tidore.

Reconnecting orphaned objects

Orphaned objects have not received the attention they deserve.

Such objects are generally anathema to scholars, because of concerns that to study them is to legitimise them.

We agree there are important ethical considerations at play. But we also recognise these orphaned objects are a crucial part of broader geopolitical and maritime security debates.

To exclude them from scholarly study, as has largely been the case to date, is to risk missing an essential piece of the maritime puzzle.

Read more:
Ghost ships: why are World War II naval wrecks vanishing in Indonesia?

Natali Pearson receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australia-ASEAN Council.

Martin Polkinghorne receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Nia Naelul Hasanah Ridwan works for the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Republic of Indonesia.

Zainab Tahir works for the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries in Indonesia

– ref. Underwater cultural heritage: why we’re studying ‘orphaned objects’ to work out which shipwrecks they came from – https://theconversation.com/underwater-cultural-heritage-why-were-studying-orphaned-objects-to-work-out-which-shipwrecks-they-came-from-226322

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Ziegler, Collection Manager, Vertebrate Palaeontology, Museums Victoria Research Institute

Pitch-black darkness. Crushing squeezes, muddy passages, icy waterfalls. Bats and spiders. Abseiling over ledges into the unknown. How far would you go for a fossil?

On a two-year retrieval mission of nearly 60 hours in an underground cave, we met our limits – and went beyond.

The limestone slope of Potholes Cave Reserve is found in Gunaikurnai Country, north of the township of Buchan in eastern Victoria.

Here, the river valley is peppered with shadowy entrances to underground caves. Portals barely large enough to permit a willing caver open into kilometres of subterranean passages encrusted with delicate crystals twinkling in torchlight.

In one of them, Nightshade Cave, the Museums Victoria Research Institute led a team of recreational cavers and Parks Victoria rangers to excavate an extraordinary fossil: a near-complete skeleton of the extinct short-faced kangaroo Simosthenurus occidentalis. In June this year, it will appear on display at Melbourne Museum.

It started with an unusual skull

As is so often the case in palaeontology, the discovery began with engaged citizens out in nature. In 2011, a local caving group first entered Nightshade Cave through an opening previously blocked by soil. One of the group, Joshua Van Dyk, sighted an unusual animal skull.

Recognising its potential significance, he reported the find to Melbourne Museum. However, Van Dyk reckoned it was irretrievable, appearing to be crushed under boulders in a narrow vertical collapse. The cave was gated shut to protect its contents, and a decade passed quietly.

In 2021, I took an interest in the intriguing find. Members of the Victorian Speleological Association were only too happy to assist a return to the cave.

Rigging a ropeline, we abseiled down a tight ten-metre rift, emptying our lungs to pass tight points in midair. We corkscrewed into a narrow passage and wormed, single-file, through low-domed chambers hung with dripping stalactites and plastered by popcorn-like calcite formations.

Descending deeper, the cave transformed into tall, narrow, clean-walled rifts, full of dark recesses. Hours passed as we circuited the passages, until a shout echoed around: found again! We scrambled to a chimney-like chute stacked with pinned boulders, to come eye to eye with an ancient.

On reaching it, I felt sudden grief: the beautiful fossilised skull had in the intervening years begun to collapse. It seemed that, despite its long survival, the fossil was newly vulnerable – from little more than the altered air currents and changing humidity caused by the new cave entrance.

We strengthened the exposed bones with protective resins, but exited the cave having left them in place: more time would be needed to plan their retrieval.

A painstaking retrieval

On our return trips, I carefully brushed away fine layers of mud and we photographed and packed the newly freed fossils. The skull had a deep muzzle, with robust jaws and teeth that marked it as a short-faced (sthenurine) kangaroo.

Behind it were more bones. It was a marvel to see vertebrae, shoulders and hips, limbs and a narrow ribcage: many of the bones were wholly undisturbed and still in their original positions. This was a single animal, not a random scattering of bones. It felt like a fossil holy grail.

A detailed comparison to fossils in the Museums Victoria State Collection gave our skeleton its identification as Simosthenurus occidentalis. Comprising 150 preserved bones, it is the most complete fossil skeleton found in a Victorian cave to date.

That it is a juvenile rather than adult kangaroo further distinguishes it from other examples of the species. Its teeth show little wear, its skull bones are still unfused, and its limb ends had not yet joined, suggesting it was still young at its time of death.

From the size of its limbs, we estimate it weighed around 80 kilograms – as much as an average person – but might have grown half as large again had it reached adulthood.

Australia’s extinct megafauna

Short-faced kangaroos appear in Australia’s fossil record from 10 to 15 million years ago, as widespread rainforests began to give way to drier habitats. They became particularly diverse during the shift toward our current arid climate in the later part of the Pleistocene Epoch, from around 500,000 years ago.

But in a pulse of extinction around 45,000 years ago, they vanished across the continent, along with up to 85% of Australia’s megafauna. Radiocarbon dating by the Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organisation dated the skeleton’s burial to 49,400 years ago. This means our S. occidentalis was among the very last of its kind.

Today, the hills of eastern Gippsland host a precious population of the brush-tailed rock-wallaby, a vulnerable species. Once, they shared the country with larger kin.

A key idea under investigation is whether sthenurine kangaroos walked with a striding gait, rather than hopped. The skeleton we found has a uniquely complete vertebral column, providing new insights we couldn’t get from isolated bones. With the benefit of detailed 3D models, this near-complete skeleton can also be studied from anywhere in the world.

This fossil, along with others from Nightshade Cave, is now housed and cared for in perpetuity at Melbourne Museum. Through Museums Victoria Research Institute, we can preserve a link to its once home of East Gippsland, while opening a door to global research.

Tim Ziegler received funding from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) for radiocarbon dating analysis. He is affiliated with the Victorian Speleological Association.

– ref. We spent 2 years in deep underground caves to bring this extraordinary fossil to light – https://theconversation.com/we-spent-2-years-in-deep-underground-caves-to-bring-this-extraordinary-fossil-to-light-226629

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nalini Joshi, Professor of Mathematics, University of Sydney

Imagine the tap of a card that bought you a cup of coffee this morning also let a hacker halfway across the world access your bank account and buy themselves whatever they liked. Now imagine it wasn’t a one-off glitch, but it happened all the time: imagine the locks that secure our electronic data suddenly stopped working.

This is not a science fiction scenario. It may well become a reality when sufficiently powerful quantum computers come online. These devices will use the strange properties of the quantum world to untangle secrets that would take ordinary computers more than a lifetime to decipher.

We don’t know when this will happen. However, many people and organisations are already concerned about so-called “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, in which cybercriminals or other adversaries steal encrypted data now and store it away for the day when they can decrypt it with a quantum computer.

As the advent of quantum computers grows closer, cryptographers are trying to devise new mathematical schemes to secure data against their hypothetical attacks. The mathematics involved is highly complex – but the survival of our digital world may depend on it.

‘Quantum-proof’ encryption

The task of cracking much current online security boils down to the mathematical problem of finding two numbers that, when multiplied together, produce a third number. You can think of this third number as a key that unlocks the secret information. As this number gets bigger, the amount of time it takes an ordinary computer to solve the problem becomes longer than our lifetimes.

Future quantum computers, however, should be able to crack these codes much more quickly. So the race is on to find new encryption algorithms that can stand up to a quantum attack.

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology has been calling for proposed “quantum-proof” encryption algorithms for years, but so far few have withstood scrutiny. (One proposed algorithm, called Supersingular Isogeny Key Encapsulation, was dramatically broken in 2022 with the aid of Australian mathematical software called Magma, developed at the University of Sydney.)

The race has been hotting up this year. In February, Apple updated the security system for the iMessage platform to protect data that may be harvested for a post-quantum future.

Two weeks ago, scientists in China announced they had installed a new “encryption shield” to protect the Origin Wukong quantum computer from quantum attacks.

Around the same time, cryptographer Yilei Chen announced he had found a way quantum computers could attack an important class of algorithms based on the mathematics of lattices, which were considered some of the hardest to break. Lattice-based methods are part of Apple’s new iMessage security, as well as two of the three frontrunners for a standard post-quantum encryption algorithm.

What is a lattice-based algorithm?

A lattice is an arrangement of points in a repeating structure, like the corners of tiles in a bathroom or the atoms in a diamond crystal. The tiles are two dimensional and the atoms in diamond are three dimensional, but mathematically we can make lattices with many more dimensions.

Most lattice-based cryptography is based on a seemingly simple question: if you hide a secret point in such a lattice, how long will it take someone else to find the secret location starting from some other point? This game of hide and seek can underpin many ways to make data more secure.

A variant of the lattice problem called “learning with errors” is considered to be too hard to break even on a quantum computer. As the size of the lattice grows, the amount of time it takes to solve is believed to increase exponentially, even for a quantum computer.

Read more:
Has a mathematician solved the ‘invariant subspace problem’? And what does that even mean?

The lattice problem – like the problem of finding the factors of a large number on which so much current encryption depends – is closely related to a deep open problem in mathematics called the “hidden subgroup problem”.

Yilei Chen’s approach suggested quantum computers may be able to solve lattice-based problems more quickly under certain conditions. Experts scrambled to check his results – and rapidly found an error. After the error was discovered, Chen published an updated version of his paper describing the flaw.

Despite this discovery, Chen’s paper has made many cryptographers less confident in the security of lattice-based methods. Some are still assessing whether Chen’s ideas can be extended to new pathways for attacking these methods.

More mathematics required

Chen’s paper set off a storm in the small community of cryptographers who are equipped to understand it. However, it received almost no attention in the wider world – perhaps because so few people understand this kind of work or its implications.

Last year, when the Australian government published a national quantum strategy to make the country “a leader of the global quantum industry” where “quantum technologies are integral to a prosperous, fair and inclusive Australia”, there was an important omission: it didn’t mention mathematics at all.

Read more:
What is quantum advantage? A quantum computing scientist explains an approaching milestone marking the arrival of extremely powerful computers

Australia does have many leading experts in quantum computing and quantum information science. However, making the most of quantum computers – and defending against them – will require deep mathematical training to produce new knowledge and research.

Nalini Joshi 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. Mind-bending maths could stop quantum hackers, but few understand it – https://theconversation.com/mind-bending-maths-could-stop-quantum-hackers-but-few-understand-it-228191

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brigid McCarthy, Lecturer in Journalism, La Trobe University

Sports media misogyny was alive and well this month.

In just the few short weeks it took for star United States basketball players Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese to shoot their way from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Sweet 16 to the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) draft, two different sport reporters found themselves publicly apologising for their coverage of the women.

First, Los Angeles Times reporter Ben Bolch sparked criticism for describing Reese’s Louisiana State University (LSU) team as “dirty debutantes” in a since-redacted NCAA championships match-up preview.

LSU coach Kim Mulkey lambasted the article and those who failed to criticise it. “If you don’t think that’s sexism, then you’re in denial,” she said.

The Times quickly retracted the comments and Bolch posted an apology with a promise to “do better”.

This didn’t stop Indianapolis Star columnist Gregg Doyel from learning a similar lesson after he engaged in an inappropriate exchange with WNBA number 1 draft pick Clarke at a press conference, prompting yet another apology.

An issue closer to home, too

Australia is no stranger to these moments. It’s still hard to believe it was in this century that The Age columnist Greg Baum wrote “women’s soccer is a joke … women’s cricket is not much better”.

We also saw Kim Clijsters calling out Todd Woodbridge about an inappropriate text about her body, and an Australian Open commentator asking Canadian tennis player Eugenie Bouchard to give him “a twirl”.

Just last year, Australian cricketer Maitlin Brown endured a sidelines reporter labelling her a “little Barbie”.

And it’s not just female athletes who cop it, either. In 2022, AFL journalist Tom Morris was sacked over leaked sexist and homophobic comments he made about a female colleague.

Read more:
From forced kisses to power imbalances, violence against women in sport is endemic

Problems in a male-dominated industry

The issue is glaringly obvious. Contemporary sports media is overwhelmingly male.

Only 10% of Australian sports reporters are women (and the United States and Canadian stats are not much better).

Women are consistently reminded that sport is the territory of men, and that those who enter it are subject primarily to men’s perspectives and, too often, ridicule.

While the overt sexualisation and trivialisation that once routinely shaped women’s sport coverage is less common, some subtle but no less harmful forms of marginalisation remain.

Women’s sports are significantly less likely to receive deep analysis than men’s. Coverage tends to emphasise effort over performance and men are significantly more likely to be characterised as “well-liked”.

Sometimes it’s even unintended, and veiled by praise. For example, my study of media coverage of girl skateboarding “prodigies” at the Tokyo Olympics found that while the media celebrated the teen medallists as evidence of “girl power” at work, the coverage largely ignored the structural issues that still impact many women’s progress in skating and beyond.

Read more:
Is this the dawn of a new era in women’s sports?

What is the solution?

Women researchers and journalists have been offering the solution for years: we need more women’s voices in sports coverage.

Diverse perspectives can create better outcomes for women – just ask the medical research sector. Sport media need the voices of women who are not just experts in their sport, but know what it’s like to be a woman playing that sport.

We’ve already been given glimpses of the magic that can happen when women are moved from the sidelines to the desk.

During the same NCAA competition that saw two reporters apologise, ESPN assembled an all-women panel of former players and sports journalists to analyse the tournament.

The trio received considerable praise for coverage of an event that would culminate in ESPN’s most-viewed match (men’s or women’s) on record.

What was so illustrative of the power of women’s perspectives was the panel’s preview of Clark and Reese’s face-off in the Sweet 16, which would also set viewership records.

Moments before the game began, the trio took a moment to nod to the sport’s past players, telling them that because they built the game, this was their night, too.

This could only come from women who know what it is like to play and report a sport that has historically struggled for attention and respect.

Australia got its own peek at the possibilities in March when an all-woman commentary team covered an A-League round – a first for any Australian professional league.

Still, commentator Kate Allman said she was unsurprised it had taken until 2024 to get there, given the “labyrinth of glass ceilings” she’d encountered during her career.

Now, we storm towards yet another Olympics, one likely to result in success for Aussie women on the soccer field, basketball court, in the pool and more.

We need to see more women covering their efforts. And we need more mentoring initiatives to demonstrate to young women the possibilities of a sport media career.

It’s an opportunity to show that sports media can belong to women, too. And that they can play a part in improving coverage for the athletes who deserve better.

Brigid McCarthy 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. Women’s sport is soaring, and old-school male sports journalists need to lift their game – https://theconversation.com/womens-sport-is-soaring-and-old-school-male-sports-journalists-need-to-lift-their-game-228404

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacob Crouse, Research Fellow in Youth Mental Health, Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney

The core experiences of depression – changes in energy, activity, thinking and mood – have been described for more than 10,000 years. The word “depression” has been used for about 350 years.

Given this long history, it may surprise you that experts don’t agree about what depression is, how to define it or what causes it.

But many experts do agree that depression is not one thing. It’s a large family of illnesses with different causes and mechanisms. This makes choosing the best treatment for each person challenging.

Read more:
Families including someone with mental illness can experience deep despair. They need support

Reactive vs endogenous depression

One strategy is to search for sub-types of depression and see whether they might do better with different kinds of treatments. One example is contrasting “reactive” depression with “endogenous” depression.

Reactive depression (also thought of as social or psychological depression) is presented as being triggered by exposure to stressful life events. These might be being assaulted or losing a loved one – an understandable reaction to an outside trigger.

Endogenous depression (also thought of as biological or genetic depression) is proposed to be caused by something inside, such as genes or brain chemistry.

Many people working clinically in mental health accept this sub-typing. You might have read about this online.

But we think this approach is way too simple.

While stressful life events and genes may, individually, contribute to causing depression, they also interact to increase the risk of someone developing depression. And evidence shows that there is a genetic component to being exposed to stressors. Some genes affect things such as personality. Some affect how we interact with our environments.

What we did and what we found

Our team set out to look at the role of genes and stressors to see if classifying depression as reactive or endogenous was valid.

In the Australian Genetics of Depression Study, people with depression answered surveys about exposure to stressful life events. We analysed DNA from their saliva samples to calculate their genetic risk for mental disorders.

Our question was simple. Does genetic risk for depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, ADHD, anxiety and neuroticism (a personality trait) influence people’s reported exposure to stressful life events?

You may be wondering why we bothered calculating the genetic risk for mental disorders in people who already have depression. Every person has genetic variants linked to mental disorders. Some people have more, some less. Even people who already have depression might have a low genetic risk for it. These people may have developed their particular depression from some other constellation of causes.

We looked at the genetic risk of conditions other than depression for a couple of reasons. First, genetic variants linked to depression overlap with those linked to other mental disorders. Second, two people with depression may have completely different genetic variants. So we wanted to cast a wide net to look at a wider spectrum of genetic variants linked to mental disorders.

If reactive and endogenous depression sub-types are valid, we’d expect people with a lower genetic component to their depression (the reactive group) would report more stressful life events. And we’d expect those with a higher genetic component (the endogenous group) would report fewer stressful life events.

But after studying more than 14,000 people with depression we found the opposite.

We found people at higher genetic risk for depression, anxiety, ADHD or schizophrenia say they’ve been exposed to more stressors.

Assault with a weapon, sexual assault, accidents, legal and financial troubles, and childhood abuse and neglect, were all more common in people with a higher genetic risk of depression, anxiety, ADHD or schizophrenia.

These associations were not strongly influenced by people’s age, sex or relationships with family. We didn’t look at other factors that may influence these associations, such as socioeconomic status. We also relied on people’s memory of past events, which may not be accurate.

Read more:
Do kids grow out of ADHD as they get older?

How do genes play a role?

Genetic risk for mental disorders changes people’s sensitivity to the environment.

Imagine two people, one with a high genetic risk for depression, one with a low risk. They both lose their jobs. The genetically vulnerable person experiences the job loss as a threat to their self-worth and social status. There is a sense of shame and despair. They can’t bring themselves to look for another job for fear of losing it too. For the other, the job loss feels less about them and more about the company. These two people internalise the event differently and remember it differently.

Genetic risk for mental disorders also might make it more likely people find themselves in environments where bad things happen. For example, a higher genetic risk for depression might affect self-worth, making people more likely to get into dysfunctional relationships which then go badly.

Read more:
Many suicides are related to gambling. How can we tackle this problem?

What does our study mean for depression?

First, it confirms genes and environments are not independent. Genes influence the environments we end up in, and what then happens. Genes also influence how we react to those events.

Second, our study doesn’t support a distinction between reactive and endogenous depression. Genes and environments have a complex interplay. Most cases of depression are a mix of genetics, biology and stressors.

Third, people with depression who appear to have a stronger genetic component to their depression report their lives are punctuated by more serious stressors.

So clinically, people with higher genetic vulnerability might benefit from learning specific techniques to manage their stress. This might help some people reduce their chance of developing depression in the first place. It might also help some people with depression reduce their ongoing exposure to stressors.

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

Ian Hickie is the co-director of Health and Policy at the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney, which operates early-intervention youth services at Camperdown under contract to Headspace; has previously led community-based and projects supported by the pharmaceutical industry (Wyeth, Eli Lily, Servier, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Janssen, Cilag), focused on the identification and better management of anxiety and depression; and is the Chief Scientific Advisor to, and a 3·2% equity shareholder in, InnoWell, which aims to transform mental health services through the use of innovative technologies.

Jacob Crouse 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. We looked at genetic clues to depression in more than 14,000 people. What we found may surprise you – https://theconversation.com/we-looked-at-genetic-clues-to-depression-in-more-than-14-000-people-what-we-found-may-surprise-you-227779

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Wilson, PhD Candidate in Quantum Technology & Innovation Governance, Institue for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

A landmark legal settlement has once again focused our attention on the dangers of “forever chemicals”.

This class of chemicals, technically known as per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are widely used to make nonstick or waterproof products. The problem is, the chemicals move easily around the environment, pollute groundwater and rivers, are often carcinogenic – and they don’t degrade.

This month, one of the largest makers of these chemicals, 3M, had its offer of A$16 billion to clean up PFAS-contaminated waterways approved by a US court. It’s just the latest in a series of PFAS lawsuits across the United States.

While increased attention is welcome, there’s no guarantee of success. Removing and destroying PFAS from wastewater streams across a single US state, Minnesota, would cost a minimum of $21 billion over 20 years. Globally, a recent report by the chemical safety nonprofit ChemSec found the costs of PFAS remediation alone amount to around $26 trillion per year – not including rising healthcare costs from exposure to PFAS, or damage to the environment. The 3M settlement is just the tip of the iceberg.

The problem now is how to actually clean up these chemicals – and prevent further pollution.

Remediation is expensive – and uncertain

In Australia, contamination is worst in firefighter training grounds and on defence force bases, due to the long-term use of firefighting foams full of PFAS. The discovery of this contamination triggered a wave of lawsuits. The Department of Defence has since paid out more than $366 million in class action lawsuits.

Defence has also assumed responsibility for managing, remediating and monitoring PFAS contamination on and around its bases. In 2021, the department began to actively set about remediation.

Read more:
Removing PFAS from public water systems will cost billions and take time – here are ways you can filter out harmful ‘forever chemicals’ at home

That sounds promising – find the pollution and fix the problem. But the reality is much more complicated.

A 2022 parliamentary inquiry described PFAS remediation as an emerging and experimental industry.

This is correct. There’s a great deal of basic scientific research we have to do. This is not a simple problem. These chemicals seep into the soil and groundwater – and stay there. It’s hard to get them out.

As a result, most remediation work at defence bases to date has been part of research and development, rather than a wide-scale permanent cleanup.

To help, the defence department has brought in three major industry partners, including Emerging Compounds Treatment Technologies. We don’t know how they are doing the cleanup or if their methods work, as this information is not publicly accessible. The three companies have sought intellectual property protection to support their technological advantage in the growing PFAS remediation market.

One of the companies, Venetia, told the parliamentary inquiry:

[there] are still significant gaps in knowledge in keys areas such as human health toxicology, PFAS behaviour in the environment and remediation of PFAS in soil and water

PFAS is a much bigger problem

Significant PFAS contamination has now been reported in:

– Melbourne’s West Gate Tunnel construction site. Soil contamination at the most polluted site is hundreds of times worse than a threshold set by the state’s environmental protection agency

– Western Australian mines

– WA waste management facilities

– Southeast Queensland water reclamation plants

– Perth’s public and private airports

– Operating and closed landfills.

The full extent of PFAS contamination in Australia is still emerging. Recent research has found Australia is one of several toxic hotspots for PFAS, relative to the rest of the world.

Worse, current monitoring practices are likely to be underestimating how much PFAS is lingering in the environment, given we usually only track a handful of these chemicals – out of more than 16,000.

Experts have called for:

improved understanding of the range of PFAS embodied in consumer and industrial products […] to assess the environmental burden and develop mitigation measures

The more we look, the more alarming the picture appears. Emerging research has found PFAS in consumer products such as cosmetics, packaging, waterproofing, inks, pesticides, medical articles, polishes and paints, metal plating, pipes and cables, mechanical components, electronics, solar cells, textiles and carpets.

The size and complexity of PFAS contamination suggests we are in for a very long and expensive process to begin cleaning it up – especially given we are still making and using these chemicals.

Read more:
Controversial ‘forever chemicals’ could be phased out in Australia under new restrictions. Here’s what you need to know

How should we respond?

To start addressing the problem, here are three important steps.

1. Introduce a “polluter pays” principle.

The introduction of this concept is what forced 3M to pay up in the US. Australia has yet to follow suit, which is why the public has been footing the bill. If we introduce this legal principle, manufacturers will have to take responsibility. This would make it much less attractive for companies to make polluting products – and shift the burden from taxpayers to the companies responsible. Australia’s government is considering pursuing similar legal action against 3M.

2. Set PFAS contamination standards in line with other OECD countries, or better.

Earlier this month, the US implemented the first legally enforceable national drinking water standards for five PFAS compounds and two PFAS mixtures. Australia’s current acceptable drinking water guidelines allow up to 140 times more PFAS in our water than these strict new US standards. In the US, these new standards are drawing new investment in remediation.

3. Take it seriously.

For years, many of us thought all you had to do to avoid PFAS was not to buy nonstick pans. But these chemicals are now everywhere. They’re highly persistent and don’t leave our bodies easily. Every single person on the planet is now likely to have detectable levels of PFAS in their blood. Reducing this dangerous chemical load is going to take a lot of work to clean up existing hotspots, stop further production, and prevent recirculation of PFAS in recycled products or in our food.

The 3M settlement is a good start. But it’s only a start. Tackling this problem is going to be hard, but necessary.

Read more:
PFAS: how research is uncovering damaging effects of ‘forever chemicals’

Rachael Wakefield-Rann receives research funding from various government and non-government organisations. She does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would financially benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond her academic appointment.

Sarah Wilson 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. Chemicals, forever: how do you fix a problem like PFAS? – https://theconversation.com/chemicals-forever-how-do-you-fix-a-problem-like-pfas-227771

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Davies, Professor and Head of School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia

Australians are having fewer babies, so many fewer that without international migration our population would be on track to decline in just over a decade.

In most circumstances, the number of babies per woman that a population needs to sustain itself – the so-called total fertility rate – is 2.1.

Australia’s total fertility rate dipped below 2.1 in the late 1970s, moved back up towards it in the late 2000s (assisted in part by an improving economy, better access to childcare and the introduction of the Commonwealth Baby Bonus), and then plunged again, hitting a low of 1.59 during the first year of COVID.

The latest population projections from the Australian Bureau of Statistics assume the rate remains near its present 1.6% for the next 50 years.

An alternative, lower, set of assumptions has the rate falling to 1.45 over the next five years and staying there. A higher set of assumptions has it rebounding to 1.75 and staying there.

A comprehensive study of global fertility trends published in March in the medical journal The Lancet has Australia’s central case at 1.45, followed by a fall to 1.33 by the end of the century.

Significantly, none of these assumptions envisages a return to replacement rate.

The bureau’s central projection has Australia’s population turning down from 2037 in the absence of a boost from migration.

It’s easy to make guesses about reasons. Reliable contraception has been widely available for 50 years. Rents, mortgages and the other costs facing Australians of child-bearing age appear to be climbing. It’s still difficult to have a career if you have a child, and data show women still carry the substantive burden of unpaid work around the home.

The US fertility rate has fallen much in line with Australia’s.

Reporting on research into the reasons, Forbes Magazine succinctly
said a broken economy had “screwed over” Americans considering having children.

More diplomatically, it said Americans saw parenthood as “harder to manage” than they might have in the past.

Half the world is unable to replace itself

But this trend is widespread. The Lancet study finds more than half of the world’s countries have a fertility rate below replacement level.

China, which is important for the global fertility rate because it makes up such a large share of the world’s population, had a fertility rate as high as 7.5 in the early 1960s. It fell to 2.5 before the start of China’s one-child policy in the early 1990s, and then slid further from 1.8 to 1 after the policy was abandoned in 2016.

South Korea’s fertility rate has dived further, to the world’s lowest: 0.72.

The fertility rate in India, which is now more populous than China, has also fallen below replacement level.

Most of the 94 nations that continue to have above-replacement fertility rates are in North Africa, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. Some, including Samoa
and Papua New Guinea, are in the Pacific.

Most of Asia, Europe and Oceania is already below replacement rate.

A changing world order

The largest high-fertility African nation, Nigeria, is expected to overtake China to become the world’s second-most-populous nation by the end of the century.

But even Nigeria’s fertility rate will sink. The Lancet projections have it sliding from 4.7 to 1.87 by the end of the century.

The differences mean the world’s population growth will increasingly take place in countries that are among the most vulnerable to environmental and economic hardship.

Already economically disadvantaged, these nations will need to provide jobs, housing, healthcare and services for rapidly growing populations at a time when the rest of the world does not.

On the other hand, those nations will be blessed with young people. They will be an increasingly valuable resource as other nations face the challenges of an ageing population and declining workforce.

An older world, then a smaller world

Global fertility halved between 1950 and 2021, shrinking from 4.84 to 2.23.

The latest projections have it sinking below the replacement rate to somewhere between 1.59 and 2.08 by 2050, and then to between 1.25 and 1.96 by 2100.

The world has already seen peak births and peak primary-school-aged children.

In 2016, the world welcomed about 142 million live babies, and since then the number born each year has fallen. By 2021, it was about 129 million.

The global school-age population aged 6 to 11 years peaked at around 820 million in 2023.

The United Nations expects the world’s population to peak at 10.6 billion in 2086, after which it will begin to fall.

Another forecast, produced as part of the impressive Global Burden of Disease study, has the peak occurring two decades earlier in 2064, with the world’s population peaking at 9.73 billion.

Fewer babies are a sign of success

In many ways, a smaller world is to be welcomed.

The concern common in the 1960s and 1970s that the world’s population was growing faster and faster and the world would soon be unable to feed itself has turned out to be misplaced.

Aside from occasional blips (China’s birth rate in the Year of the Dragon) the fertility trend in just about every nation on Earth is downwards.

The world’s population hasn’t been growing rapidly for long. Before 1700 it grew by only about 0.4% per year. By 2100 it will have stabilised and started to fall, limiting the period of unusually rapid growth to four centuries.

In an important way, lower birth rates can be seen as a sign of success. The richer a society becomes and the more it is able to look after its seniors, the less important it becomes for each couple to have children to care for them in old age. This is a long-established theory with a name: the demographic transition.

Read more:
With one exception, the Intergenerational Report is far less scary than you’ve heard

For Australia, even with forecast immigration, lower fertility will mean changes.

The government’s 2023 Intergenerational Report says that whereas there are now 3.7 Australians of traditional working age for each Australian aged 65 and over, by 2063 there will only be 2.6.

It will mean those 2.6 people will have to work smarter, perhaps with greater assistance from artificial intelligence.

Unless they decide to have more babies, which history suggests they won’t.

Amanda Davies currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council and CRC Transformation in Mining Economies

– ref. Australians are having fewer babies and our local-born population is about to shrink: here’s why it’s not that scary – https://theconversation.com/australians-are-having-fewer-babies-and-our-local-born-population-is-about-to-shrink-heres-why-its-not-that-scary-228273

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Oscar, Senior Lecturer, Visual Communication, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney

Since last year, I have been working on a project with my Thai mother who migrated to Australia in 1974 while pregnant with me. There are no photographs of this significant event. As a reparative act to fill in the gaps of our family archive, I used a generative AI platform to create photographs of my mother’s migration story, a project I called Counterfactual Departures.

To conjure photographs in MidJourney, I collected information to engineer a range of prompts. I noted details of my mother’s departure from Thailand – her age, the location, her clothing and the trimester of her pregnancy. I also included my own interpretation of how she would have felt as a 30-year-old woman travelling alone to white Australia in the 1970s. She spoke little English and had no family or friends of her own to begin life with my father, who she barely knew.

My attempts to piece together the past using data sets scraped from the collective archive of the internet have led me to question the role photography and memory might play in this new era of generative AI.

MidJourney and the ‘mean image’

MidJourney, like other AI image-generating platforms, creates images based on aggregates of data trawled from millions of online source photographs.

While they are not strictly photographs, AI-generated images read like photographs, look like photographs, are compared to photographs and challenge our philosophical understanding of photographs.

As relatives of photography, they are associated with qualities like pastness and memory, or even, as photographic theorist Joanna Zylinska suggests, as perceptual devices that can show us the future.

The problem that emerges out of generating images from photographic data sets is the way information is aggregated to form an image as a statistical average. As artist Hito Steyerl has observed:

They represent the norm by signalling the mean. They replace likenesses with likelinesses […] in style and substance they are: mean images.

By sampling from a range of information sources and creating composites, MidJourney accentuates the most prominent features of a dataset, this mean.

The first photographs produced of my mother illustrated this tendency. In the image, my mother and I (in utero) stand in an oversized grey suit, looking out of the frame in a parking lot among suitcases and a wasteland of plastic bags. We appear to be somewhere in Los Angeles, rendered in the style of staged photography. Generated from the statistical mean of data sets, they could also be described adjectivally as mean.

Looking back on these early photographs, part of the project’s problem was my over-emphasis on how the past should have looked. To shift the way this event was represented as a statistical mean of racial stereotypes, I had to place less emphasis on the generated image and turn image generation into a generative process of dialogue and discussion.

Read more:
Education should look to the way artists are embracing AI, instead of turning its back on the technology

Memory-work as a generative method

The conversations we have about a photograph, whether real or not, can constitute a form of memory-work. Memory-work refers to how we process memories through the social relations we build around artefacts, such as photographs, text, objects or family albums. It is a valuable method for artists who deal with events outside of history because the process of art making serves a reparative function.

For cultural historian Annette Kuhn this cultivates dialogue about the past. She writes, memory-work means we can look at photographs as:

material for interpretation, to be interrogated, mined, for its meanings and its possibilities.

By shifting my emphasis from the generative image to the dialogue it generated, I began performing the act of memory-work. Images were used to generate conversations about this significant event. This created space to identify a gap between my imaginative recreation of events, my mother’s memories and the mean image generated by AI.

This collaborative process between my mother, AI and me has been revelatory. It has allowed me to fill the gaps in our family biography playfully. It has given my mother an opportunity to say, “no, it wasn’t like that, I came to Australia with dignity” and to recognise racial stereotypes of representation.

AI has the potential to create proxy representations of us and to create a dialogue around significant events and life experiences.

From moral panic to collaboration

Much moral panic around generated images has been fuelled in the media by an inability to discern between the real and the fake.

Mimicry, whether contributing to false memory, fake news, breaches of copyright, or the replacement of humans with machine labour, is at the centre of this debate.

But what if generative AI were able to be put to use as a tool of memory-work, to facilitate dialogue and interaction? This approach reconnects AI-generated images with earlier social and cultural practices of photography. It offers a more intimate example of what AI can do.

Read more:
Synthetic futures: my journey into the emotional, poetic world of AI art making

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

– ref. I had no photos of my mother’s pregnancy and migration, so I found a way for AI to help fill in the gaps – https://theconversation.com/i-had-no-photos-of-my-mothers-pregnancy-and-migration-so-i-found-a-way-for-ai-to-help-fill-in-the-gaps-225559

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

Tackling violence against women will be the sole agenda item for a national cabinet meeting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has convened for Wednesday.

The meeting, held remotely, follows thousands of Australians attending rallies across the country, as community anger surges over the horrific number of women killed so far this year.

One topic is expected to be bail laws. NSW already has an inquiry, after a man charged with crimes against a woman was granted bail and then allegedly killed her.

Albanese was at the Canberra rally on Sunday, where he received some heckling. He was accompanied by the Minister for Woman Katy Gallagher and the Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth.

“We are here today to demand that governments of all levels must do better, including my own, including every state and territory government,” the Prime Minister told the crowd.

“We’re here as well to say that society, and Australia, must do better.

“We need to change the culture. We need to change attitudes. We need to change the legal system. We need to change the approach by all governments – because it’s not enough to support victims.

“We need to focus on the perpetrators and focus on prevention.”

National cabinet would “talk about what we can do, including as part of the national plan to end violence against women and children, where in the first two budgets, we’ve added $2.3 billion,” Albanese said.

He said, “I know that we all must do better,” but “it’s not just governments’ problem. It’s a problem of our entire society” and a “a national crisis”.

“We need to make sure that this isn’t just up to women. It’s up to men to change men’s behaviour as well.”

The federal government has rejected calls for a royal commission into the issue, saying it already has a plan.

Rishworth told Sky on Sunday that victim survivors and many experts had had input into that plan. “So we believe we need to get on with the job.

“We have a Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner and Commission that our government stood up. That role is incredibly important in monitoring. We believe we just need to continue to have this sustained effort. We believe that is what will make the difference,” she said.

In the latest incident, in Perth a 35-year-old man was charged with murdering a 30-year-old mother late last week.

A police statement said: “It will be alleged […] the accused physically assaulted the victim at their shared home on Currie Street [in Perth]”.

“It will be further alleged the accused set the property alight while the victim was still inside.” The woman was later found dead.

So far this year 27 women have died in gender-based violence in Australia.

eSafety review opens public consultations

Meanwhile, amid growing concern about the negative effects of social media (including its contribution to gender-based violence) and the government’s fight with Elon Musk over the post of the Assyrian church stabbing, public consultations are opening on strengthening eSafety laws. An issues paper is being released on Monday.

A review by Delia Rickard, a former deputy chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, is underway. She has already been consulting academics, civil society and government departments and agencies to determine issues, the review’s are scope and the public consultation processes.

“The Review is considering the effectiveness of the current framework, including whether more powers are needed to address new and emerging harms,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said.

It is also looking at “options to reduce harms caused by online hate, as well as new harms raised by emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence”.

Among the matters the issues paper raises are

• further steps to ensure the industry acts in children’s best interests

• adequacy of existing penalties and enforcement powers

• accessibility of laws and regulations dealing with online content and harms, and

• international developments in online safety regulation, including whether a new duty of care should be imposed on digital platforms.

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. National cabinet to meet on violence against women, with Albanese saying everyone ‘must do better’ – https://theconversation.com/national-cabinet-to-meet-on-violence-against-women-with-albanese-saying-everyone-must-do-better-228873