Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Walldorf, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Wake Forest University

Little has seemingly gone as Washington planned in the war against Iran.

The Iranian people have not risen up, one hard-line leader has been replaced by another, Iranian missiles and drones keep hitting targets across the Middle East, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, driving oil and gas prices up worldwide, and in sharp contrast to Trump’s demand for “unconditional surrender,” Tehran has rejected a 15-point U.S. plan for a ceasefire.

So how did things go so wrong?

As a scholar who researches U.S. forever wars, I believe the answer is simple: Trump, like other U.S. presidents before him, has fallen into what I call the trap of asymmetric resolve. In short, this occurs when a stronger power with less determination to fight starts a military conflict with a far weaker state that has near boundless determination to prevail. Victory for the strong becomes tough, even close to impossible.

When it comes to Iran, the Islamic Republic wants – and needs – victory more than the United States. Unlike the U.S., the Iranian government’s very existence is on the line. And that gives Tehran many more incentives – and in many cases very effective countermeasures – through which to fight on.

The trap of asymmetric resolve

Typically, in asymmetric wars the stronger side does not face the same potential for regime death as the weaker side. In short, it has less on the line. And this can lead to lesser resolve, making it hard to sustain the costs of war required to defeat the weaker, more determined rival.

Such dynamics have played out in conflicts dating back to at least the sixth century B.C., when a massive Persian army under Darius I was checked by a much smaller, determined Scythian military, leading in the end to a humiliating Persian retreat.

For the U.S. in the modern era, wars of asymmetric resolve have likewise not been kind.

In the Vietnam War, an estimated 1.1 million North Vietnamese civilians and Viet Cong fighters died compared to 58,000 U.S. troops. Yet, the U.S. proved no match for the North’s resolve. After eight years of brutal war, the U.S. gave up, cut a deal, withdrew and watched North Vietnam roll to victory over the South.

In 2001, the U.S. unseated the Taliban in Afghanistan, set up a new government and built a large Afghan army supported by U.S. firepower. Over the next 20 years, the remnants of the Taliban lost about 84,000 fighters compared to around 2,400 U.S. troops, yet the U.S. ultimately sued for peace, cut a deal and left. The Taliban immediately returned to power.

Many other great powers have fallen into this same trap – and at times in the same countries. Despite far fewer casualties than the Afghan resistance, the mighty Soviet Union suffered a humiliating defeat in its nine-year war in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The same happened to the French in Vietnam and Algeria after World War II.

Asymmetric resolve in the Iran war

A similar asymmetry is now playing out in Iran.

Unlike 2025’s 12-day war that largely targeted Iranian military installations, including its nuclear sites, Trump and the Israelis are now directly threatening the survival of the Iranian government. Killing the supreme leader, a slew of other powerful figures, and encouraging a popular uprising made this crystal clear.

Tehran is responding as it said it would were its survival to be at stake. Prior to the current war, Iran warned it would retaliate against Israel, Arab Gulf nations and U.S. bases across the region, as well as largely close the Straight of Hormuz to commercial traffic.

In short, it is going all-in to cause as much pain as it can to the U.S. and its interests.

Iran has suffered the disproportionate number of loses in the current war, both in terms of human casualties and depleted weaponry. As of mid-March, there have been upward of 5,000 Iranian military casualties and more than 1,500 Iranian civilian deaths, compared to 13 dead U.S. service members.

Yet, Tehran isn’t backing down, saying on March 10, “We will determine when the war ends.”

Such Iranian resolve seemingly confounds Trump. Before the war, he wondered why Iran wouldn’t cave to his demands, and he has since conceded that regime change – seemingly a major U.S. goal at the war’s onset – is now a “very big hurdle.”

This conflicts with how Iran was being presented to the American public prior to the war. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in January that “Iran is probably weaker than it’s ever been.” It has no ballistic missiles capable of hitting the U.S. homeland, a decimated nuclear program and fewer allies than ever across the Middle East.

No wonder a Marist poll from March 6 found that 55% of Americans viewed Iran as a minor threat or no threat at all.

With Iran proving resilient, American public opinion on the war has been definitively negative. This aspect of war resolve can be especially challenging for democracies, where a disgruntled public can vote leaders out of power.

Fading or low U.S. public support for war was likewise a primary driver in past U.S. asymmetric quagmires.

Indeed, the Iran war is more unpopular than just about any other U.S. war since World War II, with polling consistently finding around 60% of Americans in opposition.

For Iran, as a nondemocracy there are far less reliable figures to compare this to on its side. Before the war, the government faced a major public crisis with widespread protests, but for many reasons – including its brutal crackdown and a potential “rally around the flag” effect – Iranian public opinion has proved far less salient.

What’s next?

The Trump administration is attempting to mitigate the impact that asymmetrical resolve has by saying the length and scope of the operation will remain limited.

To reassure the public and calm financial markets, Trump keeps promising a short war and delaying bigger strikes to give space for negotiations that he, not the Iranians, says are ongoing.

History suggests that once faced with a smaller military power showing greater resolve, the larger power has two trajectories. It can succumb to the hubris of power and escalate, such as was the case in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Or it can wind down the conflict in an attempt to save face.

Often in the past, leaders of a stronger side opt for the first option of escalation. They just can’t escape thinking that a little more force here or there wins the conflict. President Barack Obama wrongly thought a surge of 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Afghanistan would bring the Taliban to their knees.

Despite signs that he wants out of the Iran war, Trump could still fall to the hubris of power. More U.S. troops are on the way to the Gulf, and B-52 bombers have been flying over Iran for the first time.

As Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan show, following hubris into escalation against a determined foe like Iran will probably come at great cost to the U.S.

The other option – that of winding down the war – is still available to Trump.

And Trump has gone down this route before. He signed a deal in 2020 with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan rather than surge more troops in. And just last year, Trump declared victory and walked away from an air war in Yemen when he realized ground forces would be required to overcome the resolve of the Houthis.

The U.S. president could try the same with Iran – saying the job is done then walking away, or entering real, sustained negotiations to end the war. Either way, he’ll need to give something up, such as unfettered access through Hormuz or sanctions relief.

Trump likely won’t like that. But polling suggests Americans will take it. After all, who wants another Vietnam?

– ref. Trump risks falling in to the ‘asymmetric resolve’ trap in Iran − just as presidents before him did elsewhere – https://theconversation.com/trump-risks-falling-in-to-the-asymmetric-resolve-trap-in-iran-just-as-presidents-before-him-did-elsewhere-279374

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bec Kavanagh, Senior Tutor in Publishing & Creative Writing, The University of Melbourne

An author and freelance journalist has admitted to using AI to help him write a book review for the New York Times.

Alex Preston’s review of Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s novel Watching Over Her, published by the New York Times in January 2026, draws phrases and full paragraphs from Christobel Kent’s Guardian review. The “error” was brought to light by a reader, who alerted the New York Times to the similarities.

Preston told the Guardian he is “hugely embarassed” and “made a huge mistake”.

The Times promptly dropped Preston, calling his “reliance on A.I. and his use of unattributed work by another writer” a “clear violation of the Times’s standards”. An editor’s note now precedes the review online, advising readers of the issue and providing a link to the Guardian review.

Preston’s apology to the Guardian raises more questions than it resolves. The portion quoted online seems to speak more to the issue of unattributed work than his use of AI. It reads: “I made a serious mistake in using an AI tool on a draft review I had written, and I failed to identify and remove overlapping language from another review that the AI dropped in.” This implies that if he had removed the “overlapping” language, the issue would have been avoided.

As a literary critic and scholar, I believe the deeper question isn’t whether or not critics should do more to hide their use of AI – but the ethics of using it at all.

Why AI can’t do criticism

The role of the critic isn’t to summarise or repackage art, but to actively participate in a conversation about it. “Good criticism thrives in the complexity of its environment,” writes critic Jane Howard, who is also The Conversation’s Arts + Culture editor. “Each review sits in conversation with every other review of a piece of art, with every other review the critic has written.”

In other words, the critic is in conversation with both the artist and the audience. The critic’s emotional and intellectual engagement with art – and their translation and communication of meaning – is intrinsic to their role as mediator. That role is deeply human.

Perhaps information can be outsourced, but emotional engagement can’t. Nor can an individual perspective, filtered through one human’s reading, viewing, listening and experiences.

Art and AI controversies

There are valid arguments outlining the functional uses of AI, and warning against significant climate repercussions. But there is also an escalating concern around the intrusion of AI into creative expression.

Last month, author Mia Ballard was accused of using AI to write her horror novel, Shy Girl. It was withdrawn from publication in the UK and cancelled from scheduled publication in the US, after “readers on platforms such as Goodreads and Reddit had questioned whether sections of the text bore hallmarks of AI-generated prose”, according to the Guardian.

In 2023, German artist Boris Eldagsen sparked controversy when he revealed that his prize-winning photograph The Electrician was AI generated. In 2025, Tilly Norwood, the first fully AI-generated “actress” ignited debate around whether so-called synthetic actors were a tool for creative expression, or a threat to human creators.

In 2025, writers were “horrified” to discover that their work had been pirated by Meta to train AI systems.

If the question that underlies these examples is “what is the role of art”, this latest debacle adds “and what is the responsibility of the critic”?

Breaking a pact

Art criticism in Australia is what Howard describes as a “niche within a niche”. The sector is unbearably small, so most critics have an additional day job and are in close professional and personal proximity to the artists whose work they review.

Some critics of the critics, such as writer Gideon Haigh, have suggested this has led to a culture of what literary academic Emmett Stinson called “too-nice” criticism.

But I would argue generosity is fundamental to public-facing criticism – and that the critic reviewing in the public sphere has a responsibility to writers and readers.

The writer might safely assume that when we’re publishing a review that surmises their book’s successes and failings against its ambition, we have, at the very least, taken the time to read and carefully consider their work, and our own response to it.

This unspoken pact is broken when the writer begins to use AI – particularly when a professional reviewer like Preston seems to outsource his assessment to it.

Such fiascos point to a disturbing future where readers’ opportunities to build community and develop empathy through engagement with literature is outsourced entirely to AI.

Australian literature academic Julieanne Lamond has said “when we write reviews we have to do it ‘naked’ – as individual readers, with a public to judge our judgements”. In other words, we sit at the middle of a pact between the writer of a book and their potential readers.

Criticism can be literature

Done well, criticism is literature. As Australian author, playwright and critic Leslie Rees argued in 1946, good literary criticism is a “real and creative service to literature”.

Popular criticism, written for the general public and published as journalism, might sit on a different playing field from scholarly criticism. But its obligation to readers – to convey real and honest opinions about books and bring readers into a conversation about literature – is no less significant. There is a shared obligation to be honest, and surely this honesty extends to a transparency about AI use.

French professor and essayist Phillipe Lejeune, best known for his work on autobiography, used the term the “autobiographical pact” to describe the relationship between the writer of a memoir and the reader. That is, the reader accepts what the memoirist says as truth, based on the writer’s acknowledgements of their own biases and subjectivity.

We might transfer a similar pact to the reviewer and their reader. Should the reader not be able to trust that the review they’re reading is the critic’s own?

Hannah Bowman, a literary agent from Liza Dawson Associates, recently described mistrust as the book industry’s greatest peril: “it’s essential for all parties in the publishing process to have transparency and clarity in conversations about how AI tools are being used by any party, especially in the creative process”.

In failing to disclose his use of AI, Preston has not only embarrassed himself, but broken the trust of his readers.

– ref. A New York Times critic used AI to write his review – but criticism is deeply human – https://theconversation.com/a-new-york-times-critic-used-ai-to-write-his-review-but-criticism-is-deeply-human-279742

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Moss, Senior Lecturer in History, UNSW Sydney

On April 1 2026, NASA is sending astronauts back around the Moon. And Australia will play a critical role in helping them get there.

Four astronauts will launch from Florida, bound for the Moon aboard the Orion spacecraft. Similar to the 1968 Apollo 8 spaceflight, the Artemis II mission will orbit the Moon without landing, to test the spacecraft and the systems that support it. It paves the way for the next Artemis missions, with an eventual crewed Moon landing slated for early 2028.

Today’s mission will also mark the first time a Black astronaut, a female astronaut and a non-American (a Canadian) will travel to the Moon system.

Throughout the journey, ground stations in Australia will track the spacecraft and maintain communications. This vital support not only underscores Australia’s space strengths, but also encourages us to consider Australia’s own direction in space.

A long history of support

Australia’s support of NASA space exploration has a long history. A series of tracking stations around Australia were essential to US President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a person on the Moon by the end of the 1960s.

As part of NASA’s mammoth human spaceflight efforts, facilities were established around Australia – in Western Australia, Queensland, and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).

Indeed, Australia hosted more tracking stations than any other country outside the United States, a contribution memorably celebrated in the 2001 film The Dish.

While much celebrated, even after 60 years there’s still much to learn about Australia’s role in putting the first person on the Moon. Much of the archival record of Australian tracking stations during the Apollo era remains inaccessible in Department of Defence storage, rather than having been transferred to the National Archives.

Australia’s contribution to NASA’s space efforts continued past the Apollo program through the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex at Tidbinbilla, now managed by CSIRO.

This station has operated continuously since the 1970s as part of NASA’s Deep Space Network, which consists of three stations in the ACT, Spain and California. Combined, these stations have supported all NASA’s deep space exploration missions.

Through it, Australia has played a role in well-known missions such as the Voyager exploration of the outer Solar System and the more recent New Horizons mission to Pluto.

How Australia is helping Artemis

Today, Australia’s role as host to tracking stations makes it vital for all communications with the Artemis II mission.

Mission controllers in Houston, Texas talk to the astronauts; data about the spacecraft (telemetry) and science data are returned to Earth in huge quantities; and video is beamed back to millions.

Two networks enable this communication. First, the Near Space Network handles communication with the spacecraft during launch and low Earth orbit.

Second, the Deep Space Network takes over when the spacecraft is in high Earth orbit and for the voyage to and from the Moon.

At the Canberra station, huge dishes between 34 and 64 metres across are capable of transmitting and receiving the huge quantities of data from Orion. These dishes are particularly important given the ten day mission is expected be the farthest crewed mission from Earth in history.

Even when the Moon and Artemis II are on the other side of Earth relative to Canberra, the system’s global integration means Australian staff remotely operate other facilities when staff there are asleep, or vice versa.

In preparation for this mission, Australian staff at the tracking station outside Canberra have been training for years. Significant upgrades were also completed before the 2022 uncrewed mission, Artemis I.

Further afield, Australians are also involved in developing new methods of communication with far-flung spacecraft. During this mission, the Australian National University will also assist in the mission’s objectives. Scientists will test laser communications with the spacecraft from the Mount Stromlo Observatory outside Canberra.

An upward trajectory for Australia

Australia’s contribution to Artemis II comes at a moment of sustained public interest in space. The prominence of figures such as astronaut Katherine Bennell-Pegg, recently awarded Australian of the Year, has ensured space activity remains in the national spotlight.

The Australian Space Agency has sought to grow Australia’s space efforts in a variety of ways, including through the Artemis Accords. Signed by Australia in 2020, this US-led agreement establishes shared principles for civil space exploration that will return the US and partners to the Moon.

Part of Australia’s contribution will be the development of an A$42 million lunar rover, named Roo-ver. This will launch on a future NASA mission.

All this shows Australia has been gradually moving upward in space for a long time. Where the space efforts go from here will depend on a range of factors, including government policy and the capabilities of local industry and research institutions.

Public opinion is vital, given the cost of space exploration. A recent public opinion survey shows Australians are supportive of space activities, if unsure about the country’s direction.

As the four NASA astronauts travel around the Moon, Australia is also presented with an opportunity to talk about its own important role in space, and the future direction the country might take.

– ref. As NASA launches a crewed Moon mission, Australia is once again playing a critical role – https://theconversation.com/as-nasa-launches-a-crewed-moon-mission-australia-is-once-again-playing-a-critical-role-274981

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lyndall Bryant, Senior lecturer, QUT Centre for Justice, School of Econmics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology

For Australia’s building industry, higher fuel costs since the start of the Middle East war have been just the start of the pain.

Countless construction products are made with petroleum-based products. From bitumen for our roads to plastic pipes, prices are rising, with some supplies already facing delays.

This shock hits an industry still recovering from COVID, while also trying to meet surging demand for new homes and major infrastructure across Australia.

Even before the war, there was fierce competition for tradespeople and materials from big infrastructure projects across Australia. These include the A$3.6 billion Brisbane Olympics stadium, Queensland’s $9 billion Bruce Highway upgrade and Victoria’s $8 billion Big Build for new housing. Meanwhile, governments across Australia have fallen behind on a national target to build 1.2 million new homes by mid-2029

Whether you’re in the market for a new home, or you’re a builder, here’s how the Middle East war could impact your project – and its cost.

Price rises and tighter supplies

Builders need diesel to run heavy machinery and deliver materials to site. Diesel prices have been rising even faster than petrol since the war disrupted global supply routes.

Other price rises affecting building products announced since the Middle East war began include:

Most of Australia’s bitumen for sealing roads – from new subdivisions to highways – is imported from Asia and made from crude oil products from the Middle East.

Last month, industry body the Australian Flexible Pavements Association warned road authorities “bitumen prices are anticipated to rise by more than 50% […] and there is a real risk of stock depletion and stock outs in the near term”.

Last week, the Urban Development Institute of Australia’s Queensland branch shared a members-only alert about “new and rapidly escalating challenges with materials shortages”. This includes longer delays for concrete pipes, needed to connect water to new housing estates.

Now, with plastic pipes also becoming more expensive and harder to source because of the global oil crisis, the institute says:

Industry is now experiencing shortages in concrete pipes and [plastic] pipes with no viable alternatives. This is severely compromising the industry’s ability to provide housing at the rate needed to address the current housing crisis.

The result is price escalation at every stage of the supply chain, including for Australian-made products.

History offers little comfort: house construction prices soared more than 40% between 2020 and 2024. While price increases have slowed since, prices remain elevated from pre-COVID levels.

Read more: Australia has plenty of diesel for now. But running out could upend our economy

Building is already a higher-risk business

Current conditions echo the COVID period, when sudden and unpredictable cost spikes put intense pressure on construction businesses’ viability.

Home builders working under fixed price contracts can only absorb so much cost pressure before they go bust.

Even before this Middle East war, construction already had more insolvencies than any other industry – more than doubling since COVID.

Despite huge demand for new housing, the 2024-25 financial year saw a record 3,490 construction firms enter insolvency – meaning they couldn’t pay their debts as they fell due.

When builders collapse, the contagion spreads quickly: tradies lose jobs, subcontractors go under, projects stall and consumers face financial and emotional devastation.

For the tradies and subcontractors caught in the middle, the fallout can be overwhelming. Male construction workers are nearly twice as likely to take their own lives as other employed Australian men of the same age.

Small builders face the toughest conditions

Our 2025 report looked into the root causes behind the high rate of builders going bust.

We found that as of 2024, two-thirds (63%) of building company collapses were concentrated among small builders with fewer than five full-time employees. Typically, they’re operating on thin margins, with unsecured debt and limited financial buffers. These conditions leave even experienced directors vulnerable when supply chains are disrupted and costs surge.

But large builders aren’t exempt. During COVID, large home builder Porter Davis collapsed, leaving 1,700 homes unfinished in Victoria and Queensland. Even Australia’s largest home builder, Metricon, teetered on the brink before recovering.

If this oil crisis lingers, more builders are likely to go bust, slowing down housing supply.

Looking ahead

To support the industry, Queensland and New South Wales have both announced a 12-month deferral to the adoption of the National Construction Code 2025, due to start on May 1 this year. At a difficult time, this gives builders more time to adjust to pending changes. It’s unclear if other states will follow.

Longer term, our research recommended a number of reforms, from setting up low-cost independent resolution services to help builders avoid financial disputes with banks or customers, through to strengthening business training for tradies.

For builders, the priority is to be proactive. Spend time identifying high risk areas, looking for lower risk work and keeping financial records current to avoid trading when insolvent.

Stay in close contact with clients, subcontractors, suppliers and – if necessary – your bank about short-term overdraft support. Don’t wait until it’s too late to seek help.

For home buyers, open communication with your builder is essential.

If legitimate cost pressures arise under a fixed price contract, negotiating a fair adjustment may be the best outcome. Working with your builder to negotiate a mutually beneficial solution might cost you more. But that may still be preferable to a builder gone broke and a half-built home.

– ref. Housing construction costs are already rising, increasing risks of builders going bust – https://theconversation.com/housing-construction-costs-are-already-rising-increasing-risks-of-builders-going-bust-279329

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Niusha Shafiabady, Professor in Computational Intelligence, Australian Catholic University

If you’ve spent much time on TikTok recently, you may have noticed a strange new type of AI brain rot taking over: fruit dramas.

These AI-generated short dramas feature odd-looking anthropomorphic fruit characters engaging in a range of ethically problematic behaviours. Many storylines, for instance, are based around affairs, racist attitudes, and the sexual assault of women characters.

At face value, the videos come across as so bizarre and grotesque they can be hard to take seriously. That is until you realise they’re amassing hundreds of millions of views. One account called ai.cinema021, which has launched a parody series called Fruit Love Island, has more than 3 million followers.

This content is, at best, a water-guzzling affront to the art of animation and, at worst, actively helping to normalise racism and misogyny. So why does it have so many fans?

Tapping into the brain’s reward system

These videos exploit core features of human psychology. Combined with addictive platform features (such as infinite scroll), the result is an endless stream of content that keeps us engaged – even if the message is immoral, or simply ridiculous.

Short-form video feeds such as TikTok and Instagram reels operate on similar principles to those used in gambling systems. The human brain is highly sensitive to novelty and unpredictability, both of which are linked to dopamine signalling in reward learning.

When rewards are delivered unpredictably, behaviour becomes more persistent. This pattern, known as “variable reinforcement”, has long been shown to sustain repeated actions, even when rewards are inconsistent.

AI slop videos offer rapid visual novelty and unexpected emotional turns. You don’t know whether the next one will be absurd, funny, tragic, or strangely compelling.

The videos also compress big emotional experiences. A single clip may move from betrayal, to sadness, to revenge, to humour in seconds. This creates emotional volatility, which increases arousal and sustains attention.

Research shows emotionally charged content, especially when it is negative or surprising, is more likely than neutral material to get our attention.

The pull of things that feel ‘kinda wrong’

Many viewers describe a sense that these videos feel “off”. The characters are expressive, but often not fully coherent. The narratives resemble human drama, but lack internal logic.

This relates to the idea of the uncanny valley, where near-human representations produce discomfort. Importantly, these videos rarely become disturbing enough to trigger avoidance. Instead they sit in a middle zone. They are strange enough to provoke curiosity, but not uncomfortable enough to make you stop watching.

This creates cognitive tension. According to cognitive dissonance theory, people are motivated to resolve such inconsistencies. And the way to resolve tension in this case is to keep watching, in search of closure. The mind keeps asking: what is this and where is it going?

We’re also more likely to ignore the unethical messaging because of the format. The characters are highly synthetic. This makes the scenarios feel fictional – even when they reflect real social behaviours.

Research on moral disengagement shows people are more likely to relax ethical judgement when the harm appears abstract or indirect. Fruit videos with themes of betrayal, humiliation or assault can be consumed without the discomfort that would arise if real people were involved.

Influence through many minor interactions

Much like AI slop, social media algorithms don’t prioritise meaning or quality. They prioritise content that captures our attention.

Recommendation systems are driven by metrics such as “watch time”, “completion rate” and “interaction”. High engagement leads to greater visibility, which encourages the production of more similar content, creating a feedback loop.

From an AI governance perspective, these videos highlight an often overlooked risk. That is: generative systems don’t just produce content; they can gradually shape our behaviours – often without us realising. This aligns with broader concerns in AI ethics about behavioural influence and manipulative design working on a large scale.

Reclaiming your time and attention

Avoiding social media entirely is not realistic for many people. But small changes can reduce the pull of AI-generated brain rot.

One approach is to introduce a pause before scrolling to the next video. Even a brief interruption will weaken the reward loop in your brain, and make it easier to put your phone down. When you notice yourself thinking “this feels pointless” or “this is strange”, that’s the best time to stop. In some cases a digital detox might be helpful.

You can also retrain your algorithm. Quickly skip or select “not interested” on videos you don’t want to see – and replace passive scrolling with intentional viewing by seeking out specific content.

Finally, create friction. This might involve disabling automatic playback, or limiting your access to a feed, by disabling the app notification, or removing the app from your home screen.

AI fruit videos may seem trivial and absurd, but they reveal something important about the digital environment. As generative systems scale up, they will only get better at capturing and directing our attention. Understanding the psychology behind this is the first step to resisting it.

– ref. Unethical brain rot: why are millions watching AI fruits have affairs on TikTok? – https://theconversation.com/unethical-brain-rot-why-are-millions-watching-ai-fruits-have-affairs-on-tiktok-279569

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca McKetin, Associate Professor, National Drug & Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Sydney

Methamphetamine – more commonly known as meth, crystal or ice – is a highly addictive, stimulant drug.

An estimated 7.4 million people in the world are dependent on it or “addicted” to it. They face multiple health risks including paranoia, feeling suicidal, heart problems, strokes, injuries from accidents, and a higher risk of early death.

But there are no medications approved anywhere in the world to treat meth dependence.

Now, a cheap, safe and readily available medicine that has been used to treat depression for years is showing promise. Our trial of mirtazapine, just published in JAMA Psychiatry, shows people who take it cut back their meth use.

Few other options

Australia has one of the highest number of people dependent on meth per capita worldwide.

As there are no medications approved for meth dependence anywhere in the world, we have few treatment options.

Currently available treatment options include counselling, detox or withdrawal and long-stay residential rehabilitation. However, access can be difficult and treatment dropout rates are high. Most people who go to rehab relapse.

More sophisticated treatments offered within the community such as contingency management, which involves setting targets and rewards for meeting them, are more effective but aren’t widely available.

Even though there are no approved medications for methamphetamine use, doctors sometimes prescribe existing medications that have shown promise in clinical trials.

Medications that are prescribed off label include prescription stimulants (methylphenidate, lisdexamfetamine, modafinil), the anti-smoking treatment bupropion, the opioid-blocking drug naltrexone (including in combination with bupropion) and antidepressants.

However, these drugs may not work and may cause unnecessary side effects or safety risks.

How about mirtazapine?

Studies in recent years suggest the antidepressant mirtazapine may provide some hope.

Two studies were conducted in the United States in an outpatient research clinic in San Francisco, California. Both trials found mirtazapine reduced meth use.

These initial trials were conducted a research clinic with a small group of patients (60 and 120 respectively) who were monitored closely. Patients were at risk of HIV: men and transgender women who had sex with men. Women and people with people with depression were excluded.

So our Australian team wanted to know if mirtazapine would have the same benefit if it was used by doctors in community clinics to treat a larger and more diverse group of patients.

What we did and what we found

The Tina Trial recruited a larger and more diverse sample of 339 people dependent on meth from six outpatient clinics in Australia.

At the start of the trial, participants had used meth an average of 22 days out of the previous 28.

Half were randomly assigned to either take home mirtazapine (a 30 milligram tablet daily), or a placebo, for 12 weeks. The researchers then tracked days when participants used meth across the 12-week period.

People who received mirtazapine reduced their meth use by more than people who received the placebo (an average reduction of seven out of 28 days compared with 4.8).

So the comparative advantage of mirtazapine was modest: 2.2 days in use out of 28 days.

This benefit was apparent regardless of whether people had depression at the start of the study.

Although this reduction is small, in the absence of any alternative medication this is an important step forward.

Our research team believes mirtazapine has a direct effect on meth dependence, distinct from its ability to reduce depression.

This implies mirtazapine is acting directly on brain systems involved in drug reward, and might restore function to pathways that long-term meth use can disrupt.

Our study found no unexpected safety issues when using mirtazapine to treat meth dependence. The most common side effects were drowsiness and weight gain.

This isn’t a ‘cure’

Mirtazapine is not an instant “cure” for meth dependence. But in the absence of any approved medications for methamphetamine use worldwide, it is a critical first step in providing a medications to reduce harms from methamphetamine.

Mirtazapine is cheap, safe and readily available. Many doctors are familiar with its use to treat depression.

It is a take-home medication, making it convenient for people to use. So there is no need for daily clinic visits or close medical monitoring.

It is also “off patent”, meaning there are inexpensive generic versions.

In order for mirtazapine to be routinely prescribed for meth dependence outside a clinical trial, regulators would need to approve it for this purpose. This requires research evidence, like that provided by the Tina Trial.

In the meantime, doctors can prescribe mirtazapine off label. Guidelines on the off label prescribing of medications are available from the Royal Australian New Zealand College of Psychiatrists.

Further information on the Tina Trial is available here.

If you have concerns about your own or someone else’s drug or alcohol use, call the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015. This 24/7 hotline provides free and confidential information and support.

– ref. This common antidepressant helps people cut back on methamphetamine – new study – https://theconversation.com/this-common-antidepressant-helps-people-cut-back-on-methamphetamine-new-study-272994

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Hartland, Adjunct Associate Professor in Freshwater Biogeochemistry, Lincoln University, New Zealand

The Waikato is New Zealand’s longest river, central to the identity and practices of Waikato River iwi and a source of drinking water for nearly half of the country’s population.

It is also becoming a case study in what happens when very different environmental pressures hit the same system faster than authorities can respond.

A recent RNZ investigation documented worsening toxic algal blooms in hydro lakes in the upper Waikato. Communities around Lake Ohakuri describe water so green it resembles the “Incredible Hulk”, dogs becoming violently ill and mats of toxic slime covering the surface.

These conditions are a long way from Te Ture Whaimana o te Awa o Waikato, the legislated vision for a river safe for swimming and gathering food.

The reporting captured genuine community frustration and institutional fragmentation. But to turn concern into effective action, we need to understand why blooms keep forming where they do.

Otherwise, interventions risk missing the mark. The Waikato cannot afford misdirected effort.

The location of the worst blooms is a clue. Lake Ohakuri sits right next to the Ohaaki-Broadlands geothermal field, where decades of extracting hot fluids for power generation have caused the ground to sink by nearly seven metres.

That geothermal activity releases heat, carbon dioxide (CO₂) and mineral-rich fluids into the water, all of which promote the growth of cyanobacteria. This includes iron, a nutrient toxic algae need to thrive.

Whether decades of fluid extraction have altered the rate of influx of CO₂ and iron remains untested, but the proximity to geothermal fields is striking.

Tracking downstream effects

Until now, no one has measured how much of the geothermal CO₂ actually dissolves in the river or how far downstream it travels.

During our recent field campaign, we deployed a mobile sensor along the upper Waikato and a technique known as stable isotope analysis to fingerprint the carbon and start filling this gap.

The results are stark.

Carbon dioxide concentrations in the geothermal zone reach ten times the background level and the isotopic signature confirms the source as volcanic, not biological.

Huge quantities of dissolved CO₂ escape into the atmosphere as the river passes through the hydro lake chain. The water does not return to background levels even by the time it reaches Lake Karāpiro more than a hundred kilometres away.

That lingering excess CO₂ could be feeding algal growth well beyond the volcanic zone.

The gold clam factor

The geothermal zone is not the only pressure point. The invasive gold clam (Corbicula fluminea) has rapidly colonised the Waikato since its detection in 2023.

The clams have now been confirmed as far upstream as Lake Maraetai, directly downstream of Ohakuri.

Our research, currently under review, shows the clams are stripping roughly 14 tonnes of calcium carbonate from the river every day, disrupting the water chemistry treatment plants rely on and releasing arsenic in forms that could slip through conventional treatment processes.

As the clams breathe, they pump carbon dioxide into the water and consume oxygen, tipping the river’s balance away from a system driven by plant-like photosynthesis (which produces oxygen) and toward one dominated by respiration (which releases CO₂).

Multiple pressures, compounding risk

In January 2026, our monitoring buoy in Lake Karāpiro recorded oxygen near the lake bed dropping rapidly toward levels that would suffocate aquatic life.

What prevented a crisis was not management action but weather. Severe storms physically overturned the water column and mixed oxygen back in.

This near miss, averted by luck, is a warning, not a reassurance.

Two very different stressors are now converging on the same river. Geothermal CO₂ enriches the water from below, sustaining conditions that help toxic algae grow far downstream.

The clams, spreading upstream into the geothermal reaches, add a second source of CO₂ through their breathing, while depleting oxygen and stripping calcium.

What this double pressure will mean for algal blooms – when they form, how long they last and how severe they become – as clam populations continue to expand, is an open and urgent question.

Current monitoring cannot answer it. Toxic algae are sampled monthly at four hydro lakes, with results taking days to return. This is not a criticism of any single agency; national monitoring protocols now predate the compound pressures the river faces.

The gap between knowing and acting

The local community called for ultrasonic algae-killing buoys, webcams and flushing the lakes. This reflects an understandable desire for visible action, but without understanding the underlying drivers of blooms at these specific locations, we risk treating symptoms rather than causes.

Two million people drink water from the Waikato. Thousands swim in it, fish from it and gather mahinga kai (traditional food gathering) along its length. Iwi have obligations to it that stretch across generations.

The science is telling us, in real-time sensor data, that the system is moving toward thresholds we do not want to cross. The monitoring and governance architecture we have inherited was not designed for the compound pressures now acting on the river.

The question is whether we can build the governance and data-led operational protocols to match the pace of change, before the next bloom or near miss becomes the event we failed to prevent.

– ref. Toxic blooms and invasive clams are forcing a rethink on the Waikato River – https://theconversation.com/toxic-blooms-and-invasive-clams-are-forcing-a-rethink-on-the-waikato-river-279560

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania

In 1967, catastrophic bushfires in Tasmania killed dozens of people – and very nearly destroyed Hobart.

A year later, W.D. Jackson, Professor of Botany at the University of Tasmania, published a short but very influential article on why the fires were so bad. He suggested that after Tasmania’s wet eucalypt forests were burned by severe bushfires, there would be a high-risk period during their regrowth when they are at risk of severely burning again.

This, Jackson theorised, was because regrowing saplings form a very dense canopy, with little distance between living leaves and the leaf litter and understorey plants able to ignite canopy fires. If a second fire sweeps through, he predicted the forests could be replaced with more fire-tolerant scrub.

Was Jackson correct? Is regrowth truly more flammable? It’s very difficult to prove regrowth burns more intensely and accelerates bushfire spread, as it’s not practical to undertake neat, perfectly controlled experiments involving severe bushfires.

But sometimes, scientists get lucky. We took advantage of a natural experiment in 2019, when a severe bushfire burned through a research site spanning old growth wet Tasmanian forests and logged areas of regrowth, giving us access to data before and after the fires.

In our new research, we show Jackson was right. Regrowth does indeed burn more intensely than mature forests.

Why does this matter?

Jackson’s theory has resonated with generations of fire ecologists and fire managers in Australia and internationally, due to how it focuses on the interplay between the age of forests and the risk of bushfires.

Worldwide, vast areas of regrowth forest are recovering from clear-fell forestry and wildfires. In Tasmania alone, remote sensing data suggests a fifth of all tall wet forests are in a regrowth stage younger than 40 years old.

After an old forest is clear-felled, it is regenerated using fire to remove logging debris and then sown with seeds native to the area. This puts it in Jackson’s 30-year danger zone, which begins about 20 years after a fire, when eucalypts begin bearing gumnuts. It ends about 50 years after the fire, when trees are tall enough and moist dense understoreys have developed to lower the risk of devastating fires able to kill mature trees.

If regrowing forests make it through centuries without more fires, they could potentially become temperate rainforests, whose deeply shaded, moist understoreys put them at very low risk of fire.

If another severe fire starts before forests reach this safer period, experts have suggested the flammable regrowth could threaten entire landscapes by making fires more intense.

Some experts suggested forests regrowing from logging were a key factor in the huge area burned during the notorious 2019–20 fire season, though others have disputed this.

This is why Jackson’s theory still matters, almost 60 years after he proposed it.

Hard to test

Testing this theory has long proved difficult.

Forest ecologists have instead typically relied on indirect approaches, such as analysing how severe the fire was using satellite data, or estimating likely fire behaviour based on field measurements of the amount of fuel and how much moisture was present.

These inferential approaches can be scientifically fraught, as they are vulnerable to many assumptions that are hard to test or control for.

A previous attempt to resolve this question by experts, including the renowned Tasmanian ecologist J.B. Kirkpatrick had to be withdrawn due to technical issues. In retracting the paper, the authors noted their results had proven “highly sensitive” to variation in a small number of sites.

A natural experiment

In 2019, a lightning strike ignited a fire in Tasmania’s southwest forests. Known as the Riveaux Road fire, it burned through an area of regrowing forest used for research.

This offered a rare chance of a natural experiment. We had pre-fire data on fuel loads, canopy structure and microclimates (areas where local conditions make climate different from surrounding areas) in both mature forests and adjacent areas logged around 40 years earlier.

After the fire passed, we collected more data so we could compare the fire damage (measured by damage to tree canopy) and the effects on the microclimates in both regrowth and mature, unlogged forests.

This natural experiment was conclusive. The areas of post-logging regrowth burned more severely, due to their hotter, drier microclimates and the fact their canopies were closer to the ground.

Interestingly, we found fires in the regrowth didn’t cause the fires to spread further. This was because the damp understorey of the surrounding mature forests could contain the fires.

That’s not to say this would always be the case. The 2019 fire took place in moderate fire weather conditions, meaning it wasn’t especially hot, dry or windy. If severe fire weather was present, this dampening effect would likely have been overwhelmed.

Lots of regrowth, lots more fire

Proving Jackson’s theory isn’t good news for forests.

Climate change means fire weather will arrive more often and be more extreme. Combined with the large areas of forest regrowth, this means we will have to be ready for more fires.

In North American conifer forests, thinning out regrowth and burning off leaf litter and other fuel have proven effective in reducing the risks of fire-prone regrowth. Eucalypts have fundamentally different fire ecologies, so we can’t directly apply that research to Australia. Local research is limited, meaning we don’t know yet if this will work here.

Recent research has shown commercial thinning of regrowth in Tasmania doesn’t reduce the risk of fire, because bark, limbs and smashed trunks left after logging act as fuel.

This means we urgently need to find an effective way to reduce the risk of fires in regrowth in wet eucalypt forests in Tasmania and elsewhere in Australia.

Since the lethal fires of 1967, many Tasmanian communities – including large areas of Hobart – are now surrounded by forests still in the dangerous period of regrowth after logging or fires.

Read more: In 1939, a Royal Commission found burning forests leads to more bushfires. But this cycle of destruction can be stopped

– ref. We have the proof that logging makes Tasmania’s forests more flammable – https://theconversation.com/we-have-the-proof-that-logging-makes-tasmanias-forests-more-flammable-279103

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Guy Curtis, Associate professor, The University of Western Australia

People using other peoples’ ideas, words and creations without acknowledgement is a widespread problem. Plagiarism occurs everywhere from restaurant menus to political speeches and music.

Within academia, plagiarism is seen as a serious breach of integrity for scholars and students.

It’s easy to find media articles claiming plagiarism is increasing among university students. These claims have intensified with the rise of generative AI – which can quickly produce large amounts of text that students can copy and paste into their assignments.

But while AI certainly poses a range of challenges for academic integrity, is plagiarism increasing as much as we think it is?

My team’s new research, which has tracked students at one university over 20 years, suggests it may even be falling.

What are we comparing?

Precise rates of plagiarism can be difficult to determine. Pre-AI, many claims about increasing plagiarism among students came from cherry picking results of different surveys from different student groups. So they were not comparing apples with apples.

Since AI, we have have a lot of anecdotal reporting of cheating. But we do not have a lot of robust evidence of whether cheating has increased over time.

In a new journal article, my colleagues and I have used a rare longitudinal study of plagiarism to overcome this problem.

My research

Every five years since 2004, our study carried out the same survey on plagiarism with students at Western Sydney University (WSU). This means we have been able to track the same phenomena in the same environment over time.

In our survey students are presented with scenarios representing different forms of plagiarism. For example, a student copying text from a book without citing the book. Students were asked whether the behaviour is plagiarism, to test their understanding of it, and how often, if ever, they have done a similar thing. In 2024, we also also asked students if they used text generated by AI in their university work, without acknowledging it.

We conducted an anonymous survey of mostly undergraduate students, studying in a range of disciplines. The survey started in 2004 on paper and has been fully online since 2014.

The survey was done in the second half of the academic year to ensure students had the opportunity to both learn about and engage in plagiarism.

In 2024, as well as WSU, we included students from five other Australian universities for additional comparison. This gave us sample of more than 2,100 students in total for the latest round.

Plagiarism isn’t increasing

Over 20 years, the survey has found the percentage of students who engage in any form of plagiarism at least once has fallen every five years, from more than 80% in 2004 to 57% in 2024.

This decline corresponds with various measures, such as the use of text-matching software, which can help detect plagiarism. There has also been more training in referencing and citation rules – this reduces unintentional plagiarism.

AI is not turning all students into plagiarists

Although 14% of students in 2024 indicated they had copied from AI without acknowledgement, most of them also engaged in at least one other form of plagiarism. For example, copying from another student’s assignment.

Copying from AI was the sole form of plagiarism for only 2% of students.

Most students don’t plagiarise accidentally

Combining students’ answers to whether they understand plagiarism and whether they engaged in it showed most did so knowingly. For example when it came to verbatim copying from AI, 88% of WSU students who engaged in this knew it was plagiarism.

Interestingly, most plagiarism was accidental 20 years ago when education about academic integrity was less thorough. However, the recent results show students have a better understanding of plagiarism and still do it anyway.

AI detectors don’t stop copying

In the survey, two universities used AI detectors (which aim to assess whether a piece of written work has used AI, with mixed results and four did not.

Rates of plagiarism from AI were similar between the universities with and without detectors.

What does this mean?

Our survey largely looked at only one Australian university. But despite this limitation, we can interpret the results in optimistic and pessimistic ways.

Optimistically, plagiarism has fallen over 20 years. This suggests measures to detect plagiarism and teach students about proper referencing can help.

On top of this, AI has not turned all students into plagiarists – at least not yet. What our study suggests is students who have plagiarised in some other way may now plagiarise from AI as well.

Pessimistically, over half of all students still plagiarise at some time in their university studies. And, because these surveys rely on self-reports, it is likely these figures represent the minimum number of students who plagiarise. Even when surveys, like ours, are anonymous and online, students may still be hesitant to admit to breaking rules.

This means educating students and policing academic conduct remains an ongoing battle.

– ref. Does AI mean more uni students are plagiarising their work? – https://theconversation.com/does-ai-mean-more-uni-students-are-plagiarising-their-work-279565

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christina Bouchard, professeure à temps partiel I Part-time professor, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

Several housing developments are currently underway in Montréal incorporating community‑scale features, including walkable streets, lively commercial corridors, galleries and public spaces.

While building on infill sites already located in the heart of established cities offers many advantages, densification projects can also present complex challenges during implementation.

Drawing on my experiences working as an urban planner and teaching governance at the University of Ottawa, let’s examine emerging trends in urban development projects.

Building a neighbourhood

Several development projects currently underway in Montréal include multiple buildings as well as community facilities like parks, gardens, patios, terraces, playgrounds and sports or cultural centers.

So when did the practice of building several structures at once, together with shared community amenities, first begin? The goal of urban planning has always been to organize space, both public and private. But the balance between how these spaces are managed has been conceived in different ways, and has taken on different characteristics over time.

In North America, the commercial development of housing subdivisions expanded significantly after the Second World War. A new transportation technology came to the fore: the automobile.

Read more: Boomburbs: The rapid rise of Toronto’s northern suburbs

The proliferation of very low‑density housing developments from those years onward was a direct consequence of the widespread availability of cars. New York’s Levittown neighborhood is frequently cited as a key example of suburban development patterns and of the rise of housing construction as an assembly‑line process..

Suburban life was uniform and standardized, matching the mass-market approach to post-war housing. Homes were built the same for everyone, not customized for individual owners. Despite this sameness, people liked them, making them profitable and keeping developers focused on these types of houses for decades.

North American governments also encouraged developers to build suburbs by strictly enforcing zoning rules that separated housing from commercial areas and social spaces. The distances between these areas, and even to employment centres, often necessitated car ownership to get around.

In contrast, current developments in Montréal (including Canoë, Quartier des Lumières, Bridge-Bonaventure, Langelier, Quartier Molson, Esplanad-Cartier) emphasize their walkability and proximity to subway stations in their marketing to prospective buyers.

Adopting mixed-use zoning, walkability

By the late 1970s, critics were already pointing out the weaknesses of communities overly dependent on the automobile. Their concerns included sedentary lifestyles, social fragmentation, reduced community interaction, loss of farmland and various economic and environmental costs.

Current trends toward mixed‑use zoning and walkability can be traced back to the ‘80s, when North American urban planners began organizing the New Urbanism movement. Some of the movement’s principles:

• The belief that good design creates strong communities.

• Promoting mixed‑use development and placing particular emphasis on high‑quality urban design.

• An appreciation for the compact urban form of pre‑automobile cities (as opposed to low‑density sprawl).

• Support for transit‑oriented urban design.

• A preference for mid‑rise buildings (associated with pre‑industrial urbanism) over skyscrapers (associated with modernist planning).

• Valuing and enhancing urban heritage.

• Promoting the redevelopment of historic urban neighbourhoods, particularly those affected by deindustrialization or poverty.

• Supporting more participatory design practices that involve a range of stakeholders.

Although Canadian cities have continued to build suburbs on their outskirts, several initiatives now aim to encourage urban development and infill projects.

Many municipal governments are reconsidering and rolling back the regressive zoning policies they once enforced. The consensus has shifted so much that the federal government has even offered direct funding to municipalities as an incentive to adopt policies that support greater urban density.

Read more: Dense, compact urban growth is favoured by mid-sized Canadian cities

These fundamental questions about mixed‑use development are accompanied by important design details that help make cities pleasant and human‑scaled.

Modernist developments of the “Tower on the Park” type have often included lawns with pedestrian paths. But these pedestrian facilities tended to regard walking primarily as a recreational activity alongside green space.

In contrast, today’s urban densification projects are more socially oriented, making it possible to walk or bike to shops, community centres, schools and other everyday destinations. New developments place community spaces close to commercial amenities like grocery stores and make them more accessible for people who want to walk, cycle or use public transit.

Addressing gaps in established urban areas

The infrastructure costs associated with urban sprawl have also encouraged municipalities to recognize the development potential of unused or underused land within their cities. But planning and developing these kinds of sites can be more complex than building on peripheral greenfield land, precisely because they are located within existing urban areas.

Montréal’s Molson site, for example, benefits from historic buildings, but it’s challenging to rethink a place that previously served industrial purposes.

Urban redevelopment can entail significant costs, such as the time and resources required to remediate industrial contamination, carry out archeological assessments or consult with affected stakeholders. Redeveloping urban land parcels may also involve more complex governance arrangements, depending on former ownership and the relevant land‑use rights.

Although these infill sites are close to existing road networks, public transit, and other infrastructure, the costs of connecting them to these systems remain.

For example, in the case of the Namur‑Hippodrome project in Montréal, developers have been reluctant to build the roads, sewers and other infrastructure needed to serve the site, preferring that this work be carried out by government.

This situation reminds us that, ultimately, developers are for‑profit companies that weigh the costs and benefits of projects in terms of their own expenditures rather than broader social objectives.

A more diverse urban form

For several years, cities have aimed to create more diverse and appealing urban spaces, featuring varied building heights, destinations and housing types. A thoughtful mix of public and private spaces encourages community interaction and provides natural “eyes on the street,” enhancing the sense of safety. Montreal’s new developments are designed to be vibrant, lively and community-focused.

The creation of social spaces aims to encourage positive social interactions and prevent feelings of anonymity or disconnection during the regular course of daily activities.

The Molson project includes a large park along the banks of the St. Lawrence River. The Esplanade-Cartier project has emphasized social amenities, featuring not only a pedestrian street but also a “project house” with a community garden on the rooftop terrace. Rooftop gardening is already well established in Montréal commercially, but this project is among the first community garden on the roof of a private building in Québec.

Read more: Growing pains: An Ontario city’s urban agriculture efforts show good policy requires real capacity

Embracing the complexity of cities

Building within already developed areas can be complex. The 10-year consultation and planning process for the Namur-Hippodrome project in Montréal is one example, but there are others.

Just a stone’s throw from Parliament Hill, the redevelopment of the Lebreton Flats in Ottawa has been promised for decades. The process of developing the Ookwemin Minising residential neighbourhood on Toronto’s waterfront has been underway since 2017.

The numerous urban densification projects currently underway in Montréal indicate a growing recognition that suburban development models lacked diversity.

Today’s projects aim to place new housing near vibrant cultural and commercial corridors. While elements of the 15-minute neighborhood concept — such as mixed-use zoning that encourages walking and transit — aren’t new, stakeholders seen to be embracing New Urbanism principles in planning, design and construction. It’s clear there’s been a shift in thinking about what makes a neighbourhood desirable.

– ref. Neighbourhoods are changing as cities prioritize diversity, connectivity and livability – https://theconversation.com/neighbourhoods-are-changing-as-cities-prioritize-diversity-connectivity-and-livability-279426

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

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday will announce interest-free loans for businesses hit by the fuel crisis, in a speech also promising the crisis won’t divert the government from economic reform in the budget.

The loans will help truckies, freight companies and fuel and fertiliser producers. This comes after cuts in excise and the Heavy Vehicle Road User Charge and moves to assist small business were also announced this week.

Albanese, addressing the National Press Club in a speech released in part ahead of delivery, will say the May 12 budget will be “our government’s most important budget to date and it will be our most ambitious. It has to be.”

His message will go some way to reassuring those who fear the prime minister might want to scale back reform ambitions of treasurer Jim Chalmers for the budget, given the crisis and accommpanying uncertainty.

But Albanese says: “economic reform that drives growth, boosts productivity, tackles inflation and lifts living standards is always necessary.

“And in times of uncertainty such as this, it is urgent.”

The Labor government was investing in economic resilience well before this crisis, he says.

“For our government, international uncertainty is not an excuse to delay, or hold back reform – it is the reason we must press ahead.

“Because we will not generate the same prosperity or create the same opportunities, if we continue to rely on an economic model designed in a different time and built for a more predictable world.

“Nor can we go back to those days.”

“Anyone who pretends that the solution to housing or jobs or wages or health is to somehow to recreate the 1950s or 60s, or whatever time they imagine everything was hunky dory, is simply not being fair dinkum.

“Australia will not find our future security in the past. Or by copying approaches from overseas.

“We have to invest in it, build it and create it for ourselves.”

Albanese says while planning for a more resilient Australia, “our number one priority remains helping people with the cost of living”. That balance would be struck in the budget.

The interest-free loans will be provided under the government’s $1 billion Economic Resilience Program.

“No government can promise to eliminate the pressures this crisis will impose. But we can be a buffer against the worst of it,” Albanese says.

“Providing this stability and security amidst uncertainty does not mean standing still while the world changes around us.

“It means anticipating and creating change, true to Australian values and in Australia’s interests.

“Because if people feel like the economy is not working for them, if they’re putting in the effort but not seeing the reward, if planning for the future feels like a luxury, then government cannot provide stability, just by keeping things as they are.”

– ref. Albanese to announce interest-free loans for businesses hit by fuel crisis – https://theconversation.com/albanese-to-announce-interest-free-loans-for-businesses-hit-by-fuel-crisis-278793