Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yetta Gurtner, Adjunct senior lecturer, Centre for Disaster Studies, James Cook University

For millions of people in southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales, Cyclone Alfred will be their first experience living through a cyclone. Alfred is forecast to make landfall about 2am on Friday morning.

I am a disaster expert based in northern Queensland, which regularly experiences cyclones. In my other role as an acting SES public information officer, I’m heading south to the Gold Coast to help residents prepare and respond.

Here’s what I want you to know. First, don’t panic. Second, do prepare.

Preparation has several steps. It’s important to clearly assess your specific threat. If you live near the sea, storm surges – where the sea spills inland – could be a significant threat, while flooding might pose a large risk if you live near a river – especially in the few days after Alfred passes. The highest rainfall is likely on Alfred’s southern flank from the Gold Coast down to northern New South Wales.

Having enough food, water and medication is vital. Be ready to evacuate too, in case authorities deem it necessary. Check your local council’s disaster website, disaster apps and stay tuned to the ABC, which will run disaster alerts.

What should I do right now?

If you’re in the danger zone, make preparations now, before the full intensity of the cyclone arrives.

Tie down loose objects. Clean gutters to avoid overflow from torrential rain. And prepare your “go bag” – a bag of essentials you can throw in the car if authorities tell you to leave immediately. Don’t take too much – just the bare necessities.

Buy an AM/FM radio and tune it to ABC National, as you cannot be sure mobile networks will function. Radio is a reliable way to get good information from the ABC, Australia’s designated emergency channel.

Make sure the car is fuelled or charged. If you’ve got a generator, make sure you have fuel and the generator is positioned outside in a well-ventilated area. Water is often unreliable after disasters. Fill your bathtub or front-loader washing machine with water. Put containers of water in your freezer, to keep food cold if the power goes out and as another water source. Plan for days of power outages. Protect windows with plywood, heavy blankets or mattresses. Put a mattress between your car and garage roller door to stop it blowing in.

Turn off gas, electricity and solar power.

Authorities recommend using sandbags to reduce the chance of water getting in. You can get sacks from hardware stores or council-run emergency centres, if available, who also provide sand. You also need plastic sheeting.

If there’s a shortage of sand, you can use garden soil or commercial bagged soil. If you can’t get sacks, large plastic shopping bags will do.

Tape strong plastic sheeting around the door or low window where water might get in. This is the barrier that actually keeps water out – sandbags keep it in place.

Fill sandbags and lay them like bricks. Lay one row, and lay the next row offset for strength.

Sandbags are good, but they have limits. There’s little point in piling sandbags higher than about 30 centimetres. If floodwaters edge higher, water will get through.

Many people have had the unpleasant experience of having effluent come back up through toilets during cyclones and subsequent flooding. To stop this, cover your toilet with plastic sheeting (directly on the porcelain) and put a sandbag on top for weight. Do the same for any drains where water might flow back up.

To reduce water damage, put valuable or important items up high, atop tables or bunk beds or upstairs if you have a second storey.

Read more:
How to prepare for a cyclone, according to an expert

What will it be like when Alfred hits?

When the cyclone first hits, it can be overwhelming. The sound is like a roaring jet engine.

If you haven’t been advised to evacuate by authorities, you will be sheltering in place.

This means finding the safest room in the house, to avoid damage from flying objects. Choose the smallest room with the fewest windows – a bathroom or a room under the stairs. Basements are very safe, but will be the first affected by water.

As the cyclone picks up intensity, set up inside this safe room with your pets and children. Do not leave this room until you have been told it’s safe by authorities.

At the centre of strong cyclones is the eye of the storm, which we experience as a period of sudden calm. People often make the mistake of thinking it’s over. But in fact, it’s just a brief reprieve before the intense winds pick up again. Don’t make the mistake of leaving the house – check with authoritative sources.

Cyclone Alfred is a slow-moving cyclone, which means you might be stuck inside for a while. Be prepared to be inside your house for up to 24 hours, even after the worst has passed. This is because there may well be downed powerlines with live electricity, broken glass, falling trees and so on.

For your children (and yourself), being in the cyclone is frightening. Young kids find the sound chilling. You can play music through headphones to help soothe them. Board games, books and puzzles can help pass the time. You will need distraction. Have a bucket in the corner for emergency toilet needs.

Keep track of the storm and any emerging dangers through your radio and internet-enabled phone (if still functioning).

What if I have to evacuate?

Authorities are working to set up evacuation centres for people whose homes may not be safe. Authorities will go door-to-door to tell affected residents to leave, as well as broadcasting the information on radio and online.

You’re more likely to have to evacuate if your house is on low-lying land near the sea, as a storm surge is likely. How much water is pushed ashore will depend on the tide, but it could be as high as 70cm above the high tide line if we’re unlucky.

Evacuations can happen after the cyclone too. Alfred is packing a lot of rain – up to a metre in some areas. That’s very likely to cause flooding, both flash floods and rivers breaking their banks.

If you are asked to evacuate, you can go to the house of a friend or family member if it’s on higher ground and outside the flood risk zones. Or you can go to a local evacuation centre – check your council website to see where your closest one is. Take as little as possible with you.

Many people who choose not to evacuate do so because they’re worried about their pets. This is risky. Some evacuation centres do take pets, so check now. If they don’t, look for other options with friends and family. Staying put after an evacuation order is dangerous.

What will happen after the cyclone?

Cyclone Alfred brings three threats: intense winds, high seas and heavy rain.

After the intense winds die down, the seas will be dangerous for days after Alfred. There are coastal hazard warnings for about 1,000km of coastline.

Cyclones also often decay into tropical low weather systems, which dump heavy rain for days. This is likely.

As you move into recovery phase, don’t relax your guard. In far north Queensland, 16 people have now died after being infected with melioidosis, a bacterium found in mud. The bug is more prevalent after heavy rainfall.

Wear protective gear such as gloves and face masks when dealing with water-damaged goods and mud, and pay close attention to the latest advice authorities are giving.

But remember – don’t panic. We will get through this.

Yetta Gurtner has received funding in the past from the Bureau of Meteorology. She is a community engagement officer with the Queensland State Emergency Services.

– ref. ‘Don’t panic, do prepare’: why it’s not too late to plan for Cyclone Alfred – https://theconversation.com/dont-panic-do-prepare-why-its-not-too-late-to-plan-for-cyclone-alfred-251463

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steve Turton, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Geography, CQUniversity Australia

Tropical Cyclone Alfred is strengthening as it bears down on the coast of southern Queensland and northern New South Wales, prompting fears it may become a destructive category 3 cyclone before it makes landfall.

As of Wednesday, the cyclone was a category 2 and had begun moving west towards land. It is forecast to maintain intensity on Thursday and cross the coast early on Friday morning, probably between Maroochydore and Coolangatta.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the possibility of the system reaching a low-end category 3 was a low risk but “cannot be ruled out”.

The bureau has issued warnings from Double Island Point in Queensland to Grafton in NSW. The area includes Brisbane, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, Byron Bay and Ballina.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner says modelling shows 20,000 properties in Brisbane could be affected by storm surge or flooding.

The intensifying cyclone is a major concern, and makes Cyclone Alfred an unusual phenomenon. Cyclones typically lose strength as they approach the coast – especially this far south. It means Alfred may cause extensive damage, including to inland areas. We can expect it to last well into Friday before petering out and heading south on Saturday.

What to expect in the next few days

From Wednesday afternoon and into Thursday, the bureau forecasts gales, with damaging wind gusts to 120km an hour, along the coast from southeast Queensland to northeast NSW.

From Thursday afternoon, destructive wind gusts of up to 155km an hour may develop around the coast and islands as Alfred’s “destructive core” approaches and crosses the coast, the bureau says.

If Alfred crosses the coast on Friday morning during high tide, it may cause a dangerous storm surge along the coast, especially in waterfront suburbs near and south of the cyclone’s centre. This may inundate low-lying areas, such as canal communities of the Gold Coast.

In Brisbane, peak storm surges are expected from Thursday onwards. Some 20,000 properties have been warned of impacts ranging from minor inundation in yards to significant flooding inside homes. Areas most at risk include Nudgee Beach, Brighton, Windsor, Ashgrove, Morningside and Rocklea.

Damaging surf may also cause serious erosion at open beaches between Sandy Cape and Grafton, and further south into NSW.

From Thursday, residents in southeastern Queensland and northeastern NSW have been told to expect heavy to intense rain. It may lead to life-threatening flash flooding – again, near and south of the cyclone centre.

Northern NSW has already been hit by devastating flooding in recent years, most recently in February 2022. Many of its settlements, including Lismore, are along or close to major river courses. Residents are understandably anxious about what the next few days may bring.

The bureau released the below map on Wednesday morning. It shows the bureau’s best estimate of the cyclone’s future movement and intensity.

The grey zone indicates the range of tracks the cyclone centre may follow. The bureau says winds will almost certainly extend to regions outside the rings on this map.

Why is Alfred so fired up?

Cyclone Alfred has been meandering off Queensland’s coast for almost two weeks. Unusually, it has maintained its cyclonic structure and intensity much further south than is typical.

Over the past two days, unique atmospheric and oceanic conditions have allowed Cyclone Alfred to intensify.

It moved towards an area of warmer coastal water (around 27°C), which caused it to strengthen. It also moved into an area of reduced “vertical wind shear” – a variation in wind speed running at right angles to prevailing winds, which often acts to weaken a cyclone.

Usually, cyclones in this part of Australian waters may brush the coast, but are soon pulled south or east by an upper trough of cold air and then flicked away into the cooler waters of the Tasman Sea – to an area known as the “cyclone graveyard”.

The current situation is unusual because that upper trough is absent. At the same time, a high pressure system in the Tasman Sea is steering the cyclone towards the coast.

The big question now is whether Alfred reaches category 3 – that is, very destructive winds of 165–224km per hour.

Should the cyclone’s forward motion towards the coast slow, it raises the chances of becoming a category 3 storm. That’s because it would spend more time passing over the warm area of coastal water.

Category 3 winds are likely to cause significant structural damage to some buildings. Brisbane is, to some extent, sheltered from the winds by offshore islands. Other areas, such as the Gold Coast, do not have such protections.

How long will the cyclone last?

As I write, gales are starting to rake the coast – including where I live, on the Sunshine Coast. Conditions will continue to deteriorate this afternoon and into tonight.

The cyclone will bring gale-force winds to a large area of coastline – from Double Island Point in the north to potentially as far south as Coffs Harbour.

By Thursday afternoon, conditions on land and just offshore will be pretty rough. If the cyclone keeps travelling at a constant speed, it will cross the coast in the early hours of Friday morning.

This is less than ideal. It will be dark and people can’t see what’s going on. But there is much affected communities can do to prepare, as outlined here.

For cyclone preparedness and safety advice, go to Get Ready Queensland. For emergency assistance call the State Emergency Service (SES) in NSW or Queensland on 132 500.

Steve Turton has previously received funding from the federal government.

– ref. Cyclone Alfred is bearing down. Here’s how it grew so fierce – and where it’s expected to hit – https://theconversation.com/cyclone-alfred-is-bearing-down-heres-how-it-grew-so-fierce-and-where-its-expected-to-hit-251358

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wellett Potter, Lecturer in Law, University of New England

How much is your voice worth?

It could be as little as roughly A$100. That was how much ABC News Verify recently spent to clone federal senator Jacqui Lambie’s voice – with her permission – using an easily accessible online platform.

This example highlights how artificial intelligence (AI) apps which create a synthetic replica of a person’s image and/or voice in the form of deepfakes or voice cloning are becoming cheaper and easier to use.

This poses a serious threat not only to the functioning of democracy (especially around elections), but also to a person’s identity.

Current copyright laws in Australia are inadequate when it comes to protecting people if their image or voice is digitally cloned without their permission. Establishing “personality rights” could help.

Detecting what’s fake is difficult

Deepfake technology is able to produce content which seems increasingly real. This makes it harder to detect what is fake and what is not. Indeed, several people for whom the ABC played the voice clone of Senator Lambie did not initially realise it was fake.

This shows how unauthorised deepfakes and voice cloning can be easily used to generate misinformation. They can also be extremely damaging to individuals.

This was highlighted back in 2020, when one of Australia’s first political deepfake videos was released. It featured the then Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk claiming the state was “cooked” and in “massive debt”.

The video received around 1 million views on social media.

What laws cover this?

In Australia, defamation, privacy, image-based abuse laws, passing off and consumer protection laws might be applicable to situations involving deepfake video or audio clips. You may also be able to lodge a complaint with the eSafety commissioner.

In theory copyright law can also protect a person’s image and voice. However, its application is more nuanced.

First, a person whose likeness has been cloned by an AI platform often does not own the source material. This material could be an image, video or voice recording which has been copied and uploaded. Even if your image and voice is depicted, if you are not the owner of the source material, you cannot sue for infringement.

Using Senator Lambie as an example, the ABC only needed 90 seconds of original voice recording to create the AI clone. Senator Lambie’s voice itself is not able to be copyright-protected. That’s because copyright can only attach to a tangible expression, say in written or recorded form. It cannot attach to speech or unexpressed ideas.

As the ABC arranged, recorded and produced the original 90-second recording, the broadcaster could hold copyright in it as a sound recording. It is a fixed, tangible expression of Senator Lambie’s voice. However, unless the senator and the ABC made an agreement, Senator Lambie would have no economic rights, such as the right to reproduction, to the original voice recording. Nor would she have any rights to the clone of her voice.

In fact, the AI-generated clone itself is unlikely to be protected by copyright, as it is considered authorless under Australian copyright law. Many AI-generated creations are currently unable to be protected under Australian copyright, due to a lack of original, identifiable human authorship.

Moral rights – including the right of attribution (to be credited as the performer), the right against false attribution and the right of integrity – are also limited in scope. They could apply to the original audio clip, but not to a deepfake.

What are ‘personality rights’?

In most jurisdictions in the United States, there exist what are commonly known as “personality rights”. These rights include the right of publicity, which acknowledges that an individual’s name, likeness, voice and other attributes are commercially valuable.

Celebrities such as Bette Midler and Johnny Carson have successfully exercised this right to prevent companies using elements of their identity for commercial purposes without permission.

However, personality rights might not always apply to AI voice clones, with some lawyers arguing that only actual recorded voices are protectable, not clones of voices. This has led to states such as Tennessee introducing legislation to specifically address AI-generated content. The Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security Act, introduced in 2024, addresses the misappropriation of an individual’s voice through generative AI use.

Urgent steps are needed

There has been longstanding scholarly debate about whether Australia should introduce statutory publicity rights.

One of the challenges is overlap with pre-existing laws, such as Australian consumer law and tort law. Policymakers might be hesitant to introduce a new right, as these other areas of the law may provide partial protection. Another challenge is how to enforce these rights if an AI-generated deepfake is created overseas.

Australia could also consider introducing a similar law to the “No Fakes Bill” currently being debated in the US. If passed, this bill would allow people to protect their image and voice through intellectual property rights. This should be given serious consideration in Australia too.

Deepfakes are becoming more and more common, and are now widespread during elections. Because of this, it’s important that Australians remain vigilant to them in the lead up to this year’s federal election.

And let’s hope that whoever wins that election takes urgent steps to better protect everyone’s image and voice.

Wellett Potter 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. AI deepfakes threaten democracy and people’s identities. ‘Personality rights’ could help – https://theconversation.com/ai-deepfakes-threaten-democracy-and-peoples-identities-personality-rights-could-help-251267

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margaret Murray, Senior Lecturer, Nutrition, Swinburne University of Technology

If you head to the shops to buy bread, you’ll face a variety of different options.

But it can be hard to work out the difference between all the types on sale.

For instance, you might have a vague idea that wholemeal or wholegrain bread is healthy. But what’s the difference?

Here’s what we know and what this means for shoppers in Australia and New Zealand.

Let’s start with wholemeal bread

According to Australian and New Zealand food standards, wholemeal bread is made from flour containing all parts of the original grain (endosperm, germ and bran) in their original proportions.

Because it contains all parts of the grain, wholemeal bread is typically darker in colour and slightly more brown than white bread, which is made using only the endosperm.

How about wholegrain bread?

Australian and New Zealand food standards define wholegrain bread as something that contains either the intact grain (for instance, visible grains) or is made from processed grains (flour) where all the parts of the grain are present in their original proportions.

That last part may sound familiar. That’s because wholegrain is an umbrella term that encompasses both bread made with intact grains and bread made with wholemeal flour. In other words, wholemeal bread is a type of wholegrain bread, just like an apple is a type of fruit.

Don’t be confused by labels such as “with added grains”, “grainy” or “multigrain”. Australian and New Zealand food standards don’t define these so manufacturers can legally add a small amount of intact grains to white bread to make the product appear healthier. This doesn’t necessarily make these products wholegrain breads.

So unless a product is specifically called wholegrain bread, wholemeal bread or indicates it “contains whole grain”, it is likely to be made from more refined ingredients.

Which one’s healthier?

So when thinking about which bread to choose, both wholemeal and wholegrain breads are rich in beneficial compounds including nutrients and fibre, more so than breads made from further-refined flour, such as white bread.

The presence of these compounds is what makes eating wholegrains (including wholemeal bread) beneficial for our overall health. Research has also shown eating wholegrains helps reduce the risk of common chronic diseases, such as heart disease.

The table below gives us a closer look at the nutritional composition of these breads, and shows some slight differences.

Wholegrain bread is slightly higher in fibre, protein, niacin (vitamin B3), iron, zinc, phosphorus and magnesium than wholemeal bread. But wholegrain bread is lower in carbohydrates, thiamin (vitamin B1) and folate (vitamin B9).

However the differences are relatively small when considering how these contribute to your overall dietary intake.

Which one should I buy?

Next time you’re shopping, look for a wholegrain bread (one made from wholemeal flour that has intact grains and seeds throughout) as your number one choice for fibre and protein, and to support overall health.

If you can’t find wholegrain bread, wholemeal bread comes in a very close second.

Wholegrain and wholemeal bread tend to cost the same, but both tend to be more expensive than white bread.

Margaret Murray 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’s the difference between wholemeal and wholegrain bread? Not a whole lot – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-difference-between-wholemeal-and-wholegrain-bread-not-a-whole-lot-249156

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hemming, Associate Professor of Law, School of Law and Justice, University of the Sunshine Coast

After Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded 23 others at Port Arthur in 1996, Australia made fundamental changes to its gun laws. The use of automatic and semi-automatic weapons became restricted and a national gun registry was established.

As a result, unlike the situation in the United States where automatic weapons can be readily obtained, mass shootings are a rarity in Australia.

However, a new and pressing danger in the form of 3D guns, or “ghost guns”, threatens to undermine Australia’s strict gun control laws.

The reason is simple: 3D guns can be manufactured in a suburban garage. In a process like making a dress from a pattern, a digital blueprint for the manufacture of a firearm can be downloaded from the internet. Then, instead of a sewing machine, you need a 3D printer or an electronic milling machine.

The emergence of these types of firearms reveal big loopholes in many of our gun laws. These need urgent attention.

How are these guns made?

A 3D gun is manufactured in stages, with each part of the gun printed separately and assembled manually.

Think of yourself as making a toy LEGO gun, but instead of taking the parts from the LEGO box, you make the parts on your 3D printer based on your digital blueprint and you then assemble your gun. Your raw materials are thermoplastic polymers and metal for the barrel and firing pin.

High-end, industrial-grade 3D printers are priced between $2,000 and $10,000, and are readily available.

This technology has been around for more than a decade.

The first 3D printed handgun was designed by Cody Wilson in 2013, which he christened The Liberator. It was made of 15 parts of plastic and a nail for the ring pin.

Also in 2013, reporters from the Daily Mail newspaper in London 3D-printed a Liberator pistol and smuggled the disassembled gun onto a Eurostar train. They reassembled the gun in the toilet.

As the gun was made of plastic, metal detectors were not activated, demonstrating the danger these weapons pose even in high-security locations such as airports and public transport.

In the recent high-profile murder in New York of Brian Thompson, chief executive of the US health insurance company United Healthcare, the suspect, Luigi Mangione, when arrested was found to be in possession of a similar 3D-printed gun and 3D-printed suppressor to those allegedly used in the shooting.

Leaps forward in technology

In the 12 years since the designs for The Liberator were posted on the internet, the quality and range of 3D guns have greatly improved and expanded.

According to Detective Inspector Brad Phelps from Queensland’s Crime and Intelligence Command Drug Squad, the technology has advanced sufficiently that:

now you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a privately manufactured firearm and a traditional firearm in many instances […] every jurisdiction in Australia has reported an increase, particularly in the last 18 months to two years.

As 3D guns are untraceable, the actual prevalence of 3D guns is unknown, other than the growing number of 3D guns seized in police raids. According to gun safety groups, 3D guns can now fire up to 40 rounds and use standard gauge ammunition.

Police predict homemade guns will soon overtake illicit weapon imports.

In October 2024, Western Australian police seized 21 privately made 3D-printed firearms from a home in Perth.

Fixing the legal loopholes

So, with all these alarm bells ringing in the ears of law enforcement agencies, what steps have authorities taken to meet the threat 3D guns pose to community safety?

Indeed, what effective steps are being taken to prevent further advances in the technology and thwart any efforts to produce these guns en masse?

The answer would appear to be that little attention has been directed towards the dangers 3D guns represent. Legislation across Australian jurisdictions is inconsistent.

At present, only New South Wales and Tasmania have legislated to make it an offence to possess a digital blueprint for the manufacture of a firearm on a 3D printer or electronic milling machine. The maximum penalties are imprisonment for 14 years and 21 years, respectively.

In 2022, WA took a step in the right direction by making unauthorised possession of firearms technology an offence. This included possession of a 3D printer or milling device.

The slow progress on this issue is well illustrated by South Australia. There have been 23 incidents in which police have seized 3D-printed firearms and firearm parts between 2020 and 2023.

But the drafting of proposed legal amendments to address these incidents started in 2024 and are still to be introduced into the SA parliament.

There needs to be a national sense of urgency similar to the federal government’s response to the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. Existing laws are inadequate as there is no uniformity in the legislation covering 3D-printed firearms and their digital blueprints.

There was a senate inquiry into gun violence in 2014, which found 3D printers “were by no means integral to the illegal manufacture of firearms”. This is no longer accurate.

Ironically, the senate committee recommended “Australian governments investigate the requirement for uniform regulations in all jurisdictions covering the manufacture of 3D-printed firearms and firearm parts”. A decade on, little progress has been made.

New laws could distinguish between possessing of a digital blueprint for a 3D gun and actually manufacturing a firearm. This could look like a scale of penalties, such as those imposed for the possession and manufacture of illegal drugs, which are based on the category of drug and the quantity seized.

Andrew Hemming 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. Police are seizing 3D-printed guns across Australia, but our laws aren’t keeping up – https://theconversation.com/police-are-seizing-3d-printed-guns-across-australia-but-our-laws-arent-keeping-up-250255

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

The aftermath of one of the most undiplomatic – and notorious – White House meetings in recent history reveals a changed world.

Having berated Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky for supposedly not wanting peace with Russia and failing to show sufficient gratitude to the United States, President Donald Trump has now paused all military aid to Ukraine.

This equates to about 40% of the beleaguered nation’s military support. If the gap is not quickly covered by other countries, Ukraine will be severely compromised in its defence against the Russian invasion.

This has happened while the Russian army is making slow but costly gains along the front in eastern Ukraine. Trump’s goal appears to be to force Zelensky to accept a deal he does not want, and which may be illegal under international law.

New Zealand is a long way from that front line, but the implications of Trump’s unilateral abandonment of Ukraine still create a serious foreign policy problem.

Aside from its unequivocal condemnation of Russia’s actions, New Zealand has provided Defence Force personnel for training, intelligence, logistics and liaison to the tune of nearly NZ$35 million. The government has also given an additional $32 million in humanitarian assistance.

At the same time, New Zealand has supported global legal efforts to hold Russia to account at both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. With Trump undermining these collective actions, New Zealand faces some stark choices.

Allies at war

While a genuine ceasefire and eventual peace in Ukraine are the right aims, Trump’s one-sided proposal has involved direct talks between Russia and the US, excluding all other parties, including the actual victims of Russian aggression.

With eery parallels to the Munich Agreement of 1938 between Nazi Germany, Britain, France and Italy, peace terms could be dictated to the innocent party. Ukraine may have to sacrifice part of its territory in the hope a wider peace prevails.

In exchange, Ukraine may be given some type of “security assurance”. But what that arrangement would look like, and what kind of peacekeeping force might be acceptable to Russia, remains unclear.

If the current UK and European ceasefire proposals fail, Europe could be pulled more directly into the conflict. Since the Trump rebuff, European leaders are embracing Zelenskyy more tightly, wary of an emboldened Russia threatening other states with substantial Russian populations such as in Estonia and Latvia.

European boots on the ground in Ukraine could escalate the existing war into a much larger and more dangerous conflict. The complexities of this new reality are now spilling over in the United Nations.

A fork in the road

While the Security Council finally agreed on a broad statement in favour of a lasting peace, just what that might look like has seen opposing resolutions in the General Assembly.

On February 18, 53 countries, including New Zealand, voted in favour of a resolution condemning Russian aggression and calling for the return of Ukrainian territory. The resolution passed, but the US, Russia, Belarus and North Korea voted against it.

The US then put up its own resolution calling for peace, without recognising Russian aggression or the illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory. New Zealand supported this, too.

Those two votes clearly signal a fork-in-the-road moment for New Zealand.

As well as the wider consequences and potential precedents of any Ukraine peace settlement for security in Europe and the Pacific region, there is the immediate problem of supporting Ukraine.

With the US and Europe – both traditional allies of New Zealand – now deeply divided, whatever path the government chooses will directly affect present and future security arrangements – including any possible “pillar two” membership of AUKUS.

Potentially complicating matters further, Trump’s civilian lieutenant Elon Musk has publicly advocated for the US leaving the UN and NATO. Whether or not that happens, the threat alone underscores the gravity of the current situation.

No option without risk

Ultimately, if Trump decides to force Zelensky to the negotiating table against his will, and Europe continues urging and supporting him to fight on, New Zealand will have to take sides. It cannot take both.

The National-led coalition government will either have to abandon the stance New Zealand has taken on the Russian invasion over the past three years, or wait for Europe’s response and align with efforts to support a rules-based international order.

The first option would mean stepping back from that traditional foreign policy position, cutting military support for Ukraine (and trusting the Trump process), and probably ending sanctions against Russia and diplomatic efforts for legal accountability.

The other path would mean spending more on military aid, and possibly deploying more defence personnel to help fill the gap Trump has created.

No option is without risk. But, on balance, the European approach to international affairs seems closer to New Zealand’s worldview than the one currently articulated by the Trump administration.

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. America or Europe? Why Trump’s Ukraine U-turn is a fork in the road for New Zealand – https://theconversation.com/america-or-europe-why-trumps-ukraine-u-turn-is-a-fork-in-the-road-for-new-zealand-251459

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

For centuries, fire was one of the major fears for city-dwellers. Dense cities built largely of wood could – and did – burn. In 1666, a fire in a bakery went on to destroy two-thirds of the city of London, leaving 85% of residents homeless. In 1871, fire burned out huge areas of Chicago. In World War II, bombing raids by Allied forces largely destroyed cities such as Dresden in Germany and Tokyo in Japan.

The threat of large-scale urban fires drove authorities to spend more on urban firefighting and require buildings to use less flammable material. Fire alarms, fire engines and automatic sprinklers have done much to reduce the chance of uncontrolled spread.

But will our sense of safety endure in the age of climate change? In January, we saw swathes of Los Angeles burn – even in the northern winter. Driven by low humidity and high winds, numerous large fires encroached on the city, destroying outlying suburbs. Climate change made the fires worse, according to climate scientists.

Now we have new research on the question of whether climate change will make large city fires more likely. A research team from China, Singapore and Australia have gathered a decade’s worth of data on fires from almost 3,000 cities in 20 nations, home to one-fifth of the world’s population.

The researchers found for every 1°C increase in air temperature, outdoor fires (rubbish and landfill) increase 4.7% and vehicle fires 2.5%. If the world accelerates its burning of fossil fuels under a high emissions scenario compatible with a 4.3°C temperature rise by century’s end, outdoor fires in cities would soar 22% and vehicle fires 11%. But building fires are projected to actually fall 5%. Thankfully, this emissions scenario is now less likely.

What did this research find?

To make these findings, the researchers aggregated the fire incident data from 2,847 cities located in 20 countries over the 2011–20 decade and analysed them to see how air temperature influences the frequency of three types of fires: outdoor, structural and vehicle. They found a strong correlation.

Of the 20 nations, New Zealand looks likely to have the highest increase in fires, soaring 140% over 2020 figures by 2100.

When we think of fires in a city, we usually think of structural fires – a building going up in flames.

The research suggests building fires would actually decrease 5% by 2100. This is unexpected, and might suggest uncertainty about this finding.

Interestingly, this research found the fewest structural fires occurred at air temperatures of 24°C, a temperature which humans find optimal. When it’s hotter or cooler than that, more buildings catch fire.

Why? It’s likely due to our behaviour. We spend more time indoors when it’s very cold or very hot outside, which the authors suggest could make us more likely to accidentally cause fires by using electrical appliances and fireplaces which have a fire risk.

By contrast, outdoor and vehicle fires do increase linearly as temperatures rise. Most vehicle fires come from an equipment or heat source failure, which are both likely to increase as temperatures rise. We are also more likely to have a car crash when it’s hotter, and vehicle fires often come after a crash.

Outdoor fires become more likely because heat dries out fuels and favours fire spread. Rubbish dumps can spontaneously catch fire when temperatures are too high – even underground. This happens because chemical reactions are accelerated in warmer temperatures, causing waste materials to heat up faster. If the extra heat isn’t dissipated, waste can become so hot that it catches fire on its own.

We should take these estimates with a grain of salt. This is because they project recent statistical patterns into an uncertain future, and draw on a data set not perfectly suited to the task. The data set stops in 2020, before the electric vehicle transition gathered speed. EVs have a different risk profile for accidental fires.

As the authors note, there are large barriers to getting a coherent understanding of fire risk. “Despite multiple efforts, we have been unsuccessful in obtaining fire data from Africa and South America,” they write.

Their estimates also relate to a high-emissions future which is hopefully becoming less likely, though the general pattern of the results are similar under less severe climate projections.

Most importantly, it’s not yet clear why temperature influences urban fires. This uncertainty raises questions over whether simple projections of current patterns into the future are realistic or appropriate.

Cities aflame?

Arguably the most important contribution of this new research is to show us that our cities are not inherently protected from fire.

For city authorities, this research points to the need to manage combustible materials, from piles of mulch to dry urban parks and even home gardens. Storage yards, rubbish dumps and recycling centres will also need to be managed.

Fire used to be a major concern for cities, and it could be again. Cities and fire are uneasy bedfellows, and climate change will worsen the situation.

David Bowman is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and also receives funding from the New South Wales Bushfire and Natural Hazards Research Centre, and Natural Hazards Research Australia.

Calum Cunningham receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Fires used to terrify city residents. New research suggests climate change could see this fear return – https://theconversation.com/fires-used-to-terrify-city-residents-new-research-suggests-climate-change-could-see-this-fear-return-251056

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dana McKay, Associate Dean, Interaction, Technology and Information, RMIT University

Bill Gates, cofounder of Microsoft, is one of the world’s richest men. He is also a highly controversial figure.

On one hand, he contributes to social, medical and environmental causes through his foundation, making grants worth more than US$77 billion ($A123 billion) from its inception to the end of 2023. On the other, he has confirmed associations with Jeffrey Epstein and was the subject of spurious COVID conspiracy theories.

Even Gates’ Microsoft days were controversial. Under his leadership, Microsoft became the first tech giant, but Gates has been repeatedly described as ruthless, both personally and professionally.

Review: Source Code, My Beginnings – Bill Gates (Penguin)

He was accused by his late long-term friend and business partner Paul Allen, of canvassing ways to dilute Allen’s shares in Microsoft when the latter was undergoing treatment for lymphoma. Gates reportedly apologised to Allen, and they repaired their relationship, and were on good terms by the time Allen died.

Still, as a leader, his style has been characterised by some who worked with him in the 1980s and 1990s as bullying. (Gates’ spokesperson has denied he mistreated employees.)

Childhood

In Source Code, Gates sets out to tell his own story, and the story of the birth of the tech industry.

His parents were the children of hardworking strugglers. His father, Bill Senior, was educated as a lawyer on the GI bill; his mother, Mary, was, according to Gates, an innovative and engaged homemaker, who later shattered glass ceilings.

Born in 1955 Gates describes himself as the kind of kid his mother had to warn his preschool teachers about. He responded to not knowing how to fit in with other kids by becoming a class clown, and was pushed by his mother to relate to other adults.

He was introduced to mathematics by his maternal grandmother, a Christian Scientist and a card sharp. She played assiduously with her grandchildren. She did not believe in losing to them deliberately. Through cards, Gates learned two key lessons: that you can learn the mathematics of a problem, and that practising a skill will hone it.

His relationship with his father was loving and respectful, but his relationship with his mother was more fraught. She encouraged him, but he resented her expectation that he live up to social mores so much that peace had to be brokered by a family therapist.

The privilege of private school

Gates was sent to a private school for boys, and his stories about Lakeside School in Seattle are probably the most engaging segment of the book. It was at Lakeside that he learned to apply himself academically, after his class-clown act failed to impress. There, he also met Allen, who would become co-founder of Microsoft, and got his hands on his first computer.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, computer time was charged by the minute. Gates used lucky connections and his entreprenurial spirit to get a job coding, so he could do more of what he loved. This was how he clocked up 500 hours coding before he left high school, a mean feat even by today’s standards.

Gates describes a degree of freedom almost unimaginable in today’s regimented education system. He had access to the computer lab at all hours and was able to take an entire semester off to code.

He continued his elite education at Harvard. Eventually, he chose to major in applied mathematics, partly because it gave him some of the same freedom he had been accustomed to. He soon realised he was not the best at pure mathematics, as he had anticipated.

Gates again got early access to computers at Harvard. He used this access to build his first microprocessor software (“Micro-Soft”), with Allen, which he and Allen sold to a company called MITS in 1975.

He was sanctioned by Harvard for this project. Their computers were not supposed to be for commercial use. He was also bringing non-students into the lab.

At this point, aged 19, he decided to take a semester off to focus on his business.

But they stole my software!

In 1975 Gates went to work with MITS, the company that built the first desktop computer, where he expanded his software.

The first version of this software was literally stolen at a trade fair, reducing Microsoft’s profits and creating a rift between Gates and many of the hobbyists who were using this software

Gates believed that software should be paid for; many of the hobbyists believed software should be free and open source.

Gates describes the head of MITS, Ed Roberts, as loud and somewhat mercurial, an irony that is not lost as we read Gates’ letters to his friends and business partners, in whom he is frequently disappointed.

Eventually, the relationship with MITS broke down. MITS failed to meet the terms of its contract to promote and license Gates’s software.

The end of this contract left Gates free to sell his software to a range of companies, including Apple and Texas Instruments. A legal judgement confirmed MITS had not fulfilled its contract to Microsoft, and that Microsoft had full ownership of its software and the right to sell it. This judgement is probably the foundation of the for-profit software industry.

In early adulthood, Gates already showed little respect for other people and social norms. He describes subscribing to the ideology of the lone genius, being arrested for speeding (where the famous mugshot of him comes from), and even joyriding on parked bulldozers.

This section of the book is probably the least readable. It presents a limited account of an exciting time in computing. Steven Levy’s Hackers is a great alternative account.

The DNA of computer programs

The “source code” is the DNA of the computer programs we use. Gates’ book sets out the source code of Microsoft, as a company, and in many ways, of the tech industry as a business.

Gates created not just Microsoft, but arguably an entire industry: selling software. His book describes the unique set of personal characteristics that made him the right person for this (single minded focus, which Gates attributes to likely autism, and a willingness to ignore all other considerations to get the job done).

It also describes a lucky set of circumstances. Gates benefited from a legal education at his father’s knee, a family history of entrepreneurship, and early access to computers.

The book ends in the late 1970s just as this combination of circumstances is about to bear fruit and a full four years before the launch of Microsoft’s first operating system. It does not cover Microsoft’s heyday, nor Gates’ substantial philanthropic activities later in life.

It isn’t clear why Gates has written this book now. If it is to rehabilitate his image, he makes a poor job of it. He describes a life of consistent privilege and only acknowledges this privilege at the end of the book, which rings hollow.

He displays a profound belief that he has been right in his interactions with others, going so far as to describe his relationship with Steve Jobs at Apple as “sometimes rivalrous, sometimes friendly”, even though Apple famously sued Microsoft over the rights to the windows style of user interface we are all used to today.

There is little acknowledgement in the book even of the regrets he has expressed elsewhere, for example over his treatment of Paul Allen. There is little to dilute the impression that Gates was ruthless, though perhaps a later memoir may document changes later in life.

A male-dominated industry

While Gates’ focus and drive were clearly fundamental to the growth of the tech industry, this book also exposes the DNA of some of the tech industry’s problems.

He describes his father as a feminist, but his mother’s social expectations were a source of irritation to him, and he barely mentions his two sisters. He got his first access to computers at an elite boys’ school – a school where, notably, his best friend protested the integration of the sister school for fear it would reduce academic standards.

This school, and later Harvard (then another male bastion), were the source of all early Microsoft employees, sowing the seeds of today’s male-dominated industry, with all its attendant problems.

Gates’ attitude to property underpins Microsoft’s aggressive business practices. He was clearly prepared to borrow what isn’t his (bulldozers, computer lab time), but he is incensed by the theft of his intellectual property. This attitude is evident in the long history of Microsoft litigation.

The company has been repeatedly prosecuted for antitrust behaviour and sued for copyright infringement. Conversely, it aggressively pursued those it believes to be infringing, including, famously, a 17-year-old entrepreneur, who was probably not unlike Gates himself.

Gates doesn’t draw these connections. He is largely uncritical of his own path, only occasionally admitting he treated someone poorly.

Ultimately, his book is a useful insight into the source code of the tech industry, but not always in the ways Gates likely anticipates.

Dana McKay has previously received funding from Google.

– ref. Bill Gates’ origin story describes a life of privilege, exposing the DNA of some of the tech industry’s problems – https://theconversation.com/bill-gates-origin-story-describes-a-life-of-privilege-exposing-the-dna-of-some-of-the-tech-industrys-problems-247577

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Etienne Capron, Postdoctoral fellow, HEC Montréal

There is an enduring myth that many technological innovations have come out of garages, bedrooms and basements.

One of the most famous garages is the one at Steve Jobs’ parents’ house where he was rumoured to have designed the Apple I computer, along with Steve Wozniak and some colleagues. The myth was so persistent, that the garage was designated as a site of historical importance in 2013. It was a similar story for the founders of Google, who set up their first offices in an actual garage in Menlo Park in San Jose, Calif.

Then there was William Hewlett and David Packard, who developed a low-distortion frequency oscillator in their garage in Palo Alto, before going on to found the information technology company HP Inc. One of their first customers was Walt Disney, who used it for the sound in his 1940 film Fantasia.

The garage is an important site in the founding myths of many entrepreneurial adventures. Before a company becomes successful, where it starts out is as important as the visionaries who invest in it. And in addition to the specific space of the garage, the surrounding urban environment is also important. What a city offers, and the way it is organized, both contribute to innovation.

This article is part of our series Our cities from yesterday to tomorrow. Urban life is going through many transformations, each with cultural, economic, social – and, in this election year, political – implications. To shed light on these diverse issues, The Conversation Canada is inviting researchers to discuss the current state of our cities.

Multiplicity of creative spaces

There are many spaces specifically designed to support entrepreneurship today, including incubators, accelerators and collaborative workspaces. In addition to providing a place to work, these spaces facilitate both networking with potential partners and access to business opportunities.

It is also interesting to note how these creative spaces have multiplied in most cities, sometimes with a specialization. They can be found in the fields of health, social innovation and digital technologies.

Yet, as important as they may be for some players, these spaces are not the only factors that contribute to entrepreneurial success. Other places, sometimes unexpected, such as the fast food restaurant where Nvidia was born or the Californian saunas that have replaced luxury hotels for business meetings between investors and entrepreneurs, also contribute to the creation and development of new companies. Nor can the success of an entrepreneurial venture be explained by a single place.

That raises the question: what do we know about how cities, and the variety of places within them, affect the development of entrepreneurial capacity?

As a postdoctoral researcher at HEC Montréal (MOSAIC) and a professor of innovation management at the IAE Nantes University, respectively, we have explored this question as part of our research in innovation management, particularly in a recent piece of research.

The city, an ecosystem

Research has long focused on specific types of places. The aim is both to understand what happens there and to extract lessons that can be replicated elsewhere. Accessing a shared workspace offers entrepreneurs the opportunity to socialize. This was also the great promise of the American company WeWork: to be a member of a community.

À lire aussi :
WeWork : chute d’une entreprise ou fin du coworking ?

Specific technologies or tools for prototyping can be found in a fab lab or a collaborative manufacturing workshop. Presenting your project to investors is easier from an incubator or accelerator. For example, by presenting a project at Y-Combinator in California, an accelerator renowned for supporting promising projects, entrepreneurs know they’ll get noticed by investors.

Similarly, it is easier to meet potential partners or pick up on the latest trends in a market or technologies by spending the evening in a trendy café or bar. Informal exchanges are easier there and these play a big role in the entrepreneurial dynamics of a territory.

And then, quite simply, where does the initial idea come from? As the American columnist and writer Steven Johnson shows through the examples of Gutenberg and Darwin, it is clear this often happens at odd times and in unusual places.

As a result, whether innovators are entrepreneurs, artists or scientists, it is unlikely that all the resources they require will be available to everyone, all the time, in one place.

As the American urban planner and sociologist Jane Jacobs so aptly put it, individuals experience the city. They do not got to a single place: they visit or pass by a variety of places, each of which, in its own way, can nurture the creativity and career of an entrepreneur. Our research reveals that it is above all the combination of a city’s places – their diversity of size, function, purpose and location – that produces entrepreneurial capacity.

Observing artists to better understand entrepreneurship

Let’s take the example of creators who produce projection mapping works in Montréal. Thanks to a six-month survey of 21 Montréal artists, we were able to show the heterogeneity of places they visited regularly throughout the process of creation and development.

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Our study led to two main conclusions.

Firstly, depending on the profile of individuals and their creative approach, the places they visit regularly are different, and sometimes distinctive. This is the case, for example, of an artist who benefits from a residency in a printing workshop to create a projection on fabrics. It is also the case of a designer who goes to a fab lab to experiment with sensors.

This suggests that there are specific trajectories for each individual, and therefore, no single path that leads to innovation.

The need for structuring places

Secondly, this observation suggests that the convergence around certain places does not owe to chance: multiple resources, sometimes crucial for recognition in a field, are mobilized there.

For example, many of the artists in our study regularly visited Montréal’s Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), a renowned meeting place that has helped the careers of many artists. The artists we met go there to take courses, attend shows, and meet musicians with whom they may eventually collaborate.

That’s how a venue’s reputation is built. As we have shown, this can become essential at a particular stage of the entrepreneur’s journey.

But before or after this stage, other places may be more beneficial.

In fact, depending on the phase of the innovation project, the types of places visited and their number vary greatly. So, since needs are different, the capacity to innovate depends on the places and possibilities that exist in a city. For example, Montréal’s diverse cultural offerings, with its artist-run centres and performance halls, strongly inspire projection mapping artists.

Workshops are obviously important places for experimentation and creation, but they are only used when a prototype or final work is being produced.

The territory of innovation

In a more global context, where there are many technological, societal and environmental challenges, innovations are necessary.

Ideas and entrepreneurs are essential to make innovation happen. Entrepreneurs need skills and financial resources. They need to be part of collectives and communities. But also, and perhaps even above all, they need to be in territories that offer a wide range of places where they can take advantage of complementary resources to carry out their projects.

The city as a whole, and on a smaller scale, its neighbourhoods, are the melting pot from which ideas circulate and mix, where projects mature and take shape. The urban morphology, which can be seen as a particular arrangement of places and transport or travel infrastructures, then becomes a new deciding factor in entrepreneurial capacity.

Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.

– ref. Beyond the garage: How important are spaces to business creation? – https://theconversation.com/beyond-the-garage-how-important-are-spaces-to-business-creation-250130

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katharine H. Greenaway, Associate Professor, The University of Melbourne

In 218 BC, the Carthaginian general Hannibal crossed the Alps against the advice of his men, who claimed it was impossible. “Aut inveniam viam, aut faciam,” Hannibal is said to have replied: “I shall either find a way, or make one.”

Though apocryphal, Hannibal’s bold statement captures a trait much sought in the tech industry today: “high agency”. This means being able to positively influence yourself or the world around you.

Psychologists use a range of other terms to refer to this kind of trait — including perceived control, mastery, and efficacy. All of them boil down to being able to achieve the things you want, when you want.

Recognising agency

In the business world, the term high agency is used in much the same way as “disruptor”, “game-changer” and “self-starter” were before it. As you might expect from those comparisons, high agency is a catch-all phrase for people who see and take opportunities where others see roadblocks.

More than this, high agency describes a person who creates their own opportunities where there appear to be none.

High agency is beneficial in more than the professional sphere, however.

Research shows that feeling able to achieve important goals is a building block for motivation in most domains of life, including education, health and political action. This is because people who feel “in control” set higher goals, are more committed those goals, and exert greater effort to achieve those goals than people who feel “out of control”.

Agency differs by demographic, including factors such as age. Some research suggests people feel more in control of their life circumstances and outcomes in middle age than in old age.

Socioeconomic factors such as education, income and work history also play a role. Put simply, people who are “better off” feel more agentic.

Mental health seems to be both an outcome and a predictor of high agency. People who are less depressed feel more in control of their lives, and those who feel more in control are less depressed.

Rethinking agency

The concept of “high agency” is an amalgamation of, or an umbrella term for, a range of traits that psychologists have studied for decades. Related concepts include the prized “growth mindset” (the belief that one’s talents are developable rather than innate), “proactivity” (acting in advance of, rather than reacting to, situations), and the somewhat controversial “grit” (perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals). Note, however, that some argue grit is just a rebranded version of the personality trait “conscientiousness”.

High agency, as the tech world sees it, appears to borrow from all these concepts, wrapped up in one convenient package. Agentic people are those who see possibility where others see barriers, take action rather than wait to be told what to do, and aren’t afraid to go after what they want.

These traits are also stereotypically associated with particular people in society: members of advantaged majority groups, such as men, those with high socioeconomic status, and white people.

In many ways, high-agency behaviour is an act of privilege. It involves trusting that others will react well to your efforts to try a new approach or disrupt the status quo.

The reality is that the way other people respond will depend at least in part on factors outside our control. This may be particularly true for less privileged people, who tend to see less opportunity to exert choice and influence the world due to the very real structural barriers they face. This means acting “high agency” may be a risk for some people: actions that see one person praised as a “game changer” could easily see another labelled a “troublemaker”.

Taken to an extreme, high agency could read as “alpha” – the kind of person who takes charge and is a natural leader. Alpha is a gendered term, most commonly applied with a suffix such as male, bro or dude.

The already male-dominated tech industry should be wary of baking gendered traits into personnel selection procedures. If high agency is understood to mean a certain type of person rather than just a type of personality, it could be a problem for equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Realising agency

Given the rising value of high agency in professional settings – not to mention its personal emotional and motivational benefits – you might wonder how people can become more agentic.

Many proponents of high agency emphasise its value for looking at the world in a different way. So too it might be valuable to look at high agency in a different way: not what makes an individual agentic, but what are the conditions that allow agency to thrive.

Research shows that certain types of environments set people up for success. Environments that allow people to thrive are those that meet three basic psychological needs.

The first is the need for autonomy: the ability to freely choose what we do and when we do it. The second is the need for competence: the feeling of being capable of performing desired actions. Finally, there is the need for relatedness: the feeling of being connected to others.

These needs can be fostered by the work environment. (Google famously adopts similar motivational workplace practices.) People can also adapt themselves by “job crafting” to help create the conditions conducive to success.

While high agency may seem like an innate personality trait, emerging research suggests the people around us may be a powerful source of personal agency. People who are better able to influence their own outcomes are often those who can turn to, or recruit, others to help them achieve those outcomes.

Paradoxically, this means that “high agency” might not (just) be a quality of you personally, but a quality of the people around you.

Katharine H. Greenaway 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. ‘High agency’: what the science says about the latest tech buzzword – https://theconversation.com/high-agency-what-the-science-says-about-the-latest-tech-buzzword-250767

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Genauer, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Flinders University

Since commencing his second term as United States president, Donald Trump has distanced the US from Ukraine and warmed relations with Russia.

This presents a predicament for European nations.

A changing landscape

Europe relies on the US for military and technology capability.

The US is responsible for more than a third of the total funds spent on defence worldwide.

It is also a critical member of the NATO security alliance and has more than 80,000 troops on the European continent.

Since January 20, the Trump administration has coupled economic isolationism with a surprisingly interventionist foreign policy agenda.

This is driven by a realist, interests-based approach to political leadership.

Trump’s actions align with a worldview that emphasises material advantage over values and ideas – the interests of great and regional powers are considered to be the only ones that matter.

The heated exchange between Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28 underscored the crumbling architecture and protocols of the international rules-based order in place since the second world war.

It appears the Trump administration may expect unilateral concessions from Ukraine to Russia for peace. This would likely include ceding significant territory to Russia.

Read more:
In siding with Russia over Ukraine, Trump is not putting America first. He is hastening its decline

A rock and a hard place

Ukraine borders four EU and NATO-member countries: Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. This poses a serious security risk.

Europe’s foremost security challenge is to deter Russia from further offensive action on the continent.

European countries have a direct interest in stopping the war, because a continuing conflict presents a costly threat, draining resources in military and humanitarian aid.

According to the Kiel institute for the World Economy, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, European countries have collectively committed more than $US138 billion ($A222 billion) in military and non-military aid.

European countries want to see an end to the war that leaves Ukraine a safe and sovereign nation state. For European countries, it is crucial that any political settlement effectively deters Russia from further incursions into Ukrainian or Eastern European territory.

Without deterrence measures in place, there is no guaranteed prevention of wider state-to-state conflict on the European continent in future.

On the one hand, Europe needs the US military and economic might. On the other hand, Europe has pressing security concerns that drive a divergence from the US in its position on Ukraine.

How far will Trump go with Russia?

A key question on European leaders’ minds is: will the NATO alliance hold if there is an incursion into NATO-member territory?

If the borders of Poland or a Baltic state are violated, NATO’s article 5 will be triggered. This article requires the collective defense by all NATO allies of any ally under attack.

This could mean the US is obliged to join a direct confrontation with Russia.

Would Trump actually commit US military support to a fight with Russia? Or would the US abandon their NATO treaty obligations?

Trump’s rhetoric and actions so far suggest European countries should prepare for the latter possibility.

Read more:
How Trump’s spat with Zelensky threatens the security of the world – including the US

Strategic autonomy and deterrence

Given this dilemma, Europe needs to focus on strategic autonomy and deterrence.

Strategic autonomy includes not only defence, but also economics, environment, energy and values.

In terms of defence, strategic autonomy means Europe taking more responsibility for its own security. Former European Defence Agency chief Jorge Domecq notes this includes having the ability to “develop, operate, modify and maintain the full spectrum of defence capabilities”.

Effective deterrence of further Russian aggression on the continent requires providing substantive security guarantees to Ukraine. This may include a multilateral security structure for European countries (without the US) that could guarantee Ukraine’s security.

The idea of a European Army has also reemerged. This would go beyond defence cooperation to full military and strategic integration. Such an entity could underpin a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine.

At a summit in London on March 2, EU countries and the UK proposed a one-month truce that could be followed by European troops on the ground in Ukraine to maintain the peace.

What does Ukraine want from Europe?

A Gallup survey in late 2024 suggests the percentage of Ukrainians who want a negotiated end to the war has increased from about 20% in early 2022 to more than 50% in late 2024.

Over the same period, those who favour fighting for a military solution has declined from more than 70% to just under 40%.

The same survey revealed most Ukrainians prefer a key role for the EU in negotiations (70%) and the UK (63%), with less than half preferring a significant role from Trump.

Interestingly, more than 40% supported a central role for Turkey in negotiations.

China: a country to watch

China’s approach to Russia and the war could have an impact on Europe’s security and political stability.

China is mostly concerned with domestic economic growth and regime stability, and it has not directly involved itself in the war in Ukraine.

However, China is a close friend of Russia and a security ally of North Korea, which is currently fighting in the Kursk province of Russia against Ukrainian forces.

In 2023, China put forward its own “peace plan” proposal for Ukraine.

A rapprochement between the US and Russia may be viewed unfavourably by China which could see this as a threat to its own regional geopolitical influence.

China maintains significant influence over Russian President Vladimir Putin due to economic and security ties.

If China senses a fundamental shift in the international order, it may become more assertive in attempting to influence Russia and the trajectory of the war in Ukraine.

For Europe, distancing from the US may mean getting closer to China.

However, this comes with its own risks.

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

– ref. The strategies and risks European powers must consider when it comes to tackling Trump – https://theconversation.com/the-strategies-and-risks-european-powers-must-consider-when-it-comes-to-tackling-trump-251253

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ty Ferguson, Research Fellow, University of South Australia

Tossing and turning on sweltering summer nights? You’re not alone.

As temperatures rise due to climate change, our sleep is becoming shorter and more disrupted.

But it’s not just the heat keeping us awake – climate change creates multiple challenges to our nightly slumber, which may be affecting our health.

What happens when we don’t get enough sleep?

Sleep isn’t just rest – it’s vital for our health.

Adults need at least seven hours per night to maintain cognitive function, memory and emotional balance. Poor sleep immediately impacts mood and attention, while chronic sleep issues increase risk of diabetes, obesity, depression, heart disease and even premature death.

So, how is climate change impacting our sleep?

1. Overnight temperatures are rising

Our circadian rhythm – that internal biological clock – requires our internal body temperature to drop at night for quality sleep. The ideal room temperature for sleep is 15°C to 19°C.

Rising outdoor temperatures make this body temperature increasingly difficult to maintain, especially for those without air conditioning. Paradoxically, widespread air conditioning use further contributes to climate change by using fossil-energy, which creates emissions.**

Research shows the impact on our sleep is already measurable. Our 2023 study of 375 Australian adults found people lost 12 minutes per night on the hottest nights compared with the coldest (31°C vs 0.4°C overnight temperatures across the year).

Globally, scientists predict we could lose 50–58 hours of sleep annually per person by the end of the century if warming continues unchecked. This is one way climate change will make geographic inequalities worse.

2. Climate change is worsening air pollution

Hot and dry conditions typically tend to make air pollution worse. As climate change increases the number of hot days and frequency of heatwaves, the rate of wildfires will increase. This adds another source of air pollution, increasing emissions of harmful greenhouse gases and airborne particles.

Air pollution is linked with poorer health, increased risk of chronic illness and early death.

Air pollution also impacts our sleep through breathing issues, inflammation and potentially disrupting our nervous system’s ability to regulate sleep.

And in winter, households burn wood for residential heating, adding another source of climate-impacting emissions. Air pollution from wood fires worsens respiratory conditions such as asthma, bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, further compromising sleep.

3. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe

Whether it’s wildfires, heatwaves, flooding or cyclones, extreme weather is becoming more common and more intense.

With these extreme events comes widespread upheaval in affected communities. From mass population displacement to loss of shelter, security and essential resources, sleep is likely way down the list of priorities when dealing with natural disasters.

However, sleep disturbances are common after these extreme events. A review of global research on wildfire survivors found two-thirds experienced insomnia and more than a third reported nightmares. These effects persisted up to 10 months after the disaster.

4. Climate anxiety is on the rise

Even if you haven’t directly experienced an extreme weather event, the constant stream of climate catastrophes in our media can trigger what psychologists call “climate anxiety” – an existential dread that is keeping people awake.

Research confirms these climate concerns are linked with sleep disturbances including difficulty falling asleep, insomnia and wakefulness. They occur across the age spectrum, affecting both younger and older adults.

If climate-related concerns or ongoing poor sleep are significantly impacting your life consider consulting a doctor or psychologist.

Tips for getting a good night sleep during hot nights

Fortunately, there are a few simple things you can do to improve your chances of getting a good night’s sleep. They cost nothing or very little and require just a small bit of pre-bedtime planning.

Here are some tips for getting a good night sleep despite the temperature:

For your environment:

· sleep in the coolest room in the house (this may not be the bedroom)

· keep curtains closed during the day to limit heating from sunlight

· put on a fan – air flow can lower your perception of the temperature (by helping sweat evaporate faster) without actually cooling your room

· select light, breathable bedding (natural fibres work best)

· if outside temperatures drop at night, open the windows to encourage air circulation.

For your body:

· take a cool shower before bed to help lower body temperature

· timing your exercise is important: aim to exercise early in the day

· wear light natural-fibre clothing

· keep a damp towel or spray bottle by your bed to dampen your skin

· stay hydrated but avoid heavy meals before sleeping.

As we adapt to a changing climate, getting a good night’s sleep should be a top priority for our health.

With some practical adjustments to our environments and habits, we can adapt to these changes while advocating for the broader climate solutions that will ultimately help us all rest easier.

Ty Ferguson receives funding from the Medical Research Future Fund and the National Health and Medical Research Council

Carol Maher receives funding from the Medical Research Future Fund, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the National Heart Foundation, the SA Department for Education, Preventive Health SA, the Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation, the South Australian Office for Sport, Recreation and Racing, Healthway, Hunter New England Local Health District, and the Central Adelaide Local Health Network.

– ref. Why can’t I sleep? 4 ways climate change could be keeping you up at night and what you can do about it – https://theconversation.com/why-cant-i-sleep-4-ways-climate-change-could-be-keeping-you-up-at-night-and-what-you-can-do-about-it-250253

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Whiting, Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, RMIT University

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the union for voice actors and creatives, recently circulated a video of voice actor Thomas G. Burt describing the impact of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) on his livelihood.

Voice actors have been hit hard by GenAI, particularly those working in the video game sector. Many are contract workers without ongoing employment, and for some game companies already feeling the squeeze, supplementing voice-acting work with GenAI is just too tempting.

Audio work – whether music, sound design or voice acting – already lacks strong protections. Recent research from my colleagues and I on the use of GenAI and automation in producing music for Australian video games reveals a messy picture.

Facing the crunch

A need for greater productivity, increased turnarounds, and budget restraints in the Australian games sector is incentivising the accelerated uptake of automation.

The games sector is already susceptible to “crunch”, or unpaid overtime, to reach a deadline. This crunch demands faster workflows, increasing automation and the adoption of GenAI throughout the sector.

The Australian games industry is also experiencing a period of significant contraction, with many workers facing layoffs. This has constrained resources and increased the prevalence of crunch, which may increase reliance on automation at the expense of re-skilling the workforce.

One participant told us:

the fear that I have going forward for a lot of creative forms is I feel like this is going to be the fast fashion of art and of text.

Mixed emotions and fair compensation

Workers in the Australian games industry have mixed feelings about the impact of GenAI, ranging from hopeful to scared.

Audio workers are generally more pessimistic than non-audio games professionals. Many see GenAI as extractive and potentially exploitative. When asked how they see the future of the sector, one participant responded:

I would say negative, and the general feeling being probably fear and anxiety, specifically around job security.

Others noted it will increase productivity and efficiency:

[when] synthesisers started being made, people were like, ‘oh, it’s going to replace musicians. It’s going to take jobs away’. And maybe it did, but like, it also opened up this whole other world of possibilities for people to be creative.

Regardless, most participants expressed concerns about whether a GenAI model was ethically trained and whether licensing can be properly remunerated, concerns echoed by the union.

Those we spoke with believed the authors of any material used to train AI data-sets should be fairly compensated and/or credited.

An “opt-in” licensing model has been proposed by unions as a compromise. This states a creators’ data should only be used for training GenAI under an opt-in basis, and the use of content to train generative AI models should be subject to consent and compensation.

Taboos, confusion and loss of community

Some audio professionals interested in working with GenAI do not feel like they can speak openly about the subject, as it is seen as taboo:

There’s like this feeling of dread and despair, just completely swirling around our entire creative field of people. And it doesn’t need to be like that. We just need to have the right discussions, and we can’t have the right discussions if everyone’s hair is on fire.

The technology is clearly divisive, despite perceived benefits.

Several participants expressed concerns the prevalence of GenAI may reduce collaboration across the sector. They feared this could result in an erosion of professional community, as well as potential loss of institutional knowledge and specific creative skills:

I really like working with people […] And handing that over to a machine, like, I can’t be friends with the machine […] I want to work with someone who’s going to come in and completely shake up the way, you know, our project works.

The Australian games sector is reliant on a highly networked but often precarious set of workers, who move between projects based on need and demand for certain skills.

The ability to replace such skills with automation may lead to siloing and a deterioration of greater professional collaboration.

But there are benefits to be had

Many workers in the games audio sector see automation as helpful in terms
of administration, ideation, workshopping, programming and as an educational tool:

In terms of automation, I see it as, like, utilities. For example, being a developer, I write scripts. So, if I’m doing something and it’s gonna take me a long time, I’ll automate it by writing a script.

These systems also have helpful applications for neurodivergent professionals and workers who may struggle with time management or other attention-related issues.

Over half of participants said AI and automation allows more time for creativity, as workers can automate the more tedious elements of their workflow:

I suffer like anyone else from writer’s block […] If you can give me a piece of software that is trained off me, that I could say, ‘I need something that’s in my house style, make me something’, and a piece of software could spit back at me a piece of music that sounds like me that I could go, ‘oh, that’s exactly it’, I would do it. That would save me an incalculable amount of time.

Many professionals who would prefer not to use AI said they would consider using it in the face of time or budget constraints. Others stated GenAI allows teams and individuals to deliver more work than they would without it:

Especially with deadlines always being as short as they are, I think a lot of automation can help to focus on the more creative and decision-based aspects.

Many workers within the digital audio space are already working hard to create ethical alternatives to AI theft.

Although GenAI may be here to stay, a balance between the efficiencies provided should not come at the cost of creative professions.

Sam Whiting receives funding from RMIT University and the Winston Churchill Trust. Dr Whiting received funding from APRA/AMCOS and Creative Australia for the project discussed in this piece.

– ref. ‘I can’t be friends with the machine’: what audio artists working in games think of AI – https://theconversation.com/i-cant-be-friends-with-the-machine-what-audio-artists-working-in-games-think-of-ai-248869

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Shaw, Professor of Politics, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey University

Extending the length of the parliamentary term is one of those recurring issues in New Zealand politics, emerging from the constitutional shadows every 30 years or so and quickly retreating from the bright light of scrutiny.

The pending introduction of the Term of Parliament (Enabling 4-year Term) Legislation Amendment Bill – a coalition initiative of the ACT Party but which enjoys qualified cross-party support – sees the question once again enjoying a moment in the sun.

Because of the constitutional protection of the parliamentary term, and if the bill becomes law, an extension would require a public referendum with the 2026 general election (or the support of 75% of all MPs, a route the government will not take).

The standard maximum term of parliament would remain three years. But a prime minister would have the option at the start of a new parliamentary term of advising the governor-general it would be extended to four years.

This could only happen if the allocation of places on select committees reflected the distribution of non-executive MPs across all parliamentary parties. Theoretically, this would be a check on executive power.

But while the coming debate will be framed as one about parliament, the real issue is whether voters wish to extend the length of time governments spend in office. This is a crucial distinction.

Lack of checks and balances

New Zealand voters do not directly elect the executive branch. Rather, the government is formed by the party or parties able to command a majority of MPs following each election.

In short, we elect parliaments, which then provide governments. The length of one is connected to that of the other – meaning elections are one of the few ways New Zealanders can hold their governments to account.

Perhaps for this reason, voters have consistently supported a three-year term, despite historical attempts by earlier governments to extend it. Two previous referendums, in 1967 and 1990, maintained the status quo.

This does make New Zealand something of an outlier internationally. Of 190 lower houses and unicameral national legislatures around the world, only nine have terms of three years or less. The vast majority have terms of four or five years.

But New Zealand also lacks the checks and balances found in many of those other countries: a codified constitution, a Supreme Court responsible for policing it, and an upper legislative chamber.

Consequently, the frequency with which governments are held accountable to the people really does matter.

An ‘executive paradise’

This absence of the sorts of constitutional guardrails common elsewhere is what led former prime minister and constitutional lawyer Geoffrey Palmer to call New Zealand an “executive paradise”.

The introduction of a four-year parliamentary term would do little to alter that, despite the argument it would improve the quality of parliamentary law and the standard of public policy-making.

A three-year cycle, it is often claimed, forces governments to spend their first year in office removing as many traces of the previous administration as possible, the second consolidating its own policy agenda, and the third campaigning for the next election.

A four-year term, the logic goes, would give ministers more time to learn the intricacies of their portfolios and develop policy expertise. It would allow for longer parliamentary deliberation on complex legislation, and ensure parliament properly scrutinises government policies, budgets and performance.

All things being equal, a longer parliamentary term could improve governance and create a more stable, durable policy mix. But, of course, all things are rarely equal.

Missing provisions

In and of itself, a longer parliamentary term is unlikely to produce the benefits its proponents promise. Improved policy-making requires resources as well as more time, including policy and procedural expertise, judgement and institutional wisdom.

These things reside in the professional bureaucracy. Without also addressing the systemic crisis in the public service, an extra year won’t improve matters.

It would be especially important to ensure a longer term went hand in hand with more effective parliamentary scrutiny of government activity, both its forecasts and actual results.

As a 2019 report from the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies suggested, investment in MPs’ policy expertise, systematic work plans for select committees and changes to parliament’s Standing Orders are also needed to improve the legislative process.

But these do not feature in the draft legislation. And without them, an extended parliamentary term would simply tip the balance even further towards the executive branch and away from the legislature.

Democratic accountability

There are other important issues the draft legislation doesn’t address, including the implications of making a four-year term discretionary, and what might prevent a government from ignoring irksome select committee recommendations (as can and does presently occur).

Worryingly, too, advice from the Ministry of Justice to the justice minister points out that parts of the proposed legislation are “constitutionally and practically problematic”.

The inevitable uncertainty at the start of every new parliament would “undermine democratic accountability” and “risks undermining the legitimacy of parliament and its exercise of public decision-making powers”.

The advice also says the legislation is “out of step with other long-standing legal and constitutional principles, including that it appears to encroach on the House of Representatives’ right to control its own operations”. In our constitutional tradition it is not for the executive to determine how parliament functions. A king’s head once rolled over this issue.

The proposed legislation starkly illustrates the tensions that can emerge when constitutional arrangements blur the boundaries between the executive and legislative branches, enabling the former to dictate terms to the latter.

Without other changes – an increase in the size of the House relative to the executive, say, or restrictions on the power of the prime minister to call early elections – the variable parliamentary term promised by the bill will inject more uncertainty into public life, not less.

And it will not improve the quality of our laws. It will simply extend the length of time government ministers get to spend in paradise.

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

– ref. NZ governments enjoy an ‘executive paradise’ – a longer parliamentary term won’t change that – https://theconversation.com/nz-governments-enjoy-an-executive-paradise-a-longer-parliamentary-term-wont-change-that-251139

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

What do the Australian lungfish, ghost bat, sandhill dunnart and southern and central greater gliders have in common? They’re all threatened species that need a formal “recovery plan” – but do not have one.

Today, environmental group the Wilderness Society launched a case in the Federal Court against Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, arguing she and successive environment ministers have failed to meet their legal obligations to create threatened species recovery plans.

Other species forming the basis of the case are Baudin’s cockatoo, the Australian grayling, Carnaby’s black cockatoo, red goshawk, forest red-tailed black cockatoo and the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle.

Many other species and ecological communities also don’t have recovery plans. If successful, the case would set a precedent compelling future environment ministers to meet their legal obligations and improve Australia’s dire conservation record. This is a significant moment for conservation in Australia – testing how accountable environment ministers are in preventing species extinctions.

Why do recovery plans matter?

Threatened species recovery plans lay out very clearly why species or ecological communities are in trouble and the actions necessary to save them. Once a plan is in place, it can directly benefit the species by tackling threats and safeguarding habitat.

Proposals such as a new farm, suburb or mining project can be assessed by the environment minister and rejected if they are inconsistent with recovery plans and place threatened species at increased risk of extinction. Recovery plans have helped dozens of species come back from the brink.

Under Australia’s national environmental laws, the environment minister must decide whether a recovery plan is required for a species or ecological community listed as threatened.

If a plan is ordered, it must typically be created within three years. But a 2022 Auditor-General’s report found just 2% of plans met this timeframe.

Recovery is possible, but plans are vital

Successive governments have failed to keep up with creating and implementing recovery plans in a timely manner. The perennial and chronic lack of funding for conservation means there’s little capacity to do the vital but time-consuming work of planning and recovery.

As a result, the federal government has increasingly shifted to offering conservation advices in place of recovery plans. Conservation advices can be produced and updated faster than recovery plans. This is useful if, say, a new threat emerges and needs a rapid response.

But there’s a key legal difference. When the environment minister is considering a project such as land clearing for new farmland or a mine, they need only consider any conservation advice in place. When a recovery plan is in place, the minister is legally obliged not to approve actions which are contrary to its objectives and would make the plight of a species or ecological community worse.

A conservation advice can be thought of more like a fact sheet without the same legal weight or accountability that recovery plans have.

In March 2022, the Morrison government scrapped recovery plans for 176 threatened species and habitats, despite thousands of submissions arguing against this.

After the Albanese government took power in May 2022, it pledged to end “wilful neglect” of the environment and to introduce stronger environmental laws. Sadly, this commitment has not been honoured.

Why do we need recovery plans?

Australia’s species protection record is unenviable. Since European colonisation, more than 100 species have been driven to extinction and more than 2,000 species and ecological communities are listed at risk of suffering the same fate.

For a species to be considered threatened, its population has to have shrunk. The severity of the decline and hence its extinction risk will determine how it’s categorised, from vulnerable through to critically endangered. Recovery plans lay out the research required to actually recover these species, meaning helping their populations to grow out of the danger zone.

A key role for these plans is to coordinate planning and action between relevant interest groups and agencies. This is especially important for species found across state and territory borders, such as the southern greater glider and the migratory swift parrot. The greater glider should have had a recovery plan in place since 2016, but does not.

Are individual plans still worthwhile?

Faced with so many species in need of protection and limited funding, prominent figures including former Environment Minister Peter Garrett have argued we should focus our efforts on protecting ecosystems rather than single species to make the best use of scarce funds.

But there is a deeper issue. Australia is one of the wealthiest nations in the world. It has the capacity to greatly increase conservation spending without impoverishing humans, and should do so for the benefit of the economy, culture and our health and wellbeing.

That’s not to say ecosystem protection isn’t worthwhile. After all, ecosystems are made up of species and their interactions with each other and their environment. You cannot have healthy species without healthy ecosystems and vice versa.

But if we focus only on protecting large expanses of wetland, forest and grasslands, we risk overlooking a key issue. Two species in the same ecosystem can be very differently affected by a specific threat (predation by foxes, for instance). Some species can even have conflicting management needs. For some species, invasive species are the biggest threat, while climate change and intensified fire regimes threaten others the most.

Extinction is a choice

As Australia’s natural world continues to deteriorate, climate change deepens and worsening wildlife woes abound, these issues will no doubt be front of mind for many in the upcoming federal election.

It can be easy to see these trends as inevitable. But they are not – the collapse of nature is a choice. We have what we need for success, including traditional, ecological and conservation knowledge. What’s sorely needed is political will.

There were once fewer than 50 northern hairy-nosed wombats alive. Today, that number exceeds 400. When supported, conservation can succeed.

Almost all Australians want their government to do more to save our species. Let us hope whoever forms the next government takes up that challenge – even if it takes court cases to prompt action.

Euan Ritchie receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Energy, Environment, and Climate Action. Euan is a Councillor within the Biodiversity Council, a member of the Ecological Society of Australia and the Australian Mammal Society, and President of the Australian Mammal Society.

– ref. Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has been taken to court over 11 threatened species. Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/environment-minister-tanya-plibersek-has-been-taken-to-court-over-11-threatened-species-heres-why-219231

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Toby Murray, Professor of Cybersecurity, School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne

In July last year, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, directed tech companies to develop codes of practice to keep children safe from online porn and harmful content. Now, after seven months, the industry has submitted draft codes to eSafety for approval.

eSafety is currently assessing the draft codes.

Assuming Grant approves the new codes, what can we expect the future to look like for children and teens online? And how effective will the proposed codes be at protecting children?

A coordinated approach

The codes submitted for approval were developed by a group of industry associations.

They cover social media platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat. But they also cover internet service providers, search engines such as Google, online messaging services such as WhatsApp, online gaming platforms, as well as the manufacturers of the computers, mobile phones and software we use to access online services.

The codes will also cover online app stores such as those operated by Apple and Google. However, app store codes aren’t expected to be released until late March.

As well as covering a range of companies, the codes also cover a range of harms. They aim to protect kids not only from online pornography but also content that promotes self-harm, eating disorders, suicide and violence.

Given the difficulty of protecting kids from this kind of content, this coordinated approach is absolutely essential.

If the draft codes are approved, companies will have six months to implement the proposed safety measures. They will face fines of up to A$50 million for non-compliance.

What’s in store?

The draft codes are broken up across different parts of the tech ecosystem. The requirements they place on individual tech platforms depend on the danger harmful content on each platform poses to children.

Large social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) are likely to be categorised among the most dangerous. That’s because it’s possible for users to access extremely harmful content such as child sexual abuse or terrorist material on these platforms. Plus, these platforms serve millions of people and also allow users to create public profiles, maintain “friend” lists, and share content widely.

According to the draft codes, these platforms will need to implement the most stringent safety measures. These include using age-assurance measures to prevent children under the minimum age allowed to access the service from doing so, having an appropriately resourced trust and safety team, and using automated systems to detect and remove child abuse and pro-terror material.

On the other hand, less risky platforms won’t be subject to any requirements under the draft codes. These include online platforms that allow only limited communication within a specific group of people and without social media features such as friends lists and public profiles. Platforms for communication within a primary school such as Compass would be among the least risky.

Online search engines such as Google and Bing – which provide access to adult and self-harm content, but are legitimately used by children – will be required to implement appropriate measures to prevent children accessing that content.

This may include enabling safe-search features and establishing child-user accounts. These accounts would include features that automatically blur harmful content and filter such content from search results and recommendation algorithms

The codes also cover emerging harmful technology, such as deepfake porn apps powered by generative artificial intelligence. Like traditional porn sites, these will be required to implement age-assurance technology to prevent children using these services.

What about age assurance?

The codes specifically define what age-assurance measures are considered “appropriate”.

Importantly, just because an age-checking system can be bypassed doesn’t disqualify it. Instead, age assurance measures must include “reasonable steps” to ensure someone is of age, while balancing privacy concerns.

Requiring users to self-declare their age is not appropriate. So expect to see porn sites do away with click-through dialogs asking visitors to declare they are really adults.

Instead, sites will have a range of options for assuring their users’ ages, including photo ID, estimating age based on facial images or video, having a parent attest to a child’s age, leveraging credit card checks, or AI-based methods for age inference.

Different measures are likely to be used by different companies and systems.

For example, Apple has already announced a range of new child safety measures that appear to align with many parts of the draft codes. These include making it easier for parents to set up child safety features on kids’ iPads and iPhones, using a parent’s payment information to ensure they can safely attest to their child’s age, as well as app store integration of child safety features to enable app developers to make their apps safer for children.

On the other hand, adult sites and apps are likely to adopt age-assurance mechanisms that users perceive to be more private. For paying subscribers, they are likely to leverage the credit information already stored to assure the users’ age.

Non-subscribers may instead be required to submit to a facial scan or other AI-based methods to estimate their age.

Publicly available data on state-of-the-art systems for age estimation from facial images suggests the best systems have an average error of 3.7 years.

Whether eSafety will agree such technology is “appropriate” remains to be seen. However, if it is adopted, there is a real risk many teens will remain able to access online porn and harmful deepfake apps despite these new codes.

Toby Murray receives funding from Google. He is director of the Defence Science Institute, which receives funding from Victorian and Tasmanian state governments, and from the Commonwealth Department of Defence.

– ref. Tech companies’ proposed new safety codes won’t protect all kids online – https://theconversation.com/tech-companies-proposed-new-safety-codes-wont-protect-all-kids-online-251266

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Conley Tyler, Honorary Fellow, Asia Institute, The University of Melbourne

Hard on the heels of Donald Trump’s dismantling of USAID, the United Kingdom has ripped more than A$12 billion (£6 billion) from its foreign assistance budget.

The double hit from two of the globe’s biggest contributors to international development has been branded a betrayal of poorer countries that will cost lives.

What does this mean for Australia as we head towards the federal election?

Australia is different

Australia’s aid context is strikingly different.

International development is deeply integrated in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and can’t easily be pulled apart. There is no separate aid agency to target.

Recent experience also reminds us why it is unwise to cut overseas assistance. When the Abbott government made major cuts to development spending, other actors including China quickly filled the vacuum throughout the Pacific.

Most importantly, more than 20 of Australia’s regional neighbours are developing countries. This means an adequate overseas aid budget is non-negotiable if we want to exert influence throughout the region.

At a minimum, both the Labor Party and the Coalition should commit to maintaining current levels of development assistance.

If you want to see how every dollar of Australia’s overseas aid is being spent, you can visit the transparency portal on the DFAT website. The portal outlines each investment, which includes peace building in Sri Lanka, countering people trafficking in Vietnam, preventing foot and mouth disease in Indonesia, and disaster preparedness across the Pacific.

This is cost-effective spending: dealing with the aftermath of a crisis is massively more expensive than the relatively small outlays needed to prevent them from happening in the first place. By way of contrast, the budget for defence is $48 billion each year compared to less than $5 billion for preventive spending on development.

New opportunities

Initial reaction to the severe foreign aid cuts focused on how China and Russia could benefit from the void left by Washington and London. But it is now being recognised that their shortsightedness may provide a golden geopolitical opportunity for Australia.

It is an opportunity that could be seized upon by whoever wins the election.

Think back to the Boxing Day tsunami, when John Howard’s response transformed the relationship with Indonesia and led to the formation of the Quad grouping.

When the US withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement in 2017, Japan stepped up and showed the leadership needed to conclude negotiations. With Australia’s support, the deal went ahead and is now one of the largest free-trade agreements in the world. Major achievements can still be made even without the involvement of the US.

We are now faced with a similar moment. While Australia cannot compete with the scale of US and UK international development, there is much it can do across the region and throughout the broader global system.

What Australia can do

If Australia was to think big, it would announce that it will elevate funding for overseas aid from its current level of 0.68% of the federal budget to 1% over the next two to three years.

This would generate positive worldwide coverage and differentiate Australia for a relatively small investment. John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard were all able to keep the international development budget at more than 1%, so it’s not impossible.

There is a perception that a much larger slice of the budget pie currently goes to development assistance. The average Australian believes we spend 14% of the budget helping out our neighbours. In reality the outlay is less than 70 cents per $100.

Even a smaller increase for emergency funding could be very meaningful. The impact of the US 90-day pause on foreign assistance has been immediate, with charities and contractors left with no income and forced to let staff go and shutter offices. There is a real risk some international aid charities won’t survive the freeze. Emergency funding is needed to stave off collapse and stop the loss of specialist skills.

At the global level, Australia could help to maintain the essential humanitarian work of organisations like the World Food Programme, UNAIDS, UNHCR and the World Health Organisation, which may face existential funding crises.

Australia’s national interest

Australia’s security, stability and prosperity depend on both the region and cultivating wider relationships.

We could use this moment to partner with critical countries in the Pacific and South East Asia to preserve the programs most at risk. Australia could also build deeper relationships with other donors like Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Canada, and EU members and institutions.

There are many competing priorities in the budget process, so foreign aid is never an easy sell. But there will be international praise for Australian leadership, including from the US and the UK, if Australian aid helps maintain Western presence in key geopolitical arenas. It would be a diplomatic win and very much in Australia’s interest.

Now is the time for Australia to announce the steps it will take to preserve and even increase development aid as one of the key tools of statecraft to create a world that Australians want to live in.

Melissa Conley Tyler is Executive Director at the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D), an initiative funded by the foreign affairs and defence portfolios and hosted by the Australian Council for International Development..

– ref. The US and UK have decimated their aid spending. Australia has a unique opportunity to help fill the vacuum – https://theconversation.com/the-us-and-uk-have-decimated-their-aid-spending-australia-has-a-unique-opportunity-to-help-fill-the-vacuum-251156

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stewart Riddle, Professor, School of Education, University of Southern Queensland

The federal government and NSW government have announced a new funding deal for the state’s public schools.

This will see the Commonwealth contribution jump from 20% to 25% of the schooling resource standard (on which school funding is based) by 2034. The NSW government will contribute the rest.

This follows more than a year of negotiations between federal Labor and the states and territories to lock in a new agreement, after the previous one expired at the end of 2024. Queensland is now the only state or territory without an agreement.

Th NSW deal will result in an additional A$4.8 billion in federal funding to NSW public schools over ten years. But the extra funding comes with conditions.

As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says,

This is not a blank cheque; [it] ties funding to reforms that will help students catch up, keep up and finish school.

Why has this taken so long?

The first state to sign on was Western Australia in January last year, but many other states have taken longer to agree.

Some, like NSW pushed for a 5% funding increase, when the Albanese government was initially only offering a 2.5% boost.

The federal government finally agreed to a 5% increase for South Australia and Victoria in January, in a sign the school “funding wars” were about to see some peace.

Read more:
Schools agreement provides NSW $4.8 billion extra for public schools over a decade

What’s in the new agreement?

The new funding is part of the Better and and Fairer Schools Agreement. Under this agreement, states and territories must agree to specific education reforms to qualify for the federal funding. These include:

• Year 1 phonics and early years numeracy checks

• an emphasis on “explicit teaching” (where teachers show students what to do and how to do it)

• providing intensive support for students

• support for student and teacher wellbeing

• improving teacher recruitment and retention.

The specific actions required by each state and territory are outlined in their bilateral agreements with the federal government.

The new money will take time to arrive

The federal and NSW governments have billed their deal as a means to “fully and fairly fund New South Wales public schools”. Or, as Education Minister Jason Clare noted, “this is big”.

But while the extra funding is welcome news for NSW public schools, the results of the agreed reforms will not be felt for some time. Underfunded schools will continue to be underfunded for years to come.

This is because the extra funding will gradually kick in from 2026 to 2034. So many students who currently attend underfunded public schools will not see the benefits of the increased funding during their time at school.

Keep in mind, talk of “fully funding” schools dates back to David Gonski’s 2011 report, which called for equitable funding for Australia’s education system.

Read more:
How a Cold War satellite and Robert Menzies changed the way Australian schools are funded

What about the reforms?

The federal government is placing considerable emphasis on its bid to lift wellbeing, teaching and learning standards as part of the new agreement. But the last agreement with states made little difference to schools.

The National School Reform Agreement (which expired at the end of 2024) aimed to improved academic outcomes, especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and improve school attendance. But there were few positive gains around its goals.

In 2022, a scathing Productivity Commission’s review of the agreement found:

The [reform agreement’s] initiatives have done little, so far, to improve student outcomes.

The new bilateral agreements contain more specific targets for each state and territory. However, this does not mean promises will be kept. Our 2024 research has shown how various education ministers make national schooling reform promises, which are then lost as the political cycle moves on.

once agreements are endorsed and ratified, the ongoing commitment to the enactment of agreed education reforms can be ‘forgotten’.

Our research has also shown how school reform also becomes stuck in the process of moving between national, state and school levels. That is, the policy intention (or reform agreement) rarely plays out the way it is intended in schools.

What now?

Does this mean the new agreement will also fail to produce “better and fairer” outcomes for some of Australia’s most marginalised and disenfranchised students?

We need to be careful that real schooling reform – of which fair and full funding to every Australian schools is an important element – is not lost to the short-term political games of the election cycle.

While the Coalition has been critical of the time taken to reach an agreement, it says it will honour the funding commitments if elected.

So assuming Queensland signs onto the new agreement before the federal election, perhaps the promise of the original Gonski reforms will finally be realised, even if it is two decades later.

Stewart Riddle receives funding from the Australian Research Council (LP210100098).

– ref. NSW has finally struck a school funding deal. What does this mean for schools and students? – https://theconversation.com/nsw-has-finally-struck-a-school-funding-deal-what-does-this-mean-for-schools-and-students-251271

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole White, Associate Professor of Statistics, Queensland University of Technology

Whether it’s for a work meeting or a class assignment, presenting data to others is a common task on our to-do list.

We use data to make decisions on our health, finances and the world we live in, yet finding the best ways to communicate data without boring your audience can be daunting.

However, there are some tried and true techniques to getting your message across effectively.

First, you need to boost your data literacy – which includes learning about the different kind of charts and how to use them.

What is data literacy?

Data literacy is the ability to “plot” and present complex data in a way that’s easy to digest. There is even a branch of statistics focusing on the best way to present data.

It’s one of the most desired skills in the workplace, yet a 2020 survey found only one in five employees across nine different countries (including Australia) believe they are data literate.

With seemingly countless options available, choosing the right chart is challenging, and the wrong choice can influence how data is interpreted.

Passing on the humble pie

Pie charts are often the first pick when it comes to presenting data with different categories, such as age group or blood type. These categories are represented as slices, with the size of each slice proportional to the amount of data.

Doughnut charts, a close relative of the pie chart, work the same way but are shown with a hole in the middle.

As delicious as they sound, these charts should be consumed in moderation.

Pie charts present data in a circular pattern, making it difficult to make comparisons when there are many groups, or when groups are similar in size. They can also misrepresent data entirely, especially when data add up to over 100%.

Here are some alternatives to pie charts that sound just as tasty, but are easier to digest.

Bar charts

Bar charts summarise data across different categories, but present them next to each other. This makes it easier to compare several categories at once.

Here is an example from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showing the different generations from the last census.

Waffle charts

Waffle charts are a good option for data organised by categories.

They present data in a grid, with each unit representing a fixed number. This is useful for presenting both large and small percentages that are difficult to compare side-by-side.

We can clearly see most people eat meat from the figure.

However, a bar chart would make comparing less common diets difficult. With a waffle chart, we can see 4% of people surveyed are vegan, while 2% are pescetarian.

Histograms

Data often represent different measurements, such as height and weight, or time taken to write an article.

Histograms also present data with bars but, unlike bar charts, are used for data collected as numbers, or numerical data.

This chart type is used to show how a set of numbers are spread out, and can be useful in seeing which numbers occur more often than others.

It’s tempting to simplify data by fitting them into categories, but this can sometimes hide interesting facts.

The example below shows the body mass index (BMI) of a group of people as a bar chart.

It’s easy to lose information when trying to simplify BMI into categories, especially among people who may be obese.

Each category in the bar chart could easily be misunderstood as representing BMI as similar ranges. However, if we look at the histogram, BMI for obese people can be as high as 70.

A doctor using this data would need to take into account that someone with a BMI of 60 may need a different treatment method compared to someone with a BMI of 30.

Line charts and scatterplots

Other chart types for numerical data, such as line charts and scatterplots, allow us to explore how different measurements are related to one another.

Line charts are used to visualise trends over time, such as stock prices and weekly flu cases.

In contrast, scatterplots show how two different measurements collected on the same subject are related.

While scatterplots summarise trends, they sometimes show unusual results that would go unnoticed if measurements were charted separately.

For example, the figure below compares life expectancy and health expenditure in different countries.

If we’re only looking at health expenditure, people from the United States would appear healthier as the US spends the most money on health care per person.

Presenting this information along with life expectancy tells a different story.

Keep it simple and avoid ‘chart junk’

It is always tempting to add more information.

“Chart junk” refers to extra information such as excess labels, 3D effects or even different types of data in the same chart.

This makes them more difficult to read and can distort the data, and is usually a sign your data is too complicated. You’re better off using multiple charts to tell the full story.

As Coco Chanel once said, “simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance”.

Keep these words in mind and choose a chart that keeps it simple without compromising style, content and detail.

Nicole White is a member of the Statistical Society of Australia.

– ref. Sick of pie charts for your uni, school or work projects? Here are 5 other options – https://theconversation.com/sick-of-pie-charts-for-your-uni-school-or-work-projects-here-are-5-other-options-250499

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Hartley, Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania

With the AFL and NRL seasons kicking off, fantasy footy players have been deep in draft mode, carefully building their best teams.

Fantasy sports have transformed the way fans engage with many sports, sparking interest beyond simply watching matches or supporting a favourite team.

What are fantasy sports?

In simple terms, fantasy sports involve participants acting as team coaches/managers, selecting real-life players to form a fantasy team within the constraints of the game’s rules.

These teams compete based on the actual performance of the selected players in real matches. Points are awarded on various performance metrics, depending on the sport.

Many fantasy leagues also incorporate a stock market-like element. When a real-life player exceeds expectations, their fantasy value increases, while underperformance leads to a decrease in value.

This allows coaches to trade players in and out strategically, aiming to build the most valuable and high-scoring team during a season.

Success in fantasy sports often depends on statistical analysis, player scouting, and smart decision-making when it comes to trades and team selection.

The origins of fantasy sports

The first mainstream fantasy game can be attributed to Rotisserie League Baseball in 1980 by Daniel Okrent and friends.

This league required participants to track their own players’ progress using a scoring system based on statistics obtained in newspapers after a game.

With the rapid progression of technology, fantasy sports have evolved significantly, with most major sporting codes worldwide now offering multiple fantasy platforms, formats and prizes.

In Australia, the number of people playing fantasy sports has doubled since 2021, with nearly 2.5 million players engaged in one league or another.

This growth presents opportunities for content creation, expanded revenue streams, and potentially increased engagement with sports betting.

Fan engagement

The way fans engage with sports has evolved with the rise of fantasy sports, social media, and real time data tracking, leading to “second screen consumption”.

This involves fans using multiple digital platforms such as fantasy sports apps, social media and tracking of live statistics while simultaneously watching live broadcasts.

This shift has redefined the traditional sports fandom experience.

Fantasy coaches watch more games each week, with a dual identity that extends beyond traditional loyalty to the team they support.

While sports fans have historically supported a single team, fantasy sports reshape fan identity by encouraging engagement with both their favourite team and their fantasy team. Fans often watch games they normally wouldn’t be interested in specifically to watch the fantasy-relevant players involved.

Community engagement is a key motivator for participation, often surpassing interest in the real-life sports.

In Australia, a study by News Corporation Australia, which owns SuperCoach, found bragging rights, social connection and learning more about sport drive participation.

While prizes matter, the main reason people join is to connect with others.

In 2021, Australian fantasy players were largely concentrated in the larger sporting codes such as the AFL and NRL, but by 2023 it had broadened into the Big Bash League (BBL) and National Basketball League (NBL).

There are many Australians playing fantasy leagues in global sports too, from the English Premier League (soccer) to the United States’ National Football League (NFL) and National Basketball Association (NBA). Some 14% of the Australian fantasy audience plays in global leagues.

Media involvement

With some sporting seasons becoming longer and the connection to fantasy sports extending beyond live games, fans are kept invested throughout the off-season as they analyse trades, follow pre-season developments and prepare for the next competition.

Read more:
How the AFL and NRL have crept into cricket’s traditional summer timeslot

This almost year-round involvement offers extended media coverage and consumption of new content in a variety of formats.

Fantasy sport complements traditional media by offering alternative coverage, such as podcasts and short-form content that extends beyond game day, keeping fans connected throughout the week as they adjust their lineups and strategies.

Fantasy sports are also boosting viewership for new formats like AFLW by increasing fan engagement.

Rich pickings

Fantasy sport has been big business for a long time but the global fantasy sports market is challenging to quantify.

In 2013, Forbes estimated the NFL fantasy football market alone to be worth $US70 billion ($A111 billion), significantly surpassing the NFL’s 2021 revenue of $US11 billion ($A17 billion), highlighting its major role in the global sporting market.

Big revenues mainly come from sponsorship and advertising on fantasy platforms.

Major brands invest hundreds of millions of dollars in targeted advertising campaigns to capitalise on this engaged audience.

Money is also made by charging fees to enter some contests and to access premium analytics content, in-app purchases, and related entertainment products like websites and podcasts.

Links to sports betting

Many of the advertisers on fantasy platforms are gambling businesses.

Fantasy organisations have tried to highlight the differences between fantasy sports and sports betting, which has been linked to poor mental health, family violence and even suicide.

Their key argument is that betting is a game of chance whereas fantasy sports are games of skill.

Despite these differences, concerns have been raised about the links between fantasy sports and sports betting.

An Australian fantasy betting app was recently fined more than $A500,000 for illegally offering inducements to gamble in dozens of ads on its platform.

Whether or not fantasy sports are likely to encourage gambling is a grey area – studies in this space are mixed.

Some studies have found people who participate in fantasy sports are more likely to gamble and experience gambling-related problems.

However, others describe fantasy sports as a more positive alternative to gambling and that participants are motivated by the social benefits, rather than being motivated by a chance to win money.

As fantasy sports continue to evolve and attract new players, their ability to deepen fan engagement, foster community connections, and enhance the sports watching experience ensures they will remain a dynamic and influential part of the sporting world.

I have worked with members of the AFL Fantasy Traders before in schools.

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

– ref. Why are so many people obsessed with fantasy sports? – https://theconversation.com/why-are-so-many-people-obsessed-with-fantasy-sports-249010

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tailane Scapin, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Deakin University

In many countries, buying food at supermarkets, convenience stores and online has become the norm. But what’s the convenience of modern food shopping doing to our health?

Our study, published today with colleagues from UNICEF, looked at how people in 97 countries shopped for groceries over 15 years.

Globally, we found a huge increase in the number of supermarkets and convenience stores (which we’ll shorten to chain grocery stores in this article). We also found people are spending more money in these stores and on their online platforms.

But this has come at a cost to our health. People in countries with the most chain grocery stores per person buy more unhealthy food and are more likely to be obese.

Here’s why we’re so concerned about this public health disaster.

The rise of chain grocery stores

Our study analysed food industry data from a business database to understand how the food retail sector has changed worldwide over time. We looked at the kinds of stores, how much people spend there, and how much unhealthy processed food is sold. We linked these trends with changes in obesity rates using data from a large global initiative.

We found the density of chain grocery stores (number of stores per 10,000 people) has increased globally by 23.6% over 15 years (from 2009 to 2023).

We found far more of these stores per person in high-income countries, as you may expect. However, it’s in low- and middle-income countries where numbers are increasing the fastest.

Rapid urbanisation, rising incomes and customer demand mean large retail companies see these countries as new potential markets.

For example, the density of chain grocery stores increased by about 21% a year in Myanmar, about 18% a year in Vietnam and about 12% a year in Cambodia.

We’re shopping online too

The data in our study also covers the rise of online food shopping. For instance, the worldwide spend on online grocery shopping was 325% more in 2023 compared with 2014.

Out of the 27 countries we looked at for online food shopping, people in the United Arab Emirates and the United States were the top spenders. In 2023, the average person in the United Arab Emirates spent about US$617 that year, 570% more than in 2014. In the US, the average person spent US$387 in 2023. That’s about 125% more than in 2014.

It seems many of us took to online shopping during the early days of the COVID pandemic, a habit that appears to have stuck.

More chain stores, more junk food, more obesity

The rise of chain grocery stores, including their online platforms, is also changing what we eat.

Over the 15 years of our study, there has been a 10.9% increase in the sales of unhealthy processed food from those chain grocery stores.

In South Asia, the increase has been particularly rapid. People in Pakistan have been buying 5% more unhealthy processed foods from chain grocery stores every year for the past 15 years. In India, it’s 4% more and in Bangladesh 3% more.

Over 15 years, our study also showed the percentage of people with obesity across all countries rose from 18.2% to 23.7%. It was the countries with the biggest increases in chain grocery stores where we saw the sharpest increases in obesity.

Laos is a good example. The number of chain grocery stores per person in the country has been increasing by 15% each year since 2009, while the percentage of people with obesity has doubled from 2009 to 2023.

In almost all countries, obesity is on the rise. In Australia, overweight and obesity have recently officially overtaken tobacco as the biggest burden on our health.

Why do we think supermarkets are to blame?

Supermarkets and hypermarkets sell healthy foods, such as fruit and vegetables. Yet, there are good reasons to think our retail environment might be to blame for the rise in obesity.

Highly processed foods

Chain grocery stores typically sell an enormous array of highly processed packaged foods high in sugar, fat and salt that can harm our health. One study of the food and drinks available in supermarkets from 12 countries showed the majority are classified as unhealthy. Given our findings of rapid increases in chain grocery in low- and middle-income countries, it was alarming in this study that the least healthy products were typically seen in supermarkets from countries like India, China and Chile.

Heavy promotion

Chain grocery stores often aggressively promote unhealthy foods. This includes through price discounting; advertising in circulars, on TV and social media; and by being placed in prominent displays at checkouts and the ends of aisles. Studies have shown this to be true in Belgium, Ireland and another 12 countries.

Online, we see unhealthy foods promoted more often (with discounts and displayed more prominently) than healthy options. For instance, on average at least one-third of products prominently displayed on Australian supermarket websites are unhealthy.

More buying power

Compared to small independent grocers, large chain grocery stores globally have a far larger influence on decisions around product assortment and price. Because of this, they can control supply chains, often in partnership with national and multi-national food manufacturers of ultra processed, unhealthy packaged foods.

What can we do about it?

There are many social, political, cultural and economic factors that contribute to the rise in obesity globally. Many of these relate to the price, availability and promotion of food in retail settings and the way the retail industry is structured.

Because of this, we think it’s time for governments and retailers to step up and start making changes to where and how we shop for food.

Some countries are already beginning to act. In the United Kingdom for example, government legislation now prevents placing unhealthy foods in prominent places such as the checkout counter and at the ends of aisles close to checkouts. From October this year, further restrictions on the price promotion of unhealthy foods (such as “buy one, get one free”) will also come into force in the UK.

There is also plenty that retailers can do. In Norway, for example, one major grocery chain launched a comprehensive healthy eating campaign several years ago, including by increasing the size and prominence of healthy food displays and offering discounts on fruits and vegetables. This led to a 42% increase in vegetable sales and a 25% rise in fruit sales from 2012 until 2020.

But most grocery chains are still not doing enough to prioritise their customers’ health and nutrition. In the US, we see this in particular for supermarkets catering to people on low-incomes. And in the UK, although there has been some promising progress by some supermarket retailers, all those assessed have considerable scope for improvement.

Now more than ever, it is time to create healthier retail food environments that support nutritious diets and help reverse the rising rates of obesity.

Tailane Scapin receives funding from UNICEF.

Adrian Cameron receives funding from the National Heart Foundation of Australia, the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and UNICEF. He is affiliated with INFORMAS (International Network for Food and Obesity / Non-communicable Diseases Research, Monitoring and Action Support) and is the Director of the RE-FRESH: Next Generation NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Food Retail Environments for Health.

– ref. We looked at what supermarkets in 97 countries are doing to our waistlines. Here’s what we found – https://theconversation.com/we-looked-at-what-supermarkets-in-97-countries-are-doing-to-our-waistlines-heres-what-we-found-246412

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leonora Risse, Associate Professor in Economics, University of Canberra

Women’s annual earnings are closing in on men’s, with the gender pay gap in Australia’s private sector shrinking from 14.5% to 13.6% in the past year.

It’s a steady improvement, down from a 15.4% gap two years ago.

While women are working and earning more than ever before, they are now empowered with even more information to take into salary negotiations and to decide which companies to work for.

This information is especially valuable in a tight labour market, with the unemployment rate at just 4.1%, as companies fight for top talent.

This is the second year the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) has published company gender pay gaps, responding to concerns that progress on gender equality had been stalling.

Pay gap transparency tackles the problem of “asymmetric information” where employers know where each worker sits on the pay scale, but employees don’t.

Data from 7,800 private companies

Women’s typical full-time annual salaries sat at A$72,638 in 2023–24, compared to men’s $84,048.

Though narrowing, that’s still a gap of $11,410 a year, or around $220 a week.

The gap is much larger once bonuses, overtime and superannuation are included: $18,835 or a total remuneration gap of 18.3%.

All private companies in Australia with at least 100 employees must report their data to the federal agency. This covers 5.3 million employees across 7,800 companies, a big expansion from last year’s 5,000 companies as more companies improve their data reporting.

Employees can look at the agency’s website to find the gender pay gap of their private sector employer – or one they are thinking of joining.

This year’s calculations of company gender pay gaps also incorporate the salaries of top executives.

When CEOs and heads of business are factored in, the difference in men’s and women’s average total remuneration swells to $28,435, or 21.8%.

This all adds up to men out-earning women by an average of $547 per week.

A closer look at company-level gender pay gaps

Across all companies, the average gender gap in total remuneration is 13.0%. But the magnitude varies widely across different companies.

Around 2,200 companies (around one-quarter) have a gap exceeding 20%. Of these, around 250 companies have a gap stretching beyond 40%.

At the other end, around one-quarter of companies have a gap that is either zero or negative, meaning in favour of women.

The agency considers a gender pay gap within the range of negative 5% to positive 5% to be a reasonable measure to aim for.

Of the largest organisations (with 5,000 or more employees), airlines are among the worst performers. Virgin has an average gender gap in total remuneration of 41.7% while Qantas reports a gap of 39.2%.

Among the banks, Commonwealth Bank and Westpac both report an average gender pay gap of 22.4%. Suncorp’s gap sits at 19.3%, NAB’s is at 19.0%, and ANZ has a gap of 18.8%.

Progress is happening

The purpose of publishing company pay gap data is to propel progress on gender equality in Australian workplaces.

It follows legislated reforms designed to motivate employers to pay closer attention to their gender pay gap and take more action.

Comparisons to last year’s data suggest this is happening. The agency reports that just over half of all employers (56%) reduced their gender pay gap. And 68% conducted an analysis of their gender pay gap, which is an important first step in making progress.

Greater transparency makes employers more accountable for improving working conditions.

It is also a way to recognise the companies that are improving over time and learn from their success.

Correct interpretation is critical

The gender pay gap, measured as the difference between men’s and women’s earnings, is not the same as equal pay for equal or comparable work. For over 50 years, it has been against the law in Australia to pay men and women differently for doing work of equal value.

Employer-level gaps in earnings reflects a combination of factors, including gender patterns in the different types of occupations that men and women tend to be in within a company. But these gender patterns in job types do not explain the whole picture.

Biases and barriers persist, including unconscious favouritism, gender imbalances in care-giving responsibilities and the perpetuation of gender stereotypes.

This is also not a gap that can be explained by women working fewer hours than men. The calculations include part-time employees, whose pay is converted into an annualised full-time equivalent.

Each employer has the chance to provide deeper analysis and explanation of their gender pay gap, and the actions they are taking, in their official employer statements which are also available on the agnecy’s website.

This information will empower not just current employees but also prospective employees, customers, business partners and the wider community in their choices of which companies to work for, do business with, and endorse – and which ones not to.

Read more:
Now you’re able to look up individual companies’ gender pay gaps

Leonora Risse receives research funding from the Trawalla Foundation and the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia. She has previously undertaken commissioned research for the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. She is a member of the Economic Society of Australia and the Women in Economics Network. She serves as an Expert Panel Member on gender pay equity for the Fair Work Commission.

– ref. Women’s annual salaries are narrowing the gap. But men still out-earn women by an average $547 a week – https://theconversation.com/womens-annual-salaries-are-narrowing-the-gap-but-men-still-out-earn-women-by-an-average-547-a-week-251034

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Raffaele F Ciriello, Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems, University of Sydney

Have you ever been called a Luddite? We have – usually as an insult, rooted in a popular misconception that Luddites are anti-progress fanatics.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The original 19th century Luddites weren’t against technology. Rather, they resisted its oppressive use.

Their rebellion was violently suppressed. But their core critique lives on: technology should benefit all of humanity, not a privileged few.

Today, as Silicon Valley billionaires and United States president Donald Trump turbocharge corporate control of public digital infrastructure, this critique rings truer than ever.

In response, we are a seeing a growing surge of attempts to wrest back control of technology for democratic ends. This is a kind of “digital Luddism” which echoes past struggles against high-tech injustice.

The original Luddites

The Luddites were 19th century English textile workers who destroyed machinery threatening their craft and livelihoods. Historians call their tactics “collective bargaining by riot”. They were fighting against technologies that centralised power and stripped workers of dignity.

Luddite resistance was part of broader struggles for labour rights and socioeconomic justice.

For example, in 18th century France, silk weavers similarly revolted against mechanisation that devalued their craft.

Earlier, England’s Diggers and Levellers resisted the privatisation of communal lands. This foreshadowed today’s battles over corporate control of digital infrastructure.

The Luddites faced severe punishment, including imprisonment and even execution. Despite this, their legacy endures. Today, dismissing critics of Big Tech as “Luddites” repeats the mistake of conflating resistance to exploitation with fear of progress.

In the most extreme scenario, unchecked corporate power allied with monstrous government polices can lead to atrocities. In Nazi Germany, for example, Dehomag, a former subsidiary of computer giant IBM, provided data systems to the Nazis to track victims. Chemical company IG Farben also supplied Zyklon B gas for extermination camps. Many other companies profited from forced labour and funded the regime. This shows how complicity can make oppression more efficient.

Today, digital technologies are deepening inequality, eroding democracy, undermining privacy, and concentrating power.

Digital technologies are also fuelling surveillance capitalism, the displacement of human workers by AI algorithms and the growth of monopolistic platforms.

Platforms and AI systems governed by “broligarchs” such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are also shaping politics, culture, and beliefs globally.

Digital Luddism, also known as neo-Luddism, tackles these issues through three strategies: resistance, removal and replacement.

Resistance: blocking harmful systems

Technology is not inevitable — it’s a choice. Sustained collective action can counter corporate dominance and align tech with democratic values.

In 2018, more than 3,000 Google workers protested the company’s military AI contract, forcing it to adopt ethical guidelines. However, in February this year, Google expanded defence deals, showing how resistance must be sustained.

Three years later, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen exposed the harmful algorithms at the heart of the social media platform.

Then, in 2024, Amazon and Google staff also staged walkouts over a US$1.2 billion AI contract linked to Israeli military operations.

Creative industries are also fighting back. For example, in 2023 screenwriters and actors in Hollywood protested against AI replacing their roles. Similarly, Australia’s “right to disconnect” law reflects Luddite principles of reclaiming autonomy.

Non-profit organisations such as the Algorithmic Justice League and the Electronic Frontier Foundation empower digital rights advocates to take back control over digital spaces by exposing AI bias and through legal litigation.

Digital Luddism doesn’t reject innovation. It demands technology serve stakeholders, not shareholders.

Removal: dismantling entrenched power

Some systems are beyond reform, requiring direct intervention. Removal involves political action and legal regulation. It also involves public pressure to break monopolies or impose penalties on unethical corporations.

For example, the TraffickingHub petition has garnered more than two million signatories to hold adult website PornHub accountable for unethical or unlawful content. This has led financial institutions, such as Visa and Mastercard, to cut ties to the website. For more than 20 years, hacker collective Anonymous has carried out cyber-attacks on authoritarian regimes, extremists and corporations.

Digital Luddites can also lend a hand to the long arm of the law.

The European Union’s 2023 Digital Markets Act broke Apple’s app store monopoly. This sparked a surge in small EU developers.

Big Tech has also repeatedly faced huge fines and antitrust lawsuits. However, breaking up or nationalising these corporations remains rhetoric for now.

Replacement: building ethical alternatives

Proprietary corporate systems have long been challenged by free, open-source alternatives.

But digital Luddism isn’t just about using different tools. It’s about systemic change towards sustainable, transparent and user-controlled infrastructure.

After Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, decentralised alternatives that let users control content flourished. For example, Bluesky grew from 1 million to more than 27 million users in one year.

The Australian government is also responding to a broader public demand for platform independence. For example, it has introduced policies aimed at enhancing people’s data rights. Its Digital Transformation Agency is also advocating for improved open data standards.

Open-source AI projects such as China’s DeepSeek and HuggingFace’s Deep Research now rival corporate models, proving open tech is a force to reckon with.

The original Luddites smashed machines. But the global nature of today’s digital infrastructure makes physical sabotage impractical. That’s why digital Luddism isn’t about smashing screens. Instead, it’s about smashing oppressive systems.

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. Digital Luddites are rising. They want to democratise tech, not destroy it – https://theconversation.com/digital-luddites-are-rising-they-want-to-democratise-tech-not-destroy-it-251155

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Miroslav Filipovic, Professor, Western Sydney University

Radio astronomers see what the naked eye can’t. As we study the sky with telescopes that record radio signals rather than light, we end up seeing a lot of circles.

The newest generation of radio telescopes – including the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and MeerKAT, a telescope in South Africa – is revealing incredibly faint cosmic objects, never before seen.

In astronomy, surface brightness is a measure that tells us how easily visible an object is. The extraordinary sensitivity of MeerKAT and ASKAP is now revealing a new “low surface brightness universe” to radio astronomers. It’s comprised of radio sources so faint they have never been seen before, each with their own unique physical properties.

Many of the ASKAP results presented here were obtained with one of its major observing programs called EMU (Evolutionary Map of the Universe). EMU is mapping the entire southern sky with an unprecedented sensitivity and will deliver the most detailed map of the southern hemisphere sky to date – a spectacular new radio atlas that will be used for decades to come.

EMU’s all-hemisphere coverage paired with ASKAP’s exceptional sensitivity, especially within the Milky Way, is what’s yielded so many recent discoveries.

Here’s what they’re teaching us.

Unstable stars

The ghostly ring Kýklos (from the Greek κύκλος, circle or ring) and the object WR16 both show the environment of rare and unusual celestial objects known as Wolf-Rayet stars.

When big stars are close to running out of fuel, they become unstable as they enter one of the last stages of the stellar life cycle, becoming a Wolf-Rayet star. They begin surging and pulsing, shedding their outer layers which can form bright nebulous structures around the star.

In these objects, a previous outflow of material has cleared the space around the star, allowing the current outburst to expand symmetrically in all directions. This sphere of stellar detritus shows itself as a circle.

Exploded stars

Stingray 1, Perun, Ancora and Unicycle are supernova remnants. When a big star finally runs out of fuel, it can no longer hold back the crush of gravity. The matter falling inwards causes one final explosion, and the remains of these violent star deaths are known as supernovas.

Their expanding shockwaves sweep up material into an expanding sphere, forming beautiful circular features.

The supernova remnant will be deformed by its environment over time. If one side of the explosion slams into an interstellar cloud, we’ll see a squashed shape. So, a near-perfect circle in a messy universe is a special find.

Teleios – named from the Greek Τελεɩοσ (“perfect”) for its near-perfectly circular shape – is shown below. This unique object has never been seen in any wavelength, including visible light, demonstrating ASKAP’s incredible ability to discover new objects.

The shape indicates Teleios has remained relatively untouched by its environment. This presents us with an opportunity to make inferences about the initial supernova explosion, providing rare insight into one of the most energetic events in the universe.

At the other extreme, we can take an object and discover something entirely new about it. The Diprotodon supernova remnant is shown below.

This remnant is one of the largest objects in the sky, appearing approximately six times larger than the Moon. Hence the name: the animal Diprotodon, one of Australia’s most famous megafauna, a giant wombat that lived about 25,000 years ago.

ASKAP’s sensitivity has uncovered the object’s full extent. This discovery led to further analysis, uncovering more of the history and the physics behind this object. The messy internal structure can be seen as different parts of the expanding shell slam into a busy interstellar environment.

A cosmic mirror

Lagotis is another object that can show how new telescope data can reclassify previously discovered objects. The reflection nebula VdB-80 has been seen before, within the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. The light we see was emitted by nearby stars, and then reflected off a nearby cloud of gas and dust.

However, with newly available ASKAP EMU data, we were able to discover an associated cloud of ionised hydrogen (known as an HII region, pronounced “aitch two”), where stellar energy has caused the gaseous matter to lose its electrons.

This HII region is seen to coexist with the reflection nebula, sharing the same stellar centre, and is created from the star pushing into a molecular cloud. This movement is akin to burrowing, so the object earned the name Lagotis after Macrotis lagotis, the Australian greater bilby.

Outside the galaxy

ASKAP and MeerKAT are also illuminating objects from outside our Milky Way galaxy – for example, “radio ring” galaxies. When we use visible light to look at the stars in this galaxy, we see a rather plain disk.

But in radio light, we see a ring. Why is there a hole in the middle? Perhaps the combined force of many exploding supernovas has pushed all the radio-emitting clouds out of the centre. We’re not sure – we’re looking for more examples to test our ideas.

Finally, LMC-ORC is an Odd Radio Circle (ORC), a prominent new class of objects with unfamiliar origins. Only being visible in radio light, they are perhaps the most mysterious of all.

The next generation

MeerKAT and ASKAP are revealing incredible insights into the low surface brightness universe. However, they are precursors for the Square Kilometre Array, an international collaborative endeavour that will increase the abilities of radio astronomers and reveal even more unique features of the universe.

The low-surface brightness universe presents many mysteries. These discoveries push our understanding further. Currently, the EMU survey using ASKAP is only 25% complete.

As more of this survey becomes available, we will discover many more unique and exciting objects, both new to astrophysics and extensions on previously known objects.

Acknowledgements: Aaron Bradley and Zachary Smeaton, Masters Research Students at Western Sydney University, made valuable contributions to this article.

Nicholas Tothill receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Andrew Hopkins, Luke Barnes, and Miroslav Filipovic 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. ‘Ghosts of the radio universe’: astronomers have discovered a slew of faint circular objects – https://theconversation.com/ghosts-of-the-radio-universe-astronomers-have-discovered-a-slew-of-faint-circular-objects-249141

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yee-Fui Ng, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Monash University

The question of how best to eliminate corruption has exercised the minds of philosophers as much as the practical drafters of legislation from Ancient Greek and Roman times.

Within the political sphere, the notion of “corruption” has fluctuated between broad and narrow conceptions.

The broad conception relates to the decay of institutions or of the stature of the individuals who comprise them. On the other hand, the narrow conception focuses on the abuse of public office for private gain.

There is also “grey corruption” – which involves questionable behaviour involving a breach of integrity standards that does not necessarily amount to criminal conduct.

This could include where a person has undue influence over a politician, such as by essentially buying that power through making large donations or hiring expensive lobbyists, particularly where it causes public officials to behave in corrupt ways.

However the notion is defined, it is clear the fight against corruption is one of the basic tasks of a liberal democracy, perhaps even of an effectively functioning civil society.

Corruption control is a pressing issue worldwide: the United Nations estimated the economic cost of corruption at 5% of global domestic product or $3.6 trillion annually.

Australia has had a number of major corruption scandals throughout its history. Corruption was rife in the colonial era, where wealthy landholders sought to influence parliamentarians with monetary bribes.

This has been followed by several major corruption scandals, such as the Fitzgerald inquiry, which revealed widespread police corruption involving illegal gambling and prostitution.

What are anti-corruption commissions?

Anti-corruption commissions are arguably the most significant tool developed in liberal democracies to fight corruption in recent times.

The first anti-corruption commission in Australia, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), was established in New South Wales in 1988 by then premier Nick Greiner.

Infamously, a few years later, Greiner became the first premier to resign due to an ICAC investigation.

Over the next few decades, all states and territories have set up their own anti-corruption or integrity commissions.

In 2023, the Commonwealth followed suit with the introduction of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), a promise made by Anthony Albanese in the lead-up to the 2022 election after considerable pressure from the public and from within parliament.

As a result, Australia now has a comprehensive network of broad-based public sector anti-corruption agencies covering all levels of government – a significant development nationally and internationally.

Anti-corruption commissions are tasked with investigating serious and systemic corrupt conduct in government. This includes not just members of the House and Senate, but their staff and public servants.

In performing their functions, these commissions have strong coercive powers, equivalent to the powers of a royal commission. This includes the power to compel documents and witnesses.

Some anti-corruption commissions such as the NACC and NSW’s ICAC have the power to conduct public hearings if they believe it’s in the public interest. This increases transparency in government. But concerns have been expressed about reputational damage for those subject to investigations.

Anti-corruption commissions also have corruption prevention functions. They are tasked with educating the public about the detrimental effects of corruption on public administration.

Reports of anti-corruption commissions are often attended by significant media publicity, leading to public awareness of corruption in government.

Why are anti-corruption commissions needed?

It has become well accepted that effective anti-corruption institutions play an important role as institutions supporting constitutional democracy.

The state anti-corruption bodies have brought to light many indiscretions by politicians that would have otherwise remained hidden.

Without these commissions, corruption in the public sector can take root without us knowing about it. An anti-corruption agency is a powerful deterrent against improper behaviour.

Yet anti-corruption commissions tend to be unpopular within governments because they scrutinise government action. This means the a commission may expose improper conduct or corruption within their ranks.

It is common for governments hostile to anti-corruption commissions to attack them, including by reducing their powers or funding.

This is despite their integral role in our democracy. Alongside other oversight bodies such as the ombudsman (who investigates maladministration within government) and auditor-general (who performs audits of government expenditure), anti-corruption commissions form part of an intricate, interlocking integrity framework that monitors executive action.

Who watches the watchdogs?

A big question is about how we ensure anti-corruption commissions do not overstep their bounds. Given their broad coercive powers, how do we hold them to account?

From their inception, concerns have been expressed about the potential for anti-corruption bodies to infringe on civil liberties, and the possibility they may exceed or abuse their powers.

In Australia, anti-corruption commissions are subject to a strong system of accountability through parliaments and the courts. They report to dedicated parliamentary committees who scrutinise their actions and decisions. Complaints against anti-corruption commissions can be made to a dedicated inspectorate – an independent statutory officer who oversees their actions.

Anti-corruption commissions are also subject to judicial review by the courts to ensure they don’t exceed their legal boundaries. Court scrutiny occurs when a person investigated by an anti-corruption commission takes their grievance to court.

To be effective, anti-corruption commissions require strong powers and institutional independence. But this needs to be balanced with accountability and the protection of individual rights.

What is pork barrelling and what are some recent examples?

Pork barrelling involves governments channelling public funds to seats they hold or seats they would like to win from an opponent, as a way of winning voters’ favour. This means the money is used for political purposes, rather than proper allocation according to merit.

We have been inundated with pork barrelling scandals in recent years. This includes the car park rorts scandal, where 77% of the commuter car park sites selected were in electorates held by the then Coalition government, rather than in areas of real need with congestion issues.

This followed close on the heels of the “sports rorts” scandal. Minister Bridget McKenzie resigned from cabinet following allegations she had intervened in the sport grants program to benefit the Coalition government while in a position of conflict of interest.

My research has shown that pork barrelling is an intractable problem across multiple governments over many decades. It takes different forms based on electoral systems.

Australia has a single member electorate parliamentary system, which makes it more susceptible to pork barrelling than multi-member electorates such as Norway or Spain. The belief is that politicians who “bring home the bacon” for their constituents are electorally rewarded for doing so.

This means there are incentives for the central cabinet to strategically apportion benefits to marginal electorates to increase prospects of electoral success. There is also an incentive to bias the apportionment of funds towards the party in power.

In short, rorts scandals keep happening because governments believe that channelling money to marginal and government electorates will win them elections.

Potentially the NACC could investigate rorts scandals, but only where it amounts to serious or systemic corrupt conduct.

How do we fix the grants system?

At the federal level, we have sophisticated financial management legislation that provides a framework for grant rules. The Commonwealth grant rules provide a detailed set of guidelines that ministers and government officials must follow on grant application and selection processes.

However, there are significant loopholes in the rules. For example, the “car park rorts” scandal is not covered by these rules because it involves money being channelled through the states.

Also, there are no sanctions for breaching the rules. So ministers and government officials can break the rules without any repercussions.

To fix the system, we need to reform the rules about grants allocation and close the loopholes. We also need to impose punishment for breaching the rules.

It is imperative our grants administration system be reformed to ensure that taxpayer funds are protected from governmental abuse. If the ministerial discretion available in grants processes is improperly used, this can give rise to political favouritism and corruption.

How corrupt is Australia compared to other countries?

There is a public perception that a small elite is reaping large benefits in Australian society in terms of political influence and its flow-on dividends.

In Australia, the “game of mates” is flourishing. There’s now a revolving door in politics with many politicians, advisers and senior government officials leaving the public sector to become well-paid lobbyists.

Add to that the appointments of political “mates” to commissions, tribunals and cushy ambassadorships and the blatant misuse of parliamentary entitlements such as helicopter trips on taxpayer funds.

Political parties are also accepting millions of dollars in donations from lobbyists and others interested in influencing policy outcomes.

All of this adds to the perception that the system is rigged – and not in favour of the person on the street.

Australia has fallen steadily in Transparency International’s global corruption index, from 8th place in 2012 to 14th in 2024. But even so, Australia is the 14th-least corrupt country in the world, which is still a respectable ranking.

More alarming is the fact that one in 30 Australian public servants said in a survey last year they had seen a colleague acting in a corrupt manner.

The types of corruption witnessed included cronyism or nepotism (favourable treatment of friends or family members without proper regard to merit). Fraud, forgery, embezzlement and conflicts of interest were also reported.

In the 1980s, there were incidences of large-scale corruption that rocked the country, culminating in the Fitzgerald Inquiry in Queensland and the WA Inc Royal Commission in Western Australia. These scandals led to the resignations and imprisonments of various former ministers and officials.

Although we have not sunk to such depths since then, state anti-corruption commissions, such as the NSW ICAC, have uncovered various instances of corruption in recent years. The NSW ICAC’s inquiries have led to the resignations of several politicians, as well as the conviction of former Labor MP Eric Obeid.

Another classic case of corruption exposed by the ICAC led to the downfall of former Newcastle lord mayor, Jeff McCloy. McCloy famously bragged that politicians treated him like a “walking ATM” and admitted to giving two MPs envelopes of cash amounting to $10,000.

In Victoria, the Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission’s (IBAC) revealed that a lobbyist funnelled suitcases of cash totalling more than $100,000 from a property developer to a councillor, under the guise of sham transactions.

These explosive scandals involving corrupt conduct by public officials have eroded public trust in politicians. But the exposure of these scandals by anti-corruption commissions have an important deterrent and educative effect on public officials and the broader public.

Our faith in government has been eroded by a lack of transparency and the perception that those in power are enjoying unfair benefits. The active investigations by robust institutions such as anti-corruption commissions will act as checks and balances on governmental power – and are key to a vibrant democracy.

This is an edited extract from How Australian Democracy Works, a new book from leading authors at The Conversation on all aspects of our political system and its history, out March 4.

Yee-Fui Ng 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. Democracy’s bad eggs: corruption, pork-barrelling and abuses of power – https://theconversation.com/democracys-bad-eggs-corruption-pork-barrelling-and-abuses-of-power-229888

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Ghezelbash, Professor and Director, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney

Misinformation is a significant threat to our society. It undermines public discussion, erodes social cohesion, leads to bad policy and weakens democracy.

Misinformation on refugee and migrant issues is particularly pervasive – especially in the lead up to elections, as bad-faith actors try to promote fear, distrust and simplistic solutions.

And sometimes, misinformation is specifically targeted at migrant communities themselves, sowing division in an effort to influence elections.

So, what’s the best way to counter misinformation about refugees and migrants? And given the risk that publicly addressing lies and rumours can sometimes end up spreading them, when is misinformation best ignored?

A new report by the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law and the Behavioural Insights Team (a behavioural science research company) uses science to answer these questions.

Behavioural science explains why and how misinformation works. Understanding some of that science can empower all of us to stop its spread.

Misinformation increases during elections

The recent US presidential race provides a stark example of how misinformation on refugees and migrants soars during elections.

During one presidential debate, Donald Trump falsely claimed migrants in Ohio were “eating the pets”. Though entirely untrue, this baseless claim spread rapidly across social media.

Australia is not immune to such deception. While refugees and migrants make significant positive economic, social and cultural contributions to their host societies, politicians across the spectrum have falsely blamed them for issues ranging from rising house prices to crime.

This is not new. Back in the 2001 election campaign, government ministers made false claims that people seeking asylum had thrown their children overboard from a boat. These are widely regarded as having contributed to turning around the fortunes of the Howard government, which was then trailing in the polls.

Instead of addressing challenges with real solutions, these strategies scapegoat refugees and migrants, and ignore their immense positive contributions.

Misinformation leads to a more divided and polarised society. So, how does it spread?

6 ways misinformation spreads

Online platforms create the perfect breeding ground for misinformation to spread.

The rise of AI-generated misinformation – such as highly convincing deepfake images and videos – only exacerbates the problem.

Combating misinformation begins with understanding the psychological factors that drive its spread and influence.

Our new report identifies six key behavioural science principles that explain how misinformation takes hold:

1. Hot states: Heightened emotions, such as fear, outrage or anxiety, make people more reactive and less critical of misleading claims.

2. The messenger effect: People judge a message’s truth based on who shares it, often trusting friends and family over experts.

3. The mere-exposure effect: Seeing misinformation multiple times makes it seem more true, making people more likely to share it.

4. Confirmation bias: People are more likely to believe false information that aligns with their values and reject facts that challenge them.

5. Cognitive load: When overwhelmed by information, people are less likely to question what they see, making them more vulnerable to falsehoods.

6. Continued influence effect: Misinformation has a lasting effect on our attitudes and decisions, even after it has been corrected.

Building on these principles and an extensive review of research literature, we developed an evidence-based framework for countering misinformation about refugees and migrants.

It provides a step-by-step guide on what to do when faced with falsehoods, starting with recognising whether the misinformation is anticipated or already circulating.

When misinformation is anticipated

When you expect a particular false claim, but it’s not yet out there, then prebunk. Alert people to manipulation tactics before they become widespread.

This helps people recognise and resist misinformation before it takes hold.

When misinformation is already circulating

If false claims are already out there, first ask three questions before acting:

1. is the claim prominent (visible and gaining traction)?
2. is it persuasive (able to change people’s minds)?
3. is it proximate (relevant to your audience and cause)?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, then reframe the agenda. Instead of amplifying falsehoods, shift your resources to sharing stories that reinforce accurate information and resonate with your audience’s values.

If misinformation is indeed prominent, persuasive and proximate, debunk it.

Use the fact, myth, fallacy, fact – or “fact sandwich” – method. Make the correction clear, credible and effective by stating the truth, then presenting the myth, explaining its flaws, and reinforcing the correct fact.

Here’s an example that leads with a fact, warns about the myth, explains the fallacy and then ends with a fact:

When Australia’s borders were closed during COVID, migration was at its lowest in a century — yet house prices still went up. The idea that cutting migration will magically solve the housing crisis doesn’t hold up against the evidence.

But some political actors are blaming migrants, as if they’re the main reason housing has become unaffordable.

In fact, this oversimplifies the problem. The housing crisis has been a long time in the making, and it’s now this severe because of past policy choices piling up.

There are many drivers of Australia’s housing crisis, including a lack of housing, rising construction costs, and tax breaks that distort the market. Migration is only a small piece of the puzzle.

How to engage audiences

The report also details seven strategies that drive reach and impact. These include publicly communicating in a way that’s:

• consistent
• repeated
• coordinated with other groups with similar goals
• appeals to your audience’s values and emotions, and
• uses humour.

One part of a broader approach

These strategies can be used by anyone seeking to push back against misinformation in our public debate, not just about refugees and migrants.

However, communication approaches are only one lever.

To turn the tide on misinformation, society needs systemic solutions. These include media literacy education and regulatory reform of online platforms.

As we approach Australia’s next federal election, addressing misinformation about refugees and migrants is more crucial than ever to protect refugees and migrants from harm, strengthen our democratic processes, and foster a more inclusive society.

Daniel Ghezelbash receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the NSW government and the Robert Bosch Foundation. He is a board member of Refugee Advice and Casework Services, Wallumatta Legal, and the Access to Justice and Technology Network. He is also a Special Counsel at the National Justice Project.

Saul Wodak is affiliated with the Behavioural Insights Team.

– ref. Misinformation on refugees and migrants is rife during elections. We found 6 ways it spreads – and how to stop it – https://theconversation.com/misinformation-on-refugees-and-migrants-is-rife-during-elections-we-found-6-ways-it-spreads-and-how-to-stop-it-251035

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon O’Connor, Professor in U.S. Politics and U.S. Foreign Relations, United States Studies Centre,, University of Sydney

Since returning to the US presidency, Donald Trump has outdone himself, gaining global media headlines and attention with outrageous statements and dramatic decisions.

The most consequential decision so far has been the freezing of many US aid and development programs. The freeze had an immediate impact. Even with some waivers now in place, it is likely that starving people in Ethiopia will not get the famine relief desperately needed; food is rotting in African harbours as constitutional battles over executive power are waged in Washington.

In Africa alone, the US has also been funding lifesaving malaria prevention efforts and HIV/AIDS drug programs. Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency has cruelly disrupted those.

There are numerous examples of other reckless policy decisions. In terms of long term consequences, arguably the worst decision Trump has made is pulling the United States out of the Paris Agreement on climate change. He also wound back a slew of Biden administration policies while erasing the term “climate change” from various government websites.

Trump has attempted to bully Mexico and Canada with threats of a 25% tax on all imports from those two trading partners. He has also imposed a 10% tariff on all Chinese imports coming into the US.

Then there are Trump’s statements on Ukraine, Gaza and Panama. Last weekend, his treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House meeting caused widespread dismay around the world, as Trump doubled down on his promotion of Putin’s talking points and Russian government interests.

So what’s Trump’s game plan?

With Trump, it is tempting to claim he is a chaos merchant with no plan or method to his madness. According to this view, when he is challenged or criticised, he will escalate the threats and increase the insults.

Therefore, conventional wisdom has it that the best way to deal with Trump is to flatter and humour him, then wait for his attention to be distracted by another prize. This understanding of Trump has been developed by international relations scholar Daniel Drezner into the “toddler-in-chief” thesis.

Psychological understandings of Trump are useful to a point, but it is worth remembering presidencies are run by vast administrations of people, departments and agencies, and not just one person. Moreover, an institution as large as the US Defense Department – with its two million employees and military bases in at least 80 countries around the world – has a near permanent mindset of its own. This, in turn, tends to make presidents as seemingly different as Obama and Trump custodians of many similar military policies and postures.

The way I have initially examined Trump in my own research is to see him as a hardline conservative nationalist who believes projecting US power with tough talk and reminding other nations of American military might is the best approach to world politics.

Previous Republican presidents, most notably George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, adopted this so-called “cowboy” approach. It’s a posture that rejects the idea that the US is the leader of a liberal international order (a leadership role promoted by their Democratic party opponents).

My starting point for analysis sees continuities between Reagan, Bush and Trump, and highlights their arrogance and ignorance when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world.

Similar, but different

However, there are some things about Trump that are clearly different and distinct. Before his second term, the most unusual aspect of Trump’s foreign policy approach was the volume and range of his scattergun rhetoric towards other leaders and nations. For example, he threatened North Korea with “fire and fury and, frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before”, but later told a rally of supporters that, “We fell in love. No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters.”

As for academic perspectives that might help us better understand what kind of politician Trump is and what his next moves might be, the obvious label is “crudely transactional”. His attitude to most minor and middle powers seems to be “what have you done for me lately?” or “why does America owe your nation anything?”.

When it comes to Russia, and potentially China, there has been speculation Trump is adopting a geopolitical approach with parallels to the “great game” of the 19th century. The “great game” is another way of saying imperialism, and this is a largely underused way of describing American foreign policy in general and the second Trump administration in particular.

Then there is the question of whether the (other) “f-word” is a useful way to understand Trump and Trumpism: are his rhetoric and his domestic and international policies fascist? They are definitely ultra-nationalist and racist, which are two key components of fascism; Trumpism revolves around a charismatic leader that has enough in common with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to make opponents of Trump justifiably nervous. But does Trumpism have the other key element of fascism: mob or state violence that is at times directed at scapegoated enemies?

There is certainly an embrace of revenge and cruelty by Trump in general, which is being carried out in practice by Musk’s DOGE project. However, whether it is useful to call the second Trump administration fascist, or just fascistic for now, is a complex question within scholarly circles.

Five weeks into the second Trump administration, and many of the most destructive ideas that were laid out last year in the unofficial campaign manifesto Project 2025 are being put into place. It has been a long-term dream of many hardline conservatives to gut America’s foreign aid and development programs, which is now happening at a frightening pace.

What lies ahead that turns rhetoric into reality is hard to entirely predict, but many of Trump’s utterances this year have clearly been imperialistic and fascistic. Trump does not have to ignore the constitution or be a textbook fascist to be a terribly dangerous president. Being an authoritarian, which he has no qualms about embracing, is worrying enough.

Brendon O’Connor 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. Donald Trump is picking fights with leaders around the world. What exactly is his foreign policy approach? – https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-is-picking-fights-with-leaders-around-the-world-what-exactly-is-his-foreign-policy-approach-251238