Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

It’s the big question that has loomed over Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign from the start: is the United States ready for a Black woman president?

I get asked this almost every time I speak about American politics. And it’s a question that pundits, observers and experts keep asking, without ever landing on an answer.

That’s because the question is, in the end, unanswerable. It’s so heavily loaded that answering it requires too much history, cultural knowledge, judgment and speculation.

While the question hints at the deeply ingrained racism and sexism that is built into the structures of American politics and culture, it doesn’t directly address these things, leaving assumptions about just how sexist and racist the country might be unresolved.

Asking if America is “ready” also assumes that history is progress – that things move forward in a relatively straight line. It assumes that in the past America was not ready for a Black woman president, but at some point in the future it might be. It assumes, as Martin Luther King junior once said so beautifully, that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”.

Like much of King’s teachings, this idea has been flattened into an assumption that “progress” is inevitable – that women and people of colour will eventually get equal representation and treatment as society learns, gradually, to become more just, tolerant and accepting.

It assumes that, one day, the United States will live up to its own foundational ideal that “all men are created equal”.

But as Harris has herself said, the United States has not always lived up to its own ideals. Progress on equality – especially in extending it beyond the original, exclusively white men identified in the Constitution – has been patchy and frustratingly slow. It has also been marred by violence and even war.

History is not a forward march. It does not “progress” to some end point of idealism. It is, more often than not, a fight.

Are you ready for it?

Many other countries have shown it is possible to be “ready” for a woman leader at various points in their histories, only to return to being not ready again.

India, the largest democracy in the world, elected Indira Gandhi to the prime ministership in 1966. Gandhi served for over a decade, and then again from 1980 to 1984, when she was assassinated. Every leader since then has been a man.

Similarly, the United Kingdom elected its first woman prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, in 1979. After Thatcher resigned in 1990, the UK didn’t have another woman leader until Liz Truss in 2022 (and that didn’t exactly go well).

In Australia, Julia Gillard won a very close election to become prime minister in 2010, only to lose to a man four years later. There has been no real suggestion that a woman, let alone a woman of colour, might ascend to the leadership of either major party in the decade since. And could Australia even be definitively considered “ready” for a woman leader in that period, given how Gillard was treated during her prime ministership?

New Zealand has a stronger record. Jenny Shipley became the first woman prime minister in 1997 by bumping off the leader of the coalition government. Helen Clark was then the first woman to be elected prime minister in 1999, followed by Jacinda Ardern nearly two decades later, in 2017.

While Britain, New Zealand and Australia have some political and cultural similarities with the United States, they have different political structures. Unlike in the US, their leaders are not directly elected, making the specific identity of the leader less explicitly the focus of elections.

Other countries with direct elections, though, have also been “ready” for women leaders at one point or another. In 1980, Iceland became the first country in the world to directly elect a woman to the presidency. Vigdís Finnbogadóttir served for 16 years. Deeply conservative Ireland was also ready 30 years ago, directly electing its first woman president, Mary Robinson, in 1990.

Structural inequality

For the most part, though, these women are exceptions to ingrained, structural gender inequality in politics across the world – albeit a reality reflected more starkly in the American experience.

The fact the question of “readiness” remains so prominent reflects the fundamental reality of the unequal representation of women, especially Black women and women of colour, not just in America but in most democracies.

In June this year, UN Women noted only 27 countries currently have women leaders. It said:

At the current rate, gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years.

The idea of a “rate” of progress once again assumes the world will be ready for women leaders one day (even if that day might be more than a century away).

Unsurprisingly, the same structural inequality is reflected below the highest levels of leadership. UN Women found only 15 countries where women hold at least 50% of Cabinet minister positions. And when women do get leadership positions, it’s often in areas traditionally understood as “women’s” or “minority” issues, such as social services or Indigenous affairs.

This general trend is reflected in the US, too. After the most recent US election, the Congress has a “record number” of women. Yet it is still just 28%.

Similarly, in Australia, research by The Australia Institute found women are underrepresented in seven of Australia’s nine parliaments.

That should not, however, undermine the significant achievements of women and people of colour, who have long fought for a seat at the table of power – often at great personal risk.

According to the Pew Research Center, the current Congress in the US is also the most racially and ethnically diverse in history, with 133 representatives and senators identifying their ethnicity as something other than non-Hispanic white.

And in 2021, Harris became the first woman, the first person of South Asian descent and the first Black woman to be vice president of the United States. In another historic milestone, President Joe Biden appointed the first Native American woman to a Cabinet position – Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

A milestone was achieved in Australia, too, when Linda Burney became the first Aboriginal woman to serve as minister for Indigenous affairs in 2022.

Weaponising gender and race

None of this, though, can confirm or deny the “readiness” of the United States – or any other country – to elect a Black woman leader.

There are signs a sizeable portion of the American electorate is decidedly not ready to elevate a woman, let alone a Black woman, to the highest position of power.

A great deal of attention has, rightly, been focused on the current Republican candidates’ attitudes towards gender and race. Vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, for instance, has made numerous comments about women, such as his insistence that “childless cat ladies” have too much power. Donald Trump has also repeatedly attacked women with sexist remarks, made obscene comments about women’s bodies, and been found liable in a civil court for sexual assault.

In August, Fox News anchor Jesse Watters suggested generals would “have their way” with Harris if she were to be elected.

Trump, Vance and their surrogates use race and gender to delegitimise their opponents, suggesting they are not fit for positions of power.

Such misogynistic attacks are a common experience for women in politics. Decades before Vance’s insistence that only people with biological children have a proper “stake” in the future, an Australian Liberal senator suggested Gillard was unfit for leadership because she was “deliberately barren”.

As a Black woman, Harris faces attacks on both her race and her gender. Right-wing figures have repeatedly dismissed her as a “DEI” (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) candidate, suggesting she has only made it as far as she has because of special treatment based not on her merit, but on her identity.

Once again adopting a tactic he honed during Barack Obama’s presidency, Trump has also repeatedly questioned Harris’ legitimacy as vice president and a candidate based on her race.

Context matters

Not so long ago, many people assumed Hillary Clinton would win the race to be “first”. When she accepted the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, she stood, symbolically, underneath a shattering glass ceiling.

A few months later, that ceiling quickly re-formed itself.

But even Clinton’s loss in 2016 cannot definitely prove that America was “not ready” for a woman president. Context is crucial.

Even those voters who might be “ready” for a woman president won’t vote for just any woman. They will make decisions based on complicated, interrelated factors, including a candidate’s policy positions.

It’s arguable the role both Bill and Hillary Clinton played in the adoption of free-trade agreements – from Bill Clinton’s overseeing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to Hillary Clinton’s support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – alongside economic stagnation in the US, had a much bigger role in Clinton’s loss than her gender. And her characterisation of alienated voters as “a basket of deplorables” certainly didn’t help.

Clinton had significant political baggage after decades in the spotlight. The political, economic and historic circumstances of the 2016 presidential race – alongside Trump’s political ascendancy – are impossible to pull apart.

Similarly, while some Britons might have voted for Thatcher because she was a woman, many also voted for her because of her conservative policy positions, or perhaps because they disapproved of her opponents more.

Decades later and worlds apart politically, Harris is under pressure from a critical section of her own party’s base to modify her position on Israel. This is a serious and pressing policy issue that has nothing to do with her race or gender and everything to do with competing visions for the United States’ role in the world. And this will have an impact on many voters’ decisions in November.

Put simply, it cannot be definitively argued that Clinton lost in 2016 because America was “not ready” for a woman. Or that circumstances have changed enough that the country can be considered ready now.

In a different context, with a different candidate and a different policy platform, America may well have been “ready” in 2016. A different woman – like, say, the unwaveringly popular Michelle Obama – might well have been able to beat Trump. Or not. We simply have no way of knowing.

And even if we did, we still could not know if America was definitively “ready” for a Black woman to lead.

Kamala Harris’ ‘firsts’

Nevertheless, at this year’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Hillary Clinton reflected on the possibility of “firsts” and the progress of American history. She proclaimed that “a future where there are no ceilings on our dreams” had finally arrived.

Harris, too, is focused on the future – but not on her “firsts”.

In her first media interview since becoming the Democratic candidate, for example, she dismissed a question about Trump’s focus on her race. Her campaign has successfully framed any specific focus on gender or race – and particularly on women’s bodies – as “weird”.

In this way, Harris’ campaign has firmly flipped the focus of identity politics back onto Trump and Vance. Her campaign is showcasing a very different kind of masculinity – one that is entirely comfortable with Black women occupying positions of leadership.

The Harris campaign is reinforcing this framing by focusing not on individual “firsts”, but on structural gender and racial inequality and women’s basic rights of bodily autonomy. In this way, the campaign is embracing a collective feminism, rather than the more 1990s-style, individualistic, “white women” feminism more redolent of Clinton. Kamala is, after all, brat.

The Harris campaign is explicitly avoiding the tempting shallowness of identity politics, learning the lessons of an often fraught Clinton campaign that appeared to assume Americans would vote for her precisely because she was a woman, or because it was time America did, finally, elect a woman president.

All of this is, implicitly at least, a recognition that “readiness” is not a simple question with a straightforward answer. The Harris campaign recognises it is not necessarily a question of collective “readiness”, but of getting enough Americans who are already ready inspired and mobilised.

As Biden has said repeatedly, “women are not without […] electoral or political power”. According to one analysis, in the four years since 2020, Black women’s voter registration has increased by 98.4%. Among young Black women, it has increased by 175.8%.

Black American women are clearly ready for this moment.

The question has no answer

If Harris is elected this November, many will take this as proof that a threshold has been crossed, that America was indeed collectively “ready” to be led by a Black woman. And that might be true. Up to a point.

The United States once demonstrated itself “ready” to elect its first Catholic president. In 2008, it proved itself “ready” to elect the first Black president.
But eight years later, in an historic, world-shaping backlash, it went back to being very much not ready.

The divides of American politics are deep and structural. They have remained unresolved since the country’s foundation. The election of the first Black woman would be hugely significant, a remarkable historical development in what has already been an extraordinary campaign.

But the question of whether America is “ready” for this moment cannot be answered by a single individual.

There are two versions of America: one that is ready for this moment (and has always been), and one that will likely never be. These two versions co‑exist. And they are, for the moment, irreconcilable.

Both sides know that victory in November is only an indication of where power lies in this moment. It will not be some clear resolution to a centuries-long question about what the United States is and what it wants to be.

That’s not how history works.

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

– ref. Is America ready to elect a Black woman president? – https://theconversation.com/is-america-ready-to-elect-a-black-woman-president-237322

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin University

Until recently, Elon Musk was just a wildly successful electric car tycoon and space pioneer. Sure, he was erratic and outspoken, but his global influence was contained and seemingly under control.

But add the ownership of just one media platform, in the form of Twitter – now X – and the maverick has become a mogul, and the baton of the world’s biggest media bully has passed to a new player.

What we can gauge from watching Musk’s stewardship of X is that he’s unlike former media moguls, making him potentially even more dangerous. He operates under his own rules, often beyond the reach of regulators. He has demonstrated he has no regard for those who try to rein him in.

Under the old regime, press barons, from William Randolph Hearst to Rupert Murdoch, at least pretended they were committed to truth-telling journalism. Never mind that they were simultaneously deploying intimidation and bullying to achieve their commercial and political ends.

Musk has no need, or desire, for such pretence because he’s not required to cloak anything he says in even a wafer-thin veil of journalism. Instead, his driving rationale is free speech, which is often code for don’t dare get in my way.

This means we are in new territory, but it doesn’t mean what went before it is irrelevant.

A big bucket of the proverbial

If you want a comprehensive, up-to-date primer on the behaviour of media moguls over the past century-plus, Eric Beecher has just provided it in his book The Men Who Killed the News.

Alongside accounts of people like Hearst in the United States and Lord Northcliffe in the United Kingdom, Beecher quotes the notorious example of what happened to John Major, the UK prime minister between 1990 and 1997, who baulked at following Murdoch’s resistance to strengthening ties with the European Union.

In a conversation between Major and Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of Murdoch’s best-selling English tabloid newspaper, The Sun, the prime minister was bluntly told: “Well John, let me put it this way. I’ve got a large bucket of shit lying on my desk and tomorrow morning I’m going to pour it all over your head.”

MacKenzie might have thought he was speaking truth to power, but in reality he was doing Murdoch’s bidding, and actually using his master’s voice, as Beecher confirms by recounting an anecdote from early in Murdoch’s career in Australia.

In the 1960s, when Murdoch owned The Sunday Times in Perth, he met Lang Hancock (father of Gina Rinehart) to discuss potentially buying some mineral prospects together in Western Australia. The state government was opposed to the planned deal.

Beecher cites Hancock’s biographer, Robert Duffield, who claimed Murdoch asked the mining magnate, “If I can get a certain politician to negotiate, will you sell me a piece of the cake?” Hancock said yes. Later that night, Murdoch called again to say the deal had been done. How, asked an incredulous Hancock. Murdoch replied: “Simple […] I told him: look you can have a headline a day or a bucket of shit every day. What’s it to be?”

Between Murdoch in the 1960s and MacKenzie in the 1990s came Mario Puzo’s The Godfather with Don Corleone, aided by Luca Brasi holding a gun to a rival’s head, saying “either his brains or his signature would be on the contract”.

Changing the rules of the game

Media moguls use metaphorical bullets. Those relatively few people who do resist them, like Major, get the proverbial poured over their government. Headlines in The Sun following the Conservatives’ win in the 1992 election included: “Pigmy PM”, “Not up to the job” and “1,001 reasons why you are such a plonker John”.

If media moguls since Hearst and Northcliffe have tap-danced between producing journalism and pursuing their commercial and political aims, they have at least done the former, and some of it has been very good.

The leaders of the social media behemoths, by contrast, don’t claim any fourth estate role. If anything, they seem to hold journalism with tongs as far from their face as possible.

They do possess enormous wealth though. Apple, Microsoft, Google and Meta, formerly known as Facebook, are in the top ten companies globally by market capitalisation. By comparison, News Corporation’s market capitalisation now ranks at 1,173 in the world.

Regulating the online environment may be difficult, as Australia discovered this year when it tried, and failed, to stop X hosting footage of the Wakeley Church stabbing attacks. But limiting transnational media platforms can be done, according to Robert Reich, a former Secretary of Labor in Bill Clinton’s government.

Despite some early wins through Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, big tech companies habitually resist regulation. They have used their substantial influence to stymie it wherever and whenever nation-states have sought to introduce it.

Meta’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has been known to go rogue, as he demonstrated in February 2021 when he protested against the bargaining code by unilaterally closing Facebook sites that carried news. Generally, though, his strategy has been to deploy standard public relations and lobbying methods.

But his rival Musk uses his social media platform, X, like a wrecking ball.

Musk is just about the first thing the average X user sees in their feed, whether they want to or not. He gives everyone the benefit of his thoughts, not to mention his thought bubbles. He proclaims himself a free-speech absolutist, but most of his pronouncements lean hard to the right, providing little space for alternative views.

Some of his tweets have been inflammatory, such as him linking to an article promoting a conspiracy theory about the savage attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of the former US Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, or his tweet that “Civil war is inevitable” following riots that erupted recently in the UK.

As the BBC reported, the riots occurred after the fatal stabbing of three girls in Southport. “The subsequent unrest in towns and cities across England and in parts of Northern Ireland has been fuelled by misinformation online, the far-right and anti-immigration sentiment.”

Nor does Musk bother with niceties when people disagree with him. Late last year, advertisers considered boycotting X because they believed some of Musk’s posts were anti-Semitic. He told them during a live interview to “Go fuck yourself”.

He has welcomed Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, back onto X after Trump’s account was frozen over his comments surrounding the January 6 2021 attack on the capitol. Since then both men have floated the idea of governing together if Trump wins a second term.

Is the world better off with tech bros like Musk who demand unlimited freedom and assert their influence brazenly, or old-style media moguls who spin fine-sounding rhetoric about freedom of the press and exert influence under the cover of journalism?

That’s a question for our times that we should probably begin grappling with.

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. Murdoch to Musk: how global media power has shifted from the moguls to the big tech bros – https://theconversation.com/murdoch-to-musk-how-global-media-power-has-shifted-from-the-moguls-to-the-big-tech-bros-237985

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joel Lexchin, Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Management, York University, Canada

Africa says it needs an estimated ten million doses of mpox vaccine to control this public health emergency.

The situation is particularly concerning in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has reported more than 27,000 suspected mpox cases and more than 1,300 deaths so far this year.

Europe and the United States have promised to donate mpox vaccines. In an emergency, donations are welcome. But donations are a charity “bandaid” solution that can’t be relied on.

Here’s what needs to happen next to ensure equitable access to mpox vaccines for this and the next health emergency.

How did we get here?

It’s been less than a month since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared mpox an international public heath emergency of international concern, after rising cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the potential for further spread.

Mpox, once known as monkeypox, has spilled over into countries that have never seen it before, possibly driven by a new, more infectious strain of the virus.

But the WHO has yet to approve mpox vaccines. This is necessary before groups such as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and UNICEF can begin to buy vaccines and start distributing them to affected countries that have not already independently approved them.

Once WHO has approved the vaccines, vaccine donations can also be distributed. These include about 175,000 doses from the European Commission and another 40,000 from vaccine company Bavarian Nordic. The US has also pledged 50,000 doses from its national stockpile.

Even for countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which issued an emergency approval for the vaccines back in June, donated vaccines have only just reportedly arrived.

Other wealthy countries haven’t been so forthcoming with donating vaccines. Canada so far has not committed to sharing any of its several million doses. Australia has secured some vaccine doses for its population but hasn’t said anything about donations.

There are also concerns about how well the current vaccines will work against the new strain of the virus.

We’ve seen this before

In 2022, the Democratic Republic of the Congo saw another mpox outbreak. The US, Canada and the European Union were sufficiently worried that they bought vaccines from Bavarian Nordic. But that left none for poorer countries.

If vaccines were available in Africa then, the current emergency could have been stopped in its tracks, said Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, acting director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Low-income countries, especially those in Africa, are always at the end of the line when it comes to accessing vaccines, diagnostics and treatments.

This is a story that has been repeated multiple times in the past few decades – with HIV/AIDS, Ebola and most recently COVID.

Within the first year COVID vaccines were available, 75-80% of people in high-income countries had been vaccinated versus fewer than 10% in low-income countries.

This maldistribution is not inevitable. It is a legacy of rich countries’ exploitation of the colonised world’s natural resources, a practice that continues under global economic trade and investment rules that keep low-income countries poor and dependent on wealthier ones.

Here’s what happened with COVID products

One key example is the international system of intellectual property governed by the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). This agreement gives companies control over the manufacturing and pricing of their products – including COVID vaccines – until their patents expire. As a result, only rich countries can afford these vaccines.

In 2020, India and South Africa, eventually supported by more than 100 other low- and middle-income countries, proposed a waiver for COVID medical products for a limited time. This would have freed up scientific knowledge, technology and other intellectual property to allow for scaling up the manufacturing of vaccines, diagnostics, treatments and other products necessary to deal with the pandemic.

Less than two years later, the WTO approved a strongly watered-down version of the original proposal. The waiver, which lasts just five years, only made exporting COVID vaccines slightly easier. It did not include any other COVID medical products including treatments and diagnostics, or transfer of know-how and technology needed to safely and effectively scale-up production in the fastest way possible.

We must make sure this does not happen again

Mpox and future infectious disease outbreaks are sure to occur as climate change and environmental destruction increase the risk of animal-to-human disease transmission.

Such outbreaks will not be prevented and controlled by relying on charity, voluntary sharing by pharmaceutical companies or the goodwill of countries at the WTO.

African countries have recognised the need to strengthen the self-sufficiency of their public health systems. To address the current global imbalances, they have recognised they need to boost their collective voice on global health matters and become efficient in preparing and responding to disease threats. There is a framework for action.

But the global maldistribution of medicines for emergencies is not a problem Africa can solve on its own. A new set of global rules is also needed to ensure all countries work cooperatively to prevent, prepare for and respond to pandemics and to share vaccines and other needed medical products. This is vital so the global vaccine inequity experienced during COVID doesn’t happen again.

WHO member states agreed to negotiate such an agreement in December 2021. But they missed the deadline they had set for themselves to conclude it by mid-2024.

While not a pandemic at this stage, the current mpox public health emergency reinforces the need for a concerted global effort to negotiate arrangements that ensure a fairer distribution of vaccines, medicines and diagnostic tests.

All countries should take note. Perhaps the upcoming negotiation for the WHO pandemic agreement – which sets out how the world manages pandemic prevention, preparedness and response – is the perfect opportunity.

Joel Lexchin has received payments for writing a brief on the role of promotion in generating prescriptions for a legal firm, for being on a panel about pharmacare and for co-writing an article for a peer-reviewed medical journal. He is a member of the Boards of Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the Canadian Health Coalition. He receives royalties from University of Toronto Press and James Lorimer & Co. Ltd. for books he has written.

Brigitte Tenni is affiliated with People’s Health Movement and is a member of the Public Health Association of Australia. She has previously received a Research Training Program (RTP) scholarship funded by the Australian government.

Deborah Gleeson has received funding in the past from the Australian Research Council. She has received funding from various national and international non-government organisations to attend speaking engagements related to trade agreements and health, including access to medicines. She has represented the Public Health Association of Australia on matters related to trade agreements and public health.

Ronald Labonte has received funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the University of Ottawa Distinguished Research Chair program, and the World Health Organization. He receives royalties for books he has written from Oxford University Press, Routledge, Macmillan, and Sage; and a stipend as co-Editor-in-Chief of the BMC journal, Globalization and Health. He is affiliated with the People’s Health Movement.

– ref. Africa desperately needs mpox vaccines. But donations from rich countries won’t fix this or the next health emergency – https://theconversation.com/africa-desperately-needs-mpox-vaccines-but-donations-from-rich-countries-wont-fix-this-or-the-next-health-emergency-237747

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Stokes, Industry Professor, Environment and Sustainability, Macquarie University

Old graveyards are a forgotten land asset that can find new life as urban parks in crowded cities. As the density of our cities increases, efficient use of urban land becomes paramount. In particular, land for urban parks becomes more important and harder to find.

Church graveyards are one of the land assets left behind as dead space in our cities. Most were closed decades ago as the burial industry created cemeteries and memorial gardens away from churches.

Large necropolises are now being re‑imagined as urban parks while continuing as active burial grounds. In contrast, dormant graveyards are largely overlooked as urban pocket parks. Yet these sites are often found in some of the most densely populated parts of cities.

From rest to recreation

Many cities have long experience converting burial spaces into urban parks. Famous examples include Washington Square Park in central Manhattan, which was converted from a common burial ground to a public park in 1827. Bunhill Fields was a burial space for non-conformist Christians in London from the 1660s until converted into public gardens in the 1850s.

In many instances, cemeteries fulfil the dual role of accommodating new burials while also being public parks. Assistens Cemetery in the Danish capital Copenhagen was founded in the 1750s. Since the early 19th century it has also served the city as a public park.

As urban planning emerged as a separate discipline in the early 20th century, city planners sought to identify and separate discrete land uses. Large allotments on the city fringes were set aside as burial spaces styled as urban parks. Their ancillary use as passive open space was implied in their names – “lawn cemeteries” or “memorial gardens”.

Urban growth and increasing density has led some cities to examine ways to maximise recreational and community uses of these large institutional burial sites.

The untapped potential of urban churchyards

The potential for shared use of small church graveyards remains largely overlooked.

There are 2,265 cemeteries in New South Wales. Most are small church graveyards, which have not been used for interments for many decades.

Across Greater Sydney, the Catholic and Anglican churches own and manage more than 100 cemeteries and columbaria (memorials housing urns of cremated remains). Most are closed to new burials. Many of these sites are located in areas facing a deficit of open space as building densities increase.

One example of this is St Anne’s Church graveyard at Ryde. Established in 1826, it was subject to a partial land resumption for road widening and closed to new interments in the 1950s.

The graveyard is next to high- and medium-density residential apartments. If converted to open space, this area of more than 4,200 square metres would provide extra open space to complement the Ryde Memorial Park to the east of the site.

St Paul’s Anglican Church is about 600 metres from Canterbury Metro station in inner south-western Sydney. The cemetery at St Paul’s was established in the 1860s and measures more than 2,200m². Only the columbarium is still operating. The site does not adjoin the active church buildings.

If converted to open space, the St Paul’s cemetery site could supplement Canterbury Park to the north-west. The surrounding areas of housing have been earmarked for high-density residential development.

Why aren’t more graveyards being used as parks?

Despite the potential of such sites, there are legal, planning and environmental obstacles to converting unused graveyards into public open spaces. Because graveyards are much smaller than cemeteries and are integrated with other land uses, they often face a more complex regulatory environment.

Neighbours may oppose change, preferring to live next to a quiet graveyard rather than an activated parkland. Many urban church graveyards are zoned for infrastructure purposes, with conversion to parkland requiring development consent.

Social attitudes, such as respect for the dead, or fear of “creepy” places, can also create discomfort at converting graveyards to parkland.

As graveyards often include significant heritage items, conversion processes can be complex and costly. Church graveyards may also include habitat for biodiversity. The presence of at-risk species often limits opportunities for greater public use.

Decaying monuments, decrepit headstones and crumbling masonry also create public liability concerns for church management. The safety of monuments in areas used by children is of particular concern.

From hallowed grounds to playgrounds

Despite the complex challenges involved in converting graveyards to parks, there are examples of effective transformations.

St David’s Park is the site of the first church in Hobart, Tasmania, and was used as a burial ground from 1810 to 1872. In 1919 the site was converted into a public park. Tombstones were relocated and conserved along park boundaries to create usable public open space.

Campderdown Cemetery in Newtown, NSW, was founded in 1848 by the Sydney Church of England Cemetery Company. It was converted into public parkland from 1948, becoming a crucial piece of inner-city public space.

Similar conversions have been proposed for other unused urban graveyards. One of these is St John’s Cemetery in central Parramatta, NSW. It was proposed for conversion to a public park in the 1950s.

The architectural historian Keith Eggener observed that cemeteries occupy liminal space where life meets death, nature meets city, present meets past. As our growing cities become more dense, church graveyards may provide valuable community open spaces for the next generation alongside resting places for generations past.

Rob Stokes is Chair of Faith Housing Australia, the peak body representing faith groups advocating for social and affordable housing. He is also a former Liberal member of the NSW parliament who served as a NSW government minister across a range of portfolios, including cities, planning and public spaces, and heritage.

– ref. Plot twist: how giving old graveyards new life as parks can improve our cities – https://theconversation.com/plot-twist-how-giving-old-graveyards-new-life-as-parks-can-improve-our-cities-236791

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yeslam Al-Saggaf, Professor in Computing, Charles Sturt University

Most Australian teenagers have their own smartphone. According to a 2023 survey, 91% of young people between 14 and 17 owned a phone.

At the same time, there is huge community concern about young people being exposed to harms online – this includes the content they consume and the interactions they might have.

But there is also concern about their privacy and security. A 2023 UK study found teenagers are overly optimistic about the degree to which they can protect their personal information online.

This is a problem because smartphones can communicate information such as identities and locations when settings are not figured correctly.

Our new project – which has been funded by the eSafety Commissioner and will soon be available online – looked at how to teach students to be safer with their phones.

What are the risks?

Without changing the default settings, a phone (or smart watch, laptop or tablet) can share information such as full names, current locations and the duration of their stay in those locations. This makes it easy for others with basic IT knowledge to create profiles of someone’s movements over time.

Children are at particular risk, as they often connect to free public Wi-Fi networks. They may also be more likely to exchange photos with strangers online and accept social media friend requests without caution.

This also puts them at increased risk of having their identity or money stolen or coming into contact with people who may wish them harm.

Our research

Our project was conducted in seven high schools in regional New South Wales between August 2023 and April 2024.

First, we set up network sensors in two schools to monitor data leakage from students’ phones. We wanted to know the extent to which they were they giving away names and locations of the students. This was conducted over several weeks to establish a baseline for their typical data leakage levels.

Next, we gave 4,460 students in seven high schools lessons in how smartphones can leak sensitive information and how to stop this. The students were shown how to turn off their Bluetooth and switch off their Wi-Fi. They were also shown how to change their Bluetooth name and switch off their location services.

We then measured data leakage after the lesson in the two schools with network sensors.

We also conducted a survey on 574 students across five other schools, to measure their knowledge before and after the lesson. Of this group, about 90% of students owned a smartphone and most were aged between 14 and 16.

What did we find?

We found a significant reduction in data leakage after students were given the lessons.

At the two schools we monitored, we found the number of identifiable phones fell by about 30% after the education session.

The survey results also indicated the lessons had been effective. There was an 85% improvement in students’ “knowledge of smartphone settings” questions.

There was also a 15% improvement in students’ use of a safer, fake name as their smartphone name after the lessons – for example, instead of “Joshua’s phone”, calling it “cool dude”.

There was a 7% increase in concern about someone knowing where they were at a particular point in time, and a 10% increase in concern about someone knowing what their regular travel route to school was.

However, despite their enhanced understanding, many students continued to keep their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth settings enabled all the time, as this gave them convenient access to school and home Wi-Fi networks and headphone connections. This is an example of the “privacy paradox” where individuals prioritise convenience over security, even when aware of the risks.

How can students keep their phones safe?

There are three things young people – and others – can do to keep their smartphones safe.

1. Switch off services you don’t use

Phone owners should ask themselves: do I really need to keep all the available services on? If they are not using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or location services (such as Snap Map, where you share your location with friends), they should turn them off.

As our research indicated, young people are unlikely to do this because it is inconvenient. Many young people want to connect to their headphones at all times so they can listen to music, watch videos and talk to friends.

2. Hide the device

If teens can’t switch off these services, they can at least de-identify their device by replacing their real name on the phone with something else. They can use a name parents and friends will recognise but will not link them to their other data.

They can also hide their device by not giving away the type of phone they are using (this can be done in general settings). This will prevent cyber attackers from linking their phone to the security vulnerabilities with their make of phone.

3. Control each app

Ideally, students should also go in and check smartphone settings for individual apps as well – and turn off services for apps that don’t require them. It is now easy to find out which apps have access to location services and your phone’s camera or microphone.

This project was funded through the Australian eSafety Commissioner’s Online Safety Grants Program.

Julie Maclean 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. 91% of Australian teens have a phone – but many are not keeping their identity and location secure – https://theconversation.com/91-of-australian-teens-have-a-phone-but-many-are-not-keeping-their-identity-and-location-secure-237981

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Tolkach, Senior Lecturer, James Cook University

Imagine checking in for a flight with your two teenage children. At the counter, you are told that your youngest teenager’s suitcase is two kilograms over the limit. You get slapped with a $75 penalty for their excess luggage.

This penalty feels arbitrary and unfair. The youngest weighs about 45 kg, and their luggage weighs 25 kg, making their total payload on the flight 70 kg.

Their older sibling, on the other hand, weighs 65 kg, and has brought 23 kg of luggage to check in. Their total weight is higher – 88 kg – yet they receive no penalty.

Obviously, things aren’t that simple. Charging passengers based on their weight is highly controversial for many reasons. But that hasn’t stopped some airlines experimenting with such policies.

Imagine checking in for your flight only to have the staff tell you to purchase an extra seat as you are a plus-size passenger. You feel discriminated against because you are using the same service as other passengers and your weight is beyond your control.

But despite the lived experience of many and hot debate in the media, there has not been a formal study into what passengers themselves think about this matter.

Our recently published research examined air passengers’ views on alternative airfare policies to understand whether the public finds them acceptable and what ethical considerations determine their views.

Though we found a range of ethical contradictions, most travellers were guided by self-interest.

Read more:
Even after the government’s aviation crackdown, Australia will lag behind on flyers’ rights

A controversial but important topic

The issue of whether airlines should weigh passengers is an ethical minefield with no easy answers.

Despite its sensitivity, the aviation industry can’t ignore passenger weight. Airlines intermittently undertake passenger weight surveys as they need to accurately calculate payload to ensure flight safety and estimate fuel consumption.

The evidence shows passengers are getting heavier. Airlines including the now-defunct Samoa Air and Hawaiian Airlines have taken things one step further and experimented with weighing passengers regularly.

Samoa Air, for example, became the first airline to introduce a “pay-as-you-weigh” policy, where the cost of your ticket was directly proportional to the combined weight of you and your luggage.

In contrast, Canada has now long had a “one person, one fare” policy. It is prohibited and deemed discriminatory to force passengers living with a disability to purchase a second seat for themselves if they require one, including those with functional disability due to obesity.

To complicate matters further, the issue of passenger and luggage weight is not only ethical and financial, but also environmental. More weight on an aircraft leads to more jet fuel being burned and more carbon emissions.

About 5% of human-driven climate change can be attributed to aviation, and the industry faces enormous pressure to reduce fuel consumption while it waits for low carbon substitutes to become available.

What do passengers actually think?

To get a better sense of how the public actually feels about this issue, we surveyed 1,012 US travellers of different weights, presenting them with three alternatives:

• standard policy – currently the most widely used policy with passengers paying a standard price, irrespective of their weight
• threshold policy – passengers are penalised if they are over a threshold weight
• unit of body weight policy – passengers pay a personalised price based on their own body weight, per each pound.

The standard policy was the most acceptable for participants of differing weight, although the heavier the passenger, the more they preferred the standard policy. This can be partially explained by status quo bias. Generally, people are likely to choose a familiar answer.

The threshold policy was the least acceptable. This policy was seen to violate established social norms and be generally less fair.

The unit of body weight policy was preferred to the threshold policy, although participants raised concerns about whether it would be accepted by society.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found that self-interest played a clear role in determining whether respondents considered a policy acceptable.

Younger, male, financially well-off travellers with lower personal weight generally found the alternative policies more acceptable.

An ethical conflict

Alternative airfare policies that are based on passenger weight bring environmental and ethical concerns into conflict. Obviously, the effect isn’t from any one traveller, in particular, but averages over the entire industry.

Interestingly, respondents that were more concerned about the environment – “ecocentric” – preferred air fare policies that would reduce the carbon emissions. This made them more open to the controversial alternatives.

While the threshold policy was clearly rejected by many respondents as discriminatory, environmental concern played a role in the level of acceptance of the unit of body weight policy.

It’s important to apply a critical lens here. These ecocentric travellers were also generally younger and had lower personal weights, so many would benefit from the alternative policies financially.

For policymakers overall, our study suggests when it comes to controversial ticketing policies, the public is more likely to be swayed by self-interest than anything else.

Authors received a grant from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University for this study.

Stephen Pratt 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. Pay-by-weight airfares are an ethical minefield. We asked travellers what they actually think – https://theconversation.com/pay-by-weight-airfares-are-an-ethical-minefield-we-asked-travellers-what-they-actually-think-237856

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Historian, Australian Catholic University

Pope Francis is continuing the tradition of papal journeys, having embarked on the longest trip of his papacy yet to Asia and the Pacific.

In recent decades, apostolic journeys have emerged as a powerful tool of global diplomacy and pastoral outreach – and to meet the needs of a increasingly connected yet fractured world. But this wasn’t always the case. In fact, there was a time when popes were largely confined to Rome.

The birth of the apostolic journey

Francis has cited the example of the apostle Paul, who travelled frequently to reach diverse audiences with creativity and conviction.

In the early centuries of the church, the key message of Christianity was spread by the apostles. They were the closest followers of Jesus and became pivotal in telling the world about his teachings. Their voyages gave the name to the later papal tradition of “apostolic journeys”.

Back then, the seat of papacy was Rome itself (rather than Vatican City) and papal travel was rare and often limited to local communities. The pope, as the bishop of Rome, would journey outside the city to visit and offer pastoral guidance.

Longer journeys, such as Pope John I’s trip to Constantinople in 523CE, were exceptions. They were often driven by a broad desire for pastoral outreach, but also by political necessity.

Conflict and forced exile

During the Middle Ages, periods of instability occasionally forced popes to leave Rome. In the 13th century, popes temporarily lived in other Italian cities such as Viterbo, Orvieto and Perugia, due to conflicts in the eternal city, politics, or personal preference.

Even so, papal travel remained largely confined to Europe and was focused on territories under papal influence or control.

One crucial period from 1309 to 1378 saw the papacy relocate to Avignon, France, under the forceful direction of the French monarchs. Yet the pope’s travel remained limited.

Other times, popes were forced to travel – or were even kidnapped. Pope Pius VII, elected in 1800, travelled to Paris in 1804 for the coronation of Napoleon I as emperor. In 1809, when the French invaded the papal states, Pius VII excommunicated Napoleon and in retaliation was forcibly taken to France where he stayed as a prisoner until 1814.

When papal travel went global

The pontificate of Pope Paul VI (1963–78) marked a significant turning point in the history of papal travel. Paul VI became the first pope to travel by airplane, initiating a new era of international apostolic journeys. His extensive journeys even earned him the title of “the Pilgrim Pope”.

He visited six continents, marking the first papal pilgrimages to the Holy Land, the Americas, Africa, Oceania and Asia. The focus of his 1964 visit to the Holy Land was to promote Christian unity.

In 1965, Paul VI became the first pope to visit the United States and to address the United Nations in New York. His papacy highlighted the church’s desire to engage with the global Catholic community. Paul VI set a precedent for his successors.

Pope John Paul II (1978–2005) once more dramatically expanded the scope of papal travel, becoming the most travelled pope in history. In addition to almost 150 pastoral visits within Italy, he visited more than 120 countries, covering more distance than his predecessors combined. His extensive travels were central to his papacy, which was aimed at addressing international issues and strengthening the church’s global reach.

Pope Benedict XVI (2005–13) continued the tradition of international travel, albeit to a lesser extent due to his advanced age. Still, his journeys remained significant in maintaining the Vatican’s global presence.

And now Pope Francis (2013–present) continues this legacy of global outreach, his travels reflecting his commitment to addressing contemporary challenges.

A papal itinerary for the modern world

Francis’ most recent journey to Southeast Asia marks the longest and most challenging trip of his papacy, covering more than 32,000 kilometres across Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore.

Apart from continuing the (relatively modern) tradition of papal apostolic journeys, the trip also redefines its purpose in a globalised world.

In Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim nation, Francis engaged in interfaith dialogue at the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, the largest mosque in Southeast Asia.

The rest of his visit is expected to similarly underscore his commitment to fostering religious tolerance and building bridges between different faith communities.

Despite Catholics comprising only about 3% of Indonesia’s population, the pope’s visit generated significant excitement and media coverage, reflecting his influence beyond the Vatican.

Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste, both nations with significant Catholic populations, will also be key stops on the pope’s itinerary. In Timor-Leste, where Catholics make up about 97% of the population, the pope’s visit will reaffirm the church’s deep connection with the country, particularly in its struggle for independence. But the visit will also highlight ongoing challenges, including recent scandals involving church leaders.

Singapore, known for its religious diversity, will be the final leg of the journey. Here, Francis will address themes of inter-religious harmony and environmental stewardship, particularly as all the countries on this trip are island nations facing the existential threat of rising sea levels.

The trip will showcase the Vatican’s commitment to the global issue of climate change, which Francis has championed throughout his papacy.

Francis’ Southeast Asia trip demonstrates the Vatican’s continued engagement in global diplomacy and social issues. Beyond that, it also underscores his own personal vision of a church that is close to the people – especially those on the margins – and committed to fostering peace and dialogue.

Darius von Guttner Sporzynski 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. Popes were once confined to Rome. Now they travel the world – and Francis’ current journey is particularly significant – https://theconversation.com/popes-were-once-confined-to-rome-now-they-travel-the-world-and-francis-current-journey-is-particularly-significant-238088

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Walton, Professor of Sustainable Business, University of Otago

Interpreting corporate reports on carbon emissions can be challenging. The current, adhoc approach to how businesses share this information makes it difficult to see whether they have set the right targets, have realistic plans to meet them or are being transparent about their progress.

While there are frameworks for reporting climate and sustainability data, there are still big differences in the way the data is being disclosed.

We developed the Climate Action Tracker Aotearoa (CATA) to address these issues. Based on the global Net Zero Tracker, CATA evaluates company reports and climate plans to share and explain their climate action.

Using the tracker, we analysed 21 companies in Aotearoa New Zealand, focusing on the top emitters and companies in the energy, retail, agriculture and transport sectors, as well as the banking sector.

We evaluated three aspects – targets, plans and reporting – by reading through publicly available information provided by the company. These three aspects help make sense of what a company is doing and going to do to mitigate climate change.

Here is what we found.

Setting targets

While the majority of companies have 2030 targets (86%) and absolute targets (81%), only five companies of the 21 (25%) have targets that have been verified by the Science-based Targets Initiative.

All but two companies include scope one (emissions the company creates directly) and scope two (emissions created indirectly from, for example electricity or energy it buys for heating and cooling buildings) – the areas companies have the most control and ownership over. But when it comes to scope three emissions, which come from company travel in planes, trains and taxis, and the supply chain, far fewer companies have set such targets.

Scope three targets are difficult to set due as they involve a large number of supply chain partners. But understanding the full impact of a company’s emissions is an important factor towards meeting the Paris Agreement targets.

Making plans

It is in the planning that there starts to be a divergence in the results across the companies. It would seem that it is easier to set a target than provide detailed plans on how to reach it.

Some companies do this very well, laying out a transparent and plausible climate map (Meridian Energy, for example). But many companies have failed to provide enough detail to be able to understand just how the reductions might occur.

It is even harder to understand how companies plan to use carbon offsets and credits.

Carbon offsetting involves a reduction or avoidance of emissions that can be used to compensate for emissions elsewhere. For example, offset projects could include renewable energy projects or energy efficiency improvements.

We found that just over half of the companies were offsetting or intending to, with only two stating they will only offset hard-to-abate emissions.

According to the University of Oxford Offsetting Principles, the best practice is to reduce as much as possible and use offsetting closer to the net zero date (2050) for those residual emissions.

It is not great to be seeing offsetting already in use.

We also found companies are not always transparent about their policy for using offsets. The majority either did not specify conditions for offsetting or just didn’t have any conditions to begin with.

The majority of companies were unspecified in their approach to carbon removals (the process of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere).

The carbon removal measures that were mentioned were nature-based (such as planting a mixture of exotic and native trees) and carbon capture and storage (CCS). These tended to be from companies that also operated overseas.

The World Economic Forum outlined the best practice for voluntary carbon removals last year.

Carbon removals were seen as necessary for the hard to reduce emissions, to reverse the build up of historical emissions, and deal with feedback loops in natural processes such as forest fires.

In 2022, the Ministry for the Environment also published a set of principles around carbon removals. These principles included that information needs to be transparent, clearly stated and publicly available.

We found the minority of companies adhered to such standards. Therefore, more transparency is needed on both offsetting and removals in their reporting.

Reporting climate action

The majority of companies are reporting carbon emissions and providing some level of detail on the emissions to an international standard.

But at the same time, many companies are making it very difficult to find and piece together the data needed to clearly see what climate action they are undertaking.

We know that voluntary disclosing on social and environmental impacts can be a result of pressure from stakeholders. But it can also be used as a way to conform to these societal expectations without giving sufficient information.

Throughout our research, we found a mixture of conformity and diversion. Some companies provided vast amounts of positive information about some of their impacts, some provided multiple reports with information scattered between them, and then some were straightforward with the required information.

Companies should use CATA as a tool to benchmark themselves and their reporting to be able to provide a sufficient and transparent level of information to stakeholders, partners, investors and consumers.

This will allow consistency across industry, the implementation of science-based targets, the development of detailed action plans and easy access to comprehensive, clear and concise reports.

The authors acknowledge the contributions of their fellow researchers on this project: Lucy Mitchell, Pii-Tuulia Nikula and Limi Prestwood-Smith.

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. How well are NZ companies reporting their climate impacts? Our new tracker shows very mixed results – https://theconversation.com/how-well-are-nz-companies-reporting-their-climate-impacts-our-new-tracker-shows-very-mixed-results-238314

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

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has distanced himself from the strident attack his one-time boss Wayne Swan launched on the Reserve Bank, which the former treasurer accused of “putting economic dogma over rational decision-making”.

Swan, who is national president of the Labor Party and was treasurer in the Rudd and Gillard governments, said on Friday the Reserve Bank’s stance was “counterproductive and it’s not good policy”.

“If you look at markets, they’re all forecasting rate drops,” he said. “They’re going down around the world.”

The Reserve Bank continues to reiterate that it is not intending to bring down rates any time soon.

Chalmers, who was accused of shifting blame to the bank when he said a week ago that rate rises were “smashing” the economy, said Swan had gone “much further than I have”.

“I’m making a factual point borne out by the national accounts [of last Wednesday],” he told the ABC on Sunday.

“I don’t second guess the Reserve Bank in the way that Wayne has. My focus is on working with Governor Bullock.

“I’ve got a lot of respect for Governor Bullock. Our objectives are actually aligned to get on top of this inflation challenge, and we need to do that without ignoring the risks to growth,” he said.

Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock has been particularly blunt in saying the bank will do whatever is needed to reduce inflation to the 2-3% target range, including hiking rates again if necessary. Inflation was 3.8% in the June quarter.

Bullock has been equally forthright in spelling out the implications for some home buyers of the present fight against inflation.

She said last week that about 5% of owner-occupiers with variable-rate loans were in “a particularly challenging situation”.

These people had to make “quite painful adjustments to avoid falling behind on their mortgage repayments.

“This includes things like cutting back on their spending to the more essential items, trading down to lower-quality goods and services, dipping into their savings and working extra hours.

“Some may ultimately make the difficult decision to sell their homes,” she said. Lower-income borrowers were “over-represented in the group of people who are really struggling”.

The latest GDP figures, showing the economy crawling, has added fuel to the controversy over the Reserve Banks’s hardline stand.

Chalmers off to China

Meanwhile, Chalmers on Sunday confirmed he will visit China later this month for the Strategic Economic Dialogue. This will be the first visit by an Australian treasurer in seven years.

For Chalmers it will be a fact-finding visit, especially to get an assessment of the growth prospects of the Chinese economy, which have significant implications for Australia.

There is general doubt over the viability of China’s 5% growth target, and the iron ore price has fallen sharply over the course of this year.

Chalmers said his department had modelled a scenario in which a sustained drop in the price of key commodities cost the budget “something like $4.5 billion”.

The relationship with China was “full of complexity, but also full of opportunity, and I want to help the government maximise that opportunity for the Australian people, workers, businesses, employers, investors”.

Chalmers said the talks gave an opportunity to work through issues like foreign investment and trade restrictions and compare notes on how the two countries saw the global economy.

China has lifted most trade restrictions on Australia, although they remain on lobster.

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

– ref. Treasurer distances himself from his former boss’ Reserve Bank attack – https://theconversation.com/treasurer-distances-himself-from-his-former-boss-reserve-bank-attack-238524

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

The Albanese government has shifted again on the 2026 census, now saying it will include questions on both sexual orientation and gender identity.

In its latest iteration, the government announced on Sunday the census would include “a new topic of sexual orientation and gender”.

Originally the government ruled out any new questions, arguing they would be divisive.

After a backlash from the LGBTIQ+ community, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said there would be one question on “sexuality”. He did not spell out the detail. But pressure on the government continued, with critics saying this was too narrow and questions on gender should also be included.

The assistant minister for treasury, Andrew Leigh, outlining the latest position, said the government would allow the Bureau of Statistics “to ask questions on sexual orientation and gender for the first time, in keeping with their recommendation to government”.

The questions will only asked of those aged 16 and over, and will not be compulsory.

Leigh said the new topic reflected consultations with the ABS’s LGBTIQ+ expert advisory committee.

But the questions won’t include one on variations of sex characteristics (intersex status). Leigh said this was not recommended by the ABS.

“Although this topic was considered by the ABS, testing indicated high quality data could not be collected due to the technical complexity of the topic. The government will continue to work with the intersex community about ways of gathering information in other ABS surveys,” Leigh said.

The government this year will introduce a legislative instrument to give effect to the new questions.

National LGBTIQ+ group Equality Australia welcomed the latest move.

The group’s CEO, Anna Brown, said it was the “sensible, pragmatic and moral course of action, that will ensure vital data about some of the most vulnerable populations in Australia is collected nationally for the first time”.

She hoped the expert advisory group could continue working with the ABS on a new topic covering intersex people for a future census. Intersex people have innate sex characteristics that don’t fit medical and social norms for female or male bodies.

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

– ref. Census will now include questions on sexual orientation and gender identity – https://theconversation.com/census-will-now-include-questions-on-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity-238521

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deanne Fisher, Associate Professor of Astronomy, Swinburne University of Technology

Have you ever wanted to make a $150,000 gamble? If you’re right, you open a new window to the universe. But if you’re wrong, you’ve just wasted a lot of money and time.

That is exactly what my team did when we pointed the Keck telescope at Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawai’i at what looked like empty space, hoping to reveal the hidden gas that shrouds all galaxies in the universe. There were cheers in the control room when we realised our gamble had paid off.

In a study published today in Nature Astronomy, we reveal the first detailed picture of the gas shroud around a galaxy, extending 100,000 light years out into “empty” space. If our own Milky Way has a similar halo, it is likely already interacting with the halo of our nearest galactic neighbour, Andromeda.

Most of the universe is not the bright stars

Most of the matter in the universe is not in the bright stars that make up the spectacular images of galaxies we see. For one thing, galaxies are surrounded by dark matter – which astronomers believe is some kind of exotic invisible particle.

But even most of the normal matter is not in stars. Instead, it is in gigantic clouds of gas that surround galaxies.

We believe these halos around galaxies contain as much as 70–90% of the universe’s normal matter (mostly consisting of hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen gas).

Understanding this diffuse gas – which is where all the stars and planets we see had their beginnings – helps us understand more about our own story, on the grandest scales.

However, this halo of gas is spread out over huge areas of space, which makes it extremely faint. In fact, it is 10,000 to 100,000 times fainter than the bright parts of galaxies.

We have known about these gas halos since the 1950s, when astronomers discovered they were absorbing certain frequencies of light that passed through them.

However, these measurements reduce gigantic regions of space stretching hundreds of thousands of light years into a single point – so we knew very little about the exact size or shape of the halos, or the way gas flows between them and their host galaxies.

How to see a galactic halo

For a long time, it was believed to be impossible to capture an image of the halos. However, that changed with the development of a new kind of spectrograph – a device for viewing the spectrum of different wavelengths of light in an image – called an “image slicer”.

The image slicer lets us take spectroscopic images of regions of the night sky to much fainter levels than previous generation instruments.

A team led by Chris Martin at Caltech (one of our collaborators on this project) built an ultra-faint spectrograph called the Keck Cosmic Web Imager and put it on the Keck telescope. The Keck is one of the largest optical telescopes in the world, and its location atop the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawai’i is one of the best astronomical sites in the world.

With the new device in place, we are able to see extremely faint things in the sky.

We used this instrument to stare for an entire night at the apparently empty space around a galaxy. This was followed by intense work analysing the data, as we were working at the limits of what the telescope could do.

Credit here goes to Nikki Nielsen, now a professor at Oklahoma University, who led the data analysis and the writing of the paper when she was working in our team at Swinburne University. To our excitement the gamble paid off, and returned data that allowed us to generate an image of the halo of gas around one galaxy.

What does the shroud of gas around galaxies look like?

Our team took images of the glow of hydrogen and oxygen gas over a region ten times larger than what would normally be called a “galaxy”.

This was exciting! Firstly, because it confirmed the idea that most of the universe’s ordinary matter is in these diffuse halos of gas.

We also found that the galaxy does not smoothly “fade out” into the surrounding halo. There is an abrupt break from one to the other.

In the past, a lot of debate surrounded the nature of this transition. In our data, it is easy to see an abrupt change near the edge of where the vast majority of stars are located.

Why can we see the halo at all?

There is still a mystery as to why we can see the gas at all. It is glowing, but we don’t know why.

We often see the glow of hydrogen gas inside a galaxy, but there we know it is glowing because it has been heated up by strong radiation from nearby stars. Outside a galaxy, however, there are not enough nearby stars to heat up the gas enough to explain the glow we see.

One possibility is that the halo is made of streams of gas moving in different directions. When the streams collide at high speed, the shock makes them glow.

Another possibility is that some very heavy stars and certain black holes (both inside galaxies) produce very large amounts of ultraviolet light. Some of this light can escape the galaxy, and might provide a kind of ambient background UV lighting for the cosmos.

Combined with fast-moving streams of gas, the ultraviolet background might be enough to produce the glow we have seen – but it will take more observations to know for sure.

Deanne Fisher receives funding from Australian Research Council.

– ref. New measurements reveal the enormous halos that shroud all galaxies in the universe – https://theconversation.com/new-measurements-reveal-the-enormous-halos-that-shroud-all-galaxies-in-the-universe-238414

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Moya Costello, Adjunct Lecturer, Southern Cross University

My first curiosities about the new opera Eucalyptus, an adaptation of Murray Bail’s multi-award-winning 1998 novel, were regarding how Ellen and the many stories told to her by her ultimately successful suitor would be portrayed.

Would Ellen be a victim of the plans of men, or would she forge her own path, as she does in the novel? Overall, I was relieved the opera remained largely faithful to Bail’s novel by recognising and respecting its various narrative pleasures.

Bail’s story centres on our protagonist, the famously beautiful Ellen (played by Desiree Frahn) and a eucalypt gum-naming competition set up by her father, Holland (Simon Meadows), to find her the perfect suitor. To Holland, little is more precious than his daughter and the hundreds of eucalyptus gums he has planted on his property. But Ellen vehemently rejects his plans for her.

The “storyteller” (Michael Petrucelli) is the unnamed wanderer Ellen stumbles upon in her father’s woods. He wins Ellen’s hand in marriage by naming all the gums (and does so inadvertently by creating name plaques which he then sells to Ellen’s father). Beyond this, he seduces Ellen with various tales of love, loss, death and deception.

Bail’s story comes to life

While Bail’s original story takes place at an unspecified time on “a property in western New South Wales”, director Michael Gow’s program notes a setting in the early 1960s.

The gums in the story are projected as images onstage, accompanied by characters and choristers (Brisbane Chorus) singing the eucalypts’ Latin names. The choristers also play the roles of Ellen’s many suitors.

The opera is composed by Jonathan Mills, conducted by Tahu Matheson and accompanied by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. The first orchestration – in which Holland makes clear his questionable intentions for his daughter, leaving her in distress – appropriately strikes a sombre, discordant note.

Central to Bail’s story is a kind of anachronistic Anglo-Saxon Australian man (represented in various male characters across Bail’s fiction) who doesn’t understand women, and who deals in what he thinks of as facts and empiricisms, such as the (non-Indigenous) names of the gums.

Ellen, meanwhile, is seduced by art, nature, the imaginative and the propulsion of storytelling.

And although she finds herself in this unseemly transaction initiated by her father, living somewhat like a captured fairytale figure, Ellen still has agency: she roams freely, responds to nature, learns, thinks, judges, deduces and decides.

I’ve often thought Ellen’s character is partly based on Bail’s former wife, Helen Garner, who unravelled in the wake of her failed second marriage and the reception of her book-length essay, The First Stone.

Though many women are antipathetic to Bail’s general portrayal of women, academic Lyn Jacobs notes “a new sensitivity to the dynamics of gender” in Eucalyptus.

The opera’s ensemble cast is energetically committed to the subtleties of characterisation. Frahn expertly captured Ellen’s sense of wonder. Similarly, Meadows convincingly captures Holland’s pathos: “I don’t want you riding their bikes, I don’t want you smoking their Lucky Strikes.”

Michael Petruccelli performs passionately as the storyteller, startlingly engaging both Ellen and the audience. And Mr Cave (Samuel Dundas), who at one point looks frighteningly close to becoming Ellen’s successful suitor, is more pompous, priggish and comedic in a white safari suit than his novel counterpart, who instead is a machine-like and almost stalker-ish figure.

Some noticeable points of difference

Gow’s direction is faultless in the first half of the production, but some minor issues discombobulated me in the second half, as I am unwilling to completely suspend belief when it came to Simone Romaniuk’s set design.

One example is when Ellen, the storyteller, Holland and Mr Cave all end up sitting among the choristers’ chairs, while these could have easily been removed in exchange for props used as rocks.

At one point, the storyteller also sits on the table in the house, whereas in the novel he (significantly) only enters the house once – to lay chastely with Ellen on her bed.

That said, I was pleased to see Ellen clothed by Romaniuk in a simple slip of a dress “faded to butter colour”, as described in the novel. Bail’s women characters often wear faded colours, or rhubarb and green. Holland, meanwhile, is in functional rather than sartorial braces.

Meredith Oakes’ lyrically inventive and funny libretto falters at the end, recalling too much of a cheesy HBO romance film. The word “love” features heavily, when the optimal word is more relevantly “desire”, as per the original story.

The end of the opera in particular takes a noticeable departure from the original tale, in which Ellen’s desire for the storyteller is fundamental to the narrative. In the opera, however, she seems determinedly to take up her own, different destiny.

Many in the audience will possibly appreciate this resurgence of female agency.

Moya Costello 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. Opera Eucalyptus is a lush adaptation of Murray Bail’s novel – with a modern twist – https://theconversation.com/opera-eucalyptus-is-a-lush-adaptation-of-murray-bails-novel-with-a-modern-twist-237979

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andres Felipe Suarez-Castro, Research Fellow, Ecological Modelling, Griffith University

The birds that fill our mornings with songs and our parks and gardens with colour are disappearing from our cities, our new study has found.

We examined 82 bird species across 42 landscape types in Brisbane. The range of landscapes encompassed parks, bushland reserves, and industrial and residential areas.

Our findings were clear: urbanisation, particularly the increase in built infrastructure and the loss of green spaces, was linked to a decline in the bird communities we find most attractive. In other words, many of the colourful birds with sweet songs are leaving or dying out. They include many smaller species that are among the most affected by increasing urbanisation.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but previous research has shown species with bright colours, contrasting colour patterns and melodious calls are perceived as attractive. Seeing and hearing them can enhance our mood. As cities expand and we cram more people into existing urban areas, we risk losing the vibrant natural birdlife that helps make urban life enjoyable.

What’s causing the loss of these species?

A range of factors is driving the decline of small, colourful and melodious birds. The many pressures on these species include habitat loss and fragmentation as land is cleared for buildings and roads.

Competition from aggressive birds, such as noisy miners (Manorina melanocephala), also has a particularly severe impact on small, forest-dependent species. They include many of the birds we consider most atttractive.

Vulnerable species in Brisbane include the white-throated gerygone (Gerygone olivacea). Known for its striking colours and distinctive calls, it’s one of the species being squeezed out of our cities. Also vanishing from the most urbanised areas we studied are delicate species such as the scarlet honeyeater (Myzomela sanguinolenta) and the golden whistler (Pachycephala pectoralis).

Landscapes with low numbers of species still support some species with traits that people consider “attractive”. They include the rainbow lorikeet (Trichoglossus haematodus) and the willie wagtail (Rhipidura leucophrys). Larger urban-adapted species, such as the pied butcherbird (Cracticus nigrogularis) and the Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen), also have melodious calls that give us joy.

But poor urban design means our cities are losing the rich diversity of beautiful bird songs and colours that residents once enjoyed.

It’s not just beauty we’re losing

Cities across Australia are growing. South-east Queensland, where we did our research, is forecast to gain an extra 2.2 million people by 2046.

When poorly planned, urban expansion reduces and fragments habitats. It means vibrantly colourful nature is replaced by dull, dreary greys.

The presence of diverse bird species in urban areas is crucial for biodiversity conservation. Our cities are home to a great variety of species, including surprisingly large numbers of threatened species.

Conserving these attractive bird species could also strengthen connections between people and nature. Losing these unique, colourful species with their unique calls means missing opportunities to experience the full beauty of nature.

The absence of diverse bird species in cities also points to a broader issue: the loss of the essential ecological and cultural services these species provide. These birds pollinate plants, disperse their seeds and control pests. These services are vital for the health of ecosystems in our cities.

Losing these birds could also result in a shifting baseline where we, and future generations, become accustomed to seeing only a limited snapshot of nature. The result could be an “extinction of experience”, as reduced daily encounters with nature lead to an emotional disconnection from the natural world.

How can we bring this natural joy in cities?

Urban planning has the power to bring back vibrant, colourful birdlife to our cities. In this way, it can enrich our daily lives and connections with nature in the places we live and work.

Thoughtful urban designs can prioritise biodiversity and habitat protection. Our research shows this can foster more diverse and attractive bird communities, even in densely built areas.

Maintaining urban bushland reserves that preserve native vegetation is important, but we can also help in other ways. Simple actions such as planting a variety of shrubs and trees in gardens and parks can create pockets of native habitat that allow colourful and melodious birds to thrive. Beyond beautifying our urban spaces, these actions create “green corridors” that support the movement of wildlife, thereby helping to maintain biodiversity.

The way people perceive and interact with nature is very personal. Urban-resilient species such as magpies and butcherbirds are valuable in their own right and play a vital role in urban ecosystems. However, careful design of our cities can open the door to experiencing a wider variety of astonishing birdlife.

It is not just about preserving what we have, but actively enhancing our urban spaces to welcome back the species that fill our lives with colour, song and joy.

Andres Felipe Suarez-Castro has received funding from Universities Australia through an Australia-Germany Joint Research Cooperation Scheme.

Rachel Oh received funding from Universities Australia and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) under the Australia-Germany Joint Research Cooperation Scheme (ID: 57600873).

– ref. Our cities are losing the small, colourful songbirds that give us the most joy – https://theconversation.com/our-cities-are-losing-the-small-colourful-songbirds-that-give-us-the-most-joy-238315

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University

A new A$4.7 billion national funding package announced today will deliver much needed resources to address family and sexual violence.

For years, specialist support services, community legal services, therapeutic responses and men’s behaviour change programs have been saying they can’t keep up with the demand from people living with family and sexual violence. Long wait lists, delayed access to support and inadequate legal representation are just some of the problems victim-survivors have faced due to this under-resourcing.

When the service sector cannot respond to all the calls for assistance and intervention it receives, victim-survivors are left in harm’s way. Their lives may be at risk. And there are lost opportunities to intervene with people using violence to prevent their behaviour from escalating further.

Previously, the sector has estimated it needs approximately $1 billion per year to meet the needs of Australians experiencing family and sexual violence. While the current announcement does not meet that demand, it is an unprecedented investment in frontline services and a very welcome one.

What’s in the package?

The announcement from National Cabinet places the safety and recovery of victim-survivors front and centre. It promotes holding people who use family and sexual violence accountable. It does this by strengthening legal systems, specialist services, and programs for perpetrator change.

The plan addresses the impacts of violence on children and young people. It also promises to improve the coordination and stability of family and sexual violence responses across the country.

Specific measures that will receive a boost in funding include:

• $3.9 billion over five years to the family, domestic and sexual violence sector, and a commitment to long-term funding certainty for services

• an $800 million increase in legal assistance funding to services addressing gender-based violence, over five years

• a more than $80 million boost to trauma-informed support for children and young people to promote recovery and intervene early to prevent inter-generational violence.

A nationally coordinated approach

There were commitments from first ministers to work collaboratively on several national reform areas.

These include a shared national risk assessment framework for family violence and information sharing systems to better respond to high-risk perpetrators.

There’ll also be an audit of government systems that are being weaponised by perpetrators as a tool of abuse.

The announcement substantially extends previous funding commitments, including the nearly $1 billion in funding announced in May. That money extended the Leaving Violence Program. Also the announcement last year of $100 million over five years to deliver targeted prevention activity across the community.

Together, this investment goes a long way towards implementing the holistic and multi-sectoral approach identified in the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children.

The national plan identifies four priority areas for action:

• prevention

• early intervention

• responses

• recovery and healing.

Each of these is crucial to addressing family and sexual violence, both now and into the future.

This national approach promises to work collaboratively across all levels of government. To be successful, it will take sustained efforts across governments, by justice and legal institutions and across the community services sector. That’s not to mention in our workplaces and schools, too.

There should be no wrong door for someone experiencing family or sexual violence to be able to access information and be connected with specialist services.

Where to from here?

The immediate and crucial issue is the timing for the first of these funds to be available to front line services. The funding package is due to start roll out from July 1 next year.

But to meet demand right now, many family and sexual violence services need that funding to commence much more urgently.

Many men’s behaviour change programs have also faced long waitlists and a lack of capacity due to insufficient funding.

There is also concern about workforce challenges facing the family and sexual violence sectors.

Long term under-investment has meant these specialist service workers often face short-term contracts, precarious work and unreasonable workloads. All this contributes to worker burnout.

Efforts to train new family violence caseworkers are hampered by expensive course fees and a lack of flexible study options. The same issues stop existing community workers from being able to specialise in family violence response work.

If we really are to end violence against women in “one generation”, as the national plan intends, then we must continue to work together as a community.

Crucially, we must hold governments to account to ensure that the promised funding is delivered where it is needed – and soon.

The National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.

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

– ref. New government funding for family violence is unprecedented, but it can’t afford to wait – https://theconversation.com/new-government-funding-for-family-violence-is-unprecedented-but-it-cant-afford-to-wait-238420

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Collins, Professor of Geology, University of Adelaide

Using information from inside the rocks on Earth’s surface, we have reconstructed the plate tectonics of the planet over the last 1.8 billion years.

It is the first time Earth’s geological record has been used like this, looking so far back in time. This has enabled us to make an attempt at mapping the planet over the last 40% of its history, which you can see in the animation below.

The work, led by Xianzhi Cao from the Ocean University in China, is now published in the open-access journal Geoscience Frontiers.

A beautiful dance

Mapping our planet through its long history creates a beautiful continental dance — mesmerising in itself and a work of natural art.

It starts with the map of the world familiar to everyone. Then India rapidly moves south, followed by parts of Southeast Asia as the past continent of Gondwana forms in the Southern Hemisphere.

Around 200 million years ago (Ma or mega-annum in the reconstruction), when the dinosaurs walked the earth, Gondwana linked with North America, Europe and northern Asia to form a large supercontinent called Pangaea.

Then, the reconstruction carries on back through time. Pangaea and Gondwana were themselves formed from older plate collisions. As time rolls back, an earlier supercontinent called Rodinia appears. It doesn’t stop here. Rodinia, in turn, is formed by the break-up of an even older supercontinent called Nuna about 1.35 billion years ago.

Why map Earth’s past?

Among the planets in the Solar System, Earth is unique for having plate tectonics. Its rocky surface is split into fragments (plates) that grind into each other and create mountains, or split away and form chasms that are then filled with oceans.

Apart from causing earthquakes and volcanoes, plate tectonics also pushes up rocks from the deep earth into the heights of mountain ranges. This way, elements which were far underground can erode from the rocks and end up washing into rivers and oceans. From there, living things can make use of these elements.

Among these essential elements is phosphorus, which forms the framework of DNA molecules, and molybdenum, which is used by organisms to strip nitrogen out of the atmosphere and make proteins and amino acids – building blocks of life.

Plate tectonics also exposes rocks that react with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Rocks locking up carbon dioxide is the main control on Earth’s climate over long time scales – much, much longer than the tumultuous climate change we are responsible for today.

A tool for understanding deep time

Mapping the past plate tectonics of the planet is the first stage in being able to build a complete digital model of Earth through its history.

Such a model will allow us to test hypotheses about Earth’s past. For example, why Earth’s climate has gone through extreme “Snowball Earth” fluctuations, or why oxygen built up in the atmosphere when it did.

Indeed, it will allow us to much better understand the feedback between the deep planet and the surface systems of Earth that support life as we know it.

So much more to learn

Modelling our planet’s past is essential if we’re to understand how nutrients became available to power evolution. The first evidence for complex cells with nuclei — like all animal and plant cells — dates to 1.65 billion years ago.

This is near the start of this reconstruction and close to the time the supercontinent Nuna formed. We aim to test whether the mountains that grew at the time of Nuna formation may have provided the elements to power complex cell evolution.

Much of Earth’s life photosynthesises and liberates oxygen. This links plate tectonics with the chemistry of the atmosphere, and some of that oxygen dissolves into the oceans. In turn, a number of critical metals – like copper and cobalt – are more soluble in oxygen-rich water. In certain conditions, these metals are then precipitated out of the solution: in short, they form ore deposits.

Many metals form in the roots of volcanoes that occur along plate margins. By reconstructing where ancient plate boundaries lay through time, we can better understand the tectonic geography of the world and assist mineral explorers in finding ancient metal-rich rocks now buried under much younger mountains.

In this time of exploration of other worlds in the Solar System and beyond, it is worth remembering there’s so much about our own planet we are only just beginning to get a glimpse of.

There are 4.6 billion years of it to investigate, and the rocks we walk over contain the evidence for how Earth has changed over this time.

This first attempt at mapping the last 1.8 billion years of Earth’s history is a leap forward in the scientific grand challenge to map our world. But it is just that – a first attempt. The next years will see considerable improvement from the starting point we have now made.

The author would like to acknowledge this research was largely done by Xianzhi Cao, Sergei Pisarevsky, Nicolas Flament, Derrick Hasterok, Dietmar Muller and Sanzhong Li; as a co-author, he is just one cog in the research network. The author also acknowledges the many students and researchers from the Tectonics and Earth Systems Group at The University of Adelaide and national and international colleagues who did the fundamental geological work this research is based on.

Alan Collins receives funding from The Australian Research Council (he is an ARC Laureate Fellow), AuScope and the MinEx CRC. He also has funding from a number of State and Federal Government bodies as well as BHP, Santos, Empire Energy, Teck Australia and the CSIRO.

– ref. Witness 1.8 billion years of tectonic plates dance across Earth’s surface in a new animation – https://theconversation.com/witness-1-8-billion-years-of-tectonic-plates-dance-across-earths-surface-in-a-new-animation-238209

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Revell, Associate Professor in Environmental Physics, University of Canterbury

At this time of year, as the sun rises over Antarctica, a “hole” opens up in Earth’s ozone layer.

The ozone layer is a vital planetary boundary that protects all life on Earth from the sun’s damaging ultraviolet radiation. But as our research shows, a series of unusual events in recent years caused ozone holes that lasted longer.

The Montreal Protocol, which came into force just four years after the ozone hole was discovered in 1985, has been enormously successful in preventing many ozone-depleting gases from entering the atmosphere.

But the hole will continue to open each year for at least another four decades because of the long lifetimes of gases emitted last century.

Ozone depletion is also linked with climate change, and there are other emerging issues which could affect ozone recovery. These include more frequent mega-wildfires due to climate change, emissions from rocket launches and more satellite debris burning up in the upper atmosphere.

All this indicates ozone depletion is far from a solved problem.

Why ozone matters

Most atmospheric ozone resides in the stratosphere, at around 10-50km above Earth’s surface, where it absorbs the sun’s ultraviolet-B rays.

In New Zealand and Australia, summertime peak UV levels are higher – sometimes by as much as 30% – than at comparable latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere.

This is due to lower levels of air pollution, slightly lower ozone amounts historically and proximity to the sun, which is closer during Southern Hemisphere summers.

New Zealand and Australia also have the highest melanoma rates in the world. This is partly because of the higher UV levels, but there are other contributing factors, including improved diagnosis due to increased awareness.

If the Montreal Protocol had not been implemented, melanoma rates would be significantly higher today.

How the ozone hole contributes to climate change

Even though most ozone-depleting gases are now banned, it will take decades before they are gone from the stratosphere.

In the meantime, the ozone hole continues to form above Antarctica each spring, causing cascading changes in temperature, winds and rainfall patterns across the Southern Hemisphere.

Ozone depletion causes the prevailing westerly winds at southern mid-latitudes (the “Roaring Forties”) to strengthen and shift toward Antarctica during summertime. This has increased surface melting on Antarctic ice shelves and is changing summertime rainfall and temperature patterns in New Zealand and Australia.

While the ozone hole drives climate change, protection and recovery of the ozone layer has additional benefits for the climate.

Many ozone-depleting gases, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are also potent greenhouse gases. By phasing out these gases, the Montreal Protocol has helped the world avoid a catastrophic collapse of the global ozone layer, and also limited global warming.

One study estimated the Montreal Protocol delayed the first ice-free summer in the Arctic by up to 15 years.

Ozone depletion and climate change are interlinked issues. While ozone depletion affects Southern Hemisphere climate, global ozone recovery is in turn affected by emissions of dominant greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane.

Technological innovations bring new threats

The discovery of the ozone hole in 1985 was a major surprise. While the alarm bells had been sounded in the 1970’s that CFCs destroy stratospheric ozone, scientists didn’t predict the existence of the large hole above Antarctica.

It was some years after the ozone hole was discovered that scientists began to understand just how ozone depletion works in the cold Antarctic stratosphere.

The Montreal Protocol is arguably the most successful environmental treaty, but the ozone story brings continual surprises. The timing of ozone recovery depends in part on future emissions but there are other contributing factors.

Recent research shows mega-wildfires such as the Australian bushfires of 2019 can contribute to ozone depletion. An increase in civilian rocket launches is expected to put more ozone-depleting gases and aerosols into the stratosphere.

Higher amounts of debris from satellite re-entry may contribute to ozone loss by introducing aerosols into the upper atmosphere.

On top of these issues come controversial “geoengineering” proposals, whereby aerosols are deliberately injected into the stratosphere to reduce the rate of global warming.

This would likely deplete ozone further and any such projects must be given careful thought – along with myriad other considerations before such proposals are implemented.

History tells us technological innovation can bring solutions (such as the replacement of CFCs by non-ozone depleting gases) but also unanticipated consequences. Far from being a “solved” 20th-century problem, ozone remains an important issue, albeit in new and previously unimagined ways.

Laura Revell receives New Zealand government funding from the Royal Society Te Apārangi (Marsden fund and Rutherford Discovery Fellowships) and Ministry for the Environment. She is a member of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Environmental Effects Assessment Panel (EEAP) which assesses how ozone depletion impacts life on Earth, and a member of the International Ozone Commission.

Dan Smale and Richard McKenzie do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The ozone hole above Antarctica will keep opening up each spring for decades to come – here’s why that still matters – https://theconversation.com/the-ozone-hole-above-antarctica-will-keep-opening-up-each-spring-for-decades-to-come-heres-why-that-still-matters-237013

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon Richardson, Visiting Fellow, Centre for European Studies, Australian National University

Russia’s announcement this week that it is revising its nuclear weapons doctrine has raised questions about what this means – and whether it marks a significant escalation in its war in Ukraine.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in an interview the decision to change the nuclear doctrine was “connected with the escalation course of our Western adversaries”.

Russia’s existing nuclear doctrine was set out in a decree by President Vladimir Putin in 2020. It states that Russia may use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy, or if a conventional attack “threatens the existence of the state”.

The document also opens the possibility of launching nuclear weapons if Russia receives warning of an imminent nuclear attack – not just after confirmation that Russian targets had been hit.

It also allows for their use in response to conventional attacks on vital facilities (for example, an early-warning radar system), which could make it difficult to detect and retaliate against a nuclear strike.

Russia’s modification of the doctrine in 2020 was apparently driven by military considerations, including advances in conventional missile systems.

By contrast, the latest signalling of changes to the doctrine would seem to fit more with a pattern of Russian sabre-rattling aimed at discouraging and limiting Western support for Ukraine.

Nuclear sabre-rattling

Nuclear threats are nothing new for the Putin government. One website has listed more than 50 instances of senior Russians making direct or indirect nuclear threats since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

When he announced his “special military operation” on day one of the invasion, for example, Putin placed Russian nuclear forces on “high combat alert”. He warned:

whoever tries to impede us […] must know that the Russian response will be immediate and lead to consequences you have never seen in history.

Former President Dmitry Medvedev has also aired numerous threats, both vague and specific. Among the actions he has suggested could invite a nuclear response:

• any attack on Crimea, which Russia has illegally occupied since 2014

• provision of Western arms to Ukraine

• Finland and Sweden joining NATO

• a successful counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine in 2023

• and strikes by Ukraine on Russian missile sites.

Last year, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued a similar nuclear warning about the Western supply of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.

Some Putin associates have even raised the prospect of a nuclear attack against the United Kingdom, or as a warning blow against Ukrainian cities, to demonstrate Russia’s seriousness against what it portrays as Western aggression.

These rhetorical blasts have also been accompanied by actions to signal Russia’s seriousness, including holding drills involving its nuclear weapons or stationing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

Most of these Russian “red lines” have already been crossed, however, making Medvedev and the others look like the proverbial boy who cried wolf.

Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, for example, crossed the line of undermining Russia’s territorial integrity, although any Ukrainian advance is hardly likely to “threaten the existence” of the Russian state.

And while Moscow howls publicly that the incursion is a “provocation” or “escalation”, it has itself invaded and occupied nearly one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory as recognised in a bilateral treaty, subjecting it to an occupation regime that is hard to describe other than as fascist.

Russian bluster has made the West cautious

In his interview, Ryabkov did not elaborate on what changes to the nuclear doctrine might be under consideration. He later told Russian television that NATO’s “disregard for our potential in this area and a belief […] that matters will not come to the worst requires a clearer and more precise statement of what can happen if they continue to ignore [our potential]”.

This echoes the calls of one Russian foreign policy hawk to lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons to “sober up our opponents”.

An updated doctrine might also embrace the idea of “escalating-to-deescalate”, which has been advanced by some Russian military thinkers. The rationale here is that the first use of nuclear weapons could serve to “deescalate” a conventional conflict on terms favourable to Russia.

Russian sabre-rattling has certainly helped inject a high degree of caution into the West’s response, slowing its supply of much-needed arms to Ukraine and restricting Ukrainian forces from using them inside Russia or against certain Russian targets. As The Economist points out, the reasons given by Washington for these restrictions keep shifting and remain unconvincing.

UK strategic expert Laurence Freedman notes that, by taking on a quasi-supervisory role in how weapons are used, the Americans are “caught in a trap of their own making” and seem unsure how to get out of it.

While Russian nuclear threats cannot be completely ignored, it seems unlikely the mooted changes will signal Russian actions any more clearly. The track record of sabre-rattling bluster, muddied with regular disclaimers about having no intention to use nuclear weapons, comes across as a macabre “good cop, bad cop” routine.

The idea Russia would use nuclear weapons against NATO countries merely for supplying Ukraine with arms seems preposterous. More plausible is a strike on Ukraine with tactical nuclear weapons if Russia is pushed out of its occupied territory in Ukraine. But this would surely have disastrous consequences for Russia internationally for marginal military gains.

If Russia does succeed in taking more Ukrainian territory or securing its present occupation, it will give other countries the message that nuclear weapons are the only way to protect themselves against nuclear powers. More nuclear sabre-rattling only reinforces that message.

Ukraine itself handed the Soviet-era nuclear weapons it possessed to Russia in 1994 in exchange for guarantees of security and inviolability of borders, which have obviously proved meaningless.

Jon Richardson 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. Is Russia’s changing nuclear doctrine a significant concern – or just another empty threat? – https://theconversation.com/is-russias-changing-nuclear-doctrine-a-significant-concern-or-just-another-empty-threat-238078

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bradley J. Moggridge, Professor of Science, University of Technology Sydney

Kamilaroi Country lies in far northwest New South Wales, past Tamworth and crossing over the Queensland border. Here, the bunyip bird (Australasian bittern, Botaurus poiciloptilus), and the brolga (Grus rubicunda or burraalga in Kamilaroi) have been part of life, lore, spirit, dance and culture with Country for thousands of generations.

In this Country, these two species are now rare. Kamilaroi people want to turn this around. But to do that, we come up against a gap between Western conservation laws and culturally significant species/entities.

Under Australia’s conservation laws, a species is considered threatened when its numbers fall so low, or its distribution shrinks so much, it might not recover. But the threatened species legal protections – and any recovery funding it provides – are focused on the Western approach of countable nature, not the Indigenous focus on nature-with-culture.

We are not splitting hairs. The difference is momentous, as we document in recent research. It determines whose environmental research and management is considered legitimate and resourced, and the terms on which knowledge is shared and exchanged.

Understanding this helps find common ground between ecological and Indigenous priorities. It will also be crucial to the now-delayed major overhaul of Australia’s nature laws.

Threatened species on Country

To list a species as threatened under federal and New South Wales law, two things must be determined.

The first is how many animals or plants of a given species are still in their habitat and how consistent this is over generations.

Second is how widespread the species is compared to the past, and how much habitat is left.

This formula – abundance plus distribution – determines if the species is in decline and if it needs urgent attention.

Kamilaroi Country is home to the Gwydir wetlands, an immensely sacred place where brolgas and bunyip birds were once present in great numbers.

Brolgas are known for their elaborate mating dances, and embodying their spirit is an important Indigenous dance. With long legs and necks, Brolgas are this continent’s largest water bird. But their presence has fallen sharply in southern Australia. These days, brolgas appear in the Kamilaroi wetlands less often.

It’s also rarer to see or hear the well-hidden bunyip bird. The Kamilaroi believe the bittern’s’ booming cry signals the presence of the bunyip, a creature from ancestral times whose songs and stories keep people away from sacred water holes.

Buruuugu (Dreaming) stories passed down from the old people connect these birds with Kamilaroi people and freshwater life, encompassing culture, lore, language, dance, meaning and existence.

The brolga is listed as vulnerable in New South Wales and the bunyip bird is endangered. Both species have been found or their presence predicted in regions close to Kamilaroi Country.

Because these species are present close by, it makes it harder for Kamilaroi people to access Country, government funding, resources and protections for these species.

The problem is worse where culturally significant species / entities are generally abundant, but on a shrunken range. Species important to Indigenous people may be lost entirely from Country where they belong, yet government programs offer very few options for protection or resources.

When one plus one does not equal two

There is a growing openness among ecologists, governments and Western land managers to foreground and include Indigenous knowledge in decision making, Indigenous people are ready and waiting. This respectful knowledge exchange is often called two-way learning.

It’s common to think of these different value sets as additive: ecological values plus Indigenous values equals better conservation. At times, reports on threatened species will include a section on Aboriginal people’s cultural values. And Indigenous caring for Country is seen as a vital tool in the toolkit for recovering threatened species.

But Kamilaroi knowledge is not just a management tool. And these species are not separate from the people who care for them. For Kamilaroi, the brolga and the bunyip bird are culture and kin. This is not nature plus culture, two categories alongside each other, but nature with culture – a transformation rather than an addition.

Typically these two categories are divided for study and management, as in the natural and social sciences. But Country weaves nature and culture together and focuses on which relationships are important and why. From this viewpoint, ecological species and habitats become folded into Country, which also includes its people.

So what do we suggest?

Our current conservation policies look for ways for Indigenous peoples to fit in with biodiversity conservation approaches. Instead, we need to find protections and resources to support Indigenous people’s knowledge and relationships with Country. The significant growth of Indigenous Protected Areas is a start, as these large areas of land and sea are managed by Indigenous groups and rangers.

But we need our environmental laws, reporting frameworks and levels of resourcing to include support for Indigenous governance across their systems. These matters go well beyond protected area boundaries.

It could mean writing laws to recognise and invest in culturally significant species under Indigenous guidance. It could mean programs supporting Indigenous peoples to set their own priorities and measures of success for Country and culture, and set the terms of how knowledge about Country is used and exchanged.

And it could mean flipping governance so conservation is increasingly led by Indigenous people, to be the voice for and with responsibilities to Country – the enfolded relationships of brolga and bunyip bird and Kamilaroi people – at the fore rather than an afterthought.

When the migrating brolga arrives in the Gwydir Wetlands to perform its hopping, swooping dance, to nest and mate, you get an ecological outcome: a vulnerable species is breeding. But you can also witness how and why the world’s oldest living culture keeps brolgas close, as kin.

The authorship order for citing this article is Moggridge, Weir, Morgain and Moon.

Bradley J. Moggridge is affiliated with the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, the Freshwater Science Society and The Biodiversity Council

Jessica Weir is a member of the NSW Bushfire and Natural Hazards Research Centre.

󠁡​​Rachel​ ​Morgain has received funding from the Australian and Victorian Governments, Australian Conservation Foundation, Bush Heritage Australia and The Nature Conservancy. She is affiliated with the Biodiversity Council and consults with NRM Regions Australia.

Katie Moon 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. Bunyip birds and brolgas: how can we better protect species important to Indigenous people? – https://theconversation.com/bunyip-birds-and-brolgas-how-can-we-better-protect-species-important-to-indigenous-people-236801

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

Thousands of amazing athletes have competed in the Paralympics Games over the past 64 years.

But who are the greatest of these Paralympians?

And how would you decide? Most gold medals? Most overall medals?

What about competing in the most Paralympics, or competing in the Paralympics and the Olympics, or even having the biggest impact increasing awareness of the Paralympics and Paralympians?

Most gold medals

The International Paralympic Committee medal tally ranks countries by the number of gold medals won, so it is logical to do that for athletes too.

By this measure, visually impaired American swimmer Trischa Zorn is the greatest Paralympian of all time. She won 41 golds from seven Paralympics (1980-2004), including 12 golds from 12 events in 1988.

Her 55 medals overall (41 gold, nine silver, five bronze) is also the most ever.

While no other Paralympian (or Olympian) can compete with Zorn’s amazing medal tally, there are many other notable Paralympians who have had sustained success over multiple Paralympics.

Second on the list of gold medal winners is Norwegian skier Ragnhild Myklebust.

She did not start competing until she was in her 40s, but still won 22 golds in para biathlon, cross-country skiing and ice sledge racing between 1988 and 2002.

Second on the list of overall medals is Swiss athlete Heinz Frei.

He won 35 medals (15 gold, eight silver, 12 bronze) in para athletics, cycling and cross-country skiing between 1984 and 2021.

He won his final medal in Tokyo at the age of 63.

Numerous other Paralympians have also won medals at summer and winter Paralympics.

Sustained success

Swedish shooter Jonas Jacobsson is another Paralympian with sustained success.

He competed in ten consecutive Paralympics (1980-2016) and won golds in the first nine – this included winning the same air rifle event for five consecutive games.

In addition to his 30 shooting medals (17 gold, four silver, nine bronze) he also competed in wheelchair basketball in 1988.

Great Britain athlete Sarah Storey has the most gold medals of any current Paralympian.

She has won medals in all eight of her Paralympic appearances (swimming and cycling, 1992-2024).

She currently has 18 golds, eight silver and three bronze, and is a chance of more medals in Paris in her ninth games.

Olympics and Paralympics

About 20 Paralympians have also competed at the Olympics.

The only Australian to have done this is Melissa Tapper. She has competed in Para table tennis at the Paralympics (2012, 2016, 2021, 2024) and table tennis at the Olympics (2016, 2021, 2024). She won a silver at the Tokyo Paralympics.

Only one athlete has won an Olympic medal and a Paralympic medal.

Hungary’s Pal Szekeres, won a bronze medal in fencing at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

He switched to wheelchair fencing after being injured in a traffic accident and then won three gold and three bronze medals in para fencing in five Paralympics (1992-2008).

Since retiring from competition, Szekeres has used his fame to positively influence Hungarian society.

He has successfully campaigned for greater accessibility in public buildings and greater sporting opportunities for people living with disabilities.

What about Australia?

Australia’s most successful Paralympian is swimmer Matthew Cowdrey. He has won the most gold medals and the most medals overall (23 – 13 gold, seven silver, three bronze).

Wheelchair racer Louise Sauvage has won the most golds of any female Paralympian (nine, as well as four silver).

Swimmer Ellie Cole is our most decorated female Paralympian with 17 medals (six gold, five silver and six bronze).

Some other contenders for Australia’s greatest Paralympian include Daphne Hilton, Libby Kosmana and Dylan Alcott.

Hilton was a trailblazer who won six of Australia’s 10 medals at the first Paralympics in 1960. She attended three Paralympics and won 14 medals in five different sports (para athletics, swimming, archery, table tennis and fencing).

Kosmana competed in 12 consecutive Paralympic Games (1972-2016), winning a total of 13 medals in swimming and shooting, including nine gold.

She retired in 2020 at the age of 78.

Changing perceptions

Alcott is one of Australia’s best known Paralympians.

He has won six Paralympic medals (four gold, two silver) in basketball and tennis, as well as numerous tennis titles (including seven consecutive Australian Opens (2015-2021), and a historic Golden Slam in 2021).

In addition to his athletic achievements, his “greatness” is significantly contributed to by his efforts to change perceptions of people with disabilities.

He is a TV and radio presenter, silver Logie winner, and was the 2022 Australian of the Year.

Other notable initiatives connected to his Dylan Alcott Foundation include
Shift 20 (increasing representation of people with disabilities in advertising campaigns), his Nike Academy (dedicated at supporting athletes living with disabilities), the Field (a jobs platform for people with disabilities) and the Game On book series which celebrates inclusion and diversity for kids and normalises disabilities in mainstream media.

The advocacy work of Alcott and others, as well as improved coverage of the Paris Paralympics and Paralympians, have increased awareness of people living with disabilities in Australian society.

This means young children with disabilities are seeing more people like them succeed and achieve their dreams.

In time, one of these young Aussie kids may become our greatest ever Paralympian.

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. Who are the greatest Paralympians of all time? – https://theconversation.com/who-are-the-greatest-paralympians-of-all-time-237563

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erica Mealy, Lecturer in Computer Science, University of the Sunshine Coast

The Australian government this week released voluntary artificial intelligence (AI) safety standards, alongside a proposals paper calling for greater regulation of the use of the fast-growing technology in high-risk situations.

The take-home message from federal Minister for Industry and Science, Ed Husic, was:

We need more people to use AI and to do that we need to build trust.

But why exactly do people need to trust this technology? And why exactly do more people need to use it?

AI systems are trained on incomprehensibly large data sets using advanced mathematics most people don’t understand. They produce results we have no way of verifying. Even flagship, state-of-the-art systems produce output riddled with errors.

ChatGPT appears to be growing less accurate over time. Even at its best it can’t tell you what letters are in the word “strawberry”. Meanwhile, Google’s Gemini chatbot has recommended putting glue on pizza, among other comical failures.

Given all this, public distrust of AI seems entirely reasonable. The case for using more of it seems quite weak – and also potentially dangerous.

AI risks

Much has been made of the “existential threat” of AI, and how it will lead to job losses. The harms AI presents range from the overt – such as autonomous vehicles that hit pedestrians – to the more subtle, such as AI recruitment systems that demonstrate bias against women or AI legal system tools with a bias against people of colour.

Other harms include fraud from deepfakes of coworkers and of loved ones.

Never mind that the federal government’s own recent reporting showed humans are more effective, efficient and productive than AI.

But if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Technology adoption still falls into this familiar trope. AI is not always the best tool for the job. But when faced with an exciting new technology, we often use it without considering if we should.

Instead of encouraging more people to use AI, we should all learn what is a good, and not good, use of AI.

Is it the technology we need to trust – or the government?

Just what does the Australian government get from more people using AI?

One of the largest risks is the leaking of private data. These tools are collecting our private information, our intellectual property and our thoughts on a scale we have never before seen.

Much of this data, in the case of ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Otter.ai and other AI models, is not processed onshore in Australia.

These companies preach transparency, privacy and security. But it is often hard to uncover if your data is used for training their newer models, how they secure it, or what other organisations or governments have access to that data.

Recently, federal Minister for Government Services, Bill Shorten, presented the government’s proposed Trust Exchange program, which raised concerns about the collection of even more data about Australian citizens. In his speech to the National Press Club, Shorten openly noted the support from large technology companies, including Google.

If data about Australians was to be collated across different technology platforms, including AI, we could see widespread mass surveillance.

But even more worryingly, we have observed the power of technology to influence politics and behaviour.

Automation bias is the terminology we use for the tendency for users to believe the technology is “smarter” then they are. Too much trust in AI poses even more risk to Australians – by encouraging more use of technology without adequate education, we could be subjecting our population to a comprehensive system of automated surveillance and control.

And although you might be able to escape this system, it would undermine social trust and cohesion and influence people without them knowing.

These factors are even more reason to regulate the use of AI, as the Australian government is now looking to do. But doing so does not have to be accompanied by a forceful encouragement to also use it.

Let’s dial down the blind hype

The topic of AI regulation is important.

The International Organisation for Standardisation has established a standard on the use and management of AI systems. Its implementation in Australia would lead to better, more well-reasoned and regulated use of AI.

This standard and others are the foundation of the government’s proposed Voluntary AI Safety standard.

What was problematic in this week’s announcement from the federal government was not the call for greater regulation, but the blind hyping of AI use.

Let’s focus on protecting Australians – not on mandating their need to use, and trust, AI.

Erica Mealy is a member of the Board of Directors of not-for-profit digital rights organisation Electronic Frontiers Australia. She is is also member of the Australian Computer Society, the Australian Information Security Association, and the International Association for Public participation (IAP2).

– ref. The government says more people need to use AI. Here’s why that’s wrong – https://theconversation.com/the-government-says-more-people-need-to-use-ai-heres-why-thats-wrong-238327

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By George Taleporos, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Living with Disability Research Centre, La Trobe University

Bill Shorten is resigning from politics in February next year. Throughout his 17 years in parliament, no achievement stands out more than his role in the creation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

As a person with a severe physical disability, my life, like that of so many others in Australia, has been transformed by the NDIS. It has enabled me to live independently with the support I need to have a good life. Because of the NDIS, I can work full-time and contribute to my community.

Without the NDIS, I doubt I would still be alive.

Before the NDIS, we were powerless

Before the NDIS, life was very different. Support was fragmented, varying greatly depending on where you lived and how you acquired your disability. With an unsustainable reliance on family members and with service providers holding all the power, it was hell for many of us.

For years, we were calling for reasonable and necessary support and for choice and control over our lives. But no one was listening.

Turning an idea into reality

Shorten’s role in establishing the NDIS began when he served as parliamentary secretary for disability in the Rudd/Gillard government.

The original idea was grounded in the recognition that Australia needed a national approach to provide reasonable, equitable support for people with disabilities. Such a universal system would provide people with disabilities choice and control over our lives.

To make this happen, he skilfully garnered bipartisan support, recognising early on that the NDIS had to rise above political divisions. His ability to frame the scheme as a moral and practical necessity helped secure the backing of both sides of politics, ensuring its passage through parliament in 2013.

Public support was equally crucial, and Shorten worked with advocates, communities and the media to build a broad coalition that saw the NDIS as a necessary step forward. This included convincing Australian taxpayers of the necessity to increase the Medicare levy from 1.5% to 2% of taxable income in 2014 to pay for the scheme.

The NDIS was the first scheme of its kind in Australia, shifting from welfare-based support to a rights-based approach, where people with disabilities could access personalised services based on their individual needs and aspirations.

In a political landscape often filled with promises and inaction, Shorten not only had a vision but also the determination to make it happen. By providing individualised funding packages to Australian’s with permanent and significant disability, the NDIS shifted power and control from service providers and government, to people with disabilities.

Containing costs

When Shorten became Minister for the NDIS in 2022, he initiated a 12-month review of the NDIS. This concluded the NDIS was on an unsustainable trajectory and recommended needs assessments and tighter controls over scheme costs.

In opposition, Shorten had been a fierce critic of independent assessments, which were proposed by the former government to contain the costs of the scheme. However, in government, Shorten spoke about the need for financial sustainability in the NDIS, supporting stricter oversight on how funds were spent.

The once passionate critic of government efforts to reduce spending on the NDIS was now arguing for more stringent controls. It seemed the pressure to keep a lid on the growing costs of the scheme had led Shorten to adopt some of the measures he had once opposed.

With the recent passage of legislation, Shorten has made significant changes to the NDIS, aimed at addressing scheme sustainability, but these reforms have sparked concern among participants.

One of the key changes is the introduction of NDIS support lists that would narrow how NDIS funds can be spent. Though Shorten has positioned these changes as necessary to provide clarity on how NDIS funds can be used, the impact on participants could be a loss of flexibility and greater difficulty in accessing the personalised services we need to live our lives.

Shorten’s work in establishing the NDIS will be remembered as a turning point for the disability rights movement in Australia. I know that his work in government has transformed the lives of countless Australians with disabilities, including my own, and for that I am truly grateful.

While his recent reforms haven’t always fully reflected the concerns of our community, his commitment to ensuring the future of the scheme cannot be denied.

George Taleporos is a Strategic Advisor at the Summer Foundation, Director of the Self Manager Hub and InLife, as well as the Independent Chair of Every Australian Counts. While George is a member of the NDIS Independent Advisory Council, this contribution does not intend to reflect the views of the Council.

– ref. Bill Shorten’s greatest legacy is the NDIS. It transformed the lives of people like me with disability – https://theconversation.com/bill-shortens-greatest-legacy-is-the-ndis-it-transformed-the-lives-of-people-like-me-with-disability-238329

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janet McCalman, Emeritus Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, The University of Melbourne

Why does Victoria’s Births, Deaths and Marriages registry matter? Civil registrations are the most important documents created about you by the state: they certify your existence in time and place, your citizenship, your marital status, your parenthood, your entitlement to inherit. All of these things also affect your partners and descendants.

The state has custody of these documents on your behalf. It is legally bound to preserve them in perpetuity. Just because they may be about people long dead does not make them commodities that can be sold or loaned to commercial organisations, or made vulnerable to identity thieves.

The Victorian government, with advice from Treasury, is investigating the feasibility of moving the service to a public-private partnership to raise funds and improve customer service. Customer service certainly needs reform, but not this way.

The state has obligations to protect our privacy and identity. Currently, the major defence against this is that birth certificates are kept out of the public domain for 100 years. However hungry genealogy entrepreneurs are for new records, the market value of the operation is small, while the historical value is huge.

Victoria’s vital registrations are the historical record, in Victoria’s case, of the colonising people and the people they colonised. Personal events like birth, death and marriage map the movement of people occupying a landscape, their settlement and family formation, their illness and death. We can see communities being built and fading away with change.

We can see waves of immigrants from all over the world and how they fared. They tell of Chinese miners dying of starvation in lonely huts; they tell of epidemics that swept away whole families of children; they tell of former convicts trying to rebuild their lives; they tell of violence and intemperance, madness and sexual delinquency. They show us our past as it was, not as we want it to be.

In Victoria, they also tell of the Indigenous people, dying too soon, removed from country, herded on to reserves, burying their babies and children. They tell of ancient elders born long before the settlement at Botany Bay, seeking refuge on the reserves to die among kin.

We can measure the catastrophic demographic collapse of Aboriginal Victoria, then the gap widening with government policy and continued discrimination. And we can see the recovery of the First Nations over the past three generations.

We can tell this truth by reconstituting the families and communities and applying demographic techniques to estimate the original population and chart the collapse.

Few of the world’s insidious genocides of indigenous peoples are as well documented as ours. Few were as dramatic as the collapse of a population, now estimated to have been from around 60,000 in 1788 to merely 600 by Federation in 1901.

Today, Aboriginal Victoria has recovered, but it comprises only part descendants. And a major reason why that recovery was so difficult can be seen from fertility data. They show that, compared to white women, Aboriginal women suffered high secondary infertility from sexually transmitted diseases, often inflicted on them as young girls by white men. This is colonisation of the human body.

We can read this history in our births, deaths and marriages because, through almost an accident of history, the Colony of Victoria instituted what is arguably the finest civil registration regime in the world. The first registrar was a young English actuary named William Henry Archer. He had been a student of William Farr, the father of the census and civil registration in England and Wales.

Archer was also a member of the London Statistical Society, which had drawn up a template for the ideal registration of civil events. Archer was given a free hand by the colonial government, and it was only in Victoria in 1854 that this template was fully implemented.

Victoria’s records are better than those in England, Wales, Scotland, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. They are more detailed in causes of death and family history and relationships than in any other country.

With AI, we can capture these records to build a genealogy of the people of Victoria and link them to other historical, medical and social sources. This will enable historical demographic reconsitution; population health risk analysis for infectious and chronic disease and intergenerational effects.

It will clarify causation rather than association in genetic population health with historical sibling and cousin observations. It will also advance economic and historical analysis of intergenerational wealth transfer, social mobility and immigration.

This project has been hailed as “our social genome” by the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences in its Decadal Plan for Social Science Research Infrastructure 2024-33. We could call it “Archer”.

We are among the few countries in the world to have the records to build cradle-to-grave data sets of this calibre. We would join the ranks of Sweden, Utah, Quebec and Scotland, while starting from a superior base. Western Australia has done similar linkage in Australia, but has only gone back to 1944.

Our Victorian certificates are heritage assets comparable to the UNESCO-recognised convict archives of New South Wales and Tasmania. Victoria set the standard in Australia from 1854. This astonishingly detailed archive can be de‑identified for the use of researchers both here and around the world.

William Henry Archer would be well pleased to see them curated for the public good in his name.

Janet McCalman received funding from the Australian Research Council between 1998 and 2015 which used these records. Along with colleagues across Australia, she is lobbying for Australia’s vital registrations to be converted into a national Historical Record of the Australian People, 1838-1994. She is a member of the ALP.

– ref. Birth, deaths and marriages: we all have them, which is why they should be protected – https://theconversation.com/birth-deaths-and-marriages-we-all-have-them-which-is-why-they-should-be-protected-237867

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity

Americans face a stark choice this November between two very different political visions. As I watched the recent Democratic National Convention (DNC), it struck me that it is also a choice between two very different kinds of Christianity.

Donald Trump has positioned himself as a defender of the Christian faith, and found somewhat unlikely bedfellows in American evangelicalism. This seems a politically expedient choice for someone who has previously shown no interest in faith nor has a record of attending church.

Equating the “radical left” with communism, Trump has promised to protect the public symbols of Christianity such as crosses from those who would tear them down. Whether crosses are actually under threat is unclear.

Christianity does not fit in to ‘left’ and ‘right’

If anyone tuned into the DNC expecting to see this “radical left” inciting crowds to tear down crosses, they would have been disappointed. Instead, biblical language permeated the speeches.

Michelle Obama appealed to a sense of community over individualism in political life, quoting the Bible’s golden rule “do unto others” and “love thy neighbour”. So familiar are these phrases to a Christianised America that she didn’t even need to quote the entire verses. Pete Buttigieg drew on apocalyptic imagery to describe Trump’s worldview as “darkness”. Senator Raphael Warnock, a pastor, quoted Micah’s injunction to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God”.

At the Republican Convention weeks earlier, Christianity was also on display, but with a very different tone. Christian images and language infused the rhetoric of Christian Nationalism, a movement that is predominantly white, male, authoritarian and unabashedly puts America first. God bless America! It blurs the lines between patriotic and Christian symbols in the belief that Christianity should be privileged and in power in America.

A Christian nationalist agenda is one that seeks to dominate and shape the community according to a narrow set of “biblical” values. These are the kind of values outlined in Project 2025, which claims to be a blueprint of “biblical principles” for the nation.

Its principles look a lot like patriarchy: a system that relies on male domination, wants women pregnant and back in the kitchen, and leaves no space for anyone whose diversity of gender or sexual orientation challenges the hierarchy.

Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne, argues that Christian Nationalism is a political movement, not a Christian one. It has moved a long way from biblical values or traditional evangelical Christianity.

By contrast, the Democrats seemed to reclaim Christianity as a liberal and liberative religion. They portrayed Christianity as a faith that makes space for LGBTQI+ families, embraces diversity and affirms a woman’s right to choose (and one that makes space for a diversity of religious or non-religious views). Moreover, they embodied Christian qualities such as joy, promise and hope for the future.

The Bible is political, but not party political

Though my sympathies lie with the Democrats in this particular political contest, no political party has ever been able to truly claim the “Christian” mantle. Christianity is inescapably political, but it is not party political, and never can be. Christianity can be found in both these somewhat polarised forms.

While religion and its extremes play out in particular ways in American politics, we are naïve if we think such narratives do not exist in Australia.

Globally, there are those who lean into the liberative aspects of faith, finding in the pages of the Bible a radical call for justice, an affirmation of diversity and a demand for loving action. And there are those who emphasise a narrowly drawn set of supposedly Christian moral standards, often reflective of some ideal past.

One end of the spectrum focuses on community and common good, the other on individual behaviour and responsibility. One liberates, the other seeks to control. One is a big tent, the other seeks to draw tight boundaries about who is in and who is out.

Both of these sets of thinking – the liberative and the controlling, the diverse and the patriarchal – can be found within the Bible. This is why the Bible should be used carefully in public discourse, not weaponised or co-opted for visions that are not in keeping with its teaching.

As religion declines in the West, there is a danger that voters are less well equipped to evaluate how religion is used in political life and what constitutes a poor or dishonest use of Christian theology. While the interpretation of almost any biblical passage can be debated (and is), at the heart of Christianity is the term gospel, euanggelion, which literally means “good news”.

When Jesus spoke about “good news”, he spoke about it in terms of release from captivity, the liberation of the oppressed, and favour for the poor (Luke 4). It is not a bad measure by which to assess political discourse that claims to be Christian.

It can be tempting in the face of the diversity of Christian opinion to want to keep religion out of politics entirely. But the answer to bad theology is not an absence of theology. It is good theology.

When Christianity is invoked in politics, people of all faiths – and none – should examine how the way it is being used sits alongside the central Christian message that God is love, and that the people at the very bottom of society always come first in Jesus’ teaching.

Robyn J. Whitaker 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. For God and country: why the choice of next US president is a religious choice, too – https://theconversation.com/for-god-and-country-why-the-choice-of-next-us-president-is-a-religious-choice-too-237863

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Malos, Climateworks Centre – Country Lead, Australia, Monash University

Australia’s push for net-zero emissions received a welcome boost on Thursday, with the release of an official report showing how Australia can seek to cut domestic emissions across each sector of the economy.

The Climate Change Authority prepared the report, which provides vital scaffolding for Australia’s climate ambitions. Hopefully, it will inform the Australian government’s upcoming decarbonisation plans for each sector of the economy, and its updated goal for emissions reduction out to 2035.

The pathways laid out by the authority show how emissions cuts can be made in sectors such as land use, resources, transport and energy. Importantly, the report shows what effective climate action looks like – and what Australia can achieve.

The roadmap also shows how Australia can do its part to limit global warming to 1.5°C to avoid temperatures climbing dangerously higher. Climate scientists are clear: every fraction of a degree matters.

Why are these pathways important?

The authority groups Australia’s domestic emissions into six categories: electricity and energy, transport, industry and waste, agriculture and land, built environment, and resources.

For each sector of Australia’s economy, getting emissions to net zero poses different challenges and opportunities.

Preventing emissions from buildings requires, among other things, getting off gas and making them more efficient. Reducing emissions from transport means encouraging uptake of diverse solutions such as electric vehicles, trains and cycling.

The report provides pathways that can guide the decarbonisation of each sector. It shows which technologies could be taken up and phased out, how to attract, enable and time investments, and how to align policy with practical implementation.

The authority borrows from the approach of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, by showing a range of possible routes to net zero and comparing their work to others.

We hope the Australian government continues this approach, to ensure decision-makers understand how different modelling approaches and scenarios combine to create a robust body of knowledge.

Pathways show us the way

We have spent more than a decade doing work similar to the report just released. Our own sectoral pathways are also designed to support governments, businesses and investors as they look for opportunities to reduce emissions.

Decision-makers around the world are calling for such guidance.

Why? Because pathways create a signal of how things can change. Laying out the problem, and different approaches to solving it, helps create a common understanding of the opportunities, risks and barriers to effective action.

They make it possible for governments to set clear goals and ensure policies match what is needed and are backed by evidence. Rather than just setting out the overarching intention of, say, cutting emissions in half in a decade, pathways show how it can be done.

Pathways let investors and companies identify and reduce risks and get ahead in a global economy aiming for net-zero emissions.

And they lay out the technologies and processes needed to make the shift: ranging from mature, ready-to-deploy technologies such as renewable energy and storage, to maturing technologies such as green steelmaking.

Pathways to keep 1.5°C alive

Early next year, the Australian government is expected to release its new 2035 emissions target, taking us beyond the current target for 2030.

Every signatory to the 2015 Paris Agreement has to publicly set a new target every five years. Other nations are doing the same.

In the authority’s plan, Australia would hit net zero by 2040 under the more ambitious pathway aimed at meeting the 1.5°C goal, or 2050 under the 2°C scenario. These net zero dates are broadly consistent with our own analysis.

But there are opportunities to move faster still.

Boosted ambitions

Transport is now Australia’s fastest-growing source of emissions. The authority’s transport pathway envisages passenger vehicles going electric and encouraging public transport and active transport, such as walking, cycling and micromobility such as e-scooters.

It aligns with our research, which shows a diverse solutions approach is a better option to reduce transport emissions. This is especially important given recent delays in the shift to zero-emissions vehicles.

However, the authority only takes a diverse approach to passenger transport. Our own work shows Australia can diversify its approach to freight transport.

The authority focuses on moving trucks from diesel and petrol to battery electric and green hydrogen. But Climateworks’ analysis shows we can also reduce distance travelled through route optimisation and shift freight to rail, where possible.

For the built environment – our houses, offices and infrastructure – the report rightly notes most technologies are now technically ready, commercially available, cheaper to run and healthier. They include energy-efficient electrical appliances, roof and wall insulation and window glazing.

But there’s an opportunity to go further.

The most cost-effective way to green your house depends on which state or territory you live in. Quick fixes – such as switching gas hot water for heat pumps – are included in the authority’s report.

But as our recent modelling shows, homes in cooler climates benefit from more comprehensive improvements including double-glazing windows and adding insulation to walls and ceilings, alongside the quick fixes.

What’s next?

The pathways laid out by the Climate Change Authority in this report will not just be left on the shelf. They have very real use for business leaders and investors, as well as for policymakers.

These pathways will guide Australia’s comprehensive national net-zero plan. They give us a starting point and show us how it can be done.

Read more:
Can we really reach net zero by 2050? A new report maps out Australia’s path in more detail than ever before

Climateworks Centre is a part of Monash University. It receives funding from a range of external sources including philanthropy, governments and businesses.

Josh Solomonsz works for Climateworks Centre. Climateworks is a part of Monash University and receives funding from a range of external sources including philanthropy, governments and businesses. Josh is a volunteer committee of management member of the Port Phillip EcoCentre, a community environmental sustainability organisation.

Matthew Benetti is affiliated with Think Forward, an intergenerational fairness think tank. I am a volunteer board member.

– ref. Australia has just been handed a map for getting to net zero. Here’s how it will guide us – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-just-been-handed-a-map-for-getting-to-net-zero-heres-how-it-will-guide-us-237703

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amali Cooray, PhD Candidate in Genetic Engineering and Cancer, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)

Research over the years has suggested intermittent fasting has the potential to improve our health and reduce the likelihood of developing cancer.

So what should we make of a new study in mice suggesting fasting increases the risk of cancer?

What is intermittent fasting?

Intermittent fasting means switching between times of eating and not eating. Unlike traditional diets that focus on what to eat, this approach focuses on when to eat.

There are lots of commonly used intermittent fasting schedules. The 16/8 plan means you only eat within an eight-hour window, then fast for the remaining 16 hours. Another popular option is the 5:2 diet, where you eat normally for five days then restrict calories for two days.

In Australia, poor diet contributes to 7% of all cases of disease, including coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and cancers of the bowel and lung. Globally, poor diet is linked to 22% of deaths in adults over the age of 25.

Intermittent fasting has gained a lot of attention in recent years for its potential health benefits. Fasting influences metabolism, which is how your body processes food and energy. It can affect how the body absorbs nutrients from food and burns energy from sugar and fat.

What did the new study find?

The new study, published in Nature, found when mice ate again after fasting, their gut stem cells, which help repair the intestine, became more active. The stem cells were better at regenerating compared with those of mice who were either totally fasting or eating normally.

This suggests the body might be better at healing itself when eating after fasting.

However, this could also have a downside. If there are genetic mutations present, the burst of stem cell-driven regeneration after eating again might make it easier for cancer to develop.

Polyamines – small molecules important for cell growth – drive this regeneration after refeeding. These polyamines can be produced by the body, influenced by diet, or come from gut bacteria.

The findings suggest that while fasting and refeeding can improve stem cell function and regeneration, there might be a tradeoff with an increased risk of cancer, especially if fasting and refeeding cycles are repeated over time.

While this has been shown in mice, the link between intermittent fasting and cancer risk in humans is more complicated and not yet fully understood.

What has other research found?

Studies in animals have found intermittent fasting can help with weight loss, improve blood pressure and blood sugar levels, and subsequently reduce the risks of diabetes and heart disease.

Research in humans suggests intermittent fasting can reduce body weight, improve metabolic health, reduce inflammation, and enhance cellular repair processes, which remove damaged cells that could potentially turn cancerous.

However, other studies warn that the benefits of intermittent fasting are the same as what can be achieved through calorie restriction, and that there isn’t enough evidence to confirm it reduces cancer risk in humans.

What about in people with cancer?

In studies of people who have cancer, fasting has been reported to protect against the side effects of chemotherapy and improve the effectiveness of cancer treatments, while decreasing damage to healthy cells.

Prolonged fasting in some patients who have cancer has been shown to be safe and may potentially be able to decrease tumour growth.

On the other hand, some experts advise caution. Studies in mice show intermittent fasting could weaken the immune system and make the body less able to fight infection, potentially leading to worse health outcomes in people who are unwell. However, there is currently no evidence that fasting increases the risk of bacterial infections in humans.

So is it OK to try intermittent fasting?

The current view on intermittent fasting is that it can be beneficial, but experts agree more research is needed. Short-term benefits such as weight loss and better overall health are well supported. But we don’t fully understand the long-term effects, especially when it comes to cancer risk and other immune-related issues.

Since there are many different methods of intermittent fasting and people react to them differently, it’s hard to give advice that works for everyone. And because most people who participated in the studies were overweight, or had diabetes or other health problems, we don’t know how the results apply to the broader population.

For healthy people, intermittent fasting is generally considered safe. But it’s not suitable for everyone, particularly those with certain medical conditions, pregnant or breastfeeding women, and people with a history of eating disorders. So consult your health-care provider before starting any fasting program.

Amali Cooray is also affiliated with the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute.

– ref. Does intermittent fasting increase or decrease our risk of cancer? – https://theconversation.com/does-intermittent-fasting-increase-or-decrease-our-risk-of-cancer-238071

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jo Raphael, Senior lecturer in drama education, Deakin University

Parents sometimes ask: what’s the point of drama class? Many want their children to choose elective subjects, especially in Year 12, that parents think will help them get into university and establish a career.

This is despite the fact work possibilities are wide open for the average 17 year-old, who is likely to have a range of jobs and careers over their lifetime.

So why study drama? As scholars who have researched drama and learning for 30 years, it’s clear studying drama can enhance your teenager’s present and contribute to their future. Drama teaches skills for life, learning and employability.

Teamwork, project management, public speaking and more

Many employers want staff who can work well in a team, manage a complicated project from inception to final delivery and speak well in public or to clients.

They want employees who can problem-solve creatively and effectively, can think flexibly, adapt to changing circumstances and see others’ point of view.

Now consider the skills kids learn in drama class. These include:

Teamwork: There is nothing like collaborating with your classmates as an ensemble to devise a script or pull off a show. There is excitement and a heightened sense of purpose in having to work together to present a performance for an audience. Relationships of trust and cooperation are formed through teamwork in drama class. These are valuable skills kids can use throughout their lives.

Public speaking: Drama develops communication and presentation skills that boost your confidence to speak in public. You learn how to use space, gesture, posture and to vary your pace, tone and volume to successfully communicate with and convince your audience. This is a skill set your child will use at university, in job interviews and at work.

Speedy problem-solving: In drama class, you learn to improvise. The skill of quick and creative thinking on your feet is valuable to many employers.

Creative and critical thinking: Drama is critical thinking in action, a way to look at issues from multiple points of view and understand nuance. Untangling this complexity in drama class is equipping students with the ability to cope with complexity in other parts of their life – now and in the future. It allows kids to exercise creativity, imagine alternate futures, and experiment and test radical ideas in a safe space. Creativity and imagination are essential skills for jobs of the future.

Make a compelling argument: When students have something important to say, a drama performance can be a powerful way to practice using their voice, express concerns and call others to action. Going to see live theatre with peers, studying plays and analysing theatre means engaging with and discussing big, complex and global ideas. Knowing how to formulate your point and articulate it in a compelling way is a valuable workplace skill.

Artistic and design skills: Students learn artistic, performance and theatre design skills when studying drama, which can lead to employment in a wide range of creative industries jobs.

Examining the evidence

There is a great deal of evidence on the impact of drama education on young people’s lives and employability skills.

Research shows drama develops empathy, social skills, well-being and confidence.

Studies involving drama students also report young people derive a sense of fellowship and fun from studying drama. They also report theatre helped them develop a sense of self and important life competencies.

Research has also shown drama can be an effective part of teacher education.

Consider the value drama adds to your child’s life now

Of course, school isn’t really about turning your child into an obedient and helpful worker bee. It’s their life now. Just as having a positive workplace can make a world of difference to your quality of life, having an enjoyable school experience is crucial to a teen’s mental health.

So if your child enjoys drama, ask them why. You might be surprised by the depth of the answer you receive.

Drama creates a strong sense of belonging and can reduce loneliness, as demonstrated in this recent ABC story:

Drama class can help your child feel connected to others in school and to their community. It can help them develop empathy, relate to others in the real world (outside of social media) and encourage self-reflection.

It can allow them to engage with, and learn about, the big things in life: love, betrayal, friendship, ambition, power, envy, duty and more.

In the senior school years, when exam pressure and competitiveness can be overwhelming, a drama class and the community it provides can be a welcome relief.

And lastly: let’s not underestimate the sheer joy that comes of being creative, of expressing yourself, and the thrill of presenting to an audience.

Jo Raphael is a voluntary President of Drama Australia, the national professional association for drama education. Drama Australia is not for profit. She is a life member and former President of Drama Victoria, the peak state professional association for drama educators. She is also Artistic Director of Fusion Theatre, a community-based inclusive theatre company based in Dandenong.

Joanne O’Mara receives funding the Australian Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is voluntary President of the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English (VATE), a not-for-profit teachers’ association.

– ref. What’s the point of drama class? It teaches the workplace skills employers want, for a start – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-point-of-drama-class-it-teaches-the-workplace-skills-employers-want-for-a-start-236862

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mathias-Felipe de-Lima-Santos, Lecturer, Macquarie University

We’ve long been warned about the looming demise of traditional journalism in the face of digital disruption. But some tech giants, once the very disruptors themselves, have been positioning themselves as journalism’s saviours.

Programs such as the Google News Initiative promise not only to keep journalism alive, but by enabling innovation, to also help it adapt and thrive into the future.

Much of the media industry has welcomed this financial and technical support. For smaller, cash-strapped newsrooms, it can be life-changing.

But modern journalism is already heavily dependent on the platforms offered by big tech. Adding new financial dimensions to this relationship raises urgent questions about press independence.

We set out to explore how big tech’s “philanthrocapitalism” could be reshaping the news industry, focusing on countries in the Global South, where such funding can play an outsized role.

Our findings suggest an emerging web of dependency between cash-strapped newsrooms and Silicon Valley’s deep pockets. That offers some important lessons, both for media organisations and the tech giants themselves.

A double-edged sword

Big tech is now deeply enmeshed with modern journalism. Platforms such as Google and Facebook are at the heart of the way news is distributed, and new players like OpenAI are revolutionising the way we create content.

These companies admittedly provide vital digital infrastructure that has enabled much of the innovation we’ve seen in journalism over the past decade. But they’re also the entities that disrupted the traditional news business model in the first place.

Google News Initiative’s Innovation Challenge offers selected news organisations grants to explore new ways of incorporating technology into journalism.

Launched in 2018, it has provided about A$44 million for more than 200 projects in 47 countries.

To investigate the news-tech relationship further, we conducted 36 in-depth interviews with media organisations in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East that received grants as part of this program.

The regions included in our study are all part of what’s known as the Global South, where relative political instability, the digital divide, limited funding and a lack of media literacy can all make news organisations more vulnerable to the influence of big tech.

Great ideas, tough to implement

Our study uncovered a wide range of exciting journalistic technology projects launched and funded by the Google News Initiative’s Innovation Challenge. But many struggled to progress beyond the initial stages or sustain themselves long term.

In Brazil, for example, two promising projects were ultimately discontinued.

The Lume app, developed in partnership with nine independent journalism organisations, was designed to make local news more accessible for people with vision impairments. Another, ConfereAI, used artificial intelligence to help users fact check the accuracy of links and short texts.

Both projects got off to a promising start. However, for financial and technical reasons, their development could not be sustained after launch.

Across all of our respondents, three-quarters expressed difficulties implementing new technology. Many said they simply lacked the resources or expertise. This can create a cycle of dependency on further funding or support.

News and technology aren’t an easy cultural fit

We also found many news organisations were outsourcing technical development to companies and individuals based outside their own country, such as the United States, Canada or in the European Union.

That might save money and time in the short term. But as a broader trend, it raises serious concerns about how well newsrooms are being empowered to build their own capabilities, and the potential for new forms of “digital colonialism”.

Those that did try to hire locally faced their own challenges. Many media organisations, especially in Africa, struggled to pay high enough salaries to attract required tech talent.

Tech companies typically offer higher pay than many of these newsrooms can afford, often in foreign currencies like dollars or euros.

Some success stories

That isn’t to say there weren’t any success stories. Google even encouraged some organisations to plan for long term sustainability early on, including Stears, a legacy media company in Nigeria.

Stears’ project proposed developing an easy-to-use subscription management service. This would allow African publishers to implement paywalls and monetise their audiences without needing technical expertise.

Stears acknowledged the benefits of Google’s advice to plan for the long term.

If sustainability wasn’t a major consideration from the beginning, things could have been different … because the Google team encouraged us to prioritize sustainability from the outset, it will be a matter of returning to our normal day-to-day operations and aligning our expenses accordingly.

But this was unfortunately not a reality for many other projects that were ultimately discontinued. At least eight projects from the organisations we interviewed were phased out or never made publicly available.

Big tech is under pressure

Google has been criticised for profiting from news without paying for it. By promoting technological innovation in media, Google is positioning itself as a “philanthrocapitalist” organisation.

Its initiatives are presented as support for the news industry, and help build goodwill among journalists, media organisations and policymakers. But we should be sceptical, because this strategy also serves Google’s broader interests.

If being seen to fund innovation and training programs can deliver a more favourable regulatory environment, it might ultimately help the tech giant avoid stricter regulations forcing direct payments to news publishers.

Regulators around the world are increasingly throwing their weight behind such proposals. But in many regions, including Brazil, Google has been pushing back hard.

Journalism must embrace tech, but carefully

To survive, journalism must continue to embrace technology. But doing so should never cost newsrooms their independence.

News organisations should prioritise building direct relationships with their audience to reduce reliance on third-party platforms. They should also stay informed about evolving regulations, and actively participate in policy discussions shaping the future of the news-tech relationship.

Google itself can still make a positive contribution to journalism. But our findings suggest that to enhance this program, Google should broaden its funding criteria to support a more diverse range of news organisations over a longer time period.

Support should also be extended beyond technological innovations to encompass newsroom operations and other journalistic projects.

Read more:
Would a tech tax be a fair way to make Google and Meta pay for the news they distribute and profit from?

Mathias-Felipe de-Lima-Santos has received funding from the University of Amsterdam’s RPA Human(e) AI and by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programs No 951911 (AI4Media). The Conversation receives funding from Google negotiated under the Australian Government’s News Media Bargaining Code. It has also previously received grant funding from Google.

– ref. Big tech is painting itself as journalism’s saviour. We should tread carefully – https://theconversation.com/big-tech-is-painting-itself-as-journalisms-saviour-we-should-tread-carefully-236692

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

Finally, just months out from the election, the Liberal Party is tackling the Augean stable that is its New South Wales division. It is a task that should have been a priority two years ago, after the division’s toxic factionalism had been on inglorious display in the run-up to the 2022 federal election.

As Liberal leader, Peter Dutton has performed better than most observers expected. In this week’s Newspoll, the opposition is equal with the government on a two-party basis. On current polling, Dutton could push Albanese into minority government.

But, until now, Dutton had not managed to force the NSW Liberal organisation to undertake reform.

This week the Liberal federal executive finally intervened in NSW. The trigger was an unbelievable snafu that saw a raft of Liberal local council candidates miss the deadline for nomination because the party didn’t submit their names in time.

Even the intervention was botched (inviting the well-worn joke, if you can’t run yourselves, how can you run the country?).

A three-man panel was announced to oversee the ten-month takeover of the NSW division. It included two former federal presidents of the party, both Victorians: Richard Alston (a former federal minister) and Alan Stockdale (a former Victorian minister). The third member was Rob Stokes, a former NSW minister, who was nominated by NSW. But Stokes’ participation was not tied down before the announcement and he immediately ruled himself out.

Apart from that bungle, the panel quickly came under fire from within the party. Stockdale and Alston were criticised for being from outside NSW, too old and part of an alleged right-wing seizing of a division where the moderates have the edge. And what party in its right mind that has been told it has a “women problem” would set up a panel without a woman? The Stokes misfortune at least allows that to be rectified.

After the nominations disaster, Dutton was alarmed. A report was commissioned into the stuff-up and also the state of preparations for the federal election. Done by former federal director Brian Loughnane, it highlights the rampant factionalism that has bedevilled the NSW division for decades.

This destructive behaviour parallels the disease we’ve seen in Labor over the years.

In the NSW Liberals, moderates and conservatives carve up preselections and often fight each other more bitterly than they do the party’s political opponents.

Before the 2022 election, manoeuvring by then minister Alex Hawke, Scott Morrison’s numbers man, delayed preselections until the death knock. Morrison then made a captain’s pick for Warringah. That was Katherine Deves, an anti-trans campaigner who proved a liability well beyond the seat, which the independent incumbent, Zali Steggall, held comfortably.

The NSW Liberals decades ago had some 50,000 members; now, the number is reportedly about 10,000. One senior member of the division (from the right) says members are “expected to turn up, pay up and shut up. They are frozen out of preselections and discouraged from debating policy issues.”

There is a wider issue: few people want to join political parties these days. But the parties still need robust organisations for their “ground games”, going door to door and handing out how-to-vote cards in individual electorates.

This campaigning is as crucial as ever, and probably even more so, because contests in many seats are becoming more local. The importance of local volunteers was shown in 2022 by the success of the “teal” candidates who managed to mobilise enthusiastic bands of volunteers.

The need for local presences is one reason the absence of so many Liberal-labelled council candidates is a negative for the NSW party. For example, in the highly marginal south coast federal seat of Gilmore, held by Labor, the Liberals’ Andrew Constance will be hampered by the Liberal team being unable to stand for the Shoalhaven council.

More widely, the party’s campaigning capacity is weakened by being in opposition at state level, so it has fewer MPs with resources to help out in the federal election.

If Dutton is to eat into Albanese’s majority significantly, he needs to have wins in NSW, and that requires candidates who have time to campaign.

While the NSW party is doing better with its federal preselections than in 2022, some key seats are still to have candidates installed – among them Warringah and the teal-held Mackellar (although nominations have opened).

Next week the Australian Electoral Commission will release its final redrawn boundaries for NSW. On its draft boundaries, the teal seat of North Sydney will be scrapped.

Not only do the Liberals have to win seats in NSW; they also have to stop further erosion of their existing seats. The Liberal seat of Bradfield, held by frontbencher Paul Fletcher, a moderate, is potentially vulnerable to a teal.

It’s not just the NSW division that is a problem. Victoria is also faction-ridden, with the state parliamentary party consumed by the debilitating culture war between Opposition Leader John Pesutto and Moira Deeming. Deeming, who was expelled from the parliamentary Liberal Party and now sits as a Liberal independent, is suing Pesutto for defamation. This case is about to begin, with all the dirty linen set to be aired.

In South Australia, factionalism has long been endemic , and remains so. The state opposition leader, David Speirs, recently resigned, declaring he’d had “a gutful”, followed by the party’s state director.

Campaigning in Adelaide on Thursday, former prime minister John Howard condemned the factionalism in the party. “It’s true of the South Australian division, it’s true of the New South Wales division. Look, factionalism around policy differences is one thing, but factionalism which is no more than the competition between different preferment co-operatives is bad.”

The Western Australia Liberal organisation is less dysfunctional than its counterparts elsewhere, but heavy defeats there in the last state and federal elections have left the party depleted.

In finally driving intervention in NSW, Dutton is following a path taken by opposition leaders on the Labor side.

In 2020 Anthony Albanese spearheaded a takeover of the Victorian ALP after an expose of branch-stacking. Way back when, Gough Whitlam also forced intervention in Victoria.

For Dutton, winning next year’s election would be against the odds. But so were Tony Abbott’s chances in 2010 – when he came within a whisker of victory. Back then, some Liberals reportedly blamed the under-performance of the NSW party for not delivering the extra seats needed. Dutton doesn’t want to risk living with that regret.

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

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Liberals send in veteran warhorses to deal with party’s hot mess – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-liberals-send-in-veteran-warhorses-to-deal-with-partys-hot-mess-238229

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brooke Nickel, NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, University of Sydney

Celebrity supermodel Elle Macpherson disclosed in an interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly earlier this week that seven years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Media coverage around the world said Elle had rejected some “conventional” treatments for the type of breast cancer she had disclosed, known as HER2-positive oestrogen receptive intraductal carcinoma.

This is not the first time we’ve seen powerful celebrity stories about cancer have the potential to influence the public health narrative. Sometimes these celebrity stories have changed cancer screening and treatment.

For instance, after singer Kylie Minogue announced her breast cancer diagnosis in 2005 there was an unprecedented increase in mammography bookings.

Actor Angelina Jolie’s op-ed in The New York Times in 2013 about her preventative double mastectomy for breast cancer may have inadvertently fuelled overtesting among women not at high risk.

And when actor Ben Stiller announced in 2016 that the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test he had taken in his late 40s had saved his life, this was in contradiction to international screening guidelines. These recommend men under 55 do not use the PSA test because prostate cancer can often be overdiagnosed.

Should we be worried about the latest news?

Organisations, such as Breast Cancer Network Australia, have made public statements, worried that Macpherson’s comments might encourage an approach to treating invasive breast cancers that includes the use of non-evidence-based “wellness” products and interventions.

But media coverage of Macpherson’s situation has largely missed a key piece of information: her breast cancer is not invasive.

The type she disclosed is commonly known as ductal carcinoma in situ or DCIS. This is a cluster of pre-invasive or non-invasive breast cancer cells. It differs from invasive breast cancer in that the lesions are contained and have not spread. This means that treatments for invasive and non-invasive breast cancer differ.

In fact, Macpherson appears to have followed recommended treatment for her cancer. She did have surgery, a lumpectomy to remove the DCIS. Guidelines recommend patients weigh up the possible benefits and risks of the additional treatments that Macpherson said her doctor offered: mastectomy surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and hormone therapy. Together with their treating team, each patient may decide whether any of these additional treatments are right for their individual situation.

There are ongoing research trials looking into who is most likely to benefit from these additional treatments, and who might not need them at all. Therefore, Macpherson’s decision to decline the additional treatments may have been both a reasonable and a conventional decision for a woman with non-invasive breast cancer.

This missing information from the media is also a missed opportunity to discuss less invasive options for the management of DCIS.

The rate of DCIS has increased greatly since the introduction of breast cancer screening. You can detect it on a mammogram but it rarely causes symptoms. Many of these lesions are unlikely to ever cause a problem in a woman’s lifetime. As a result of this some cases of DCIS are considered to be over-diagnosed.

Now options such as active surveillance (closely monitoring but not providing treatment unless the condition progresses) are considered reasonable and are being robustly evaluated in research trials to help reduce overtreatment.

We need to be wary of simplistic narratives about celebrity cancer journeys that don’t necessarily tell the whole story. This should also include scepticism over “wellness” narratives as these can lead to non-evidence-based treatment choices that waste consumers’ money and may cause them harm.

We all need to get better at being appropriately sceptical about health information without losing trust in proven health interventions.

I’m worried about my breast cancer. What should I do?

A breast cancer diagnosis can create a flood of different emotions, and presents a woman with many uncertainties including the effectiveness of treatments, and about their potential side effects and long-term impacts.

Women can ask their health professionals questions about possible management options, including:

• What are my options? One of these options might be to choose less treatment, including an active surveillance approach for low-risk DCIS

• What are the possible benefits and harms of those options?

• How likely are each of those benefits and harms to happen to me?

The Conversation approached Elle Macpherson’s spokesperson to clarify details about her diagnosis and treatment but did not receive a response before publication.

Brooke Nickel receives fellowship funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). She is on the Scientific Committee of the Preventing Overdiagnosis Conference.

Katy Bell receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). She is an Investigator for Wiser Healthcare, an Australian research collaboration that aims to promote better value care for all Australians https://www.wiserhealthcare.org.au/ .

Claire Hooker 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. Elle Macpherson’s breast cancer: when the media reports on celebrity cancer, are we really getting the whole story? – https://theconversation.com/elle-macphersons-breast-cancer-when-the-media-reports-on-celebrity-cancer-are-we-really-getting-the-whole-story-238231

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy L. Winship, Group Leader and Senior Research Fellow, Anatomy and Developmental Biology, Monash University

Roughly one in six people are affected by infertility worldwide.

And with more than half the world’s population now living in urban areas, researchers are interested in whether living in noisy and polluted cities could be to blame.

A new study in Denmark has used nationwide data to explore infertility.

It found long-term exposure to air pollution and traffic noise may be associated with higher infertility – but these factors affect men and women differently.

What do pollution and noise do to the body?

We know traffic pollution has undeniable impacts on the environment. Its negative effects on human health are also well established, with links to cancers and heart disease.

Inhaled chemicals from polluted air may also travel to the reproductive tract via the blood. They can reduce fertility by either disrupting hormones or causing direct damage to eggs and sperm.

Effects of traffic noise on health are less clear, but some research suggests this affects stress hormones, which could alter fertility.

What did they look at?

This new study was conducted in Denmark, which collects data about every resident into multiple national databases over their lifetime, using a unique identification number.

Nationwide data allows researchers to investigate links between a person’s health and factors such as where they live, their job, education history and family. This method is called “data linkage”.

The study aimed to capture people who were likely to be trying to get pregnant, and therefore at risk of receiving an infertility diagnosis.

Over 2 million men and women were identified as being of reproductive age. The study looked at those who were:

• aged 30 – 45
• living together or married
• with less than two children
• living in Denmark between January 1 2000 and December 31 2017.

It excluded anyone who was diagnosed with infertility before age 30, lived alone or in a registered same-sex partnership. People with incomplete information (like a missing address) were also excluded.

There were 377,850 women and 526,056 men who fit these criteria.

The study did not survey them. Instead, over a five-year period it cross-checked detailed information about where they lived and whether they received an infertility diagnosis, collected from the Danish National Patient Register.

Researchers also estimated how much each residential address was exposed to road traffic noise (measured in decibels) and air pollution, or how much fine particulate matter (called PM2.5) is in the air.

What did they find?

Infertility was diagnosed in 16,172 men (out of 526,056) and 22,672 women (out of 377,850).

The study found the risk of infertility was 24% greater for men exposed to PM2.5 levels 1.6 times higher than recommended by the World Health Organization.

For women, exposure to traffic noise at 10.2 decibels higher than average (55-60 decibels) was associated with 14% increased infertility risk for those over 35.

Risks were similar based on residing in urban or rural areas, and when accounting for education and income.

What does it suggest?

The study highlights how environmental exposure can have immediate and long-term effects, and may affect male and female reproduction differently.

After puberty, men constantly produce sperm – up to 300 million a day. The impact of environmental changes on male fertility – such as exposure to toxic pollutants — tends to show up more quickly than in females, affecting sperm number and quality.

In contrast, women are born with all their eggs, and cannot produce new ones. Eggs have some “damage control” mechanisms to protect them from environmental hazards across a lifetime.

This doesn’t mean eggs are not sensitive to damage. However it may take longer than the five years of exposure this study looked at for the impact on women to become clear.

It is possible even longer-term studies could reveal a similar impact for pollution on women.

Is data linkage a good way to look at fertility?

Data linkage can be a powerful tool to uncover links between environmental exposures and health. This allows assessments in large numbers of people, over long periods of time, like this recent Danish study.

But there are inherent limitations to these types of studies. Without surveying individuals or looking at biological factors – like hormone levels and body mass — the research relies on some assumptions.

For example, this study involved some major assumptions about whether or not couples were actually trying to conceive.

It also calculated people’s exposure to noise and air pollution according to their address, assuming they were at home.

A more precise picture could be painted if information was gathered from individuals about their exposure and experiences, including with fertility.

For example, surveys could include factors like sleep disturbance and stress, which can alter hormone responses and impact fertility. Exposure to chemicals that disrupt hormones are also found at home, in everyday household and personal care products.

In its scale, this study is unprecedented and a useful step in exploring the potential link between air pollution, traffic noise and infertility. However more controlled studies – involving actual measures of exposure instead of estimations – would be needed to deepen our understanding of how these factors affect men and women.

Amy Winship receives funding from the Rebecca Cooper Medical Research Foundation, Cancer Council Victoria and Monash University.

Mark Green is an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne and the Deputy Scientific Director Research at Monash IVF. His lab conducts research to identify the negative effects of environmental pollutants, such as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), on fertility.

– ref. A new study has linked traffic noise and pollution to infertility – but the effects differed for men and women – https://theconversation.com/a-new-study-has-linked-traffic-noise-and-pollution-to-infertility-but-the-effects-differed-for-men-and-women-238223

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Davis, Industry Professor of Emerging Technology and Co-Director, Human Technology Institute, University of Technology Sydney

Australia’s federal government has today launched a proposed set of mandatory guardrails for high-risk AI alongside a voluntary safety standard for organisations using AI.

Each of these documents offer ten mutually reinforcing guardrails that set clear expectations for organisations across the AI supply chain. They are relevant for all organisations using AI, including internal systems aimed at boosting employee efficiency and externally-facing systems such as chatbots.

Most of the guardrails relate to things like accountability, transparency, record-keeping and making sure humans are overseeing AI systems in a meaningful way. They are aligned with emerging international standards such as the ISO standard for AI management and the European Union’s AI Act.

The proposals for mandatory requirements for high-risk AI – which are open to public submissions for the next month – recognise that AI systems are special in ways that limit the ability of existing laws to effectively prevent or mitigate a wide range of harms to Australians. While defining precisely what constitutes a high-risk setting is a core part of the consultation, the proposed principle-based approach would likely capture any systems that have a legal effect. Examples might include AI recruitment systems, systems that may limit human rights (including some facial recognition systems), and any systems that can cause physical harm, such as autonomous vehicles.

Well-designed guardrails will improve technology and make us all better off. On this front, the government should accelerate law reform efforts to clarify existing rules and improve both transparency and accountability in the market. At the same time, we don’t need to – nor should we – wait for the government to act.

The AI market is a mess

As it stands, the market for AI products and services is a mess. The central problem is that people don’t know how AI systems work, when they’re using them, and whether the output helps or hurts them.

Take, for example, a company that recently asked my advice on a generative AI service projected to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. It was worried about falling behind competitors and having difficulty choosing between vendors.

Yet, in the first 15 minutes of discussion, the company revealed it had no reliable information around the potential benefit for the business, and no knowledge of existing generative AI use by its teams.

It’s important we get this right. If you believe even a fraction of the hype, AI represents a huge opportunity for Australia. Estimates referenced by the federal government suggest the economic boost from AI and automation could be up to A$600 billion every year by 2030. This would lift our GDP to 25% above 2023 levels.

But all of this is at risk. The evidence is in the alarmingly high failure rates of AI projects (above 80% by some estimates), an array of reckless rollouts, low levels of citizen trust and the prospect of thousands of Robodebt-esque crises across both industry and government.

The information asymmetry problem

A lack of skills and experience among decision-makers is undoubtedly part of the problem. But the rapid pace of innovation in AI is supercharging another challenge: information asymmetry.

Information asymmetry is a simple, Nobel prize-winning economic concept with serious implications for everyone. And it’s a particularly pernicious challenge when it comes to AI.

When buyers and sellers have uneven knowledge about a product or service, it doesn’t just mean one party gains at the other’s expense. It can lead to poor-quality goods dominating the market, and even the market failing entirely.

AI creates information asymmetries in spades. AI models are technical and complex, they are often embedded and hidden inside other systems, and they are increasingly being used to make important choices.

Balancing out these asymmetries should deeply concern all of us. Boards, executives and shareholders want AI investments to pay off. Consumers want systems that work in their interests. And we all want to enjoy the benefits of economic expansion while avoiding the very real harms AI systems can inflict if they fail, or if they are used maliciously or deployed inappropriately.

In the short term, at least, companies selling AI gain a real benefit from restricting information so they can do deals with naïve counterparties. Solving this problem will require more than upskilling. It means using a range of tools and incentives to gather and share accurate, timely and important information about AI systems.

What businesses can do today

Now is the time to act. Businesses across Australia can pick up the Voluntary AI Safety Standard (or the International Standard Organisation’s version) and start gathering and documenting the information they need to make better decisions about AI today.

This will help in two ways. First, it will help businesses to take a structured approach to understanding and governing their own use of AI systems, to ask useful questions to (and demand answers from) their technology partners, and to signal to the market that their AI use is trustworthy.

Second, as more and more businesses adopt the standard, Australian and international vendors and deployers will feel market pressure to ensure their products and services are fit for purpose. In turn, it will become cheaper and easier for all of us to know whether the AI system we’re buying, relying on or being judged by actually serves our needs.

Clearing a path

Australian consumers and businesses both want AI to be safe and responsible. But we urgently need to close the huge gap that exists between aspiration and practice.

The National AI Centre’s Responsible AI index shows that while 78% of organisations believed they were developing and deploying AI systems responsibly, only 29% of organisations were applying actual practices towards this end.

Safe and responsible AI is where good governance meets good business practice and human-centred technology. In the bigger picture, it’s also about ensuring that innovation thrives in a well-functioning market. On both these fronts, standards can help us clear a path through the clutter.

Nicholas Davis is Co-Director of the UTS Human Technology Institute, which receives funding from its advisory partners (Atlassian, Gilbert+Tobin and KPMG Australia), its philanthropic partners (including the Paul Ramsay Institute and the Minderoo Institute) and from the Federal Government.

– ref. How Australia’s new AI ‘guardrails’ can clean up the messy market for artificial intelligence – https://theconversation.com/how-australias-new-ai-guardrails-can-clean-up-the-messy-market-for-artificial-intelligence-238307

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Rose, Honorary Lecturer, University of Adelaide

Next week, Timor-Leste will welcome Pope Francis, its first papal visit in 35 years. Aside from being an enormous event in this deeply Catholic country, the two-day visit also has resonance in terms of its recent history.

In 1989, John Paul II’s visit to Timor-Leste (then occupied by Indonesia) gave hope to a beleaguered people who had been brutalised by their Indonesian rulers, repeatedly betrayed by Australia, and written off by many others.

Welcoming Francis to a free and independent Timor-Leste is the realisation of what once seemed an impossible dream.

To say this is a cause for excitement is an understatement. But while officials and the foreign media will likely frame the visit by looking back at Timor-Leste’s independence struggle, younger Timorese citizens are more concerned with social justice in their fledgling democracy and solidarity with other liberation movements around the world.

Anxiety and anticipation

In Timor-Leste’s capital, Dili, the mood over the past week has been a mix of anxiety and joyful anticipation.

While people wait impatiently for the arrival of the man they call Amu Papa, there has also been disquiet – if not disgust – over actions taken by the state, ostensibly to prepare for his visit.

This week, the detentions of an activist and journalist, an assault on street vendors by security forces, and the eviction of families from the site of the papal mass have all caused considerable anger.

While few would say Amu Papa isn’t welcome (or even particularly begrudge the chaos caused as the government prepares for an expected crowd of 700,000), his visit has become a flashpoint for heated disagreements over how best to welcome him.

For Timor-Leste’s leaders (largely the same men in control since 2002), the pope’s visit is a chance to show the country has arrived. Clean streets, a new venue with a specially built altar (part of the US$12 million (A$17.8 million) the government allocated for the visit), and crowds that don’t mix prayer and politics are key to the image they want to project.

Timor-Leste’s activists, meanwhile, have a different idea of what patriotism means. For them, this is an opportunity to shine a light not just on their nation’s achievements, but also on its continuing struggles for social and economic justice, including, notably, for victims of clerical abuse.

They also want to use the occasion to express solidarity with the West Papua independence movement and the Palestinian cause.

Earlier this week, a human rights activist, Nelson Roldão, was detained at gunpoint at Dili’s airport by police after dropping off a West Papuan guest. Police seized a bag containing a West Papuan flag, two banners, books and a laptop. After being interrogated, he was released, although the West Papuan materials were not returned.

While displaying the Morning Star flag is illegal in Indonesia, it is not in Timor-Leste. The West Papuan cause understandably enjoys widespread support from the people here (although less from politicians).

Whatever this incident suggests about the nature of Indonesian influence in Timor-Leste, it is clear the local authorities do not want the pope’s visit to be a platform for Dili’s activists to promote their own concerns.

National symbols evoke powerful emotions in Timor-Leste and the surrounding islands.

During the pope’s visit in 1989, a pro-independence banner was unfurled near the altar at the end of the mass. This provoked a brutal response from security forces, but did succeed in bringing the cause of East Timorese independence to a global audience.

The parallels with today, where once again young activists are being told political symbols will not be tolerated at the papal mass, are lost on no one.

In another worrying development on Tuesday night, state security officers were filmed brutally clearing a group itinerant vendors who were selling vegetables from carts in the suburb of Kampung Baru. Shaky mobile phone footage shows a chaotic scene as uniformed men (including one armed with a stick) kicked and tipped over carts and pushed people away as terrified children screamed and cried.

The men also reportedly threatened a journalist covering the incident and took another to the local police station before releasing her.

Sending the right image to the world

Timor-Leste is proud of being rated as the strongest democracy in Southeast Asia. As the eyes of the world focus on the small country, this is a chance to show what that means.

The pontiff is known to care deeply about poverty, human rights and the environment. If a West Papuan, Palestinian or gay pride flag is unfurled at his mass next week, a tolerant response from security officials will surely only increase his admiration for what Timor-Leste has become. Violence like we have seen this week, however, will do the opposite.

Timor-Leste’s leaders need to take stock of the incidents this week, how it makes them look, and how they can be avoided in future. An approach that empathises tolerance (and trust) in their remarkable people during the pope’s visit is better than one focused on maintaining tight control.

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. With pope’s visit, Timor-Leste must shine a light on its democratic ideals – not intolerance for dissent – https://theconversation.com/with-popes-visit-timor-leste-must-shine-a-light-on-its-democratic-ideals-not-intolerance-for-dissent-238204