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

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt Hayward, Professor of Conservation Science, University of Newcastle

The dire state of biodiversity across the globe suggests not all governments are willing to act decisively to protect nature. Why is that the case, and is a country’s political ideology a factor?

Political ideology is a set of beliefs used as the fundamental basis for political decisions. Each country sits somewhere along a spectrum that spans conservative, nationalist and socialist ideologies (among others). This may vary, based on what party is in power at the time.

Our latest paper studied the political ideology of the government in 165 nations. We then examined the country’s threatened species numbers and its “protected estate” – land set aside for national parks and reserves.

We found conservative ideology increases the likelihood of having more protected areas. Socialist and nationalist ideologies increase the number of threatened animals. This suggests political ideologies on either the left or right may affect biodiversity.

Politics playing out in decision-making

The political ideology of a government influences its actions in different ways.

Conservative ideology promotes the value of traditional institutions and practices. It is strongly linked to capitalism and letting market forces operate freely. Under this way of thinking, nature is largely valued in economic terms.

A conservative government may promote protected areas for their economic value – because these create opportunities for money-making ventures such as ecotourism or biodiversity offsetting schemes.

Payments for ecosystem services have flourished in socially conservative countries such as Brazil.

Socialist ideology advocates that property and resources should be owned by the community as a whole. Socialist governments are more likely to take a human-centred approach, emphasising the value of nature to people. This may include cultural value, human health benefits and intergenerational equity.

But socialist governments often improve the conditions of their people through industrial development and heavy use of natural resources. This might explain why these countries tend to have high numbers of threatened species. They also face challenges in establishing and maintaining effective protected areas.

Nationalist ideology involves support for one’s own nation and its interests. It connects to nature by linking individual species and places with national identity and territorial security.

Nationalism often emphasises individuals and autonomy. The United States is considered strongly nationalist. For example, it rejected the UN Convention on Biological Diversity because it did not meet with its national objectives.

Global environmental issues often require diplomatic and economic cooperation between nations through sharing responsibility, knowledge and resources. So nationalist governments may be less likely to participate in cross-border conservation actions such as Peace Parks.

With all this in mind, we wanted to know whether a nation’s political ideology and biodiversity outcomes were linked.

What we did

First, we examined the total number of threatened animals per country, compared with the overall number of animals. Next, we checked what proportion of a country’s land and inland water was protected.

Then we classified the ideology of national governments as either nationalist, conservative or socialist. We chose to focus on these three ideologies in keeping with the literature from previous research. Recognising that government decisions typically take about 15 years to flow through to environmental outcomes, we took data on national governments from 2005–09.

The ideologies followed by any given nation are not mutually exclusive – one country can have elements of them all. The information in the ideology database is based on the opinions of several experts. Their opinions can differ. So our models included results for all three ideologies at once.

Australia, for example, scored higher for conservatism and nationalism than socialism. China, on the other hand, was strongly socialist, slightly nationalist, and not conservative at all.

We also considered other important factors such as how strongly a country was viewed as democratic, the degree of inequality, and size of the economy.

Finally, we ran a series of computer models. One, on threatened animals, measured the physical threat to biodiversity. The other, on protected areas, measured national commitment to reducing biodiversity loss.

What we found

Nationalist

We found the number of threatened species increases in countries where nationalism is prevalent – but, surprisingly, protected areas were unaffected. New Zealand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka are considered strongly nationalistic.

Marketing conservation to nationalist governments and societies might focus on the importance of national natural heritage values. For example, the US is proud of its bald eagle, while New Zealand is synonymous with kiwis.

National sporting teams often take on the names of iconic wildlife, such as the Australian Wallabies or the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon.

Socialist

Prominent socialist ideology was related to significantly more threatened species, and slightly more protected area. China and Belarus, for example, were classed as socialist. So their protected area networks suffer from problems historically levelled at socialist regimes, such as poor planning and enforcement, which often leads to less than ideal conservation outcomes.

Conservative

Conservative ideology was the most strongly associated with increased protected area estate. However, the numbers of threatened species also increased under these governments.

In our study, Australia’s political ideology was mixed but scored higher for conservatism and nationalism compared with socialism. So we found Australia’s approach to conservation actions tends to sit in the centre of available options. The proportion of threatened species is still high (more than 12% of Australia’s species are threatened).

In Australia, shades of nationalism can be seen in promoting individual iconic species such as koalas. And conservatism in the use of offsetting to “balance” the impacts of developments.

What this means

Our work builds on previous research that found fair and transparent governance, inequality between rich and poor, and the strength of a country’s democracy are important in explaining conservation success.

Indeed, our research also found stronger democracies, where elections are widely viewed as free and transparent, had more protected areas. But as we outline above, national political ideology also has an influence. By understanding this, we hope conservation advocates can tailor their messages to target the value systems of a government to improve conservation outcomes.

Matt Hayward receives funding from the Australian Research Council, New South Wales Environment Trust, Illawarra Coal Pty Ltd, BHP Pty Ltd and a variety of philanthropists.

Andrea S. Griffin receives funding from the Australian Research Council, The New South Wales Environmental Trust, Local Land Services, New South Wales Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water Saving Our Species Program (Science and Research), Port Waratah Coal Services, a range of philanthropists, and a range of Biodiversity Conservation NGOs. She is affiliated with the Australian World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Jacob Jones is supported by a Research Training Program Scholarship provided by the Australian Government. Jacob is also supported by a philanthropic donation made to the University of Newcastle.

– ref. Conservative governments protect more land while socialists and nationalists threaten more species – https://theconversation.com/conservative-governments-protect-more-land-while-socialists-and-nationalists-threaten-more-species-236519

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lyrian Daniel, Associate Professor in Architecture, University of South Australia

Imagine coming home after a long day at work. It is winter. You step inside your home. It is warm, quiet and dry.

A storm is forecast to blow in tonight. Unprecedented rainfall, they are saying. But you are not worried. You know your house will stay warm, and the roof and gutters will cope with the fourth “once-in-100-year” rainfall event this season.

Come summer, too, you know your house will stay cool, even through any blackouts.

Since moving into your new home, you no longer have to worry about the next electricity bill. Your house is designed well, so it takes very little energy to keep warm in winter and cool in summer.

The house also never gets that musty, mouldy smell. Your child’s asthma has improved greatly. Your own mental wellbeing is better and your risk of heart and blood vessel disease is low.

Imagine if all Australian homes were fit for purpose: healthy, affordable to run and climate-resilient. This is the housing we need, but for many it is not the housing we have, nor is it the housing we are building.

Our new research casts a critical eye across the quality and condition of the Australian housing stock and the policies that govern it. The results were stark. We don’t have much information on the state of our housing stock, but what we do have paints a worrying picture.

‘Patchy’ data, but we know enough to be concerned

Australians hold about A$11 trillion of their wealth in their housing. While we’re very good at calculating our housing’s value, we don’t know much at all about what our 11 million dwellings are like to live in. Data to describe the warmth, energy efficiency and healthiness of Australian homes are best described as patchy.

If we look across this patchwork of information, though, there is a lot to be concerned about. For example, we find:

• a large gap between the energy efficiency of new and existing homes

• older homes are in poorer condition than newer homes

• older homes are more likely to be cold homes.

Australia is lagging on the policy front

We reviewed energy efficiency policies from across Australia. We then compared the findings with an International Energy Agency framework for energy-efficient buildings. Australian policies fall short in terms of regulation, information and incentives, with a reliance on voluntary rather than mandatory measures.

New buildings and major renovations are regulated under the National Construction Code (NCC). In 2022, the code was updated to include a 7-star energy-efficiency rating, lower than the 9-star rating experts recommended. We know building codes and mandatory energy-efficiency standards are effective for improving energy performance, saving on energy costs and battling climate change.

While the NCC is a national code, it is enacted by states and territories. They agreed to the updated code of 2022. But adoption of the new standards has been slow.

Tasmania and the Northern Territory have decided not to adopt the energy-efficiency standards. New South Wales and Western Australia are not adopting the Liveable Housing Design standard that was included in the code in 2022.

There is a national plan for improving existing buildings to achieve net zero emissions. However, policymakers recognise that current policy settings are not sufficient to achieve net zero.

Essential policies, such as mandatory disclosure of the energy performance of homes and minimum standards for rental properties, have not been widely adopted.

Information and incentives for improving existing buildings are mostly voluntary. The ACT is the only state or territory that requires disclosure of energy-efficiency ratings. Rebates for things like solar panels differ in different parts of Australia and change over time.

Change is political, but not impossible

With Australia so far behind, we sought to understand how and why political change occurs. Or doesn’t. We drew lessons from two case studies discussed in our report.

The first looked at the adoption of the Liveable Housing Design Standard. It took over a decade for the standard to progress from a voluntary measure to inclusion in the 2022 National Construction Code.

The case study revealed the influence of the property lobby in hampering the adoption of the standard. At a broader scale, many experts we spoke with for the research noted the high political stakes of intervening in housing policy.

The second case study reflected on the powerful role of a decades-long program of empirical research and strong narratives for change in realising Healthy Homes Standards for rental properties in Aotearoa New Zealand. It also showed the importance of a reformist government and minister that were able to leverage the research evidence to enact change.

Australia needs to move, quickly and with big steps

On the global stage, Australia is lagging in both its recognition of adequate housing as a human right and its commitment to action on climate change.

We so desperately need national leadership. A national vision. And a national plan to achieve the housing we need, for all Australians.

To learn more, you can register for the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute’s October 1 webinar, Sub Standard – Lifting Australian building quality.

Lyrian Daniel receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI).

Emma Baker receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI).

Ian Hamilton receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI).

Michaela Lang receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI). Michaela’s PhD was part-funded by the Victorian government.

Peter Phibbs receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI).

– ref. How to get the housing we need: healthy, affordable and resilient to climate change – https://theconversation.com/how-to-get-the-housing-we-need-healthy-affordable-and-resilient-to-climate-change-238205

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Bowell, Lecturer, Swinburne University of Technology

The 2024 AFLW season kicked off last week, continuing the growth of a variety of sports that were once considered only for men.

This growth has resulted in more women athletes entering elite sporting structures for the first time.

However, these environments are often designed for men.

AFLW footballers, for example, are asked to train and prepare like their AFL peers, including tracking their physical activities through digital performance monitoring.

This can be problematic, because most women athletes are still semi-professional, balancing their sporting commitments with work or caregiving responsibilities.

This prompted us to research AFLW players’ comfort with digital performance tracking.

We found many were uncomfortable with some or many aspects of clubs’ digital performance monitoring programs, which can impact tracking effectiveness while adversely affecting the players.

Technology and elite sport

Digital performance monitoring, like GPS tracking, is now widely used in most elite sports.

GPS tracking can monitor athletes’ movement, speed, acceleration and effort during training and in games.

Sporting teams use this data to compare and contrast athlete performances while managing workloads in the hope of preventing injury.

GPS tracking guides training schedules, is used for performance measuring and is used for medical information to manage or prevent injuries.

In the AFLW, all players wear a GPS monitor during training sessions and games.

These data are then shared among the team – a sport scientist or coach will often display the data in the changerooms or share it through collective messaging groups.

They will then often rank the footballers’ metrics from fastest to slowest or the most to the fewest kilometres run.

This can create a highly competitive atmosphere that can be confronting for athletes who are new to elite sporting environments.

The data are also seen as objective and unquestionable — no asterisks are attached to a player, for example, who had worked a 12-hour shift before training, which affected their outputs.

AFLW: emerging history and semi-professionalism

The AFLW is the elite women’s Australian rules football competition.

Founded in 2017 with eight clubs, it expanded to 18 teams in 2022.

There is a mix of athletes playing in the AFLW.

Most come from junior development pathways. Some, though, are elite athletes from other sports, like Fremantle’s Ash Brazill, who represented Australia in netball.

Most AFLW footballers are considered semi-professional. This means they need to balance work, study, caregiving or other responsibilities with their sporting careers.

In 2023, the average AFLW footballer’s wage was around $60,000 yearly, well below Australian average incomes.

So most AFLW players need to continue working while playing football.

Another complexity is that most AFLW footballers receive short half-year contracts and have few job prospects within the sport beyond their playing careers.

While AFLW clubs operate in conjunction with the men’s program, and the players have access to similar elite facilities, there is a lack of infrastructural support for the players, such as full-time access to coaches, their clubs, sport scientists, or dietitians.

The footballers are expected to perform as elite athletes, yet they face semi-professional conditions such as limited access, support and compensation.

These conditions led us to see if this affected how AFLW footballers used and experienced digital performance monitoring and whether being semi-professional athletes affected their willingness to engage in digital performance monitoring and the data produced.

What our research revealed

We discovered many AFLW footballers find digital performance monitoring a complicated and confusing practice that reminds them they are outsiders to the game of Australian rules.

Several factors affect a player’s tracking data. These include personal situations such as caregiving or working responsibilities, lack of sleep, menstruation, and how the wearable device fits — a particular issue when devices are often designed for male body types.

However, when the athlete reads these data, it is void of these subjectivities and presented objectively — “you just didn’t run fast enough” — often negatively impacting the athlete’s sporting experiences.

This highlights ongoing issues for women athletes entering emerging sporting environments like the AFLW.

In short, the players are expected to perform as elite athletes, but their realities as semi-professional athletes are not considered.

A guide for teams

Our study has underscored a critical reality: semi-professional women athletes’ engagement with digital performance monitoring is inherently subjective and complex.

Player-centred policies for digital performance monitoring are crucial.

We suggest clubs look to improve in this area with five key focuses:

1. communication of purpose, with encouraged, open two-way dialogue, allowing athletes to receive and seek timely feedback

2. offer a clear understanding of what is tracked, why, and how that data is used and not used

3. performance monitoring should be proportional, meeting the club’s, and player’s, needs

4. transparent data-sharing practices, which consider and include the subjective factors unique to semi-professional athletes

5. increased wearability: ensuring gender-appropriate wearables that fit a variety of body shapes are available to all athletes.

A player-centred framework can help AFLW clubs maximise their sizeable investment in digital performance monitoring by offering each footballer the best possible chance of reaching their full physical potential.

More importantly, semi-professional women athletes will be empowered to not only participate but thrive in elite sporting competitions.

Emma Sherry receives funding from a variety of sport organisations for funded research projects.

Ekaterina Pechenkina, Paul Bowell, and Paul Scifleet 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. GPS tracking is everywhere in pro sports but many AFLW players are uncomfortable with it – https://theconversation.com/gps-tracking-is-everywhere-in-pro-sports-but-many-aflw-players-are-uncomfortable-with-it-237475

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

Meta, which owns social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, has revealed its plans for keeping kids safe online. It wants companies like Apple and Google, who run mobile phone app stores, to force parents to approve when their children attempt to install phone apps which are popular among young people.

Meta’s announcement comes just months after Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, gave these major tech companies a six-month deadline to develop codes for protecting kids and teens from online harms.

Following Meta’s announcement, Apple responded by saying Meta is shirking its online safety responsibilities.

This is a time when the major tech platforms should be working together to improve online safety. Instead, they seem to be engaged in a game of hot potato, with each insisting the other is in the best position to protect children online.

The reality is that the eSafety Commissioner has presented the online platforms with an opportunity and a mandate to cooperate on online safety. Doing so could yield tangible benefits for children, teens and parents alike. But Meta’s announcement – and Apple’s response – suggests major tech companies might squander this crucial opportunity.

What is Meta’s proposal?

The potential online harms to children and teenagers are well known to many parents.

The eSafety Commissioner’s own research says that, on average, children first encounter pornography online at the age of 13. The Australian government announced earlier this year it was trialling “age assurance” technology to prevent children accessing online porn.

Both the government and the opposition have said that, in principle, they are in favour of banning children under 16 from social media.

Under Meta’s proposal, children under 16 would be unable to install apps on their mobile phones without a parent first approving.

Both Apple iPhones and Google Android phones already provide functionality for parents to be required to approve app installs by their children.

One way Meta’s proposal might work in practice is that when a phone is set up for someone under 16, these kinds of features would be mandatory rather than optional.

Is it a good idea?

Meta’s proposal acknowledges the reality that it is much better to check somebody’s age once, when a phone is first set up, rather than having to rely on fallible age verification technology each time a child or teenager attempts to install an app or visit a website.

It also reflects the wisdom that kids would be safer online if the mobile phone platform providers like Apple and Google implemented comprehensive child safety features across their devices.

However, it also places the primary responsibility for online safety onto Apple and Google.

Apple is right to note that, by doing so, Meta is abrogating its own responsibilities to its users. While companies like Meta already implement some child safety features in apps like Instagram, there is much more that could be done.

A better alternative

Instead of arguing with each other, Meta, and companies behind other popular apps like Snapchat and TikTok, should work together with Apple and Google to implement holistic child safety features.

When a parent approves their child’s request to install Instagram or Snapchat, the mobile phone platform should inform the app that the device is used by an underage person. The app should in turn make use of that information to prioritise the safety of the phone’s user.

That could include turning on safety features automatically (and requiring parental approval to turn them off). It could also include additional safety features, such as blurring or refusing to display images that appear to contain nudity, displaying a warning to the user when such images are received or sent, or even alerting the parent.

The devil will of course be in the detail – which of these features to make mandatory, which to enable by default, and which to require parental approval to disable.

There is also no reason these kinds of features should be limited to social media apps.

Web browsers like Google Chrome and Apple Safari should also integrate with on-device child safety features and controls, which could include blocking access to porn sites.

The best approach would be for Apple and Google to work together with the major app vendors including Meta to develop a standard for platform safety features, with a common programming interface for apps to use those features.

Government policy could set minimum standards for which safety features should be provided by Google’s and Apple’s platforms, as well as how those features need to be used by app providers. Those standards could in turn be enforced on the app providers by the major app stores, which already vet apps for safety and security before they are allowed to be listed.

Doing so will of course require a lot of cooperation. But instead of cooperating, the major tech companies seem more interested at the moment in passing the hot potato.

Toby Murray receives funding from Google. He is also the Director of the Defence Science Institute.

– ref. Meta has a new plan to keep kids safe online, but it’s a missed opportunity for tech giants to work together – https://theconversation.com/meta-has-a-new-plan-to-keep-kids-safe-online-but-its-a-missed-opportunity-for-tech-giants-to-work-together-238224

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caroline Shaw, Associate Professor in Public Health, University of Otago

With walking and cycling funding halved in the government’s recently released National Land Transport Programme, and a weaker transport emissions reduction plan, the potential health benefits of a low-carbon transport system have hit a real speed bump.

This is a pity, because one of the great promises of low-carbon transport is the health improvements that can accompany certain policy choices. Health is tangible, while decarbonisation policy is often complex and highly technical. People care deeply about health, both physical and mental.

However, we are now faced with climate and transport policy options that will have radically different implications for health.

To explore this, we looked at two distinct future transport pathways described by the Climate Change Commission. We found the choices New Zealand makes now will be crucial to improving people’s lives in the near future.

Transport and health

We already know transport systems cause a lot of disease and harm from air and noise pollution, physical inactivity and injury. Cancer, asthma, heart disease, premature birth, depression and dementia have all been linked to the effects of transport emissions.

It is hard to precisely quantify the health impacts of New Zealand’s current transport system. But we know it has a greater effect than tobacco, causes thousands of premature deaths each year and adds avoidable burdens to strained health services.

These impacts do not fall equally on different parts of the population. People with low incomes, for example, are more likely to die from road traffic injury. We also know those who drive the most (and have the most environmental impact) tend to experience the least adverse transport-related health outcomes.

Reducing transport emissions involves a series of choices about how we decarbonise. For example, we can emphasise vehicle electrification, change urban design, or pursue combinations of both.

To explore the health implications of this, our new research quantifies two possible transport pathways outlined in the Climate Change Commission’s 2021 advice to the government, Ināia tonu nei: a low emissions future for Aotearoa.

Behaviour and technology

Focusing on population health, health system costs, health inequity and transport greenhouse gas emissions, we modelled household travel under the two most distinct pathways out to 2050. We then compared these to the current transport system (as of 2018).

The two pathways – “further behaviour change” and “further technology change” – both rely on increasing public transport and reducing vehicle travel per person by 2050. The behaviour pathway achieves the most in those areas and includes a large increase in cycling.

Both pathways require a transition to electric cars, but the technology pathway gets to a 100% electric light fleet by 2050 compared to 89% in the behaviour pathway.

Compared to the 2018 transport system, we found both pathways would save lives, reduce health system costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the health gains were around two-and-half times greater in the behaviour pathway than the technology pathway (health savings were three times larger).

This was primarily because of the increased physical activity in this pathway. Lifecycle emissions reductions (for example, from the manufacture and destruction of a car, as well as driving it) were quite similar between the two pathways.

Similar impacts to tobacco reduction

We also modelled how the pathways would affect existing health inequities. We found the behaviour pathway could contribute to reducing healthy life expectancy differences between Māori and non-Māori.

This depended on how policies are implemented: the fairer the transport system, the better it is for health equity.

The potential health benefits of the behaviour pathway are of the same magnitude as those seen from tobacco market interventions such as a 10% tax increase and creation of a smoke-free generation.

These results are quite conservative, too. The Climate Change Commission assumed only minimal changes in walking. But the policies needed to deliver this pathway are all likely to increase walking substantially. And even the policies needed to achieve the technology pathway would increase walking.

Moreover, our health model itself is conservative. For example, we know the positive impacts of the behaviour pathway on mental health would be considerably larger than we were able to model.

Health and fairness

These findings also relate to the government’s emissions reduction plans, which were published after the Climate Change Commission delivered its advice.

The behaviour change pathway is similar to the approach taken in the first emissions reduction plan from 2022, so we can assume there would be comparable health impacts. In contrast, the approach in the draft second emissions reduction plan, published this year, is radically different.

This newer plan focuses on the emissions trading scheme (a pricing tool), increasing electric car charging infrastructure, and a few public transport projects (mainly in Auckland).

These policies are unlikely to have much impact on land transport emissions. Nor will they achieve the health benefits of even the technology pathway. Other transport policies – speed limit increases, expanded road building and weaker vehicle emissions standards – will likely counteract any potential benefits from the second emissions reduction plan, as well as make health worse.

This research illustrates how the way we choose to decarbonise transport is important. It adds to other local research showing that moving to a “planet-friendly” diet would result in large health, health equity and climate benefits.

Collectively these studies demonstrate how we can decarbonise in ways that meaningfully improve lives. And we can build support for climate policy by focusing on the things people truly value, such as health and fairness.

The author gratefully acknowledges her fellow researchers and co-authors on this project: Anja Mizdrak, Ryan Gage and Melissa McLeod, University of Otago; Rhys Jones and Alistair Woodward, University of Auckland; and Linda Cobiac, Griffith University.

Caroline Shaw received funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand for this work, which was also supported by the University of Otago.

– ref. Healthier, happier, fairer: new research shows major life benefits from decarbonising transport – https://theconversation.com/healthier-happier-fairer-new-research-shows-major-life-benefits-from-decarbonising-transport-237660

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stacy Carter, Professor and Director, Australian Centre for Health Engagement, Evidence and Values, University of Wollongong

Imagine this. You’ve finally summoned up the courage to see a GP about an embarrassing problem. You sit down. The GP says:

before we start, I’m using my computer to record my appointments. It’s AI – it will write a summary for the notes and a letter to the specialist. Is that OK?

Wait – AI writing our medical records? Why would we want that?

Records are essential for safe and effective health care. Clinicians must make good records to keep their registration. Health services must provide good record systems to be accredited. Records are also legal documents: they can be important in insurance claims or legal actions.

But writing stuff down (or dictating notes or letters) takes time. During appointments, clinicians can have their attention divided between good record-keeping and good communication with the patient. Sometimes clinicians need to work on records after hours, at the end of an already-long day.

So there’s understandable excitement, from all kinds of health-care professionals, about “ambient AI” or “digital scribes”.

What are digital scribes?

This is not old-school transcription software: dictate letter, software types it up word for word.

Digital scribes are different. They use AI – large language models with generative capabilities – similar to ChatGPT (or sometimes, GPT4 itself).

The application silently records the conversation between a clinician and a patient (via a phone, tablet or computer microphone, or a dedicated sensitive microphone). The AI converts the recording to a word-for-word transcript.

The AI system then uses the transcript, and the instructions it is given, to write a clinical note and/or letters for other doctors, ready for the clinician to check.

Most clinicians know little about these technologies: they are experts in their speciality, not in AI. The marketing materials promise to “let AI take care of your clinical notes so you can spend more time with your patients.”

Put yourself in the clinician’s shoes. You might say “yes please!”

How are they regulated?

Recently, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency released a code of practice for using digital scribes. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners released a fact sheet. Both warn clinicians that they remain responsible for the contents of their medical records.

Some AI applications are regulated as medical devices, but many digital scribes are not. So it’s often up to health services or clinicians to work out whether scribes are safe and effective.

What does the research say so far?

There’s very limited data or real world evidence on the performance of digital scribes.

In a big Californian hospital system, researchers followed 9,000 doctors for ten weeks in a pilot test of a digital scribe.

Some doctors liked the scribe: their work hours decreased, they communicated better with patients. Others didn’t even start using the scribe.

And the scribe made mistakes – for example, recording the wrong diagnosis, or recording that a test had been done, when it needed to be done.

So what should we do about digital scribes?

The recommendations of the first Australian National Citizens’ Jury on AI in Health Care show what Australians want from health care AI, and provide a great starting point.

Building on those recommendations, here are some things to keep in mind about digital scribes the next time you head to the clinic or emergency department:

1) You should be told if a digital scribe is being used.

2) Only scribes designed for health care should be used in health care. Regular, publicly available generative AI tools (like ChatGPT or Google Gemini) should not be used in clinical care.

3) You should be able to consent, or refuse consent, for use of a digital scribe. You should have any relevant risks explained, and be able to agree or refuse freely.

4) Clinical digital scribes must meet strict privacy standards. You have a right to privacy and confidentiality in your health care. The whole transcript of an appointment may contain a lot more detail than a clinical note usually would. So ask:

• are the transcripts and summaries of your appointments processed in Australia, or another country?
• how are they kept secure and private (for example, are they encrypted)?
• who can access them?
• how are they used (for example, are they used to train AI systems)?
• does the scribe access other data from your record to make the summary? If so, is that data ever shared?

Is human oversight enough?

Generative AI systems can make things up, get things wrong, or misunderstand some patient’s accents. But they will often communicate these errors in a way that sounds very convincing. This means careful human checking is crucial.

Doctors are told by tech and insurance companies that they must check every summary or letter (and they must). But it’s not that simple. Busy clinicians might become over-reliant on the scribe and just accept the summaries. Tired or inexperienced clinicians might think their memory must be wrong, and the AI must be right (known as automation bias).

Some have suggested these scribes should also be able to create summaries for patients. We don’t own our own health records, but we usually have a right to access them. Knowing a digital scribe is in use may increase consumers’ motivation to see what is in their health record.

Clinicians have always written notes about our embarrassing problems, and have always been responsible for these notes. The privacy, security, confidentiality and quality of these records have always been important.

Maybe one day, digital scribes will mean better records and better interactions with our clinicians. But right now, we need good evidence that these tools can deliver in real-world clinics, without compromising quality, safety or ethics.

Stacy Carter has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Medical Research Future Fund, and National Breast Cancer Research Foundation for research on AI in healthcare, has received travel support to speak at conferences about consumer views on AI in health care, and has worked with the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare, consumer organisations and medical professional organisations on AI governance in health care.

Farah Magrabi receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Digital Health Collaborative Research Centre and Macquarie University; has worked with the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care on ensuring the clinical safety of digital health and AI enabled services. She is Co-Chair of the Australian Alliance for AI in Healthcare’s Safety, Quality and Ethics Working Group; an Advisor to the Australian Digital Health Agency; and serves on the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s Technical Reference group for Software as a Medical Device and AI.

Yves Saint James Aquino receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. He is a member of the Australian Alliance for AI in Healthcare. He has worked with the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare on projects related to AI ethics and governance.

– ref. Some clinicians are using AI to write health records. What do you need to know? – https://theconversation.com/some-clinicians-are-using-ai-to-write-health-records-what-do-you-need-to-know-237762

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Jotzo, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy and Head of Energy, Institute for Climate Energy and Disaster Solutions, Australian National University

A zero-carbon mindset must “become the new normal” in Australia, according to a much-anticipated report from the federal government’s independent climate advisory body.

The report, released today by the Climate Change Authority, describes how Australia can meet the crucial target of net-zero emissions by 2050.

The authority does not attempt to solve the conundrum of how to broaden and strengthen Australia’s climate policy suite. But it shows in detail how a low-emissions economy can be achieved. It urges Australian governments, businesses and the community to get on with the decarbonisation task. It can help infuse policy ambition for governments and set expectations for investors and the public.

As the report makes clear, a huge national effort is needed. Mature technologies should be quickly deployed while emerging technologies develop further. Barriers must be overcome and opportunities seized. The net-zero goal should become front of mind for business, investors and governments.

Pathways to net-zero

The authority’s report is formally known as the sector pathways review. It was undertaken at the request of the federal parliament.

Australia has committed to reducing carbon emissions to net zero. This report is the most important analysis to date on how the country might get there.

The authority’s analysis is comprehensive, fine-grained and deeply researched. It shows how net zero would be achieved through action in Australia, rather than assuming we might cover the shortfall by buying international emissions credits.

It relies on available and achievable technologies, rather than unspecified future solutions. As the authority makes clear, “Waiting for new, better, cheaper technologies is tantamount to choosing to continue to emit.”

Both points are in contrast to the net-zero plan by the previous government, and earlier work by the authority, among others.

The report uses modelling the authority commissioned from Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO. The modelling examined two scenarios, one arriving at net zero in 2050, the other in 2040. It also includes an assessment of possible residual emissions at 2050, derived from detailed separate analysis.

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Sector snapshots

The report splits the economy into six sectors, taking the same approach as the federal government’s own net-zero plan currently being developed.

It paints a picture of a modern, prosperous Australian economy by mid-century. In brief, sector by sector:

1. Electricity and energy

Electricity supply will be decarbonised through wind and solar power coupled with energy storage, and greatly scaled up to electrify the whole economy.

All scenarios have electricity emissions falling to near zero. This is now regarded as a near certainty in expert circles. The shift from coal to renewables is already happening fast, driven by the exit of old coal plants and the low cost of solar and wind power, supported by policy.

2. Transport

Transport decarbonisation is a story of electric vehicles, more rail and public transport in a shift away from private cars, and also the prospect of carbon-neutral fuels.

The transition will naturally be gradual, limited by vehicle stock turnover rates, timelines for building infrastructure, and increasing transport demand. But the authority envisages deep cuts by the 2040s.

3. Industry and waste

Stripping emissions from industry relies on electrification and new technologies.

Heavy industry emissions have not been declining. But the federal government’s safeguard mechanism, which targets Australia’s biggest emitters, is starting to work. In addition, low-emissions technologies are developing and maturing.

Nevertheless, the authority’s scenarios show notable remaining emissions from industry. The key is for governments to provide strong commercial incentives to cut emissions – such as those evolving under the safeguard mechanism – and for industry to avoid building new high-emitting facilities.

4. Agriculture and land

Together, land and agriculture are projected to go below zero emissions well before 2050, as vegetation cover and forests are expanded. This would lead to the takeup of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in vegetation, outweighing remaining emissions from livestock and cropping.

Overall, land use change and forestry has turned from a large combined source of emissions to a “sink” (or carbon absorber) over the past 20 years. This accounts for most reductions in national emissions over the past two decades.

Continuing and accelerating this trend is a huge opportunity. It will require potentially tough decisions on land use, such as converting grazing land back to natural vegetation. It will also require changing farming practices, and new technologies in areas such as reducing livestock emissions.

5. Resources

The authority considers the resources sector, including mining and gas extraction and processing, as being on a steady path to near-zero emissions, including through electrification of mining and gas processing, and carbon capture and storage.

The analysis does not include the emissions of Australia’s fossil fuel exports, because they are burned overseas.

Likewise, contributions that Australia can make to decarbonisation elsewhere in the world, by producing and exporting renewables-based, energy-intensive commodities and fuels, are not counted in the net-zero target.

6. Built environment

Direct emissions from building, principally from heating, cooling and cooking, can be eliminated through electrification, coupled with much greater building efficiency.

Compensating for remaining emissions to achieve net zero

After each sector has done its best to decarbonise, getting to net zero will require removing remaining CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere.

The precise extent of CO₂ removal will become a topic of intense interest in coming years. One scenario outlined by the authority puts the required annual removal in 2050 at about 30% of current annual emissions.

The authority assumes this will be achieved via greater carbon uptake on the land, and to a small extent through technological means.

Reality may be better than modelling suggests

The history of modelling emissions cuts in Australia is one of underestimating the possibilities.

For example, modelling done for the Garnaut Climate Change Review of 2008 and 2011 underestimated the scope for affordable low-emissions energy, and consequently overestimated the costs of reductions.

A review published by the authority in 2014 showed emissions increasing by nearly 30% from 2005 to 2030 without policy, flatlining under a moderate carbon price, and decreasing by about 20% under a high carbon price.

Reality has turned out far better – even though national climate policy was severely limited for most of that time.

A plausible way forward, without the tough policy answers

The report paints a plausible picture of the path to net-zero emissions in Australia. The government’s forthcoming sector plans, and similar exercises by state governments, will provide further detail.

The authority is notably cautious on policy. It calls for every tool in the kit to be used, but largely leaves open the question of new policy instruments.

So what about the question of carbon pricing – the hot potato at the centre of Australia’s long-running climate policy woes?

The authority notes a broad-based “consistent price for emissions” is generally seen as the most efficient policy. But it does not recommend a comprehensive carbon price, pointing to the inherent “political and social challenges”.

Instead, it recommends expanding and strengthening existing mechanisms. These include the safeguard mechanism, Australia’s carbon credit scheme, the federal government’s vehicle efficiency standard, and the capacity investment scheme for renewable electricity and energy storage.

Notably, the authority holds back on proposing new policy approaches specific to each sector, such as agriculture.

It makes sense to build on what we have. And incrementalism is often seen as the only viable option while Australia’s politics remains divided over climate policy.

Yet the the huge task and opportunity in the shift to net zero cry out for comprehensive, and overall far stronger, policy action.

This report provides a solid information base for the many debates to come. The next, highly anticipated decision will be Australia’s 2035 national emissions target, on which the authority is expected to provide advice to the government later this year.

In addition to his academic role, Frank Jotzo advises Australian governments as lead of the federal government’s carbon leakage review, chair of the Queensland clean economy expert panel, and member of the New South Wales net zero commission. He leads research projects funded by a government foundation, a philanthropic donor and the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Can we really reach net zero by 2050? A new report maps out Australia’s path in more detail than ever before – https://theconversation.com/can-we-really-reach-net-zero-by-2050-a-new-report-maps-out-australias-path-in-more-detail-than-ever-before-235959

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Bradbury, Senior Research Fellow in the School of Population Health, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

Many seafood products sold in New Zealand make environmental claims, but our new research shows most of them are too ambiguous and may serve as greenwashing.

We looked into the labelling and environmental claims on packaged fish and seafood products in major New Zealand supermarkets, investigating 369 products such as canned tuna or other fish, vacuum-packed salmon and frozen fish or seafood.

Just under half of the products (41.2%) we investigated contained at least one self-declared environmental claim, such as “sustainably fished”, “responsibly caught” or “dolphin friendly”.

Nearly 80% of these claims were vague and therefore contrary to international best practice and New Zealand Commerce Commission guidance. This states environmental claims need to be specific to avoid misleading consumers, and it lists the “dolphin friendly” claim as an example that should not be used.

However, we found 42 products available in New Zealand supermarkets carried a “dolphin friendly” or “dolphin safe” claim. Such hard-to-substantiate claims can potentially mislead consumers into thinking they are choosing to buy products that are less damaging to the environment than they might actually be.

Our results show we need stronger enforcement of existing regulations and clearer rules around labelling of fish and seafood products to encourage transparency around fishing practices.

Lack of information about fishing practices

Under New Zealand’s Fair Trading Act, seafood product manufacturers are not allowed to make misleading or unsubstantiated claims. But they are not required to state the harvest location or method (for example, pole and line caught, mid-water trawl, dredged).

We found only about half of the products stated the harvest location and less than 10% mentioned the harvest method. This means consumers usually don’t know where and how their fish and seafood was caught.

Making it compulsory for manufacturers to declare harvest location and fishing methods would mean consumers could choose products that cause less environmental damage. It may also encourage companies to adopt better fishing practices.

Other countries are cracking down on greenwashing

A European Commission study found more than half of the environmental claims on products they investigated from the European Union (EU) were potentially misleading.

As a result, the EU will now ban generic environmental claims that do not provide proof. The EU is also proposing companies should have to submit evidence for environmental claims and get pre-approval before being allowed to put labels on their products.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) carried out an audit of businesses and found more than half were making concerning environmental claims. The most common issue was vague claims such as “green”, “eco-friendly”, “responsible” or “sustainable”.

The ACCC is now updating and developing targeted guidance and engaging with industry to improve practices.

In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority is conducting a review of compliance with consumer law. They have investigated environmental claims in the fashion sector and found vague statements commonplace.

In response, three fashion businesses with a major share of UK fashion sales have formally agreed to avoid using vague terms such as “eco”, “responsible” and “sustainable”.

The authority is currently investigating environmental claims on food, drink, cleaning products and toiletries. They are also revising and tailoring their guidance to businesses around environmental claims.

Preventing greenwashing in New Zealand

Greenwashing and vague claims make it difficult to monitor whether businesses are actually making meaningful changes and improving their practices.

We need an independent investigation of greenwashing claims (including claims around biodegradable or compostable packaging) across all New Zealand industries. To understand the full extent of the problem, this should include food and household products.

Currently, consumers can make a complaint about a vague claim to the Commerce Commission or Advertising Standard Authority. However, our finding that almost 80% of environmental claims on seafood products are vague suggests providing guidance isn’t enough and it shouldn’t be left to consumers to make complaints.

We need proactive enforcement of the existing Commerce Commission guidance and the Fair Trading Act to avoid the display of vague environmental claims on seafood, as well as on products from other sectors.

We would like to acknowledge the contribution by Xuân Le Folcalvez, who worked on this project during her internship as part of her masters degree from AgroParisTech.

Kathryn Bradbury receives funding from the Heart Foundation of New Zealand (Senior Heart Foundation Fellowship, supported by the G.R. Winn Trust (#3728679).

– ref. Dolphin friendly? New research shows vague environmental labelling is common on NZ seafood products – https://theconversation.com/dolphin-friendly-new-research-shows-vague-environmental-labelling-is-common-on-nz-seafood-products-237954

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Garnett, Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University

Everyday people understandably rely on information quoted by scientists. But when that information turns out to be incorrect, things get complicated.

For more than two decades, the claim that 80% of biodiversity occurs on the territories of the world’s Indigenous Peoples has been treated as fact. It has taken root in public discourse as an established truth.

The figure, however, is wrong, as we show in a comment article published today in the leading science journal Nature.

There is ample evidence showing Indigenous Peoples and their territories are essential to the world’s biodiversity. We don’t need an unsupported statistic to prove it.

Right reason, wrong figure

The claim that 80% of global biodiversity is found on the lands of Indigenous Peoples has been used to support a just cause.

Advocates using the figure say it shows Indigenous communities are highly accomplished guardians of the natural environment, and they have vital roles to play in biodiversity conservation.

For the past 20 years or so, the 80% claim has been cited nearly 350 times in a variety of public documents. They include reports by the United Nations and the World Bank, news articles and the websites of advocacy organisations.

Some 186 of the citations were in peer-reviewed scientific journals. They include top titles such as PNAS, The Lancet and Nature.

The earliest reference to the figure we could find was from 2002. But the figure is most commonly attributed to a report from the World Bank from 2008.

That report says around the world, the role of Indigenous Peoples in conserving nature has been overlooked. That part is correct. Only recently have Indigenous Peoples’ enormous contributions started to be appreciated in science and policy.

But as our paper outlines, the 80% figure is wrong, for several reasons.

First, the possible sources for the figure – an encyclopedia chapter and a report on poverty – are either misquotes, or a poor summary of, previous research.

Second, when the figure was first published in the early 2000s, the extent of Indigenous Peoples’ lands and seas had not yet been mapped. So precisely determining what proportion of biodiversity it contained was not possible.

Third, biodiversity in its true sense cannot be counted. The widely accepted definition of biodiversity encompasses everything from genes to entire ecological communities. It is impossible to estimate a percentage of something that cannot be quantified.

And finally, even if one considers biodiversity simply as a list of plant and animal species in a given location, many species have not yet been “described” by science. In other words, the species has not received a scientific name and been formally recognised in a scientific paper.

Why challenge a helpful number?

Our paper was a collaboration between researchers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Australia’s Charles Darwin University and elsewhere. It also involved Indigenous Peoples and their representatives.

We struggled with the decision to show the 80% figure is wrong. Why challenge a figure used to support the right of Indigenous People’s to access and care for their lands?

To make the decision, we consulted ethics committees at our universities. We also talked widely with Indigenous Peoples’ advocates – indeed, three of our paper’s authors identify as Indigenous.

Assembling the support to challenge the figure has taken five years. We decided to proceed, for several reasons.

The first is to protect the cause the figure has been used to promote.

In the wrong hands, exposure of the false figure could be used to dismiss all claims by Indigenous Peoples relating to biodiversity. We took the opposite approach. We combined our analysis with many lines of evidence demonstrating the crucial importance of Indigenous Peoples’ territories and knowledge systems to nature conservation.

The second reason was to safeguard the reputation of Indigenous Peoples and their advocates, who have relied on this figure in good faith. Continuing to use an unsupported statistic risks undermining their credibility and diminishing the impact of their advocacy.

Third, we question the wisdom of reducing Indigenous Peoples’ contributions to a single figure. In our view, it diminishes the significance of the rich social and cultural values that guide their stewardship of nature. It suggests these values are less important than the sheer number of animals and plants in their territories.

Fourth, the figure implies that knowledge of the biodiversity on Indigenous Peoples’ lands and seas is complete. This could undermine efforts by Indigenous Peoples themselves to document and conserve biodiversity.

And fifth, the 80% figure could be seen as patronising. No-one attempts to give a percentage for biodiversity in, for example, protected areas. This is for good reason – such a figure would be considered implausible. So why should the standard for science on Indigenous Peoples’ territories be any lower?

Finally, scientists who find and fail to correct inconvenient errors are supporting disinformation by default. This runs contrary to the tenets of scientific rigour.

Should we really be worried?

You might well be asking yourself, has the spurious 80% figure actually done harm?

It is very hard to say this for sure. Certainly, at one international meeting we attended, the 80% figure was used to challenge the quality of Indigenous Peoples’ stewardship. The argument was that if they look after such a large percentage of biodiversity, why then are so many species declining?

We hear scepticism about the figure on the sidelines of scientific and policy meetings we attend. Commentators have also started questioning its validity.

Granted, the figure could have benefited Indigenous Peoples in some ways. But nonetheless, the figure is wrong and could inadvertently undermine the cause it seeks to champion.

Indigenous Peoples play central roles in protecting Earth’s biodiversity. The true extent of their contributions cannot be captured in a single number.

Stephen Garnett receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares receives funding from the European Research Council and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. He is a Honorary member of the ICCA Consortium, an organisation promoting recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ and community lands at the global level.

– ref. For decades, we’ve been told 80% of the world’s biodiversity is found on Indigenous lands – but it’s wrong – https://theconversation.com/for-decades-weve-been-told-80-of-the-worlds-biodiversity-is-found-on-indigenous-lands-but-its-wrong-237811

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paula Jarzabkowski, Professor in Strategic Management, The University of Queensland

Late winter and early spring has been marked by wild weather sweeping large parts of Australia, damaging homes and businesses and causing power outages.

Such unpredictable weather is also occurring around the world and driving huge rises in premiums to the point where the future of insurance is in doubt.

In 2022, floods, hurricanes, hailstorms, winter storms and droughts amounted to more than A$149 billion in insured losses globally with losses growing five years prior.

The full impact and cost of the latest events in Australia will not be known for some time, but it can be expected to be significant.

Extreme weather

As one of the world’s most climate exposed nations, Australia is at the forefront of extreme weather effects on insurance premiums.

In the “great deluge” of 2022, flooding in Queensland and New South Wales amounted to A$5.56 billion in insured losses from 236,000 individual claims.

As extreme weather generates ever-greater losses, insurers are reluctant to provide cover in higher-risk locations. Increasingly they are not offering policies, making insurance unavailable, or raising premiums to unaffordable levels.

One insurer reported between 2020 and 2023, their average household premium rose by 56%.

And the situation is worsening.

Insurance stress

In 2022, 10% of Australian households faced extreme insurance stress, defined as paying more than four weeks’ gross household income for a policy.

By 2024, this rose to 15% of Australian households, with the most stressed households facing premiums of up to 9.6 weeks, or 18% of their gross income.

This measure of insurance stress is based on gross household income. Yet premiums are paid from net income after tax. Many households simply cannot afford insurance with the Insurance Council of Australia estimating 23% of households are uninsured.

In June 2024, the Australian Bureau of Statistics noted insurance is one of the main contributors to rising living costs across all household types.

Unsurprisingly, when needing to pay energy bills, put food on the table, and fuel in the car, many Australians have little choice but to let insurance lapse, or buy less insurance than they need to recover after a weather event.

Why we can’t rely on insurance

Even for those who are insured, widespread loss from extreme weather means they cannot necessarily rely on their insurance claims to bounce back from disaster.

Large numbers of claims can result in lengthy settlements, as insurer resources are stretched by the complexity of assessing damage, and the increased demand on trades and services, including temporary accommodation.

Excess demand following widespread loss has effects beyond emotionally charged claims processes, as insurers are using cash settlements to resolve claims quickly.

Cash settlements can be offered when the homeowner is underinsured and the policy will not cover full repairs, when there is a lack of trades and services to complete the work, or when homeowners are desperate to get some compensation to help them move on from disaster.

However, there are serious financial implications for homeowners in accepting cash. Recent research reveals cash settlements are often under-quoted and homeowners lack appropriate knowledge and experience to accurately assess the offer.

As a result, this can leave homeowners without enough money to fix their property, potentially leaving them with an unlivable home and large debt.

Economic impacts

A lack of affordable insurance also has significant negative consequences for Australia’s economy.

Home insurance is usually required to take out a mortgage. However, about 5% of Australian households with a mortgage are experiencing insurance stress.

Such insurance-stressed homeowners are in a precarious financial situation following extreme weather losses, as they have insufficient funds to repair their home and/or repay their mortgage.

Potential homeowners are also affected, as they may be unable to get a mortgage in higher-risk locations, as banks anticipate insurance will be unavailable or unaffordable.

With as many as one in 25 homes across Australia expected to be uninsurable by 2030 and one in seven homes in the most at-risk localities, this looming mortgage crisis will have wide-reaching implications beyond home ownership.

Mortgages are critical for business lending, to support the rental market and ensure viable communities.

A bleak forecast

The compounding effects of insurance stress, extreme weather, and pressure on banks to take account of climate exposure is likely to limit lending to small business, constrain housing supply, and affect jobs, especially in higher-risk locations.

This complex situation is already evident across cyclone-exposed northern Australia, where the impact of rapidly rising premiums, or a lack of insurance availability, means small business owners, such as tourism and hospitality operators, struggle to meet licensing and regulatory requirements.

This is forcing many to reconsider their future viability.

Given Australia’s reliance on home ownership for economic security, a robust rental market to support jobs, and viable small businesses to support vibrant communities, the effects of extreme weather on insurance availability and affordability are set to affect us all.

Paula Jarzabkowski has previously received research funding from the Insurance Intellectual Capital Initiative (UK) and from insurance risk pools. She is a member of the OECD High-Level Advisory Board for the Financial Management of Catastrophic Risk, the Lloyd’s of London Futureset Technical Advisory Group, and the Pool Reinsurance Company Advisory Council.

Katie Meissner, postdoctoral research fellow and Tyler Riordan, postdoctoral research fellow 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. Wild weather is costing billions of dollars and putting the future of insurance in doubt – https://theconversation.com/wild-weather-is-costing-billions-of-dollars-and-putting-the-future-of-insurance-in-doubt-237983

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University

The lavender painted bus named “Priscilla” continues to pick up new fans while never going out of favour with its legion of original devotees, 30 years after its release.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was shot on location in and around Sydney, Broken Hill, Coober Pedy, Kings Canyon and Alice Springs over six weeks in 1993.

Directed by Stephan Elliott, the film screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the May 1994 Cannes Film Festival, winning critical and popular acclaim for its positive portrayal of LGBTQI+ characters.

Awards came, most notably for costume designers Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner who won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design for their sparkly, sequin-filled costumes.

The film’s cultural brilliance lies in juxtaposing the extreme flamboyance of the costumes and props against the equally extreme rural natural desert landscape. The unexpected revelation for audiences was how perfectly these contrasting elements harmonised.

A smash hit

Less than 12 months since its release, the Film Finance Corporation (FFC) of Australia had the rare success of fully recouping its A$1.67 million investment.

Initially hesitant due to Elliott’s disappointing box office return on his debut feature, Frauds (1993), the FFC was convinced after the screenplay gained attention at Cannes. The film exceeded predictions, grossing more than $16 million in Australia.

The film was socially and critically embraced as an instant classic.

Ask cinema employees from this time and they will all share similar memories of lines of people outside the cinema doors eager to watch and rewatch (and rewatch again) the musical road movie about a pair of drag queens (Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce) and a transgender woman (Terence Stamp) as they set out from Sydney on a bus journey across the Australian outback.

The casting today seems like more of a sure bet than it did in 1994. Stamp was a British actor of legendary status, having gained critical accolades in the 1960s in films such as Billy Budd, The Collector and Far from the Madding Crowd. However Stamp was equally a regular tabloid subject for his high-profile romances with film star Julie Christie and supermodel Jean Shrimpton.

Would audiences be willing to go with the idea of this playboy as the trandsgender woman, Bernadette?

It is now impossible to consider any actor better able to deliver Terrance Stamps’s deadpan sardonic lines so perfectly: “Don’t ‘Darling’, me, Darling. Look at you. You’ve got a face like a cat’s arse.”

Pearce and Weaving also were a risk. Neither were box office marquee stars at the time. Pearce was known as a lovable Mike from the popular television soap opera, Neighbours. Weaving was a critically respected actor known more for his quirky small parts than as a star in his own right.

Both were perfect casting, launching them onto Hollywood careers. Pearce as Adam was a remarkable revelation.

The chemistry and connection between the three lead actors makes the film truly succeed.

Never do their performances seem showboating or forced. Each has their own arc, personality and journey. And when they climb Kings Canyon in full drag regalia at the film’s end there is something moving about what they have been able to accomplish together.

A film that begins to be a slight and joyful comedy about drag performers becomes a deeper essay on the importance of lived experience and friendship (or, dare I say, mateship).

More vital than ever

Drag has a long history in mainstream cinema with its own codes and references.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is crucially different by it not being about “straight” men masquerading as women to mask their actual identity. Instead, Elliot’s film rather positively celebrates these characters in drag as their true and authentic selves.

This film stood with others as a wave of Australian cinema in the 1990s unashamedly wanting to celebrate an Australia juxtaposing the blokey masculine stereotype.

Ocker characters (men and women) appear in this film, but ultimately they are publicly humiliated for their homophobia. Bernadette kneeing in the groin the vicious and vulgar Frank (Kenneth Radley) often receives a big cheer from cinema audiences: “Stop flexing your muscles, you big pile of budgie turd,” Bernadette scorns.

Perhaps the true star of the film were not the actors as much as the iconic 1976 Japanese model Hino Freighter Priscilla bus that became the set for several scenes in the film. Because the bus interior was such a small set, there was no room for the crew with many actually in shot, hiding under clothes and other props.

The bus, long thought to be lost, was rediscovered on a farm in New South Wales in 2019. The bus is currently being restored, with an aim to have it on display at the National Motor Museum in Birdwood, Adelaide Hills, in 2026. Perhaps it will be good timing for shooting the recently announced potential sequel.

30 years after its original release The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert seems more important, enjoyable and vital than ever. All aboard, Priscilla. Long may she run.

RMIT Capitol will be hosting a screening and introductory panel discussion on September 11 with the film’s costume designer Tim Chappel, executive producer Rebel Penfold-Russell, Melbourne Queer Film Festival program director Cerise Howard, historian Kristy Kokegei and Stephen Gaunson.

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

– ref. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert at 30: more important, enjoyable and vital than ever – https://theconversation.com/the-adventures-of-priscilla-queen-of-the-desert-at-30-more-important-enjoyable-and-vital-than-ever-235424

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steve Macfarlane, Head of Clinical Services, Dementia Support Australia, & Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Monash University

A Korean study published recently suggests people with type 2 diabetes who are prescribed a particular class of drug might be at a significantly lower risk of dementia.

The researchers compared the health outcomes of more than 110,000 people aged 40–69 with type 2 diabetes who had been prescribed a type of drug called SGLT-2 inhibitors with those of another 110,000 patients taking a different class of drug, DPP-4 inhibitors. They followed participants for an average of 670 days.

The researchers found that, after accounting for potential confounding factors, those taking an SGLT-2 inhibitor were 35% less likely to develop dementia.

Diabetes is recognised as a risk factor for dementia. So it’s not entirely surprising that treating diabetes could reduce the risk of dementia. But why would one drug cut the risk more than another? And how are diabetes and dementia linked anyway?

Diabetes and dementia

Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas. Its job is to move glucose (sugar) from our bloodstream into our cells, where it serves as a source of energy. Type 2 diabetes arises when our pancreas fails to produce enough insulin, or our cells develop a resistance to insulin.

Dementia is caused by changes in the brain and encompasses several conditions that affect memory, thinking, mood, and our ability to perform daily tasks.

Diabetes has long been recognised as a risk factor for both Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia, the two most common forms of dementia. Both are characterised by cognitive decline caused by disease of blood vessels in the brain.

We don’t fully understand why diabetes and dementia are linked in this way, but there a few possible reasons.

For example, diabetes increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, which damage the heart and blood vessels. When blood vessels in the brain are damaged, this may contribute to cognitive decline.

Also, high blood sugar levels cause inflammation, which may damage brain cells and contribute to the development of dementia.

Treating diabetes could mitigate the increased risk

Better control of blood sugar levels in diabetes helps protect blood vessels and reduces inflammation in the brain.

Diabetes may be controlled initially with lifestyle modifications such as diet and exercise, but management may also include medications, such as those taken by participants in the Korean study.

Patients taking either type of drug had comparable blood glucose control. But why did one reduce the risk of people developing dementia compared to the other?

SGLT-2 inhibitors (which stands for sodium-glucose transport protein 2) lower blood glucose by increasing its removal by the kidneys. These drugs are known to have positive effects on other areas of health too, including improving blood pressure, promoting weight loss, and reducing inflammation and oxidative stress (a type of damage to our cells).

Obesity and high blood pressure are themselves risk factors for vascular and Alzheimer’s-type dementia, so it may well be that these effects of the SGLT-2 inhibitors lower dementia risk to a greater degree than what could be expected by better blood glucose control alone.

Prevention versus treatment

It’s important to emphasise that the benefit of a drug reducing the risk of developing a disease is quite separate from any suggestion that the drug might be useful in treating that disease. The best way to reduce your risk of lung cancer, for example, is to stop smoking. Once you have lung cancer, however, stopping smoking is insufficient to treat it.

Having said this, because of the evidence linking diabetes and dementia, certain diabetes drugs have previously been investigated as treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. And they have been shown to provide a degree of benefit to cognition.

Semaglutide, better known by the trade name Ozempic, is a member of yet another class of diabetes drugs (called GLP1 receptor agonists). Semaglutide is currently being studied as a treatment for early Alzheimer’s disease in two clinical trials involving more than 3,500 patients.

These studies were themselves sparked by observations during clinical trials of semaglutide for people with diabetes, which showed lower rates of dementia in those who took the drug compared to those who took a placebo.

Similar to the SGLT-2 drugs, the GLP-1 class of drugs is known to reduce inflammation in the brain. GLP-1 drugs also appear to reduce chemical reactions that lead to an abnormal form of a protein called Tau, one of the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease.

What next?

As our knowledge of the mechanisms underlying Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia continues to grow, so will advances in treatment.

It’s unlikely that a single drug will be the answer to Alzheimer’s disease. Cancer treatments have evolved to the point where the use of “drug cocktails”, or a combination of drugs, is now routine.

One possible future for these diabetes drugs is that we may see them used as part of a range of treatments to combat the ravages of dementia or, indeed, help prevent it, even in people without diabetes. But we need more research before we get to this point.

Steve Macfarlane is an investigator on a trial of semaglutide funded by Novo Nordisk.

– ref. Research shows diabetes drug could reduce dementia risk. Here’s how the two diseases may be linked – https://theconversation.com/research-shows-diabetes-drug-could-reduce-dementia-risk-heres-how-the-two-diseases-may-be-linked-237760

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Kidson, Senior Lecturer in Educational Leadership, Australian Catholic University

The federal government has offered states a new funding agreement that would provide an extra A$16 billion for Australian schools, starting next year.

It sounds good, but Education Minister Jason Clare has made it clear the offer will lapse by the end of September if states and territories don’t sign up to it.

The Northern Territory signed up in July, just before its recent change of government. Western Australia signed up on Tuesday.

Clare is standing his ground, warning “stubborn” state and territory governments risk missing out entirely on the new money if they don’t agree.

How does the agreement work?

The federal government released details of the new agreement at the end of July.

It is due to replace current arrangements from January 1 2025. It requires states and territories to do specific things to improve student outcomes. In return, they get increased federal funding for schools.

The proposed new agreement would run for ten years.

Read more:
There’s a new 10-year plan for Australian schools. But will all states agree to sign on?

What’s in the new agreement?

There are three important components to the new agreement.

First, there are phonics (reading) and numeracy checks in early primary school school to identify students who need more help. There are ongoing concerns that once students start to fall behind, it’s much harder to catch up.

Second, there is money to connect schools and services which support student mental health. This likely means increasing access to psychologists, counsellors and mental health workers, although the details about how this might work are limited.

Third, the proposed agreement will focus on teacher and school leader (which includes principals and deputies) wellbeing. This follows research, such as our own, which shows this is a significant problem in schools, which are facing high levels of teacher burnout, mental health issues and resignations.

Our 2023 report asked whether school leaders seriously considered changing their jobs. More than 1,250 (or 55% of participants) said yes.

This is the first time a national schools policy has singled out teacher and principal wellbeing as an issue. It’s also essential if we are going to see significant change in student wellbeing, which has been a source of growing concern over the past few years.

So why aren’t all states and territories signing?

They’re not happy with the deal.

The federal government has offered to increase its contribution to funding government schools from 20% to 22.5% of the Schooling Resourcing Standard. This is the estimated cost of educating students to an adequate level.

Remaining jurisdictions say this is not enough to run their schools and want this amount increased to 25% before they sign. They have been holding firm to this position since the beginning of the year.

Both sides feel they have a case.

A May 2024 review by the National School Resourcing Board found the current indexation arrangements for school funding are suitable.

Meanwhile, states are looking at the fine print. For example, the current funding agreement for New South Wales says the state government will provide “at least 75% of the [Schooling Resource Standard] by 2027”. But it does not commit NSW to do more – leaving the state government to argue the federal government should contribute 25%.

What happens now?

We are in the middle of a standoff. September is now here, and Western Australia joining the Northern Territory in signing the agreement adds to the pressure.

There’s little to suggest either Clare or his unsigned state and territory counterparts are willing to shift their positions at the moment.

It is not an realistic option for the federal minister to strike individual deals with those who are holding out. The Australian Education Act requires states and territories to commit to national agreements as a condition of getting federal money. It would also make a mockery of having “national goals” for education.

There has also already been a 12-month extension to the current agreement (which was due to expire at the end of 2023).

So the need to reach a deal – and start implementing these crucial improvements for schools – only continues to grow.

Paul Kidson 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. Australian schools could get an extra $16 billion – but only if states reach a deal with Jason Clare by the end of September – https://theconversation.com/australian-schools-could-get-an-extra-16-billion-but-only-if-states-reach-a-deal-with-jason-clare-by-the-end-of-september-238194

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

This article is part of The Conversation’s “Business Basics” series where we ask experts to discuss key concepts in business, economics and finance.

Today’s economic data shows that, outside of the pandemic, the Australian economy has slowed down to its lowest annual rate of growth since the early-1990s recession.

That’s prompting the dreaded question: are we headed for another one?

Any mention of the “R” word can trigger anxiety. Recessions bring job losses and financial strain, and put serious pressure on people’s mental health.

These impacts can be especially severe for people who are already experiencing disadvantage and vulnerabilities.

But what exactly does it mean to be in a recession? What are the different ways we define them? And are these current approaches the best way to measure people’s economic pain?

Read more:
This is the weakest economy outside of a recession. Here’s what the GDP figures show

What’s a recession?

A bit like the waves of the ocean, our economy is characterised by ebbs and flows in overall activity.

Spending and business growth can swell during times of confidence, but slow down when optimism deflates or the economy is hit by an unexpected shock such as a pandemic or climate disaster. This pattern is what economists describe as “the business cycle”.

Most of the time, our economy is constantly growing, even if the pace varies.

Conventionally, we measure this pace by tracking changes in the level of gross domestic product (GDP) – the overall volume of items and services being produced, bought and sold in the economy.

The latest economic growth rates of 0.2% for the June quarter, and 1% over the past year, tell us that the Australian economy is still growing, even if at a slower pace than previous years.

Occasionally, the economy slows down to such a grind that economic activity, from one quarter to the next, shrinks. When this happens, the GDP measurements come out negative.

When we have two negative measurements of GDP in a row, this is defined as a technical recession.

This is what happened to most countries around the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, Australia hadn’t experienced a technical recession since 1991.

The latest figures tell us Australia is staying afloat for now. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel like a recession to many people. Some other metrics show why.

Other measures of recession

Growth in economic activity is fuelled, in part, by a growing population. Dividing total economic output by the population size, GDP per capita can offer a more accurate picture of people’s economic reality.

This population-adjusted measure of economic growth has long fallen into negative territory. Today’s figures tell us that Australia’s GDP per person has been shrinking for 18 months. Our annual per capita growth rate is now -1.5%.

In the United States, recessions are measured differently again. Recessions are officially declared by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Unlike technical recessions, these aren’t based on a simple rule.

NBER considers a range of measures beyond GDP – including personal income, employment, personal consumption, wholesale and retail sales, and industrial production across multiple sectors – when deciding whether to declare a US recession.

Is Australia heading for a recession?

This is a challenging question to answer because the GDP figures economists conventionally use to diagnose the situation only come to light after a recession hits.

Today’s economic figures from the ABS are for the June 2024 quarter – now more than two months old. Measurements of the current economic climate won’t come through in official statistics for some time.

If it occurs, by the time a recession is officially diagnosed, we’re usually well and truly in it.

A similar limitation applies to the retrospective approach of the NBER, which “waits until it is confident that a recession has occurred”.

It’s like a weather forecaster declaring a cyclone has hit only after the wind gusts have blown your roof away.

But we can use other metrics to alert ourselves to recession risks before the eye of the storm hits.

Using jobs numbers as a recession alert

One approach is the Sahm Rule, named after its creator, US economist Claudia Sahm.

By analysing patterns in the monthly unemployment data that preceded past recessions, Sahm devised a formula to detect when increases in the current unemployment rate were rapid enough to pose a recession risk.

The advantage of this approach is that unemployment statistics come out more quickly and frequently than GDP numbers.

Many would also argue that monitoring unemployment, rather than GDP, is a more meaningful metric to reflect people’s everyday experiences of the economy and wellbeing.

The Sahm approach tracks how quickly the national unemployment rate is currently rising compared to the past year.

It’s calculated by comparing the current three-month moving average of the national unemployment rate to this figure’s lowest value in the previous 12 months. This “moving average” approach smooths out the bumpiness of monthly figures.

A jump of 0.5% or more signals the economy’s current pattern is on the cusp of recession.

While the Sahm formula was developed for the US economy, it does a fairly good job of waving a red flag where recessions previously occurred in the Australian economy, too.

Australia’s latest unemployment rate – inching up to 4.2% in July 2024 – pushed the Sahm value up to 0.5%.

This indicator doesn’t necessarily mean that a recession will occur. But it suggests policymakers should be on high alert.

The Sahm indicator also validates the experiences of job seekers who – despite official definitions that the economy is not in recession – are personally feeling the pressures of a slowing economy and shrinking job opportunities.

As our approaches to measuring and managing the ups and downs of the economy continue to evolve, these people-centred metrics are an increasingly important part of our toolkit.

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

– ref. What’s a recession – and how can we tell if we’re in one? – https://theconversation.com/whats-a-recession-and-how-can-we-tell-if-were-in-one-238199

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bartos, Professor of Economics, University of Canberra

The latest national accounts show the Australian economy is struggling. It’s what you would expect after the sharpest series of interest rate rises on record, and is more or less what the Reserve Bank was trying to achieve to bring down inflation.

Australia’s gross domestic product grew just 0.2% in the three months to June, after growing 0.2% in the previous three months (upgraded from an earlier estimate of 0.1%) and 0.2% the three months before that.

So low is the run of low growth that the economy grew just 1% over the year to June. That’s the lowest annual growth outside of a recession since the mid-1980s.

We are not in recession as commonly defined: two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Nor are we in the broader definition of a recession favoured by the Reserve Bank, one accompanied by a significant increase in unemployment.

That is actually one of the positives at present – unemployment remains low. Nevertheless, it feels like a recession for many Australians.

GDP per capita has been falling for six consecutive quarters. This means this measure of living standards has been falling for 18 months – a record since the Bureau of Statistics began publishing GDP per capita in the early 1970s.

Were it not for population growth, GDP would be going backwards. Population growth has been keeping the economy afloat.

Australians who oppose immigration might want to reflect on whether they would prefer a recession.

Public sector spending has also been shoring up the economy. It contributed 0.4 percentage points to the quarterly economic growth figure of 0.2%, meaning that without it the economy would have also gone backwards.

In the words of Treasurer Jim Chalmers at the national accounts press conference:

Without growth in government spending, there would have been no growth in the economy at all.

Chalmers said the weak growth figure

vindicates the approach we took in the budget and frankly torpedoes a lot of the free advice we got at budget time to cut harder and harsher.

Chalmers conceded that cutting government spending rather than expanding spending in the May budget would have brought inflation down faster, but said he wanted to do it in a way that didn’t “smash people or weaken an economy which is already very soft and subdued”.

Inflation is coming down, although the Reserve Bank says it is not yet confident it is moving sustainably towards its target range.

My assessment is that to make much of a difference to that trajectory the government would need to cut spending by billions of dollars, enough to bring on a recession. For obvious reasons, the government does not want that.

Consumer spending is very weak. Household spending per capita has declined for five out of the past six quarters.

In part, this is because of mortgage rate increases and also because wage growth has been unusually weak relative to price growth, cutting the amount households have to spend.

The national accounts confirm households have as good as stopped saving.

The household saving ratio remained at 0.6% of income. That’s way down from the peak of 24.1% reached during the COVID lockdowns.

Australia is hostage to overseas events. Weakness in the Chinese building industry is reducing demand for Australian iron ore and other exports, which has a flow-on effect on how our economy performs.

These are things about which we can do precisely nothing.

China’s population has been shrinking for two years now. It’s a good thing for the global environment, but means we are less likely to see the sustained and very high rates of Chinese housing construction that buoyed demand for Australian iron ore and other commodities in previous decades.

The terms-of-trade figures in the national accounts show the price Australia receives for what it sells overseas has been shrinking relative to the price it pays for what it buys from overseas for the past two quarters.

The only way to sustainably boost the economy while bringing down inflation is to lift productivity, the amount we produce per hour.

The national accounts show this measure of productivity fell again in the three months to June.

Innovation, more effective regulation, fostering more competition, and controlling monopolies can all help build productivity.

The government and its advisers know this. The tricky bit is doing it.

Stephen Bartos 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. This is the weakest economy outside of a recession. Here’s what the GDP figures show – https://theconversation.com/this-is-the-weakest-economy-outside-of-a-recession-heres-what-the-gdp-figures-show-236128

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Darcy, Professor of Social Inclusion – UTS Business School – Co-Lead UTS Disability Research Network – Australian Centre for Olympic and Sport Studies – Centre for Sport, Business and Society, University of Technology Sydney

A record 4,400 athletes from more than 160 countries are competing in the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, with 549 medal events across 22 sports.

To give an idea of how much the event has grown, at the 1964 Tokyo games there were 375 athletes from 21 countries competing in just nine events.

During this time, the Paralympics have evolved from an event for second world war military with spinal cord injuries to now welcoming ten different impairment types, managed using an athlete classification system.

Read more:
Explainer: how the Paralympics classification system keeps things fair

This chart demonstrates the growth of the Paralympic Games in terms of the number of athletes.

As we look at these statistics, it is important to note that this multi-sport mega event evolved from an idea of several advocates across the globe, the most celebrated of whom was Sir Ludwig Guttmann, a refugee to the United Kingdom from Nazi Germany, to use sport to aid medical rehabilitation.

Origins of the Paralympics

The second world war was devastating, not just in the number of those killed but also in the number of people who sustained injuries resulting in lifelong disability.

But improved medical treatments resulted in much higher survival rates, so there was a greater need for rehabilitation to ensure the injured military could be active members of society.

This led to a number of nations developing specialist spinal injuries centres, including the UK’s Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, England.

From 1944, the centre was led by the visionary Guttmann, who gained a reputation for innovative practice, both in medical rehabilitation and in motivating those with spinal cord injury.

Central to Guttmann’s approach was the use of sport in rehabilitation, which quickly evolved into a wheelchair sport competition.

The first was an archery event between hospital wards, with 14 male and two female competitors. The servicemen and women thrived on the physical outlet that competition provided.

However, Guttmann had a broader vision for the future of wheelchair sports.

These modest beginnings led to the creation of an annual Stoke Mandeville Games, first held on July 28, 1948.

Deliberately, this date was also the opening day of the 1948 London Olympic Games, with the two events held at the same time.

The first international competition occurred in 1952, when competitors from Holland were invited to compete in archery, table tennis, darts and snooker.

Eight years later (1960), Rome became the first city outside of Stoke Mandeville to host the games.

Yet it was not until Tokyo 1964 that the term “Paralympics” was officially used.

The evolution of the games

From 1960 to 1984, only two Paralympic Games were held in the same city as the Olympics: Rome 1960 and Tokyo 1964.

In 1988, this changed when the Paralympic and Olympic Games were both held in Seoul, Korea.

Here, for the first time, the host organising committees ensured Paralympic athletes competed in the same venues as the Olympic athletes, although housed in different villages.

The Seoul 1988 Games also helped spur the creation of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) in 1989, bringing together the four separate disability-specific organisations that had previously been represented in the International Co-Coordinating Committee Sports for the Disabled.

This was a significant step, allowing the IPC to evolve and forge closer links with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and future host cities.

The Atlanta 1996 Olympic and Paralympic Games, however, showed the frailty of the relationship, with appalling issues emerging during the village handover, no coordination between the organising committees and problems with the sports delivery program.

Four years later, the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic games changed that trajectory and created a benchmark for the operational partnership between the organising committees.

Following the 2000 games, the first host city agreement between the IOC and IPC was signed, ensuring all games after Beijing 2008 would require bid cities to host both events.

The relationship between the IOC and the IPC was further consolidated prior to the Rio 2016 games with the signing of a memorandum of understanding extending the partnership up to the Brisbane 2032 Games.

Social inclusion and question marks

The vision of the IPC is to enable para athletes to “achieve sporting excellence and inspire and excite the world”, with hopes of being a catalyst for greater social inclusion.

Yet, critics suggest the rhetoric of these claims can fail people with disability within the host city and country.

Critics question whether the Paralympics lead to a legacy of improvement for people with disability in the host community, or if they only improve the material position of the elite athletes who participate.

Another example critics highlight is that while the IPC handbook and the IPC accessibility guidelines discuss the importance of improving host city accessibility and attitudes towards people with disability beyond the games, the IPC has not resourced studies to test these claims.

In part this may be because focusing on legacy is somewhat new.

London 2012 was the first to have social inclusion in bid documents and featured in the narrative leading up to the games. This broadened the focus beyond the field of play.

The lack of research may also be because most organising committees wrap up within months of the games ending.

An example of a broader social inclusion agenda beyond the games is #Wethe15 – a global collaboration of organisations advocating for people with disability.

Launched in the lead-up to the Tokyo 2020/21 Paralympic Games to promote social change, the campaign showed everyday life challenges, barriers, and frustrations of “the world’s 1.2 billion persons with disabilities” so they can be visible and active members of an inclusive society.

A second phase of the campaign was a #WeThe15 podcast series launched prior to Paris 2024.

As gold medal winning Paralympian and Australian broadcast co-host Kurt Fearnley said: “WeThe15 is about taking the voice of the people with disabilities to an international stage.

They don’t want to be seen as superhuman, they want to be seen as human, as equal, as being able to get a job, being able to access education.

The success of the #WeThe15 campaign will depend on how well the rest of society is able to create more accessible and inclusive societies, communities, workplaces, and sporting opportunities.

The Paris legacy and beyond

The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games has its opportunity to add another page in Paralympic history. As the IPC president Andrew Parsons recently stated

For the City of Paris, the improvements made over the last seven years have been fantastic. They should be regarded however as the starting point of an accessibility journey, rather than the end.

Has the Paris Games helped achieve Guttmann’s vision that people with disability may live fulfilling and engaged lives?

The final assessment will be made by the community of Parisiens with disability and those that visit the city in the future.

Simon Darcy in the past received funding from the Australian Sports Commission and the Australian Paralympic Committee. He currently holds an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant researching engaging outsiders in sport leading up to the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic games affiliated with Griffith University and the University of Technology Sydney. In 2023-2024 Simon was also a member of the Australian Sports Commission’s HP2032+ Inclusive Design Working Group.

David Legg receives funding from SSHRC which is Canadian Government associated granting agency.
I am the Past President of the International Federation of Adapted Physical Activity and Past President of the Canadian Paralympic Committee and presently volunteering with the International Paralympic Committee on a history project
I am a personal friend and colleague of Dr. Robert Steadward, founding President of the International Paralympic Committee

Barbara Almond and Tracey J Dickson 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. Paris is adding another page to Paralympic history but what will its legacy be? – https://theconversation.com/paris-is-adding-another-page-to-paralympic-history-but-what-will-its-legacy-be-237550

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

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has committed to a range of reforms strengthening legal responses to family violence across the state. These reforms follow the alleged murder of 28-year-old Molly Ticehurst by her former partner earlier this year.

A key plank of the new reforms is a revision of stalking laws in the state. This revision will recognise the increasing role technologies such as GPS trackers play in family violence.

These changes to the NSW stalking laws are welcome. But they may not be enough to address the widespread use of technology to stalk and harass people – especially women.

The reason is simple: too often police and courts don’t take tech-facilitated family violence seriously.

Tech-facilitated abuse is very common

Tech-faciliated abuse is a form of interpersonal violence that involves the use of mobile phones or other digital technologies to harass, monitor, abuse, cause fear, or otherwise inflict harm on someone. It is very common, with nearly half of all Australian adults experiencing at least one form of tech-facilitated abuse in their lifetime.

Some examples include hacking a “smart” speaker to listen in on a private conversation or using a GPS tracking device to monitor where a person is at any given time. In June, the NSW Crime Commission revealed 25% of people who had bought some kind of tracking device in the past 18 months had a history of domestic and family violence.

Australian research has identified several key features of tech-facilitated family violence.

For example, when women experience tech-facilitated abuse, it is often part of a pattern of other forms of abusive behaviour from a current or former partner. In other words, women’s experiences of tech-facilitated abuse often take place in the context of multiple forms of family violence, including controlling behaviours and physical assault.

Women victims of tech-facilitated abuse in family violence contexts also tend to experience high levels of distress and fear for their physical safety.

What is most concerning about the research into tech-facilitated family violence is that victim-survivors also often tell us they have been turned away by police when they’ve tried to report and seek assistance.

Even women who have a protection order in place say police are often reluctant to charge a perpetrator for breaching the order. That is, unless the breach is a physical assault or a physical trespass on her property.

These sorts of responses leave victim-survivors feeling that tech-facilitated abuse is not taken seriously. But all those repeated messages or voicemails, the doxing online, the tracking of a woman’s location, the spyware on her devices; these are clear red flags for physical violence.

What are the proposed reforms?

Currently, the law which governs stalking in NSW prohibits repeatedly following, watching, contacting and/or approaching a person to cause them fear of physical or mental harm. While this can include online behaviours, the revised law will more clearly specify this can include any technologically assisted means of doing so.

Other states across Australia have already made changes to stalking laws to clearly include tech-assisted means of abuse. In Victoria the laws specifically include the use of the internet or other electronic means to carry out stalking behaviours.

The proposed reforms in NSW also include new offences for serious and repeated breaches of a protection order. The government has also started an overhaul of bail decisions, including for people accused of serious domestic violence offences.

Police and courts need to take tech-facilitated abuse seriously

The National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032 rightly tells us we need to hold people who use violence accountable.

But there remains a gap in programs to help men change their abusive behaviour.

Taking tech-facilitated family violence seriously would not only improve women’s safety – it might also provide the opportunity to intervene early with abusers.

Sadly, this isn’t happening.

Of course, there are examples of proactive policing and court responses that do take tech-facilitated family violence seriously.

But as many victim-survivors have often said, a protection order is only a piece of paper. It means nothing if the police don’t act on it when it is breached. And so the problem of tech-facilitated abuse may remain despite the proposed reforms in NSW. It is not necessarily one of insufficient laws, but rather a reluctance or lack of resources to act on the laws we already have.

If governments really want to turn the tide to address family violence in all its forms, they need to properly implement the actions under the National Plan.

That includes investing in well-trained police, specialist courts and legal services. It also includes investing in programs to change abuser behaviour, as well as funding family violence support workers.

It is not right for victim-survivors to be facing ongoing harassment from their abuser, while feeling that our legal and support systems have abandoned them.

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 laws to tackle technology-based abuse in NSW are welcome. But police and courts also need to step up – https://theconversation.com/new-laws-to-tackle-technology-based-abuse-in-nsw-are-welcome-but-police-and-courts-also-need-to-step-up-238076

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Therésa Jones, Professor in Evolution and Behaviour, The University of Melbourne

As darkness falls, the nocturnal half of the animal kingdom starts its day. Nocturnal species are perfectly adapted to navigate and survive the dark of night that has existed for countless millions of years.

What happens to these creatures when the darkness they call home is transformed by streetlights and other artificial night lighting?

In new research published in Biology Letters, we studied how light pollution affects the development of Australian garden orb weaving spiders. We discovered it makes their brains smaller, particularly in the regions devoted to vision – with unknown effects on their behaviour.

What light pollution means for animals

Artificial light is one of the fastest-growing ways humans are polluting the world, and it has a huge range of effects on animals, plants and ecosystems. Recent evidence suggests the stress of living with light pollution may impair the growth and development of the brain in some birds and mammals.

This may be catastrophic. To survive in novel environments where light pollution is most common, such as cities, animals may actually need larger and more complex brains.

But what about insects and spiders and other, smaller creatures that inhabit the night? Could light pollution similarly affect the growth and development of their brains?

Our study on the nocturnal Australian garden orb weaving spider suggests it does.

More insects, but fewer offspring

The Australian garden orb weaving spider is a perfect species to explore this question. It lives happily in cities and rural areas where it constructs its webs each night in wide open areas (even under streetlights).

In previous studies we found urban spiders that build webs under streetlights catch more insect prey. We also showed that light at night has a cost because it accelerates juvenile development resulting in smaller adults that produce fewer offspring.

In this current study we investigated whether developing under light at night also affects brain size in males and females.

To explore this question, we took late-juvenile spiders from relatively dark parks in Melbourne, Australia and reared them in the laboratory until they were adults.

During rearing we kept half the spiders under darkness at night and exposed the other half to nocturnal lighting equivalent to the brightness of a streetlight.

Smaller brains, but why?

A few weeks after the spiders were fully grown we assessed whether light at night had affected the development of their brains. As a spider brain is around the size of the nib of a ballpoint pen (less than a cubic millimetre) we used micro-CT imaging technology to visualise what was inside.

We found that short-term exposure to light at night resulted in overall smaller spider brain volumes. The strongest effects were seen in the area of the brain linked to vision in the spider’s primary eyes.

These results are a first for invertebrates (animals with no backbone, such as insects and spiders), but they mirror what has been described in vertebrates. We can only speculate how these differences came about.

It is possible that the presence of light at night created a stressful environment that disrupted hormonal processes related to growth and development. However, if this was the case we might expect to see all parts of the brain affected, which was not the case.

An alternative explanation is that spiders forced to develop under light at night changed their “investment” in different parts of the brain. Proper brain function is essential for an animal to navigate its environment, so under stressful conditions, limited resources may be directed to the more important parts of the brain. For spiders that don’t rely on vision, like orb-weavers, they may compensate by reducing investment in the visual parts of the brain, as we found here.

Other invertebrates such as desert ants (Cataglyphis fortis) show similar “neuroplastic shifts” in the visual centre of their brain when they move from subterranean nest-tending to above-ground, vision-based foraging.

Why spiders – and their brains – matter

All this is quite interesting, but you might be wondering why we should care about light pollution affecting the size of a spider’s brain.

Well, spiders are very important in an ecosystem. They eat other invertebrates, including many pest species such as flies and mosquitoes. Spiders are also important prey for other predators, such as birds and lizards.

If spiders’ brains get smaller, it may affect their cognitive function and ability to perform these vital roles. We know from other species of birds and mammals that larger brains can help individuals survive in novel city environments and it is likely the same may be true for spiders.

This research also shows that the effects of light pollution on brain development extend to invertebrates as well as birds and mammals. The full effects of humanity’s love of artificial lighting are likely much bigger than we yet understand.

Therésa Jones receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Nikolas Willmott received funding from the Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment, Ecological Society of Australia, and the Environmental Microbiology Research Initiative.

– ref. City light pollution is shrinking spiders’ brains – https://theconversation.com/city-light-pollution-is-shrinking-spiders-brains-238086

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Hunter, Senior Lecturer in Art and Performance, Deakin University

The City of Melbourne’s Now Or Never Festival has just finished its second year, packing an exciting and experimental ten-day punch with a focus on art, ideas, sound and technology.

The inaugural 2023 festival featured an eclectic and innovative program of works and included my personal favourite event, the divine Kali Malone on the grand organ at Melbourne Town Hall.

This year I attended three of the festival’s events, each one compelling and unique in its own way.

The artistry of PowerPoint

Federation Square’s Edge theatre was filled with joyful energy on Thursday night as six presenters took their turn onstage for Queer PowerPoint, in front of a large and very appreciative crowd.

The conceit of this delightfully comic and engaging show is simple: each presenter is given ten minutes to unpack a question, challenge a notion or share a particular fascination using that ubiquitous tool of 1980s corporate-speak: Microsoft PowerPoint.

Programmed and facilitated by artist/performers Harriet Gilles and Xanthe Dobbie, Queer PowerPoint has serious street cred as a cult hit which also featured at the Sydney Biennial. It’s a unique concept that repurposes the straitlaced domain of public speaking into a powerful way to share stories by and for diverse communities.

From impassioned diatribes about pigeons as underappreciated but toxically polyamorous partners, to hilarious and rapid-fire conspiratorial treatises that compare Ellen DeGeneres to Joan of Arc, Queer PowerPoint is smart, raucous and hugely inventive. Who knew the exploding text transitions embedded in this dowdy graphic interface could be so profoundly and creatively employed?

The show elevates PowerPoint to artistic heights, as spoken word intersects with gifs, images, diagrams, graphs, animations and text in a stupidly funny and extremely satisfying riot of information.

Soulful musicality in a sublime collaboration

On Friday, at the Capitol Theatre, I stared up at the beautifully tessellated ceiling designed by Walter Burley Griffin. The musicians began with a full, rich and resonant overture, before Uncle Kutcha Edwards entered with clapsticks.

This event, Wuigada – Gagada (To Sing – Loud), features First Nations songman and legend Kutcha Edwards, a Mutti Mutti, Yorta Yorta and Nari Nari man. The event is a testament to the Australian Art Orchestra’s rich legacy of creative alliances across cultures in its 30-year history.

Grounded in the orchestra’s trademark sonic experimentation, the collaboration is a moving and personal celebration of Uncle Kutcha’s soulful musicality.

The songs shift from big-band fat grooves, through to intense, reverberating jazz, and to delicate sonic moments supported by Ryan Williams’ spacious, breathy contrabass recorder and backing vocalist Hailey Cramer. But it’s Uncle Kutcha’s rich voice, compelling presence and potent vulnerability that make this performance so moving.

Perched on a stool, hands occasionally fluttering, eyes sometimes closed, he is a music master of the highest order. At the conclusion of the concert he stands and exhorts the audience in language – then sings the musicians off the stage.

His encore number, a quietly devastating reminder of the deep sadness still present in and through the Stolen Generations, crystallises into a gentler moment of feeling that demonstrates the lingering impact of past acts and the transformative power of music.

Visceral immersive and intense

In cacophonous contrast to Uncle Kutcha’s show is Desastres, Marco Fusinato’s solo performance held in the cavernous Studio 1 at Docklands.

As I enter the space, I’m met by an earthquake of power chords generated by a lone guitarist and his audio stacks silhouetted against three massive digital screens. Earplugs are provided but I remove them after a few minutes to really immerse myself – and my body – in the sound, which is visceral, vibrating up through my feet and chest.

Stark black and white images flash thick and fast across the screens, timed precisely to the sound, which pulses, shreds, slows and groans. The images – of skulls, leaves, ancient texts, ammunition, war zones, palimpsests of torn walls, and more – are too rapid and chaotic to retain in my conscious mind.

As Fusinato’s rhythmic and deafening pulses shift across the space, the wall of sound stutters to staccato. We experience a second or two of blissful silence before we are immersed in a sonic world of screeching bombs, single gunshots and blasts. It’s a shattering moment.

It is as intense as it sounds. Fusinato is a noise-musician, working with and from multiple sources. And despite the fractured onslaught of photos and flashes, there’s a coherence to the work: a careful and considered dramaturgy of light, dark, noise and image.

All three of the works I witnessed at Now or Never 2024 were captivating in different ways. Each one is also evidence of the thoughtful and provocative remit of the festival.

I leave feeling equal parts disrupted, enlivened and uplifted, pondering the imaginative ways in which the unfolding of language – spoken, visual, sonic, embodied – is made manifest through artistic practice.

If this success is anything to go by, Now Or Never could continue to be a compelling fixture in Melbourne’s festival calendar.

Kate Hunter 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. From Queer PowerPoint to sonic immersion: highlights from Melbourne’s experimental arts festival Now or Never – https://theconversation.com/from-queer-powerpoint-to-sonic-immersion-highlights-from-melbournes-experimental-arts-festival-now-or-never-237759