Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ayesha Scott, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, AUT Business School, Auckland University of Technology and Senior Lecturer in Finance & Financial Planning, Griffith University

Economic harm – restricting access to, sabotaging or exploiting another person’s financial resources, and impeding their economic autonomy – is increasingly recognised as a form of family violence. And it can happen to anyone.

According to our ongoing research and previous studies, one in seven New Zealanders has experienced economic harm in their intimate relationships.

Like other forms of family violence, economic and financial harm affects victims’ physical and mental health, and increases housing instability and financial insecurity.

To understand how widespread economic harm is in New Zealand, we surveyed 993 people aged 18 and over. We asked if they had experienced a list of 19 harmful financial behaviours during the previous 12 months – and how often.

The prevalence of financial abuse

The vast majority of studies on wider intimate partner violence ask between three and five questions about money while measuring other types of violence. Instead, we focused only on capturing a wide range of financial behaviours and economic harm.

Examples of what we looked at included withholding financial information, using household money for other nonessential purchases, and intentionally paying bills late to hurt a partner’s credit rating.

Some behaviours were more prevalent than others. Across all 19 behaviours, an average of one in seven respondents (15.1%) reported experiencing a given behaviour at least half the time during their relationship in the preceding 12-months. One in seven said they had experienced at least ten of the behaviours.

While caution is needed when comparing different studies, our findings are similar to research in New Zealand and elsewhere, including from the United Kingdom.

Among the most prevalent behaviours experienced was action to “withhold or hide financial information or money from you” (17.6%). This was followed by “intentionally paying bills late or not paying bills that were in your name or in both your names” (17%).

Approximately one in five respondents reported their partner using their “money or household money for excessive gambling or alcohol/drug consumption”. A similar number said their partner used “online banking or banking apps (bank technology) to “pressure, coerce or threaten” them.

The use of online platforms such as banking apps and transactions as a tool to cause harm has led an increasing number of banks in New Zealand and Australia to explicitly name economic harm as inappropriate customer conduct in their terms and conditions.

The “historical” prevalence of economic harm (behaviours experienced in a previous relationship, more than 12 months ago) was much higher than that experienced by a current or former partner within the past 12 months.

We interpret this as evidence of money being a leading cause of relationship breakdown. This finding suggests individuals may be better able to identify their experience as abuse, or disclose harmful behaviours after the relationship has ended.

Invisible to outsiders

Economic harm rarely appears obvious to outsiders, and household income or individual earning power is not always indicative of access to financial resources. Unsafe and harmful behaviours hide behind cultural taboos around money.

Victims may also not immediately realise they are being harmed. They are unlikely to have the financial independence or agency to make decisions an outsider thinks they can or should.

Importantly, one in four survey respondents also reported knowing of someone they believed was being financially harmed. Given our general lack of understanding and awareness of economic harm, this finding offers hope.

Continual advocacy, backed by research and the many organisations and corporates working to improve knowledge and toolkits for survivors, will keep financial safety on the agenda.

As well as the often devastating personal experiences of financial harm, the cost to the broader economy is high. While figures are unclear for New Zealand, the economic impact on Australia in 2020 was estimated to be AUD$5.2 billion in lost productivity and mental health costs.

Changing the law

In the Asia-Pacific, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation has launched the “Empower Finance” programme to help financial institutions identify and address financial harm across the region.

Family violence agencies, advocates, and financial organisations have called for New Zealand’s Family Violence Act to name economic harm as a standalone type of violence, rather than a subcategory of psychological abuse.

Such a move would bring New Zealand in line with the United Kingdom and Australia. In Queensland and New South Wales, non-physical patterns of abuse, such as economic harm, are criminalised under new coercive control laws.

While New Zealand waits for legislative change, everyone can work to understand the behaviours that cause economic harm. This can include breaking down the taboos around talking about money, particularly in relationships.

If you believe you or someone you care about is experiencing economic harm, you can find more information at Good Shepherd in NZ, and the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety in Australia.

For this project, Ayesha Scott received funding from Kantar NZ and collaborated with Good Shepherd NZ and BNZ.

– ref. Financial forms of family violence affect 1 in 7 New Zealanders – but the law is lagging – https://theconversation.com/financial-forms-of-family-violence-affect-1-in-7-new-zealanders-but-the-law-is-lagging-243466

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katharine Kemp, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law & Justice; Lead, UNSW Public Interest Law & Tech Initiative, UNSW Sydney

New research reveals serious privacy flaws in the data practices of new internet connected cars in Australia. It’s yet another reason why we need urgent reform of privacy laws.

Modern cars are increasingly equipped with internet-enabled features. Your “connected car” might automatically detect an accident and call emergency services, or send a notification if a child is left in the back seat.

But connected cars are also sophisticated surveillance devices. The data they collect can create a highly revealing picture of each driver. If this data is misused, it can result in privacy and security threats.

A report published today analysed the privacy terms from 15 of the most popular new car brands that sell connected cars in Australia.

This analysis uncovered concerning practices. There are enormous obstacles for consumers who want to find and understand the privacy terms. Some brands also make inaccurate claims that certain information is not “personal information”, implying the Privacy Act doesn’t apply to that data.

Some companies are also repurposing personal information for “marketing” or “research”, and sharing data with third parties.

What is a connected car? How does it transmit data?

Connected cars sold in Australia can transmit data about the car, its driver and passengers in real time via the internet. The data can go to the overseas vehicle manufacturer and other businesses.

Manufacturers often require the owner or driver to download and use an app to make use of various “connected services”.

Depending on the brand and model, these may include the ability to remotely:

• heat, cool, lock or unlock the car
• locate the parked car, including through remote use of headlights and horn
• check fuel level and tyre pressure, or
• use the car’s internal and external cameras to view its surroundings and interior.

The introduction of connected models in Australia has lagged behind the European Union and the United States. Some popular brands in Australia – for example, Subaru and Isuzu – still offer no connected models.

However, Austroads predicts that by 2031, 93% of new car sales in Australia will be connected cars.

Why do we need data privacy?

Personal information collected by your car can be misused in various ways. It could be disclosed to insurers or data brokers without your consent. It can facilitate crimes, including domestic violence, stalking and robbery.

Such data also presents the risk of unjustified police or government surveillance, and even national security risks.

In 2023, Mozilla Foundation researchers analysed connected car privacy terms in the United States, calling it a “privacy nightmare on wheels”. This was revealing, but not directly useful for Australian consumers.

This new report analyses the privacy terms of new connected cars sold by the 15 most popular car brands in Australia. The goal was to find out how car brands approach customer privacy and potential risks, and whether consumers can make decisions about their data privacy before buying the car.

To avoid comparing apples with oranges, this analysis only included brands that currently offer connected cars in Australia. “Unconnected” cars don’t offer consumers the same features via the internet (although they may still collect data to some extent, and can still present privacy risks).

Privacy terms aren’t easy to find

There are massive obstacles to consumers who want to read and understand the relevant privacy terms.

This includes brands referring consumers to multiple, lengthy documents. Consumers are directed to an average of three documents totalling around 14,000 words per brand to discover the applicable privacy terms.

There can also be further privacy notices in the vehicle, the user manual or the purchase contract.

Other hurdles for consumers included missing privacy terms, unhelpful interfaces, and significant errors in published privacy policies.

What counts as personal information?

Several major brands fail to recognise the full scope of personal information protected by the Privacy Act.

They claim, for example, that certain information “does not, on its own, personally identify” the consumer and they can use this for “any purpose”.

But this can, in fact, be personal information about a reasonably identifiable individual.

For example, on its own, a map of your precise location throughout the day may not identify you. But once matched with your home and work address, or location history on your mobile phone, it can be linked to you.

Using data for unrelated purposes

Given the intimate and often sensitive nature of the information, car companies should not use it for unrelated purposes without consent. Any consent to use it should be active, opt-in, express, unequivocal and fully informed.

However, most of the brands in our report say they will use the information collected from connected cars for undefined “marketing” or “research” purposes. In some cases they say they will use it for making predictions about the individual’s behaviour – all without requiring express consent.

Several of the brands also have broad data sharing arrangements with digital platforms, advertising technology companies, data brokers or artificial intelligence developers.

Most of the privacy terms also make vague references to providing personal information to insurance companies, without specifying limits on these disclosures to ensure insurance companies don’t repurpose this information against consumers’ interests.

Consumers in the US are suing General Motors for passing on driving data to insurers, which then increased their insurance premiums.

Privacy law reform is overdue

The Australian Privacy Act has been under review for several years.

To improve privacy protections in connected cars, we must update definitions of “personal information” and “consent”. We also need a “fair and reasonable” test for data practices. It’s not enough for consumers to technically consent to a practice, the practice itself should be fair when its consequences are fully understood.

The government’s current “first tranche” of proposed privacy law reform does not include these amendments.

In the meantime, the data practices surrounding connected cars need immediate attention and guidance from the privacy regulator.

Customers should be able to easily find and understand the privacy terms and choices of the cars they want to buy. Businesses should recognise the full extent of personal information collected by the car and adequately protect it.

Katharine Kemp is a member of the Expert Advisory Panel of the Consumer Policy Research Centre.

– ref. Modern cars are surveillance devices on wheels with major privacy risks – new report – https://theconversation.com/modern-cars-are-surveillance-devices-on-wheels-with-major-privacy-risks-new-report-241258

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

Australia’s gender pay gap has been shrinking year by year, but is still over 20% among Australia’s private companies, a new national report card shows.

But that gender gap is even bigger at 25% among chief executive officers, according to figures collected for the first time in 2023–24.

And the widest gap of all is among older workers, with women in their late 50s typically earning $53,000 less each year than men the same age.

The release of the scorecard coincides with the federal government announcing it will introduce legislation this week requiring employers to set gender targets for boards, for narrowing the pay gap and for providing flexible work hours.

These and other measures will apply to companies with 500 or more employees. They build on legislative changes that enables the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to publish the size of their gender pay gaps, which came into effect this year.

Tracking Australia’s gender pay gap

Each year, the gender equality agency measures the gender equality performance of all private sector employers with 100 or more employees. This adds up to more than 7,000 employers and 5 million employees nationally.

Drawing on data collected in the annual employer census, the agency looks at several key indicators including gender composition of the workforce, gender balance of boards and governing bodies and equal pay for equal work.

One important indicator is the gender gap in average total remuneration. This is calculated for all employees – full-time, part-time and casual – by converting employees’ pay into a full-time annualised equivalent.

The gap continued to shrink in the past year to 21.1%. This has been largely fuelled by growth in the pay of the lowest-earning women in the workforce.

This came about, in part, because in June 2023, the Fair Work Commission awarded a 15% minimum pay rise to several aged care awards, where women hold 80% of jobs. Raises were also given to the retail trade, accommodation and food services sectors, also large employers of women.

Another reason the gap narrowed was because the remuneration of women managers rose by 5.9% from 2022-2023, compared to men’s which increased by 4.4% over the same period.

A bigger gap among high earners

The increase was particularly significant for high earning women (up 6.3%) compared to high earning men (4.1%). However, men still outnumber women in management, holding 58% of positions.

For the first time in 2023-24, the agency collected CEO salaries. The gender gap in CEO total remuneration was 25%.

Just one in four CEOs are women, and the gender pay gap for these key roles is the largest of all management roles. Women CEOs are paid, on average, $158,632 less total remuneration than men.

When CEO salaries are added into the mix, the overall gender pay gap stretches to 21.8%.

Little change for women on boards

The gender agency knows that women’s representation on governing boards matters for steering organisational change towards gender equality, monitoring these changes on the scorecard.

However the overall percentage of women on boards has hardly budged in recent years, at around one-third.

And about one-quarter of companies have no women on their governing board at all. This share is even higher in male-dominated industries, such as construction where the boards of 55% of companies are all men.

Women in their late 50s face the biggest pay gap

In dollars, it means Australian women are earning, on average, $28,425 less each year than their male colleagues.

This gap widens further among older workers. At its widest point, women aged 55 to 59 years are earning $53,000 less each year than men – a gap of 32.6%.

One of the big drivers of this pay gap are gender patterns in different industries and occupations.

The gender agency’s scorecard shows that half of all private sector employees work in an industry that is either male-dominated or female-dominated, meaning its workforce least 60% of a single gender.

It’s been a longstanding feature of the workforce that male-dominated industries outstrip the average earnings are female-dominated industries of education and training, and health care and social assistance.

How supportive are employers?

The workplace gender agency also measures employers’ policies supporting work and family balance, such as flexible hours and extra paid parental leave on top of minimal government provisions.

The finding that more employers are offering paid parental leave, rising from 63% to 68% in the past year, is a tick on the scorecard.

Men’s involvement in caregiving has a direct impact, enabling women’s involvement in the workforce. The proportion of parental leave being taken by men is up from 14% to 17%.

These improvements are set to increase under the government’s new legislation.

Providing a safe workplace

The final indicator on the scorecard looks at employers’ actions to prevent and respond to sexual harassment and discrimination in their workplace, as required under new Respect@Work laws.

Almost all (99%) of employers report having a policy in place. But there is scope for improvement in other ways.

Almost half (40%) don’t monitor the outcomes of sexual harassment and discrimination complaints and half don’t review the policy and consult with employees. As well, about 25% don’t incorporate inclusive and respectful behaviour into regular performance evaluation.

How reporting can drive change

As with any report card, there are marks for effort.

In the last year, 75% of companies reported they had analysed their own organisation’s gender pay gap and had made changes. This was up from 60% the previous year.

The gender agency attributes this to the publication of individual organisation’s gender pay gaps for the first time earlier this year.

Almost half (45%) of employers are now setting goals to improve gender equality. This includes targets to boost the number of women in management, reduce the gender pay gap and to achieve a gender-balance in their governing body.

These higher aspirations are likely to also be a response to plans to make target-setting part of the requirements for bidding for government contracts.

These changes show how incentives can bring about improvements. They arose from the 2021 Review to the Workplace Gender Equality Act that used research-based insights, data and community consultation to develop practical steps to reduce the gap and improve conditions for women.

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

– ref. Women are still being paid almost $30,000 a year less than men and the gap widens with age – https://theconversation.com/women-are-still-being-paid-almost-30-000-a-year-less-than-men-and-the-gap-widens-with-age-243941

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Belinda Lunnay, Senior Research Fellow in Public Health, Torrens University Australia

Even before the COVID pandemic, which added significant pressure to the health-care workforce, Australian doctors experienced poor mental health at higher rates than the overall population.

The risk is particularly high for medical students, junior doctors and female doctors. A recent review of data from 20 countries found suicide was 76% more likely among female physicians compared to the general female population.

All this is a problem for the doctors themselves, and often for their loved ones. But it’s also a problem because we rely on doctors to provide high-quality health care for the population. If they’re burnt out, or experiencing anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues, this can affect their capacity to look after us.

Our new study published today in BMJ Open explores how doctors’ workplaces and working conditions affect their mental health.

What we did

We interviewed and then “work shadowed” 14 doctors while they were on shift in a public hospital in South Australia between June and October 2021. The doctors who took part were from varying cultural backgrounds, genders, sub-specialties, and at different stages of their careers (junior and senior).

We asked doctors about their roles, duties they perform, training requirements, and hospital regulations or standards that affect their experiences of their work.

We then watched the same doctors working at different times of the day, observing:

• features of their working environments (such as pace and demands)
• interpersonal relationships (team dynamics, mentoring, supervision, patient interactions)
• the types of pressures they contended with alongside delivering clinical care (patient loads, administrative tasks).

During the shadowing, we explored with doctors how their workplaces could better support their mental health.

Administrative burdens on top of patient care

Among several challenges participants reported in their day-to-day work, the burden of administrative processes (such as completing paperwork and gaining approvals required for referrals) was a particularly strong theme.

One doctor said “the hospital processes are more stressful than clinical scenarios”.

The administrative burden required on top of clinical care left doctors feeling disenfranchised and negatively affected their satisfaction with service delivery. One said:

If the [patient’s] outcome is poor because they’ve had a terrible accident or got a terrible illness, I can rationalise that. But if they’ve had a poor outcome because we’ve not been able to deliver them a good service that feels a lot worse.

Workforce and rostering shortages

Doctors also described under-staffing and fragmented teams, which often required them to absorb pressure to provide high-quality care. This, compounded by the effects of shift work, led to exhaustion and took a toll on their mental health.

Despite this, doctors described feeling unable to refuse shifts or take leave for fear of losing professional credibility among colleagues or with senior staff who might control future job opportunities. One participant said:

We just keep taking it, keep taking it, keep taking it […] until we can’t. And I think, particularly doctors who don’t want to be seen as causing trouble or rocking the boat […] or seen as weak. You don’t want to be the one to admit that actually, this is impossible for one person to do.

A combination of pressures

Doctors in our study were highly trained, motivated and proficient in providing clinical care relative to their career stage.

However, their medical practice occurred within work environments characterised by high patient loads, time constraints, geographical challenges (services dispersed across sites) and administrative burdens. As one participant explained:

I think that just bubbles over years and it just makes this horrible feeling of injustice. Which is why I think doctors just feel burnt out, tired, frustrated, because they’re trying to do the right thing, and they’re trying to be better, and the system just doesn’t allow it.

The combination of competing pressures often collided with ambitions of being “a good doctor”. As one junior doctor explained:

In addition to all that knowledge and actual competence that you need to have, it is so important to convey to others that you are this rational, measured human being who is there to get the job done in an efficient way, in the right way. You just have to step up to that role and fulfil all these different tasks, and different expectations within this one job.

What next?

Our study was conducted only in South Australia’s public hospital system, so our findings can’t be generalised to other hospitals or other health-care settings where doctors might work.

But to our knowledge, ours is the first study of doctors’ mental health where, alongside interviews, researchers entered participants’ workplaces to observe their working conditions. In this way, it provides unique insights on the organisation and system-level factors which influence doctors at all career stages.

Our findings indicate doctors’ working conditions can have a direct impact on their mental health.

Protecting doctors’ mental health often focuses on how individual doctors can build resilience and increase their capacity to manage stress, for example through employee assistance programs.

While these approaches are important, they place ultimate responsibility for mental health on the individual doctor. This will not be enough, because doctors’ working conditions are largely outside of their control.

Programs are also not always accessible, for example due to stigma, workplace and professional culture, concerns about confidentiality or perceived risks to registration.

Protecting doctors’ mental health will require system-level changes, including addressing workforce shortages and restructuring leave provisions so that staff feel able to take time off. These changes are a crucial starting point to better look after our doctors, so they can look after us.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Belinda Lunnay has previously received funding from the Women’s Health Research Translation Network via the MRFF, the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, College of Medicine and Public Health and the Flinders Foundation. She is affiliated with the Australian Health Promotion Association, Australia’s peak health promotion body as Board Director.

Kristen Foley has previously received a scholarship from the National Health and Medical Research Council, and research funding from the Flinders Medical Health Research Institute. She is a clinical council member for the Adelaide Primary Health Network.

Paul Ward 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. ‘Burnt out, tired, frustrated’: how hospital pressures harm doctors’ mental health – https://theconversation.com/burnt-out-tired-frustrated-how-hospital-pressures-harm-doctors-mental-health-243378

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Keddie, Professor of Education, Deakin University

If parents have a choice, the decision about where to send a child to school and what will be best for them can be a really difficult one.

One question that comes up frequently in media reporting is whether single-sex or co-ed schools are better for students. There is ongoing debate about this for both private and public schools.

There has been community outcry over some schools’ plans to go co-ed. So it may surprise parents to know this isn’t a key question for many education researchers.

As someone who studies gender, social justice and schools, there are other questions I consider to be more important, such as: does a school give students equal opportunities for education and future life success? And how do we make sure all our schools do this?

What does the research say?

Single-sex vs co-ed debates have been going for decades. Which creates better outcomes? Is co-ed better for boys? Is single-sex more suitable for girls?

But decades of research into the topic is inconclusive.

What we can say is that the biggest predictors of a student’s academic success are socio-economic status, whether they live in a rural or remote area, and whether they are Indigenous.

There is also a widespread view it’s good for boys to be with girls, but better for girls to be on their own. But again, there is little comprehensive research evidence to support this premise.

These debates are also dominated by a belief that girls and boys learn differently. There is no strong basis for this in educational research.

Read more:
Why do we have single sex schools? What’s the history behind one of the biggest debates in education?

A different question

Looking only at gender differences between boys and girls at school can mean we ignore other important factors that impact on students’ educational success such as social class, race, school location and funding.

This is why, instead of getting stuck in old debates about single-sex vs co-ed schools, we should be asking more important questions:

• do schools support all students?

• do they create an environment that gives every student a fair chance to succeed?

US philosopher Nancy Fraser has a helpful framework for us to think about these questions. Her framework provides guidance about what schools and schooling systems should focus on to provide a fair and quality education.

This includes three elements: economic, cultural and political justice. These elements support not only students’ academic and social learning but also their physical, social and emotional wellbeing.

What about funding?

Economic justice is about fair access to resources. In Australia, reforms like the Gonski model aim to do this by focusing on student needs, such as location, Indigenous background, disability and language support. The idea is schools in needier areas should get more government funding and support.

However, there’s still a long way to go for funding equity. Public schools that serve the most disadvantaged students remain underfunded compared to private schools, which receive substantial government support.

This funding gap limits students’ access to the resources, safe spaces and support they need to thrive.

Respecting all backgrounds

But money alone isn’t enough. Schools need to respect and value the different backgrounds and experiences students have.

In Australia, with its rich multicultural makeup, it’s important schools focus on cultural justice by recognising and challenging discrimination based on gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religious background and ability.

They can do this by, for example, including Indigenous perspectives across the curriculum, teaching gender respect in relationships and setting up classrooms where cultural differences are valued. This helps create a welcoming and supportive school environment for everyone.

This is not about reducing identities to stereotypes. It is about supporting a deep understanding of different cultures that goes beyond labels and addresses the issues that keep certain groups marginalised.

Read more:
Australian schools need to address racism. Here are 4 ways they can do this

Are all voices heard?

Schools also need to foster political justice. Good schools provide opportunities for all voices — especially those from marginalised communities — to be heard and be part of decision-making.

This is something that can easily be obscured in debates about single sex or co-ed schools being better for one gender. For example, while single-sex schools may try to address gender-specific needs, they often reinforce stereotypes and can exclude non-binary and transgender students.

Schools can foster political justice by creating ways for all students, families, and communities to have a real say in policies and practices.

Inclusive decision-making helps students, families, and the school community feel connected and valued.

What can you look for in a school?

Parents interested in whether a school is working to give all its students opportunities to succeed, could ask questions such as:

• how does the school allocate resources to support disadvantaged students and ensure equal access to facilities and opportunities?

• does the curriculum include diverse perspectives, celebrate cultural differences, and address issues like racism, sexism, and ableism?

• are teachers trained to respond to diverse student needs?

• how does the school ensure students, families and communities have a voice in decision-making?

• finally, does the school’s staff reflect the diversity of its student body and if not, are there steps to rectify this?

Amanda Keddie receives funding from the Australian Research Council

– ref. When picking schools, don’t get stuck on single-sex vs. co-ed. Instead ask – are all students supported and included? – https://theconversation.com/when-picking-schools-dont-get-stuck-on-single-sex-vs-co-ed-instead-ask-are-all-students-supported-and-included-243932

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yves Rees, Senior Lecturer in History, La Trobe University

Drag Race Down Under is back for a fourth season, only this time something is different. The Australasian franchise is no longer helmed by the eponymous RuPaul. Instead, this season the main judge and host is RuPaul’s long-term “best Judy” Michelle Visage, a woman from New Jersey who came to fame in the late 1980s as a member of dance-pop group Seduction.

Visage has worked as a panellist and judge on all US variations of Drag Race since 2011, and on the UK and “Down Under” (Australia-New Zealand) spinoffs.

On Down Under, Visage has now become the authority who determines who sashays and who stays in the fierce contest between ten queens.

This promotion has significance far beyond Visage’s own career. Importantly, it has prompted debate in drag communities that brings to light tensions across queer gender politics, and also reveals shifts in drag culture – for which Drag Race’s huge global popularity is largely responsible.

The mother of queens

On one hand, Visage’s elevation to host can be seen as a milestone for cisgender women in the world of drag, a culture long dominated by cisgender gay men such as RuPaul himself.

Along with the rising mainstream profile of drag over recent years, a growing number of cis women have identified and performed as drag queens (a category sometimes called “bioqueens”).

In 2021, UK Drag Race contestant Victoria Scone made headlines as the first cis woman to compete on a Drag Race franchise.

More recently, runaway pop sensation Chappell Roan – famous for elaborate costumes and makeup – has claimed the mantle of drag queen. Cis women have also performed as drag kings for decades, though “kinging” remains comparatively marginal and under-resourced.

Visage taking the reins is something categorically different: a position of power and authority within the drag world conferred by no less than RuPaul, the world’s preeminent drag artist.

It’s one thing for a cis woman to self-identify as a drag artist; it is quite another to be anointed as a drag gatekeeper by the individual who almost single-handedly brought this queer artform to the mainstream.

Although notoriously reluctant to allow trans women to compete in Drag Race, RuPaul has no qualms about extending queendom to Visage. In the foreword to Visage’s 2015 memoir The Diva Rules, RuPaul wrote Visage “knows the world of drag (she’s a drag queen herself)”.

Not so long ago, cisgender heterosexual women in gay culture were often dismissed as “fag hags”, a sometimes misogynistic (and also homophobic) label that reduced them to mere hangers-on.

Now, Visage is in the spotlight. The season’s blocking, editing, wardrobe and dialogue all position Visage as direct successor and equal to RuPaul.

There can be no doubt: on Drag Race Down Under, this cis woman is now the mother of all queens.

More than an ally

Since Visage was announced as host, Drag Race fandom has been alight with debate, with many concluding Visage lacks necessary credentials.

Online disputes among Drag Race fans flared on Reddit, asking if “they couldn’t find an Aussie?” and questioning whether Visage could legitimately be considered a drag queen herself.

Most conspicuously, Willam – a US Drag Race celebrity alum – was indignant “a drag ally is the host of a drag show”.

On the podcast Race Chaser, Willam said:

Why would you have someone who is not a drag queen hosting a drag show? […] It’s like someone who is coeliac hosting a baking competition.

But Willam seems to have missed some new developments, as well as certain histories, in drag culture.

Visage and RuPaul first met in New York’s ballroom scene, a subculture established in the mid-20th century by Black and Latinx queers, especially trans women (or “femme queens”) in response to racism in white-dominated drag spaces.

In ballroom, individuals are adopted into Houses, who then compete in categories such as “Vogue” (a dance style inspired by fashion modelling) or “Face” (a beauty category that focuses on the contestant’s face) at regular balls. Ballroom and drag are not synonymous, but ballroom has been a strong influence on contemporary drag culture and Drag Race.

Visage entered the ballroom world in the late 1980s, adopted into the House of Magnifique, becoming a top vogue dancer. As she said in her memoir, she was a “wild drag child”.

As a white, cisgender heterosexual woman, Visage was an outlier in ballroom but, nonetheless, the community became her “surrogate family”. During these years Visage created her drag persona. Born and raised as Michelle Shupack, she changed her named to Visage (French for “face”) after winning the Face category at many balls.

Drag and ballroom were once necessarily peripheral. They were spaces marginalised queer people carved out for themselves where they could celebrate, empower and compete, setting their own rules.

Yet, in the past decade, the global Drag Race phenomenon and social expansions of gender categories have changed how people engage with these previously underground subcultures.

All drag is valid

In this new drag-world order, Visage can ascend to a rightful place as a bona fide drag queen – a status she claims with “drag queen” tattooed on her upper thigh.

For Visage, all genders have equal claim to the artform:

I think that trans women do drag just like biological women do drag, just like trans men do drag […] all drag is valid, and all drag is welcome.

As the drag artist Michelle Visage, her name has become synonymous with a distinctive aesthetic: leopard print, exaggerated make-up, big hair, long nails and (until recently) artificial DD breasts – a high-camp nod to her New Jersey roots.

“This is my shield, my superhero costume,” Visage explains. “When I put on my makeup, my drag, I feel like I can take on the world.”

She may not yet have conquered the world, but this queen has certainly conquered Drag Race, forging a new frontier for cis women in drag culture.

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. Michelle Visage is now hosting Drag Race Down Under. It’s a milestone for cis women in drag – https://theconversation.com/michelle-visage-is-now-hosting-drag-race-down-under-its-a-milestone-for-cis-women-in-drag-243704

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joo-Cheong Tham, Professor, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

Political funding in Australia has long been shrouded in secrecy. It is also dominated by large donations and unrestrained spending, courtesy of laissez-faire federal political finance laws.

The Albanese government has proposed the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Bill. According to the government, the bill “seek(s) to remove the influence of big money in politics”. The Teal MPs and Clive Palmer have, however, denounced it as “a major party stich-up”.

Where does the truth lie?

The bill will reduce the influence of big money in politics, but it does not go far enough in curbing large donations and excessive spending. Its scorecard on promoting fair elections is mixed: it will make elections fairer in key respects, but also unduly favour the major parties, political parties with wealthy candidates, and those with investment income.

A wholesale reform

The bill proposes significant changes to the two pillars of current federal laws (disclosure and public funding), while adding another two (caps on gifts and caps on electoral expenditure). This is the most ambitious reform of federal political finance laws attempted since the current regime was established four decades ago.

Substantial “hidden money” has resulted from the weaknesses of current laws. These include a high disclosure threshold, a lack of timeliness, and weak penalties.

The bill provides a comprehensive response to these weaknesses by:
• reducing the disclosure threshold to $1,000
• requiring expedited disclosure
• providing penalties based on the amounts not disclosed.

Risk of corruption is reduced, but there are significant loopholes

A small minority of large donors dominate the funding of federal political parties and candidates.

Leading the pack are cashed-up individuals such as Richard Pratt, Clive Palmer and Rob Keldoulis (the main funder of Climate 200).

Specific industries (including the mining and resource sector, the property sector, and the gambling sector), regularly make substantial donations and mainly to the major parties – money follows power.

All this illustrates what the High Court has described as “clientelism” corruption. This means corruption that

arises from an office-holder’s dependence on the financial support of a wealthy patron to a degree that is apt to compromise the expectation, fundamental to representative democracy, that public power will be exercised in the public interest.

The bill tackles such corruption through all four pillars. Robust disclosure will aid through “sunlight as disinfectant”. A ceiling on spending through expenditure caps will reduce the pressure to fundraise. An increase in public funding for campaigns has a similar effect.

Gift caps are the principal way in which the bill seeks to prevent large donations. The million-dollar donations made by Pratt, Keldoulis and mining companies would be illegal under these caps, which limit donations to each political party to $20,000 a year.

However, these caps also have major loopholes. Exclusions from the caps allow for disguised donations: membership and affiliation fees to associated entities are not caught by the caps. While there is a principled basis for exempting membership and affiliation fees to political parties (including trade union affiliation fees), the bill allows for inflation of these fees by leaving the exemptions uncapped (unlike NSW laws).

Most significantly, the caps do not apply to donations made by candidates to the party that endorsed them. They would not, for example, prevent Clive Palmer from continuing to donate millions to the United Australia Party. They would also not prohibit donations such as the $1.75 million Malcolm Turnbull gave to the Liberal Party in 2016–17.

The ‘arms race’ is contained but big spending will continue

The past two decades have seen a steady rise in federal election spending. This has been driven by major party spending and big spending contests such as Kooyong (where both Monique Ryan and Josh Frydenberg spent around $2 million each).

The problem here is twofold: high spending increases fundraising pressure and the risk of corruption associated with large donations; and high spending itself undermines fairness of elections. The High Court has referred to “war-chest” corruption where “the power of money may also pose a threat to the electoral process itself”.

The bill’s federal cap of $90 million will reduce levels of spending (the Coalition, United Australia and Labor each spent more than $100 million in the last election) and prevent further increases.

Nevertheless, the cap is set too high. Analysis by the Centre for Public Integrity shows the federal cap is disproportionately high compared to the state caps. For example, it will allow more than double a maximum spend per elector compared to the New South Wales cap on spending.

The $11.25 million cap on third-party spending shares the same weakness. While this high level was presumably adopted to lessen the prospect of a successful constitutional challenge to the cap (as occurred with the NSW cap), the scale has been tilted too far.

As it stands, the third-party cap will not prevent campaigns such as the $22 million advertising campaign by mining companies against the Rudd government’s resource super-profits tax, which contributed to the ousting of Kevin Rudd as prime minister.

Caps promote fairness but some still get a free pass

Gift caps promote fair elections by reducing the need for large donations in order for candidates to run a meaningful campaign. They also level the playing field by reducing the spending advantage of the better-resourced parties and candidates.

In both cases, candidates such as the Teals, who rely on large donations and high spending, will clearly be constrained. But it is the major parties that will be most affected (disadvantaged), as they are the main beneficiaries of the laissez-faire status quo (together with Palmer’s United Australia Party).

On the negative side, the loophole with candidate donations will favour parties with wealthy candidates. Parties will also be able to register their investment vehicles as “nominated entities” and receive income outside of the gift caps, a boon for the major parties and probably Palmer’s UAP.

Major parties further benefit from the narrow scope of Division and Senate caps which leave out considerable party spending directed at these contests. Broadening their scope along the lines of [Canadian] and UK spending limits will help address the Teals’ concern that spending caps allow the major parties to game the caps by shifting spending from safe and unwinnable seats to marginal ones.

Public funding can be fairer

The bill seeks to increase public funding based on first preference votes (election funding) and the number of seats (administrative assistance funding). This is a measure for fairness: together with gift caps, it means funding is increasingly determined by the level of popular support rather than the ability to attract large donations.

The major parties will receive substantial increases in public funding due to their share of votes and seats. But this is not a credible argument that such funding is “biased”.

However, as funding criteria are based on the outcomes of the past election, public funding does favour incumbents. This could can be offset by a start-up fund for new parties and candidates (such as the New South Wales’ New Parties Fund).

The government should be congratulated for grasping the nettle of reform in an area where disagreement and self interest run deep. It should now follow through with a proper parliamentary process – including a parliamentary inquiry with adequate time for scrutiny. Otherwise, it may miss the opportunity for enduring change.

Joo-Cheong Tham has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, European Trade Union Institute, International IDEA, the New South Wales Electoral Commission, the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption and the Victorian Electoral Commission. He is a Director of the Centre for Public Integrity; Expert Network Member of Climate Integrity; and the Victorian Division Assistant Secretary (Academic Staff) of the National Tertiary Education Union.

– ref. Political finance law reforms will reduce big money in politics, but will rich donors be the ultimate winners? – https://theconversation.com/political-finance-law-reforms-will-reduce-big-money-in-politics-but-will-rich-donors-be-the-ultimate-winners-243906

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margarita Vladimirova, PhD in Privacy Law and Facial Recognition Technology, Deakin University

Hardware giant Bunnings breached the privacy of “likely hundreds of thousands” of Australians through its use of facial recognition technology, the Privacy Commissioner ruled today.

“Individuals who entered the relevant Bunnings stores at the time would not have been aware that facial recognition technology was in use and especially that their sensitive information was being collected, even if briefly,” the commissioner Carly Kind said.

The ruling is the culmination of a two-year investigation. Bunnings claimed it is “deeply disappointed” by the decision, and is seeking a review.

The commissioner did not seek to impose a fine on Bunnings for the breach of privacy.

If the ruling stands, it could have big implications for Australian shoppers and retailers. It also strengthens the case for removing a significant loophole in Australia’s privacy law.

Right now, that loophole allows businesses to collect your biometric information without your explicit consent by simply putting up signs.

An elaborate profiling system

Bunnings is a hardware and garden supplies chain with more than 500 stores across Australia and New Zealand. It is owned by Wesfarmers and in 2023 had a total revenue of $18.54 billion.

Bunnings ran a trial of a facial recognition technology system between January 2019 and November 2021 in at least 62 stores in Victoria and New South Wales. This followed an earlier two-month trial in one store, which started in November 2018.

The system was incorporated into security cameras and captured the facial image of every person who entered a store. The system then analysed these images to create a searchable database of facial images.

The person’s file could be assigned to a range of categories. These included:

• non-threatening
• individuals who had engaged in “actual or threatened violence” to Bunnings’ staff or members of the public
• individuals who had demonstrated “violent, threatening or other inappropriate behaviour”
• individuals who had engaged in “serious cases of theft”
• individuals who were reasonably suspected of committing “organised retail crime”.

Bunnings stated its “sole and clear intent” in conducting the trial was to keep team members and customers safe and prevent unlawful activity.

No consent

The privacy commissioner launched an investigation into Bunnings in July 2022. This followed a report from consumer advocacy group CHOICE about the company’s use of facial recognition technology.

The commissioner acknowledged the potential of facial recognition technology to reduce violence and theft. However, she added:

any possible benefits need to be weighed against the impact on privacy rights, as well as our collective values as a society.

In this case, the commissioner found Bunnings’ use of facial recognition technology breached Australian privacy law because the company did not obtain consent from its customers nor inform them it was collecting their biometric information.

The commissioner ordered Bunnings not to continue or repeat the practice in the future. She also ordered Bunnings to destroy all of the personal and sensitive information of its customers it still holds (after 12 months), and to publish a statement about the ruling online within 30 days.

However, the commissioner has not applied to the Federal Court to impose a financial penalty on Bunnings for the privacy breach. If she had done so, as a “body corporate” Bunnings could have faced a maximum fine of $50 million.

Australian retailers are now on notice

Despite the lack of a fine against Bunnings, this ruling may still have a number of significant implications for Australian shoppers and retailers.

First, it could lead to a more thoughtful and ethical use of technology in retail environments. Alongside the ruling, the commissioner’s office released clear guidance on the application of the Privacy Act to facial recognition technology in the hope it will help companies follow the letter of the law.

Second, the ruling reinforces a broad definition of biometric information introduced by the privacy commissioner last year, in a case against facial recognition company Clearview AI.

During a hearing at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the commissioner stated that “even a photograph could be described as one of the lower levels of biometric recognition”. The tribunal accepted this definition.

In this case against Bunnings, the privacy commissioner has applied that definition. This puts retailers on notice. They will no longer be able to hide behind claims that they “just collect video information but not biometric data”. Any image of a face is a potential source of biometric data and therefore should be protected under privacy law.

We need to fix this legal loophole

The ruling against Bunnings also strengthens the case for a more thorough update to Australian privacy law.

At present, the law doesn’t specifically require businesses to obtain express consent when collecting biometric information. It only requires them to obtain “consent”.

This assumes that implied consent is valid, which is achievable, for example, by erecting signs informing customers upon entry that there is a facial recognition camera on the premises. This suggests that if you enter, you agree for your facial information to be collected.

This loophole was overlooked in the proposed privacy reforms released by the federal government earlier this year.

The Bunnings case clearly demonstrates the need for an updated and clear legal definition of consent to protect peoples’ privacy. It also demonstrates the need for additional legal tools to protect biometric information, such as a technical standard for facial recognition technology.

This standard could then be enforced by a statutory authority, which would issue licences to businesses wanting to use facial recognition technology, as well as conduct regular audits and checks to ensure the standard is being upheld.

Margarita Vladimirova 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. Bunnings breached privacy law by scanning customers’ faces – but this loophole lets other shops keep doing it – https://theconversation.com/bunnings-breached-privacy-law-by-scanning-customers-faces-but-this-loophole-lets-other-shops-keep-doing-it-244031

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meg Edwards, Lecturer in Wildlife Science, University of Southern Queensland

Humans have been turning wild animals into pets for thousands of years. Pets – animals kept for companionship, not for food or work – were widespread in ancient Egypt.

In Australia, First Nations groups favoured dingoes, a naturalised canine arriving perhaps 5,000 years ago. “Dingo” is derived from din-gu, the Dharug word for domesticated dog – wild dingoes were known as “warrigal”.

To begin with, early colonial settlers often saw native wildlife as competitors to livestock. But over time, some began keeping native animals as pets. In the early 20th century, officials began warning people not to take animals such as koalas from the wild to become pets. Over the next few decades, state and territory governments restricted the practice.

A few common native species such as budgies can be kept without a license regardless of where you live. But having a pet koala is either banned outright or heavily restricted.

In recent years, states such as South Australia have moved to liberalise native wildlife ownership laws. Could this be good for threatened species? That depends. Turning threatened species into pets may keep the species alive – but unable to survive without us.

What wildlife can be kept as pets in Australia?

These days, most Australian pet owners have a dog or a cat and wouldn’t think to consider a native pet other than a budgie. Is it even legal, you might wonder. Well, it depends where you live.

In South Australia you can keep most native animals as a pet, though you might need a permit depending on the type.

Residents keep animals such as fat-tailed dunnarts, sugar gliders, rufous bettongs, and a long list of reptiles and birds – even emus. But there are rules – native pets have to be sourced from captive populations, not the wild.

In Queensland you can keep species such as black-throated finches, types of rainbowfish and crimson rosellas without a licence. A standard licence opens the door to bird-eating spiders, tree frogs, land mullet and bearded dragons.

Other states and territories list a few dozen common species which you don’t need a license to keep.

• In the Northern Territory residents can keep species such as spinifex hopping mice without a permit.

• In Victoria residents have to get a license for all native species bar 45 common ones such as king quail, blue-tongue lizards and spinifex hopping mice.

• In New South Wales residents have a similar list of 41 common species and license requirements for others.

• In Western Australia, residents can keep any invertebrate as a pet, as well as 12 bird species. A standard license opens the door to dozens of bird and reptile species.

• Tasmania is more restrictive. Rainbow lorikeets, turtles, snakes and ferrets are banned as pets. The island state wants to avoid issues with introduced species – and even native species such as sugar gliders can do real damage once they’re introduced.

The rules can be quite different overseas. The sugar glider is largely restricted to permit-holders in Australia, but is commonly kept as a pet in the United States without restrictions. Similarly, you can buy a kangaroo as a pet in some US states.

Wild pets can be hard work

Cute, furry gliding marsupials like sugar gliders make for great social media content. But sugar gliders are nocturnal and have specialised diets. They’re not an easy pet.

Most Australian species will pose similar challenges. Special diets. Different waking hours. The need for specific types of enclosures and enrichment.

If a native pet is fed the wrong food, such as fruits high in sugar, they can quickly become overweight, ill and have dental problems.

Some species like gliders also have complex social structures which can be tricky to manage, and without suitable companions may become stressed or depressed.

Could domestication help conservation?

It’s not uncommon to hear people asking whether keeping threatened native species as pets could help bring them back from the brink.

Conservationists have long used captive breeding to boost dwindling populations and reintroducing captive-born individuals back to the wild. Not long ago, the eastern barred bandicoot was extinct in the wild in Victoria. But a sustained captive breeding and release program on fox-free islands has been remarkably successful.

But conservation projects like this are done carefully. They need strict breeding, genetic and health management, alongside significant funding and planning commitments. Some animals undergo antipredator training to give them a better chance in the wild.

Using native pets for conservation is a different story.

When animals are domesticated, their anatomy and appearance begins to change. We select pets for a range of appealing traits, resulting in a wide variety of coat colours, body shapes and temperaments. This is how we ended up with hundreds of varieties of dogs.

In Russia, foxes bred in captivity ended up with floppy ears and different coat patterns. The budgerigar is one of the world’s most popular pet birds. But captive breeding over 150 years has produced pet budgies generally larger and slower than wild individuals.

What if we had pet quolls not cats?

Conservationists have floated the idea of having pet quolls rather than pet cats. Quolls are attractive, carnivores with unique coats, similar in size to cats. But all four species of these native marsupials are under pressure.

If we bred quolls for pet shops, we would likely see them change, as our preferences change how they look and behave. Bitey or drab quolls wouldn’t get to mate. This selection process has already happened to sugar gliders – you can now buy gliders with pure white coats. That’s good for humans – but not for the species.

Within 13 captive-bred generations, the northern quoll loses its wariness and other defences against predators. Animals bred for pets would likely find it hard or impossible to survive the wild.

Making animals into pets doesn’t mean wild populations will increase. Around 5,000 tigers now live in captivity in the US, more than those remaining in the wild. But “pet” tigers are rarely reintroduced back to the wild. So wild tiger populations keep falling even while domesticated tiger numbers grow.

So yes, keeping native species as pets could safeguard against complete extinction. But it’s hard to see how owning a pet quoll or other native species would help the species overall.

Meg Edwards receives funding from the Queensland Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation and is a member of the Australian Mammal Society and Ecological Society of Australia.

– ref. Could keeping native species as pets save them from extinction? Here’s why it’s not that simple – https://theconversation.com/could-keeping-native-species-as-pets-save-them-from-extinction-heres-why-its-not-that-simple-243710

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

The lifting of US restrictions on the use of ATACMS ballistic missiles by Ukraine may help it repel Russian forces trying to retake Russian territory seized by Ukraine earlier this year. It could also strengthen Ukraine’s hand ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump’s arrival in the White House in January.

It may, however, be another case of too little, too late in Western support for Ukraine.

This week, the Biden Administration lifted restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US-supplied missiles known as ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems). ATACMS have a range of around 300 kilometres. Previously, the US has told Ukraine only to use them against Russian forces on Ukrainian territory.

This has been a source of huge frustration to Ukraine, particularly as it could not use them against bases inside Russia that have launched ceaseless missile and drone assaults on Ukrainian cities.

Russian attacks on Ukraine in October killed 183 civilians and wounded another 903, according to the UN.

Precise details of the change in US policy have not been announced publicly. The New York Times reports that permission to hit Russian territory will only apply initially to attacking Russian forces massing in the Kursk region.

Russia wants to recapture more than 500 square kilometres of territory captured by Ukraine in a bold thrust in August. Western agencies believe the 50,000 troops massing on the Russian side include several thousand North Korean soldiers.

North Korea’s involvement may be the main reason prompting the removal of limits on the ATACMS. Apart from strengthening Ukraine’s chances of keeping its foothold inside Russian territory, the move may also discourage North Korea from sending more troops.

The North Korean presence also provides some justification for the US decision, allaying concerns it could be framed by Russia as an escalation.

Careful decision-making by the West

Fears of escalation and the possibility of direct conflict between Russia and NATO have been a major reason for the US caution thus far.

This has been fuelled in part by Russian nuclear sabre-rattling. Russian President Vladimir Putin upped the ante in September, warning that allowing Western weapons to hit Russia would constitute NATO’s “direct participation” in the war.

Russia claims, apparently without foundation, that such weapons need Western crews to man them. Russia also claims the missiles may require Western intelligence to ensure accurate targeting.

The Kremlin has reacted predictably to the US announcement this week, saying it would add “fuel to the fire” of the war.

However, ATACMS have already been used against Russian targets inside Ukrainian sovereign territory, notably in Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed a decade ago.

Some Biden administration sources have told the media that fears of retaliation via sabotage also have shaped its wariness about allowing ATACMS to hit Russia. Russian intelligence services have mounted a substantial sabotage campaign in Europe during the past year.

Aversion to such risk has been evident from the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Western countries have shown concern at every step about crossing Putin’s supposed “red lines”.

They initially baulked at supplying different types of equipment – be it tanks, fighter jets, short-range missiles or long-range missiles. They then put restrictions on where and how they could be used.

Will it help Ukraine?

The US restrictions on using ATACMS led Britain and France to place similar limits on Ukraine’s use of Storm Shadow and SCALP missiles, which have a range of 250 kilometres. It seems likely the US move will now enable the UK and France to follow suit in relaxing those limits.

Another boost to Ukraine’s arsenal could come from Germany, where the Greens, Social Democrats and the opposition Christian Democrats support green-lighting delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, which have a range of 500 kilometres.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has to date blocked it, but elections are now scheduled for February.

Washington officials have recently claimed that ATACMS would now be of limited use because Russia has moved much of its key weaponry, particularly jet fighters, outside their range.

However, some military analysts believe there are still plenty of military targets within range, perhaps numbering in the hundreds.

These include command and communications posts, logistics hubs, arms depots, missile units and helicopter detachments. Moving equipment further back from the front lines would make life difficult for Russian operations, stretching their supply lines and adding to the time for air support to arrive.

Russia’s support has grown

Allowing a sovereign state that’s been illegally invaded to use weapons against military targets inside the aggressor country is hardly escalatory.

Moreover, as US-based Russian scholar Sergei Radchenko points out, it would be extremely risky for Russia, which has so woefully underperformed on the battlefield in Ukraine, to attack NATO in response.

Russian warnings about escalation seem even more preposterous given the huge amount of weaponry and ammunition Russia has received from its own supporters, even before the entry of North Korean soldiers.

North Korea has sold Russia hundreds of ballistic missiles and millions of rounds of ammunition. And it is now reportedly supplying Russia with self-propelled howitzers and multiple rocket launchers.

Iran has supplied Russia with thousands of Shahed drones, drone production technology, ammunition and short-range missiles.

And China sells Russia around US$300 million (A$460 million) each month in dual-use equipment necessary for weapons production, from machine tools to microchips. Russia may even have set up a military drone factory in China.

What could Trump’s arrival mean?

The Biden White House may further reduce restrictions on using ATACMS inside Russia, for example, allow their use beyond the Kursk region, in an effort to leave Ukraine in as strong a position as possible before Trump takes office.

Some Ukrainians fear Trump may cut support for Ukraine in his effort to end the war quickly. However, others believe Trump may be just as helpful as the Biden administration, given the latter’s caution, and the need for Trump to be seen as a credible dealmaker, rather than selling Ukraine down the river.

Some in Trump’s new team, notably incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, have spoken, albeit equivocally, of using the prospect of more robust support for Ukraine as leverage in pushing Putin to negotiate.

But optimism on this score must be offset by the strong presence in his new Cabinet and inner circle of those who have been strong critics of aid to Ukraine or even downright apologists for Russia.

There is also a strong chance the Trump administration could rescind the decision to lift the restrictions on ATACMS use.

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

– ref. Why did the US change its mind on Ukraine firing missiles into Russia? And will it impact the war? – https://theconversation.com/why-did-the-us-change-its-mind-on-ukraine-firing-missiles-into-russia-and-will-it-impact-the-war-243920

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

The Albanese government has been put on the spot by a new agreement – which it has declined to join – signed by the United Kingdom and the United States to speed up the deployment of “cutting edge” nuclear technology.

The original version of the British government’s press release announcing the agreement said Australia, among a number of other countries, was expected to sign it.

But the reference was removed from the statement.

The UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and the US deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk signed the agreement in Baku during COP29.

The agreement promotes nuclear technology to help decarbonise industry and boost energy security.

A spokesperson for Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who is at the COP meeting, said: “Australia is not signing this agreement as we do not have a nuclear energy industry.

“We recognise that some countries may choose to use nuclear energy, depending on national circumstances.

“Our international partners understand that Australia’s abundance of renewable energy resources makes nuclear power, including nuclear power through small modular reactors, an unviable option for inclusion in our energy mix for decarbonisation efforts.”

Australia would remain as observers to the agreement to continue to support its scientists in other nuclear research fields, the spokesperson said.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton said “Australia is starting to become an international embarrassment under Chris Bowen and Mr Albanese”.

In parliament, acting Prime Minister Richard Marles said for Australia to pursue a path of nuclear energy would add $1200 to the bills of each household in this country.

The statement from the British government said the agreement “will help pool together billions of pounds worth of nuclear research and development – including the world’s leading academic institutions and nuclear innovators”.

New technologies such as advanced modular reactors could help decarbonise heavy industry including aviation fuel, and hydrogen or advanced steel production, the statement said.

Nuclear power is at the heart of the Dutton opposition’s energy policy. The Coalition has identified seven sites around the country for proposed nuclear power plants.

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. Albanese government gives firm ‘no’ to joining UK-US agreement to advance nuclear technology – https://theconversation.com/albanese-government-gives-firm-no-to-joining-uk-us-agreement-to-advance-nuclear-technology-244041

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steve Worthington, Adjunct Professor, Swinburne University of Technology

Cash usage has fallen off a cliff in Australia, but the federal government says it must have a future. So, it’s going to mandate one.

The Australian government will require businesses to accept cash for essentials such as groceries and fuel. Some (yet to be determined) small businesses will be exempt.

According to Treasury, losing cash as a means of payment would leave too many people behind:

Around 1.5 million Australians use cash to make more than 80% of their in‑person payments. Cash also provides an easily accessible back‑up to digital payments in times of natural disaster or digital outage.

In its announcement on Monday, Treasury pointed to what had already been achieved with similar schemes in other countries such as Spain and Norway, and a range of US states.

It’s an honourable cause. There are, however, some aspects of life in Australia that will present unique challenges for achieving it.

Read more:
Surcharges are added to most purchases, but what are the rules behind these extra fees?

Why does using cash cost so much?

Some merchants in Australia already refuse to accept cash as a means of payment. That means relying entirely on digital payment methods such as bank cards and mobile wallets.

It mightn’t be immediately obvious why some businesses don’t like cash. But for many, it’s the most costly payment method to accept. While cash transactions don’t come with a surcharge fee like bank cards, they do carry a wide range of other hidden costs.

Businesses typically need to keep a “float” of cash in their tills overnight, so that next day’s early customers can be given change if needed. This float needs to be regularly updated and rebalanced with appropriate currency so the correct change can always be given.

Businesses also have to make sure no cash goes missing during their opening hours, count their cash take at the end of each day, make sure it is secure on their premises, and make periodic physical deposits into their bank account.

Both maintaining a float and making deposits can involve unpredictable trips to a bank branch or post office throughout the week.

Things are getting harder

For individuals and businesses, getting cash into and out of a bank account is becoming more of a challenge. And if you’re in regional or remote Australia, the nearest location where you can do so may be an hours-long drive away.

The most recent figures from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) show that across Australia since 2017, the number of ATMs has fallen by about 60% and the number of bank branches by 41%.

Many remaining bank branches have reduced their hours, and some have even stopped dealing in cash entirely, especially in rural and regional areas.

Moving cash around the country isn’t getting any easier or cheaper.

The dominant provider of cash-in-transit services, Armaguard, has been under sustained financial pressure in recent years.

Earlier this year, it secured a deal with Australia’s big four banks and some of its other major customers to receive a $50 million bailout.

Read more:
Future of cash secured for now as banks and retailers bail out Armaguard

Some countries facing similar situations – including the UK – have persuaded their banks to fund the idea of “banking hubs”.

Typically under this model, a location is identified in a regional community and banks collectively share the space, with each bank having one day a week in residence so that nobody is excluded from these services.

Could a regional branch levy help?

Also this month, Treasury proposed a new regional services levy, to support what should be the minimum level of banking services in regional areas.

Banks with a relatively large regional presence would be cross subsidised by a proportional levy on banks with relatively fewer services in these areas or none at all.

This funding would help banks sustain the number of branches, their opening hours and their ATMs. Under the proposal, banks that fell short of baseline requirements could purchase credits from others that did.

The reasoning behind these measures is that like Australia Post, banks should have a formal community service obligation. That is, a baseline of minimum services that must be provided.

Questions still to answer

In its media release, Treasury only gave a big picture view of what they wanted to achieve. There are still many questions that need to be resolved before any of its plans can become legislation.

Some concern where and how to target support. If regionally focused, how should regional be defined? Which areas and towns prioritised?

How should the banks and other financial services providers be required to help support cash use?

Exactly which businesses will be affected – and which exempt – must also be clearly defined, along with any enforcement measures.

And there is likely to be robust debate over what exactly constitutes the “essentials” for which merchants will be mandated to accept cash payment.

Steve Worthington 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 government wants to keep cash alive for buying essentials. Here’s why it’s such a challenge for businesses – https://theconversation.com/the-government-wants-to-keep-cash-alive-for-buying-essentials-heres-why-its-such-a-challenge-for-businesses-243919

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

For decades it seemed Alan Jones was unassailable.

A finding against him of professional misconduct by the Australian Broadcasting Authority (2000); a finding that he incited hatred, serious contempt and severe ridicule of Lebanese Muslims (2009); propositions of violence against two women prime ministers (2011 and 2019); verdicts against him and his employer amounting to millions of dollars in defamation actions (most notably one for $3.75 million in 2018): none of these ended his career.

Quite the reverse. Only weeks after the Australian Broadcasting Authority found in its “cash for comments” inquiry that Jones and others had misled their listeners by presenting paid endorsements as editorial opinion, he was hosting an event for then prime minister John Howard.

Howard was to become a fixture on the Jones program throughout the 11 years of his prime ministership.

The day after the Australian Communications and Media Authority found Jones was likely to have encouraged violence and vilification of Australians of Lebanese and Middle Eastern background, Howard described him as “an outstanding broadcaster”. “I don’t think he’s a person who encourages prejudice in the Australian community, not for one moment, but he is a person who articulates what a lot of people think.”

By 2001, Jones had become a kind of on-air policy-maker for the New South Wales government. In November that year, he dined with the then Labor premier, Bob Carr. They discussed a range of government policies, particularly policing. At that time, Jones was a relentless critic of the NSW police.

The following week, Carr dispatched his police minister-designate, Michael Costa, to Jones’s home to discuss policing policy.

In 2011 he said Julia Gillard, then Australia’s prime minister, should be taken out to sea and dumped in a chaff bag. In August 2019 he said Scott Morrison, who was then Australia’s prime minister, should “shove a sock” down the throat of his New Zealand counterpart Jacinda Ardern.

He was an outspoken climate-change denier, and these grotesqueries were part of his campaign against political recognition of this reality.

Jones’s power, which made him so apparently untouchable, came from his weaponising of the microphone for conservative political ends in ways that resonated with his vast and rusted-on audience of largely working-class older people across Sydney’s sprawling western suburbs.

These suburbs contain many marginal state and federal electorates where the fates of governments can be decided. Their populations provide fertile ground for seeding by right-wing radio shock jocks, of whom Jones and his rival John Laws were pre-eminent examples.

In Australia, this is a peculiarly Sydney phenomenon. It is not seen to the same degree in any other capital city, even though they too have large areas of socioeconomic disadvantage like western Sydney.

Why that should be so is a complex question, but there are aspects of Sydney life that mark it out as different. It is really two cities. One is the largely prosperous and scenically dazzling east and north. The other, much larger, consists of dreary tracts of increasingly crowded housing stretching for many kilometres to the west and southwest.

In Sydney argot, the inhabitants of these respective worlds are called “silvertails” and “fibros”, the latter referring to the cladding of the homes that proliferated in western Sydney between and after the two world wars.

This two-cities effect makes the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” highly visible in a way that has no parallel in other Australian capitals. It engenders deep-seated grievance and cynicism, which the likes of Jones, who lives in a multimillion-dollar apartment on Circular Quay, have relentlessly exploited.

Jones coined the term “Struggle Street” to encapsulate the hardships of his listeners’ lives.

To these powerless people, Jones and Laws gave a voice, and as their audiences grew, prime ministers and premiers courted and feared them.

In the end, Jones’s impregnability was breached by not the power elite turning on one of their own, but by the journalism of a redoubtably tenacious Sydney Morning Herald investigative reporter, Kate McClymont.

In December 2023, she claimed Jones had used his position of power, first as a teacher and later as the country’s top-rating radio broadcaster, to allegedly prey on a number of young men.

In response to McClymont’s work, the NSW police set up Strike Force Bonnefin, run by the State Crime Command’s Child Abuse Squad, to conduct an investigation into Jones.

On November 18 2024, Jones was arrested at his Circular Quay home and charged initially with 24 sexual offences against eight males. The following day, two additional charges were laid involving a ninth male.

Through his lawyers, Jones has denied the charges and was bailed to appear in Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court on December 18. He was ordered to surrender his passport and not to contact or harass the alleged victims.

The charges relate to offences alleged to have been committed by Jones between 2001 and 2019, the youngest alleged victim being 17 at the time.

Those dates coincide almost exactly with Jones’s most influential years, from 2002 to 2020.

McClymont has spoken about the reluctance of some of her interviewees to speak, for fear of what Jones might do:

People were too afraid to take on Alan Jones. Once a couple of people came forward, and some people were happy to be publicly named, that gave confidence for other people to come forward.

Denis Muller 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. Alan Jones once seemed unassailable. What ended it was a peculiarly Sydney story of media, politics and power – https://theconversation.com/alan-jones-once-seemed-unassailable-what-ended-it-was-a-peculiarly-sydney-story-of-media-politics-and-power-243942

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carolyn Heward, Lecturer, Clinical Psychology, James Cook University

Imagine being questioned about complex technical knowledge in front of your peers, supervisors, and members of the public – knowing that a wrong answer could lead to public ridicule.

This is the reality for many medical students, with up to 90% of medical students experiencing public humiliation during their training.

Our research looked at teaching by humiliation. This is when medical trainees are intentionally shamed or humiliated in front of peers, other health-care staff, and sometimes even patients.

This can create doctors who are anxious, less confident and may be more likely to make errors. Despite that, we found teaching by humiliation remains common in medical training.

What we did and what we found

First, we (Wendy Li and Carolyn Heward) conducted a systematic review looking at what the research says on public humiliation in different settings such as schools, the police force, social media, medical training and so on.

We analysed 33 studies involving more than 40,000 people. We found that, on average, 34.9% of people experience public humiliation. However, we found teaching by public humiliation was astonishingly common in medical education settings.

These concerning findings led to a focused follow-up study, published recently in the journal Medical Science Educator and led by one of us (Luisa Wigg). This study looked specifically at teaching by humiliation in medical education.

This follow-up research analysed 28 published studies involving nearly 35,000 medical trainees across multiple countries.

The results showed that, on average, 57% of medical students and junior doctors reported that they experienced teaching by humiliation, although there were large differences between various medical schools and health-care settings.

Astonishingly, one US study revealed that 90.8% of graduating medical students experienced teaching by humiliation at some point during their training.

Surveys from the Association of American Medical Colleges have also shown public humiliation is consistently reported as the most common form of mistreatment experienced by medical students.

What teaching by humiliation looks like

Teaching by humiliation typically happens when an educator embarrasses a trainee in public teaching spaces such as hospital wards, operating rooms, or medical conferences.

Some common examples are:

• when students are aggressively questioned about medical knowledge
• when wrong answers are mocked
• when people make derogatory comments about a student’s capabilities in front of others.

These incidents most commonly occur in operating theatres and during hospital rounds (when doctors visit patients, often in the mornings).

Senior doctors are often the ones who teach by humiliation. However, the research showed a concerning pattern where nurses, fellow students and even junior doctors also do it.

This suggests people who experience humiliation might later perpetrate it themselves, because they view it as a normal part of medical culture.

How does this affect patient care?

For patients, the implications of this practice are concerning.

Most people want any doctor treating them to be knowledgeable but also confident and emotionally stable.

The research has shown doctors who have experienced teaching by humiliation often develop mental health problems. One study showed they were almost eight times more likely to report burnout and almost four times more likely to report symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Many doctors become reluctant to ask questions or seek help when they are uncertain about something.

This is exactly the opposite of what most patients want in a medical professional making crucial decisions about their care.

The research also showed medical trainees who experience humiliation often become isolated from their peers and disengaged from learning.

Some end up leaving medicine altogether, which contributes to shortages in the health-care workforce.

Those who remain in medicine might perpetuate the cycle, because they have internalised the belief humiliation is a normal part of medical education.

A deeply hierarchical culture

The medical profession has a deeply hierarchical structure. Senior doctors hold significant power over the education and future careers of their trainees. This hierarchical culture may contribute to the problem of teaching by humiliation.

Many educators simply want to maintain high standards through rigorous questioning. The research shows, however, that this can all-too-easily cross the line into harmful humiliation.

Some argue teaching by humiliation prepares doctors for high-pressure situations or helps maintain professional standards.

The evidence, however, shows it achieves the opposite effect. It creates doctors who are anxious and less confident, who might be more likely to make errors and less likely to work effectively with their colleagues.

For change to occur, medical schools and hospitals need to acknowledge this problem exists and implement clear policies to prevent teaching by humiliation.

This doesn’t mean lowering standards. Instead, it means finding better ways to maintain excellence while supporting the wellbeing of trainees.

Alternative teaching methods – such as structured feedback sessions, simulation-based training, and constructive mentorship programs – can help maintain high standards.

The way doctors are trained affects how they will treat their patients.

With the health-care system under pressure and workforce shortages common, we cannot afford to damage medical staff through outdated and harmful teaching practices.

Patients have the right to be treated by health-care professionals who have received their training in supportive, psychologically safe environments.

Carolyn Heward co-authored the initial systematic review on public humiliation. This piece draws on that work and subsequent research by colleagues examining teaching by humiliation in medical education.

Luisa Wigg and Wendy Li 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. Public humiliation is still a common teaching tool in medical education. Here’s how it leaves patients worse off – https://theconversation.com/public-humiliation-is-still-a-common-teaching-tool-in-medical-education-heres-how-it-leaves-patients-worse-off-242692

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chelsey Taylor, PhD Candidate, Swinburne University of Technology

From revolutionary Geelong ruckman Graham “Polly” Farmer, to the electrifying Krakouer brothers (Phil and Jim) at North Melbourne, through to modern stars such as Charlie Cameron, Adam Goodes, Lance Franklin and Eddie Betts, Indigenous athletes have long shone brightly on Australian Football League (AFL) fields.

However, there has recently been a worrying drop in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander players and draft picks.

It’s an issue the AFL is concerned about, with a steady decline of Indigenous players over the past four years in the men’s and women’s leagues.

In 2024, 70 men and 21 women players identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander.

This is a decrease of 17% since a high of 109 in 2020. The number of draftees also declined to just four in last year’s men’s draft.

The AFL has actively called for new ideas to improve Indigenous engagement given this decline.

Ahead of this week’s AFL draft, it is not just the number of draftees in isolation that’s worrying, rather the environments into which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander players enter the AFL system.

A distinct lack of consistency, support and genuine cultural understanding remains part of an ecosystem that doesn’t fully understand the value of including cultural knowledges in sport.

Culture is crucial

Culture is a vital, inherent aspect of life for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

It takes many forms, from learning language and performing activities, to understanding familial connections and learning about histories.

It is an individual right that is vitally important on a personal level.

Understanding this connection and the role of culture in daily life is a crucial step in reconciliation in Australia. It has also proven to be a critical element of recruiting, retaining and developing Indigenous players.

Club sources have identified this as a key to success but often, clubs don’t or can’t find ways to support Indigenous players.

One club source told us, anonymously:

There’s a gap between our expectations of young Indigenous players and the realities of their lives.

Funding queries

The AFL developed the Next Generation Academy program in 2017 for young Indigenous and multicultural people aged 11–18 to encourage participation and provide access to expert coaching and elite pathways into AFL.

These academies are zone-based, and while they provide an opportunity for clubs to engage and connect with local communities, they are not without criticism.

Some critics believe a lack of adequate resources results in ad-hoc and sporadic engagement. This, in turn, limits effective engagement with Indigenous families and communities.

The impact of COVID resulted in cuts to resources across the AFL landscape and development programs felt these immensely, particularly the Indigenous pathways.

Club sources also told us the success of Indigenous-specific talent pipelines – such as the Flying Boomerangs and Woomeras, which historically have developed many current AFL players – are at risk in the current climate.

Recruiting isn’t one-size-fits-all

Pathway programs into the AFL have a strong focus on getting athletes “AFL ready”. This means getting 15- to 18-year-olds performing in ways that satisfy recruiters.

The nuanced challenges of life, particularly for young Indigenous people, do not always align with performing in such ways and to such expectations.

Development occurs at varying levels and times, but potential draftees are expected to reach standardised markers to prove their talent and abilities.

This narrow view of talent development, combined with the rigid mainstream talent pathways, have a way to go to be culturally safe and accessible.

Some potential solutions

So, what might be done to help reverse the decline of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander players?

The AFL should consider new and innovative ways to work with state and regional associations that actively engage remote communities with football activity.

It may also be beneficial to engage talent scouts from a range of backgrounds and to rethink the talent pathways.

Proud Wiradjuri man, Professor John Evans, the pro vice-chancellor of Indigenous engagement for Swinburne University of Technology, rightly points out concerns about “colonialised” club cultures and the resulting systemic racism. Recent alleged cases include Hawthorn and Collingwood.

While efforts are being made to address aspects of systemic racism, issues continue to arise. This indicates more needs to be done.

Also, recent research demonstrates the need for greater authenticity in leadership pathways for Indigenous players. There are currently only three coaches working across the AFL men’s competition and two development coaches in the women’s competition who are Indigenous.

There are no Indigenous head coaches or CEOs. As of 2023, only eight clubs have Indigenous representation on the board.

Clubs that demonstrate ongoing commitment and connections with community tend to also have higher retention of Indigenous players and staff.

It isn’t enough to simply draft an Indigenous player and hope they thrive on the field.

Increased cultural education at all levels can help shift current thinking.

Placing culture at the forefront of club activity can help provide appropriate, engaged and informed support to young Indigenous players who exemplify everything we love about football, and provide club-wide benefits both on and off the field.

Chelsey Taylor has previously received research funding from various sporting organisations and currently works alongside sport in the not-for-profit sector.

Andrew Peters 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. It’s clear footy has an Indigenous participation problem, and the AFL draft is only part of the solution – https://theconversation.com/its-clear-footy-has-an-indigenous-participation-problem-and-the-afl-draft-is-only-part-of-the-solution-228779

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ladan Hashemi, Senior Research Fellow in Health Sciences, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

Childhood obesity is a growing concern worldwide. But in New Zealand it’s a particularly pressing issue.

With one of the highest rates in the OECD, about one in three New Zealand children are overweight or obese. Obesity in children can lead to severe health issues that persist into adulthood.

While many factors contribute to childhood obesity – such as diet, physical activity and genetics – one often-overlooked factor is screen time.

Children are constantly surrounded by devices such as TVs, tablets and smartphones, and screen time has become a normal part of daily life.

The World Health Organization and the American Academy of Paediatrics both suggest preschool-aged children should have no more than one hour of screen time daily.

But many young children in New Zealand and overseas are spending significantly more time on screens, with many regularly surpassing these guidelines.

Our new study explored how simple family screen time rules could reduce childhood obesity risk. Our work revealed ways parents and policymakers can tackle this growing challenge.

Screens and the risk of obesity

Excessive screen time has been linked to various health issues in children, ranging from mental and emotional problems to physical health concerns like obesity.

Spending too much time with screens often means more sitting and less physical activity, both of which can lead to excess weight gain.

Additionally, screen time is associated with snacking, as children often eat while watching shows or playing games. These snacks are typically high in sugar and fat, contributing to weight gain over time.

Advertisements for high-calorie foods are also common in children’s media, increasing cravings for unhealthy snacks.

Moreover, screens emit blue light, which can disrupt sleep cycles if used close to bedtime. Poor sleep has been shown to increase hunger and cravings for high-calorie foods, making children more susceptible to weight gain.

Noticeable benefits from limits

Our research used data from the Growing Up in New Zealand study, which followed over 5,700 children and their families. We examined how family screen time rules established at the age of two influenced obesity risk by the time the children were four-and-a-half.

The results were eye-opening. We found families who set and implemented clear rules about screen use saw noticeable benefits.

These rules indirectly helped reduce obesity risk by supporting better sleep habits and limiting excessive screen use – two factors strongly linked to healthier weight.

While the study didn’t find a direct link between screen time rules and a reduced obesity rate, it did show how these rules can prevent behaviours associated with weight gain.

For example, children in families with screen time rules slept longer and spent less time on screens, both of which are critical for maintaining a healthy weight.

The most effective screen time strategies covered three main areas:

Quality: deciding what type of shows or apps children can use. Previous research recommend prioritising educational or calming media over fast-paced or violent shows, as intense content can overstimulate children, making it harder for them to relax and sleep well.

Quantity: setting a limit on how much time children spend on screens each day.

Timing: establishing rules on when screens are allowed. For instance, avoiding screen time right before bed can help prevent sleep disruption from blue light exposure.

The findings suggest setting all three types of screen rules can make a big difference in helping children form healthier habits. When families combine these rules, it doesn’t just reduce screen time; it also supports better sleep, which is vital for children’s overall health.

Over time, these small but consistent rules can have a lasting, positive impact on children’s physical and mental wellbeing, reducing the risk of developing unhealthy weight.

Other factors

It’s worth noting that screen time habits don’t exist in a vacuum. The study also highlighted how socioeconomic factors can affect screen time and, subsequently, childhood obesity.

Families in financially disadvantaged situations often have fewer resources to manage screen time effectively. These families might rely more on screens to entertain or occupy children due to limited access to alternative activities or safe outdoor spaces.

Additionally, food insecurity – a lack of access to affordable, nutritious food – can increase reliance on inexpensive, unhealthy food options, further contributing to childhood obesity.

When we accounted for factors such as poverty and food insecurity, the link between screen time and obesity became less direct. This suggests that tackling childhood obesity effectively requires addressing these underlying socioeconomic factors alongside screen time habits.

Guiding parents

For families, the key advice is to implement and maintain rules that address the quality, quantity and timing of screen use.

These rules encourage children to balance their screen time with other activities, like physical play and adequate sleep, which are essential for healthy growth and development and reduce obesity risk.

Policymakers can also play a role by supporting initiatives that assist families in lower-income brackets.

Policies which reduce poverty, make healthy food more affordable and accessible, and create safe and attractive neighbourhood spaces would all make it easier for parents to establish and follow screen time rules.

With rates of childhood obesity rising and long-term health consequences becoming more apparent, tackling this issue requires coordinated action from families, communities and policymakers alike.

This research was completed with Maryam Ghasemi, Deborah Schlichting, Maryam Pirouzi and Cameron Grant.

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. Basic rules for screen time at a young age can help reduce childhood obesity – new research – https://theconversation.com/basic-rules-for-screen-time-at-a-young-age-can-help-reduce-childhood-obesity-new-research-243674

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Narelle Miragliotta, Associate Professor in Politics, Murdoch University

State and territory elections held in 2024 have not delivered the electoral and legislative gains the Greens would have hoped for or expected.

Of the elections conducted this year, the Greens’ performance was, at best, a mixed bag. At worst, it was flat. As the table below shows, the party experienced either slight declines or only modest growth in their first preference vote.

Heading into an election next year, there are potential portents for the federal Greens too.

A poll by Resolve Political Monitor for the Sydney Morning Herald found the party’s net likeability has declined from –11% in December 2023 to –19% in November 2024. Moreover, its national leader Adam Bandt is rated the third most unlikeable federal politician.

The 2022 Australian Election Study (AES) found Bandt ranked highly on trust. It is conceivable that voters can trust someone they don’t like, but this seems unlikely.

The Greens get a lot of attention – but is it turning voters off?

The Greens have been a particularly assertive presence in the 47th federal parliament. This, of course, is not without its rewards, if rewards are measured in terms of free media coverage. What is less clear is whether the events that have attracted media attention are to the Greens’ electoral advantage.

Take the cases of the Greens senators walking out of the chamber and holding up placards during Senate questions over the Albanese government’s decision not to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

While such acts might appeal to the base and younger voters, other segments of the electorate may regard such action as stunts, and behaviour unbecoming of a serious parliamentary party.

Consider also the Greens’ decision in June 2024 to delay the passage of the Albanese government’s Housing Fund, even after the government’s offer of an extra $2 billion in spending on social housing.

The Greens had several concerns about the house funding proposal, key among them its consequences for renters. They said they would not support the bill until Prime Minister Anthony Albanese managed to get the states and territories to agree to a rent freeze.

However, laws for renters are a state matter, not a federal concern. And while some economists agreed the Housing Fund may result in unintended effects for renters, polling suggested the initiative was popular, including among Greens voters.

By September, the Greens announced they would support the bill. The risk for the Greens is that the time it took to secure concessions, and the argy-bargy that surrounded negotiations, supported Labor’s narrative of the party being “inflexible” or a “party of protest”, which is code for “radical”.

With the final parliamentary session for 2024 underway, the Greens are keen to restart negotiations with the Albanese government over housing and the stalled Nature Positive bill.

However, they might have overplayed their hand by holding out for as long as they have. It is possible the party could secure additional concessions from the Albanese government in exchange for their support, but they also might not. In that case, the Greens would have to decide whether to vote down one or more bills, or capitulate. However it ends, and whether fairly or not, the Greens might have squandered any claim to being a constructive and responsible balance-of-power player.

The limits of a party as movement

The Greens’ approach to politics is consistent with the party’s movement origins, grounded in a more expressive and disruptive style of political action, both within and outside of parliament.

The question is whether that approach is an incongruous and counterproductive fit for a party that is now a longstanding fixture of the political establishment, and has made clear its desire (and intention) to be an alternative party of government.

The Greens must grow their support if they are to realise their ambitions to form government. There is significant opportunity for the party to expand its vote share. There has been persistent decline in voter support for the major parties, and upwards of 22% of voters claimed no partisanship or allegiance to any party in 2022.

The question for the Greens is whether they are positioning the party to take advantage of evident discontent with the major parties, and the growth in non-party identifiers.

The Greens may well succeed in growing their support among younger voters, but are they building too narrow an electoral coalition, and alienating a wider range of progressive voters? Around 18% of enrolled voters are aged 18–29, and the party already attracts strong support among younger voters.

The Greens should also expect that more community independents (such as the Teals) will contest an even more diverse range of seats at the 2024 election. Why does this matter? The most recent Australian Election Study found that Teal voters were more likely to be “tactical voters who see their preferred party as nonviable in the electorate and use this information to defeat the most viable party”.

The Greens cannot take for granted that disaffected major party voters, and more specifically disaffected Labor voters, will necessarily choose them.

Narelle Miragliotta 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. To build support, it might be time for the Greens to hang up their movement-style approach to politics – https://theconversation.com/to-build-support-it-might-be-time-for-the-greens-to-hang-up-their-movement-style-approach-to-politics-243693

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonine Jancey, Academic and Director Collaboration for Evidence, Research and Impact in Public Health, Curtin University

Last week, the federal government announced a plan to roll out an anti-vaping program in schools across the country.

The education program, called OurFutures, aims to prevent young people taking up vaping. It has been developed by experts from the University of Sydney’s Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use with input from educators and young people.

So why do we need this program, what will it involve, and will it be an effective way to stop young people taking up vaping? Let’s take a closer look.

Vaping is on the rise

A survey of Australian high school students in 2022–23 showed almost one in three reported having tried vaping, while one in six had vaped in the previous month.

This represents a significant increase over time, with rates of both lifetime (ever) vaping and vaping in the past month more than doubling since 2017.

However, since this data were collected, new laws to control the supply of and access to vapes have been introduced, which aim to reduce the prevalence of vaping.

Evidence showing the harmful effects of vaping is mounting. A 2022 review found vaping was linked to a range of negative health outcomes including poisoning, addiction, burns to the face, hands and thighs, lung injury, and an increased likelihood of taking up tobacco smoking.

Vapes, or e-cigarettes, have been found to contain a number of chemicals known to cause cancer, including formaldehyde, acetone, and heavy metals such as nickel and lead. This means young vapers are breathing in chemicals found in nail polish remover, plastics, weed killer and industrial glues.

Although we don’t yet understand the longer-term health effects of vaping, the evidence we have so far indicates it’s vital to stop as many people taking up this habit as possible.

What will the program entail?

OurFutures is designed for children in years 7 and 8 based on research evidence. Students are guided through four online lessons, each of which uses a variety of activities and resources to educate them about the harms of vaping. Lessons also cover information on the impact of social media, assertive communication, and how and where to seek help.

The government says the program will be able to reach more than 3,000 schools across Australia.

Our research and that of others indicates this is an optimal age to reach young people, as it’s a time when they are starting to experiment and take up vapes.

This program is also extremely timely, as young people have told us they want vaping prevention messages in their schools to help them make informed decisions. These young people recognise there’s a lack of credible information available.

Equally, school professionals (such as principals and teachers) recognise they are unable to deal with the issue of vaping among students on their own, and have been calling for support.

The OurFutures program is currently being trialled in 40 schools across New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia.

Initial results have been positive. Just after students had completed the program, they knew more about the harms of vaping, and they reported reduced intentions to vape.

However, to our knowledge, full results from the trial have yet to be released. It’s also unclear whether these results will be maintained in the longer term.

A review of school-based vaping prevention programs found that although many interventions improved knowledge, attitudes and intentions around vaping in the short term, these effects were not always maintained.

However, this review also suggested programs delivered over multiple sessions, as is the case with OurFutures, were effective in preventing young people taking up vaping over longer periods.

An important element of any public health program is its capacity to be tailored to different populations. Australia is a culturally and linguistically diverse country, with urban, regional, and remote populations. It’s currently not clear if and how the program will take these differences into account.

The program should be part of a broader approach

Providing evidence-based, rational information in this way should help many young people doing this program better understand the potential health risks of vaping, and in turn think twice about doing it.

However, school-based education programs are only one strategy in a suite of strategies needed to address youth vaping. Relying solely on young people to change their behaviour is unrealistic and not best practice.

Young people operate in communities, influenced by family, social norms, and societal structures. Education is great, but we need to stop the exposure and access to these harmful products.

Fortunately, Australia’s crackdown on vaping is world-leading. We welcome recently announced vaping reforms, including stopping the importation of vapes, selling them solely behind the pharmacy counter, and restricting flavours, which limit their accessibility and appeal for school students.

Since these vape regulations were introduced the Australian Border Force has stopped hundreds of thousands of vapes entering Australia.

The recent Public Health (Tobacco and Other Products) Act 2023 also restricts the advertising and promotion of vapes, including on social media. This means the same bans that apply to tobacco advertising now also apply to vapes.

Our research shows vaping has been widely promoted to young people on social media. Social media companies must ensure the health of their users is prioritised over commercial interests.

Just last week the government called for a “digital duty of care”, which would require social media companies to take steps to create a safer online environment for all Australians.

Ultimately, the national vaping prevention program for Australian school students is a positive step. But it needs to be complemented by a range of strategies and continued government investment to support our young people to avoid or stop vaping.

Jonine Jancey receives funding from the Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation to undertake research into e-cigarettes.

Renee Carey has worked on commissioned research on e-cigarette use in young people for the Cancer Council of Western Australia. This work is not related to the contents of this article.

– ref. Australia’s new anti-vaping program in schools is a good step – but education is only part of the puzzle – https://theconversation.com/australias-new-anti-vaping-program-in-schools-is-a-good-step-but-education-is-only-part-of-the-puzzle-243717

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Song Shi, Associate Professor, Property Economics, University of Technology Sydney

If you’re buying a house near a river or on a floodplain, you will likely come up against the question of flood risk. We usually talk about this in terms of chance.

Houses close to the river might be at risk of a 1-in-100 year flood, meaning there’s a 1% chance a flood could hit in any given year. Houses further back might be at risk of a 1-in-500 year flood (0.2% chance). Truly extreme floods might be 1-in-1,000 or even 10,000 years. This way of thinking about flood risk is technically known as an Annual Exceedance Probability (AEP).

What does flood risk translate to? Our recent research found houses in the New South Wales town of Richmond with an AEP of 100 – meaning a 1-in-100 year flood – come at a discount of almost 11% compared to similar homes without the risk. We are prepared to pay less for houses we think might flood.

But what’s really interesting is how quickly this discount drops off. A house in an AEP 500 zone (1-in-500 years) has a 4.4% discount. There’s no discount for houses in an AEP 1,000 zone, at risk from a 1-in-1,000 year flood. People simply ignore this risk as if it doesn’t exist. But it does. The floods which devastated Lismore in 2022 were roughly 1-in-1,000 year floods – so extreme we think it won’t happen. But it can and does.

When we assess the risk of natural disasters, we often ignore or underestimate events with a low probability but high severity. But as climate change makes floods worse and worse, this is a problem. The lethal floods in Spain came after a year’s worth of rain fell in a few hours in some areas. We underestimate floods at our peril.

What a flood-prone town tells us about risk

When we think of the risk of natural disasters such as bushfires, floods and earthquakes, our perceptions tend to be bounded by thresholds. We focus on the most likely threats and tend to ignore or play down the risk of severe events with low probability.

This may have made sense historically. But this approach won’t cut it in the future. Climate change is already making severe floods more likely, including flash floods and rivers breaking their banks.

For authorities tasked with managing flood risk, this poses a major challenge. The gap between how we see these risks and the actual threat they pose could lead to major losses of lives and property. Our research suggests people stop assessing risk beyond 1-in-500 year floods (AEP 500).

In our research, we looked at Richmond, a flood-prone town of about 14,500 people in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley in New South Wales, and surrounding areas. This area has a long history of significant and dangerous flooding.

In the last few years, it has had five major floods, in February 2020, March 2021 and March, April and July 2022. Major floods here indicate the river has risen over 12 metres.

We used home sales data and the region’s digital flood maps to gauge how people were assessing risk in flood-prone areas.

Digital flood maps are widely used to assess the risk of flood at a specific location. In 2019, the NSW government conducted a regional flood study for the 500 square kilometre Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley, capitalising on advances in flood modelling and changes to the floodplain. These maps were updated in 2023. We used both of these maps so we could verify our findings and see how changes in the updated version changed people’s perception of risks.

These maps are very influential, as they directly shape how people see the risk of floods near them. We found these maps have strengthened residents’ perceptions of flood risk.

For instance, houses with the same flood risk levels across both 2019 and 2023 flood maps saw greater drops in price compared to houses where the risk level had changed or was unclear.

In recent years, insurers have jacked up flood insurance premiums, which could mean affected residents underinsure themselves in the future. In 2023, Richmond’s median house price was A$825,000. But if it was in the 1-in-100 AEP 100 flooding zone, our research suggests it would be discounted by about 11% ($89,100).

But while the upfront cost may be less, owners of these homes will have to pay substantially higher insurance premiums as long as they own it. Getting insurance in a AEP 100 flood zone can be much more expensive than people think.

For authorities, these maps help identify areas most vulnerable to extreme flood events, such as over a 1-in-500 year flood.

As we prepare for more severe floods hitting more often, authorities need to give people as much notice as possible.

Ahead of a major rain event, we suggest authorities should release digital flood maps of areas likely to be affected – including different AEP levels. If a extreme flood (1-in-500 years or more) is likely, people living in areas with little or no flooding in their lifetimes will be affected. They need to know.

Read more:
One in 1,000 years? Old flood probabilities no longer hold water

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. We pay less for houses in one-in-100 year flood zones – but overlook risks of more devastating floods – https://theconversation.com/we-pay-less-for-houses-in-one-in-100-year-flood-zones-but-overlook-risks-of-more-devastating-floods-243485

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charlotte Dunn, Lecturer in Classics, University of Tasmania

The Egyptian queen Cleopatra is often associated with glamorous beauty routines, deadly snake bites, lavish banquets and torrid affairs with some of the most notorious men in Roman history.

One such (very public) affair was with Roman leader Julius Caesar.

But their “situationship” was complex. This doomed romance ended abruptly in 44 BCE when Caesar was quite literally stabbed in the back (and from all sides) by his enemies in Rome. And she pretty soon hooked up with one of his closest allies.

Queen meets consul

When Caesar met Cleopatra, he was was 52 and had a wife back in Rome. But something about the 21-year-old Cleopatra caught his eye.

Perhaps it was her charming banter and impressive mind. The ancient author Plutarch reports Cleopatra was an irresistible conversation partner, and fluent in nine languages.

Things really got started when Caesar got involved in a family feud involving Cleopatra and her royal relatives.

Cleopatra came from a long line of dramatic and ruthless kings and queens, which we now call the Ptolemies.

The Ptolemies had ruled Egypt since about 305 or 304 BCE. They didn’t always get along but they were very close. As in, genetically close.

The Ptolemies had practised brother-sister marriages (and other in-the-family marriages as well) for several generations.

According to this tradition, Cleopatra was probably married to her ten-year-old brother Ptolemy XIII when their father died and they became co-rulers of Egypt.

So in pursuing Caesar, you might say Cleopatra was going against the family trend by dating outside her siblings.

Cleopatra’s union with her little brother was not a happy one: the young Ptolemy, alongside his advisors, had managed to run Cleopatra out of Egypt, wanting to rule the kingdom without her interfering.

While Cleopatra was busy raising an army to reclaim her place on the throne, Caesar arrived at the royal palace at Alexandria in 48 BCE.

Caesar had his own political woes. He was in the middle of a civil war, and was pursuing his rival Gnaeus Pompey (also known as Pompey the Great) after defeating his army in Greece.

Ptolemy, completely misreading the situation, greeted Caesar with a gruesome and unexpected gift: Pompey’s severed head.

Outraged and disgusted, Caesar demanded Cleopatra and her brother reconcile, but Cleopatra had other plans.

Plutarch says she hid herself in a bed sack and got smuggled into the palace to meet and charm Caesar.

Was it true love?

The young Cleopatra was ambitious, and there’s no denying a connection with Caesar was politically advantageous.

Caesar also had plenty of other affairs, including one with another queen, Eunoë of Mauretania.

But there may well have been a true connection with Cleopatra. Caesar, after all, was also very well educated and ruthlessly ambitious, and the ancient author Suetonius states Cleopatra was Caesar’s most passionate love affair.

But whatever sparks flew, Cleopatra couldn’t fully escape her family responsibilities.

Caesar put her back on the throne but arranged for her to marry her youngest brother, Ptolemy XIV after her previous brother-husband (Ptolemy XIII) drowned.

Nothing spells romance like your lover ordering you to marry your 12-year-old brother, but Cleopatra needed Caesar’s help to secure her position on the throne.

Being older and ambitious, she seemingly had no trouble taking the lead in running their kingdom, pushing Ptolemy XIV to one side.

A luxurious cruise down the Nile

Some sources say Cleopatra and Caesar celebrated their success at smoothing things over in Alexandria by taking a luxurious cruise down the Nile, accompanied by 400 ships.

This promoted their partnership and alliance, and by this time there was something else to celebrate: Cleopatra was pregnant with Caesar’s son, something she wanted to advertise as the future of her dynasty.

Cleopatra and Caesar’s son was nicknamed Caesarion, meaning “little Caesar”, although he is also known as Ptolemy Caesar or Ptolemy XV.

Caesarion’s existence was a bit of a problem. Caesar probably acknowledged the boy as his son, but Roman law did not, because Roman men were not allowed to marry foreign women.

There was also of course the matter that Caesar was still married at the time, to a Roman woman named Calpurnia.

The fiercely republican Romans of this era did not have much love for monarchy, and Caesar’s dalliance with Cleopatra probably made his fellow Romans even more suspicious about his own grand plans.

When in Rome

Despite many Romans disapproving of the relationship, the Egyptian queen spent about 18 months living on Caesar’s estate in Rome.

While there, Caesar seems to have done nothing to dispel the rumours about his situationship with Cleopatra, and he may have even dedicated a golden statue of Cleopatra as Venus in the temple of Venus Genetrix.

The famous orator Cicero was not impressed, writing in a letter to a friend “reginam odi” or “I hate the queen.”

After Caesar’s assassination, Cleopatra returned to Egypt.

But she soon began a love affair with Marc Antony, Caesar’s right hand man and would-be successor to his power, if 19-year-old Octavian (who would eventually become the first emperor Augustus) had not been named heir in Caesar’s will.

Antony and Cleopatra’s relationship flourished, but ended in tragedy when Octavian’s political rivalry with Antony intensified, and Octavian used their relationship as fuel for anti-Antony propaganda.

The lovers were eventually pursued and defeated by Octavian’s forces. Both took their own lives – he by stabbing himself with a sword and she, according to one version of the tale, by compelling a snake to bite her.

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. What was the deal with Julius Caesar and Cleopatra’s ‘situationship’? – https://theconversation.com/what-was-the-deal-with-julius-caesar-and-cleopatras-situationship-237868

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hallam Stevens, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, James Cook University

On November 12, United States president-elect Donald Trump announced he would appoint Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, to lead a newly constituted Department of Government Efficiency alongside fellow tech billionaire and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. The new department will be tasked with reining in government bureaucracy, curbing government spending, and reducing regulation.

Musk has been outspoken in his support of Trump’s campaign, which included potentially illegal financial “giveaways” to voters. Although Musk’s direct involvement in electoral politics is new, attempts by technology companies and their leaders to reshape public policy and governance have a long history, from transport and housing to town planning.

By looking more closely at some of these initiatives, we may be able to get a preview of what Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency will attempt to do, what government-by-tech may look like, and what might go wrong.

Replacing public services

In 2013, Musk himself proposed a new form of public transport called the “hyperloop” to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco. And Musk’s SpaceX is his attempt to out-compete the publicly funded NASA in building rockets.

But other tech companies have had similar ambitions.

Uber has made a series of attempts to replace public transportation. Companies such as Sidewalk Labs (a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet) have made efforts to substitute for urban infrastructure by building so-called “smart cities” that collect and analyse data about people’s behaviour in order to make decisions about providing services.

An economist has even suggested that Amazon bookstores might replace public libraries. Tech companies have challenged public offerings in fields as diverse as education, identity verification and housing.

The limits of disruption

One thing many government-by-tech projects have in common is a belief that government is fundamentally inefficient, and that (unregulated) technology can provide better solutions.

Silicon Valley tech companies have long espoused “disruption”, the idea of overthrowing a moribund status quo with innovation. Unlike public bureaucracies, the argument goes, companies can “move fast and break things” to find new and more efficient ways to deliver services and value.

Tech companies following this philosophy have certainly offered services that benefit many of us in our day-to-day lives, and made huge amounts of money. But this doesn’t mean the Silicon Valley model makes sense for public administration. In fact, the evidence suggests something more like the opposite.

A history of failure

Tech’s forays into the provision of public services have had mixed results.

In 2017, the Canadian town of Innisfil replaced all its public transit with Uber. The result was spiralling costs for the city (in fees paid to Uber), more cars on the road, and higher transportation costs for low-income residents.

Sidewalk Labs’ smart-city experiment in Toronto was abandoned in 2021 after running into objections related to privacy and planning.

In the case of housing, the tech industry disruption has made existing problems worse, with Airbnb and other short-term rental companies contributing to the housing crisis.

Narrow solutions for narrow problems

Technology companies also tend to focus on a relatively narrow range of problems. Silicon Valley has helped us to find a taxi, pick a restaurant for dinner, navigate efficiently around a city, transfer cash to our friends, and search for the best rental for our vacation.

It has provided fewer solutions for finding low-income housing, providing care for the aged, or reducing our energy consumption. There are important reasons for this: tech companies want to generate revenue by tapping upper-middle class consumers with disposable income.

But these gaps also reflect the lack of diversity in Silicon Valley itself. Tech remains mostly white, mostly male, mostly upper-middle class, mostly highly educated. This impacts the kinds of problems Silicon Valley sees and the kinds of solutions it produces.

All this is bad enough for the private sector. But the job of the government is not merely to look after shareholders or customers (or even just those who voted for it), but rather to look after all its citizens.

Services for the few

The concern here is that the kinds of solutions and “efficiencies” that Silicon Valley produces may end up serving the few at the expense of the many. Some “inefficiencies” of public services arise from the fact they are designed to take as many people into account as possible. Provisions and protections for older people, for those with disabilities, for those who may not speak English as a first language, for example, all create the need for more bureaucracy and more regulation.

Musk has said public transit is a “pain in the ass” where you have to stand next to potential serial killers. Of course, in many places public transport carries no such stigma. What’s more, many of those who might like to commute in private jets (or even Teslas) may have little choice but to subject themselves to the vagaries of a public bus.

One of SpaceX’s goals is to reduce the cost of a trip to Mars to under $US1 million. This would be a remarkable achievement, but it means that Musk’s imagined Mars colony would remain incredibly elite. Spaceships and hyperloops are woefully inadequate as public policy.

Unsexy necessities

While the philosophy of disruption tries to downplay the importance of existing infrastructure and institutions, the tech industry itself relies on them. Uber depends on cars and roads (including the governments that maintains them), Airbnb depends on brick-and-mortar buildings (and the labour that builds them), and Amazon and eBay depend on transportation infrastructure and postal services.

All tech companies rely on established and enforced systems of finance, property, and taxation. These old infrastructures and institutions may be unsexy and even inefficient.

However, these so-called inefficiencies have often evolved in ways aligned with fairness, justice, and inclusivity. The record of Silicon Valley tech companies does not suggest that they share such values.

Hallam Stevens has received funding from the Ministry of Education (Singapore), the National Heritage Board (Singapore), the National Science Foundation (USA) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

– ref. Elon Musk’s new job will bring tech ‘disruption’ to the US government – and history says it won’t be pretty – https://theconversation.com/elon-musks-new-job-will-bring-tech-disruption-to-the-us-government-and-history-says-it-wont-be-pretty-243907

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Russ-Smith, Associate Professor, Social Work and Assistant Deputy Head of School, School of Allied Health, Australian Catholic University

From climate change to geopolitical instability to health emergencies, we are entering a period of momentous change. The technology industry likes to tell us that the antidote is artificial intelligence (AI).

But as things currently stand, AI is actually accelerating climate change, harming Country and perpetuating systemic racism.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, AI can address many of the problems facing the world today.

One way to ensure this is by centring Wiradyuri (an Indigenous nation in central New South Wales) and other sovereign First Nations ways of knowing and being with the world and technology.

A long history

First Nations cultures from around the world have a long history of creating and using technology.

For example, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander fish traps and fishing practices support sustainable fishing. They allow fish populations to thrive and eliminate waste by using the entire fish.

Inuit people from modern day North America also carved bones into snow goggles and waterproofed their canoes with raw bitumen.

These examples reflect how First Nations cultures have long developed technology to help care for and enhance all life – including Country. This is a very different approach to technology to the one we find in settler colonial cultures.

A logic of destruction

Settler colonialism is where people from one country settle permanently on land where others already reside. The intention of the colonisers is to destroy what isn’t wanted (including Country and First Nations cultures), take what is desired and replace the existing social structure.

Modern nations such as the United States and Australia are examples of settler colonies.

There are numerous examples in history of people using technology to facilitate settler colonial violence. These include the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment which began in 1932 and continued to 1972, and the forced sterilisation of Indigenous peoples in Canada throughout the 20th century.

With the US leading AI research and development, the dominant forms of contemporary technology are perpetuating the settler-colonial logic of destroying and replacing culture, Country and communities. This AI-driven settler-colonialism is occurring at a speed and reach far greater than in the past.

Some forms of AI are programmed to steal data and erase certain perspectives, voices and experiences. People are also using the technology to specifically harm Indigenous peoples.

For example, during last year’s referendum on whether or not to create an Indigenous “Voice to Parliament” in Australia, AI was used to spread misinformation and appropriate Indigenous art in support of the “No” vote.

Time to transform

For lead author Jess, a sovereign Wiradyuri Wambuul woman, her understanding of AI draws from the Wiradyuri cosmology which teaches us that everything is related. This simple yet profound concept is encapsulated by the Wiradyuri concept “Wayanha”.

Loosely translated to English, Wayanha means transformation. It teaches that everything always exists, and has always existed. In this way a person, thing or place never simply begins or ends. Instead, it transforms.

This is as true of AI as it is of humans. Just as humans have the DNA which are the biological elements of those that came before us, so too does AI have the technological and cultural elements of what came before it.

Looking at AI this way highlights that this technology – and its impact on our world – isn’t a recent phenomenon, as some suggest. While dominant forms of AI may be different from technologies of the past, its harm on the world around us echoes that of all prior technology-aided settler-colonial violence.

Growing resistance

But this technological transformation is not a foregone conclusion. There is a growing movement of people resisting the pervasive settler-colonial AI transformations.

For example, there is the Lakota Language Learning Model project that is using a locally developed AI to preserve the native Lakota language in North America. There is also the Indigenous AI Abundant Intelligences research program that is exploring how to develop technology grounded in First Nations ways of knowing that “recognise the abundant multiplicity of ways of being intelligent in the world”.

You can trace the lineage of these examples back thousands of years to those ancient fish traps and other forms of sovereign First Nations technologies.

They show that technology doesn’t have to be harmful to people and Country in the way the dominant AI transformation currently is. Instead, by being First Nations-led, local, contextualised, purpose-built and sustainable, AI can help care for and preserve people and Country.

Jessica Russ-Smith is affiliated with the Australian Association of Social Workers where she is a non-executive Board Director.

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

– ref. AI for life: how sovereign Wiradyuri ways of knowing can transform technology for good – https://theconversation.com/ai-for-life-how-sovereign-wiradyuri-ways-of-knowing-can-transform-technology-for-good-243270

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Menviel, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney

A vast network of ocean currents nicknamed the “great global ocean conveyor belt” is slowing down. That’s a problem because this vital system redistributes heat around the world, influencing both temperatures and rainfall.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation funnels heat northwards through the Atlantic Ocean and is crucial for controlling climate and marine ecosystems. It’s weaker now than at any other time in the past 1,000 years, and global warming could be to blame. But climate models have struggled to replicate the changes observed to date – until now.

Our modelling suggests the recent weakening of the oceanic circulation can potentially be explained if meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet and Canadian glaciers is taken into account.

Our results show the Atlantic overturning circulation is likely to become a third weaker than it was 70 years ago at 2°C of global warming. This would bring big changes to the climate and ecosystems, including faster warming in the southern hemisphere, harsher winters in Europe, and weakening of the northern hemisphere’s tropical monsoons. Our simulations also show such changes are likely to occur much sooner than others had suspected.

Changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

The Atlantic ocean circulation has been monitored continuously since 2004. But a longer-term view is necessary to assess potential changes and their causes.

There are various ways to work out what was going before these measurements began. One technique is based on sediment analyses. These estimates suggest the Atlantic meridional circulation is the weakest it has been for the past millennium, and about 20% weaker since the middle of the 20th century.

Evidence suggests the Earth has already warmed 1.5ºC since the industrial revolution.

The rate of warming has been nearly four times faster over the Arctic in recent decades.

Meltwater weakens oceanic circulation patterns

High temperatures are melting Arctic sea ice, glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet.

Since 2002, Greenland lost 5,900 billion tonnes (gigatonnes) of ice. To put that into perspective, imagine if the whole state of New South Wales was covered in ice 8 metres thick.

This fresh meltwater flowing into the subarctic ocean is lighter than salty seawater. So less water descends to the ocean depths. This reduces the southward flow of deep and cold waters from the Atlantic. It also weakens the Gulf Stream, which is the main pathway of the northward return flow of warm waters at the surface.

The Gulf Stream is what gives Britain mild winters compared to other places at the same distance from the north pole such as Saint-Pierre and Miquelon in Canada.

Our new research shows meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic glaciers in Canada is the missing piece in the climate puzzle.

When we factor this into simulations, using an Earth system model and a high-resolution ocean model, slowing of the oceanic circulation reflects reality.

Our research confirms the Atlantic overturning circulation has been slowing down since the middle of the 20th century. It also offers a glimpse of the future.

Connectivity in the Atlantic Ocean

Our new research also shows the North and South Atlantic oceans are more connected than previously thought.

The weakening of the overturning circulation over the past few decades has obscured the warming effect in the North Atlantic, leading to what’s been termed a “warming hole”.

When oceanic circulation is strong, there is a large transfer of heat to the North Atlantic. But weakening of the oceanic circulation means the surface of the ocean south of Greenland has warmed much less than the rest.

Reduced heat and salt transfer to the North Atlantic has meant more heat and salt accumulated in the South Atlantic. As a result, the temperature and salinity in the South Atlantic increased faster.

Our simulations show changes in the far North Atlantic are felt in the South Atlantic Ocean in less than two decades. This provides new observational evidence of the past century slow-down of the Atlantic overturning circulation.

What does the future hold?

The latest climate projections suggest the Atlantic overturning circulation will weaken by about 30% by 2060. But these estimates do not take into account the meltwater that runs into the subarctic ocean.

The Greenland ice sheet will continue melting over the coming century, possibly raising global sea level by about 10 cm. If this additional meltwater is included in climate projections, the overturning circulation will weaken faster. It could be 30% weaker by 2040. That’s 20 years earlier than initially projected.

Such a rapid decrease in the overturning circulation over coming decades will disrupt climate and ecosystems. Expect harsher winters in Europe, and drier conditions in the northern tropics. The southern hemisphere, including Australia and southern South America, may face warmer and wetter summers.

Our climate has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. More rapid melting of the ice sheets will accelerate further disruption of the climate system.

This means we have even less time to stabilise the climate. So it is imperative that humanity acts to reduce emissions as fast as possible.

Laurie Menviel receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Gabriel Pontes receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Meltwater from Greenland and the Arctic is weakening ocean circulation, speeding up warming down south – https://theconversation.com/meltwater-from-greenland-and-the-arctic-is-weakening-ocean-circulation-speeding-up-warming-down-south-238302

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University

In a surprise move, the Coalition has announced it will vote against Labor’s bill to cap international student numbers. This follows previous Coalition comments saying it would work with universities to “put a cap on foreign students”.

The Greens opposed caps from the start. Between them, the Coalition and the Greens have a Senate majority, which means the Albanese government’s plan to cap international students seems dead.

For universities, TAFEs, private colleges and potential international students, this news will be cause for relief, but not celebration.

There are multiple other measures still in place to reduce international student numbers. The Coalition has also previously committed to capping international student numbers in the major cities.

So while the Coalition has now opposed Labor’s student caps, it is not opposed to the idea of caps altogether.

What did the caps bill propose?

The proposed bill would have given the education minister wide powers to cap international student enrolments by education provider, campus and course.

For 2025, the caps would have applied to enrolments that were new to the education provider.

Apart from students in exempt categories (such as postgraduate research students), vocational and higher education providers would have been allocated 270,000 commencing enrolments between them.

Exemptions make it difficult to compare the proposed 2025 cap with previous years, but during a Senate hearing earlier this month, the government gave 323,000 commencing enrolments as a comparable 2023 figure.

Separate formulas were going to apply for international student places in public universities, private universities and non-university higher education providers as well as vocational education institutes. The impact of Labor’s caps would have been uneven. This includes a small overall cut for public universities compared to 2023, with bigger reductions for other education providers.

The Coalition has been critical of the bill

During Senate hearings into the bill, and in their subsequent comments in the Senate inquiry report, Liberal senators attacked the disproportionate effects of the proposed caps on private education providers.

For some, their financial viability would be threatened. The Coalition highlighted a pilot training academy that could not survive with its capped number of international students. It would have to break contracts with international airlines.

Vocational and higher education regulators also shared their concerns about the impact on providers’ finances.

Education providers going out of business would put pressure on the Tuition Protection Service. This is a government-run but education provider-funded scheme that finds new courses for students of failed education providers or pays refunds.

While affected international students eventually get a new course or their money back, provider collapses can cause them significant stress and delay.

What might the Coalition do instead?

The Coalition’s Senate inquiry report also gives some guidance about how they would approach caps if they won the 2025 federal election.

It singled out the “excessive number” of international students flowing into Australia’s most prestigious universities, especially in Sydney and Melbourne.

“We respectfully suggest”, their comments say, “a number of Group of Eight universities have lost sight of their core mission”. The Coalition says that core mission is providing Australian students with high value tertiary qualifications.

The Coalition favourably quoted Deakin University (not a Group of Eight member), which voluntarily capped international students at 35% of total enrolments. Deakin talked about “getting the balance right” between local and overseas students.

This approach may signal a future Coalition policy for capping public universities. It tackles total international student numbers – with their affect on Australia’s population and consequent pressures on accommodation and other services – and more specific concerns about the student experience when international students dominate classes.

The Coalition has also signalled it may restrict visas for the partners and children of students.

What will Labor do now?

Labor had said if the caps bill passed it would repeal “ministerial direction 107”, a decision by former Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil in December 2023 on the processing of student visa applications. Now this repeal will not happen.

Ministerial direction 107 repurposed an existing risk rating, which determined how much evidence must be provided with a student visa application. Under the direction, visa applications for students from low-risk providers – whose students have low rates of visa refusals or cancellations or subsequent overstays in Australia – received visa processing priority. In practice, ministerial direction 107 favoured the more prestigious universities.

Ministerial direction 107 is widely hated by international education providers. They blame it for student numbers and revenues falling in 2024.

While the direction undoubtedly delays visa processing for higher-risk providers, its effects are conflated with the multiple other changes to visa policy since late 2023.

Ending ministerial direction 107 would still leave in place changes such as student visa applicants needing to prove a higher financial capacity, increased English language requirements, more than doubling the non-refundable visa application fee, and restrictions on onshore student visa applications.

The government could also reduce the total resources it devotes to processing student visas, which would slow the inflow of students for all providers. As my analysis shows the number of visas processed between January and August 2024 (including both grants and rejections) were only 5% lower than pre-COVID in 2019. This could be cut further.

Labor also has unfinished business on the incentives for international students to choose Australia. For nearly a year it has been foreshadowing changes to the permanent migration system that would remove points categories international students have relied on. This could include points for studying in a regional area, for undertaking professional development years and perhaps points for studying in Australia. This would be a blow to demand from migration-sensitive source countries, such as India and Nepal.

The political troubles of international education are not over

Given the Coalition’s previous statements on international student caps, their current position is a surprise.

But it does not change their overall policy goal of restricting international student numbers. They could cap enrolments in a different way. Labor has not completed its announced reforms to international education and may find other ways to reduce student numbers.

There is more to come in international education policy, whichever party wins the 2025 federal election.

Andrew Norton works for the Australian National University, which has announced significant job cuts partly due to caps on international student enrolments.

– ref. The Coalition will block the student caps bill. Brace yourself for more uncertainty over international students – https://theconversation.com/the-coalition-will-block-the-student-caps-bill-brace-yourself-for-more-uncertainty-over-international-students-243926

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

Melbourne Theatre Company’s My Brilliant Career is a musical re-imagining of Miles Franklin’s classic 1901 novel of the same name. It follows a young woman, Sybylla Melvyn, as she chafes against her rural constraints to seek creative freedom.

A headstrong young woman, Sybylla dreams of becoming a writer despite her family’s poverty and society’s expectations of marriage. She ultimately rejects a marriage proposal from wealthy squatter Harold Beecham, choosing her independence and artistic aspirations over conventional romance and security. But this decision comes at a personal cost.

With libretto by Sheridan Harbridge and Dean Bryant, music by Mathew Frank, lyrics by Bryant and musical direction and arrangements by Victoria Falconer, this new, contemporary take on the book was developed over five years (initially supported by the NEXT STAGE writers’ program).

Born from a shared experience of the writers’ rural upbringings, the production is an example of what can happen when shows and artists are afforded the time to develop works organically and with care.

A fine ensemble

In the Sumner Theatre, the music begins before the show starts.

Initially, a small trio plays on stage while the audience enters. Over time, other musicians drift on, joining in on violin, keys, drums, cello and more. These actor-musicians, all dressed in period costume with long skirts and cinched-in waists, are multi-instrumentalists who also play the show’s characters.

At first I’m a little discombobulated by the playful and intense energy: I have a thorough crush on Franklin’s original novel, and no less affection for the 1979 film starring Judy Davis. Once I let go of my attachments, however, I’m able to settle into – and thoroughly enjoy – this delightful musical.

The fine ensemble is competent, physical and highly skilled, with a wonderfully spirited complicité. The clarity of character and relationship between the cast members is testament to Anne-Louise Sarks’ expert direction.

Versatility and panache

Kala Gare plays the role of Sybylla Melvyn – who just wants art and music and books – with a precocious, teenage ebullience.

Gare is a versatile actor and indie musician and her effervescent performance is undercut with a good dose of raucous feminist sass. She totally grows on me, comically framing her joyful portrayal of Sybylla with wry asides to the audience: (“I am being overwhelmed by my hot untamed spirit!”).

Gare readily shifts through performance styles – from poignant piano ballads, to thrashing hard rock, to cheeky all-singing, all-dancing numbers, with panache.

Her singer/songwriter vocal delivery is quite different to some of the other ensemble members, who happily dwell in the “belter” musical theatre category. Nonetheless, the voices are integrated well.

Other standouts include Raj Labade as the smooth-voiced, charismatic Harry/Harold, and the delightful Cameron Bajraktarevic-Hayward as Frank, who brings the house down with a brilliantly over-the-top number You’re Better Than a Beauty, Baby: You’re a Brick.

Precise and choreographed physicality

Amy Campbell’s choreography makes the most of the ensemble’s physicality. Rather than being confined to the orchestra pit or relegated backstage, the performers inhabit the space with embodied and grounded presence. They move fluidly through and around the stage with precise, choreographed synchronicity.

I love to see performers who are confident in movement. In this instance the choreography shines, with many fine moments of comic physical timing and still tableaux with bodies and props.

Marg Horwell’s set is full of lushly delivered surprises. It features sparkling chandeliers, brightly coloured ribboned backdrops and spectacular flower cascades.

The costumes are similarly plush, with high Victorian-era necklines, extreme ruffles, outlandish winged cravats and fitted bodices rendered larger than life by the use of oversized shoulder pads.

The magic of the theatre is hilariously disrupted as straight-faced stage managers wittingly walk onto the stage to help dress actors, or supplying new props, in the midst of the action.

Smart, funny and thoroughly entertaining

Some of the show’s musical numbers are more successful than others. The “Australian larrikin” vibe is occasionally a bit overcooked, or undermined by unnecessarily saccharine phrases. The second act also doesn’t quite maintain the exuberant energy of the first.

That said, the overall production guarantees audiences a smart, funny and thoroughly entertaining experience that doesn’t lessen the impact of Franklin’s story.

My Brilliant Career is a refreshing reinvention of a timeless classic. The production’s success lies in its ability to honour the source material while infusing it with contemporary energy and wit.

It’s a wonderful reminder of what can be achieved when creative labour is properly resourced and carefully considered.

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. My Brilliant Career: musical based on Miles Franklin’s novel takes us on a sassy, spirited journey of self-discovery – https://theconversation.com/my-brilliant-career-musical-based-on-miles-franklins-novel-takes-us-on-a-sassy-spirited-journey-of-self-discovery-243588

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Schirmer, ROLE at Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University

It’s a universally acknowledged truth that a geriatric millennial in possession of a Scholastic book club catalogue and a television must have been a fan of Paul Jennings back in the 1980s and ‘90s.

I devoured Jennings’ short story collections, particularly the Un and Gizmo series. They were the perfect mix of silly and subversive, and always captured the awkwardness of being a kid.

After school, my brother and I would curl up and turn the TV dial to Channel 2, SAO crackers with butter and Vegemite in hand, and watch the Twist family get into all sorts of scrapes. I was particularly fond of Pete and his floppy blonde bowl cut.

So, when I found out there was a Round The Twist stage show in development – a musical, no less – I knew it would be for me.

I was, however, interested in how much the material would translate for a new generation. Would it just be a nostalgic trip to the lighthouse for the recently middle-aged, or would Generation Alpha get on board? In the interest of research, I borrowed a ten-year-old (my nephew Hugo) for the evening and off we went to the theatre.

Meeting the Twist gang

I needn’t have been concerned. Paul Hodge’s book and music, and Simon Phillips’ direction, have perfectly captured the heart of the original material in its sense of humour, its uniquely Australian sensibility, its focus on community and its downright weirdness.

We meet the Twist Family – dad Tony (Matt Hetherington) and kids Pete (Hanlon Innocent), Linda (Charly Oakley) and Bronson (played at opening by Edison Ai) as they arrive in the fictional town of Port Niranda, seeking a sea change and some “fresh air” (although Bronson’s flatulence soon puts an end to that).

The central characters put me at ease. They are earthy, charming and immediately read as a family shaped by both love and tragedy.

We soon meet the locals, including the lighthouse keeper with secrets, Nell Rickards (Christen O’Leary), and the mayoral power couple Harold and Mrs Gribble (played with high camp by David James and Tarita Botsman).

We also meet Bronson’s teacher Fay James (Liz Buchanan). Fay walks straight into Tony’s life and heart, but are the kids ready to accept a new stepmum? This storyline provides the emotional heft of the play, with Bronson’s resistance and Fay’s vulnerability authentically portrayed by Ai and Buchanan respectively.

We also meet the kids of Port Niranda. The local gang includes James Gribble (an athletic Nic Van Lits) and his offsiders, the mouth-breathing Rabbit (Carlo Boumouglbay) and the scrappy Tiger (Carla Beard).

Rounding out the cast are the objects of the two elder Twists’ affection, Fiona (Taylah Johns) and Andrew (Alex Tye). While these two actors are a little underused, both have enormous charm.

Dazzling design and musically brilliant

What separates Round The Twist from just another charming Aussie dramedy, however, is the supernatural, spooky and silly phenomena for which Jennings is famous.

The central mystery of the play includes mysterious music emanating from the lighthouse, a missing painting, a circus troupe, a pissed-off mermaid (Laura Raineri), a poltergeist pooch and a toilet ghost (one of Bryan Probets’ numerous roles).

The Twist kids sing and dance their way to solving the mystery, while navigating school crushes, evading property developers, enduring embarrassing encounters and battling their foes with the power of foot odour (up the pong!).

All this is enhanced by Renee Mulder’s brilliant design work and Craig Wilkinson’s video design. Projected images are essential to the magical realism of the piece. They resemble the animation style of Terry Gilliam, but never lose their distinctly Australian flavour.

The music is catchy and the lyrics clever. In general, the high-energy, comic pieces work better than the ballads. That said, Linda (Oakley) and Andrew’s (Tye) duet in act two is genuinely moving.

There were a couple of moments where young Bronson (Ai) missed a musical cue, but he was well-supported by the cast and the (excellent) band to find his place and carry on. It should be noted Bronson carries much of the play on his young shoulders. Ai is an absolute standout in the role.

And if you, like me, are a fan of the earworm that is the TV series theme tune (composed by Andrew Duffield), never fear! It is not only included, but is integral to the plot.

Old stories through new eyes

But what did the ten-year-old nephew think? He laughed until he cried at Pete’s (Innocent) predicament towards the end of act one, which I won’t spoil here. He gasped and bounced in his seat and praised the “smart writing”. I can only hope he will now discover and devour Jennings’ original books.

For me, the joy was in seeing so many young professionals in the cast holding their own with veterans of Australia’s theatre scene. Hearing them sing so authentically in their own voices, while telling a story that is so quintessentially Australian, reiterated to me how important it is for local arts companies to invest in and champion homegrown musical theatre.

And aside from that, it was the most fun I’ve had at the theatre all year!

Kate Schirmer works for Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University (QCGU) and the Queensland Academy of Excellence in Musical Theatre (QAEMT). Griffith University is a production partner of Queensland Theatre, and participated in the development of this work. The work also features several alumni.

– ref. Stinky feet, angry mermaids and a toilet ghost: Round The Twist musical captures the magic and madness of an Aussie TV classic – https://theconversation.com/stinky-feet-angry-mermaids-and-a-toilet-ghost-round-the-twist-musical-captures-the-magic-and-madness-of-an-aussie-tv-classic-243145

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nikki-Anne Wilson, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), UNSW Sydney

The way people living with dementia experience the world can change as the disease progresses. Their sense of reality or place in time can become distorted, which can cause agitation and distress.

One of the best ways to support people experiencing changes in perception and behaviour is to manage their environment. This can have profound benefits including reducing the need for sedatives.

One such strategy is the use of dolls as comfort aids.

What is ‘doll therapy’?

More appropriately referred to as “child representation”, lifelike dolls (also known as empathy dolls) can provide comfort for some people with dementia.

Memories from the distant past are often more salient than more recent events in dementia. This means that past experiences of parenthood and caring for young children may feel more “real” to a person with dementia than where they are now.

Hallucinations or delusions may also occur, where a person hears a baby crying or fears they have lost their baby.

Providing a doll can be a tangible way of reducing distress without invalidating the experience of the person with dementia.

Some people believe the doll is real

A recent case involving an aged care nurse mistreating a dementia patient’s therapy doll highlights the importance of appropriate training and support for care workers in this area.

For those who do become attached to a therapeutic doll, they will treat the doll as a real baby needing care and may therefore have a profound emotional response if the doll is mishandled.

It’s important to be guided by the person with dementia and only act as if it’s a real baby if the person themselves believes that is the case.

What does the evidence say about their use?

Evidence shows the use of empathy dolls may help reduce agitation and anxiety and improve overall quality of life in people living with dementia.

Child representation therapy falls under the banner of non-pharmacological approaches to dementia care. More specifically, the attachment to the doll may act as a form of reminiscence therapy, which involves using prompts to reconnect with past experiences.

Interacting with the dolls may also act as a form of sensory stimulation, where the person with dementia may gain comfort from touching and holding the doll. Sensory stimulation may support emotional well-being and aid commnication.

However, not all people living with dementia will respond to an empathy doll.

The introduction of a therapeutic doll needs to be done in conjunction with careful observation and consideration of the person’s background.

Empathy dolls may be inappropriate or less effective for those who have not previously cared for children or who may have experienced past birth trauma or the loss of a child.

Be guided by the person with dementia and how they respond to the doll.

Are there downsides?

The approach has attracted some controversy. It has been suggested that child representation therapy “infantilises” people living with dementia and may increase negative stigma.

Further, the attachment may become so strong that the person with dementia will become upset if someone else picks the doll up. This may create some difficulties in the presence of grandchildren or when cleaning the doll.

The introduction of child representation therapy may also require additional staff training and time. Non-pharmacological interventions such as child representation, however, have been shown to be cost-effective.

Could robots be the future?

The use of more interactive empathy dolls and pet-like robots is also gaining popularity.

While robots have been shown to be feasible and acceptable in dementia care, there remains some contention about their benefits.

While some studies have shown positive outcomes, including reduced agitation, others show no improvement in cognition, behaviour or quality of life among people with dementia.

Advances in artificial intelligence are also being used to help support people living with dementia and inform the community.

Viv and Friends, for example, are AI companions who appear on a screen and can interact with the person with dementia in real time. The AI character Viv has dementia and was co-created with women living with dementia using verbatim scripts of their words, insights and experiences. While Viv can share her experience of living with dementia, she can also be programmed to talk about common interests, such as gardening.

These companions are currently being trialled in some residential aged care facilities and to help educate people on the lived experience of dementia.

How should you respond to your loved one’s empathy doll?

While child representation can be a useful adjunct in dementia care, it requires sensitivity and appropriate consideration of the person’s needs.

People living with dementia may not perceive the social world the same way as a person without dementia. But a person living with dementia is not a child and should never be treated as one.

Ensure all family, friends and care workers are informed about the attachment to the empathy doll to help avoid unintentionally causing distress from inappropriate handling of the doll.

If using an interactive doll, ensure spare batteries are on hand.

Finally, it is important to reassess the attachment over time as the person’s response to the empathy doll may change.

Nikki-Anne Wilson is affiliated with the University of New South Wales and Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA). She is also currently a contributor to the Ageing Advisory Committee facilitated by the Hon Kylea Tink MP. She has previously received funding from the Australian Association of Gerontology and the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute.

– ref. What is ‘doll therapy’ for people with dementia? And is it backed by science? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-doll-therapy-for-people-with-dementia-and-is-it-backed-by-science-243589

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Nethery, Senior Lecturer in Politics and Policy Studies, Deakin University

After nearly a year without basic income and support services, 42 refugees and asylum seekers remaining in Papua New Guinea will soon begin receiving a meagre allowance of 900 kina (A$338) per week from the Australian government.

These men are former Manus Island detainees who were released in 2016 after the PNG Supreme Court ruled that Australia’s offshore detention facility was unconstitutional.

Most of the refugees and asylum seekers were then transferred to the capital, Port Moresby, where the Australian government began providing them with accommodation, meals, medical, health care and settlement services

However, in November 2023, that assistance was suddenly cut off without any explanation from the Australian government.

A year later, the men were informed this month that the support would be reinstated if they vacated their current homes, though the payments would be at a much lower level than before.

The demand that the men source their own accommodations is concerning, as many are too unwell to navigate a competitive and expensive rental market. Many are at risk of homelessness.

These low payments will also make medical care unaffordable, so the threat to health and life will continue to grow more serious.

Trying to restart lives in PNG

The refugees and asylum seekers were sent to PNG under the government’s Operation Sovereign Borders policy in 2012 and 2013.

The policy, which remains in place today, requires the mandatory offshore detention of people attempting to reach Australia by sea.

From the outset, the filthy conditions of detention on Manus Island were considered so harsh that only men were sent there. Families, women and children were held on Nauru.

Manus was also the site of deadly riots in 2014. In 2017, the Australian government paid A$70 million in compensation to refugees there – the largest out-of-court settlement for a human rights case.

On the closure of the detention centre a month later, most refugees and asylum seekers were moved to Port Moresby. A few men have since managed to rebuild their lives, set up businesses and begin families, but others have struggled.

Many have been unable to find work due to high rates of unemployment in the country, discriminatory hiring practices and their poor physical and mental health.

In addition, many have been victims of violent crime and resentment from the local community.

Deal behind closed doors

In a secret deal signed by the Morrison government and PNG in late 2021, Australia agreed to provide ongoing funding for services to the remaining refugees and asylum seekers in the country.

The agreement was, and remains, confidential. We have no way of knowing what support was promised, for how long, and to whom.

This support assisted the men with accommodation, security, health care, transport services, food and grocery vouchers, immigration advice and a small stipend of 700 kina (A$268) per week or 1,200 kina (A$460) for families).

When the funding was suddenly stopped a year ago, PNG’s chief migration officer said the remaining men would be resettled within weeks. The majority were to go to New Zealand.

Local businesses, citing breach of contract and shortfalls of tens of millions of dollars, withdrew all services.

Rapid health decline

In the year since, the 42 remaining refugees have faced evictions, financial precarity, threats to their safety, and a rapid and alarming decline in their mental and physical health.

Of the people the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) is currently in contact with, 20% are so unwell their lives are at imminent risk, 88% reported severe mental health conditions, and 100% reported physical health conditions.

Financial stress is a major cause of deteriorating mental health. One refugee who wished to remain anonymous reported:

the inflation is going higher day by day and it’s hard to manage everything, like clothes, food, electricity, other basic life necessity things […] life is like a jail […] what is our crime that we are still here?

In the last year, basic humanitarian aid has come through crowdfunding organised by Sister Jane Keogh of the Brigidine Sisters. However, this community-driven lifeline is not sustainable.

As Keogh explained to us:

Their physical conditions allied with their mental trauma means that they’re not able to cope with their lives […] many have surpassed the ability to ever lead a normal life due to their mental health.

Out of harm’s way

Since 2013, Australia has stuck with its policy that refugees subject to offshore processing would never be allowed in Australia. The United States and New Zealand have resettled most of the refugees and asylum seekers from PNG and Nauru, but these options are now uncertain for the remaining 42.

Resettlement in New Zealand requires a medical report, which is expensive and difficult for the refugees to acquire.

Without intervention by the Australian government, the consequences for the remaining refugees is dire.

As Qabil Hussain, who has been stuck in PNG for 12 years, told us:

We’ve been brought by Australia here [to PNG] and they just left us stranded here and our support was withdrawn […] I want Australia to take responsibility.

From 2018-2022, Amy Nethery was a partner in Comparative Network of Refugee Externalisation Policies (CONREP), which was co-funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ Programme – Jean Monnet Activities (599660 EPP-1-2018-1-AU-EPPJMO-NETWORK).

Jemima McKenna is affiliated with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre as a volunteer caseworker for their Detention Rights and Advocacy Program (DRAP). She has volunteered for the ASRC since December 2018 and has been with DRAP since March 2021. She is the caseworker for the refugees and asylum seekers quoted in this article. Jemima’s PhD is funded by the Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP).

– ref. Dozens of refugees are still stranded in precarious situations in PNG – and support from Australia is dwindling – https://theconversation.com/dozens-of-refugees-are-still-stranded-in-precarious-situations-in-png-and-support-from-australia-is-dwindling-241676