Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Young, Research Fellow, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University, Deakin University

After a great deal of political haggling, pressure and negotiations, Australia’s National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) was established a year ago, with a view to stamping out corruption and discouraging any activities that might be interpreted as such.

So, has it lived up to its promise?

On June 6 this year, the NACC made a long-awaited announcement in relation to the highly controversial and widely panned Robodebt scheme. It issued a brief public statement that it would not pursue the Robodebt royal commission’s referrals to it.

This came as a shock to many. When the royal commission made the referrals, integrity groups and commentators had strong expectations that the NACC would undertake an inquiry into the conduct of senior public officials.

One week after the announcement, the inspector of the NACC, Gail Furness, announced she would inquire into the NACC’s decision after receiving almost 900 complaints. Some of those complaints alleged the decision was in itself an example of corruption or maladministration.

While the conduct of the NACC’s decision-making will be legally tested by the inspector, there are political tests that may be more difficult to pass. This includes whether the body is seen to be fulfilling its purpose, and whether it is publicly accountable for its decisions.

What is the purpose of the NACC?

The NACC’s purpose is similar to that of most anti-corruption commissions that have been established in Australia since the first Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in NSW in 1988: to detect, deter and prevent corrupt conduct of public officials.

The NACC made the point that the royal commission had already investigated Robodebt. Although controversial, the point is a timely reminder that anti-corruption commissions are like royal commissions with an ongoing tenure. Their mandate is to make findings as to whether corrupt conduct has taken place, not to prosecute or find a person guilty of a criminal offence.

The NACC explained its Robodebt decision by simply referring to its consideration of whether any investigation would be in the public interest. It is not legally obliged to inquire into every referral. This discretion is essential, given the flood of complaints it receives and the investigative choices it must make.

However, concepts such as public interest require complex balancing of legal, social and political considerations that affect the credibility of the NACC.

Is the NACC fulfilling its purpose?

One week before its first year of operation, the NACC reported it had received 3,154 referrals. Of those, 516 were under assessment, it was conducting 26 corruption investigations and monitoring or overseeing 21 investigations by other agencies.

Five matters have gone on to court proceedings. Two of these have resulted in convictions.

The NACC is demonstrating, on raw numbers at least, that it is committed to its purpose and achieving results. This is particularly so given any new anti-corruption commission is finding its feet in its first year while being swamped with new referrals.

The challenge for the NACC is the extent to which it is legally restrained and inclined to withhold details that the public relies on to understand investigative decisions. Sometimes these will never be made public. In most cases, there is a long lag time before a report is made to parliament or a matter is brought to court.

Like all anti-corruption commissions, the NACC will walk a legal, ethical and political tightrope: making enough of its operations public in support of its own legitimacy, while protecting the reputation and welfare of persons under investigation and not jeopardising future legal proceedings.

Is the NACC properly accountable?

The NACC is overseen by an inspector and a parliamentary committee.

Inspectors focus on the legal compliance of the commission and allegations of maladministration or corrupt conduct by commission officers.

The NACC is accountable to the parliament and to the oversight committee as the parliament’s delegate. Oversight committees have the broader purpose of monitoring the commission’s overall performance, assisted by the more forensic inquiries of inspectors.

Experience in Australian states suggests it will be crucial that the committee forms a constructive relationship with the NACC, that it exercises its power to hold some of its meetings with the NACC in public and table regular reports. This will be the public’s best opportunity to determine if the NACC is fulfilling its purpose.

The committee has not been established long enough to indicate how public and active it will be, but the more secretive the committee is, the more the NACC will struggle for public acceptance.

Just as crucial is that the committee should operate with as little political partisanship as possible. It should not only ensure accountability of the NACC, but be a guardian when the commission inevitably faces political and institutional backlash.

It is too early to say if the NACC has lived up to its promise. Its willingness to be accountable for its Robodebt decision, and the ability of the inspector and parliamentary committee to play a constructive role in that accountability, will be critical to ensuring ongoing public support.

Andrew Young is the former Clerk of the Legislative Council of Victoria, responsible for the administration of the Integrity and Oversight Committee.
Andrew Young is Chair of the Victorian chapter of the Australasian Study of Parliament Group (ASPG).

– ref. Australia’s long-awaited national anti-corruption body is a year old. Is it meeting expectations? – https://theconversation.com/australias-long-awaited-national-anti-corruption-body-is-a-year-old-is-it-meeting-expectations-233786

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marta Rychert, Senior Researcher in Drug Policy and Health Law, Massey University

We all make mistakes at work. And many factors can contribute to professional lapses, including fatigue, illness and lack of training or professional support. Usually we pick up the pieces and move on.

But for those who work in high-risk sectors and with vulnerable people – teachers and doctors, among others – the outcome of professional misconduct can be career-ending.

Disciplinary bodies and workplaces can respond to misconduct by removing a professional’s ability to practise. Alternatively, they can impose rehabilitative measures to help someone return to work.

For example, they can oblige someone to undergo more training or to practise under supervision for a set period. But the risk of repeated misconduct or harm to the public is a concern.

So how do we balance public safety with the goal of rehabilitation? And would greater emphasis on rehabilitation avoid wasted investment in expensive education and training?

Balancing safety and second chances

In New Zealand, registered professionals such as teachers, lawyers and health practitioners may be held accountable before a disciplinary tribunal.

Our analysis of 15 years of disciplinary decisions about health practitioners reveals the range of conduct involved, from crossing professional boundaries to practising without registration or misappropriating funds.

Registered professionals may even be disciplined for conduct outside their work, such as being convicted of dangerous driving.

The tribunals’ primary concern is to protect the public and maintain professional standards. This way we can all trust in our education, health and legal workforce, knowing their services are safe and comply with expected standards.

These tribunals also have the power to suspend practitioners or cancel their registration, effectively ending that person’s career. But by law the tribunals should also consider alternative responses and whether the goal of public protection can be achieved in other ways.

They can oblige a practitioner to practise under supervision, complete additional training, attend an ethics course or undergo addiction treatment (if relevant). But there is little consistency in how this is applied. More research on what works best is needed.

The case for rehabilitation

Our analysis found the majority of tribunal decisions included some rehabilitative element. And there has been an increase in tribunals ordering conditions such as training, supervision and mentoring.

But the likelihood of receiving a rehabilitative outcome differs across professions. We found nurses were more likely than doctors to be deregistered as a result of disciplinary proceedings, for instance.

It also appears some professional tribunals are more inclined than others to address the core issues that contributed to the misconduct. In fact, some explicitly craft “compassionate” penalties, taking account of distressing circumstances that led to professional breaches.

Recent decisions by tribunals and the High Court highlight the growing importance of professional rehabilitation. These also illustrate the challenges in deciding who deserves it. In one case, the lawyers’ disciplinary tribunal said failure to consider rehabilitation would leave its “job largely undone”.

In 2022, the High Court overturned a disciplinary tribunal’s decision to deregister a pharmacist, because the tribunal did not sufficiently assess the prospects of her rehabilitation.

The case involved mismanagement of a pharmacy and breach of conditions imposed on the pharmacy licence. In overturning the original decision, the High Court described the penalty as “unduly harsh” and reaffirmed the importance of rehabilitation.

Who deserves rehabilitation?

Our society makes great investments in the training and support of health practitioners, lawyers and teachers. Supporting them to continue practising safely, rather than striking them off, may have societal and economic benefits.

But sometimes misconduct cannot be remedied. For example, when teachers engage in sexual relationships with their students, the outcome is often deregistration. The severity of such misconduct and protecting students from harm are prioritised over rehabilitation efforts.

In one case, where a female teacher developed an intimate relationship with her vulnerable student, the tribunal said deregistration was the only acceptable outcome. This was despite the teacher’s remorse, her insight into her behaviour, and the fact she prioritised the student’s needs after the relationship ended.

In other sectors such as criminal justice and health, theoretical concepts have guided rehabilitation practice. For example, the “risk-needs-responsivity” model is widely adopted in the rehabilitation of criminal offenders, and provides guidance for implementing the programmes.

Towards a better model

Despite rehab being a common response in the justice system, we don’t have similar models specifically developed for professional misconduct. And surprisingly little is known about how New Zealand tribunals craft rehabilitation penalties.

While tribunals often consider practitioners’ levels of “remorse” and “insight”, assessing the prospects of rehabilitation poses challenges (as the recent High Court appeal demonstrated).

We also don’t know what responses work best in restoring practitioners to safe and competent practice after misconduct. For example, how effective are mandated ethics courses, or how well do practitioners engage with supervision conditions?

An interdisciplinary research project is under way to understand this. We are seeking the views of teachers, lawyers and health practitioners who have been ordered to undergo treatment, training, supervision, mentoring, counselling or health assessment by their disciplinary tribunals.

Understanding their experiences of professional rehabilitation will help improve consistency within and across tribunals, and could transform how workplaces in other sectors respond to misconduct.

Health professionals, teachers and lawyers who have received rehabilitative conditions from a disciplinary tribunal and would like to participate in this research are invited to contact the team here.

Marta Rychert receives funding from the Marsden Royal Society for a research project on rehabilitation after professional misconduct.

Kate Diesfeld receives funding from the Marsden Fund.

Lois Surgenor receives funding from the Marsden Fund.

– ref. Professional misconduct can end a career – who should get a second chance? – https://theconversation.com/professional-misconduct-can-end-a-career-who-should-get-a-second-chance-232986

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ehsan Noroozinejad, Senior Researcher, Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University

Australia is facing dual crises: increasing climate change risks and soaring housing costs. Financial institutions have a crucial role to play in funding and promoting solutions to these challenges.

A recent United Nations Environment Programme report, Banking on Green Buildings, proposes ways to promote sustainable buildings in line with both economic and environmental goals. Suggested options include green bonds and green mortgages for developing and renovating buildings to be sustainable.

Banks have the power to revolutionise how we fund construction. Directing investment into green buildings means future houses can be affordable, sustainable and resilient to climate change.

Our buildings account for around 19% of total energy use and 18% of direct carbon emissions in Australia.

How does this help with housing costs?

Rising costs and a lack of affordable choices are putting immense pressure on Australia’s communities and housing sector. Soaring energy bills have driven up the cost of living, especially for low-income households.

Modern construction methods and green buildings provide an answer since they are more efficient and use less energy. So smart green building strategies can produce more affordable homes for Australians that are cheaper to run.

By reducing living costs, green homes also reduce mortgage default risk. That’s one reason banks in some parts of the world already promote their benefits.

Various UK lenders offer green mortgages with lower interest rates to buyers of energy-efficient new homes. A European Commission-funded project has also provided green mortgages.

Green homes increase resilience

Australia faces increasing risk from natural hazards including bushfires, floods and extreme heatwaves as a result of climate change. Australian
households paid an average of A$888 a year in direct costs because of extreme weather events over the ten years to 2022. This figure is expected to exceed $2,500 a year (in 2022 dollar value) by 2050.

Energy-efficient and sustainably built buildings are more resilient to climate change impacts such as extreme heat. They lower long-term risk for investors and households by improving comfort and safety during extreme weather.

Banking programs that give priority to energy-efficient designs and materials have a dual effect: they reduce environmental impacts and strengthen resilience to climate change.

Who does this in Australia?

Green building loans enable financial institutions to develop and expand their product offerings.

NAB’s Green Finance for Commercial Real Estate program is an initiative that increases commercial buildings’ climate resilience. It includes financing for developing green buildings and retrofitting buildings to greatly reduce energy use and emissions.

The Sustainable Australia Fund’s offer of $100 million in green loans to business is another program that helps make buildings more sustainable. Eligible upgrades include renewable energy and battery storage, building insulation and electric vehicle charging stations. Owners are advised on the emissions profiles of their properties and possible improvements.

Bank Australia’s Clean Energy Home Loan is an example in the housing sector. The bank offers lower rates for home owners to make their homes more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly.

Global examples of success

Financial institutions worldwide have benefited from including sustainable construction investments in their portfolios.

A 2023 International Finance Corporation report, Building Green, shows green construction could be a US$1.5 trillion investment opportunity in emerging markets over the next decade.

Global demand for investments in climate-resilient infrastructure is already high, as green bond issues show. Banks issue these bonds to borrow money from investors. The banks then use those funds to provide loans for environmentally friendly purposes.

In the past two months, First Abu Dhabi Bank raised US$600 million and Commercial Bank of Dubai raised US$500 million by issuing green bonds.

The success of European property consultancy CFP Green Buildings demonstrates the scalability of such programs. It has grown from greening 3,000 buildings per year to over 3.5 million buildings per year.

CFP has now partnered with CommBank to provide comparable tools in Australia to assess commercial buildings, identify ways to improve their sustainability and estimate costs.

The Japan Bank for International Cooperation’s green bonds issues, totalling more than US$1.5 billion over the past four years, is another example of the robust global demand. Funded projects involve renewable energy, clean transportation and green buildings.

Global bank HSBC also plays a key role in this rapidly growing market. HSBC Green Bonds support activities such as green buildings, clean transportation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable waste management and climate change adaptation.

These financial solutions are essential to fund actions to reduce environmental hazards and improve climate resilience.

Aligning with national policy goals

Australia has a target of net-zero emissions by 2050. Our financial institutions can play an important role in getting there by promoting green construction methods including prefab and modular timber buildings.

Owners of homes with a Green Star rating benefit financially from the start. A 2023 KPMG report estimates they may save up to A$115,000 in interest by putting their energy bill savings into repaying their loan. The energy and interest savings exceed the initial costs of achieving a Green Star standard.

A panel discussion last October, led by Urban Transformations Research Centre at Western Sydney University, highlighted the need for sustainable building designs to build community resilience. One of the main challenges that panellists identified is finding ways to finance the costs of constructing and retrofitting buildings amid an affordability crisis.

This is where financial institutions come into the picture. They are key to building a sustainable future and overcoming Australia’s climate and housing challenges.

Ehsan Noroozinejad received national and international funding for research on housing technologies and affordability.

Nicky Morrison receives funding from New South Wales state and local governments.

– ref. How investing in green buildings, including cheaper home loans, is a win for banks, people and our planet – https://theconversation.com/how-investing-in-green-buildings-including-cheaper-home-loans-is-a-win-for-banks-people-and-our-planet-232476

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carmel Taddeo, Senior Lecturer at UniSA Education Futures, University of South Australia

Many parents are worried about how much their children use social media and what content they might encounter while using it.

Amid proposals to ban teenagers under 16yrs from social media and calls to better educate them about being safe online, how can you tell if your child’s social media use is already a problem? And what steps can take to help if there is an issue?

It is easy to get hooked

These platforms are designed in a way that releases dopamine (the “feel-good” hormone) for users. This can make it especially difficult for adolescents to resist.

As psychologists explain, from the onset of puberty until the mid-20’s, our brains are hypersensitive to social feedback and stimuli.

This means young people are more likely to engage in behaviours that can lead to praise or attention from peers and others. So it can be harder for a young person to resist responding to notifications or “likes”. Young people also are developing their impulse control, which can have implications for their scrolling habits and make it harder for them to stop.

There are benefits and risks

There are certainly many benefits to social media use, such as social connection, information and support. But there are also risks.

Although it is not necessarily causal, there are links between social media use and depression, anxiety, stress, sleep disorders, many aspects of cyberbullying and body image issues.

So it is understandable if parents have concerns about their children’s use of platforms such as TikTok, Instagram or Snapchat.

Are we talking about a ‘problem’ or an ‘addiction’?

Often terms such as “problematic” and “addiction” are used interchangeably when talking about social media use.

But there is no consensus among experts about how to differentiate between them or even if they should be differentiated.

Although some researchers argue social media addiction presents in similar ways to other behavioural addictions such as gambling, it is not recognised as a clinical disorder.

We need to be careful about referring to social media use as a clinical disorder or addiction.
It can be more helpful to use terms such as “problematic” or “unhealthy” until we know more.

Is there any advice on how much time is OK?

Australian guidelines suggest children and young people between five and 17 should spend no more than two hours of sedentary recreational screen time per day (not including school work).

But as the eSafety Commissioner notes, there is no “magic figure”. It depends on a range of factors such as a child’s maturity and age, the type and quality of content they are consuming and if it involves watching alone or with a carer.

There are no specific guidelines around social media use.

How can you tell if there’s a problem?

Keeping track of what teenagers are doing online can be very difficult, especially if they have their own devices.

So it means parents and carers will have to carefully consider their own child’s situation and behaviour to work out if there is a issue. Things that can suggest a young person’s use of social media has become a problem include:

• withdrawing from, or missing out on usual activities to spend time on social media

• finding it hard to stop or reduce the time spent on social media

• lying about or trying to cover up their social media use

• continuing to use social media even if it is causing problems with their real life relationships or other areas of life (such as school, work or sport).

What about problematic content?

On top of time spent on social media, problematic use can also relate to the kinds of content a young person is being exposed to.
This can include content which shows or promotes risky behaviours or violence, extremist views, pornography, gambling opportunities, graphic videos, fake news or mis/disinformation.

This can be very easy to access. As a US Surgeon General’s advisory notes, inappropriate content is even directed towards young people through algorithms.

If your child has come across inappropriate or concerning content, they may not want to talk about it or tell anyone because they may be embarrassed, confused or scared.

What can you do if you think there’s a problem?

Try to approach a conversation with your child in a sensitive way. Assure them you are here to help and not “get them in trouble”.

Thinking about your own social media use can be a useful starting point. Research suggests adolescents are more likely to have problematic internet use in general when their parents also have problematic use. Are your own habits consistent with what you want for your child? Do you have time-out from social media?

You and your child/young person could have a discussion about how you could both commit to changing your behaviour as a family. Perhaps this means no social media after a certain time of day or only at certain times of the day.

Involve your kids in change, do things offline

Even if your own habits are OK, it is important for young people to be involved and consulted about what will work for them, rather than an outright “ban” or imposed change. This gives them a sense of ownership of the solution (and makes them more likely to participate).

Research also suggests having regular, positive family time together can help foster time away from devices and problematic use. So organise things that fit with your child’s interests and can be done offline. For example, board game nights, hikes, bike rides or meals.

Young people also often seek help and information about problems through other trusted adults and peers. So if you can, encourage them to talk to their friends or a teacher at school about what they do to manage social media use.

Other resources

Problematic social media use is a complex issue. And it needs involvement from the broader community, not just families and carers. Any solutions will also need to actively involve young people and social media platforms themselves.

If your child/young person is demonstrating problematic use, and you would like more specific support, contact a counsellor or mental health professional.

There are also other resources that may help, including:

• general advice to parents on what social media is and why young people use it, from youth mental health organisation ReachOut

• advice to young people if they feel pressured by social media from the eSafety Commissioner

• advice to parents about social media use from the federal government’s Student Wellbeing Hub

• advice about the law and social media and what to do if you get into trouble from Youth Law Australia

• advice to young people about how to protect their mental health on social media from Kids Helpline.

I was a postdoctoral research fellow between 2013 and 2016 on the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre. I work for the University of South Australia in a part-time capacity and have received various funding to support research in my field. I also am director of CMT Accessible Research Pty Ltd

Professor (Adjunct) Barbara Spears AM,
has received funding in the past from various sources including Australian Research Council and Cooperative Research Centre competitive grants.
She led the Safe and Well Online project of the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre; the review of the National Safe Schools Framework; and various bullying and cyberbullying projects.

She is affiliated with the University of South Australia, is a recently retired Deputy Chair of the Child Development Council of SA and current member of the Programs Committee of the Sammy D Foundation (SA).

– ref. What can you do if you think your teen already has unhealthy social media habits? – https://theconversation.com/what-can-you-do-if-you-think-your-teen-already-has-unhealthy-social-media-habits-233556

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Magnus Söderberg, Professor & Director, Centre for Applied Energy Economics and Policy Research, Griffith University

Much of the debate about nuclear power in the month since the Coalition announced its plan to install reactors in seven states has been about cost.

But some things matter more to electricity users than the average price they pay for electricity.

For big industrial users who either buy their power wholesale, or renegotiate their fixed-term price contracts frequently, it is important that the wholesale price is fairly steady.

Nuclear power plants produce power at a fairly steady pace, which leads to a more steady market price. Power systems built around wind and solar produce cheaper power, but with more uncertain output and much greater variability in price.

This greater variability can be smoothed to some extent by adding storage such as pumped hydro and large-scale batteries, but to the extent that it remains, uncertain prices make investments in power-hungry projects harder to justify.

The greater the uncertainty, the more investment moves to other firms, other less energy-intensive industries and other countries.

This has been confirmed in a study of the behaviour of thousands of Chinese firms between 2008 and 2018.

Variable prices cut the value of firms

I presented preliminary results from a project using data from Queensland during Australian Energy Week last month.

Those results suggest that higher volatility in wholesale electricity prices lowers the share price of listed firms in the metals and mining industries.

Intraday price volatility has doubled over the past five to ten years. I find this has cost the firms that suffered it 5% of their share market value.

The metals and mining industries are valued at about A$40 billion, meaning a 5% reduction corresponds to $74 per Australian, each year.

Without nuclear, prices vary more

Now back to nuclear. Since nuclear power can generate electricity regardless of the weather, an advantage it has is lower price volatility.

We can see this by investigating what has happened in other countries when a sizeable proportion of the nuclear capacity has been taken offline.

Two recent examples from Europe illustrate this.

The first is from Germany which shut down three nuclear reactors on December 31, 2021, halving Germany’s nuclear power capacity overnight.

The second example is taken from France. There, stress corrosion cracking was discovered in several reactors and in April 2022, it had taken out 28 of France’s 56 reactors.

In Germany, shutting down the reactors pushed up price volatility by 5% to 15%. France experienced a few extreme price spikes, which also drove up the volatility.

In nearby southern Sweden and Poland, price volatility fell 10% to 25% during the same period.

As we keep expanding wind and solar, it is highly likely that electricity wholesale price volatility will climb further.

If Australia continues to rule out nuclear power, it is necessary to ask what else it can do to keep price volatility in check.

Magnus Söderberg 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. Nuclear power has an advantage not reflected in the average price. It’s price stability, and for some users that matters – https://theconversation.com/nuclear-power-has-an-advantage-not-reflected-in-the-average-price-its-price-stability-and-for-some-users-that-matters-233865

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adhi Oktaviana, PhD Candidate in Archaeology, Griffith University

Figurative rock art – art that presents lifelike representations of subjects – provides visual insights into ancient cultures, beliefs and societal practices, offering a direct window into human cultural evolution.

Being able to date figurative rock art accurately is crucial. It helps establish timelines of human artistic expression, aiding in understanding the development of symbolic thinking and cultural complexity across different periods and regions.

In an article published in the journal Nature today, we present a novel approach to date cave paintings.

Using this new dating innovation, we have found the world’s oldest figurative cave art.

Dated to at least 51,200 years ago, the art depicts an interaction between humans and a pig. It was found in a cave in Sulawesi, an island of Indonesia directly north-east of Bali and east of Borneo.

It’s a crucial piece of our history as humans, suggesting figurative art and storytelling have long been intertwined.

A new pioneering technique

In some limestone caves where people made rock art, dripping or flowing water occasionally led to the formation of mineral deposits on top of the paint layer, which provide a way to date the art scientifically.

Each drop of water leaves a tiny amount of carbonate particles, leading to the formation of a whitish coating over the rock art. The same process also leads to the growth of speleothem (also known as stalagmite and stalactite) layers, with numerous layers of particles that encapsulate all sorts of elements, including uranium.

Uranium is a naturally occurring radioisotope, meaning the chemical element will decay into other elements with time.

By comparing the ratio between the parent isotope (uranium) and the daughter isotope (thorium) we are able to calculate an age proportional to the time it took for the latter to form. This technique is called uranium-series, or U-series.

Rock art dating using U-series has typically been done by manually excavating a calcium carbonate sample and dissolving the resultant powder into a chemical solution, which is then introduced into a mass spectrometer. But the problem with this approach is that it averages several layers that have different ages, and does not distinguish pristine zones from altered ones.

To overcome these problems, our team developed a new analytical approach that uses a laser beam, four times smaller than the width of a human hair, to precisely sample the layers of calcium carbonate covering the art, including those closest to the painting.

The technique permits a better understanding of the internal growth structure of the calcium carbonate that formed on the art. This allows us to identify porous areas within these growths that complicate the dating process.

The laser is run across the samples in parallel lines, known as rasters. Once these are consolidated into a single high-resolution data set, we are able to understand the distribution of uranium and associated elements in great detail.

This technique is called “U-series imaging”, as it creates a map of the sample’s geochemical composition. We can then extract the data closest to the paint layer, providing a precise age estimate.

The dating result is always considered to be a minimum age estimation, given there might have been a delay between the creation of the art and the growth of the first calcium carbonate layers on top.

Art to tell a story

We used this new technique to date a painting in a cave in southern Sulawesi named Leang Karampuang and showed it is at least 51,200 years old.

The painting consists of a scene dominated by a large naturalistic representation of a wild pig. In front of the pig are three smaller human-like figures. They appear to be interacting with the animal.

One figure seems to be holding an object near the pig’s throat. Another is directly above the pig’s head in an upside-down position with legs splayed out. The third figure is larger and grander in appearance than the others; it is holding an unidentified object and is possibly wearing an elaborate headdress.

The manner in which these human-like figures are depicted in relation to the pig conveys a sense of dynamic action. Something is happening in this artwork – a story is being told.

We don’t know what that story was. Perhaps it was an account of a real boar hunt or a depiction of a myth or imaginary tale. Whatever the case, it seems to concern the relationship between pigs and people as conceived by early humans in Sulawesi.

We now know humans have used figurative art to tell stories for at least 51,000 years. Using our new dating method it may be possible in the future to fill in some of the many gaps in our knowledge of this key development in the history of art.

Adhi Oktaviana receives funding from Google Arts & Culture and National Geographic Society.

Adam Brumm receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Google Arts and Culture, and the National Geographic Society.

Maxime Aubert receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Google Arts and Culture, and the National Geographic Society.

Renaud Joannes-Boyau receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Found in a cave in Indonesia, we can now show the world’s oldest figurative art is 51,200 years old – https://theconversation.com/found-in-a-cave-in-indonesia-we-can-now-show-the-worlds-oldest-figurative-art-is-51-200-years-old-233663

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Garritt C. Van Dyk, Lecturer in History, University of Newcastle

The most seductive culinary myths have murky origins, with a revolutionary discovery created by accident, or out of necessity.

For the Caesar salad, these classic ingredients are spiced up with a family food feud and a spontaneous recipe invention on the Fourth of July, across the border in Mexico, during Prohibition.

Our story is set during the era when America banned the production and sale of alcohol from 1919–1933.

Two brothers, Caesar (Cesare) and Alex (Alessandro) Cardini, moved to the United States from Italy. Caesar opened a restaurant in California in 1919. In the 1920s, he opened another in the Mexican border town of Tijuana, serving food and liquor to Americans looking to circumvent Prohibition.

Tijuana’s Main Street, packed with saloons, became a popular destination for southern Californians looking for drink. It claimed to have the “world’s longest bar” at the Ballena, 215 feet (66 metres) long with ten bartenders and 30 waitresses.

The story of the Caesar salad, allegedly 100 years old, is one of a cross-border national holiday Prohibition-era myth, a brotherly battle for the claim to fame and celebrity chef endorsements.

Necessity is the mother of invention

On July 4 1924, so the story goes, Caesar Cardini was hard at work in the kitchen of his restaurant, Caesar’s Place, packed with holiday crowds from across the border looking to celebrate with food and drink.

He was confronted with a chef’s worst nightmare: running out of ingredients in the middle of service.

As supplies for regular menu items dwindled, Caesar decided to improvise with what he had on hand.

He took ingredients in the pantry and cool room and combined the smaller leaves from hearts of cos lettuce with a dressing made from coddled (one-minute boiled) eggs, olive oil, black pepper, lemon juice, a little garlic and Parmesan cheese.

The novel combination was a huge success with the customers and became a regular menu item: the Caesar salad.

Et tu, Alex?

There is another version of the origin of the famous salad, made by Caesar’s brother, Alex, at his restaurant in Tijuana.

Alex claims Caesar’s “inspiration” was actually a menu item at his place, the “aviator’s salad”, named because he made it as a morning-after pick-me-up for American pilots after a long night drinking.

His version had many of the same ingredients, but used lime juice, not lemon, and was served with large croutons covered with mashed anchovies.

When Caesar’s menu item later became famous, Alex asserted his claim as the true inventor of the salad, now named for his brother.

Enter the celebrity chefs

To add to the intrigue, two celebrity chefs championed the opposing sides of this feud. Julia Child backed Caesar, and Diana Kennedy (not nearly as famous, but known for her authentic Mexican cookbooks) supported Alex’s claim.

By entering the fray, each of these culinary heavyweights added credence to different elements of each story and made the variations more popular in the US.

While Child reached more viewers in print and on television, Kennedy had local influence, known for promoting regional Mexican cuisine.

While they chose different versions, the influence of major media figures contributed to the evolution of the Caesar salad beyond its origins.

The original had no croutons and no anchovies. As the recipe was codified into an “official” version, garlic was included in the form of an infused olive oil. Newer versions either mashed anchovies directly into the dressing or added Worcestershire sauce, which has anchovies in the mix.

Caesar’s daughter, Rosa, always maintained her father was the original inventor of the salad. She continued to market her father’s trademarked recipe after his death in 1954.

Ultimately she won the battle for her father’s claim as the creator of the dish, but elements from Alex’s recipe have become popular inclusions that deviate from the purist version, so his influence is present – even if his contribution is less visible.

No forks required – but a bit of a performance

If this weren’t enough, there is also a tasty morsel that got lost along the way.

Caesar salad was originally meant to be eaten as finger food, with your hands, using the baby leaves as scoops for the delicious dressing ingredients.

For presentation in a restaurant, the salad was also created in front of the diners’ table, on a rolling cart, with some recommending a “true” Caesar salad was tossed only seven times, clockwise.

This extra level of drama, performance and prescribed ritual was usually limited to alcohol-doused flaming desserts.

To have a humble salad, invented in desperation, elevated to this kind of treatment made it a very special dish – even without any bacon.

Garritt C. Van Dyk receives funding from the Getty Research Institute, California, for research into 17th-18th c. cookbooks as politcial satire

– ref. No croutons, no anchovies, no bacon: the 100-year-old Mexican origins of the Caesar salad – https://theconversation.com/no-croutons-no-anchovies-no-bacon-the-100-year-old-mexican-origins-of-the-caesar-salad-233099

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Harris, Professor of Corporate Law, University of Sydney

Australia’s corporate watchdog, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), should be broken up and replaced by new and more responsive regulatory agencies, a damning report has found.

The Senate Economics References Committee handed down its 200-page report Tuesday evening after a 20-month inquiry into the corporate regulator.

The inquiry involved five days of public hearings and 198 submissions from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) and an array of other financial, accounting and legal interest groups.

The report calls for greater transparency and accountability from ASIC and a fundamental change to how it approaches enforcement.

It highlights three major problems.

1. Impossibly broad responsibility

The scope of ASIC’s responsibility is impossibly broad and it has not shown it can effectively fulfil its mandate.

While ASIC is chronically under-resourced when compared with other corporate regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States, ASIC’s repeated governance failures and lack of public accountability mean giving it more money won’t necessarily solve the problem

2. A gun-shy regulator

ASIC is a gun-shy regulator that is constantly reacting to public criticism and fumbling its caseload, rather than getting on with the job of investigating and punishing serious misconduct in our financial markets.

ASIC has taken its eye off the goal of addressing serious misconduct, perhaps because it is too scared to lose when it does take action.

It proudly trumpets its 97% litigation success rate in its annual reports, but this speaks to a regulator not taking on challenging cases and a regulator that is running the same type of matter over and again.

ASIC’s approach to public accountability is to deflect criticism and use a highlights package of sample enforcement actions in its reports to justify its existence. Meanwhile tens of thousands of reports of potential misconduct are ignored.

The report notes that ASIC is simply not using the information it receives about potential misconduct effectively. ASIC takes action in less than 1% of its reports of misconduct from insolvency practitioners alone. When questioned by the Senate committee about enforcement activities, ASIC steadfastly refused to comply with requests for information.

The corporate regulator should be independent from the government, but no-one should be immune from the scrutiny of parliament.

3. A flawed approach

ASIC’s approach to responding to reports of misconduct is fundamentally flawed. It derides reports of misconduct as mere complaints, stating that it is not a complaint handling body.

Many reports of misconduct are dismissed almost immediately. For decades, it has failed to provide accurate and timely information about its enforcement activity, as it changes how it reports enforcement actions and outcomes from year to year.

This makes it impossible to hold it accountable or to identify precisely what actions ASIC is and isn’t bringing. ASIC’s funding and staffing have increased over the past 10 years, but its enforcement activity has seen little change or increase.

Empirical studies show that ASIC only litigates a small number of provisions in the Corporations Act 2001 each year. The number of directors that ASIC bans each year for misconduct has barely changed in the past 20 years.

What the report says should happen next

The report makes 11 recommendations that call for ASIC to be broken up and for major governance changes inside the corporate cop.

ASIC commissioners frequently state they are one of the most active corporate regulators in the world and they are very effective at addressing corporate fraud and misconduct.

But this was rejected by the Hayne Royal Commission into the Banking and Financial Services industries which reported in 2019 that ASIC had consistently failed to take action against large financial institutions.

It also found the commission was too reliant on low level sanctions and agreed enforcement outcomes and it simply did not bring enough court cases to address serious misconduct.

ASIC responded at the time that it would bring a “why not litigate?” approach and then quickly backed away from that stance once the COVID pandemic hit.

Nothing has changed

This latest report shows nothing has changed since the royal commission. ASIC is too slow (often taking years to respond to reports of wrongdoing), too clumsy (failing to respond quickly enough to changes in market behaviour), doesn’t always pick the right cases to run.

Even when it “wins”, it often settles for low-level enforcement measures.

The serious financial and corporate crooks have little to fear from ASIC it appears.

This is a regulator that is stultifying under ineffective governance and a mandate so broad that it can point to almost any action as being relevant to its duties.

The inquiry’s final report shows it is not simply a matter of more enforcement being needed but also ensuring that ASIC is responding in the most appropriate way.

ASIC as an omnibus corporate regulator for everything, is a failed regulatory experiment. It is not simply a watchdog with no bite, but even worse, a watchdog chasing its own tail.

Jason Harris serves on the legal committee of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, the policy committee of the Governance Institute of Australia and serves on the business law section of the Law Council of Australia.

– ref. ASIC has comprehensively failed and its role should be split in two, according to long-awaited report – https://theconversation.com/asic-has-comprehensively-failed-and-its-role-should-be-split-in-two-according-to-long-awaited-report-233668

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

Anthony Albanese has flagged he expects rebel Labor senator Fatima Payman to quit the Labor Party imminently.

Answering a question in parliament from the opposition, the prime minister said: “I expect further announcements in the coming days, which will explain exactly what the strategy has been over now more than a month”.

Albanese suspended Payman from caucus on Sunday after she said on ABC TV that she would cross the floor again if necessary. This followed her doing so on a pro-Palestinian motion moved by the Greens last week.

On Tuesday it was reported Payman had met with Muslim leaders and political strategist Glenn Druery, dubbed the “preference whisperer”, who has worked with a range of micro parties over many years.

Asked that night on the ABC’s 7.30 whether it was acceptable for Payman to be talking with Labor’s opponents Albanese said “clearly, it’s not acceptable”.

He suggested this had not just happened since the events of the last few days,

“The idea that this happened just in the last 24 hours is I think not what has occurred.

“Clearly […] someone doesn’t just pop up on Insiders because they were walking past the studio on Sunday”.

Albanese, who called Payman to The Lodge on Sunday, said he had asked for an explanation about what motivated her interview but “I haven’t received one.

“Just as Senator Payman’s caucus colleagues weren’t given the courtesy of any advance notice that she would cross the floor to vote for a position that is not consistent with Labor’s position, when it comes to the Middle East.”

Albanese has stressed that by breaking party solidarity Payman has “placed herself outside the Labor party”. She has said “some members” were attempting to “intimidate” her into resigning from the Senate.

Druery has confirmed he has met Muslim community leaders about the election and a meeting included Payman. But he had no contract with the Muslim leaders.

Thursday is the last parliamentary sitting day before the winter recess. The Greens have been discussing some move on the Palestine issue before parliament rises.

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 suggests Fatima Payman likely to quit Labor Party imminently – https://theconversation.com/albanese-suggests-fatima-payman-likely-to-quit-labor-party-imminently-233886

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milad Haghani, Senior Lecturer of Urban Mobility, Public Safety & Disaster Risk, UNSW Sydney

A catastrophe involving large crowds at a religious gathering in northern India yesterday resulted in the deaths of over 100 people, with many more injured.

The disaster, in the Hathras district southeast of the capital New Delhi, unfolded during a Satsang (spiritual discourse) by a popular preacher which drew thousands of devotees.

This is the latest in a long list of crowd disasters in India.

Although much of the media coverage has described this event as a crowd “stampede”, this obscures failings in how the event was planned and run.

India has seen many such catastrophes

In recent history, India has witnessed several tragic crowd-related catastrophes.

On January 1 2022, a disaster at the Mata Vaishno Devi shrine in Jammu and Kashmir resulted in 12 deaths and 15 injuries. The incident was triggered by an argument among pilgrims during New Year celebrations.

On December 28 2022, a stampede at a political rally in Andhra Pradesh state in India’s south led to eight deaths as supporters surged towards the stage.

On November 25 2023, a crowd incident at a university concert in Kerala in India’s south caused four deaths and numerous injuries.

In 1954, millions gathered for a religious pilgrimage at the Prayag Kumbh Mela in northern India, resulting in a crowd disaster that claimed around 800 lives. This incident remains the deadliest crowd disaster in India’s history.

A global database of deaths from crowd accidents shows more than 1,477 people have lost their lives since 2000 in over 50 disastrous mass gatherings in India (excluding the very recent incident).

India remains one of the biggest hotspots for deadly crowd accidents in the world, particularly over the past two decades.

Other major hotspots include Saudi Arabia, mainly due to incidents during the annual Hajj pilgrimage, and some parts of West Africa.

A sobering trend of crowd disasters

A look back at the history of crowd accidents reveals a noteworthy and sobering trend.

In the 1980s, most crowd accident deaths occurred at sporting events. However, nowadays, most happen at religious gatherings, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.

High-profile examples, such as the UK’s Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989, led to the development of crowd management guides, better practices, and heightened awareness in sport arenas, especially in Europe. These measures have made sporting events significantly safer for crowds. But there haven’t been similar improvements for religious gatherings.

Today, for ticketed large events there’s usually extensive risk assessment, planning and operational control. Organisers can monitor and spot the risk as it unfolds and take real-time actions. Planning includes computer modelling of the event in terms of crowd movement, estimating evacuation times, and monitoring how people enter and leave the premises, among other factors.

However, these steps are not necessarily taken with religious mass gatherings.

Exits can be overwhelmed

Media reports indicate the venue where the recent tragedy took place was three times over its capacity.

A crowd that gathers gradually over an extended period of time during such an event would want to exit the venue all at once at the end. This means exits are grossly insufficient.

This simple inadequacy of exit capacities relative to the size of the crowd appears to be one of the main causes of the recent tragedy in India.

In many cases, the sheer pressure of the crowd at narrow exit points can lead to suffocation, which was reported with this latest tragic event. Clearly, individuals with smaller body sizes and shorter heights are at higher risk. This is reflected in the large number of women and children reported as casualties.

It’s not a crowd ‘stampede’

The media has used the word “stampede” to describe such events. This is often a blanket term to describe crowd accidents, often regardless of the underlying cause. It catastrophises events involving crowds, especially in relation to religious gatherings or when details of the incident are vague.

But using terms like this has implications. It essentially puts the blame on the people involved in the incident and on the way they behaved. In fact, crowd behaviour is often not the main cause of such incidents.

Perpetuating this narrative often allows organisers to be absolved of responsibility and demotivates authorities from investigating the root cause of the problem.

This leads to a vicious cycle of accidents occurring without any practical measures implemented to prevent the next one.

One member of India’s parliament told The New York Times:

Every year, these kinds of incidents keep repeating themselves, and we learn nothing.

We need to learn from past events

Crowd accidents, particularly at religious mass gatherings in developing countries, are becoming a more common cause of premature death worldwide.

In recent weeks, more than 1,300 pilgrims died during the Hajj. The recent incident in India soon followed.

While the number of deaths at the Hajj is higher, the mortality rate at the recent Indian gathering is significantly higher (we’ve calculated this at 0.065% for the Hajj versus 0.77% for the Indian incident).

This calls for rigorous regulation, proper risk assessment, planning, security provision and crowd monitoring.

Targeted, evidence-based public education campaigns can raise awareness and significantly reduce the likelihood and impact of such events.

Just as we pursue zero deaths on the roads, crowd accident deaths should be recognised as a preventable cause that needs addressing, especially in developing countries.

Milad Haghani receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

Claudio Feliciani receives funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Japan Science and Technology Agency.

– ref. Deadly crowd crush at Indian religious gathering shows how dangerous leaving an event can be – https://theconversation.com/deadly-crowd-crush-at-indian-religious-gathering-shows-how-dangerous-leaving-an-event-can-be-233864

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cameron Webb, Clinical Associate Professor and Principal Hospital Scientist, University of Sydney

If you’re looking to escape the Australian winter for your next holiday, don’t forget where there’s warmth, there will also be mosquitoes.

In turn, tropical destinations can be hot spots of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue. In fact, Australian health authorities have warned travellers to Bali to be aware of the risk of dengue, with cases surging in the region.

So here’s how to protect yourself and your family on holidays.

What is dengue?

Dengue virus infection (commonly known as dengue fever, or just dengue) is caused by viruses spread by the bite of a mosquito. The mosquito species that typically transmit dengue are Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus.

There are four strains of dengue virus. Each has the potential to cause illness that can range from mild to severe and potentially life threatening.

Symptoms typically include rash, fever, chills, headache, muscle and joint pain, and fatigue. People also often report abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting.

While infection with just one of these viruses can make you sick, subsequent exposure to other strains can have more serious health implications. In these cases, symptoms can also include the presence of blood in vomit, bleeding gums and breathing difficulties.

Dengue infection must be confirmed via a blood test, but there are no specific treatments. Most people will recover on their own however staying hydrated is crucial and pain relief can help with symptoms. If more severe illness occurs, seek urgent medical care.

Are travellers at risk?

The disease is now endemic in around 100 countries and an estimated 4 billion people are considered at risk. Asian countries represent around 70% of the global disease burden. Even Europe is at risk.

One of the worst years on record was 2023, but the burden of dengue continues to grow. In the first four months of 2024, Indonesia reported three times as many cases of dengue compared to the same period in 2023.

Dengue is not a new risk to Australian travellers. Before COVID disrupted international travel, the number of Australians returning from tropical destinations with dengue was steadily increasing.

For example, between 2010 and 2016, there was an average annual increase of 22% of travellers returning to Victoria with dengue. Almost half of these people contracted the illness in Indonesia. Bali is well documented as posing a risk of dengue to travellers.

International travel restrictions due to COVID abruptly stopped this trend. But now Australians are again embracing international travel, cases are rising once more.

Bali isn’t the only destination with a surge in dengue, but we know it’s a popular holiday destination for Australian travellers. There’s little doubt plenty of families will be heading to Bali these school holidays.

How about the risk in Australia?

Not all mosquitoes can spread dengue viruses. This is why the risk is different in Bali and other tropical regions compared to Australia.

Although there are more than 40 Australian mosquito species known or suspected to be transmitting local pathogens, such as Ross River virus, Australia is generally free of local dengue risk due to the limited spread of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus.

While Aedes aegypti is found in parts of Queensland, thanks to interventions by the World Mosquito Program and local authorities dengue risk is low. These interventions include the release of laboratory-bred mosquitoes that prevent mosquitoes in the environment spreading viruses, as well as community education. But local cases occasionally occur.

Aedes albopictus is not currently found on the Australian mainland but is present in the islands of the Torres Strait. A dengue outbreak has occurred there this year.

Keep mozzies away during the day, not just at night

While there is a vaccine available, it’s not recommended for short-term travellers. There are strict eligibility criteria for its use, so speak to a health professional for advice.

For the majority of travellers, preventing mosquito bites is the only way to prevent disease.

But there are differences in the behaviour of dengue mosquitoes that mean the normal measures to avoid mosquito bites may not be as effective.

During the Australian summer, mosquitoes found in local wetlands can be incredibly abundant. We tend to need to reach for the repellent and cover up to stop bites as soon as the sun starts going down.

Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus can aggressively bite people but they’re not as abundant as the swarms of summer mosquitoes back home.

They also bite during the day, not just at night. So for those travelling to Bali or other areas at risk of dengue, putting insect repellent on throughout the day is recommended.

What to pack for protection

If you’re staying in a major resort, there’s likely to be a mosquito control program in place. This may include minimising available water for mosquito breeding in combination with insecticide use. Mosquitoes are also less likely to be an issue in air-conditioned accommodation.

But if you’re planning to spend time out and about visiting local villages, markets, or in nature, it’s best to protect against bites.

Light coloured and loose fitting clothing will help stop mosquito bites (and help keep you cool). Covered shoes can help too – dengue mosquitoes love smelly feet.

Finally, it’s best to take some insect repellent with you. There may not be any available at your destination, and formulations on sale might not have been through the same thorough testing as products approved in Australia.

Cameron Webb and the Department of Medical Entomology, NSW Health Pathology, have been engaged by a wide range of insect repellent and insecticide manufacturers to provide testing of products and provide expert advice on mosquito biology. Cameron has also received funding from local, state and federal agencies to undertake research into mosquito-borne disease surveillance and management.

– ref. Heading to Bali or somewhere tropical these holidays? Here’s what you need to know about dengue fever – https://theconversation.com/heading-to-bali-or-somewhere-tropical-these-holidays-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-dengue-fever-233670

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katharine Kemp, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney

Photos of Australian children have been used without consent to train artificial intelligence (AI) models that generate images.

A new report from the non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch has found the personal information, including photos, of Australian children in a large data set called LAION-5B. This data set was created by accessing content from the publicly available internet. It contains links to some 5.85 billion images paired with captions.

Companies use data sets like LAION-5B to “teach” their generative AI tools what visual content looks like. A generative AI tool like Midjourney or Stable Diffusion will then assemble images from the thousands of data points in its training materials.

In many cases, the developers of AI models – and their training data – seem to be riding roughshod over data protection and consumer protection laws. They seem to believe that if they build and deploy the model, they will be able to achieve their business goals while law or enforcement is catching up.

The data set analysed by Human Rights Watch is maintained by German nonprofit organisation LAION. Stanford researchers have previously found child sexual abuse imagery in this same data set.

LAION has now pledged to remove the Australian kids’ photos found by Human Rights Watch. However, AI developers that have already used this data can’t make their AI models “unlearn” it. And the broader issue of privacy breaches also remains.

If it’s on the internet, is it fair game?

It’s a misconception to say that because something is publicly available, privacy laws don’t apply to it. Publicly available information can be personal information under the Australian Privacy Act.

In fact, we have a relevant case when facial recognition platform Clearview AI was found to breach Australians’ privacy in 2021. The company was scraping people’s images from websites across the internet to use in a facial recognition tool.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) ruled that even though those photographs were already on websites, they were still personal information. More than that, they were sensitive information.

It held Clearview AI had contravened the Privacy Act by failing to follow obligations about collection of personal information. So, in Australia, personal information includes publicly available information.

AI developers need to be very careful about the provenance of the data sets they’re using.

Can we enforce the privacy law?

This is where the Clearview AI case is relevant. There are potentially strong arguments LAION has breached current Australian privacy laws.

One such argument involves the collection of biometric information in the form of facial images without the consent of the individual.

Australia’s information commissioner ruled Clearview AI had collected sensitive information without consent. Additionally, this was done by “unfair means”: scraping people’s facial information from various websites for use in a facial recognition tool.

Under Australian privacy laws, the organisation gathering the data also has to provide a collection notice to the individuals. When you have these kinds of practices – broadly scraping images from across the internet – the likelihood of a company giving appropriate notice to everybody concerned is vanishingly small.

If it’s found that Australian privacy law has been breached in this case, we need strong enforcement action by the privacy commissioner. For example, the commissioner may be able to seek a very large fine if there is a serious interference with privacy: the greater of A$50 million, 30% of turnover, or three times the benefit received.

The federal government is expected to release an amendment bill for the Privacy Act in August. It follows a major review of privacy law conducted over the last couple of years.

As part of those reforms, there have been proposals for a children’s privacy code, recognising that children are in an even more vulnerable position than adults when it comes to the potential misuse of their personal information. They often lack agency over what’s being collected and used, and how that will affect them throughout their lives.

What can parents do?

There are many good reasons not to publish pictures of your children on the internet, including unwanted surveillance, the risk of identification of children by those with criminal intentions and use in deepfake images – including child pornography. These AI data sets provide yet another reason. For parents, this is an ongoing battle.

Human Rights Watch found photos in the LAION-5B data set that had been scraped from unlisted, unsearchable YouTube videos. In its response, LAION has argued the most effective protection against misuse is to remove children’s personal photos from the internet.

But even if you decide not to publish photos of your children, there are many situations where your child can be photographed by other people and have their images available on the internet. This can include daycare centres, schools or sporting clubs.

If, as individual parents, we don’t publish our children’s photos, that’s great. But avoiding this problem wholesale is difficult – and we should not put all the blame on parents if these images end up in AI training data. Instead, we must keep the tech companies accountable.

Katharine Kemp is a Member of the Expert Panel of the Consumer Policy Research Centre, and the Australian Privacy Foundation.

– ref. Photos of Australian kids have been found in a massive AI training data set. What can we do? – https://theconversation.com/photos-of-australian-kids-have-been-found-in-a-massive-ai-training-data-set-what-can-we-do-233868

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Muhammad Rizwan Azhar, Lecturer of Chemical Engineering, Sustainable Energy and Resources, Edith Cowan University

More Australians than ever are riding electric bikes – a fact you may have noticed on the streets of our cities and towns.

Electric bikes, or e-bikes, are typically equipped with an electric motor and a battery, providing power to help you pedal. Some allow you to boost and lower the amount of pedalling assistance you get.

Globally, the transport sector produces about one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. Finding cleaner ways to get around is vital to combating the climate crisis. E-bikes also offer solutions to the problems of traffic congestion, fuel costs and sedentary lifestyles.

But is an electric bike right for you? Below, we discuss the pros and cons, to help you decide.

The pros

– Reduce carbon emissions

In developed countries, transport can be one of the largest proportions of an individual’s carbon footprint. But you can reduce your travel emissions by 75% if you replace car use with an e-bike for short trips such as the work commute.

Research has found e-bikes, if used to replace cars, could cut carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions by up to 50% in England – or about 30 million tonnes a year. Other analysis showed the potential was greatest in rural areas.

– Connect with your community

The “car-rification” of our cities changed community dynamics. Retail became concentrated in out-of-town shopping centres, leading to a decline in smaller town centres. This provided fewer opportunities to meet our neighbours and has contributed to high rates of loneliness and social isolation.

Similar to regular cycling, riding e-bikes helps create community bonds. It makes us more likely to engage with our surroundings and interact with people around us. You can even join an e-bike group or community ride.

– Save money

E-bikes offer substantial long-term financial benefits to owners.

In Australia, an e-bike costs from about A$1,000 to more than $5,000. An annual e-bike service will set you back between $100 and $300. And retailers currently put the cost of a full battery charge at 10–15 cents, translating to roughly $20 per year for an average commuter.

Cars, of course, cost far more to run. For example, Victorian motoring body RACV last year found the state’s cheapest car to own and operate was the MG3 Core light Hatchm, with monthly costs of $734.84. Even taking into account charging costs and maintenance, you can see how quickly an e-bike would pay for itself.

– Get active

E-bikes are clearly better for your health than riding in a car.

A 2019 study investigated e‐bike commuting for inactive, overweight people living in regional Australia. It found e-bike users increased their physical activity by an average 90 minutes a week.

A literature review in 2022 found e-biking was a moderately intense physical activity on measures such as energy expenditure, heart rate and oxygen consumption. The benefits were lower than conventional cycling, but generally greater than walking.

Women, in particular, have reported benefits from e-bike use. A New Zealand study showed e-bikes provided less fit women with “more empowering physical activity experiences” and increased their cycling confidence.

The cons

– Safety challenges

Like any form of mobility, e-bikes must be used safely. Concerns around e-bikes include speeding, accidents and people riding without helmets.

In May this year, Sydney’s Northern Beaches Council launched a public awareness campaign on e-bike safety. The advice includes:

• slow to walking pace when others are on the path
• ring your bell to signal your approach
• be ready for sudden changes.

Government regulation on e-bikes is also important for public safety. For example in Germany, high-speed e-bikes are classed as mopeds and cannot be ridden on bike paths.

Separately, e-bikes usually contain lithium-ion batteries which can explode and start fires – particularly in e-bikes bought from overseas retailers that don’t meet Australian standards. Before buying, check advice from fire authorities.

– Lack of cycling and charging infrastructure

Well-designed cycling infrastructure encourages e-bike use. In Australia, governments are slowly accepting the need for infrastructure such as dedicated bike lanes and charging stations, but more money is needed.

In the Netherlands, a surge in e-bike sales has driven investments in cycling paths, improvements in bicycle parking at train stations, and other efforts to promote cycling and e-bike use.

– Higher upfront cost than a regular bike

The cost of buying an e-bike can be a barrier for some. For example, NZ-based research found the purchase cost meant the benefits were less likely to be available to lower-income women.

So how can the cost barrier be overcome? In Australia, some companies offer e-bike rentals, via a weekly subscription service. And overseas, share schemes mean people can access e-bikes without having to buy one.

In 2023, Tasmania became the first Australian state to offer a subsidy for e-bike purchases, and the uptake was rapid. However, the scheme has now closed.

– Environmental impacts

Almost everything we buy has an environmental impact, and electric bikes are no exception. However, they are obviously a better alternative to conventional cars – and also have less impact than electric vehicles.

Over the total lifecycle of the product, including manufacturing, an e-bike emits about 10% of the CO₂ emissions associated with producing an electric car, according to the European Cyclists Federation. And e-bikes consume about 15 watt-hours per kilometre, compared to electric cars which consume around 150 to 200 watt-hours per kilometre.

E-bike battery systems also typically require fewer raw materials and simpler design than an electric vehicle, which simplifies the battery recycling process.

Cleaner, cheaper, better

Electric cars are crucial for replacing traditional vehicles on longer routes and for family travel. However, e-bikes offer a more affordable and lower-impact solution for commuting and short-distance travel – and if you buy a cargo e-bike, you can even take your family.

Mass adoption of e-bikes in Australia requires better cycling infrastructure, new government regulation and price incentives. But in the meantime, thousands of Australians are already enjoying the benefits of e-bikes. Perhaps you could too?

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. Is an electric bike right for you? Here’s what to consider before you buy – https://theconversation.com/is-an-electric-bike-right-for-you-heres-what-to-consider-before-you-buy-230024

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sherine Al Shallah, Doctoral Researcher, Refugee Cultural Heritage and Connected Rights Protection | Affiliate, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law | Associate, Australian Human Rights Institute, UNSW Sydney

Cultural heritage has long been targeted during conflict. This includes the destruction of the famous Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Russia’s attempts to erase the Ukrainian language in areas of the country it has occupied since 2014.

Cultural heritage loss has been extensively documented in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict, too. Since the current war broke out in October 2023, at least 144 prominent historical monuments and cultural sites have been destroyed in Gaza, such as churches, mosques and the ancient city of Anthedon.

This cultural heritage loss can have implications on the continuity of Gazan Palestinians as a national group due to the erasure of their collective identity and memory.

The Rome Statute specifically protects cultural property from attacks during war. This includes sites dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, as well as historical monuments. Unlawful attacks on civilian objects that may constitute cultural property are also protected.

The International Criminal Court has used this statute to prosecute individuals for war crimes too. In 2016, the court found Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi guilty of intentionally directing attacks against religious and historic buildings in Timbuktu, Mali. He was sentenced to nine years in prison.

But when it comes to protection for refugees on the basis of cultural heritage – and taking into account cultural heritage loss specifically – there are very few pathways available.

What is refugee cultural heritage and why is it important?

Cultural heritage plays a significant role in shaping identity. It includes our traditions and practices, as well as physical heritage sites and objects, and people’s relationships with them.

For refugees, cultural heritage can include both the heritage of their home countries, as well as that of other countries where they have lived in exile. This means that if a Rohingya refugee from Myanmar spends time in a camp in Bangladesh, their heritage would incorporate influences from both places, in addition to the refugee experience itself.

Respecting “exile heritage” in asylum claims allows refugees the “right to exit” – or distance themselves from – the heritage of their home countries if they no longer agree with its values.

Refugee status is determined by states that are party to the 1951 Refugee Convention based on five grounds of persecution: race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group and/or political opinion. These five grounds are all interlinked with cultural heritage. Yet cultural heritage alone is rarely relied upon to assess evidence of persecution.

Until this year, for instance, the United Kingdom had been one of 12 countries not to have ratified the 2003 UNESCO Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage. The convention aims to recognise and safeguard a wide variety of cultural practices and traditions for people around the world.

And scholars believe this may have played a role in a well-known asylum case in Scotland.

In the early 2000s, members of a minority Somali clan known as the Bajuni applied for asylum in Glasgow, claiming persecution from the Somali government.

The asylum seekers did not have documentation to support their claim that they belonged to the clan that had been persecuted. So, the UK government administered linguistic and cultural tests to assess whether they were, in fact, members of the clan.

Many failed the linguistic tests because they had lived in exile in refugee camps where they learned to speak other languages, in addition to the English they learned in the UK. As a result, they were denied asylum and forced to live in prolonged limbo, seeking protection from other countries or a return to Somalia.

Scholars who studied the case said the UK’s absence from the UN convention established

a precedent in which other state actors (that is, immigration authorities) are emboldened to advance scepticism over matters involving intangible cultural heritage.

Members of the Bajuni community later launched a campaign to highlight the importance of recognising refugee cultural heritage more broadly in asylum claims to include “exile heritage” and to integrate the evolution of cultural heritage in these assessments.

After many years of debate, the UK finally ratified the convention in early June.

How should Australia’s policy respond to this?

When the Australian government assesses refugee claims, it requires applicants to recount experiences of persecution on the five grounds of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group and political opinion.

This should be broadened to specifically include cultural heritage. For asylum seekers from Ukraine or Gaza, for example, the government should assess claimants’ language skills, cultural connections to their home countries and experiences in exile, in conjunction with the five grounds of persecution.

Recognising a refugee’s cultural heritage both in their home country and after they’ve fled is essential. It humanises refugees and provides them with a better opportunity for protection.

Though asylum seekers are often persecuted as members of a group, their claims are assessed as individuals. By ignoring the cultural heritage of people claiming refugee status, we are suppressing their identities.

Sherine Al Shallah is a recipient of the University Postgraduate Award. She is affiliated with the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law and the Australian Human Rights Institute.

– ref. Cultural heritage is often overlooked when assessing refugee claims. Here’s why this is a mistake – https://theconversation.com/cultural-heritage-is-often-overlooked-when-assessing-refugee-claims-heres-why-this-is-a-mistake-228384

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Williamson, Senior Tutor in English, University of Canterbury

A Family Affair is Netflix’s latest entry in the recently resuscitated rom-com genre. The streaming giant’s film execs have described the revival as a tactical decision to plug – and capitalise on – an identified gap in the market.

This began with a young audience in mind, with films such as To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and The Kissing Booth. A Family Affair, however, strives to capture an older female audience who grew up in the halcyon days of the 1990s Nora Ephron rom-com.

The film attempts to look at the compromises women make to prioritise their families and partners, joining other works such as Prime Video’s The Idea of You (2024), Maggie Gyllenhall’s The Lost Daughter (2021), HBO’s Big Little Lies (2017–19) and Pamela Adlon’s excellent series Better Things (2016–22). But unlike these examples, A Family Affair isn’t very good.

Tonal patchiness

The film pairs Nicole Kidman’s character, award-winning author and widow of 11 years, Brooke Harwood, with Zac Efron’s much younger character Chris Cole, a womanising Hollywood heartthrob who catapulted to fame through a cheesy action franchise.

The duo’s implausible romance is set in motion when Brooke’s daughter Zara (Joey King) quits her job as Chris’s personal assistant.

In a “meet-cute” that beggars belief even within the rom-com universe of unlikely pairings, Chris somehow mistakes the glamorous Brooke for a cleaner. Naturally, the pair connect over a bottle of tequila before ripping one another’s clothes off.

The sequence ends with Zara catching them in the act, wheeling around in horror only to knock herself out on a door frame. It’s intended as slapstick, but the scene falls flat. In a society where women’s bodies are routinely subjected to violence, inviting us to laugh at Joey’s black eye and concussion feels uncomfortable.

Throughout A Family Affair, the jokes are thin at best and cringe-inducing at worst. The film suffers from tonal patchiness, careening wildly between sincerity and parody. These failings are made especially frustrating by the small glimmers that suggest it might actually have something interesting to say.

‘One or the other’

In an early scene, Brooke confesses to her mother-in-law, Leila (a woefully underutilised Kathy Bates), that she worries she has become “irrelevant” and invisible.

For Brooke, this is bound up with her waning usefulness as a mother. She begins taking stock of her life, only to realise it doesn’t add up to much. Single and ageing, she is struggling to write, her daughter has grown up, and she finds herself having built an identity around her maternal role.

Later, we find out that not only did Brooke’s writing take a backseat in the wake of her husband Charlie’s death, but they were also “having problems” prior to his cancer diagnosis. Charlie, it transpires, couldn’t cope with Brooke’s success and was planning to leave her.

These are important details that raise questions about maternal identity, regret and the many compromises women make to prioritise their families and partners.

My research looks at productions that foreground maternal protagonists and grapple with women’s desires to be “more than just a mother”. And they often use sex as a vehicle to initiate this discussion.

The quarantining of motherhood from sexuality has a long history, dating back to the venerated Virgin Mary who miraculously managed to sidestep the issue altogether.

Similarly, popular culture has branded the sexual mother as a “bad” mum, whose voracious desire not only threatens the sanctity of the family but also compromises her ability to parent. Netflix’s hugely successful soapy soft-porn series Sex/Life (2021–23), which pitted a mother’s sexual pleasure against her mundane domestic life, is an excellent example.

A Family Affair offers a similar scenario when Zara demands her mother end the affair. Clearly, in Zara’s eyes, Brooke can’t be both a sexual person and a good mother. Against this backdrop, Brooke’s frustrated insistence that “I just don’t see why it has to be one or the other” reads as a flat-out rejection of the well-worn Madonna/whore trope.

Cougars, MILFS and happy-ever-afters

Unfortunately, like the film itself, the sex scenes aren’t very satisfying. The duo lack chemistry and scenes are played more for laughs than titillation.

While director Richard LaGravenese insists the couple’s star power and lack of inhibition imbue the comedy with sexiness, the lame quips and shirt ripping are farcical, if not outright failures.

Failure is often used in comedy to defuse the threatening and unknown. In this case, the film’s failure to depict Brooke engaging in hot sex neutralises the threat she poses as a sexual mother. This reduces her to just another figure in a long line of cougars and MILFs: the object of desire, perhaps, but rarely the active desiring subject herself.

Another way sexual mothers are made “safe” is through the conventional happy-ever-after ending. Romantic endings are obviously a staple of the genre, but Brooke and Chris’s happy-ever-after also doubles as a redemption arc to bring the transgressive mother back into the socially sanctioned fold of the monogamous family unit.

Romantic comedies have always been entangled with their specific sociocultural moment, often staging anxieties about rapidly changing gender norms and social roles in a witty battle of the sexes. While the 1940s saw rom-com heroines fighting for equal footing and the 1980s focused on workplace inclusion, 2024’s entries appear to have the interests of the middle-aged sexual mother at heart.

Lame jokes, unlikable characters and lacklustre chemistry aside, this is arguably where the film most disappoints: it might tease and tantalise with promises of Brooke triumphantly getting both the “one and the other” – but ultimately, by dampening Brooke’s sexual desire so thoroughly, it fails to deliver.

Rachel Williamson 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. Netflix’s A Family Affair tries to reject old stories of sexual women being ‘bad mothers’. Too bad it’s a terrible film – https://theconversation.com/netflixs-a-family-affair-tries-to-reject-old-stories-of-sexual-women-being-bad-mothers-too-bad-its-a-terrible-film-233777

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

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has announced she’s given the major tech platforms six months to develop enforceable codes for protecting children from online pornography and other “high-impact” content like self harm.

This follows recent announcements that the federal government is trialling “age assurance” technology to prevent children accessing online porn.

Parents of school-aged children are all too aware of why such efforts are needed. The commissioner’s own research indicates the average age children encounter pornography online is 13. Some stumble upon it by accident much younger.

Age verification is an incredibly challenging technical problem – especially for adults’ access to pornographic content. Currently, the most reliable age verification methods are government-issued identities (whether physical or digital). Yet few people would be willing to reveal their porn habits to the government.

What then might tech platforms like Google, Apple and Meta implement? Let’s look at the options.

What’s on the table?

While crystal-ball gazing is always fraught, we can draw some clues about what the commissioner has in mind. The codes are set to apply broadly and are not just limited to porn sites or social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.

Instead, the commissioner envisages codes that cover the entire online ecosystem. Apps and app stores, websites (whether porn or otherwise) and search engines like Google are covered. Also, service and equipment providers that power online platforms and build smartphones and other devices.

Finally, the codes are set to also cover instant messaging and chat, and even multi-player gaming and online dating services.

An accompanying discussion paper details the sorts of measures being considered. These include things that would be relatively straightforward to implement, like ensuring search engines like Google have Safe Search features turned on by default. These filter out content that may be inappropriate for children to view from appearing in search results.

Parental controls, which already exist in various forms, are also in scope. However, the focus seems to be on avoiding an “opt-in” model in which parents have to do all the heavy lifting. (Anyone who has configured Screen Time on an iPhone to limit their child’s smartphone use knows how burdensome this can be.)

Of course, age assurance technology is also in scope. The codes will be developed in parallel with the government’s ongoing age assurance technology trial. Age assurance covers methods like facial recognition for estimating somebody’s age, as well as methods for verifying somebody’s age, such as government-issued digital IDs.

However, we already know many existing age assurance technologies can’t feasibly regulate access to pornography. Technology based on facial recognition is inherently unreliable and insecure.

And having to show your government-issued digital identity (such as your MyGovID) to sign-up for access to adult content raises significant privacy concerns.

How might this work in the future?

The discussion paper recognises the need to carefully balance online safety and privacy concerns. It notes that age assurance technology should protect people’s privacy while minimising the amount of data required to be collected about people.

Reading between the lines, what the online regulator seems to be angling for is a holistic approach in which smartphone manufacturers and companies like Google and Apple – who manage the major app stores – work together with online platforms like Meta (who owns Facebook and Instagram).

This is yet another big ask from a relatively small Australian regulator. But it may be worth trying.

We’ll have to wait for the actual codes to emerge in December. However, based on currently available technology, one speculative way this might all play out could be the following.

Imagine you’ve just purchased a new smartphone for your child. When setting up the phone, you’re asked if you would like to turn on child safety features.

These features could include things like having Safe Search turned on by default on the phone, plus blocking access to porn sites. App stores already include age ratings for their apps, so under this scenario the phone could refuse to install age-inappropriate apps.

Other child safety features could include having the phone automatically scan images displayed in apps (whether Instagram, WhatsApp or Snapchat) to detect ones that appear to contain nudity or high-impact content. The phone could then be set to either display a click-through warning, or to blur or refuse to display those images. Those same protections could also be applied to photos taken by the phone’s camera.

However, no detection system is perfect and automatic content classifiers routinely fail to catch unsafe content or falsely flag innocuous content as unsafe.

If platforms implement this sort of filtering, they will have to navigate difficult choices, including balancing a parent’s right to control their child’s exposure to harmful content and the child’s right to access high-quality sexual education materials.

Can tech giants work together?

For all this to work, the Apple or Google account used to download apps would need to be integrated with those child safety features. That way, if a child downloads the Google Chrome browser on their iPhone, Chrome could be instructed to turn on Safe Search or block access to porn sites.

This scheme has the advantage that it doesn’t require fallible age estimation technology, nor heavy-handed digital identification, nor privacy-invasive surveillance.

However, it would require tech firms to work together to implement an integrated and comprehensive set of safety measures to enhance online child safety.

That goal is laudable and may well be achievable. However, whether it can be done in just six months remains to be seen.

Toby Murray has previously received research funding from Google.

– ref. Australia is pushing big tech to ‘protect kids from porn’. What can they actually do? – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-pushing-big-tech-to-protect-kids-from-porn-what-can-they-actually-do-233781

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Manwaring, Associate Professor, Politics and Public Policy, Flinders University

The United Kingdom heads to the polls on July 4, and the widely expected outcome is a defeat for the British Conservative Party after 14 years in power.

In the 650-seat House of Commons, the Conservatives (more commonly the “Tories”), led by Rishi Sunak, currently hold 344 seats. The Labour Party has 205 seats, the Scottish National Party has 43, and the Liberal Democrats are on 15.

The Labour Party, headed by Sir Keir Starmer, has long led opinion polls by at least 20 points. This was cemented after the disastrous prime ministership of Liz Truss, which came to an end in October 2022.

The most recent polls indicate the Conservatives face either a significant loss of more than 200 seats, or a total bloodbath leaving them with little more than 50 seats.

Why are the Conservatives struggling?

The UK’s outmoded first-past-the-post electoral system creates highly disproportionate results. Sunak inherited Boris Johnson’s 2019 80-seat majority, but while this was 56% of the seats, the party only won 44% of the vote share.

Sunak’s campaign so far has been insipid, tetchy, flat and downbeat.

First, the Conservatives have run out of steam. A record number of Conservative MPs decided not to run.

Sunak’s early call for an election surprised and wrong-footed the party machine. A betting scandal is currently engulfing the Conservatives, reflecting a party that lacks discipline and integrity.

Candidate Craig Williams has been dropped by the Conservatives after betting on the election date, three days before Sunak announced it. The UK’s Gambling Commission is investigating up to five Conservative candidates for suspicious betting activity.

The campaign began with Sunak getting drenched by the rain outside 10 Downing Street – a fitting image for his woes.

Sunak also has a patchy record on which to campaign.

He failed to meet all five of his pledges in office. His signature policy on the Rwanda deal to “stop the boats” has met numerous legal challenges and has not taken hold.

He has also backtracked on his proposed smoking ban legislation, which makes his campaign call for “bold action” ring hollow.

And his call to introduce national service was met with derision.

Labour has problems, too

Starmer’s personal polling remains weak. He has pushed Labour to the centre, and has courted former conservatives such as pro-Brexiteer Natalie Elphicke (MP for Dover), alienating parts of the left’s rank and file.

Starmer’s policy agenda has also failed to catch the public’s imagination.

His call for “change” is vague, and crucially, he and his Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves (presumably soon to the UK’s first ever female Chancellor) have made fiscal restraint a central motif.

The contest outside England

In Scotland, the Scottish National Party also looks set to lose significant seats to Labour, and suffered leadership churn.

In Wales, the contest for the 32 seats largely falls on the traditional Tory/Labour axis, with some challenge to Labour’s left from Plaid Cymru (the Welsh nationalists).

In Northern Ireland, 18 seats will be contested.

Strikingly, Sinn Féin – the Irish republican party that currently holds seven UK parliamentary seats – could for the first time become Northern Ireland’s largest party, with the Unionists in disarray.

Sinn Féin’s policy of abstentionism means it will not take up its seats in Westminster; but a big win for them will be a blow for the Unionists.

A shift to multi-party politics

The return of Nigel Farage to lead Reform UK, which is polling at 15–18%, is eroding the conservative campaign.

And the Lib Dems, former coalition partners of the Tories, are expected to increase their 15 seats.

A shift to a more multi-party politics will likely emerge.

Key policy concerns for voters

The economy remains the priority issue for most voters. Despite being the sixth-largest economy in the world, the UK public is not feeling the benefits. While inflation is falling, the cost of living remains resolutely high. For the poorest people, 14 years of the Conservatives has also seen record numbers of people using foodbanks.

There are significant policy differences between the two main parties.

Labour is promising £8.6 billion (A$16.3 billion) in tax rises, which include extending VAT (a consumption tax, similar to Australia’s GST) to private school fees. It’s also targeting the tax status of non-domiciled residents, and a windfall tax on the oil and gas industry.

Sunak is under pressure to cut taxes and has said he’ll further reduce the national insurance levy that helps to fund public services such as health.

Tax remains a wounding policy area for Labour. During TV debates, the Conservatives have repeated, albeit false claims, that household budgets will face a £2,000 (A$3,800) tax hike under a Starmer government. These claims will test Labour’s nerve.

Public services in the UK are in a poor state and there are concerns current spending pledges by the two parties may mean further decline.

National Health Service waiting times for surgery are nearly three times higher than when David Cameron was prime minister in 2010.

Yet, some experts warn neither major party is putting enough resources into tackling this.

On climate change, there isn’t a significant headline difference between the major parties – Labour pledges to shift to clean energy by 2030, the Tories by 2035.

Yet, Labor has a “mission” to significantly ramp up renewables and insulation. Sunak has softened a number of his pledges, citing concerns the economic burden will fall on households.

Should Labour win – and it’s highly likely it will – the task facing a Starmer government will be stern and far-reaching, and the public impatient.

Rob Manwaring receives funding from the Australian Research Council (on a discovery grant on political parties and associated entities).

– ref. Conservatives face a bloodbath at July’s UK election. What are the key issues for voters – and what’s Labour promised? – https://theconversation.com/conservatives-face-a-bloodbath-at-julys-uk-election-what-are-the-key-issues-for-voters-and-whats-labour-promised-232173

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Isabella Bower, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of South Australia

Can you remember your last in-person exam? You’re waiting outside the venue with your identification, pens and back-up pens. Everyone is nervously looking at their notes or avoiding eye contact.

The doors open and you enter a cavernous space of numbered tables in rows. You find your seat and, waiting to start, glance around the vast space that surrounds you.

Our research suggests this environment may have an effect on your ability to perform at your best.

In our new study, we looked at the impact of ceiling heights on the exam performance of Australian students.

Exams have a long history

Exams date back more than 1,300 years and are still one of the most common forms of assessment for school and university. They are often conducted in large spaces for efficiency in supervision and space use. This often includes gymnasiums, auditoriums, showgrounds, halls and exhibition buildings.

While the pandemic led a shift to online exams, growing concern over AI and other forms of cheating has seen a renewed emphasis on this traditional style of in-person assessment (even if research shows “high stakes” exams are not good for learning or the prevention of cheating).

Our research

In our previous 2022 lab-based study, we found if rooms were larger, there was an impact on brain activity associated with our ability to concentrate.

This lead us to wonder whether, in everyday life, large rooms have an impact on cognitive performance (or how well our brains can perform tasks) – and therefore whether traditional large exam halls have an impact on students’ results.

To test this, in our new study, we compared students’ exam results across different sizes of rooms.

We looked at the results from 15,400 psychology undergraduates at one Australian university over eight years (2011–19), and across three campuses.

We matched exam scores and the room dimensions where the examinations were held. This included rooms with ceiling heights between 2.79 metres to 9.50m, and internal floor areas between 38m² to 1,562m².

As we relied on non-experimental data (things in their natural state), we were careful to account for other variables that might account for the results.

We factored in students’ coursework scores as well as variables such as their gender, age, past exam experience and the unit of study. We also looked at geographic location, as admission requirements were different across campuses. All of these helped us understand what might affect our results.

To do our analysis, we used a statistical model called a “linear mixed model”. This meant we could add these different variables to try and understand the extent to which they predict something (in this case, exam performance).

What we found

The “significance” score for coursework was less than 0.001 and for ceiling height it was 0.002. A score below 0.05 means the result is unlikely to happen by chance, so we can be confident there’s a real effect.

This means a students’ prior coursework scores had a bigger impact on their exam score. But we still found ceiling height was a significant predictor of their results. In other words, even after accounting for other factors, higher ceiling heights were a significant predictor of the students’ exam scores.

This suggests study habits matter but so too do the dimensions of the room in which you sit the exam.

Why is this?

Our fresh findings suggest several questions ripe for further research. These include:

• is room insulation and climate control (which affect the air temperature, quality and circulation) a reason for room size making a difference? Research shows factors such as temperature affect cognitive performance.

• does room context have an impact? If we know big halls and gyms are usually designed for large social gatherings and sporting events, does this make us feel less comfortable or bring back past memories, and therefore make us less likely to perform at our best?

• does being in a space with more people sitting close by means you are more or less likely to cheat? How does this affect your score?

• what happens when students are randomly allocated to rooms of different sizes? At present there are other factors such as special consideration which will determine exam room allocation and conditions.

We also need to consider what is happening now for online exams. This has introduced new variability around the environmental conditions for students. Here, a student may have an advantage if they feel cosy and relaxed at home, or perhaps they may struggle to concentrate due to other environmental and social factors at home.

Given we only studied students in one discipline (psychology) we also need to replicate these findings in different areas and groups of students.

What else?

This work also feeds into our broader research about how building design can effect what our brains need to do.

There is already significant community awareness of how buildings can impact upon our physical health – and building codes and regulations to make sure they meet these standards.

But as our research shows, the way spaces are designed can have an impact on the way we think and how well we perform a task. This could be applied beyond exams to how we learn or do our jobs in the broader world.

Isabella Bower is currently supported by a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the University of South Australia. She has previously received scholarship or funding from Deakin University, Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, Creative Futures Pty. Ltd., American Psychological Association, and NOMIS Foundation. Currently, Isabella is a committee member for the Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and has been a past committee member for Learning Environments Australasia (Victorian Chapter).

Jaclyn Broadbent receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Should we ditch big exam halls? Our research shows how high ceilings are associated with a lower score – https://theconversation.com/should-we-ditch-big-exam-halls-our-research-shows-how-high-ceilings-are-associated-with-a-lower-score-233478

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angela Smith, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Western Sydney University

Momentum is growing for the Australian government to provide universal early childhood education and care – free or very-low-cost childcare for all families.

Access to quality, affordable childcare can help parents join or remain in the workforce – particularly women, who still perform the majority of unpaid household work.

Our recent report examined women’s labour force participation in Western Sydney, Australia’s third-largest economy.

A lack of accessible and affordable early childhood education and care services makes most of the region a childcare “desert” and contributes to lower labour force participation rates for women – 65% in Western Sydney compared to 76% in the rest of the city.

Limited local employment options, long commute times and structural discrimination are further barriers women in Western Sydney face when juggling caring responsibilities.

Our research suggests universal childcare could play a huge role in tackling the stubborn labour and wealth inequalities that persist across Western Sydney, and other regions facing similar challenges nationally.

Pay gaps across geography and gender

Both women and men in Western Sydney earn less than women in other parts of the city, which complicates the gender pay gap picture.

Our research shows a deep spatial divide across Sydney in employment patterns, unpaid care responsibilities and income levels, despite women in the city’s west gaining tertiary qualifications at rapid rates.

Full-time working women in Western Sydney earn about A$20,000 less per year than those in other parts of the city.

The prevalence of relatively low-paying, feminised jobs in Western Sydney, compared to higher-paying professional roles in central and eastern Sydney, plays a significant role in this gap.

There is also a significant gender pay gap within Western Sydney itself. Women earn around $12,670 less annually than men in the same region, and have lower participation rates. This is partly due to a gender divide across work types and industries, and gender differences in career progression.

But women also bear the brunt of unpaid care responsibilities, such as childcare, caring for elders and household management. This unpaid, and often undervalued, care work is crucial for society, but it only adds to the pay gaps across geography and gender.

Western Sydney’s childcare ‘desert’

Where families live can have a huge impact on their access to quality employment and childcare.

Most of Western Sydney is considered a childcare “desert” – an area where there are more than three children aged four and under for each place available in childcare.

In economically marginalised areas, the privatised system of childcare isn’t meeting families’ needs. Research has found the care systems currently on offer do not match the realities of work and family life in Western Sydney.

Our research has found that on average, women in Western Sydney take on more unpaid childcare responsibilities than women in the rest of Sydney, regardless of whether or not they are also employed.

And we found it is the least privileged women who are bearing the greatest impacts, particularly recently arrived migrants, refugees and solo mothers.

Women who migrate to Australia often leave behind their extended family and other important support systems in their home countries. Some seek to bring their children’s grandparents to Australia to assist with childcare, but this is a slow and costly process.

Giving women a fairer go

Access to paid work can have a huge impact on equity, social justice and inclusion across society.

We acknowledge not all women want to join the workforce. But universal early childhood education and care could significantly boost their ability to do so if they choose.

For their children, access to quality care in early childhood is linked to better outcomes later in life.

The Productivity Commission has just handed the government its final report from an inquiry into Australia’s early childhood education and care sector, which will soon be made public.

Particularly relevant for Western Sydney communities, the commission’s draft report argued that any reform needs to go beyond access to childcare and also address inclusion, flexibility and cultural safety.

One common criticism of universal early childhood education and care is that it risks offering “middle class welfare” to wealthy families. But the Centre for Policy Development has argued it should be seen as a basic public service, like Medicare or public schooling.

For women in Western Sydney and other childcare deserts, greater support for childcare could help them break free from the geographical barriers currently holding them back.

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. Western Sydney’s childcare ‘desert’ locks women out of the workforce. Universal childcare could be a game-changer – https://theconversation.com/western-sydneys-childcare-desert-locks-women-out-of-the-workforce-universal-childcare-could-be-a-game-changer-233446

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Cutler, Professor and Director, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University

Australia’s mental health-care system is struggling to cope with the demand. But more money won’t necessarily mean everyone gets the care they need.

As we outline in research out this week, we need to incentivise health providers to improve outcomes rather than paying them to do more of the same.

The research, which was funded by the Australian government’s National Mental Health Commission, outlines why such reform is needed and how it might work.

The problem with mental health care

Many Australians with mental ill health cannot access care when needed, due to long waiting lists and high patient costs.

Almost two-thirds of patients are waiting more than 12 weeks to receive care for their mental ill-health. About one in five people reported cost was a reason for delaying or not seeing a mental health professional.

Even when people do access care, this is often not evidence based, reducing the likelihood of becoming well quickly. For instance, nearly half of all encounters to treat depression are deemed inappropriate and consequently of low value.

There are also gaps in individual care pathways. For example, some people who present to hospital after a suicide attempt may not receive mental health care when they leave. People find it difficult to navigate mental health-care services within the community, which means people can fall through the cracks and do not receive the care they need.

This results in poorer health outcomes and use of expensive acute inpatient care, instead of cheaper community-based care, wasting valuable health-care system resources.

How might we change things?

One reason why mental health care struggles to meet patient needs is how health care is funded. Medicare pays a fee to providers for their services based on the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS).

The MBS incentivises providers to deliver more services because providers are paid based on each service they deliver. This fee-for-service model does not incentivise providers to deliver good quality care, or to improve health outcomes efficiently.

So we need to reform how mental health care is funded, including paying for good care that delivers outcomes valued by the patient.

All Australian governments have agreed to reform health care, including starting to pay for value and outcomes.

Implementation has started but is slower than expected. The government also wants to shift GP funding towards payment models that blend Medicare with other payment types, such as value-based payments.

How do we pay for good-value care?

Our research explored how to embed greater value into mental health-care funding using value-based payments.

We interviewed state, territory and federal government departments and agencies, and held several national workshops with providers, care recipients, carers, peak bodies and academics.

Under a value-based payment model, doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists in the community would receive more funding if they delivered better care. We cannot rule out some also receiving less money for not hitting agreed targets, which may be controversial.

These financial incentives would seek to encourage providers to invest their time and effort into improving their care, skills and the patient experience.

Measured outcomes would be valued by patients, such as more capable social interactions and increased ability to function at work. This would require a shift in provider thinking, which primarily seeks to improve clinical outcomes. Our consultation suggested clinical outcomes do not always align with what patients value.

Incentives could be targeted at individual practitioners, multidisciplinary teams or practices, among other combinations. Value-based payments could bring together different health services to deliver care focused on patient needs and preferences. This could include physical and mental health services bundled into a package of care, given one typically brings about the other.

Value-based payments could also be used to bundle mental health services with non-health services that impact mental health outcomes, such as social care, housing, education and justice services. These bundles of care would aim to address the underlying causes of poor mental health while also treating the patient.

How do we know this would work?

There was consensus among our respondents for using value-based payment models in the Australian mental health-care system. Unfortunately, there is little evidence on how to best structure this.

Emerging evidence demonstrates there are benefits from paying providers more to deliver better quality care, compared to using a fee-for-service model. However, some trials have failed to improve outcomes.

Our research suggests we need to know more about the size of the incentive and whether this should target individual practitioners, teams or practices, what outcomes we should measure, and what targets providers should seek to achieve.

This evidence can only be gathered through randomised-controlled trials conducted in the Australian health-care system, implemented over time and across different settings. We need to learn from these trials’ successes and failures.

Overcoming barriers

Reforming mental health-care funding towards value-based payments will be complex and challenging.

Our respondents identified barriers, including:

• defining outcomes that matter to patients
• overcoming a lack of evidence on how value-based payments can improve outcomes
• addressing workforce gaps
• navigating political complexities and procedural challenges
• covering the cost of reform.

Providers would need to change their business models, and government would need to invest much more in data collection and data infrastructure.

What needs to happen next?

Government needs to better define what value means within mental health care and establish a unified set of agreed outcomes. It needs to raise provider awareness of why value-based payments are required and develop a ten-year strategy and implementation plan.

In the next four years, government should develop and implement a mental health data infrastructure strategy to help fill data gaps. Mental health-care funding reform should be integrated into ongoing payment reforms in hospitals and primary care.

There also must be greater accountability for reform. An independent value-based payment authority should be developed to work with state, territory and federal governments to design, coordinate and evaluate new value-based payment models.

Using financial incentives to change provider behaviour won’t fix Australia’s mental health-care crisis alone. But the government can’t fix that crisis without reforming how we incentivise and pay for care that improves mental health.

While our research was funded by the Australian government through the National Mental Health Commission, the views expressed in this publication are ours and are not necessarily the views of the Australian government. The Australian government neither endorses the views presented in our research, nor vouches for the accuracy or completeness of the information contained within our research.

The research referenced in this article was funded by the National Mental Health Commission. While Jonas Fooken conducted central parts of the research, he did not receive this funding, and has not been in contact with the funder, except when communicating the final results.

– ref. Mental health services are overloaded. We should pay them a bonus to improve your care – https://theconversation.com/mental-health-services-are-overloaded-we-should-pay-them-a-bonus-to-improve-your-care-232898

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Phoebe Macrossan, Lecturer in Screen Media, University of the Sunshine Coast

Australian teenagers have grown up with abundant choices in digital screen entertainment including social media, gaming and streaming video.

However, the viewing habits of Australian teens are often overlooked in research. The most recent report from the Australian Communications and Media Authority into the digital lives of “younger Australians” does not include teens, with the lowest demographic aged 18–24.

The lack of teen audience studies in Australia is significant. Young children and teenagers are a distinctive and growing market, and a highly attractive audience for global streamers.

Our new study investigated how, why and to what extent Australian teenagers aged 13 to 19 engage with long-form TV drama and movies in their daily lives, including Australian stories.

We found Australian teens overwhelmingly preferred to watch streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Stan and YouTube over free-to-air television. Their tastes are broad and include shows such as Heartstopper and The Summer I Turned Pretty.

But teens aren’t watching much Aussie content.

Aussie teens don’t watch Aussie content

Although many remember the Australian TV they watched as children with affection, teens now place a low priority on a screen story being Australian.

When we asked survey participants why they like the streaming services they regularly watch, 33% of participants ranked access to Australian content last and 25% ranked it second last, out of six options. For teens, the most important streaming feature was being able to watch a whole season on demand.

Several teens said they do not watch or desire to watch Australian content.

One teen told us:

I don’t really want to watch shows that are about Australia. I just feel like I pretty much already know what Australia’s like.

Many teens did have fond memories of watching Australian TV as a child. They listed shows like Home and Away (Seven), Nowhere Boys (ABC), Kath & Kim (ABC and then Seven), H₂O: Just Add Water (Network 10), Mako Mermaids (Network 10), Summer Heights High (ABC) and Koala Brothers (ABC).

But they didn’t always classify these shows as “Australian”. One participant told us “I don’t watch anything Australian”, but then called H₂O “my favourite TV show on the whole planet!”

A love for Heartbreak High

Netflix’s 2022 Australian reboot of Heartbreak High was a marked exception to teens’ general lack of engagement with Australian content.

Originally broadcast in the 1990s, Netflix released a reboot of Heartbreak High in September 2022 during the middle of the data collection for this project.

As a recent release on a major streamer that remained in Netflix’s top 10 for its first three weeks, Heartbreak High was a common talking point for many teens. They were particularly drawn to the characters, and representations of neurodivergence, sexuality, gender and ethnicity.

During one focus group discussion, one participant praised the character of Quinni (Chloe Hayden) and how on the show:

they actually represent how autistic people are through their day-to-day lives.

Another said:

I like how there were First Nations people […] [It’s not] just all white Australian cast. There’s a diversity.

Teens also enjoyed listening to Australian accents and familiar vernacular used in the show, such as “bin chickens” referring to the urban scavenging bird, the ibis.

Similarly, they laughed at “eshay”: a common slang term in Australia for a male working-class youth subculture, associated with sports brands, disruptive behaviour and crime. Participants enjoyed the construction of “eshay” character Ca$h (Will McDonald), who they felt was humanised and disrupted classist stereotypes.

Do we need quotas?

Historically, Australian governments have valued domestically produced drama and children’s programs as a means of socialising and uniting Australian viewers, particularly young audiences.

Broadcasting policies from the late 1970s compelled Australia’s three commercial broadcasters to annually provide 130 hours of new Australia children’s content, including 32  hours of drama.

In 2021 however, the Morrison government removed all children’s quota obligations from commercial broadcasters. By 2024 their investment in children’s drama had fallen to zero. This policy development left the ABC largely responsible for children’s television in Australia, but the ABC does not currently make any television specifically for young people older than 12 that is, the teen audience.

There is no political appetite for bringing back children’s quotas on free-to-air channels, but even if quotas were re-introduced, this isn’t where young people are looking to watch television. Of our survey respondents, 12.6% said they “never” watched free-to-air television, 28% said they “rarely” did, 25% watched “sometimes”, and only 10% watched free-to-air channels “mostly” or “always”.

When we expanded this to look at the streaming services of these channels, like ABC iView, SBS On Demand and 10Play, still only 27% “sometimes”, and 9% “mostly” and “always”, watched on these platforms.

Streamers like Netflix and Stan are exempt from Australian content regulations. The Australian government has pledged to introduce regulations for streamers from July 1, but is yet to table a motion in parliament or provide much detail on what that might look like. It is unclear if there would be specific quotas for children or any formal protections for distinctively Australian stories.

If and when these quotas are re-introduced, putting quotas on any service will not be enough if we’re not talking to Aussie teens about what, where and how they watch – and understanding the shows they will want to watch in the future.

Anna Potter receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Phoebe Macrossan 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. ‘I pretty much already know what Australia’s like’: what Aussie teenagers told us about not watching local TV – https://theconversation.com/i-pretty-much-already-know-what-australias-like-what-aussie-teenagers-told-us-about-not-watching-local-tv-231915

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roslyn Prinsley, Head, Disaster Solutions, Australian National University

Many Australians live in areas increasingly exposed to climate change and associated extreme weather such as floods, fires, coastal erosion, cyclones and extreme heat. If we wait for disasters to happen, hundreds of thousands of people could be forced to flee.

The devastating 2022 floods in northern New South Wales demonstrate the dangers of failing to move communities from harm’s way. More than two years after the disaster, the city of Lismore is still recovering. Many people remain in temporary housing and cannot return home, re-open businesses or access funds to move elsewhere.

But there is an alternative. We can plan ahead, identify areas most at risk and permanently relocate communities before disaster strikes. Our recent paper outlines the pressing need for such a strategy and offers guidance on how to do it.

Crucially, we call for the establishment of a National Relocation Authority to spearhead the strategy. While the prospect of relocation can be unsettling and traumatic for residents, it offers new opportunities and long-term benefits. But we must act now.

Mounting climate-related risks

Evidence is mounting that climate change will damage homes and property values across Australia.

For example, thousands of inner-city Melbourne residents will be hit with higher insurance premiums and lower property values after Melbourne Water’s updated flood risk modelling
placed them in a flood zone. Kensington Banks estate, east of the Maribyrnong River, was once an award-winning urban renewal project. Now the authorities are scrambling to protect high-risk properties and prevent future flood damage.

Sydney-based climate risk analysis company Climate Valuation recently assessed flood risks from swollen rivers to homes across Australia. It identified high-risk properties, where insurance may become unaffordable or unavailable by 2030.

Around one in 25 homes analysed will likely be uninsurable by 2030. That’s 588,857 homes out of 14,739,901. In the most affected regions, more than one in ten homes would be uninsurable.

These properties are most likely to be damaged from flooding, leaving owners with properties they cannot live in, afford to fix, or sell.

Already, one in ten homes within 150 metres of the coast are vulnerable to coastal erosion. It won’t be long before sea level rise makes parts of Australia uninhabitable.

Up to 250,000 residential buildings will be exposed to coastal inundation and erosion with a sea level rise of 1.1m. That is expected by 2100, under the higher emissions scenario. It’s worth noting a rise of nearly 2m by 2100 cannot be ruled out, due to deep uncertainty about melting of ice-sheets.

Meanwhile, parts of Australia are becoming too hot or increasingly bushfire-prone.

Insurance companies raising the alarm

Climate change is forcing up insurance premiums, triggering a push from the industry to get community relocations onto the agenda.

Last year, Australia and New Zealand’s largest general insurer, IAG, commissioned a report into the factors that help or hinder planned relocation. The report explores involving communities in decision-making and makes recommendations for how governments can implement and manage planned relocation programs.

Suncorp Group and Natural Hazards Research Australia subsequently released a discussion paper to help “drive a national conversation about assisted relocations”. It urges authorities to map the risks of natural hazards, to inform a national conversation about priority natural hazard risk zones. This would incorporate data from the insurance industry.

A Senate inquiry is examining how climate risk affects insurance premiums and availability.

Hospitals, services and roads at risk

New South Wales is the first state to identify planned relocation in its State Disaster Mitigation Plan. Managed relocation is listed as one of the “tools to reduce hazard exposure”. However, the plan recognises:

the managed relocation of people from homes in high-risk areas (known as buy-backs or voluntary purchase) can be disruptive and traumatic
due to longstanding connections to homes, places, communities, and Country.

When assessing disaster risks to communities, critical infrastructure also needs to be considered. The NSW plan identifies 64 police stations, 54 State Emergency Service facilities and 19 general hospitals at risk from a 1-in-100 year flood. It also says a 1m rise in sea level would affect more than 800 kilometres of local roads across the state, causing severe disruptions.

The NSW Reconstruction Authority, with the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, will develop state policy for managed relocation by mid 2025.

Relocation is already happening – after disasters

The Northern Rivers floods left more than 3,500 homes uninhabitable. About 1,100 properties were expected to receive a buyback offer through the state’s Resilient Homes fund. The Reconstruction Authority is working through 1,090 buyback applications.

Another 800 homes in Southeast Queensland may be bought back through the Queensland Reconstruction Authority.

However, buybacks are disruptive and hard to manage after a disaster. It is far better to plan ahead.

Spend on proactive relocation, to save on disaster recovery

If a community stays in place and a disaster occurs, Australian taxpayers share the cost of recovery. This will become increasingly unaffordable as the number of extreme weather events rises.

We need a National Relocation Authority to coordinate relocation efforts with states, territories, local authorities, communities and individuals.

The Commonwealth is uniquely positioned to coordinate and guide state and territory practices concerning relocation. It can ensure efforts are not duplicated, best practices are consistently adopted, and national resources for relocation are used to maximum effect.

Evidence-based, dynamic risk-mapping would identify high priority sites, especially those exposed to multiple climate-related risks – for instance, where sea-level rise coincides with river-flood risk in coastal areas, or where bushfires have exposed the soil and reduced the landscape’s capacity to absorb water, raising the flood risk.

The authority would keep registers of resources in the public and private sector such as infrastructure, available land to relocate to, machinery and equipment, supply chains and expertise.

Communities with a deep sense of belonging and place attachment often resist relocation. The potential loss of place can have significant psycho-social impacts, so careful community engagement is essential.

As climate-related disasters intensify, more people will be find their homes unlivable or uninsurable. Australia needs to start planning now, to relocate our most at-risk communities before it’s too late. The long-term benefits are incalculable.

We would like to acknowledge our co-authors of the issues paper on which this article is based, including experts from The Australian National University, University of Tasmania, University of Canberra, the University of Sydney and Mather Architecture.

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. Rising risks of climate disasters mean some communities will need to move – we need a national conversation about relocation now – https://theconversation.com/rising-risks-of-climate-disasters-mean-some-communities-will-need-to-move-we-need-a-national-conversation-about-relocation-now-232703

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa L. Gould, Senior Lecturer in Critical Media Studies, Auckland University of Technology

The astounding rise in social media use in the past few years is seeing policy responses come to a head, both internationally and in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Some estimates put the number using social media globally above five billion, with an annualised growth rate of more than 5%.

Accelerated concerns about smartphone addiction, cyberbullying, misinformation and extremist content have often seen digital devices and social media blamed for declines in mental and social wellbeing, in young people in particular.

The American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls them “the anxious generation”, and politicians and policymakers are scrambling to respond.

This year, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy asked Congress to put warning labels on social media, similar to health labels on cigarettes.

Along with New Zealand, governments in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, China and parts of the US have proposed or enforced restrictions on phone use in schools

Now, an Australian petition to increase the minimum age of social media account users from 13 to 16 is building traction, with more than 100,000 signatures. Such a move is backed by the Australian and UK prime ministers. And in New Zealand, Labour MP Priyanca Radhakrishnan and ACT Party leader David Seymour have supported exploring the option.

But the research into protecting young people by restricting social media use is largely inconclusive. What we do know, however, is that these measures don’t equip young people with the skills they already need to build healthy relationships with smartphones and social media.

Education as empowerment

In all the proposed official solutions, one has been seriously overlooked – teaching media literacy.

According to the US National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), this would provide the skills to “access, analyse, evaluate, create and act using all forms of communication”.

By making media literacy “highly valued and widely practised as an essential life skill”, it aims to enable young people to shift from being passive media consumers to critical media users. It also helps them understand how they use – and are used by – media platforms.

Essentially, teaching media literacy is about shifting power and agency back to media users by educating them about how the media works.

Unfortunately, media studies (along with other subjects) was dropped from New Zealand’s NCEA level one curriculum from 2023.

So far, it remains at levels two and three, but the move signalled a devaluing of what should be a core subject in the digital age. This is especially relevant, given how digital media technology is being incorporated within classes themselves.

The more pervasive devices are in our everyday lives, the more essential media studies education becomes.

Accentuate the positive

Teaching social media literacy provides young people with the tools to engage with their smartphones and social media feeds in healthy, productive and meaningful ways. It also helps them navigate the darker, uglier sides of the online world.

By understanding the history, mechanics, ownership and funding models of social media, students can analyse its role and influence in their lives, and ask questions such as:

• How does my behaviour on social media train the algorithms that dictate what content is in my feed, and what content I don’t see?

• How does a social media app make money, and what does it need from its users to make that money?

• What techniques do social media apps use to gain my attention and keep me on the app?

• How can social media help me find and belong to a community?

• What stories do the content I post online tell other people about who I am and what I value?

As media literacy advocate Renee Hobbs of the US Media Education Lab has said, “there is a reciprocal relationship between protection and empowerment”.

In other words, conversations about social media shouldn’t be restricted to potential risk and harm. Social media also provides opportunities for people to be creative, to find communities and a sense of belonging, and to engage in learning, discussion and debate.

Social media as ‘virtual playground’

British social psychologist Sonia Livingstone suggests debates about the limits on screen time should focus on quality rather than quantity: it matters how screens are being used more than for how long.

US scholar Ethan Bresnick has described the online world as a “virtual playground”. There are risks, you can get hurt, but there is also joy, connections, play, creativity and laughter.

As with any playground, there need to be health and safety measures. But we must also support young people to assess and handle risk so they can thrive and have fun.

Above all, it is important not to forget that young people are social media experts.

Parenting and educating children experiencing childhoods so different from
previous generations can be scary. Social media is complex and multifaceted – as should be our approach to learning how to navigate and understand it.

Melissa L. Gould is affiliated with the US National Association for Media Literacy Education.

– ref. Banning social media for under-16s won’t help – teaching digital media literacy will – https://theconversation.com/banning-social-media-for-under-16s-wont-help-teaching-digital-media-literacy-will-233224

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Opposition leader Peter Dutton might have been hoping for an endorsement from economists for his plan to take Australian nuclear.

He shouldn’t expect one from The Economist.

The Economist is a British weekly news magazine that has reported on economic thinking and served as a place for economists to exchange views since 1843.

By chance, just three days after Dutton announced plans for seven nuclear reactors he said would usher in a new era of economic prosperity for Australia, The Economist produced a special issue, titled Dawn of the Solar Age.

Whereas nuclear power is barely growing, and is shrinking as a proportion of global power output, The Economist reported solar power is growing so quickly it is set to become the biggest source of electricity on the planet by the mid-2030s.

By the 2040s – within this next generation – it could be the world’s largest source of energy of any kind, overtaking fossil fuels like coal and oil.

Solar’s off-the-charts global growth

Installed solar capacity is doubling every three years, meaning it has grown tenfold in the past ten years. The Economist says the next tenfold increase will be the equivalent of multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight, in less time than it usually takes to build one of them.

To give an idea of the standing start the industry has grown from, The Economist reports that in 2004 it took the world an entire year to install one gigawatt of solar capacity (about enough to power a small city). This year, that’s expected to happen every day.

Energy experts didn’t see it coming. The Economist includes a chart showing that every single forecast the International Energy Agency has made for the growth of the growth of solar since 2009 has been wrong. What the agency said would take 20 years happened in only six.

The forecasts closest to the mark were made by Greenpeace – “environmentalists poo-pooed for zealotry and economic illiteracy” – but even those forecasts turned out to be woefully short of what actually happened.

And the cost of solar cells has been plunging in the way that costs usually do when emerging technologies become mainstream.

The Economist describes the process this way:

As the cumulative production of a manufactured good increases, costs go down. As costs go down, demand goes up. As demand goes up, production increases – and costs go down further.

Normally, this can’t continue. In earlier energy transitions – from wood to coal, coal to oil, and oil to gas – it became increasingly expensive to find fuel.

But the main ingredient in solar cells (apart from energy) is sand, for the silicon and the glass. This is not only the case in China, which makes the bulk of the world’s solar cells, but also in India, which is short of power, blessed by sun and sand, and which is manufacturing and installing solar cells at a prodigious rate.

Solar easy, batteries more difficult

Batteries are more difficult. They are needed to make solar useful after dark and they require so-called critical minerals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt (which Australia has in abundance).

But the efficiency of batteries is soaring and the price is plummeting, meaning that on one estimate the cost of a kilowatt-hour of battery storage has fallen by 99% over the past 30 years.

In the United States, plans are being drawn up to use batteries to transport solar energy as well as store it. Why build high-voltage transmission cables when you can use train carriages full of batteries to move power from the remote sunny places that collect it to the cities that need it?

Solar’s step change

The International Energy Agency is suddenly optimistic. Its latest assessment released in January says last year saw a “step change” in renewable power, driven by China’s adoption of solar. In 2023, China installed as much solar capacity as the entire world did in 2022.

The world is on track to install more renewable capacity over the next five years than has ever been installed over the past 100 years, something the agency says still won’t be enough to get to net-zero emissions by 2050.

That would need renewables capacity to triple over the next five years, instead of more than doubling.

Oxford University energy specialist Rupert Way has modelled a “fast transition” scenario, in which the costs of solar and other new technologies keep falling as they have been rather than as the International Energy Agency expects.

He finds that by 2060, solar will be by far the world’s biggest source of energy, exceeding wind and green hydrogen and leaving nuclear with an infinitesimally tiny role.

In Australia, solar is pushing down prices

Australia’s energy market operator says record generation from grid-scale renewables and rooftop solar is pushing down wholesale electricity prices.

South Australia and Tasmania are the states that rely on renewables the most. They are the two states with the lowest wholesale electricity prices outside Victoria, whose prices are very low because of its reliance on brown coal.

It is price – rather than the environment – that most interests The Economist. It says when the price of something gets low people use much, much more of it.

As energy gets really copious and all but free, it will be used for things we can’t even imagine today. The Economist said to bet against that is to bet against capitalism.

Peter Martin is Economics Editor of The Conversation.

– ref. When it comes to power, solar is about to leave nuclear and everything else in the shade – https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-power-solar-is-about-to-leave-nuclear-and-everything-else-in-the-shade-233644

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Cooper, Distinguished Professor, Charles Sturt University

The remarkable aurora in early May this year demonstrated the power that solar storms can emit as radiation, but occasionally the Sun does something far more destructive. Known as “solar particle events”, these blasts of protons directly from the surface of the Sun can shoot out like a searchlight into space.

Records show that around every thousand years Earth gets hit by an extreme solar particle event, which could cause severe damage to the ozone layer and increase levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation at the surface.

We analysed what happens during such an extreme event in a paper published today. We also show that at times when Earth’s magnetic field is weak, these events could have a dramatic effect on life across the planet.

Earth’s critical magnetic shield

Earth’s magnetic field provides a crucial protective cocoon for life, deflecting electrically charged radiation from the Sun. In the normal state, it functions like a gigantic bar magnet with field lines rising from one pole, looping around, and plunging back down at the other pole, in a pattern sometimes described as an “inverted grapefruit”. The vertical orientation at the poles allows some ionising cosmic radiation to penetrate down as far as the upper atmosphere, where it interacts with gas molecules to create the glow we know as the aurora.

However, the field changes a great deal over time. In the past century, the north magnetic pole has wandered across northern Canada at a speed of around 40 kilometres per year, and the field has weakened by more than 6%. Geological records show there have been periods of centuries or millennia when the geomagnetic field has been very weak or even entirely absent.

We can see what would happen without Earth’s magnetic field by looking at Mars, which lost its global magnetic field in the ancient past, and most of its atmosphere as a result. In May, not long after the aurora, a strong solar particle event hit Mars. It disrupted the operation of the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, and caused radiation levels at the surface of Mars about 30 times higher than what you would receive during a chest X-ray.

The power of protons

The Sun’s outer atmosphere emits a constant fluctuating stream of electrons and protons known as the “solar wind”. However, the Sun’s surface also sporadically emits bursts of energy, mostly protons, in solar particle events – which are often associated with solar flares.

Protons are much heavier than electrons and carry more energy so they reach lower altitudes in Earth’s atmosphere, exciting gas molecules in the air. However, these excited molecules emit only X-rays, which are invisible to the naked eye.

Hundreds of weak solar particle events occur every solar cycle (roughly 11 years) but scientists have found traces of much stronger events throughout Earth’s history. Some of the most extreme were thousands of times stronger than anything recorded with modern instruments.

Extreme solar particle events

These extreme solar particle events occur roughly every few millennia. The most recent one happened around 993 AD, and was used to show that Viking buildings in Canada used timber cut in 1021 AD.

Less ozone, more radiation

Beyond their immediate effect, solar particle events can also kickstart a chain of chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere that can deplete ozone. Ozone absorbs harmful solar UV radiation, which can damage eyesight and also DNA (increasing the risk of skin cancer), as well as impacting the climate.

In our new study, we used large computer models of global atmospheric chemistry to examine the impacts of an extreme solar particle event.

We found such an event could deplete ozone levels for a year or so, raising UV levels at the surface and increasing DNA damage. But if a solar proton event arrived during a period when Earth’s magnetic field was very weak then ozone damage would last six years, increasing UV levels by 25% and boosting the rate of solar-induced DNA damage by up to 50%.

Particle blasts from the past

How likely is this deadly combination of weak magnetic field and extreme solar proton events? Given how often each of them occurs, it appears likely they happen together relatively often.

In fact, this combination of events may explain several mysterious occurrences in Earth’s past.

The most recent period of weak magnetic field – including a temporary switch in north and south poles – began 42,000 years ago and lasted about 1,000 years. Several major evolutionary events occurred around this time, such as the disappearance of the last Neanderthals in Europe and the extinctions of marsupial megafauna including giant wombats and kangaroos in Australia.

An even bigger evolutionary event has also been linked to Earth’s geomagnetic field. The origin of multicellular animals at the end of the Ediacaran period (from 565 million years ago), recorded in fossils in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges, occurred after a 26-million-year period of weak or absent magnetic field.

Similarly, the rapid evolution of diverse groups of animals in the Cambrian Explosion (around 539 million years ago) has also been related to geomagnetism and high UV levels. The simultaneous evolution of eyes and hard body shells in multiple unrelated groups has been described as the best means to both detect and avoid the harmful incoming UV rays, in a “flight from light”.

We are still only starting to explore the role of solar activity and Earth’s magnetic field in the history of life.

Alan Cooper features in the ABC Megafaunal Extinctions documentary mentioned in the article.

Pavle Arsenovic 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. New study shows mysterious solar particle blasts can devastate the ozone layer, bathing Earth in radiation for years – https://theconversation.com/new-study-shows-mysterious-solar-particle-blasts-can-devastate-the-ozone-layer-bathing-earth-in-radiation-for-years-233464

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Axel Bruns, Professor, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology

At a parliamentary hearing late last week, Meta once again suggested it could ban links to news on Facebook and Instagram in Australia.

This would repeat the ban it enacted for more than a week in February 2021. That ban was in response to the introduction of the News Media Bargaining Code, an Australian law designed to force digital platforms to pass on some of their advertising earnings to news publishers.

A similar law – based on this code – was passed in Canada last year. As a result, in Canada news has been blocked from Meta platforms since August 2023.

This has produced strongly negative results for Canadian news outlets. Not only has the Canadian law failed to produce revenue flows from Meta to news producers, it severely reduced the incoming user traffic to their websites from Meta’s social media platforms.

What happened after the news ban in Canada?

The ongoing news ban in Canada has had several key effects. First, the removal of direct links to news articles meant a collapse in user visits to news sites. Those who once occasionally clicked on a news link in their feed can no longer do so.

This has especially affected regional and local news sites, for whom Facebook is often a key source of audience traffic. At a time when regional and rural areas of both Canada and Australia are already in danger of turning into “news deserts”, this is particularly concerning.

News outlets and audiences have worked around the bans to some extent. They’ve found circumvention techniques, such as posting article content without links, or article screenshots.

But such tricks can never fully replace the audience attention that has been lost. They also don’t help news outlets generate revenue for their content (as website traffic does through ads).

Instead, the main replacement for news coverage on Facebook has been political discussion that doesn’t directly reference or link to the news it draws on. This disconnection also opens the door for the circulation of well-meaning misinformation or deliberate disinformation.

Ultimately, the users of Meta’s platforms who suffer the most are those who are least interested in the news and who believe “news will find them”.

Highly invested news consumers will always find the news somewhere else. Those who see news only when people in their networks share articles will miss out, and may not even notice what they’re missing.

News is already hard to find on social media

Social media users are on these platforms for many other purposes than to follow the news. Most Australians don’t actually care much for news in the first place.

According to this year’s Digital News Report Australia, 68% of Australians actively avoid the news, and 41% suffer from news fatigue. After years of wall-to-wall reporting about pandemic, ecological, domestic violence, financial and military crises, this is hardly surprising.

Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code was conceived with a flawed assumption that social media play a central role as a conduit to news content, and that Facebook wouldn’t follow through on its threats to ban news.

But Facebook’s parent company Meta did exactly that, and shows no signs of changing that approach. Indeed, even where it doesn’t actively ban news content altogether, it is now substantially reducing news visibility in the feeds of its users.

This is because news has long tended to be more trouble for Meta than it’s worth. Not only is news a minute subset of all Facebook content, but it also generates an out-sized amount of unhappiness and controversy that requires costly moderation.

Meta also knows that reducing the visibility of news on its platforms doesn’t substantially impact on user experience. By its own calculations, only some 3% of the posts Facebook users see in their feeds contain links of any kind.

This can’t be independently verified without greater data access for independent researchers than the company currently provides, but certainly aligns with the everyday experience of ordinary Facebook users. Even of these 3% of posts, only a fraction link to news sources, let alone Australian news sources.

Our own analysis during the brief Australian news ban in February 2021 showed only a very minor impact on the posting and engagement patterns on Australian Facebook pages. Many users may not even have noticed news was suddenly missing from their feeds.

What can Australia do now?

In 2021, the news ban was temporarily resolved by Meta agreeing to voluntarily make some payments to a select few Australian news organisations.

In exchange, the then Morrison government elected to not “designate” Meta under the bargaining code, meaning the provisions didn’t apply to Meta’s platforms. These agreements are now coming to an end and Meta has already stated it has no interest in renewing them.

This gives the Albanese government the choice between applying the code to Meta after all, or allowing the agreements to expire without consequence. The latter would effectively kill off the News Media Bargaining Code as a meaningful piece of legislation.

Formally “designating” Meta to make it pay news publishers is likely to backfire. Meta is building an obvious argument here: if its platforms carry only a limited amount of Australian news content, why should it be forced to share revenue with Australian news publishers?

Both in the court of public opinion and in any legal proceedings it may pursue, such an argument is likely to prove highly persuasive.

A smarter solution to support local news

Australian news media need financial support, but the bargaining code was always severely flawed legislation. It should be abandoned at the earliest opportunity.

There is a better way for the Albanese government to tackle the real issue at stake: media revenue.

Right now, most Australian news media outlets are struggling to survive. Since news media moved online, audiences now expect news for free and most readers are not willing to pay. That leaves many publications without a sustainable business model and in need of public subsidy.

But we don’t usually provide subsidies by forcing profitable companies to negotiate directly with unprofitable ones, like the News Media Bargaining Code does. An alternative model is needed.

One option could be to use the corporate tax generated from digital platforms to support public-interest journalism by Australian media organisations. This would mean taxing the platforms’ revenues appropriately and fairly in the name of Australian citizens and in the national interest.

However, this would also require a stronger quality framework for what constitutes public-interest journalism. The latest round of journalism lay-offs in Australia shows we are rapidly running out of alternatives if we want to sustain quality, diverse Australian news content into the future.

Axel Bruns is an Australian Laureate Fellow and receives funding from the Australian Research Council through the Australian Laureate Fellowship project Determining the Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Innovation. He provides occasional expert feedback on Meta products as part of the company’s Instagram Working Group.

– ref. If Meta bans news in Australia, what will happen? Canada’s experience is telling – https://theconversation.com/if-meta-bans-news-in-australia-what-will-happen-canadas-experience-is-telling-233662

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Peden, NHMRC Research Fellow, School of Population Health & co-founder UNSW Beach Safety Research Group, UNSW Sydney

Every year in Australia, people driving into floodwaters drown and many more are rescued. Do you know what to do when there’s water on the road?

We searched all state and territory learner and driver handbooks for information about floodwaters, including signage. Our findings, published in the Journal of Safety Research, are disturbing.

Across half of Australia’s states and territories, the driver handbook ignores flooding. That’s a missed opportunity, considering the handbook contains road rules and provides advice on how to navigate safely. While some states fail to provide any flood-related information, others give detailed practical guidance. Only the New South Wales handbook includes explanation of the meaning and purpose of flood signage.

This is despite almost all states and territories experiencing vehicle-related flood deaths, including drowning, between 2001 and 2017. It’s a major problem that is only going to get worse as the climate changes. So our research shows driver education needs to come up to speed, fast.

Why do people drive into floodwaters?

Our previous research revealed motorists can feel compelled to drive into floodwaters for a range of reasons. These include time pressures such as being late for work or school, or needing to get home to family or pets. Sometimes they feel pressured by their passengers, or motorists behind them on the road, urging them to cross.

People also report having been encouraged or instructed as learners to drive into floodwaters. Past experience as a passenger also influences a learner driver’s future willingness to drive into floodwaters.

So the views of significant others, such as their supervising driver, strongly influence decisions around driving into floodwaters.

What we did and what we found

We assessed all publicly available, government-issued learner and driver handbooks (12 documents) across all six Australian states and two territories. We also looked for flood-related signage. We used a method for reviewing online material through a systematic search including in-document key words and imagery.

Four jurisdictions provided no information on flooding in the handbook. In the ACT, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria, drivers need to look elsewhere for information on floodwaters and driving safety.

Only one jurisdiction provided information on flood signage such as depth markers and “road subject to flooding”. Hats off to the NSW Road User Handbook, which warns:

Floodwater is extremely dangerous. Find another way or wait until the road is clear. It’s safer to turn around than to drive in floodwater.

For the states and territories that did provide information on floodwaters in the handbook, the content varied.

NSW, Queensland and the Northern Territory warned against entering floodwaters in a vehicle. They highlighted the dangers and financial penalties associated with driving on closed roads.

In the NT and Western Australia, handbooks provided practical information on when and how to cross floodwaters safely, such as how to gauge safe water depth based on vehicle size, and to avoid fast-flowing water.

Although well-intentioned, judgements around what constitutes fast-flowing water are subjective and hard for any driver to assess, let alone learner drivers. Even drivers of larger vehicles such as four-wheel drives are regularly involved in flood-related vehicle drowning fatalities.

Just 45cm of water can float a large 4WD, and considerably less for smaller vehicles.

Handbooks represent valuable sources of safety information, particularly for new drivers who must learn important road rules to progress from one licence to another. Such graduated driver licensing schemes reduce road traffic injury, particularly among young people.

However, many of these handbooks fail to provide consistent, practical evidence-based information about flooding. There is an opportunity here to support safer driving behaviours.

Safety tips for all drivers

We encourage drivers to follow these safety tips:

• avoid driving into floodwaters
• identify alternative routes, so you have a plan B
• familiarise yourself, and any learner drivers in the household or under your care, with the meaning and purpose of flood signage
• understand the legal consequences of crossing a road closed sign
• discuss the dangers of driving into floodwaters with learner drivers and help them formulate their own plan B
• model safe driving for all passengers, including children.

Time to lift our game

Driving into floodwaters remains the main cause of flood-related drowning in Australia.

For our emergency service personnel, driver behaviour, including people ignoring road closed signs, significantly complicates the already dangerous act of performing a flood rescue.

Extreme weather and flooding are likely to become more frequent and intense in the future. That means the chance of being faced with a flooded road is growing. So information about driving during floods is vital for all, from the newly licensed to the experienced driver.

We hope our research will encourage all states and territories to include provide practical, evidence-based advice on floods in driver handbooks as soon as possible.

Amy Peden receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. She is an honorary Senior Research Fellow with Royal Life Saving Society – Australia.

Kyra Hamilton has received funding from Royal Life Saving Society – Australia.

– ref. Just 15 centimetres of water can float a car – but we are failing to educate drivers about the dangers of floodwaters – https://theconversation.com/just-15-centimetres-of-water-can-float-a-car-but-we-are-failing-to-educate-drivers-about-the-dangers-of-floodwaters-233116

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Whitehouse, Bennett Chair of Autism, Telethon Kids Institute, The University of Western Australia

Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), Bill Shorten, has proposed a number of policy changes to the scheme. It is hoped these will ensure its sustainability for future generations.

The proposals and legislative amendments follow a nationwide discussion on the need for reform so the NDIS can achieve its original aim to support and empower Australians with disability. Currently, one in ten children aged between five and seven years are participants of the NDIS.

Less discussion has focused on how the introduction and roll-out of the NDIS may have shaped community expectations around early support. For example, many families are now seeking supports that do not align with what experts know is best practice for children with developmental delays or who are autistic.

So what does the evidence say works best for young children diagnosed with autism? And how could reframing community expectations be critical to the success of any policy reform?

Support can come in different forms

Around 20% of children in Australia experience developmental delay, and around 3% of children are autistic. Many of these children will require additional support to meet their developmental needs at some time.

Depending on its aims, support can be delivered in many places, including within clinical settings, or in settings embedded within everyday life.

Within the NDIS there has been dramatic increases in the delivery of support in specialised clinical settings, such as the clinics of speech pathologists or occupational therapists. But best practice guidelines consistently call for community-embedded approaches.

Best practice guidelines – consensus statements within a specialist area that summarise evidence and describe what reflects the best approach – emphasise the importance of building capacity within the child’s everyday routines and environments.

This might be at home with parents, in childcare and early schooling with educators, or in their local community with playgroups, sport coaches and other important people in the child’s life.

Within the current NDIS funding model, these types of supports are either underfunded or unfunded, and therefore not prioritised.

The NDIS Review that completed its work last year highlighted a range of policies which incentivise the delivery of services within clinical settings. These include the dominance of individual support packages, an activity-based fee-for-service funding model and rigid funding categories – all of which preference clinic-based service delivery as a way of controlling costs.

Specialised services within clinical settings have an important role to play, particularly when children are presenting with developmental challenges that are having a substantial impact on their daily functioning.

However, this model of care is not what is best for the majority of children.

The three Rs

Three core tenets of best practice are the delivery of support at the right time, in the right amount and in the right context.

Right time

Development is a sequential process. Skills are built up over time, with later skills often relying on the firm foundation of earlier skills. Because of this, early delays can cascade into greater challenges over time. Effective support must move quickly to provide support early. This is also when support needs may be lower.

Right amount

Many people assume more intense support will result in better outcomes for children. But research does not bear this out. A recent meta-analysis – a type of study that uses statistics to compare different studies – found no evidence outcomes improve with increasing amounts of therapy.

Instead, the right amount should be individually determined and should vary across a child’s life as their needs and environment change over time.

Right context

One of the primary goals of childhood disability supports is to enable children to participate fully and meaningfully in family and community life. To achieve this goal, supports must be delivered in the right context.

Wherever possible, supports should be delivered in naturalistic settings (home, childcare, school) and focus on family and community capacity building.

Policy changes need community shifts

The NDIS reform bill currently before parliament makes provisions for more flexible use of personal funding. This may make it easier for clinicians and families to adapt the type of support to the changing needs of the child over time.

The other major proposed change is the development of a “foundational support” system. State and territory leaders, who will be responsible for delivering this support, have asked for more detail on the cost of this shift. But the government hopes such a system could support the “missing middle” between children receiving intensive therapies and no therapy at all.

But policy changes alone will not be enough to realign the system.

The NDIS was established in 2013, and many families’ and clinicians’ knowledge of what represents best practice supports for children is framed by the “specialist” model of care. The success of any policy change will also likely hinge on a community reappraisal of the importance of community-based supports.

Building capacity

Naturalistic supports decrease the distance between therapy and everyday life. This helps ensure supports are immediately translatable to the child’s daily life.

So prioritising supports that can be brought into community settings, like childcare, the community library or the local sports club is vital. This focus might be different to what families and those providing a diagnosis have become used to expecting.

Family and community capacity building is a powerful way to support children. Through identifying the key people in a child’s life and empowering them with knowledge and skills, children can receive high quality support from those who know them best. When non-specialists are equipped to deliver supports, children can be supported wherever they are by people who will have deep and lasting bonds in their lives.

Andrew Whitehouse works for the Telethon Kids Institute, which is the operator of a NDIS registered provider, CliniKids. Andrew Whitehouse receives research funding from the NHMRC, Angela Wright Bennett Foundation, and the Autism CRC.

David Trembath works for Griffith University. He receives funding support for his position from the Telethon Kids Institute where he holds an honorary title, as well as research project funding from Autism CRC, Playgroup NSW, the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, and the Medical Research Future Fund.

Sarah Pillar works for the Telethon Kids Institute which is the operator of CliniKids.
Sarah Pillar has family members who have a diagnosis of autism and who access the NDIS.

– ref. First an autism diagnosis then a clinician’s office – how the evidence supports a different approach for families – https://theconversation.com/first-an-autism-diagnosis-then-a-clinicians-office-how-the-evidence-supports-a-different-approach-for-families-233106

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Judith Brett, Emeritus Professor of Politics, La Trobe University

When Robert Menzies was out of office in 1943, in between prime ministerships, he was thinking about the future of non-Labor politics in wartime Australia. He read Edmund Burke’s book Thought on the Present Discontents. In it, Burke included the now-famous definition of a political party as:

a body of men united in promoting by their joint endeavour the national interest upon some particular principle on which they are all agreed.

For Burke, political parties were legitimate when they were based on shared principles and were committed neither to personal nor sectional interest, but to the interest of the nation as a whole.

Recently, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton announced the Coalition would not have an emissions reduction target for 2030. Instead, it would build seven nuclear power plants to reach zero emissions by 2050.

I have spent much of my research life thinking and writing about the Liberal Party and its predecessors, as well its three most successful leaders: Alfred Deakin, Robert Menzies and John Howard. So I have been running Dutton’s nuclear policies against my understanding of the Liberal party’s core principles.

It’s left me puzzled. Setting aside the many technical questions about the cost and feasibility of the plan, the proposal seems to breach some of those core principles.

Public ownership?

Political parties change and evolve over time, so it’s worth assessing the Liberal Party’s current web page for a contemporary statement of beliefs.

As expected, there are clear statements about the party’s commitment to maximising private sector initiatives. This includes statements like “government should only do those things the private sector cannot”, and “wherever possible government should not compete with an efficient private sector”.

So why is the Liberal Party proposing to build and own nuclear power plants on sites the government doesn’t even own, like Liddell in New South Wales? Or Loy Yang in Victoria where the owner, AGL, has plans already in train to develop low-emission industrial energy hubs?

How would a resort to compulsory acquisition of privately owned sites be justified by a party committed to private enterprise? And what would be the cost of these acquisitions?

Section 51 of the Constitution allows the Commonwealth to acquire property “on just terms from any State or person for any purpose in respect of which the Parliament has power to make laws.” Just terms – that means the property so acquired has to be paid for, by us, the tax payer, and this has to be added to the considerable cost of building the plants.

What about the states?

The state premiers of Queensland, NSW and Victoria oppose the plan, as do some Liberal opposition leaders such as Victoria’s John Pesutto.

Speaking to the Liberal Party Federal Council in June, Dutton said that the Commonwealth can override state laws, so the state premiers won’t be able to stop the plan.

Well it can, but it requires legislation that has to get through a Senate unlikely to be controlled by any future Coalition government. It would also cost a mountain of political capital.

But in terms of principles, how does this sit with the Liberal Party’s long-standing support for the rights of the states within the federation? One of the Liberal Party’s beliefs is that “responsibility should be divided according to federal principles, without the Commonwealth taking advantage of powers it has acquired other than by referendum.”

National interest or political interest?

It seems the policy as announced breaches two of the Liberal party’s core principles:

1. government should not do what is better left to private enterprise

2. the Commonwealth should respect state rights

But what of the national interest? The Liberal Party has always claimed it is not a sectional party and so is best able to represent the national interest. This, it says, is in contrast to Labor, with its ties to the unionised working class, and the Country Party turned Nationals which represents farmers, the regions, and increasingly, the miners.

What was most shocking about the Coalition’s plan is that it blithely flirts with sovereign risk and hence with Australia’s national interest. This is completely out of character for the Liberal Party.

Energy infrastructure is a long-term investment. Local and foreign investors are spooked by the collapse of bipartisan commitment to a clean energy transition and reconsidering their investment plans. And if the investment goes, so will the jobs it would have created. How is this in the national interest?

Shadow Minister for Energy Ted O’Brien tried to settle investors down by claiming the Coalition was still committed to renewables as well, but with little detail about the planned mix.

The only one of the Liberal Party’s traditional principles visible in this policy is the one that gives the leader, rather than the party, authority over policy.

But where does this leave the Liberals in federal parliament when their leader’s policy is so fundamentally at odds with their party’s core beliefs? Loyalty to the leader can only go so far. Perhaps Liberal MPs should consult their party’s website to remind themselves of the principles on which they stood for election. It seems in the pursuit of winning political points, political principles are all too easy to forget.

Judith Brett 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. With its nuclear energy policy, Peter Dutton seems to have forgotten the Liberal Party’s core beliefs – https://theconversation.com/with-its-nuclear-energy-policy-peter-dutton-seems-to-have-forgotten-the-liberal-partys-core-beliefs-233444

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Kingham, Professor of Human Geography, University of Canterbury

Only last year, all the talk was about lowering speed limits to save lives as part of the previous Labour government’s Road to Zero policy.

Even motoring advocacy group the Automobile Association was calling for continued reductions in speed limits.

But a year on, the coalition government has announced it will reverse the blanket speed limit reductions put in place after January 1, 2020. Submissions on this policy shift close on July 11.

It is worthwhile considering, then, why the government is increasing speed limits despite extensive research highlighting the benefits of slower speeds – including fuel savings, reduction in injuries and deaths, environmental benefits and community wellbeing.

1. Time savings and productivity

Supporters of higher speed limits argue slowing traffic costs time and money. But a 10% increase in speed limit doesn’t lead to a 10% increase in time savings. Much of a journey involves slowing in traffic and stopping at junctions and traffic lights.

The evidence suggests lower speeds usually result in very small increases in travel time, especially in urban areas. There are also questions about how travel time savings would be used.

Typically, time savings are multiplied by the number of vehicles on the road to produce the total time saved. For example, 5,000 vehicles on a stretch of road each day, saving an average of 30 seconds per vehicle, gives 2,500 minutes of time saved. At NZ$30 per hour, this would equal $75,000 of “saved time” each day.

That sounds like a significant number. But, of course, this is based on the assumption people use time savings to be more productive. Research suggests they often don’t.

In fact, making it easier to travel further and faster encourages people to travel longer distances. This is called induced demand and ultimately it adds to our traffic woes.

This is because, in the short term, people who had previously been discouraged from using congested roads start to use them. And in the longer term, people move further away from city centres to take advantage of new roads that allow them to travel further faster.

In addition, time savings associated with higher speed limits could be worth less than the fuel savings associated with lower speed limits. This is especially the case on state highways where more fuel is used at speeds above 80 kilometres per hour.

2. Crashes, deaths and injuries

Speed is a contributing factor in a third of fatal crashes on our roads and over 50% in crashes that kill 15-29 year olds. By comparison, potholes contribute to 1% of crashes leading to deaths or serious injuries.

The research clearly shows deaths and serious injuries are much higher at increased speeds, primarily as stopping distances become longer. The chances of a pedestrian surviving a crash are around 90% at 30km/h, compared to around 10% at 50km/h, for example.

Recent research in New Zealand has found notable reductions in these sorts of deaths and serious injuries on roads where speed limits have been reduced.

In countries such as the United Kingdom, where urban speed limits have been reduced, there have been significant reductions in road casualties. In Wales, reducing the speed limit on residential roads to 20 miles per hour (30km/h) has been estimated to save around $200 million annually.

3. Environmental pollution

Lower speed limits are also better for the environment. As well as producing greenhouse gas emissions, motor vehicles fuels emit air pollution – something that causes over 2,000 New Zealand deaths each year.

Research shows the speed at which vehicles travel affects the amount of pollutants released. Vehicles driven at very high or very low speeds emit more pollutants, with the lowest emissions from vehicles travelling at 60-80km/h.

Braking and accelerating increase emissions, so driving at a consistent speed is better. Research has shown the optimum speed limit to minimise emissions in urban areas is between 20 km/h and 30km/h.

Lower speeds also reduce noise, which has been identified as the second biggest environmental stressor on public health after air pollution. Even small decreases in speeds create significantly quieter roads.

4. Health, wellbeing, community and equity

Further research shows communities with slower traffic have better health and wellbeing.

Oxford University’s Danny Dorling has argued urban speed limits of 20 miles-per-hour (30km/h) are the “most effective thing a local authority can do to reduce health inequalities”.

This is particularly important in New Zealand. Rates of injury and death on the roads disproportionately affect Māori, younger people and those in low-income communities.

It has also been suggested there are multiple additional benefits from slower urban speed limits, including economic, health and social gains.

5. Global trends

Around the world, numerous cities are adopting lower urban speed limits, typically 30 km/h. For example, Wales has legislated a national speed limit of 20m/h (30km/h) on residential streets, and Scotland has committed to doing this by 2025.

Nearly 30 million people in the UK have speed limits of 20mph (30km/h) in the places where they live or work. There are similar examples across continental Europe.

In 2020, road safety experts and government ministers from 130 countries adopted the “Stockholm Declaration”. This advocates for 30km/h limits in urban areas where “vulnerable road users and vehicles mix in a frequent and planned manner”.

It’s not just Europe. Lower speed limits are being implemented across many other regions, including the United States and South America.

The case for lower speed limits is compelling. Lives are saved, pollution reduced, health improved and communities enhanced. The question is, why is New Zealand’s government seeking to buck the trend and go against what science shows is good policy, when the rest of the world accepts lower speed limits make sense.

Simon Kingham has previously worked as chief science advisor at the Ministry of Transport.

– ref. Give way: 5 reasons why the government should slow down on raising speed limits – https://theconversation.com/give-way-5-reasons-why-the-government-should-slow-down-on-raising-speed-limits-233774

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Beckett, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Nutrition, Dietetics & Food Innovation – School of Health Sciences, UNSW Sydney

Do you struggle to eat your fruits and vegetables? You are not alone. Less than 5% of Australians eat the recommended serves of fresh produce each day (with 44% eating enough fruit but only 6% eating the recommended vegetables).

Adults should aim to eat at least five serves of vegetables (or roughly 375 grams) and two serves of fruit (about 300 grams) each day. Fruits and vegetables help keep us healthy because they have lots of nutrients (vitamins, minerals and fibre) and health-promoting bioactive compounds (substances not technically essential but which have health benefits) without having many calories.

So, if you are having trouble eating the rainbow, you might be wondering – is it OK to drink your fruits and vegetables instead in a juice or smoothie? Like everything in nutrition, the answer is all about context.

It might help overcome barriers

Common reasons for not eating enough fruits and vegetables are preferences, habits, perishability, cost, availability, time and poor cooking skills. Drinking your fruits and vegetables in juices or smoothies can help overcome some of these barriers.

Juicing or blending can help disguise tastes you don’t like, like bitterness in vegetables. And it can blitz imperfections such as bruises or soft spots. Preparation doesn’t take much skill or time, particularly if you just have to pour store-bought juice from the bottle. Treating for food safety and shipping time does change the make up of juices slightly, but unsweetened juices still remain significant sources of nutrients and beneficial bioactives.

Juicing can extend shelf life and reduce the cost of nutrients. In fact, when researchers looked at the density of nutrients relative to the costs of common foods, fruit juice was the top performer.

So, drinking my fruits and veggies counts as a serve, right?

How juice is positioned in healthy eating recommendations is a bit confusing. The Australian Dietary Guidelines include 100% fruit juice with fruit but vegetable juice isn’t mentioned. This is likely because vegetable juices weren’t as common in 2013 when the guidelines were last revised.

The guidelines also warn against having juice too often or in too high amounts. This appears to be based on the logic that juice is similar, but not quite as good as, whole fruit. Juice has lower levels of fibre compared to fruits, with fibre important for gut health, heart health and promoting feelings of fullness. Juice and smoothies also release the sugar from the fruit’s other structures, making them “free”. The World Health Organization recommends we limit free sugars for good health.

But fruit and vegetables are more than just the sum of their parts. When we take a “reductionist” approach to nutrition, foods and drinks are judged based on assumptions made about limited features such as sugar content or specific vitamins.

But these features might not have the impact we logically assume because of the complexity of foods and people. When humans eat varied and complex diets, we don’t necessarily need to be concerned that some foods are lower in fibre than others. Juice can retain the nutrients and bioactive compounds of fruit and vegetables and even add more because parts of the fruit we don’t normally eat, like the skin, can be included.

So, it is healthy then?

A recent umbrella review of meta-analyses (a type of research that combines data from multiple studies of multiple outcomes into one paper looked at the relationship between 100% juice and a range of health outcomes.

Most of the evidence showed juice had a neutral impact on health (meaning no impact) or a positive one. Pure 100% juice was linked to improved heart health and inflammatory markers and wasn’t clearly linked to weight gain, multiple cancer types or metabolic markers (such as blood sugar levels).

Some health risks linked to drinking juice were reported: death from heart disease, prostate cancer and diabetes risk. But the risks were all reported in observational studies, where researchers look at data from groups of people collected over time. These are not controlled and do not record consumption in the moment. So other drinks people think of as 100% fruit juice (such as sugar-sweetened juices or cordials) might accidentally be counted as 100% fruit juice. These types of studies are not good at showing the direct causes of illness or death.

What about my teeth?

The common belief juice damages teeth might not stack up. Studies that show juice damages teeth often lump 100% juice in with sweetened drinks. Or they use model systems like fake mouths that don’t match how people drinks juice in real life. Some use extreme scenarios like sipping on large volumes of drink frequently over long periods of time.

Juice is acidic and does contain sugars, but it is possible proper oral hygiene, including rinsing, cleaning and using straws can mitigate these risks.

Again, reducing juice to its acid level misses the rest of the story, including the nutrients and bioactives contained in juice that are beneficial to oral health.

So, what should I do?

Comparing whole fruit (a food) to juice (a drink) can be problematic. They serve different culinary purposes, so aren’t really interchangeable.

The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating recommends water as the preferred beverage but this assumes you are getting all your essential nutrients from eating.

Where juice fits in your diet depends on what you are eating and what other drinks it is replacing. Juice might replace water in the context of a “perfect” diet. Or juice might replace alcohol or sugary soft drinks and make the relative benefits look very different.

On balance

Whether you want to eat your fruits and vegetables or drink them comes down to what works for you, how it fits into the context of your diet and your life.

Smoothies and juices aren’t a silver bullet, and there is no evidence they work as a “cleanse” or detox. But, with society’s low levels of fruit and vegetable eating, having the option to access nutrients and bioactives in a cheap, easy and tasty way shouldn’t be discouraged either.

Emma Beckett has received funding for research or consulting from Mars Foods, Nutrition Research Australia, NHMRC, ARC, AMP Foundation, Kellogg and the University of Newcastle. She works for FOODiQ Global including consulting for Citrus Australia, The Australian Beverages Council Ltd (ABCL), Hort Innovation and the Austrailan Food and Grocery Council. She is a member of committees/working groups related to nutrition and food, including the Australian Academy of Science, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Nutrition Society of Australia and the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology.

– ref. Can you drink your fruit and vegetables? How does juice compare to the whole food? – https://theconversation.com/can-you-drink-your-fruit-and-vegetables-how-does-juice-compare-to-the-whole-food-205222

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

Last week, several major record labels filed copyright infringement lawsuits in US courts against the makers of two generative AI music apps, Suno and Udio. The labels allege the AI companies have engaged in copyright infringement by copying many sound recordings belonging to the record labels, and producing outputs very similar to those recordings.

The labels are seeking damages of US$150,000 (A$225,000) for each of the thousands of tracks of which copyright has allegedly been infringed.

The lawsuits allege Udio produced output with “striking resemblances” to songs including Dancing Queen by ABBA and All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey, while Suno allegedly turned out songs similar to I Got You (I Feel Good) by James Brown and Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry, among others.

These lawsuits are not the first to trouble the booming generative AI industry. Visual artists have sued makers of image generating systems, while various newspapers are suing OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, for similar allegations. The result of the litigation may determine the future viability of such generative AI products.

How do music generators work?

For those who have not used these type of products, they work like this. You type in a text prompt, such as “compose a female jazz song about beating the Monday morning blues”. If you like, you can also provide your own lyrics.

The app then generates output in the form of an MP3 song, with a combination of vocals and instrumentation, which can be downloaded by the user.

To generate the song, the AI has been trained with a vast amount of data. The lawsuits allege this data comprises pre-existing sound recordings owned by various record labels and copied without permission. These sound recordings are at the heart of this issue.

The litigation is likely to hinge on whether what Suno and Udio have done with any of these sound recordings is found to be “fair use”.

In the US, fair use is a defence to copyright infringement. In Australia, we have a narrower “fair dealing” copyright doctrine which pertains to particular uses such as research and study.

How will the court make its decision?

The court will examine four factors in relation to the use of the record labels’ songs by Suno and Udio. These are:

1. the purpose and character of the use
2. the nature of the original copyright work
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used, and
4. the effect of the use on market value.

The most contentious factor is the purpose and character of the use. This involves examining whether the generative AI music is sufficiently “transformative”, which means it provides a new meaning, expression or value to the original work.

At the heart of Suno and Udio’s argument is that their technology is sufficently transformative in nature. They argue that this is because their AI synthesises new, original output, rather than copying and reproducing pre-existing songs.

The court will examine the amount and substantiality of the portion of songs copied. It will examine how the allegedly copied songs are used in the AI training process and in generating output.

The element of substantiality may be qualitative, rather than quantitative. This means that in addition to the amount copied, the court can also consider whether a distinctive part of a song has been copied.

In addition, the effect of the generative AI use on the market value of the original sound recording will be considered. A use which substitutes for the original song in the market is more likely to be considered substantial. This point can be argued both ways.

What’s in a voice?

One major concern for the music industry is the cloning of voices. This is where other generative AI music apps (not Suno or Udio) can be used to clone a famous singer’s voice onto any song.

Suno released a statement on X, denying that voice cloning is possible using their app, because it does not allow users to reference particular singers. This issue will likely be contested in court.

What will happen next? It is difficult to predict.

Perhaps a settlement will be reached prior to the hearings. Perhaps new licensing arrangements between the parties will be developed, in a similar situation to OpenAI’s recent collaboration with News Corp.

What is certain is that there are other new AI voice cloning innovations being developed through start-up companies, to monetise and license voice cloning. One example is Hooky, a licensing platform for AI voice modelling, which provides artists with control over the use of their voice.

If the record labels’ litigation proceeds, it will give American courts the opportunity to clarify whether training activities and output from generative AI music apps are captured under fair use. This decision may also set a precedent for the activities conducted by other types of generative AI apps.

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

– ref. Record labels are suing tech companies for copying classic songs – and the results could shape the legal future of generative AI – https://theconversation.com/record-labels-are-suing-tech-companies-for-copying-classic-songs-and-the-results-could-shape-the-legal-future-of-generative-ai-233465

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heather Douglas, Professor of Law, The University of Melbourne

We recently surveyed thousands of young Australians about their experiences of strangulation (or choking) during sex and found more than half (57%) reported being strangled by a partner during sex. About half (51%) said they had strangled their partner during sex.

For some people, strangulation is a high-risk but acceptable part of consensual sex, and it is important not to stigmatise people who use it.

But strangulation carries significant risks and harms to those who experience it, including the possibility of serious injury or even death, sometimes months after the event.

Participants most commonly reported first becoming aware of strangulation during sex when they were around 16–18 years old (29%), or during early adulthood, 19–21 years (24%).

People also reported they were exposed to information about or depictions of strangulation during sex through various sources, most commonly via pornography (61%), but also through movies (40%), friends (32%), social media (31%) and discussions with current or potential partners (29%).

Rates highest among gender-diverse people

We surveyed 4,702 Australians aged between 18 and 35 who had previously had a sexual experience. We defined strangulation or choking as when a person’s breathing is stopped or restricted by the use of hands, other body parts or ties (like ropes) around the neck. People sometimes refer to this behaviour as breath play or erotic asphyxiation.

More women (61%) than men (43%) reported ever having been strangled, with a high proportion of people who identified as trans or gender-diverse (78%) reporting being strangled.

More men (59%) than women (40%) responded they had strangled their partners, and nearly three-quarters (74%) of trans and gender-diverse participants reported that they had strangled their partners.

While a high proportion of all genders reported being strangled or strangling partners during sex, women and trans and gender-diverse participants reported it happening more often compared to men.

Men, on the other hand, reported strangling partners during sex more often compared to women, with no difference compared to trans and gender diverse people.

Our data also showed gay and bisexual men were more likely to have been strangled than straight men, and that bisexual women were more likely than straight women to have ever been strangled or to have strangled a partner. Furthermore, lesbian women were more likely than straight women to have ever strangled a partner.

How old and how often?

For close to a third of participants, the first time they were strangled (30%) and/or strangled a partner (31%) occurred between the ages of 19 and 21.

On average, participants who reported being strangled during sex said they had been strangled around six times, by around three partners. Those who had strangled partners reported doing it around five times, with about three different partners.

Read more:
A new bill would bring Victoria’s strangulation laws in line with other states – but consent complicates matters

What did consent look like?

People generally responded they neither agreed nor disagreed to be strangled during sex. However, strangulation was generally perceived to be consensual, with consent understood in different ways.

Participants who had strangled partners reported more often that their partners played an active role in consent (79%) including asking to be strangled, agreeing to be strangled, or withdrawing previous consent, than those who were strangled (57%).

Consent was not always negotiated at the time. People who had been choked or choked a partner both responded that consent was negotiated during a previous sexual encounter where the person being choked gave their future consent.

Among participants who were strangled, women (27%) were more likely than men (23%) to report that they asked to be strangled. Similarly, women (21%) were more likely than men (15%) to report that they had given consent during a previous sexual experience.

Among trans and gender-diverse participants, more than a quarter (29%) reported they had asked to be strangled and around one-fifth (20%) said they had given consent during a previous experience.

Nearly a third of men (32%) and a fifth of women (20%) reported they agreed to be strangled when they were asked by their partner. Around one-fifth (23%) of trans and gender-diverse participants reported that they agreed to be strangled when they were asked by their partner.

Trans and gender-diverse participants (12%) were more likely to report withdrawing consent compared to men (7%) and women (6%).

Lastly, women (10%) were more likely than men (8%) and trans and gender-diverse participants (4%), to report that they “did not consent, but did not ask or motion for them to stop”.

Why is this concerning?

Strangulation is linked to many different kinds of injuries regardless of whether there is consent. These can include bruising, sore throat, neck pain, a hoarse voice, a cough, difficulty swallowing, swollen lips, nausea and vomiting.

Other more serious impacts include pregnancy miscarriage, unconsciousness, brain injury and death. Miscarriage and death can occur weeks or months after the initial strangulation.

Generally, there are no visible injuries associated with strangulation, but even when the person remains conscious, brain injury may occur. We know the more often people are strangled, the more likely they are to experience brain injury. This includes memory loss and difficulties problem-solving. Brain injury also accumulates so the more strangulations, the worse it becomes.

Strangulation has been criminalised across Australia because of the risk associated with it in the context of domestic violence and the harms linked with it more generally. But there are different rules across Australia about consent. And consent can be “blurry”.

In most states, strangulation is probably legal where there are no injuries reported and where there is consent. However, given how common strangulation during sex is, criminal law isn’t the best answer.

Instead, much better education is needed about the harms of this behaviour, and support is needed for those navigating this practice.

Heather Douglas receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration.

Leah Sharman receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Robin Fitzgerald receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. More than half of Australian young people are using strangulation during sex: new research – https://theconversation.com/more-than-half-of-australian-young-people-are-using-strangulation-during-sex-new-research-231269

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Foley, Associate Lecturer & PhD Candidate, La Trobe University, La Trobe University

The machinations of the Australian Labor Party machine are back in the spotlight this week, with Western Australian Senator Fatima Payman crossing the floor to support a Greens-backed motion calling for the Australian Senate to “recognise the State of Palestine”.

In crossing the floor, Payman breached the concept of caucus solidarity. She has been indefinitely suspended from the Labor Party caucus as a result.

So, what does this notion of caucus solidarity in the Labor Party really mean and how did it come about?

Read more:
View from The Hill: Fatima Payman alleges attempts to ‘intimidate’ her into quitting the Senate

What is caucus solidarity?

Simply put, caucus is the group of MPs that make up a political party. This includes cabinet ministers (or “frontbenchers”) and everyone else (“backbenchers”) across both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Before the formation of the federation and the federal parliamentary Australian Labor Party, caucus solidarity had already taken root. In 1891, the first NSW Labor caucus meeting made a significant decision: MPs would pledge to abide by the majority decision and vote as a unified caucus.

The structure of the party’s organisation is formalised in the party’s constitution. In it, the federal parliamentary Labor Party has the authority in caucus meetings to make decisions on behalf of the parliamentary party, particularly on questions or matters that are not subject to national platform, conference, or executive decisions. In this specific case, the “majority decision of Caucus” must be “binding upon all members in the parliament.”

In addition, there is a formal pledge that binds all Labor MPs to support the caucus’s majority decision, even if they individually voted against the majority in a caucus meeting. This pledge has been adopted since the formation of state Labor parties before federation, but was formalised shortly within federal Labor in 1902.

This enduring notion of caucus solidarity originated from the party’s mass party trade union roots. There, the collective majority decision required solidarity to further the movement. It also explains why it is a more institutionalised element of the Labor Party compared with other parties.

It may be a feature of other parties in a less formalised way. For example, neither the Liberal Party nor the National Party has any formalised pledge that prohibits crossing the floor, though it’s generally politically frowned upon.

Theory vs practice

The same rules also say the caucus is bound to follow decisions made in the Labor Party’s National Platform. This is a compilation of theoretically binding policies the parliamentary wing of the party must follow. The National Platform is the outcome of Labor Party Conferences which take place every three years and consist of federal and state party leaders, elected state delegates and Young Labor delegates.

On the issue of Israel and Palestine, the most recent platform explicitly “calls on the Australian Government to recognise Palestine as a state and expected that this issue will be an important priority for the Australian government”.

However, the tension lies in the timing of these policies’ enactment, which is up to the discretion of the Labor parliamentary caucus and the party executive. Therefore, according to caucus conventions, Payman could not override the majority decision of the caucus, even if the caucus’ majority decision was in direct contradiction to party’s policy platform. Basically whatever caucus says, goes.

It is very rare for Labor MPs to break caucus solidarity and cross the floor (when someone votes in opposition to their own party on a particular issue by siding with an opposing motion). Research shows between February 1950 and April 2019, just 29 individual Labor members have ever crossed the floor. Comparatively, 185 Liberal politicians did so over the same period.

When it has been done by Labor MPs, it is more common for it to be done while Labor has been in opposition. It was also usually done with the full knowledge they may face expulsion from the party as a consequence.

All decisions must be debated in the caucus before a final decision is reached. After reaching a decision, all members are expected to vote for it in parliament, regardless of their own political position on the issue.

This isn’t always easy for MPs. In recent years, the example of same-sex marriage has been a particular sore point for certain MPs like current Foreign Minister Penny Wong. Back in 2004, Wong didn’t support the majority caucus opposition to the issue, but ultimately chose to follow the caucus rules.

The concept of caucus solidarity remains unchanged for more than a century, but Labor now faces greater cultural and political challenges and a more diverse electorate than in its early days.

Payman is pushing the pressure points of a mass party that, arguably, must evolve. But this notion of strict party discipline is intrinsic to the notion of a mass party like Labor. It raises questions about the future of a party with roots in the 19th century labour movement in determining crucial political and social issues in the 21st century.

Emily Foley is affiliated with the National Tertiary Education Union as an elected representative on the La Trobe NTEU branch.

– ref. Fatima Payman breached ‘caucus solidarity’. What does this mean and why is it so significant? – https://theconversation.com/fatima-payman-breached-caucus-solidarity-what-does-this-mean-and-why-is-it-so-significant-233660