Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Subha Parida, Lecturer in Property, University of South Australia

Houses and fire do not mix. The firestorm which hit Los Angeles in January destroyed nearly 2,000 buildings and forced 130,000 people to evacuate.

The 2019–20 Australian megafires destroyed almost 2,800 homes. This summer, houses and buildings have been lost in Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania.

As temperatures inch upwards, bushfires will become more severe and more frequent, posing risks to more homes. But fires don’t affect homes equally. Older homes built before fire resilience standards became mandatory are at higher risk of going up in flames.

In the aftermath of the devastating LA fires, there are signs that newer homes have fared better than older ones. Previous fires in California and Australia have shown newer homes built with fire-resilient features are more likely to survive than older homes.

The problem is, more than half (55%) of Australia’s homes were built 30 or more years ago – before national standards for fire resilience were introduced.

The good news: you can take action to make older homes more resilient.

Why are new homes better able to survive bushfires?

Location, vegetation and luck play a role in determining which houses survive fires. But there is also evidence newer homes with heat- and ember-resistant features survive better.

Construction standards in both Australia and the United States require the use of materials and designs which reduce fire risk.

In Australia, the national construction standards have been in place since the early 1990s. Over time, the standards have expanded to include more fire-resistant features, such as fire-resistant external walls.

By contrast, older homes are more likely to be built of flammable materials such as wood and untreated timber. Older homes are also more likely to have mature trees and shrubs closer to the house, which can increase fire risk. But as the CSIRO Bushfire Best Practice Guide points out, “trees can also be used to shield against wind, absorb radiant heat, and to filter embers […] when located at a safe distance from the house”.

More exacting construction standards apply for homes built in areas considered at risk of bushfire. State and territory governments have interactive maps of these areas.

Unfortunately, climate change is expanding these areas at risk. As the LA wildfires show, warmer climates mean fire can attack suburbs and cities thought to be safe from bushfire.

Climate change is also making home ownership more expensive, as insurance premiums rise in the wake of more expensive disasters. Analysts predict banks may begin rejecting mortgage applications for properties in areas at high risk from fire.

How can we make older homes more resilient?

Older homes remain highly sought after, especially in cities such as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

But for these homes to be brought up to modern standards of bushfire resistance, they often require significant retrofitting. These retrofits can drastically reduce the risk of ignition.

How do houses actually ignite? Wind-blown embers are a common cause in starting house fires. If a few houses in a town start burning, the fire can spread house to house.

Here are 5 ways to protect your older house:

1. Upgrade external vents. Traditional external vents are designed to ventilate rooms and roofs. But they also permit embers to gain access to attics and crawl spaces and spark a fire. Upgrading to ember-resistant vents can directly improve your home’s resilience.

2. Install ember gutter guards. Ember-resistant gutter guards are made of metal and have finer mesh than normal gutter guards. These help to prevent the build-up of dry leaves and twigs and stop small embers from landing.

3. Upgrade windows and walls. You can cut your risk further by installing bushfire-resistant shutters for windows, using fire-resistant material for wall insulation and replacing combustible material with better alternatives such as metal roofing, fibre cement siding for walls and tempered glass windows.

4. Check your deck and verandah. Wooden decks and verandahs are risky in high-risk areas. If they need to be rebuilt, choose fire-resistant materials.

5. Make space around your home. In fire-prone areas, removing trees and shrubs within 20 metres of the house can reduce risk. A well-managed area of pavers and low-density plants and shrubs close to the home acts as a fire break.

Ahead of fire season, making and updating an evacuation plan is equally vital. Homeowners should prepare emergency kits with essential documents, medications, and protective gear. If a fire starts in your area, applying fire-retardant gels to surfaces at risk can provide temporary protection.

Homeowners can use the National Emergency Management Authority’s bushfire resilience rating app to assess their home’s bushfire risk and to see which retrofits are highest priority.

State or territory governments offer advice on making your house more resistant to fire attack: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory, Australian Capital Territory.

Protecting our homes takes time – and money

Australia’s housing crisis has been front page news for months. As we head towards the federal election, it will remain a hot-button issue. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet heard discussion of the risk posed to our housing stock from bushfires made worse by climate change.

While planning controls and building standards can raise the standards of future homes, better support and incentives are needed to retrofit existing homes – especially for those built before fire safety standards became the norm.

Retrofitting is crucial. But it’s not cheap. Costs can range from A$8,500 to $47,000 per property.

These expenses can be prohibitive for many homeowners. Initiatives such as the Bushfire Resilience Rating Home Self-Assessment app can result in insurers offering premium discounts to homeowners using it to introduce recommended measures.

In some areas, local governments offer financial assistance for retrofitting, such as the Bushfire Wise Rebate by Ku-ring-gai Council in NSW.

Without greater financial support or government incentives, a significant portion of Australia’s housing stock will remain vulnerable, increasing risks as climate change expands fire-prone areas.

Subha Parida receives receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI)

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

Michaela Lang receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI).

– ref. More than half of Australia’s homes were built before fire standards came in. Here are 5 ways to retrofit them – https://theconversation.com/more-than-half-of-australias-homes-were-built-before-fire-standards-came-in-here-are-5-ways-to-retrofit-them-249490

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

Tasmania has been burning for more than two weeks, with no end in sight. Almost 100,000 hectares of bushland in the northwest has burned to date. This includes the Tarkine rainforest and alpine ecosystems of Cradle Mountain that may never recover.

The situation has taken emergency services and land management agencies by surprise. The seasonal bushfire outlook for summer 2024 suggested Tasmania’s fire risk was nothing out of the ordinary. The state was also well prepared for bushfire fighting, particularly with specialised aircraft.

But this fire season has turned out to be anything but typical. Firefighting capacity has been stretched to the limit and interstate crews have been called in.

It all began with a massive lightning storm in the evening of Monday February 3. The incidence of such lightning fires has been increasing in Tasmania since the 1990s.

An official inquiry into the bushfires will no doubt be held, given the substantial social, economic and environmental harm – as well as the sizeable costs associated with fighting the fires from the air in remote and rugged landscapes.

Nonetheless, important lessons are emerging from these fires, which speak to the broader, worsening threat as the climate changes.

Understanding the impacts of the fires

Fortunately, direct economic losses from theses fires have been limited so far, despite significant disruption associated with evacuation and road closures. Tourism operators and honey producers have been hardest hit.

The fires caused brief but substantial smoke pollution across the state, placing a range of people with medical conditions at risk.

The full environmental effects and the benefits of prescribed burning are yet to be evaluated. Nonetheless, there is grave concern about damage to unique rainforests and alpine ecosystems. If sufficiently dry the organic soils, or peats, that supports forests and treeless areas in western Tasmania are also vulnerable to combustion.

We undertook a preliminary estimate of how much highly fire-sensitive vegetation – plant communities that will take more than 50 years to recover – may have burned. This involved comparing the current bushfire boundaries or footprint, based on satellite data and field reconnaissance, to vegetation mapping used for various purposes including fire management. We put the figure at 19,716 hectares of vegetation. However, it’s possible not all of this burned and islands of unburned vegetation persist within the broad fire boundary.

Our estimation includes 10,419 hectares of temperate rainforest (10% of the fire area) and 462 hectares of alpine vegetation (0.45% of the fire area). Neither of these vegetation types can readily tolerate fire.

Our analysis suggests about half of fire-affected rainforest areas have been previously burned by fires since 1982 (48%) and some small areas have burned twice (5%). Recurrent fires in rainforest can result in permanent loss of this vegetation. Just how much damage has been done will require further assessment.

Emergence of new fire patterns

The number of fires ignited by lightning have increased in Tasmania since the 1990s. When the lightning occurs in storms without much rain, or where the rain evaporates before it hits the ground, it’s known as dry lightning.

Concerningly, in the last decade two other major dry lightning fire events have occurred,
likely a signal of a change in fire activity. As a result, fires are burning into areas that historically are rarely affected by fire, damaging the natural values of the Tasmanian wilderness.

This event could not be predicted

Going into summer, experts were concerned that soils across western Tasmania were particularly dry. This increased the fire risk in the seasonal outlook.

The recent rapid fire growth in Tasmania was caused by the unusual combination of regional drying (including dry soils), an extreme lightning storm and subsequent strong winds.

But the sequence of events that caused this fire to take off could not have been predicted more than a week ahead. That’s because it is impossible to predict lightning and windstorms outside the seven-day window of weather forecasts.

What’s more, our research shows it is currently not possible to reliably predict which lightning strikes will start fire.

Rapid attack and fire suppression have practical limits

Massive lightning storms that ignite multiple fires overwhelm the capacity of firefighters to locate and immediately extinguish all the flames.

Unfavourable weather conditions caused the west coast fires to rapidly grow. Firefighting shifted from attempts to extinguish the fire to instead contain its spread. This involved techniques such as targeted waterbombing, back burning and building fire breaks.

These approaches have been successful in some cases, notably the deployment of retardant drops to contain the Canning Peak fire, saving extensive stands of conifer rainforest. But suppression efforts were imperfect, as the loss of a private tourist facility hut on the Overland Track has demonstrated.

Managing these massive fires demands triage – making difficult choices about where to direct firefighting effort. Effective triage requires a detailed understanding of the location of areas of high economic, cultural and environmental value. High-quality mapping of these sites and involvement of specialists in the broader decision-making process is essential.

The Tasmanian government does have maps and expertise to guide triage, but there are calls for more investment to protect the region’s ecological values. This is particularly important for small, localised sites vulnerable to fire, such as groves of ancient Huon pine.

Broader lessons for fire fighting

Dry lightning storms are hard to predict, extraordinarily difficult to contain, and can cause substantial economic, social and environmental harms.

Technology alone – such as that which combines satellites, artificial intelligence, drones and water bombers – is not enough to eliminate these fires. What’s needed is a diverse portfolio of approaches, involving a combination of:

• reducing fuel loads by prescribed burning
• firefighting that is carefully targeted using high quality data
• expertise embedded in firefighting teams.

Researchers and fire managers must also identify the best strategies for prescribed burning to reduce bushfire risk while protecting areas of high economic, conservation and cultural value.

Climate change will bring more frequent monster fires – and fighting them demands a broad suite of investment.

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

Grant Williamson receives funding from the NSW Bushfire and Natural Hazards Research Centre, and Natural Hazards Research Australia.

– ref. More dry lightning in Tasmania is sparking bushfires – challenging fire fighters and land managers – https://theconversation.com/more-dry-lightning-in-tasmania-is-sparking-bushfires-challenging-fire-fighters-and-land-managers-250063

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martin Loosemore, Professor of Construction Management, University of Technology Sydney

This week, the Productivity Commission released its much-awaited report into productivity growth in Australia’s housing construction sector. It wasn’t a glowing appraisal.

The commission found physical productivity – the total number of houses built per hour worked – has more than halved over the past 30 years.

The more nuanced measure of labour productivity – which accounts for improvements in size and quality – has also fallen, by 12%.

Both measures put home-building productivity well behind the broader economy, something the report’s authors attribute to “decades of poor performance”.

We’ve known about this problem for a long time. The Productivity Commission’s report is well researched and makes some sensible recommendations.

Solving the underlying problem will require a coordinated approach between government, home-owners, construction companies and workers.

Measuring productivity

Housing can take many forms. However, from a productivity perspective, the process of development is essentially the same.

In very simple terms it involves:

• concept and initial design, feasibility, finance and business case development
• land acquisition and due diligence
• detailed design, development and building approvals
• pre-construction planning and working drawings
• construction project management
• practical completion, final certificates and settlement, commissioning and handover.

There are no official estimates of housing construction productivity. So, the Productivity Commission used Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data to create its own new measures to capture productivity across this entire process.

Falling or flat-lining productivity in this sector is a well-known long-term problem. Under the National Housing Accord, the federal government has committed to building 1.2 million new well-located homes by the end of this decade.

But in the first three months since the National Housing Accord was launched, only 44,884 homes were built across Australia. That’s about 15,000 fewer than the required quarterly target of 60,000.

The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council projects that new market housing supply will ultimately come in at about a quarter of a million homes below the accord’s target.

4 key problems

The report identified four key factors behind the malaise:

1. complex, slow approvals, as well as delayed construction certificates and essential infrastructure connections
2. lack of innovation and slow uptake of digital technologies and modern methods of construction
3. the dominance of smaller building firms resulting in low economies-of-scale and project management challenges associated with supply chain fragmentation
4. difficulties attracting and retaining skilled workers resulting in skills and labour shortages.

The report proposes seven reform directions in response. These centre on speeding up the planning approval process, investing in research and development, and increasing workforce flexibility.

Fixing things won’t be simple

The Productivity Commission’s report has brought a welcome focus on planning and approvals as a key element of easing the housing crisis.

It acknowledges that under-resourcing of agencies involved in the approvals process, such as local governments, has made the problem worse.

One issue with increasing the number of planning approvals processed is that you then need to have a construction industry that can build fast enough to keep up with them.

Currently, we don’t. Industry research shows since 2013, the number of workers within Australia’s construction workforce has increased by more than 25%. But they are working 2% fewer hours each year, and achieving an output that’s 25.4% lower.

Keeping an eye on quality

Amid any push to speed up approvals, we need to be mindful of the possible risks. Loosening building regulations can increase the risk of quality problems and inappropriate development.

If widespread across the industry, such problems can cause significant personal and economic harm to households, social and economic costs for society. They can also increase building costs, insurance premiums and strata fees.

This problem calls for a range of tools to reduce the risk of compromising on quality when regulations are loosened or changed. New South Wales has two key pieces of legislation in place that could act as a model for other states.

One allows owners to sue if a person who carries out construction work fails to exercise reasonable care. The other allows the Building Commission to investigate building work and require rectification of defects for up to six years.

NSW also has an independent builder trustworthiness rating scheme. This is known as iCirt and operated by credit rating agency Equifax.

Innovation isn’t a panacea

A major feature of the Productivity Commission’s report discusses the housing construction industry’s low innovation culture.

However, much innovation is hidden from view, since it occurs at the manufacturing stage. And innovation itself is not a panacea.

While calling for greater innovation seems obvious on the surface, research has shown its ability to increase productivity depends on a wide range of factors and is certainly not guaranteed. It can even increase costs and reduce quality and productivity if not managed effectively.

More holistic workforce planning

The report also highlights issues with attracting and retaining a skilled workforce. Issues include low apprenticeship take-up and completion rates, restrictive trade pathways, and large infrastructure projects drawing talent away.

This raises a bigger issue. Despite workforce planning across the industry by the Construction Industry Training Board the industry still seems to be constantly reacting to a skilled labour shortage rather than planning ahead to predict and prevent one.

Read more:
Will new $10,000 apprentice payments help solve job shortages in construction? Not anytime soon

Martin Loosemore 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. Here’s why increasing productivity in housing construction is such a tricky problem to solve – https://theconversation.com/heres-why-increasing-productivity-in-housing-construction-is-such-a-tricky-problem-to-solve-250048

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cristóbal Castro Barrientos, PhD candidate, NZ Policy Research Institute, Auckland University of Technology

Despite Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s reassurance that “some green shoots” are starting to show in the economy, including a 50 point cut in the official cash rate expected to be announced later today, the outlook for 2025 remains uncertain for many – and grim for some.

Unemployment reached 5.1% in the final quarter of 2024, the highest level since 2020, according to the latest data from Stats NZ. That translates to a total of 156,000 unemployed individuals.

At the same time, a 1% decrease in gross domestic product in the third quarter of 2024 puts more pressure on the job market.

While the unemployment rate may not have reached the levels of past crises – the rate exceeded 6% during the 2008-2009 recession – the devil is in the detail.

The Stats NZ data show the most affected sectors include male-dominated occupations such as technicians and machinery operators, accounting for 85% of the latest job losses.

Women have seen smaller declines in employment and a slight increase in transitions to part-time roles. But the shift from full-time to part-time employment, especially among men, suggests the creation of quality full-time jobs will be a challenge.

Job losses concentrated in male-dominated industries also have broader economic implications. They may signal shifts in household income dynamics, particularly for families that depend on a male breadwinner.

It could also contribute to rising male underemployment (when a worker’s job doesn’t fully utilise their skills, education or experience) and further disparities in the employment rates of men and women.

Overall, these trends raise questions about the nature and quality of work now available in the job market, and what strategies the government can respond with.

A rise in ‘discouraged’ workers

In the fourth quarter of 2024, the annualised employment rate (representing the proportion of the working-age population employed over a year, adjusted for seasonal fluctuations) was 67.4%, compared with 69% in the same period of the previous year.

This is the most significant decline since 2009. It reflects job losses and a “discouraged worker” effect.

Discouraged workers are those who have stopped seeking employment due to a perceived lack of opportunities. Instead of remaining in the labour force, they may rely on savings, family support, welfare, or transition into informal or temporary work.

A drop in quality work

The rise in part-time employment, particularly among men, raises concerns about the quality of the labour market. Although employment levels appear stable, the growth of less secure jobs may conceal structural weaknesses.

In the fourth quarter of 2024, the number in part-time employment reached 585,000, the highest figure since 1986. Over the past year, 36,000 men left full-time jobs, while 9,000 transitioned to part-time work.

One of the main risks of this trend is that companies may be cutting costs without resorting to mass layoffs, which implies reduced job security for workers. Many of these transitions to part-time employment are not voluntary but rather a sign that the economy is not generating enough stable job opportunities.

Additionally, part-time jobs often offer lower wages, fewer benefits and fewer opportunities for career advancement.

This type of employment can contribute to stagnation in skill development and reduce workers’ purchasing power, ultimately affecting consumer spending and overall economic growth.

There is also a perception of discrimination against part-time workers, with one in three reporting feeling discriminated against in their jobs.

A year of two halves

While consumer confidence has been low, recent revisions to economic growth estimates suggest the economy hasn’t been as weak as perceived.

Current projections are that unemployment may reach a peak between 5.3% and 5.6% in mid-2025 and then trend downwards.

With inflation now within the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s target range, changes in the official cash rate are needed to contain the damage to a weakened labour market. The central bank is forecast to cut the interest rate by 50-points today.

The weak growth in the working-age population and a potential decline in labour force participation could limit how high unemployment rises, as fewer people may be actively looking for work. But this does not mean a strong recovery is imminent.

New Zealand faces a significant but not insurmountable challenge. An unemployment rate of 5.1% should raise a red flag and is devastating for the increasing number of workers who have lost their jobs. But the data also show the increase is part of an anticipated economic cycle.

What matters is how the government reacts to the increases in unemployment and changes to the job market. A supportive job-creation policy and a coordinated strategy for the most affected sectors will be key in avoiding long-lasting pain in the labour market.

Cristóbal Castro Barrientos 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. Economic ‘green shoots’ and lower interest rates disguise worrying trends in NZ’s job market – https://theconversation.com/economic-green-shoots-and-lower-interest-rates-disguise-worrying-trends-in-nzs-job-market-249685

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pascale Lubbe, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Molecular Ecology, University of Otago

When people arrived on the shores of Aotearoa New Zealand and began to turn the land to their needs, they set in motion great changes.

The landscape of today bears little resemblance to that of a mere thousand years ago. More than 70% of forest cover has been lost since human arrival. Native bush has been replaced by tussocks, scrublands and, most of all, open agricultural land.

These changes affected our birdlife dramatically. Some species, like the moa, were simply hunted to extinction. Others fell directly to mammalian predators. Many species were victims of severe habitat destruction. The loss of suitable habitat remains a key conservation challenge to this day.

However, a changing distribution of plants is not a uniquely modern feature. New Zealand has seen equally radical shifts in habitat before – during the Ice Age, which lasted 2.6 million years and ended about 12,000 years ago.

At its height, parts of the country were up to 6°C colder than today, and glacial ice sheets spread wide fingers across the Southern Alps. The dry, cold climate resulted in widespread grass and scrubland. Forest cover became patchy everywhere except for the northern North Island.

Our new research tracks how bird life responded to these changes – in particular how exotic species took advantage of the shifting landscapes to make New Zealand home.

Ice Age invaders

Native birds responded to the Ice Age in a variety of ways. Kiwi populations became so isolated in forest patches they split into new lineages. Several moa species moved across the landscape, following their shifting habitat.

Some groups adapted, spreading into novel environments. Kea split off from their relatives the kākā, becoming more generalised. This is known as in situ adaptation; an existing group changing its habits or character to deal with new environments.

But where new ecological opportunities arise, species from elsewhere will also come to take advantage of them. Our research uncovers a pulse of colonisation by exotic bird species that coincides with the reduction of forest cover and the expansion of grasslands at the start of the Ice Age some 2.6 million years ago.

These species were primarily generalists, able to take advantage of a variety of habitats. But there was also an influx of birds pre-adapted to more open conditions, such as the ancestors of Haast’s eagle, pūtangitangi (paradise shelduck) and pīhoihoi (pipit).

Where did these “invaders” come from? Principally, from Australia. For millions of years, they have ridden the winds across the Tasman Sea and, occasionally, established breeding colonies on our shores.

Over a long enough time, those new populations evolved to become distinct, endemic New Zealand species found nowhere else on earth. Pīwakawaka (fantail), ruru (morepork), weweia (dabchick) and kakī (black stilt), to name a few, are all descended from Ice Age Australian ancestors.

They arrived in a New Zealand characterised by scrub, tussock and grass during cold glacial periods, followed by slowly expanding forests during warmer interglacials.

History repeats itself

Today, open vistas once again dominate the landscape. This time they were sculpted by humans rather than a cooling climate. The changing environment means new ecological opportunities – and vacancies – have been left by the great number of species that have gone extinct.

Correspondingly, many new species have naturalised on our shores. Welcome swallows, royal spoonbills, Australian coots, spur winged plovers and white-faced herons started making their home here during the 1930s to 50s.

Silvereyes have been here longer, first reported during the 1850s, while glossy ibis and barn owl only started breeding here this century. All likely flew across the Tasman to settle here.

Some arrivals seem to serve as ecological replacements of a kind. The kāhu (swamp harrier) is a stand-in for the now-extinct Eyles’ harrier and Haast’s eagle. The poaka (pied stilt) is a common sight where kakī once dominated. And Australian coots proliferate where New Zealand coots once waded.

Native habitats for native birds

These birds are following ancient patterns and processes. Where new opportunities appear, new organisms will rise to fill them. Our highly modified ecosystems are responding in the only way open to them, with exotic species expanding their range to take advantage of empty ecological niches – job vacancies in the ecosystem.

Indeed, these invasions are likely to become more frequent as species distributions shift in a warming climate. As our native species decline under threats of habitat loss and predation by mammalian pests, they will be ecologically replaced by other species.

Left to their own devices, Aotearoa’s plants and animals will look different in the future. The unique species that have called these islands home for millions of years will increasingly be replaced by more generalist species from elsewhere.

The good news is that in predator-free native bush, endemic birds can outcompete introduced species.

The route to protecting our native species in a fast changing world remains as clear as ever – protect and restore native habitat and eradicate mammalian predators.

Pascale Lubbe currently receives funding from the Marsden Fund.

Michael Knapp has received funding from The Royal Society of New Zealand (Rutherford Discovery Fellowship).

Nic Rawlence receives funding from the Marsden Fund.

– ref. Loss of forests brought new birds to NZ during the last Ice Age – we’re witnessing a similar process now – https://theconversation.com/loss-of-forests-brought-new-birds-to-nz-during-the-last-ice-age-were-witnessing-a-similar-process-now-248523

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Stone, Principal Research Fellow, School of Population and Global Health, The University of Western Australia

Having dense breasts is a clear risk factor for breast cancer. It can also make cancers hard to spot on mammograms.

Yet you might not be aware you have dense breasts, even after mammographic screening.

In Australia, advice for women with dense breasts and their health-care professionals can be inconsistent and confusing.

This is because there’s not currently consensus on whether women who have dense breasts, but no symptoms, benefit from further imaging such as ultrasounds. Concerns include potential cost of these tests and the risk they can produce false positives.

What is breast density?

Breasts are made up of fatty tissue and fibroglandular tissue (including glands that make milk, held together by fibrous tissue).

On a mammogram – an x-ray of the breast – fibroglandular tissue appears white and fatty tissue appears dark. The white areas are referred to as breast density.

A higher proportion of fibroglandular tissue means your breasts are dense.

There are four categories to classify breast density:

• A: almost entirely fatty
• B: scattered areas of fibroglandular density
• C: heterogeneously or consistently dense
• D: extremely dense.

Breast density is very common. Around 40% of women aged 40–74 are estimated to have “dense breasts”, meaning they fall in category C or D.

What’s the link to cancer?

Breast density is associated with the risk of breast cancer in two ways.

First, breast density usually decreases with age. But if a woman has high breast density for her age, it increases her likelihood of breast cancer.

One study looked at the risk of breast cancer over the age of 50. It found there was a 6.2% risk for the one-third of women with the lowest density. For the 5% with the highest density, the risk was 14.7%.

Second, breast density “masks” cancers if they develop. Both cancers and breast density appear white on a mammogram, making cancers very hard to see.

Breast cancer screening saves lives through early detection and improved treatment options. But we don’t yet know if telling women about their breast density leads to earlier cancer detection, or lives saved.

In Australia, screening mammography is free for all women* aged 40 and older. This is run through BreastScreen Australia, a joint national, state and territory initiative. Those aged 50-74 are invited to have a mammogram, but it’s available for free without a referral from age 40.

However, the messages Australian women currently receive about breast density – and whether it’s recorded – depends on where they live.

What does the advice say?

In 2023, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists updated its position statement to recommend breast density is recorded during screening and diagnostic tests in Australia and New Zealand.

Meanwhile BreastScreen Australia says it “should not routinely record breast density or provide supplemental testing for women with dense breasts”. However this position statement is from 2020 and is currently under review.

Some state and territory BreastScreen programs, including in Western Australia, South Australia and soon Victoria, notify women if they have dense breasts. Victoria is currently at an early stage of its roll-out.

While the messaging regarding breast density differs by state, none currently recommend further imaging for women with dense breasts without speaking to a doctor about individual risk.

What are the issues?

Providing recommendations for women with dense breasts is difficult.

The European Society of Breast Imaging recommends women with extremely dense breasts aged 50–70 receive an MRI every two to four years, in addition to screening mammography. This is based on a large randomised controlled trial from the Netherlands.

But the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists describes this recommendation as “aspirational”, acknowledging cost, staffing and accessibility as challenges.

That is, it is not feasible to provide a supplemental MRI for everyone in the screening population in category D with extremely dense breasts (around 10%).

Further, there is no consensus on appropriate screening recommendations for women in the category C (heterogeneous density).

We need a national approach to breast density reporting in Australia and to do better at identifying who is most likely to benefit from further testing.

BreastScreen Australia is currently undergoing a review of its policy and funding.

One of its goals is to enable a nationally consistent approach to breast screening practices. Hopefully breast density reporting, including funding to support national implementation, will be a priority.

*This includes those recorded female at birth and who are gender diverse.

Jennifer Stone receives funding from Cancer Council Western Australia and the NHMRC. She is affiliated with the University of Western Australia and the University of Melbourne. She is Co-chair of the Australian Breast Density Consumer Advisory Council and member of the InforMD Alliance (www.informd.org.au).

– ref. Having dense breasts is linked to cancer. But advice about breast density can depend on where you live – https://theconversation.com/having-dense-breasts-is-linked-to-cancer-but-advice-about-breast-density-can-depend-on-where-you-live-249863

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

The National Anti-Corruption Commission will finally investigate whether six people referred to it by the royal commission into Robodebt engaged in corrupt conduct.

This follows an independent reconsideration by former High Court judge Geoffrey Nettle, who examined the NACC”s original decision not to pursue the referrals.

That decision was highly controversial, bringing a plethora of complaints, and sharp criticism of NACC chief Paul Brereton.

The NACC’s inspector, Gail Furness, found Brereton had not adequately excused himself when the matter was considered. Brereton had delegated the decision-making because he knew one of the people referred professionally, but the inspector found he was still involved in the process.

In its Tuesday statement the NACC said:“The purpose of the investigation is to determine whether or not any of the 6 referred persons engaged in corrupt conduct”.

The names of those referred to the NACC – contained in a sealed section of the royal commission report – were not made public. The sealed section has not been released.

The NACC statement said: “Consistent with its usual practice, the Commission does not publish reasons for commencing an investigation, as doing so may prejudice the investigations, disclose information which the Commission is required by law to keep confidential, compromise investigative pathways and/or unfairly impact reputations and rights of individuals to impartial adjudication.”

The NACC stressed its arrangements would ensure the investigation was “impartial and fair”. Brereton and those deputy commissioners involved in the original decision not to investigate the referrals won’t be part of the investigation.

Robodebt used a flawed system of income averaging to determine debts. The scheme, later found to be illegal, raised $1.76 billion from hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients. But many of the debts were wrong, and eventually the money had to be repaid.

In its findings, the royal commission targeted multiple public officials including ministers who had overseen the scheme (one of them Scott Morrison who as social services minister had been an initiator of it) and public servants.

A number of the bureaucrats who’d been involved with the scheme, including two who had been departmental heads, were later found to have breached the public service code of conduct.

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. NACC belatedly to investigate whether six Robodebt referrals engaged in ‘corrupt conduct’ – https://theconversation.com/nacc-belatedly-to-investigate-whether-six-robodebt-referrals-engaged-in-corrupt-conduct-250145

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

Last week in Europe, the United States sent some very strong messages it is prepared to upend the established global order.

US Vice President JD Vance warned a stunned Munich Security Conference that Europe has an “enemy within”, referring to leaders who ignore their citizens’ concerns and values. He also advocated for right-wing political groups to be brought into the mainstream.

Meanwhile, at a meeting of NATO defence ministers, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth talked about hard power, the warrior ethos and the need for NATO members to spend up to 5% of their GDPs on defence. Most have only just climbed to about 2%, the longstanding NATO guideline.

In Poland, he reaffirmed the US commitment to the defence of Poland (and NATO) and committed to bolstering the US military presence there. So, despite the mixed messaging, the United States is not leaving Europe anytime soon.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is reportedly demanding a significant levy from Ukraine as payback for US protection and support.

The combination of remarks has left pundits and policymakers wondering – is the US-led international order, with its multilateral institutions, nearing its end?

The demise of the rules-based order?

The United States played a leading role in establishing the rules-based international order from the ashes of the second world war.

Critics have decried the UN-related institutions that arose at this time. But the rules-based order is perhaps best viewed as Voltaire saw the Holy Roman Empire: “no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire”. Those proclaiming the demise of the rules-based order should be careful what they wish for.

Such a system of trusted international exchanges barely existed prior to 1945. And while superpowers have carved out many exceptions for themselves, the rules-based order has nonetheless resulted in a time of remarkable stability and prosperity for the world.

So, why would the United States now appear to be retreating from this arrangement? The declining centrality of US influence goes some way to explain this.

China’s rise and the rise of Trump

To place the current events in proper context, we need to go back 25 years, when China joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

This move was supported by and facilitated by then US President Bill Clinton in a belief that market liberalisation would eventually lead to political liberalisation.

Since then, China’s growth has skyrocketed thanks to its ready access to global markets. But it’s retained a strong mercantilist approach, counter to the spirit of the WTO. This has generated much resentment and nervousness among Western powers about the changing global power balance.

Since Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012, in particular, China has taken on an adversarial position to the rules-based order, following its own set of rules.

In effect, the world got neither the political nor the trade liberalisation that it once sought from China. Rather, the rules as they applied in China (and to an extent in Russia) allowed state-owned enterprises to co-opt – if not outright steal – technology shared by their international industry partners.

Foreign companies were squeezed out of China and had difficulty competing with lower-priced Chinese products at home.

Trump’s rise is, in part, a reaction to these developments. During his first term from 2017–20, Trump fitfully attempted to take a retaliatory, transactional approach to international relations. Now, as he begins his second term, he has a much more clear-eyed plan of action.

What Trump expects now

What became startlingly clear at the Munich Security Conference was Trump’s new vision of transactional alliances with America’s traditional partners.

In his view, the United States is not so much retreating into isolationism as much as it’s acting as a great power with its own economic interests at heart. Trump is eager for the US to assert its place in a world where spheres of influence matter as much – if not more – than any particular set of rules.

Evidently, the US is no longer advocating for multilateralism, in which states cooperate as equals. Now, it’s focused more on multi-polarity – a world with several great powers, in which the US puts its own interests first. As Trump frequently reminds us, “America First”.

According to this world view, allies and adversaries have equally been taking unfair advantage of:

• America’s famous openness (notably its borders)
• its liberal trade policies (which, according to Trump, has led to the de-industrialisation of the American heartland).

Its allies have also taken advantage of the generosity of its security umbrella, leading to their cavalier approach to security.

The Trump administration’s remedy to all of this involves doling out sanctimonious advice. An example of this: Vance telling European allies they should unwind their relaxed immigration policies.

It’s also doling out some tough medicine, apparently trying to provoke a reaction in European capitals so they significantly increase their defence spending. This would enable the US to step back from being Europe’s security guarantor and finally undertake its long-talked-about pivot to Asia and focus on its main adversary: China.

Russia evidently features as part of this plan. Trump appears intent to try to cleave Russia from its Chinese embrace in order to either isolate or weaken China. A hard-nosed deal with Russia over Ukraine may well be the price he’s willing to pay to make that happen.

For America’s close security and economic partners, this presents an unprecedented challenge. The old preconceptions and expectations no longer seem to apply. What’s important now is not so much America’s shared values with Europe, it’s their overlapping interests.

For America’s allies, as well as its adversaries, this is going to require some hard thinking and new strategies, both economically and militarily.

John Blaxland 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. Trump’s view of the world is becoming clear: America’s interests matter more than any set of rules – https://theconversation.com/trumps-view-of-the-world-is-becoming-clear-americas-interests-matter-more-than-any-set-of-rules-250144

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

The Reserve Bank has delivered the expected modest rate cut of a quarter of a percentage point, and we’re set for the predictable frenzy of speculation about an April election.

The cut is unlikely to be a major vote changer, after 13 increases. But it was absolutely vital to the government. Labor would have suffered a big knock if Michele Bullock and her board had held out.

The cut underpins the narrative of things improving, and may put voters in a better mood. At least that’s the government’s thinking.

But the bank is highly circumspect in its tone. It warned in its statement:

The forecasts published today suggest that, if monetary policy is eased too much too soon, disinflation could stall, and inflation would settle above the midpoint of the target range. In removing a little of the policy restrictiveness in its decision today, the Board acknowledges that progress has been made but is cautious about the outlook.

Speculation about the election date is a frustrating exercise, given only Anthony Albanese – and perhaps a few closest to him – knows his thinking, which could still be, as he suggested recently, “fluid”. In recent days the PM has played the tease. Periodically he talks about the intense work on budget, set for March 25; if that went ahead, it would mean a May election. But last week, he was also talking about parliament having seen its last day, which pointed to April.

It is hard to see the logic of Albanese launching a campaign before the March 8 Western Australian election, given that would be confusing for both state and federal campaigns and put maximum pressure on Labor’s WA volunteers. If Albanese opts for April 12, he would have to call it immediately after the WA poll.

Many in the business world would like the election done and dusted ASAP, because the pre-election period means a hiatus of sorts.

The opinion polls can be read various ways, but as things stand, they point to a minority government.

This is already putting pressure on crossbenchers, notably the teals, to indicate what factors they’d take into account in deciding who they’d support. The Coalition, if it reached about 72 seats (76 is a majority), would be eyeing off crossbenchers Bob Katter, Rebekha Sharkie, Allegra Spender and Dai Le as potentials to guarantee them confidence and supply. Of course that would assume they all were re-elected.

But this is putting several carts before the horse. Much will happen in the next few weeks, whether the election is April or May. Current polls that make predictions down to individual seats should be treated with much caution.

While the polls are presently depressing for Labor, this week’s Newspoll had a finding on inflation that might cheer treasurer Jim Chalmers. It found that less than a quarter of people believe inflation would have been lower under a Coalition government. In other words, while high prices are making voters sour, that is not necessarily directly translating into blame for Labor.

When the campaign proper is underway, the smallest things can blow up in leaders’ faces.

Albanese failed to remember key numbers in 2022. He had enough fat so his generally lackluster performance didn’t matter in the end. Dutton is yet to be campaign-tested. Rather disconcertingly for his handlers, in his Sky interview last Sunday he forgot deputy prime minister Richard Marles had just been in Washington.

Meanwhile Dutton is hard at work humanising his image in a series of interviews, and the obligatory 60 Minutes family get together with Karl Stefanovic (who did the Meet the Morrisons – the Duttons-at-home came without an musical performance).

Albanese worked hard at this before the last election, repeating over and over his story of being brought up in council housing, son of a single mother.

Dutton’s more complicated back story involves a stint as a youngster in a butcher’s shop, buying a house at 19, an early divorce, and a failed relationship that produced a baby who became his first child in his second marriage. And of course his career as a policeman.

One can imagine that some of these memories are painful to have to canvas in public, but the campaign’s hard heads say the public want to know all about a potential PM. So it has to be done.

(One Dutton incident is rarely recalled these days, that involved a temporary loss of political nerve. In 2009, after a redistribution made his seat of Dickson notionally Labor, Dutton sought to jump to the Gold Coast seat of McPherson. But he was beaten in a preselection by Karen Andrews, who is retiring at this election. That forced him back to Dickson, which he then held at the 2010 election.)

Albanese does not need to canvass his backstory as much these days but he took advantage of Valentine’s day to put out some sentimental social media fodder.

He and fiancé Jodie (to whom he proposed on Valentine’s day last year) sat, with Toto between them, turning over cards with questions said to be posed by the public. With each question (such as “who said I love you first”) they pointed to each other or themselves.

Opinion was divided about the video. Toto fell into the sceptics’ camp, jumping to the ground before it was finished.

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. View from the Hill: will Albanese opt for an April election now a rate cut has him breathing more easily? – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-will-albanese-opt-for-an-april-election-now-a-rate-cut-has-him-breathing-more-easily-250136

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

The Reserve Bank cut official interest rates on Tuesday, the first decrease in four years, saying inflationary pressures are easing “a little more quickly than expected”.

However, the central bank said the outlook for economic activity and inflation remains uncertain, with a risk that household spending may be slower than expected.

The reduction in the cash rate target will come as a relief to the one-third of households with a mortgage. It will help to ease the cost of living crisis for them.

The cut from a 13-year high of 4.35% to 4.1% had been widely expected by economists and financial markets.

The interest rate cut may help tip the scales for the government to call an early election. But recent opinion polls suggest the government still has work to do to put itself in a winning position.

Announcing its decision, the Reserve Bank said it had “more confidence that inflation is moving sustainably towards the midpoint of the 2-3% target”.

All four of the major banks swiftly passed on the cut in official rates to mortgage-holders. The average new housing loan is $666,000. Reducing the interest rate on this by 0.25% will mean $110 less a month in repayments (assuming a standard 30-year loan).

It is the first change in the cash rate since November 2023 and marks the first small reversal of 13 rate increases. The central bank had hiked interest rates quickly from the near-zero emergency level during the COVID epidemic and lockdowns.

Why did the Reserve Bank cut now?

The interest rate cut comes after headline inflation eased, to 2.4% during 2024, within the Bank’s 2-3% inflation target range.

However, the Bank’s preferred measure of underlying inflation, the “trimmed mean”, which excludes temporary factors such as the government’s electricity rebates, rose by 3.2% during 2024. This is just above the target range but a little less than the 3.4% the Bank had been forecasting.

“We cannot declare victory on inflation just yet,” Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock told a press conference after the decision. “It’s not good enough for it to be back in the target range temporarily, the board needs to be confident it’s returning to the target range sustainably.”

Read more:
Lower inflation in the December quarter boosts chances of an interest rate cut

The RBA and the election

In its first meeting for the year, the Reserve Bank board rejected the notion that they should hold off changing rates because an election is approaching.

While cutting interest rates will suit one side of politics, not cutting would have benefited the other. The impartial approach is to take the same decision as if no election were looming.

As then RBA governor Glenn Stevens said in 2007 after raising rates during an election campaign:

I do not think we ever could accept the idea that in an election year — which, after all, is one year out of three — you cannot change interest rates.

How does the Reserve Bank compare with other central banks?

Some central banks in comparable economies had already started lowering interest rates and have cut them by more than the RBA. But that is because most had raised interest rates by more.

The Reserve Bank adopted a strategy of being more patient in returning inflation to its target, so as to limit the increase in unemployment.

The strategy has worked. Unemployment in Australia peaked at 4.2% and is now 4.0%. By contrast, in New Zealand it is over 5% and in the euro area and Canada it is over 6%.

The Reserve Bank hasn’t received the credit it deserves for this strong performance.

Where to from here?

This is the last meeting of the current Reserve Bank board. It is being replaced by a new monetary policy committee, and a separate governance board as part of an overhaul of the bank. Two new members will replace two members of the current board for its next meeting on April 1.

The RBA board’s statement said that it “remains cautious on prospects for further policy easing”. This is central bank-speak for not rushing into further interest rate cuts.

The RBA also noted that “geopolitical and policy uncertainties are pronounced”. This is a reference to the economic fallout from United States President Donald Trump’s policies on trade and slashing jobs.

His proposed tariffs and deportations will increase inflation in the US and make US interest rates higher than they otherwise would be.

Read more:
What would a second Trump presidency mean for the global economy?

But this does not mean interest rates need to be higher here. Indeed, a trade war would weaken the global economy, which could lead to less inflation in Australia.

The Reserve Bank also released its updated forecasts. These show the underlying inflation rate dropping to 2.7% by June and then staying around there through 2026 and 2027.

Unemployment is low at 4%, and below what the Bank has previously regarded as “full employment”. But it is not leading to any surge in wage growth.

Indeed, the Bank commented that wages growth has been a little lower than it had forecast. Inflationary expectations are also well contained.

This offers hope there may be at least one further interest rate cut later this year (and the Reserve Bank’s forecasts assume this). But borrowers should not get their hopes up that interest rates will revisit the COVID-era lows. That is very unlikely.

John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist at the Reserve Bank.

– ref. The Reserve Bank has cut rates for the first time in four years. But it is cautious about future cuts – https://theconversation.com/the-reserve-bank-has-cut-rates-for-the-first-time-in-four-years-but-it-is-cautious-about-future-cuts-249704

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

The Reserve Bank has delivered the expected modest rate cut of a quarter of a percentage point, and we’re set for the predictable frenzy of speculation about an April election.

The cut is unlikely to be a major vote changer, after 13 increases. But it was absolutely vital to the government. Labor would have suffered a big knock if Michele Bullock and her board had held out.

The cut underpins the narrative of things improving, and may put voters in a better mood. At least that’s the government’s thinking.

But the bank is highly circumspect in its tone. It warned in its statement:

The forecasts published today suggest that, if monetary policy is eased too much too soon, disinflation could stall, and inflation would settle above the midpoint of the target range. In removing a little of the policy restrictiveness in its decision today, the Board acknowledges that progress has been made but is cautious about the outlook.

Speculation about the election date is a frustrating exercise, given only Anthony Albanese – and perhaps a few closest to him – knows his thinking, which could still be, as he suggested recently, “fluid”. In recent days the PM has played the tease. Periodically he talks about the intense work on budget, set for March 25; if that went ahead, it would mean a May election. But last week, he was also talking about parliament having seen its last day, which pointed to April.

It is hard to see the logic of Albanese launching a campaign before the March 8 Western Australian election, given that would be confusing for both state and federal campaigns and put maximum pressure on Labor’s WA volunteers. If Albanese opts for April 12, he would have to call it immediately after the WA poll.

Many in the business world would like the election done and dusted ASAP, because the pre-election period means a hiatus of sorts.

The opinion polls can be read various ways, but as things stand, they point to a minority government.

This is already putting pressure on crossbenchers, notably the teals, to indicate what factors they’d take into account in deciding who they’d support. The Coalition, if it reached about 72 seats (76 is a majority), would be eyeing off crossbenchers Bob Katter, Rebekha Sharkie, Allegra Spender and Dai Le as potentials to guarantee them confidence and supply. Of course that would assume they all were re-elected.

But this is putting several carts before the horse. Much will happen in the next few weeks, whether the election is April or May. Current polls that make predictions down to individual seats should be treated with much caution.

While the polls are presently depressing for Labor, this week’s Newspoll had a finding on inflation that might cheer treasurer Jim Chalmers. It found that less than a quarter of people believe inflation would have been lower under a Coalition government. In other words, while high prices are making voters sour, that is not necessarily directly translating into blame for Labor.

When the campaign proper is underway, the smallest things can blow up in leaders’ faces.

Albanese failed to remember key numbers in 2022. He had enough fat so his generally lackluster performance didn’t matter in the end. Dutton is yet to be campaign-tested. Rather disconcertingly for his handlers, in his Sky interview last Sunday he forgot deputy prime minister Richard Marles had just been in Washington.

Meanwhile Dutton is hard at work humanising his image in a series of interviews, and the obligatory 60 Minutes family get together with Karl Stefanovic (who did the Meet the Morrisons – the Duttons-at-home came without an musical performance).

Albanese worked hard at this before the last election, repeating over and over his story of being brought up in council housing, son of a single mother.

Dutton’s more complicated back story involves a stint as a youngster in a butcher’s shop, buying a house at 19, an early divorce, and a failed relationship that produced a baby who became his first child in his second marriage. And of course his career as a policeman.

One can imagine that some of these memories are painful to have to canvas in public, but the campaign’s hard heads say the public want to know all about a potential PM. So it has to be done.

(One Dutton incident is rarely recalled these days, that involved a temporary loss of political nerve. In 2009, after a redistribution made his seat of Dickson notionally Labor, Dutton sought to jump to the Gold Coast seat of McPherson. But he was beaten in a preselection by Karen Andrews, who is retiring at this election. That forced him back to Dickson, which he then held at the 2010 election.)

Albanese does not need to canvass his backstory as much these days but he took advantage of Valentine’s day to put out some sentimental social media fodder.

He and fiancé Jodie (to whom he proposed on Valentine’s day last year) sat, with Toto between them, turning over cards. with questions said to be posed by the public. With each question (such as “who said I love you first”) they pointed to each other or themselves.

Opinion was divided about the video. Toto fell into the sceptics’ camp, jumping to the ground before it was finished.

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. View from the Hill: will Albanese opt for an April election now that a rates cut has him breathing more easily? – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-will-albanese-opt-for-an-april-election-now-that-a-rates-cut-has-him-breathing-more-easily-250136

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Allan Fels, Professor Allan Fels, Professor of Law, Economics and Business at the University of Melbourne and Monash University., The University of Melbourne

Australia is creeping towards adding a divestiture power to its Competition and Consumer Act.

Under such a law, the courts, on the recommendation of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, could break a firm into parts.

Divestiture is currently used in Australia when the competition and consumer commission considers proposed mergers. Often it will only approve a merger when certain parts of the business are broken up to prevent monopolies.

It has also been used to deal with abuse of market power by electricity providers.

Under the proposed change, a company with substantial market power which breaches the Consumer and Competition Act may be forced to divest assets to restore balance and ensure the market is competitive. This would reduce the possibility of consumers being over-charged.

The Coalition has already proposed breaking up the major supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths which have been long-accused of price gouging customers.

On Sunday, Coalition leader Peter Dutton signalled he was likely to introduce divestiture if elected to stop insurers from “ripping off” customers by charging exorbitant premiums or refusing to pay claims.

Premiums have soared by 16.4% in the last year as Australia has been hit by major floods and bushfires. Climate Valuation analysts last month warned one in ten properties could be uninsurable by 2035.

Repeating his position on Monday, Dutton said:

If we have a situation where people are being priced out of insurance or they’re deemed an uninsurable risk when they shouldn’t be, that is a failure of the market and we’ll respond accordingly to that.

He said insurance companies had to be responsible corporate citizens and work with their customers.

We’re not going to have a situation where people can’t afford insurance or they’re being priced out of products.

Previously the Morrison government enacted laws which enabled a breakup of energy companies in certain circumstances.

Labor has not supported a divestiture power. One reason is the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association has opposed such measures.

The case for divestiture

In principle there is a strong case for a divestiture law.

Monopolies and market power stem from an industry being highly concentrated. Often the only way to prevent them from misusing their monopoly is to break them up. The solution could be left to the market or to price regulation or other remedies but these do not address the source of the problem.

A divestiture power has long existed in the United States. It was used to break up oil, cigarettes, and chemicals in the early days of antitrust law. In the mid-80s it was successfully used to break up the AT&T telephone monopoly. AT&T controlled both long distance and local calls before it was broken up.

But divestiture is only occasionally used and only when stringent criteria are satisfied.

Some 20 years ago the US Department of Justice proposed a breakup of Microsoft – the case was never finalised because of procedural problems. However, the Federal Court laid out many prerequisites before this drastic remedy could occur.

The power has been used in a number of other OECD countries including the United Kingdom.

When divesting is necessary

There has been heavy use in Australia of divestiture powers to break up gas and electricity monopolies in the last 30 years

And there is a strong case for making it a general remedy available for all industries, even though its use would be infrequent.

Importantly, the availability of this sanction would provide an incentive for firms to comply with abuse of market power provisions of the competition law. These provisions are intended to stop powerful businesses from deterring competition by making it difficult for new entrants to join the market.

The sanctions for this part of the law currently are very weak. Fines are rarely imposed and if they are, they are small and seen as a cost of doing business to be weighed up against the benefits of anti-competitive behaviour.

Another reason is that cases take many years. For example, the ACCC case v Safeway 19 years ago took seven years before a court resolution.

A divestiture power would make firms far more careful before breaching the law.

Too ‘Russian’?

Occasionally people question the desirability of this power on the grounds it is the sort of thing you would only see in a country like Russia.

In an ABC interview last February, Prime Minister Albanese said:

We have a private sector economy in Australia and not a command and control economy […]We’re not the old Soviet Union. What we have the power to do is to encourage competition and encouraging new entrants.

However, most observers agree one of the big failures of the Soviet economy has been failure to divest monopolies in energy, transport and other parts of the economy.

The Coalition’s adoption of a divestiture remedy in three industries is welcome. We need at some point to move to a divestiture power that is available for the whole economy.

Allan Fels is a former chair of the ACCC.

– ref. What is divestiture and how would it stop insurance companies ‘ripping off’ customers? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-divestiture-and-how-would-it-stop-insurance-companies-ripping-off-customers-250036

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arjen Vaartjes, PhD Student, Quantum Physics, UNSW Sydney

What makes something quantum? This question has kept a small but dedicated fraction of the world’s population – most of them quantum physicists – up at night for decades.

At very small scales, we know the universe is made up of waves and energy fields ruled by the laws of quantum mechanics, but at the scale of the everyday world around us we mostly see solid objects following the older rules of classical mechanics. When we ask what makes something quantum, we are asking where the line is between these two realms and how it can be drawn.

In a new study published in Newton, we answer this question in a previously undiscovered way. We show that a single spinning particle can show indubitable evidence of quantum behaviour.

The discovery of spin

One hundred years ago, Dutch physicists Samuel Goudsmit and George Uhlenbeck proposed the idea that most tiny particles never really stand still. Instead, they suggested, electrons – elementary particles that form the outer shell of atoms – behave like minuscule spinning tops.

The spin can be either clockwise or anticlockwise, or what physicists call “spin up” and “spin down”. This binary nature of spinning electrons means that they can be used as building blocks for quantum computers.

However, in 1925 Goudsmit and Uhlenbeck’s spinning electron proposal caused an uproar in the physics establishment. At this time, physics was shaped by illustrious names such as Albert Einstein, Max Planck and Paul Ehrenfest, who laid the groundwork for the grand theories of relativity and quantum mechanics that transformed our understanding of the universe.

After eminent physicist and Nobel laureate Hendrik Lorentz criticised the spin theory, Uhlenbeck got cold feet and wanted to retract the paper. Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit’s mentor Ehrenfest told them to persist, writing: “You are both young enough to be able to afford a stupidity!”

Old ideas still remain

This kind of resistance to new ideas is not unusual in physics. As Planck put it, science progresses one funeral at a time.

Much like the scepticism about the discovery of spinning electrons, today many physicists are educated with a misconception about how spin works. Conventional wisdom, still taught in standard textbooks, tells us that spin is a quantum property that is essential to understanding the behaviour of electrons and nuclei. But at the same time, the textbooks say the rotation of the particle is still somehow perfectly described by classical physics.

Tsirelson’s forgotten protocol

A similar consideration applies to another textbook system, the harmonic oscillator (e.g. a pendulum). According to a 1927 theorem by Paul Ehrenfest, the way a quantum pendulum swings is indistinguishable from a swing in the park.

Strikingly, almost 80 years later the Russian-Israeli physicist Boris Tsirelson had an idea showing that it is possible to discern a quantum pendulum from a swing in the park, provided the quantum system is prepared in a truly quantum state. At the time, Tsirelson’s paper attracted little notice.

Another 15 years later, the research team of Valerio Scarani in Singapore resurfaced Tsirelson’s paper from the depths of the internet. Scarani’s student Zaw Lin Htoo extended Tsirelson’s idea, proving theoretically that it actually was possible to detect quantumness in the rotation of a spin.

Bigger particles and Schrödinger’s cat

Our team at the University of New South Wales decided to take on the challenge and prove the quantumness of a spin in a real experiment. However, we couldn’t do it with a simple spin like an electron. Because an electron is so small, it only has two possible spin states: up and down. Again defying widespread intuition, it turns out that an electron spin can only be prepared in quasi-classical states, which obey the old textbook predictions.

Instead we used a much larger particle, the nucleus of an antimony atom. The spin of this particle can point in eight different directions, instead of just two.

We were able to place the atom in a so-called “Schrödinger’s cat” state, in which it is in a superposition of two widely different spin directions at once.

We then performed the Tsirelson-Scarani protocol, which involves measuring not just the average orientation of the spin, but the positivity of it – a very different kind of measurement to what is done in standard spin resonance setups. This experiment showed unquestionable evidence for the quantumness of the antimony’s spin.

What’s next?

Our study is important for discovering fundamental truths about the universe, and for providing clarity on what it means to “be quantum”. However, it may also have real-life applications.

The states that we demonstrated to be quantum with the Tsirelson-Scarani protocol are exactly the kind of thing that give quantum computation and quantum sensing an advantage over classical counterparts. In the future we will focus making the most of these systems for use in technological applications.

Arjen Vaartjes receives funding from the Sydney Quantum Academy.

Andrea Morello receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Department of Defence, and the US Army Research Office.

– ref. New experiments finally prove a long-forgotten theory about how quantum particles spin – https://theconversation.com/new-experiments-finally-prove-a-long-forgotten-theory-about-how-quantum-particles-spin-250059

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary Anne Kenny, Associate Professor, School of Law, Murdoch University

Australia’s minister for home affairs announced on Sunday that the federal government has struck a deal with Nauru to “resettle” three non-citizens from what’s come to be known as the “NZYQ cohort”.

The NZYQ cohort is a group of people released from long-term immigration detention after the High Court’s NZYQ 2023 decision.

The court found their ongoing detention was unconstitutional where there was no reasonable prospect of removing them to another country. This led to the release of over 200 people from detention, the majority of whom had previously had visas cancelled on character grounds or had committed crimes.

This new deal with Nauru has significant implications.

What happened on the weekend?

According to the home affairs minister, three people from the NZYQ group have now been granted 30-year visas by Nauru, and will soon be removed to that country.

The minister said all three have criminal histories. One has been convicted of murder.

Nauru may accept more people from the NZYQ cohort, referring to these people as “the first three”. The minister says he expects a legal challenge to their removal.

Read more:
High Court reasons on immigration ruling pave way for further legislation

Why it is this development significant?

Once a non-citizen has had their visa cancelled on criminal grounds, they are often deported to their country of origin after serving their prison sentence.

However, the individuals in the NZYQ group cannot be returned to their country of origin. That could be because international law prevents Australia returning them to places where they may face harm (a principle known as “non-refoulement”).

Or, they may have no recognised nationality and no country to accept them.

This raises the question of what should be done with them after they complete their prison sentence.

Up until the decision in NZYQ, people in this situation were simply kept in immigration detention. It was often almost impossible to get another country to accept them.

The Australian government tried to get many other countries to accept the man at the centre of the NZYQ case. This person, a stateless Rohingnya man given the pseudonym NZYQ, had been convicted of a serious crime.

The High Court noted no country had a standard practice of resettling people in situations such as this. It noted the immigration department had never successfully transferred such a person to a third country (in other words, to a place that was not Australia, and not their country of origin).

The Nauru deal announced on the weekend is an important development, in part because it is the first significant use of new migration laws rushed through late last year.

What do the new migration laws allow?

These laws aimed to respond to concerns around the NZYQ cohort being released into the community.

The new laws allow the government to transfer non-citizens to third countries, in this case Nauru, under “third country reception arrangements.”

The details of these agreements are left entirely to the discretion of government. The laws grant broad powers to remove people and provide payments to those third countries.

People who may be removed to a third country include those in the NZYQ group who, since the High Court decision, have been living in the community on bridging visas.

Why are some concerned?

A major issue is the uncertainty surrounding the rights and support of individuals sent to Nauru.

It’s unclear how or whether these people will be able to get housing and access to work, or how they might be treated in a country with high unemployment. Some may have family members in Australia and may be separated indefinitely from them.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has raised significant concerns around what it calls “externalisation” of international protection obligations without adequate protection safeguards or standards of treatment.

Externalisation, it says, can lead to

indefinite “warehousing” of asylum-seekers in isolated places, exposing them to indirect refoulement and other dangers.

The UN Human Rights Committee has also said that outsourcing operations to another country did not absolve Australia of accountability and its human rights obligations.

A possible precedent

A final concern is the precedent this agreement with Nauru sets for how other countries may treat refugees with criminal convictions.

Australia’s model of offshore processing has already been used as a reference by other countries, including the UK.

With the growing international debate about managing refugees with criminal convictions, this arrangement may end up being replicated elsewhere.

The lack of safeguards for people in third countries, such as Nauru, could mean refugees and asylum seekers are transferred without proper protection, exposing them to further harm.

How do other countries handle cases like this?

It is not uncommon for countries to send criminal deportees to their home countries. But in situations where people are stateless or cannot be sent home due to a fear of serious harm, countries either have to allow the person to remain or seek an alternative country to send them to.

However, it remains very hard for countries to convince other countries to accept people who have criminal convictions.

Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to prepare a detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in order to hold up to 30,000 “high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States”.

Exact details of the arrangement remain unclear and the plan has been criticised by a range of human rights groups and legal organisations.

What are the alternatives to Australia’s Nauru plan?

Other countries have established systems for managing non-citizens who are not entitled to protection or whose visas have been revoked due to criminal offences, ensuring they are not detained indefinitely.

After completing their prison sentences, these individuals are typically released into the community, where domestic law enforcement handles any further offending.

Neglecting to address offending behaviour or rehabilitation within the Australian system – whether during imprisonment, detention, or in the community – and then deporting individuals to developing countries doesn’t really solve the problem.

It simply means we are externalising the problem to a poorer country.

Mary Anne Kenny has received funding from the ARC. She is a member of the Migration Institute of Australia and the Law Council of Australia and an affiliate of the UNSW Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. She previously was an independent advisor to the governments of Australia and Nauru as part of the Joint Advisory Committee on Nauru between 2012 – 2016.

Lisa van Toor receives funding from Research Training Plan (RTP) scholarship for her PhD. She is currently a PhD student with the UNSW Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. She previously was a Judge’s Associate in the Supreme Court of Nauru between 2018-2019. Lisa is a member of the Greens WA.

– ref. Australia is deporting 3 non-citizens from the ‘NZYQ’ group to Nauru. What could it do instead? – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-deporting-3-non-citizens-from-the-nzyq-group-to-nauru-what-could-it-do-instead-250053

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt Fitzpatrick, Professor in International History, Flinders University

Ukraine has not been invited to a key meeting between American and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia this week to decide what peace in the country might look like.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine will “never accept” any decisions in talks without its participation to end Russia’s three-year war in the country.

A decision to negotiate the sovereignty of Ukrainians without them – as well as US President Donald Trump’s blatantly extortionate attempt to claim half of Ukraine’s rare mineral wealth as the price for ongoing US support – reveals a lot about how Trump sees Ukraine and Europe.

But this is not the first time large powers have colluded to negotiate new borders or spheres of influence without the input of the people who live there.

Such high-handed power politics rarely ends well for those affected, as these seven historical examples show.

1. The Scramble for Africa

In the winter of 1884–85, German leader Otto von Bismarck invited the powers of Europe to Berlin for a conference to formalise the division of the entire African continent among them. Not a single African was present at the conference that would come to be known as “The Scramble for Africa”.

Among other things, the conference led to the creation of the Congo Free State under Belgian control, the site of colonial atrocities that killed millions.

Germany also established the colony of German South West Africa (present-day Namibia), where the first genocide of the 20th century was later perpetrated against its colonised peoples.

2. The Tripartite Convention

It wasn’t just Africa that was divided up this way. In 1899, Germany and the United States held a conference and forced an agreement on the Samoans to split their islands between the two powers.

This was despite the Samoans expressing a desire for either self-rule or a confederation of Pacific states with Hawai’i.

As “compensation” for missing out in Samoa, Britain received uncontested primacy over Tonga.

German Samoa came under the rule of New Zealand after the first world war and remained a territory until 1962. American Samoa (in addition to several other Pacific islands) remain US territories to this day.

3. The Sykes-Picot Agreement

As the first world war was well under way, British and French representatives sat down to agree how they’d divide up the Ottoman Empire after it was over. As an enemy power, the Ottomans were not invited to the talks.

Together, England’s Mark Sykes and France’s François Georges-Picot redrew the Middle East’s borders in line with their nations’ interests.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement ran counter to commitments made in a series of letters known as the Hussein-McMahon correspondence. In these letters, Britain promised to support Arab independence from Turkish rule.

Read more:
What was the Sykes-Picot agreement, and why does it still affect the Middle East today?

The Sykes-Picot Agreement also ran counter to promises Britain made in the Balfour Declaration to back Zionists who wanted to build a new Jewish homeland in Ottoman Palestine.

The agreement became the wellspring of decades of conflict and colonial misrule in the Middle East, the consequences of which continue to be felt today.

4. The Munich Agreement

In September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier met with Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, and Germany’s Adolf Hitler to sign what became known as the Munich Agreement.

The leaders sought to prevent the spread of war throughout Europe after Hitler’s Nazis had fomented an uprising and began attacking the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland. They did this under the pretext of protecting German minorities. No Czechoslovakians were invited to the meeting.

The meeting is still seen by many as the “Munich Betrayal” – a classic example of a failed appeasement of a belligerent power in the false hope of staving off war.

5. The Évian Conference

In 1938, 32 countries met in Évian-les-Bains, France, to decide how to deal with Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany.

Before the conference started, Britain and the US had agreed not to put pressure on one another to lift the quota of Jews they would accept in either the US or British Palestine.

While Golda Meir (the future Israeli leader) attended the conference as an observer, neither she nor any other representatives of the Jewish people were permitted to take part in the negotiations.

The attendees largely failed to come to an agreement on accepting Jewish refugees, with the exception of the Dominican Republic. And most Jews in Germany were unable to leave before Nazism reached its genocidal nadir in the Holocaust.

6. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

As Hitler planned his invasion of Eastern Europe, it became clear his major stumbling block was the Soviet Union. His answer was to sign a disingenuous non-aggression treaty with the USSR.

The treaty, named after Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop (the Soviet and German foreign ministers), ensured the Soviet Union would not respond when Hitler invaded Poland. It also carved up Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres. This allowed the Soviets to expand into Romania and the Baltic states, attack Finland and take its own share of Polish territory.

Unsurprisingly, some in Eastern Europe view the current US-Russia talks over Ukraine’s future as a revival of this kind of secret diplomacy that divided the smaller nations of Europe between large powers in the second world war.

7. The Yalta Conference

With the defeat of Nazi Germany imminent, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and US President Franklin D Roosevelt met in 1945 to decide the fate of postwar Europe. This meeting came to be known as the Yalta Conference.

Alongside the Potsdam Conference several months later, Yalta created the political architecture that would lead to the Cold War division of Europe.

At Yalta, the “big three” decided on the division of Germany, while Stalin was also offered a sphere of interest in Eastern Europe.

This took the form of a series of politically controlled buffer states in Eastern Europe, a model some believe Putin is aiming to emulate today in eastern and southeastern Europe.

Matt Fitzpatrick receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the History Council of South Australia.

– ref. Ukraine isn’t invited to its own peace talks. History is full of such examples – and the results are devastating – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-isnt-invited-to-its-own-peace-talks-history-is-full-of-such-examples-and-the-results-are-devastating-250049

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Mudgway, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Canterbury

Yesterday’s revelation of a 2023 standoff between the Human Rights Commission and New Zealand’s internet safety agencies highlights lingering concern about the current online safety code.

According to the report from RNZ, the commission told NZ Tech and Netsafe that social media companies X Corp. and Meta failed to protect former prime minister Jacinda Ardern from misogynistic and dehumanising violence across their platforms.

The commission’s claim that the Code of Practice for Online Safety and Harms was not fit for purpose apparently drew a sharp legal response from the agencies, which argued the commission showed bias and had overstepped its remit.

But the historical incident raises important questions New Zealand has yet to grapple with properly.

Established in 2022, the code is a voluntary set of commitments co-designed with the technology industry, including some social media companies such as Meta and X-Corp.

Companies become signatories to the code and agree to its commitments. The current signatories are Meta, Google, TikTok, Twitch and X Corp.

Among other provisions, the code asks signatories to take steps to reduce harmful content on their platforms or services, including harassment (where there is an intent to cause harm), hate speech (which includes sexist hate speech), incitement of violence and disinformation.

The code is not legally enforceable. Compliance relies on willingness to adopt such measures. But there is an accountability structure in the form of an oversight committee. The public can lodge complaints with the committee if they believe signatories have breached the code, and the committee can remove a signatory from the code.

When it was launched, the code received some international acclaim as an example of best practice for digital safety. But its critics argued that because it was co-written with social media companies, the commitments were not as strong or effective as they might have been.

Is the code effective?

Last year, Netsafe rang the alarm about increasing rates of online misogyny and violent extremism, including the targeting of public figures and politicians.

This raises obvious questions about the code’s effectiveness. Since the Human Rights Commission cited the extreme online violence directed at Jacinda Ardern, former Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman has spoken about the violent online misogyny and racism she experienced while in office.

These forms of gender-based violence are a breach of women’s human rights. They also lead to women politicians self-censoring, avoiding social media, and generally having less contact with the public.

Some overseas studies have shown prolonged exposure to online violence has led to women MPs leaving office sooner than planned. Overall, online harm endangers representative democracy and breaches women’s rights to participate in politics.

The human rights implications also mean the New Zealand government has legal duties under international treaties to prevent online gender-based violence.

The United Nations has also called on social media companies to do more to prevent the spread of racial hatred. As such, it is a function of the Human Rights Commission to promote and monitor compliance with international standards.

NZ is out of step internationally

In its current form, the code is not effective. Its commitments aim to reduce harm rather than eliminate it, and it is not comprehensive about the kinds of harm it wants signatories to reduce.

For example, it does not include reference to “volumetric” attacks – the type of coordinated harassment campaigns against a person that were directed at Ardern.

Further, the code’s threshold for “harm” is high, requiring the online violence to pose an imminent and serious threat to users’ safety. This does not easily capture the types of gender-based violence, such as misogynistic hate speech, that over time normalise violence against women.

The code also emphasises the role of users in managing harmful content, rather than placing a responsibility on the platforms to investigate how their services and technologies might be misused to cause harm.

Relying on voluntary commitments also puts New Zealand out of step with other countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia which have legally enforceable requirements for social media companies to protect online safety.

Placing that burden on users – to block, report or remove content – is merely reactive. It does not prevent harm because it has already happened. And for some groups, such as MPs and public figures, the harm they receive can be overwhelming and seemingly endless.

Preventing online gender-based violence requires proactive measures that are legally enforceable. To fulfil its international obligations, the government should urgently review the need for legal regulation that places the burden of online safety on large social media companies rather than on users.

Cassandra Mudgway 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. Online violence and misogyny are still on the rise – NZ needs a tougher response – https://theconversation.com/online-violence-and-misogyny-are-still-on-the-rise-nz-needs-a-tougher-response-250033

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joel Garrett, Lecturer in Exercise Science and Physiology, Griffith University

Australia’s love affair with the major football codes – the Australian Football League (AFL) and National Rugby League (NRL) – is well documented. However, one aspect that stands out to many observers, particularly those overseas, is the length of these leagues’ pre-seasons.

While global and international sports such as soccer and the United States’ National Football League (NFL) typically have pre-seasons lasting only a few weeks to two months, AFL and NRL pre-seasons can stretch well beyond that, sometimes up to and even surpassing four months.

Why do these two codes, more than almost any others, devote such an extended block of time to pre-season training?

The answer lies in a blend of the diverse physical qualities required to play AFL and NRL and the greater risk of injury associated with short preparation times.

High-impact collisions and diverse physical demands

Both the AFL and NRL are considered contact team sports. Athletes are required to cover large distances at speed, with frequent contact.

AFL players can run upwards of 12–17 kilometres per match, at incredibly high intensities, all while executing numerous technical actions, such as kicking, catching, handballing and tackling.

NRL players face similar challenges. Athletes are required to perform more than 30 high-impact collisions per game combined with repeated bouts of high-intensity activity, such as running and sprinting.

This blend of endurance, strength and power, combined with the high contact demands, creates a distinct training challenge.

Off-season programs must therefore develop multiple physical qualities. These include endurance for sustained high-intensity efforts, speed and agility for generating and closing space, and strength and power for tackling, wrestling and contested ball situations.

A shorter pre-season can limit the time available to improve each of these qualities safely. This in turn increases the likelihood of in-season injuries and reduced performance overall.

Longer pre-seasons and injury prevention

From a sports science perspective, a key benefit of extended pre-seasons is the gradual increase in training load. This helps reduce injury risk once the season begins.

Research has shown the importance of progressive overload (gradually increasing training demands in a safe, structured manner), recovery management, and adequate conditioning to tolerate in-season demands.

Evidence also shows increased pre-season participation, additional pre-season sessions and higher workloads (such as total distance) result in fewer games missed due to injury within the season.

These findings underscore that a carefully structured, longer preparation phase, even if it appears arduous, can build resilience.

By gradually but systematically exposing players to both low- and high-intensity running volumes, physical contact, and skill-based sessions, clubs can equip their athletes’ bodies to withstand the onerous demands of an AFL or NRL season.

What do other codes do?

European football (soccer) clubs often have limited downtime between league seasons and international fixtures.

Pre-season often entails high-profile international exhibition tours, leaving little space for the months-long conditioning programs common in AFL and NRL.

Moreover, the absence of a draft system can mean injured players are simply replaced via the transfer market. This reduces the incentive for longer pre-season conditioning to keep key athletes healthy.

The NFL’s pre-season is relatively short. It uses a training camp model that includes a few pre-season games in which their “starters” play a limited role due to injury concerns.

The sport’s stop-start nature and its athletes’ highly specialised positional requirements also results in players having a more specific physical profile. In contrast, AFL and NRL players require a broader physical profile.

In recent years, the NFL has become increasingly aware of higher injury rates tied to abrupt increases in training load. It is now exploring extended or restructured pre-season protocols that in part aim to reduce injury risk.

Changes may be afoot

Interestingly, the AFL itself may face a similar scenario this year.

In the most recent off-season, many AFL clubs had only two to three weeks of full-squad structured training before Christmas, followed by three weeks off.

This approach, designed to provide player downtime, might inadvertently produce an effect akin to what the NFL experiences, where shorter preparation periods are linked to higher rates of tendon and soft-tissue injuries.

Sports scientists at Australian clubs will be monitoring training loads closely when their players return, aiming to avoid the pitfalls of quick turnarounds meeting high-impact competition.

There’s a reason for these long pre-seasons

Devoting three to four months to pre-season training is not merely a quirk of the Australian sporting calendar.

It is a necessary response to the extreme physical demands of these codes. More importantly, a longer, carefully managed pre-season significantly lowers in-season injury risks.

Clubs need to strike a balance between giving players sufficient rest and allowing enough time for a measured and carefully planned off-season. This not only enhances performance, but reduces injuries.

Given the evidence, it is little wonder that Australian codes invest so heavily in this crucial preparation phase.

Darren Burgess, General Manager of High Performance at Adelaide Football Club, contributed to this article.

Joel Garrett 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. AFL and NRL pre-seasons are among the longest in world sport – here’s why – https://theconversation.com/afl-and-nrl-pre-seasons-are-among-the-longest-in-world-sport-heres-why-248430

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Rickerby, Lecturer, School of Product Design, University of Canterbury

Some 45 years ago, a team of staff and students at Wellington Polytechnic designed and built a desktop computer with an operating system customised for the needs of New Zealand schools.

The Poly-1 was far ahead of international competition, but New Zealand failed to capitalise on the opportunity. At the time, public investment in a new knowledge-based industry ran counter to both “Think Big” industrial policy and the emerging neoliberal agenda in government.

As New Zealand looks to scale up investment in artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced technologies, the story of the Poly-1 has enduring lessons about research and innovation policy – and the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration.

Leading the world

The Poly-1 was designed in 1980 as a learning device and teacher support tool. It was advanced for its time with colour graphics and powerful processors. It incorporated a networking feature, enabling up to 32 workstations across multiple sites to communicate over a real-time connection.

Its tough, rounded fibreglass case with carry handles and integrated keyboard was ergonomically designed to handle the rigours of classroom use. A range of bold colour options were meant to make it more relatable for children.

Fifty working prototypes were built in less than a year. A large group of volunteer teachers worked over the summer break to integrate course content and ensure it was ready for use in classrooms.

In 1981, the Department of Education signed a NZ$10 million purchase agreement for 1,000 units per year over a five year period.

The Poly-1 went into production under Polycorp, a joint venture with Lower Hutt-based Progeni. Manufacturing was backed by the state-owned Development Finance Corporation venture capital fund.

Polycorp was poised for scale with a field-tested product and unique distributed learning model. Wide deployment in classrooms would position New Zealand as leading the world in maths education and applied computing.

Blocking innovators and boosting importers

Voicing outrage at this use of public funds, corporate lobbyists began publicly attacking “bureaucrats and boffins”. Privately, they put pressure on ministers sympathetic to a nascent deregulation agenda. They argued only the market could properly decide which computers were used.

In 1982, then prime minister Robert Muldoon’s cabinet scuttled the deal, halting higher volume production and discarding two years of work.

The beneficiary of the broken contract was Apple, which targeted New Zealand as its first education market outside the United States. It gave away free Apple II computers to schools, then followed up by offering larger volumes to the Department of Education at below cost.

The Apple computers were unsupported by curriculum resources, lacked teacher training and were soon obsolete.

By the mid 1980s, the rollout of computers in classrooms stalled as the Fourth Labour Government prioritised administrative reforms in education. Schools were left on their own to deal with hawkish IT vendors and distributors.

Missed opportunities

Relying on an underdeveloped market to serve the growing demand for computers in education led to anti-competitive practices and a devaluing of the teaching expertise behind the software and services.

It’s unlikely the Poly-1 would have survived through the early 1990s as cheap IBM-compatible clones became widespread. But its ultimate end was a consequence of finance rather than technology.

The collapse of the government-owned Development Finance Corporation in a complex tangle of failed property investments left Progeni directly exposed as a debtor to the BNZ, which was also teetering on the edge of collapse.

In late 1989, Progeni was forced into receivership by the bank, which asset-stripped the company and sold it at a nominal value.

Innovation is interdisciplinary

The current government has recently announced major structural changes to New Zealand’s research and innovation system, including a new Public Research Organisation focused on advanced technology.

Institutional reform is much needed and long overdue, but significant challenges remain. A narrow focus on science and technology driving economic growth is not enough. More attention to detail is needed to bridge from current capacity to a desired future state.

The Poly-1 required collaboration with industrial designers and teachers to become market-ready – and the same is true today.

Successfully commercialising research in AI and other advanced technologies requires contributions from experts across design, social science, arts and business.

Like personal computers in 1980, AI is a new category with contested meanings. This has an impact on policy and the reception of new products.

Discussions about state-led innovation often default to arguments about picking winners. But direct support for industries and firms is only part of the broader picture.

In order to see economic and public benefits of investment in AI, the government has a role to play in coordinating interdisciplinary efforts across sectors. This requires visions for the future that are a practical response to the needs of individuals, businesses and communities.

Countries like New Zealand have so far been consumers rather than producers of current generation AI. Changing this balance requires willingness to learn from past mistakes to support leadership in both innovation and regulation. Poly-1 still has lessons to teach us.

Mark Rickerby was the recipient of an arts innovation grant from Manatū Taonga, Ministry for Culture & Heritage in 2021. He is a member of the New Zealand Game Developers Association (NZGDA).

– ref. Remembering the Poly-1: what NZ’s forgotten homegrown school computer can teach us about state-led innovation – https://theconversation.com/remembering-the-poly-1-what-nzs-forgotten-homegrown-school-computer-can-teach-us-about-state-led-innovation-249577

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sonia R. Grover, Clinical Professor of Gynaecology, The University of Melbourne

Menstruation, or a period, is the bleeding that occurs about monthly in healthy people born with a uterus, from puberty to menopause. This happens when the endometrium, the tissue that lines the inside of the uterus, is shed.

Endometriosis is a condition that occurs when endometrium-like tissue is found outside the uterus, usually within the pelvic cavity. It is often considered a major cause of pelvic pain.

Pelvic pain significantly impacts quality of life. But how can you tell the difference between period pain and endometriosis?

Periods and period pain

Periods involve shedding the 4-6 millimetre-thick endometrial lining from the inside of the uterus.

As the lining detaches from the wall of the uterus, the blood vessels which previously supplied the lining bleed. The uterine muscles contract, expelling the blood and crumbled endometrium.

The crumbled endometrium and blood mostly pass through the cervix and vagina. But almost everyone back-bleeds via their fallopian tubes into their pelvic cavity. This is known as “retrograde menstruation”.

The process of menstrual shedding is caused by inflammatory substances, which also cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches, aches, pains, dizziness, feeling faint, as well as stimulating pain receptors.

These inflammatory substances are responsible for the pain and symptoms in the week before a period and the first few days.

For women with heavy periods, their worst days of pain are usually the heaviest days of their period, coinciding with more cramps to expel clots and more retrograde bleeding.

Many women also have pain when they are releasing an egg from their ovary at the time of ovulation. Ovulation or mid-cycle pain can be worse in those who bleed more, as those women are more likely to bleed into the ovulation follicle.

Around 90% of adolescents experience period pain. Among these adolescents, 20% will experience such severe period pain they need time off from school and miss activities. These symptoms are too often normalised, without validation or acknowledgement.

What about endometriosis?

Many symptoms have been attributed to endometriosis, including painful periods, pain with sex, bladder and bowel-related pain, low back pain and thigh pain.

Other pain-related conditions such migraines and chronic fatigue have also been linked to endometriosis. But these other pain-related symptoms occur equally often in people with pelvic pain who don’t have endometriosis.

Repeated, significant period and ovulation pain can eventually lead some people to develop persistent or chronic pelvic pain, which lasts longer than six months. This appears to occur through a process known as central sensitisation, where the brain becomes more sensitive to pain and other sensory stimuli.

Central sensitisation can occur in people with persistent pain, independent of the presence or absence of endometriosis.

Eventually, many people with period and/or persistent pelvic pain will have an operation called a laparoscopy, which allows surgeons to examine organs in the pelvis and abdomen, and diagnose and treat endometriosis.

Yet only 50% of those with identical pain symptoms who undergo a laparoscopy will end up having endometriosis.

Endometriosis is also found in pain-free women. So we cannot predict who does and doesn’t have endometriosis from symptoms alone.

How is this pain managed?

Endometriosis surgery usually involves removing lesions and adhesions. But at least 30% of people return to pre-surgery pain levels within six months or have more pain than before.

After surgery, emergency department presentations for pain are unchanged and 50% have repeat surgery within a few years.

Suppressing periods using hormonal therapies (such as continuous oral contraceptive pills or progesterone-only approaches) can suppress endometriosis and reduce or eliminate pain, independent of the presence or absence of endometriosis.

Not every type or dose of hormonal medications suits everyone, so medications need to be individualised.

The current gold-standard approach to manage persistent pelvic pain involves a multidisciplinary team approach, with the aim of achieving sustained remission and improving quality of life. This may include:

• physiotherapy for pelvic floor and other musculoskeletal problems
• management of bladder and bowel symptoms
• support for self-managing pain
• lifestyle changes including diet and exercise
• psychological or group therapy, as our moods, stress levels and childhood events can affect how we feel and experience pain.

Whether you have period pain, chronic pelvic pain or pain you think is associated with endometriosis, if you feel pain, it’s real. If it’s disrupting your life, you deserve to be taken seriously and treated as the whole person you are.

Sonia R. Grover receives funding from the Medical Research Future Fund for LongSTEPPP: Longitudinal Study of teens with Endometriosis, Period and Pelvic pain. She is Director of the Department of Gynaecology at the Royal Children’s Hospital and
Gynaecology Unit Head at the Mercy Hospital for Women in Heidelberg.

– ref. What’s the difference between period pain and endometriosis pain? – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-difference-between-period-pain-and-endometriosis-pain-244656

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Davis, Associate Professor in Conservation, Edith Cowan University

Humans have been poisoning rodents for centuries. But fast-breeding rats and mice have evolved resistance to earlier poisons. In response, manufacturers have produced second generation anticoagulant rodenticides such as bromadiolone, widely used in Australian households.

Unfortunately, these potent poisons do not magically disappear after the rodent is dead. For example, it’s well known owls who eat poisoned rodents suffer the same slow death from internal bleeding.

Our new research shows the problem is much bigger than owls. We found Australia’s five largest marsupial predators – the four quoll species and the Tasmanian devil – are getting hit by these poisons too.

Half of the 52 animals we tested had these poisons in their bodies. Some had died from it. These species are already threatened by foxes and feral cats. Rat poison is yet another threat – and one they may not be able to survive. Other countries have moved to ban these poisons. But in Australia, they’re widely available.

How does rat poison end up in a Tasmanian devil?

Quolls and Tasmanian devils are carnivores. They eat mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles, finding food by hunting – or by scavenging dead bodies, including rats and mice. But do they eat enough poisoned rats and mice to be at risk?

To find out, we analysed liver samples from all four of Australia’s quoll species as well as the iconic Tasmanian devil. The samples came from dead animals from a range of sources, including animals dying in veterinary care, found as roadkill, or simply found dead.

Each of these species is endangered or vulnerable. Together, they represent the largest remaining Australian carnivorous marsupials – native animals at the top of their food chains.

We tested samples from 52 animals. Half of these were positive for second generation anticoagulant rodenticides. Of these, 21% tested positive for more than one rodenticide.

Unfortunately, many animals we tested had consumed doses high enough to kill. Around 15% of the Tasmanian devils, 20% of the eastern quolls, 22% of chuditch (western quolls) and 20% of the spotted-tailed quolls tested were very likely to die either from the poison itself or a related cause such as longer-term sickening.

We found one chuditch from a Perth suburb had been exposed to three different second-generation rodenticides. It had levels of one poison, brodifacoum, at 1.6 milligrams per kilo, far above the rate presumed to be lethal to mammals. This is likely the highest recorded exposure rate in an Australian marsupial.

Some 5% of Tasmanian devils had also been exposed to lethal levels of these second-generation poisons and a further 10% were exposed to potentially lethal levels.

Even when these poisons don’t directly kill the quoll or devil, they can leave it worse off.

All five species are threatened, meaning their populations are a fraction of what they used to be. Even small changes to populations can trigger more rapid decline.

Our analysis indicates an increase in deaths of just 2–4% of the chuditch population could increase extinction risk by 75%. This figure is dwarfed by how many chuditch are at risk from rat poisons, which we estimate at 22% of any given population in each generation, based on the exposure rates here.

So, exposure to rat poison alone is likely enough to tip the species towards extinction – even without other threats such as being killed by foxes and cats.

Can poisons be too potent?

After the poison kills a mouse or rat, it remains lethal for some time.

The poisons we examined take several months to halve in toxicity, meaning during this time they can kill owls, reptiles, frogs and small and medium-sized mammals such as possums.

In Australia and around the world, evidence is mounting that these second-generation rodenticides are killing many more animals than those targeted. The poisons are hitting a wide range of carnivores including otters, wolves, foxes and raccoons. Even the famous Californian condor is threatened by rodenticides.

Efforts to use thousands of litres of bromadiolone to stop a mouse plague in New South Wales triggered strong criticism. But to date, criticism has done little to curb their use in Australia.

Australia is an outlier on this issue. In European and North American nations, these products are restricted to use by licensed pest controllers and banned for home use. Some nations have gone further and banned these poisons altogether. But here, you can buy them at Bunnings, Coles or Woolworths.

Last year, a delegation of Australian researchers lobbied politicians to do more to regulate the use of these poisons.

The institution responsible for ensuring poisons are safe is the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicine Authority. At present, the authority is weighing a decision on whether to introduce restrictions on these second-generation poisons, expected in April.

Four other threatened Australian species – the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle, Tasmanian masked owl, powerful owl and Carnaby’s black cockatoo – have previously been found to be exposed to these rodenticides. Our research takes this tally to nine threatened species.

In the absence of regulation, you can make a difference at home. Don’t use second-generation poisons which rely on brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difethialone, difenacoum or flocoumafen. Get rid of your mouse or rat problem with first-generation poisons containing warfarin, coumatetralyl or other chemicals.

If you only have a mouse or two, consider looking at non-poison alternatives.

Taking a moment to consider these alternatives could save Australia’s most threatened native predators from an agonising death.

Acknowledgements: Michael Lohr (Birdlife Australia) was the lead author on the research behind this article. Cheryl Lohr (Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, Western Australia) contributed to the research.

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. Lethal second-generation rat poisons are killing endangered quolls and Tasmanian devils – https://theconversation.com/lethal-second-generation-rat-poisons-are-killing-endangered-quolls-and-tasmanian-devils-250035

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

It’s an unfortunate fact that bad people sometimes want guns. And while laws are designed to prevent guns falling into the wrong hands, the determined criminal can be highly resourceful.

There are three main ways to source an illegal weapon: find a lawful owner willing to provide one unlawfully, buy one from another criminal, or make your own.

The first two options aren’t as easy as they sound. The buyer might “know a guy” willing to sell, but the seller generally has good reason to be cautious about who they sell to.

The price of the right firearm can be high, too, as is how “clean” its history is. No criminal wants to be connected to someone else’s crimes by their weapon’s history.

Which leads us to the third option. Privately made firearms, manufactured to avoid detection by the authorities, are nothing new. What has grown is the computer-aided manufacture, of which 3D-printing technology is the best known form, enabling manufacture without traditional gunsmithing skills.

The resulting “ghost guns” will potentially become more prevalent in New Zealand, and are already posing a significant challenge in overseas jurisdictions. With public submissions on the planned rewriting of the Arms Act closing at the end of February, it’s an issue we can’t ignore.

No room for complacency

Although blueprints of fully 3D-printed firearms are most common, hybrid designs, conversion kits, and firearms components sold as a kit or as separate pieces, are all gaining ground.

These are all far more advanced and deadly than the homemade wood and metal weapon used in 2022 to kill former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Their ease of manufacture, improved reliability and performance, non-traceability and lower cost all appear to be driving demand. There is also the ideological attraction of avoiding state scrutiny that makes 3D-printing popular with far-right extremist groups.

New Zealand authorities seized their first 3D-printed firearm in the middle of 2018. As of the end of last year, 58 3D-printed guns and between 200 and 300 firearms parts had been seized.

This growth mirrors overseas trends. But it’s important to keep the numbers in perspective. Of the 9,662 firearms (including airguns) the New Zealand Police seized between August 2016 and July 2022, the most common were conventional rifles and shotguns.

However, that is no cause for complacency. If proposed firearms law reforms – such as a new registry – help shrink the black market, we can expect the ghost gun market to grow.

Gaps in the law

Legislation passed in 2020 makes the crime of illegal manufacturing (by unlicensed people) punishable by up to ten years’ imprisonment.

Additional penalties can be added for making certain prohibited items, such as large-capacity magazines. In October last year, an Otago man became the first to be imprisoned in New Zealand for 3D-printing firearms.

Despite this, and the foreseeable risk, there are several significant gaps in New Zealand law.

1. Making guns detectable

Unlike the US and some other countries, New Zealand does not mandate that every gun be detectable by containing enough metal to set off X-ray machines and metal detectors.

The US also prohibits any firearms with major components that do not show up accurately in standard airport imaging technology.

2. Penalties for obtaining blueprints

While the manufacture of 3D-printed firearms is illegal, there is nothing specific in New Zealand law about downloading blueprints.

There may be scope within existing censorship laws around downloading objectionable material. But this may be limited by the need to classify each plan or blueprint as objectionable. And artificial intelligence means these plans can change and evolve rapidly.

More wholesale laws covering the computer-aided manufacture of firearms or their individual parts would be preferable.

Canada, for example, introduced recent changes to firearms law making it a crime to access or download plans or graphics. Knowingly sharing or selling such data online for manufacturing or trafficking is also a crime, with penalties of up to ten years in prison.

New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia are all making new laws in this area. In the case of South Australia, offenders face up to 15 years in prison for the possession of 3D-printer firearms blueprints.

3. Preventing ‘ghost ammunition’

Privately manufactured firearms still require ammunition to be effective, and the Arms Act is only partly effective in this area.

Only firearms licence holders can lawfully possess non-prohibited ammunition, and all firearms dealers and ammunition sellers must keep a record of those transactions.

But that obligation does not apply when firearms licence holders give, share or otherwise supply ammunition among themselves. Furthermore, there are only limited regulations around obtaining the precursors or tools for making ammunition, with only a few key ingredients, like gunpowder, restricted to licence holders.

This is similar to the Australian approach. But Australia also requires licensed owners to purchase only the type of ammunition required for their specific firearms type.

Trying to the correct balance here is tricky: the law must be practical to work but also ensure a potential ghost gun market does not create a “ghost ammunition” market, too.

The ability to privately manufacture firearms, by computer-aided methods in particular, is a foreseeable and potentially hard-to-police problem. But by learning from other jurisdictions and making a few simple law changes, New Zealand can move now to make communities safer.

The author thanks Clementine Annabell for assisting with the research for this article.

Alexander Gillespie is a recipient of a Borrin Foundation Justice Fellowship to research comparative best practice in the regulation of firearms. He is also a member of the Ministerial Arms Advisory Group. The views expressed here are his own and not to be attributed to either of these organisations.

– ref. The threat of 3D-printed ‘ghost guns’ is growing, but NZ is yet to act on these 3 big legal gaps – https://theconversation.com/the-threat-of-3d-printed-ghost-guns-is-growing-but-nz-is-yet-to-act-on-these-3-big-legal-gaps-248541

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

A national Newspoll, conducted February 10–14 from a sample of 1,244, gave the Coalition a 51–49 lead, unchanged from the previous Newspoll, three weeks ago. Primary votes were 38% Coalition (down one), 31% Labor (steady), 12% Greens (steady), 7% One Nation (steady) and 12% for all Others (up one).

Newspoll previously used 2022 election preference flows, but they have adjusted for stronger One Nation preferences to the Coalition at the Queensland state election. The one-point drop in the Coalition’s primary vote suggests Labor gained, but preference flow changes affected the unchanged two-party estimate.

The graph below shows Labor’s two-party vote for each pollster’s headline voting intentions. As the pollsters are making adjustments to the 2022 election preference flows, I don’t think it’s useful anymore to use the 2022 flows as a baseline.

I’ve revised some of the previous iterations of Morgan and Essential so they use their headline respondent preferences. The four new polls included since the last federal update are Newspoll, the YouGov MRP below and last week’s Morgan and Redbridge polls.

All polls have the Coalition leading by about 51–49. Labor had a better result (a 50–50 tie) from Morgan two weeks ago, but last week it reverted to a Coalition lead. Labor can recover this lead by the election that is due by May, but they’re currently losing.

In Newspoll, Anthony Albanese’s net approval slid one point to a new low of -21, with 58% dissatisfied and 37% satisfied. Peter Dutton’s net approval was up one point to -10. Albanese led Dutton by 45–40 as better PM (44–41 previously).

The graph below shows Albanese’s deteriorating ratings in Newspoll. The plus signs mark the data and a smoothed line has been fitted.

In more bad news for Labor, just 34% said they deserved to be re-elected, while 53% said it’s time to give someone else a go.

YouGov has Coalition winning the most seats

YouGov conducted a national MRP poll (multi-level modelling with post-stratification) from January 22 to February 12 from an overall sample of over 40,000. MRP polls are used to estimate the outcome in each House of Representatives electorate using huge samples and modelling.

YouGov’s central forecast if the election were held now is the Coalition winning 73 of the 150 lower house seats, three short of a majority. Labor would win 66 seats, independents eight, the Greens one and others two. At lower limits, the Coalition could win 65 seats and Labor 59, while at higher limits the Coalition could win 80 and Labor 72.

The overall vote share in this MRP poll was 51.1–48.0 to the Coalition, a 3.2% swing to the Coalition since the 2022 election. Primary votes were 37.4% Coalition, 29.1% Labor, 12.7% Greens, 9.1% One Nation, 8.9% independents and 2.8% others.

YouGov is using respondent preferences for its MRP polls, and it has a weakening of flows to Labor from both Green and One Nation voters compared with 2022. By 2022 election preference flows, this poll would be 50.2–49.8 to Labor.

Labor’s primary vote is down most in its once safe working-class seats. But the Coalition is not likely to regain any of the seats taken by teal independents at the last election.

Redbridge and Morgan polls

The Poll Bludger reported last Tuesday that a national Redbridge poll, conducted February 3–7 from a sample of 1,013, gave the Coalition a 51.5–48.5 lead, a 1.5-point gain for the Coalition since early November. Primary votes were 40% Coalition (up two), 31% Labor (down three), 11% Greens (steady) and 18% for all Others (up one).

Coalition supporters were more firm in their voting intentions (61% solid, 34% soft) than Labor supporters (51% solid, 39% soft). The poll suggested a 9% two-party swing against Labor in the outer suburbs, but this would have been based on a small subsample. Other swings were 5% against Labor in inner and middle suburbs, no change in provincial cities and a 3% swing to Labor in rural areas.

The Poll Bludger reported Sunday that a Redbridge and Accent Research poll of 20 marginal seats, conducted February 4–11 from a total sample of 1,002, gave the Coalition a 52–48 lead (51–49 to Labor across these seats in 2022). Primary votes were 43% Coalition, 33% Labor, 12% Greens and 12% for all Others.

A national Morgan poll, conducted February 3–9 from a sample of 1,688, gave the Coalition a 51.5–48.5 lead by headline respondent preferences, a 1.5-point gain for the Coalition since the January 27 to February 2 poll.

Primary votes were 40.5% Coalition (up two), 29% Labor (down one), 11% Greens (down 0.5), 4% One Nation (down 1.5), 9.5% independents (down one) and 6% others (up two). This is the lowest support for the Greens in this poll since November 2022. By 2022 election preference flows, the Coalition led by 51.5–48.5, a two-point gain for the Coalition.

UAP can’t register for election

Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP) voluntarily deregistered during this term, and were unable to re-register under this name. Palmer and the UAP’s only federal parliamentarian, Victorian Senator Ralph Babet, challenged this law, but the High Court last Wednesday denied the challenge.

Babet was elected in 2022 and won’t be up for election as his six-year term expires in June 2028. The coming election will be a normal one for the full House and half the Senate, not a double dissolution where all senators are up for election.

The UAP could still register under a different name, but their registration would need to be completed before writs are issued for the election. If the election is on May 17, the latest possible date, writs would need to be issued by April 14.

Victorian Labor retains Werribee at byelection

I previously covered the February 8 Victorian state byelections for Werribee and Prahran. On the election night count, Prahran was a Liberal gain from the Greens, with Labor ahead in Werribee but not certain to hold.

Over 2,000 additional postals have been counted in Werribee, and Labor increased its lead, and now leads by 50.8–49.2 against the Liberals, a 10.2% swing to the Liberals since the November 2022 state election.

Left-wing parties will do badly in Germany

I covered next Sunday’s German election for The Poll Bludger on Saturday. The conservative CDU/CSU and far-right AfD are the top two parties in the polls, with the governing centre-left SPD and the Greens trailing.

In Canada, Mark Carney is almost certain to be elected Liberal leader, replacing Justin Trudeau. In recent weeks, the Liberals have closed the gap on the Conservatives, but still trail by a large margin. US and UK polls were also covered.

Adrian Beaumont 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. Coalition leading narrowly in four polls and would likely win an election held now – https://theconversation.com/coalition-leading-narrowly-in-four-polls-and-would-likely-win-an-election-held-now-249694

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has taken off at lightning speed in the past couple of years, creating disruption in many industries. Newsrooms are no exception.

A new report published today finds that news audiences and journalists alike are concerned about how news organisations are – and could be – using generative AI such as chatbots, image, audio and video generators, and similar tools.

The report draws on three years of interviews and focus group research into generative AI and journalism in Australia and six other countries (United States, United Kingdom, Norway, Switzerland, Germany and France).

Only 25% of our news audience participants were confident they had encountered generative AI in journalism. About 50% were unsure or suspected they had.

This suggests a potential lack of transparency from news organisations when they use generative AI. It could also reflect a lack of trust between news outlets and audiences.

Who or what makes your news – and how – matters for a host of reasons.

Some outlets tend to use more or fewer sources, for example. Or use certain kinds of sources – such as politicians or experts – more than others.

Some outlets under-represent or misrepresent parts of the community. This is sometimes because the news outlet’s staff themselves aren’t representative of their audience.

Carelessly using AI to produce or edit journalism can reproduce some of these inequalities.

Our report identifies dozens of ways journalists and news organisations can use generative AI. It also summarises how comfortable news audiences are with each.

The news audiences we spoke to overall felt most comfortable with journalists using AI for behind-the-scenes tasks rather than for editing and creating. These include using AI to transcribe an interview or to provide ideas on how to cover a topic.

But comfort is highly dependent on context. Audiences were quite comfortable with some editing and creating tasks when the perceived risks were lower.

The problem – and opportunity

Generative AI can be used in just about every part of journalism.

For example, a photographer could cover an event. Then, a generative AI tool could select what it “thinks” are the best images, edit the images to optimise them, and add keywords to each.

These might seem like relatively harmless applications. But what if the AI identifies something or someone incorrectly, and these keywords lead to mis-identifications in the photo captions? What if the criteria humans think make “good” images are different to what a computer might think? These criteria may also change over time or in different contexts.

Even something as simple as lightening or darkening an image can cause a furore when politics are involved.

AI can also make things up completely. Images can appear photorealistic but show things that never happened. Videos can be entirely generated with AI, or edited with AI to change their context.

Generative AI is also frequently used for writing headlines or summarising articles. These sound like helpful applications for time-poor individuals, but some news outlets are using AI to rip off others’ content.

AI-generated news alerts have also gotten the facts wrong. As an example, Apple recently suspended its automatically generated news notification feature. It did this after the feature falsely claimed US murder suspect Luigi Mangione had killed himself, with the source attributed as the BBC.

What do people think about journalists using AI?

Our research found news audiences seem to be more comfortable with journalists using AI for certain tasks when they themselves have used it for similar purposes.

For example, the people interviewed were largely comfortable with journalists using AI to blur parts of an image. Our participants said they used similar tools on video conferencing apps or when using the “portrait” mode on smartphones.

Likewise, when you insert an image into popular word processing or presentation software, it might automatically create a written description of the image for people with vision impairments. Those who’d previously encountered such AI descriptions of images felt more comfortable with journalists using AI to add keywords to media.

The most frequent way our participants encountered generative AI in journalism was when journalists reported on AI content that had gone viral.

For example, when an AI-generated image purported to show Princes William and Harry embracing at King Charles’s coronation, news outlets reported on this false image.

Our news audience participants also saw notices that AI had been used to write, edit or translate news articles. They saw AI-generated images accompanying some of these. This is a popular approach at The Daily Telegraph, which uses AI-generated images to illustrate many of its opinion columns.

Overall, our participants felt most comfortable with journalists using AI for brainstorming or for enriching already created media. This was followed by using AI for editing and creating. But comfort depends heavily on the specific use.

Most of our participants were comfortable with turning to AI to create icons for an infographic. But they were quite uncomfortable with the idea of an AI avatar presenting the news, for example.

On the editing front, a majority of our participants were comfortable with using AI to animate historical images, like this one. AI can be used to “enliven” an otherwise static image in the hopes of attracting viewer interest and engagement.

Your role as an audience member

If you’re unsure if or how journalists are using AI, look for a policy or explainer from the news outlet on the topic. If you can’t find one, consider asking the outlet to develop and publish a policy.

Consider supporting media outlets that use AI to complement and support – rather than replace – human labour.

Before making decisions, consider the past trustworthiness of the journalist or outlet in question, and what the evidence says.

T.J. Thomson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is an affiliate with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society.

Michelle Riedlinger receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Global Journalism Innovation Lab. She is an affiliate with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society.

Phoebe Matich receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a post-doctoral research fellow within the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society.

Ryan J. Thomas 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. Generative AI is already being used in journalism – here’s how people feel about it – https://theconversation.com/generative-ai-is-already-being-used-in-journalism-heres-how-people-feel-about-it-247232

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abdul Aziz, Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies, School of Arts and Social Sciences, Monash University

Google’s search engine handles the vast majority of online searches worldwide. By one estimate, it fields 6.3 million queries every second.

Because of the search engine’s enormous scale, its outputs can have outsized effects. And, while Google’s search results are shaped by ostensibly neutral rules and processes, research has shown these algorithms often produce biased results.

This problem of algorithmic bias is again being highlighted by recent escalating tensions between India and Bangladesh and cases of violence against Bangladeshi citizens in India and violence against Hindus in Bangladesh. A pro-Indian misinformation and disinformation campaign is exploiting this algorithmic bias to further its agenda – an agenda that has been described as Islamophobic and alarmist.

This kind of misinformation has been implicated in several riots and violent incidents in Bangladesh.

All of this serves as an important reminder of the power Google’s search engine has in shaping public perceptions of any event – and its vulnerability to being exploited. It’s also an important reminder to anyone who uses Google’s search engine to engage critically with the results it dishes up, rather than accepting them at face value.

What is algorithmic bias?

The algorithms that power Google’s search engine are trained on massive amounts of data. This data is gathered by computer bots which crawl billions of pages on the Internet and automatically analyse their content and quality. This information is stored in a large database, which Google’s search engine relies on to serve up relevant results whenever it receives a query.

But this process doesn’t capture every website on the Internet. It is also governed by predetermined rules about what is high quality and what is low quality, and reflects existing biases in data. For example, even though only 16% of the world’s population speaks English, it accounts for 55% of all written content online.

This means the reality of life on the ground in non-English speaking countries is often not reflected in Google search results. This is especially true for those countries located in the Global South.

This lack of representation perpetuates real-world biases. It can also hinder a nuanced public understanding of global issues.

What’s happening between Bangladesh and India?

Relations between Muslim-majority Bangladesh and neighbouring India, which is currently led by the Hindu nationalist BJP government, have deteriorated recently.

In August last year, youth-led anti-government protests erupted in Bangladesh.

These protests resulted in the downfall of prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s long-lasting autocratic regime, which had been supported by the Indian government.

An interim government filled the void. But certain Indian media outlets have leveraged sensitive issues such as Hindu minority rights to undermine its legitimacy.

In November, Bangladeshi authorities arrested Hindu leader Chinmoy Krishna Das on sedition charges over allegations he had disrespected the Bangladeshi flag. This triggered violent clashes between his supporters and police. These clashes resulted in the death of a Muslim lawyer.

Hindu activists also attacked a Bangladeshi consulate in India.

There have also been verified instances of mob violence against Hindus in Bangladesh. However, the Bangladeshi government claims these incidents are politically motivated rather than communal attacks.

The unrest intensified earlier this month, with thousands of protestors destroying the family home of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka.

Boosting a disinformation campaign

A disinformation campaign based in India has exaggerated some cases of religious violence against Hindus in Bangladesh.

This campaign has been boosted by Google’s algorithmic bias.

For example, an analysis by the Tech Global Institute of Google search results about Chinmoy Krishna Das’s arrest between November 25 and December 20 last year found a “consistent pattern of bias”.

Specifically, Indian news outlets – including Hindu ultranationalist news outlets – “disproportionately” dominated the top search results. This overshadowed

factual reporting from credible Bangladeshi media outlets […] despite the search originating from within Bangladesh, the country where the incident originally occurred.

This bias was also evident in search queries coming from overseas. For example, roughly 90% of the top results about Chinmoy Krishna Das were from Indian outlets when searched from Australia and the United States. Bangladeshi news outlets featured on the thirteenth and fourteenth pages of results.

Indian news outlets – unlike their Bangladeshi counterparts – produce a substantial amount of content in English. They also employ more advanced search engine optimisation – or SEO – techniques, such as using effective keywords and sensationalist headlines. This gives them an advantage in Google search results compared to their Bangladeshi counterparts.

Another investigation by Bangladeshi fact-checking outlet Rumor Scanner in December 2024 found 72% of social media accounts spreading fake and misinformation are located in India.

The Conversation asked Google a series of questions about its search engine. It did not receive a response.

An illustrative case of a global problem

Bangladesh is an illustrative case of the global problem of algorithmic bias. It highlights how search engines can be exploited to promote disinformation and misinformation and powerfully shape people’s perceptions about what’s happening in the world.

It also highlights how everybody should think critically about the information they find online about the current situation in Bangladesh. Or about any news event, for that matter.

The case also reinforces the urgent need for policymakers, tech companies and governments to work together to effectively address algorithmic bias. This is especially urgent in the Global South, where marginal voices remain silenced.

Abdul Aziz 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. Unrest in Bangladesh is revealing the bias at the heart of Google’s search engine – https://theconversation.com/unrest-in-bangladesh-is-revealing-the-bias-at-the-heart-of-googles-search-engine-249131

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University

The dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is a serious blow to the soft power of the United States and disastrous for many poor countries where it helps provide humanitarian, health and educational services.

One country whose citizens will bear the brunt of it is Afghanistan, under the misogynistic and draconian rule of the Taliban.

According to United Nations reports, more than half of Afghanistan’s estimated 40 million population is dependent on international handouts for their survival. Most of the remaining barely earn enough to exist.

USAID has played a critical part in alleviating the suffering of Afhghans since the hasty retreat of the US and its allies from the country and the return of the Taliban to power in mid-2021.

Since then, the United States has been the largest donor of humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, amounting to US$3.71 billion (A$5.8 billion), channelled through UN agencies and other international organisations. USAID has been responsible for delivering a large proportion of it.

The effects are already being felt. A major midwifery program has closed, while “secret schools” for girls and the American University of Afghanistan has suspended classes.

US aid, along with help from other donors, has also been critical in keeping mass starvation at bay.

Aid propping up the Taliban

Indeed, not all the aid has directly been delivered to the needy. The Taliban have creamed off a portion of it in the process of permitting and supervising its delivery.

As widely reported, the group has indirectly received some US$40 million (A$63 million) a week of donor funds. The United Nations says it’s unavoidable that some money makes its way to Afghanistan’s central bank, which is under the control of the Taliban.

This aid money, together with US$7 billion (A$11 billion) worth of light and heavy arms left behind by the US and its allies, has been crucial in enabling the Taliban to enforce its extremist rule, despite lacking domestic and international legitimacy.

US President Donald Trump’s objection to the flow of any American aid to the Taliban is well placed. He has criticised the Biden administration for its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and failure to curtail the indirect benefits of American aid to the group.

He has called for an end to American money going to the Taliban and for the return of US military equipment from the group. He has even floated the idea of retaking the strategically important Bagram air base outside Kabul, which he claims is now under Chinese influence.

Further, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who both served in Afghanistan, have vowed to continue to fight terrorism around the world. Waltz believes terrorist groups are regrouping in Afghanistan under the Taliban and the Pentagon may need to send US troops back there.

A halt to any aid that can advantage the Taliban is absolutely imperative. Countering the group is vital to combating violent extremism and terrorism.

Afghans still desperately need aid

However, this effort needs to be managed in ways that do not deprive the needy people of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s economy, industries, reconstruction projects and work opportunities have virtually collapsed, while many schools have been closed or transformed into religious institutions.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that in the last three years, Afghanistan’s economy has contracted by 27%, with staggeringly high unemployment and inflation.

Living conditions are so bad that some families are selling their children in order to feed the rest of the family.

No section of the society is in more desperate need than girls and women, who have been stripped of all their basic rights to education, work and public life. They are not even allowed to speak in public or pray outside the four walls of their homes. As put by actor Meryl Streep, a cat has more freedom than women in Afghanistan.

This has caused a mental health crisis among women in Afghanistan, with rising numbers of suicides.

What can be done?

The disembowelling of USAID will have far-reaching consequences for the people of Afghanistan.

If the Trump administration wants to achieve its anti-Taliban objectives, it needs a two-pronged policy approach:

• identify new ways to continue humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan in ways that don’t benefit the Taliban

• increase pressure on the Taliban by strictly enforcing international sanctions and maintaining its isolation on the international stage.

The suspension of American aid has already resulted in a devaluation of the Afghani currency. This has prompted the Taliban to impose severe restrictions on the transfer of dollars out of the country.

Some analysts predict that if the economy continues to worsen, it will impact the Taliban’s ability to govern.

In turn, this could strengthen civil and armed opposition groups – including the women’s Purple Saturday movement, which stands for a free and legitimately governed Afghanistan. These groups have increasingly become active in different parts of the country.

Amin Saikal 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. In Afghanistan, families are forced to sell children to survive. Trump’s USAID cuts will be devastating – https://theconversation.com/in-afghanistan-families-are-forced-to-sell-children-to-survive-trumps-usaid-cuts-will-be-devastating-249713