Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Toole, Associate Principal Research Fellow, Burnet Institute

As war continues to devastate Gaza and its people, we learnt last week that a variant of poliovirus has been detected in the region. The virus was isolated in six sewage samples collected in late June from Khan Younis and Deir al Balah.

Most infections with poliovirus don’t cause symptoms, but a minority of those who contract the virus develop paralysis (paralytic polio).

No cases of paralytic polio have been reported in Gaza. But detecting the virus in wastewater is concerning nonetheless.

There are different types of polio

The cases of polio we’ve seen historically have generally been caused by “wild poliovirus”. For centuries, wild poliovirus affected both poor and wealthy countries, including Australia. The deployment of effective vaccines in the 1960s led to a dramatic decrease in cases in the following decades among those countries that could afford the vaccines.

The introduction of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988 enabled more equitable vaccination. There were only 12 cases of paralysis caused by wild poliovirus in 2023, in just two countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan.

However, as the number of wild poliovirus cases decreased there was an increase in cases of vaccine-derived poliovirus causing paralysis.

There are two types of polio vaccines: one is given orally, and the other by injection (the type used in Australia). The oral polio vaccine is based on a weakened virus – so it doesn’t cause disease, but can still reproduce. Vaccine-derived poliovirus emerges when people vaccinated with the oral polio vaccine excrete the vaccine virus in their stool and it spreads to other people.

Over time, it may mutate to become a virus that circulates and causes paralysis in populations with low levels of immunity. In 2023, there were 524 polio cases in 32 countries caused by vaccine-derived poliovirus.

It’s a strain of vaccine-derived poliovirus that has been detected in the wastewater in Gaza – type 2.

High vaccination coverage is key, but not always enough

The most important indicator of eradicating polio, both wild and vaccine-derived, is vaccine coverage. This is usually measured as the percentage of children under five who have received at least four vaccine doses, ideally 95%.

High vaccination coverage has been achieved by a combination of routine immunisation in early childhood plus national or local catch-up vaccination campaigns, particularly in areas where the virus pops up.

However, high vaccination coverage is not always enough to eliminate the virus.

Early in the 21st century, India and Nigeria were reporting the highest number of polio cases in the world. After an accelerated immunisation campaign in India, vaccine coverage rates were high by 2007 and cases were decreasing. But many cases continued to be reported in impoverished districts of western Uttar Pradesh (a state in northern India), where access to clean water and sanitation was poor.

Research shows a high level of pathogens in children’s intestines can make the absorption of the oral vaccine less effective, while unsanitary conditions make it easier for the virus to spread. After a sanitation and hygiene project began in 2007, the last case of polio in Uttar Pradesh occurred in 2010, and the entire country eradicated polio in 2014.

Wild polio was eradicated from Gaza more than 25 years ago. But it’s possible the re-emergence of vaccine-derived poliovirus is due to a combination of poor hygiene and sanitation, as we saw in Uttar Pradesh, and reduced vaccine coverage.

Polio vaccination coverage in the Palestinian territories was 99% in 2022. By the end of 2023, coverage had dropped to 89%. However, the data were not separated by each of the territories (the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza), so coverage may be lower in Gaza.

Recent outbreaks

We saw the detection of a similar strain of poliovirus in wastewater in Jerusalem, London and New York in early 2022.

Parts of these cities have high concentrations of ultra-Orthodox Jews, which may have lower rates of vaccination than the overall population. In Rockland County, 65 kilometres north of New York City, a young, unimmunised Orthodox Jewish man became the first case of polio transmitted locally in the United States in 30 years.

There’s no evidence of vaccination hesitancy among Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Australia. However, there are other communities where vaccination rates are low, including some shires in the Northern Rivers district of New South Wales.

Communities with low vaccination rates, whatever the reason, are vulnerable to infectious diseases such as polio.

So where did this virus come from?

The oral vaccine used in Gaza has not contained type 2 since 2016, so it must have come from elsewhere.

In 2023, most outbreaks of type 2 vaccine-derived poliovirus were in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Nigeria, Sudan and Somalia. There was also one case in Egypt, which borders on Gaza. Egypt could be the source of this virus, but we’ll need further investigation.

It’s unlikely to have come from Israel as there have been no detections of poliovirus in wastewater there since 2022.

What can the world learn?

First, we must not forget that poliovirus can cross borders and maintaining high vaccination rates in Australia and elsewhere is the most effective protective strategy. It’s also crucial to contain the virus inside Gaza. UNICEF and partners are preparing for a vaccination campaign focusing on young children.

Second, it’s important to maintain wastewater surveillance for polio, which is an early warning mechanism that can initiate public health action before symptomatic cases occur.

In 2022, Victoria was the only Australian state conducting routine polio wastewater surveillance until NSW adopted the practice when the outbreaks in Jerusalem, New York and London occurred. Wastewater surveillance is worthwhile in all states and territories.

Third, but not least, this should be a wake-up call highlighting the need to cease hostilities and provide unrestricted access by aid agencies to improve the provision of clean water, sanitation and effective health services throughout Gaza. This is an urgent global health priority.

Michael Toole receives funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. Polio in Gaza: what does this mean for the region and the world? – https://theconversation.com/polio-in-gaza-what-does-this-mean-for-the-region-and-the-world-235178

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael J. Davern, Professor of Accounting & Business Information Systems, The University of Melbourne

In the wake of the widespread chaos we saw on Friday, one old adage perhaps feels even truer now than when it was first coined in the 1960s:

To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.

As the world continues to assess the fallout of what has been called “the largest IT outage in history”, industry and government leaders will naturally be pondering how exactly this all could have happened.

Most tragically, the company at the heart of all this – cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike – is explicitly meant to protect the IT systems across our hyperconnected global economy. Is CrowdStrike to blame or were they just unlucky? Could this happen again?

Read more:
One small update brought down millions of IT systems around the world. It’s a timely warning

For businesses, these are risk management questions as much as they are technical IT questions. Risk is unavoidable in business and life. We can never completely escape it, but we can proactively manage it.

Many big companies hate thinking about and preparing for so-called “black swan” events – major catastrophes that are hard to predict. Friday’s events have shown just how important it is that they do.

Risk isn’t a choice

Businesses face many different types of risks. Of these, Friday’s IT outage was an example of an operational risk event. Operational risk is broadly defined as:

the risk of loss as a result of ineffective or failed internal processes, people, systems, or external events.

In simpler terms, it’s the risk that something goes wrong in the way a business runs.

Friday’s outage instantly wrought havoc on a wide range of technology integrated businesses. It might feel like the kind of event that’s impossible to predict.

But was this operational risk event foreseeable? In general terms – yes! An event like this was inevitable. And it will happen again. Let’s explore some reasons why.

The networked economy

We benefit daily from our networked world, which enables our economy to function at a speed undreamed of decades ago. We depend now on technology for virtually every aspect of our lives.

But this network and speed of activity means when things go wrong, they can go wrong fast, and everywhere. It’s a trade-off decision. If we want the benefits of our data-driven, networked economy, we must accept some risk here.

The trade-off decision extends to the choices made by providers of the upstream software and services we rely upon. This painful lesson was learned by some businesses that had never heard of CrowdStrike last Friday but soon found out key software relied on it. Choosing upstream providers means accepting the risks of their trade-off decisions.

Competition is good, but so are network effects

A fundamental tenet of economics is that competition is good. Yet in technology markets, we often see only a few players dominate. This is in part due to what economists call network externalities.

Positive network externalities arise when increasing the number of users of a product or service increases its value.

Microsoft Windows, for example, is ubiquitous because it has a critical mass of users. Many people know how to use it, which attracts many developers to provide useful applications. Network externalities drive market dominance.

Friday’s events were so wide-reaching because Microsoft and CrowdStrike are dominant players in their respective markets.

Though it wasn’t a Microsoft incident, the company estimated that the outage affected about 8.5 million Windows devices around the world. This is less than 1% of all Windows machines. Microsoft said while this percentage may seem small:

the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services.

We have benefited tremendously from the network externalities of these companies’ dominance, at the price of exposing ourselves to the risk of such narrow dependencies.

How to think about risk

Such vulnerabilities don’t mean we can’t still manage these risks. Effective risk management entails the interplay between three factors:

• risk appetite – how much risk we are willing to accept
• understanding the risks we face – keeping an organisational risk register
• investing in risk treatments to keep risks within our appetite.

Risk appetite and understanding varies significantly across different businesses, so too does the extent of investment in treatments.

But the risk of an outage like Friday’s should have been on the risk register of the affected organisations. We can choose our risk appetite and accordingly invest in risk treatments to keep the identified risks within it.

For example, investing in fully redundant systems as a treatment could have limited some of the damage of Friday’s events. Many systems that weren’t using CrowdStrike weren’t directly impacted. Some organisations were able to revert to paper-based systems.

But redundancy in systems is very expensive, and there is always the risk that multiple systems will fail at once.

Risk management is complex. CrowdStrike itself is a risk treatment – for the risk of cyberattacks. Friday’s outage resulted in part from fast patching – a rapid roll out of an update to treat a specific cyberattack risk. In treating one risk, we can expose ourselves to new risks.

Given the consequences of black swan events, effective risk management for such possibilities would seem essential. But businesses can’t prepare for every contingency and so are reluctant to invest now to protect against a future risk event of unknown impact.

It’s a matter of perspective: we need to take a systemic view as we evaluate the trade-offs in our networked economy. Or as Nassim Taleb, author of “The Black Swan” aptly said: “let’s not be turkeys”.

Michael J. Davern has received research grant funding in the past from the Australian Research Council (LP130100106 & LP100100068) in conjunction with National Australia Bank and Great Southern Bank for research in operational risk management practices.

– ref. The Crowdstrike outage showed that risk management is essential. Why are so many businesses reluctant to do it? – https://theconversation.com/the-crowdstrike-outage-showed-that-risk-management-is-essential-why-are-so-many-businesses-reluctant-to-do-it-235177

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Wade, Lecturer in Social Inquiry, La Trobe University

Giving is in a tough spot in Australia. A declining proportion of us donate to charities, and fewer of us are registering as formal volunteers than in 2018.

However, demand for the work of charities is higher than ever.

Charities Minister Andrew Leigh has deemed this a civic crisis and set a target of doubling philanthropic giving by 2030.

To achieve this, Leigh and Treasurer Jim Chalmers asked the Productivity Commission to conduct a once-in-a-generation 15-month review of philanthropy, which was published last Thursday.

Leigh said he would consider all of the recommendations but one – that donations to school building funds no longer be tax deductible.

Why allow tax deductions for school building donations?

The Productivity Commission is a big supporter of tax deductions as a means of encouraging giving, and recommended changes that would make more charities eligible for tax-deductible gift recipient status.

But it said there was currently “no coherent policy rationale” for why some charities got deductible gift recipient status and others missed out.

A rationale was needed because tax-deductible status effectively renders taxpayers co-investors with donors in the entities given such status.

The Commission wanted decisions about which activities were eligible to be guided by three principles:

• Will the activity generate community-wide benefits and otherwise be undersupplied?

• Is subsidising donations the best way to support this activity?

• Could donations be unjustly converted into private benefits for donors?

Using these principles, the Commission recommended that while many more charities should receive access to deductible gift recipient status, some should have their status withdrawn, among them school building funds.

School buildings arguably met the first of the Commission’s tests. They might be said to generate community benefits that could otherwise be undersupplied.

But the Commission found they did not meet its second and third tests.

There were better ways to support them with government funding, and there was a “material risk” that donors could convert tax‑deductible donations into private benefits, as donations may “substitute for fees”.

Backlash swift and fierce

When the Commission suggested this in its draft report, released in November, the backlash was swift and fierce.

The National Catholic Education Commission called it a “direct attack” on faith communities. Others said it would erode
“Judeo-Christian values”.

Although overblown, such reactions proved effective in threatening to drag a sober reform into a tiresome “culture war”.

Deductible contributions to school building funds were introduced in 1954 as a pragmatic response to rapid growth in enrolments.

A more regressive system ‘hard to imagine’

Leading tax scholar Professor Ann O’Connell observed that they enabled governments to indirectly support private schools without being perceived as propping them up at the expense of the public system.

This was pragmatic and sensible at the time. But 70 years later, Australia’s 3,500 private school building funds have become a key driver of shameful disparities in educational facilities.

The reasons are obvious enough. The typical donors are parents and alumni, and the wealthiest among them are the best-equipped to exploit the concession. This directs the biggest benefits to the highest-fee (usually most “elite”) schools.

The Commission finds the richest 1% of school building funds get 36% of total donations. The top 10% get 83%.

A more regressive mechanism is hard to imagine. Taxpayer subsidies for private school buildings now approach A$100 million per year.

Tax concessions reflect what we value

In rejecting the Commission’s recommendation as soon as he released its report, Leigh said a “world-class education system is essential to tackling inequality”.

It’s a pity he didn’t decide to use the “once in a generation” opportunity to tackle inequality within education aided by distorted giving incentives.

For what it’s worth, Leigh is an excellent charities minister, genuinely committed to his portfolio. I also suspect he knows the status quo is both ethically and fiscally indefensible.

But that’s precisely what makes the response so disheartening.

It’s not simply about the waste inherent in directing public funds to places that don’t much need them. It’s also about the moral injury of witnessing something manifestly unfair.

Such injustices undermine the social solidarity Leigh says he wants to rebuild .

An opportunity squandered

If even such modest reforms are electorally “too hard”, what hope is there for more meaningful reforms?

Even ones as modest as taking away the tax exemptions granted to the Australian Football League and National Rugby League.

One of Leigh’s pet projects, the Australian Centre for Evaluation, is intended to

put evaluation evidence at the heart of policy design and decision-making, so the Australian government can have confidence its programs and policies are delivering better outcomes for Australians and achieving value for money.

It sounds great, but what’s the point if you disregard advice from an already-established evidence-evaluation body?

Leigh and colleagues have squandered an opportunity to fix a festering issue that will only worsen over time.

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

– ref. The Productivity Commission wants to axe a key tax break for private school donations – but the government is determined to keep it – https://theconversation.com/the-productivity-commission-wants-to-axe-a-key-tax-break-for-private-school-donations-but-the-government-is-determined-to-keep-it-219910

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Emily Clark, Lecturer in Japanese, University of New England

At first glance, Netflix’s popular Japanese animation Delicious in Dungeon is a strangely food-obsessed dungeon-crawler fantasy tale.

Upon a closer look, however, it reveals itself as a striking parody of the popular “gourmet genre”. The series invites us to think critically about how food traditions are created and conformed to.

It also reminds us that food is highly political and that the “culinary nationalism” we see around the world – and particularly in Japan – is more complicated than most people realise.

A culinary high fantasy

Delicious in Dungeon was initially released as a comic book in 2014, before being adapted for TV by Japanese animation studio Trigger. Its distribution by Netflix this year has given the seinen (meaning “youth”) anime a global audience.

Despite being a dungeon crawler, the series has an unusually explicit focus on food. Our group of heroes must keep themselves fed while on their epic quest. Specifically, they must embrace (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) danjon meshii: slaying monsters and eating them.

The show’s creators use a range of visual and narrative tropes borrowed from the Japanese “gourmet” genre. Typically, works in this genre (including books, movies, shows, comics and more) feature a careful discussion of ingredients, a demonstration of their preparation and an evaluation on the final product.

The order in which this happens can vary depending on the specific work. For example, the popular Netflix show Midnight Diner typically provides the full recipe at the end of each episode.

Although the ingredients and method of preparation shown in Delicious in Dungeon are … unusual … the show still follows this pattern to a T. Whether the characters are making a mandrake and bat meat kakiage, or a basilisk egg omelette, they discuss the ingredients, prepare the meal and react as they eat it.

Even the characters who are the most uncomfortable with having to eat monsters have moments of eye-watering happiness when they taste the delicious flavours.

Conversations about food

By talking explicitly and consistently about food taboos (such as “must you eat the monsters you kill?”) and food values (such as “food should be shared with others”), Delicious in Dungeon draws our attention to a number of ideas that usually hide beneath the surface.

What is “natural” to eat? Why are some food practices considered taboo? And who gets to decide?

Our “foodways” – our cultural and social practices regarding the creation and consumption of food – are where community, connection and in-group/out-group dynamics are formed.

Food is constantly at the centre of battles of authenticity, tradition and values (never mind issues of scarcity and sustainability). As described by Japanese literature academic Tomoko Aoyama in her book Reading Food in Modern Japanese Literature:

the seemingly simple and ordinary may turn out to be surprisingly complex, once we pay attention to it […] Food has been discovered, invented, classified, and scrutinised, as well as enjoyed, consumed and devoured.

Policing tradition and authenticity

Since the early 2000s, various arms of the Japanese government have been on a quest to define (and protect) “authentic” Japanese food.

One eyebrow-raising example was a 2006 program created for the certification of authentic Japanese restaurants outside Japan. It has since been largely replaced by Japan’s non-governmental, non-profit Organisation to Promote Japanese Restaurants Abroad and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries promotion of businesses that use Japanese ingredients.

Perhaps the most significant change in Japanese food tradition was the successful UNESCO Intangible Heritage bid of 2013, which saw washoku enshrined as a “traditional dietary culture”.

The term washoku (“wa” meaning Japanese and “shoku” meaning food) emerged during the modern Meiji period (1868–1912) to describe food from Japan alongside a sudden influx of European foods. But it was an everyday term of no special significance; there was no uniform opinion of what “Japanese” food was.

After the bid, a previously undefined range of food practices carried out by millions of people was reduced to a single meal which includes a serve of white rice with multiple side dishes.

Washoku is essentially an “invented tradition” that was only recently awarded cultural significance and repackaged for an international audience. As Japanese culinary scholar Eric Rath explains:

Washoku is an idealised dietary lifestyle focusing on food popularised from the 1960s onwards, meant to impress audiences outside Japan and guide domestic eating habits.

In fact, many elements of modern Japanese cuisine didn’t become mainstream until the past 100 years. For instance, the vast majority of Japan’s population rarely ate pure white rice before the 1950s. It was the rice rationing of the wartime government that introduced white rice into people’s daily fare.

Before this period, there was massive variation in food practices and the types of food eaten depended on the region and climate. Generally speaking, however, a “traditional” Japanese diet from pre-modern times included single-pot meals combining millet and barley (sometimes mixed with rice) and local vegetables.

Another example of a dish considered purely Japanese, but which isn’t, is ramen.

Ramen was developed in the early 1900s by Chinese immigrants in Japan, to serve to blue-collar workers. It underwent several changes and adjustments before it became the rich dish we know and love today.

Eating with your eyes

Regardless of the historical reality, our shared imagination of “Japanese food” continues to thrive in fictional worlds and the gourmet genre.

Netflix in particular has engaged with the genre through older hits such as Midnight Diner and more recent releases such as The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House.

A number of novels translated from Japenese to English such as The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai can also be understood as part of this trend.

When we see the characters in Delicious in Dungeon debate how to best prepare their dishes, or gasp in pleasure at the wonders on their palates, we’re actually seeing a parody of the gourmet genre and a critique of culinary nationalism.

So the next time you encounter the words “traditional” next to food, you might want to ask yourself: what is this person trying to sell me – and why?

Laura Emily Clark 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. White rice with side dishes isn’t really ‘traditional’ Japanese food. So where did we get this idea? – https://theconversation.com/white-rice-with-side-dishes-isnt-really-traditional-japanese-food-so-where-did-we-get-this-idea-233871

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jared Mondschein, Director of Research, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

After three weeks of pained debates in the media and within the Biden administration itself, the 61% of Americans who wanted Joe Biden to step aside have had their wish granted.

Only a few minutes after announcing he would no longer be seeking re-election, Biden made clear he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him, while major Democratic Party stalwarts – including the Congressional Black Caucus as well as Bill and Hillary Clinton, though notably not Barack Obama – quickly followed suit.

Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison has promised a “transparent and orderly process” to select Biden’s successor, though further details have yet to be made available.

Regardless, the significant endorsements for Harris’ candidacy – combined with the Democratic fear of weakening a presumed nominee in the face of what they deem to be an existential threat in Donald Trump’s candidacy – makes Harris the most likely to be the next presidential nominee.

Who is Kamala Harris?

Harris’ ascent from the first Black woman and Asian American to be vice president to now likely to be the first to lead a major party ticket is historic, to say the least.

The daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, Harris began her career as a prosecutor, spending almost three decades in law enforcement. She started as a local prosecutor, then became district attorney of San Francisco before being elected California attorney-general in 2011. Her 2003 district attorney race saw her win more votes than any other candidate running for a city-wide office that year in her defeat of a two-term incumbent.

Her first run for statewide office in 2010 was not called until weeks after election day, and Harris won by less than a percentage point (but was against a favourite).

To this day, Harris has never lost a general election, including her Senate run in 2017. Only the second ever Black woman elected to the US Senate, Harris won her seat under unique circumstances: for the first time since California began voting directly for seats in 1914, no Republican placed in the state’s electoral runoff for the Senate seat. In other words, Harris only had to defeat another Democratic candidate to win.

A Senate stint and her first electoral loss

Once in the Senate, Harris was appointed to the homeland security and intelligence committees and later the Senate Judiciary Committee, which gave her a platform to grill Trump’s judicial nominees. Whether it be questioning then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on whether the government had ever made laws related to the male body, or the Mueller investigation’s of the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia, Harris became known for using her prosecutorial experience to advance Democratic priorities.

Yet as much as some of her Senate performances became well-known among political pundits, her most well-known moment in the national spotlight before being elected vice president. And it was at Biden’s expense during her campaign to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020.

She had already caught the country’s attention with a heavily publicised launch in Oakland, California – this was near where she was born, her parents had worked and she had worked as a district attorney. But at the first Democratic Party debate, Harris directly targeted the then-former vice president, criticising Biden for positive comments he had made about pro-segregation politicians with whom he had served in his 36 years in the US Senate.

While Biden had long postured that his willingness to work with diverse politicians was a political and legislative strength, Harris countered that

You also worked with them to oppose bussing. And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bussed to school every day. And that little girl was me.

As compelling as her launch and debate performance was, Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign was widely reported to be beset with disorganisation and the absence of compelling policy proposals. Sliding polls and funding numbers led to her suspending her campaign months before the Iowa caucuses, and long before a single vote was cast in Democratic primaries.

Nonetheless, her viral debate performance established her as a formidable politician and debate opponent – such skills were particularly well-reviewed when she deployed them against then vice president Mike Pence in their 2020 debate.

Biden’s vice president

While Harris vacated her Californian senate seat after assuming vice presidential duties in 2021, a Senate split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans saw Harris spend much of her first two years in office back with her Senate colleagues as a decisive tiebreaker on key legislation supported by the Biden-Harris administration.

But outside of her senatorial duties, Biden decided to give Harris a few key portfolios to carry out. This most notably included immigration – a particularly challenging issue that remains a key electoral weakness for Democratic candidates across the country. That the issue remains challenging is telling of Harris’ performance. She has been widely criticised for her ineffective efforts trying to address the “root causes” of the record-breaking immigration influx into the United States.

Harris has found more success in championing other political causes, most notably in relation to abortion. An issue that Biden, a practising Catholic, notoriously felt uncomfortable with, Harris in many ways led the administration’s efforts on the topic after the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the Roe v Wade ruling that had legalised abortion for decades beforehand.

Lingering concerns

The Democratic embrace of the vice president has not come without concern.

After his first nine months in office – and most notably, the controversial US pullout from Afghanistan in September 2021 – Biden’s approval ratings never eclipsed 45%. While Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections fared far better than predicted and continued to outperform Republicans in special elections around the country, Biden’s approval rating has generally only trended in one direction. This was particularly so after his June 27 debate performance.

As low as Biden’s ratings sank in the three and a half years prior to June 27, Harris’ approval ratings fared consistently fared worse, making her one of the least popular vice presidents in US history. Over the past year alone, her approval rating has fallen from an average of around 41% in July 2023 to around 38% in June and July 2024.

Yet polling released in July 2024 indicated, for the first time, that she eclipsed Biden (now at 38%) in approval ratings. Most importantly for Democrats, polling in key swing states also indicated she would likely fare significantly better at the top of the Democratic ticket than Biden against Trump. In other words, Harris is the heir apparent to Biden not because she started looking better, but because Biden kept looking worse.

The challenging road ahead

On many fronts, the road ahead for Harris remains uncertain. While the office of the vice president is often perceived as a stepping stone to the presidency, Biden, George H.W. Bush, and Richard Nixon are the only former vice presidents to have successfully won office through an election in nearly a century and a half. A total of 17 vice presidents have sought the office but only five have succeeded.

Harris will soon name her own vice presidential running mate – widely anticipated to be a moderate male figure who will be used to reassure voters concerned that she is more progressive than Biden. The effort to reassure sceptical conservative voters will also see her likely regularly referring to her many years as a “top cop” should she end up winning the Democratic nomination.

While Harris does not have an official lock on the nomination, her hours-old campaign will certainly make it look like she does. Similar to how the now-suspended Biden campaign fought off the prospect of intra-party challengers in the 2024 Democratic primaries, the Harris campaign will portray Democratic resistance to her as not only futile but also unnecessarily damaging to the candidate ahead of the general election against Trump.

Should she win the Democratic nomination, we can expect Harris to make a forceful counterargument to a Trump campaign that is so confident in its prospects in November that it named a running mate whom polling found is unlikely to boost Trump’s electoral prospects. Such forceful counterarguments were already on display in her media and campaign appearances in the aftermath of Biden’s lacklustre debate performance, in which she passionately defended the administration’s record while also highlighting the threats she deems a second Trump administration poses.

Given that Harris’ first comments to the nation after being endorsed by Biden saw her pledging to “unite the Democratic Party — and unite our nation — to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda”, we can expect the 2024 race will continue to be one defined by negative partisanship. With the vice president doing only marginally better than Biden in head-to-head matchups against Trump, Harris has a lot to do in a exceptionally short amount of time.

As a senator prosecuting political opponents, a presidential aspirant questioning Biden’s fitness for office, and a vice president rallying voters on abortion rights, Harris has clearly performed well in the past. At this point, she will have to do far more and far better than ever.

Jared Mondschein 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. Kamala Harris is likely to become the Democratic nominee for president. So who is she and how might she fare against Trump? – https://theconversation.com/kamala-harris-is-likely-to-become-the-democratic-nominee-for-president-so-who-is-she-and-how-might-she-fare-against-trump-235091

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

President Joe Biden’s decision to step aside as the Democratic nominee in this year’s presidential election certainly had a sense of inevitability about it.

Yet, it is still unprecedented in the modern era for a sitting president to drop out of a presidential race this late in the process. We are really in uncharted waters for American politics.

So, how where does the race go from here – and what does it mean for both the Democrats and Donald Trump, the Republican nominee?

Will the Democrats now unite behind Kamala Harris?

Biden has endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, as the nominee, which I believe he was always going to do. Not anointing Harris as his successor would have been politically unthinkable for Biden simply because it would have undermined his own decision-making when he chose her to be his running mate before the 2020 election.

His endorsement will also have a big impact on the decision-making of the Democratic Party as a whole. Anybody who challenges Harris now might well be taking on the establishment of the party. And the party would be wary of increasing perceptions of disunity at this point.

So, it certainly seems the Democrats will unite behind her as the candidate.

That said, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that she could be challenged by another presidential hopeful. This may well depend on her performance – and the broader reactions to her – in the next couple of days.

Potential rivals will have political ambitions of their own – we can’t discount that.

There will also be significant calculations about whether Harris can do the job – if she can win a national election campaign against Trump. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of wariness in the United States about what it would mean to be have a Black woman running against Trump, and how that would be received.

And lastly, there is a lot of very real angst within the Democratic Party – and more broadly – about what a Trump victory would mean for the country. In many people’s views, the best way to avert what Democrats see as a potential catastrophe is to nominate the candidate with the best chance of beating him. Whether or not the party settles on Harris as that person remains to be seen.

What are the potential risks and rewards for the Democrats?

The risks are quite obvious. There’s a real wariness about the unprecedented nature of this decision and how it will rattle the party.

One risk is Harris turns out not to be the right candidate and that the presidential race would be difficult for her to win, especially given how badly her first campaign for the presidency went in 2020.

The risks to American politics more broadly are also quite serious, given the level of vitriol and hatred that will be directed at the Democratic Party if a Black woman is the head of the ticket.

But I think it’s also entirely possible this is the circuit breaker the Democrats needed. The party had been slipping into a morass of despair after Biden’s debate performance against Trump last month and the subsequent assassination attempt against the former president. In a recent poll, two-thirds of Democrats said they believed Biden should withdraw from the race.

Given that both Biden and Trump are so disliked by the American population, Harris (and her running mate) could represent a huge opportunity for the Democrats.

A key strength of Harris is on the critical issue of reproductive rights. She has owned this issue in the campaign so far because Biden has difficulty with abortion politically as a devout Catholic – and we saw how he struggled with the messaging on this issue in the debate.

It’s entirely possible it will be a hugely mobilising factor in this year’s election, as it was in the 2022 midterm elections. As such, Harris would have a significant advantage in persuading the Democratic base to turn out to vote on that issue, in addition to other voters.

How would this change the calculations for Trump?

Assuming Harris does become the nominee, Trump’s pick of J.D. Vance as his vice presidential running mate may turn out to have been a mistake. Like much of the movement that supports Trump, Vance is virulently anti-abortion and committed to further regulations on reproductive rights.

This could be a significant vulnerability for Trump, who doesn’t perform as well with women voters compared to men.

And it seems the Trump campaign knows this, which is why it has been campaigning against Harris even before it was clear Biden was going to drop out.

The attacks on Harris from the right have been very brazen in their misogyny and racism. For example, the New York Post published a column earlier this month saying Harris would be the country’s first “DEI president”, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion. This is a way of dismissing anybody who’s not white and not a man as not being worthy of the position they’ve earned.

Trump rose to national prominence prosecuting the same kind of racist campaign against the presidency of Barack Obama.

I think we can expect there to be a push for the Trump campaign not to go down that road any further. But we’ve seen in the past how Trump completely ignores that kind of conventional wisdom, and just how much that incites his base.

This remains a dangerous and unpredictable era in American politics. There are no rules for what happens next.

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

– ref. Biden out, Harris in? Why this risky, unprecedented move could be the circuit breaker the Democrats needed – https://theconversation.com/biden-out-harris-in-why-this-risky-unprecedented-move-could-be-the-circuit-breaker-the-democrats-needed-235196

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

President Joe Biden’s decision to step aside as the Democratic nominee in this year’s presidential election certainly had a sense of inevitability about it.

Yet, it is still unprecedented in the modern era for a sitting president to drop out of a presidential race this late in the process. We are really in uncharted waters for American politics.

So, how where does the race go from here – and what does it mean for both the Democrats and Donald Trump, the Republican nominee?

Will the Democrats now unite behind Kamala Harris?

Biden has endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, as the nominee, which I believe he was always going to do. Not anointing Harris as his successor would have been politically unthinkable for Biden simply because it would have undermined his own decision-making when he chose her to be his running mate before the 2020 election.

His endorsement will also have a big impact on the decision-making of the Democratic Party as a whole. Anybody who challenges Harris now might well be taking on the establishment of the party. And the party would be wary of increasing perceptions of disunity at this point.

So, it certainly seems the Democrats will unite behind her as the candidate.

That said, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that she could be challenged by another presidential hopeful. This may well depend on her performance – and the broader reactions to her – in the next couple of days.

Potential rivals will have political ambitions of their own – we can’t discount that.

There will also be significant calculations about whether Harris can do the job – if she can win a national election campaign against Trump. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of wariness in the United States about what it would mean to be have a Black woman running against Trump, and how that would be received.

And lastly, there is a lot of very real angst within the Democratic Party – and more broadly – about what a Trump victory would mean for the country. In many people’s views, the best way to avert what Democrats see as a potential catastrophe is to nominate the candidate with the best chance of beating him. Whether or not the party settles on Harris as that person remains to be seen.

What are the potential risks and rewards for the Democrats?

The risks are quite obvious. There’s a real wariness about the unprecedented nature of this decision and how it will rattle the party.

One risk is Harris turns out not to be the right candidate and that the presidential race would be difficult for her to win, especially given how badly her first campaign for the presidency went in 2020.

The risks to American politics more broadly are also quite serious, given the level of vitriol and hatred that will be directed at the Democratic Party if a Black woman is the head of the ticket.

But I think it’s also entirely possible this is the circuit breaker the Democrats needed. The party had been slipping into a morass of despair after Biden’s debate performance against Trump last month and the subsequent assassination attempt against the former president. In a recent poll, two-thirds of Democrats said they believed Biden should withdraw from the race.

Given that both Biden and Trump are so disliked by the American population, Harris (and her running mate) could represent a huge opportunity for the Democrats.

A key strength of Harris is on the critical issue of reproductive rights. She has owned this issue in the campaign so far because Biden has difficulty with abortion politically as a devout Catholic – and we saw how he struggled with the messaging on this issue in the debate.

It’s entirely possible it will be a hugely mobilising factor in this year’s election, as it was in the 2022 midterm elections. As such, Harris would have a significant advantage in persuading the Democratic base to turn out to vote on that issue, in addition to other voters.

How would this change the calculations for Trump?

Assuming Harris does become the nominee, Trump’s pick of J.D. Vance as his vice presidential running mate may turn out to have been a mistake. Like much of the movement that supports Trump, Vance is virulently anti-abortion and committed to further regulations on reproductive rights.

This could be a significant vulnerability for Trump, who doesn’t perform as well with women voters compared to men.

And it seems the Trump campaign knows this, which is why it has been campaigning against Harris even before it was clear Biden was going to drop out.

The attacks on Harris from the right have been very brazen in their misogyny and racism. For example, the New York Post published a column earlier this month saying Harris would be the country’s first “DEI president”, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion. This is a way of dismissing anybody who’s not white and not a man as not being worthy of the position they’ve earned.

Trump rose to national prominence prosecuting the same kind of racist campaign against the presidency of Barack Obama.

I think we can expect there to be a push for the Trump campaign not to go down that road any further. But we’ve seen in the past how Trump completely ignores that kind of conventional wisdom, and just how much that incites his base.

This remains a dangerous and unpredictable era in American politics. There are no rules for what happens next.

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

– ref. Biden out, Harris in? What this risky, unprecedented move could mean for the Democrats – and Donald Trump – https://theconversation.com/biden-out-harris-in-what-this-risky-unprecedented-move-could-mean-for-the-democrats-and-donald-trump-235196

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

The United States election will be held on November 5. On Sunday US time, President Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential election contest and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris.

It’s not certain, but very likely Harris will now be the Democratic candidate to face former Republican president Donald Trump in November. During the Democratic presidential primaries held early this year, Biden won about 95% of all delegates to the August 19–22 Democratic convention. These delegates are likely to support Harris given Biden’s endorsement.

Since the debate with Trump on June 27 that was widely thought to have been a disaster for Biden, he has faced pressure to withdraw. In an Ipsos poll for US ABC News that was released before Biden’s withdrawal on Sunday, Democratic voters wanted Biden to withdraw by 60–39.

Following the assassination attempt against Trump on July 13 and the Republican convention from July 15–18, Trump’s lead over Biden in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate of national polls had increased to 3.2 points from 1.9 points on July 13, the largest margin since the aggregate began in March. Vote shares were 43.5% Trump, 40.2% Biden and 8.7% for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

I’ve written previously that the presidency is not decided by the national popular vote. Instead each state has a certain amount of Electoral Votes (EVs), mostly based on population, with each state awarding their EVs winner takes all. It takes 270 EVs to win. The EV system is likely to skew to Trump, so Biden was further behind than in the national polls.

Biden will continue as president until his term ends in January 2025. His net approval in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate is -17.7, with 56.2% disapproving and 38.5% approving. His net approval is worse than other previous presidents at this point in their term, except George Bush Sr and Jimmy Carter.

Trump’s net favourability in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate is -12.0, with 53.7% unfavourable and 41.7% favourable. His ratings are relatively unchanged since April. Unfortunately, FiveThirtyEight has no favourability ratings for Harris.

Will Harris win?

It’s too soon to analyse Harris vs Trump polls. Harris had not been a presidential candidate before today and name recognition of Biden explains his often better numbers than Harris. A recent national YouGov poll for CBS News gave Trump a five-point lead over Biden and a three-point lead over Harris.

There are two things that should advantage Harris. One is that economic data has improved, with inflation dropping and real earnings up. The other is that, while Biden would have been almost 82 by the election, Harris will only be 60 by then. Trump is 78, so the age split that was unfavourable to Biden will be favourable to Harris.

Nevertheless, nominating a candidate who has not been battle-tested in the primaries is very risky. When Harris ran for president in 2020, she withdrew from the contest in December 2019, before any primaries.

However, with Biden’s age of great concern to voters, and with him already behind Trump, switching to a new candidate could prove a sensible move for the Democrats. Changes in prime minister have worked for Australian parties in the past, with Malcolm Turnbull winning the 2016 federal election after replacing Tony Abbott, and Scott Morrison winning in 2019 after replacing Turnbull.

While Biden has been losing, US Senate polls in the presidential swing states of Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona suggest the Democratic candidates are winning, and doing much better than Biden. So perhaps Democrats just have a Biden problem.

US earnings up

In June, headline inflation dropped 0.1% after being unchanged in May and 12-month inflation dropped to 3.0%, the lowest it has been since June 2023. Core inflation was up 0.1% in June after increasing 0.2% in May and has increased 3.3% in the last 12 months, the smallest increase since April 2021.

The low inflation in May and June has boosted real (inflation-adjusted) earnings in those months, with real hourly earnings up 0.9% for May and June and real weekly earnings up 0.7%. In the 12 months to June, real hourly earnings are up 0.8% and real weekly earnings up 0.6%.

In June, a net 206,000 jobs were added, but the unemployment rate increased 0.1% to 4.1%. This is the highest unemployment rate since November 2021.

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. Can Kamala Harris win the US presidency after Joe Biden’s withdrawal? Here’s what the polls say – https://theconversation.com/can-kamala-harris-win-the-us-presidency-after-joe-bidens-withdrawal-heres-what-the-polls-say-235185

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Belinda Wheaton, Professor, School of Sport, Health and Human Performance, University of Waikato

A greener games? Certainly that is what Paris promised when it made environmental sustainability, innovation and leadership central to its successful bid to host the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Organising Committee promised “historic” progress on climate goals, halving the carbon footprint of previous games in Rio and London.

To achieve this, Paris will cut carbon emissions across travel, construction and operations such as catering and accommodation. All Olympic sites will connect to the public electricity grid, avoiding diesel electricity generation.

To enhance social, economic and environmental sustainability, new construction has been minimised by using existing and temporary venues.

All laudable objectives that align with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) goal of using the games to “inspire sustainable futures around the world”. Despite the bold claims, however, the way Paris has delivered its surfing event in Tahiti illustrates just how challenging it is to turn rhetoric into reality.

Olympic surfing on a Pacific atoll

Surfing debuted at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020-21. But an international surfing event is challenging to organise and run, and few cities can guarantee quality waves and ideal weather conditions for the duration.

While the Tokyo surfing ran smoothly, the wave quality on the Japanese east coast was not ideal for high-performance competition.

Initial reports suggested Paris was building an artificial wave pool. But such an energy intensive and costly facility would have been difficult to align with the host’s sustainability goals.

France’s Atlantic coast then became the favoured venue, but was later supplanted by
Teahupo’o in Tahiti, French Polynesia, almost 16,000 kilometres from Paris.

While the IOC has been committed to a “one host city” model, recent policy changes in its Agenda 2020+5 allow for increased flexibility. Hosting the Olympics can now involve several cities and even regions or countries.

And it’s not hard to see why Teahupo’o became the preferred option. One of the world’s most challenging and dramatic surf breaks, it is already part of the pro surfing world circuit (although until recently it was deemed too dangerous for women, who were excluded from 2006 till 2022).

In 2024 it will showcase the spectacular, athletic nature of modern surfing against a stunning Polynesian island backdrop. Holding the event in Tahiti, it was claimed, would “bring a sense of belonging to overseas French territories”.

In the end, however, the choice of surfing venue has proved highly controversial, causing local and international protest.

Local versus global

Teahupo’o is a small settlement on the main island of Tahiti’s southwestern coast. Locals first became alarmed when leaked plans for an Olympic village revealed vast new infrastructure.

This included two-lane roads, a car bridge, electricity groundwork, coastal embankments, a floating pontoon for spectators and scaffolding for 200 officials.

Residents and environmental groups quickly responded, raising media attention and demanding greater transparency and public participation. As Teahupo’o mayor Roniu Poaru stated:

Our population accepts the Olympic Games, but that comes with conditions […] the goal is to preserve our environment.

Compromises were eventually reached. New infrastructure would be kept to a minimum, with competitors living on a cruise ship. Olympic staff, press and officials would be housed with residents or in local guesthouses.

With limited capacity for live spectators, viewing screens will be set up in the local town and in the capital, Papeeti.

Tower of trouble

The greatest concern, however, has been over the construction of a new aluminium judging tower to replace the existing structure, which was deemed unsafe by the Olympic organisers.

This involved drilling into the delicate coral reef, which scientists say could have dire consequences for the reef ecosystems.

A global petition was launched to stop the new tower. The International Surfing Association, which is responsible for developing and running Olympic surfing, said it would not support any new construction on the reef.

Despite this, the head of the Paris organising committee and President of French Polynesia were said to be “in lockstep together” and “united in their desire to see the judging tower built”. And so it was, albeit a scaled back version.

But many Tahitians remain upset at what they saw as a disrespectful process. Tahitian surfer Vahiné Fierro, who is representing France in the event, described the reef environment as “our temple”:

It’s a spiritual belief, living incarnation of our heritage, and our ancestral land.

Ironically, as our earlier research revealed, such beliefs express the very essence of surfing’s Polynesian origins, which the IOC has been so keen to showcase through surfing’s inclusion in the Olympics.

‘Greenwashing gold’

The controversy surrounding the surfing event at the Paris Olympics highlights the many challenges in delivering sustainable mega-events.

Many scholars and activists remain unconvinced by the IOC’s environmental claims, and have questioned whether the organisation is really “greenwashing gold”.

Indeed, the IOC continues to be highly selective about how it measures its operations to support various Utopian projections and environmental promises. And research evaluating Olympic sustainability between 1992 and 2020 has shown it has declined over time.

According to Georgina Grenon, the environmental excellence director for Paris 2024:

We want to show that another model is possible and create a legacy for major sporting events. We don’t claim to be perfect, but we want to show that we can do things differently.

Hosting the surfing event in Tahiti is certainly doing things differently. But it raises yet more questions about the IOC’s claims of leadership in environmental sustainability.

Belinda Wheaton has received funding from the IOC Advanced Research Programme.

Holly Thorpe has received funding from the IOC Advanced Research Programme.

– ref. The greenest games ever? How claims of Olympic sustainability hit a reef in Tahiti – https://theconversation.com/the-greenest-games-ever-how-claims-of-olympic-sustainability-hit-a-reef-in-tahiti-234464

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 July 15–19 from a sample of 1,258, gave Labor a 51–49 lead, unchanged from the previous Newspoll, three weeks ago. Primary votes were 38% Coalition (up two), 33% Labor (up one), 13% Greens (steady), 6% One Nation (down one) and 10% for all Others (down two).

Both Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton gained on net approval, with Albanese up four points to -7, with 51% dissatisfied (down two) and 44% satisfied (up two). Dutton’s net approval was up eight points to -8. Albanese led Dutton as better PM by 46–39 (46–38 three weeks ago).

Here is a graph of Albanese’s net approval in Newspoll. The data are marked with plus signs with a smoothed line fitted. After a bad result last Newspoll, Albanese’s ratings have returned to their normal run since the October 2023 Voice referendum.

Dutton’s -8 net approval is the best for him since October 2022, and his seven-point better PM deficit is a record high.

While Newspoll has Labor ahead, other polls have Labor behind. As long as the cost of living is dominating voters’ concerns, it’s likely the incumbent government will struggle.

Asked about preferred Labor leader, 28% selected Albanese, 13% Tanya Plibersek, 10% Bill Shorten and 8% Jim Chalmers. Among Labor voters, Albanese was way ahead with 59%. Dutton was preferred as Coalition leader by 28%, with Jacinta Price on 12%, with Dutton on 54% with Coalition voters.

Freshwater poll: Coalition gains lead

A national Freshwater poll for The Financial Review, conducted July 19–21 from a sample of 1,003, gave the Coalition a 51–49 lead by respondent allocated preferences, a one-point gain for the Coalition since June. Primary votes were 40% Coalition (steady), 31% Labor (down one), 13% Greens (steady) and 16% for all Others.

Albanese’s net approval fell two points to -14, with 48% unfavourable and 34% favourable. Dutton’s net approval improved two points to -3. Albanese led Dutton as preferred PM by 45–39 (43–41 in June). By 50–21, voters believed the economy would worsen in the next 12 months, rather than improve.

The cost of living was rated one of the most important issues by 73%, with housing on 42%, managing the economy and health at 26% each and crime at 25%. The Coalition led Labor by 12 points on cost of living, with this lead up three points since June. They led on housing by two points, a three-point improvement for Labor.

Essential poll: Coalition leads by 48–46

A national Essential poll, conducted July 10–14 from a sample of 1,122, gave the Coalition a 48–46 lead including undecided (47–46 in late June). Primary votes were 33% Coalition (steady), 29% Labor (down one), 13% Greens (up one), 8% One Nation (up one), 3% UAP (up two), 9% for all Others (down one) and 6% undecided (down one).

Since early April, Labor has only led once in Essential. This is partly because Essential’s respondent allocated preferences have been weak for Labor. Analyst Kevin Bonham said in the current Essential, Labor had just 53% of all preferences.

By 37–30, voters were satisfied with democracy, but they were dissatisfied with federal parliament by 43–29. By 75–25, voters thought most politicians enter politics to serve their own interest, rather than the public interest. By 42–38, they thought a single-party majority government was better than negotiating with other parties or independents to form government.

On political engagement, 7% said they actively participate in politics, 42% closely follow politics, 37% had little interest and 15% no interest. For sport, 15% participated in sport, 37% closely follow sport, 29% had little interest and 19% no interest.

The most popular sports to watch were the Olympics (48%), AFL (40%), tennis (36%), cricket (33%), rugby (33%) and soccer (28%). On sports betting advertising, 43% (down three since August 2023) said it should be banned outright, 25% (steady) allowed, but not during sports events and 17% (up one) allowed at all times.

On the upcoming Olympics, 64% (up 11 since the 2021 Olympics) thought Australia winning gold medals important, while 30% (down 11) said it was not important. This implies expectation management could be a problem.

Additional Resolve questions

I previously covered the federal Resolve poll that had Labor and Albanese continuing to slide. In additional questions, asked whether they had noticed a tax cut in their pay packet as a result of the modified stage three plan, 57% said “no” and 43% “yes”.

By 54–16, voters supported Labor granting more freedom to its parliamentarians to vote against the party, with Labor voters supporting by 54–14. By 41–29, voters thought Fatima Payman should resign from the Senate to make way for a Labor senator over staying on as an independent.

Queensland YouGov poll: Labor doomed at election

The Queensland state election will be held on October 26. A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, conducted July 8–15 from a sample of 1,019, gave the Liberal National Party a 57–43 lead over Labor, a one-point gain for the LNP since April. Primary votes were 43% LNP (down one), 26% Labor (down one), 14% Greens (down one), 13% One Nation (up three) and 4% for all Others (steady).

Labor Premier Steven Miles’ net approval jumped nine points to -13, with 44% dissatisfied and 31% satisfied. LNP leader David Crisafulli’s net approval improved three points to +17. Crisafulli continued to lead as better premier by 40–29 (40–27 in April).

Since a March Newspoll gave the LNP a 54–46 lead, all Queensland polls have been ugly for Labor, and it’s virtually certain they will lose the October election, ending almost ten years of Labor state government.

Victorian Resolve poll: Coalition has large primary vote lead

A Victorian Resolve poll for The Age, conducted with the federal June and July Resolve polls from a sample of “more than 1,100”, gave the Coalition 37% of the primary vote (steady since May), Labor 27% (down one), the Greens 15% (up two), independents 15% (down one) and others 6% (steady).

Resolve does not usually include a two-party estimate, but Resolve director Jim Reed said Labor and the Coalition would be “extremely close” in a two-party contest. This poll was done before the revelations of alleged corrupt behaviour by the CFMEU.

Labor incumbent Jacinta Allan led the Liberals’ John Pesutto by 31–28 as preferred premier (31–26 in May). By 57–22, voters supported the Victorian government’s plan to increase the number of homes by 2 million by 2051.

However, voters were opposed by 57–28 to the state government’s plan to lift the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 years old, and further increase it to 14 years old in 2027.

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. Labor has narrow Newspoll lead but behind in other polls; Labor doomed in Queensland – https://theconversation.com/labor-has-narrow-newspoll-lead-but-behind-in-other-polls-labor-doomed-in-queensland-234710

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

The 2024 Summer Olympics, kicking off in Paris on July 26, will be novel for more than just the first inclusion of breakdancing. The event will also be the first instalment of the quadrennial sportsfest since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) unveiled its Olympic AI Agenda.

You might be wondering why the Olympics – founded in 1896 in imitation of the famous athletic contest of ancient Greece – needs an “AI agenda”. What can computers do to help the human body’s quest to reach higher, faster and stronger?

The answer, according to the IOC, is quite a lot. The committee’s far-reaching agenda envisions a world in which AI systems aid athletes in reaching their peak performance, help to ensure fair play, optimise event operations, and transform the spectator experience.

The goal, according to IOC president Thomas Bach, is “to set the course for the AI future of sport with responsible leadership by embracing the change while preserving the Olympic values”.

Spotting talent, training athletes, rehabilitating injuries

Most of what the IOC has in mind is quite specific to sport, but some of it is the kind of AI applications that could be used by organisations in many fields.

Chief among sport-focused uses of AI are those that focus on individual athletes. By evaluating huge data sets based on performance, physical traits, and skills, AI systems can make it easier to spot talent. These systems could operate on a large scale and might identify people who are currently being missed.

AI could also play a role in helping talented individuals become world-class athletes. We are already seeing AI systems designed to support coaches by providing personalised training plans.

Optimising training and uncovering hidden patterns in the behaviour of individuals or groups of athletes is another promising application of AI models. Coaches can use these models to adapt training strategies continuously through feedback.

AI training systems can be more affordable and accessible than traditional coaching. There are also AI tools that can analyse video of movements such as a tennis swing in real time and provide feedback – and some need no more equipment than a smartphone.

Organisations such as Swimming Australia are already using AI tools to interpret athlete data using natural language.

AI-powered tools are also changing injury prevention and rehabilitation. By analysing biomechanical data, training logs and medical records, AI can identify injury risk factors and provide personalised recommendations to avoid them.

For instance, AI models can analyse an athlete’s movement patterns to detect imbalances, suggesting targeted exercises and corrective techniques to reduce injury risk and enhance recovery. Research also shows AI technologies can identify knee injuries with accuracy comparable to physicians, potentially reducing the need for specialised medical practitioners.

Refereeing and judging

The IOC also believes another key use for AI is to help make sport more fair.

Technological aids for officials are not new. Think of cricket’s decision review system, the NRL’s bunker, and electronic line calling in tennis. The FIFA World Cup’s “semi-automated” offside technology uses AI.

AI judging is also coming to gymnastics. For casual viewers, it can be hard to understand why one gymnast gets a higher score than another.

In a bid to make judging more transparent, a judging support system was employed across all apparatus at the 2023 world championships. This AI-based tool strictly matches gymnast movements to the rulebook, and may make the sport more accessible for viewers.

Viewing experience

New technologies and digital innovations also make the Olympic Games more accessible for fans.

During the 2020 Tokyo games (actually held in 2021 due to the COVID pandemic), digital engagement doubled compared to the Rio games of 2016, with Australia being one of the top countries for consuming digital content.

A recent survey showed Australian audiences generally oppose AI-produced political news, but they are more accepting of AI-generated sports content.

More recent research from IBM showed 55% of global tennis fans surveyed believe AI will positively impact sports. This sentiment reflects a growing acceptance of AI’s role in enhancing the experience for fans.

The IOC wants to use AI to create “more personalised fan experiences”, but we don’t yet know exactly what those will be.

Improving efficiency

Away from the sport itself, AI will also be used in an effort to improve efficiency, reduce costs and enhance sustainability in the Olympics. This will be for things such as optimising transportation, workforce training, logistics and ticket sales.

The IOC plans to share the knowledge gained from this year’s games with other sports organisers to help them create more engaging and cost-effective events.

AI technology will be used to safeguard athletes and officials from social media abuse. An expected half a billion social comments will be monitored during the 2024 Paris Olympics, with abusive posts automatically erased to protect athletes.

Change or be changed

In sport as in the rest of society, it will be crucial to establish guidelines for safe and responsible implementation of AI. An important first step is to ensure data fed to AI systems is secure, accurate, fair and inclusive.

In 2014, the IOC launched a program of reform in a fast-moving world with the motto “change or be changed”. This imperative has taken on a new urgency with the rapid progress of AI technologies in recent years.

As we have seen, AI is making inroads at this year’s games, and we can expect to see even more of it at the Los Angeles games due in 2028 and the 2032 games booked for Brisbane. Are we ready to embrace it?

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. Why does the Olympics have an ‘AI agenda’ and what does it mean for the future of sport? – https://theconversation.com/why-does-the-olympics-have-an-ai-agenda-and-what-does-it-mean-for-the-future-of-sport-233456

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carolyn Holbrook, Associate Professor in History, Deakin University

The Strengthening Australian Democracy report released by Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil this week provides a sophisticated diagnosis of the challenges facing democratic governance around the world. The report also offers a broad prescription of how Australia might meet those challenges.

The Strengthening Democracy Taskforce, established by O’Neil in 2023, prepared the report, which is based on wide consultation and deep research. It positions Australia as a global leader and innovator in democratic practice.

The report argues we need to recognise and safeguard against our own vulnerability to anti-democratic headwinds and regard the defence of democracy as an issue of vital international importance. We don’t want to become “an island of democracy in a sea of autocracy”.

The threat to democracy

The scale of the global threat to democracy is well-recognised. We are seeing the erosion of democratic institutions and conventions such as a free press and judicial independence around the world, including in Brazil, Venezuela, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Turkey, India and Indonesia.

In the United States, the politician who has already shown he is prepared to disregard democratic norms, in a nation that trumpets itself as the bastion of democracy, may well be re-elected as president. “Strongman” populists in the style of Donald Trump, armed with simplistic and potentially dangerous solutions to extremely complex problems, are — in the words of O’Neil— “replicating at an exponential rate”.

The Strengthening Australian Democracy report conceives Australian democracy expansively, as a community-wide project. Community consent through the electoral system gives licence and legitimacy to our elected politicians.

Our democratic practice includes not only those electoral and political systems, but vital elements such as judicial independence, anti-corruption bodies, publicly owned media and civil society.

Australia is in a stronger position than many other countries. However, there are alarming signs of democratic decay in rising levels of polarisation and distrust in our democratic system. This is particularly so among the young and less advantaged.

The report also details the threat to Australian democracy posed by foreign actors through various means. These include the use of human commentators by a surprisingly high number of overseas governments — 47 in the year to May 2023 — to distort online debate and seed conspiracy theories. It also includes the deployment of AI technology to spread distrust in government.

The threats presented by AI, social media and the internet more generally are also home-grown. These technologies can act as tools for innovation and even democratisation. But they are also used to rapidly spread disinformation and misinformation, and polarise communities far more effectively than analogue technologies.

To its credit, the report does not dwell on external or technology-driven threats at the expense of the endemic social and economic causes of declining trust in democratic governance.

While social connection — “a vibrant civic society” — is vital to democratic wellbeing, loneliness and isolation are increasing. Membership of political, religious, sporting, political and trade union communities has declined.

Crucially, those who feel shut out of opportunities such as home ownership and employment, or suffer from mental ill-health and forms of complex disadvantage, are more likely to feel disillusioned and distrustful.

The risk of complacency about our democracy

The report’s claim that “every generation has discovered that their democracy cannot be taken for granted” doesn’t square with the unique circumstances of the current situation, nor our history of civic indolence.

Indeed, Australians are notoriously complacent about their democracy. The late historian John Hirst commented on the “strange gap” between Australia’s democratic achievements and our lack of attachment to them. We are much more likely to derive national pride from sporting achievements or Anzac commemoration than from Federation or other significant democratic achievements.

Previous generations have sought to educate children about our system of government. Crucially, though, this was never in circumstances in which that system was threatened existentially.

The civics and history curriculum taught in schools until the 1950s was designed to inculcate children into the “sacred rites” of British race patriotism. Then, in the mid-1990s, then prime minister Paul Keating revived civics education.

This came amid much fuss about the extent of our civic ignorance — “What kind of country would forget the name of its first prime minister?” asked a television advertisement for the centenary of Federation. The civics program was part of Keating’s broader plan to make Australia a republic by the end of the decade.

John Howard maintained the civics education program when he became prime minister in 1996. It survives, albeit in a moth-eaten form, to this day.

Data collected by the Australian Curriculum Assessment Authority indicates civics education is ineffective. Just 38% of students finish Year 10 with the required standard of knowledge.

Importance of democracy education

It’s heartening the government is encouraging informed debate about our democratic future. But the big question is whether O’Neil can win support within Cabinet for funding to introduce concrete measures that complement the work done by security agencies against foreign and domestic threats.

As the report notes, democracy works when people share a feeling of common purpose, which motivates them to work co-operatively and constructively. The widening wealth inequality gap and diminution of public services continue to erode this feeling of common purpose. These issues are not easily tackled given the entrenched and powerful interests that continue to block efforts at reform.

A more immediate option for the government is to commit to a widespread education initiative. This must be creative and innovative, and conceived around the concept of democracy itself, rather than civics, with its more abstract, less exciting connotations. Australia has plenty of material with which to build pride in its democratic history — for instance, early introduction of the secret ballot and enfranchisement of white women, Saturday voting, preferential voting, compulsory voting and an independent electoral commission.

The school-based aspect of democracy education will inevitably be a thorny issue, given the need to wrangle the federation, find room within an already overcrowded curriculum and ask more of an overburdened teaching profession.

The Australian Electoral Commission could make good use of more funding to expand its community outreach. This could include engaging with and educating voters on election days. The importance of election-day voting rituals, not least the “democracy sausage” and community cake stall, in fostering a sense of pride and inclusion in our democracy must not be underestimated.

Similarly, the government could increase funding for the Parliamentary Education Office, for Parliament’s school visits program and for the excellent Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House.

The Australian War Memorial has been extravagantly funded in its role as the national shrine to Anzac commemoration. Why isn’t Old Parliament House, a magnificently warm and intimate building, adequately funded to become the shrine to Australians’ most important ideal — democracy?

Carolyn Holbrook receives funding from the Australian Research Council

– ref. Threats and challenges to Australia’s democracy are well outlined in government report. Now for some action – https://theconversation.com/threats-and-challenges-to-australias-democracy-are-well-outlined-in-government-report-now-for-some-action-234898

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Strangio, Emeritus Professor of Politics, Monash University

For nearly 200 years, the notion of American political exceptionalism has had currency in the United States: it is an idea rooted in the nation’s status as the first modern republic. As we watch from afar, disturbed yet mesmerised by the latest chapter of violent political division in America, the country seems less a paragon than a symbol of democratic pathology.

America’s certainty in its political uniqueness is symptomatic of a brash national chauvinism. By way of contrast, Australia is prone, if anything, to undue bashfulness about its democratic credentials. How else can we explain that this month marks the centenary of the most extraordinary feature of the country’s democratic architecture, and yet the anniversary is slipping by with neither comment nor reflection. I refer to compulsory voting, which was legislated in the federal parliament in July 1924.

Compulsory voting is not unique to Australia. Calculating how many countries abide by the practice is notoriously difficult, since in around half the nations where compulsory voting exists in name it is not enforced. Most estimates, however, put the figure in the vicinity of 20 to 30.

If not unique, Australia’s experience of compulsory voting is highly distinctive for a number of reasons.

First, its emergence in the early 20th century was consistent with the nation’s larger tradition of innovation and experimentation when it came to electoral institutions and practices. This record is typically traced back to the pioneering in the 1850s of the secret ballot (sometimes called the “Australian ballot”) in a number of the Australian colonies and the embrace of other advanced democratic measures in the second half of the 19th century.

These included manhood suffrage, payment of MPs and the extension of the franchise to women, beginning in South Australia in 1894. The innovations continued in the 20th century with such things as preferential voting and non-partisan bureaucratic electoral administration.

Second, Australia is alone in embracing compulsory voting among the Anglophone democracies to which it typically compares itself. The electoral systems of Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States are all based on voluntary voting.

Third, unlike many other compulsory voting countries, Australia does not pay lip service to its operation. Electoral authorities enforce compulsory voting, albeit leniently. It has been strongly upheld by the courts and is backed by a regime of sanctions for non-compliance.

Fourth, compulsory voting has been consistently and unambiguously successful in achieving high voter turnout. Though there has been a slight downward trend in turnout at the past five national elections (it hit a low of 90.5% in 2022), it has not fallen below 90% since the adoption of compulsory voting a century ago.

This is around 30% higher than the recent average turnout in countries with voluntary voting. It is also well above the recent average in countries with compulsory voting systems.

Fifth, the public has strongly and consistently backed the practice. Evidence from more than half a century of opinion polls and election study surveys shows support hovering around the 70% mark.

An impregnable practice

Perhaps the most singular aspect of the nation’s experience of compulsory voting, however, is how seemingly impregnable is the practice if measured by its durability, the dearth of controversy over it, the consistency of its enforcement by authorities and the way citizens have dutifully complied with and supported it. Together these things make Australia an exemplar of compulsory voting internationally.

This is not to say compulsory voting has been a sacred cow in Australia. In the final decades of the 20th century and first decade of this century, there was a concerted push to end the practice emanating principally from within the Liberal Party.

The torchbearer of the agitation for voluntary voting was the avowed libertarian South Australian senator, Nick Minchin. For Minchin, compulsory voting was anathema:

[…] in relation to the most important single manifestation of democratic will, the act of voting, I profoundly detest Australia’s denial of individual choice. It seems to me that an essential part of a liberal democracy should be the citizen’s legal right to decide whether or not to vote. The denial of that right is an affront to democracy.

Minchin had a number of like-minded supporters of voluntary voting in the Liberal Party. Among them, importantly, was John Howard, whose prime ministership coincided with the mobilisation to abolish compulsory voting.

Howard had been on record as an opponent of the practice since his entry to the federal parliament in 1974. The Liberal Party campaign against compulsory voting manifested in, among other things:

• the party’s federal council resolving in favour of voluntary voting
• shadow cabinet endorsing a recommendation for a change of policy to voluntary voting being placed before the joint Liberal-National party parliamentary room
• the introduction in the South Australian parliament of two bills to repeal compulsory voting by successive Liberal state governments
• Coalition members of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters repeatedly recommending the abolition of the practice.

In the end, these agitations achieved nought. The most fundamental reason was that the opponents of compulsory voting failed to generate community resentment towards the system. Howard, while restating his preference for voluntary voting, admitted as much in 2005 when shutting down debate on the issue in his government:

As I move around the country, I don’t get people stopping me in the street and saying, “You’ve got to get rid of compulsory voting.”

Indeed, election survey data suggests the Liberal campaign coincided with a firming of public support for compulsory voting. In the two decades since, opposition has been dormant. For the foreseeable future, Australia’s compulsory voting regime is secure.

An Australian democratic exceptionalism?

As noted above, compulsory voting has kept voter turnout at elections above 90% for the past century. Kindred democracies marvel at, and envy, this level of participation. It affords legitimacy to election outcomes in this country. Significantly, it also produces a socially even turnout.

Compare this to the situation in this month’s United Kingdom election. Turnout is estimated to have slumped to a record low 52%. There was a clear pattern of the “haves” exercising much greater say at the ballot box than the “have nots”. Those who stayed away from the polls were predominantly less well-off, non-homeowners, the young, the lower-educated and of minority ethnic background.

Australia cannot be complacent in this regard. Low and declining turnout in remote electorates with high Indigenous populations is the most worrying chink in the performance of compulsory voting. In 2022, turnout in the Northern Territory seat of Lingiari fell to 66.8%. Even so, the practice largely succeeds in achieving inclusive voter participation across the country.

Crucially, compulsory voting is also recognised as one reason the political centre holds better in Australia than in many comparable nations. It exercises a moderating influence because it ensures it is not only impassioned partisans at either end of the political spectrum who participate in elections. This in turn means they are not the chief focus of governments and political parties.

Under a compulsory voting system, middle-of-the-road citizens and their concerns and sensibilities count. This inhibits the trend towards polarisation and grievance politics evident in other parts of the globe. It helps explain why Australia has been less receptive to the aggressive conservative populism that has taken root in the United States and Europe.

Compulsory voting also goes hand in hand with other institutional bulwarks of the nation’s democracy. While there is plenty of evidence in Australia of increasing disaffection with politics, one thing that helps bolster faith in the democratic system is the politically independent national electoral authority, the Australian Electoral Commission.

The AEC’s trusted impartial administration of the electoral system lends integrity to the democratic process. So do the many procedures it manages to facilitate voting. To name a few: Saturday election days, assistance for the ill, aged and those from non-English-speaking backgrounds, mobile polling stations, postal, absentee and early voting, and active and regular updating of registration.

Indeed, Australia has been described as “the most voter-friendly country in the world”. Compulsory voting encourages this accessibility: if citizens are obliged to vote, then it becomes incumbent to smooth the path to them participating. The ease of voting in Australia contrasts with what goes on elsewhere, for example, the rampant state-based voter-suppression practices in the United States.

Dare we suggest, then, that compulsory voting is a mainstay of an Australian democratic exceptionalism? That we little note, let alone extol, the practice is perhaps not only a product of an inherent national modesty but because it is second nature after 100 years. Habituated to being compelled to participate in elections, we are inured to its specialness.

Let’s hope this casual familiarity does not induce apathy rather than vigilance when next the system is challenged.

In the past, Paul Strangio receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Compulsory voting in Australia is 100 years old. We should celebrate how special it makes our democracy – https://theconversation.com/compulsory-voting-in-australia-is-100-years-old-we-should-celebrate-how-special-it-makes-our-democracy-234801

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renee Carey, Senior Research Fellow, School of Population Health, Curtin University

Census data show at least 60,000 people are employed as welders in Australia. Welders work in a variety of industries, including construction, manufacturing and mining.

Welding is a method used to join metals together by heating them to a high temperature and then allowing them to cool, forming a strong join. This process creates fumes.

Welding fumes are a complex mixture of very fine metal dusts, gases and other particles. These fumes have been associated with health harms including cancer, respiratory diseases and neurological disorders.

But little is known about the level of exposure to welding fumes, or the use of control measures to prevent or reduce this exposure, in Australian workplaces.

In our study published today, we surveyed 634 workers involved in welding from around Australia, across a range of ages and industries. We found most Australian welders are being exposed to high levels of dangerous, carcinogenic fumes. And we’re not doing enough to protect them.

The health risks of welding

Welding fumes were classified as a known carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in March 2017. This was based on evidence that showed exposure to welding fumes increased the risk of lung and possibly kidney cancer. This risk was apparent regardless of the type of welding or the metals being welded.

There’s also some evidence suggesting exposure to welding fumes can cause respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma, as well as respiratory symptoms such as cough and wheeze.

There is limited evidence that welding fumes containing manganese might be related to neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

The exposure limit for welding fumes has recently been lowered in Australia, from 5 milligrams of fumes per cubic metre of air (5 mg/m³) to 1 mg/m³. This brings us into line with exposure limits in countries such as the Netherlands and Germany.

Exposure to welding fumes

In our study, we asked the workers about the tasks they did in a regular working week to understand their level of exposure to welding fumes. We also asked about the environment they worked in and the safety measures used in their workplaces. Participants responded via an online survey.

We found most welding workers (91%) were exposed to welding fumes. And worryingly, a large proportion (76%) of those were exposed at a high level, likely above new exposure limits. This is a level known to be associated with serious health harms and indicates many welding workers are not using effective protective measures.

When we apply this to the number of Australians employed as welders, this means more than 40,000 workers could be exposed to high levels of welding fumes at work.

We also know many other people – such as farmers, plumbers and mechanics – may do some welding as part of their jobs. There are also other people who work in the same areas as welders who may be exposed to welding fumes.

One limitation of our research is that we didn’t go out and measure levels of exposure to welding fumes in the workplace. Instead, we used software that assigns exposures based on the participant’s work tasks. This method has been used to assess workplace exposures in other studies in Australia and internationally.

What about protection?

The levels of protection reported were generally low. Less than 20% of participants said their workplace had some form of effective ventilation. Around 60% of those who worked in non-ventilated areas also reported they didn’t use personal respiratory protection in the form of an air-supplied welding helmet. In a recent study, wearing these helmets was found to prevent around 60% of exposure to welding fumes.

We also found the welders were performing their work tasks in ways that could increase their exposure. Many reported welding in confined or restricted spaces, which is associated with higher levels of exposure. Around 86% of welders also reported leaning over the welding area while welding, which can put their breathing zone directly in line of the fumes.

Our findings show more needs to be done to protect our workers. Employers must consider work design and provide effective exhaust systems that can remove the fumes at the source, before the welder can breathe them in.

The United Kingdom has introduced tighter regulations around the control of welding fumes. These regulations mean all indoor welding tasks need to use local exhaust ventilation, which removes the fumes from the workplace air (away from workers). This is to be supplemented by adequate respiratory protection. We would like to see these regulations enforced in Australia.

Under current Australian regulations, businesses need to take all reasonably practicable steps to eliminate or minimise exposure to welding fumes. We have the technology available in the form of effective ventilation and air-supplied welding helmets to prevent or reduce exposure – we just need to make sure we are using these controls consistently. State and territory workplace safety regulators will have a role to play in making sure these regulations, and the exposure limits, are enforced.

We’ve recently seen increased attention being paid to occupational hazards, in particular with the decision to ban engineered stone and tighter regulation of silica exposure. We need to continue this momentum to ensure all of our workers are protected from harm in the workplace.

Renee Carey received funding through the Centre for Work Health and Safety New South Wales for the work described in this article.

– ref. Most Australian welders are exposed to high levels of dangerous fumes. More than 40,000 may be at risk – https://theconversation.com/most-australian-welders-are-exposed-to-high-levels-of-dangerous-fumes-more-than-40-000-may-be-at-risk-234813

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University

The extent to which renewables should dominate Australia’s energy grids is a major issue in science and politics. Solar and wind are clearly now the cheapest form of electricity. But limits to these technologies can undermine the case for a renewables-only electricity mix.

The challenges posed by solar and wind generators are real. They are inherently variable, producing electricity only when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. To ensure reliable energy supplies, grids dominated by renewables need “firming” capacity: back-up technology that can supply electricity on demand.

Some, including the Albanese government, argue gas-fired generators are needed to fill the gap. Others, such as the Coalition, say renewables can’t “keep the lights on” at all and Australia should pursue nuclear energy instead.

But a new way to firm up the world’s electricity grids is fast developing: sodium-ion batteries. This emerging energy storage technology could be a game-changer – enabling our grids to run on 100% renewables.

Sodium-ion batteries: pros and cons

Energy storage collects excess energy generated by renewables, stores it then releases it on demand, to help ensure a reliable supply. Such facilities provide either short or long-term (more than 100 hours) storage.

At present, lithium-ion batteries are the primary storage technology but are best for short-term storage. Sodium-ion batteries are now almost ready to fill the long-term storage gap.

As the name suggests, sodium-ion batteries contain sodium (symbol Na), an element found in salt. The technology involves the movement of sodium ions between positive and negative poles, which creates a charge.

The technology used in sodium-ion batteries is similar to that of lithium-ion batteries. In fact, as others have noted, factories currently producing lithium batteries could easily and cheaply move to sodium batteries.

And sodium is a far more abundant material than lithium, and potentially cheaper to extract.

Some types of lithium mining require a lot of water and energy and have led to local pollution, such as in South America’s alpine lakes. The pollution issues are far fewer, however, in Australian hard-rock lithium.

The recycling and disposal of lithium batteries is challenging – though much easier than recycling carbon from fossil fuels.

In terms of performance, sodium batteries hold their charge for much longer than lithium batteries.

But as with any technology, sodium-ion batteries present challenges. Sodium ions are bigger and heavier than lithium ions. This means the batteries are less energy-dense than their lithium counterparts, and so require more space and material to store the same amount of charge.

This is improving, however. According to one analysis, the energy density of sodium-based batteries in 2022 was equal to that of lower-end lithium-ion batteries a decade earlier.

And ongoing research and development means their energy-density continues to increase.

Getting to market

As with all promising technologies, a key question for sodium-ion batteries is when they might become widely commercialised.

To answer that, we may look to recent analysis based on a method developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It suggests sodium-ion batteries are becoming increasingly competitive on cost – and so may enter the global market as early as 2027.

The analysis suggested sodium-ion batteries would soon match the cost of using gas-fired power as a firming energy source.

Similarly, an assessment by the United States energy department in September last year found sodium-ion batteries are “expected to adopt a significant market share by 2030”.

It said the technology could become a competitive replacement for lead-acid or lithium-iron phosphate batteries in both small-scale vehicle electrification and “behind-the-meter” applications such as backing up home solar panel systems.

The analysis found current and planned manufacturing of sodium-ion batteries was concentrated in China and Europe, and several large battery producers were “projecting large-scale manufacturing facilities in the near future”.

They include Chinese electric motor vehicle company BYD, which has reportedly started constructing a sodium-ion battery facility in Xuzhou.

In Australia, United Kingdom-based battery company Faradion installed small stationary modules in Victoria’s Yarra Valley in 2022.

Keeping our options open

A recent plan by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) suggests coal-fired power will be phased out by 2035. But the plan suggests a significant amount of gas will remain in the grid.

The AEMO analysis did not look at the potential for long-duration energy storage to compete with gas. However, the development of technologies such as sodium-ion batteries suggests we should question AEMO’s assumed need for gas in future.

Disruptive innovations grow quickly and exponentially. We need only look to the annual growth rates for existing clean energy technologies such as solar (29%), wind (14%), electric vehicles (54%) and battery storage (52%).

The Climate Change Authority is currently assessing Australia’s potential technology transition and emission pathways as we head towards net-zero emissions by 2050. Within the review’s scope is to examine which technologies may be deployed in each sector to support emissions reductions.

The potential of sodium-ion batteries suggests policies put forward by the authority should not lock in polluting options for the electricity sector, such as gas-fired power. Cleaner alternatives are likely to be commercial in a few years – and the stability of our climate depends on planning for them.

Peter Newman received funding from the Australian Government to attend IPCC author meetings over the past 15 years.

– ref. Sodium-ion batteries are set to spark a renewable energy revolution – and Australia must be ready – https://theconversation.com/sodium-ion-batteries-are-set-to-spark-a-renewable-energy-revolution-and-australia-must-be-ready-234560

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Bedford, Senior Lecturer Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of Southern Queensland

As Year 12 students begin term 3, they will be thinking increasingly about what to do next year. Throughout August, many universities have have open days as students investigate different courses and options for study.

This is a significant time for young people as they navigate study pressures with decisions about what to do beyond school.

If you are still making up your mind (and there is still plenty of time!), here are six things to consider.

1. There are lots of options

Your personal interests and ability are some of the most important factors to consider when choosing a university degree.

So your Year 12 subjects can help steer what you study after school. Many high school students will be familiar with the careers “bullseye” posters which help you see the links between school study, possible careers and what kind of study you need to get there. These posters cover a huge range of subjects, from biology to food studies, languages and physical education.

For example, if you love maths, you may want to consider studying data analytics, engineering, economics or architecture.

Meanwhile, most careers can be done in a whole range of ways. For example, many archaeologists may not be excavating tombs in Egypt, but undertaking heritage site surveys for construction projects.

If you have a specific idea in mind – or even just a general area of interest – talk to your careers adviser at school. At uni open days, talk to subject-area specialists about what they do in their courses.

2. High school subjects are not quite the same as uni

Keep in mind the subject you love at school is likely to be a little different at university level, or may go by a different name.

For example, high school English is much broader than English literature at university. So if you love creative writing or essay writing at school, you may want to consider a creative writing or journalism course rather than English literature at uni.

To better understand what you might study, look at the specific subjects involved in possible degrees and talk to academics (the people who research and teach at uni) and current university students at open days.

3. Think about your uni as well as your course

On top of your studies, make sure you look at any additional opportunities that may be offered by a university.

Do they have opportunities to do study tours or a semester abroad? Do their degrees include industry experience? Do they have social or sporting clubs you would like to join?

4. Don’t forget there are options with how you study

Along with the subject matter you will also be thinking about where you are studying and how you are getting there.

Not all students live close to their chosen university, where it’s a simple commute to campus. Relocating can be expensive and we know this is made all the more difficult by housing and cost-of-living crises.

Full-time study might be supported by Youth Allowance or ABSTUDY for First Nations students.

A full-time study load is usually eight courses a year. But many universities now offer flexible enrolment patterns that allow you to spread your study over the year by studying fewer courses across more study periods.

Another option is studying part-time. Your degree will take longer to complete, but this might allow you to better manage your work and study commitments.

Don’t forget you can also investigate doing degrees online, and make sure you check out any scholarship opportunities for which you may be eligible. Each university will advertise its own scholarships on its website, and some organisations also offer scholarships for study in particular fields.

5. The ATAR is not everything

There can be a lot of pressure on students to get a certain ATAR. But missing out on ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank) entry for a certain course does not mean university study is out of reach.

Many courses use other entry criteria such as auditions or portfolios.

Many students also use non-ATAR pathways to get to university, including vocational, diploma or bridging studies to get to uni.

6.It’s OK to change your mind

Starting a degree and finding it isn’t quite the right fit is a common experience. In almost all cases, you will be able to transfer to another degree or another major within your current degree, and sometimes get credit for the study you have already completed.

Alison Bedford 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. Unsure what to study next year? 6 things to consider as you make up your mind – https://theconversation.com/unsure-what-to-study-next-year-6-things-to-consider-as-you-make-up-your-mind-234690

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anjali Bhatia, Research Assistant, Auckland University of Technology

Migrant mothers face a confusing and frustrating time when it comes to navigating New Zealand’s healthcare system, new research has found. But there are ways to make the process easier.

The Asian population is the fastest growing ethnic group in New Zealand, currently making up 15% of the total population. Three-quarters are migrants.

And yet, research has found Asian women have poorer maternal and perinatal outcomes when compared with New Zealand Europeans.

One recent study found that while pregnant Asian mothers were more likely to see a doctor than New Zealand European mothers, they were less likely to have their first-choice lead maternity caregiver (LMC).

Speaking with migrant mothers from China and India, our research identified overarching themes describing their experiences with healthcare in New Zealand. The interviewees also outlined ways their needs could be better integrated into the health system.

A lack of understanding

New Zealand’s maternal healthcare is considered relatively unique. Midwives are the lead maternity carer for more than 90% of women.

But that uniqueness can cause problems for migrant mothers. Most of the research participants said they were not aware of the different health services available to them and their children.

As one Indian mother said:

 [I had] a pretty hard time to find a good midwife because when I was pregnant for the first time, I didn’t know anything, and New Zealand is a new country. And I didn’t have anyone, didn’t know anyone, and had no family and no friends.

Having to manage a language barrier was another challenge. At times, this prevented the mothers from accessing the care they needed.

As one Chinese mother explained:

For any kind of appointment including GP and doctor, the first thing is to make an appointment. No matter how much time it takes, I have to use translation. And I need to ask others to help make the call every time… Sometimes I don’t want to bother others, so I would rather not see the doctor.

Another barrier mentioned by the mothers we spoke to was that their child’s access to some services – such as Plunket – depended on their visa status.

One mother we spoke with sent their young toddler back to India to live with family when the cost of care became too much:

[W]e were spending a lot of money for [my daughter’s] daycare because she was under three years, so she wasn’t getting any free hours for daycare. So, we were spending more than $60 per day for her daycare, so it was quite expensive for us. So that’s why me and my husband decided to leave her with my mum and dad [in India].

Going home rather than waiting

Many of the mothers we spoke with said doctors in New Zealand were friendly. But the research participants also expressed a general lack of trust of the GPs.

One mother spoke of how a New Zealand doctor used the internet to search for information regarding their symptoms. This undermined her trust and confidence in the doctor.

Many of the research participants were also frustrated by the lack of diagnostic tests. They reported feeling dismissed when they asked for them.

These factors contributed to them travelling back to their home country to receive care. As a Chinese mother recounted:

My kid had an extra teeth [sic] when she was three-years-old and we have been waiting for the dentist. Now two years have gone, and we are still in the line … When we went back to China, we paid ourselves and extracted the tooth.

The migrant mothers also spoke about a lack of support systems. In India, new mothers and their child were cared for by their family members. That support structure, however, was absent in New Zealand.

As one Indian mother explained:

when I got home, I was on borderline depression, so postpartum depression, and when I asked my midwife… I really didn’t receive any like, ‘Oh, you’ve got this, you can ask your GP to assess you, and then we can give you some mental wellbeing support’. It just seemed very difficult to ask for help in terms of postpartum.

Improving care

The responses from the migrant mothers highlighted the importance of a system that is inclusive of migrants’ needs. This includes wider access to translation and orientation services that help migrants navigate the different facets of life in New Zealand.

It’s not out of the realm of possibility. One Chinese mother explained how she had seen this model of migrant care while working in Japan:

In the first week when we arrived in Japan, they provided a whole week training including the national system, rubbish recycling, and medical system… Some basic trainings, for example, how and where to register GP, the process for seeing a doctor when you are sick, the emergency number, etc. These would be valuable for people that are new to New Zealand, especially those that cannot speak English.

New initiatives, such as the Healthy Mother Healthy Future, have been implemented to help Asian mothers during pregnancy.

But New Zealand also needs to address issues of access to childhood services, particularly for children whose parents are on work visas.

New Zealand’s healthcare system is built on the idea of universal access and fairness. Our research shows that, for many migrant mothers and their children, this is not the case.

This research was completed with the assistance of Dr. Hongxia Qi. This research was funded by a grant from the Health Research Council (19/263).

Anjali Bhatia received funding from the Health Research Council.

Nadia Charania receives/has received funding from the Health Research Council, Te Whatu Ora, Manatū Hauora, MBIE, ESR, Natural Hazards Commission, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

– ref. Navigating NZ’s health system can be so hard some migrant mothers travel home for medical help – https://theconversation.com/navigating-nzs-health-system-can-be-so-hard-some-migrant-mothers-travel-home-for-medical-help-235000

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Myles David Sergeant, Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Family Medicine, McMaster University

Keeping people in cities healthy, especially in poorer neighbourhoods, is challenging. One simple, effective and scientifically proven prescription for better health is planting more trees.

The idea of planting more trees in urban environments is so simple, affordable and effective that it’s hard to understand why we aren’t applying it more urgently, especially with mountains of evidence to show how much good trees can do.

Environmental epidemiologist Mark J. Nieuwenhuijsen provided an easy way to remember how important they are: the 3-30-300 rule, which suggests that for optimal health, everyone should be able to see at least three trees from home, live under a neighbourhood canopy of at least 30 per cent tree cover and within 300 metres of a green space of at least one hectare.

Trees and urban health

While trees are beautiful and certainly benefit the environment, the most practical argument for planting more is that they provide a demonstrable public health benefit, both in the preventive and therapeutic sense.

As a physician and researcher, that’s something I say with the confidence of experience, but there is also powerful evidence behind the assertion.

Here are 10 ways planting more trees in cities makes people healthier:

1. A meta-analyses showed that an increase in vegetation was significantly associated with two to three per cent lower odds of mortality from cardiovascular disease. These studies included data from 18 countries and over 100 million people.

2. By improving health, trees reduce the cost of health care, allowing a strained system to take care of more people.

3. Trees help reduce ground-level concentrations of urban air pollution, especially in areas with high pollution concentrations, as such improving air quality.

4. Trees provide shade that cools hot urban environments, including buildings with no air conditioning. Less heat in summer means fewer premature deaths.

5. Trees promote healing. A study in a Pennsylvania hospital compared post-surgery outcomes for gallbladder patients who recovered in rooms with a treed view to patients in rooms facing a brick wall. Those with a treed view had shorter stays and needed fewer pain medications overall.

6. Trees improve mental well-being. A published study showed that people who walked 90 minutes in a natural setting experienced less repetitive negative thinking, or rumination, which is corrosive to mental health. Spending time in natural environments has also been shown to be helpful in alleviating the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and anger disorder.

7. Trees are an important element of outdoor environments that support physical activity.

8. People who live among trees and other greenery get more sleep, which directly benefits physical and mental well-being.

9. Playing regularly in green spaces is linked to milder symptoms for kids with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).

10. Adding trees is strongly associated with reduced crime, while removing trees is strongly associated with increased crime.

Bringing trees to hospital patients

My medical practice includes serving vulnerable patients through the Shelter Health Network and at a chronic-care hospital, both in central Hamilton, Ont. At the former, I work mainly with men coping with homelessness, addiction and, typically, mental health issues such as major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety.

At St. Peter’s Hospital, I work with frail elderly people and other patients whose continuing health-care needs are too great for residential facilities.

When patients arrive at the facility and see the treed courtyard and the forested face of the nearby Niagara Escarpment, they often tell me they feel better already.

Just blocks away, though, it’s all too easy to find desolate tracts of sun-bleached pavement and bleak, nearly treeless vistas where people live, work and go to school.

In 2012, biologist Lorraine Ironside and I started Trees for Hamilton and our charitable organization continues to advocate for, and assist with, planting trees on the grounds of medical-care facilities, such as our long-term project to plant 70 trees on the inner-city grounds of Hamilton General Hospital.

The idea is that when patients can’t get to trees, we bring trees to them by planting what we call a health-care forest.

So far, the group has co-organized 80 events and planted 5,000 trees with the help of more than 500 volunteers. Our members have made presentations to community and academic groups about the benefits of trees and organizing similar projects.

Using the knowledge and experience we have developed there, we have since started a related national effort called Canadian Health Care Forests, partnering health-care professionals with tree-planting charities across the country to get more trees planted on the grounds of hospitals and clinics.

These organizations are, in turn, associated with several groups that advocate and raise money for tree planting, or which plant trees directly.

Trees in Canadian cities

It’s not always easy to find urban places to plant more trees. We have found that a surprising number of homeowners, for example, are not interested in having trees in their yards, because they drop leaves, twigs, cones and bud covers — stuff that needs to be cleaned up. We try to show them how it’s more than worth the trouble.

Parks and parkettes downtown could use more trees, but sometimes communities don’t want them because they’re worried about providing cover for crime. That could maybe be true for bushes and evergreens, but deciduous trees don’t obstruct the view in a meaningful way.

Even after urban trees are planted, it can be challenging to protect them. “Weed-whacking” is a distinct threat to tender young trunks, especially on public property, as is the lack of watering. These problems are simple to solve, though, compared to the human problems that a healthy tree canopy helps to address.

In Hamilton, we have about 20 per cent urban tree cover overall — only half as much in the most challenged neighbourhoods — with a goal to reach 40 per cent by 2050, aided by free trees from municipal and non-profit programs. Getting there would require planting about one million new trees.

Nature Canada’s September 2022 report, Bringing the Canopy To All, found a range of coverage in other Canadian cities, including 20 per cent in Montréal, 28 per cent in Toronto, 23 per cent in Vancouver and eight per cent in Calgary.

Bringing these numbers up to 30 or 40 per cent will be challenging, but it’s far from impossible to reach such a goal.

If people in every city could make a priority of planting more trees, the benefits for all would be lasting and apparent, far exceeding the cost.

Myles David Sergeant is affiliated with Trees for Hamilton and the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care

– ref. Bringing forests to the city: 10 ways planting trees improves health in urban centres – https://theconversation.com/bringing-forests-to-the-city-10-ways-planting-trees-improves-health-in-urban-centres-233629

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

A massive IT outage is currently affecting computer systems worldwide. In Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, reports indicate computers at banks, media organisations, hospitals, transport services, shop checkouts, airports and more have all been impacted.

Today’s outage is unprecedented in its scale and severity. The technical term for what has happened to the affected computers is that they have been “bricked”. This word refers to those computers being rendered so useless by this outage that – at least for now – they may as well be bricks.

The widespread outage has been linked to a piece of software called CrowdStrike Falcon. What is it, and why has it caused such widespread disruption?

What is CrowdStrike Falcon?

CrowdStrike is a US cyber security company with a major global share in the tech market. Falcon is one of its software products that organisations install on their computers to keep them safe from cyber attacks and malware.

Falcon is what is known as “endpoint detection and response” (EDR) software. Its job is to monitor what is happening on the computers on which it is installed, looking for signs of nefarious activity (such as malware). When it detects something fishy, it helps to lock down the threat.

This means Falcon is what we call privileged software. To detect signs of attack, Falcon has to monitor computers in a lot of detail, so it has access to a lot of the internal systems. This includes what communications computers are sending over the internet as well as what programs are running, what files are being opened, and much more.

In this sense, Falcon is a bit like traditional antivirus software, but on steroids.

More than that, however, it also needs to be able to lock down threats. For example, if it detects that a computer it is monitoring is communicating with a potential hacker, Falcon needs to be able to shut down that communication. This means Falcon is tightly integrated with the core software of the computers it runs on – Microsoft Windows.

Why did Falcon cause this problem?

This privilege and tight integration makes Falcon powerful. But it also means that when Falcon malfunctions, it can cause serious problems. Today’s outage is a worst-case scenario.

What we currently know is that an update to Falcon caused it to malfunction in a way that caused Windows 10 computers to crash and then fail to reboot, leading to the dreaded “blue screen of death” (BSOD).

This is the affectionate term used to refer to the screen that is displayed when Windows computers crash and need to be rebooted – only, in this case, the Falcon problem means the computers cannot reboot without encountering the BSOD again.

Why is Falcon so widely used?

CrowdStrike is the market leader in EDR solutions. This means its products – such as Falcon – are common and likely the pick of the bunch for organisations conscious of their cyber security.

As today’s outage has shown, this includes hospitals, media companies, universities, major supermarkets and many more. The full scale of the impact is yet to be determined, but it’s certainly global.

Why aren’t home PCs affected?

While CrowdStrike’s products are widely deployed in major organisations that need to protect themselves from cyber attacks, they are much less commonly used on home PCs.

This is because CrowdStrike’s products are tailored for large organisations in which CrowdStrike’s tools help them monitor their networks for signs of attack, and provide them with the information they need to respond to intrusions in a timely way.

For home users, built-in antivirus sofware or security products offered by companies such as Norton and McAfee are much more popular.

How long will this take to fix?

At this stage, CrowdStrike has provided manual instructions for how people can fix the problem on individual affected computers.

However, at the time of writing there does not yet appear to be an automatic fix for the problem. IT teams at some organisations may be able to fix this problem quickly by simply wiping the affected computers and restoring them from backups or similar.

Some IT teams may also be able to “roll back” (revert to an earlier version) the affected Falcon version on their organisation’s computers. It’s also possible some IT teams will have to manually fix the problem on their organisation’s computers, one at a time.

We should expect that in many organisations it may take a while before the problem can be resolved entirely.

What is ironic about this incident is that security professionals have been encouraging organisations to deploy advanced security technology such as EDR for years. Yet that same technology has now resulted in a major outage the likes of which we haven’t seen in years.

For companies like CrowdStrike that sell highly privileged security software, this is a timely reminder to be incredibly careful when deploying automatic updates to their products.

Toby Murray 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. What is CrowdStrike Falcon and what does it do? Is my computer safe? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-crowdstrike-falcon-and-what-does-it-do-is-my-computer-safe-235123

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Slack, Director, Scarp Archaelogy and Adjunct Associate Professor of Archaeology, James Cook University

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains an image of deceased people, which is used with permission from the Traditional Owners.

In May 2020, as part of a legally permitted expansion of an iron ore mine, Rio Tinto destroyed an ancient rockshelter at Juukan Gorge in Puutu Kunti Kurrama Country in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

Working with the Traditional Owners, we had excavated the shelter – known as Juukan 2 – in 2014, six years before its destruction. We found evidence Aboriginal people first used Juukan 2 around 47,000 years ago, likely throughout the last ice age, through to just a few decades before the cave was destroyed.

The site held thousands of significant objects including an ancient plait of human hair, tools and other artefacts, and animal remains. The results of the excavation led to last-minute efforts to stop the destruction of the site, but they were unsuccessful.

The full results of the excavation are published for the first time today in Quaternary Science Reviews.

Where is Juukan and what happened there?

Juukan is a gorge system with a series of caves in Puutu Kunti Kurrama Country, approximately 60 km north west of Tom Price, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

The Juukan 2 rockshelter is one of the caves that make up this system. It was once part of a deep gorge featuring fresh water holes, large camping areas surrounded by massive ironstone mountains and a large river that flowed at some times of the year and was dry at others.

Today the area is part of a Rio Tinto iron ore mine. As widely reported in May 2020, the Juukan 2 rockshelter was destroyed during mine expansion activities. While Rio Tinto held ministerial consent to destroy the heritage site, the action was against the wishes of the Traditional Owners.

The destruction led to widespread global condemnation and shone a spotlight on Western Australia’s substandard heritage protection legislation.

What is so significant about Juukan?

Juukan Gorge is named after a Puutu Kunti Kurrama ancestor. It is extremely significant both for cultural and scientific reasons.

For the Puutu Kunti Kurrama, Juukan is a deeply spiritual place that contains deep-time evidence of their presence and association with the landscape in their Traditional Country.

In terms of the scientific significance of Juukan 2, the site is one of the oldest known locations of Aboriginal settlement of Australia. While there are some sites that have been found to be older, such as Madjedbebe in Kakadu in the Northern Territory and off the Western Australian coast, there are only a few places as old as Juukan in inland Australia.

Juukan is about 500 kilometres from the coast today. Up until approximately 10,000 years ago, when sea levels rose, it was almost 1,000 kilometres inland.

This means people living around Juukan were adept at living in the desert. This is also shown by the fact they were able to continue to use the cave even during the last ice age (from around 28,000 to 18,000 years ago). Archaeologists have found very little direct evidence from this period at any other sites.

Often just a handful of artefacts is regarded as enough evidence to show people used an archaeological site. However, at Juukan 2 we found thousands of artefacts, including many that featured resin from spinifex grass, which was likely used as a kind of glue to hold together the pieces of composite tools.

Juukan 2 also held amazing evidence of animals over the ages. We found broken bones from animals that had died naturally, and also bones associated with people cooking and eating kangaroos, emus, and even echidnas at the site.

Among this material was a plait of human hair dated to around 3,000 years old. The hair was DNA tested and the results told us it was likely related to the Traditional Owners who were part of the excavation team.

The material we found was extremely well preserved. We even found a bone point made from a kangaroo’s shinbone around 30,000 years old with ochre on its end. We don’t know what this was used for, but the ochre may indicate a ritual function.

What now?

After the blast in 2020, we began to re-excavate the site. Over the past two years we have removed about 150 cubic metres of rubble that was once the roof and back wall of the cave. Beneath the debris we found traces of organic material, and then remnants of the cave floor.

Excavations have now reached the original floor level throughout most of the site, and we are carefully digging and finding more incredible materials. This includes more plaited hair, shell beads we think were brought from the coast, and fragments from the jaw of a Tasmanian devil, an animal which has been extinct on mainland Australia for over 3,000 years.

The publication of these results from 2014 is just the next chapter in the archaeology of Juukan 2, a place special to the Traditional Owners, but also of immense significance to science and our understanding of cultural heritage of Australia.

The Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura Aboriginal Corporation is a co-author of this article and the associated research, recognised collectively according to their cultural preference.

Jordan Ralph is the Chief Heritage Officer at the PKKP Aboriginal Corporation.

Michael Slack and Wallace Boone Law do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The first published results from Juukan Gorge show 47,000 years of Aboriginal heritage was destroyed in mining blast – https://theconversation.com/the-first-published-results-from-juukan-gorge-show-47-000-years-of-aboriginal-heritage-was-destroyed-in-mining-blast-234806

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anita Wahid, PhD candidate, Australian National University

At dawn on June 27, a journalist for Indonesia’s Tribrata TV, Rico Sempurna Pasaribu, was killed in a suspected arson attack at his home, along with his wife, son and grandchild.

Before his death, Rico investigated and reported on a gambling business in North Sumatra, which he alleged was backed by a member of the military. The police have arrested two suspects.

The incident is not the first suspected arson involving journalists in North Sumatra. On March 21, the house of Junaidi Marpaung, a journalist from Utama News, was also burned down by unknown individuals. Junaidi and his family narrowly escaped.

The attack happened after Junaidi reported on drug trafficking in the region and received several threats via social media.

Press freedom is increasingly under attack in Indonesia. The Indonesian Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) has recorded more than 1,000 cases of violence against journalists since 2006, with the single highest year coming in 2023 (87 incidents).

AJI’s 2023 report found that the journalists who were targeted largely reported on issues of public accountability, corruption, social and criminal issues, and environmental issues. And the attacks included verbal and physical threats (including torture, confinement and kidnappings), gender-based sexual harassment and assaults, terror and intimidation.

Police reports were only filed in 20 of the 87 incidents, and just seven cases were followed up. Two of those ended with convictions in a court, while four others led to arrests. One closed case was reopened for further investigation.

Given this, it should come as no surprise that Indonesia sits at a lowly number 111 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index this year.

Digital attacks and confiscated devices

Beyond this disturbing rise in violence and intimidation, journalists are also frequently forced by the authorities or sometimes even angry members of the public to delete their interview recordings, photos and videos, particularly when covering a highly controversial story or case in court.

Computers and cameras are often confiscated or destroyed. And journalists are routinely kicked out of the scenes of breaking news, or denied entry to facilities to cover the news.

Digital attacks against journalists are on the rise in Indonesia, too.

Those reporting on extremely sensitive topics, such as Indonesia’s oligarchs, often experience doxing, online harassment and the hacking of their social media accounts and electronic devices.

Media outlets are similarly targeted with malware attacks. Their websites have been defaced and had articles disappear, and their social media accounts have been hacked.

Two of the most prominent investigative media outlets in Indonesia, Tempo and Tirto, for example, were subject to such attacks during the height of the COVID pandemic. On one day in 2020, Tempo’s homepage was replaced with a black screen and the word “hoax”.

Concerning legal restrictions

In addition, media outlets are increasingly being targeted through legal channels.

In 1999, Indonesia passed a Press Law at the start of the post-Suharto “Reformasi” era that guaranteed the protection of the media, as well as citizens’ right to information.

Press freedom advocates say, however, that this law has been disregarded as journalists have been targeted through other laws, namely the Electronic Information and Transactions Law (ITE Law) and the criminal code.

Both the criminal code and ITE Law contain provisions that have been used to bring journalists and media outlets to court to face allegations of blasphemy, defamation, hate speech or spreading fake news. The definitions of these offences under the laws are vague and ambiguous, making them easy to deploy against critics.

The website SemuaBisaKena.jaring.id (Anyone Can Be Targeted), a joint initiative of civil society organisations to push back against the ITE Law, recorded 27 cases of journalists being targeted through this law from 2013 to 2024. In the last five years alone, three journalists have been sentenced to jail time.

In addition, Indonesia’s parliament has been considering concerning revisions to the country’s Broadcast Law.

Not only has the revision process been hidden from the public, therefore lacking transparency and meaningful public participation, the draft bill also contains provisions that could be very damaging to press freedom if it passes.

Perhaps the most onerous one would be a ban on broadcasting exclusive investigative journalism, which the country’s Press Council chairman said would “result in our press not being free and independent”. Reporting on the LGBTQI+ community would also be restricted.

The revision process has been halted for the moment amid widespread media and public condemnation. However, this is not the first time legislators have attempted to weaken the press – and it certainly will not be the last.

Why this matters

With democracy increasingly under threat in Indonesia, the role of an independent media has become even more crucial and pressing. Journalists are needed now more than ever to monitor a government that has adopted increasingly authoritarian practices, in addition to rising corruption and human rights violations.

And with the shrinking of civic space in Indonesia, the media is necessary as a platform to broadcast the voices of critics from civil society and academia.

Without them, the demise of Indonesian democracy would be imminent. As Nelson Mandela once said,

A critical, independent and investigative press is the lifeblood of any democracy […] It must enjoy the protection of the constitution, so that it can protect our rights as citizens.

Anita Wahid is affiliated with Public Virtue Research Institute, Masyarakat Anti-fitnah Indonesia (Indonesia Anti-hoax Society), and Gusdurian Network. She is the daughter of Indonesia’s former president, Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid.

– ref. Journalists in Indonesia are being killed, threatened and jailed. A new draft law could make things even worse – https://theconversation.com/journalists-in-indonesia-are-being-killed-threatened-and-jailed-a-new-draft-law-could-make-things-even-worse-234564

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thami Croeser, Research Officer, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

Imagine you’re a fairywren living in a patch of scrub behind a schoolyard in the suburbs. It’s been pretty nice so far, but a recent increase in neighbourhood cats and the council’s insect control tactics mean it’s time to look for somewhere safer to live.

There’s a problem, though. You’re a small, bright blue bird that tends to make short flights from shrub to shrub, staying safe in the foliage. Beyond your little patch of habitat, there don’t seem to be any places you can easily access. On one side are wide-open sportsfields; on the other, a busy six-lane road. Where do you go?

It’s a bad situation for a fairywren, and for many other native species in cities. In ecology, we call this habitat fragmentation.

The map of suitable habitat for city-dwelling wildlife often looks like a scattering of islands in an inhospitable sea of other land uses. These species face threats or barriers such as roads, buildings, fences and feral predators. This poses several issues, such as barring access to feeding areas, increasing competition for nesting spaces within habitat patches and even reducing gene flow by making it hard to find mates.

Our newly published research shows how native species in our cities can benefit if we focus on creating strategically located green spaces to connect isolated patches of habitat.

Why we should care for urban species

Despite the myriad challenges facing plants, animals and insects in urban areas, cities are important places to take care of our native species. Urban areas still offer valuable nesting and feeding resources, especially for tree-dwelling mammals, canopy-feeding birds and water-adapted species.

In addition to their value for conservation, urban habitats are precious spaces for people to encounter nature in the places we live and work. Urban nature has been shown to be important in balancing out the stresses of city life, particularly in disadvantaged communities. It’s also good for our physical health and social connectedness – it even improves cognitive development in children.

Unsurprisingly, studies have shown people want more nature in their cities.

But actively supporting native species hasn’t generally been the norm in many cities. The practice of planning and design to deliberately bring nature back into urban areas is still developing. Our open-access research paper in Landscape and Urban Planning offers insights into how we can tackle one aspect of the problem: habitat fragmentation.

What did the study look at?

We examined how greening projects could best connect up habitat for New Holland honeyeaters (Phylidonyris novaehollandiae), blue-banded bees (Amegilla spp) and mole crickets (Gryllotalpa spp) in Melbourne, Victoria. These are all species that occur locally but experience some degree of habitat fragmentation.

We have a lot of greening to do for climate adaptation and to create open space for new residents in our growing cities. What if we could also do this greening in a way that boosts habitat for non-human residents too?

We compared a scenario where a large number of small green spaces (formerly parking spaces) were created mainly for climate adaptation purposes, to a pair of scenarios where a smaller number of green spaces were created exclusively in areas that had been identified as key links between habitat fragments.

What were the findings?

In total, the benefit of each space in the targeted scenario was more than double that of the scenario where we placed green spaces for climate adaptation purposes, even with the same design of individual green spaces.

Here’s an image of the kind of green spaces we modelled in this study.

We found significant benefits for two of our three species when green spaces were located in a way that specifically targeted habitat connections.

Blue-banded bees and mole crickets did especially well. It is trickier for these small creatures to navigate the space between habitat patches. When these small green spaces provided “stepping stones” between bigger patches, they greatly increased the area of habitat a bee or cricket could reach.

Linking up habitats when we create new green spaces is one way to give native species a chance in our cities. It also gives us (and our kids) a better chance of having everyday nature experiences.

Of course, adding this “ecosystem connectivity” lens to our green space planning isn’t a biodiversity panacea. We’ll still need to deliver a lot of new greenery.

And we’ll have to design it carefully to support native animals while also providing cooling, reduced flood risk and recreational spaces. We also need to make sure we’re picking the right species to model our maps on, and then design our spaces for.

Still, if we get this right, that fairywren might just one day have small, green “stepping stones” to find their way around the city to a happy new home.

Thami Croeser receives funding from the Ian Potter Foundation.

Holly Kirk receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Ian Potter Foundation.

– ref. Stepping stones for wildlife: how linking up isolated habitats can help nature thrive in our cities – https://theconversation.com/stepping-stones-for-wildlife-how-linking-up-isolated-habitats-can-help-nature-thrive-in-our-cities-234923

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Turner, System Lead, Sustainable Economies, Climateworks Centre

Australian mining and energy giant Fortescue announced late on Wednesday that its ambitious green energy goal – to produce 15 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen annually by 2030 – will be placed on hold.

As part of a broader restructure, the company will also merge its mining and energy divisions, and slash 700 jobs across its business.

The news will disappoint those who’ve eagerly awaited the emergence of a green hydrogen sector in Australia. Fortescue’s executive chairman and founder, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, has been an outspoken supporter of the technology.

But since the announcement, Forrest has been quick to reject claims the company is walking back from its green hydrogen dreams more broadly, telling Nine Radio in Perth on Thursday:

We just have to work out now how to produce it cheaply enough.

Fortescue’s announcement reinforces the fact that one company can’t do it alone – Australia needs a coordinated approach to supporting future green industries – including renewable hydrogen.

Developing renewable hydrogen at scale – like any industry – will require both national and global action to build demand, by supporting new technologies and lowering the risk of investing in early projects. Over time, this will bring prices down.

Read more:
Green hydrogen could be a game changer by displacing fossil fuels – we just need the price to come down

Hydrogen has a role to play – if we can make it cheaply

Green or renewable hydrogen is produced by “electrolysing” or splitting water into its component elements hydrogen and oxygen using renewable electricity.

This is in contrast to non-renewable “blue hydrogen” which is extracted from natural gas using steam in a process called ‘steam methane reforming’.

Renewable hydrogen’s current high cost of production has been a key element of the industry’s sluggish start.

At Climateworks Centre, we’ve modelled a range of different scenarios across the whole economy to work out how Australia can best reduce its emissions at the lowest cost.

Our modelling shows renewable hydrogen can indeed play a lead role in Australia’s energy future. It becomes particularly important for transitioning industries that can’t be electrified, such as ammonia and alumina production, and heavy transport. But only if it becomes commercially viable to produce.

This is where the Future Made in Australia policy will serve as an important “net-zero” filter by setting out tests which must be passed to unlock targeted government investment.

The policy includes an economy-wide framework to determine which industries need government support to incentivise private investment at scale. But it acknowledges we can’t do everything, everywhere, all at once – we must prioritise our actions.

Renewable hydrogen has already been assessed by Treasury as an industry that requires support under the policy. This is because it meets two key net zero “tests” – it offers Australia a sustained comparative advantage in a future net zero global economy, and needs significant public investment to reduce emissions at an efficient cost.

This should come as no surprise. Australia has a clear comparative advantage in the production of renewable hydrogen, with a skilled workforce and abundant renewable resources and land.

Read more:
What is comparative advantage?

Renewable hydrogen is also a foundational requirement for other products we can produce and export. Modelling by CSIRO and Climateworks for the Australian Industry Energy Transitions Initiative has explored these uses.

It found that in the short term, hydrogen could help decarbonise ammonia production (used for fertiliser and explosives), and potentially also mining haulage and alumina calcination – an important step in refining aluminium. Longer term, steelmaking and freight could also require significant volumes of hydrogen.

Slow out the gate

Despite this potential, the market for hydrogen has been slow to get started.

A number of factors have made private investment challenging. Limited data from current large scale green hydrogen projects means there’s some uncertainty on how quickly the cost of producing renewable hydrogen will come down.

Currently, there’s also limited access to the large amounts of low-cost renewable energy required to make hydrogen projects commercially viable.

Without established local and global demand, public investment is needed to kick start this industry at scale.

Fortescue’s announcement indicates it is likely experiencing some of these challenges. But the supports contained in the Future Made in Australia policy may eventually help alleviate some of these pressures on it and other companies in the emerging industry.

A$4 billion to bridge the the cost of producing renewable hydrogen and the market price with a hydrogen production credit via Hydrogen Headstart, plus a $2 per kilo hydrogen production tax incentive both aim to improve the investment outlook for green hydrogen projects.

By providing some price certainty for each kilo of renewable hydrogen produced, the government will share the risk with potential investors, making the projects more bankable. Both of these supports will be paid over a ten-year period.

Fortescue’s setbacks reinforce the need for support

Getting to net zero is complex and will require ambitious, coordinated action from government, industry, and finance.

Bold action on climate isn’t a choice, it’s an imperative. To do challenging things quickly, each part of the economy must step up. If we get this right, generations of Australians can work in and benefit from a net-zero nation run on renewable energy, with a thriving renewable hydrogen industry.

Fortescue has long taken much-needed first mover risks to drive attention and action in the global and Australian renewable hydrogen market. This week’s news is a setback, but shouldn’t be seen as a death knell for the nascent industry or for the government’s bold ambitions.

Rather, it highlights the gap that government support aims to fill by coordinating and unlocking finance, and funnelling it in the right direction.

Read more:
Will government investment make green hydrogen a reality in Australia?

Kylie Turner is an employee of Climateworks Centre which receives funding from philanthropy and project-specific financial support from a range of private and public entities including federal, state and local government and private sector organisations and international and local non-profit organisations.

Kylie Turner was most recently the program impact manager for the Australian Industry Energy Transitions Initiative funded by ARENA, philanthropy and industry participants, developing decarbonisation pathways to limit warming to 1.5℃.

Luke Brown 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. Fortescue has put its ambitious green hydrogen target on hold – but Australia should keep powering ahead – https://theconversation.com/fortescue-has-put-its-ambitious-green-hydrogen-target-on-hold-but-australia-should-keep-powering-ahead-235007

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

In an early scene in Jack Clark and Jim Weir’s Birdeater, we catch a glimpse of a poster of Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright (1971).

More than in any other film of the period, Kotcheff managed to capture something of the unhinged, deranged quality of homosociality in the Australian outback in a hallucinatory, nightmarish, nihilistically comedic romp.

As the epigraph of Kenneth Cook’s eponymous novel suggests: “May you dream of the devil and wake in fright.”

The Australian cinematic landscape seems primed for a return to this theme. Horror cinema is more popular now than it’s been for years, and more critically acclaimed than it’s ever been.

From the opening image, Birdeater feels like it’s going to be another entry in this New Wave, filtered through an anarchic Australian sensibility.

Irene (Shabana Azeez), an anxious English woman in a relationship with quintessential Aussie “nice guy” Louie (Mackenzie Fearnley), is coming along for Louie’s buck’s party.

In a rural location, only accessible via ferry, we sense a return to the perennial theme of Australian horror: the sinister experience for the foreigner or city dweller when going into the Australian bush and outback.

Think about backpacker Liz Hunter’s experiences in Wolf Creek (2005) as she comes under the eye of killer Mick Hunter, or Canadian Carl Winters from Razorback (1984) who comes to Australia in search of his missing wife and ends up fighting both local hoons and a killer pig. Or, indeed, the experience of urbanite schoolteacher John Grant (Gary Bond) in Kotcheff’s film as he is thrust into a bloody, two-up-and-alcohol-infused nightmare in the ‘Yabba.

There are, at the same time, echoes of Ari Aster’s critically acclaimed Midsommar (2019) here. Irene and Louie’s relationship isn’t exactly perfect – he keeps giving her glasses of water and she keeps taking pills – but the actual source of the menace is tantalisingly unclear.

They have some kind of toxic codependent relationship involving an accident he had, anchored around her desire to secure a visa so she can stay in Australia.

A stellar opening – and then it fizzles

When the friends reunite for the buck’s party, we immediately recognise their personality clashes, and sense things are going to get nasty quickly.

The core trio of old friends involves bungling, hen-pecked Christian virgin Charlie (Jack Bannister), loose cannon Dylan (Ben Hunter) and good guy control freak Louie.

Or, as Dylan notes in one of the great bad toast scenes in cinema – he’s trying to get his own back against Louie for refusing to take ketamine, refusing Dylan’s offer of a beer, and accusing Dylan of being a child – the smart one, the funny one and the nice one.

This is a “modern” buck’s, so women are included too. There’s Grace (Clementine Anderson), partner of Charlie, and, of course, Irene herself. When Irene’s ex (or is he?) Sam (Harley Wilson) turns up for the party, we sense the powder keg is full and, if Wake in Fright is anything to go by, things will get explosively and violently weird pretty quickly.

Alas, it never happens. After a stellar opening 40 minutes, it fizzles out.

All of the intrigue, all of the tension and all of the mystery of the opening seems to be little more than a ruse, a trick to keep us engaged with the film. It works at first, but for no real thematic purpose, with the result that, at the end of its two hours, Birdeater seems like little more than a really well-made music video or ad.

It’s all set-up, with little pay-off. The spare, elegant cinematography, the hypnotic score and sound design, the weird associative logic of the opening taper off into a dreary two hours. It becomes increasingly wordy and navel-gazing. Its cloak of mystery and intrigue comes off and instead of the rip-roaring, unsettling horror romp we were expecting we’re left with a Home and Away-level story.

The mystery is resolved along conventional psycho-dramatic lines. Even its attempts at delving into current buzzy concepts like gaslighting, coercive control and toxic codependency seem superficial, lacking psychological depth or any real acuity.

Let me be clear: Birdeater is brilliantly shot and edited, the sound design and music are exemplary (the best in Aussie cinema since 2011’s Snowtown) and the acting is absolutely first-rate (newcomer to the big screen Ben Hunter as Dylan is a standout, but Mackenzie Fearnley as Louie, a kind of cross between Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ben Mendelsohn, is also exceptional).

Kudos for this to all involved in the film – it just works from the opening shot, following its own compulsive logic. The characterisations have the right level of caricature and nuance to be effective, and it perfectly sets up the kind of blokey Aussie nightmare scenario in which it’s an affront to not skull a beer. It’s also the first Australian film since Upgrade (2018) that actually feels like it should be seen in a movie theatre.

But it’s thematically threadbare and derivative and, ultimately, disappointing. Unlike Wake in Fright, once the haze clears, we’re left with little of substance, in a film with less conceptual depth than it seems to think it has.

Birdeater is worth seeing. It is undeniably better made than most new films, even if it plays far worse than many more old ones.

Birdeater is in cinemas now.

Ari Mattes 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. Birdeater starts like a successor to Wake In Fright – but ends up like an episode of Home and Away – https://theconversation.com/birdeater-starts-like-a-successor-to-wake-in-fright-but-ends-up-like-an-episode-of-home-and-away-233675