Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Teresa Ubide, Associate Professor – Igneous Petrology/Volcanology, The University of Queensland

When you hear news reports about volcanoes spewing lava and ash, you may worry about the people nearby. In fact, almost one in ten people around the world live within 100 kilometres of an active volcano. For those living close to volcanoes, farming on their fertile soils, or visiting their spectacular landscapes, it is crucial to understand the drivers of eruption.

Why is the volcano erupting? How will the eruption evolve? When will it finish?

Our new research published today in Science Advances applies laser technology to read into the chemical composition of erupted magma over time.

Because the chemistry of magmas affects their fluidity, explosivity and hazard potential, our work could help future monitoring and forecasting of the evolution of volcanic eruptions.

Read more:
Why can’t we predict when a volcano will erupt?

Untangling the chemistry of erupted melt

Magma – molten rock – is composed of liquid (known as “melt”), gas and crystals that grow as the temperature of the magma drops during its journey up to Earth’s surface.

When the magma erupts to become a lava flow, it will release the gas (which contains water vapour, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and other compounds) and cool down into a volcanic rock. This rock contains crystals cooled slowly inside the volcano, embedded in a finer rock matrix cooled rapidly at the surface.

As a result, volcanic rocks can look a bit like “rocky road” chocolate. The crystals formed in the guts of the volcano are excellent archives of the run-up to eruption. However, the crystals can get in the way when we want to focus on the melt that carries them to the surface, and how the melt properties vary throughout the eruption.

To isolate the melt signal, we used an ultraviolet laser, similar to the ones used for eye surgery, to blast the rock matrix between larger crystals.

We then analysed the laser-generated particles by mass spectrometry to determine the chemical composition of the volcanic matrix. The method allows for a rapid chemical analysis.

This provides a faster and more detailed measure of melt chemistry and its evolution over time, compared to traditional analysis of the entire rock, or to painstaking separation of matrix and crystal fragments from crushed rock samples. Even if we call the crystals “large”, they are often as small as a grain of salt (or up to a chickpea in size if you are lucky!) and difficult to remove.

Read more:
The ‘pulse’ of a volcano can be used to help predict its next eruption

A destructive disaster in the Canary Islands

Our study focused on the 2021 eruption at La Palma, the most destructive volcanic eruption on historical record in the Canary Islands.

From September to December 2021, a total of 160 cubic metres of lava covered more than 12 square kilometres of land. It destroyed more than 1,600 homes, forced the evacuation of more than 7,000 people and generated losses of more than €860 million (AU$1.4 billion).

We analysed lava samples collected systematically by our collaborators in Spain throughout the three months of eruption. These are precious samples as we know their exact eruption day, and many of the sampling sites are now covered by later lavas from the eruption.

Using the laser-powered method, we could see variations in lava chemistry linked to changes in earthquakes and sulphur dioxide emissions, as well as eruption style and the resulting hazards. This included a change from thick lavas that acted as a bulldozer at the start of the eruption, to runny lavas that created rapid lava rivers and lava tunnels later in the eruption.

We also found a key change in lava chemistry about two weeks before the eruption ended, which suggests cooling of the magma due to a dropping magma supply.

Similar changes could be monitored as a signal of eruption wind-down in future eruptions around the world.

Forecasting volcanic activity

We cannot prevent volcanoes from erupting, and we cannot yet travel inside them like French sci-fi author Jules Verne once envisioned. But volcano monitoring has improved enormously in the last few decades to allow us to indirectly ‘peek into’ volcanoes and better forecast their activity.

Our work aims to provide a laboratory tool for testing volcanic samples collected during future eruptions. The goal is to read into the evolution of eruptions, to understand why they start and when they will end.

With about 50 volcanoes erupting at any given time around the world, you will soon see another volcano erupting in the news. This time, you can consider the importance of volcano science to improve our understanding of how volcanoes work and what drives them to erupt, to protect the people around them.

Teresa Ubide works for The University of Queensland. She receives funding from the Australian Research Council, AuScope-NCRIS, and The University of Queensland.

Alice MacDonald is a PhD Student at The University of Queensland and receives a RTP PhD Stipend from UQ.

jack.mulder@adelaide.edu.au receives funding from the Australian Research Council, AuScope-NCRIS, The University of Adelaide.

– ref. Volcano eruptions are notoriously hard to forecast. A new method using lasers could be the key – https://theconversation.com/volcano-eruptions-are-notoriously-hard-to-forecast-a-new-method-using-lasers-could-be-the-key-207031

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janet Conti, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology, Western Sydney University

No single treatment will work for all people with eating disorders. Even the most highly researched evidence-based treatment may work for some people, but less so for others. When such treatments do not work, it can provoke anxiety.

As part of our research, we spoke with one mother who was supporting her teenage daughter through anorexia nervosa. When current treatments were not working, the mother told us:

We don’t really know what else we can do.

But there may be other treatment options for people like her daughter. The issue is they’re not always available on Medicare.

Read more:
Binge eating is more common than anorexia or bulimia – but it remains a hidden and hard-to-treat disorder

Medicare provides a menu of options

In Australia, changes to Medicare mean people diagnosed with an eating disorder may be eligible for up to 40 sessions with a psychologist and up to 20 sessions with a dietitian a year.

This is a remarkable recognition of how eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia or binge eating impact people’s lives, and for those who care for them.

This also recognises how difficult it can be to recover from an eating disorder. This is particularly when aspects of the eating disorder are acceptable to the person, and become their way of dealing with the slings and arrows of life.

Medicare provides several options for psychological interventions to treat eating disorders that are backed by research evidence.

These treatments include family-based treatment for adolescent eating disorders and cognitive behavioural therapy for adult eating disorders.

Such interventions work in the long term for around half of people.

So what about the other half?

Read more:
When I work with people with eating disorders, I see many rules around ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods – but eating is never that simple

It’s not just about evidence

Think about psychotherapy – also known as talking therapy – as a three-legged stool.

One leg of the stool is the research evidence. Another is the clinician’s expertise. The third leg is preferences of the person having treatment. We need all three if the stool is to stay upright and the psychotherapy has a chance of working.

The current Medicare system allows clinicians to draw from the first leg – the research evidence. This works for some.

Then there’s the second leg, the clinician’s expertise. One welcome development is through the Australian & New Zealand Academy for Eating Disorders credential for professionals treating eating disorders.

What is less recognised in the current Medicare system, however, is the importance of the therapeutic relationship, such as whether the clinician works in a person-centred way that takes into consideration the person’s preferences.

This could be tailoring treatment to the person’s unique needs, instilling hope for their recovery, and seeing the person as more than just the eating disorder. Think of these as the third leg of the stool.

These second and third legs help explain why even gold-standard, research evidence-based treatments do not work for everyone.

Read more:
How many people have eating disorders? We don’t really know, and that’s a worry

What else could work?

There are many psychological treatments for eating disorders that don’t have research evidence to back them. We cannot necessarily dismiss them as not working. They may have not yet been extensively researched. These emerging treatments need more research evidence, including which treatments work, for whom, and when.

Emerging treatments include those based on mindfulness. These may involve people learning not to judge their thoughts and feelings as right or wrong, or good or bad. Instead, this therapy allows them to observe these thoughts and feelings by focusing on the present moment.

Others include therapies that address both the eating disorder and adverse and traumatic life events, including the experience of the eating disorder itself.

We are also interested in, and are currently researching, narrative therapy. This explores aspects of the person that have been lost to the eating disorder, such as a valued sense of oneself. Reclaiming these aspects can give the person freedom to live a life no longer dominated by the eating disorder.

Until emerging treatments have more extensive research evidence, the Medicare system needs to mention them as valid treatment pathways when facilitated by experienced practitioners. This is particularly important if the most widely researched interventions do not work for someone.

Including emerging therapies, however, does not mean anything goes. To work out which of these emerging therapies might be eligible for Medicare funding in the future, we need greater consultation with people living with eating disorders, and the clinicians who treat them, to learn which emerging treatments work in practice.

Read more:
What makes a good psychologist or psychiatrist and how do you find one you like?

Join our study

We are conducting a small study on narrative therapy for anorexia nervosa. This involves 40 sessions over 12 months to be conducted at Western Sydney University.

If you want to know more about participating in the study, email us at narrative@westernsydney.edu.au

If you (or someone you know) needs care for an eating disorder, see your GP to be assessed for a Medicare Eating Disorder Plan. For support and more information about eating disorders, contact the Butterfly Foundation on 1800 33 4673 or Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800. If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. In an emergency, call 000.

Janet Conti is affiliated with Western Sydney University as an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology. She also works part-time in private practice as a Clinical Psychologist. She is currently a co-researcher in two research projects funded by the Butterfly Foundation and the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Eating Disorders (ANZAED).

Tania Perich is affiliated with Western Sydney University as an Senior Lecturer in Psychology. She also works part-time in private practice as a registered psychologist.

– ref. Why eating disorder treatments only work half the time, according to a psychologist – https://theconversation.com/why-eating-disorder-treatments-only-work-half-the-time-according-to-a-psychologist-207322

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Averyl Gaylor, PhD Candidate in History, La Trobe University

On TikTok, “old money” and “clean girl” aesthetics are trending, with over three and four billion views respectively. Content tagged #cleangirlaesthetic and #oldmoneyaesthetic proliferates on the platform.

Clean girl and old money aesthetics are presented as aspirational trends achieved through living the associated lifestyle – cultivated from the inside out through diet, light exercise, skincare, hair care, nail care and practices of personal hygiene.

Even scent and the way one organises and manages their time contribute, in different ways, to clean girl and old money aesthetics.

These aesthetics are informed by a much larger history in which the performance of hygiene was entangled with ideas of class and race.

What are clean girl and old money aesthetics?

The clean girl aesthetic can be traced to this TikTok in which a user named xolizahbeauty instructs her audience on how to achieve the look of “those girls that always look clean”.

This highly gendered and racialised aesthetic implies slimness, flawless and dewy skin, plump and glossy lips, smooth and sleek hair, light (or “no makeup”) makeup, a fresh scent, gold jewellery and a highly organised and stress-free lifestyle.

It is considered best exemplified by celebrities like Hailey Bieber and Bella Hadid and, according to some subscribers of the aesthetic, evokes an “elite feeling”.

The old money aesthetic, on the other hand, is right now best embodied by Sofia Richie, whose recent wedding in the south of France went viral for exemplifying the style. In fiction, it has been popularised by the Roy siblings of HBO’s hit series, Succession.

Old money aesthetics draw on notions of “quiet luxury”, also called “stealth wealth”, in which sporting fashions that are garish or excessively branded is considered a social faux pas. There is a preference for fabrics made from natural fibres or clothing that is well constructed and functional. Such clothing might be worn on a yacht, in a country club or while attending the polo.

Without definitive rules, even Vogue admits the old money aesthetic is “hard to pin down”, describing it as “more of a mood than anything else”.

The entanglement of hygiene and wealth

“Clean girlies” (as they’re known on TikTok) and those embodying old money occupy what are imagined as distinct aesthetic trends. However, it is no coincidence these trends have emerged on social media at the same time. Perceived cleanliness (or otherwise) has long been understood as being reflective of class.

In 19th century England, infectious diseases plagued industrialising cities and towns, which could not adequately accommodate a rapidly expanding urban population. Diseases like cholera, caused by contaminated water, were attributed to the filth and squalor exemplified in the overcrowded city slums.

The urban poor living in such conditions were pathologised as unhealthy, unhygienic and immoral. Slum areas were imagined as vectors of disease that threatened the middle and upper classes.

In this context, poor hygiene denoted poverty and, conversely, just like on TikTok, perceptions of cleanliness were associated with wealth.

In Australia (and elsewhere), social reformers questioned whether poverty and poor hygiene were traits innate to certain populations, or whether hygiene could be taught. Reformers working in inner-city Melbourne were relieved to discover that, with the assistance of education and training, poor children could learn to distinguish between hygienic and unhygienic practices.

Today, hygiene education is delivered to young people not through classes in physical culture, but through short videos that contribute to clean girl and old money aesthetics.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, hygiene was also leveraged as a technique of colonisation. In her book Imperial Hygiene, historian Alison Bashford has shown that “imperial hygiene” (understood as “colonisation by the known laws of cleanliness”) was crucial to British expansion and the colonisation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Hygiene discourse was weaponised to justify the so-called “protectionist” policy that segregated Indigenous populations in government-run missions and reserves. These pathologised Indigenous populations as “better off” removed from the settler world.

Contemporary clean girl and old money aesthetics draw on this history, redeploying racialised associations between hygiene and wealth to deem some people fashionable and aspirational. These aesthetics imply that not everyone has the capacity to be a clean girl privileged by the old money derived from aristocratic, imperial, colonialist roots.

Read more:
Far from the ‘ludicrously capacious’: what the fashion of Succession tells us about the show – and about society

The problems of clean girl and old money aesthetics

Clean girl and old money aesthetics leverage leisure time for self-improvement. “Hot girl walks” (the hashtag has over 200 million views on TikTok) and “Sunday resets” in which one rigorously deep-cleans and reorganises their home, are seen as practices of these aesthetics.

These aesthetics do not only require time, they are also intrinsically commercial. Celebrity and other influencers promote an infinite array of beauty, hygiene, food and fashion products as able to engender clean girl and old money aesthetics.

For example, the peptide lip treatment by Hailey Bieber’s skincare brand Rhode is a staple of the clean girl aesthetic. Old money, meanwhile, requires a good pair of blue jeans and a perfectly tailored blazer such as those sold by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s brand, The Row.

In requiring time and money, and being most prominently performed by a particular racialised group (young white women), clean girl and old money aesthetics function to exclude those unable to (literally and metaphorically) “buy-in”.

In this way, clean girl and old money aesthetics can be understood as a contemporary reflection of the historical relationship between modern hygiene, race and class.

Though clean girl and old money aesthetics are informed by the history of modern hygiene, they can also be positioned within a much more recent history of pandemic illness and disease.

The COVID-19 pandemic put matters of personal hygiene and cleanliness front and centre, and the world was starkly reminded that poverty and wealth have a direct impact on health outcomes, especially in times of crisis.

It is perhaps no wonder aesthetics that value practices of cleanliness and the attributes of wealth have emerged as aspirational trends in recent times.

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

– ref. New ‘clean girl’ and ‘old money’ aesthetics on TikTok make the same old link between hygiene and class – https://theconversation.com/new-clean-girl-and-old-money-aesthetics-on-tiktok-make-the-same-old-link-between-hygiene-and-class-208566

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Tolhurst AM, Hon. Assoc. Prof., Fire Ecology and Management, The University of Melbourne

An El Niño event has arrived, according to the World Meteorological Organization, raising fears of record high global temperatures, extreme weather and, in Australia, a severe fire season.

The El Niño is a reminder that bushfires are part of Australian life – especially as human-caused global warming worsens. But there are a few important considerations to note.

First, not all El Niño years result in bad bushfires. The presence of an El Niño is only one factor that determines the prevalence of bushfires. Other factors, such as the presence of drought, also come into play.

And second, whether or not this fire season is a bad one, Australia must find a more sustainable and effective way to manage bushfires. The El Niño threat only makes the task more urgent.

Understanding fire in Australia

An El Niño is declared when the sea surface temperature in large parts of the tropical Pacific Ocean warms significantly.

The statement by the World Meteorological Organization, released on Tuesday, said El Niño conditions have developed in the tropical Pacific for the first time in seven years “setting the stage for a likely surge in global temperatures and disruptive weather and climate patterns”.

The organisation says there’s a 90% probability of the El Niño event continuing during the second half of 2023. It said El Niño can trigger extreme heat and also cause severe droughts over Australia and other parts of the world.

But before we start planning ahead for the next bushfire season, it’s important to understand what drives bushfire risks – and the influence of climate change, fire management and events such as El Niño.

The evidence for human-induced climate change is irrefutable. While the global climate has changed significantly in the past, the current changes are occurring at an unprecedented rate.

In geologic time scales, before the influence of humans, a significant shift in climate has been associated with an increase in fire activity in Australia. There is every reason to expect fire activity will increase with human-induced climate change as well.

Humans have also changed the Australian fire landscape – both First Nations people and, for the past 200 years, European colonisers.

Changes brought about by Indigenous Australians were widespread, but sustainable. Their methods included, for example, lighting “cool” fires in small, targeted patches early in the dry season. This reduced the chance that very large and intense fires would develop.

Read more:
Our land is burning, and Western science does not have all the answers

Changes brought about by European colonisers have also been widespread – such as land clearing using fire, and fire suppression to protect human life and property. But this approach has been far from sustainable, either financially, ecologically or socially.

Australia has just experienced a period of high rainfall across the continent due to a La Niña event combined with two other climate drivers: a negative Indian Ocean Dipole and a positive Southern Annular Mode. It means the soil is moist and plants are flourishing.

Now, we’re set to enter into a drying period driven by an El Niño. The abundant plant growth leading into a dry period is likely to result in widespread bushfires across Australia.

Initially, this is likely to occur in semi-arid inland areas where grasses have flourished in the wet period, but will dry out quickly. If the drying cycle persists for two or three years, then fires might become more prevalent in forests and woodlands in temperate Australia.

But an El Niño year doesn’t necessarily mean a bad bushfire season is certain.

In Australia, El Niño events are associated with hotter and drier conditions, leading to more days of high fire danger. But large and severe forest fires also need a prolonged drought to dry out fuels, especially in sheltered gullies and slopes. Soils and woody vegetation are currently moist following the La Niña period.

So El Niño and its opposite phase, La Niña, are on their own are a relatively poor predictor of the number and size of bushfires.

Read more:
The burn legacy: why the science on hazard reduction is contested

Fight smarter, and be prepared

Climate change will continue to test our fire management systems. And the return of an El Niño has fire crews on alert.

When it comes to fire management, Australia must be much smarter than it has been for the past 200 years. This means changing the focus to holistic fire management. Throwing huge amounts of money and resources at controlling bushfires – such as purchasing more and larger firefighting aircraft – is is not sustainable or sensible.

Fire is as fundamental to our environment as wind and rain. And the amount of energy released from a large bushfire will never be matched by any level of resources humans can muster.

The evidence bears this out. Take, for example, analysis of fire dynamics in two areas north and south of the US-Mexico border. Between 1920 and 1972, authorities on the US side had spent hundreds of millions of dollars on firefighting aircraft and other resources trying to suppress wildfires. This resulted in fewer wildfires than in the Mexico region. But the fires that occurred were larger and more severe.

Similar patterns have occurred in Australia. For example, a study of burn patterns in the Western Desert region showed that after the exodus of Traditional Owners, the number of fires reduced substantially, but the fires became far bigger.

Read more:
Watching our politicians fumble through the bushfire crisis, I’m overwhelmed by déjà vu

Change must happen

Damaging bushfires will return to Australia in the near future. The expected return of another El Niño should heighten efforts to create a more considered and sustainable fire management regime – particularly in southern Australia.

Experts, including me, have devised plans to guide the shift. They include:

• effectively managing the land with fire, including promoting Indigenous Australians’ use of fire
• engaging communities in bushfire mitigation and management
• better coordination across land, fire and emergency management agencies
• ensuring fire management is based on “best practice” approaches.

Australia, with its wealth of scientific knowledge and long history of Indigenous land management, should be well placed to manage fire sustainably – even with the pressures of climate change. Changing our approach will not be quick or simple, but it must be done.

Kevin Tolhurst is affiliated with the International Association of Wildland Fire. He is also on the forest fire management committee of Forestry Australia.

– ref. It’s official: Australia is set for a hot, dry El Niño. Here’s what that means for our flammable continent – https://theconversation.com/its-official-australia-is-set-for-a-hot-dry-el-nino-heres-what-that-means-for-our-flammable-continent-209126

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Program Director – Health and Physical Education, Maths/Science, Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania

The second Ashes Test ended in tense scenes on Sunday following the controversial dismissal of English batsman Jonny Bairstow. His stumping infuriated a pro-England crowd at the famous Lord’s ground and divided the cricketing world.

While the Australians would no doubt have preferred to win with less controversy, did they actually do anything wrong?

In answer to that question, it’s widely accepted, even by the English team, that his dismissal was within the laws of cricket. But critics then invoked the “spirit of cricket” to suggest the Australians should not have asked for the dismissal to be upheld. So what is the difference?

The laws of cricket detail the rules of the game of cricket worldwide. They have been owned and maintained by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in London for over 200 years.

The rules are clear and the many English fans and past players, along with the current captain and coach, have acknowledged the umpires were correct according to those laws.

That’s when we get to the “spirit”. Since the late 1990s, the laws of cricket have also had an introductory statement or preamble. It states that cricket should be played not only according to the laws, but also in the “spirit of cricket”“.

This preamble is aimed at reminding players and officials of their responsibility for ensuring cricket is played in a truly sportsmanlike manner.

The two captains have the main responsibility for ensuring the spirit of fair play is upheld. This primarily involves making sure players show respect for other players, officials and the traditional values of cricket. It is against the spirit of the game to do things such as dispute an umpire’s decision, verbally or physically abuse a player or umpire, or cheat.

The problem is the “spirit of cricket” is a subjective and slightly hazy concept. Respected English cricket writers have even suggested it has not existed since 1882, using an example of conduct by the “father of cricket”, W.G. Grace himself.

While cricket is united under its laws, cricket is a global game and the idea of the “spirit” differs around the world. Consequently, opinions about Bairstow’s dismissal have been highly polarised. Many English players and fans are very angry at what has occurred, accusing Australia of going against the “spirit of cricket”. The fact they narrowly lost the match no doubt intensified this feeling.

Their anger is reflected in the front-page stories in numerous English newspapers and in social media posts. Twitter has had tens of thousands of tweets under trending hashtags such as #Ashes, #Bairstow and #SpiritofCricket.

Interestingly, a look at these hashtags also reveal numerous accusations of hypocrisy by the English, backed up with examples of England’s questionable, and sometimes very similar, conduct. These examples have included central figures such as English players Stuart Broad, Jonny Bairstow and coach Brendon McCullum.

Additionally, the only player who has been fined for displaying conduct contrary to the spirit of the game in this Ashes series is English player Moeen Ali.

Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting noted that a key part of the spirit of cricket was respecting the umpire’s decision, which in this instance he said the English players, fans and press had not. Indeed, several MCC members have been suspended over their abuse of Australian cricketers returning to their dressing room.

Perhaps the key lesson that both sides could learn can be encapsulated in the old saying that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, particularly in the modern age when evidence can be quickly found on the internet.

Neither country has a clean slate when it comes to the “spirit of cricket”. Both should be careful about trying to take the moral high ground. Trevor Chappell’s underarm bowl is one of the most infamous Australian examples, still remembered over 40 years later.

Bairstow’s dismissal is the most recent controversy and unlikely to be the last.

As the Australian team heads to Leeds for the third Test starting on Thursday, there are concerns tensions could boil over, on and off the field. Leeds is known for its raucous atmosphere. Cricket Australia has increased security for the Australian team and reportedly told players to remain extra vigilant when dining out in restaurants during the remaining weeks of the Ashes.

We may never get complete agreement on the “spirit of cricket” and whether the Australians breached it on this occasion. Perhaps the closest we can get is to agree with former Australian bowler and Yorkshire coach Jason Gillespie, who believes that

by playing within the laws of the game you are playing within the spirit of the game.

Let’s hope the remainder of the series sees a cooling of tensions and more focus on the last three Tests being played hard but fair, without reigniting “spirit of cricket” debates that no one wins.

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

– ref. What is the difference between the laws of cricket and the ‘spirit’ of cricket? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-difference-between-the-laws-of-cricket-and-the-spirit-of-cricket-209124

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Hay, Professor of Drama, Flinders University

The 2024 intake into the Bachelors-level degree at the National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA) has been “paused”, reportedly on the grounds of financial viability and “strategic alignment” with Swinburne University, which has auspiced NICA since 1995.

In the same week across the Tasman, Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington announced savage cuts to its theatre and music programs.

These are just the latest blows to a sector in crisis. They arise from a decades-long suspicion of the place of arts training in the academy, which can be traced back as far as the 1950s.

Then, arts training was seen as insufficiently rigorous and incompatible with university structures. Now, those same concerns are framed in terms of strategic value and return on investment.

Whatever the rationale, they speak to a lack of imagination and creativity in the administration of the contemporary university.

An independent institution

At a meeting of its Professorial Board in December 1956, the University of Melbourne refused a proposal to establish a degree-level actor training program. The board declared the aims of the proposal could not “be fulfilled by a course which conformed to indispensable university standards”.

After this rejection, a similar proposal progressed at the University of New South Wales, with one critical difference.

While this actor training program would operate out of university facilities and be collocated with the School of English, it would remain separate.

The National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) was born in 1958. From its start, NIDA was physically integrated with but academically apart from its institutional sponsor.

Throughout its history and to today, to paraphrase long-time director John Clark, NIDA has revelled in its close association with the university – but closely guarded its independence.

Intellectual rigour

The suggestion in the late 1950s that the business of performer training was antithetical to the mission of the university was grounded in two related factors: matriculation standards, and the availability of suitably qualified staff.

Universities were sceptical of the intellectual rigour of artistic practice in the institution, both in prospective students and in staff.

Universities were also concerned about the lack of funding or teaching space for the higher intensity and longer hours demanded over more traditional tertiary subjects.

One exception stands out: the long-running actor training offered at Flinders University began in 1971, just five years after the university opened in 1966.

Otherwise, performers trained outside of university level institutions. Some joined the profession directly and trained on the job. Others were apprenticed through youth companies or student theatre, and graduated onto the professional stage.

Merging with the universities

In the intervening years, between 1967 to the early 1990s, much Australian arts training was housed within Colleges of Advanced Education (CAE). These colleges sat between TAFE institutions and universities, focusing on more vocational disciplines and awarding certificates, diplomas, and eventually degrees.

In the early 1990s, the Dawkins Reforms merged some technical and vocational providers with universities, and granted university status to others. This brought more arts training programs into universities.

The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), which had been housed within the Western Australian CAE since 1980, became part of Edith Cowan University.

The Kelvin Grove Campus of the Brisbane CAE, which had provided actor training since the late 1970s, was merged with the new Queensland University of Technology.

These new universities were beginning to articulate an academic identity. Their historical association with more vocational forms of training made them more open to maintaining the provision of arts training.

As part of this commitment, some institutions even founded new training programs. Swinburne established the National Institute of Circus Arts in 1995. The Griffith Film School followed in 2004.

By far the most contentious integration took place at the University of Melbourne in 2006, when the Victorian College of the Arts was first affiliated with and then fully integrated into the university.

Almost exactly 50 years after it was first rejected, actor training was now part of the business of that university – though not without a great deal of consternation and protest.

Various painful reorganisations followed, elegantly documented by Richard Murphet, as the university and the training institution worked through their differences – many the same as those identified by the Professorial Board in the 1950s.

Read more:
Friday essay: training a new generation of performers about intimacy, safety and creativity

The value of arts training

At its root, the uneasiness of the alliance between universities and performer training is a product of a perceived opposition between the intellectual and the manual.

This false binary discounts the ways in which knowledge is made by and held in the body, and the rigorous research-informed training cultures that have developed in university performing arts programs since the 1990s.

Too often, the universities themselves aren’t able to take on the very acts of imagination that characterise the training offered to students. Administrators instead see bloated programs that refuse to conform to increasingly rigid curriculum architectures.

Institutions that proclaim themselves to be innovative, agile and creative are increasingly unwilling to sustain the very programs that exemplify those qualities.

Budget bottom lines trump the values of the institution.

Far from being expensive follies incompatible with the institution, arts training programs act as the shopfront for the university. These programs intervene in civic life and showcase the university publicly. Their students activate campus spaces and bring community audiences to the university.

To maintain them does not require a commitment to the arts as an intrinsic good – though that would not go astray. It merely needs administrators to think differently, to make new models instead of insisting we fit the old, to imagine a better future.

Funnily enough, an arts training program could teach them precisely that.

Read more:
Friday essay: a world of pain – Australian theatre in crisis

Chris Hay receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC).

– ref. Intake to the National Institute of Circus Arts has been ‘paused’. Where to next for Australia’s performing arts training? – https://theconversation.com/intake-to-the-national-institute-of-circus-arts-has-been-paused-where-to-next-for-australias-performing-arts-training-209120

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth (Liz) Jackson, Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management & Logistics, Curtin University

Australia’s government wants to end live animal exports. A panel of four experts has been appointed and given a $5.6 million budget to come up with a plan to phase out the trade, worth $92 million a year.

Chaired by the former head of the Murray Darling Basin Authority, Phillip Glyde, the panel is expected to report by the end of September. What it proposes remains to be seen. The only thing that’s certain is that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has promised the ban won’t happen in his first term, and that a lot more funding will be needed if no one involved in the trade is to be left worse off.

The thornier question is whether the ban – something animal welfare activists have campaigned for decades – will be a net gain for global animal welfare. It’s likely to mean more animals being shipped from nations with lower standards.

Read more:
Veganism: why we should see it as a political movement rather than a dietary choice

Scandals, bans and reforms

Australia is the world’s seventh-biggest exporter of live animals by value. In 2022 it accounted for about 4.7% of the global trade, mostly shipping sheep to the Middle East and cattle to Asia. These markets either lack reliable refrigeration and cold-chain facilities for processed meat or have a cultural preference for freshly slaughtered meat adhering to specific practices, like halal.

Currently there is a ban on sheep being shipped to the northern hemisphere in summer, after 2,400 sheep died on a journey to the Middle East in 2017. There have also been temporary suspensions to individual countries over the past two decades.

Exports to Indonesia were suspended for six weeks in 2012, following an ABC Four Corners expose of cruelty to cattle in abattoirs.

Trade to Egypt was suspended in 2013 and 2006, again over cruelty to cattle in abattoirs. Shipments to Saudi Arabia were suspended between 2003 and 2005, after 58,000 sheep were stranded at sea for three months after Saudi authorities refused to let them disembark due to an outbreak of the viral disease scabby mouth.

These scandals, however, have led to significant reforms in the industry, with the federal government imposing stringent obligations on exporters for trade to resume.

As a result, Australia can boast that it leads the world in animal welfare practices.

It is only country that requires exporters to safeguard the welfare of animals from the paddock to the point of slaughter in abattoirs in other countries. This is a rare example of the principle of extended producer responsibility being practised. The World Organisation for Animal Health recommends this but does not require it.

Regulating treatment in importing nations

Two sets of Australian regulations oversee the treatment of animals being shipped for slaughter overseas. From the farmgate to the ship is covered by the Australian Standards for the Export of Livestock. These were introduced in 2021.

Treatment in importing countries is covered by the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System (ESCAS). These rules were instituted in 2011, following the expose of mistreatment in Indonesian abattoirs.

They require exporters to ensure all handlers and facilities (ports, transport vehicle, feedlots and abbatoirs) in importing countries to comply with both local and Australian welfare guidelines.

To gain an export licence from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, exporters must demonstrate they have control over every link in the supply chain from when animals leave the ship to the point at which they are slaughtered.

Animals must be inspected before, during and after their journey by accredited animal health professionals. Facilities and animal-handling techniques are audited at least once a year. Auditors are appointed by the exporter but have to be independent, have no conflict of interest and be appropriately qualified.

Imperfect but ‘unique and innovative’

The system is not perfect. A 2021 review of ESCAS by the federal Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports identified a number of regulatory gaps and ways to make the system more efficient. In particular it noted that loss of control and traceability, sometimes with poor animal welfare outcomes, still occurs at low but chronic levels.

Nonetheless it still described the system as “a unique and innovative regulatory practice solution” that had largely achieved its broad objectives, and made eight recommendations to fix problems (the department agreed to four of these, and “agreed in principle” to the other four.)

Reporting non-compliance

One measure of how well the system is working is the number of reports of Australian livestock being mistreated or being in non-accredited facilities.
Anyone can make these reports, which are publicly available, along with the investigations arising.

For example, in 2021 the animal rights group Animals Australia reported non-compliant slaughter of sheep in Jordan. The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry agreed, and that the control arrangements of the exporter, Livestock Shipping Services, had failed.

Read more:
What the High Court decision on filming animals in farms and abattoirs really means

The federal minister for Agriculture, Murray Watt, described the live export industry in June 2020 (when he was shadow minister for Northern Australia) as “a world leader with regard to animal welfare”.

Nothing has changed since.

Elizabeth Jackson is a member-elected non-executive director of Sheep Producers Australia and is on the WAFarmers’ Livestock Council but does not derive any income from the agricultural industry. She currently receives research funding from the Food Agility CRC and the Fight Food Waste CRC.

– ref. Why Australia banning live animal exports may be a net loss for animal welfare – https://theconversation.com/why-australia-banning-live-animal-exports-may-be-a-net-loss-for-animal-welfare-205831

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Carlson, Professor, Indigenous Studies and Director of The Centre for Global Indigenous Futures, Macquarie University

NAIDOC week is a big celebration for Indigenous people and a highlight on the Blak calendar – it is our Blak Christmas.

While reconciliation week focuses on relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, NAIDOC week is purely to celebrate our culture and achievements.

We get to celebrate who we are and what we have achieved, and we get to support all the deadly Blak businesses.

It’s a time for our community to celebrate being Blak, with local events that are accessible to all, such as Burramatta NAIDOC. Or you can relax at home and enjoy the many films and TV series written or produced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander filmmakers or staring fabulous Blak talent.

A brief history of NAIDOC

Held in the first week of July, NAIDOC has a long history of activism and celebration.

NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee and it dates back to the 1920s and the fight for better living conditions and rights for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

It continued into the 1930s with the boycotting of Australia Day and the establishment of The Day of Mourning. In 1955 the event was expanded to a week-long celebration held in July.

Over the years the event shifted to become one of celebrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, culture, and history, our survival and our resistance. With more than 65,000 years of history we need at least a week to celebrate our deadliness!

Read more:
Connecting to culture: here’s what happened when elders gifted totemic species to school kids

This year’s theme: ‘For our Elders’

This year’s NAIDOC theme is “For our Elders”. Our Elders are the trailblazers who fought tirelessly for all we currently have, and they continue to fight for the rights and freedoms of our people.

Sadly, we lose too many Elders at relatively young ages. Recently we have lost Uncle Jack Charles, Uncle Archie Roach and Yunupingu, among many others. In our communities, loss of our Elders too early is heartbreakingly commonplace.

NAIDOC awards

An event that is very popular is the National NAIDOC awards which acknowledge the contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to our communities. There are a range of categories including sports, creative arts, youth, Elders and lifetime achievement.

The “male” and “female” categories unfortunately miss a valuable opportunity to celebrate our leaders who are beyond the gender binary. Introducing gender-free categories would allow trans and gender diverse mob to be equally celebrated, as they also work tirelessly to make life better for the generations to come.

The NAIDOC ball

The annual NAIDOC balls held across most states and territories are also a highlight of the week. Much attention is paid to the fabulous outfits and jewellery, as this is one of the biggest events of the year and one of few opportunities to come together and celebrate a deep sense of pride in what we have achieved.

It’s also important to consider the accessibility of the key NAIDOC events, such as the awards and balls. Indigenous peoples will be out of pocket at least A$120 for a ticket to the awards and balls, and organisations including Blak businesses are ticketed at $220, with $300 tickets for corporate allies. During a cost-of-living crisis, $120 is a big ask.

Given NAIDOC is a national celebration, more funding is needed from government and local councils to fund mob to host celebrations. It would be fabulous to see government and mainstream organisations provide funding to Indigenous owned and controlled organisations to host NAIDOC events that are community-led and accessible to everyone.

What does NAIDOC week mean for non-Indigenous people?

Unfortunately NAIDOC week often leads to unpaid labour for many Indigenous people in workplaces, as they are expected to organise NAIDOC events and celebrations.

During NAIDOC week, non-Indigenous people can show their support by not putting extra pressure on Indigenous staff and being involved in the organising of NAIDOC events. Employers could also include a day off for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff so they can participate in cultural celebrations.

Non-Indigenous people can also support Blak-controlled businesses such as caterers and florists. But this should happen throughout the year as well.

They should also listen and learn throughout the year, not just during NAIDOC. Engage with free content such as First Australians, After the Apology, First Inventors and Mabo. Read some of the wonderful books written by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

During NAIDOC we also see deadly collaborations with big corporations which is a great way to showcase Indigenous excellence. This year Indigenous artist Rubii Red collaborated with Xbox to create a hand-painted console with profits going to Aboriginal kids in out of home care.

Happy Blak Christmas you mob!

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

– ref. What is NAIDOC week? How did it start and what does it celebrate? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-naidoc-week-how-did-it-start-and-what-does-it-celebrate-208936

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stacey Priestley, Research Scientist, Environment Business Unit, CSIRO

Groundwater is the world’s biggest source of easily accessible freshwater. Despite its importance, we know very little about how this resource is replenished over time. In a world-first study, we have used caves to show the decades-long decline in rainfall in south-west Australia has reduced the replenishment of groundwater in the region to an 800-year low.

Our findings highlight the immediate threat of climate change to water security for communities in the south-west – the region between Geraldton and Albany, including Perth. Groundwater is the major source of water used in Perth and many rural towns.

Rainfall across south-west Australia has been decreasing since the late 1960s. The region’s drying climate means rainfall may no longer be reliably replenishing its groundwater.

Read more:
Hidden depths: why groundwater is our most important water source

How can caves tell us about groundwater recharge?

Caves are natural windows into what’s happening underground. In caves, we can directly observe water on its way to becoming groundwater. This is an advantage when we want to understand how rainfall replenishes groundwater (technically known as groundwater recharge).

In this study, we measured seven stalagmite records and also water dripping from the cave ceiling from caves located in the Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park. Stalagmites grow up from the cave floor in limestone caves. These structures build up when dripping water deposits minerals onto the cave floor.

In our study area, the mineral calcite (CaCO₃) is deposited in layers. The oldest layers are at the base of the stalagmite and the youngest layers at the top.

Read more:
Explorers just uncovered Australia’s deepest cave. A hydrogeologist explains how they form

These layers contain a record of past environmental change in the composition of their oxygen isotopes (different naturally occurring forms of oxygen atoms). We measured two of the stable isotopes of oxygen. Our study found both stalagmites and water showed the same change in their chemistry, an “uptick” or rise in the ratio between the two isotopes.

This oxygen isotope record of stalagmites is widely treated as a faithful recorder of changes in rainfall. However, it isn’t that simple in south-west Australia.

We found a change in the oxygen isotope composition of the stalagmites that was ten times greater than the drop in rainfall since the 1960s. This means another process was responsible for the oxygen isotope uptick.

We analysed the water dripping into the caves to help us understand the isotope changes in the stalagmites. We saw differences between water flow types: slower flow through the porous limestone and faster flow along fractures in the limestone, which is known as preferential flow. The faster flow of water had a different oxygen isotope composition, and the uptick in stalagmite oxygen isotopes indicates this flow type has declined in recent decades.

Read more:
The world’s biggest source of freshwater is beneath your feet

What does this mean for groundwater recharge?

Preferential flow is an important mechanism for rainfall recharge of groundwater. This flow supplies larger volumes of water to groundwater compared to porous flow.

The impact of reduced preferential flow can be seen in the stalagmite image below. A contraction of the growth to the centre of the stalagmite indicates a reduction in drip rate.

A decline in the local water table from another cave system in the region that began around 1980 matches the beginning of the oxygen isotope uptick. This confirms the decline in rainfall recharge to groundwater.

We now understood how the stalagmite record has captured changes in the groundwater recharge process. We then used the stalagmites to look further back in time to find evidence of previous upticks.

This is the second advantage of having approached this problem using caves. The stalagmite is essentially an archive of past dripwater oxygen isotope composition. Upticks further back in time would indicate if similar reductions in groundwater recharge had occurred.

Importantly, the longer record (shown below) indicates the current reduction in rainfall recharge is unprecedented in the past 800 years.

What does this mean for the region’s water supply?

South-west Australia’s drying climate and reduced groundwater recharge have important implications for sustainable use of this resource. Groundwater supplies three-quarters of the water used in the region and future groundwater use is expected to increase. These trends also pose a threat to the plants and animals that live in groundwater-dependent ecosystems.

Australia as a whole depends on finite groundwater resources, which are under mounting pressure. Drought resilience is a research focus of CSIRO, ANSTO and UNSW.

Read more:
How drought is affecting water supply in Australia’s capital cities

This research includes looking at ways to improve water security, such as water banking. This involves storing water underground using managed aquifer recharge (MAR) techniques. Excess water resources, such as recycled stormwater, are stored when available and used during dry years or a drought.

We are now working towards extending the record further back in time to 10,000 years ago. Our aim is to understand when groundwater was recharged and under what past climate scenarios. This knowledge will give us a better understanding of the limits and sustainability of this vital resource for communities that rely heavily on groundwater.

Stacey Priestley is also affiliated with the University of Adelaide. This research was undertaken while employed by ANSTO.

Other contributors to the research include Dr Allan Griffiths and Dr Karina Meredith of ANSTO and Professor Nerilie Abram of ANU. This research was supported by funding from the Australian Research Council and ANSTO, Australian Synchrotron beamtime, and with the assistance of resources and services from the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), which is supported by the Australian Government.

Andy Baker receives funding from The Australian Research Council

Pauline Treble receives funding from the Australian Research Council and ANSTO. She is also an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at UNSW Sydney.

– ref. Decades of less rainfall have cut replenishing of groundwater to 800-year low in WA – https://theconversation.com/decades-of-less-rainfall-have-cut-replenishing-of-groundwater-to-800-year-low-in-wa-208751

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Moreton, Associate Lecturer, School of Psychology, University of Wollongong

As of July 1, authorised psychiatrists have been allowed to prescribe MDMA (the chemical found in “ecstasy”) to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and psilocybin (found in “magic mushrooms”) to treat depression that hasn’t responded to other treatment.

Psychedelic therapies have researchers excited because evidence suggests they might have lasting effects on factors that cause psychological distress beyond the treatment period. These include feeling disconnected from other people, fear of death, and rigid ways of thinking.

This stands in contrast to most medications for psychological issues, which only directly help while people keep taking them regularly.

But how strong is the evidence for psychedelic therapy?

Early promise

Early results from studies around the world have found psychedelic therapy might be effective for treating a range of psychological issues.

For instance, most studies (but not all) have found patients tend to report fewer depression symptoms for periods ranging from several weeks to several months after psilocybin therapy.

Similarly, studies have found reductions in PTSD symptoms three weeks after MDMA therapy.

Not so fast

However, as psychedelic research has grown, limitations of the research have been identified by researchers both within and outside the psychedelic field.

One issue is that we aren’t sure whether findings might be due to a placebo effect, which occurs when a treatment works because people expect it to work.

In clinical trials, participants are often given either a medication or a placebo (inactive) drug – and it’s important they don’t know which they have been given. However, due to the strong effects, it is difficult to prevent participants from knowing whether they have been given a psychedelic drug.

Researchers have tried to use a range of different drugs (such as Ritalin) as a placebo in order to “trick” those participants not given a psychedelic into thinking they have received one. But this can be difficult to achieve.

In 2021, researchers reviewed clinical trials involving psychedelics such as LSD, psilocybin, and dimethyltryptamine (found in animals and plants) for mood and anxiety disorders. They found trials either had not assessed whether participants guessed correctly which drug they had been given, or that this had been tested and participants tended to guess correctly.

More recent trials either don’t measure this or find participants have a pretty good idea of whether they’ve had a placebo or a psychedelic drug.

Given the publicity and excitement around psychedelic research in recent years, it is likely most participants have strong beliefs such therapies work. This could lead to a significant placebo effect for participants given a psychedelic dose. Additionally, participants who realise they have received a placebo could experience disappointment and frustration, resulting in worse symptoms. The benefits of a psychedelic may seem even greater when they are compared to the experiences of disappointed participants.

Read more:
The TGA has approved certain psychedelic treatments: the response from experts is mixed

Translating trials to practice

Anecdotally, patients might be motivated to report they have gotten better, even when they haven’t.

On a 2021 podcast, one clinical trial participant described how, in hindsight, the information they provided to the trial did not accurately capture the worsening of their symptoms. Trial participants are likely aware their results might affect whether treatments are legalised. They may not want to “ruin” the research by admitting the treatment didn’t work for them.

There is also uncertainty about whether the findings from clinical trials mean treatments will work in private practice. There may be a lack of clarity around how trial participants are recruited and selected. Therefore participants may not represent the typical person with PTSD or treatment-resistant depression.

And while the safety of psychedelics within controlled contexts is often emphasised by advocates, less is known about safety of psychedelic therapy outside clinical trials.

Resolving issues

These issues do not mean the promising psychedelic research conducted over the past several decades is worthless. Nevertheless, a recent review of the effects of MDMA and psilocybin on mental, behavioural or developmental disorders by Australian researchers concluded the “overall certainty of evidence was low or very low”.

Dutch researchers recently drafted a roadmap for psychedelic science with a checklist for future research to help avoid these pitfalls. When more research is done, it might turn out psychedelic treatments help patients and don’t come with unacceptable harms – we simply don’t know that yet.

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

– ref. Do psychedelics really work to treat depression and PTSD? Here’s what the evidence says – https://theconversation.com/do-psychedelics-really-work-to-treat-depression-and-ptsd-heres-what-the-evidence-says-208857

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam J. Taylor, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne

On Wednesday the federal government released a consultation paper looking at how to make the school system “better and fairer”.

This is part of ongoing consultations over the next National School Reform Agreement between the Commonwealth and states, due to begin in 2025.

One of the questions the consultation paper asks is how to attract and retain teachers, and how to improve and support teachers’ career pathways.

As the paper noted, teachers accredited at the top level of the profession’s standards “make up less than 1% of the teaching workforce”.

Why is this so?

Read more:
What is the National School Reform Agreement and what does it have to do with school funding?

Accreditation levels

Australia’s professional standards for teachers are now ten years old.

The standards set out what a teacher must know and be able to do to be registered as a teacher in Australia.

They consist of four levels. The bottom two are mandatory for all teachers in classrooms. But the top two are voluntary.

Despite these being a way to high-performing members of the profession, as of 2023, only 1,211 of the 307,000 full-time-equivalent teachers in Australia, are accredited at these levels. That’s only about 0.4%.

A Commonwealth and state government plan to address the national teacher shortage, released in December 2022, said Australia should aim for 10,000 “highly accomplished” or “lead” teachers by 2025. It also noted the need to “streamline” the process.

This suggests the standards are not working or useful for the vast majority of teachers.

What are the standards?

The standards were developed by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. They include seven separate headings and 37 different focus areas.

The headings include “know students and how they learn”, “know the content and how to teach it”, “create safe and supportive learning environment” and “assess students’ learning”. Teachers must also ensure they keep engaging in professional development.

Each of the focus areas is divided into four stages. Teachers need to pass the first stage to enter a classroom after their education degree (“the graduate stage”) and then pass another stage in the first few years of their career (the “proficient stage”.)

The third and fourth stages of the standards (“highly accomplished” and “lead”) are voluntary.

What’s involved with the higher levels?

To become a “highly accomplished” teacher, there are two stages, no matter what state or territory teachers live in.

Firstly, the teacher needs to submit a complex portfolio with annotated documents, giving with evidence of their teaching practice. Then they have to pass a site visit where an external assessor examines them in the classroom.

Depending on the jurisdiction, the process takes a year or more. The cost ranges from about A$600 to more than A$1,000.

“Lead teacher” accreditation is another year and the same sort of cost again. On top of this, certification must be renewed every five years. This requires more written statements by the teacher, along with three to five referee reports.

Do they get paid more?

Despite this cost and effort, teachers do not necessarily get paid more if they get accredited at the higher levels.

Teachers in New South Wales do get a pay rise, as “highly accomplished or lead” categories are recognised in enterprise agreements across all school sectors. But this is not the case in Victoria. And in South Australia, if teachers have the accreditation and work in a government school, they are only paid more if they are in a recognised “highly accomplished or lead teacher” position in the school.

Read more:
Working with kids, being passionate about a subject, making a difference: what makes people switch careers to teaching?

Is it more prestigious?

The two voluntary stages are supposed to create a pathway for teachers to become specialists in their fields.

It was hoped that the voluntary stages would give teachers recognition for their expertise while remaining in the classroom, rather than building their careers by moving into school leadership roles. It was also seen as a way of raising the status of teaching.

But as my 2021 research showed, there is no compelling evidence the standards raise the status of the profession.

Meanwhile, many teachers don’t stay in the classroom once they are accredited.

A 2018 survey found one in three teachers who had done the higher levels of accreditation had moved into a school leadership role that took them more out of the classroom. Previous Australian research has shown teachers see moving into a school leadership or management role – such as a principal or a subject coordinator – as more prestigious than staying in the classroom.

Read more:
We won’t solve the teacher shortage until we answer these 4 questions

We don’t have a national approach

The uptake is not helped by different state attitudes. For example, Western Australia has an alternative leadership and pathways for teachers, which do not involve the national standards.

The figures suggest teachers would prefer to get a masters degree or other university qualification anyway. More than 16,000 Australians completed a postgraduate degree in education in 2021 alone. Even accounting for the 4,000 or so of those who were completing initial teacher education at master degree level, this is still a significant figure.

What now?

Teaching has long had an emphasis on ongoing professional development. But the low uptake in voluntary accreditation suggests we need to change the way we recognise high-performing teachers.

The two mandatory stages of the standards have had a high impact in part because all initial teacher education courses (and teachers’ ongoing registration) are pegged to them.

One way to give the voluntary stages of the standards some relevance, currency and status in the profession is to hitch “highly accomplished and lead teacher” accreditation to university qualifications as well. We know teachers want to do further study. This could be combined with higher levels of registration.

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

– ref. Why are less than 1% of Australian teachers accredited at the top levels of the profession? – https://theconversation.com/why-are-less-than-1-of-australian-teachers-accredited-at-the-top-levels-of-the-profession-208659

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Lesh, Lecturer in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies, Deakin University

Heritage conservation has been blamed for making the housing crisis worse by standing in the way of new, higher-density housing. But protecting heritage and increasing housing should be complementary objectives. Heritage suffers when not enjoyed by our growing communities. Housing suffers when not shaped by our communal heritage.

YIMBYs and NIMBYs are usually on opposing sides of this debate. Yet what they agree on is the desirability of heritage areas. People in both the Not In My Back Yard and Yes In My Back Yard camps want to live in established suburbs, often in the inner city, with attractive historic urban landscapes.

Unfortunately, NIMBYs have exploited heritage loopholes to prevent development. There is a problem with how overly cautious practitioners and under-resourced authorities are applying heritage protections. So, YIMBYs wrongly blame heritage itself for housing issues.

Empirical evidence that heritage is a barrier to housing supply is practically non-existent. It’s not a talking point among housing experts. The real issues are urban policy, the tax system and housing supply.

Read more:
Why heritage protection is about how people use places, not just their architecture and history

In support of both heritage and housing

Heritage should be seen as part of the housing solution. Advocates for both heritage and housing can and have been allies.

In Victoria, for example, architect and politician Evan Walker introduced the first comprehensive local protections in the mid-1980s. He was ably supported by David Yencken, who had been the first chairman of the Australian Heritage Commission and a developer of innovative suburban housing. These city visionaries recognised that we could keep the best of the past and complement it with new, higher-density builds.

Heritage protections were created at a time when our historic neighbourhoods were at risk of widespread demolitions for inferior new buildings. High-rise towers threatened areas like The Rocks in Sydney and Carlton in Melbourne. A surge in ad-hoc redevelopment put valued homes at risk in suburbs such as Brisbane’s New Farm, North Adelaide and Perth’s Subiaco.

Our heritage suburbs were not desirable like today. We only have our fabulous cities of villages because people fought hard for heritage protections.

Read more:
Our cities owe much of their surviving heritage to Jack Mundey

Heritage is about what we find significant. Eroding protections risks the social, physical and historic fabric of heritage neighbourhoods, the very reasons so many of us – including both YIMBYs and NIMBYs – want to live in them. These areas have vibrant high streets, excellent services such as schools and hospitals, and many transport options.

It’s notable, too, that the smaller block sizes in older suburbs already produce high levels of density by Australian standards. Their walkability and infrastructure also make them more liveable. This heritage of urban vitality is worth conserving and replicating.

We can build more housing in heritage areas

A more palatable and sustainable solution is to build well-designed homes, hapartments and townhouses in and around heritage areas. There are architects and developers who do this. It may be a case of adapting obsolete historical buildings or constructing new buildings on appropriate sites.

When done well, new builds and incremental change improve our historic urban landscapes. Good examples include Perth’s Northbridge, Melbourne’s Collingwood and Sydney’s Chippendale.

Importantly, the best-designed new homes respect local history, prevailing design forms and neighbourhood character. That is a great strength of heritage: it allows us to embrace the most significant and beautiful aspects of our existing built forms and social lives.

Read more:
Preserving cities: how ‘trendies’ shaped Australia’s urban heritage

Heritage is not just about protecting grand monuments along Spring or Macquarie streets. It is also about everyday aspects of our suburbs: the sturdy stone street kerb, the intricate iron and lacework terrace, the worker’s timber cottage, the subdivided Federation home, the industrial warehouse turned apartment block and, of course, uplifting gardens, parks and trees.

The precincts, places and features that are heritage-protected reflect decades of community efforts. Today, residents still must have a right to have a say in planning and to see their heritage protected. Conservation is enshrined in planning and heritage legislation and widely supported by the community.

Overcoming barriers to densifying heritage areas

Authorities too often say “no” to appropriate housing in heritage areas. It happens for many reasons, though so-called NIMBYism is a factor.

Many local councils have also had funding for conservation cut, while federal and state leadership in urban heritage is minimal.

Some traditional approaches to conservation do tend to prevent rather than promote reasonable change to heritage places. This is also unsustainable: adapting existing buildings is good for the environment.

Read more:
Frozen in time, we’ve become blind to ways to build sustainability into our urban heritage

Many authorities lack the knowledge and resources to ensure new housing is consistent with heritage. We need to equip them with the innovative heritage approaches and creative design outlook they need to make better decisions. Planning and design panels with wide-ranging skills, including heritage, could work with communities to increase housing supply and choice where people want to live.

It’s essential to address the housing crisisc. More people should be able to enter the housing market and enjoy living in established suburbs. We have the heritage, planning and design tools to achieve both objectives.

Heritage strategies for increasing housing supply can include subdivision, adaptive reuse and infill development in and around heritage areas. It’s about designing the best housing for the specific context. Heritage policies should be reviewed and updated across Australia to support these kinds of outcomes.

The urban heritage of Australia’s cities is what makes them among the world’s most liveable. Heritage should not be about blocking housing, but rather about asking “how can we build housing better?”. Let’s embrace our urban past to shape our urban future.

Read more:
War on the demolishers? Probably not, and timing of NSW heritage review is curious

James Lesh has consulted in the area of heritage conservation.

– ref. YIMBYs and NIMBYs unite! You can have both heritage protection and more housing – https://theconversation.com/yimbys-and-nimbys-unite-you-can-have-both-heritage-protection-and-more-housing-206765

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Garlett, Legal Academic and Industry Fellow, Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, The University of Queensland

There has been a flurry of scaremongering recently about Western Australia’s new Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act, which came into effect on July 1.

The act aims to better reflect the aspirations of Aboriginal people in government and business decisions that impact their cultural heritage. The views of Indigenous people have not been given equal weight in WA on these matters before, which has led to disastrous consequences.

The state’s outdated Aboriginal Heritage Act from 1972 failed to prevent Rio Tinto from legally destroying ancient and sacred rock shelters in Juukan Gorge in 2020 to expand an iron ore mine, demonstrating the need for legal reform.

The new act in WA is a step towards alignment with laws in other states, too. So, why is there so much concern about it?

Why was this new law instituted?

Past changes to WA’s cultural heritage law have disadvantaged Indigenous people. Those reforms narrowed the definition of Aboriginal heritage, weakening the protection of sacred sites to enable mining projects and other developments.

The new act aims to rectify this situation and better protect Australia’s 60,000 years of precious Aboriginal heritage. The law was developed over a period of five years and involved extensive consultation with many groups from all over WA.

What does the new act try to do?

While development and heritage protection can sometimes co-exist, it is not always possible – notably in mining regions. Once tangible pieces of cultural heritage are destroyed, they are gone forever. This is why the act aims to strike a better balance between the interests of different land users and stakeholder groups.

The new law includes stronger protections for significant sites and broader definitions of Aboriginal cultural heritage. It also requires developers to consult with Traditional Owners via new governance structures.

And it includes a positive duty to exercise due diligence – which means actively avoiding harm to Aboriginal heritage – and stronger penalties for breaking the law.

The law also considers cultural landscapes such as ancestral journeys through song lines – not just individual cultural sites. This approach means that both tangible and intangible cultural heritage can be protected.

There are now opportunities to establish protected cultural heritage areas in the state, too, which haven’t existed before.

Is all of the concern justified? Why is there so much confusion?

Despite the aim of striking a better balance between different stakeholder interests, many groups remain concerned about the act.

Farmers say the changes may delay their normal operations and impede their ability to work the land. Some fear they might be unduly prosecuted or fined.

Mining companies say the introduction of the law has been shambolic with exploration companies concerned it will slow the discovery of the minerals we need for the energy transition away from fossil fuels, such as lithium, copper and iron ore.

It has also been reported that sales of residential properties over 1,100 square metres have now started including disclosure statements that the buyer understands there may be new legal obligations to consider.

This may be adding to the fearmongering, similar to the introduction of the Native Title Act in the 1990s, when people feared they could lose ownership of their suburban backyards. That never came to pass.

Read more:
From crumbling rock art to exposed ancestral remains, climate change is ravaging our precious Indigenous heritage

The Shire of Carnarvon in WA says the new law may trigger community disputes about who is the appropriate Traditional Owner or knowledge holding group for a particular area of land. But this is not a new issue.

While there may be some uncertainty about the act, it does not mean the changes are unworkable. What will be required is adequate resourcing for the new local Aboriginal cultural heritage services and the new Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Council.

To allay fears, the WA government says for the first 12 months it will focus on implementation of the act, not punishing stakeholders for breaches of the more rigorous requirement to conduct Indigenous heritage surveys.

Public workshops and education sessions will be offered for anyone who is uncertain about the new requirements, as well.

Is the new law strong enough?

While it may be a step in the right direction, the law does not go far enough from an Indigenous perspective and for other professionals who work with Indigenous people.

A major point of contention is that the state minister for Aboriginal affairs can still have the final say in situations where traditional owners and developers do not agree on the destruction of cultural heritage. In the past, the minister has routinely prioritised mining and other developments over Aboriginal heritage protection.

The First Nations Heritage Protection Alliance has called for overarching federal legislation to ensure Indigenous self-determination and consent rights on cultural heritage are codified into Commonwealth law.

Read more:
Juukan Gorge inquiry: a critical turning point in First Nations authority over land management

In addition, the Dhawura Ngilan vision, which was developed by Australia’s peak Indigenous heritage bodies, outlines best practice standards for cultural heritage management and legislative protections.

It calls for Aboriginal heritage to be acknowledged and valued as central to Australia’s national heritage and recognised for its global significance. The vision sees Aboriginal people as the custodians of their own heritage, supported by strong and consistent heritage management policies across all states.

This issue of how we make decisions that balance competing interests is going to be more pressing in the future. Much of the mining required for the crucial minerals to fuel the renewable energy transition overlaps with Indigenous peoples’ lands.

Despite some improvement to the cultural heritage law in WA, more needs to be done. There needs to be protections for water resources and managing the cumulative impacts major developments (such as mining) can have on cultural heritage over time.

There is a lot more work to do to ensure our laws are not only fair, but also comprehensive. The next 12 months will hopefully allay fears the new state Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act will cause chaos and take us backwards.

Emma Garlett is an Indigenous consultant. She receives research funding at The University of Queensland. She is a columnist for The West Australian and the Host of Paint it Blak on YouTube. Emma is an Adjunct Professor and Advisory Board Member at the National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth and Justice at Federation University.

Deanna is chief investigator of an ARC Linkage grant on public-private inquiries in mining; member of the International Council of Mining and Metals independent expert review panel; and trustee and member of the international advisory council for the Institute of Human Rights and Business. She is Director of the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining at The University of Queensland.

Sarah Holcombe is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining (CSRM) at the University of Queensland. CSRM undertakes applied research for NGOs and civil society organisations, government and industry. Sarah is a member of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) expert working group on FPIC.

– ref. Why is there so much confusion and fearmongering over WA’s new Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-there-so-much-confusion-and-fearmongering-over-was-new-aboriginal-cultural-heritage-act-208752

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Baker, Associate Professor in Human Geography, University of Auckland

The ink was barely dry on the Green Party’s recently unveiled “Pledge to Renters” – which included annual rent increase limits, a rental warrant of fitness and a national register of landlords – before others were consigning it to the policy dustbin.

By Tuesday morning, the prime minister had emphatically ruled out rent controls as part of a potential Labour-Greens coalition after this year’s election: “International experience suggests […] a constraining effect on the number of rentals available,” he said.

The ACT Party housing spokesperson claimed the policy “attacks landlords”, while the vice-president of the Property Investors Federation said it would lead to a “black market” in rental deals.

Labelling the policy “economically illiterate”, National’s housing spokesperson Chris Bishop said: “Economists don’t agree on much but almost all agree rent controls […] are counterproductive.”

And it is true – social science research, and economics in particular, can be marshalled to argue against rent controls. One meta-analysis of 60 studies, for example, found “economic research quite consistently and predominantly frowns on rent control”.

These arguments tend to converge around the notion that controls result in the opposite of their commonly stated objectives: reducing supply and lowering rather than increasing housing standards.

But some perspective is needed. Another international analysis found the “strongly held but highly polarised views” about rent control are “rarely strongly evidence-based”. In fact, there is much more to the debate than many of the partisan arguments suggest.

The generation gap

The research that exists tends to quibble with so-called “first generation” rent controls. These involve freezing rents, akin to the temporary measures put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

First generation rent control was especially popular in Europe and, to some extent, the United States during and shortly after the second world war. Some rent control dwellings from that time live on to this day, but they are rare.

Importantly, these measures involve sustaining rent freezes well below market levels – which is not something entertained by the Greens.

However, because the economic literature tends to focus on first generation rent controls – and because this highly partial focus comes to stand for all rent controls in public discussion – the Greens policy has been implicitly lumped in with only one kind of control.

Read more:
NZ’s housing market drives inequality – why not just tax houses like any other income?

Research on second and third generation rent controls is less plentiful. But it contains more diversity of disciplinary perspectives – including public policy, sociology, geography and other research fields – and is more equivocal in its findings.

Mainstream economics is famously enamoured with formal models based on assumptions that lead to good theory, but which often run into trouble when applied to the complex social and political systems that shape us.

When we begin to incorporate those complexities in our analysis, the world of rent control looks more varied. As the same comparative study that found a lack of evidence-based perspectives put it: “the impact of rent control depends on its form and economic context […] plus crucially the nature of the welfare system in place”.

Not a blunt instrument

The Greens’ proposal most closely resembles second generation rent controls. These allow for rent increases, but within specified limits (a maximum 3% annual increase under the Greens’ proposal). And only under certain circumstances (such as making significant improvements to the dwelling) can landlords increase rents beyond those limits.

Third generation rent controls, by comparison, only apply within a single tenancy, whereas second generation controls apply within and between tenancies. So, a landlord cannot opportunistically increase the rent, above the specified limit, before a new tenancy begins.

Rent control need not be a blunt instrument. It can include any number of provisions to overcome or ameliorate anticipated perverse outcomes.

Around the world, there’s a range of locally tailored variations of rent control policies. Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands, for example, each have different approaches to stabilising rent increases for part of their rental housing stock.

Read more:
The coming storm for New Zealand’s future retirees: still renting and not enough savings to avoid poverty

More informed debate needed

A big part of the problem with New Zealand’s rent control “debate” is that it misses these kinds of nuance. A better discussion would involve looking at what kind of rent control might work, for what purpose, and with what trade-offs.

This is especially important in the context of the country’s rental affordability problem and wealth distribution disparities underpinned by the current housing system.

As was reported earlier this year, Stats NZ figures show renters are experiencing the housing affordability crisis worse than homeowners. In the year to June 2022, one in four renting households were spending more than 40% of their disposable income on housing costs, compared with one in five mortgaged households.

Read more:
Housing is both a human right and a profitable asset, and that’s the problem

Average weekly rents also increased faster than mortgage payments over the past 15 years – by 93%, compared with 48.8%. Given these realities, some kind of policy response is surely logical.

A modest proposal such as the Greens’ policy deserves more than blank rejection. As a recent study of the “mythology” of rent control put it, we ought “to take the trouble to look closely at different kinds of rent control”.

If it is understood as multidimensional, not monolithic, such a policy might at least be seen as one legitimate approach to improving renters’ lives.

Tom Baker 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. Not all rent control policies are the same – the Green Party proposal deserves an open-minded debate – https://theconversation.com/not-all-rent-control-policies-are-the-same-the-green-party-proposal-deserves-an-open-minded-debate-209039

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Barron, Professor, Macquarie University

The animal world is full of different types of intelligence, from the simple bodily coordination of jellyfish to the navigation abilities of bees, the complex songs of birds and the imaginative symbolic thought of humans.

In an article published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, we argue the evolution of all these kinds of animal intelligence has been shaped by just five major changes in the computational capacity of brains.

Each change was a major transitional point in the history of life that changed what types of intelligence could evolve.

The coordination problem

The first intelligence transition was the development of animals with a nervous system. Some have argued single-celled organisms show adaptive and complex behaviour and forms of learning, but these are limited to life at tiny sizes.

Multi-cellular bodies allowed animals to get big and exploit entirely new physical domains. However, a multi-cellular body need to be coordinated to actively move as a single entity. A nervous system solves that coordination problem.

The simplest nervous systems look something like the kind of diffuse neural networks we see in jellyfish. This is great for coordinating a body, but it is not so good at putting information together.

Growing a brain

The second transition was to a centralised nervous system. With this came a brain, and the capacity to combine information from different senses.

A brain can be the master coordinator of the whole body, and this let new types of bodies evolve: bodies with specialised limbs and special sensory structures.

We see these very simple brains in modern worms, leeches and tardigrades. With these brains animals can integrate senses, learn from sensory input, coordinate and orient their movements.

Simple brains transform sensory input to motor output. We can think of the information flow as a “feed forward” from information to action.

A feedback loop

The third transition was to more complex brains, specifically ones with feedback. When the output of a process is fed back into the process, we call it “recurrence”.

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Bees can learn the difference between European and Australian Indigenous art styles in a single afternoon

Insects have recurrent brains. The brilliance of bees – their ability to quickly learn different types of art, to recognise abstract concepts and to navigate to goal locations – is all enabled by their recurrent brains.

Parallel processing

The fourth transition is to brains constructed from multiple recurrent systems each in recurrent connection to each other. Here information flow iterates through recurrent systems. We see brains like this in birds, dogs, reptiles and fish.

This allows massive parallel processing of information. The same information can be used in multiple different ways at the same time, and relationships between different types of information can be recognised.

These networks of recurrent systems are why birds are so good at learning complex sequences in songs; why birds, rats and dogs are great at learning what, where and when things happen; and why monkeys can learn new ways to manipulate objects to solve problems and make rudimentary tools.

The brain that modifies itself

The fifth transition was to brains that can modify their own computational structure according to what is needed. In computer science this is called reflection.

A reflective brain can learn the best information flow for a specific task and modify how it processes information on the fly to complete the task in the fastest and most efficient way.

The human brain is reflective, and this capability has enabled our imagination, our thought processes and our rich mental lives. It also opened the door for the use of symbolic language, which expanded our minds even further as it helped us communicate and coordinate so efficiently with each other.

Different brains for different lifestyles

Each of these transitions is a a set of evolved changes in the structure of information flow through the nervous system. Each transition changed in fundamental ways what the nervous system could do and opened up new possibilities for cognition.

The transitions build on each other. For example, you cannot have recurrence without first evolving centralisation. But this story is not a ladder with Homo sapiens at the top.

Our story describes five fundamentally different types of brain. One is not better than another, each is just different.

We might like to claim we are the smartest animal and depending how you measure it, perhaps we are. But a bee can do things a human simply cannot.

Our intelligence demands an extended childhood, in which we can’t even walk for a year; a bee is fully functional from the moment its wings dry as it emerges from its cell. A bee can learn to navigate for kilometres around its hive with less than 20 minutes of flight time; I still get lost walking home from the train.

And a jellyfish or a worm might not be Einstein, but they can tolerate a level of damage that would kill or paralyse a mammal.

Different types of brains suit animals to different lifestyles, and support different types of animal minds. These five transitions help us make sense of our place among the stunning diversity of animal intelligences.

À lire aussi :
Why do animals living with humans evolve such similar features? A new theory could explain ‘domestication syndrome’

Andrew Barron receives funding from Templeton World Charity Foundation Project Grant TWCF-2020-2539

– ref. All animal intelligence was shaped by just 5 leaps in brain evolution – https://theconversation.com/all-animal-intelligence-was-shaped-by-just-5-leaps-in-brain-evolution-208753

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren O’Donovan, Senior Lecturer in Administrative Law, La Trobe University

On Friday, the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme will submit its final report to the federal government, which is expected to release it to the public shortly thereafter.

The report will be the culmination of years of suffering and work by victims to hold their government to account.

So what can we expect?

Conspiracy or ‘stuff up’?

The headline questions the commission will adjudicate are confronting:

• Did officials at one Commonwealth department deceive another when removing key legal and policy warnings from the cabinet submission that launched robodebt?

• Even worse, did two departments collude to remove references to the unlawful method of averaging?

• Did department officials mislead the Commonwealth ombudsman in its 2017 investigation?

• Why was damning legal advice left unactioned by officials?

The whistleblowing of true public servants like former Centrelink employee Colleen Taylor means the report’s release will not be a dark day for the whole public service.

It will, rather, collapse the established worldview of its senior executive class. A worldview that denies Australians the facts about their government and fobs off independent oversight.

Adverse findings against individuals will not be lightly reached. Hearings, however viral they go, only explore possibilities, but reports make careful findings. Shockingly poor record creation practices in Commonwealth agencies may limit the character of what can be found.

If it recommends further investigation into individuals’ conduct, the report’s release will be tailored to avoid prejudicing any future proceedings.

Standards in political life

Coverage surged for politicians’ appearances at the commission, with many holding out for “who knew what when” moments. In giving evidence, politicians often relied on public servants’ failure to deliver warnings at key moments in the scheme. Ministers who oversaw robodebt consistently used this lack of frank advice to defend their failure to stop it.

The final report will spend time reacquainting our political class with basic expectations of responsible government and standards in public life.

Our public representatives emerged as utterly insubstantial figures, consumed by marketing political images like “welfare cop” and party political combat. They displayed a striking lack of curiosity towards key questions. Adverse information flowed around, rather than through them.

The final report will reflect on standards in our public life and the ethical lows that are plumbed for party political ends: for example, the leaking of private information by the office of then-Human Services Minister Alan Tudge to “correct the record” and discourage people speaking out.

It will tackle warped ideas of ministerial responsibility and cabinet solidarity that see facts or views suppressed in the name of defending a position.

Read more:
The Robodebt scheme failed tests of lawfulness, impartiality, integrity and trust

This commission was fiercely independent, despite misdirected efforts by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to portray it as a “witchhunt”.

It painstakingly examined the history of unlawful income averaging (which was used to calculate robodebts), setting out the fundamental differences in investigation approaches over time. It found 2010 documents describing the use of averaging as a last resort to close files where evidence was not available.

It uncovered the corners cut in remediation, as debts such as these were never paid back. These are the invisible spaces no political slogans ever address, where unapproved practices take root against people who can’t argue back.

Access to justice at the frontline

The governance dynamics that sustained robodebt are not limited to a certain time or place. Consider the unlawfully crude use of bank statements by Services Australia when reprocessing robodebts, which was called out by an appeals tribunal in May.

Our social security system is still failing to provide people with disability adequate reasons for life-changing pension decisions.

Robodebt used behavioural economics approaches to engineer feelings of shame and prevent legal consciousness from forming.

It gamed our administrative law system to overwrite or rapture the debts of those who did complain, while nothing changed on the frontline.

It imposed an administrative burden on those unable to carry it, confident they would triage the trauma and cop the debt.

We must have legal reform to oblige Centrelink to implement tribunal standards of decision-making where it matters: right at the frontline.

Building a culture of accountability

The early signs are that Australian Public Service leaders are pursuing a robodebt response that centres on non-binding, internal cultural reforms put forward by themselves.

When it comes to careerism or the pursuit of power, history tells us human nature will not be changed by refreshed seminars on ethics. You need to change the underlying relationships of power and accountability.

Change is always hard. But we know what stops it. Consider a freedom of information appeal handed down in the last week of the royal commission.

Six long years ago, transparency advocate Justin Warren sought the weekly manager reports on robodebt’s disastrous launch. Services Australia refused to hand them over. About 2,220 days later, the information commissioner (who resigned in protest recently) had to order their release. He found the basis Services Australia thought they could even try denying the documents was “not readily apparent”.

Beware those who offer “cultural” fixes and non-binding reassurances to self-correct. The Albanese government should not fall back on the very institutions who never fully investigated or acted until the political fluke of an exceptional royal commission.

Future scandals will be prevented by the things that stopped robodebt: access to facts, firm legal rights and enforceable remedies for injustice.

Darren O’Donovan 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 culmination of years of suffering’: what can we expect from the robodebt royal commission’s final report? – https://theconversation.com/the-culmination-of-years-of-suffering-what-can-we-expect-from-the-robodebt-royal-commissions-final-report-202337

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nigel Howard, Research associate, Flinders University

Last week, The Australian newspaper reported some parents have been prompted to start their own schools to give their children the type of education they want.

One of these is Hartford College in Sydney, a new Catholic school with an emphasis on the liberal arts, including classical literature, languages and philosophy. It has about 22 students enrolled and the founding parents say they want to engage the “whole” child and will have mentors for each student.

Previously when we think of parents taking their child’s education into their own hands, we may think of homeschooling (which is certainly growing in Australia).

But there is a long tradition of parents and local communities starting their own schools if they feel what’s on offer is not suiting their families’ needs.

Ragged schools

Before compulsory schooling, Ragged schools appeared in Melbourne as early as 1859.

The idea for these community-funded schools came from England, and provided a free moral education for poor and homeless children roaming the streets of Melbourne and Sydney.

In the 20th century, parents of children with a disability, established schools to meet the specific needs of their children. For example, in 1945 Adelaide parents set up the Cora Barclay Centre for children who were deaf from the post-war measles pandemic.

Read more:
Why do I find my child’s school report so hard to understand?

The community schools movement

In the 1970’s parent and community-initiated schools had their heyday.
Coalitions of parents and teachers set up community schools as alternatives to a narrow, paternalistic, exclusionary education.

This was influenced by American education philosopher John Dewey’s ideas about democratic schools and the freedom given to students in Scottish educator A.S. Neill’s Summerhill school. Australian parents and teachers were also emboldened by the civil and children’s rights movements.

But the boom in small, humanist schools was short-lived as state education departments moved to centralisation and standardisation. By the end of the century, community schools had either disappeared or had evolved into places for students who were not progressing in mainstream schools.

Read more:
Australia has a new online-only private school: what are the options if the mainstream system doesn’t suit your child?

Low-fee, faith-based schools

In the 1980s and 1990s Australia saw an increase in faith-based parent and community-initiated schools.

After a 1981 High Court decision, the federal government began to fund a wider range of schools, including religious schools. Rules that limited the establishment of new schools were also scrapped, further opening up new parent and community-initiated schools.

These schools were “low fee”, mainly Christian schools and usually in growth areas. In the 1990s, parents and leaders from refugee communities also banded together to develop schools that reflected their faith and community.

New, specialist schools

Since 2012, the Gonski education reforms have made it even more economically feasible for parents, and communities to establish new independent schools.

The federal government now funds 80% of each non-government school’s schooling resource standard. This is an estimate of how much public funding a school needs to meet its students’ educational needs.

This has seen small schools that cater to a specific parent or community need become more common. The largest growth area of these is Special Assistance Schools, that are primarily for students who have dropped out of mainstream school.

But there are also new schools for students with high academic potential, bush schools, sports schools, performing arts and music schools, science-based schools and sustainable schools.

Read more:
20% of Australian students don’t finish high school: non-mainstream schools have a lot to teach us about helping kids stay

How do parents create a new school?

Not every vision for a new school is successful. Setting up a new school takes leadership, time, commitment, determination and money.

The school must be able to satisfy the state’s schools accrediting authority they have premises, a governance structure with a board, will be able deliver a curriculum and meet safety and protection requirements for staff and students.

For the last four years, we have been researching the development of a new Adelaide school, Ngutu College. It was established by former state school principal and Kamilaroi Man, Andrew Plastow, in response to teacher and community concern.

It describes itself as having:

Aboriginal cultures as its soul, children as its heart and the arts as it spine.

It took 18 months, from the initial discussions with community, to open its classroom doors to students in 2021.

Ngutu has 230 students of which 44% are Indigenous. As it expands to Year 12, it will be capped at 350 students to retain its community focus.

Hartford College and Ngutu College are worlds apart in their vision of education but both are small schools, driven by communities wanting to do the best for its children.

What does this mean for the mainstream system?

Parents and communities are setting up their own schools because they feel their needs are not being met in the mainstream system, which has increasingly been tied to narrow ideas of “success”.

The strength of public education is the interaction between children, young people and their wider community. The more separate, specialised schools that are set up, the more the public loses these students, parents and communities.

In an ideal world, the local public school is able to provide for diverse students and communities. This means schools need to be open and responsiveto the needs of students. This means parents and communities also need to be involved in shaping how their schools are run and their children are educated.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Parents have just started their own school in Sydney – this is part of a long tradition in Australia – https://theconversation.com/parents-have-just-started-their-own-school-in-sydney-this-is-part-of-a-long-tradition-in-australia-208656

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie E. Brice, Assistant Professor, Department of Kinesiology, California State University, Fullerton

There’s little doubt the FIFA Women’s World Cup will deliver spectacle and significant financial rewards when it kicks off in a fortnight. The longer-term rewards, however, are harder to predict.

Tens of thousands of visitors will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to follow the matches across Australia and New Zealand – the first FIFA women’s football tournament to be hosted across two countries and two football confederations.

Following the recent success of the Women’s Rugby World Cup, the financial benefits of co-hosting this tournament have been estimated to be worth NZ$200 million to New Zealand and A$460 million to Australia.

But the event’s legacy can’t be measured in dollars alone. The trans-Tasman bid to co-host the Cup – dubbed “As One” – emphasised its potential to supercharge football in the region and promote women and girls in the sport.

The bid drew heavily on the Sport New Zealand Strategy for Women and Girls in Sport and Active Recreation, a government-led initiative to improve opportunities for girls and women to participate in sport, active recreation and play, and to improve conditions for women as athletes and leaders.

All noble goals, but research has repeatedly shown it isn’t possible to draw a straight line between major sporting events and wider societal benefits. And there is clear evidence of longstanding inequities in women’s football, both in New Zealand and around the world.

Making up for these historic inequalities in opportunity, pay, and representation will require sustained focus and investment. The challenge, therefore, is to genuinely leverage interest in the Women’s World Cup to effect real, measurable, and positive change.

Promise versus reality

Politically, the “As One” bid aligned well with FIFA’s own recent goals and objectives, including its FIFA 2.0 initiative and women’s football strategy.

In response to recent claims of major corruption, FIFA has been working to rebrand its image and reform the federation. Part of this has seen a commitment to support and grow the women’s game at both professional and recreational levels.

Just how much mega-events, like World Cups and Olympics, contribute to real social and economic legacies, however, has long been questioned. In fact, many of the promises made during bids and later promotion of the events – increased participation, more investment in leagues – go unrealised.

Read more:
World Cup 2023 will be a massive boost for women’s sport – but does it make financial sense?

This is particularly so when short-term event strategies aren’t matched by longer-term investment planning. There is little evidence to support claims of trickle-down or “inspiration” effects, whereby people are motivated to participate in a sport or physical activity simply by watching a major event.

The so-called “legacies” of football tournaments, more specifically, have also been found wanting, particularly where improving gender equity has been a focus. One study of the UEFA Women’s Euro 2005 Championship found that:

Despite record crowds and unprecedented media attention, an increase in participation by women after the event was neither significant, nor sustained.

Similarly, despite FIFA’s promises of equality, there remain vast disparities within sporting organisations. There has also been a lack of sustained commitment to end gender inequalities and sexism across the sport. The “As One” bid itself has also been criticised for its superficial engagement with gender equality.

Read more:
‘The moment needs to carry on’ – why the Black Ferns’ success must be a game-changer for women’s sport in NZ

Leveraging the World Cup

Sporting bodies in New Zealand are aware of these issues. Across government and sporting agencies, there are a range of strategic steps being made towards achieving a genuine social legacy from the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Beyond increased media attention and FIFA-sponsored “fan festivals” in the host cities, the Ministry for Women and Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment have developed grants and funding for organisations committed to empowering young girls and women, and increasing physical activity levels.

New Zealand Football (NZF) has addressed the challenge head on, tagging its “Aotearoa United” initiative with the byline “Legacy Starts Now”. It aims for an “enduring impact on our game and diverse communities in the years that follow the tournament”.

Read more:
Women’s football: record crowds and soaring popularity – here’s how to keep it this way

To that end, NZF’s FanTails programme capitalises on World Cup excitement to introduce the game in a fun way to girls aged 4-12. NZF has also partnered with Māori Football Aotearoa and Sport New Zealand to develop the Kōtuitui nationwide school programme, with a focus on supporting participation by girls and young women from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds.

But while such programmes should be applauded, they may not address the larger systemic issues within football. Recently, players from Auckland’s Western Springs AFC expressed concerns about alleged gender inequities and feeling “disrespected” by club leadership, resulting in many players threatening to leave the club.

With long histories of male dominance in football clubs and organisations, changing a sporting culture does not happen overnight.

Playing the long game

On the other hand, great strides are being made for women’s football across New Zealand and internationally.

Participation rates for women and girls have increased over 35% since 2011, according to NZF. At the same time, the profile of the women’s game has grown globally.

Clearly, the two are related. With the significant investment in the FIFA Women’s World Cup, and the efforts being made to inspire and connect with girls, women and families across the country, a further surge in participation rates is on the cards.

How long this interest lasts, however, depends on longer term investment strategies. And that means building opportunities for girls and young women to participate in safe, supportive, and truly inclusive sporting environments.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Long-range goals: can the FIFA World Cup help level the playing field for all women footballers? – https://theconversation.com/long-range-goals-can-the-fifa-world-cup-help-level-the-playing-field-for-all-women-footballers-205213

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Wellings, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Monash University

Someone’s got to say it: it’s just not cricket!

Prime ministers current and former have stepped up to the crease. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is delivering spinners. Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s playing it with a straight bat. No-one is letting anything through to the keeper. I could go on.

The already febrile sporting pages of the English press have gone into overdrive about Jonny Bairstow’s controversial dismissal. It’s obviously more than just a game.

The reason this is not just cricket is that the political furore over the Ashes playing out in England expresses old and new elements of the Australia-UK relationship. The old elements are that Anglo-Australian rivalries and tensions play out in the safety of social forms understood by both sides, in this case cricket.

The first Test ended in an exciting win for Australia. Much of this had to do with England’s questionable decision-making about when to declare, and a new approach to the game known as “Bazball”. There’s been a lot of focus on questionable decision-making in England recently, given that June 23 marked the seventh anniversary of the UK’s referendum to leave the European Union.

Polls now show many regret leaving, including those who voted to leave. The buccaneering spirit that Brexit was supposed to unleash has not materialised.

This is doubly bad news for the Conservatives, whose 2019 election-winning support, built on aggrieved leave-voting former Labour suporters in the north of England, has fallen away like a tail-order collapse. There’s a year and a half until the next general election is due, but trailing badly in the polls, the run chase for the Conservatives is daunting.

A cynic might say Sunak is using this Ashes contretemps as a distraction – weighing in makes the multi-millionaire prime minister look more like one of the people. He has steadied the Conservative government after the disastrous Boris Johnson and Liz Truss moments, but his wealth plays against him in a cost-of-living crisis, and that mud has stuck. Bread and circuses might help.

Last week, a UK Court of Appeal deemed Sunak’s “stop the boats” policy – the most obvious instance of contemporary Australia-UK policy transfer – unlawful, halting plans to send asylum seekers arriving by boat to Rwanda. This was one of Sunak’s five policy pledges to the electorate when he became prime minister last year. Now that policy is on hold pending a government appeal to the supreme court.

The MCC altercation also taps into Australian defensive insecurities about being told how things work by posh English people. In fairness, lots of English people don’t like being told what to do by posh people either – another element in the Conservative’s poor polling at the tail-end of their government.

The last time things were this tense in the cricketing sense was during the Bodyline tour in 1932. This occurred in the context of UK-Australia rivalries during the Great Depression, and financial tensions between the City of London and “Langite” Labor in New South Wales.

But today the relationship has not been better since the UK joined the forerunner of the European Union 50 years ago. AUKUS has locked Australian security into UK nuclear submarine manufacturing capabilities. On the Labor left, this has revived memories of the last time Australian and British security was so closely aligned. Memories of the disaster at Singapore in 1942, or nuclear testing at Maralinga in the 1950s, don’t bring much comfort.

And then there’s the Australia-UK free trade agreement that came into force this year. This is largely seen as a win for Australia, because the UK needed a political symbol to make Brexit look like a success. Some of the fears of British sheep farmers about the unequal nature of the FTA appear to be well-founded. It turns out the largest sheep station in Australia is slightly larger than Wales.

Mention of Wales draws attention to the fact that the Anglo-Australian cricketing rivalry is not a British thing. The Scots appear to be enjoying the moment and generally support two teams – Scotland, and anyone playing against England.

Sport and identity politics are never far apart. It is refreshing to see Sunak come out to bat for England so unselfconsciously. Some of his forebears in the Conservative Party would not have been so relaxed about this – the infamous “Tebbit Test” rated support for the England cricket team as a determinant of being English.

The visual symbolism of Sunak’s support fits into the Conservatives’ culture-war position and magical thinking that there is no such thing as institutional racism in modern Britain. This conclusion sits uncomfortably with the Independent Commissions for Equity in Cricket’s report, released last week, that found racism, sexism and elitism were endemic in the English game.

Read more:
There’s something wrong with British politics. It’s called the Conservative Party

Fortunately, the MCC is not representative of the current UK-Australia relationship. People-to-people links remain very strong. Australia has a presence in the UK that other Commonwealth countries, with the possible exception of India, cannot match – and that’s even though we thought Neighbours had ended.

On Thursday, the sound of leather on willow will resume for the third Test. The Headingley crowd may still be smarting from the Bairstow incident, and confirmed in their views of how Australians play the game.

However, the UK-Australia relationship will go on much as it has boosted by this latest chapter: friends, allies and sporting rivals whose tensions are mitigated by the shared formats of deep historical connections.

Ben Wellings 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. Cricket’s wicket ways: what the furore over a stumping tells us about Anglo-Australian relations (spoiler: they’ll survive) – https://theconversation.com/crickets-wicket-ways-what-the-furore-over-a-stumping-tells-us-about-anglo-australian-relations-spoiler-theyll-survive-209026

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

The Reserve Bank decided to keep interest rates on hold at 4.1% because it thinks there’s a chance – just a chance – it has lifted them all it needs to.

In his statement released after Tuesday’s board meeting, Governor Philip Lowe said while inflation was still too high and set to remain so for some time yet, it had “passed its peak”.

Growth in the Australian economy had slowed and labour market conditions had eased, although they remained tight.

After 12 near-consecutive rate hikes, and in light of the “uncertainty surrounding the economic outlook”, it had decided to wait at least a month before hiking again until it knew more about the impact of what it has done on inflation and the health of the economy.

And when you compare Australians’ experience of rising rates with other countries, the Reserve Bank has already done more than many people realise.

Rising rates have hit Australian borrowers harder

Criticism of Australia’s Reserve Bank for not pushing up its cash rate as far as other countries overlooks an important difference between Australian borrowers and borrowers in those countries.

Canada has lifted its central bank rate from close to zero to 4.75%, Britain to 5%, the US to just above 5% and New Zealand to 5.5%.

Yet Australia’s increase – from close to zero to 4.1% – has caused Australian borrowers much, much more pain than borrowers in those other countries.

That’s because an exceptionally large proportion of Australian mortgage holders are on variable rates: roughly 70%. That’s compared to 35% in Canada, 15% in the UK, 12% in New Zealand and less than 5% in the United States.

Read more:
Why the Bank of England’s interest rate hikes aren’t slowing inflation enough and what that means for mortgages

In the words of Australia’s Reserve Bank: “interest rates on loans with very
long fixed-rate terms tend to be less sensitive to changes in the short-term rates”.

Back in February, the Reserve Bank’s estimate was that the interest rates actually paid on Australian mortgages had climbed two percentage points since it began pushing up rates.

In contrast – as this Reserve Bank chart shows – the rates actually paid in New Zealand had climbed by one and half percentage points, the rates in the UK by just half a percentage point, and the rates in the United States by very little at all.

Increases in mortgage rates actually paid

Months since the official rate began climbing. 100 = one percentage point

And because mortgages themselves are so much bigger than they used to be, the dramatic increase in rates actually paid costs a lot more than it would have.

Modelling by Ben Phillips at the ANU’s Centre for Social Research and Methods suggests that in the past two years, the average share of mortgaged households’ post-tax income devoted to payments has jumped from 17% to 25% – the biggest share in an awfully long time.

And it’s set to get worse, whatever the bank does to its cash rate.

The looming mortgage cliff

Usually, Australians take out very few fixed-rate mortgages. But in 2020 and 2021, we took out lots with fixed two- and three-year rates, when fixed rates were low.

As many as 880,000 of those fixed-rate terms are about to expire, pushing those borrowers from rates of around 2% (which might cost $2,100 per month to service) to rates nearer 5.5% (which might cost $3,000 to service).

The Reserve Bank itself expects 15% of borrowers to find themselves with negative cash flows in the coming months – meaning their incomings won’t match their outgoings and they’ll have to run down savings, work more hours, or tighten belts.

We’re already winding back spending. Although total retail spending has climbed 4.2% over the past year, prices have probably climbed 7% while the population has climbed 2%. This means the amount bought per person has shrunk sharply.

Recession is increasingly likely

Anything that makes us cut back even more runs the risk of bringing on a recession, something that’s already happened in New Zealand and may be about to happen in the United Kingdom.

At the start of this week, The Conversation’s expert forecasting panel assigned a 38% probability to a recession in Australia, much more than at the start of the year, but still less than 50% – meaning we might escape it.

The panel’s central forecast is for two more rate hikes this year, which it expects to be quickly unwound. If that happens, and if we escape a recession, the panel expects unemployment to climb only modestly over the year ahead while inflation glides down to 3.9% – within spitting distance of the Reserve Bank’s 2-3% target.

Lowe says getting things right means staying on a narrow path.

The case for living with higher inflation

That path might mean accepting a slower glide down in inflation than some would like, or even a higher end point – something closer to 3% than 2-3%.

Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman this week suggested quietly abandoning the US inflation target (of 2%) once inflation dropped to a point where people no longer noticed it all the time, which he thought would be about 3-4%.

There would be a case for doing that here, so long as inflation was stable, predictable and no longer causing alarm. It’d help keep unemployment low.

Read more:
Going down: the 6 graphs that show economic growth shrinking

In any event, we’re nowhere near there yet. The March quarter figure (the most recent quarterly inflation figure) put the annual inflation rate at 7%. The update due in four weeks will show how quickly we are moving toward 4%.

When we get there, Lowe or his successor (Lowe’s term expires in September) will have time to think about how important ultra-low inflation of 2-3% really is, and whether it is worth the cost to Australians of getting there.

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

– ref. The RBA has kept interest rates on hold. Here’s why it’ll be cautious from here on – https://theconversation.com/the-rba-has-kept-interest-rates-on-hold-heres-why-itll-be-cautious-from-here-on-208917

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Clift, Lecturer, The University of Melbourne

The Hong Kong government has extended its efforts to suppress political dissent overseas, issuing arrest warrants for eight exiled pro-democracy figures and offering bounties of HK$1 million (around A$191,000) each.

The targeted pro-democracy figures, who now live in Australia, the US and UK, were selected from a longer list of wanted dissidents. There is a curated feel to their profiles – three ex-legislators, three activists, a unionist and a lawyer – that suggests the list is symbolic, as well as pragmatic.

It is reminiscent of the infamous “Umbrella Nine” trial that capped years of prosecutions after Hong Kong’s 2014 “Umbrella Movement” protests. Three academics, three politicians and three activists were tried and convicted together to send a message to “troublesome” sectors of civil society.

The mugshots of those issued with arrest warrants this week depict not gun-slinging outlaws, but amiable-looking intellectual types.

Their “very serious crimes”, according to police, consist mostly of calling for sanctions to turn the tide of political repression in Hong Kong. In the terms of the controversial national security law under which the warrants were issued, this is considered “subversion of state power”, an offence punishable by up to life imprisonment.

How extradition with Hong Kong works

Hong Kong is nominally a self-governing region of China under the “one country, two systems” model agreed to when the UK handed the territory back in 1997.

However, the national security law was drafted in Beijing and applied to Hong Kong after the tumultuous, protracted protests that gripped the city in 2019. These were prompted, ironically, by fears the region’s autonomy was breaking down.

A curious feature of the national security law is its purported extraterritorial effect. It claims jurisdiction over any person of any nationality who has committed any of its offences anywhere in the world.

Read more:
Hong Kong activists now face a choice: stay silent, or flee the city. The world must give them a path to safety

Whether the Hong Kong government can realistically bring these people to trial is another matter entirely.

The international law of extradition (technically, in Hong Kong’s case, the surrender of fugitive offenders, as only states engage in extradition) includes certain safeguards. The act must be a sufficiently serious crime in both places, and it must not be a political offence.

The warrants in question fail both of these tests, notwithstanding the Hong Kong government’s hyperbolic claims about national security.

Moreover, extradition is guided by bilateral agreements between jurisdictions. Numerous Western countries, including the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, suspended their extradition agreements with Hong Kong when the national security law was imposed, foreseeing the politicisation of criminal justice.

China’s never-ending mission to muzzle its critics

The pro-democracy figures targeted this week knew which way the wind was blowing when they left Hong Kong. They will probably never return there, a sad fact to which they may already be reconciled.

However, they may also need to reconsider their travel to jurisdictions which do maintain extradition agreements with Hong Kong or China.

The risk goes beyond formal arrest and extradition. The bounties on offer may encourage vigilantism, and sympathetic governments may turn a blind eye to or even facilitate extra-legal rendition of the eight exiled activists.

This is illustrated by the 2015 case of the five Hong Kong booksellers who disappeared from various locations, including Thailand, and later showed up in China where they “confessed” to crimes in the state media.

The existence of overseas dissidents has long rankled Beijing – as the lifetime of spats with the Dalai Lama illustrates – but in recent years it has shown increased determination to monitor and influence the overseas Chinese diaspora.

The government has even set up secret “overseas police offices” in Europe, North America and elsewhere, as bases for information-gathering and harassment.

Read more:
Succession on the Tibetan plateau: what’s at stake in the battle over the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation?

Hong Kong’s society brought to heel

In the past, China and Hong Kong could be regarded as distinct political entities, but over the last decade, the “firewall” between the mainland and the region has gradually collapsed. Hong Kong’s government and political system have been stripped of democratic elements, and its national security and law enforcement apparatus are now dictated by the mainland.

Compared with its mainland counterpart, the Hong Kong government goes to greater pains to paper over its actions with a veneer of law and legal process.

However, this tactic is increasingly transparent as it ramps up its pursuit of authoritarian goals. The co-option of Hong Kong’s once-celebrated legal institutions undermines their already-damaged legitimacy.

Read more:
Hong Kong democracy protester’s sentencing sets a harsh precedent for national security law

Hong Kong’s civil society has been brought to heel via a suite of repressive reforms spanning the legal, political, education and media sectors. These new warrants are the latest sign that China will never stop trying to muzzle its critics, so long as they are willing to speak out.

Ultimately, these warrants may be futile overreach – for the sake of their targets, we can only hope that is so – but the intention behind them remains condemnable. They are a threat to freedoms that lie at the core of our democratic society.

Brendan Clift 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. Bounties on exiled Hong Kong activists show the ambitious reach of China’s political repression – https://theconversation.com/bounties-on-exiled-hong-kong-activists-show-the-ambitious-reach-of-chinas-political-repression-209029

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Seyedali Mirjalili, Professor, Director of Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research and Optimisation, Torrens University Australia

AI image produced using the prompt ‘hyper-realistic ten hands on a picture with text saying hello’. Midjourney, Author provided

Generative AI tools such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2 have astounded us with their ability to produce remarkable images in a matter of seconds.

Despite their achievements, however, there remains a puzzling disparity between what AI image generators can produce and what we can. For instance, these tools often won’t deliver satisfactory results for seemingly simple tasks such as counting objects and producing accurate text.

If generative AI has reached such unprecedented heights in creative expression, why does it struggle with tasks even a primary school student could complete?

Exploring the underlying reasons helps sheds light on the complex numerical nature of AI, and the nuance of its capabilities.

AI’s limitations with writing

Humans can easily recognise text symbols (such as letters, numbers and characters) written in various different fonts and handwriting. We can also produce text in different contexts, and understand how context can change meaning.

Current AI image generators lack this inherent understanding. They have no true comprehension of what any text symbols mean. These generators are built on artificial neural networks trained on massive amounts of image data, from which they “learn” associations and make predictions.

Combinations of shapes in the training images are associated with various entities. For example, two inward-facing lines that meet might represent the tip of a pencil, or the roof of a house.

But when it comes to text and quantities, the associations must be incredibly accurate, since even minor imperfections are noticeable. Our brains can overlook slight deviations in a pencil’s tip, or a roof – but not as much when it comes to how a word is written, or the number of fingers on a hand.

Read more:
Both humans and AI hallucinate — but not in the same way

As far as text-to-image models are concerned, text symbols are just combinations of lines and shapes. Since text comes in so many different styles – and since letters and numbers are used in seemingly endless arrangements – the model often won’t learn how to effectively reproduce text.

The main reason for this is insufficient training data. AI image generators require much more training data to accurately represent text and quantities than they do for other tasks.

The tragedy of AI hands

Issues also arise when dealing with smaller objects that require intricate details, such as hands.

In training images, hands are often small, holding objects, or partially obscured by other elements. It becomes challenging for AI to associate the term “hand” with the exact representation of a human hand with five fingers.

Consequently, AI-generated hands often look misshapen, have additional or fewer fingers, or have hands partially covered by objects such as sleeves or purses.

We see a similar issue when it comes to quantities. AI models lack a clear understanding of quantities, such as the abstract concept of “four”.

As such, an image generator may respond to a prompt for “four apples” by drawing on learning from myriad images featuring many quantities of apples – and return an output with the incorrect amount.

In other words, the huge diversity of associations within the training data impacts the accuracy of quantities in outputs.

Will AI ever be able to write and count?

It’s important to remember text-to-image and text-to-video conversion is a relatively new concept in AI. Current generative platforms are “low-resolution” versions of what we can expect in the future.

With advancements being made in training processes and AI technology, future AI image generators will likely be much more capable of producing accurate visualisations.

It’s also worth noting most publicly accessible AI platforms don’t offer the highest level of capability. Generating accurate text and quantities demands highly optimised and tailored networks, so paid subscriptions to more advanced platforms will likely deliver better results.

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

– ref. If AI image generators are so smart, why do they struggle to write and count? – https://theconversation.com/if-ai-image-generators-are-so-smart-why-do-they-struggle-to-write-and-count-208485

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Harris, Senior Research Fellow, Acting Director, CHETRE, UNSW Sydney

The Minns government’s approach to planning Sydney is troubling in terms of direction and substance.

The announcement that it will “fold” the Greater Cities Commission back into the Department of Planning raises several red flags for planning in New South Wales. Staff will also be transferred to the department from the Western Parkland City Authority, which was overseeing the building of a “third CBD” called Bradfield near Western Sydney Airport.

The Greater Sydney Commission (as it was originally known) was created to resolve a series of tricky planning problems. Sydney was growing and an institution to manage this growth city-wide was deemed desirable.

The approach to the city’s development had been top-down and siloed. The Department of Planning made decisions in isolation from other departments and especially local councils. This approach was not delivering a healthy, liveable, growing city.

Understanding why planning works the way it does in NSW has been part of our research agenda for ten years. What we have found, consistently, is a failure to invest real power and trust in those with the skills and mandate to make Sydney work.

The commission was not perfect, but it did make some progress towards breaking the silos between various authorities. Without a similar body that spans departments to deliver on the promise of more housing (or transport or hospitals or parks), the government is setting itself up to fail.

To demonstrate why, let’s unpack some of the challenges Sydney faces today.

Read more:
Bold and innovative planning is delivering Australia’s newest city. But it will be hot – and can we ditch the colonial name?

Housing

Providing more affordable housing for Sydney is more complex than simply setting targets and building houses. Blaming lack of progress on local councils is similarly simplistic.

Removing proper assessment processes and rushing through residential rezonings is guaranteed to create poorly designed and built housing. Speed will not increase affordability. It will, however, result in housing that is isolated, car-dependent, poorly insulated and under-serviced.

It is time the state government questioned its creed that “the market” will solve our housing crises. It needs to pay due attention to the inherent complexities of housing a growing population of more than 5 million people.

Read more:
The market has failed to give Australians affordable housing, so don’t expect it to solve the crisis

The City of Sydney is not Sydney!

The one upside of the pandemic for cities is that people began to look at the neighbourhoods around them. Suburbs started to be seen as places to be, rather than viewed from the window of the family car.

This shift could finally lead to the entrenched, monocentric view of Sydney being challenged. Questioning of the supremacy of the CBD creates an opportunity for this city’s middle and outer suburbs to thrive.

Pushing this vision forward has always been an aspiration. The true realisation of decentralisation needs more than centralised decision-making.

Transport planning

Sydney grew up with the assumption of a universal need for access to the private car, and it shows.

While other cities in our position have started to challenge the car’s supremacy, our governments have continued to build freeways. We have invested in public transport infrastructure that goes places, but nowhere anyone really needs to go. The A$26.6 billon Sydney West Metro, for example, connects Sydney’s two central business districts, but bypasses the residential hot spots just west of the Parramatta CBD.

Transport planning consistently fails to respond to the needs of the community it’s meant to serve. It is based on outdated notions such as the value of travel time, ignoring the fact people travel the way they do for multiple reasons. Comfort, convenience and habit will often come before a rational evaluation of whether it’s better to take the bus or the family car.

Furthermore, cost-benefit analyses fail to factor in the true costs and benefits of a sustainable transport system. The business case for investment in a bike network, for example, should includes savings to the health system from increased physical activity. And more investment in roads adds to health costs resulting from diseases related to physical inactivity, such as heart disease.

Read more:
To get people out of cars we need to know why they drive

Climate change

Underpinning our housing, transport and connectivity woes is the fact that our planet is heating. The way we live today in cities like Sydney is both contributing to the problem and preventing the adaptations that need to happen.

Since being elected, the Minns government has stayed silent on the risks of climate change for Sydney. Yet making the transition to a more resilient city will require skill across layers of society, including active engagement with the community and business.

Read more:
Why Western Sydney is feeling the heat from climate change more than the rest of the city

So, what next?

All of these problems will only be resolved when we delve deeply into complexity. We need to respond to the diversity of urban fabrics that together form the whole vast city.

Sydney matters – as a place to live, do business and visit. It needs to be cared for by a body with its interests as its mandate. The housing shortage, car dependency, entrenched monocentricity and the climate challenge demand more than top-down, simple solutions. Middle ground is needed, and that ground is rapidly being lost.

The solution is to take the politics and functions of city planning seriously. We need to better understand that the way our cities are planned and managed determines our ability to deal with the urgent problems we face.

Planning can help us adapt to hotter climates by ensuring we have well-insulated homes powered by renewable electricity and accessible green spaces nearby. Our cities can keep us healthy by providing clean environments and local opportunities for keeping physically active and making social connections. And, of course, we depend on our planning system to collaborate on solving the housing crisis.

But none of these things happen without investments – effective planning takes time, power and funding. And these resources are best allocated to city-wide institutions that know and care about Sydney as a whole.

Patrick Harris receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council and Australian Research Council

Jennifer Kent receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. By gutting the Greater Cities Commission, the NSW government is setting up itself and Sydney for failure – https://theconversation.com/by-gutting-the-greater-cities-commission-the-nsw-government-is-setting-up-itself-and-sydney-for-failure-208934

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Jean Baker, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Monash University

A new survey of 126 women and non-binary punters and artists working the music industry in Melbourne has found 60% of respondents feel unsafe in music spaces.

The survey found sexual violence disempowers female music workers, deters non-binary communities from working in the industry, and discourages punters from going to gigs.

This is a marked increase on previous surveys. In the 2018 Victorian Live Music census, only 8% of respondents did not believe “most Victorian venues provide a safe and inclusive environment”.

The 2022 census didn’t even ask about safety or sexual violence.

As Melbourne beats Sydney to became the nation’s most populated city in 2023, the epidemic of sexual violence may intensify in its urban music spaces.

Read more:
Is sexual abuse and exploitation rife in the music industry?

The #meNoMore awakening

In 2017, an open letter was signed by over 1,000 women who work or participate in the Australian music industry, calling out abuse and harassment in the industry under the hashtag #MeNoMore.

This is a global problem. Studies have found grassroots venues and promoters in the United Kingdom need to implement changes to tackle sexual violence and work towards gender equality. Music festivals are rife with structural sexism, inequalities and gendered power dynamics.

In music education women “face disadvantages in terms of income, inclusion and professional opportunities”.

In music media, women deal with discrimination, harassment and sexist abuse.

In late 2022, the Raising Their Voices industry report about the contemporary Australian music scene found unacceptably high rates of sexual harassment, sexual harm, bullying and systemic discrimination.

The report called for an industry-wide approach to respond to the findings.

In January, it was announced the federal government’s new Revive cultural policy would establish a centre to address sexual harassment in the arts and entertainment industry.

Read more:
Pay, safety and welfare: how the new Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplaces can strengthen the arts sector

A frequent violence

In our survey, we found groping and harassment were normalised in clubs and venues.

Respondents reported street harassment to and from venues, or were assaulted in commercially shared vehicles.

The majority of perpetrators were men.

One third of the music punters reported an incident to venue staff or festival management.

“In the last incident of assault I reacted by punching the guy, and I was thrown out by security after I explained what happened […] ” one punter said. “I want to call it out now […] I am sick of this shit”.

Music workers were less likely to report these incidents than punters: 80% of music workers told us they had not reported these incidents to venue staff, festival authorities, music management or to police.

Fearing unemployment in a highly competitive industry, they remain stoic victim-survivors in the boy’s club.

“As someone who has worked in the music industry for 40 years, I feel I have a thicker skin when it comes to sexual harassment… [but] I feel that it really is time for change,” one music worker told us.

What’s next

More than one-third of the music workers we spoke to had considered leaving the industry due to sexual harassment. Some punters told us they were reluctant to go to gigs.

If Melbourne wants to be considered a global music city, then the music talent and audience drain related to the epidemic of sexual violence requires critical attention.

The 2018 Melbourne Music Census found only 49% of staff in venues were trained in-house to deal with sexual harassment or assault.

Our study suggests all security staff should be provided with bystander training to prevent, detect and address perpetrators’ behaviour, and to refer victim-survivors to relevant authorities. Too often, security staff have a reluctance to change routine practices, and many venues have a lack of female security staff. There is poor collaboration between security companies and music staff, and limited funding for grassroots venues to conduct this training.

Less than 10% of the women and non-binary people we spoke to had reached out for counselling support following an experience of sexual violence. More needs to be done to spread the awareness of phone counselling hotlines, such as The Support Act Wellbeing Helpline for people working in music or the arts.

There are international models we can look towards. The not-for-profit Good Night Out began in Leeds, UK, in 2014. The organisation runs accredited sexual violence response training programs for licensed venues and live music events. Its workers put up campaign posters in venues and encourage trained staff to wear badges to alert people that help is available. The program was established in Melbourne in 2021, and an evaluation of the program will be conducted in August this year.

Our report also suggested music venues and organisations should be achieving gender and ethnic diversity among their leadership and staff to be eligible for government funding.

Changes also need to happen beyond the music industry.

Changes in the school curriculum and how we talk about consent more broadly in society will also impact on music spaces. Movements like Teach Us Consent advocate for sex education in schools to include an understanding sexual violence is an unacceptable behaviour, and what it means to have consent.

A 2022 bill in the Victorian parliament adopted an affirmative consent model to provide better protections for victim-survivors of sexual offences, shifting the scrutiny onto their perpetrators.

This bill will help break the code of silence and encourage women and non-binary people to speak out about their experiences of sexual violence.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732. In immediate danger, call 000.

Read more:
Camp Cope leaves the Australian music industry forever changed by their fearless feminist activism

Andrea Jean Baker received funding from the Victorian State government and the City of Melbourne.

– ref. 60% of women and non-binary punters and artists feel unsafe in Melbourne’s music spaces – https://theconversation.com/60-of-women-and-non-binary-punters-and-artists-feel-unsafe-in-melbournes-music-spaces-205399

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrine Del Villar, Postdoctoral research fellow, Queensland University of Technology

The ACT Labor-Greens government is currently considering legalising voluntary assisted dying, as has recently occurred in all six Australian states. But the results of community consultation on the topic suggest the ACT’s proposed legislation may differ in significant respects from the model adopted by other Australian states and territories.

One controversial difference is the proposal to allow people under 18 to access voluntary assisted dying if they have a terminal illness.

The ACT proposes not setting a minimum age requirement for access to voluntary assisted dying. Instead, as is the case with other areas of medical treatment, the decision-making capacity of people under the age of 18 would be assessed on a case-by-case basis by medical practitioners.

If they are assessed as having the maturity to understand the nature of their medical condition, and the nature of a decision to seek assistance to end their life, they would be able to be considered for voluntary assisted dying.

ACT could be the first

There appears to be some support within the ACT for this proposal. In a survey of almost 3,000 ACT residents conducted in February this year, some 32% of respondents supported a minimum age of 18 for people to be able to access voluntary assisted dying – suggesting the majority don’t see it as required.

However, it has already elicited impassioned commentary, debate and expressions of concern.

If passed, the ACT would become the first Australian jurisdiction to allow access to voluntary assisted dying by people under 18.

Internationally, only three countries – the Netherlands, Belgium and Colombia – permit minors to access voluntary assisted dying or euthanasia. Canada is currently considering a proposal to expand its assisted dying law to “mature minors” deemed to have decision-making capacity.

Read more:
Voluntary assisted dying is legal in Victoria, but you may not be able to access it

Suffering doesn’t discriminate by age

During community consultation, many ACT residents felt an age requirement would be arbitrary.

Young people, just like adults, may also be suffering intolerably from an incurable terminal illness. Age limits are only an approximation of a person’s capacity to make one’s own decisions in important matters of life and death.

However, the absence of age limits can also lead to significant variations in access, depending on the views of the medical practitioners involved in making the decision as to a young person’s capacity.

In Belgium, where no minimum age is stipulated (provided children understand the decision they are making), children as young as 9 and 11 have been granted access to euthanasia.

In the Netherlands, children must be aged 12 or over to request euthanasia. In Colombia, in most cases a child must be aged 12 or over, although in extraordinary cases children aged between 6 and 12 may demonstrate “exceptional neurocognitive and psychological development” and an advanced concept of death appropriate for a 12-year-old child.

Checks and balances required

The ACT government noted allowing young people to access voluntary assisted dying requires extra safeguards to balance the autonomous rights of young people against their right to special protection and the rights of families.

Parental consent is required in addition to the child’s consent for all children in Belgium (except emancipated minors), and for children aged under 16 in the Netherlands and under 14 in Colombia.

For children aged 16 to 17 in the Netherlands, and 14 to 17 in Colombia, parents are informed and consulted about the young person’s decision. But ultimately the decision is that of the child.

If the ACT proceeds down this path, legislation will need to address difficult questions, including whose wishes prevail if a young person and their parents are in conflict.

Some jurisdictions, including Belgium and Columbia, require extra consultations above those required for adults, to confirm a young person’s capacity to make the decision to end their life.

Other supports may include access to child and family counselling throughout the voluntary assisted dying request and assessment process, or independent review of the child’s eligibility assessment.

Read more:
Voluntary assisted dying will soon be legal in all states. Here’s what’s just happened in NSW and what it means for you

How many young people could choose voluntary assisted dying?

There is not likely to be a great need for young people to access voluntary assisted dying in the ACT.

In Belgium, only four children are reported to have accessed euthanasia in nine years. In the Netherlands, 17 cases have been reported over a 20-year period. Although cases of terminally ill young people seeking access to VAD are likely to be exceptional, they will occasionally arise.

Read more:
Dutch government to expand euthanasia law to include children aged one to 12 – an ethicist’s view

How else could ACT laws be different?

Some other departures from the Australian model proposed by the ACT government are likely to have a far greater impact than the inclusion of minors.

The proposal not to specify a timeframe to death will open the door for people diagnosed with a terminal illness to seek voluntary assisted death several years before their anticipated passing. In other countries, such as Canada, this has been interpreted to allow people to access voluntary assisted dying in the early stages of dementia, before a person loses capacity.

Another proposal with far-reaching ramifications is whether a request for voluntary assisted dying can be made in an advance directive. If enacted, this would allow for the euthanasia of a person with advanced dementia, in compliance with their previous request.

Under consideration

At this stage, these proposals simply summarise the views of the ACT community. The next step is for the ACT government to develop its preferred model law to legalise voluntary assisted dying in the territory.

A bill is likely to be introduced in late 2023. It will then be considered by a parliamentary committee, before being debated in the ACT Legislative Assembly some time next year. That gives the ACT government time to consider what safeguards and supports should be included if children or young people are to be permitted to access voluntary assisted dying there.

Katrine Del Villar was a member of the team from the Australian Centre for Health Law Research at QUT which was commissioned by the Queensland and Western Australian governments to prepare mandatory training for medical practitioners on the voluntary assisted dying laws in those states.

– ref. Should terminally ill young people be able to choose voluntary assisted dying? The ACT is considering it – https://theconversation.com/should-terminally-ill-young-people-be-able-to-choose-voluntary-assisted-dying-the-act-is-considering-it-208837

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Fitzpatrick, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney

Ella never knew when her credit card was going to be declined.

It happened when she was shopping for groceries with her kids, or refuelling the car. That’s when she would discover her partner had cancelled the card or lowered the limit so she couldn’t buy essentials. Again.

Ella* (not her real name) is one of about 1.6 million Australian women and 745,000 men who have experienced economic or financial abuse.

Perpetrators of such abuse use money to control their victims, with devastating impact including stopping or limiting access to money, creating insurmountable debt and damaging a credit history.

Read more:
Higher unemployment and less income: how domestic violence costs women financially

The direct costs to victim-survivors of financial abuse have been estimated at $5.7 billion a year, with impact on the economy estimated at $5.2 billion a year.

The highly disruptive tactics used by abusers

Perpetrators use a range of tactics, some of which are inadvertently enabled by bank products and services. For example:

• credit cards are opened in the name of victim-survivors without their knowledge, potentially damaging credit scores

• all cash is withdrawn from joint accounts or redraw facilities without the consent of the other account holder

• legally binding property settlement orders to refinance home loans are ignored, forcing one party to seek help with repayments while trying to disentangle from their ex-partner

• payment descriptions are used to send threatening, abusive messages.

Banks typically respond to these issues case-by-case, tailoring solutions for each customer. However, it may be possible to eliminate or reduce the need for these interventions with improved product design to prevent and disrupt abusers.

Taking action against perpetrators

My first Designed to Disrupt discussion paper for the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety (CWES) proposes a new “financial safety by design” framework that tailors the eSafety Commissioner’s work with the technology sector and provides greater protection for victim-survivors.

It outlines steps banks can take to prevent their products being used as a weapon in domestic and family violence.

Recommended measures include setting up every joint account with separate passwords, logins, and portals for each person so it’s simpler and safer to separate if the relationship ends or is abusive.

Two of Australia’s big four banks, the National Australia Bank (NAB) and the Commonwealth (CBA) have already agreed to adopt the primary recommendation – to include financial abuse in product terms and conditions as a reason for suspension or closure of accounts.

It’s likely other banks will follow suit, with Westpac signalling last November it would consider ensuring its terms and conditions reflect its no tolerance approach to financial abuse.

Read more:
Women who suffer domestic violence fare much worse financially after separating from their partner: new data

Evidence shows that challenging the acceptance of violence against women is essential to respond to specific gendered drivers of violence.

In banking, this means spelling out the bank’s rules and its expectations of customer behaviour in its terms and conditions. These rules are the foundation of the contractual relationship with the customer and are relied on where there is a dispute.

Banks taking the lead

National Australia Bank NAB and CBA will change their terms and conditions to make it clear that financial abuse is unacceptable – just like financial crime or threatening call centre staff.

They will be the first Australian banks to signal to millions of bank customers they have a choice: abuse other customers and potentially lose access to their bank account, or behave with respect.

This will make it harder for people to misuse financial products as a means of coercive control.

Implementation will be complex and the banks will need to proceed with caution. Financial abuse is hard to detect and there may be risks to the abused partner if perpetrators blame them for the bank’s action.

Consequences for abusers who fail to stop

An abuser may continue their behaviour at another bank. In this instance, there is the option of “de-banking” the customer which is not only a major inconvenience but also denies them access to an essential service.

That’s why it’s important the whole industry moves on this. It is instructive to examine the collective approach the banks have already taken to disrupt technology-facilitated abuse through payment descriptions.

Notably, my research found two banks reported more than 90% of customers discontinued abuse following a warning letter.

Implementation of the new terms and conditions should be guided by the experience of victim-survivors. It could also be informed by the Council of Financial Regulators’ de-banking policy recommendations on transparency and fairness measures.

These measures include providing documented reasons to the customer with 30 days’ notice before closing services and giving them access to internal dispute resolution.

Getting the public on board

There also needs to be a public conversation about what this means. Airlines make it clear jokes about terrorism are not okay, and patrons are ejected from sporting events for violence.

If every bank in Australia makes it clear there is a minimum expectation of respectful behaviour to be a customer, it would be a game changer.

The widespread adoption of financial abuse terms and conditions and broad public communication will send a strong message to everyone with a bank account that financial abuse is unacceptable and has consequences.

Catherine Fitzpatrick consults to Westpac and owns shares in Westpac and Commonwealth Bank of Australia. She received funding from the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety to write the Designed to Disrupt report and continues to be affiliated. She is a former bank executive and established and led specialist customer vulnerability teams at CBA and Westpac.

– ref. Banks put family violence perpetrators on notice. Stop using accounts to commit abuse or risk being ‘debanked’ – https://theconversation.com/banks-put-family-violence-perpetrators-on-notice-stop-using-accounts-to-commit-abuse-or-risk-being-debanked-208575

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Linda Stalker, Senior principal research scientist, CSIRO

Hydrogen comes in an ever-increasing range of colours. Green hydrogen, made by cracking water into oxygen and hydrogen. Blue hydrogen, made from natural gas with the carbon emissions captured and stored. Grey hydrogen, using natural gas with carbon dioxide emissions released to the atmosphere.

But there’s one type few people have heard of – white or gold hydrogen, produced by natural processes that occur deep underground.

The main methods of producing hydrogen uses an energy source to convert methane, coal or water to hydrogen, with byproducts such as oxygen or carbon dioxide.

But this natural hydrogen could mean an easier route. Viacheslav Zgonnik, a researcher and head of a natural hydrogen company, has told Science he believes “it has the potential to replace all fossil fuels”.

Is that really possible? And why are we only just finding out about it? Here’s what we know.

Read more:
What is hydrogen, and can it really become a climate change solution?

The race for lots of hydrogen

Hydrogen has long been touted as a way to help us get to net zero. It’s energy-dense and able to be used in vehicles, for electricity generation and industrial processes.

But some experts are sceptical, given the current costs to produce it and challenges for adoption, to say nothing of the emissions created with the most common production method – blue hydrogen from natural gas.

That’s why natural hydrogen is getting so much attention, given it would have very low emissions.

So where’s it found? Often, underground alongside other gases such as methane and helium. It’s a lot like oil and natural gas, in that sense.

But unlike oil and gas, we haven’t had anywhere near the same experience in exploring for hydrogen.

What we know so far is that natural hydrogen can be produced in many different ways as different rocks and minerals interact underground.

Ancient, iron-rich rocks can produce hydrogen. So can minerals such as serpentinite, and basalt produced from magma emerging in the deep ocean, or from organic-rich rocks such as coals or shales. And life, too, can be involved. Deep in the earth live microbes which can eat – or produce – hydrogen.

Our research has suggested finding sources of hydrogen isn’t likely to be the main issue for extraction. Over the last decade, natural hydrogen experts have exponentially increased their estimates of how much of this useful gas there is out there.

So where could we extract it?

Hydrocarbons such as oil tend to float up from the deeper rocks where they are produced until trapped in porous rocks called reservoirs.

But what about much lighter hydrogen? It moves upwards wherever possible – but it’s so mobile, it can easily slip through many rocks and escape to the atmosphere. It may only be worth recovering if there are big enough reservoirs where it has accumulated under, say, an impermeable rock layer like shale or salt. Salt caverns are already being explored as a way to store green hydrogen.

Researchers are working to figure out what actually acts as a barrier to hydrogen flowing underground.

At present, it’s early days. The industry has just one known example of hydrogen accumulating in commercial amounts. It was found by accident in Mali, West Africa, in the 1980s, when drilling for water uncovered shallow but significant volumes of hydrogen.

Public production and pressure monitoring suggest the Mali gas field has seen no depletion to date. By contrast, oil and gas reservoirs tend not to refill themselves on a timeframe that matters to us.

Will prospecting for hydrogen be like the oil rush?

When prospectors realised the importance of fossil fuels such as oil and gas, they turned first to surface seeps. Seeping oil and gas at the surface meant a source rock like shale was expelling hydrocarbons.

Backtracking from surface seeps is one way to look for naturally occurring hydrogen. Already, researchers have used high-resolution satellite imagery to look for enigmatic features often referred to as fairy circles.

For decades, researchers have debated what causes these circles. Termites? Rain? Plants? One answer might be – hydrogen seeps.

Natural hydrogen exploration companies in South Australia are already using fairy circles to identify possible sites. Others are turning to the history books – one borehole on Kangaroo Island drilled in 1921 produced up to 80% hydrogen.

Why are we only finding this now?

We weren’t looking. Until recently, the world’s vast reserves of shale and tight gas went unobserved for decades. But as technology progressed with new drilling, well logging and recovery methods such as fracking, extraction was possible.

From the 1960s onwards, geologists looking for hydrocarbons in sedimentary basins have used gas chromatography to figure out what was present in a gas mix. Previous methods could spot a broader range of gases, but the most common and simplified method left hydrogen and helium undetectable. So hydrogen may have been there the whole time.

When we drill looking for oil and gas, we drill deep to take samples – often 1,500 to 3,000 metres. But as the Mali find shows us, hydrogen can exist much shallower at under 500 metres and in different rock types. That means our current data sets are skewed.

Are we going to see a hydrogen rush?

It’s possible. A new generation of explorers are already scouring South Australia, looking for good prospects. That’s because the state is currently the only Australian jurisdiction with laws in place to enable hydrogen exploration.

That’s not to say natural hydrogen is a guaranteed winner. There’s much we don’t know, such as how common it is and how easy it is to extract. It’s also one of many potential pathways being explored to help us toward decarbonisation and net zero milestones.

What we do know is that to make this a reality will mean an open mind – and a willingness to try new approaches.

Read more:
Why don’t rocks burn?

Linda Stalker 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 earth might hold huge stores of natural hydrogen – and prospectors are already scouring South Australia for it – https://theconversation.com/the-earth-might-hold-huge-stores-of-natural-hydrogen-and-prospectors-are-already-scouring-south-australia-for-it-204904

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geraint Lewis, Professor of Astrophysics, University of Sydney

According to our best understanding of physics, the fact space is expanding should influence the apparent flow of time, with the distant Universe appearing to run in slow motion.

But observations of highly luminous and variable galaxies, known as quasars, have failed to reveal this cosmic time dilation – until now.

In a new study published in Nature Astronomy, we use two decades of observation to untangle the complex flickering of almost 200 quasars. Buried within this flickering is the imprint of expanding space, with the Universe appearing to be ticking five times slower when it was only a billion years old.

This shows quasars obey the rules of the cosmos, putting to bed the idea they represented a challenge to modern cosmology.

Time is a funny thing

In 1905, Albert Einstein, through his special theory of relativity, told us the speed of clocks’ ticking is relative, dependent on how the clocks are moving. In his 1915 general theory, he told us gravity too can influence the relative rates of clock ticks.

By the 1930s, physicists realised the expanding space of the cosmos, which is described in the language of Einstein’s general relativity, also influences the universe of ticks and tocks.

Read more:
Timeline: the history of gravity

Due to the finite speed of light, as we look through our telescopes, we are peering into the past. The further we look, the further back into the life of the Universe we see. But in our expanding Universe, the further back we look, the more time space has had to stretch, and the more the relative nature of clock ticks grows.

The prediction of Einstein’s mathematics is clear: we should see the distant universe playing out in slow motion.

Tick-tock supernova clock

Measuring this slow-motion universe is difficult, as nature does not provide standard clocks across the cosmos whose relative ticks could be compared.

It took until the 1990s for astronomers to discover and understand the tick of suitable clocks: a particular kind of exploding star, a supernova. Each supernova explosion was surprisingly similar, brightening rapidly and then fading away over a matter of weeks.

Supernovae are similar, but not identical, meaning their rate of brightening and fading was not a standard clock. But by the close of the 20th century, astronomers were taking another look at these exploding stars, using them to chart the expansion of the Universe. (This expansion turned out to be accelerating, leading to the unexpected discovery of dark energy.)

Read more:
From dark gravity to phantom energy: what’s driving the expansion of the universe?

To achieve this goal, astronomers had to iron out peculiarities of each supernova, putting them on an equal footing, matching them to a standard intrinsic brightness and a standard clock.

They found the flash of more distant supernovae was stretched precisely in line with Einstein’s predictions. The most distant observed supernovae, exploding when the Universe was half its present age, brightened and faded twice as slowly as more recent supernovae.

The trouble with quasars

Supernovae are not the only variable objects in the cosmos.

Quasars were discovered in the 1960s, and are thought to be supermassive black holes, some many billions of times more massive than the Sun, lurking at the hearts of galaxies. Matter swirls around these black holes on its journey to oblivion inside, heating up and glowing brightly as it does so.

Quasars are extremely bright, some burning furiously when the Universe was an infant. Quasars are also variable, varying in luminosity as matter turbulently tumbles on its way to destruction.

Because quasars are so bright, we can see them at much greater distances than supernovae. So the impact of expanding space and time dilation should be more pronounced.

However, searches for the expected signal have turned up blank. Samples of hundreds of quasars observed over decades definitely varied, but it seemed that the variations of those nearby and those far away were identical.

Some suggested that this demonstrated that the variability of quasars is not intrinsic but is instead due to black holes scattered through the Universe, magnifying some quasars by the action of gravity. More outlandishly, others have claimed that the lack of the expected cosmological signal is a clear sign that we have cosmology all wrong and need to go back to the drawing board.

New data, new approaches

In 2023, a new set of quasar data was published. This presented 190 quasars originally identified in the highly successful Sloan Digital Sky Survey but observed over two decades in multiple colours – green, red and infrared light.

The data sampling was mixed, with lots of observations over some times, and less over others. But the wealth of this data meant the astronomers, led by graduate student Zachary Stone at the University of Illinois, could statistically characterise each quasar’s variability as what is known as a “damped random walk”. This characterisation assigned a time scale, a tick, to each quasar.

Like each supernova, each quasar is different, and the observed variability can depend upon their intrinsic properties. But with this new data, we could match similar quasars with each other, removing the impact of these differences. As had been done for supernovae before, we had standardised the tick-tock of quasars.

The only remaining influence on the observed variability of quasars was the expansion of space, and we unambiguously revealed this signature. Quasars obeyed the rules of the Universe exactly as Einstein’s theory predicted.

Due to their brightness, however, the influence of this cosmic time dilation could be seen much further. The most distant quasars, seen when the Universe was only a tenth of its present age, were ticking away time five times more slowly than today.

At its heart, this is a story about how Einstein is right again, and how his mathematical description of the cosmos is the best we have. It puts to rest ideas of a sea of cosmic black holes, or that we truly inhabit a static, unchanging universe. And this is precisely how science advances.

Geraint Lewis receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Astronomers see ancient galaxies flickering in slow motion due to expanding space – https://theconversation.com/astronomers-see-ancient-galaxies-flickering-in-slow-motion-due-to-expanding-space-208621

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Shortis, Lecturer in Social and Global Studies, RMIT University

The day he launched his bid for the Republican nomination for the 2024 US presidential election, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned Fox News viewers “the woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism.”

With his trademark subtlety, DeSantis was pitching himself to the Republican base that still supports Donald Trump, the current front-runner for the nomination.

For those in the know, it was a signal. With a President DeSantis, there would be no more critical race theory. There would be fewer protections for LGBTQIA+ people. And there would be no more troubling ambiguity in textbooks or any suggestion the United States is anything other than the greatest country on earth, and always has been, and is going to be made great again. Or even greater.

Welcome to the “War on Woke”.

On Fox, DeSantis was trying to claim that he, not Trump, is the leading general in this war. But he is far from alone. Across the country, Republican-led state legislatures are unleashing a tidal wave of laws intended to enforce white conservative mores on the broader population.

The “war on woke” has involved brazen attacks on academic freedom in universities and schools; on the rights of transgender people, particularly children, to gender-affirming health care; and on any person, group or business deemed too liberal – even Mickey Mouse.

These shifting battlefronts are underpinned by a concerted effort to erase any form of American history that considers the racism and inequity of the country’s past and present. The teaching of “critical race theory” is being banned in many states, “divisive concepts” are no longer allowed in school curricula and any history that explores inequality is being expunged from school textbooks.

Though it may seem it, this war on woke is not new.

In the 1950s, William Faulkner, the American novelist whose Southern Gothic fiction was haunted by the legacy of slavery, wrote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Zealous conservatives have banned Faulkner’s books from school curricula on multiple occasions for obscenity and blasphemy.

Today’s “war” is part of a much longer fight – one that has dominated America’s past, and continues to shape the possibilities of its future.

What is the “war on woke”?

In Iowa last month, Trump lamented the constant repetition of “woke, woke, woke,” complaining that “it’s just a term they use. Half the people can’t define it; they don’t know what it is.”

As he so often does, Trump inadvertently highlighted the confounding and contradictory nature of American politics today.

The term “woke” can be either an insult or a marker of pride – it can shift depending on the context. Both those broadly aligned with “woke” aims and those in bitter opposition to them appear to find it equally difficult to define the term.

As the journalist and author Michael Harriot has explained, the term “woke” emerged from the African American maxim “stay woke”. That is, a call to stay aware of the lived reality of racism in the United States. More recently, the meaning has drifted and now signifies broad commitment to social justice awareness and activism.

It’s not surprising it has drawn the opprobrium of a conservative right that is obsessed with entrenching its moral coda as not just the dominant ethic, but the law of the land.

So how do conservatives define “wokeness” and articulate the terms of their opposition? The simple answer is they don’t. Many conservatives instead compare “wokeness” with a sickness, which is a way of associating those seeking to ameliorate social injustices with degradation, decay and moral turpitude.

The slippery nature of the term “woke” is useful to those wishing to prosecute a war against anything that strays outside the rigid confines of conservative ideology. Its adaptability and malleability are crucial to its pervasiveness.

From civil war to civil rights

But this is hardly the first time in American history that states have passed regressive laws seeking to wind back social gains made at the federal level.

The United States has never been one country. The dispersed, state-level battlefronts of the “war on woke” reflect this historical reality.

The country was born as an uneasy alliance of settler-colonies based on imperial expansion and dispossession. The white establishment in both the north and south benefited from slavery, but there was a crucial difference: the south’s entire economic foundation and social structure was built on it. The north’s was not.

This created a fundamental tension between the two social systems that in the mid-19th century erupted into outright conflict.

Depicting themselves as the victims of northern aggression, white southerners insisted they were simply seeking to protect their way of life. This meant not just the maintenance, but the expansion, of slavery.

The “carpetbaggers” from the north, meanwhile, were imposing an unjust and unwanted way of life on the south. This was a cultural construction that would endure long after the Civil War.

After losing the war, white southern leaders found new ways to assert power, through Jim Crow laws and the continued brutal oppression of African Americans and other racial minorities.

In the 1960s, the civil rights movement began to challenge these discriminatory laws. The backlash was swift. And it was, again, about a white minority population seeking to utilise the unequal mechanisms of the American constitutional order to maintain their authority.

Loudly proclaiming “states rights”, they inveighed against the white northern elite once again interfering, so they alleged, with their way of life.

Conservatism was cohering into a new social movement, premised on the rejection of the advances of the civil rights movement. Its adherents despised all those they perceived as a threat to the social order they sought to (re)create: mobilised Black Americans, feminists, lesbians and gays, migrants and anybody else who could be broadly described as “liberal”.

Read more:
The American right has gone to war with ‘woke capitalism’ – here’s what they get wrong

A new social movement is born

In a 1964 speech supporting the presidential campaign of Republican Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, a rising star in the Republican Party gave voice to this emerging politics:

This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

Generations of free marketers proudly repeat Reagan’s words. What they neglect to mention is this was not a simple appeal for hearty and virtuous Americans to draw on their own resources and dictate their destinies, rather than rely on ineffective government bureaucracy.

In the climate of the civil rights movement, it was a repetition of the racially coded southern call to assert the right to local self-government over interference from the central government, which was daring to support aspirations for genuine racial equality.

This was the culture war of the time. Conservatives mobilised in presidential campaigns, in student groups such as the Young Americans for Freedom, and in more insidious places, such as the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan.

Most significant of all was the mobilisation in churches, as a new, white, Christian evangelical movement discovered and embraced its power.

Reagan sought to identify himself with this conservative social mobilisation sweeping the country, against the Republican establishment of the day. The tactic elevated him to the governorship of California and later, the White House.

This right-wing mobilisation included a forceful campaign against educational materials provided by the government to school students that sought to capture the complexities of American history.

Conservative Christians also campaigned against depictions of Black oppression and assertions of non-white culture, sex education and anything that might challenge their carefully prescribed social coda.

Read more:
Evangelical Christians are crucial voters in Republican primaries. Would they support DeSantis or Trump?

The past is never dead

The “war on woke” is the most recent incarnation of this ongoing culture war.

The war on woke is a means of mobilisation, but also of cultural definition. By being against “wokeness”, this movement is able to construct a coherence it otherwise lacks. Devoid of a clear vision of what it stands for, this mobilisation (like other right-wing movements before it) is focused on opposition.

The starting point of this mobilisation is, and has always been, race. The white supremacist “Great Replacement Theory” posits that non-white populations are replacing whites through migration and demographic changes. Once a fringe conspiracy theory, it is now being openly espoused on Fox News.

Electoral laws are also being passed to disenfranchise Black voters, and bans are being placed on teaching the history of how southern states maintained white power through systems of racial disenfranchisement.

Trump and DeSantis are now fuelling and feeding off this agenda as they seek to build their political careers. But they can only do so because there is a large existing social constituency for such actions, built on generations of opposition to progressive social gains.

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

Emma Shortis is a member of the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN).

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

– ref. Why ‘wokeness’ has become the latest battlefront for white conservatives in America – https://theconversation.com/why-wokeness-has-become-the-latest-battlefront-for-white-conservatives-in-america-207122

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Townsend, Lecturer, School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, The University of Queensland

Researchers at the Australian Sports Brain Bank have today reported the world’s first diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in a female athlete.

With the consent of her family, the diagnosis was made on the brain of Heather Anderson, a 28-year-old AFLW athlete who died last November. Heather’s family donated her brain to the Australian Sports Brain Bank hoping to better understand why she died.

The findings, which Professor Alan Pearce co-authored with the Australian Sports Brain Bank, raise questions about how a lifetime of contact sport may have contributed to her death. They come as Australia’s Senate inquiry works on its report into concussions and repeated head trauma in contact sport, due in August.

Given how hard women have fought to participate in football codes and contact sports in recent years, this diagnosis has major implications for women’s sport in Australia. It also highlights the significant lack of research about women athletes in sport science and medicine.

What is chronic traumatic encephalopathy?

CTE is a devastating form of dementia which causes a decline in brain functioning and increased risk of mental illness. It is increasingly associated with athletes who play contact sports, such as football, boxing and martial arts.

It is incurable and can only be diagnosed post-mortem. Recently, a number of high-profile former Australian footballers were found to have been suffering from CTE when they died, including former AFL stars Danny Frawley and Shane Tuck, and former NRL player and coach Paul Green.

Concussions in contact sports have long been associated with long-term neurodegeneration in Australia and internationally. While the public and researchers are rightly concerned about serious concussions, a study published last month in Nature Communications confirmed that repetitive brain trauma over time – even seemingly mild head knocks or whiplash – is the strongest predictor for an athlete developing CTE. Athletes with long careers in contact sport are at particular risk, especially if they play from an early age.

Read more:
Repeated head injury may cause degenerative brain disease for people who play sport – juniors and amateurs included

A sporting life

Heather Anderson began playing rugby league at age five before transferring to Australian rules football in her early teens. She played representative football in the Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory before being drafted into the inaugural season of the AFLW in 2017.

Anderson played a single season with the Adelaide Crows, during which she won a premiership and suffered a career-ending shoulder injury. She then returned to her role as a medic with the Australian Army, a physical career which also carries a heightened risk of brain injury.

Anderson’s family donated her brain in the hope of knowing whether a lifetime of exposure to repetitive head trauma contributed to her death.

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Was this diagnosis expected?

Concussion researcher Anne McKee predicted earlier this year it was a matter of time before CTE was found in the brain of a woman athlete.

The Australian Sports Brain Bank team believe Anderson is a “sentinel case” we can learn from. She is the first female athlete diagnosed with CTE, but she will not be the last.

Although Australian women have historically been excluded from the sports most associated with repeated head injuries, this is changing. In 2022, there were almost one million women and girls playing some form of contact sport in Australia. As women’s participation in contact sport continues to grow, so too does their risk of repetitive brain trauma.

Are women more prone to CTE than men?

There is emerging evidence that women are at significantly higher risk of mild traumatic brain injury (concussion) and may suffer more severe symptoms.

Concussion alone does not cause CTE, but an athlete’s number of concussions is a reliable indicator of their cumulative exposure to brain trauma, which is the biggest predictor of CTE.

While knowledge on the topic is still developing, researchers propose a mix of physiological and social explanations for women’s increased concussion risk. These include

[…] differences in the microstructure of the brain to the influence of hormones, coaching regimes, players’ level of experience and the management of injuries.

More research is needed to understand sporting brain injuries specifically in women and girls. Given their growth in participation and the enhanced risks they face in sport, it is concerning that women and girls are underrepresented in concussion research.

This is representative of a broader trend in sport and exercise science research to exclude women from studies because their bodies are perceived as more complex than men’s and thus more difficult to accommodate in testing.

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A disease that does not discriminate

This world-first report of CTE in a female athlete is proof the disease does not discriminate and lends urgency to calls for greater representation of women in brain injury studies.

Efforts to reduce concussion in women’s sport must first address resource inequalities between men’s and women’s sport. This includes giving women access to quality training and coaching support, as well as greater attention from sport science and medical research.

The health of women athletes and women’s sport will only progress if researchers, policymakers and sport governance bodies ensure the attention and resources required to address concussion and brain disease are not focused solely on men.

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

Alan Pearce is currently unfunded. Alan is a non-executive unpaid director for the Concussion Legacy Foundation. He has previously received funding from Erasmus+ strategic partnerships program (2019-1-IE01-KA202-051555), Sports Health Check Charity (Australia), Australian Football League, Impact Technologies Inc., and Samsung Corporation, and is remunerated for expert advice to medico-legal practices.

Rebecca Olive receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

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

– ref. Australian researchers confirm world’s first case of dementia linked to repetitive brain trauma in a female athlete – https://theconversation.com/australian-researchers-confirm-worlds-first-case-of-dementia-linked-to-repetitive-brain-trauma-in-a-female-athlete-208929