Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew King, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, The University of Melbourne

One year in the next five will almost certainly be the hottest on record and there’s a two-in-three chance a single year will cross the crucial 1.5℃ global warming threshold, an alarming new report by the World Meteorological Organization predicts.

The report, known as the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, warns if humanity fails to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, increasingly worse heat records will tumble beyond this decade.

So what is driving the bleak outlook for the next five years? An expected El Niño, on top of the overall global warming trend, will likely push the global temperature to record levels.

Has the Paris Agreement already failed if the global average temperature exceeds the 1.5℃ threshold in one of the next five years? No, but it will be a stark warning of what’s in store if we don’t quickly reduce emissions to net zero.

Read more:
Two trillion tonnes of greenhouse gases, 25 billion nukes of heat: are we pushing Earth out of the Goldilocks zone?

Warming makes record heat inevitable

The World Meteorological Organization update says there is a 98% chance at least one of the next five years will be the hottest on record. And there’s a 66% chance of at least one year over the 1.5℃ threshold.

There’s also a 32% chance the average temperature over the next five years will exceed the 1.5℃ threshold. The chance of temporarily exceeding 1.5℃ has risen steadily since 2015, when it was close to zero. For the years between 2017 and 2021, it was a 10% chance.

Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have already driven up global average temperatures by more than 1℃ since the late 19th century. The update notes the 2022 average global temperature was about 1.15℃ above the 1850-1900 average, despite the cooling influence of La Niña conditions. Temperatures are now rising by about 0.2℃ per decade.

We now have more than a century of global mean temperature data. That means it should be getting harder, not easier, to achieve new records. If there was no trend, we would expect to see fewer records as time passes and the data we’ve collected better captures the full range of natural climate variability.

Instead, because we are warming the world so quickly, more heat records are being set globally and at the local level. The human influence on the climate is pushing temperatures to unprecedented highs with alarming frequency.

Add El Niño, then extreme highs are likely

The current record global average temperature dates back to 2016. A major El Niño event early that year pushed up the global average temperature.

Read more:
2016 crowned hottest year on record: Australia needs to get heat smart

El Niño events are associated with warmer-than-normal seas over much of the central and eastern Pacific. This helps warm the lower atmosphere and raise global temperatures by about 0.1℃. This might not sound like much, but with rapid background warming it’s often enough to break the previous record.

In the seven years since the current global temperature record, humanity has continued to intensify the greenhouse effect. This is making a new record ever more likely.

El Niño conditions are starting to form in the Pacific and are looking increasingly likely to take hold in June and July. This could be the first significant El Niño since 2016. An El Niño would greatly increase the chance of breaking that year’s record high global average temperature, particularly in 2024.

Does this mean the Paris Agreement has already failed?

Almost all nations around the world have signed the Paris Agreement. The aim is to limit global warming to well below 2℃ and preferably below 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels.

The prediction that an individual year above 1.5℃ global warming is more likely than not is alarming. But it doesn’t mean we have failed to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goals. The agreement aims to limit long-term global warming to a level that avoids major climate impacts, including ecosystem loss. One or two years that pop over the 1.5℃ level don’t constitute failure.

However, the world is getting closer to the 1.5℃ global warming level due to our continuing high greenhouse gas emissions. The forecast of a probable year that exceeds that level should serve as a warning.

Read more:
Global carbon emissions at record levels with no signs of shrinking, new data shows. Humanity has a monumental task ahead

Yet another sign of humanity’s damage to the climate

Past inaction on reducing emissions and tackling climate change means we have already warmed the world by more than 1.2℃. Global emissions remain at near-record high levels, so we are continuing to intensify the greenhouse effect and warm the planet.

If we are to limit global warming to well below 2℃, then we must act so future generations don’t suffer a much less hospitable planet.

We have understood the solution for decades. We must reduce emissions to net zero to stop warming Earth. Countries such as Australia, with high historical emissions, have a leading role to play by decarbonising electricity supply and ramping down coal, oil and gas production in line with goals laid out by the United Nations.

Read more:
Australia’s 116 new coal, oil and gas projects equate to 215 new coal power stations

Failure to act should not be considered an option. Otherwise we are locking in more record hot years and much worse climate change impacts for decades and centuries to come.

Andrew King receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program.

– ref. Global warming to bring record hot year by 2028 – probably our first above 1.5°C limit – https://theconversation.com/global-warming-to-bring-record-hot-year-by-2028-probably-our-first-above-1-5-c-limit-205758

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marilyn McMahon, Deputy Dean, School of Law, Deakin University

Women in abusive relationships are more likely to be unemployed and earn less money than women with non-abusive partners.

That’s among the key findings confirmed by a landmark international study by researchers from England, America and Finland, which charted the economic impact abusive relationships have on women.

The study found that the deterioration in economic wellbeing started soon after women began living with an abusive male partner. After five years, these women continued to experience significant falls in earnings and employment.

Read more:
Revealed: the hidden problem of economic abuse in Australia

What is economic abuse in a domestic relationship?

We know from previous research that men use economic abuse to exert power over and exploit their female partners.

It can involve using intimidation, threats, humiliation, emotional manipulation, isolation and physical violence to restrict their partner’s right to work and access to property, including

• preventing her from taking a job

• forcing her to resign

• undermining her work performance

• restricting the type of job they can do

• preventing her from accessing bank accounts

• excluding her from decision-making over household spending or joint property

• preventing her from accessing joint financial assets

• making her relinquish control over her property or income, or

• compelling her to take on her partner’s debt.

This abuse sabotages a woman’s independence and ability to leave the relationship by limiting her access to money and work outside the home.

Economic abuse is more common than many realise. A recent online survey of 15,000 women in Australia found 11% had experienced coercive control. Of this group, just over half reported their partners had used their own or shared money without consent or made important financial decisions without consulting them.

What did the new study set out to do?

The new empirical study involved a data set of nearly 14,000 cohabiting couples. The study’s authors linked information from unusually comprehensive police and economic databases in Finland to chart men’s economic abuse of their female partners.

The researchers compared women who had reported domestic abuse to police with a matched sample of women who had not reported abuse.

By employing a relatively long time span (from 2006 to 2019), the study was able to chart the points at which physical violence and economic abuse most frequently occurred.

The researchers were also able to identify if the women had been in a non-abusive relationship. This allowed them to compare economic outcomes in both situations.

What did the new study find?

When women in abusive and non-abusive relationships were compared after five years living with a partner, the employment rates for those in abusive relationships fell 12% and their earnings declined 26% relative to their situation before cohabitating.

The researchers were able to exclude other factors that might have contributed to this outcome, such as a general economic downturn or working less outside the home after starting a relationship.

By referring to other relationships, they could also establish that these negative outcomes had not occurred when the same women had been in a non-abusive relationship.

In other words, the negative outcomes were a product of the abuse rather than any characteristics of the victim-survivors. These findings refute claims these women have only themselves to blame.

The researchers were also able to identify that a negative impact on economic wellbeing occurred relatively early in abusive relationships. Women’s unemployment tended to increase and their earnings tended to decrease within the first two years of a couple living together.

The study also found women “in the middle” – those with intermediate levels of education and earnings before entering into a relationship that became abusive – experienced the worst economic outcomes.

It’s not clear why. Perhaps this was the least predictable group in relation to whether they would leave the relationship and this may have triggered the most control from their abusive partners.

The study also found that economic abuse usually preceded physical violence, but could also occur in relationships where there was no reported violence.

How to end this abuse?

Economic abuse in intimate relationships builds on existing gendered inequities, especially social norms about management of finances.

Changing the attitudes and behaviours of perpetrators and potential perpetrators is crucial. Many consent and behaviour change programs include economic abuse as a recognised form of coercion and control.

It’s also important we find ways to improve financial literacy and provide more support for women seeking to leave abusive relationships.

Australian banks have already developed useful guidelines and are working with experts in domestic and family violence to promote understanding of this abuse.

It’s vital that we find ways to support women to deal with the predictable consequences of economic abuse. These include homelessness, home insecurity, unemployment, poverty, and debts accrued by a partner or former partner.

Without intervention, a bad credit rating or poor rental history caused by a perpetrator’s abusive conduct can blight women’s lives for years after they leave these relationships.

Taking out a civil protection order may prohibit further economic abuse. New South Wales and Tasmania already have criminal laws targeting coercive control and economic abuse. Queensland is planning to introduce a coercive control offence.

Enacting similar laws in other states and territories would extend these protections to even more Australian women.

Read more:
Coercive control is a key part of domestic violence. So why isn’t it a crime across Australia?

Marilyn McMahon 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. Higher unemployment and less income: how domestic violence costs women financially – https://theconversation.com/higher-unemployment-and-less-income-how-domestic-violence-costs-women-financially-204688

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carl Rhodes, Professor of Organization Studies, University of Technology Sydney

Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers called it “an appalling breach of trust”. But the scandal involving the local arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the world’s second-largest professional services firm, is much worse than that.

PwC Australia’s chief executive Tom Seymour and two other board members, Pete Calleja and Sean Gregory, last week finally resigned their leadership positions over the use of confidential information about Australian tax policy to help PwC clients avoid paying tax.

In January, it was revealed the Tax Practitioners Board had (in late 2022) terminated the registration of PwC Australia’s former head of international tax, Peter-John Collins, for sharing information he gained at confidential Treasury consultations. Collins left PwC last October.

In March, the Senate announced an inquiry into the integrity of consulting services. Seymour downplayed the leak as a “perception issue”.

Things only substantially changed after the inquiry this month published internal PwC emails showing that (in the words of the Australian Financial Review) “for years, dozens of PwC operatives used confidential updates on government tax plans obtained by Collins to drum up new tax clients”.

Up to eight partners shared the information about plans to tackle multinational tax avoidance. As many as 40 of PwC’s 900 partners received emails discussing using the information. This included Seymour. (For context, PwC Australia has about 900 partners and 8,000 staff.)

It wasn’t until the emails were made public that Seymour announced an “independent” review of the firm’s governance, culture and accountability (to be done by former Telstra chief executive Ziggy Switkowski), with the partners who received the emails being put through PwC’s “consequence management framework”.

Values in conflict

PwC made at least A$2.5 million from the leaked information, using it to drum up new business for the company’s tax services. In terms of PwC Australia’s total revenues of $2.6 billion last year, it’s not much. But the fact it happened, and the response of PwC’s leadership since, is telling.

Read more:
Putting a dollar value on how much employees are willing to put their own interests first

The whole fiasco stands in stark contrast to PwC’s stated corporate values that “celebrate doing the right thing”.

The firm describes itself as “purpose-led and values-driven”. In 2019 its global chairman, Bob Moritz, was among 181 business leaders who signed a declaration redefining the purpose of the corporation as being about delivering value to all stakeholders.

These are warm sentiments, but the proof is in the pudding, and a key social responsibility of any business is to pay taxes that fund schools, roads, hospitals and protection of the vulnerable. It’s hard to reconcile the statements about values with the apparent laxity around the Collins case.

Bigger than one company

The fundamental conflict that underlies the scandal is what makes it bigger than just PwC.

In any area where governments make decisions affecting business profitability, there are incentives for vested interests to influence the process. There are, however, few areas where the government has so blatantly left its processes open to abuse as through its reliance on external consultants.

Federal spending on consultancy-related contracts rose from $352 million to $888 million a year between 2012–13 and 2021–22, according to the Australian National Audit Office says. PwC’s share over the decade was more than $420 million.

Reversing this trend, and separating corporate and public interests, is now as crucial as separating church and state.

Read more:
Big four accounting firms avoid scrutiny in multinational tax avoidance

The high priests of consulting

As the coronation of King Charles reminds us, the separation of church of and state is unfinished business in the political institutions inherited from Britain. Nonetheless, since the Enlightenment it has been broadly accepted that keeping church and state broadly distinct is necessary for good democracy.

One of the reasons the church got powerful in the first place is that for hundreds of years it was the only institution more or less based on meritocracy. It was a source of advisers who could read, write and add up numbers – useful skills for any monarch.

Clerical advisers such as Alcuin of York in the court of Charlemagne, or Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII, were a bit like modern corporate consultants.

They belonged to a multinational organisation with a vast global network. Secular leaders looked to them as the experts on many matters. The lack of separation, however, between their allegiances came with significant downsides, both for religious freedom and state political independence.

Read more:
Consulting firms are the ‘shadow public service’ managing the response to COVID-19

The power of the modern consultants to influence government is akin to the influence Church officials once wielded. The danger of particular private interests taking precedence over public ones is striking, as the tax scandal illustrates.

Much more needs to be done

The PcW scandal raises serious doubt about the value that consultants are making to government efforts to stamp out tax avoidance by multinational companies, with estimated US$1 trillion of profits per year funnelled through tax havens globally. The cost to Australian taxpayers (through lost revenue from Australian companies using tax havens) is estimated to be about A$6 billion a year (US$5 billion).

Read more:
$1 trillion in the shade – the annual profits multinational corporations shift to tax havens continues to climb and climb

Seymour has announced he will retire later in the year. More retirement announcements are expected. The federal government is considering how to impose a financial penalty on the firm.

But these are are minor punishments that will leave the systemic problem untouched. Much more needs to be done to prevent the system of democratic government being abused for private gain.

Carl Rhodes 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. PwC scandal shows consultants, like church officials, are best kept out of state affairs – https://theconversation.com/pwc-scandal-shows-consultants-like-church-officials-are-best-kept-out-of-state-affairs-205560

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susanne Becken, Professor of Sustainable Tourism, Griffith Institute for Tourism, Griffith University

The global airline industry is fast recovering from the unprecedented pause to flying imposed by COVID-19. In some parts of the world, such as the Middle East, airlines are even expanding rapidly – well beyond pre-pandemic levels.

But how will the industry continue to grow while doing its fair share on climate change? Unless global aviation changes tack, its greenhouse gas emissions are projected to cause about 0.1℃ of total global warming by 2050.

So-called “sustainable aviation fuels” are being promoted by the aviation and energy industries as the preferred solution. These fuels can be made from organic matter such as plants (also known as biomass), waste such as used cooking oil, and synthetic kerosene.

However, as our new research shows, sustainable aviation fuel is not a silver bullet. Even if the industry could make the shift, there’s not enough land or renewable energy potential on Earth to produce all the sustainable fuels airlines need.

A tough ask

In 2021, the International Air Transport Association released a plan for airlines to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050.

Individual airlines have made similar commitments, including American Airlines, Qantas and Air New Zealand.

But there are very few low-carbon alternatives to traditional fossil jet fuel. That makes reducing emissions from the aviation sector extremely difficult.

Two options – batteries and liquid hydrogen – face significant challenges. For example, neither are suitable for long-haul flights. That’s why industry is turning to sustainable aviation fuels.

These fuels effectively perform in the same way as their fossil fuel-derived counterparts. They are suitable for long flights and can be used in existing planes so airlines wouldn’t have to replace whole fleets.

But at the moment, very little sustainable aviation fuel is being produced – and it’s much more expensive than fossil jet fuel.

Sustainable aviation fuel also raises serious environmental concerns. So is the transition actually feasible? Our new research set out to answer this question.

Read more:
Green hydrogen funding is a step forward – but a step doesn’t win the race

What we found

Our study involved analysing 12 “roadmaps” or plans for decarbonising the global aviation industry. They were published by the industry, outside organisations and academics.

We found the plans rely heavily on biofuels in the medium-term and synthetic e-kerosene in the longer term.

Currently, all sustainable aviation fuels used commercially are produced from food waste such as cooking oil or animal fat. Energy crops (such as soy and willow), agricultural residues (husks, bagasse), and forest biomass (such as logging residue and manufacturing waste) provide larger volumes of raw materials, but chemical engineering processes to turn them into fuel are still developing.

If e-kerosene is to be produced cleanly, it requires electricity produced from renewable energy sources to “split” the water (a process called electrolysis) and produce hydrogen. This hydrogen is then combined with carbon dioxide.

Our research found the roadmaps largely omitted a number of fundamental problems with sustainable aviation fuels.

The first is the huge amount of biomass and clean energy needed. On average across the roadmaps, producing sustainable aviation fuels would require about 9% of global renewable electricity and 30% of available biomass in 2050. Even then, about 30% of fuel used by airlines in 2050 would be fossil-derived.

Read more:
The future of flight in a net-zero-carbon world: 9 scenarios, lots of sustainable aviation fuel

Other industries also use biomass resources. For example, the cosmetics industry uses tallow in skincare products. Bagasse – the pulp left after sugar cane juice is extracted – is used for heat in sugar mills. So demand for sustainable aviation fuels risks displacing other industries.

Second, the process of converting raw materials into sustainable aviation fuels leads to a major loss of energy, in the form of heat. In the case of e-kerosene, only about 15% of the primary renewable electricity remains to power the aircraft.

Not only is this inefficient, it leaves less clean energy for other industries wanting to decarbonise.

Third, producing sustainable aviation fuels creates greenhouse gas emissions. Growing bio-crops, for instance, requires the use of emissions-intensive fertiliser, harvest machinery and transport.

And already, vast tracts of rainforest are being razed to make way for crops used in biofuels. If sustainable aviation fuels were produced in this way, they’d be considerably worse for the climate than fossil fuels.

Finally, carbon dioxide is not the only aviation emission that contributes to climate change. Others include nitrogen oxides, water vapour and soot. Research to date is inconclusive about whether sustainable aviation fuels will improve this problem.

‘Unrealistic and irresponsible’

The above is not an exhaustive list of the potential climate damage caused by sustainable aviation fuels. But clearly, while the fuels will play a useful role to some extent, the industry’s growth plans are unrealistic and irresponsible.

Private and government investment should instead be directed to lower-carbon forms of transport, such as rail. And for the travelling public, a shift in mindset is required, involving how often and how far we need to travel.

Aviation is not the only industry that must rapidly decarbonise in coming decades. The whole global energy system needs to transition.

That means airlines must not take more than their fair share of finite resources to claim the label of “sustainable”.

Read more:
Tourism desperately wants a return to the ‘old normal’ but that would be a disaster

Susanne Becken currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Green Growth and Travelism, and the UNWTO. She is a member of the Air New Zealand Sustainability Advisory Panel and member of the Independent Advisory Group of Travalyst.

David Simon Lee receives funding from the UK Department for Transport, the UKRI (Aerospace Technology Institute) and the EU H2020 research scheme. He is a member of the UK Jet Zero Council and a co-rapporteur of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Impacts and Science Group, and a Member of the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s Environmental Sustainability Panel.

Brendan Mackey 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. There’s a buzz about ‘sustainable’ fuels – but they cannot solve aviation’s colossal climate woes – https://theconversation.com/theres-a-buzz-about-sustainable-fuels-but-they-cannot-solve-aviations-colossal-climate-woes-205484

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susanne Becken, Professor of Sustainable Tourism, Griffith Institute for Tourism, Griffith University

The global airline industry is fast recovering from the unprecedented pause to flying imposed by COVID-19. In some parts of the world, such as the Middle East, airlines are even expanding rapidly – well beyond pre-pandemic levels.

But how will the industry continue to grow while doing its fair share on climate change? Unless global aviation changes tack, its greenhouse gas emissions are projected to cause about 0.1℃ of total global warming by 2050.

So-called “sustainable aviation fuels” are being promoted by the aviation and energy industries as the preferred solution. These fuels can be made from organic matter such as plants (also known as biomass), waste such as used cooking oil, and synthetic kerosene.

However, as our new research shows, sustainable aviation fuel is not a silver bullet. Even if the industry could make the shift, there’s not enough land or renewable energy potential on Earth to produce all the sustainable fuels airlines need.

A tough ask

In 2021, the International Air Transport Association released a plan for airlines to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050.

Individual airlines have made similar commitments, including American Airlines, Qantas and Air New Zealand.

But there are very few low-carbon alternatives to traditional fossil jet fuel. That makes reducing emissions from the aviation sector extremely difficult.

Two options – batteries and liquid hydrogen – face significant challenges. For example, neither are suitable for long-haul flights. That’s why industry is turning to sustainable aviation fuels.

These fuels effectively perform in the same way as their fossil fuel-derived counterparts. They are suitable for long flights and can be used in existing planes so airlines wouldn’t have to replace whole fleets.

But at the moment, very little sustainable aviation fuel is being produced – and it’s much more expensive than fossil jet fuel.

Sustainable aviation fuel also raises serious environmental concerns. So is the transition actually feasible? Our new research set out to answer this question.

Read more:
Green hydrogen funding is a step forward – but a step doesn’t win the race

What we found

Our study involved analysing 12 “roadmaps” or plans for decarbonising the global aviation industry. They were published by the industry, outside organisations and academics.

We found the plans rely heavily on biofuels in the medium-term and synthetic e-kerosene in the longer term.

Currently, all sustainable aviation fuels used commercially are produced from food waste such as cooking oil or animal fat. Energy crops (such as soy and willow), agricultural residues (husks, bagasse), and forest biomass (such as logging residue and manufacturing waste) provide larger volumes of raw materials, but chemical engineering processes to turn them into fuel are still developing.

If e-kerosene is to be produced cleanly, it requires electricity produced from renewable energy sources to “split” the water (a process called electrolysis) and produce hydrogen. This hydrogen is then combined with carbon dioxide.

Our research found the roadmaps largely omitted a number of fundamental problems with sustainable aviation fuels.

The first is the huge amount of biomass and clean energy needed. On average across the roadmaps, producing sustainable aviation fuels would require about 9% of global renewable electricity and 30% of available biomass in 2050. Even then, about 30% of fuel used by airlines in 2050 would be fossil-derived.

Read more:
The future of flight in a net-zero-carbon world: 9 scenarios, lots of sustainable aviation fuel

Other industries also use biomass resources. For example, the cosmetics industry uses tallow in skincare products. Bagasse – the pulp left after sugar cane juice is extracted – is used for heat in sugar mills. So demand for sustainable aviation fuels risks displacing other industries.

Second, the process of converting raw materials into sustainable aviation fuels leads to a major loss of energy, in the form of heat. In the case of e-kerosene, only about 15% of the primary renewable electricity remains to power the aircraft.

Not only is this inefficient, it leaves less clean energy for other industries wanting to decarbonise.

Third, producing sustainable aviation fuels creates greenhouse gas emissions. Growing bio-crops, for instance, requires the use of emissions-intensive fertiliser, harvest machinery and transport.

And already, vast tracts of rainforest are being razed to make way for crops used in biofuels. If sustainable aviation fuels were produced in this way, they’d be considerably worse for the climate than fossil fuels.

Finally, carbon dioxide is not the only aviation emission that contributes to climate change. Others include nitrogen oxides, water vapour and soot. Research to date is inconclusive about whether sustainable aviation fuels will improve this problem.

‘Unrealistic and irresponsible’

The above is not an exhaustive list of the potential climate damage caused by sustainable aviation fuels. But clearly, while the fuels will play a useful role to some extent, the industry’s growth plans are unrealistic and irresponsible.

Private and government investment should instead be directed to lower-carbon forms of transport, such as rail. And for the travelling public, a shift in mindset is required, involving how often and how far we need to travel.

Aviation is not the only industry that must rapidly decarbonise in coming decades. The whole global energy system needs to transition.

That means airlines must not take more than their fair share of finite resources to claim the label of “sustainable”.

Read more:
Tourism desperately wants a return to the ‘old normal’ but that would be a disaster

Susanne Becken currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Green Growth and Travelism, and the UNWTO. She is a member of the Air New Zealand Sustainability Advisory Panel and member of the Independent Advisory Group of Travalyst.

David Simon Lee receives funding from the UK Department for Transport, the UKRI (Aerospace Technology Institute) and the EU H2020 research scheme. He is a member of the UK Jet Zero Council and a co-rapporteur of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Impacts and Science Group, and a Member of the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s Environmental Sustainability Panel.

Brendan Mackey 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. There’s a buzz about ‘sustainable’ fuels – but they won’t solve aviation’s colossal climate woes – https://theconversation.com/theres-a-buzz-about-sustainable-fuels-but-they-wont-solve-aviations-colossal-climate-woes-205484

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Megan Willis, Senior Lecturer, School of Behavioural and Health Sciences, Australian Catholic University

Single people are increasingly turning online to find love, with more than 300 million people around the world trying their luck on dating apps. Some find their fairy tale. But for others, stories of online dating have very different endings.

You may be ghosted after a seemingly blissful start, or strung along with just crumbs of attention. Perhaps you suddenly learn the person you’re dating isn’t who you thought they were.

If these scenarios sound familiar, you may have dated a “vulnerable narcissist”.

The dark side of online dating

These days, about 30% of new relationships form online, and experts say this will only become more common in the future. But online dating isn’t without risk.

Antisocial dating behaviours are common online, such as ghosting and breadcrumbing (when someone gives you crumbs of attention to keep you interested, with no intention of progressing the relationship). These experiences are often painful for the person on the receiving end, resulting in diminished self-esteem and wellbeing.

Misrepresentation is also rife online. One study found up to 81% of online dating users had engaged in some form of it. Some forms of misrepresentation are arguably innocuous, such as a carefully selected profile photo. But others are more deceptive and potentially harmful, such as presenting one’s personality inauthentically to lure a potential mate.

Behind the mask

In new research conducted by me and my colleagues Eliza Oliver and Evita March, we explore how personality traits can be associated with inauthentic self-presentation while online dating.

We were particularly interested in a sub-type of narcissism called vulnerable narcissism. Narcissism in a broad sense can be conceptualised as a personality trait that falls on a continuum. Those at the extreme end are characterised by entitlement, superiority, and a strong need for attention, admiration and approval.

Vulnerable narcissism is characterised by high emotional sensitivity and a defensive, insecure grandiosity that masks feelings of incompetence and inadequacy.

For our study, we recruited a sample of 316 online daters (55% female) via the crowdsourcing platform Prolific. We measured their scores for vulnerable narcissism, along with other “dark triad” personality traits including grandiose narcissism (arrogance and dominance), psychopathy (low empathy and callousness) and Machiavellianism (being manipulative and calculating).

We asked participants to complete two questionnaires that measured six domains of their personality, to measure how authentically they presented themselves.

First they considered their authentic self, with items such as “I can handle difficult situations without needing emotional support from anyone else”. Then they were asked to consider the persona they presented while online dating, with items such as “the persona I present when online dating would like people who have unconventional views”.

We then calculated a score for inauthentic self-presentation, which represented the distance between the authentic self and the online dating self.

We also asked participants whether they had ever engaged in the antisocial dating behaviours of ghosting or breadcrumbing.

Read more:
First the ‘love-bomb’, then the ‘financial emergency’: 5 tactics of Tinder swindlers

Here’s what we found

We found a significant link between vulnerable narcissism and inauthentic self-presentation. That is, those with higher scores for vulnerable narcissism presented more inauthentically.

Participants who had ghosted or breadcrumbed someone also had higher scores for vulnerable narcissism. However, it should be noted these effects were small, and not everyone who ghosts is likely to be a vulnerable narcissist. People may ghost for a range of reasons, some of which are appropriate to their situation (such as for their own safety).

That said, if a ghost returns from the dead without a reasonable explanation for their absence, you may have been “zombied”. This is when someone ghosts you, only to reappear months or even years later. If this happens it would be wise to hit the block button.

Might I be dating a vulnerable narcissist?

Vulnerable narcissists can be difficult to identify in the early stages of dating because the persona they present isn’t their authentic self. Over time, however, the mask usually comes off.

If you’re wondering whether you’re dating a vulnerable narcissist, look out for these red flags waving in sync.

1. Vulnerable narcissists are usually introverted and high on neuroticism. In isolation, these traits need not be of concern, but in vulnerable narcissists they typically present in combination with dishonesty, and a lack of agreeableness and humility.

2. Love-bombing is a manipulative dating tactic commonly used by vulnerable narcissists. It’s characterised by excessive attention and affection. While this can be flattering in the early stages of a relationship, the intention is to manipulate you into feeling dependent on and obligated to them.

3. The devaluation phase follows love-bombing. It will often manifest in emotionally abusive behaviours such as harsh and relentless criticism, unprovoked angry outbursts, gaslighting and stonewalling.

4. Finally, vulnerable narcissists are hypersensitive to criticism. Constructive criticism is an important component of communication in healthy relationships. But a vulnerable narcissist is likely to perceive the slightest criticism as a personal attack. They may respond to criticism with emotional outbursts, making you feel like you’re walking on eggshells.

I think I’m dating a vulnerable narcissist!

Vulnerable narcissists are prone to engaging in emotionally abusive behaviours. If you suspect you’re dating one then you may be experiencing domestic violence, or be at significant risk of it if the relationship continues.

The onset of narcissistic abuse is often slow and insidious, but the adverse effects (such as symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder) can persist long after the relationship has ended.

If you have concerns, it’s important to seek support from your family doctor, a psychologist, or a domestic violence support service. They can help you navigate the relationship, or safely exit it.

Read more:
Is narcissism a mental health problem? And can you really diagnose it online?

Anyone at risk of family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault can seek help 24 hours a day, seven days a week, either online or by calling 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732). Information is also available in 28 languages other than English.

Megan Willis 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. Think you might be dating a ‘vulnerable narcissist’? Look out for these red flags – https://theconversation.com/think-you-might-be-dating-a-vulnerable-narcissist-look-out-for-these-red-flags-205565

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Davies, Professor of Human Geography, The University of Western Australia

The COVID-19 pandemic hit volunteering very hard. By June 2021, volunteer numbers in Australia had fallen by 37% from the start of the pandemic.

In the first two years of the pandemic, around 1.86 million people left volunteering, according to Volunteering Australia. Last year, 26.7% of the population did formal volunteer work. That’s well down from the pre-COVID level of 36% in 2019.

Many depleted volunteer services are now feeling the strain of increasing demand due to the cost-of-living crisis. They are also facing the compounding effects of an ageing population, the ongoing impacts of COVID-19, unaffordable housing and the mental health epidemic.

To try to rebuild the ranks of volunteers, Volunteering Australia recently released a government-funded national strategy. It outlines 11 strategic objectives for the next ten years to secure the future of volunteering in Australian communities.

The strategy is based on input from across the volunteering sector. Some 83% of organisations reported they need more volunteers. As the strategy observes, volunteering in Australia is facing a sustainability crisis.

Read more:
Loss of two-thirds of volunteers delivers another COVID blow to communities

COVID accelerated a long-term decline

Australia’s most populous states, New South Wales and Victoria, have suffered the biggest declines in volunteering. This is likely linked to the extent of disruptions by COVID lockdowns in those states.

Volunteering rates in rural Australia remain higher than in metropolitan areas. Research shows this is likely driven by need. Rural areas often have no alternative to the services volunteers provide.

Work and family commitments are the most common reasons for not volunteering. For those who had left volunteering, perceived over-regulation – the “red tape” – had caused many to step away.

Volunteers are also having to re-assess if they can afford to continue. Many have to cover out-of-pocket expenses, such as travel costs, meals, training and, increasingly, specialist software for their volunteering activities. Volunteering Victoria has found the costs per volunteer average $1,500 a year.

Those volunteers face a difficult choice. Most of them gain great personal satisfaction from volunteering and helping others.

It’s also a critical social outlet. Volunteering is a way to engage with people who share common interests and values.

The national strategy also identifies a significant mismatch between the volunteering opportunities being offered and what non‑volunteers are interested in. This applies to both the types of organisations and the types of roles.

Read more:
How helping others during major life transitions could be a path to greater well-being

Informal volunteering is on the rise

While more and more people are moving away from volunteering in formal organisations, research has shown informal volunteering is increasing. The strategy reports just under half the population (46.5%) took part in informal volunteering in 2022.

This form of volunteering is not associated with a volunteer organisation. Informal volunteering can include anything from organising local garden clean-ups and running a street library to helping out neighbours, updating Wikipedia pages and running community “buy nothing” pages on Facebook.

Informal volunteering may take as much time as formal volunteering. However, its informal nature allows people to be more flexible about when they offer their time. They are also able to pick and choose activities that best suit their interests and skills.

Read more:
Volunteer on a dig for the thrill of digging up the past (you’ll also learn to hate buckets)

Informal and local-scale volunteering is not new, of course. But the COVID pandemic did result in an increase in informal volunteering. Up to half of all Australians did it in some form.

Throughout the pandemic stories emerged of local communities rallying together to support each other. There were ad-hoc social events, community choirs, food drives and other local initiatives. Philanthropic funding helped support these informal local efforts.

The growth of informal volunteering is a “good news” story. More people are getting involved in a more diverse range of activities, in ways that fit with their busy lives.

However, the need to curb the decline in formal volunteering remains pressing. Formal volunteering underpins essential services such as emergency work and social care and support. Sporting and cultural events also rely on regular, volunteer-provided services.

Read more:
‘Time is their secret weapon’: the hidden grey army quietly advancing species discovery in Australia

So what can volunteer organisations do?

It is not a lack of goodwill that is driving the decline in formal volunteering; the growth of informal volunteering clearly attests to this.

To reverse the decline, researchers argue the sector has to innovate to improve its diversity and inclusiveness.

More flexible models of volunteerism are needed too. Organisations should make greater use of remote engagement via the internet and hybrid collaboration. For example, having meetings online enables participation by volunteers who are not necessarily located in the same place.

The National Strategy for Volunteering 2023-2033 makes clear the quality of volunteers’ experience of this work is critical to attracting and retaining more volunteers. To improve this experience, volunteering organisations need to develop avenues for engaging diverse cohorts and provide opportunities for ad-hoc and alternative modes of volunteering.

Volunteering Australia also highlights that volunteers are not looking to replicate the experience of paid work. While they might draw on knowledge and skills from their workplace, volunteering is about more than simply the labour they are providing.

To sustain volunteering in Australia, it is essential to recognise and value the intrinsic desire that volunteers have to make a difference. It’s equally essential to make it easier for people to undertake diverse forms of volunteering. These options will better enable them to balance family, work and volunteering commitments.

The growth of informal volunteering shows Australians are still willing to volunteer, if volunteering can fit in with the other demands of their busy lives.

Amanda Davies receives funding from The Australian Research Council, Volunteering Australia, Cooperative Research Centre for the Transition of Mining Economies, The Australian Government, The Western Australian Government.

– ref. How can we bolster Australia’s depleted army of volunteers to match the soaring demand for their services? – https://theconversation.com/how-can-we-bolster-australias-depleted-army-of-volunteers-to-match-the-soaring-demand-for-their-services-205218

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul (Mac) McDermott, Lecturer in Contemporary Music, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, University of Sydney

This year, Perth synth-metal band Voyager finally succeeded in their long-running dream of representing Australia at Eurovision. After multiple attempts, they were directly chosen by the post-Australia Decides “committious mysterious” and hopped on the long haul to Liverpool.

They did not disappoint, making it through to the final. Their song, Promise, was voted ninth by an adoring fanbase. Not bad indeed!

But what even is synth-metal?

Traditionally, synths in metal, particularly onstage, were generally frowned upon and seen as a sign of inauthenticity. In the 1990s, I swore allegiance to baggy clothes, instrumental techno and synthesisers. The black t-shirt-wearing grunge fans worshipped guitar riffs, screamo lyrics and mosh pits.

We kept in our lanes and followed the rules.

Voyager’s proud embrace of synthesisers reject this rather 1990s separation and return metal to the melodic pomp of Van Halen’s Jump or Europe’s The Final Countdown. The band can still rock hard, but like the taco ad says, “Why not both?”

If you were coming to the finals fresh, Promise followed the classic Eurovision three-act strategy to maximum effect.

Beginning with synthesised staccato pulses playing rich harmonic progressions, it feels like a classic Euro-trance anthem, not unlike the Swedish winner, Tattoo. We find lead singer Daniel Estrin onstage driving his 1980s convertible, hair half-shaved and half in luscious locks. His mysterious passenger, bathed in neon – a red keytar.

A what? I haven’t seen one of those in ages!

The word “keytar” is a portmanteau of keyboard and guitar. It looks like a keyboard but is hung around the neck and played like a guitar.

The first verse of Voyager’s song begins its ascent, “if you haven’t ever done anything like this before then you haven’t been alive”.

I suppose not – I really need to get out with my keytar more often, this looks like fun.

The keytar stays in its seat as the band rolls through stadium rock, synchronised guitar swings, hard drum hits and distorted guitar stabs. In the second act, Voyager are now death metal.

It’s deep growls, drop-tuned power riffs, and scattergun kick drums. The audience’s collective mind explodes.

After one more melodic pre-chorus, it’s time for the third and final act. With one boot threatening to scratch the duco of the car, the lead guitar solo lifts us up to melodic rock heaven.

But wait. For the second half, Estrin grabs the red keytar and joins in. He throttles its neck and finishes with a lightning-fast arpeggiated flourish that ELO’s Jeff Lynne would be proud of.

The finale repeats and ascends until we all rise to metal nirvana. A quick, traditional pyro-pop ends it all. That was truly genius!

The power of the keytar is restored.

Read more:
Eurovision under the shadow of war: how the 2023 contest highlighted humanitarianism, empathy and solidarity

An instrument of mixed feelings

The keytar tends to be loved or loathed. Created in the late 1970s and popularised throughout the 1980s, it looks like a product of its time.

Made of shiny plastic, shaped like the future, it’s showy and rather impractical to play.

If you want to play chords, it is easier to play them on a horizontal keyboard, like a traditional synthesiser.

The primary advantage of the keytar is portability and pose-striking. Like its distant ancestor, the piano accordion, a player is free to move around, finally free of the horizontal grip of gravity.

Most guitarists thought of it as a joke, whereas new-wave synth players saw it as a cool accessory to their modern sound and fashion-forward hair.

This was the future, as viewed from 1980.

One early adoptor was Edgar Winter. His instrumental track Frankenstein topped the Billboard chart in 1973. A multi-instrumentalist who played guitar, sax, percussion and keyboards, he took conventional synths and simply added shoulder straps to wear them like a guitar.

While this is a cool look, it is not great for the spine.

The first manufactured keytars were released in the late 1970s, the PMS Syntar (see what they did there?) being exhibited at Atlanta’s 1979 NAMM show (National Association of Music Merchants).

It was a time of extremely contrasting genres that nevertheless all had synthesisers at the core of their sound. More traditional progressive rock acts such as Yes vied with the new vision of electropunk by Devo. Glam metal bands adopted its look, while synth-driven electrofunk artists could overturn conventional rock theatrics.

The fall and the rise

The new, standardised MIDI language created an ecosystem that allowed musos to access any synth from any manufacturer, rather than being beholden to one. This quickly resulted in cheaper, easier-to-use synthesisers becoming more widely accessible, leading to the home recording boom we all enjoy today.

This bastion of the future soon became as passe as the flat-tops, mohawks and mullets of the people who played them. As we moved into the 1990s, the joyous excesses of 1980s pop bands would soon be seen as daggy. Replaced by faceless DJs, flannel-wearing rockers and choreographed dancers, it was time to sell your keytar or put it into storage.

But after a couple of decades of respectful silence, the humble keytar slowly began to re-emerge. Lady Gaga led the charge on her Fame Ball Tour in 2009. The keytar does make sense for such a look-driven, 1980s-influenced artist.

So all hail the keytarists of the world. Thank you Thomas Dolby, A-Ha and Dave Stewart. Respect to Chick Korea, Herbie Hancock and Prince. To Muse, Arcade Fire, John Paul Jones and Lady Gaga, may you shred in space, without a hair in place. Thank you Voyager!

Read more:
Is Eurovision finally cool? That depends on your definition – ‘cool theory’ expert explains

Paul (Mac) McDermott 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. Showy, impractical to play, and looks like the 1980s: why we keep falling for the keytar – https://theconversation.com/showy-impractical-to-play-and-looks-like-the-1980s-why-we-keep-falling-for-the-keytar-205640

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Scott, Associate Professor (Research) and NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow, Deakin University

Sarcopenia is the progressive and accelerated loss of muscle mass and strength as we age.

The term was coined in the 1980s, and the condition has been recognised as a disease for less than a decade, but the concept is as old as time: use it or lose it.

But what if you’re in your 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s? Is it “too late” to build muscle and fight sarcopenia? Here’s what the research says.

Read more:
The muscle-wasting condition ‘sarcopenia’ is now a recognised disease. But we can all protect ourselves

Sarcopenia isn’t just unfortunate. It’s dangerous

All of us will start to gradually lose muscle from our mid-30s, but this loss accelerates in later years. For up to 30% of adults aged over 60, the declines are substantial enough to meet the definition for sarcopenia.

Sarcopenia increases your risk of falls, fractures, hospitalisation, loss of independence and many other chronic diseases.

However, people who are active in early life and maintain this as they age can delay or prevent the onset of sarcopenia.

The good news is it’s never too late to make a start, even if you are already experiencing the debilitating effects of sarcopenia.

What the science says

Resistance training is the most effective way to build and strengthen muscle at all ages. That means things like:

• lifting free weights like dumbbells

• using machine weights, like you find in a gym

• using resistance bands

• bodyweight exercises such as push-ups, squats, wall-sits or tricep dips.

It’s OK to start with even very light weights, or do modified, easier versions of bodyweight exercises (for example, you might do a shallow squat rather than a deep one, or a push-up against a wall or windowsill instead of on the floor). Something is always better than nothing.

Aim to make the exercise harder over time. Lift progressively heavier weights or do increasingly harder versions of bodyweight or resistance band exercises. This is called progressive resistance training.

Clinical trials have consistently shown all adults – even very frail people over the age of 75 – can make significant gains in muscle mass and strength by doing progressive resistance training at least twice a week. The improvements can be seen in as little as eight weeks.

One seminal study included ten frail, institutionalised 86–96 year olds who did a high-intensity progressive resistance training program.

After just eight weeks, the average mid-thigh muscle area had increased by almost 10% (which is equivalent to the amount of muscle typically lost over a decade) and leg strength increased by about 180%.

In other words, these older people were almost three times stronger at the end of the short training program than before.

It really can be done. British-Swiss man Charles Eugster (1919–2017), for example, took up progressive resistance training in his late 80s after noticing a decline in his muscle mass. He went on to become a bodybuilder, and in 2012 gave a TEDx talk titled “Why bodybuilding at age 93 is a great idea”.

What if my doctor has told me to lose weight?

Many older adults have obesity, which increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

They’re often told to lose weight, but any dieting (or other strategy aimed at weight loss) also usually causes muscle loss.

Losing muscle mass in older age could increase the risk for many common chronic conditions. For example, muscle is crucial to keeping blood sugar levels under control, so excessive muscle loss could blunt the benefits of weight loss for people with type 2 diabetes.

If you’re losing weight, it’s important to try to minimise muscle mass loss at the same time. How? Progressive resistance training.

By combining progressive resistance training with weight loss, one study found the resulting muscle loss is negligible. (It’s also important that if you are dieting, you are still eating enough protein, so your body has the ingredients it needs to build new muscle).

Exercise training during weight loss can also prevent bone loss, which reduces fracture risk in older people.

Aim for at least twice a week – more if you can

Whether or not you’re trying to lose weight, and regardless of whether you think you have sarcopenia, all older adults can benefit from strengthening their muscles.

Even if getting to a gym or clinic is hard, there are plenty of resistance exercises you can do at home or outdoors that will help build strength.

Talk to a health professional before starting a moderate to high intensity progressive resistance training program. An accredited exercise professional can help design a program that suits you.

Generally, we should aim to do progressive resistance training at least twice a week.

Try to target 8–10 muscle groups, and start out at about 30–40% of your maximum effort before progressing over time to 70–80% of your maximum.

As the name suggests, it is key to progressively increase the effort or challenge of your program so you can feel the improvements and achieve your goals.

It’s never too late to start training for your fight against sarcopenia and loss of independence in older age. The health benefits will be worth it. As Socrates said in the 4th Century BC:

is not the bodily habit spoiled by rest and idleness, but preserved for a long time by motion and exercise?

Read more:
Use it or rapidly lose it: how to keep up strength training in lockdown

David Scott has been a consultant for Pfizer Consumer Healthcare and Abbott Nutrition. He has received competitive research funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) and Amgen Australia. He is a Council member of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Sarcopenia and Frailty Research (ANZSSFR), and Chair of the ANZSSFR Sarcopenia Diagnosis and Management Taskforce.

Robin Daly has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), Eggs Australia, Meat and Livestock Australia, the Peanut Institute, Fonterra Co-operative Group Ltd as part of a Primary Growth Partnership grant via the Ministry of Primary Industries in New Zealand and Amgen Australia. He has previously received speaker honoraria from Abbott Nutrition, Fresenius Kabi, Nutricia Australia and Amgen. He is a member of the medical and scientific advisory committee of Healthy Bones Australia and a council member of the International Federation for Musculoskeletal Research Societies (IFMRS).

– ref. Am I too old to build muscle? What science says about sarcopenia and building strength later in life – https://theconversation.com/am-i-too-old-to-build-muscle-what-science-says-about-sarcopenia-and-building-strength-later-in-life-203562

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ananish Chaudhuri, Professor of Behavioural and Experimental Economics, University of Auckland

People’s willingness to believe in climate change varies greatly, as does their willingness to engage in pro-environmental behaviour, such as energy conservation. We tried to understand the psychological factors behind these differences in our recent study.

The problem of climate change presents a social dilemma, one which sets up a conflict between cooperating for the common good and acting in one’s individual self-interest.

For instance, if all fishermen abide by fishing quotas, it is good for everyone. If one fisherman exceeds the quota while everyone else abides by it, then that individual is better off at the expense of others.

But if it is individually rational for one to exceed the quota, then it is rational for everyone to do so, resulting in the rapid depletion of fish stock.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is costly. If other countries reduce while one does not, the latter is better off at the expense of the others. But if everyone acts to maximise their own self-interest we get greater pollution and global warming.

Willingness to cooperate

One psychological mechanism that could explain variation in climate change beliefs and pro-environmental behaviour is a general willingness to cooperate in responding to social dilemmas.

Our study uses a set of behavioural economic games to present social dilemma problems to almost 900 New Zealanders. These games offer monetary rewards, and players must choose between prioritising the common good among a small group of strangers or maximising personal gain.

The choice is simple: cooperate in the group interest, which makes one vulnerable to free-riding by others, or maximise one’s self-interest. Free-riding pays more if others cooperate, but if everyone does it then cooperation unravels and everyone is worse off.

Read more:
Science alone won’t change climate opinions, but it matters

Using such micro-scale social dilemma games, we found a general psychological preference for cooperation that we refer to as the “cooperative phenotype” (phenotype being all observable characteristics of an organism). These were people who routinely cooperate with strangers even if that means sacrificing money.

We then show that those who behaved cooperatively in such small-scale decision tasks were more likely to report engaging in pro-environmental behaviour than individuals who cooperated less.

We also found a positive relationship between cooperation in these games and climate change beliefs. Individuals who cooperated more were more likely to believe in human-caused climate change than individuals who cooperated less.

Linking cooperation and action

Our findings are striking because when people played our games we made no mention of any real-world scenario. The only connection between the games and climate change or the environment was the fact they all involve an opportunity to cooperate in a social dilemma. What, then, might explain the connection?

It is possible that cooperators in our games were also more willing to make sacrifices for the environment and come to believe in climate change as a possible justification for their actions. Here the action drives the beliefs.

Alternatively, it may be that those who are more cooperative find belief in climate change more palatable and as a result come to take pro-environmental action. Here the beliefs drive the subsequent actions.

Read more:
Climate change is relentless: Seemingly small shifts have big consequences

We found at least some evidence for the second scenario – those who are more cooperative tended to believe in the facts of climate change and were willing to take action.

Linking climate change to a general drive to cooperate makes us optimistic. Prior work using games very similar to those we used showed people were more likely to cooperate if they believed their peers would do so too. This emphasises the importance of speaking across ideological divides, rather than confining our interactions to those who think like us.

Giving to big and small causes

Intriguingly, we also found a larger proportion of the cooperative types tended to be Green Party supporters rather than National or Labour. This suggests the broad pro-social tendency tapped by the cooperative phenotype may also explain some of the variance in political party support.

This may also be an important predictor of climate change beliefs and pro-environmental behaviour.

Crucially, this doesn’t mean conservatives are less generous. Evidence suggests that when it comes to cooperative issues like contributing to charity, conservatives and progressives don’t differ in how much they give, so much as who they give to.

While progressives are more comfortable with contributing to large anonymous groups (such as charities or governmental agencies), conservative giving is often much more targeted at the local community level.

Read more:
Scientists understood physics of climate change in the 1800s – thanks to a woman named Eunice Foote

This may partly explain the differences in stance toward climate change, since typical climate change proposals tend to be more global than local.

Our findings apply primarily to a developed Western population and more work is needed to generalise beyond this. However, our work offers the promise that a potential way to change minds is to convince people that climate change issues are merely a larger-scale extension of local social dilemmas.

The more an individual cooperates in micro-scale social dilemmas, the more likely he or she is to cooperate in the large-scale dilemma of climate change and to believe in its reality.

This way of recasting the issue may provide a way of building support for combating climate change across the ideological spectrum.

Ananish Chaudhuri receives funding from Royal Society of NZ Marsden Fund Grant.

Quentin Douglas Atkinson receives funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund.

Scott Claessens 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. Climate change believers are more likely to cooperate with strangers, new research finds – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-believers-are-more-likely-to-cooperate-with-strangers-new-research-finds-205469

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

Since the May 9 budget, there have been polls from Resolve, Essential, Morgan and Newspoll. Labor has a large lead in all of these polls. It’s almost a year since Labor won the May 21 2022 election by a 52.1-47.9 national two party margin, but its honeymoon is continuing, and they have a far bigger lead now than at the election. I covered Newspoll on Monday.

Read more:
Albanese’s ratings improve in a post-budget Newspoll; left to control NSW upper house

A Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted May 10-13 from a sample of 1,610, gave Labor 42% of the primary vote (steady since April), the Coalition 30% (up two), the Greens 12% (steady), One Nation 5% (down one), the UAP 2% (up one), independents 8% (down one) and others 2% (steady).

Resolve does not give a two party estimate until close to elections, but applying 2022 election preference flows to these primary votes gives Labor over a 60-40 lead, a one-point gain for the Coalition since April. Resolve continues to skew to Labor relative to other polls.

By 56-29, voters thought Anthony Albanese was doing a good job; his net approval of +27 was steady. Peter Dutton’s net approval was up seven points to -21. Albanese led Dutton as preferred PM by 53-20, a slight decrease from 55-21 in April. By 65-29, voters thought Labor had done a good job since gaining power.

Labor extended its lead over the Liberals to 38-29 on economic management from 36-30 in April. Labor’s lead on keeping the cost of living low also increased to 35-23 from 31-21 in April.

In budget questions, out of 12 proposals canvassed by Resolve, only one was opposed: the $2.8 billion for the Brisbane Olympics and Tasmanian AFL (37-27 opposed).

The strongest support was for $5.7 billion for Medicare to encourage bulk billing (81-5 support). The $4.9 billion in higher welfare payments, such as JobSeeker, was supported by 55-21. Other than sport, the weakest support was for limiting growth in spending on the NDIS to 8% a year (37-17 support).

By 31-26, voters thought the budget would be good for them and their household, by 44-17 they thought it good for the country as a whole and by 36-15 they thought it good for the health of the economy. By 56-14, votes thought it good for the less fortunate and disadvantaged.

Support for the Indigenous Voice to parliament in the Resolve poll slumped to 53-47 nationally on a two-answer basis without an undecided option, from 58-42 in April. Initial preferences were 44% “yes” (down two), 39% “no” (up eight) and 18% undecided (down four).

There has been a clear national trend against the Voice in Resolve polls since September 2022 when it was at 64-36 support. Historically, referendum polling has crashed as we get closer to votes, and just one of 25 referendums held by Labor governments have succeeded.

Read more:
While the Voice has a large poll lead now, history of past referendums indicates it may struggle

Essential poll: Labor leads by 53-42 including undecided

In this week’s federal Essential poll, conducted May 10-14 from a sample of 1,125, Labor led by 53-42 including undecided (53-41 last fortnight). Primary votes were 35% Labor (up two), 31% Coalition (down one), 14% Greens (steady), 5% One Nation (steady), 1% UAP (down one), 8% for all Others (steady) and 5% undecided (steady).

Although Labor’s primary vote lead increased, their two party lead was slightly reduced. This implies that respondent allocated preference flows were worse for Labor than last fortnight.

Albanese had a 54-35 approval rating, improving from 51-36 in April; this is his first gain in approval in Essential since November 2022. Dutton’s ratings were nearly unchanged at 45-36 disapproval from 44-36 in April.

By 51-18, voters thought the budget would be good for people receiving government payments, and by 42-28 they thought it good for people on lower incomes. However, it was thought bad for “you personally” by 30-24.

By 46-23, voters thought it likely the budget would create long-term problems that will need to be fixed in the future. By 38-26, they thought it unlikely to help relieve cost of living pressures.

By 59-41, voters supported the Indigenous Voice to parliament (60-40 in April). By vote strength, this was 31% “hard yes” (down one), 28% “soft yes” (up one), 17% “soft no” (up three) and 24% “hard no” (down two).

By 54-46, voters supported Australia becoming a republic. However, this question doesn’t specify the type of republic we would become, and opposition would likely increase once a model was known.

A net +14 thought the treatment of Indigenous Australians over the last year had improved, and a net +7 Australia’s efforts to reduce climate change. However, voters’ personal financial situation had worsened by a net -33.

Morgan poll: 57-43 to Labor

The weekly federal Morgan poll, conducted May 8-14 from a sample of 1,392, gave Labor a 57-43 lead, a 2.5-point gain for Labor since the previous week. The first two days of this poll were conducted before the May 9 budget. Primary votes are not yet available.

Turkey: Erdoğan very likely to win May 28 runoff

I covered Sunday’s Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections for The Poll Bludger. In the presidential contest, right-wing incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan led the social democratic Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu by 49.5-44.9 with 5.2% for a far-right candidate. As Erdoğan was below the 50% needed to win outright, there will be a May 28 runoff, but Erdoğan is very likely to win.

In the parliamentary election, Erdoğan’s AKP and their far-right allies retained a majority with a combined 317 of the 600 seats, 16 above the 301 required for a majority. This election was a disaster for the left in Turkey. The article also explained the BBC’s Projected National Share for UK council elections.

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

– ref. Labor maintains large lead in post-budget polls a year after winning election, but Voice support slumps – https://theconversation.com/labor-maintains-large-lead-in-post-budget-polls-a-year-after-winning-election-but-voice-support-slumps-205746

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Kaufman, Adjunct Researcher, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University

Public transport systems are facing a critical challenge: how to improve services without increasing infrastructure and cost. As urban populations grow and demand increases, innovative solutions are needed to ensure the most efficient use of resources.

The answer isn’t always to buy more vehicles. One alternative is to adopt on-demand transit services. These can potentially serve more people with greater efficiency than traditional fixed-route services such as buses and trains.

As cities have grown and evolved, public transport planning has relied on these traditional systems. But because they have been designed around established routes and schedules, they have limited ability to adapt to changing demand and travel patterns.

Moreover, fixed-route systems often struggle to provide frequent coverage, especially in suburban areas and places with low population density. The so-called “first mile, last mile” problem means travellers can struggle with those sections of their journey.

This is where on-demand transit can help – by providing more direct connections between homes, workplaces and other transit hubs. It is a vital link that encourages greater uptake of public transport in general.

This shift toward dynamic, demand-responsive transport systems presents an opportunity for cities to enhance their public transit networks and better meet the needs of their residents. Optimising these services will be key to ensuring their success and was the focus of our recent work with Auckland Transport.

Flexible transport

AT Local is Auckland Transport’s on-demand service. It was made permanent after a successful 12-month trial, replacing a low-performing diesel fixed-route service.

Using a mobile app, it operates in three suburbs of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest urban centre. Spanning an area of 16 square kilometres, the service uses four fully electric vehicles, two three-seaters and two seven-seaters.

On-demand transit systems are flexible transit systems that adjust routing to pick up and drop off passengers according to demand. Riders share journeys with other passengers going in the same direction.

It’s similar to catching a bus, but with stops and pick-up times adjusted to meet the riders’ needs. This provides a high-quality service for riders and an affordable option for transit agencies.

Since its inception in November 2021, the service has seen consistent passenger growth, even during COVID restrictions. By March this year, however, patronage plateaued due to system constraints.

Looking to increase patronage without compromising user experience (and without purchasing new vehicles), Auckland Transport asked on-demand transit technology provider Liftango to simulate various service adjustments and their impact on passenger experience.

Read more:
1 million rides and counting: on-demand services bring public transport to the suburbs

Simulation and reality

The simulations used data from completed and requested trips on one of the busiest service days. It then compared the projected performance with actual performance. Two parameters were studied: passenger boarding and alighting time, and fleet configuration.

After calibrating the simulator against reality (achieving 98.3% accuracy rate), we focused on finding potential, rapidly deployable solutions. This included reducing standard passenger boarding and alighting times within the network routing algorithms, and adding an additional three-seater vehicle to the fleet.

The results of the simulations were promising. The most successful adjustment, which involved both allocating revised boarding and alighting times in the routing algorithm and the addition of a vehicle, resulted in an 18.97% increase in patronage.

Adjusting boarding and alighting time alone led to a 15.52% increase – meaning customer value increased without the need to buy another vehicle. On this basis, Auckland Transport decided to adjust the boarding and alighting time used in the computer programme that allocates routing and passengers to vehicles.

This doesn’t mean riders are forced to board more quickly, merely that the algorithms have been fine tuned, guided by actual boarding and alighting times. But it has a significant impact on routing when applied to hundreds of trips each week.

Read more:
How on-demand buses can transform travel and daily life for people with disabilities

Optimisation and service

The benefits have been significant. Maximum daily patronage has grown since the change, with a 14% increase compared to the historical maximum. Passengers per vehicle-hour increased by 15% compared to the period before the change. New maximum weekly passenger levels have been reached.

The optimisation work has helped Auckland Transport serve more passengers without increasing fleet size or journey times, according to senior transport planner James Hills. “This has added resilience to the service and enabled us to make the most of what we have.”

The case of AT Local highlights the value of using simulations to optimise on-demand services. By using data from active services and adjusting service parameters in a simulation, service providers can make evidence-based decisions about service design.

Efficiency and accessibility

Optimising on-demand transit routing algorithms can have several benefits for public transport systems.

1. It can significantly increase overall efficiency, reducing fuel (or electricity) consumption and wear-and-tear on vehicles, leading to reduced operating costs. This makes on-demand systems scalable and adaptable, able to accommodate new infrastructure developments and react to major disruptions such as extreme weather or driver shortages.

2. By taking into account individual pick-up and drop-off times and locations, on-demand systems can offer more direct routes to minimise waiting times and transfers. This approach can lead to higher customer satisfaction, increased patronage, and greater support for public transport.

3. Optimised on-demand systems can improve accessibility and coverage in under-served areas. This promotes social equity and ensures a greater number of people have reliable transport options. Such systems can be tailored for people with restricted mobility: on-demand vehicles can be programmed to pick up some passengers directly from their homes, and by designating “virtual bus stops” for others.

Using simulations to guide evidence-based decisions allows for smart utilisation of existing assets. In turn, this leads to improved user experiences and increased patronage while maintaining a high quality of service for diverse passenger needs.

The author thanks Iain MacDougall and James Willcox from Liftango Labs for their assistance in this research, and Auckland Transport for making this research possible.

Benjamin Kaufman works for Liftango as a New Mobilities Specialist

– ref. Smart moves: how Auckland can get more for its money from on-demand public transport – https://theconversation.com/smart-moves-how-auckland-can-get-more-for-its-money-from-on-demand-public-transport-205389

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sussex, Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

As Russia’s disastrous war in Ukraine continues, another rant by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the bombastic chief of the paramilitary Wagner group, has laid bare the power struggle at the top of Russia’s military leadership.

Calling Russian commanders “stupid” and responsible for “criminal orders” last week, Prigozhin questioned whether the military could even defend Russian territory.

Upset with the slow delivery of ammunition, Prigozhin had also filmed himself next to the bodies of Wagner fighters, issuing a tirade at Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and its chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov.

“Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where are the fucking shells?” Prigozhin demanded.

“Look at them! Look at them!” he fumed, gesturing at the corpses. “You sit in expensive clubs […] your children make YouTube videos […] they [Wagner fighters] died so you could gorge yourselves in your offices!”

Astonishingly, Prigozhin even obliquely took aim at Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, referring to the “happy grandfather” who thought the war in Ukraine was proceeding smoothly.

“But what”, Prigozhin speculated, “if it turns out that this grandfather is a complete asshole?” (Some translations have used a different expletive.)

Infighting in plain sight

The infighting between Wagner and Russia’s military has become a soap opera played out in front of a global audience. In the most recent episode, an article in the Washington Post this week suggested Prigozhin had on several occasions made contact with Ukrainian military intelligence.

Citing the Discord Leaks, the story claimed Prigozhin had offered to turn over information about the positions of Russian forces if the Ukrainian military withdrew from the city of Bakhmut, where Wagner fighters have been fighting Ukrainian forces for months.

If the Kremlin accepts that line, Prigozhin will be in serious trouble.

But the deployment of compromising material and misinformation is a common tactic in Eurasia. And while tempers often spill over among Russia’s competing elites, Putin has previously had little trouble reining them in.

However, the fact he now seems unable (or unwilling) to do so with Prigozhin indicates that his ability to control the Kremlin’s fiefdoms isn’t what it used to be. A weakened Putin, who has deliberately placed himself at the heart of the Russian state with no obvious successor, would raise more serious questions about the future of his regime.

Authoritarian governments control their populations in a variety of ways. Most commonly, they use fear – of the state, and of external and internal “enemies” – against which only strong leadership can prevail.

But they also need narratives about success, trading on tales of triumph against foreign or domestic evils. Putin’s Russia has been no exception, repeatedly stretching credibility to claim great successes over Russia’s woke Western foes.

When things go badly, it becomes imperative to punish scapegoats, deflecting blame from the leader. This is what we are witnessing now, with Russia’s armed forces and Wagner attempting to pin culpability on one another.

Yet, just as success has its own momentum, so does failure. That’s evident in the fact that the difficult task of turning around Russia’s military fortunes is rapidly being overshadowed by an enthusiastic search for the guilty.

Read more:
Wagner Group: what it would mean for the UK to designate Putin’s private army a ‘terrorist organisation’

Who will lose the blame game?

Whichever group succeeds in dodging “official” blame depends to a large extent on how influential they are in Russia’s complex vertical power structure, as well as how valuable their chief figureheads are to Putin.

Assessing the relative weight of different Kremlin clans and their leaders is difficult because they are so fluid and opaque. But it is generally accepted that Prigozhin is an outsider. He lacks a broad power base in Moscow, with few friends among the main courtiers – the heads of Security Council ministries and agencies.

And with an estimated 50,000 fighters – a tenfold increase since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – Wagner is dwarfed by Russia’s regular armed forces, as well as the Rosgvardiya (Putin’s personal guard), which has over 300,000 personnel.

That would seemingly make it difficult for Prigozhin to dodge the ire of the Kremlin, much less – as some have speculated – directly challenge Putin himself.

That said, both Wagner and Prigozhin remain important to Putin. For all his alleged enthusiasm for purging his underlings, Putin has actually only rarely discarded those close to him.

Prigozhin’s relationship with Putin dates back to the early 2000s, when his company Concord Catering became the Kremlin’s partner-of-choice for state banquets. Prigozhin later set up the Internet Research Agency, the infamous troll factory designed to promote Russian misinformation and interfere in elections, especially after Ukraine’s 2014 Euromaidan revolution.

Prigozhin established the Wagner private military company in 2014, together with the neo-Nazi Dmitry Utkin, a former commander in Russia’s military intelligence special forces.

From the outset, it was virtually indistinguishable from an organ of the Russian state. Its fighters trained at Russian Defence Ministry bases, its best personnel were veterans of the Russian armed forces and it had a code of honour based on promoting Russian interests everywhere.

By 2022, Wagner had established itself in the Global South, offering security, military training and political propaganda in exchange for lucrative contracts in energy infrastructure, resources and precious metals. And since the invasion of Ukraine, Wagner’s footprint has grown. It’s now active in Syria, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Libya, Mozambique, Mali, Cameroon and Madagascar, among others.

Reflecting the ruthless martial culture Putin has encouraged in Russia, Prigozhin has proven himself eager to glorify violence. This was demonstrated by his approving reaction to a brutal video of a Wagner deserter in Ukraine being executed with a sledgehammer. Later, in November 2022, Prigozhin sent a sledgehammer smeared in fake blood to the European Parliament in response to calls for Wagner be placed on Europe’s list of terrorist groups.

However, Prigozhin ultimately remains beholden to the Russian military, which he relies upon to supply Wagner fighters in Ukraine.

Putin’s recent appointment of General Sergei Surovikin as liaison between Wagner and Russia’s armed forces underscores that point – as a military officer, Surovikin can simply delay sending him ammunition, or cease doing so altogether.

The military can also counteract the more lucrative contracts offered by Wagner by restricting his access to new fighters.

This leverage enjoyed by the military seems to have made Prigozhin even more vocal in his criticism of its leadership. It suggests the infighting is also set to continue.

Putin’s paradox

Russia’s ongoing military melodrama is dangerous for the Kremlin. Put simply, it’s becoming harder for Putin to dissociate himself from serious errors of judgement.

It was Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. Putin ordered Wagner to achieve a breakthrough in Bakhmut. And ultimately, Putin is responsible for choosing the military leaders to oversee the war effort. With Gerasimov taking over from Surovikin in January, Russia has lost or fired well over a dozen generals since it invaded in February 2022.

Read more:
A year on, Russia’s war on Ukraine threatens to redraw the map of world politics – and 2023 will be crucial

Like both the Stalinist and Nazi German regimes, which explained away failures as the result of ineptitude subordinates, Russia’s state media has performed complicated contortions in response to Russia’s battlefield failures. Many journalists and military bloggers claimed the purity of Putin’s strategic vision has been let down by military incompetence.

But how can the rot be so wide without Putin having known about it? And if he didn’t, then why was he so disconnected from those responsible for carrying out his orders? That creates a paradox, making him either clueless or careless – or both.

Putin’s advantage is that he retains numerous levers of power over the general population and the elite.

But without a tale of triumph to peddle, he will run out of scapegoats if his security services eventually refuse to be purged. Given the intensity of the unchecked rivalry between them, that may come sooner rather than later.

Matthew Sussex has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Carnegie Foundation, the Lowy Institute, Chatham House and various Australian government agencies.

– ref. Putin under pressure: the military melodrama between the Wagner group and Russia’s armed forces – https://theconversation.com/putin-under-pressure-the-military-melodrama-between-the-wagner-group-and-russias-armed-forces-205475

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Griffin, Associate Professor, Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, The University of Queensland

After having low rates of influenza (flu) transmission in recent years thanks to our COVID control strategies, case numbers are now rising.

So far this year, Australia has had more than 32,000 lab-confirmed cases of the flu and 32 deaths.

Getting a flu vaccine is the best way to protect against getting the flu. These are reformulated each year to protect against the most widely circulating strains – if our predictions are right.

Below you’ll find everything you need to know about the 2023 flu vaccine. But first, some flu basics.

Read more:
Are flu cases already 100 times higher than last year? Here’s what we really know about the 2023 flu season

What are the different types of flu?

There are two main types of influenza: influenza A and influenza B. On the surface of the influenza virus there are two main proteins, the hemagglutinin (HA or H) and neuraminidase (NA or N).

Different strains are named after their versions of the H and N proteins, as in H1N1 or “swine flu”.

Minor changes in the proteins (HA and NA) on the surface are common because the enzyme the virus uses to make copies of itself is prone to errors.

Sometimes the influenza virus can change more abruptly when it mixes up components from different influenza viruses – including influenza viruses that typically infect birds, pigs or bats – to create a virus that’s basically new.

The regular change in the virus is the reason the vaccine is updated every year. The Australian Influenza Vaccine Committee meets late in the year to plan what should be included in the vaccine for the following season, after considering what happened in our last flu season and in the Northern hemisphere winter.

Read more:
Flu or COVID? You can now test for both at home with a single swab. Here’s what you need to know

What strains does this year’s flu shot protect against?

Modern flu vaccines typically protect against four strains. For this year’s vaccine, the committee has recommended it includes:

• an A/Sydney/5/2021 (H1N1)pdm09-like virus

• an A/Darwin/9/2021 (H3N2)-like virus

• a B/Austria/1359417/2021 (B/Victoria lineage)-like virus

• a B/Phuket/3073/2013 (B/Yamagata lineage)-like virus.

The naming of the viral components can sometimes be confusing. The name is derived from the virus type (A or B)/the place it was first isolated/strain number/year isolated (virus subtype).

This year’s vaccine therefore includes an influenza A virus similar to the 2009 pandemic-causing H1N1 isolated from Sydney in 2021 and a second influenza A virus (H3N2) isolated in Darwin in 2021.

Influenza B viruses are classified into 2 lineages: Victoria and Yamagata. This year’s vaccine includes an influenza B isolated from Austria in 2021 (Victoria lineage) and an influenza B isolated in Phuket in 2013 (Yamagata lineage).

Who should get a flu shot?

Health authorities recommend everyone aged six months of age or over should get the flu vaccine every year.

Some groups are at greater risk of significant disease from the flu and can access the flu vaccine for free. This includes:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged six months and over

• children aged six months to five years

• pregnant women at any stage of pregnancy

• people aged 65 years or over

• people aged five years to 65 years who have certain underlying health conditions affecting the heart, lungs, kidneys or immune system, and those with diabetes.

Read more:
Should I get the flu shot if I’m pregnant?

How can I get it?

You can get a flu shot from your local general practice or pharmacy. Or you may have an opportunity to get vaccinated at your workplace if your employer supplies it.

While the vaccine is free for those in the above groups, there can be a consultation or administration fee, depending on where you get your vaccine.

If you aren’t eligible for a free vaccine, it usually costs around A$20-$30.

Are there different options?

For over 65s, whose immune systems may not work as well as when they were younger, a specific vaccine is available that includes an adjuvant which boosts the immune response. This is free for over-65s under the national immunisation program.

A high-dose vaccine is also available for people aged 60 and over. However this isn’t currently funded and costs around $70 on a private prescription.

People with egg allergies can safely get the egg-based flu vaccine. However there is also a cell-based immunisation for people who don’t want a vaccine made in eggs. When vaccines are grown in eggs, sometimes the virus can change and this might affect the level of protection. Cell-based vaccines aim to address this issue.

The cell-based vaccine isn’t funded so patients will pay around $40 for a private prescription.

How well do they work?

The vaccine’s effectiveness depends on how well the strains in the vaccine match those circulating. It generally reduces the chance of being admitted to hospital with influenza by 30-60%.

Read more:
Why can you still get influenza if you’ve had a flu shot?

What are the side effects?

You can’t get the flu from the vaccine as there’s no live virus in it.

When people get a flu-like illness after the vaccine, it can be due to mild effects we sometimes see after vaccination, such as headaches, tiredness or some aches and pains. These usually go away within a day or two.

Alternatively, symptoms after getting a flu shot may be due to another respiratory virus such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that circulates in winter.

When’s the best time to get your flu shot?

The vaccine provides peak protection around three to four months after you get it.

The peak of the flu season is usually between June and September, however this changes every year and can vary in different parts of the country.

Given this, the best time to get the vaccine is usually around late April or early May. So if you haven’t already, now would be a good time to get it.

Paul Griffin has been a Medical Advisory Board Member including for AstraZeneca, GSK, MSD, Moderna, Biocelect/Novavax, Seqirus and Pfizer and has received speaker honoraria including from Seqirus, Novartis, Gilead, Sanofi, MSD and Janssen.
Paul Griffin is also a Director and Scientific Advisory Board Member of the Immunisation Coalition.

– ref. Should I get a flu vaccine this year? Here’s what you need to know – https://theconversation.com/should-i-get-a-flu-vaccine-this-year-heres-what-you-need-to-know-203406

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cynthia Faye Barlow, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Australian Centre for Housing Research, University of Adelaide

Every winter we hear about soaring energy bills and people’s inability to stay warm. But, until now, we haven’t really known just how cold Australian homes are. Our newly published research suggests around four out of five of Australian homes fail to meet World Health Organization minimum standards for warmth.

Australia has a reputation for being a hot place. It might lead us to think we just need to tough it out through winter, because soon it will be hot again.

Our winters may not be as cold as in Europe and North America, but our health statistics are a wake-up call. Our winter death rates are over 20% higher than in summer.

Newly updated building codes, and our health and welfare systems, assume most people are OK over winter. This is simply not the case. We need to take winter more seriously.

Read more:
Breaking the mould: why rental properties are more likely to be mouldy and what’s needed to stop people getting sick

What did the study find?

About six years ago, we wondered just how cold Australian homes were. Over the past few winters, we have been measuring people’s in-home temperature. Our latest research suggests more than three-quarters of Australian homes were cold last winter – having an average winter temperature less than 18 degrees (the World Health Organization’s recommended minimum) during occupied, waking hours.

This is startling. Previously, it has been thought that only about 5% of people were cold.

For our study, temperature sensors were placed in 100 homes across temperate New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia. Two-thirds of Australia’s population live in these temperate climate zones.

Across the sampled homes, 81% were below 18°C on average across the whole of winter. The homes averaged 16.5°C across occupied, waking hours. The coldest homes had a minimum hourly average of just 5°C.

Tasmanians were hardest hit. Some homes in this state had average indoor temperatures of less than 11°C.

But, regardless of state, the majority of homes in our study were unhealthily cold.

Read more:
Forget heatwaves, our cold houses are much more likely to kill us

Who’s at risk?

Cold isn’t just a problem that affects low-income households. The research included homes that were owned outright, mortgaged and rented, across all income levels.

Some people might feel comfortable at 16℃, but many are not cold by choice. A combination of poor housing conditions, inadequate heating and not being able to afford the cost of heating leaves many struggling to stay warm. And energy prices are set to rise.

The aged, people with a disability and those facing housing insecurity are most at risk. This includes those struggling to pay rent, moving frequently, living in overcrowded homes or spending most of their income on housing. There are also greater challenges for renters.

Cold indoor temperatures can make other problems such as mould worse, and can even affect our mental health.

Read more:
If you’re renting, chances are your home is cold. With power prices soaring, here’s what you can do to keep warm

We must recognise the connection between health and cold housing. The objectives of housing and health policies must be linked to improve the situation.

Australia is shifting towards providing more home-based care, rather than hospital care. This trend means we must be even more careful to ensure home environments are healthy.

There is also a need to increase community awareness of the risks of cold housing. At-risk groups include First Nations communities, the aged, the young, disabled and those in insecure housing.

Delivering healthier housing is one of the best ways of raising the living standards and quality of life of these communities.

Read more:
What is hospital in the home and when is it used? An expert explains

We can learn from successes overseas

New Zealand and the United Kingdom have been tackling cold housing with remarkable success. Both have started by acknowledging a collective social responsibility to address this problem.

We, too, must realise the problem is bigger than individual households. National ownership of this problem and a systemic response are required.

The NZ and UK interventions have started with rentals, both government and private. Their experience shows mandatory requirements to protect tenants, in particular, need to be made transparent and objective.

With almost one-third of Australians renting their homes, such actions could improve the lives of millions of people.

Read more:
‘I’ve never actually met them’: what will motivate landlords to fix cold and costly homes for renters?

Both NZ and the UK used housing surveys to track progress in housing quality over time. This method clearly shows what works best and identifies areas that still need improvement.

Similarly, Australia should closely monitor progress towards housing that keeps temperatures at a healthy level. Results should be made public. This would promote continued improvement of housing conditions and help direct investment to policies that deliver the best results.

Importantly, we need to keep providing robust research on who is most vulnerable. Our study represents early data from a bigger study of 500 homes, which will enable us to more conclusively identify the true risk of cold housing in Australia.

Cynthia Faye Barlow receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council grant number 2004466.

Emma Baker currently receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), The Australian Research Council (ARC), the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), and the Environment Protection Authority Victoria.

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

– ref. Feeling frozen? 4 out of 5 homes in southern Australia are colder than is healthy – https://theconversation.com/feeling-frozen-4-out-of-5-homes-in-southern-australia-are-colder-than-is-healthy-205293

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bjorn Sturmberg, Senior Research Fellow, Battery Storage & Grid Integration Program, Australian National University

To power Australia without fossil fuels will mean using batteries to store power from solar and wind. We often think this means home batteries – or large grid-scale installations.

There’s another size too: community-scale or neighbourhood batteries, which are growing rapidly in Australia due to support from state governments like Victoria and Western Australia and, more recently, from the federal government. They seem to solve a lot of problems we know people are concerned about – such as enabling more rooftop solar and helping to speed up a transition to renewables.

But the popularity of these batteries shouldn’t be the only factor in decisions about where they are rolled out. Sometimes – and in some parts of the grid – they make sense. At other times, they may not be the best solution.

Our research explores when community batteries are – and are not – useful. In short, we find the main use of these batteries is to make the grid able to handle more solar and electric vehicles. But they’re not the only option. This is why we have produced a decision-making tool for policymakers to figure out where and when these batteries are worthwhile.

What exactly is a community battery – and why is the idea popular?

Think of a community battery as like a neighbourhood asset – battery packs similar in size to a 4WD that can store locally produced solar or help serve local electric vehicle charging.

The idea is for these batteries to reduce carbon emissions and energy bills while benefiting all energy users nearby, rather than only those with access to rooftop solar. These are great ambitions – small wonder they’ve proven a hit.

But the success of these batteries is far from certain.

Over the last four years, our research has found two areas we have to fix to maximise the chances these batteries actually do what we want them to do.

First, we need greater clarity on how we decide whether community batteries are a good investment.

Second, we need better measurement and evaluation of what these batteries actually contribute to the grid and to energy users.

Why does it matter? Making sure neighbourhood batteries deliver what they promise is particularly important because they have generated so much public interest and excitement.

If they don’t work, they could undermine public support for collective solutions – the type of solutions we know are more efficient and equitable than households going it alone.

Why put batteries into communities at all?

Batteries will play a crucial role in getting us towards our goal of 82% renewables by 2030. One way they can do this is by storing energy from solar and wind for later use.

Surprisingly, this doesn’t necessarily mean emissions will go down. Recent research has shown that if batteries are run to maximise profits, they could actually increase emissions by charging from coal power. By contrast, if they are run to maximise the use of solar and wind, they could contribute to lowering emissions.

What batteries do better than any other technology, however, is to provide (or soak up) power at extremely short notice to tide the grid through sudden shocks, such as the storm knocking over a transmission line or a coal-fired power station exploding.

But batteries can do this from anywhere on the grid. So the real question is: why put batteries into our suburbs and small towns at all?

In a new discussion paper, this article’s lead author argues the primary purpose of community batteries ought to be addressing constraint in the local electricity grid. This reiterates a consistent finding from our research.

While this sounds reasonable, community batteries aren’t the only option to fix local grid issues. That means we should only turn to them where they are clearly better than the alternatives, such as upgrading transformers.

What about storing solar and shoring up the grid? These tasks may be done more efficiently and with less environmental impact with grid-scale batteries, pumped hydro or electric vehicle batteries.

Read more:
Small communities could be buying, selling and saving money on electric power right now – here’s how

And what about sharing the benefits of solar with people who can’t afford an array or who have nowhere to put one? While this vision is in line with public sentiment, the complexity of the privatised energy system makes it very difficult to redistribute financial benefits.

Community batteries are also no panacea for the desire of people to see and be included in national planning for the decarbonisation transition. An inclusive planning process can address uncertainties in how the transition will affect us and our communities and ensure it upholds public values.

Time will tell if the newly announced Net Zero Authority will deliver this.

Build these batteries only when warranted

So does this mean we should avoid community batteries altogether? No – but it does mean we should carefully track and evaluate these projects to see where they work best.

To help with this, several of this article’s authors developed a framework to figure out what impact these batteries have on the clean energy transition, how to do it with social acceptance and good oversight, and to do so in a way which is economically beneficial.

Community batteries are not a silver bullet, but they do have promise. Used wisely, they could help accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels while reducing network costs.

To make the most of them, we need to understand how and where these batteries will best serve the work of building a just, reliable and sustainable energy system.

Read more:
Solar curtailment is emerging as a new challenge to overcome as Australia dashes for rooftop solar

Bjorn Sturmberg has received funding from the State and Federal governments, including from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, for work related to solar, batteries (including medium-scale batteries), microgrids, and electric vehicles.

Alice Wendy Russell has received funding from State (Vic) and Commonwealth governments for work on neighbourhood batteries and microgrids. She is affiliated with the Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy.

Hedda Ransan-Cooper has received funding from State and Federal governments, including from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, for work related to community batteries.

Louise Bardwell has received funding from State (Vic) and Federal governments for work on neighbourhood batteries.

Marnie Shaw has received funding from State and Federal governments, including from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, for work related to community batteries.

– ref. Community batteries are popular – but we have to make sure they actually help share power – https://theconversation.com/community-batteries-are-popular-but-we-have-to-make-sure-they-actually-help-share-power-202626

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy W. Jones, Associate Professor in History, La Trobe University

Drag queens around the world are currently being accused of “grooming children” through drag storytime events. These accusations curiously associate public book reading with child sex offending.

We know from decades of research and inquiries the places that young people are most at risk of sexual victimisation are their home or an institution of care (such as a school, orphanage or church). The people that most often offend against children are family members and care providers.

However, this recent panic about drag queens reading in public libraries is actually typical in the history of child sexual abuse. This history has involved repeated moral panics that distract from the alarming data regarding child sexual abuse in the home. Instead, these narratives locate the threat to children outside of the home – to gay men, “stranger danger” and even satanic ritual abuse – rather than confronting the situations and protecting children where they are most at risk.

Moral panic

In the 1970s, feminist attention to domestic violence, sexual assault and the patriarchy created the conditions that enabled the sexual assault of children in the home to be put in the spotlight.

It wasn’t long, however, before attention was shifted elsewhere. In the 1980s, fears about a new form of abuse spread. Satanic ritual abuse was thought to involve large numbers of victims and perpetrators, but was “so cloaked in secrecy and involve such precise concealment of evidence that almost no one knew about it”.

Satanic ritual abuse captured headlines and people’s imaginations with tales of particularly painful, depraved and degrading practices. Research has shown that reports of abuse initially came from adults who “regained memories” of experiences of satanic abuse in their childhoods. Additional reports clustered in the periods after media attention on initial cases.

Read more:
‘Satanic worship, sodomy and even murder’: how Stranger Things revived the American satanic panic of the 80s

The consensus in medical literature that emerged in the 1990s was there was a tendency of some individuals, especially clients of particular psychotherapists, to manufacture memories of abuse which never occurred. Corroborating evidence of abuse was not found, leading sceptics to account for these “pseudomemories” through “misdiagnosis, and the misapplication of hypnosis, dreamwork, or regressive therapies”.

Subsequently, the satanic ritual abuse controversy and “false memory syndrome” have been used to discredit hard-fought feminist recognition of the gravity of child sex offending.

A deviant lifestyle

There is also a long history of using paedophilia and ideas about child grooming in homophobic and transphobic ways to oppose the recognition of the civil rights of LGBTIQA people.

Campaigns to decriminalise homosexuality often struggled against attempts to impose unequal ages of consent in reform legislation. In 1967, for example, homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales, but men had to wait until they were 21 to legally consummate their love, five years longer than straight lovers.

In Tasmania, the last Australian state to decriminalise sex between men (in 1997), a heated public debate frequently raised issues of child protection. Letters to newspapers claimed that decriminalisation “would only open the floodgates and allow the very young to become prey to those who have chosen to lead this deviant lifestyle”.

The idea was that young people are vulnerable to becoming homosexual and shouldn’t be allowed to consent to sexual activity until they were much older than their heterosexual peers.

Sitting behind this notion of the vulnerability of young queer people is the false idea that LGBTIQA status is a sign of moral failing, illness or perversion.

Further, it perpetuates the myth that queerness or transness is somehow transmissible. This is the somewhat fantastical idea that everybody has the latent potential to become queer or trans, and all that is needed to convert is exposure to a queer or trans person.

These fears have fuelled repressive legislation, such as the notorious Section 28 in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, Ugandan and Russian laws banning the promotion of homosexuality, and the “don’t say gay” laws in the United States.

Ironically, these strange and harmful ideas are also behind the ineffective, discredited and dangerous attempts to change or suppress LGBTIQA people’s sexuality or gender identity.

In these instances of so-called “conversion therapy”, it is often religious conservatives who “groom” young LGBTIQA people in attempts to make them straight and cisgendered.

Such change and suppression practices are now thankfully against the law in many jurisdictions around the world.

A kinder and gentler future

Despite periodic moral panics, the history of gender and sexuality since 1970 tends towards a kinder, gentler future. People have generally become more accepting of LGBTIQA people’s human rights, and are more welcoming and celebrating of sexual and gender diversity.

The pace of change has been fast, however, and some groups of people haven’t gotten used to contemporary community standards of acceptance, such as the move towards marriage equality around the world.

Because of this history of growing acceptance, young people are feeling more comfortable and safer to explore their identities at younger ages. They are thus more visible than they used to be in the past.

However, they’re also more vulnerable as they explore sensitive aspects of their inner selves at younger and potentially less resilient ages. Research shows the impacts that homophobic and transphobic messaging can have on young people, proving they need to be protected from this harmful rhetoric – not from drag queens.

Drag storytime events are an age-appropriate way to celebrate diversity. They benefit all children – gay, straight, transgender and cisgender – with education about consent, human dignity, self determination and human rights.

This knowledge is one of the best protective factors against child victimisation.

Timothy W. Jones receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Victorian Government, and has provided consultancy services to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales, and the United Nations Human Rights Council. He serves as President of the Australian Queer Archives.

– ref. Calling drag queens ‘groomers’ and ‘pedophiles’ is the latest in a long history of weaponising those terms against the LGBTIQA community – https://theconversation.com/calling-drag-queens-groomers-and-pedophiles-is-the-latest-in-a-long-history-of-weaponising-those-terms-against-the-lgbtiqa-community-205648

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate C. Prickett, Director of the Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families and Children, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Budget 2023 marks “half-time” for the Labour government’s long-term child poverty targets. It’s an ideal point in the ten-year project to take stock and see what’s worked and what hasn’t.

In 2018, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour coalition government was handed a mandate to address Aotearoa New Zealand’s high child poverty rates. This culminated in legislation requiring the government of the day to set both short-term (three year) and long-term (ten year) targets for four key poverty measures.

Various factors have influenced the outcomes so far: on the upside, high employment, a COVID-19 response that saved lives and livelihoods, and expansions to the social safety net; on the downside, the lingering impact of the pandemic, high inflation and unaffordable housing.

We might add to that a seeming lack of political appetite for bold change – the signalling of a “no frills” budget included. Ultimately, however, the hope is that what we’ve learned so far can guide future policy to hit those targets.

A nuanced story

The short-term targets came due in 2021, with mixed results. One important measurement captures the percentage of children living in households with income less than the 50% of the median household income, after housing costs are accounted for. This declined from 22.8% in 2018-19 to 15.0% in 2020-21, beating the target of 18.8%.

However, targets for the other two measures – household income before housing costs, and material hardship — were not met, or sat on the edge of the margin of error.

But focusing on only these measures masks a more nuanced story about who was helped – and who was left behind. In addition to these three key poverty measures, six other indicators are routinely reported each year.

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Poverty declined across all indicators. Moreover, some of the largest drops, in terms of the percent change from their base levels in 2018, were in measures of more severe poverty, and those that accounted for differences in housing affordability.

For example, those living in severe material hardship (not being able to afford at least half of a list of 17 everyday items, such as fresh fruit and vegetables or home heating) went from 5.8% in 2018 to 3.9% in 2022. That’s a 33% decline from the base level.

A similar decline occurred among children who were in both material hardship and income poverty, as well as for the key after-housing-cost measure.

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Uneven trends

This is good news. Those in the most severe hardship and in deeper forms of income poverty were more likely to have been helped in the past five years. And poverty seemed to drop even after considering differences in family housing costs.

Across many of these indicators, too, the percent change from 2019 base poverty levels (when ethnicity data were first reported) was larger among tamariki Māori and Asian children when compared with European children.

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To be absolutely clear, there are still large and unconscionable inequities in poverty rates between European children and tamariki Māori. But the poverty declines have been larger in absolute terms for tamariki Māori and have helped modestly narrow inequities across many measures.

The declines were uneven across certain subgroups, however. While declines in some measures have been larger for tamariki Māori compared with European children, declines were statistically insignificant for two of the key poverty indicators.

In particular, Pacific children experienced the smallest declines, and in three of the nine measures reported increases in poverty rates (albeit within sampling error range). A similar trend was found among disabled children and children living with household members with disabilities, although data reporting only began in 2020.

Taking the targets seriously

We’re not going to make further dents in child poverty without implementing bold support for those families being left behind:

• working families teetering on the poverty line

• Pacific families who may be less likely to qualify for support because they don’t have residency status, despite contributing to the economy and their communities

• and families who may not be able to work, or whose work may be limited due to care needs, such as those with whānau with disabilities.

Alas, a “no frills” budget this week feels woefully out of line with what is needed to keep the pedal down and meet those long-term poverty targets.

While the prime minister has said there would be “targeted support for those that need it most with the rising cost of living”, this hardly points to broader systemic change. If a cost-of-living crisis is seen as a short-term economic condition, deeper problems aren’t addressed.

More fundamentally, it goes against a key purpose of these targets: to have the government set goals and make budget decisions that show it takes these targets seriously.

If this or any future budget fails to project any impact on child poverty, those targets risk becoming nothing more than a Treasury spreadsheet exercise.

Kate C. Prickett is the Director of the Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families and Children, which has previously received research funding from the Ministry of Social Development and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

– ref. NZ is finally making progress on child poverty – but a ‘no frills’ budget puts that at risk – https://theconversation.com/nz-is-finally-making-progress-on-child-poverty-but-a-no-frills-budget-puts-that-at-risk-205559

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Hillman, Senior Research Fellow, Australian Council for Educational Research

Australia’s Year 4 students have not lost ground on their reading skills, despite all the disruptions to schooling during the pandemic.

A major international test has found about 80% of students have “more than elementary” skills in reading comprehension. This is the same result Australian students recorded in the last round of PIRLS testing in 2016.

But reading performance among students from disadvantaged backgrounds and rural areas still tends to be lower than among other students.

What do the PIRLS results tell us? And how can we improve reading skills?

Why is PIRLS important?

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study – PIRLS for short – is an international assessment of Year 4 students’ reading comprehension skills. It is one of three international assessments Australia participates in, along with the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which covers maths and science in Year 4 and Year 8, and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which assesses reading, mathematics and science in 15-year-olds.

These assessments involve a nationally representative, random selection of schools and students. The results provide an overview of how different groups of students are performing in these key areas of learning, both within and between countries.

Unlike NAPLAN, these assessments are not designed to report on individual students’ performance.

What does PIRLS measure?

PIRLS has been conducted about every five years since 2001, and Australia has taken part since 2011. It focuses on Year 4 students because many students at this level are moving on from learning to read and are now reading to learn.

In other words, they are now fairly comfortable with the mechanics of reading, and more of their learning will require them to interact with text – whether searching the internet for information about a certain country or discussing the experiences of a lead character in a novel.

The Year 4 students who participate in PIRLS each read two texts – either two narrative texts, like a short story; two non-fiction texts, like a short article; or one of each.

They then answer a set of questions about the content, style and purpose of those texts.

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How did Australia go?

The 2021 PIRLS assessment was conducted in the midst of the COVID pandemic, which saw interruptions to normal schooling in many participating countries, including Australia.

In Australia, 281 schools and 5,487 students were involved.

Australia’s average score was 540 points. This was statistically similar to Australia’s average score in 2016 (544 points) and higher than the average score in 2011 (527 points).

The 2021 result is also significantly higher than the average scores of 28 other countries, including Germany, New Zealand and France.

Australia scored lower than average scores for six other countries: Singapore, Hong Kong and England (who tested in English) as well as Russia, Finland and Poland.

Twenty-one countries, including usually strong performers like Russia and Finland, recorded significant drops in their average score since 2016.

Meeting the ‘proficient standard’

Australian students also held their ground when it came to the proportion who met the Australian “proficient standard” for reading. This involves students demonstrating “more than elementary skills expected at that year level”.

About 80% of Australian students met or exceeded the proficient standard in 2021, as they did in 2016. Students at this level can make straightforward inferences, interpret reasons for characters’ feelings or actions, and provide information about central ideas within texts.

We still have 20% of students behind

At the same time, this means we still have about 20% of students who do not meet the proficient standard, compared to just one in ten in the highest performing countries, such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Russia.

These figures increase if students are from an equity group.

For example, 42% of students in remote schools, 40% of First Nations students and 31% of students in disadvantaged schools did not meet the proficient standard.

How can we improve?

The PIRLS study highlights behaviours, attitudes and strategies that seem to be associated with higher scores on the reading assessment.

Students who tell us they enjoy reading, are confident readers or are engaged during their reading lessons tend to perform at higher levels than young people who do not enjoy reading, aren’t confident or aren’t engaged during their reading lessons.

Students in classrooms where teachers report students are tired, disruptive, uninterested or don’t have the prerequisite skills or knowledge they need tend to score lower than students in classes that aren’t impacted by these factors.

And students in schools where principals tell us most students have early literacy skills (like knowing letters or reading short words) before starting school tend to score higher, on average, than students in schools where fewer students have early literacy skills when they start school.

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Australia’s achievement in PIRLS 2021 is a good result in the context of the pandemic and a testament to our teachers’ dedication and professionalism.

Ultimately, though, every child deserves the chance to become a competent reader. Early support for students who find reading challenging is essential to prevent them falling behind in other learning areas, and if we hope to see improvement on future national and international assessments.

Kylie Hillman is affiliated with the Australian Council for Educational Research, who are the National Project Managers for PIRLS. The report is released on behalf of the Australia, state and territory governments, however the views expressed in this article are those of the author.

– ref. Australia’s Year 4 students have not lost ground on reading, despite pandemic disruptions – https://theconversation.com/australias-year-4-students-have-not-lost-ground-on-reading-despite-pandemic-disruptions-205644

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Miller, Senior Lecturer in Education, University of Newcastle

Students from schools in low-income communities did not suffer significant “learning loss” during the pandemic years of 2020-2021, but instead improved in certain areas of study.

That’s one key finding from our research, published recently in the journal The Australian Educational Researcher.

In fact, we found students considered most at risk of “learning loss” during the pandemic actually achieved greater growth in mathematics and equivalent growth in reading in 2021 when compared with a similar group of students from 2019.

Our results reveal one silver lining from the past three challenging years, and underscore what’s possible when programs aimed at helping the most disadvantaged students are well funded.

Overall, however, we still have a long way to go to remove pervasive and structural inequities baked into Australia’s school systems, and to narrow achievement gaps.

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What we did and what we found

Our study involved data on Year 3 and 4 academic results, collected as part of a randomised controlled trial with 125 New South Wales public schools.

From this data we carried out two studies – one comparing student results in 2020 to 2019, the second comparing 2021 to 2019.

In other words, one analysis compared student results from the first year of the pandemic with pre-pandemic kids. The other compared academic results of pre-pandemic kids with those who’d lived through consecutive years (which included remote learning).

The groups of students for each year of the study – 2019, 2020 and 2021 – were carefully “matched” so we could be confident we were comparing like with like.

When comparing 2020 and 2019 cohorts, we found no significant differences overall in maths or reading achievement.

However, analysing these same data by school Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (a measure of school-level advantage that accounts for school location, parent education and percentage of Indigenous students) revealed worrying inequities.

In this 2019 and 2020 comparison (which compared pre-pandemic students to those living through the first year) we found students in disadvantaged schools achieved less growth in maths. Those in mid-range schools had achieved slightly more.

Then when the pandemic continued, we were able to also compare pre-pandemic kids (the 2019 group) with those who’d lived through both years (the 2021 group).

This allowed us to measure the impact of consecutive years of disrupted learning.

Surprisingly, we found students from disadvantaged schools achieved three months additional growth in maths and equivalent growth in reading compared to their 2019 pre-pandemic peers.

Meanwhile, students in mid-range and advantaged schools achieved about the same as their pre-pandemic peers.

Concerns about ‘learning loss’

Early in the pandemic, teachers, parents, researchers, government, and the media worried and speculated that student results would decline.

As our research shows, major concerns about widespread diminishing academic achievement did not materialise.

Even where students did not achieve at the same rates as they did in pre-pandemic years, they still learned.

In hindsight, the idea of “learning loss” or of students’ learning going backwards was likely a source of unnecessary worry for families.

However, overseas results show Australia was an outlier.

World Bank analysis of 35 empirical studies on the impact of COVID-19 on student learning concluded students around the world fell behind by “roughly a one-half year’s worth of learning.”

It also found students from disadvantaged contexts were more likely to be negatively affected.

Researchers at Harvard University found remote and hybrid learning during the pandemic contributed to significantly widening achievement gaps for disadvantaged students.

In this global context, the recent academic achievement of students in our NSW studies are cause for real celebration.

What’s behind these results?

When the pandemic brought lockdowns and uncertainty, governments and education departments around Australia found hundreds of millions of dollars to put toward preventing students from falling behind.

The NSW Department of Education’s tutoring scheme, launched in 2021, may have contributed to the positive academic results we found.

The COVID intensive learning support program funded schools to employ more educators to deliver small group literacy and numeracy tuition to students identified as needing it most.

The program has been extended to June 2023, but has been criticised for not being particularly well targeted.

The widespread teacher shortage has also been a factor. Hard-to-staff schools in disadvantaged and rural and remote areas, where arguably tutoring was needed most, reported struggling to hire classroom teachers let alone additional educators for the tutoring program.

It’s also possible our key finding could be explained by the strict focus on literacy and numeracy in primary schools when students returned after periods of remote learning.

However, this “back to basics” focus – at the exclusion of sport, assemblies, excursions and the other extracurricular activities that punctuate school life – may also have negatively affected student and teacher wellbeing.

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Where to from here?

The achievement gap between students from marginalised groups and their more advantaged peers looms large in the Australian education system.

The students in our study from disadvantaged schools, while showing academic improvement in maths in 2021, still started and ended the year well behind their more advantaged peers.

In fact, their achievement level at the end of 2021 was still below where students in advantaged schools began their school year.

There are clear lessons to be learned from the pandemic and our research on its effects.

For decades, funding models left marginalised students at real disadvantage. But when the pandemic hit, governments were able to find significant funding for programs and initiatives actually targeted at those with the greatest need.

Can such special funding be sustained to stem ongoing inequities in Australian schooling? David Gonski, appointed by the Gillard government in 2011 to review Australian school funding models, certainly thought so.

Our results could not be more timely. Federal education minister Jason Clare recently announced an expert panel and ministerial reference group to advise on a new National School Reform Agreement.

This agreement sets out five-year initiatives and targets, which are tied to funding and agreed between the federal government and states. It represents our best opportunity to finally get school funding right.

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

Andrew Miller receives funding from the NSW Department of Education and the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

Jenny Gore receives funding from the Australian Research Council, NSW Department of Education and Paul Ramsay Foundation.

Leanne Fray receives funding from the NSW Department of Education and the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

– ref. A pandemic silver lining: how kids in some disadvantaged schools improved their results during COVID – https://theconversation.com/a-pandemic-silver-lining-how-kids-in-some-disadvantaged-schools-improved-their-results-during-covid-203047

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Professor Emerita, Australian National University

During an official visit to Australia in 2016, US President Joe Biden assured America’s Pacific allies that “We’re not trying to contain China”. That assurance is looking very shaky now.

The Biden administration’s energetic promotion of the Quad grouping and the AUKUS alliance convey a message that few observers have difficulty interpreting. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has been particularly clear, speaking of mobilising “all tools of national power” to create “guardrails” to block China from displacing America from its global leadership role.

As Financial Times editor Edward Luce observes, containing China is now Biden’s explicit goal.

The Cold War mantra

What exactly is meant by “containing”? We seldom talk about “containing” France, Britain or the United States, for instance. In the imagery of containment, “they” are always unruly and liable to overstep their boundaries. Meanwhile, “we” are always the sedentary targets of that expansionism.

If the US is to contain China, it must lead a global alliance committed to the same goal. This is evidently what the US hopes to do. This aspiration is making many of its allies increasingly uncomfortable.

“Containment” was the great Cold War mantra. Its origins can be traced to American diplomat George F. Kennan, whose 1946 “long telegram” to the State Department called on the US government to develop a strategy for preventing the spread of the “malignant parasite” of Soviet communism.

In an anonymous 1947 article in the journal Foreign Affairs, he labelled this strategy as “containment”, and stressed that Soviet expansionism had deep roots in the “Russian-Asiatic” psyche.

This did not deter US policymakers from applying his containment strategy – with even greater enthusiasm – to China following the 1949 establishment of the People’s Republic in Beijing.

As geographer Charles Fisher pointed out in the early 1970s, the idea of “containing China” echoed much older European and US images of the world. Fisher highlighted the influence of 19th and early 20th century civilisation theorist Halford Mackinder, whose thesis on “the geographical pivot of history” played “a seminal part in the development of the containment doctrine”.

European civilisation was seen as “the outcome of the secular struggle against Asiatic invasion” embodied in the invasions of the “Mongol hordes which fell upon Europe in the 14th century”. The rise of steam power and the railways had created the prospect of the emergence of a new landlocked Eurasian power that would challenge western civilisation.

Widespread public acceptance of Cold War containment policy towards China, Fisher argued, stemmed partly from its resonance with older, western images of the world.

[…] in the 1950s, it seemed that a single vast Eurasian Communist bloc now stretched like the old Mongol empire from the plains of eastern Europe to the shores of the China Sea, there to confront the United States across a rapidly shrinking Pacific Ocean.

With the rise of powerful revolutionary movements in Southeast Asia, American foreign policy became haunted by the vision of the “virus of communism” spreading from China across Asia. China became the chief object of US containment. In the words of journalist Don Oberdorfer, Vietnam became “‘the place to draw the line’ against the communist tide and especially against the Chinese hordes seen as the most virulent and threatening manifestation of international Marxism”.

The Trump era rhetoric

The widespread revival of Cold War containment rhetoric began under US President Donald Trump. His trade advisor, Peter Navarro, wrote a series of books partly based on fabricated sources with lurid titles such as “Death By China: Confronting the Dragon”, resurrecting early 20th century stereotypes of the Chinese “hordes”.

The Biden administration has tried to refashion Trump’s crude China-bashing into a more refined containment policy. But the polite language of the strategy carries familiar undertones. China’s growing power is condensed into a simple image of a global bully “exporting the tools of autocracy abroad.”

The new buzzword of Biden’s China policy defines China as the United States’ “pacing challenge”. This term is rarely defined. It paints world politics as a two-horse power race in which China must never be allowed to get its nose in front of the US.

All of this is accompanied by repeated assurances from senior US officials that they are “not looking for conflict”. But these assurances are not the same thing as a concerted diplomatic effort to find creative approaches to the current crisis in relations. A key problem with the Biden administration’s containment strategy is that it conflates urgently needed international cooperation to protect security and freedom with the “pacing challenge” of keeping the US one step ahead of China.

This strategy therefore risks becoming, like the Cold War version of containment, a perpetual struggle for the preservation of the status quo. As Henry Kissinger once observed, that allows “no role for diplomacy”.

Within the Biden administration, there are clearly divided views about the way this new version of containment is taking shape. Among close allies of the US, there seems no desire for it.

As Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said:

Rather than being a pawn in this new Cold War, we must promote principles and values enshrined in ASEAN’s outlook on the Indo-Pacific region to guide other countries in their engagement with our region.

There could be nothing more urgent than searching for alternatives to a retreat into the mindset of Cold War containment policy, with all its haunting traces of past fears and violence, and all its potential to spiral into disastrous future conflicts.

Tessa Morris-Suzuki 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. Joe Biden has said the US wasn’t trying to ‘contain’ China, but the evidence suggests otherwise – https://theconversation.com/joe-biden-has-said-the-us-wasnt-trying-to-contain-china-but-the-evidence-suggests-otherwise-204809

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

Treasurer Jim Chalmers is the first in decades to declare war on what he calls the “pain of rising rents”.

His first budget, in October, and his second, this month, contained a suite of measures designed to stop rents going “through the roof”. By far the biggest of those – the blockbuster – was a A$10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund to finance social and affordable housing.

If you think the idea of building a fund rather than building houses sounds odd, you probably think the same way about the Medical Research Future Fund, the Future Drought Fund, the Disaster Ready Fund or the $250 billion Future Fund itself, which was set up to pay public service and defence pensions.

Those were all previous Coalition government ideas – the likes of which were satirised in ABC TV’s The Hollowmen. Back in 2008, it came up with a $150 billion “Perpetual Endowment Fund”, created for no particular purpose other than “to meet the future challenges of this nation”.

I can think of at least four things that would do more to restrain rents than Labor’s $10 billion fund – and one of them would do it a lot quicker.

$10 billion, but off-budget and largely unspent

The (political) genius of these sorts of funds is they make it look as if you are spending a lot, without the need to spend much at all.

The $10 billion (or whatever that goes into the fund) isn’t actually “spent” as far as the budget is concerned. It doesn’t come off the budget surplus, or add to the budget deficit, because it remains in the government’s hands.

The fund can be thought of as a fiction. The money stays in the government’s hands until some of it is spent, except that while in the government’s hands, it is invested in the stock market and other places to try and earn a return.

But it doesn’t always work. During 2022, the usually successful Future Fund went backwards.

When Labor came up with the idea of the Housing Australia Future Fund in 2021, it looked a surer bet. Governments could borrow at “ultra-low interest rates” and the returns on investments were good.

To “protect the balance of the fund”, the government has limited withdrawals to $500,000 per year, meaning a less-grand-sounding commitment to spend up to $500,000 a year would have achieved just as much.

Housing Minister Julie Collins’ counter to that criticism is to say that creating a fund – an “enduring promise” – will protect housing spending from the “whims of future governments”

And yet the legalisation says every piece of spending from the fund will require formal government approval.

Another reason for limiting the amount that can be spent each year (apart from protecting the balance of the fund) is that there are practical limits on how quickly homes can be built.

Limits on how quickly new homes can be built

A truly bizarre and long-established fact of Australian home building is that it never gets done more quickly. If you went back to the 1990s, the 1980s or even the 1970s, you would find that the number of houses completed per quarter was roughly what it is today, between 22,000 and 29,000.

The number of houses under construction varies wildly; at times it has been low, late last year it reached an all-time high. But the number of houses completed seems to chug along at the same rate regardless. All that commencing more builds does is push out construction times.

It’s the same for units, which the Bureau of Statistics classifies as “other residential”. The number being completed per quarter is no higher than it was a decade ago, but the number under construction has climbed much higher.

All that funding more than a small number of extra builds per year would do is push construction costs higher and push out completion times.

The Australian Greens might well be right to oppose the artifice of a “fund,” but they are probably wrong to propose much more spending per year than the $500,000 the government is promising and the 30,000 extra homes over five years it says it will deliver.

I can think of at least four things that would restrain rents more than the fund, one of which Chalmers has delivered in the budget, albeit in a small dose.

1. Boost rent assistance

The “largest increase in more than 30 years” in Commonwealth Rent Assistance amounts to $16 per week.

It’ll help the 1.3 million concession card holders who receive it. But it is not much, and not much more in the future, because Chalmers has not acted on the recommendation of his economic inclusion advisory committee to increase it in line with rents actually paid, rather than the consumer price index.

Chalmers might well have been concerned that a bigger increase in rent assistance would have pushed up rents, but there’s a way of dealing with that.

2. Limit rent increases

Price control is anything but uncommon. In most states, increases in the prices we can be charged for electricity, gas and water are limited by regulation. In the Australian Capital Territory, increases in rents are limited by regulation.

The maximum permitted increase is 110% of the most recent annual increase in Canberra rents reported to the Bureau of Statistics. In the year to March, Canberra rents climbed 5.54%, making the maximum permissible increase 6.1%.

It works well, and Canberra landlords don’t seem to have withdrawn from the market. Among Australia’s capitals, Canberra’s rental vacancy rate is the highest.

3. Bribe states and councils to rezone land

Another option is to provide incentive payments to state and local governments that free up their planning systems and build more housing.

Conditional payments are not novel. The Commonwealth provided special payments to states that fell in line with its deregulation agenda for about a decade from the mid-1990s.

4. Restrict negative gearing to new builds

Negative gearing and the concessional rate of capital gains tax that accompanies it drive Australians into becoming landlords. But if they buy existing homes to do it, they do no more than turn owner-occupied homes into rented homes.

Limiting negative gearing to newly-built homes – as Labor promised in 2019 – would get them to fund new builds.

While it’s true that getting more Australians into affordable homes is anything but easy, some of what we need to do is straightforward. We can do better than a grand-sounding big-bucks fund.

À lire aussi :
The compelling case for a future fund for social housing

Peter Martin ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. 4 ways to bring down rent and build homes faster than Labor’s $10 billion housing fund – https://theconversation.com/4-ways-to-bring-down-rent-and-build-homes-faster-than-labors-10billion-housing-fund-205643

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Smith, Professor of Archaeology (World Rock Art), School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia

Three rock art panels were this month removed from Murujuga/Burrup in Western Australia to make way for a new A$6.4 billion fertiliser factory.

Moving Indigenous rock art anywhere in the world is controversial. In this case, a journalist photographing the removal was stopped by police. Later, her home was raided and her camera’s memory card temporarily seized.

The removal of rock art goes against international best practice in heritage conservation. Specifically, it breaches the globally accepted Burra Charter, which states that an object should “remain in its historical location” because this forms an important part of its cultural significance.

Despite the travesty unfolding at Murujuga/Burrup, non-Indigenous archaeologists have largely been silent about the destruction. As three rock art specialists with a combined professional experience of 100 years, we consider it our professional and moral obligation to speak out.

Rock art removal in Murujuga

Murujuga/Burrup is 1,500 kilometres north of Perth. It contains more than a million rock art petroglyphs, making it the one of the world’s largest concentration of petroglyphs. The region’s art-making tradition may extend back more than 40,000 years.

The art of Murujuga includes extinct animals and some of the earliest known images of the human face. The site has also been nominated as the next Australian UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The three rock art panels were removed this month. The panels will be relocated to another Burrup location, under the guidance of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation.

Murujuga/Burrup is also home to several large gas and ammonia plants. Posing with a spade at the fertiliser factory site last month, WA Premier Mark McGowan said the project confirmed the Pilbara region’s role as the “engine room of Australia’s economy”.

The destruction has profoundly affected Traditional Owners. Raelene Cooper, Mardudhunera woman and the former chair of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, this month said McGowan:

stands there quite proudly with a shovel to dig into the ngurra, the ground, giving the green light to go ahead and destroy the very rock art that holds the World Heritage values of our Country.

And following the rock art’s removal, Kuruma Marduthunera traditional custodian Josie Alec said:

I don’t know what to say. I am so angry and hurt right now. It is a sad, sad state of affairs. The free, prior and informed consent has still not been given to Perdaman to remove these rocks – not all traditional custodians have been consulted on this.

Read more:
In NSW there have been significant wins for First Nations land rights. But unprocessed claims still outnumber the successes

What destroying sacred sites does

Clearly, the choice to build over sacred sites causes long-term cultural pain and trauma to Aboriginal communities. So why not find an alternative location?

Murujuga/Burrup is not the only place in WA suitable for a fertiliser factory.
What’s more, acidic industrial emissions from facilities around the Burrup Peninsula are damaging the area’s rock art more generally. Emissions from the gas-powered fertiliser factory will exacerbate this – as well as leading to greater greenhouse gas emissions.

The damage to Indigenous heritage at Murujuga/Burrup has gained attention in recent years, and the problem was the subject of a 2016 Senate inquiry.

The destruction has also led to rising tensions, including street protests and road blocks, as Aboriginal community members struggle to make their voices heard.

These are not the first such protests. In the 1980s, the community and archaeologists protested against the Karratha Gas plant, a development that involved removing ancient Murujuga rock art panels. Many were damaged in the process.

In the 2000s, the proposed expansion of this plant, and plans to build a massive new liquefied natural gas facility, were met with even stronger protests. Archaeologists from across the world vocally opposed the plans.

It’s time for archaeologists to speak out

Today, Aboriginal voices against cultural heritage damage at Murujuga/Burrup are louder than ever.

But archaeologists have largely remained silent about the destruction.

Expert voices are crucial when it comes to standing up to government and corporate power. Take, for example, the almost 100 scientists who this month demanded the Northern Territory government abandon fracking in the Beetaloo Basin.

We urge archaeologists around the world to follow this example. They should demand a stop to all industrial development at Murujuga, and the immediate return of the three rock art panels.

In Australia, the cultural violence of rock art removal is being recognised in some quarters. For example, three Tasmanian museums and galleries recently returned rock art panels to locations from which they were removed in the 1960s.

Damage to rock art is not just an affront to Aboriginal people. It diminishes us all. As the global advocacy group the Rock Art Network says:

This fragile and irreplaceable visual heritage has worldwide significance, contemporary relevance and for many indigenous peoples is still part of their living culture. If we neglect, destroy or disrespect rock art we devalue our future.

Benjamin Smith receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Joakim Goldhahn receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Rock Art Australia.

Paul S.C.Taçon receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Murujuga’s rock art is being destroyed – where is the outrage? – https://theconversation.com/murujugas-rock-art-is-being-destroyed-where-is-the-outrage-205476

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martin Williams, Research fellow, Swinburne University of Technology

Kambô is an oozy substance harvested from the defensive skin secretions of the Amazonian giant monkey tree frog. In the traditional medicine of some indigenous peoples of the Amazon, Kambô is applied to superficial burns on the skin of participants to produce an intense purging effect.

In the past decade, Kambô use has also been on the rise in neo-shamanic or complementary medicine in Western countries. Many users say they experience positive after-effects, but bad outcomes ranging from prolonged vomiting to seizures and even death have also been reported.

In Brazil, it’s illegal to sell or market Kambô. In Australia, where two deaths after Kambô rituals have led to coronial inquests, it was listed by the Therapeutic Goods Administration in 2021 as a Schedule 10 poison: “a substance of such danger to health as to warrant prohibition of sale, supply and use”.

Despite government bans and several fatalities, Kambô use in Western countries still seems to be going strong. So what does Kambô do, and what do users get out of it?

The Kambô ritual

Kambô comes from the giant monkey tree frog (Phyllomedusa bicolor) which lives in the Upper Amazon rainforest. The frogs are captured and their limbs are tied with thread to four vertical twigs, to enable harvesting of their secretions by gentle scraping. The frogs are then released, physically unharmed.

The clear mucus-like secretion is typically spread onto bamboo sticks and air-dried for storage and transport. The Kambô is then prepared by reconstituting with water before application.

Kambô contains a range of biologically active molecules that most likely provide the frogs with defences against predators.

In the ritual, superficial burns are first made on the recipient’s skin, then Kambô is applied to the burns using a short length of rainforest vine. Next, the thick red sap of the “dragon’s blood” tree (Croton lechleri) is applied to the burns as an antiseptic.

Traditionally, among the indigenous Amazonian tribes that use Kambô, there is virtually no ceremony involved. It plays more of a role in their traditional medicine and hunting practices than in informing their cosmology.

In Kambô rituals catering to Westerners, the practice is often carried out in a ceremony involving songs, musical instruments, burning of incense, and prayers.

Traditionally, three to five small burns are made with a smouldering stick on the upper arm or lower leg of the recipient.

In Western neo-shamanic practice, however, Kambô is often applied to a larger number of burns. The burns may be located elsewhere on the body, including the neck, upper back, chest, and the Yogic chakra locations.

What Kambô does to the body

Following introduction via the small burns, the active ingredients of the Kambô pass rapidly into the body. They move through the lymphatic system – essentially the body’s drainage system, running parallel to the blood circulatory system – and thence into the bloodstream.

As a result, participants experience a short, intense purgative experience. The physiological effects are complex, rapid and sometimes paradoxical.

Typically, the first symptoms reported are an initial rush of heat and redness of the face. Nausea and vomiting are often experienced within several minutes, accompanied by general malaise, racing heart, dizziness and swelling of the face, and sometimes an urge to defecate.

Further effects include the feeling of a lump in the throat or difficulty swallowing, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, runny nose and tears, swollen lips, eyelids or face, and occasionally a swollen tongue or throat.

These physiological effects are generally expected, and indeed sought, by those performing and undergoing the Kambô ritual.

Aside from the range of physiological effects discussed above, Kambô is not regarded as exerting any direct psychedelic or hallucinogenic effects. Nor is it known to be used by anyone for this purpose.

What can go wrong?

The duration of the physical effects is usually 15–30 minutes. However, individual responses vary considerably and, on occasion, the symptoms may last several hours.

Kambô has caused harm in only a very limited number of documented cases, although the documented harms have included death. A handful of case reports describe incidents of hepatitis, psychosis, prolonged vomiting, hyponatremia (low blood sodium), seizure, rupture of the oesophagus and cardiac arrest.

Those extreme consequences are particularly few relative to the presumably large number of administrations globally, in both the traditional indigenous and the recent Western contexts.

Accurate figures about usage are impossible to obtain, but one academic source notes over 6,000 members of various closed Facebook groups devoted to Kambô, and the International Association of Kambô Practitioners’ Facebook page has over 2,500 followers.

What are the perceived benefits of Kambô?

Despite the documented harms, the great majority of users of Kambô anecdotally report positive physical, emotional and spiritual after-effects.

In Western societies, including Australia, the use of Kambô for healing or wellness has risen rapidly in recent years. The rise has coincided with the emergence of a subculture that questions the merits of the Western medical model and embraces alternative modes of health and medicine.

However, there is limited evidence of the directly measurable health benefits of Kambô in the peer-reviewed academic literature. The putative benefits claimed by the Kambô community largely remain to be substantiated by clinical research.

The actual or potential health benefits conferred by Kambô treatment can be difficult to distinguish from the anticipated or perceived benefits related to psychological effects. These psychological effects in turn may relate to the belief or faith systems that may be involved.

One important aspect of the Kambô experience is purging, particularly by way of vomiting but also defecation.

Many advocates see purging as representing a means of personal transformation through cleansing or detoxification. Purging may also be thought to expel various harmful, negative or generally undesirable aspects of both an emotional and a spiritual nature.

Read more:
Ayahuasca: the shamanic brew that produces out-of-body experiences

Participants may also feel a benefit from the overall “ordeal” or “challenge”. In this regard, significant parallels may be drawn between the purging elicited by Kambô and that associated with the psychoactive brew ayahuasca.

To understand what people gain from Kambô, we may need to move into the domain of philosophical speculation. However, the concepts of personal transformation and spiritual growth are very real to many adherents, and their role in Kambô’s perceived benefits should not be discounted.

Martin Williams 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. Illegal, occasionally deadly, and not much fun. What is the frog toxin Kambô and why do people use it? – https://theconversation.com/illegal-occasionally-deadly-and-not-much-fun-what-is-the-frog-toxin-kambo-and-why-do-people-use-it-205401

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Stephenson, Deputy Director, Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, Australian National University

This week, the Australian Space Summit is celebrating some of our nation’s strengths and achievements in the space sector. But it’s taking place under the shadow of significant cuts to space technology investment announced in last week’s federal budget.

Space technologies play a critical role in responding to many national priorities, such as climate and disaster resilience, connecting regional Australians, contributing to regional security and driving economic growth. Yet, the sector suffers from a branding issue – most people think of rockets and astronauts, rather than the satellites we depend on globally.

This leads to a misunderstanding in government of the importance of space technologies to the issues we are seeking to solve. It also makes it harder to recruit talented people to the field.

So, how do we find enough people with the skills necessary to grow this critical technology sector?

Why diversity and inclusivity matter

The answer is placing a new priority on talent recruitment and expanding diversity and inclusivity in the space sector.

The space sector needs workers from all different backgrounds and disciplines, but is struggling to attract a diverse talent pool. This is due to a misconception that space only offers STEM-related jobs, as well as the overwhelmingly white and male make-up of the space industry, government and academia.

This not only impacts the workforce pipeline, but also potentially the sector’s funding, due to a limited view of what kinds of solutions the space sector can provide to society’s biggest challenges.

This is an urgent public relations issue for the space sector. It needs to rethink how it markets itself to the public to better recruit for a myriad of positions in fields like space law, policy, technology governance, social anthropology and archaeology, business, arts, communications and more.

Read more:
Why outer space matters in a post-pandemic world

The sector also needs to make diversity a priority. Currently, just one in five employees in the space industry are women. First Nations Australians also continue to be sidelined, despite the fact the majority of our ground-based infrastructure for space systems is on Indigenous lands.

We need greater inclusivity of perspectives from people of diverse genders, sexual orientations and ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, as well as people with disability. Research shows diverse and inclusive groups lead to greater trust, democracy and innovation, less “group think”, more positive work environments and greater employee retention.

Additionally, greater diversity can make it easier to tell the story of why space technologies matter to society. This would help in terms of government funding and the industry’s ability to punch above its weight globally.

A national conference on diversity in space

Last month, we brought together over 200 experts from the space industry, government, academia and the community to discuss these issues at the first-ever national conference on gender equality and diversity in space.

The participants agreed that diversity is an overlooked opportunity for the space sector. Many of the challenges facing the sector could be addressed by recruiting from a more diverse talent pool and ensuring diverse perspectives are being incorporated into technology design and solutions.

These are some of our key recommendations:

1) Enhance workplace conditions and enact informal networks

Policy changes can help with diversity recruitment, such as tackling poor organisational cultures, offering equitable leave policies and improving current promotion and hiring policies.

But informal networks are important, too. There are networks for women in space in various countries, such as the US and New Zealand, which have proven to be vital in developing a more diverse workforce. A new Women in Space Network is soon to be launched in Australia.

2) Don’t just pay lip service to diversity

Diversity must be placed at the centre of programs and policies in both the space sector and in governments at the federal and state/territory level. The space sector must also do a better job of explaining the importance of its work to government agencies.

3) Establish diversity procurement policies

This includes minimum targets to support women-owned and First Nations-owned enterprises in the space sector and giving preference to space businesses that demonstrate improvements to diversity in their workforce.

Read more:
Lost in space: Australia dwindled from space leader to also-ran in 50 years

Australia risks falling behind

In 2025, Australia will host the International Astronautical Conference, the largest annual conference for the space industry in the world. This is a great opportunity to showcase our leadership in promoting a values-based, diverse, equitable and sustainable space sector.

Yet, without tangible action now, Australia’s space sector risks falling further behind our international counterparts.

The Australian Space Agency is currently working with a number of organisations, including the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, the ANU Institute for Space and the Australian Centre for Space Governance, to develop our own policy for diversity in the space sector.

This is a step in the right direction, particularly in the wake of the latest budget. But the industry also needs to step up with data transparency on diversity, as well as tangible commitments and actions.

To this end, we are conducting research on improving diversity in the space sector. We are inviting anyone in government, industry and academic roles to take part in a survey to describe their experiences of inclusion, diversity, equality and access in their jobs. This input will contribute to Australia’s statement on diversity and inclusivity in the space sector.

Elise Stephenson receives funding from the Australian Space Agency and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She is affiliated with the Australian Centre for Space Governance.

Cassandra Steer receives funding from the Australian Space Agency, the Department of Defence, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Geoscience Australia. She is Chair of the Australian Centre for Space Governance and affiliated with the International Institute of Space Law.

– ref. Just 1 in 5 employees in the space industry are women. This lack of diversity is holding us back – https://theconversation.com/just-1-in-5-employees-in-the-space-industry-are-women-this-lack-of-diversity-is-holding-us-back-205393

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Bean, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology and Fermentation Technology, Federation University Australia

It’s estimated coeliac disease affects 1.4% of the world’s population – a staggering 112,000,000 people or so in total.

People with this condition develop an abnormal immune reaction when they consume gluten – a protein found in grains including barley, wheat and rye. It can damage the lining of their small intestine and lead to a range of (often debilitating) symptoms.

Coeliacs are forced to forgo glutenous food and drinks, including bread, pasta, cakes, biscuits, pastries and, of course, beer – which has malted barley as its main ingredient. Other alcoholic beverages are considered gluten-free (although diligence is still required since drinks can have flavours added after distillation).

Brewers around the world work on producing beers that can be enjoyed by people with coeliac disease, or general gluten sensitivity. They achieve this through two common approaches:

1. making beer with grains that don’t contain gluten
2. breaking down the gluten into smaller compounds during the manufacturing process.

The former approach is widely used in Australia and New Zealand.

Read more:
Everything you need to know about coeliac disease (and whether you really have it)

How they make gluten-free beer

Consider your breakfast. Did you eat rice bubbles, corn flakes or puffed wheat? Each one of these cereals will give you energy to start your day, but only the last one contains gluten.

Similarly, brewers can use gluten-free grain such as sorghum, buckwheat or rice to try to replicate the flavour of beer, but without the gluten. Beers produced in this way are truly “gluten-free”. They contain none at all.

But brewing with these alternative grains isn’t as common or straightforward as brewing with barley.

Think back to your breakfast: all three cereals are suitable enough, but they don’t taste the same. While there is plenty of diversity in beer flavours, all commonly consumed beer has the underlying flavour of malted barley. This is the taste beer drinkers have come to know and love.

Brewing processes for gluten-free beer must be modified to accommodate the unusual characteristics of alternative grains. For example, barley has a husk, which is used for filtration while making beer. Gluten-free grains tend to not have husks, so rice husks might be added in.

Also, if a particular brewery produces both gluten-free and gluten-containing beer, then gluten contamination is possible. That’s why most Australian breweries that produce gluten-free beer do so in a dedicated facility.

How they make gluten-reduced beer

The natural role of gluten in the barley plant is to provide nutrients to the seedling for germination. Given gluten’s importance to the life cycle of the plant, it’s inevitable some gluten will end up in beer that’s made using barley. In which case, the gluten must then be removed.

To do this, brewers treat the beer with an enzyme called a prolyl endopeptidase (PEP), which is traditionally used to clarify beer by removing hazes formed by proteins.

The PEP enzyme can “recognise” specific parts of the gluten protein and break them down into smaller compounds that don’t cause an immune response in coeliacs.

These beers can be considered “gluten-reduced”. They aren’t completely gluten-free. Whether they are safe to be consumed by coeliacs is a matter of debate among health professionals. Some coelics can tolerate one or two gluten-reduced beers, while others can’t tolerate any.

Research has found gluten-reduced beers would induce an immune response that could be detected through a blood test in two out of 31 coeliac patients.

People who are very sensitive to gluten should exercise caution when considering gluten-reduced beers.

Different countries, different standards

The US Food and Drug Administration states that foods, including beer, with less than 20 parts per million (ppm) gluten can be labelled gluten-free.

The rule in Europe is the same; products containing no more than 20 ppm are considered “gluten-free”. An additional category of “very low gluten” can be used to describe products containing up to 100 ppm.

Australia and New Zealand, by contrast, have some of the strictest legislation concerning gluten-free labelling. By Food Standards Australia New Zealand’s (FSANZ) criteria, products containing 20 ppm or less can be labelled “low gluten”, but not gluten-free. To be labelled gluten-free, the beer must not contain any detectable gluten whatsoever.

In other words take note of where your beer was brewed, because it makes a difference. Products sold in Australia and New Zealand adhere to stricter labelling regulations than other countries. Low levels of gluten have been detected in foods produced overseas and sold as “gluten-free” in Australia. The same could be true for imported beers.

Fortunately, most gluten-free beers available in Australia and New Zealand are produced here, so country-specific labelling might be a bigger issue for the jet-setting beer drinker.

Not just for coeliacs

People who aren’t coeliacs can still have allergies and aversions to gluten – and this may be more common than you think. A 2020 study in Australia found almost one-quarter of people interviewed chose to avoid gluten in their diet, even though only 1% of respondents were coeliacs.

Just like the boom in alcohol-free beers, the range of gluten-free beers is expanding. Brewers are producing exciting new beers not just for coeliacs but also for other people who may be conscious about their gluten intake.

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. An expert’s guide to drinking beer for people who don’t do well with gluten – https://theconversation.com/an-experts-guide-to-drinking-beer-for-people-who-dont-do-well-with-gluten-201460

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristin Graham, Lecturer in Podiatry, University of South Australia

Ankle sprain is one of the most common musculoskeletal injuries, particularly in sports like netball, basketball and football where jumping, landing on one foot and sudden direction changes are part of the game.

Ankle sprains can be painful, debilitating and may result in ongoing ankle problems. In fact, people with a history of a previous ankle sprain are more likely to sprain an ankle again in future.

Prevention is key. In an effort to reduce sprain risk, many people look for “high-top” shoes, where the section around the side of the shoe (also known as the “collar”) extends up closer to the ankle.

But what does the research say? Do high-top shoes actually reduce your sprain risk?

Read more:
Why do I sprain my ankle so often? And how can I cut the risk of it happening again?

High-tops don’t always help – and can sometimes harm

Plenty of research exists on this topic but unravelling the truth is complicated by inconsistency between studies. Researchers may have different ways of investigating the issue, of measuring the shoes success, or even different ways of defining a “high-top” shoe.

For example, the reported difference in collar height between “high-top” to “low-top” shoes was considerable, ranging from 4.3 to 8.5cm across different studies.

That said, the trend in the current research literature suggests the ankle protection provided by high-top shoes may not be enough to significantly reduce sprain risk while playing sport.

In fact, this design may also reduce athletic performance, and increase the risk of ankle sprain in some people.

Research does support the idea high-top shoes provide good stability when outside forces may cause an ankle sprain when the person is stationary (for example, when a person standing still is knocked from the side and starts to topple over, putting stress on the ankle).

However, once you start moving it’s a different story. In fact, some research suggests high-top shoes may even increase the risk of ankle sprain in some activities.

This may be because these shoes can change the way we use the muscles in our ankles and legs.

Specifically the muscles on the outside of the lower leg may start firing later and not work as strongly to stiffen the ankle when your’re wearing high top shoes (compared to low top shoes).

To reduce ankle sprain risk, it is important the muscles on both sides of the legs work together at the same time.

Tellingly, delayed and weaker activation of the muscles on the outside of the lower leg is greater in people with chronic ankle instability. This finding suggests high-top shoes may not be the best choice for anyone with a history of ankle sprain.

There is also some evidence wearing high-top shoes may impede athletic performance by reducing jump height and increasing shock transmission to other parts of the body.

Getting the right fit

External supports such as tape and braces are effective in both uninjured and previously injured ankles. But they’re most effective when used in combination with preventive exercise programs.

What is crucial when selecting footwear is good fit and good function. Footwear should fit the foot in length, width and depth, with a thumb’s width between the end of the longest toe and the tip of the shoe. You should have enough space across the ball of the foot for it to not be pulled tight when standing.

However, around 70% of people are wearing shoes that are not fitted appropriately. Women and girls more often have shoes that are too narrow, and older males often wear shoes that are too long.

Ill-fitting footwear can increase falls, induce greater levels of osteoarthritis and impedes natural foot function in adults and children.

Make sure you’ve got the right shoe for the job. Form must suit function.

As an example, there’s merit in wearing a well-fitted high-top sneaker during static, standing based activities.

However, a low-top sneaker may be more beneficial during sporting activities that require frequent stopping, jumping, sudden changes in direction or for people with a history of ankle sprains.

Read more:
Running shoes may cause injuries – but is going barefoot the fix?

Kristin Graham is affiliated with Australian Podiatry Association. Non executive member.

Helen Banwell has received in-kind support from ASICS Oceania and Skobi in the last two years. Neither funded the relevant studies – just gave us the shoes. I am currently involved as an external ‘content expert’ on a study with Monash with Bobux shoes but the study has been on hold since Covid started and I’m not receiving any monies for my involvement.

Ryan Causby receives funding from Australasian Podiatry Education Research Fund. He is a Director on the Australasian Council of Podiatry Deans and a member of the Australian Podiatry Association.

Lewis Ingram and Saravana Kumar 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. Do high top shoes actually reduce ankle sprain risk? Here’s what the research says – https://theconversation.com/do-high-top-shoes-actually-reduce-ankle-sprain-risk-heres-what-the-research-says-202852

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grant Duncan, Associate Professor, School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University

If the recent flood of sleep-inducing pre-budget speeches and commentary is any indication, New Zealand voters can expect largely unimaginative leadership that fails to prepare the country for an uncertain future, regardless of who wins October’s election.

Even so, when finance minister Grant Robertson reads his “no frills” budget speech on Thursday, he’ll implicitly be making the case for why he and his colleagues should be returned to office. Going by the most recent opinion poll, that’s far from a sure thing.

So while this week’s budget has plenty riding on it, Labour appears to be betting voters don’t want anything bold. As Prime Minister Chris Hipkins puts it, the government is merely “doing the basics” to fix flood-damaged infrastructure – not rebuilding to a standard fit for the future.

The sense of persistent social and environmental problems being managed by press release, rather than resolved, is undiminished. In thrall to credit rating agencies, bank economists and Treasury officials, political leaders have decided “basics” and “no frills” must represent our highest ambitions.

From Ecostore to Kmart

Last year saw the Labour government’s fourth “Wellbeing Budget”, a concept begun in 2019 with mental health as its headline. In 2020, COVID-19 became the big issue. This year, however, Robertson is downplaying wellbeing, instead taking a “balanced” approach involving careful cost-cutting, saving and reprioritisation.

Not everyone is happy about the turning away from wellbeing. But it was always questionable whether the word represented anything more than a trendy sticker on “government as usual”.

It’s doubtful any government would say it wasn’t concerned with people’s wellbeing. At the same time, every budget must do the boring job of planning public revenue, expenditure and borrowing with a view to the economic consequences.

By setting out the state’s aims and priorities, it’s an inherently political document. But there’s nothing in it that will necessarily make a voter feel better or more satisfied with their lot – unless perhaps they’re the direct beneficiary of a public lolly scramble.

This being election year, of course, budget largesse is something one might anticipate. But Thursday’s “orthodox no-frills budget” sounds like Labour is switching from Ecostore to Kmart: never mind your wellbeing, this is about Labour’s political survival.

Not all about the economy

Late last year, the Reserve Bank governor apologised for “trying to engineer a recession to bring down high inflation”. He might also have apologised to the government for making it that much harder to retain office.

It hasn’t quite gone that way, though. The December 2022 quarter registered negative 0.6% economic growth, but Massey University’s GDP tracker is showing this hasn’t turned into a recession and the economy is actually growing again.

Robertson can boast that unemployment is low, jobs are being created and wages are rising. Yes, inflation and interest rates are high, which causes real stress, but inflation may have passed its peak. As a whole, New Zealand is full steam ahead.

Read more:
Strikes, protests and collective action: how fighting a cost-of-living crisis wasn’t always about tightening your own belt

To labour the metaphor, then, what’s the iceberg?

Surveys show confidence in the government has been declining since the highs of mid-2020. Last month, 55% said New Zealand was “heading in the wrong direction”, compared to 35% who said the opposite. Negative sentiment also outweighed positive in consumer confidence surveys.

A “no frills” budget may allay some fears about excessive spending and new taxes. But on its own that doesn’t win back disaffected voters. There has been more than discontent about the high price of avocados – non-material issues such as co-governance and even recognition of gender diversity have become culture wars.

As a simple political strategy, National and ACT now need only to scare those who are most likely to vote (middle class people over 45) with images of a Labour-Green coalition supported by the Māori Party taking the country further down a path that’s too radical for their liking.

An absence of vision

The government’s priorities are skills, science and technology, and infrastructure. The last involves massive projects and capital investment, estimated to cost NZ$210 billion over the next 30 years – just to address the existing infrastructure deficit.

Given the tax burden of all this, we might expect taxation to be an issue. Especially so, considering the recent Inland Revenue report showing “the effective tax rate paid by middle income New Zealanders is at least double that paid by our wealthiest citizens”.

But this budget will propose neither a wealth tax nor a capital gains tax (notwithstanding a group of wealthy New Zealanders openly agreeing they should pay more tax). And there’ll be no cyclone recovery levy, either.

Read more:
Proving the wealthiest New Zealanders pay low tax rates is a good start – now comes the hard part

So Robertson will also have one eye on the National and Act parties’ pledges to cut taxes, paid for by eliminating “wasteful” spending. Robertson calls this the “fiscal Bermuda Triangle” and rejects the idea of “unfunded inflationary tax cuts”.

We can see the outlines of a fairly conventional pre-election policy debate. National will call Labour profligate and ineffectual, Labour will be able to point to “doing the basics” with a “no frills” approach.

But neither major party appears willing to deal with the full extent of social and infrastructural investment necessary to bring the country up to speed with other developed nations. And neither now talks honestly about the tax revenues needed to do that.

They seem to have given up on building a better nation. Is this lack of vision and courage the kind of leadership voters are looking for? The fact that neither of the major parties is getting ahead in the polls may be all the answer we need.

Grant Duncan 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. Wellbeing is so last year – Labour’s ‘no frills’ budget points to an uninspiring NZ election – https://theconversation.com/wellbeing-is-so-last-year-labours-no-frills-budget-points-to-an-uninspiring-nz-election-205118

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael F. Braby, Associate Professor, Australian National University

How old are butterflies, and where did they evolve? And perhaps more importantly, how and when did they reach the isolated continent of Australia?

Answers to these simple questions have baffled scientists for decades. Until recently we had very little idea when butterflies evolved, and hypotheses concerning their place of origin were largely educated guesses.

In recent years, however, several studies have indicated butterflies most likely arose sometime during the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs dominated the Earth. Now, an international collaboration (of which I am a member) has placed the time of origin much more precisely: 101.4 million years ago, give or take 1.2 million years.

These early butterflies were different from nocturnal moths, their ancestors. They flew during the day, rather than at night, and were attracted to brightly coloured flowers for their rich nectar.

A 100-million-year history

To reach this conclusion, researchers from dozens of countries needed to construct the world’s largest “family tree” of butterfly species. This tree of life was assembled with DNA from 2,244 species representing all butterfly families and 92% of genera.

There are roughly 19,000 butterfly species in the world, and piecing together the 100-million-year history of the group required assembling the world’s largest dataset of butterfly DNA sequences, geographical distributions and larval host plants.

Underlying the analysis were 11 rare butterfly fossils, without which the analysis would have been impossible. Butterflies are rarely preserved in the fossil record, and those that are preserved are frequently difficult to identify.

These fossils served as calibration points on the evolutionary tree. Once the tree was calibrated researchers could then estimate the timing of key events in butterfly evolution, starting with their origin.

North American origins

Not only did this latest study determine the age of butterflies, it also discovered where the butterflies first originated. By assembling a database of the distributions of all modern species and the plants on which they lay their eggs, the scientists were able to trace the movements of butterflies through time and space.

The study tells a dynamic story – one rife with rapid diversifications, faltering advances, and improbable dispersals. Some groups travelled over what seem impossibly vast distances, and others seem to have stayed in one place while continents, mountains and rivers moved around them.

According to this latest research, butterflies first appeared somewhere in Central and western North America.

At that time in the mid-Cretaceous, the continent of North America was part of eastern Laurasia, and it was bisected by an expansive seaway that split the continent in two. Present-day Mexico was joined in a long arc with what is now the United States, Canada and Russia.

North and South America had not yet joined via the isthmus of Panama, but butterflies seem to have had little difficulty crossing the water gap into the Southern Hemisphere. Once they reached South America, the early butterflies diversified to an astonishing degree.

From there, many groups not only moved back into North America, but they also dispersed to Australia via Antarctica. At the time, the three continents were still connected to form Southern Gondwana, a remnant of the supercontinent Gondwana.

The path to Australia – and the rest of the world

Two of the earliest butterfly lineages to reach Australia via Antarctica were the subfamilies Coeliadinae (awl skipper butterflies) (around 72 million years ago) and Euschemoniinae (around 65 million years ago). The Euschemoniinae are a group of butterflies found only in Australia, containing just a single remaining species – the spectacular regent skipper (Euschemon rafflesia) – restricted to the rainforests along the east coast.

To reach Australia, butterflies must have once lived in Antarctica in the Late Cretaceous and Early Paleogene periods when global temperatures were considerably warmer than today. They would have made their way across the continent to Australia before the two landmasses separated some 34 million years ago.

Other groups of butterflies entered Australia much later via the islands of South-East Asia. They had earlier reached Asia from North America across the Bering land bridge.

From there, they quickly covered ground, spreading and diversifying across Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. They even made their way to India, which was then an isolated island, separated by kilometres of open sea on all sides.

Once butterflies had become established in Central and North America approximately 101 million years ago, they quickly diversified alongside their plant hosts over the next 25 million years, with the last two families (Riodinidae and Lycaenidae) evolving around 76 million years ago. By the time dinosaurs were wiped out 66 million years ago, all six modern butterfly families had arrived on the scene.

Michael F. Braby has received past funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), Australian Fulbright Commission, and the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS)

– ref. How butterflies conquered the world: a new ‘family tree’ traces their 100-million-year journey across the globe – https://theconversation.com/how-butterflies-conquered-the-world-a-new-family-tree-traces-their-100-million-year-journey-across-the-globe-205487

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Libby Callaway, Associate Professor, Rehabilitation, Ageing and Independent Living Research Centre and Occupational Therapy Department, School of Primary and Allied Healthcare, Monash University

Last week’s federal budget included a A$732.9 million investment to get the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) “back on track”. In the next four years, there are also plans for a $15.3 billion reduction in NDIS costs.

One area of focus is assistive technology, an
umbrella term that covers products – from glasses to communication devices to wheelchairs – and the systems and services necessary for their delivery. Getting assistive technology right is vitally important for an effective NDIS because the return on investment is around nine times what is spent. Assistive technology enables people to do what’s important to them, including work and study.

Pre-budget announcements flagged this focus and the 2023–24 budget provides further detail. Reportedly, some $2.5 billion in projected savings will come via proposed initiatives including “preferred provider arrangements to leverage [NDIS] buying power” and an “assistive technology expert advisory panel”.

These targets are ambitious and there are important considerations for them to be successful.

Putting the person first

There are internationally recognised steps for assistive technology provision. The first is that the supply of assistive technology is person-centred, not product or service-centred. This is because to get good outcomes, individual goals and needs should drive product selection, rather than a person’s needs being “fitted” to an existing product. The latter goes against good assistive technology practice and could worsen NDIS participant outcomes.

The value of assistive technology support funding committed in NDIS participant plans – $1.38 billion at the end of last year – points to an opportunity to exert buying power and save money. However, bulk buying assistive technology at discount prices could lead to unintended consequences.

Risks include restricting product selection or inadvertent market price fixing.
It also means the government may wind up with a warehouse full of equipment waiting to be matched to a user, rather than the products scheme participants really require.

The current approach – using an evidence-based list of product categories that guides NDIS participants and providers clarity on the options available – is more suitable.

For example, personal alarms can useful to alert others to the need for assistance but the reasons for assistance depend on the person. Disability-related needs, such as seizure and falls management, fire detection, alerts for phone calls or visitors, and orientation or memory prompts, should guide product selection.

Read more:
NDIS cost scrutiny is intensifying again – the past shows this can harm health and wellbeing for people with disability

The right advice can be complex and cost more

When assistive technology is more complex or high risk, it is recommended participants seek advice from allied health professionals.

Some assistive technology advisory services – such as state-based Independent Living Centres – were lost when they fell through funding gaps that emerged when the NDIS was implemented.

This means people will most often get advice from product suppliers or when they contract advice from allied health providers. But hourly rates for allied health services funded by the NDIS have been labelled as “price gouging” by leaders including NDIS Minister Bill Shorten. The suggestion here is that the same service is being charged at a much higher rate for NDIS participants. But this is incorrect. It fails to take into account the complexity and cost of NDIS work, or gap amounts paid for other allied health services, like those provided through private health insurance or chronic disease programs.

When it comes to assistive technology and home modifications, the trained technical expertise, necessary insurances, professional supervision and administrative processes required make delivery highly complex and costly.

For example, for an occupational therapist to codesign vehicle modifications with a wheelchair user, there are seven practice steps and three sets of stakeholders that need to be engaged to deliver a good outcome.

NDIS participant and provider expertise should be central

There are reports that a proposal to bulk buy assistive technology would rely on an advisory panel, something like the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that negotiates medicine prices.

But expert advisory panels, such as those in other disability and injury management schemes, are typically staffed by health professionals.

NDIS participants must be partners in panel design. Any advisory panel should include people who use assistive technology, as well as health professionals who advise on it.

Read more:
From glasses to mobility scooters, ‘assistive technology’ isn’t always high-tech. A WHO roadmap could help 2 million Australians get theirs

Nothing about us without (any) of us

The NDIS relies on informed and empowered participants and an effective and efficient provider market.

The most effective way to curb spending will be for the National Disability Insurance Authority (which administers the NDIS) to codesign processes with people with disability and their support network – sometimes called “need knowers” – and any advisers they choose to engage. They can help identify reasonable and necessary assistive technology and get the best value for money.

Read more:
The government says NDIS supports should be ‘evidence-based’ – but can they be?

Libby Callaway receives funding from the Australian government Department of Health and Ageing, and the Transport Accident Commission in Victoria. She is the voluntary President of the Australian Rehabilitation and Assistive Technology Association, and a voluntary Board Director of The Homer Hack.

Natasha Layton receives funding from the World Health Organization and iLA (Independent Living Assessment, WA). She is a voluntary Board member with the Australian Rehabilitation and Assistive Technology Association, and the Global Alliance of AT Organizations, as well as representing Australian Standards to the ISO as an expert on assistive product classification and terminology.

– ref. Government plans to use NDIS bulk-buying power to help save billions – but they shouldn’t put products before people – https://theconversation.com/government-plans-to-use-ndis-bulk-buying-power-to-help-save-billions-but-they-shouldnt-put-products-before-people-205577