Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Raquel Peel, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, University of Southern Queensland and Senior Lecturer, RMIT University

“Going together” sounds like a romantic term from yesteryear. Today’s young people have a newer label: the “talking stage”. It happens between being introduced to someone and officially dating, and it can involve talking or texting for days – even months.

The purpose of this stage is to have the opportunity to get to know someone before committing to a relationship with them.

But judging by their posts on social media, young people all over the world are struggling with this modern-day dating phase. They can find it drawn-out, repetitive and emotionally draining.

Is it a new thing? And how can potential couples partners make the most of it?

New label, old practice

The talking stage is not a new phenomenon, but instead a new take on what we know as traditional “courting”.

Courting involves getting to know someone and building intimacy, often for an extended period of time, before committing to marriage.

Yet, not all relationships start with a courting or talking phase, some relationships start as a hook-up then progress to dating. This is because how people communicate romantic interest and initiate intimacy depends on personalities and social context.

Neverthless, the global pandemic changed the way people date now. People who might not have chosen to date online previously, started pursing dates via the internet or sometimes teledates via screens.

Dating using online apps spread the love by swapping, matching, and instant messaging – often with multiple partners and in large numbers.

Researchers termed this period “jagged love” and found it didn’t lead to traditional courting and romance. People in this context move quickly between partners, searching for meaningful connections and often feel disappointed with the outcome. There’s a lot of potential for sabotaging a relationship before it even starts.

And there is a significant difference between the talking stage and traditional courting. Today, early conversations are accelerated by the amount of information publicly available about someone on the internet. So, for some people, talking or texting might feel like an unnecessary or tedious step, given what we can glean from Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

But the talking stage may be a way to solidify fragile human bonds.

Read more:
Hook-ups, pansexuals and holy connection: love in the time of millennials and Generation Z

Is it a ‘situationship’?

In online forums, young people report feeling confused about how long to talk to someone before moving on, or what to discuss with a potential partner. So the talking stage might seem ambiguous, stressful or anxiety-provoking.

Young people are also confused about whether they are in a “situationhsip” – another relationship status with an ambiguous definition, used to describe non-committed but emotionally charged intimate engagements. This one is similar to recent labels like “friends with benefits”, “booty calls”, or one-night stands.

Being in an undefined stage or relationship can impact mental health and wellbeing. Relationship difficulties are one of the most prominent reasons why people seek counselling and a significant contributor to anxiety, depression, and thoughts of self harm. Counselling services in Australia report the most common reasons for seeking counselling include relationship conflict, inadequate interpersonal skills to initiate or establish significant relationships, family violence, and sexual assault.

Fear of being hurt, abandoned, rejected or trapped can be a barrier to forming and maintaining healthy long-term intimate engagements.

Being in a committed romantic relationship decreases the incidence of mental health issues when compared to ambiguous or casual engagements. This why my research focuses on increasing people’s skills and confidence to navigate intimate partnerships.

Read more:
From ghosting to ‘backburner’ relationships: the reasons people behave so badly on dating apps

Good practice

Many people lack relationship skills such as insight, flexibility, maturity, confidence, effective communication and how to manage expectations. Being able to improve relationship skills is a strong predictor of relationship satisfaction and long-term relationship success.

Working out how to navigate an intimate relationship, by communicating needs honestly and creating opportunities to develop and explore a sense of self, can help people feel more confident.

So, the talking stage is an opportunity to get to know a potential partner, explore compatibility, and improve relationship skills.

Read more:
The One: could DNA tests find our soulmate? We study sex and sexuality — and think the idea is ridiculous

5 ways to make the talking stage better

It may be a bit confusing and open-ended, but there are ways to make the talking stage more helpful than stressful.

1) Open communication – make sure to express your needs, expectations, and be willing to also understand the needs and expectations of others in an honest way

2) Explore compatibility – the talking stage is an opportunity to explore whether a potential partner shares interests, values and morals

3) Define the relationship – this stage is an opportunity to discuss the potential relationship and the type of romantic engagement. It is important all parties understand what the relationship is and where it is headed

4) Acceptance – this insightful step involves understanding the talking stage or “situationship” might fizzle out and not turn into a relationship (which may hurt) and that this is a natural part of the process

5) Establish boundaries – self-protection and safety are basic human instincts. So, it is important to know how to navigate this process in a healthy way by establishing boundaries for the intimate engagement early.

Humans are hardwired to search for intimate connections from birth. Modern times may might have changed how we pursue and communicate love, but this innate instinct remains truly unbreakable and the talking stage can be an important part of it.

Raquel Peel 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. Stuck in a ‘talking stage’ or ‘situationship’? How young people can get more out of modern love – https://theconversation.com/stuck-in-a-talking-stage-or-situationship-how-young-people-can-get-more-out-of-modern-love-200914

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jim Mann, Professor of Medicine and Director, Healthier Lives–He Oranga Hauora National Science Challenge and Co-Director, Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre, University of Otago

As we emerge from the COVID pandemic, we’re grateful research evidence was there to guide us.

Years of immunology and molecular research facilitated the rapid development of new vaccines. Modelling expertise helped predict and plan our pandemic response. Research on medications and antiviral drugs enabled them to be adapted to combat the new virus.

The government’s pandemic response resulted in far fewer deaths in this country than in other parts of the world. This is in part because the latest research evidence informed the response.

There are few similar structures to advise government about the ongoing burden of non-communicable diseases, including heart disease, obesity and diabetes. This leaves Aotearoa New Zealand with large gaps in the pathways for translating research evidence into health policy and practice for our major causes of death and disability.

World Health Organization data from 2019 show non-communicable diseases caused 90% of all deaths in New Zealand. Better use of research evidence could save lives and healthcare dollars, as shown by a 2021 report on the cost of type 2 diabetes.

Four evidence-based interventions to prevent or treat type 2 diabetes were modelled and, if implemented, were predicted to save hundreds of millions of dollars. But only one has been implemented so far.

Read more:
New Zealand needs urgent action to tackle the frightening rise and cost of type 2 diabetes

Lack of expertise and transparency

The current disconnect between research evidence and its uptake into policy and practice hasn’t always existed. Several entities once played important roles in translating evidence into policy, including the New Zealand Guidelines Group, the Public Health Commission, the National Health Committee and the Social Policy Evaluation and Research Unit. They have all been disbanded.

In some cases they have been replaced by ad hoc advisory processes, which often lack transparency.

Of course, not all research can, or should, be implemented. But New Zealand researchers have become increasingly frustrated with the difficulty of bringing their own and relevant international research to the attention of policymakers.

Recognising this problem, the Healthier Lives National Science Challenge produced a report that reflects the experiences of leading researchers and community health providers who attended an earlier workshop.

The report identifies elements required for bringing research innovation into our healthcare system.

These include:

• the use of data to identify the most pressing health priorities

• continuous reviews of local and international research findings

• cost–benefit analyses to assess which research evidence should be prioritised for implementation

• funding streams for implementing evidence-informed improvements to healthcare.

It is centrally important that policymakers have access to expertise. This must include not only the expertise of researchers but also of health professionals and people with lived experience of using the healthcare system.

Evidence is available

Several research groups in Aotearoa are trying hard to make evidence as accessible as possible to policymakers. The recently launched Public Health Communication Centre, led by Professor Michael Baker at the University of Otago Wellington, aims to improve communication of public health research findings to support good policy responses.

A former director-general of health, Ashley Bloomfield, was recently appointed to lead the University of Auckland’s new Public Policy Impact Institute. Its aim is to support the application of research into policies that directly impact communities.

Healthier Lives has established an implementation network to bring researchers and community-based health providers together to help take innovative health programmes from research into community practice.

Despite these and other initiatives, it is still unclear what mechanisms there are within government to receive and assess all this evidence and to prioritise it for implementation.

Using evidence to improve New Zealanders’ health

How do other countries use evidence to inform health decision-making processes?

In the UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) produces evidence-based recommendations developed by independent committees with both professional and lay membership. In Finland, a country of similar size to New Zealand, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare carries out extensive research on population health and provides evidence-based information to support government decision-making.

A significant amount of New Zealand taxpayers’ money is spent on health research ($140 million per year). According to the 2020 Kantar NZHR opinion poll, New Zealanders consider this investment a high priority. They want to see it leading to improvements in the healthcare system and preventive programmes.

Read more:
Scientists don’t share their findings for fun – they want their research to make a difference

New Zealand researchers produce high-quality evidence that could improve people’s health here and around the world. Conversely, a lot of international research is relevant here. We should be taking full advantage of this.

As Aotearoa New Zealand continues reforming its health system, we’re hopeful that transparent and adequately resourced mechanisms will be put in place within government to assess and prioritise research evidence. The recently established Public Health Advisory Committee is a step in the right direction.

To make sure research informs health policy is not a trivial undertaking. But it is necessary if we are to maximise our investment in health research and ultimately improve the health and wellbeing of all New Zealanders.

Jim Mann receives National Science Challenge funding from MBIE, and research funding from The Riddet Institute Centre of Research Excellence.

– ref. NZ’s evidence-based response to COVID has saved lives – we could do better when it comes to other major diseases – https://theconversation.com/nzs-evidence-based-response-to-covid-has-saved-lives-we-could-do-better-when-it-comes-to-other-major-diseases-193933

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Romane H. Cristescu, Researcher in Koala, Detection Dogs, Conservation Genetics and Ecology, University of the Sunshine Coast

Koalas are an iconic endangered species living in a fire-prone environment. This makes them an ideal subject when investigating solutions to wildfires.

We explored how koalas fared before and after cultural burns on Minjerribah island (also known as North Stradbroke Island), near Brisbane on Quandamooka Country.

We used heat-seeking drones to assess population density and collected koala droppings to check hormone levels. We found cultural burns had no detectable effect on these parameters.

The project also found the benefits of cultural burns extended far beyond landscape management. We hope this research further highlights the practice of cultural burning as a strategy to help us manage the risk of wildfire in a warming world.

Read more:
‘Failure is not an option’: after a lost decade on climate action, the 2020s offer one last chance

Menacing megafires

The Australian Black Summer bushfires shocked the world. But nothing brought home the terrifying ferocity of the megafires – and our vulnerability to them – more than scenes of dead, dying or distressed koalas in an apocalyptic landscape.

Unfortunately, there’s overwhelming evidence that megafires are part of the new normal. Climate change will continue to create the exceptionally dry fuel loads and dangerous fire weather that lead to catastrophic events. So we need to find ways to minimise the damage.

Read more:
Moving beyond America’s war on wildfire: 4 ways to avoid future megafires

Ancestral practices of cultural burning hold great promise all over the world. The California Fire Science Consortium says fire fuel control, such as that derived from cultural burning, can limit the severity of future wildfires.

Minjerribah is a haven for wildlife. Half of the land is already national park and there are plans to increase the protected area.

Cultural burns have been a significant part of Minjerribah’s history. However, in recent times, large and intense fires have swept across the island, causing considerable damage to property, ecosystems and cultural resources. A megafire on Minjerribah in January 2014 burned more than 70% of the island – the largest fire in memory there.

Living on the edge

There is scant research on wildfires and koalas. That’s largely because wildfires are dangerous and unpredictable, making them difficult to study. And when monitored koalas happen to be in the path of a wildfire, researchers tend to try to save them.

Koalas are particularly vulnerable, suffering long after the fire has passed. They have limited energy reserves and require continuous access to food.

That’s a problem when trees lose their edible leaves. These trees typically require months to produce enough new foliage. After a fire, koalas are also vulnerable to overheating, because they rely on shade and cooling from healthy trees with thick canopies to regulate their body temperature.

Read more:
Scientists find burnt, starving koalas weeks after the bushfires

The koalas on Minjerribah are virtually disease-free, making this a rare and precious population in southeast Queensland. Wildfires pose the greatest threat to their survival, according to the Quandamooka Native Title rights administrators, Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation (QYAC). It is hoped restoring cultural fire practices will reduce the occurrence of large bushfires.

Cultural burning on Quandamooka Country

If cultural burning was a person, one might describe her as patient, slow-moving, calm and quiet. A cultural burn will snake slowly through a site, missing some patches. This creates a burn mosaic.

The fire is not too hot and does not burn high into the tree canopy.

Use of fire in the landscape varied across Australia, between different First Nations groups. Uses for fire can include: fuel and hazard reduction, regeneration of habitat, generation of and management of particular sources of food, fibre and medicines, facilitation of access and movement, protection of cultural and natural assets, or healing Country’s spirit.

Quandamooka people have the oldest published archaeological occupation site on the east coast of Australia. Their use of fire is a deliberate and integral part of caring for Country. That includes burning and prevention of burning.

As leaders and practitioners of cultural burns on Minjerribah, the Quandamooka people wanted to establish standard practices for wildlife management during burning – specifically, whether thermal imaging drones could establish where koalas and other animals are present in areas to be burnt. This could inform actions to reduce risk.

Studying koalas and cultural burning

Koalas are difficult to study, as they are exceptionally good at hiding. That has prompted researchers to find more innovative survey methods.

We used heat-seeking drones to establish koala density, and koala droppings to study their hormone levels. We established a baseline of both measures through repeat surveys prior to the burns.

We also compared sites with and without cultural burns, accounting for seasonal variations that are not due to the burns. We found cultural burns had no detectable impact on either koala density, or hormone levels.

Multiple benefits of more feet on Country

A perfect cultural burn is lit the right way, at the right place and time of year. Some years, only some places can be burnt, based on the fire interval and soil moisture levels. This requires local knowledge and constant observation all year round, not just during a single pre-burn site visit.

Having people on Country throughout the year also improves social connections between generations, and protects stories and sacred sites on Country. Other benefits include:

• employment
• reducing the risk of megafires
• supporting low-carbon economies
• improving biodiversity
• increasing water protection
• improving forest resilience and adaptation to climate change
• reducing air pollution
• fostering reconciliation.

Of course, this needs to be financially supported and done right – following the guiding principles of Responsibility, Respect and Recognition. It’s crucial that First Nations people of the specific land are involved. The process should also be embedded within contemporary natural resource management and supported by government agencies.

Teamwork vital to success

As the world warms, we must become increasingly resilient and work together to find solutions. We can draw on past successes as we shape new and better ways of managing landscapes.

Compassion will play an important role, including the need to listen and respect all contributions even as the world around us is increasingly stressful, so we can create a better future for all.

Romane H. Cristescu has received funding from WWF-Australia and the Queensland Department of Environment and Science (DES) for this research.

QYAC received funding from WWF and the Queensland Department of Environment and Science (DES) to undertake this work.

Kye McDonald has received funding from WWF-Australia and the Queensland Department of Environment and Science (DES) for this research.

– ref. Cultural burning is safer for koalas and better for people too – https://theconversation.com/cultural-burning-is-safer-for-koalas-and-better-for-people-too-200997

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Lowe, Emeritus Professor, School of Science, Griffith University

Within ten years, Australia could be in possession of three American-made Virginia-class nuclear submarines under the AUKUS agreement with the United States and United Kingdom. The following decade, we plan to build five next-generation nuclear submarines.

To date, criticism of the deal has largely focused on whether our unstable geopolitical environment and China’s military investment means it’s worth spending up to A$368 billion on eight submarines as a deterrent.

But nuclear submarines mean nuclear waste. And for decades, Australia has failed to find a suitable place for the long-term storage of our small quantities of low and intermediate level nuclear waste from medical isotopes and the Lucas Heights research reactor.

With this deal, we have committed ourselves to managing highly radioactive reactor waste when these submarines are decommissioned – and guarding it, given the fuel for these submarines is weapons-grade uranium.

Where will it be stored? The government says it will be on defence land, making the most likely site Woomera in South Australia.

What nuclear waste will we have to deal with?

Under this deal, Australia will not manufacture nuclear reactors. The US and later the UK will give Australia “complete, welded power units” which do not require refuelling over the lifetime of the submarine.

In this, we’re following the US model, where each submarine is powered by a reactor with fuel built in. When nuclear subs are decommissioned, the reactor is pulled out as a complete unit and treated as waste.

Read more:
Radioactive waste isn’t going away. We’ve found a new way to trap it in minerals for long-term storage

An official fact sheet about this deal states Australia “has committed to managing all radioactive waste generated through its nuclear-powered submarine program, including spent nuclear fuel, in Australia”.

What does this waste look like? When Virginia-class submarines are decommissioned, you have to pull out the “small” reactor and dispose of it. Small, in this context, is relative. It’s small compared to nuclear power plants. But it weighs over 100 tonnes, and contains around 200 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, which is nuclear weapons-grade material.

So, when our first three subs are at the end of their lives – which, according to defence minister Richard Marles, will be in about 30 years time – we will have 600kg of so-called “spent fuel” and potentially tonnes of irradiated material from the reactor and its protective walls. Because the fuel is weapons-grade material, it will need military-scale security.

Australia has no long-term storage facility

There’s one line in the fact sheet which stands out. The UK and US “will assist Australia in developing this capability, leveraging Australia’s decades of safely and securely managing radioactive waste domestically”.

This statement glosses over the tense history of our efforts to manage our much less dangerous radioactive waste.

For decades, the Australian government has been trying to find a single site for disposal of low-level radioactive waste. These are the lightly contaminated items produced in nuclear medicine and laboratory research. The low levels of ionising radiation these items produce means burying them under a few metres of soil is enough to reduce the radiation until it’s little more than the background radiation we all receive from the rocks under our feet, the buildings we live and work in and the technologies we use.

Even though these wastes are comparatively benign, every single proposal has run into strong local opposition. The most recent plans to locate a dump at Kimba, on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula is still bogged down in the legal system due to opposition by local communities and First Nations groups

And we’re still dithering about what to do with the intermediate level waste produced by the OPAL research reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney. At present, spent fuel is sent to France for reprocessing while nuclear waste is now being returned to Australia, where it is held in a temporary store near the reactor.

This waste needs to be permanently isolated from ecosystems and human society, given it will take tens of thousands of years for the radiation to decay to safe levels.

Our allies have not figured out long-term waste storage either

But while Sweden and Finland are building secure storage systems in stable rock layers 500 metres underground, neither the UK nor the US have moved beyond temporary storage.

UK efforts to manage waste from decommissioned nuclear submarines is still at the community consultation stage. At present, high-level waste from sub reactors is removed and taken to Sellafield, a long-established nuclear site near the border with Scotland. But each submarine still holds around one tonne of intermediate level waste, which, according to the UK government, has to be temporarily stored until a long-term underground storage facility is built some time after 2040.

Read more:
AUKUS submarine plan will be the biggest defence scheme in Australian history. So how will it work?

In the US, spent fuel and intermediate waste from nuclear submarines is still in temporary storage. After the Obama administration scrapped the long-debated plan to store waste underneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada, no other option has emerged. As a result, nuclear waste from their military and civilian reactors is just piling up with no long-term solution in sight. Successive administrations have kicked the can down the road, assuring the public a permanent geological disposal site will be developed some time in the future.

This should be concerning. To manage the waste from our proposed nuclear submarines properly, we’ll have to develop systems and sites which do not currently exist in Australia.

In 2016, South Australia’s Royal Commission on nuclear fuel suggested Australia’s geological stability and large areas of unpopulated land would position us well to act as a permanent place to store the world’s nuclear waste.

This hasn’t come to pass in any form. An almost intractable problem is that any proposed site will be on the traditional land of a First Nations group. Every site suggested to date has been opposed by its Traditional Owners.

What if we send the high-level waste overseas for processing and bring it back as less dangerous intermediate waste? It’s possible, given it’s what we already do with waste from the OPAL reactor. But that still leaves us with the same problem: where do you permanently store this waste. That’s one we haven’t solved in the 70 years since Australia first entered the nuclear age with our original HIFAR reactor at Lucas Heights.

Read more:
The future of nuclear waste: what’s the plan and can it be safe?

Ian Lowe was a member of the Radiation Health and Safety Advisory council for twelve years and was a member of the Expert Advisory Committee for the South Australia Royal Commission on the Nuclear Industry

– ref. Australia hasn’t figured out low-level nuclear waste storage yet – let alone high-level waste from submarines – https://theconversation.com/australia-hasnt-figured-out-low-level-nuclear-waste-storage-yet-let-alone-high-level-waste-from-submarines-201781

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Director, Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre; Professor of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University

Eight million Australians have experienced violence since the age of 15, according to new findings of the fourth Personal Safety Survey released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The results confirm that domestic, family and sexual violence remain a national crisis in Australia.

Headline findings show that since the age of 15 years old:

• one in four women, and one in 14 men, have experienced intimate partner violence

• one in five women, and one in 16 men, have experienced sexual violence

• one in three women, and two in five men, have experienced physical violence

• one in five women, and one in 15 men, have experienced stalking.

The Personal Safety Survey collected data from 12,000 Australian women and men on the form and extent of violence they had experienced since the age of 15. Only Australians over the age of 18 were surveyed.

This survey is unique because it captures people’s experiences from March 2021 and May 2022, during the height of the pandemic. Schools were closed across the country and many cities had extensive lockdown periods with work-from-home mandates that reduced interactions between colleagues.

The gendered nature of violence

The findings provide further evidence that violence in Australia is gendered. Women are more likely to experience all forms of violence within an intimate partner relationship, including physical, sexual, emotional and economic abuse. Men are more likely to experience violence from strangers.

Women are more likely to experience childhood abuse, both physical and sexual, with 18% of women and 11% of men reporting such an experience during their childhood.

How is violence changing in Australia?

The pandemic means the survey findings should be interpreted with caution, and context is key. Many questions, for instance, focused on experiences of violence in the previous 12 months, which for many Australians will have included lockdown periods.

The findings do indicate a reduction in physical and emotional violence experienced by men and women compared to the 2016 findings. There was also a reduction in the prevalence of sexual harassment and stalking.

However, we need to remember the reduced use of public spaces and workplaces during the pandemic, as well as changes in people’s lifestyles. This could be a reason why victimisation rates were lower during this time.

The survey shows, however, that rates of sexual violence remained stubbornly persistent. This highlights the importance of the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children’s commitment to bring “addressing sexual violence out of the shadows”.

For the first time, the survey also captured economic abuse by partners who lived together, which is defined as behaviours or actions “aimed at preventing or controlling a person’s access to economic resources, causing them emotional harm or fear”.

The survey shows that one in six women and one in 13 men have experienced this type of abuse since the age of 15.

Hidden victimisation: what we don’t know

Among the limitations of the survey is that it does not collect data specifically on the experiences of First Nations people. Budget commitments have been made for the Australian Bureau of Statistics to develop the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Personal Safety Survey. This is critically needed.

The findings today also do not capture the rate of violence specifically experienced by Australians with diverse gender and sexual identities, as well as people with disability.

There are also limits in the data collected in very remote areas of Australia. The findings do not provide information about differences in urban and non-urban victimisation rates. In a country as geographically dispersed as Australia, we need these insights.

Read more:
We’re missing opportunities to identify domestic violence perpetrators. This is what needs to change

Findings from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health, for instance, reveal the lifetime prevalence rate of domestic violence is higher in rural, regional and remote areas than in cities.

Also absent are the voices of Australians under the age of 18. Given the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children’s call for children to be recognised as victim-survivors in their own right, this is a notable gap.

Survey participants do reflect on prior experiences of child abuse and witnessing parental violence before the age of 15. It found:

• one in six women, and one in nine men, experienced childhood abuse

• one in six women, and one in nine men, witnessed parental violence during childhood.

Engaging children in this type of data collection can be challenging, but we need to improve our understandings of their experiences of violence and make space for their voices in national conversations.

It’s encouraging to see the survey now including a wider range of harms. For future iterations, however, we also need information about technology-facilitated abuse, including using digital media and devices to abuse, harass and stalk and non-consensual sharing of images.

We must also ensure the survey captures different forms of intimate partner violence that happen within the one abusive relationship. Presently, the survey only records discrete acts and incidents of violence. However, research shows that many abusive behaviours are interconnected and occur as a pattern of abuse.

Read more:
When it comes to family violence, young women are too often ignored

The need for more investment

The survey provides evidence of the scale of the problem of violence in the country. There is an urgent need to bolster funding and initiatives that prevent and respond to all forms of gender-based violence.

Advocates have critiqued the government’s commitment of A$386 billion for nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS deal. In comparison, less than 1% of that has been invested in tackling violence against women, despite the national plan’s pledge last year to eliminate gender-based violence in one generation.

Personal Safety Surveys will continue to document the gendered dimension of violence in Australia and the insecurity of women’s lives unless we tackle the underlying causes of violence. This survey must be a call to increase our focus on preventing violence and dismantling gender inequality in all settings across Australia.

Kate receives funding for family violence related research from the Australian Research Council, Australian Institute of Criminology, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, the Victorian Government and the Department of Social Services. In 2021 Kate led the National Plan Stakeholder and Victim-Survivor Advocates Consultation Projects. This piece is written by Kate Fitz-Gibbon in her capacity as Director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre and are wholly independent of Kate Fitz-Gibbon’s role as Chair of Respect Victoria.

Bridget Harris receives funding for family violence and technology-facilitated abuse research from the Australian Research Council and Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communication and the Arts and has previously received funding from The eSafety Commissioner and the Australian Institute of Criminology.

– ref. New data shows 1 in 3 women have experienced physical violence and sexual violence remains stubbornly persistent – https://theconversation.com/new-data-shows-1-in-3-women-have-experienced-physical-violence-and-sexual-violence-remains-stubbornly-persistent-201758

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Meade, Senior Research Fellow, Auckland University of Technology

With soaring mortgage rates expected to strain household budgets, there are calls – including from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand – for the Commerce Commission to investigate bank profits.

But rising profits and the widening margin between lending and borrowing rates mean the Reserve Bank is doing its job as much as it’s a sign of anti-competitive conduct.

The Reserve Bank’s overarching goals are to fight inflation and ensure financial stability. To achieve these, it does two things that the commission would normally frown upon.

First, the Reserve Bank runs the country’s largest legal price-fixing operation.

It does this by setting the official cash rate and by influencing banks’ expectations about its future changes. The official cash rate sets the interest rates on the deposits and loans registered banks have with the Reserve Bank, in turn affecting banks’ own lending and deposit rates.

Raising the official cash rate, and therefore the cost of borrowing, is one of the RBNZ’s principal tools for reducing inflation. However, higher interest rates can increase bank profits, not least because a low official cash rate shrinks profit margins by making it harder for banks to reduce the interest rates paid on deposits.

If ordinary competitors manipulated prices like this, the commission would investigate them for price fixing.

Price fixing to avert a meltdown

Until the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), deposit rates were closely in step with the official cash rate. When the Reserve Bank responded to the crisis by slashing the rate, mortgage and deposit rates followed suit.

But during the same period, deposit interest rates continued to track higher than the official cash rate and margins between lending and deposit rates fell significantly.

Read more:
As NZ workers and households tighten their belts, why not a windfall tax on corporate mega-profits too?

When COVID-19 stuck in early 2020, the official cash rate fell to historic lows. But deposit rates fell harder than lending rates, with banks’ lending margins jumping dramatically.

Soaring house prices bolstered demand for loans. Meanwhile, the banks’ need to offer competitive deposit rates was dampened due to the Reserve Bank’s support of cheap wholesale funding.

Hence the Reserve Bank’s price fixing averted financial meltdowns by, in part, preserving bank profitability.

Clamping down on competition

The second thing the Reserve Bank does that the commission normally dislikes is that it restricts the entry of another competitor, by setting and enforcing the rules on which entities are able to operate as banks.

The Reserve Bank also imposes conditions on how banks operate, such as requiring them to maintain minimum levels of capital.

That way the Reserve Bank limits risk in the financial sector by stopping unsafe operators from becoming banks and ensuring existing operators operate prudently.

As in other sectors, limiting competitive entry can make existing banks more profitable. The required minimum reserves of capital can also increase profits. Indeed, limiting bank sector competition has long been, until recently at least, considered important for financial stability. It reduces banks’ incentive to boost profits by taking risky bets using depositors’ money.

As for price fixing, the commission would normally take enforcement action if an organisation deliberately restricted competitive entry. But, as discussed above, the RBNZ has solid policy rationales for its approach.

Providing a ‘reference price’

In this regard, the Reserve Bank is not alone. Governments fix medicine prices to ensure accessibility and set minimum wages to support low-wage workers. The competitive impact of pricing focal points – such as those created by minimum wages or the official cash rate – can also be seen in other sectors.

In 2017, I co-authored a study into fuel pricing that recommended a reference fuel price published on one firm’s website be removed, which promptly happened. The commission subsequently undertook its own fuel sector study, providing evidence that removing this reference price resulted in reduced fuel margins.

The official cash rate is similarly a reference price for banks to use to set their own interest rates rather than openly compete for customers. So its use by the Reserve Bank can be expected to affect banks’ profit margins.

Finding a balance

Clearly a balance is required between effectively fighting inflation and maintaining financial stability on the one hand, and promoting greater competition on the other. Strengthening bank sector competition should lead to sharper interest rates. But it will also affect how official cash rate changes feed through to wider interest rates and could lead banks to take greater risks.

So, before the commission is charged with scrutinising bank competition, consider the following questions. First, are growing bank profits due to banks acting anti-competitively, the Reserve Bank fighting inflation and preserving financial stability, or both?

Read more:
Too big to fail. The risks to Australian taxpayers from New Zealand banks

Second, if bank profits are indeed excessive and due to anti-competitive behaviour, are there measures the commission could recommend and practically implement that would improve outcomes?

Finally, if bank profits are excessive, and at least partly due to the Reserve Bank doing its job, would interventions by the commission to improve competition worsen financial stability or frustrate the fight against inflation?

Answering these questions will need both the commission and the Reserve Bank to have serious conversations about how competition policy and banking regulation can be made to work together to achieve better outcomes for both bank customers and the wider economy. Little would be gained by improving bank competition if that reduces financial stability or worsens inflation.

Dr Richard Meade is a Senior Research Fellow at Auckland University of Technology, Principal Economist at Cognitus Economic Insight, and President of the Law & Economics Association of New Zealand. The views expressed in this article are his and not those of the institutions with which he is affiliated.

– ref. Rising bank profits highlight tensions between competition watchdogs and central banks – https://theconversation.com/rising-bank-profits-highlight-tensions-between-competition-watchdogs-and-central-banks-201851

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna C. Lewis, PhD Candidate, UNSW Sydney

Despite the damage humans cause to the planet, in some cases wildlife can benefit from the presence of people. The Tasmanian devil, for example, frequently feeds on roadkill left by humans.

But our new research suggests this apparent benefit can come at a cost.

We compared the diets of Tasmanian devil populations living in three types of habitat, by examining their whiskers. We found in many cases, Tasmanian devils may be mostly eating foods inadvertently provided by humans. Accessing this food changed the behaviours of Tasmanian devils – and potentially put them in harm’s way.

Our findings are especially important given the risks to Tasmanian devils posed by an aggressive facial tumour disease. If we’re to protect this endangered species, we must conserve environments untouched by humans.

What are Tasmanian devils eating?

The Tasmanian devil is the biggest carnivorous marsupial in the world. It used to be found on mainland Australia but now wild populations are only found in Tasmania.

Tasmanian devils rarely hunt prey. But they’re highly effective scavengers, thanks to their sharp sense of smell, bone-crushing jaws and energy-efficient movement.

Animals that scavenge for food are “opportunistic feeders” – in other words, they eat whatever they happen to find. This usually means scavengers have a varied diet.

But our previous research found Tasmanian devils have remarkably restricted diets. To find out why, we examined Tasmanian devil whiskers. A single whisker can provide a window into the animal’s past.

We used a technique called “stable isotope analysis”, which enabled us to measure nitrogen and carbon incorporated into the devil’s whiskers as it grows. We matched the chemical composition of the whiskers with potential food items, to determine what the devil ate weeks or months ago. Then we looked at how this varied between individuals living in different habitats.

The technique has been used to describe the diets of early humans and extinct species. It’s also been used to study the migration patterns of wide-ranging birds and marine mammals.

Read more:
If wildlife vigilantes smuggle Tassie devils to the Australian mainland, the animals could live in secret for 20 years

And the results?

We found devil populations in highly disturbed landscapes, such as cleared farmland, fed on just one type of food – medium-sized mammals such as the Tasmanian pademelon.

This is perhaps unsurprising. Pademelons are very common in farming areas, and often end up as roadkill. So Tasmanian devils have little reason to scavenge for any other types of food.

We also examined the diets of devils in eucalypt forest which had been logged and regenerated. These animals also had relatively restricted diets. The result suggests these forests may not have had time to develop mature features such as tree hollows to shelter bird life, a process which can take up to 140 years.

However, the results were different for devil populations in old-growth rainforest habitats which have never been logged. There, devil diets were diverse. Larger devils tended to eat mammals such as Tasmanian pademelons and brushtail possums, and smaller devils consumed birds such as green rosellas.

These populations may offer insight into what devil foraging behaviour was like before European settlement.

Read more:
Meet Moss, the detection dog helping Tassie devils find love

Saving wild landscapes

You might think reliable access to food inadvertently provided by humans would benefit Tasmanian devils. But in fact, it can come with hidden dangers.

The presence of roadkill poses risks to devils; they can be attracted to roads and become roadkill themselves. In 2021, more than 100 devils were reportedly killed by motorists on just one stretch of road in north-west Tasmania.

And if members of the same species are interacting around a smaller number of carcasses – or in the case of roadkill, the largest and most desirable carcasses – this could encourage the spread of devil facial tumour disease.

Over the past 25 years the disease – an aggressive, transmittable parasitic cancer is – has caused Tasmania’s devil population to fall by 68%. And this year the disease was detected for the first time in Tasmania’s north-west, from the same population as many devils in our study.

A vaccine distributed by edible baits is being developed. But in the meantime, a more diverse diet could reduce a devil’s risk of transmitting the disease to others, or catching it.

Only in old-growth rainforests did devils have a diverse diet that lived up to their reputation as opportunists. The results suggest conserving these wild landscapes is vital to protecting Tasmanian devils.

Read more:
Thousands of Tasmanian devils are dying from cancer – but a new vaccine approach could help us save them

Anna C. Lewis receives funding from The Winifred Violet Scott Charitable Trust and The Carnivore Conservancy.

Tracey Rogers receives funding from Australian Research Council and The Winifred Violet Scott Charitable Foundation

– ref. Tasmanian devil whiskers hold the key to protecting these super-scavengers – https://theconversation.com/tasmanian-devil-whiskers-hold-the-key-to-protecting-these-super-scavengers-201468

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Sanders, Senior Research Fellow on Law and the Future of War, The University of Queensland

The issue of nuclear non-proliferation is back in the headlines, thanks to details announced yesterday at a US navy base of a deal involving Australia’s purchase of nuclear submarines.

The AUKUS plan, which may cost Australia upwards of A$300 billion over the next 30 years, involves Australia purchasing three Virginia-class nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines by the early 2030s. Australia will also build its own nuclear powered submarines using US nuclear technology by the 2050s.

Australia, the US and the UK have said the deal complies with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

But China has said the AUKUS deal represents “the illegal transfer of nuclear weapon materials, making it essentially an act of nuclear proliferation.”

So what are Australia’s obligations under the existing nuclear non-proliferation regime and does this deal comply?

To answer this question, you need to know a bit more about two key treaties Australia has signed up to: the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (sometimes shortened to NPT) and the 1986 Raratonga Treaty.

Read more:
Progress in detection tech could render submarines useless by the 2050s. What does it mean for the AUKUS pact?

What is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty essentially requires nuclear weapon states who are a part of the treaty (US, UK, China, Russia and France) to not pass nuclear weapons or technology to non-nuclear weapons states. Of course, other countries do have nuclear weapons but they are not part of the treaty.

Crucially, the treaty only relates to the use of nuclear materials associated with nuclear weapons. It has a specific carve-out in it for the provision of nuclear materials for “peaceful purposes” (in Article 4).

The treaty also outlines processes to ensure the International Atomic Energy Agency monitors nuclear programs and nuclear materials even if used for peaceful purposes (including uranium and the technology to use it).

Australia has a number of subsidiary arrangements with the International Atomic Energy Agency that outline how these safeguard arrangements work.

Despite what critics may say, Australia’s nuclear-powered engines under AUKUS comply with the written rules of the treaty and these subsidiary agreements.

On the face of it, you might think the term “peaceful purposes” would rule out use for military submarine propulsion. But the definition focuses on using nuclear material for purposes that don’t involve the design, acquisition, testing or use of nuclear weapons.

All AUKUS partners have emphasised the nuclear-powered submarines Australia is to acquire will only carry conventional weapons (not nuclear weapons).

Australia’s agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency clarifies what is covered by the treaty and the concept of peaceful purposes.

Article 14 of this agreement says “non-proscribed military purposes” are allowed.

Effectively, the Australian government has interpreted this to mean nuclear materials can be used for naval nuclear vessel propulsion. That is a usage unrelated to nuclear weapons or explosive devices.

Some have suggested this argument creates a risky precedent that nuclear materials – beyond the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency – could be used to make weapons.

But Australia has undertaken to comply with its safeguard obligations with the International Atomic Energy Agency for the AUKUS deal.

This builds on its existing practice around nuclear materials held for other “peaceful purposes” (like research and medical purposes).

What does the Raratonga Treaty require?

Australia is also a signatory to the Raratonga Treaty (also known as the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty).

This treaty is a regional agreement that supports the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Signatories to the Raratonga Treaty have effectively agreed to maintaining a nuclear weapon-free zone in the South Pacific.

The Raratonga Treaty entered into force in 1986. It provides that no “nuclear explosive devices” can enter the nuclear-free zone outlined in the agreement. It also includes other limitations on the distribution and acquisition of nuclear fissile material (which are materials that can be used in a nuclear bomb) unless subject to specific safeguards.

The Raratonga Treaty accounts for differences in opinion regarding Australia and New Zealand’s approach to vessels carrying nuclear weapons (New Zealand does not allow nuclear-weapons carrying vessels to visit its ports, while Australia does).

But more importantly for the AUKUS deal, this treaty does not strictly exclude a signatory from using nuclear propulsion. That’s as long as the engine is not considered

a nuclear weapon or other explosive device capable of releasing nuclear energy, irrespective of the purpose for which it could be used.

Providing the engines meet this definition, the AUKUS deal complies with the Raratonga Treaty as well.

Australia will have particular obligations under this treaty to deal with the nuclear waste.

Defence Minister Richard Marles has outlined that waste from the vessels will be kept on Department of Defence land on Australian territory (and not disposed of at sea).

In accordance with international law

More detail is still to come. But the US and UK have decided the risks involved in sharing nuclear propulsion technology with Australia are worth it to hedge against more aggressive China.

On the face of the announcements made so far, the deal complies with international law, despite accusations to the contrary from China and other critics.

Read more:
View from The Hill: Anthony Albanese finds Scott Morrison’s AUKUS clothes a good fit

In addition to her role as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, Lauren Sanders works as a legal consultant with a law firm, advising Defence industry on international humanitarian law and weapons law issues. Any comments made here are in her personal capacity and do not represent the views of the Australian government or the Australian Defence Force.

– ref. If AUKUS is all about nuclear submarines, how can it comply with nuclear non-proliferation treaties? A law scholar explains – https://theconversation.com/if-aukus-is-all-about-nuclear-submarines-how-can-it-comply-with-nuclear-non-proliferation-treaties-a-law-scholar-explains-201760

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Camp, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland

This year has seen the release of a varied collection of nostalgic films about film making. Damien Chazelle’s Babylon looks at the excesses of 1920s and 30s Hollywood; Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans explores the position of film in the director’s own childhood in the 1960s, and Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light is about a cinema in 1980s England.

These cinematic looks back offer film composers a challenge: how should they musicalise the past of their medium while adhering to the expectations of contemporary audiences? Two of these films’ composers were nominated for Academy Awards for best score: Justin Hurwtiz for Babylon and John Williams for The Fabelmans. Neither won, but Hurwitz and Williams take opposing yet equally successful approaches to this challenge.

Both scores have been met with largely positive critical reception, the music being one of many points of excellence critics have found with The Fabelmans but one of the few they have found with Babylon.

Nostalgia and the score

While both films use music to evoke nostalgia for the times in which they are set, the effects are very different.

Hurwitz’s massive score for Babylon goes along with the excess of every other aspect of the film, while Williams’s modest work for The Fabelmans adds subtle emphasis to a delicate story. Hurwitz’s score plays through well over half of the three-hour Babylon, while Williams’ for The Fabelmans only takes up 20 minutes (including the end credits).

Notably, neither Hurwitz or Williams write in the currently dominating style of soundscape-based film music best exemplified by the work of Hans Zimmer, a style to which last year’s set of Oscar nominees adhered more consistently.

Of the other nominated scores, Son Lux’s for Everything Everywhere All At Once is a kitchen-sink pop extravaganza and Carter Burwell’s for The Banshees of Inisherin is a finely-wrought chamber score. One might have hoped that the fact that only one nominated score this year, Volker Bertelmann’s for All Quiet on the Western Front, is in the Zimmer style presages greater variety in film scoring in the years to come. That it went on to win suggests otherwise.

Hybrid music

In Babylon, Hurwitz places tropes and topics of 1920s popular music into a 21st century context. From the 1920s, we have choirs of saxophones, muted trumpets, the syncopations of early jazz, and honky-tonk pianos. From the 2020s come cyclical melodic modules, chord-based harmonic gestures, and trance-like repetition – all recorded in clean multi-channel audio.

Read more:
The nightmarish underside of the dream factory: how Babylon captures Hollywood in the 1920s

Hurwitz also throws in a healthy dose of the 1960s jazz-based film scoring style of Michel Legrand, Henry Mancini, and Lalo Schifrin.

This hybrid of ‘20s, ‘60s, and “today” has frequently been used in American films and television shows about films and television. The recent Netflix series Hollywood was scored (by Nathan Barr) in much the same way, although it is set in the late 1940s.

I date the popularity of this style to the innovative and influential backstage TV show 30 Rock, where composer Jeff Richmond took a postmodern approach to the big band styles of earlier decades to musicalise the fast-paced and absurd goings-on in the New York late night TV comedy world.

Past and emotion

Williams’s score for The Fabelmans could hardly be more different. Piano and celesta solos feature with a small orchestra playing Williams’ rich and subtly shifting chromatic harmonies.

This is the kind of music that, if not so carefully arranged with every note in the right place, could have quickly become saccharine. But Williams’s score only enters the film at a few key moments. The film’s soundscape consists primarily of music from the 1960s when the film is set (a technique of place-making more frequently used by Martin Scorsese than by Spielberg) and the piano music played by lead character Sammy Fabelman’s mother Mitzi (Michelle Williams), a character based strongly on Spielberg’s own mother Leah, who trained as a concert pianist.

As Sammy becomes a filmmaker his actions and the films he makes are accompanied by pop songs and excerpts from other film scores of the time, while the home atmosphere is largely connected to Mitzi’s own piano playing. The score is used primarily for emotionally charged moments between mother and son.

I read the presence of the score as Spielberg reflecting on these moments from his past – Williams scores the director’s emotional memory, while the pop songs and piano pieces are more literal nods to the years in which the film is set. All of the film’s music is about personal nostalgia shared with the audience by the director (compared to Babylon, where the nostalgia is not linked to personal memories of filmmaking and family but rather to the medium of film itself).

Read more:
Winning everything everywhere all at once: 5 experts on the big moments at the Oscars 2023

Williams’s most poignantly scored scene takes place during a family camping trip, where Mitzi spontaneously and lyrically dances for the family. The music provides focus to the scene, creating a sonic link between the mother as she dances and the son as he films her. The rest of the world seems to melt away as the filmmakers centre on music, light, and movement.

Hurwitz and Williams both musicalise the film-making process in both its procedural and emotional aspects. Both show excellent technical skill, Williams at the golden age end of his career and Hurwitz still at the beginning of his.

Gregory Camp 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. Hollywood, memory and family: how The Fabelmans and Babylon both use music to evoke nostalgia – https://theconversation.com/hollywood-memory-and-family-how-the-fabelmans-and-babylon-both-use-music-to-evoke-nostalgia-201658

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Victoria’s Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

The United States Environmental Protection Agency has announced new limits on the toxic “forever chemicals” – perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – in drinking water.

The announcement comes amid rising concern about PFAS, which persist in the environment, are ubiquitous and do not break down over time.

The carbon and fluorine PFAS compounds have been used in myriad domestic and industrial products from non-stick cookware to cosmetics to firefighting foams and fabric treatments. This week, a group of researchers said toilet paper should be considered a potential source (but more on that later).

Every household is more likely than not to have dusts containing PFAS chemicals at low concentrations; forming a route of exposure for the people living there. But how worried should we be about the risks to our personal health linked to these forever chemicals?

Read more:
Regulating ‘forever chemicals’: 3 essential reads on PFAS

Harmful impacts

Three specific PFAS chemicals of concern: perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), and perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS) are listed on the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. The convention is a global treaty to protect human health and the environment from chemicals that remain intact in the environment for long periods, become widely distributed geographically, accumulate in the fatty tissue of humans and wildlife, and have harmful impacts on human health or on the environment.

To address PFAS risks and set acceptable limits, Australia has environmental and health guidelines for food, drinking water and recreational water exposures – like those just announced in the US.

The effects of PFAS exposure remain a matter of debate, specifically around the causal links between exposure and poorer human health. Nonetheless, there are clear associations to health outcomes including low fetal weight, impaired immune response, thyroid function abnormalities, obesity, increased lipid levels and liver function and impaired vaccine response.

These associations to disease have been disputed, but it nevertheless remains prudent to minimise exposure to all potentially harmful chemicals.

Read more:
New evidence shows blood or plasma donations can reduce the PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ in our bodies

What about toilet paper though?

The issue in regard to the PFAS in toilet paper study is that consumers do not know the products they are buying contain PFAS. Toilet roll PFAS may have entered the paper as an additive as part of the pulping and manufacturing process. Toilet paper with PFAS adds to the total burden found in wastewater and biosolids. But should we really give a crap?

Yes and no. Yes because it’s not unreasonable for consumers to demand to know if the products they are buying (and rubbing on their nether regions) contain potentially toxic compounds. Some chemicals such as BPA (Bisphenol-A, an an industrial chemical used in plastics manufacturing) have been voluntarily phased out and products that are BPA-free are labelled accordingly.

One concern when swapping out chemicals is that subsitutions are actually more acceptable and are not replaced by something equally concerning. And we should do everything we can to minimise adding persistent, bioaccumalative and toxic chemicals to our environment that are hard to remediate.

On the other hand, we should not worry overly because dermal exposure to PFAS is negligible even from wiping your bum. Most assessments show food and water are the primary sources of PFAS exposure for humans.

And harm from exposure is determined by the dose. Although for some chemicals there is no safe acceptable threshold, ultra low concentrations are typically present in the wider environment away from PFAS sources such as fire stations and training grounds and airports.

Read more:
House dust from 35 countries reveals our global toxic contaminant exposure and health risk

Levels are falling

Australian population exposure levels to regulated PFAS chemicals – PFOA, PFOS and PFHxS – have been falling over the last 20 years despite the fact these chemicals are still present in cosmetics, food packing, cookware, clothes and carpets.

In addition, the Australian Total Diet Study showed only PFOS was detected in five of 112 food types and in less than 2% of all samples. The daily intake of PFOS in the population was identified as being well below public health and safety concerns. Australian food PFAS values were consistently lower than those reported from Europe, the US, United Kingdom and China.

Population exposure concentrations – outside of known contamination hotspots – are low and the risks have been reducing over time. Our prime focus should be improving modifiable social determinants of health such as income, education, employment security, relationships with friends and family. These will result in tangible beneficial health outcomes.

Mark Patrick Taylor is a full-time employee of EPA Victoria, appointed to the statutory role of Chief Environmental Scientist. He is also an Honorary Professor at Macquarie University.

– ref. PFAS might be everywhere – including toilet paper – but let’s keep the health risks in context – https://theconversation.com/pfas-might-be-everywhere-including-toilet-paper-but-lets-keep-the-health-risks-in-context-201785

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr. Louise Boronyak, Research Affiliate, University of Technology Sydney

Since European colonisation, farmers have often viewed dingoes as the enemy, waging war against them to protect their livestock. Farmers felt they had no option but to eradicate dingoes using traps, shooting, poisoned baits (such as 1080) and building a 5,600km long dingo fence, the world’s longest.

Killing dingoes costs millions of dollars each year. But it hasn’t resolved the conflict. In many cases it has made the threat to livestock worse by breaking up dingo families and removing experienced adults which hunt larger, more mobile prey.

The alternative? As some farmers are discovering, there are unexpected benefits of learning to coexist with dingoes instead. As Western Australian cattle grazier David Pollock told us:

I reckon my dingoes are worth $20,000 each, probably more. So, killing them would be the last thing that I did.

Can dingoes really help graziers?

Yes. In many cases, they can be allies for graziers by reducing the competition for pasture from wild herbivores such as kangaroos and goats, as well as killing or scaring off foxes and feral cats.

As our understanding of the importance of predators has grown, a new approach has taken root: human-wildlife coexistence. Recently recognised by the United Nations Convention of Biological Diversity, this field offers a path to stem the global loss of biodiversity by balancing the costs and benefits of living alongside wildlife.

Our new research lays out seven pathways to shift from the routine killing of dingoes towards coexistence.

What does coexistence look like?

One path to coexistence is supporting graziers to adopt effective tools and strategies to reduce the loss of livestock while capitalising on the benefits of large predators. This is known as predator-smart farming

Our research on this area has led to a new Australian guide. This approach relies on a variety of effective non-lethal tools and practices to protect livestock three main ways:

• humans or guardian animals such as dogs and donkeys watch over and defend livestock from dingoes, as well as using fencing to create a physical barrier

• using knowledge about dingo biology and behaviour to find better deterrents, such as the use of lights, sounds or smells

• stronger land management and livestock husbandry to increase the productive
  capacity of pastures and livestock resilience.

This approach helps ensure the livelihoods of farmers remain resilient and makes the most of the benefits of dingoes for productive agricultural landscapes and ecosystem health.

As one New South Wales cattle producer found, these approaches work. He told us:

Three years ago, we were losing 53% of our calves to dingoes. We started looking into alternatives that were cost and time effective and decided to try guardian donkeys. We purchased two jacks (male donkeys) and now we have 94% calving rate. Donkeys saved our business.

So what’s stopping us?

We now know it’s entirely possible to live and farm alongside dingoes. So why do we still resort to lethal control?

Inertia is one barrier to change. The default option is to kill dingoes. Laws, policies and funding by government and industry have institutionalised lethal control.

But there are other barriers, such as a lack of funding for different approaches from government and a lack of support from the community and graziers. Despite this resistance the number of graziers adopting predator smart farming is growing.

To overcome these barriers, we believe it’s important to undertake research alongside graziers to field-test and demonstrate how these methods actually work, and which combinations work best.

Changes like this take time. We also have to build connections and rapport through agricultural networks, as well as tackle the institutional infrastructure built up around dingo control.

It’s natural for farmers, graziers and state government representatives to be sceptical of such a big change. But the status quo isn’t working. Living alongside dingoes could help us make some of the fundamental changes needed to stop the loss of biodiversity.

To that end, public awareness and talking about this openly can help bring something which has long gone unquestioned into the spotlight.

Our research emerged from in-depth interviews with Australian livestock producers, ecologists, conservation and animal welfare groups, industry representatives and policy makers as well as field observations and analysis of Australia’s wild dog action plan.

If we do make progress towards coexisting with dingoes, we could embed predator-smart techniques in the way we farm to boost biodiversity, landscape resilience, food security and livelihoods. We would bring back dingoes as apex predators and regulators of healthy ecosystems. Politics would take a step back, in favour of scientific, evidence-based approaches and First Nations input into environmental policies.

This is not hypothetical. Graziers and landholders already using predator-smart tools and strategies report many benefits. They include:

• fewer animals injured or killed by dingoes
• less time spent stalking and killing dingoes
• lower total grazing pressure from feral grazers such as goats
• boosting pasture growth and livestock profitability.

Landholders for Dingoes promotes the work of landholders who are coexisting with dingoes.

It’s time to modernise Australia’s approach to dingoes. This approach offers a potential win-win for farmers and dingoes, as well as significant gains for nature.

But to make this happen, we will have to shift our attitude towards dingoes, gain support from graziers and other stakeholders, and make non-lethal coexistence tools and approaches the new standard practice.

Read more:
From the dingo to the Tasmanian devil – why we should be rewilding carnivores

Louise Boronyak was funded by the University of Technology Sydney under the UTS Research Excellence Scholarship. She is is a research affiliate of the University of Technology Sydney and Humane Society International Australia

Bradley Smith is an unpaid director of the Australian Dingo Foundation, a non-profit environmental charity
that advocates for dingo conservation. He also serves as a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) dingo working group, which is part of their Species Survival Commission (Canids Specialist Group).

– ref. Killing dingoes is the only way to protect livestock, right? Nope – https://theconversation.com/killing-dingoes-is-the-only-way-to-protect-livestock-right-nope-200905

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ashleigh Elizabeth Smith, Senior Lecturer – Exercise Physiology, University of South Australia

Did you set a New Year’s resolution to kick a bad habit, only to find yourself falling back into old patterns? You’re not alone. In fact, research suggests up to 40% of our daily actions are habits – automatic routines we do without thinking. But how do these habits form, and why are they so difficult to break?

Habits can be likened to riverbeds. A well-established river has a deep bed and water is likely to consistently flow in that direction. A new river has a shallow bed, so the flow of water is not well defined – it can vary course and be less predictable.

Just like water down a riverbed, habits help our behaviour “flow” down a predictable route. But what we are really talking about here is learning and unlearning.

Read more:
Making New Year’s resolutions personal could actually make them stick

What happens in the brain when we form a habit?

During the early stages of habit formation, the decision parts of your brain (pre-frontal cortices) are activated, and the action is very deliberate (instead of hitting snooze you make the choice to get out of bed). When a new routine is initiated, brain circuits – also called neural networks – are activated.

The more often you repeat the new action, the stronger and more efficient these neural networks become. This reorganising and strengthening of connections between neurons is called neuroplasticity, and in the case of building habits – long-term potentiation. Each time you perform the new action while trying to form a habit, you need smaller cues or triggers to activate the same network of brain cells.

Habits strengthen over time as we form associations and earn rewards – for example, not hitting snooze makes getting to work on time easier, so you feel the benefits of your new habit.

Later, as habits strengthen, the decision parts of the brain no longer need to kick in to initiate the action. The habit is now activated in memory and considered automatic: the neural circuits can perform the habit without conscious thought. In other words, you don’t need to choose to perform the action any more.

How long does it really take to form a habit?

Popular media and lifestyle advice from social media influencers often suggest it takes 21 days to make or break a habit – an idea originally presented in the 1960s. This is generally considered an oversimplification, though empirical evidence is surprisingly sparse.

A seminal study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology is often cited as showing habits take anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form, with an average of about 66 days.

In that study, 96 people were asked to choose a new health habit and practice it daily for 84 days. Of the original 96 participants, 39 (41%) successfully formed the habit by the end of the study period. The level of success in forming a habit, and the length of time to form the habit, appeared to vary based on the type of goal.

For example, goals related to drinking a daily glass of water were more likely to be successful, and be performed without conscious thought faster than goals related to eating fruit or exercising. Furthermore, the time of day appeared important, with habits cued earlier in the day becoming automatic more quickly than those cued later in the day (for example, eating a piece of fruit with lunch versus in the evening, and walking after breakfast versus walking after dinner).

The study was fairly small, so these findings aren’t definitive. However, they suggest that if you haven’t been able to embed a new habit in just 21 days, don’t fret – there’s still hope!

What about breaking unwanted habits?

Most of us will also have habits we don’t like – unwanted behaviours. Within the brain, breaking unwanted habits is associated with a different form of neuroplasticity, called long-term depression (not to be confused with the mental health condition).

Instead of strengthening neural connections, long-term depression is the process of weakening them. So, how do you silence two neurons that previously have been firing closely together?

One popular approach to breaking a bad habit is pinpointing the specific cue or trigger that prompts the behaviour, and the reward that reinforces the habit.

For example, someone might bite their nails when feeling stressed, and the reward is a temporary feeling of distraction, or sensory stimulation. Once the person has identified this connection, they can try to experiment with disrupting it. For example, by using a bitter nail polish, and focusing on deep breathing exercises when feeling stressed. Once disrupted, over time the old behaviour of biting their nails can gradually fade.

Read more:
Want to quit a bad habit? Here’s one way to compare treatments

Tips on how to form or break a habit

To break a habit:

• identify your triggers, and then avoid or modify them
• find a substitute: try replacing the old habit with a new and healthier one
• practise self-compassion: setbacks are a natural part of the process. Recommit to your goal and carry on.

To form a habit:

• start small: begin with a simple and achievable habit that you can easily integrate into your daily routine
• be consistent: repeat the habit consistently until it becomes automatic
• reward yourself along the way to stay motivated.

If you think of habits like that riverbed, what deepens a river is the volume of water flowing through. With behaviour, that means repetition and similarity in repetition: practising your new habit. Because new habits might be overwhelming, practising in small chunks can help – so that you are not creating a new riverbed, but maybe just deepening parts of the main stream.

Finding meaning in the new habit is critical. Some studies have reported strong findings that the belief you can change a habit is also critical. Believing in change and being aware of its potential, along with your commitment to practice, is key.

Read more:
Why some people find it easier to stick to new habits they formed during lockdown

Dr Ashleigh Elizabeth Smith receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) and Dementia Australia.

Carol Maher receives funding from the Medical Research Future Fund, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the National Heart Foundation, the SA Department for Education, the SA Department for Innovation and Skills, Healthway, Hunter New England Local Health District, the Central Adelaide Local Health Network, and LeapForward.

Susan Hillier receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Fund (NHMRC) and the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF).

– ref. Here’s what happens in your brain when you’re trying to make or break a habit – https://theconversation.com/heres-what-happens-in-your-brain-when-youre-trying-to-make-or-break-a-habit-201189

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Trembath, Associate Professor, Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University

Navigating a maze of therapies and supports can be difficult for parents of autistic children.

Often, children have multiple learning needs, and attempting to address them one-by-one can take more hours than there are in a week. Attending lots of appointments – while well meaning – may leave little, or no, time for play.

This is why the new National Guideline that outlines how practitioners should work with autistic children and their families is important.

Along with vital information on goal setting, selecting therapies, and measuring outcomes, it seeks a balanced approach that also lets kids be kids.

Read more:
New national autism guideline will finally give families a roadmap for therapy decisions

What the guideline says

The guideline says practitioners working with autistic children should “honour their childhood”, which includes their play, relationships with family and peers, and personal discovery.

This recommendation – like all 84 presented in the guideline – is based on the evidence we synthesised from 49 systematic reviews and consultation with over 1,000 autistic children, young people, and adults; their families; practitioners; and other community members.

The guideline also says practitioners should be child- and family-centred, provide only evidence-based supports, and individualise the type and amount of support for each child and family based on their individual strengths, needs, and circumstances.

The power of play

Play is arguably the most effective way children learn and the benefits are far reaching.

Play helps children develop their social, cognitive, and communication skills, such as sharing their interests with others, taking other people’s perspectives, and solving problems. Play is fun, sparks and satisfies children’s curiosity, and helps them build positive relationships.

This is not to say that play – in the traditional sense – always comes easy to autistic children. For example, autistic children often show reduced symbolic play, such as pretending a doll is picking up a book to read, or that a block moving along a table is a car.

To be diagnosed as autistic, children need to demonstrate restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests, or activities, which can all influence the way they play. A child may have a fascination with numbers or letters, line up toys in a certain order, or show a particular interest in just one part of a toy, rather than the whole.

For this reason, working on play skills has been a common goal of therapies and supports.

However, autistic adults are challenging practitioners to think differently and to value each child’s own way of playing. This might include passions and interests that may appear stereotyped or restricted and repetitive to non-autistic people. They argue these interests, movements, and behaviours can help with self-regulation and should be accepted in society, provided they do not cause the individual harm.

Read more:
From deficits to a spectrum, thinking around autism has changed. Now there are calls for a ‘profound autism’ diagnosis

So what can parents do to promote play and find the right balance?

First, the guideline is clear – supports should be individualised. Too little support – or too much – can be equally problematic for children and families.

Second, it doesn’t need to be a case of play versus supports. Naturalistic play-based therapies and supports have been around for a long time, and are supported by research. These include approaches that help parents adapt to their child’s way of playing, making it more fun, rewarding, and engaging for all involved.

Delivering supports in the community can also be effective, such as in playgroups and at libraries. Inclusive sports, such as nippers, dance, and AFL can help children participate in activities many children and families take for granted.

It is also important parents step back and reflect on what is, and is not, working well for their child and family.

Is their child receiving supports for childhood, or has it becoming a childhood of supports?

If the goal has drifted towards accessing as much support as possible, rather than using supports to help the child’s engagement and enjoyment in everyday activities such as play, than a re-think is warranted.

Read more:
Should ADHD be in the NDIS? Yes, but eligibility for disability supports should depend on the person not their diagnosis

What role can clinicians play? 3 questions to ask

The starting point is listening to children and families when setting goals and discussing supports, and ensuring they stay in control of their own decisions. This includes taking the time to talk through all of their options, and to consider how supports will shape a typical week.

Three questions can help guide this:

• will there be time to play?
• will there be support for play?
• can play be the way we provide support?

Practitioners such as speech pathologists, occupational therapists, psychologists, and educators should also constantly check the supports they are providing are the most helpful for the child and family. Goals may change and new supports may become more effective.

The ultimate goal

The guideline states:

Autistic children deserve a childhood full of love, family, fun, learning, and personal discovery.

This is the type of childhood all children deserve, and an outcome practitioners should strive for, in recommending and delivering supports to autistic children and their families.

David Trembath currently receives funding from the Autism CRC, and his position is co-funded by Griffith University and CliniKids, Telethon Kids Institute.

Andrew Whitehouse also holds the position of Research Strategy Director with the Autism CRC. Andrew Whitehouse receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Autism CRC, and the Angela Wright Bennett Foundation. The National Guideline discussed in this article was authored by David Trembath, Andrew Whitehouse, Kandice Varcin, Hannah Waddington, Rhylee Sulek, Sarah Pillar, Gary Allen, Katharine Annear, Valsamma Eapen, Jessica Feary, Emma Goodall, Teresa Pilbeam, Felicity Rose, Nancy Sadka and Natalie Silove.

– ref. Don’t forget play – 3 questions can help balance fun with supports and therapy for autistic children – https://theconversation.com/dont-forget-play-3-questions-can-help-balance-fun-with-supports-and-therapy-for-autistic-children-200920

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lucy Lu, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney

Today the NAPLAN testing window starts for more than a million students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Over the next nine days students will sit literacy and numeracy tests which are designed to measure their reading, writing, numeracy, grammar, punctuation and spelling.

Education decision makers will be holding their breath about how many students turn up for NAPLAN. Last year saw the steepest declines on record in secondary school student participation.

This is an issue because NAPLAN results help inform parents, teachers, schools and education authorities about student learning and can influence decisions about policies, resources and additional supports for students. Declining NAPLAN participation may result in decisions being based on incomplete data.

In our new paper for the Australian Education Research Organisation, we look at who is not sitting the tests and why that matters.

Read more:
‘Maths anxiety’ is a real thing. Here are 3 ways to help your child cope

Who is not sitting the tests?

While primary school student participation in NAPLAN has been steady at about 95% since 2014, secondary student participation has been in persistent decline. Last year only 87% of Year 9 students sat the tests.

A sharper decline in participation in 2022 was partly due to flooding in regions across Australia, high rates of illness and COVID-19 isolation requirements – circumstances we hope will not be repeated. It is the long-term decline in NAPLAN participation in secondary schools that needs attention.

The participation rate is alarmingly low for some groups of students. The figure below shows 79% of Year 9 students living in remote Australia sat NAPLAN last year. First Nations students and students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds also had low participation rates in 2022; 66% and 75% respectively.

Our analysis reveals low-performing students are also less likely to participate in the tests. Students who performed poorly in NAPLAN in Year 7 were nearly five times more likely to miss the Year 9 tests than high-performing students. These findings were replicated for primary students.

Students who are educationally at risk need the best decisions from schools and education authorities. If NAPLAN participation rates are low for these smaller populations, the data is less reliable and the ability to make informed decisions may be compromised.

Why aren’t students sitting the tests?

Students do not sit NAPLAN for three official reasons: they may be exempt from taking the tests, withdrawn by their parents, or absent on the day.

The main reason for the long-term decline in NAPLAN participation is that more parents have been withdrawing their children from the tests. In 2022 over 11,000 Year 9 students didn’t sit the writing test because they had been withdrawn from it.

Being absent is also a contributing factor in the decline in participation; more so for secondary students than primary. In 2022, more Year 9 students than usual were absent from the writing test (in total over 28,600).

There are many reasons students are absent and withdrawn from NAPLAN. Parents who are worried about how their child may be affected by taking the tests and receiving results may choose to keep them at home or formally withdraw them from the tests. Anecdotally there have also been reports of schools asking low performing students to stay home on testing days, so they don’t “drag down” school averages.

On the positive side, our analysis showed Year 9 students with language backgrounds other than English participated in higher proportions than average (92% compared to 87%). This suggests cultural differences and family attitudes to education and testing might play an important role in participation.

Why is high NAPLAN participation important?

NAPLAN data is used by education authorities to better understand the learning progress of all Australian students to inform system-wide policies and support.

It also helps schools, systems and sectors to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of educational approaches, and identifies schools which need more support.

For example, in NSW, NAPLAN data has been used to understand whether a new teaching role and giving students more practice time have been effective in improving students’ writing skills.

In Victoria, Brandon Park Primary School used its NAPLAN results to inform a whole school change to its teaching of reading, which brought remarkable success.

Given the benefits that good use of NAPLAN data can bring, it is critical the results are representative of the student groups being tested.

While the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority estimates data for withdrawn and absent students, our analysis suggests student proficiency is likely to be overestimated.

That’s because students not sitting the test are more likely to be lower-performing students from their respective demographic groups. Real data is always better than estimates.

What now?

The Australian education system is meant to be about achieving equitable outcomes from education for all students.

Equity is something we should all expect and support.

To achieve it, we need accurate information about student progress on a national scale. NAPLAN is meant to provide that information, so we should support and encourage students to turn up for the tests and try their best.

Read more:
How to avoid annoying your kids and getting ‘stressed by proxy’ during exam season

Lucy Lu is the Senior Manager, Analytics and Strategic Projects for the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO).

Olivia Groves is a Principal Researcher for the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO).

– ref. NAPLAN results inform schools, parents and policy. But too many kids miss the tests altogether – https://theconversation.com/naplan-results-inform-schools-parents-and-policy-but-too-many-kids-miss-the-tests-altogether-201371

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

The “Kids Future Fund” promised by NSW’s Premier Dominic Perrottet if his government is re-elected on March 25 is an idea discussed by social policy experts since the 1990s but rarely embraced by politicians.

Britain’s Blair Labour government introduced a similar policy in the early 2000s but it lasted just eight years before being scrapped as part of budget cutbacks.

Perrottet’s promise is to put $400 into a trust fund for every child aged up to 10 years old (and then for every child born). The government will then match contributions made by the child’s parents (or grandparents) up to $400 a year until the child turns 18.

The trust account can only be accessed after age 18, for two purposes only: to help buy a home; or for education, including tuition fees, learning materials, computers and tools needed to get a qualification.

The estimated cost to the NSW budget over the next four years will be A$850 million.

The Perottet government says this could mean every child born in NSW from this year could have, at age 18, a trust fund worth about $28,500. But this depends on co-contributions and a generous rate of interest. It assumes a 7% return, though the announced policy is that the state government will guarantee a 4% return.

The government’s direct contributions will be:

• $200 a year to any family receiving Family Tax Benefit A (normally available to families with one child earning up to $108,892 a year, or more for larger families)

• up to $200 more to recipients of Family Tax Benefit A, if matched by the parents (or grandparents)

• up to $400 a year for everyone else, if matched.

Parents will be allowed to contribute up to $1,000 a year (presumably to take advantage of the interest rates). Contributions can be made after age 18, but won’t be matched.

Those who only get $200 a year will, using the same formula as the government, have a fund worth a little more than $7,000.

Read more:
Other Australians don’t earn what you think. $59,538, is typical

Origins of asset-based social policy

The idea of “trust funds” for children has become more popular since the 1990s, and is most associated with the work of US social researcher Michael Sherraden.

As the Encyclopedia of Social Work puts it, the idea is to build assets complementary to traditional social policy based on income.

“In fact, asset-based policy with large public subsidies already existed (and still exists) in the United States. But the policy is regressive, benefiting the rich far more than the poor. The goal should be a universal, progressive, and lifelong asset-based policy. One promising pathway may be child development accounts (CDAs) beginning at birth, with greater public deposits for the poorest children. If all children had an account, then eventually this could grow into a universal public policy across the life course.”

That this idea emerged in the US may reflect the fact wealth there is more unequally distributed than in most other OECD nations. The least wealthy 60% of Americans own just 3% of total wealth, compared with 17% in Australia.

Read more:
Our top 1% of income earners is an increasingly entrenched elite

Britain’s Child Trust Fund

There have been a few experimental programs in Canada and the US. But the program most similar to the NSW government’s proposal is the UK’s Child Trust Fund, introduced by the Blair Labour government in 2003.

This provided every child born after August 2002 with an endowment at birth of £250 and an extra £250 for children in families with household income less than £14,495 (the threshold for receiving the full Child Tax Credit, the UK’s equivalent of the Family Tax Benefit).

In 2006 the UK government announced all eligible children would receive a further £250 at age seven, and those from lower-income families an extra £250 on top of that.

All returns were tax-free, including interest payments and capital gains. Parents could add up to £1,200. Except for a few emergency situations, funds could be withdrawn only after a child turned 18. There were no restrictions on use.

More than 6 million child trust funds were opened between 2003 and 2011, when the scheme was closed to new recipients by the government headed by David Cameron.

Recipients began to access funds in 2020. It remains unclear if the scheme benefited those it was meant to help. As many as 1 million accounts have been classed as “addressee gone away”. Those from poorer families are the most likely to be unaware they have a trust fund.

Issues and challenges

This highlights the greatest uncertainty about the benefits of the Perottet government’s proposal. How long will it last?

Another criticism is that the money could be better spent on families with children now rather than in the future. To be fair, however, the Perottet government is also promising measures including a full year of free preschool, five days a week, for every child.

But important details are lacking. For example, it appears the plan is to hold the money in some form of government-controlled account, with the funds “being invested”. With the UK scheme, accounts simply had to be with an approved financial institution. If the accounts are run by the NSW government, will they count as public assets?

The NSW scheme presumably will not involve tax-free status, since only the federal government has this power.

And even with the contribution paid to families receiving Family Tax Benefit, it is still clearly not as progressive as the UK scheme – where low-income families received deposits twice as much as higher-income families – or as beneficial as the original US proposals.

Peter Whiteford receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a member of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee.

– ref. Perrottet’s child trust fund policy dusts off an idea last tried by UK Labour – https://theconversation.com/perrottets-child-trust-fund-policy-dusts-off-an-idea-last-tried-by-uk-labour-201662

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Samuelsson, Honorary Fellow, University of Wollongong

Our food choices are being influenced every day. On social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, food and eating consistently appear on lists of trending topics.

Food has eye-catching appeal and is a universal experience. Everyone has to eat. In recent years, viral recipes like feta pasta, dalgona coffee and butter boards have taken the world by storm.

Yet food influencing is not a new trend.

Australia’s first food influencer appeared in the pages of Australia’s most popular women’s magazine nearly 70 years ago. Just like today’s creators on Instagram and TikTok, this teenage cook advised her audience what was good to eat and how to make it.

Read more:
How the Australian Women’s Weekly spoke to ’50s housewives about the Cold War

Meet Debbie, our teenage chef

Debbie commenced her decade-long tenure at the Australian Women’s Weekly in July 1954. We don’t know exactly who played the role of Debbie, which was a pseudonym. Readers were never shown her full face or body – just a set of disembodied hands making various recipes and, eventually, a cartoon portrait.

Like many food influencers today, Debbie was not an “expert” – she was a teenager herself. She taught teenage girls simple yet fashionable recipes they could cook to impress their family and friends, especially boys.

She shared recipes for tangy apricot Bavarian whip, fried rice medley and bombe Alaska. Debbie also often taught her readers the basics, like how to boil an egg.

Just like today, many of her recipes showed the readers step-by-step instructions through images.

Teaching girls to cook (and be ‘good’ women)

Debbie’s recipes first appeared in the For Teenagers section, which would go on to become the Teenagers Weekly lift-out in 1959.

These lift-outs reflected a major change taking place in wider society: the idea of “teenagers” being their own group with specific interests and behaviours had entered the popular imagination.

Debbie was speaking directly to teenage girls. Adolescents are still forming both their culinary and cultural tastes. They are forming their identities.

For the Women’s Weekly, and for Debbie, cooking was deemed an essential attribute for women. Girls were seen to be “failures” if they couldn’t at least “cook a baked dinner”, “make real coffee”, “grill a steak to perfection”, “scramble and fry eggs” and “make a salad (with dressing)”.

In addition to teaching girls how to cook, Debbie also taught girls how to catch a husband and become a good wife, a reflection of cultural expectations for women at the time.

Her macaroon trifle, the Women’s Weekly said, was sure to place girls at the top of their male friends’ “matrimony prospect” list!

Read more:
More than just MasterChef: a brief history of Australian cookery competitions

Food fads and fashions

Food fads usually reflect something important about the world around us. During global COVID lockdowns, we saw a rise in sourdough bread-making as people embraced carbohydrate-driven nostalgia in the face of anxiety.

A peek at Debbie’s culinary repertoire can reveal some of the cultural phenomena that impacted Australian teenagers in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Debbie embraced teenage interest in rock’n’roll culture from the early 1960s, the pinnacle of which came at the height of Beatlemania.

The Beatles toured Australia in June 1964. To help her teenage readers celebrate their visit, Debbie wrote an editorial on how to host a Beatles party.

She suggested the party host impress their friends by making “Beatle lollipops”, “Ringo Starrs” (decorated biscuits) and terrifying-looking “Beatle mop-heads” (cakes with chocolate hair).

A few months later, she also shared recipes for “jam butties” (or sandwiches, apparently a “Mersey food with a Mersey name”) and a “Beatle burger”.

We can also see the introduction of one of Australia’s most beloved dishes in Debbie’s recipes.

In 1957, she showed her teen readers how to make a new dish – spaghetti bolognaise – which had first appeared in the magazine five years prior.

Debbie was influencing the youth of Australia to enthusiastically adopt (and adapt) Italian-style cuisine. It stuck. While the recipe may have evolved, in 2012, Meat and Livestock Australia reported that 38% of Australian homes ate “spag bol” at least once a week.

Our food influences today may come from social media, but we shouldn’t forget the impact early influencers such as Debbie had on young people in the past.

Read more:
Getting creative with less. Recipe lessons from the Australian Women’s Weekly during wartime

Lauren Samuelsson received funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship when undertaking this research.

– ref. Tangy apricot Bavarian whip, fried rice medley and bombe Alaska: what Australia’s first food influencer had us cooking – https://theconversation.com/tangy-apricot-bavarian-whip-fried-rice-medley-and-bombe-alaska-what-australias-first-food-influencer-had-us-cooking-199987

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Renwick, Professor, Physical Geography (climate science), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

The final months of New Zealand’s summer carried a massive sting, bringing “unprecedented” rainfalls several times over, from widespread flooding in Auckland at the end of January to ex-tropical Cyclone Gabrielle dumping record rains and causing devastating floods across the east coast of the North Island.

After all that, New Zealand experienced spells of thunderstorms, bringing repeat floods to parts of Auckland and then Gisborne.

The obvious question is what role climate change plays in these record-breaking rainfalls.

Some answers come from the international World Weather Attribution team, which today released a rapid assessment which shows very heavy rain, like that associated with Cyclone Gabrielle, has become about four times more common in the region and extreme downpours now drop 30% more rain.

The team analysed weather data from several stations, which show the observed increase in heavy rain. It then used computer models to compare the climate as it is today, after about 1.2℃ of global warming since the late 1800s, with the climate of the past.

The small size of the analysed region meant the team could not quantify the extent to which human-caused warming is responsible for the observed increase in heavy rain in this part of New Zealand, but concluded it was the likely cause.

Read more:
Climate change is making flooding worse: 3 reasons the world is seeing more record-breaking deluges and flash floods

More energy in the atmosphere and ocean

Many factors add to the strength of a storm and the intensity of rainfall, especially for short bursts. A crucial factor is always the amount of energy available.

Climate change is increasing that amount of energy in two main ways. First, everything is getting warmer. Rising sea surface temperatures provide extra fuel for the development of tropical cyclones because they grow by heating from below.

Warmer seas mean potentially faster development of tropical cyclones, and stronger, more vigorous storms overall. Sea temperatures must be at least 26.5℃ to support the build-up of a tropical cyclone. So, as the oceans warm, these storms can reach farther from the equator.

Second, warmer air can hold more water vapour. Every degree of warming increases the maximum amount of water vapour by around 7%. That extra water vapour tends to fall out as extra rain, but it also provides extra energy to a storm.

Read more:
The Auckland floods are a sign of things to come – the city needs stormwater systems fit for climate change

Driving waves further inland

The energy it takes to evaporate the water from the ocean surface and turn it into vapour is released again when the vapour condenses back into liquid water. A moister airmass heats the atmosphere more when clouds and rain form, making the air more buoyant and able to rise up more. This creates deeper, more vigorous clouds with stronger updrafts, and again more rain.

Stronger updrafts in a storm mean more air will have to be drawn into the storm near the Earth’s surface, ensuring more “convergence” of air and moisture (water vapour). That’s why, even though a degree of warming translates to 7% more water vapour in the air, we can get 20% increases, or larger, in extreme rainfalls.

All of this extra energy can contribute to making the storm stronger overall, with stronger winds and lower air pressures in its centre. This seems to have happened with Cyclone Gabrielle. Record low pressures were recorded at a few North Island locations as the storm passed.

The low pressures act like a vacuum cleaner, sucking the sea surface up above normal sea level. The strong winds can then drive waves much further inland. Add in a bit of sea-level rise, and coastal inundation can get a lot worse a lot quicker.

As the climate continues to change, storm intensity is likely to increase on average, as sea levels continue to rise. Those effects together are bound to lead to more dramatic coastal erosion and inundation.

Thunderstorms riding warming seas

These processes work for thunderstorms as well. A thunder cloud often starts as a buoyant mass of air over a warm surface. As the air rises (or convects), it cools and forces water vapour to condense back to liquid water, releasing heat and increasing the buoyancy and speed of the rising air.

Again, that allows more moist air to be drawn into the cloud, and that convergence of moist air can increase rainfall amounts well above the 7% per degree of warming, for short bursts of very intense convection. The more intense the convection, the stronger the convergence of moisture and the heavier the resulting rainfall.

Tropical cyclones have rings of thunderstorms around their eye during the time when they are truly tropical storms. As they transition out of the tropics into our neighbourhood, they change their structure but retain a lot of the moisture and buoyancy of the air. An ex-tropical cyclone like Gabrielle, moving over very warm water, can pack a devastating punch.

Read more:
What Australia learned from recent devastating floods – and how New Zealand can apply those lessons now

Why has New Zealand had so much of this very heavy rain during the weeks from late January? Partly it’s the very warm ocean waters around Aotearoa (up to marine heatwave conditions) and farther north into the Coral Sea. That itself is partly related to the ongoing La Niña event in the tropical Pacific, which tends to pile up warm water (and tropical cyclones) in the west.

But it is also related to ongoing global warming. As sea temperatures increase, it becomes easier to reach heatwave conditions. Warmer seas load the atmosphere with water vapour.

Partly, too, the air over the North Island has been unusually “unstable” lately, very warm near ground level but cooler than normal higher up. That makes the buoyance in thunderstorms work even better and more strongly, encouraging very heavy rainfall.

These conditions seem to have eased now, but severe thunderstorms continue to develop. As we move from summer into autumn, as the warmest seas move eastwards away from us and as La Niña fades in the tropics, the chances of a repeat event are diminishing. For now at least.

But if we continue to warm the climate with more greenhouse gas emissions, we will continue to load the dice towards more very heavy rain over Aotearoa. Let us hope those regions and communities so badly affected by recent events have a chance to dry out, rebuild and recover before the next extreme weather.

James Renwick works at Victoria University of Wellington where he is a Professor of Physical Geography. He receives funding from MBIE for climate research. He is affiliated with the Climate Change Commission, as a Commissioner.

– ref. Floods, cyclones, thunderstorms: is climate change to blame for New Zealand’s summer of extreme weather? – https://theconversation.com/floods-cyclones-thunderstorms-is-climate-change-to-blame-for-new-zealands-summer-of-extreme-weather-201161

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

Much has been made of Australia’s renewed engagement with Asia and the Pacific since Labor came to power.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s “charm offensive” in the Pacific was seen as the beginning of a new process of listening to the region, not dictating to it. Labor’s Asia-Pacific policy has also been hailed as striking a balance between the US and China.

In announcing the AUKUS submarine deal in the US this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese emphasised it was aimed at allowing nations in the region to “act in their sovereign interests free from coercion” and would “promote security by investing in our relationships across our region”.

The reality of the submarine deal is not, however, in that spirit. Instead, it leads Australia towards half a century of armaments build up and restricted sovereignty within a US-led alliance aimed at containing China.

Worse, it hearkens back to a colonial vision of the region as rightfully dominated by Anglophone powers who enjoy a military advantage over others that live there.

In the process, it has also deliberately endangered the spirit – if not the letter of nuclear non-proliferation agreements – and heightened what our neighbours see as a destabilising and unnecessary naval race that can only further provoke China.

Relinquishing sovereignty of foreign policy

The deal confirms two things that nations in the region have long suspected.

First, Australia is incapable of imagining an Asia-Pacific region that is not militarily dominated by the United States.

In addition, the deal suggests we are still politically attached to the United Kingdom – the post-Brexit ghost of a past British empire once again looking east of the Suez Canal towards Asia and the Pacific.

Read more:
The AUKUS pact, born in secrecy, will have huge implications for Australia and the region

The second is that, despite the window dressing, Australia’s deafness to regional misgivings has not improved since the change to a Labor government.

AUKUS and the nuclear submarine deal are far from universally admired in Asia and the Pacific. The ASEAN bloc has repeatedly expressed its wish to avoid an arms race in the region. Regional powers such as Indonesia and Malaysia have made this clear on several occasions.

Other approaches to regional security do exist. And our neighbours have their own sense of how the Asia-Pacific can best balance the growing influence of both the US and China.

Malaysia, for example, has emphasised that so clearly identifying China as an enemy will be a self-fulfilling prophesy. The Pacific states have warned against becoming so clearly aligned with the US and sparking a renewed arms race in the Pacific. New Zealand, too, says it sees no sense in moving towards a nuclear-fuelled foreign policy.

Instead of taking these concerns seriously and engaging in deep regional diplomacy to head off future conflict, Australia seems to have has given up sovereign control of its foreign policy.

Canberra is moving towards what former Prime Ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating have respectively called “shared sovereignty” and “outsourced” strategic sovereignty.

Contrary to the assurances of Defence Minister Richard Marles, Australia has decided to become absolutely central to the US policy of containing and encircling China. Retreating from the assumed military role that comes with this would take the kind of foreign policy courage that has not been seen for many decades.

Read more:
Why is southeast Asia so concerned about AUKUS and Australia’s plans for nuclear submarines?

War with China is not a certainty

Th submarine deal also comes against a backdrop of some dangerously incautious media predictions that Australia could be at war with China within three years.

Scarcely to be heard is the view that if war were to occur, it would be a war of choice, not a war to defend Australian sovereignty, even broadly defined.

Bad assumptions about the future can unfortunately drive bad policy. The assumption of a regional war is in part a consequence of viewing China through the lens of the faulty idea of an inescapable “Thucydides Trap”.

For adherents of this belief, war between the US and China is simply a natural fact dictated by history when a rising power challenges an established power, similar to what happened in the war between Athens and Sparta in ancient Greece.

Chinese brinkmanship and assertion of control over disputed territories and waters, however, is not a Greek tragedy. And Australian strategic decision-makers should not take for granted that war is coming either between China and Taiwan, or China and the United States – much less with Australia.

Read more:
China does not want war, at least not yet. It’s playing the long game

Herein lies the danger of handing over our sovereign foreign policy decision-making to the US and relaxing into the faux security offered by AUKUS.

We are led to the false sense there is no alternative but to be involved militarily wherever the US is in a conflict, whether that be in Iraq, Afghanistan or a future war over Taiwan.

Ceding Australia’s capacity to make serious decisions about war and peace cannot be accepted unless all pretence of Australian sovereignty is abandoned. Australia could have tried to work towards a regional approach with other Asian and Pacific countries. But this week’s agreement makes that all but impossible.

Matt Fitzpatrick receives funding from the Australian Research Council (FT210100448 – Strategic Friendship: Anglo-German Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Region).

– ref. With AUKUS, Australia has wedded itself to a risky US policy on China – and turned a deaf ear to the region – https://theconversation.com/with-aukus-australia-has-wedded-itself-to-a-risky-us-policy-on-china-and-turned-a-deaf-ear-to-the-region-201757

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

In drawing up his plans to more effectively tax large superannuation accounts, Treasurer Jim Chalmers might have stumbled upon a really good idea.

If applied more broadly, it could at last tax rich Australians in something like the same way as the rest of us.

The wealthiest Australians are taxed differently from other Australians, because they earn much of their money in a different way.

Most of us get taxed at standard rates on the only income we have: income from working, and interest on savings in bank accounts.

High-wealth Australians make a lot of their money in other ways: from investments in shares and properties. And while the dividends from shares and the rental income from properties are taxed at standard rates, what happens to profits made by selling those shares and properties is anything but standard.

How capital gains are taxed differently

The profits made from buying and selling shares and properties are called “capital gains”. Until 1985, most of them were untaxed.

Sure, a section of the Tax Act said if you made a profit selling an asset after less than a year you would pay tax – but you could avoid that by waiting for more than a year. It also said if you sold something for the purpose of making a profit you could be taxed, but you could avoid that by saying profit wasn’t your purpose.

The capital gains tax, introduced in 1985, changed that.

Income from the profits made from buying and selling shares and properties was taxed as income – but with two important exceptions.

Read more:
Capital gains tax concession is too generous: economists poll

Rewriting one exception to the rules

One of those exceptions was that less of the income would be taxed than for other types of income. At the moment only half of each capital gain is taxed.

(During its unsuccessful 2016 and 2019 election campaigns, Labor promised to halve the discount, meaning 75% of each gain would be taxed.)

The other exception – the one Chalmers is breaking ground by winding back when it is used by super funds – is that the tax is only due when the asset is sold.

This is quite different to the way tax is charged on interest earned in bank accounts. We pay as the interest accumulates, not years or even decades later when the money is withdrawn.

The 2010 Henry Tax Review saw this special treatment as a problem.

A better deal than most Australians get

The Henry Review said collecting tax only on “realisation” (when assets were sold) rather than “accrual” (as they grew in value) encouraged investors to hold on to shares and property to delay paying tax – a response it called “lock-in”.

All the better for the investors if, when they eventually sold, they had retired and were on a much lower tax rate, meaning they would scarcely pay any tax on decades worth of gains.

During financial crises when prices fell, the rules encouraged investors to do the reverse – to sell quickly to realise tax losses, destabilising markets.

Henry would have preferred tax to be collected as the gains accrued, but said back then that wasn’t practical.

While improvements in technology might improve things, in 2010 it was hard to get a good read on changes in the value of buildings or rental properties until they were sold.

Real-time collection has become easier

Not now. Firms such as CoreLogic revalue property daily, and not just in the general sense. If you want to know what has happened to the value of a three-bedroom home with two bathrooms, on a particular size block of land, in a particular street, CoreLogic can tell you.

And real-time values are being used for all sorts of purposes. Pensioners owning rental properties get their value updated annually for the pension assets test. Services Australia doesn’t wait until they are sold to declare they are worth more.

It is the same with council rates. Property values are updated annually, rather than down the track when they change hands. There’s no longer a practical impediment to doing this, and there’s never been a practical impediment to valuing shares. They are valued daily on the stock exchange.

Finally taxing super funds in real time

That’s the simple approach Chalmers has now taken to valuing super fund income for the purpose of imposing the 15% surcharge on high balances, as announced a fortnight ago.

Rather than taxing capital gains only when assets are sold (as will still happen for the bulk of what’s in super accounts), the surcharge will be calculated by applying a 15% tax rate to the increase in the value of the relevant part of each fund. Super funds are already valued quarterly.

Chalmers isn’t talking about doing it more broadly. But what he is doing shows it would be fairly easy.

An option for Australia

Denmark is planning to do it later this year, becoming the first country in the world to introduce what it calls the “mark to market” taxation of real estate capital gains.

Adopting the same approach in Australia would create difficulties that would have to be worked through, perhaps by providing loans. Some property owners wouldn’t have enough ready cash to pay an annual capital gains tax, just as some don’t have enough ready cash to pay rates.

But mark to market taxation of real estate capital gains would have benefits.

It would make investment properties less attractive, putting downward pressure on prices and making it easier for homeowners to buy. And it would make the tax system fairer by preventing wealthy Australians from postponing tax until their tax rate was low, raising much-needed money.

Following Denmark’s lead is not going to happen in a hurry – if at all. But by moving in that direction, Chalmers has brought fairer taxation of capital gains for all Australians a little closer than before.

Peter Martin 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. Working Australians pay tax in real-time – now the richest Australians making capital gains should too – https://theconversation.com/working-australians-pay-tax-in-real-time-now-the-richest-australians-making-capital-gains-should-too-201665

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

In drawing up his plans to more effectively tax large superannuation accounts, Treasurer Jim Chalmers might have stumbled upon a really good idea.

If applied more broadly, it could at last tax rich Australians in something like the same way as the rest of us.

The wealthiest Australians are taxed differently from other Australians, because they earn much of their money in a different way.

Most of us get taxed at standard rates on the only income we have: income from working, and interest on savings in bank accounts.

High-wealth Australians make a lot of their money in other ways: from investments in shares and properties. And while the dividends from shares and the rental income from properties are taxed at standard rates, what happens to profits made by selling those shares and properties is anything but standard.

How capital gains are taxed differently

The profits made from buying and selling shares and properties are called “capital gains”. Until 1985, most of them were untaxed.

Sure, a section of the Tax Act said if you made a profit selling an asset after less than a year you would pay tax – but you could avoid that by waiting for more than a year. It also said if you sold something for the purpose of making a profit you could be taxed, but you could avoid that by saying profit wasn’t your purpose.

The capital gains tax, introduced in 1985, changed that.

Income from the profits made from buying and selling shares and properties was taxed as income – but with two important exceptions.

Read more:
Capital gains tax concession is too generous: economists poll

Rewriting one exception to the rules

One of those exceptions was that less of the income would be taxed than for other types of income. At the moment only half of each capital gain is taxed.

(During its unsuccessful 2016 and 2019 election campaigns, Labor promised to halve the discount, meaning 75% of each gain would be taxed.)

The other exception – the one Chalmers is breaking ground by winding back when it is used by super funds – is that the tax is only due when the asset is sold.

This is quite different to the way tax is charged on interest earned in bank accounts. We pay as the interest accumulates, not years or even decades later when the money is withdrawn.

The 2010 Henry Tax Review saw this special treatment as a problem.

A better deal than most Australians get

The Henry Review said collecting tax only on “realisation” (when assets were sold) rather than “accrual” (as they grew in value) encouraged investors to hold on to shares and property to delay paying tax – a response it called “lock-in”.

All the better for the investors if, when they eventually sold, they had retired and were on a much lower tax rate, meaning they would scarcely pay any tax on decades worth of gains.

During financial crises when prices fell, the rules encouraged investors to do the reverse – to sell quickly to realise tax losses, destabilising markets.

Henry would have preferred tax to be collected as the gains accrued, but said back then that wasn’t practical.

While improvements in technology might improve things, in 2010 it was hard to get a good read on changes in the value of buildings or rental properties until they were sold.

Real-time collection has become easier

Not now. Firms such as CoreLogic revalue property daily, and not just in the general sense. If you want to know what has happened to the value of a three-bedroom home with two bathrooms, on a particular size block of land, in a particular street, CoreLogic can tell you.

And real-time values are being used for all sorts of purposes. Pensioners owning rental properties get their value updated annually for the pension assets test. Services Australia doesn’t wait until they are sold to declare they are worth more.

It is the same with council rates. Property values are updated annually, rather than down the track when they change hands. There’s no longer a practical impediment to doing this, and there’s never been a practical impediment to valuing shares. They are valued daily on the stock exchange.

Finally taxing super funds in real time

That’s the simple approach Chalmers has now taken to valuing super fund income for the purpose of imposing the 15% surcharge on high balances, as announced a fortnight ago.

Rather than taxing capital gains only when assets are sold (as will still happen for the bulk of what’s in super accounts), the surcharge will be calculated by applying a 15% tax rate to the increase in the value of the relevant part of each fund. Super funds are already valued quarterly.

Chalmers isn’t talking about doing it more broadly. But what he is doing shows it would be fairly easy.

An option for Australia

Denmark is planning to do it later this year, becoming the first country in the world to introduce what it calls the “mark to market” taxation of real estate capital gains.

Adopting the same approach in Australia would create difficulties that would have to be worked through, perhaps by providing loans. Some property owners wouldn’t have enough ready cash to pay an annual capital gains tax, just as some don’t have enough ready cash to pay rates.

But mark to market taxation of real estate capital gains would have benefits.

It would make investment properties less attractive, putting downward pressure on prices and making it easier for homeowners to buy. And it would make the tax system fairer by preventing wealthy Australians from postponing tax until their tax rate was low, raising much-needed money.

Following Denmark’s lead is not going to happen in a hurry – if at all. But by moving in that direction, Chalmers has brought fairer taxation of capital gains for all Australians a little closer than before.

Peter Martin 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. Pensioners and homeowners pay capital gains tax in real-time – it’s time the richest Australians did too – https://theconversation.com/pensioners-and-homeowners-pay-capital-gains-tax-in-real-time-its-time-the-richest-australians-did-too-201665

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

The New South Wales state election will be held in 11 days, on March 25. At the March 2019 NSW election, the Coalition won 48 of the 93 lower house seats, Labor had 36 and the Greens, the Shooters and independents took three seats each. At a February 2022 byelection, Labor gained Bega from the Liberals.

Ignoring defections, the Coalition begins with 47 of the 93 seats and Labor 37. So, a single net seat loss for the Coalition would be enough for it to lose its majority, but Labor needs to gain ten seats to win its own majority.

The Coalition won the 2019 election by a 52-48% statewide margin, so the polls taken in late February that gave Labor between 52% and 53% of the statewide, two-party vote imply a 4-5% swing to Labor from 2019.

Read more:
Labor slides in a federal Newspoll; NSW polls give Labor a modest lead

On the pendulum, the Coalition holds seven seats by margins of between 5% and 7.3% against Labor, and only four seats by under 3.1%. So, for Labor to win a majority, it would probably need those four seats and six of the seven held by between 5% and 7.3%.

On current polling, Labor is unlikely to make the gains it needs to secure its own majority, so there’s a strong likelihood of a hung parliament.

Unlike other Australian jurisdictions, NSW uses optional preferential voting for its lower house elections. Voters are required only to number one candidate for a formal vote, instead of needing to sequentially number all the boxes. If they choose, though, voters can continue to number beyond a first preference.

When votes do not reach the final two candidates for a seat, they are said to “exhaust”. At the 2019 election, ABC election analyst Antony Green said, 53% of the total votes that were not for the major parties did not preference either Labor or the Coalition.

The Greens had a lower exhaust rate than for all minor parties, with 53% going to Labor, 40% exhausting and 8% to the Coalition. The exhaust rate was high for minor right-wing parties, with 67% of Shooters and 71% of One Nation preferences exhausting.

Owing to this large exhaust rate, primary votes are more important in NSW than in compulsory preferential elections, as exhausted votes make it harder for the trailing party to overtake the party in the lead.

Green said there are 562 total lower house candidates at this election, down slightly from 568 in 2019. This is an average of six candidates per seat.

The Coalition, Labor and Greens will contest all 93 seats, Sustainable Australia 82, Animal Justice 33, Legalise Cannabis 23, the Shooters 20, One Nation 17 and the Liberal Democrats 17. It will help the Coalition that One Nation is contesting only 17 seats given their high exhaust rate in 2019.

Redbridge seat polls conducted February 27 to March 2 from a combined sample of 1,250 people gave Labor a 54-46% lead in Parramatta (held by the Liberals on a 6.5% margin). The Liberals, however, retained a 51-49% lead in Penrith (held by the Liberals on 0.6% margin).

A Freshwater poll for The Financial Review of Riverstone (held by the Liberals on a 6.2% margin) gave Labor a 54-46% lead.

Seat polls can be accurate, but are often wrong. Statewide or national polls are far more reliable.

What about the upper house?

The NSW upper house has 42 members, with 21 up for election every four years, so members serve eight-year terms. The Coalition has 17 seats, Labor 14, the Greens three and One Nation, the Shooters, Animal Justice and independents hold two seats each.

One of the independents is a former Green. The other is former Christian Democrat and long-time upper house member Fred Nile. Both face re-election this year.

The upper house members who were last elected in 2015 will be the ones up for election this year. At that election, the Coalition won nine of the 21 seats up for election, Labor seven, the Greens two and the Shooters, Christian Democrats and Animal Justice one each.

Read more:
It’ll be tough for Perrottet to win the NSW election. But Labor won’t romp home either

Right-wing parties (the Coalition, One Nation, Shooters and Christian Democrats) currently have a 22-20 upper house majority over left-wing parties (Labor, the Greens and Animal Justice).

The right won the seats elected in 2015 by an 11-10 margin, so the left needs a two-seat gain, or a 12-9 margin at this election, to gain control of the upper house.

All 21 seats are elected by statewide proportional representation with preferences, so a quota for election is 1/22 of the vote, or 4.5%. As above-the-line preferences are optional, half a quota, or 2.3%, on primary votes gives a candidate a good chance of being elected.

With Labor’s current modest lead in the statewide lower house polls, the left is most likely to win 11 of the 21 seats up for election. That would give the left a one-seat gain, but the upper house would be tied at a 21-21 left-right split.

To get an above-the-line box, at least 15 candidates need to nominate for a party. At this election Green said six of the 21 groups will not get an above-the-line box as they failed to meet this requirement.

Only people who vote below the line and fill out at least 15 preferences will be able to vote for these groups. As a result, these groups have no chance of anybody being elected.

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. NSW election preview: Labor likely to fall short of a majority, which could result in hung parliament – https://theconversation.com/nsw-election-preview-labor-likely-to-fall-short-of-a-majority-which-could-result-in-hung-parliament-201289

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Tietz, Senior Lecturer in Industrial Design, UNSW Sydney

It’s the end of a long day and you’re finally home, ready to unwind and recharge for the next day. You head to your bedroom, hoping to find solace and relaxation in your personal refuge. But it’s not just a place for sleeping anymore, as our recently published study shows. Your bedroom has become a catch-all place for all sorts of activities – from work to entertainment to exercise – and it’s having a major impact on your sleep.

We asked 300 Australians about their sleep environments and how they use them. Half of them said they have or might have a sleep problem. And almost half said their bedroom was also their living space and they would prefer a different arrangement.

Despite this preference, with the rise of remote work and digital entertainment, many of us have transformed our bedrooms into multi-functional spaces. We use them for work calls and emails, watch movies or play video games, and even exercise before bed.

This versatility comes at a cost. It can be difficult to mentally disconnect from these activities and create a peaceful environment that promotes restful sleep.

What’s driving these changes?

Urban density, rising rents and housing costs, and changes in how we work affect how we use our bedrooms and what they mean to us. The COVID pandemic meant more people started working from home and many had a set-up in their bedrooms. Using the bed for activities other than sleeping became more common.

Like eating, sleep is fundamental for human survival. Sleep studies show a lack of sleep has significant impacts on our wellbeing, mental and physical health as well as social and work performance.

Despite its importance and the fact that we spend around a third of our lives asleep, our domestic sleep spaces and how we use them are relatively unexplored. We wanted to question if today’s bedrooms are still quiet places of refuge or privacy where one rests – and that no longer seems to be the case for many people.

The sleep environment plays a significant role in the way we sleep, and we wanted to learn more about where we sleep today when it isn’t simply a room with a bed. And not everyone sleeps in a bed. Sofa beds are the second-most-mentioned sleep space in our study, while close to 10% sleep in a spare room and 1% sleep in a car.

About 50% sometimes or always use the bed for studying, working or eating. And
59 respondents had a desk in their bedrooms, while 80 mentioned studying or working from their bedrooms, and 104 mentioned using their laptops. One in six people worked from their bed. Among the other activities in the sleep environment, watching TV or streaming shows was predictably the most common, followed by reading, studying or working, eating and then exercising.

People spent an average of about 9.5 hours a day in their sleep environment but just over seven hours sleeping. That’s two-and-a-half hours a day in their sleep area not sleeping. About 20% of respondents spend 12 or more hours in the rooms they sleep in.

Younger participants spent more time in their bedrooms than any other age groups. For children and teenagers their bedroom plays an important role in play, developing their own personality and character and becoming socialised. However, our study surveyed Australian residents 18 years and older.

One of the significant concerns to highlight is about a quarter mentioned having a sleep problem and another 26% were not sure whether they have a sleep problem or not. That suggests nearly 50% are not sleeping well. While 60% said they have a consistent sleeping routine, these figures suggest a consistent routine isn’t necessarily a good routine.

Read more:
Is there such a thing as the perfect alarm tone? We think so (and this is what it might sound like)

We still have much to learn about bedrooms

We have a relatively good understanding of the environmental factors that contribute to good sleep. These include noise levels under 40 decibels and limited or no lighting during sleep. Yet we know very little about bedroom layouts and furnishings.

Bedrooms are one of our most private spaces. A Belgian researcher resorted to forensic crime scene photographs of bedrooms from the 1930s and ’40s to gain insight into what bedrooms actually look like. Because what we can glean about bedrooms from architectual and interior magazines, home renovation TV shows or sales room displays is based on idealised and aspirational settings.

The kitchen, on the other hand, is very well researched and the outcomes are practically applied to our everyday lives. We know more about efficient kitchen layouts, counter top heights, drawer width, ideal distances between sink and working top to enhance hygiene and how many steps are taken to prepare a meal, among many other details.

It should be noted that many of us, particularly renter-occupiers, are limited in what we can do to personalise and change our bedrooms. It would be ideal if our laws allowed renters more flexibility to customise their space beyond just furnishings, especially if they intend to stay for a long time.

This study is the first part of a research project that in its next phase will survey existing bedrooms in homes. If you are interested in participating please contact the authors.

Read more:
Why do we wake around 3am and dwell on our fears and shortcomings?

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. Our bedrooms aren’t refuges anymore – working, studying and eating in them is bad for our sleep – https://theconversation.com/our-bedrooms-arent-refuges-anymore-working-studying-and-eating-in-them-is-bad-for-our-sleep-201169

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roger Bradbury, Emeritus Professor of Complex Systems Science, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Speaking at a summit in San Diego on Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a decades-long strategy to deliver the most costly defence project in Australia’s history.

New details of the AUKUS defence and security pact have revealed Australia will buy three second-hand US Virginia-class submarines early next decade (and potentially two more), subject to approval by US Congress.

Australia will also build a fleet of eight nuclear-powered SSN-AUKUS boats at Adelaide’s Osborne Naval Shipyard. The first will be delivered by 2042, with five completed by the 2050s, and construction of the remaining three going into the 2060s.

It’s estimated the program will cost between A$268 billion and A$368 billion over the next three decades.

Make no mistake. Modern submarines, especially nuclear-powered ones, are one of the most potent and effective weapon systems in today’s world. That is, until they aren’t.

Our analysis shows they might soon be so easily detected they could become billion-dollar coffins.

The rise in detection technologies

Both the greatest strength and greatest weakness of subs is their stealth.
The best are fiendishly difficult to detect. They can be nearly anywhere in the vast expanse of the world’s oceans, so adversaries must protect against them everywhere.

But if subs can be detected, they become easy targets: large, slow-moving and vulnerable to attack from the surface.

Historically, submarines have provided a distinct advantage: their stealth is the result of steady improvements in counter-detection technologies throughout the Cold War. Western submarines in particular are extremely quiet. Detection technologies, which mostly focused on sound, broadly struggled to keep up.

But this tide is turning. Subs in the ocean are large, metallic anomalies that move in the upper portion of the water column. They produce more than sound. As they pass through the water, they disturb it and change its physical, chemical and biological signatures. They even disturb Earth’s magnetic field – and nuclear subs unavoidably emit radiation.

Science is learning to detect all these changes, to the point where the oceans of tomorrow may become “transparent”. The submarine era could follow the battleship era and fade into history.

Read more:
Why is southeast Asia so concerned about AUKUS and Australia’s plans for nuclear submarines?

Cast forward three decades

In 2020 we undertook a first principles assessment to try to understand when that tomorrow might come, and what it might look like.

To do this we had to choose a point in the future to forecast to. We decided on the decade of the 2050s. We examined broad areas of science and technology in which progress might affect that future in terms of detection (that is, ocean sensing) and counter-detection.

In particular, we examined the potential impact of developments in artificial intelligence, sensor technology and underwater communication.

Our analysis used a software tool called Intelfuze which is often used in the intelligence community. It provides probabilistic assessments that are rigorous, transparent, defensible and able to be updated.

It’s particularly suited for issues where data are poor, uncertain and perhaps even speculative, and where there may be strongly divergent opinions on the quality and significance of those data (as in the submarine detection debate).

Our key result was that the oceans are, in most circumstances, at least likely (probability 75%) – and from some perspectives very likely (probability 90%) – to become transparent by the 2050s. Our certainty of these estimates, which the software evaluated independently, was high (above 70%).

This suggests that, regardless of progress in stealth technologies, submarines – including nuclear-powered submarines – will be able to be detected in the world’s oceans as a result of progress in science and technology.

The results should ring alarm bells for the AUKUS program to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. Our assessment suggests there will only be a brief window of time between the deployment of the first SSN-AUKUS boats and the onset of transparent oceans.

Having made the decision to build nuclear submarines, Australia needs to approach the task with a new urgency, lest we acquire these powerful deterrents just as their potency begins to fade.

Planning for obsolescence

Of course, there is a chance the predictions from our assessment are wrong; even highly probable outcomes are not certainties. Our model is a series of educated guesses based on trends in scientific and technological development. But it’s nonetheless an important consideration in light of AUKUS developments.

Australia is at a crossroads as it deals with a complex but deteriorating geostrategic environment. On one hand, we need to respond by committing to long-term investments. On the other, there’s a high degree of uncertainty about how effective these investments will be.

We argue there is evidence submarines could dramatically reduce in effectiveness in the coming decades. In other words, Australia risks investing in a nuclear ecosystem whose use-by date may be much earlier than we’d like. If we are to invest, we need to do so now.

It’s not just the science and technology workforce that needs to be built up, but also supply chains, precision manufacturing, skilled craftspeople and context-specific policies and laws.

We’ll also need a secure, sensible and environmentally appropriate way to deal with all that comes with a nuclear submarine program.

We don’t have the luxury of our AUKUS partners. Both the United Kingdom and United States have had decades to build not only nuclear submarines, but also supporting national ecosystems.

If the clock is ticking, and we think it is, time may be the only factor we have to play with.

Read more:
Does Australia need ‘interim’ submarines to tide it over until nuclear boats arrive? A defence expert explains

Roger Bradbury received funding for the initial research from Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Anne-Marie Grisogono, Elizabeth Williams, Scott Bainbridge, and Scott Vella 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. Progress in detection tech could render submarines useless by the 2050s. What does it mean for the AUKUS pact? – https://theconversation.com/progress-in-detection-tech-could-render-submarines-useless-by-the-2050s-what-does-it-mean-for-the-aukus-pact-201187

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Munt, Associate Professor, Media Arts & Production, University of Technology Sydney

In a recent interview on her portrayal of a renowned (fictional) female conductor, the autocratic maestro Lydia Tár, Cate Blanchett noted ways in which orchestral music-making is not a democratic enterprise. Neither is film-making.

Written, directed and produced by Todd Field, the film courted controversy for situating a woman as the power-play sexual predator in a post-Weinstein world. At the start of the film, or even before the start, audiences noted something else distinctive about the film: that the full screen credit list, attributing the labour of the production, came before the film proper.

More specifically, Tár obliges its audience to patiently sit through a full three minutes of opening credits. This is a big ask, in the age of streaming media where audiences embrace the “skip” function (for opening credits) and where end credits rush by at an unfathomable pace, arguably creating invisibility of the creative labour of the screen production.

A democracy of credits

Far from the trend to lavish, expensive, opening credit sequences, the screen credits for Tár are a sombre experience and materialise in small, white typography on a black screen, which gently fade in and out, set to a minimal musical score.

They are non-dynamic to the point that this slow-burning, 180-second credit sequence won’t find its way onto YouTube (unless to make a thematic point). In one sense, the style of the credits are uneventful. But they also present an opportunity for an audience to consider the history of screen credits, and the way in which this particular creative choice foreshadows the story of Lydia Tár to come.

In his Oscar-nominated screenplay, Field (unusually) spelled out his desire to return the end credits to the start of this film. His screenplay notes:

Punctuating credits filling a single black frame. One after the other, side-by-side, like players seated on a cramped stage.

To return to Blanchett’s quote above, Field appears to want to reinstate a democracy of credits, to represent the large-scale shared creative labour of screen production.

In an interview Field said “I wanted to recalibrate the viewer’s expectations about hierarchy.”

Read more:
Australian thriller The Stranger puts anxiety centre frame

The labour of film production

Field’s creative decision has a historical precedent, in the 1963 French feature film Contempt by the late Jean-Luc Godard.

In place of typographic opening credits, Godard narrates the labour of the film production, with his own voice, an exercise in Brechtian-inspired reflexivity, to make transparent the ways in which a film work arrives to an audience.

Interestingly, Godard retains the “possessory” film credit of “a film by” – something that Field rescinded, taking the more didactic (yet less dominant) “written, directed and produced by”. Field had to convince the producers that the extended end-credits-as-opening-credits would not be audience-unfriendly, in an attention-distracted world.

In Tár, the hierarchy is inverted: Field appears last, after the three-minute “communal” credits sequence. In making his decision to invert the hierarchy of the behind-the-scenes power relations, Field attempted to (from the outset) draw the viewer’s attention to the primary investigation of the film: the power relations on screen.

In consideration of the hierarchy, or signification of power within a screen production, of screen credits – this has been both culturally and historically determined. In early (silent) cinema, before the medium was highly industrialised, film roles remained shared, undefined or ambiguous.

As the motion picture industry advanced to become a highly managed creative realm, a stricter demarcation and hierarchy of roles followed.

A return to the past

The opening credit roll of Tár is not new – it represents a return to the past.

For much of the 20th century, there was only opening film credits, with the end credit being simply, and literally, marked “The End”. Relatively soon, a template for screen credits was in situ, which signalled a clear hierarchy of labour “above the line” (producers, screenwriters, director, major actors) which took the prominence of the opening credits, with the “below the line” creative crew and production support labour relegated to the end credits, in small font as a closing credit roll.

For example, a film’s cinematographer typically sits below the line even though they make a significant contribution to the visual storytelling and authorship of the film. And, invisibly to audiences, screen credits also determine the copyright provisions for a film work.

Next time you’re in the cinema, look around as the end credits roll. It’s mostly industry people, cinephiles or film students who stick around to the very end.

Even once the hierarchy of screen credits had been generally agreed for the placement and order of screen credits, it remained contested territory.

George Lucas attracted a hefty fine from the Directors Guild of America for omitting the role of the films’ directors for Star Wars (1977) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Lucas resigned and the rest is history – his spatialised prose sequence set to the famous John Williams score claimed its place as a core aspect of the Star Wars story-verse.

In the opening credits for Pulp Fiction (1995), the screenwriting is credited to “Stories By: Quentin Tarantino & Roger Avary”, who shared the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay on stage. But behind the scenes, Avary was paid out to enable the (then) new auteur to maintain the possessive credit of “A film by Quentin Tarantino”.

In more recent times, the rise of the episodic streaming television “showrunner” has displaced the possessive screen credit of the auteur director, to a more generic “created by”. The story of the hidden, or not so hidden, hierarchies of labour in screen production is to be continued.

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

– ref. The full credit list featured at the beginning of Tár is a nod to the hidden hierarchies of labour in screen production – https://theconversation.com/the-full-credit-list-featured-at-the-beginning-of-tar-is-a-nod-to-the-hidden-hierarchies-of-labour-in-screen-production-199781

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wanglin Ma, Associate Professor of Economics, Lincoln University, New Zealand

An increasing number of people are using mobile devices – their smartphone, a smartwatch or tablet – to pay for goods and services. Mobile devices allow people to complete transactions without using cash or a traditional bank card, making shopping quicker and easier.

Our recent research on China’s experience with mobile payments even suggests that people who pay with mobile devices are happier than those who do not.

While China’s experience with mobile payments over the past decade highlights some of the benefits of using digital devices to pay for everyday items, it also illustrates how accessibility issues can leave sections of the community behind.

Although mobile payments have been around since the early 2000s, they did not take off until the widespread adoption of smartphones. PayPal launched its first product for mobile phones in 2006, allowing customers to pay others via text message. M-PESA was launched soon after in Kenya in 2007. Google launched its digital wallet in 2011 and Apple launched its own version of the digital wallet in 2014.

Over the past two decades, China has emerged as the front runner in mobile payment usage. More than 87% of China’s internet users were using mobile payment services in 2021. The high rate of internet usage, a supportive regulatory framework and the government’s push for a cashless society – with COVID-19 as the impetus to introduce the digital yuan to replace physical bank notes – all contributed to the success of mobile payments in China.

Leading mobile payment platforms Alipay and WeChat Pay, which boast over a billion users each, are leading the way. Alipay is a mobile payment app and digital wallet that also allows users to order a taxi, apply for a credit card and buy insurance. WeChat Pay is a payment feature integrated within the instant messaging app WeChat. Both apps allow users to leave their physical wallet at home in favour of just their smartphone or smartwatch.

But China is not alone in this digital revolution. New Zealanders are also increasingly embracing mobile payments instead of cash.

More than just convenient

On the surface, the benefits of mobile payments may seem trivial – they allow people to shop without the need for cash.

But mobile payments can help reduce costs on essentials like food bills. In earlier research, we found mobile payment users in China spent 2,347 yuan (roughly NZ$546) less on food each year. These savings stemmed from the fact that people using mobile payments for their shopping were able to take advantage of time-sensitive online promotional offers at the checkout.

Read more:
A cashless society and the five forms of mobile payment that will get us there

Mobile payments also helped increase farmers’ resilience to adverse weather events by allowing them to access money from family and friends outside the affected areas. This access to funds that could then be spent via mobile payments allowed the farmers to remain solvent in the aftermath of a natural disaster.

Mobile payments can boost rural household consumption by making shopping easier for communities that may not have access to traditional financial services such as banks. Mobile payments have also been found to create business opportunities by helping small entrepreneurs become more nimble, increasing their appetite for risk and easing credit constraints by allowing them to take advantage of micro-lending services.

And mobile payments can measurably increase a person’s happiness, particularly in rural areas.

Analysing data from the 2017 Chinese General Social Survey and measuring happiness on a five-point scale, we found that using mobile payments was associated with a 0.76 point increase in happiness in rural China. No changes in happiness were observed for city dwellers.

The increased happiness was likely due to the convenience of mobile payments, helping people seamlessly pay for a broad spectrum of goods and services.

In terms of gender, using mobile payments affected women’s happiness more than men’s, regardless of where they lived. In rural China, using mobile payments was associated with a 0.83 point increase in women’s happiness compared to a 0.69 point increase in men’s happiness.

We found education increased the likelihood of someone using mobile payments. And being socially active was also positively associated with mobile payment use. But the data showed that the older the person, the less likely they were able to use mobile payments.

Ensuring accessibility

While there are clear positives to the widespread use of mobile payments, one of the potential stumbling blocks has been the issue of accessibility. As the global pandemic spread in 2020, concerns were raised that China’s older cash-using residents were being excluded by the push towards mobile payment options.

Read more:
Cash and the coronavirus: COVID-19 is changing our relationship with money

New Zealand could face similar issues. Concerns have already been raised by the reduction of bank branches in favour of online banking and what this means for older people and those with limited access to the internet.

While 95% of New Zealanders have access to the internet – either via landlines or on their phones – 31% of those in social housing and 29% of people with disabilities report not having any access.

Considering the documented benefits of mobile payments and their growing usage, service providers should invest in easy-to-use user interfaces for people from all walks of life. If managed well, the growing popularity of mobile payments in New Zealand could positively impact society, promoting financial inclusion, convenience and wellbeing.

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. China’s experience with mobile payments highlights the pros and cons of a cashless society – https://theconversation.com/chinas-experience-with-mobile-payments-highlights-the-pros-and-cons-of-a-cashless-society-201177

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Mesaglio, PhD candidate, UNSW Sydney

For hundreds of years, botanists have collected plants to describe species and keep in herbaria across the world. But while physical plant specimens are irreplaceable, photographs of plants are also an invaluable resource for botanical research, conservation and education.

Photographs of plants capture information that can be lost from dead, dried plants, such as flower colour. They also provide ecological context and form the cornerstone of many field guides and education resources.

All plant species known to science have samples preserved in at least one herbarium. Under the scientific rules for naming species, a species is not recognised unless there is at least one specimen officially stored in a collection somewhere in the world.

Unfortunately, and perhaps surprisingly, many plants have never been photographed in the field. Just 53% of the 125,000 known plant species in the Americas have field photographs in major online databases.

Given almost 40% of the world’s plant species are threatened with extinction, there’s a strong impetus to photograph as many of these as possible before they disappear forever. Without photographs of these species in the field, many could go extinct without us even realising.

How does Australia compare?

We were interested in how the Australian flora stacks up, so in our research, published today, we surveyed 33 major online databases. Most of these were resources created and maintained by professional botanists, such as New South Wales’ state herbarium portal PlantNET, but we also included some citizen science platforms such as iNaturalist.

Out of roughly 21,000 native Australian vascular plant species, a surprisingly large 3,715 (or 18%) did not have a single field photograph we could track down across our surveyed databases.

While most species across the southeastern states are well-photographed, Western Australia is the great frontier for unphotographed plants: 52% of all unphotographed species can be found in WA. The most incomplete plant family was Poaceae, the grasses, with 343 unphotographed species.

We identified three major “hotspots” for unphotographed Australian plants:

• northern Australia, from the Kimberley to Arnhem Land

• Queensland’s Wet Tropics World Heritage Area

• the Stirling Range and Fitzgerald River National Park in southwestern WA.

All three regions are characterised by remote environments that are often difficult to access.

Just as some animals receive less research and conservation attention than others because they aren’t as charismatic, there is also a similar charisma deficit for some types of plants. Many groups of Australian shrubs or trees with spectacular floral displays have comprehensive, or even complete, photographic records. For example, all 176 of Australia’s Banksia species have been photographed.

Conversely, small herbs, plants with tiny or dull flowers, or groups such as grasses or sedges tend to miss out on being photographed – some of them for a very long time indeed. Schoenus lanatus, for example, is a small sedge that grows across a vast stretch of coastal WA, from Perth all the way to the South Australian border. It was described in 1805 yet, more than two centuries later, it is still unphotographed in the field!

Read more:
Conservation shouldn’t be a popularity contest

Although botanists and taxonomists take many photographs of plants, citizen scientists also have a crucial role to play in the documentation of our native flora, with organisations such as Desert Discovery at the forefront. During last year’s expedition to Yeo Lake Nature Reserve at the remote western edge of the Great Victoria Desert, the Desert Discovery team photographed hundreds of native plants, including five species on our unphotographed list.

One example is the daisy bush Olearia eremaea, which is only found in WA’s arid interior. First described in 1990 and illustrated with black-and-white line drawings, it was not until more than 30 years later that this species was first photographed, at Yeo Lake, a remote nature reserve roughly 200km northeast of Laverton.

Of course, some of the species on our unphotographed list have in fact been photographed, but the images are not available in any of the 33 major databases we surveyed. These photographs may be slides in someone’s desk drawer or hard drive somewhere, appear in possibly out-of-print field guides and books, be behind paywalls in the scientific literature, or are not currently identified due to a lack of other comparison photos. This lack of discoverability is a problem, because these photos are very unlikely to be found by someone in the field trying to identify the species.

We have produced a searchable list of Australian native plants lacking photographs. We hope this work stimulates both professional and citizen scientists to track down these species and add photographs to public, discoverable repositories such as iNaturalist.

But be warned: these aren’t easy treasure hunts. These species are a mix of very remote and often overlooked species – they are typically not famous or eyecatching. Finding them will take determination, botanical know-how, and a sturdy off-road vehicle.

But the pay-off would be well worth it – successful pictures would make their way into identification guides, allowing both citizen and professional scientists to identify, monitor and conserve these species into the future.

Read more:
The 50 beautiful Australian plants at greatest risk of extinction — and how to save them

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. Thousands of our native plants have no public photographs available. Here’s why that matters – https://theconversation.com/thousands-of-our-native-plants-have-no-public-photographs-available-heres-why-that-matters-199100

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Whittaker, Senior Lecturer, School of Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Adelaide

Mahatma Gandhi said:

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

Yet we often hear of animals being treated poorly in Australia, and our laws are frequently criticised as a result.

In response, many states are reforming their animal welfare laws.

The South Australian government recently called for public feedback on how animal welfare law works and how it could be improved. This follows recent similar calls in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia.

These public consultation processes allow lawmakers to get a sense of the weight of concern about key issues. So, what are the key issues for debate, and how would changing them affect animals and society?

Animal welfare laws in Australia

We don’t have a national law to deal with animal welfare. This might seem seem strange. After all, animals are often transported across state boundaries, and having a single law throughout the country would create consistent practice, making it easier for our global trading partners to identify our animal husbandry practices (a current controversial issue).

This federated system for animal welfare is a result of our Constitution. As a result, each state and territory has its own act. We’ll call these “animal welfare acts” even though the names differ between the states.

Broadly, these acts regulate human interactions with animals. They make it an offence to be cruel to an animal.

But the acts go further than this. They make animal owners responsible for promoting their animals’ wellbeing by ensuring they have access to food, water, good housing and other resources. These acts also outline any procedures that cannot be done on animals, such as tail docking of dogs.

But you won’t find the details of animal husbandry and care in the acts. For this, you’ll have to read the codes of practice or standards. These documents, sometimes referred to as “soft law”, lay out what is acceptable husbandry practice. But they are harder to enforce as they have less legal weight.

It’s a complex system. And it’s important to remember that the current state reviews are focused on the acts.

Animals included and their sentience

A hotly debated reform topic is the definition of an animal in law. All states include mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds, but fish and other aquatic animals such as crustaceans and cephalopods (octopuses and squid) might not be included.

Recently, the UK government made news when it recognised decapods (lobsters and crabs) and cephalopods as sentient.

Recognition of animal sentience in law has been a big-ticket reform item both in Australia and internationally. Sentience describes the ability of animals to experience feelings such as pain or pleasure. Ascribing sentience to animals represents a big step forward, by acknowledging that animals are more than their current legal classification as property suggests.

So what would recognition of these animals as sentient mean for our seafood lunch or fishing trip up the coast? Well, these activities likely wouldn’t change much.

Our current laws provide protection to animals such as sheep and cattle. Yet we still farm them. The same would apply for these aquatic species. But their inclusion may provide a basis for future changes in practice – for example, the outlawing of boiling crabs alive.

But there is still debate within the legal community about what practical impact this change would have. Because of the codes of practice, farming practices will remain unchanged. It is likely the biggest impact will be on how courts apply the law to animal cruelty cases.

Still, its inclusion is important messaging, and would allow states to showcase a commitment to animal welfare, with minimal actual change to the status quo.

Read more:
ACT’s new animal sentience law recognises an animal’s psychological pain and pleasure, and may lead to better protections

Community expectations around penalties

Cruelty to animals evokes strong emotions among our nation of animal lovers. There is similar outrage when perpetrators of these offences receive what is seen as lenient sentencing.

Governments have responded to these “community expectations” by increasing maximum penalties for offences in the animal welfare acts. This sends a message to the community and the courts that animal welfare is a serious issue. It also hopefully acts as a deterrent to potential offenders.

However, changes in law do not always lead to changes in sentencing by the courts. In any case, there may be better ways to reduce this kind of offending, such as education programs or penalties, like counselling, that support offenders to get help.

We may be seeing a shift in the tide of community opinion around this issue. Recent research showed Australians appear more supportive of the use of alternative penalties than previously suggested, and more willing to trust judges’ sentencing decisions. Nevertheless, support for increasing harshness of sentences is still strong.

Read more:
Penalties for animal cruelty double in SA, but is this enough to stop animal abuse?

Limitations of animal welfare law

It is easy to criticise the law when animal welfare issues arise. But the law is a blunt instrument. Law relies on effective and well-resourced enforcement for its success.

Written law also only provides a minimum benchmark. It does not (and has never been proclaimed to) represent best practice in animal care. This can be better achieved through use of assurance or accreditation schemes, which producers can sign up to.

The power of consumers should not be discounted either. By choosing to buy only products that meet high welfare standards, we can move industry direction far more quickly than legal change is able.

Alexandra Whittaker 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. As the states consider animal welfare law reform, what changes would curb cruelty against animals? – https://theconversation.com/as-the-states-consider-animal-welfare-law-reform-what-changes-would-curb-cruelty-against-animals-201089

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Kendall Hawkins, Philosopher, University of New England

Most people are familiar with the deluge of artificial intelligence (AI) apps that seem designed to make us more efficient and creative. We’ve got apps that take text prompts and generate art, and the controversial ChatGPT, which raises serious questions about originality, misinformation and plagiarism.

Despite these concerns, AI is becoming ever more pervasive and intrusive. It’s the latest technology that will irreversibly change our lives.

The internet and smartphones were other examples. But unlike those technologies, many philosophers and scientists think AI could one day reach (or even go beyond) human-style “thinking”. This possibility, coupled with our increasing dependence on AI, is at the root of a concept in futurism called “technological singularity”.

This term has been around for a while, having been popularised by the US science fiction writer Vernor Vinge a few decades ago.

Today, the “singularity” refers to a hypothetical point in time at which the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) – that is, AI with human-level abilities – becomes so advanced that it will irreversibly change human civilisation.

It would mark the dawn of our inseparability from machines. From that moment on, we won’t be able to live without them without ceasing to function as human beings. But if the singularity comes, will we even notice it?

Brain implants as the first stage

To understand why this isn’t the stuff of fairy tales, we need only look as far as recent developments in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). BCIs are a natural beginning to the singularity in the eyes of many futurists, because they meld mind and machine in a way no other technology so far can.

Elon Musk’s company Neuralink is seeking permission from the US Food and Drug Administration to begin human trials for its BCI technology. This would involve implanting neural connectors into volunteers’ brains so they can communicate instructions by thinking them.

Neuralink hopes to help paraplegic people walk and blind people see again. But beyond these goals are other ambitions.

Musk has long said he believes brain implants will allow telepathic communication, and lead to the co-evolution of humans and machines. He argues that unless we use such technology to augment our intellects, we risk being wiped out by super-intelligent AI.

Musk is understandably not everyone’s go-to for tech expertise. But he’s not alone in predicting a massive growth in AI’s capabilities. Surveys show AI researchers overwhelmingly agree AI will achieve human-level “thinking” within this century. What they don’t agree on is whether this implies consciousness or not, or whether this necessarily means AI will do us harm once it reaches this level.

Read more:
Our neurodata can reveal our most private selves. As brain implants become common, how will it be protected?

Another BCI technology company, Synchron, has created a minimally invasive implant that allowed a patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to send emails and browse the internet using his thoughts.

Synchron chief executive Tom Oxley believes brain implants could ultimately go beyond prosthetic rehabilitation and completely transform how humans communicate. Speaking to a TED audience, he said they may one day allow users to “throw” their emotions so others can feel what they’re feeling, and “the full potential of the brain would then be unlocked”.

Early achievements in BCIs could arguably be considered the first stages of a tumbling towards the postulated singularity, in which human and machine become one. This need not imply machines will become “sentient” or control us. But the integration itself, and our ensuing dependency on it, could change us irrevocably.

It’s also worth mentioning that the start-up funding for Synchron partly came from DARPA, the research and development arm of the US Department of Defense that helped gift the world the internet. It’s probably wise to be concerned about where DARPA places its investment monies.

Read more:
Our neurodata can reveal our most private selves. As brain implants become common, how will it be protected?

Would AGI be friend or foe?

According to Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and former Google innovations engineer, humans with AI-augmented minds could be thrown onto the autobahn of evolution – hurtling forward without speed limits.

In his 2012 book How to Create a Mind, Kurzweil theorises the neocortex – the part of the brain thought to be responsible for “higher functions” such as sensory perception, emotion and cognition – is a hierarchical system of pattern recognisers which, if emulated in a machine, could lead to artificial super-intelligence.

He predicts the singularity will be with us by 2045, and thinks it might bring about a world of super-intelligent humans, perhaps even the Nietzschean “Übermensch”: someone who surpasses all worldly constraints to realise their full potential.

But not everyone sees AGI as a good thing. The late, great theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking warned super-intelligent AI could result in the apocalypse. In 2014, Hawking told the BBC

the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. […] It would take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.

Hawking was, however, an advocate for BCIs.

Connected in a hive mind

Another idea that relates to the singularity is that of the AI-enabled “hive mind”. Merriam-Webster defines a hive mind as

the collective mental activity expressed in the complex, coordinated behaviour of a colony of social insects (such as bees or ants) regarded as comparable to a single mind controlling the behaviour of an individual organism.

A theory has been developed by neuroscientist Giulio Tononi around this phenomenon, called Integrated Information Theory (IIT). It suggests we are all heading toward a merger of all minds and all data.

Philosopher Philip Goff does a good job of explaining the implications of Tononi’s concept in his book Galileo’s Error:

IIT predicts that if the growth of internet-based connectivity ever resulted in the amount of integrated information in society surpassing the amount of integrated information in a human brain, then not only would society become conscious but human brains would be ‘absorbed’ into that higher form of consciousness. Brains would cease to be conscious in their own right and would instead become mere cogs in the mega-conscious entity that is the society including its internet-based connectivity.

It’s worth noting there’s little evidence such a thing could ever come to fruition. But the theory raises important ideas about not only the rapid acceleration of technology (not to mention how quantum computing might propel this) – but about the nature of consciousness itself.

Hypothetically, if a hive mind were to emerge, one could imagine it would mark the end of individuality and the institutions that rely on it, including democracy.

The final frontier is between our ears

Recently OpenAI (the company that developed ChatGPT) released a blog post reaffirming its commitment to achieving AGI. Others will doubtless follow.

Our lives are becoming algorithmically driven in ways we often can’t discern, and therefore can’t avoid. Many features of a technological singularity promise amazing enhancements to our lives, but it’s a worry these AIs are the products of private industry.

They are virtually unregulated, and largely at the whims of impulsive “technopreneurs” with more money than than most of us combined. Regardless of whether we consider them crazy, naïve, or visionaries, we have a right to know their plans (and be able to rebut them).

If the past few decades are anything to go by, where new technologies are concerned, all of us will be affected.

Read more:
Netflix’s The Social Dilemma highlights the problem with social media, but what’s the solution?

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. Futurists predict a point where humans and machines become one. But will we see it coming? – https://theconversation.com/futurists-predict-a-point-where-humans-and-machines-become-one-but-will-we-see-it-coming-196293

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shireen Morris, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Radical Centre Reform Lab, Macquarie University Law School, Macquarie University

We asked our readers what they would like to know about the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament. In the lead-up to the referendum, our expert authors will answer those questions. You can read the other questions and answers here.

The Australian federal parliament now includes a record 11 Indigenous parliamentarians, nearly 5% of the total number of federal politicians. Given this level of Indigenous representation in parliament, some have questioned why a referendum on a constitutionally guaranteed Indigenous Voice is needed.

Parliament should reflect the diversity of the Australian community, and it’s great there is strong Indigenous representation in parliament.

However, this does not guarantee Indigenous communities across the country a proper say in laws and policies made about them. That’s why Indigenous Australians through the Uluru Statement asked for a constitutionally guaranteed Voice in their affairs.

Indigenous politicians fulfil a different role

Indigenous parliamentarians, just like parliamentarians of Indian, Chinese, Greek or other European backgrounds, must represent all Australians in their electorates.

Indigenous politicians can’t just represent Indigenous communities, because they weren’t only voted in by Indigenous communities. And Indigenous politicians also have to represent their political parties – just like any politician.

The job of politicians is to represent Australian voters and make laws and policies. The role of the Indigenous Voice is very different.

The Voice would sit outside parliament and government and would not make laws. Rather, it would enable Indigenous communities to provide advice on, and partner in, the development of laws and policies made about them. This would enable Indigenous communities to be heard in their own affairs.

Indigenous politicians do not always agree with Indigenous communities

Indigenous communities say they need a grassroots Voice that is outside parliament and government, and independent of party politics. As the Indigenous activist Roy Ah-See said,

We don’t want a green voice, we don’t want a red voice, we don’t want a blue voice: we want a black voice.

An independent Indigenous Voice is needed because the views of Indigenous politicians – which are usually constrained and informed by electoral considerations and party affiliations – cannot be expected to align with the views of Indigenous communities across the country.

We can see this in current Voice debate. Both Country Liberal Party Senator Jacinta Price on the right and now-independent Senator Lidia Thorpe on the left have disagreed with majority Indigenous opinion on the Voice. Around 80% of Indigenous Australians support a constitutionally guaranteed Voice, however these Indigenous politicians oppose it.

This demonstrates that Indigenous politicians and Indigenous communities do not always agree.

Grassroots Indigenous voices are still going unheard

Having Indigenous politicians in parliament is also no guarantee that Indigenous communities are heard in crucial policy decisions made about them. Take the way alcohol bans were left to lapse in the Northern Territory last year, against the wishes of many Indigenous communities.

As Professor Marcia Langton explained, the pleas of Indigenous communities for a better plan might have been heeded if those communities had a constitutionally guaranteed Voice in their affairs. Much harm could have been avoided.

That such policy decisions are still made without proper Indigenous community input – despite strong Indigenous representation in parliament – demonstrates why Indigenous communities want a constitutionally guaranteed Voice in their affairs.

Read more:
A Voice to Parliament will not give ‘special treatment’ to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Here’s why

The Voice would benefit all politicians

Receiving advice from Indigenous communities would be of benefit not only to non-Indigenous policymakers, but also Indigenous policymakers.

The Voice would enable all politicians to hear from and partner with Indigenous communities across the country, to make better policies about those communities.

For example, Indigenous Senators like Patrick Dodson and Price could be involved in making laws and policies about welfare reform that have a particular impact on Indigenous communities in Cape York, Queensland, or heritage protection policies with a unique impact on Indigenous communities in Tasmania.

Being senators for Western Australia and the Northern Territory, respectively, Dodson and Price probably have less understanding of the specific challenges facing Indigenous communities in Cape York and Tasmania.

Australia is a big and diverse continent, and Indigenous communities are diverse. Indigenous politicians would benefit from hearing Indigenous advice from different local regions when making laws and policies for Indigenous affairs – just as non-Indigenous politicians would.

Read more:
Why a First Nations Voice should come before Treaty

Fixing a history of exclusion

Finally, it’s worth recalling the history of Indigenous exclusion from political processes, which underscores the need for a constitutionally guaranteed Voice in their affairs.

In the past, there were laws and policies denying Indigenous people the vote in some jurisdictions. Indigenous people didn’t get equal voting rights across the board until the 1960s. And enrolling to vote at federal elections only became compulsory for Indigenous Australians in 1984.

Indigenous representation in parliament has fluctuated, and is not guaranteed.
While there are 11 Indigenous federal parliamentarians now, there were far fewer in the past.

A constitutionally guaranteed Indigenous Voice would provide advice to help prevent a repeat of the unjust laws and policies of the past – like those that denied Indigenous people the vote.

The Voice would also help policymakers – both Indigenous and non-Indigenous – partner with Indigenous communities to improve practical outcomes in Indigenous affairs.

Shireen Morris is a constitutional lawyer and director of the Radical Centre Reform Lab at Macquarie University Law School which receives funding from Foundation Donors Henry and Marcia Pinskier. She is an adviser to Cape York Institute, a member of the ALP, a committee member of the John Curtin Research Centre, a Research Fellow at Per Capita and an Academic Fellow at Trinity Collect, the University of Melbourne.

– ref. With 11 Indigenous politicians in parliament, why does Australia need the Voice? – https://theconversation.com/with-11-indigenous-politicians-in-parliament-why-does-australia-need-the-voice-200910

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Georgia Middleton, Associate Lecturer, Flinders University

Eating together regularly as a family has long been promoted as a simple solution for improving health and wellbeing.

We have been told that to achieve these proposed benefits we must follow an idealistic, age-old formula: all family members at the table, happily sharing a home-cooked meal and chatting without distractions. But the modern reality includes time-poor families, fussy eaters, siblings at odds and stress about what meals to cook – not to mention cost-of-living pressures. This combination can make achieving family meals difficult, if not impossible, for many families.

Research tells us families who eat together frequently are more likely to have better diets, better family functioning and children with higher self-esteem. But these studies cannot tell us whether the family gathering over a meal is causing these outcomes. It might be just as likely that families who eat well are more likely to eat together.

But how can we make family meals more realistic and less stressful?

Read more:
3 reasons your teenager might skip breakfast – don’t fuss but do encourage a healthy start

We’re not sure what the link is

Our previous systematic review attempted to unpack this relationship. But we weren’t able to provide conclusive answers, largely due to limitations with study designs. Researchers didn’t look at factors like physical activity, screen time and sleep separately. And they measured “success” differently across studies, making them hard to compare.

So, we do not know with certainty the family meal is beneficial for health, only that there’s a statistical link between families that eat together and family health.

And we do not know which aspect of the family meal may be responsible. The answer might relate to food quality, screen use, mealtime atmosphere or family conversations.

A nightly challenge

In Australia, family meals often happen in the evening because it is one of the few times of day families are at home at the same time. Around three quarters of young children engage in family dinners with their caregiver more than five nights per week.

Although many parents consider family mealtimes important, they can also be stressful to achieve.

Family meals are more than what happens at the table. They require intent, effort and planning. This labour can become a relentless cycle, and it’s most commonly mothers who shoulder the burden. Many find it tough going.

Managing mealtimes

The work continues once the family is seated together.

Having pleasant mealtimes and meaningful conversations may not happen naturally. Again, it is often mothers who manage the relationships and emotions around the table.

And mealtimes can become more complicated when there are multiple kids in the mix. Some parents allow TV or other screens to encourage kids to eat and to avoid arguments. This strategy has been linked with less-than-optimal dietary intakes, but can make mealtimes possible, and more manageable.

Read more:
Are you living in a food desert? These maps suggest it can make a big difference to your health

5 tips to ease the pressure

So, how can we rethink what a successful and meaningful family meal looks like? Here are five ideas for starters:

1) It doesn’t have to be dinner

Opportunities to eat together come at different times of the day, and not all family members have to be present. A meaningful eating occasion can be as simple as sharing a snack with the kids after school.

2) It doesn’t need to be perfect

There is no shame in reheating a frozen meal, throwing together pasta and sauce, serving your veggies raw, eating on a picnic rug in the living room, or occasionally watching a family TV show.

3) Don’t force the conversation

Meals are a great time to communicate, but this does not always come easily after busy days at work and school. Simple word games, listening to music and quiet time can be just as enjoyable.

4) You don’t have to do it alone

Get creative in the way you share family meal tasks with kids and partners. You could design the family menu together, have a shopping list everyone can contribute to, or divide the washing up.

5) There’s no magic number

There is no number of meals that is right for every family. It’s all about opting in how and when you can.

Read more:
Should you feed child guests dinner? What #Swedengate tells us about food culture and social expectations

Rethinking family meals

When it comes to family meals, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. We need better promotion of realistic and achievable family meals, to reduce the pressure placed on already overburdened families.

We must also consider whether systemic changes are required to support parents to have the time and energy to bring their families together for a meaningful shared meal. This could include supporting workers to finish early for meal preparation or providing more affordable, healthy convenience foods. We could also look to other cultures for inspiration.

More evidence is needed to understand which components of the family meal are most beneficial, so that we can prioritise these. Innovative research methods, such as mealtime observations in households with a range of cultures and compositions, could explore how eating occasions unfold in real time.

Family meals can be a positive experience, with the potential for good health outcomes. But they could be even better if we reduce all the pressure and expectations that surround them.

Read more:
How to save $50 off your food bill and still eat tasty, nutritious meals

Georgia Middleton’s research has been supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and the King and Amy O’Malley Trust Postgraduate Research Scholarship.

Eloise Litterbach’s research has been supported by Australian Government Research Training Program Stipend Scholarship, and Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition (IPAN) Seed Funds, Deakin University.

Fairley Le Moal’s research has been supported by the French National Association for Research in Technology (ANRT), a Flinders University Innovation Partnership Seed grant and Mars Food. The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not reflect those of Mars Food.

Susannah Ayre’s research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Stipend Scholarship.

– ref. Are we overthinking family meals? 5 realistic tips to ease the pressure – https://theconversation.com/are-we-overthinking-family-meals-5-realistic-tips-to-ease-the-pressure-200731

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bianca Le, Honorary Fellow, The University of Melbourne

It didn’t get much attention when US President Joe Biden launched a biomanufacturing initiative last September.

But it should have. Biomanufacturing is about harnessing nature’s factories – cells – to make just about anything. That includes food. As Biden pointed out, biomanufacturing could boost food security at a time when prices are spiking amid geopolitical strife and unprecedented droughts, floods and fires.

How? By cultivating meat. Having a lamb roast for dinner has traditionally required rearing animals, slaughtering them, and discarding inedible parts. But technology has advanced to the point we can now grow animal muscle cells in bioreactors.

To date, Australia has no such initiative. But we should. Agriculture and biotechnology are two of our national strengths. And we are exceptionally vulnerable to climate change. Cultivated meat has come a long way, but it’s still not cost-competitive with traditional meat. The last hurdle to be overcome is scale.

Why do we need this technology?

To create a new farm, you have to remove most of what was there before – forests, grasslands, wetlands. Cows, sheep, chickens and pigs are hungry, so the demand for soybeans and other feed shoots up. And cows belch out methane from the fermenting grass in their stomachs. Animal agriculture contributes nearly 15% of the worlds emissions – and cows make up the largest share of that.

While growing and eating plants directly is still the most calorie efficient way to produce food, many people who have grown up eating meat are unlikely to switch to fully vegetarian diets. The taste and texture of animal muscle and fat tissue just can’t be fully replicated by plant proteins and oils.

Read more:
Plant-based patties, lab-grown meat and insects: how the protein industry is innovating to meet demand

The mince in your bolognese started as a cow which, in Australia, spent most of its life outdoors, grazing on grass and exposed to the sun.

Cows are much more sensitive to heat than we are, as they can’t get rid of as much heat by sweating. They prefer temperatures below 20℃. During heatwaves, they can suffer heat stress, which can lead to organ failure and death.

Australia has already warmed more than the global average, at 1.4℃. By 2100, if nothing is done, it could be more than 3℃ warmer. Our cows aren’t going to like it.

Cultivated meat is done indoors in temperature-controlled areas. It also allows us to farm vertically, creating a smaller footprint. Beef produced this way requires vastly less land (95% less) and with a fraction of the greenhouse gases (92% less) than traditional beef production, according to a life cycle analysis.

There’s also much less waste. If you want to be able to cook and eat chicken breast and thighs, why not just grow those parts rather than breeding and raising a chicken, complete with digestive tract, brain and feathers? Biopsied muscle cells from chickens can can be grown inside bioreactors, sterile stainless-steel tanks. Another bonus is you don’t need to rely on antibiotics.

Importantly, these muscle and fat cells floating in a broth of plant-based nutrients (called culture medium) promise to be much better at converting food into muscle mass. For every three calories of broth, we could get one calorie of meat in return.

Chickens convert food to meat at an 8:1 ratio. But cows need much more. For every ~30 calories of feed a cow eats, we get 1 calorie of food in return.

Their ceaseless demand for food – and ever-growing herds – are the main driver of the destruction of tropical forests. Two fifths of all tropical deforestation is to make more pastures for cows, with 18% of this deforestation done to plant oilseeds like soybeans, most of which become cattle food.

So why isn’t cultivated meat in supermarkets?

In 2013, the world saw the first ever burger made from cultivated meat. It cost A$512,000. Investment poured in and the cost plunged. By 2017, advocates were predicting cost parity with traditional meat within five years.

It’s 2023 – so where is it? While some products are getting closer, they’re still not cheaper than traditional meat. Sceptics argue the technological barriers are insurmountable.

There’s some merit to this critique. Scale is the hardest step for any new technology. Many cultivated meat companies have succeeded in the laboratory, but none have gone all the way to commercial scale. There are still issues to iron out, such as ensuring bioreactors stay sterile at large scales, and navigating food regulations. Last year’s economic turbulence has also seen private investment drop, though public investment has risen.

Small, high-tech countries like Singapore and Israel are leaders in this area. Both nations are acutely aware of their climate vulnerabilities and dependence on food imports.

Singapore imports 90% of its food, for instance. This is why they’re looking at cultivated meat as well as other alternative proteins. Two years ago, Singapore became the first place in the world where you can actually buy cultivated meat. This didn’t just happen. They invested in talent, streamlined regulations and actively set out to attract companies.

Could Australia follow suit?

Australia has been one of the world’s top three beef exporters for more than 70 years. We’re also a biotech leader. Two decades ago, Australia’s biotech sector was tiny. Now it’s amongst the top five in the world.

Growing cells in culture has been done for decades in biomedical research. What’s new is applying this biotech knowledge to food.

Is it a threat to farmers? Not necessarily. Diversifying into new protein markets – as US beef giants like Cargill are doing – could help Australian farmers and agribusinesses stay competitive. Australian startups like Vow and Magic Valley want to kickstart the local cultivated meat industry. Vow plans to launch its cultivated quail in Singapore.

We’ll need a combination of private and public investment to overcome the remaining technical and financial barriers to scale. Cellular Agriculture Australia has laid out three ways government investment could encourage this sector: develop talent, create cooperative research centres and build flexible biomanufacturing infrastructure for pilot and full-scale plants.

As we face an increasingly uncertain future, it might be a smart move to secure our food supply while protecting ourselves against climate change – and reducing environmental damage.

Read more:
Looking forward to a future without factory farming

Bianca Le works for Mission Barns and is a Board Director of Cellular Agriculture Australia.

– ref. If we perfect cultivated meat, we could hedge against food shortages as climate chaos intensifies – https://theconversation.com/if-we-perfect-cultivated-meat-we-could-hedge-against-food-shortages-as-climate-chaos-intensifies-191417

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jasvir Kaur Nachatar Singh, Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University

International students are a hugely important part of Australia’s university system and its economy. In 2019, before COVID, international education was worth about A$40.3 billion to the Australian economy.

As of 2022, international students are worth about $25.5 billion but this figure is expected to rise again. Not only has Australia reopened its borders, but it is trying to entice international students by increasing post-study working rights and working rights on student visas.

China is of huge importance to our international student intake, making up 25% of the group as of December 2022. However, students from South Asia – including India – are also important, making up more than 30% of those studying here.

We know South Asian students are extremely keen to work here. Indian graduates were granted the most post-work study visas in the two years leading up to the pandemic. But as of 2022, only 57% of undergraduate Indian students and less than 53% of postgraduates had full-time employment after they graduated.

Our new study talked to South Asian graduates about the support they got trying to find a job. It found they face two main challenges: both career fairs and careers support on Australian campuses are skewed towards domestic students.

Our research

As of December 2022, about 16% of international students in Australia come from India, with a further 9% coming from Nepal. More than 7% of students also come from a combination of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Afghanistan and the Maldives.

We know that many of these students want to study in Australia so as to get a job here and then gain either permanent residency or citizenship. They are often referred to as “two-step” migrants.

Our study wanted to look at what kind of support this group was receiving around employability – the skills and opportunities needed to find a job. In 2020 we interviewed 20 South Asian graduates to understand their experiences at careers fairs and university career services, as these are the two major vehicles for supporting students to get into jobs.

The graduates were mainly in Melbourne and studied a range of degrees, including business, accounting, finance, engineering, education and public health.

Careers fairs are set up for domestic students

Australian universities invite companies to career fairs on campus to show students what job opportunities are out there and to connect them with prospective employers.

The South Asian graduates we interviewed were disappointed with the fairs. Most of the companies they met had internships, work placements or full-time graduate opportunities but they were largely for domestic students.

As one interviewee seeking a job in business told us:

We did have career fairs at university every semester. But most of the career fairs I attended just have jobs for PRs [permanent residents] or citizens. TR [temporary resident] jobs are very limited. Maybe just two or three companies only at the fair takes in international students or TRs.

Another interviewee, who studied telecommunications also talked of limited opportunities:

Very few companies are open for international students – probably less than ten. So, it is very hard. We don’t have much opportunities due the limited numbers of companies that take in international graduates.

Read more:
Australia wants international students to stay and work after graduation. They find it difficult for 4 reasons

Careers office don’t help enough

Most Australian universities have a career office or career advice service. Careers office offers offer general services around resume checking and tips for interview skills.

The South Asian graduates went to careers offices for help but again, found the advice and resume assistance was geared at domestic students. As another interviewee seeking work in planning told us:

Career advice provided by the university careers office is very generic. It is not going to help or be relevant, as it is supposed to be different for international students who are finding employment in Australia. So, I did not take the advice that they gave me. I got better advice from industry professionals who were also academics at this university.

An engineering graduate who had only found work in a supermarket said he went to the career office several times to try and get his resume “sorted out”.

But they just enrol me for the resume sessions every time I ask for feedback on my resume. I waste my whole day for this. They gave the same tips every time to everyone. So not much help was provided to me. I am still [searching for] jobs in my field of studies, which is engineering.

What do we need to do instead?

Australian universities need to move away from a “once-size-fits-all” approach when it comes to employability support. Some key changes could include:

• initiating partnerships with companies or industry representatives to provide specific job opportunities to international students via internships, work placements and volunteering roles

• inviting more companies to career fairs that will be open to offering opportunities for international students or graduates on temporary visas

• inviting international graduate alumni as guest speakers to career sessions, to mentor students, help modify their resumes and locate work or internship opportunities

• providing careers offices with the capacity to provide practical career planning and development guidance for international students. This is so international students are able to visualise their careers in Australia, in their home country or a third country.

Read more:
‘Are you asking us to sleep under the Harbour Bridge?’: 3 myths about international students and the housing crisis

Australia’s economy and university system rely heavily on international graduates to come and study here. They do so on the premise it will help their career prospects, and Australian universities need to do more to live up to this.

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. ‘Very few companies are open for international students’: South Asian graduates say they need specific support to find jobs – https://theconversation.com/very-few-companies-are-open-for-international-students-south-asian-graduates-say-they-need-specific-support-to-find-jobs-200739

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

The Academy Awards in 2023 were a less scandalous affair than last year – although host Jimmy Kimmel never let us forget “the slap”, with so many jokes it was verging on a dead-horse-beating situation.

In fact it was a relatively wholesome ceremony, defined by great sweeps for films All Quiet On The Western Front and Everything Everywhere All At Once. Perhaps the only “shock” was Angela Bassett losing Best Supporting Actress to Jamie Lee Curtis, and thereby being denied the chance to “do the thing”.

Here, we summarise the most important moments from the 2023 Oscars.

All the looks of the champagne carpet

Deborah Fisher, Lecturer in Design and Fashion Studies, School of Business and Creative Industries, University of the Sunshine Coast

The Oscars 2023 red-carpet fashions will spur a rush of activity as the haute couture and designer looks are rapidly reproduced for the knockoff market.

The pillars of European Haute Couture were well represented. The major players such as Louis Vuitton (Cate Blanchett, Ana de Armas), Armani Privé (Nicole Kidman), Dior Haute Couture (Michelle Yeoh), Valentino (Florence Pugh), Prada (Catherine Martin), Atelier Versace (Lady Gaga), floated across the carpet with all the feel of Paris fashion week.

There was, however, an obvious absence of emerging or avant-garde designers or even American designers. Instead, it would be fair to say there was an abundance of understated looks, with shades of soft ecru and off-white dominating (Halle Berry, Michelle Williams, Emily Blunt, Tems). Where there was colour, it was delectable- mid-toned aqua (Halle Bailey in Dolce & Gabbana), citrusy orange (Sandra Oh in Giambattista Valli), chartreuse (Winnie Harlow in Atelier Versace), palpable purple (Angela Bassett in Moschino).

Red (note the carpet was renamed champagne) got a solid look in with Melissa McCarthy, Anni Strenisko, and Cara Delavinge, who stunned in Elie Saab. The men followed the mostly conservative mood, with Austin Butler and Lenny Kravitz in Saint Laurent, Keith Urban and Ke Huy Quan in Armani Privé, and Paul Mescal in Gucci. Questlove, last year’s Best Documentary winner, adorned his Crocs with sparkles and bling so he could “shine his light,” perhaps the most personalised of the men’s sartorial stories.

And of course, there are some looks that will, although they should not, be copied – Sigourney Weaver’s somewhat matronly Givenchy dress and Eva Longoria’s art deco-inspired, but far too ambitious gown by Zuhair Murad.

Keeping the score

Gregory Camp, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland School of Music

There was a sore lack of good music throughout this year’s ceremony.

I miss the days of the orchestra pit. The orchestra this year was invisible, other than a few short shots of them leading into commercial breaks and during the Best Original Score announcement. They appeared to be in a conference room somewhere backstage; just because one can pipe in a remote orchestra fairly easily doesn’t mean one should. And despite the fact there was a live orchestra (somewhere), most of the music sounded prerecorded, as it was mixed in a flat, lossy way.

The music clips chosen to accompany the presenters’ and winners’ walks to and from the stage were not very exciting. We heard a lot of a very dull looping motive from Everything Everywhere All at Once as members of its team went to collect their well-deserved awards.

It is possible to write music that is immediately noticeable and interesting; just ask John Williams, who can fit more melodic material into two bars than this whole ceremony had in all its incidental music. All Quiet on the Western Front’s repeating minor triad is at least memorable, although I was surprised it beat Williams’ and Justin Hurwitz’s stronger work for The Fabelmans and Babylon, respectively, to win the Best Score award.

The Best Song nominees this year were uniformly poor, aside from Naatu Naatu, which did its job well and justifiably won the award. Applause from Tell It Like a Woman was really terrible, a surprisingly ineffective song from Oscar stronghold Diane Warren. This Is a Life from Everything Everywhere was also an awful song, but it added a much-needed touch of the bizarre to this slick ceremony.

Naatu Naatu was the only musical moment that brought back something of the Oscars’ glamour of yore. This is one of the first songs from song-rich Indian cinema to break through to the Oscars, but we can hope that it will pave the way for more.

Lady Gaga had a rough start with her Top Gun song Hold My Hand, suffering through some poor vocal intonation, but she warmed into it. Considering this is a film awards show, the poor cinematography for this performance was striking: Gaga was in an overly tight shot and the camera operator had a hard time keeping this very active performer in the frame. That said, I liked the simplicity of the setting for the song, the strong backlighting isolating her and her band in the space and making the large stage seem more intimate.

Rihanna gave a good performance of another lacklustre number, Wakanda Forever’s Lift Me Up. The downbeat, repetitive song didn’t allow her to show very much of her range. This all makes one desperate for a return of the likes of Henry Mancini and Randy Newman to this category.

Brendan Fraser and Best Actor

Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

With his Oscar win for Best Actor for The Whale, Brendan Fraser simply proves something most of us have known all along – he’s a great performer. If anyone had any doubts, they simply needed to watch performances across his career, from Encino Man to Gods and Monsters to his comical cameo as himself in Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star.

His performance in The Whale is fine, and good enough to win the Oscar, but again the win reflects popular sensibilities rather than being a measure of true artistic merit. It’s essentially an easy part in an easily digestible film from a director, Darren Aronofsky, who’s made a career of making genre films that seem more interesting and complex than they actually are.

He returns here, with Fraser, to similar terrain he covered with Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler – getting a performance out of a supposedly washed-up actor that, at least in part, reflects the courage of the actor in appearing warts and all – willingly vulnerable and hopeless.

I reiterate, Fraser is good (as he was in Airheads, although he wasn’t nominated for Best Actor for that performance), but so much of the pathos and energy of the film simply comes from his appearance – and our knowledge that Fraser used to be a Hollywood heartthrob.

And there’s something fundamentally lazy about that.

Michelle Yeoh and Best Actress in a Leading Role

Jindan Ni, Lecturer, Global and Language Studies, RMIT University

Everything Everywhere All at Once became the biggest winner at the 95th Academy Awards – surprising, but also not so surprising. Cast mainly by Asian actors and actresses, this strangely (sometimes even disturbingly) funny but also moving comedy won most of the major awards, including Best Leading Actress and Best Director.

Michelle Yeoh, who is now the first Asian actor to win Best Actress, addressed her acceptance speech directly to “the little boys and girls” who look like herself, and proudly claimed that her winning is “the beacon of hope and possibility” for all the Asians who pursue their dreams in Hollywood, or even more broadly, in Western societies with a long history of deeming Asians as inferior.

The sweeping wins of Everything Everywhere All At Once at the Oscars is a manifestation of reconciliation and inclusiveness that the Academy Awards are attempting to embrace and strive for.

Despite its historical winnings at the Academy Awards, it is hard to say that Everything Everywhere All At Once has successfully managed to make new representations of Asian in the big screen. Yeoh still needed to make good use of her Kung fu skills in the movie to appeal to the audience and the market.

The final thing I would like to add is although Cate Blanchett did not win Best Actress, her formidable and awe-inspiring acting in Tár is by no means inferior.

Just like the nickname “da mowang”, literally meaning “the mighty devil”, the Chinese audience has given to Cate, her powerful and almost enigmatic performance in Tár also tells of the infinite possibilities for women who refuse to be defined by age, which largely resonate with Yeoh’s words: “Ladies, don’t ever let anyone tell you you are past your prime.”

Celebrity legacy at the Oscars

Robert Boucaut, PhD Candidate and Tutor, Media Department, University of Adelaide

The choice of winners for the acting categories at the 2023 Oscars speaks to a respect for building celebrity legacy – all are actors over 50 years of age and on their first-ever nominations.

Despite the backlash copped in the year of the nepo-baby, Jamie Lee Curtis used her speech to thank her dedicated fanbase who have championed her work in action and horror movies.

Fraser and Ke Huy Quan’s outpourings of emotion for their wins signified their deeply felt triumphs over years of uncertainty in filmmaking: an Oscar’s “comeback narrative” always highlights how an industrial status quo works against individuals who fall out of favour in a celebrity marketplace.

And the collectively held breath across film Twitter upon the announcement of Halle Berry presenting the Best Actress award was finally relaxed with Michelle Yeoh’s win – the first woman of colour to win the award presented it to the second, 21 years later.

Across the awards season both Yeoh and Quan demonstrated an acute awareness of the significance their wins would hold as Asian actors, and their speeches invited the audience to dream big. The genuine emotion offered and elicited across all four categories were a refreshing rebuttal for an Oscars cynic, that the symbolic power of these awards can be put in service of expanding notions of prestige acting and celebrity.

The best picture? Or was it

Ari Mattes

The production companies behind Everything Everywhere All at Once must be frothing at the mouth – not only have they cleaned up at the box office, making (by conservative estimates) five times their budget, but their film has now won the Best Picture Oscar.

Does it deserve it? In much of the commentary around the film, moral and aesthetic categories are being confused. It is good that it has won, because it’s an independent production, and it’s nice that a film with Chinese actors in it has won. But this is a moral argument.

Although undeniably a crowd-pleaser, I found the film aesthetically drab. It was overlong, a mess of ideas derived from other (and often better) works, and the whole thing was overlaid with a kind of irritatingly cutesy schtick.

It works okay as a 1980s-style blockbuster, but as a piece of cinema it is doubtful it will have any bearing or longevity in the cultural archive.

Was it actually the best picture of 2022? No – there were six better films nominated for the award, with The Banshees of Inisherin a true cinematic masterpiece – not to mention all the excellent films that had no showing in the Oscars.

What its win does suggest (along with the success of Top Gun: Maverick), is that audiences are craving nostalgic cinema that plays well on the big screen. And this will excite the kinds of mega-corporations that produce indie cinema these days – they can simply recycle and combine material from their VHS collection.

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. Winning everything everywhere all at once: 5 experts on the big moments at the Oscars 2023 – https://theconversation.com/winning-everything-everywhere-all-at-once-5-experts-on-the-big-moments-at-the-oscars-2023-201661

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Alexander, Adjunct Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management, Curtin University

Australia Post is seeing red. A lot of it.

After posting a razor-thin profit of $23.6 million in the last six months of 2022, it anticipates a loss for the full 2022-23 financial year – only the second time since being corporatised in 1989.

The last loss was in 2014-15, following a $190 million investment in “transformational reform” of Australia Post’s letters business. At the time, it expressed confidence those efficiency improvements would allow it “to maintain a five-day-a-week delivery”. Now it is pessimistic. With the ongoing collapse in demand for letter delivery, it sees only more losses ahead.

That’s a huge problem, because Australia Post has two main obligations, enshrined in federal legislation. It is required to operate on commercial principles – that is, the federal government wants it to deliver a dividend – while also meeting strict community service obligations.

Those obligations – established in 1989 and last reviewed in 2019 – require delivering letters to 98% of all Australian addresses five days a week, and in more remote areas to 99.7% of addresses at least twice a week, generally within two days of posting.

The Morrison government temporarily relaxed those obligations between May 2020 and June 2021 so Australia Post could divert resources to its parcel delivery services as online shopping boomed during the pandemic. Now the organisation wants those community service obligations reduced permanently.

Read more:
COVID hands Australia Post opportunity to end daily delivery

Cost of service obligations

Meeting the obligations cost $348.5 million in 2021-22, says a federal government discussion paper on “postal services modernisation” published this month. It says they “are no longer financially sustainable and are not well targeted at the needs of Australians due to changes brought about by the digitisation of the economy”.

It’s hard to disagree. The numbers are incontrovertible. The hundreds of millions of dollars a year being lost on letter delivery will only get bigger. People just don’t need a daily postal service like they used to.

In the red, and dying

In the 2021-22 financial year, Australia Post made a slim profit of $55 million on revenues of $8.97 billion. That’s a 0.6% profit margin, far below the 8.5% average within the transport services sector.

The surplus was due only to its parcel-delivery business, which grew about 12% in 2021-22 after four years of growing at more than 20%. Letters now account for less than 20% of Australia Post’s revenue.

The discussion paper notes letter volumes in Australia is now less than half what they were in 2008. This is not as severe as countries such as New Zealand or Denmark, but worse than Germany, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Declines in postal organisation letter volumes

Government agencies and businesses now account for 97% of mail sent. Overall volume will decline as they move to cheaper, more efficient online methods. Even major postal events like election campaigns are likely to disappear, with postal voting replaced by digital technology.

What can be done?

The discussion paper flags a range of possible responses.

One is to charge higher prices. Britain’s Royal Mail, for example, has raised postage prices by 64% over the past five years.

Australia Post increased the rate for standard letter delivery from A$1.10 to A$1.20 in January, which the discussion paper notes is significantly less than the average of $2.08 for OECD countries.

Higher prices may boost profit for a year or two, but in the longer term will just accelerate the transition to non-postal methods.

Another option is investing in more efficient sorting technology, particularly automation. The French and German postal services are doing this. But Australia Post has already made huge investments in efficiencies, and doing more will cost the federal government money – something it won’t want to do given the budget position.

What about local post offices?

Another option is to reduce Australia Post’s network of post offices, of which there are more than 4,300. This number is tied to another community service obligation: that no one live further than 2.5km from a post office in a metropolitan area, or 7.5km in a non-metropolitan area.

The discussion paper notes Australia has more post offices than supermarkets. They cost $1.3 billion to operate in 2021-22.

These provide posting, pickup, banking, transaction and retail services. But their need is diminishing as all things are progressively digitised. An argument could be made that some, at least in metropolitan areas, could be replaced with smart lockers for parcel pick-up.

But that’s likely to be politically contentious, with less financial gain, than the most obvious choice – to scrap the community service obligation to deliver post five days a week.

New Zealand’s postal service did this in 2013, moving to delivery every other day. Sweden did so in 2020 as a trial, with the intention of making it permanent.

Some will miss the daily service. But most of us won’t. As the relaxation to deliveries every second day showed during the COVID period, it is likely most people won’t even notice.

Paul Alexander 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. Post apocalypse: the end of daily letter deliveries is in sight – https://theconversation.com/post-apocalypse-the-end-of-daily-letter-deliveries-is-in-sight-201094

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dejan Stojanovic, Postdoctoral Fellow, Australian National University

Captive breeding of threatened species for release into the wild is an important conservation tool. But where threats to wild populations remain unresolved, this tool may not guarantee population recovery in the long term.

Our new research on one of the most endangered birds in the world shows we need to tackle underlying threats to survival if we are to save species from extinction in the wild.

Captive breeding and release is sustaining the population of orange-bellied parrots, holding extinction at bay. But most of the young born into the population each year die during their migration and winter.

Our modelling shows that if captive breeding and release stopped tomorrow, orange-bellied parrots would soon become extinct. The natural birth rate is too low to compensate for the high death rates of juveniles. So we’re locked into releasing captive-bred parrots until we can solve the underlying problems afflicting the wild population. Unfortunately, it’s not clear exactly what those problems are.

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No guarantees when threats remain

Globally, captive breeding has prevented the extinction of iconic species such as the California condor.

However, despite the benefits of captive breeding, success is not guaranteed. This is especially so when captive-bred animals are released into habitats where threats remain unresolved. In such cases, captive-bred animals will succumb to the same threats as their wild counterparts.

For some species, identifying and correcting threats is straightforward. For example, removing introduced predators from islands may be a way to eliminate a threat and optimise the benefit of releases from captivity.

But the exact nature of threats is often not clear-cut, especially for species that move over large areas. This can create uncertainty about what the threats are, where they occur, and how to resolve them.

Inability to mitigate threats may result in lost opportunities for released animals to learn crucial behaviours such as migration or song, and ultimately, the decline of wild populations.

Conservationists may sometimes need to “buy time” and prevent extinction in the wild by releasing animals to ensure the continuity of animal cultures in landscapes where threats persist.

Locked into a cycle of dependency

The orange-bellied parrot is one of the most endangered birds in the world. In 2016, just four females returned to Tasmania from migration, and only one of them produced a surviving descendant. (The species migrates from its summer breeding ground in southwestern Tasmania to the coasts of southeastern mainland Australia, but these movements take a toll on the population.)

Fortunately, despite ongoing uncertainty about reducing threats, intensive conservation efforts have grown the population. More than 30 females have returned from migration annually over the past two years. Despite this success, most juvenile parrots (both captive-bred and wild-born) that leave Tasmania on their northward migration die.

Overcoming the unresolved threats that drive this high mortality is crucial for making this population self-sustaining. Unfortunately due to the practical limitations of studying a small, scattered population across remote areas, it is unlikely that this knowledge gap can be addressed in the short term. In the meantime, there are several options available.

We used simulations to compare the benefits of different management scenarios on the orange-bellied parrot. We showed that of all the potential intervention options available to the recovery project, releasing captive juveniles in autumn – to learn from wild adults, and increase the size of migrating flocks – was the most beneficial.

However, none of the interventions available to managers can directly address the underlying problem of high juvenile mortality, so their benefits were temporary. When we simulated stopping captive releases, the populations rapidly went extinct. Without addressing the underlying threats faced by the species, we found the natural birth rate too low to compensate for high juvenile mortality rates.

Until a solution is found for high migration and winter mortality rates, orange-bellied parrots will remain dependent on captive breeding and release to prevent extinction and grow the population.

Lulled into a false sense of security

Orange-bellied parrots provide a stark reminder that there is no “quick fix” for most threatened species. Although captive breeding for release can effectively prevent extinction in the short term, long-term self-sustaining populations in the wild depend on finding solutions for the threats that caused their decline in the first place. Until solutions can be found, management agencies may be locked into a cycle of conservation dependency aimed at preventing extinction, but struggle to address the threats that cause the underlying problems.

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Given the global popularity and visibility of captive breeding programs, it is easy to be lulled into a false sense of security that they are a quick fix for the extinction crisis. However, identifying the threats to wild populations early is crucial because re-establishing “extinct in the wild” species from captivity is extremely difficult, albeit not impossible.

In the case of the orange-bellied parrot, we hope preventing extinction of the wild population through releases of captive-bred birds may buy enough time to identify and mitigate the causes of high juvenile migration/winter mortality. But we also hope our study is a reminder to policymakers that conservation of wild populations should focus on identifying and preventing threats, negating the need for captive breeding in the first place.

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Dejan Stojanovic received funding for this project from the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, via NRM South.

Carolyn Hogg receives funding from the Australian Research Council, and was a member of the Orange-bellied Parrot recovery team from 2011 to 2021.

Rob Heinsohn 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. Orange-bellied parrot shows there’s more to saving endangered species than captive breeding – https://theconversation.com/orange-bellied-parrot-shows-theres-more-to-saving-endangered-species-than-captive-breeding-201226

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Len Gillman, Professor of Biogeography, Auckland University of Technology

By the end of this month, speed limits on more than 2,000 roads across Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland will have been reduced by between 10 and 60 kilometres per hour (km/h). Part of the Auckland Transport (AT) safe speeds programme, the aim is to reduce serious injuries and fatalities.

According to AT, areas where speeds have already been reduced have seen a 30% reduction in road deaths, compared to a 9% increase in deaths where they have not.

But there is another benefit to reducing speeds on our roads – a reduction in carbon emissions. Cars and other passenger vehicles were responsible for 27% of New Zealand’s gross carbon dioxide emissions in 2018. At lower speeds, vehicles use less fuel and emit less carbon dioxide.

Ultimately, it’s about climate change. The recent extreme weather events that have wreaked havoc across many communities in Aotearoa are only an entrée. The main course is yet to come.

But to see a significant emissions reduction from the country’s motor vehicle fleet, local and central government agencies must go beyond lowering speeds on small sections of inner-city and rural roads. Motorway speeds should targeted, too.

Less fuel, lower emissions

Driving slower on highways saves fuel. At higher speeds, engines must work harder to overcome drag, mainly from wind resistance. That drag increases exponentially the faster a vehicle goes. This is especially true for larger, less fuel-efficient vehicles.

A recent study found that reducing the maximum speed on New Zealand roads from 100 to 80 km/h reduced fuel use by approximately 15%.

The OECD has estimated that the fuel consumption of vehicles travelling at 90 km/h was 23% lower than at 110 km/h. In the Netherlands, increased enforcement of 100 km/h speed limits reduced average speeds by 7 km/h.

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This resulted in savings of 40 million litres of petrol, 40 million litres of diesel, and 15 million litres of LPG. Conversely, an aggressive driving style involving rapid acceleration and hard braking can increase fuel consumption by up to 30%.

It’s difficult to see how New Zealand will meet CO₂ emission reduction targets by 2050. Government policies encouraging people to buy fuel-efficient cars are a start, but they fail to provide real incentives to change the behaviour of those with the most polluting vehicles.

People who can afford to drive large, luxury vehicles with poor carbon-emission ratings (such as a new Audi Q7 or Range Rover) are unlikely to be troubled by the cost of the carbon fuel tax or the high emissions fee on new vehicles. Also, these measures won’t make any difference to the emissions from existing vehicles on New Zealand roads.

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Fairer than a fuel tax

Imposing a lower maximum speed limit on high-emission vehicles would have an impact, however. New Zealand currently has a different maximum speed limit of 90 km/h for cars towing trailers, and for heavy vehicles. Why not extend this to include targeted climate-polluting vehicles?

This would achieve two things: it would make people less keen to buy high-emission vehicles, and it would cut the emissions of high-polluting vehicles already on the road. Large fossil-fuel engines produce more emissions, and therefore have the most to offer by reducing their speed.

A 10 km/h maximum speed reduction will only add two to four minutes to a 100 kilometre trip. Those who need to drive large vehicles for commercial use will have marginally increased costs due to longer drive times, but they will save on fuel bills.

This policy option is also more equitable than fuel taxes. Emission reductions will be achieved without any added cost to low-income families with older, less-efficient vehicles (unless, of course, they choose to speed.) And it is feasible because number plate recognition technology allows vehicle type to be instantly identified by police or through camera images.

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Speed up on policy

Some may wonder, when so few people seem to obey speed limits anyway, how this change might make any difference.

But those who exceed the speed limit by, say, 10 km/h usually do so regardless of the limit. So, if they drive 110 in 100 km/h zones, they will likely drive at 100 in 90 km/h zones: still a reduction of 10 km/h.

Of course, high-performance electric vehicles don’t produce higher emissions at higher speeds. If wealthy people and businesses want the higher speed limit to apply, they can buy electric vehicles.

Lower speeds on our roads and motorways would mean a reduction in both crashes and greenhouse gas emissions. The government should speed up and act.

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

– ref. Why NZ should lower motorway speed limits for SUVs and other high-emission vehicles – https://theconversation.com/why-nz-should-lower-motorway-speed-limits-for-suvs-and-other-high-emission-vehicles-201466