Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leonora Risse, Associate Professor in Economics, University of Canberra

More of us have been in paid work this past year than ever before. A big part of that is because more of us have been able to work from home than ever before.

The proportion of Australians in paid work climbed above 64% in May last year, and has stayed there since. At the same time, unemployment has hovered around a half-century low of 4%.

In April last year, female unemployment fell to what is almost certainly an all-time low of 3.3%.

It’s working from home – actually, working from anywhere – that has been the game-changer, as the most enduring change to the way we work to have come out of the pandemic.

The jump in working from home

Before the pandemic, in 2019, the share of the workforce who usually work at least partly from home was 25%. Three years on in 2022, it was 36%.

These numbers from the latest Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey show there’s also been a shift in who’s working from home.

Before the pandemic, a greater share of men than women worked from home. Now it’s a greater share of women.

Among both women and men, the biggest jump has been among parents with young children.

The proportion of mothers with children under five working at least partly from home has leapt from 31% to 43%.

The working-from-home rate for fathers with children under five has jumped from 29% to 39%.

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Which workers, which jobs?

Before the pandemic, managers and professionals were the workers most likely to work from home. They still are, with up to 60% dialling in from the home office for at least part of their work week.

But it’s clerical and administrative workers – occupations that are about three-quarters female – who had the biggest jump in working from home. Their pre-pandemic rate of 18% has soared to 42%.

In terms of industries, finance and insurance led the pack before the pandemic and still do, with rates doubling to 85%.

Working from home is now also the norm in information media and telecommunications (74%) and public administration and safety (72%).

In the traditionally male industry of construction, women’s working-from-home rates have soared from 34% to 45%.

It’s well above the men’s rate of 24%, which is largely unchanged.

While this reflects the different types of jobs that men and women do in construction, it also suggests working from home is a way to boost women’s involvement, even in this industry.

More workers, better-matched

The benefit of working from home for the economy has been fewer obstacles getting in the way of matching jobseekers to employers. Distance and location are no longer the deal-breakers they were.

Better job-matching means less unemployment, and the heightened prospect of finding a good job match encourages jobseekers who in earlier times might have given up.

In finance and insurance – the industry with the biggest and fastest-growing rate of working from home – the proportion of jobs that were vacant fell from 2.5% before the pandemic to just 1.7% by the end of 2023.

Return-to-office mandates would set us back

Making workers return to the office for jobs that can be effectively done from home would unravel the economic benefits that have been achieved.

Fewer people, especially women and parents with young children, would put themselves forward for work. The pool of skills that employers are looking for would shrink. And job-matching in the labour market becomes less efficient.

The result would be more Australians unemployed, and more Australians dropping out of the paid workforce, than if we had continued to embrace working from home.

Read more:
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Working from home still comes with challenges. Workers who are less visible in the office are more likely to be overlooked.

But it has a wider economic benefit we have a chance to hold on to.

The extraordinary transformation of our labour market means it shouldn’t be seen as a “favour” to workers, but as a favour to us all.

Leonora Risse receives research funding from the Trawalla Foundation and the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia. She is a member of the Economic Society of Australia and the Women’s in Economics Network. She declares that she works partly from home, for family care-giving reasons.

– ref. Working from home is producing economic benefits return-to-office rules would quash – https://theconversation.com/working-from-home-is-producing-economic-benefits-return-to-office-rules-would-quash-223091

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Kelsey, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

New Zealand Trade Minister Todd McClay will be one of three deputy chairs (alongside ministers from Panama and Cameroon) at the 13th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Abu Dhabi next week.

Whether this proves to be an honour or a poison chalice for McClay will depend on who defines “success” and how.

The bar for the conference – known as MC13 – will be set very low. It may be judged simply by whether the ministers reach an agreed declaration, and what fallout there might be, given the power politics at play.

Nearly half the WTO ministerial conferences since its creation in 1995 have not produced a substantive outcome document. But despite the low expectations, the stakes are very high.

A body in crisis

The WTO faces an ongoing existential crisis, with all three of its core functions in various states of collapse.

The dispute and enforcement mechanism has been paralysed since late 2019, because both US Republican and Democrat administrations have vetoed new appointments to the WTO’s Appellate Body.

The Doha Development Round of multilateral trade negotiations, launched in 2001, has never concluded. Instead, smaller groups of mainly developed countries, including New Zealand, are conducting unmandated plurilateral negotiations.

These centre on topics such as electronic commerce and how all kinds of services are regulated domestically. These are priorities for developed countries, but leave the different priorities of developing countries behind.

And the notification mechanism to monitor compliance with trade agreements is breached more often than honoured, as developing countries struggle to cope with their obligations.

Read more:
World Trade Organization steps back from the brink of irrelevance – but it’s not fixed yet

Deferred decisions

The previous ministerial conference in Geneva in 2022 was proclaimed a “success” because it produced a partial agreement on unsustainable fisheries subsidies.

But the hard question of restricting harmful subsidies paid to large international fishing fleets was deferred to this year’s meeting and remains unresolved.

Solving the impasse over the Appellate Body was given until 2024, which the US now insists means the end of the year. Whichever party wins the presidential election, the US will continue its veto. Donald Trump may go further if he returns to the White House and revive threats to quit the WTO entirely.

Read more:
Governments spend US$22 billion a year helping the fishing industry empty our oceans. This injustice must end

Several member countries that want to protect their pharmaceutical industries continue to block a proposal by South Africa and India to waive patent rights for coronavirus therapeutics and tests.

These patent rights are guaranteed under the Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) and there is still no agreement on a “TRIPS waiver”. Its opponents want the issue declared dead.

Also dating back to 2001 is a permanent resolution on the public stockpiling of food grains, which India insists is essential for food security. This is something the Cairns Group of agricultural exporters, including New Zealand, vehemently opposes as distorting free trade.

With an election pending, and protests from Indian farmers demanding the country withdraw from the WTO, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government continues to demand an outcome.

‘Reform by doing’

Agreement on these big issues seems a long way off, just days out from the Abu Dhabi conference. And a prolonged WTO General Council meeting last week failed to resolve almost anything.

Big power politics is driving the process, and not just by the US and EU. China is exerting enormous pressure on developing country governments to endorse an unmandated agreement on “investment facilitation”.

This would create rules to streamline foreign investment, but would be onerous for developing countries to implement. It needs consensus to become a WTO agreement.

South Africa and India have resolutely challenged the systemic consequences of these plurilateral negotiations as undermining the multilateral system and sidelining developing countries’ priorities.

Read more:
Intellectual property waiver for COVID vaccines should be expanded to include treatments and tests

They were stridently attacked for this by China at last week’s General Council, as well as by WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

But the plurilateral approach continues an agenda dubbed “reform by doing” by Okonjo-Iweala, a former managing director of the World Bank who holds dual Nigerian and US citizenship.

Essentially, it means bypassing the WTO’s constitutional rules and formal bodies to redesign the WTO along the lines demanded by its powerful members and approved by the director-general.

Claims of bias were reinforced by the WTO’s (now deleted) pro-patent Valentine’s Day tweet this year, just days after the TRIPS waiver talks had broken down: “Your love is like a patent, so rare and true / A work of art that only I can view / And just like some IP rights, it can never expire / Our love is like a never-ending fire.”

Read more:
New Zealand is overdue for an open and honest debate about 21st-century trade relations

Exclusionary and manipulative

Developing countries have heavily criticised Okonjo-Iweala for what they see as the exclusionary and manipulative practices used to secure an outcome at MC12. She reportedly pushed back against such complaints.

MC13 is shaping up to repeat these patterns, with negotiations on crucial issues scheduled simultaneously for small rooms that can accommodate only a subset of members, whom the director-general will choose.

New Zealand can use its privileged position as deputy chair to ensure the conference is conducted ethically, according to the WTO’s mandate: multilateral, member-driven, rules-based, non-discriminatory, transparent, with meaningful participation in consensus-based decisions.

If not, it will share the responsibility for enabling power politics to further destabilise the WTO.

Jane Kelsey is attending the WTO ministerial as a representative of the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG), and as an invited Guest of the Chair. She advises a number of developing country governments on these issues. She is not paid by, and this is not written on behalf of, any of them.

– ref. Privilege or poisoned chalice? As deputy chair at next week’s WTO meeting, NZ confronts an organisation in crisis – https://theconversation.com/privilege-or-poisoned-chalice-as-deputy-chair-at-next-weeks-wto-meeting-nz-confronts-an-organisation-in-crisis-223849

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon Richardson, Visiting Fellow, Centre for European Studies, Australian National University

As its two-year anniversary approaches, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been pushed into the background of public attention by the war in Gaza.

The intense focus on Gaza has prompted comparisons between the two conflicts that tend to obscure or minimise the scale of destruction in Ukraine. “Ukraine fatigue” has also deepened around the world, as the fighting drags on along relatively static front lines.

This is why, on the anniversary of the invasion, it’s important to take stock of the damage done to Ukraine and its people over the past two years. To do this, I’ve drawn on extensive reports from United Nations agencies, non-governmental organisations and international, Ukrainian and Russian media.

The overall scale of the destruction, as well as the repression of Ukrainian people and erasure of Ukrainian identity in territories annexed by Russia, lend support to the accusations that Russia has committed acts of genocide. It’s vital the world not forget this.

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Civilian deaths in the tens of thousands

The Palestinian death toll in Gaza has been widely reported since the war began – it currently stands at more than 28,000. The civilian death toll in Ukraine is far less certain, or discussed.

As of the end of November, the United Nations had verified the deaths of at least 10,000 civilians in Ukraine.

However, this is likely to be a gross underestimate, “just the tip of the iceberg”, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. This is because Russia has blocked UN efforts to investigate in the Russian-controlled areas of southern and eastern Ukraine where most civilian deaths have likely occurred.

The most notorious case is Mariupol, once a city of 450,000, which suffered a devastating bombardment and blockade for almost three months in 2022. Estimates of civilian deaths there range from 22,000 to as high as 87,000.

Mystyslav Chernov, the Associated Press videographer whose documentary of the siege, 20 Days in Mariupol, has been nominated for an Academy Award, estimates between 70,000 and 80,000 people have likely died. Another AP report provides a similar estimate, based on interviews with workers documenting the collection of bodies from the streets.

Unlike Gazan authorities, the Ukrainian government has been reluctant to make estimates of civilian deaths, perhaps for reasons of morale. Ukraine’s war crimes prosecutor did say in February 2023 the total number of Ukrainian civilians killed could be higher than 100,000. Given the destruction in Mariupol and other cities, this seems plausible.

Half a million military casualties

Beyond the loss of civilian lives, one cannot ignore the needless waste of soldiers’ lives on both sides.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine has been forthcoming about their battlefield losses. US estimates last August put Russian soldier deaths at around 100,000 to 120,000 and Ukrainian soldier deaths at 70,000. The US estimated perhaps 500,000 total battlefield casualties (those killed and wounded) on both sides.

The UK Defence Ministry has provided figures in the same ballpark. This also tallies with a joint investigation by the BBC Russian service and independent Russian news site Mediazona, drawing on Russian media and social media. It estimated around 107,000 Russian soldier deaths and 321,000 wounded by late last year.

Most of the Ukrainian losses are young people who enlisted to defend their country from an unprovoked invasion. The stories of the dead have been recounted at length – medics, poets and other creatives, steelworkers, transport managers, students, beekeepers, to name a few.

About 60,000 women have also served in the armed forces, with more than 100 killed in action.

Among the casualties are amputees – perhaps as many as 50,000. By comparison, an estimated 41,000 Britons underwent amputations during the first world war.

International organisations report more than 6.5 million people have fled Ukraine since the war began, while 3.5 million have been displaced inside the country. This is about a quarter of the total pre-2022 population of 41 million.

In addition, about 17.6 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, more than a quarter of whom are considered to be at a “catastrophic” level.

Devastated national infrastructure

The destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure from thousands of missile and drone attacks has been equally horrific. According to the World Bank and UN agencies, this includes:

• 10% of Ukraine’s housing stock

• 8,400 kilometres of roads

• 13% of Ukraine’s education infrastructure, including nearly 3,600 schools, kindergartens and universities

• more than 1,500 attacks on healthcare facilities

• nearly 4,800 sites in the cultural, heritage and tourism sector

• and extensive environmental devastation, such as the blowing up of the Kakhovka Dam, which flooded hundreds of square kilometres of land and caused some 1 million people to lose drinking water.

Ukraine’s economy shrank by 30% in the first year of the war. The World Bank estimated this month the total cost of rebuilding the country at US$486 billion (A$742 billion) over ten years, which is nearly three times Ukraine’s GDP in 2023.

Violent repression and coerced integration

Russia now occupies about 18% of Ukraine’s territory – an area about the size of South Korea. It officially “annexed” four regions in late 2022, following Crimea’s annexation in 2014. Russia has since embarked on an ambitious program to change these regions’ ethnic composition, erase their Ukrainian identity and potential resistance, and integrate them into the Russian Federation.

As David Lewis of Exeter University explains, the Kremlin hopes to create a new reality on the ground that will be difficult to challenge in future. He reports an army of technocrats is overseeing a comprehensive absorption of the occupied territories, aligning their laws, regulations and tax and banking systems with Russia.

In another study of the Russification of occupied Ukraine, Karolina Hird notes locals are being coerced into getting Russian passports to obtain services such as health care. Similarly, occupation officials use the issuing of birth certificates, pensions, state payrolls and maternity payments to force residents to become reliant on the new government administrations.

The occupiers use violence to cement their control, as well. A special UN commission has documented killings, torture, sexual violence, arbitrary arrests, deportations and rapes.

The Danish Institute Against Torture documented at least 100 torture centres in prisons and police stations in south-eastern Ukraine. They employed such methods as electric shocks, beatings, suffocation, sleep deprivation, mock executions, threats and humiliation:

Our findings suggest that establishing torture chambers and torturing people in them was a routine practice in all places occupied by the Russian forces.

The UN special rapporteur on torture also describes these Russian torture practices across Ukraine as “state war policy”.

In a recent case, human rights groups reported the torture and murder of Ukrainian priest Stepan Podolchak in the Kherson region on February 13. Podolchak had held services in Ukrainian and was under pressure from the Russian security police to change his allegiance to the Russian Orthodox Church.

According to a BBC investigation, thousands of Ukrainians are being held on mostly spurious charges in prison colonies and detention centres inside Russia, with some disappearing or dying.

Mass deportations of children and cultural erasure

A year ago, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, in relation to the forced deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia. Russian officials had openly boasted of their role in the deportations, which they claimed were in the children’s interests.

Ukraine’s government has confirmed the deportations of more than 19,500 children. Some of the few children who have returned from Russia were told in school they would never leave Russia, that Ukraine didn’t exist and had never existed, and they were all really Russians.

As Latvia’s president, Edgars Rinkēvičs, put it recently:

Russia is actively erasing their Ukrainian identity and inflicting unbelievable emotional and psychological damage.

Hundreds of thousands of Russian settlers have simultaneously moved to the occupied regions. Crimean Tatar leaders estimate between 850,000 and 1 million Russians have migrated to Crimea alone since 2014.

This is a direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which obliges an occupying power not to transfer parts of its own population into a territory it occupies.

The occupation regime is also erasing Ukrainian language and culture. This is consistent with Russian nationalist ideology portraying Ukrainian as a mere dialect of Russian and the Ukrainian nation as a fiction. Putin and others on Russian state television have constantly expounded these myths.

Read more:
Are Russian transfers of Ukrainian children to re-education and adoption facilities a form of genocide?

A Russian curriculum has been introduced in more than 900 schools in occupied regions, replacing previous instruction in Ukrainian in some. Hundreds of teachers are believed to have been relocated from Russia.

Amnesty International reports that people risk reprisals for seeking to continue Ukrainian education. Some parents choose to hide their children to avoid them being taken to “re-education” institutions or for adoption in Russia.

At one school in Kherson, Amnesty reported, security officials ordered a mother to send her 15-year-old son back to school or “a bus will come next week and take [him] to an orphanage in Russia”. A school librarian said she secretly arranged meetings with students to give them Ukrainian books to avoid Russian patrols conducting arbitrary searches.

In addition, many Ukrainian streets and towns have been given new Russian names. For example, in Melitopol, a street named after a Ukrainian political theorist now bears the name of Pavel Sudoplatov, an infamous Stalinist secret agent who later boasted of organising Leon Trotsky’s assassination in Mexico.

To many observers, the erasure of Ukrainian nationhood in the occupied territories and frequent denial of Ukraine’s right to exist is evidence the Russian invasion is genocidal in nature. Some 30 genocide scholars, the Genocide Watch organisation and several national parliaments have supported this assertion.

Whether or not the threshold of genocide has been reached, the invasion constitutes the most egregious land grab of a recognised state’s territory since the second world war, as I have argued elsewhere.

It remains a mystery why some people think the Ukrainians, or the international community, would or should accept this land and its people being traded away in negotiations at the point of a gun.

Jon Richardson 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. Unmarked graves, violent repression and cultural erasure: the devastating human toll of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – https://theconversation.com/unmarked-graves-violent-repression-and-cultural-erasure-the-devastating-human-toll-of-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-223337

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Naomi Smith, Lecturer in Sociology, University of the Sunshine Coast

With Taylor Swift pulling in over half-a-million audience members on her Australian tour, we’ve been thinking a lot about fans. In this series, our academics dive into fan cultures: how they developed, how they operate, and how they shape the world today.

For years, people have claimed Elvis Presley is alive and well. Theories that his death was faked to escape the pressures of fame were even stoked by his record label, who, two years after his death, debuted a performer who sounded like and resembled Presley, but performed wearing a mask.

Of course, it was all a publicity stunt.

In the digital age, conspiracy theorising does not require media or record label boosting. Social media acts as a platform and amplifier of fan-led conspiracy theorising.

Have you heard that the Canadian singer Avril Lavigne is dead and has been replaced by a body double called Melissa Vandella? Perhaps you’ve seen TikTok’s theorising that American actor Lea Michelle can’t read?

For years, people who claimed Britney Spears was being held in her conservatorship against her will were considered fringe conspiracy theorists. However, legal events demonstrated this was substantially true. In recent years, Taylor Swift has famously mobilised cryptic clues to tip off fans to upcoming album and tour announcements and so, in a sense, encouraging fans to make conspiracy theories about what she’s doing next.

This leads us to one of the more satisfying aspects of conspiracy theorising: sometimes, they might just be right.

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Decoding Taylor Swift

When we think of conspiracy theories we tend to think of theories that have resulted in societal harms, such as QAnon or COVID-related conspiracies. However, conspiracy theories increasingly include many of the everyday practices of celebrity and fan culture.

Examining Swift’s engagement with her fans reveals that fans are not always “delulu” – a phrase popularised by fans to playfully reference their “delusion” when it comes to conspiracy theorising. The release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) was predicted by fans across social media through the meticulous interpretation of clues including colour-coded tour outfits, significant dates and social media traces left by the singer.

Another popular conspiracy theory within the Swift fandom is the “missing album”.

Prior to the release of 2017’s Reputation, Swift had been operating a clockwork schedule of album releases: one every two years. But there were a little over three years between 1989 and Reputation. The excess space between these release dates led to the theory about a “missing” album called Karma.

In one scene in her music video for her 2019 song The Man, the word “karma” is written in orange graffiti on a wall alongside Swift’s other albums, with adjacent text that says “MISSING: IF FOUND RETURN TO TAYLOR SWIFT”.

Swift’s albums are colour coded, and orange is the colour fans have chosen to associate with the missing album. At the end of her Era’s tour show, Swift sings Karma, a song from her most recent album Midnights, and exits through an orange door.

The clues are all there, the fans say, that Karma is the missing album, and maybe, just maybe, Swift is telling her watchful fans that they were right all along: Karma is coming next.

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From Deadheads on bulletin boards to Taylor Swift ‘stans’: a short history of how fandoms shaped the internet

An internet archive

Fan conspiracy theorising allows a sense of intimacy at scale. Swift frequently jokes about “seeing everything” fans do and say online, creating a sense of a real dialogue: a call and response between fan theorising and Swift’s output.

Social media has substantially changed our relationship with celebrity, as expectations around access to and intimacy with celebrities has been transformed.

The social media presence of celebrities – necessary to sell themselves in a crowded marketplace – provides fans with access to more digital traces and data points of celebrity behaviour to analyse and dissect. The internet functions as a vast, collective archive, storing and producing a seemingly endless amount of “evidence”.

But there is a trade off. Intense public discourse about Swift’s private life recently prompted her camp to push back against the “invasive, untrue and inappropriate” speculation around her sexuality.

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Community building

Platforms create opportunities for fans to collectively analyse evidence, share their theories and gain recognition within the fandom for their “expertise”. The pleasures of feeling like an expert have long been part of fandom, be that arts or sports.

Conspiracy theorising can activate many of the collective pleasures of fandom, such as insider expertise, community building and a sense of discovery through close reading of key texts.

In understanding the pleasures of conspiracy theorising about celebrities, we can gain insight into the pull of more harmful conspiracies. While there is a world of difference between QAnon and celebrity conspiracy theorists, participants in both are seeking community, the satisfaction of “putting the pieces together” and a sense of expertise.

We know from research that conspiracies are almost infinitely flexible. If one aspect is disproven, or fails, the boundaries shift and change to encompass and explain the incongruous.

Fans failed to predict the announcement of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) many more times than they succeeded. Each failure meant a return to the clues, to re-read and reinterpret the signs. Even though fans eventually successfully “predicted” the announcement, in the absence of success, failure is simply folded into the expanding horizon of speculation.

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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. The power and pleasure – and occasional backlash – of celebrity conspiracy theories – https://theconversation.com/the-power-and-pleasure-and-occasional-backlash-of-celebrity-conspiracy-theories-221754

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

Anthony Albanese has said there will be an early budget next year, ruling out a premature election while lamenting the brevity of federal parliamentary terms.

The Prime Minister on Wednesday responded to speculation in some sections of the media about a possible election later this year, after a leaked memo from his chief of staff, Tim Gartrell, referred to going into election year. The memo was announcing the appointment of David Epstein – who has worked in multiple positions for Labor as well as in the private sector – to a senior role in the PM’s office.

Albanese described the speculation as “a bit of a beat up”.

“We expect to have a budget next year in March […] and the term ends in May next year,” he said on the ABC.

He was “absolutely” committed to serving a full term.

Pressed on whether he would wait until May, the final time for the election, Albanese said, “Well, I’ve said that three-year terms are too short, in my view.

“Part of the problem in this country, I think, is that you have the first year after an election and then you have that middle year and then you’re in an election year, which is what we will be in.”

He favoured four-year terms but “it’s been tried twice at referendums and we know that referendums are difficult to carry in this country”.

There was “misinformation”, with people saying “oh, it’ll be terrible, politicians will be here for even longer and it’s a grab for power”. But “it’s actually common sense. Every state and territory has four-year terms, but we don’t federally.”

Epstein will be principal private secretary in the Albanese office.

“It’s a senior person on high level matters,” the Gartrell memo said.
“They identify emerging issues and focus on how they are best managed.

“This is an important role as we enter the election year and David is well-qualified for the role, having worked for Labor in a range of senior roles over five successive governments and opposition.”

The Coalition brought forward the budget before its last two May elections – 2019 and 2022 – as well as using a May budget as a launch pad for the 2016 mid-year election.

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

– ref. Anthony Albanese rules out early election – and wishes federal terms were longer – https://theconversation.com/anthony-albanese-rules-out-early-election-and-wishes-federal-terms-were-longer-224080

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Roberts, Lecturer, School of the Arts and Media, UNSW Sydney

The head of Australia’s biggest supermarket chain is to step down. On the face of it, this is not altogether remarkable news. Australian CEOs hold their jobs, on average, for about five years.

Woolworth’s chief executive Brad Banducci has done nearly nine years at the helm, which is worthy of attention because it’s Woolworths. The brand has about 1,400 stores nationwide and boasts a 37% share of the grocery sector. It’s big and that’s the issue underpinning Banducci’s exit.

Commentators, including the former ACCC chief Rod Sims have bemoaned the lack of competition within the sector. Woolworths and rival Coles enjoy a 65% share of the Australian market. I give a nod to the respected Sims as he plays a bit-part in the Banducci departure, which clearly did not go to plan. An announcement confirming the CEO’s retirement was made Wednesday morning.

The Four Corners interview

That announcement followed a woeful media interview by Banducci for the ABC’s Four Corners program. In light of the ongoing cost-of-living crisis affecting all parts of the country, there’s been much said about this overly concentrated grocery market and its impact on ordinary Australians.

So, it would come as no surprise to the Woolworths communications team that such questions would be put to their boss, but the boss appeared ill-prepared and defensive.

Banducci labelled Sims as out-of-touch with current market dynamics as he reminded the interviewer and viewers that the former public servant is now “retired”. This was a hapless point to make, which Banducci quickly recognises and unsurprisingly, was rather keen to remove from the interview.

Read more:
8 ways Woolworths and Coles squeeze their suppliers and their customers

The program’s refusal to play ball prompted Banducci to get out of his chair and stop the interview. The Woolworths attendants successfully persuade him to continue, but from a reputational perspective, the damage was done.

The final straw

So, was the ABC program instrumental in Banducci’s unforeseen announcement? Yes, but it’s not without important context; principally, the state of Woolworths’ financial health, considering that duopoly-like situation. The Woolworths group’s results, released on the same day as the executive’s announcement, showed a $781 million loss, although much of this was due to a couple of major write-downs.

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This brings us back to the Four Corners interview and the inherent optics of Banducci’s performance, who, it must be said, is normally unflappable when it comes to such questioning.

For further context, this is a big year for the grocer, Woolworths opened its first store in Sydney in December 1924 and much, no doubt, is planned to mark the centenary.

This will be an occasion to reinforce those corporate messages that will probably speak to the brand’s humble beginnings and being a supportive part of Australian communities over that time. In short, Woolworths is Australia, but the Banducci performance demonstrated it wasn’t Rod Sims who was out-of-touch, it was our friendly, neighbourhood grocer.

Out of touch

The program and the surrounding debate about supermarket profits at a time of hardship for many is a painful reminder that those modest beginnings have long gone and now it’s more akin to “us and them”. Woolworths needs to reclaim those ordinary, perceived simple beginnings and be seen as a community member again.

The grocer’s recent Australia Day ruckus illustrates a brand that has lost a sense of self-identity. This is not to judge the decision either way, but to underline the importance of first consulting the community.

Controlling the narrative

Banducci will be replaced by Woolworths veteran, Amanda Bardwell. Bardwell will be the 13th chief executive and knows the business well. The appointment affords Woolworths the much-needed opportunity to start controlling the corporate narrative, which has, in recent weeks, been driven by the media and centres solely on the numbers – specifically, how much is being made by the business and how little of that is, seemingly, making its way to the customer.

The Woolworths purpose speaks of “the communities in which we serve” and creating “a better tomorrow” – to that end, the business should do its darndest to give those communities greater attention.

The Woolworths advertising in 1924 described the store as a place where “goods are so cheap and shopping easy and pleasant”. So, in an attempt to control the story in 2024, Amanda Bardwell would do well going back to when it all started.

Read more:
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Peter Roberts 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. Brad Banducci checks out from Woolworths, signalling a business out-of-touch with its customers – https://theconversation.com/brad-banducci-checks-out-from-woolworths-signalling-a-business-out-of-touch-with-its-customers-224066

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Savitri Taylor, Associate Professor, Law School, La Trobe University

Last week, 39 foreign nationals arrived in a remote part of Western Australia by boat. This revived dormant debates about border security.

People without visas come to Australia by air and sea, though we only ever seem to hear about the latter. Unlike unauthorised air arrivals, unauthorised maritime arrivals (people without visas that arrive by boat without permission) are given high media visibility. This feeds a narrative that the country has lost control of its borders, which in turn creates a political problem for the government of the day.

But behind the headlines, what actually happens when people arrive in Australia without permission, whether by boat or by plane?

Read more:
Boat arrivals sent to Nauru, and Sovereign Borders commander warns against politicising the issue

What is Australia obligated to do?

Anyone who’s not an Australian citizen is required to have authorisation in the form of a visa to enter and remain in the country.

What Australia can do to deal with unauthorised arrivals is limited by its international treaty obligations. The United Nations Refugee Convention and Protocol oblige Australia to refrain from sending “refugees” (as defined in those treaties) to places where they will face a real chance of persecution.

Under other treaties to which it is a party, Australia is also obliged to refrain from sending anyone, not just refugees, to places where they will face a real risk of certain serious human rights violations.

These treaty obligations are referred to as “non-refoulement” or protection obligations. People who claim the benefit of such protection obligations are called asylum seekers.

What happens to asylum seekers when they arrive?

The processes for people arriving by boat or plane have similarities, but are slightly different.

Australian policy is for unauthorised air arrivals to be given a screening interview to ascertain whether they could be entitled to Australia’s protection under international law. If not, they are returned to their most recent country of departure. Those who are found to have a possible case are given access to the protection visa application process.

The protection visa is Australia’s main domestic mechanism for implementing its international protection obligations. People who initially entered Australia on a valid visa can also apply for a protection visa. Most applicants fall into this group.

Read more:
Who counts as a refugee? Four questions to understand current migration debates

Australia imposes penalties on airlines that bring non-citizens without valid visas here. It also posts its officials at overseas airports to help airlines identify people without visas so they can be refused boarding. As a result, there are very few unauthorised air arrivals to Australia.

Like people who come by plane, unauthorised maritime arrivals go through a screening process.

Those who are deemed not to be asylum seekers are returned to their most recent country of departure. This is usually, but not always, Indonesia.

Unless the responsible minister grants an exemption, unauthorised maritime arrivals who are found to have a possible asylum claim must be transferred to a regional processing country to have their asylum claims determined there.

How has regional processing worked?

Regional processing has a complicated history.

In late 2001, the Coalition government under John Howard entered arrangements with Nauru and Papua New Guinea (PNG) to take unauthorised maritime arrivals to those countries to process their asylum claims. Those arrangements were ended by Labor shortly after it won government in November 2007.

However, a resurgence of unauthorised maritime arrivals led the Gillard Labor government to enter a new set of arrangements with Nauru and PNG in late 2012. These allowed Australia to transfer unauthorised maritime arrivals to processing centres in those countries to have their asylum claims considered by their governments.

The 2012 arrangements left open the possibility that transferees who were found to be refugees might be resettled in Australia. However, when boats kept arriving, the Rudd Labor government decided to get even tougher. In 2013, it announced future unauthorised maritime arrivals would never be resettled in Australia.

After its election in September 2013, the Coalition government implemented Operation Sovereign Borders, which has been continued by the current Labor government. Many activities come under the Operation Sovereign Borders banner, including the interception of unauthorised maritime arrivals at sea by the Australian navy. Regional processing is now also characterised as being part of the program.

The regional processing arrangement with PNG ceased at the end of 2021. As of November 16 2023, there were still 64 transferees remaining in PNG. However, the Australian government’s position is that responsibility for these people lies entirely with PNG and not with Australia.

Nauru is still a regional processing country but under a new agreement. At the time it was signed in late 2021, there hadn’t been any transfers for years. However, it was considered important to maintain an “enduring regional processing capacity” on Nauru as a deterrent to people smugglers.

As previously, the Nauruan government is responsible for processing the asylum claims of transferees and managing them until they depart Nauru or are permanently settled there. However, Australia has contracted and is paying the processing centre’s service providers.

On June 25 2023, it was reported there were no transferees remaining in Nauru. This did not mean that a durable solution had been found for everyone who had been transferred to Nauru up until that time. While some people had been resettled in third countries, others had simply been brought to Australia with the legal status of “transitory persons”. This status prevents them from applying for a visa to remain in Australia unless granted ministerial permission to do so.

Australia’s options for resettling this cohort are limited. It has at its disposal the remainder of 1,250 refugee places promised by the United States in November 2016 and 450 refugee places over three years promised by New Zealand in 2022. Even if all these places are used, hundreds of people will remain in limbo.

What happens to last week’s arrivals?

Since Operation Sovereign Borders began, boats have either been intercepted at sea or have managed to make landfall in Australia every year except 2021.

However, between the start of Operation Sovereign Borders and the end of August 2023, only two out of the 1,123 boat passengers involved to that point had ever been accepted for regional processing. Both cases were in 2014.

This statistic raised serious concerns about the reliability of the screening process as the people screened included many from known refugee producing countries.

Given this history, it was a little surprising when the Australian government transferred 11 unauthorised maritime arrivals to Nauru in September 2023. A further 12 were transferred to Nauru in November 2023. The 39 people found in Western Australia have just been transferred there too.

Read more:
Aus-NZ refugee deal is a bandage on a failed policy. It’s time to end offshore processing

It seems the screening process has been abandoned or has been vastly improved. While the most reliable way for Australia to meet its international protection obligations would be to give all unauthorised maritime arrivals access to its protection visa application process, giving them all access to regional processing is certainly better than sending them back to their country of departure.

However, resettlement in Nauru of those found to be refugees is not realistic. The country, which has a population of approximately 13,000 people, is only 2,200 hectares in land area. To put this in context, Melbourne airport is larger than Nauru.

There is no reason to believe it will be any easier to find third country resettlement for transferees in the future than it has been up to now. For most, the only way out of limbo will be to return home, as eight of those transferred to Nauru in September have already done. Regional processing continues to be a policy failure for which vulnerable people will pay the price.

Savitri Taylor has received funding from the Australian Research Council in the past. She is a member of the Committee of Management of Refugee Legal and a member of the Kim for Canberra party. Views expressed in this article are her own and not attributable to any organisations with she is associated.

– ref. By boat or by plane? If you’re seeking asylum in Australia, the outcome is similarly bleak – https://theconversation.com/by-boat-or-by-plane-if-youre-seeking-asylum-in-australia-the-outcome-is-similarly-bleak-223957

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon McKenzie, Lecturer in Law, Griffith University

The Australian Navy is set to be transformed. On top of existing plans for nuclear submarines, the government yesterday announced a scheme for an “enhanced lethality surface combatant fleet” including six new “optionally crewed” vessels.

The advantages of these vessels, which can operate with or without a crew, are clear. They can operate for longer, with more stealth, and allow military personnel to avoid hostile environments.

Simple remote-controlled craft have been used since at least the 1920s, but increasingly sophisticated uncrewed vessels are becoming more common. Ukraine has used small uncrewed boats against Russian targets in the Black Sea, the United States plans to build a swarm of sea drones to protect Taiwan, and China is developing its own devices.

However, it is so far unclear how these vessels fit within existing international law. Unless their legal status becomes more clear, it may increase the risk of conflict with potentially serious consequences.

What’s the problem with uncrewed vehicles?

The key international treaty regulating the ocean – the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea – was negotiated in the 1970s and early 1980s, well before uncrewed vessels of the kind we see today were a realistic concern.

The convention balances the rights of coastal states with those of maritime powers by dividing the ocean into different zones, with different rules about what states can do in each zone. It’s a complicated system, but in general, states have more control over the use of the ocean closer to their own coasts.

Read more:
Ukraine: how uncrewed boats are changing the way wars are fought at sea

Under the convention, foreign ships and vessels in waters close to the coasts of other states have certain navigational rights. These rights establish where ships can go in the ocean and what they can do when they are there.

Naval vessels also rely on these navigational rights to operate. In particular, where crucial sea lanes are very close to the coast – such as in the Malacca Strait between Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia – ships or other vessels without navigational rights may not have a firm legal footing for passing through.

And in a crisis, it may not be feasible to avoid such waters by finding another route. If states had different views about what actions were permissible, it would increase the risk of conflict.

What counts as a ‘ship’?

So what does all this have to do with Australia’s “optionally crewed systems”?

The first problem is that the convention on the law of the sea gives navigational rights to “ships” and “vessels” without defining what they mean. There is an ongoing debate about whether these categories include uncrewed devices, or whether having people on board is required to qualify for navigational rights.

In my view, the more convincing argument is that uncrewed vessels like the ones Australia plans to purchase should count as ships and vessels.

The convention is designed to be the “constitution of the ocean”, with a very broad scope. This suggests we should also take a broad idea of what counts as a ship or vessel.

What counts as a ‘warship’?

However, uncrewed devices may face a more significant problem: can they be “warships”? This is a special legal category for vessels with the right to engage in belligerent activities – that is, engage in warfare and naval blockades.

Again, it is the lack of people on board that may cause issues. Unlike “ship” and “vessel”, the term “warship” is explicitly defined in the convention.

According to Article 29 of the convention, warships must be, among other things, under the command of a commissioned officer and manned by a crew under armed forces discipline. A plain reading of these requirements suggests that a vessel without people on board cannot be a warship and must stay out of conflict.

Read more:
The government has unveiled its Navy of the future. Will it solve our current problems – or just create new ones?

However, the reason “warship” is defined this way goes back to the 19th century, when states wanted to distinguish their own “warships” from the vessels of privateers. This is why the definition refers to the vessel being under command and with a crew that is part of the armed forces.

The point of the definition is to ensure the warship is controlled by a state. We should understand it as part of the effort by states to keep control of legally authorised violence, not an attempt to restrict certain rights to vessels with crews.

The future of uncrewed vessels and the law

How will this legal dilemma be resolved? The neatest solution – a revision to the convention to clarify the situation – is unlikely, because the political prospects of getting all 169 signatory states to agree to such a change are remote.

The stakes are high. The use of uncrewed vessels may plausibly lead to increased risk taking by states. It is easier to imagine the US sending a fleet of uncrewed vessels in a freedom of navigation operation close to the Chinese coast than risking a crewed fleet.

Read more:
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What can states do to reduce the risk of miscalculation and conflict?

States like Australia that plan to adopt this technology should look to develop international law in other ways. They can do this by putting their views about what uncrewed vessels are permitted to do on the record.

In doing so, they will contribute to the development of customary international law. Making Australia’s position on these devices more transparent will help create a legal regime that can cope with technological change.

Simon McKenzie has received funding from the Australian Government’s Next Generation Technologies Fund through Trusted Autonomous Systems, a Defence Cooperative Research Centre.

– ref. Australia wants navy boats with lots of weapons, but no crew. Will they run afoul of international law? – https://theconversation.com/australia-wants-navy-boats-with-lots-of-weapons-but-no-crew-will-they-run-afoul-of-international-law-223980

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Iris Lim, Assistant Professor, Bond University

Dealing with chronic urinary tract infections (UTIs) means facing more than the occasional discomfort. It’s like being on a never ending battlefield against an unseen adversary, making simple daily activities a trial.

UTIs happen when bacteria sneak into the urinary system, causing pain and frequent trips to the bathroom.

Chronic UTIs take this to the next level, coming back repeatedly or never fully going away despite treatment. Chronic UTIs are typically diagnosed when a person experiences two or more infections within six months or three or more within a year.

They can happen to anyone, but some are more prone due to their body’s makeup or habits. Women are more likely to get UTIs than men, due to their shorter urethra and hormonal changes during menopause that can decrease the protective lining of the urinary tract. Sexually active people are also at greater risk, as bacteria can be transferred around the area.

Up to 60% of women will have at least one UTI in their lifetime. While effective treatments exist, about 25% of women face recurrent infections within six months. Around 20–30% of UTIs don’t respond to standard antibiotic. The challenge of chronic UTIs lies in bacteria’s ability to shield themselves against treatments.

Why are chronic UTIs so hard to treat?

Once thought of as straightforward infections cured by antibiotics, we now know chronic UTIs are complex. The cunning nature of the bacteria responsible for the condition allows them to hide in bladder walls, out of antibiotics’ reach.

The bacteria form biofilms, a kind of protective barrier that makes them nearly impervious to standard antibiotic treatments.

This ability to evade treatment has led to a troubling increase in antibiotic resistance, a global health concern that renders some of the conventional treatments ineffective.

Read more:
How do bacteria actually become resistant to antibiotics?

Antibiotics need to be advanced to keep up with evolving bacteria, in a similar way to the flu vaccine, which is updated annually to combat the latest strains of the flu virus. If we used the same flu vaccine year after year, its effectiveness would wane, just as overused antibiotics lose their power against bacteria that have adapted.

But fighting bacteria that resist antibiotics is much tougher than updating the flu vaccine. Bacteria change in ways that are harder to predict, making it more challenging to create new, effective antibiotics. It’s like a never-ending game where the bacteria are always one step ahead.

Treating chronic UTIs still relies heavily on antibiotics, but doctors are getting crafty, changing up medications or prescribing low doses over a longer time to outwit the bacteria.

Doctors are also placing a greater emphasis on thorough diagnostics to accurately identify chronic UTIs from the outset. By asking detailed questions about the duration and frequency of symptoms, health-care providers can better distinguish between isolated UTI episodes and chronic conditions.

The approach to initial treatment can significantly influence the likelihood of a UTI becoming chronic. Early, targeted therapy, based on the specific bacteria causing the infection and its antibiotic sensitivity, may reduce the risk of recurrence.

For post-menopausal women, estrogen therapy has shown promise in reducing the risk of recurrent UTIs. After menopause, the decrease in estrogen levels can lead to changes in the urinary tract that makes it more susceptible to infections. This treatment restores the balance of the vaginal and urinary tract environments, making it less likely for UTIs to occur.

Lifestyle changes, such as drinking more water and practising good hygiene like washing hands with soap after going to the toilet and the recommended front-to-back wiping for women, also play a big role.

Some swear by cranberry juice or supplements, though researchers are still figuring out how effective these remedies truly are.

Read more:
Cranberry juice can prevent recurrent UTIs, but only for some people

What treatments might we see in the future?

Scientists are currently working on new treatments for chronic UTIs. One promising avenue is the development of vaccines aimed at preventing UTIs altogether, much like flu shots prepare our immune system to fend off the flu.

Another new method being looked at is called phage therapy. It uses special viruses called bacteriophages that go after and kill only the bad bacteria causing UTIs, while leaving the good bacteria in our body alone. This way, it doesn’t make the bacteria resistant to treatment, which is a big plus.

Researchers are also exploring the potential of probiotics. Probiotics introduce beneficial bacteria into the urinary tract to out-compete harmful pathogens. These good bacteria work by occupying space and resources in the urinary tract, making it harder for harmful pathogens to establish themselves.

Probiotics can also produce substances that inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria and enhance the body’s immune response.

Chronic UTIs represent a stubborn challenge, but with a mix of current treatments and promising research, we’re getting closer to a day when chronic UTIs are a thing of the past.

Read more:
‘Phage therapy’ could treat some drug-resistant superbug infections, but comes with unique challenges

Iris Lim 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 do I keep getting urinary tract infections? And why are chronic UTIs so hard to treat? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-i-keep-getting-urinary-tract-infections-and-why-are-chronic-utis-so-hard-to-treat-223008

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chien Ju Ting, Research Fellow, Auckland University of Technology

There has been a global push to revitalise Indigenous languages since the late 1980s.

Aotearoa New Zealand has been at the forefront of revitalisation efforts, earning the admiration of campaigners in other countries, including Taiwan.

Te reo Māori became an official language in 1987. Immersion education is an option for students alongside dedicated Māori news media. Te reo Māori is also increasingly used in mainstream schools, universities and public life.

But the work is not finished. Academics and campaigners have expressed concerns te reo Māori could still go extinct by 2100. And the current government has made moves to discourage the use of te reo Māori in official spheres.

New Zealand can learn from the successes and difficulties of countries like Taiwan. The colonial language (Mandarin Chinese) has had dominance in Taiwan for generations, despite efforts to save threatened Indigenous languages, cultures and identities.

The answer for Taiwan – and New Zealand – may lie in supporting the work of grassroots campaigners instead of relying on the government.

The colonisation of Taiwan

Taiwan has 16 Indigenous groups – making up around 2% of the island’s 23.5 million population. Each group has its own unique language and culture. These languages are believed to be the root of the Austronesian language family, encompassing te reo Māori, Hawaiian and several Pacific languages.

The island of Taiwan was governed by mainland China for hundreds of years before being ruled by Japan between the late 19th century and the end of the second world war.

Read more:
Reviving Indigenous languages – not as easy as it seems

Taiwan became the home of the Kuomintang (KMT) – the Chinese Nationalist government – after the faction lost China’s civil war in 1949. The KMT implemented martial law and a Chinese-only language policy. It had a significant impact on the survival of Indigenous languages.

This policy disrupted the sharing of these languages within families, leading to their rapid decline. Mandarin Chinese became the dominant language for communication in all social domains.

While Taiwan was presented to the world as the “democratic China”, there was no democratically elected president until 1996. The election of President Lee Teng-hui marked the start of the “Taiwanisation” movement.

In 2016, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen issued a formal apology to the Indigenous peoples on behalf of the government for “four centuries of pain and mistreatment … indigenous peoples’ languages suffered great losses” .

The revitalisation of Taiwan’s languages

While Indigenous peoples welcomed the gesture, the effectiveness of government measures to revitalise Taiwan’s original tongues remains in question.

Taiwan has introduced a series of policies dedicated to bolstering the revitalisation of Indigenous languages. These efforts started with the Education Act for Indigenous Peoples in 1988 and culminated in the most recent Development of National Languages Act in 2019.

These laws look good on paper and reflect the government’s inclusion of Indigenous peoples as a key part of national Taiwanese identity.

However, linguistic analysis of the policies show that ideologically they act to say “we are not China” rather than creating a positive, long-term framework for language revitalisation. The Education Act, for example, introduced “mother-tongue” classes (classes to teach one of the Indigenous languages).

But these classes are plagued by the question: whose mother tongue gets taught?

Read more:
Linguistics locates the beginnings of the Austronesian expansion – with Indigenous seafaring people in eastern Taiwan

By the time these classes were introduced, the vast majority of Indigenous families were speaking Mandarin Chinese in the home, the single most important domain for inter-generational transmission of language.

Even with the Indigenous Language Development Act in 2017, Indigenous languages continue to decline. A 2010 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) report identified six of Taiwan’s Indigenous languages as “critically endangered” and others as “rapidly in decline”.

Very few Taiwanese can claim fluency in any of the Indigenous languages, particularly those with a limited number of speakers, such as Kavalan.

Research shows the usual problems of not enough teachers and materials are a smokescreen. The real problem is the pervasive use of Mandarin Chinese in all facets of Taiwanese life and the failure of “mother-tongue classes” to provide any sort of fluency.

Reclaiming indigeneity

What can Aotearoa New Zealand learn from Taiwan’s experience?

Firstly, it is clear policies might just be words if the government isn’t honest about its intentions. One study found that while the policies are technically for language revitalisation, they are really about enhancing Taiwan’s international reputation and avoiding direct opposition to the one-China ideology.

Additionally, it’s not simple for many Taiwanese Indigenous people to “decolonise” because their families and histories are deeply connected to Taiwan’s past. There’s been intermarriage, urbanisation, relocation and even coercion.

Read more:
Explainer: what is decolonisation?

But what Indigenous communities can do is “recolonise indigeneity” by establishing grassroot language revitalisation efforts, continuing Indigenous journalism and television productions and creating Indigenous art and creative spaces.

Indigenous communities also need to be part of policy-making and participants in all political and cultural domains.

Undoubtedly, Indigenous people and their language contribute to national identities. Taiwanese Indigenous people aren’t Chinese, but the question arises – are they Taiwanese? What matters most to them is being recognised as “Indigenous Taiwanese”, standing alongside their non-Indigenous counterparts.

Chien Ju Ting 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. Taiwan’s Indigenous languages are under threat – what can NZ learn from their successes and failures? – https://theconversation.com/taiwans-indigenous-languages-are-under-threat-what-can-nz-learn-from-their-successes-and-failures-222485

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Johnstone, Security Researcher, Associate Professor in Resilient Systems, Edith Cowan University

Not a day goes by without a headline about a victim being scammed and losing money. We are constantly warned about new scams and staying safe from cybercriminals. Scamwatch has no shortage of resources, too.

So why are people still getting scammed, and sometimes spectacularly so?

Scammers use sophisticated psychological techniques. They exploit our deepest human vulnerabilities and bypass rational thought to tap into our emotional responses.

This “psychological warfare” coerces victims into making impulsive decisions. Sometimes scammers spread their methods around many potential victims to see who is vulnerable. Other times, criminals focus on a specific person.

Let’s unpack some of these psychological techniques, and how you can defend against them.

1. Random phone calls

Scammers start with small requests to establish a sense of commitment. After agreeing to these minor requests, we are more likely to comply with larger demands, driven by a desire to act consistently.

The call won’t come from a number in your contacts or one you recognise, but the scammer may pretend to be someone you’ve engaged to work on your house, or perhaps one of your children using a friend’s phone to call you.

If it is a scammer, maybe keeping you on the phone for a long time gives them an opportunity to find out things about you or people you know. They can use this info either immediately or at a later date.

Read more:
How risky is it to give card details over the phone and how do I reduce the chance of fraud?

2. Creating a sense of urgency

Scammers fabricate scenarios that require immediate action, like claiming a bank account is at risk of closure or an offer is about to expire. This tactic aims to prevent victims from assessing the situation logically or seeking advice, pressuring them into rushed decisions.

The scammer creates an artificial situation in which you are frightened into doing something you wouldn’t ordinarily do. Scam calls alleging to be from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) are a great example. You have a debt to pay (apparently) and things will go badly if you don’t pay right now.

Scammers play on your emotions to provoke reactions that cloud judgement. They may threaten legal trouble to instil fear, promise high investment returns to exploit greed, or share fabricated distressing stories to elicit sympathy and financial assistance.

Read more:
Australians lost more than $10 million to scammers last year. Follow these easy tips to avoid being conned

3. Building rapport with casual talk

Through extended conversation, scammers build a psychological commitment to their scheme. No one gets very far by just demanding your password, but it’s natural to be friendly with people who are friendly towards us.

After staying on the line for long periods of time, the victim also becomes cognitively fatigued. This not only makes the victim more open to suggestions, but also isolates them from friends or family who might recognise and counteract the scam.

4. Help me to help you

In this case, the scammer creates a situation where they help you to solve a real or imaginary problem (that they actually created). They work their “IT magic” and the problem goes away.

Later, they ask you for something you wouldn’t normally do, and you do it because of the “social debt”: they helped you first.

For example, a hacker might attack a corporate network, causing it to slow down. Then they call you, pretending to be from your organisation, perhaps as a recent hire not yet on the company’s contact list. They “help” you by turning off the attack, leaving you suitably grateful.

Perhaps a week later, they call again and ask for sensitive information, such as the CEO’s password. You know company policy is to not divulge it, but the scammer will ask if you remember them (of course you do) and come up with an excuse for why they really need this password.

The balance of the social debt says you will help them.

5. Appealing to authority

By posing as line managers, officials from government agencies, banks, or other authoritative bodies, scammers exploit our natural tendency to obey authority.

Such scams operate at varying levels of sophistication. The simple version: your manager messages you with an urgent request to purchase some gift cards and send through their numbers.

The complex version: your manager calls and asks to urgently transfer a large sum of money to an account you don’t recognise. You do this because it sounds exactly like your manager on the phone – but the scammer is using a voice deepfake. In a recent major case in Hong Kong, such a scam even involved a deepfake video call.

This is deeply challenging because artificial intelligence tools, such as Microsoft’s VALL-E, can create a voice deepfake using just three seconds of sampled audio from a real person.

Read more:
Voice deepfakes are calling – here’s what they are and how to avoid getting scammed

How can you defend against a scam?

First and foremost, verify identity. Find another way to contact the person to verify who they are. For example, you can call a generic number for the business and ask to be connected.

In the face of rampant voice deepfakes, it can be helpful to agree on a “safe word” with your family members. If they call from an unrecognised number and you don’t hear the safe word just hang up.

Watch out for pressure tactics. If the conversation is moving too fast, remember that someone else’s problem is not yours to solve. Stop and run the problem past a colleague or family member for a sanity check. A legitimate business will have no problem with you doing this.

Lastly, if you are not sure about even the slightest detail, the simplest thing is to hang up or not respond. If you really owe a tax debt, the ATO will write to you.

Mike Johnstone received funding from the EU for a project on authentication and authorisation and from the Australian Government for a project on Forensic Identification of Deep Fakes.

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

– ref. What ‘psychological warfare’ tactics do scammers use, and how can you protect yourself? – https://theconversation.com/what-psychological-warfare-tactics-do-scammers-use-and-how-can-you-protect-yourself-223959

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stuart Richards, Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of South Australia

This review contains mentions of suicide.

What does it mean to be alone? Who do you live for when it seems like you have no one? These are some of the big questions asked in The Rooster, a deceptively simple film from Mark Leonard Winter.

Before opening in cinemas this week, the film played at major film festivals in Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane in 2023 and Hugo Weaving recently won the best supporting AACTA for his performance as the hermit.

Winter’s feature directorial debut, The Rooster is a study of fragile, lonely masculinity.

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Guilt and devastation

Dan (Phoenix Raei) is a lonely country copper, whose morning routine is spent feeding his angry rooster. The film opens in a disorienting fashion that indicates Dan’s own fragile mental state. Before any image is shown, the crackle of Dan’s radio is interspersed with the evening crickets. “Hello? Can you hear me? I am not sure what to do,” Dan speaks into his radio. “Can you repeat that please? I don’t understand. I don’t know what to do.”

The first image we see is of a hanged body swinging in the wind lit by the car’s lights. Dan, in his car, is visible only by his red and blue lights. Suddenly, he looks up. We see a naked woman walking towards the car holding his rooster. Dan wakes up in a fright.

These opening images pose questions of Dan’s mental state for the audience. Who is this woman? Who is the hanged person?

The following day, Dan fails to follow police procedure when dealing with an incident. His childhood friend, Steve (Rhys Mitchell), is caught naked while spying on a girl’s netball team. The day after this, Steve is found dead in a shallow grave. While it is clear he committed suicide, this doesn’t explain the shallow grave. Dan’s superior (John Hughes) blames Dan for Steve’s death, as he failed to alert anyone over Steve’s risk for self-harm.

To make matters worse, Dan also discovers his much-loved rooster killed by a fox. Forced to take time off from work to process his guilt and devastation over Steve’s death, Dan retreats to the bush where Steve was found in search for answers.

How to cope with loss

Dan’s struggle to cope with this loss is depicted through the repeated nightmarish scenes of the bush, Steve clucking like a chicken and the naked woman holding his rooster.

While stumbling through the bush – its haunting beauty captured wonderfully by Craig Barden’s cinematography – Dan finds the hermit’s hut and spies the man having a bath through the window. The hermit initially threatens Dan and tries to drive him off. Dan, however, offers him a drink, which allows the two to have a conversation.

This informal tete-a-tete leads Dan to learn that the hermit was most likely the last person to see Steve alive.

In order to learn more about the hermit’s role in Steve’s death, the two must bond. Dan is introspective and shy; the hermit is prone to violent, angry outbursts. The two men drink heavily, play ping pong – sometimes naked – and help each other process their own hurt.

The film’s narrative is not driven by the investigation into Steve’s death. Rather, it is about two men learning how to cope with the loss in their lives. Through this friendship, both men learn how to share what has led them to being so isolated.

The Rooster is inconsistent in tone. Up until the moment where the two men meet, the film is slow and disorienting. Once the hermit confronts Dan for spying on him, the film kicks into gear, and the chemistry between the two men is the energy the film needs to progress.

For the most part, however, the balance of comedy and drama works. A heavy conversation about suicide quickly shifts, assisted by the two very different performances from Raei and Weaving.

“I can’t see myself in the future,” Dan says. “Your daughter, she’ll remember you. But when I’m gone, I’ll just be gone.”

“You won’t be gone,” the hermit replies. “You’ll be a fucking tree”.

This conversation on life’s failures and “ending things” quickly shifts into the hermit helping Dan release his feelings by crowing loudly like a rooster. A heavy conversation easily shifts into an absurd one.

The dynamics between both characters allows Raei and Weaving to excel in their performances. Winter primarily worked as an actor before this film, and this experience is evident in the space given to the two lead performers here, giving them extended moments to let their characters breathe. Capturing minute shifts in expression are key to Winter’s skill as a director.

The Rooster may be a small character study of two fragile men, but it’s a powerful examination of isolation and moving on.

The Rooster is in Australian cinemas from tomorrow.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Read more:
All of Us Strangers: heartbreaking film speaks to real experiences of gay men in UK and Ireland

Stuart Richards 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. A small film asking big questions: The Rooster is a study of fragile, lonely masculinity – https://theconversation.com/a-small-film-asking-big-questions-the-rooster-is-a-study-of-fragile-lonely-masculinity-222754

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sussex, Associate Professor (Adj), Griffith Asia Institute; and Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU, Australian National University

Two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, Ukraine’s resistance remains remarkable. Confident initial predictions of a swift Russian triumph were repeatedly proven wrong. Instead, Russia’s military was beset by poor logistics, corruption, a sclerotic command structure and an inability to counter Ukrainian tactics.

Kyiv’s armed forces successfully prevented a rash Russian attempt to seize the Ukrainian capital and then stopped the entire Russian advance. After six months, they began turning the Russian invaders back, recapturing swathes of territory around Kharkov in the north and Kherson in the south.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was feted by Western leaders, parlaying his personal popularity into commitments of military aid and insisting Ukraine could prevail with a more sophisticated arsenal.

Yet for all these early successes, the war soon devolved into repeated human waves of attacks by Russian conscripts against well-defended Ukrainian positions. The slow drip-feed of Western weapons forced Kyiv to significantly delay its 2023 counteroffensive. This gave Russia’s armed forces time to design deep and elaborate defensive fortifications, minefields and tank traps.

Indeed, thanks largely to Russian efforts, Ukraine is now the most heavily mined country in the world.

Once Ukraine’s counteroffensive commenced, its forces made little headway and took heavy losses, especially given the lack of air support.

Facing personnel and equipment shortages, Zelensky dramatically fired his military chief, Valerii Zaluzhny, earlier this month, opting for a new strategy that seeks to build Ukrainian strength while blocking further Russian advances.

Russia: weakened, but determined

After being humiliated by failing to immediately achieve the objectives of its “special military operation” in early 2022, the Kremlin attempted to cow an obstinately united West through bluff and bluster, while bludgeoning Ukrainian cities and military positions.

It repeatedly rattled nuclear sabres, mobilised isolationist and far-right groups throughout Europe and warned of a looming world war. President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric bordered on unhinged, punctuated by rants about the moral decrepitude of “Satanic” Western culture that only Russian traditional values could resist.

Tellingly, in a rare moment of honesty, Putin also admitted the obvious: invading Ukraine was about restoring what he saw as Russia’s “historic lands”.

While mobilising hundreds of thousands of men for sacrifice in the Ukrainian meat-grinder, the Kremlin sought to project an image of a society overseen by a stable, albeit xenophobic troika. Putin was the wise tsar, the Orthodox Church was the steward of Russia’s conservative soul and the military served as Russia’s armoured bulwark.

With no good news to report, Kremlin propagandists created a bizarre narrative in which Russia was defending itself against NATO aggression, liberally labelling Russia’s opponents as “Nazis”.

But this failed to mask the reality that Russia itself was increasingly becoming Nazified, as its hyper-nationalist “Z” movement made clear. So, too, did repeated genocidal and antisemitic language:

• Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s crude observation that both Adolf Hitler and Zelensky had Jewish blood

• comparisons between Ukrainians and vermin

• and overt calls by Kremlin-sponsored propagandists for a “solution of the Ukrainian question”.

Simultaneously, Russia’s draconian crackdown on internal dissent resulted in lengthy jail terms for anyone found guilty of criticising the war or army.

Russia’s failures also brought the audacious revolt in June 2023 by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, and one of Putin’s closest confidantes. And despite Prigozhin’s subsequently convenient death, the fact he had managed to march largely unchallenged through Russia until voluntarily stopping 200 kilometres from Moscow made Putin look considerably weakened.

However, with the start of 2024, Russia’s forces have started pressing again on the battlefield, making small territorial gains.

A recent report puts the current number of Russian military personnel in Ukraine at 470,000. And although it is believed to have lost a staggering 8,800 armoured fighting vehicles and some 315,000 dead and wounded – fully 90% of the forces it began the war with – the Russian armed forces have finally begun to adapt.

What will the coming year bring?

How the war unfolds in 2024 will have momentous implications for the world – a fact not receiving near enough attention in Western media coverage.

It will determine whether Ukraine is able to retain its territory and begin the painful rebuilding process.

It will be decisive for Putin’s wager that conquest comes without consequences, perhaps emboldening him to sets his sights on other states on its periphery.

It will confirm whether Europe can remain stabilised, secure and united, and whether America will continue to be seen as a reliable ally.

For the Kremlin, the key question is whether it can keep domestic discontent muted long enough for the West to lose interest in the war and withdraw its support for Ukraine. It is unlikely to run out of weapons, having massively ramped up domestic production of armaments and sourcing drones and ammunition from a rogues’ gallery of pariahs: Iran and North Korea.

Ukraine, which is fighting for national survival, faces a tougher and grimmer 2024. It will need to continue absorbing relentless Russian attacks, keep its economy afloat and rebuild its military strength for yet another attempt to evict Russia’s forces.

Zelensky’s famous “I need ammunition, not a ride” response to a US offer to evacuate him in 2022 holds just as true two years later. Without a constant stream of military aid, Ukrainian resistance will be very hard to sustain.

Read more:
Ukraine war: the west is at a crossroads – double down on aid to Kyiv, accept a compromise deal, or face humiliation by Russia

Aid from Ukraine’s most crucial supporter, the United States, has been stymied by the extreme right wing of the Republican Party. This is causing ammunition shortages that are already being measured in Ukrainian lives and territory.

But a far greater threat lies on the horizon, in the real prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency. Putin is well aware Trump will give him a free hand in Ukraine and probably beyond it, too.

Accordingly, he is investing significant efforts to back his candidacy. The extraordinary spectacle of Putin – the leader of a hostile foreign power – using an “interview” with ex-Fox News personality Tucker Carlson to rally the Trump base was a keen indicator of that.

Europe is finally beginning to wake up to the reality a Trump-led US could abandon NATO, in addition to Ukraine. But whether European nations are able to overcome their institutional inertia and webs of entangled interests to stoutly resist Russia on their own remains an open question.

It’s an old adage, but wars are world-shaping. Their outcomes are far-reaching: redrawing maps, establishing new fault lines, and ushering in the birth and death of nations.

Russia’s war against Ukraine is proving to be no different.

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

– ref. Why 2024 could be a grim year for Ukraine – with momentous implications for the world – https://theconversation.com/why-2024-could-be-a-grim-year-for-ukraine-with-momentous-implications-for-the-world-223096

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Rozefelds, Adjunct Assoc Professor Central Queensland University and Principal Curator Geosciences Queensland Museum, CQUniversity Australia

The Australian continent is now geologically stable. But volcanic rocks, lava flows and a contemporary landscape dotted with extinct volcanoes show this wasn’t always the case.

Between 40 and 20 million years ago – during the Eocene to Miocene epochs – there was widespread volcano activity across eastern Australia. In places such as western Victoria and the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland, it was even more recent.

Erupting volcanoes can have devastating consequences for human settlements, as we know from Pompeii in Italy, which was buried by ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. But ash falls and lava flows can also entomb entire forests, or at least many of the plants within them.

Our studies of these rare and unique plant time capsules are revealing exquisitely preserved fossil floras and new insights into Australia’s botanical history. This new work is published in the journal Gondwana Research.

Remarkable preservation

The most common volcanic rocks are basalts. The rich red soils derived from them are among the most fertile in Australia.

But the rocks in which fossils occur are buried under basalts or other volcanic rock, and are called silcretes – the name indicates their origins are from silica-rich groundwaters. Silica is the major constituent of sand, and familiar to most of us as quartz.

What makes the silcrete plant fossils so fascinating is the superfine preservation of plant material. This includes fine roots and root nodules, uncurling fern fronds and their underground stems, the soft outer bark of wood, feeding traces and frass (powdery droppings) of insects, and even the delicate tissues and anatomy of fruits and seeds.

For this fine preservation to occur, first there needs to be a rapid burial, like that from a volcanic eruption. Then, there has to be an abundant source of silica — a condition met when the volcanic rocks began to weather.

The process where silica infills and preserves plant structures is referred to as “silicification” or “permineralisation”. When plant material is buried, it provides acidic conditions that are ideal for this to happen.

And the process need not take millions of years. Overseas studies of plants in hot springs or undertaken in the laboratory have shown that some types of silica will quickly infiltrate wood and plant tissues.

Why are these plant fossils significant?

Because of their rapid entombment by the volcanoes, we can be sure the plants were in situ (that is, their original location) and were actively growing. This means we can gain detailed information about the make-up of these past plant communities.

In other areas where plant fossils might accumulate – such as river deltas – we can never be sure how far the bits of plants were carried, and whether they were from different types of vegetation.

Silicification not only preserves plants, but also leaf litter on the forest floor and even the underlying soil containing roots and root nodules. The fossil plants that are preserved at different sites varies, indicating the presence of distinct plant communities.

The abundance of seeds and fruits at one site near Capella, in central Queensland, even indicated to us that the local volcanic eruptions are likely to have occurred in summer or early autumn during the fruiting season.

The extraordinary preservation of these fossils allows us to compare them with modern plants. In turn, this means we can accurately identify them.

The ferns include fronds and underground stems (rhizomes) of the familiar bracken fern (Pteridium). We have also found the distinctive seeds and lianas of the grape family (Vitaceae), along with evidence of insect damage in the wood. Two sites also had evidence of palms.

While there have been few previous studies on silcrete plants, we have revealed new insights into the history of the modern Australian flora.

Volcanoes shaped plant communities

Volcanic activity both destroys and modifies existing plant communities. It also provides new substrates for plants to colonise.

Several sites contained ferns – this may be because they are among the first living plants to colonise new volcanic terrains via their tiny wind-borne spores. For instance, it has been documented that bracken ferns were pioneer plants of the barren cone of the famous Krakatoa volcano after its eruption in 1883.

But the diversity of seeds and fruits at another site suggests that an existing forest was buried by volcanic activity.

Researchers have suggested that the key factors responsible for the evolution of the Australian fauna and flora during the Cenozoic period (the last 66 million years) were predominantly climate and environmental change. It happened, in part, due to the movement of the Australian continental plate northwards.

But the broad-scale volcano activity that occurred in eastern Australia during the Cenozoic has rarely been invoked as a key driver of such changes.

So remarkably preserved, the silcrete plant fossils are now providing startling new insights into the history of some groups of Australian plants and the vegetation types in which they grew.

The author would like to acknowledge co-author Raymond Carpenter from the University of Adelaide who contributed to this article.

Andrew Rozefelds receives funding from the Herman Slade Foundation and Churchill Trust, Australia.

– ref. A botanical Pompeii: we found spectacular Australian plant fossils from 30 million years ago – https://theconversation.com/a-botanical-pompeii-we-found-spectacular-australian-plant-fossils-from-30-million-years-ago-222512

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeremy Bird, Research Associate, Ecology and Biodiversity, University of Tasmania

One of the largest publicly funded conservation investments in history is starting to pay off on Macquarie Island, our newly published study shows.

Sealers and whalers introduced cats, rats, rabbits and other animals to the island in the 19th century. Their impacts devastated the millions of seabirds breeding on the island. Numbers fell to a fraction of their former populations.

From 2011-14, the last non-native pests were cleared from the island. It was the end of a deadly chapter in the island’s history during which two bird species, a rail and a parakeet, were lost from the planet forever.

We looked for signs of recovery in populations of petrels, a group of highly specialised seabirds. We found that species listed as threatened have recovered to the point where they can be delisted. There’s still a long way to go, though, before their populations return to historical levels.

Read more:
The good news: 25 Australian birds are now at less risk of extinction. The bad news: 29 are gone and 4 more might be

A highly threatened group of birds

Petrels can live for decades and spend most of their lives over the open oceans far from land. Some circumnavigate the Pacific each year.

Petrels return to land only to breed on remote islands that are naturally free of mammalian predators.

Under natural circumstances petrels can be enormously abundant. This means they play important roles in marine food webs. And, by transferring marine nutrients to breeding islands, they enrich whole island ecosystems.

Petrels usually come ashore only at night and nest in underground burrows to ward off predatory birds. However, these behaviours have been no defence against the cats and rats introduced to most of the world’s islands. As a result, petrels are among the world’s most threatened bird groups.

These habits make petrels extremely difficult to study, so good information is lacking. We used novel technologies and new analytical approaches to calculate the population and distribution of four species across Macquarie Island and to compare these with surveys from the 1970s.

Read more:
Why are dead and dying seabirds washing up on our beaches in their hundreds?

What did the study find?

Antarctic prions (Pachyptila desolata) remain the most widespread and common of the four species. They survived on the barren, elevated interior of the island in areas relatively inhospitable to predators. There are about 160,000 breeding pairs today, increasing by around 1% each year.

In the 1970s, cats ate an estimated 11,000 white-headed petrels (Pterodroma lessonii) each year. Only 15% of nests were successfully fledging chicks. Today there are about 12,800 pairs with a breeding success rate of about 80%.

White-headed petrels’ range remains smaller than it was, and they were likely close to extinction before cats were eradicated in 2001. Listed as vulnerable in Tasmania, the population is growing by 1% a year and now warrants delisting.

Two species, grey petrel (Procellaria cinerea) and blue petrel (Halobaena caerulea), became extinct on the main island in the 1900s. Grey petrels disappeared altogether, while 500–600 pairs of blue petrels survived on a few coastal rock stacks. Both have now recolonised the main island.

Grey petrels still number only in the low hundreds and blue petrels in the thousands, but are increasing at more than 10% each year. Our data suggest blue petrels no longer qualify as a federally listed vulnerable species. Grey petrels will no longer qualify for listing as endangered in Tasmania if they increase at the same rate until 2026.

Read more:
Penguin paradise and geological freak: why Macquarie Island deserves a bigger marine park

Recovery has only just begun

It is testament to the hard work of all those involved in eradicating invasive species that these bird species are showing signs of recovery. Yet we found ourselves pondering what “recovery” really means.

We don’t know what Macquarie Island was like before humans first visited in 1810. To try to understand this, we identified suitable areas for recovering petrel populations by comparing with analogous islands with different invasive species histories.

The species we studied still occupy only a tiny fraction of the island. They were almost certainly many times more abundant historically. It will take decades for populations to fulfil their ecological roles again – if threats like climate change and avian influenza don’t halt their recovery.

Read more:
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A vision of an island of abundance reborn

This is our vision of Macquarie Island if these amazing birds make a full recovery.

Days before visitors first sight land, thousands of seabirds swirl around the ship at sea. The white undersides of blue petrels and prions outnumber the spindrift cresting each wave. Rather than ones or twos, there’s a constant stream of white-headed and soft-plumaged petrels.

On the island, all must tread carefully, sticking to managed paths to avoid collapsing burrows in the super-colonies that cover seaward-facing slopes. These areas, once denuded by rabbit grazing, have revegetated. A labyrinth of tunnels through the undergrowth blurs the lines between the surface and underground world.

In places the smell of ammonia is powerful. Even more pervasive is the warm, musty smell associated with petrel plumage.

By day, predatory skuas patrol the colonies, going from burrow entrance to entrance, as the occupants sit silently within. As the sun sinks, a scan from land with binoculars finds the petrels approaching en masse, loitering over coastal waters as they wait for the cover of darkness.

At dusk, black silhouettes swarm like flies up and down the coastal hills. Where once the night was silent save for the wind, the slopes are bubbling with the purr and chatter of blue petrels, the “kwick, kwick, kwick” calls of white-headed petrels and the mournful cries of soft-plumaged petrels. Once a forlorn few, the calls have become an excited cacophony.

Justine Shaw receives funding from the Australian Antarctic Science Program, the Australian Research Council and Department of Industry, Science and Resources, Australia. She is a member of the Commonwealth Government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee, and a director of the Landscape Recovery Foundation

Jeremy Bird and Richard Fuller 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. Ridding Macquarie Island of pests pays off as seabirds come back from the brink – but recovery has just begun – https://theconversation.com/ridding-macquarie-island-of-pests-pays-off-as-seabirds-come-back-from-the-brink-but-recovery-has-just-begun-221992

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

It is possible, in politics as in life, for several things to be true at once.

It is true that Donald Trump and his plans for a second presidential administration represent an existential threat to American democracy.

It is true that a media imperative for “balance” in political reporting is further degenerating into a “both sides”, false balance framework that is distorting our sense of what is at stake in this presidential campaign.

It is true that hether we think it fair or not, Biden’s age is going to frame coverage of the election. Just this week, for example, the New York Times ran a story with the headline “Which Is Worse: Biden’s Age or Trump Handing NATO to Putin?”.

As others have pointed out, this kind of narrative approach is calcifying. It does not seem to matter, for example, that in his incendiary comments about Biden’s age, special counsel Robert Hur took grossly inappropriate liberties in editorialising. It would not matter if Biden did not make another slip for the entire campaign (which, given what we know about the president, seems unlikely), and it does not matter that these slips may not have anything to do with advancing age.

It is also true that Biden is too old. At 81, he is already too old now, and if he does see out a second term, he will be 86. In the end, that may not affect the outcome of the election – in 2020 and 2022, American voters demonstrated that they saw Trump’s politics as a far greater threat to American democracy, stability and prosperity than Biden’s age.

But that does not change the fact that he is too old. As Fintan O’Toole recently argued,

Biden, fairly or otherwise, is the lightning rod for deep generational discontents and widespread unhappiness at the persistence of an American gerontocracy.

So why, given all these truths, is Biden still – barring any significant changes in the status quo – all but guaranteed the Democratic nomination?

The ‘veep’ problem

In as much as there are any “lessons” from American history, it is generally true that if a president is not running, the vice president gets the first shot at the job. Vice President Harry Truman, for example, succeeded President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and went on to win the 1964 election. Moving closer to the present, examples include Vice President George H.W. Bush’s successful run after President Ronald Reagan’s history-shaping two terms, or Vice President Al Gore’s nomination after he served twice under President Bill Clinton.

The point is, the vice presidency exists precisely for this reason – the VP is second in line for the presidency and so presumably the best choice for leadership after the president. If the president can not or will not run, the VP is all but assured the nomination.

When then-presidential candidate Joe Biden announced Kamala Harris would be his vice-presidential running mate in 2020, he said:

Kamala Harris is the best person to help me take this fight to Trump […] then to lead this nation.

After a hard-fought nomination contest, Biden chose Harris, 20 years his junior and a woman of colour, very much in the context of his commitment to act as a generational “bridge” for the Democratic Party.

In her position as vice president and in the context of history, Harris is the obvious successor to Biden.

So why hasn’t Biden built her a bridge?

Without hearing from the president specifically on this point, we can only speculate based on the evidence we have.

The most obvious answer is that Biden, having chosen her as his second, now thinks – for whatever reason – that Harris is not the right candidate for leadership and/or would not win a presidential election. There has been significant negative coverage speculating about Harris’ lack of political nous and appeal. Given what is at stake this year, it seems likely that Biden is simply not willing to risk it all on Harris.

To be fair to the vice president, this may not actually have anything to do with her political abilities.

Harris has already been on the receiving end of vicious, racist attacks from Trump supporters, including death threats. There is a reason so many conspiracy theories coming from the right focus on powerful women and, more often than not, Black women – on Harris, former First Lady Michelle Obama, and even Taylor Swift. In a febrile political environment, were Harris to be the nominee, it is almost certain sections of the American right would explode.

It is entirely possible that the significant risk to Harris herself, and to American political stability more broadly, are factoring into Biden’s decision to run again, despite the overwhelming focus on his age.

As Jill Lepore has argued, while decisions like this are being made ostensibly (and understandably) to mitigate the risk of political violence, they may end up having the effect of justifying or even encouraging it.

Nevertheless, for these reasons and possibly others, it seems as though Biden will not anoint Harris as his successor.

Simply put, if Biden does not choose Harris, he cannot choose anyone else without catastrophically undermining his own administration and authority.

Even hinting he thinks it should be someone other than himself or his vice president would suggest Biden made the wrong choice to begin with – not a risk he is likely to take, despite the stakes.

Read more:
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For want of a better alternative

Whether Biden is unwilling or just feels unable to pass the leadership baton to Harris isn’t really the point. The point is that he won’t do it and is, therefore, stuck.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that circumstances won’t change.

It is entirely possible Biden will change his mind, or become unable to run, or that some other event will force the hand of the Democratic Party.

Practically, it is now too late for another viable candidate to run for the nomination – filing deadlines have mostly already passed, and the challenges of publicity and fundraising are all but insurmountable.

If Biden were to pull out, timing would be crucial, and would likely need to be at or immediately before the Democratic National Convention in August. The best possible scenario in this case is that the contest heads to a brokered convention, in which delegates previously committed to Biden are freed, by him, to vote for another candidate.

Read more:
Joe Biden could still stand down before the election – here’s how and what would happen next

Exactly who that candidate might be is an open question, and another likely reason that Biden and the Democrats more broadly are extremely reluctant to go down this path.

Once again, the obvious candidate is Harris. If it isn’t (perhaps for the reasons outlined above), it’s not clear who it could be, or how deep divisions would run. There are several prominent, popular Democrats who might contest, including Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, California Governor Gavin Newsom or Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.

Historically, the in-fighting that would come with such a contest, even if it were amicable, has not played well for Democrats, and would almost certainly put them on the back foot come November. That’s not an insurmountable challenge, and might even be the right choice given the circumstances, but it would be an enormous political risk for a party generally averse to taking big chances.

Biden has called this election a “battle for the soul of America”. Given the existential stakes of this election, Democrats are left with few good choices.

Some truths are self-evident. That doesn’t make them easier to face.

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

– ref. Some truths are self-evident: Joe Biden is too old. But who could possibly replace him? – https://theconversation.com/some-truths-are-self-evident-joe-biden-is-too-old-but-who-could-possibly-replace-him-223634

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Ball, Professor of Community Health and Wellbeing, The University of Queensland

You’ve probably seen recent claims online seed oils are “toxic” and cause inflammation, cancer, diabetes and heart disease. But what does the research say?

Overall, if you’re worried about inflammation, cancer, diabetes and heart disease there are probably more important things to worry about than seed oils.

They may or may not play a role in inflammation (the research picture is mixed). What we do know, however, is that a high-quality diet rich in unprocessed whole foods (fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains and lean meats) is the number one thing you can to do reduce inflammation and your risk of developing diseases.

Rather than focusing on seed oils specifically, reduce your intake of processed foods more broadly and focus on eating fresh foods. So don’t stress out too much about using a bit of seed oils in your cooking if you are generally focused on all the right things.

Read more:
9 signs you have inflammation in your body. Could an anti-inflammatory diet help?

What are seed oils?

Seed oils are made from whole seeds, such as sunflower seeds, flax seeds, chia seeds and sesame seeds. These seeds are processed to extract oil.

The most common seed oils found at grocery stores include sesame oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, flaxseed oil, corn oil, grapeseed oil and soybean oil.

Seed oils are generally affordable, easy to find and suitable for many dishes and cuisines as they often have a high smoke point.

However, most people consume seed oils in larger amounts through processed foods such as biscuits, cakes, chips, muesli bars, muffins, dipping sauces, deep-fried foods, salad dressings and margarines.

These processed foods are “discretionary”, meaning they’re OK to have occasionally. But they are not considered necessary for a healthy diet, nor recommended in our national dietary guidelines, the Australian Guide for Healthy Eating.

I’ve heard people say seed oils ‘promote inflammation’. Is that true?

There are two essential types of omega fatty acids: omega-3 and omega-6. These are crucial for bodily functions, and we must get them through our diet since our bodies cannot produce them.

While all oils contain varying levels of fatty acids, some argue an excessive intake of a specific omega-6 fatty acid in seed oils called “linoleic acid” may contribute to inflammation in the body.

There is some evidence linoleic acid can be converted to arachidonic acid in the body and this may play a role in inflammation. However, other research doesn’t support the idea reducing dietary linoleic acid affects the amount of arachidonic acid in your body. The research picture is not clear cut.

But if you’re keen to reduce inflammation, the best thing you can do is aim for a healthy diet that is:

• high in antioxidants (found in fruits and vegetables)

• high in “healthy”, unsaturated fatty acids (found in fatty fish, some nuts and olive oil, for example)

• high in fibre (found in carrots, cauliflower, broccoli and leafy greens) and prebiotics (found in onions, leeks, asparagus, garlic and legumes)

• low in processed foods.

If reducing inflammation is your goal, it’s probably more meaningful to focus on these basics than on occasional use of seed oils.

What about seed oils and heart disease, cancer or diabetes risk?

Some popular arguments against seed oils come from data from single studies on this topic. Often these are observational studies where researchers do not make changes to people’s diet or lifestyle.

To get a clearer picture, we should look at meta-analyses, where scientists combine all the data available on a topic. This helps us get a better overall view of what’s going on.

A 2022 meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials investigated the relationship between supplementation with omega-6 fatty acid (often found in seed oils) and cardiovascular disease risk (meaning disease relating to the heart and blood vessels).

The researchers found omega-6 intake did not affect the risk for cardiovascular disease or death but that further research is needed for firm conclusions. Similar findings were observed in a 2019 review on this topic.

The World Health Organization published a review and meta-analysis in 2022 of observational studies (considered lower quality evidence compared to randomised controlled trials) on this topic.

They looked at omega-6 intake and risk of death, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, mental health conditions and type 2 diabetes. The findings show both advantages and disadvantages of consuming omega-6.

The findings reported that, overall, higher intakes of omega-6 were associated with a 9% reduced risk of dying (data from nine studies) but a 31% increased risk of postmenopausal breast cancer (data from six studies).

One of the key findings from this review was about the ratio of omega-3 fatty acids to omega-6 fatty acids. A higher omega 6:3 ratio was associated with a greater risk of cognitive decline and ulcerative colitis (an inflammatory bowel condition).

A higher omega 3:6 ratio was linked to a 26% reduced risk of depression. These mixed outcomes may be a cause of confusion among health-conscious consumers about the health impact of seed oils.

Overall, the evidence suggests that a high intake of omega-6 fatty acids from seed oils is unlikely to increase your risk of death and disease.

However, more high-quality intervention research is needed.

The importance of increasing your omega-3 fatty acids

On top of the mixed outcomes, there is clear evidence increasing the intake of omega-3 fatty acids (often found in foods such as fatty fish and walnuts) is beneficial for health.

While some seed oils contain small amounts of omega-3s, they are not typically considered rich sources.

Flaxseed oil is an exception and is one of the few seed oils that is notably high in alpha-linolenic acid (sometimes shortened to ALA), an omega-3 fatty acid.

If you are looking to increase your omega-3 intake, it’s better to focus on other sources such as fatty fish (salmon, mackerel, sardines), chia seeds, hemp seeds, walnuts, and algae-based supplements. These foods are known for their higher omega-3 content compared to seed oils.

The bottom line

At the end of the day, it’s probably OK to include small quantities of seed oils in your diet, as long as you are mostly focused on eating fresh, unprocessed foods.

The best way to reduce your risk of inflammation, heart disease, cancer or diabetes is not to focus so much on seed oils but rather on doing your best to follow the Australian Guide for Healthy Eating.

Read more:
How is decaf coffee made? And is it really caffeine-free?

Lauren Ball works for The University of Queensland and receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Queensland Health and Mater Misericordia. She is a Director of Dietitians Australia, a Director of the Darling Downs and West Moreton Primary Health Network and an Associate Member of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

Emily Burch is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and member of Dietitians Australia.

– ref. If you’re worried about inflammation, stop stressing about seed oils and focus on the basics – https://theconversation.com/if-youre-worried-about-inflammation-stop-stressing-about-seed-oils-and-focus-on-the-basics-221310

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam "Ben" Rohrlach, Mathematics Lecturer and Ancient DNA Researcher, University of Adelaide

After analysing DNA from almost 10,000 people from ancient and pre-modern societies, our international team of researchers have discovered six cases of Down syndrome in past human populations.

Our results, published today in Nature Communications, show people with Down syndrome lived in ancient populations. Although these individuals were very young when they died, they were all buried with care, indicating they were appreciated as members of their communities.

Down syndrome in humans

The DNA in our cells (our genome) is separated into 23 chromosomes, much like a book is separated into chapters. Most people carry two “versions” of the first 22 chromosomes, one from each of their parents. In some cases, people can have a third, extra copy of chromosome 21 (this condition is called trisomy 21).

This extra copy of chromosome 21 changes how the body and brain develop. People with trisomy 21 will have some level of intellectual disability and some characteristic physical features (such as almond-shaped eyes or a shorter height). The physical features that can result from trisomy 21 are called Down syndrome.

However, not every person with Down syndrome has the same physical features, and many of these features are not visible in the skeleton. This has made diagnosing Down syndrome from archaeological remains, which are often damaged and incomplete skeletons, very difficult.

However, we can detect trisomy 21 from even very small amounts of ancient DNA. This is because an additional chromosome 21 will lead to noticeably more DNA from chromosome 21 being present among the DNA that can be extracted from old bones and teeth.

Discovered across different times and places

After screening nearly 10,000 DNA samples, we identified six individuals with Down syndrome.

In our research, we screened nearly 10,000 DNA samples from across the world, dating as far back as when humans were hunter-gatherers. The six individuals we identified with Down syndrome were all from Europe, likely because this is where most of our ancient DNA samples were from.

Read more:
In a Stone Age cemetery, DNA reveals a treasured ‘founding father’ and a legacy of prosperity for his sons

One individual was buried in the 17th or 18th century in a church graveyard in Helsinki, Finland, under what is now a popular tourist attraction, the Helsinki Senate Square.

Another individual was discovered on the Greek island of Aegina, the closest Mediterranean island to Athens. This individual lived approximately 3,300 years ago, and was buried next to a house, with a rare and intricate bead necklace.

A third individual was discovered at the Bronze Age Bulgarian tell site (a settlement on a man-made hill) of Yunatsite, dating to around 4,800 years ago. This infant was buried under the floor of the home in a so-called “urn burial”.

The remaining three individuals were found in two Iron Age sites in Spain, Alto de la Cruz and Las Eretas, dating to approximately 2,500 years ago. According to the estimates of their age at death, these babies likely did not survive to birth.

However, they were buried with care within homes or within special buildings reserved for rituals. These burials were remarkable, as most people of the region during these times were cremated instead of buried.

We also compared the skeletons of the individuals with Down syndrome to identify common skeletal abnormalities, such as irregular bone growth, or porosity of the skull bones.

“Learning from this work may help to identify future cases of Down syndrome from skeletons when ancient DNA can’t be recovered,” says our co-author Patxuka de-Miguel-Ibáñez of the University of Alicante, the lead osteologist for the Spanish sites in the study.

An unexpected discovery

At one of the same Iron Age Spanish sites, we also identified an infant that carried an extra copy of chromosome 18. This condition, called Edwards syndrome, causes much more severe physical abnormalities, which could be observed in the skeletal remains. This baby likely only survived to 40 weeks’ gestation, but was also given a special burial.

The fact that three cases of Down syndrome and the one case of Edwards syndrome were found in just two contemporaneous and nearby settlements was a surprise to us.

“We don’t know why this happened,” says our co-author Roberto Risch, an archaeologist from The Autonomous University of Barcelona. “But it appears as if these people were purposefully choosing these infants for special burials.”

A view of our past

Today, individuals with Down syndrome live full and happy lives as valued members of our communities. Notably, our research found no adult individuals with Down syndrome. However, this study shows the perinates and infants that were found were clearly buried with care. In the case where a newborn survived, they were cared for until death.

As we discover and analyse more of these sorts of cases, we will be able to investigate the questions of how our near and distant ancestors viewed rare and uncommon genetic syndromes and how they cared for one another in these cases.

Read more:
We thought the first hunter-gatherers in Europe went missing during the last ice age. Now, ancient DNA analysis says otherwise

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. Ancient DNA reveals children with Down syndrome in past societies. What can their burials tell us about their lives? – https://theconversation.com/ancient-dna-reveals-children-with-down-syndrome-in-past-societies-what-can-their-burials-tell-us-about-their-lives-216998

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Dutton, Professor of Chemistry, La Trobe University

Over the last 15 million years, Australia has slowly dried out. After humans arrived more than 65,000 years ago, they learned to use fire to their advantage. Today, fire weather is getting more frequent – and fires are following as the world heats up. This month, fires have flared in Victoria, destroying 46 houses, while Western Australia endures a heatwave and braces for potential fires.

We use controlled fire for food, industry and many other uses. But we fear it when it is uncontrolled. For something so common, it’s not well understood.

Fire is chemistry – a set of reactions known as combustion. Here’s what that means – and why parts of Australia are so well suited to fire.

What is fire?

For a fire to start, it needs three things: fuel, an oxidising agent and heat.

In bushfires, the fuel is plant material, the oxidising agent is oxygen in the atmosphere. The heat might come from lightning or the fire itself once it starts.

First, the heat has to get to the fuel. Plants are mostly comprised of cellulose (a natural carbohydrate polymer we can’t digest) and lignin (a complex aromatic hydrocarbon), alongside other organic molecules.

But big molecules such as cellulose and lignin don’t burn easily, unlike small molecules such as propane or ethanol. It takes an external heat source to get them to burn. This is normally in the form of lightning, the cause of most large bushfires. But humans have added other sources – a flicked cigarette, angle-grinders, or sparks from a downed powerline.

A little bit of extra heat won’t do it. But when cellulose and lignin are heated to 300°C, pyrolysis begins and the natural polymers begin to break down into small organic molecules, which promptly evaporate and form a gas.

At these temperatures, this gas rapidly reacts with oxygen in the air to produce carbon dioxide, water vapour – and heat. This is combustion.

As it burns, the gas becomes hot enough to glow, as do any solid particles within it. When we gaze at a campfire, that’s what we’re seeing – burning gas, glowing particles.

Many believe it’s the breaking of chemical bonds in the fuel that produces heat. But it’s actually the opposite. When we break any chemical bond, heat is absorbed. It’s making new chemical bonds that releases heat – the creation of water vapour and carbon dioxide.

These newly formed bonds are stronger than the bonds in the hydrocarbon fuel, meaning heat is released overall. So much heat that pyrolysis is sustained, consuming more fuel and spreading the fire.

What about the water in plants?

Plant material contains water as well as organic compounds.

There’s a unique bit of chemistry which takes place here. When heat first hits plant material, the water within begins to warm. But water has an extraordinarily high ability to store heat.

As water heats up, it begins to evaporate. Evaporation is endothermic, meaning it absorbs heat. That’s why we use it to stop ourselves overheating – we rely on sweat evaporating off our skin and taking heat with it.

This means you need still more energy to increase the temperature and overcome water’s heat absorbing properties. For pyrolysis to occur at all, the water in the plant matter has to evaporate. If there’s still water in the leaves or bark, it won’t burn.

Read more:
How does the stuff in a fire extinguisher stop a fire?

Fire weather and gum trees

Australia’s forests and bushlands are mostly on the east coast, avoiding the arid interior. But they can’t avoid the extremely hot and dry air the deserts produce, especially over summer.

Hot air can hold a remarkable amount of water. Its ability to soak up water roughly doubles every 10°C. So hot, dry air acts like a sponge. It scours the water from plant matter and soaks it up.

Plant material largely comes from gum trees. Our hundreds of species are famously messy, dropping bark, leaves and limbs on the forest floor.

Eucalyptus leaves often contain large amounts of volatile organic oils. In dry conditions, these leaves act as like natural lighter fluid, or “pre-pyrolysed material”.

This is because eucalypts like fire. Fire wipes out competitor species and can trigger gumnut germination.

When a bushfire begins and starts to spread, it’s usually burning the dead, dry litter and grasses, not large living trees with plenty of water.

Dry fuel is one thing. But a bushfire needs wind to spread.

Hot days in Australia are often windy, due to the temperature difference between hot deserts and cold oceans. If a lightning triggers pyrolysis and starts a fire, wind is what makes it spread.

Wind provides fresh oxygen to the fire front, making it more intense. It also blows hot dry air over fresh fuel ahead of the fire front, drying it out. If there’s no wind, fire spreads much more slowly.

What does it take to end a bushfire? A large fire will naturally burn itself out if there’s no more fuel for it. Heavy rain can douse a fire, though coals can keep smouldering and restart fires if dry, hot air arrives again.

Firefighters make firebreaks to try to starve the fire of its fuel, spray water to wet and cool the fuel or apply chemical agents such as fire-fighting foam to prevent oxygen getting in.

If we add more and more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere it traps more heat, leading to hotter days. More heat means fire weather – hot, dry and windy conditions – is more likely. And that means combustion will be more likely in some places. Under climate change, there’s more fire in our future.

Read more:
Before fusion: a human history of fire

Jason Dutton receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

– ref. Fire is a chemical reaction. Here’s why Australia is supremely suited to it – https://theconversation.com/fire-is-a-chemical-reaction-heres-why-australia-is-supremely-suited-to-it-217275

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Juliana Zabatiero, Research Fellow, Curtin University

There have been concerns about screens making kids more sedentary and less active since TV was introduced more than half a century ago.

“Screen use” and “not enough exercise” are (separately) among the top health concerns Australian parents have about their children.

But screens are not necessarily the enemy of exercise. Our research looks at how screens can help children be physically active.

Read more:
‘Screen time’ for kids is an outdated concept, so let’s ditch it and focus on quality instead

How much exercise do kids need?

Australian guidelines around how much physical activity children need to do each day varies, depending on their age. And it’s even important for babies to spend time being active each day.

It’s recommended children up to 12 months old have at least 30 minutes of tummy time and as much interactive floor play as possible each day. Toddlers and preschoolers should be active for at least three hours per day, including energetic play.

For children five and above, it’s recommended at least 60 minutes each day of moderate to vigorous physical activity that makes the heart beat faster, including vigorous activities and activities that strengthen muscle and bone.

Our research

Concerns around screens making children sedentary are at least in part based on outdated ideas that position technology as either “good” or “bad”. Researchers today are more focused on how screens are used and in what context.

We are working on a larger project to develop online resources for parents about using digital technologies with their children.

In this part of the study, we have been exploring ideas on how to use technology to encourage young children to be active.

We gave a group of 13 families with children under five ideas on how to use technology to help their children be more active. Every week for 12 weeks, they received information and ideas from the federal government’s parenting website Raising Children Network, Playgroup WA and ABC Kids.

From this work, three messages to parents stood out:

1. Children can be active while using screens

We tend to think that when children are using screens, they are passive and sitting still.

But our study showed children can certainly be active while watching. So it is useful to provide space for them to do this and encourage them to move in response to what they are watching. This may run counter to traditional instructions to children watching TV to “sit still and be quiet”.

Content that involves music and dance (like the Wiggles) will naturally get children moving. But parents also found it helpful to encourage children to mimic their favourite character’s “action moves” when watching programs such as Spiderman or PJ Masks.

Our study looked at children five and under but older children could use digital games (such as Nintendo Switch’s Sports) that promote physical activity. Or they could use augmented reality apps that get them moving, such as Pokémon Go.

2. Technology can inspire off-screen physical activity

Parents told us they were able to use screens to inspire physical activity after viewing has stopped.

For example after watching Humpty’s Big Adventure parents could encourage children to build an obstacle course. Or watch the Bluey episode Keepy Uppy and then play the game.

This can help introduce variety into children’s physical play, which is important for developing new skills. As we have noted in a previous article, using an idea from a program can also help children transition away from screens without tantrums.

Read more:
3 ways to help your child transition off screens and avoid the dreaded ‘tech tantrums’

3. Taking videos can keep kids excited about moving

Many adults have watches or apps that record their steps and exercise and this helps them stay motivated to move. Technology can similarly be used to promote children’s activity.

Children in our study loved watching videos of themselves being active. Playing these back immediately or later (and sharing with family), reinforced their enthusiasm about how fun it is to be active. It also encouraged children to keep trying with skills.

You could try filming your child racing on their bike, demonstrating their skills on the monkey bars, climbing a tall part of the playground or working on ball skills.

For older children, you can also record dance, choreography or specific sporting skills such as stroke correction in tennis or swimming.

Parents also reported their children enjoyed using a stopwatch app to improve their time when completing a lap on their bike or tackling monkey bars. Other apps, like maps, can help plan a vigorous family walk.

Juliana Zabatiero receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Kate Highfield consults for ABC Kids, with a focus on supporting healthy technology use in play and learning. With colleagues, she receives or has received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Leon Straker receives funding from the Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council.

Susan Edwards receives funding from Australian Research Council.

– ref. Screen time doesn’t have to be sedentary: 3 ways it can get kids moving – https://theconversation.com/screen-time-doesnt-have-to-be-sedentary-3-ways-it-can-get-kids-moving-223460

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah McCann, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies, The University of Melbourne

With Taylor Swift pulling in over half-a-million audience members on her Australian tour, we’ve been thinking a lot about fans. In this series, our academics dive into fan cultures: how they developed, how they operate, and how they shape the world today.

Fandoms are their own universes of creativity, community, emotions and battles. A common aspect of fandom is fanfiction (or “fanfic”): when fans write stories about their favourite characters or celebrity idols. This work is self-published on dedicated fanfic sites, and stories can get tens of thousands of reads.

Much fanfic involves “shipping”: imagining relationships (“ships”) between characters. When shipping involves two men this is called “slash”, and two women “femslash”. A notable example of slash is fanfic on Johnlock, the ship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

However, fandoms are often built around celebrities, not just characters. “Real Person Slash” imagines queer relationships between celebrities, and whole sub-fandoms emerge around queer ships of real people.

This genre is controversial within fandoms because it involves people with actual sexualities/identities. Perhaps nowhere is this more clear than among the debates in the Taylor Swift fandom.

Read more:
Shame, intimacy, and community: fangirls are mocked, but it is more complex than you might think

Taylor Swift and ‘Kaylors’

“Kaylors” believe Swift used to date model Karlie Kloss. They also believe several of Swift’s albums were inspired by Kloss as muse/heartbreaker, rather than Swift’s very public boyfriends.

The Kaylor fandom emerged as Swift and Kloss’ friendship developed in the heyday of celebrity social media intimacy, beginning with a tweet from Kloss to Swift in 2012.

Kloss and Swift’s public displays dimmed from public view over several years. Kloss married her long-time partner Joshua Kushner in 2018, and they have since had two children together. In light of this, most fans no longer believe Kaylor “is real”, aka, they believe that Kloss and Swift broke up at some point, or were never together.

It is unclear whether Kloss and Swift’s relationship was impacted by the fandom, and whether this changed their public behaviour.

A shifting fandom

Many Kaylors have now morphed into “Gaylors” who believe Swift is queer, or who simply enjoy undertaking queer readings of Swift’s lyrics.

Taylor’s music frequently expresses themes around yearning, secret desires, intolerant families, and fear of the judgement of others: experiences many queer people can relate to. There is even a whole annual fan retreat, called “Gaylore”, dedicated to fans coming together to analyse Swift’s body of work through a queer lens.

Many within the Gaylor fandom are also queer, though importantly – and unlike other queer spaces in the real world – you do not have to identify or explain your own sexuality to be part of the fandom.

As my colleague Clare Southerton and I have argued previously, queer shipping practices provide a unique space of queer belonging. These are communities where the collective focus is on celebrating and encouraging queer identification and pride, without having to individually identify – or even know – what your own sexuality is.

While no one is pressing Gaylors about their queer legitimacy, perhaps ironically, Kaylorism and Gaylorism is controversial because other fans claim this amounts to speculating on Swift’s sexuality. The heart of the issue with queer shipping and Real Person Slash is the “truth” becomes secondary to the output and desires of the fandom.

Queer desires

Kaylors and Gaylors “queer” their idol, or in other words, encourage queer narratives where there would otherwise be heteronormative assumptions made.

While for the mainstream, Swift is the canonical “All-American” straight woman, Kaylors/Gaylors suggest an alternative reality.

This is perhaps reminiscent of artist Zoe Leonard’s poem I want a President, released in 1992, which begins:

I want a dyke for president. I want a person with AIDS for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn’t have a choice about getting leukemia.

Similarly to Leonard, the Kaylors/Gaylors have a desire for their “president” to represent counter-cultural existence. They express a longing for an alternative reality where it is possible that the most famous pop star in the world is a queer woman.

But what about the ethics?

There is some evidence that fan speculation about sexuality is genuinely taxing on celebrities. In his recent memoir Pageboy Elliot Page reflects on the pain caused by conjecture about his sexuality in the public eye before he was ready to come out.

The Kaylor/Gaylor fandom has become so controversial that the main Swift Reddit banned “speculating about Taylor’s sexuality”. In practice, this amounts to any mention of Kaylor, Gaylor or related queer content.

A recent opinion piece in the New York Times about the Gaylor phenomenon also caused a huge debate on the Internet about the ethics of discussing celebrity sexuality.

As some Gaylors have pointed out, given Swift has never “come out” as straight, assuming she is straight because of her public boyfriends is also a form of speculation.

As a result of this fraught debate, Gaylors are sometimes on the receiving end of homophobic sentiments from other fans.

Controversies over Real Person Slash and queer shipping ought to be approached with delicacy from those outside the fandoms. Fandoms are not homogenous groups.

The fights that emerge within these spaces can be intensely emotional, and deeply felt by those caught up.

An understanding of the significance of the community connections built around queer ships, and the subversive desires of these fans in a heteronormative world, must be balanced against the very real ethical concern about the impact of fan speculation, what counts as “speculation” and what causes harm.

Read more:
From Deadheads on bulletin boards to Taylor Swift ‘stans’: a short history of how fandoms shaped the internet

Hannah McCann is an “aca fan” (academic fan) within the Gaylor fandom

– ref. ‘Shipping’, ‘slash fic’ and ‘Gaylors’: fans can find community through ‘queering’ idols – but is it ethical? – https://theconversation.com/shipping-slash-fic-and-gaylors-fans-can-find-community-through-queering-idols-but-is-it-ethical-210971

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Wilson, Co-founder and director of Hate & Extremism Insights Aotearoa (HEIA) and director, Master of Conflict and Terrorism Studies, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

In March and August 2018, up to a year before he attacked two Christchurch mosques, Brenton Tarrant posted publicly online that he planned to do so. Until now, these statements have not been identified.

In fact, for four years before his attack, Tarrant had been posting anonymously but publicly on the online message board 4chan about the need to attack people of colour in locations of “significance”, including places of worship.

In its final report in 2020, the royal commission of inquiry into the terror attacks wrote:

The individual claimed that he was not a frequent commenter on extreme right-wing sites and that YouTube was, for him, a far more significant source of information and inspiration.
Although he did frequent extreme right-wing discussion boards such as those on 4chan and 8chan, the evidence we have seen is indicative of more substantial use of YouTube and is therefore consistent with what he told us.

Given the importance of online environments in radicalising lone actor terrorists, we questioned this and set out to investigate whether right-wing websites were important in Tarrant’s radicalisation.

What we found overturns a great deal of what we thought we knew about him. It also raises serious questions, not only about why this posting was not detected before the attack, but also why it has not been discovered in the five years since the March 15 attacks.

Beyond the manifesto

Having the opportunity to see Tarrant interact candidly with his online community, we see that much of what he stated in his manifesto was propaganda.

When he wrote in his manifesto that he was driven to violence by the lack of a political solution – a realisation that came to him in 2017 – we now know he had been calling for attacks against civilians at least as early as 2015.

Where he claimed he was not driven by antisemitism, we found hatred and conspiratorial distrust of Jews were central to his entire worldview.

Read more:
When life means life: why the court had to deliver an unprecedented sentence for the Christchurch terrorist

Although he claimed in his manifesto that he carried out his attack to preserve diversity and respect for all cultures, the violent racism and Islamophobia in his posting sets him apart, even in the darkest corners of 4chan.

We will be publishing more about Tarrant’s online history, including what radicalised him and what lessons can be learned. Here we introduce some of our initial findings.

Among other revelations, we show that there were numerous opportunities for the public and New Zealand and Australian security services to observe him making very threatening statements online.

We’ve chosen to repeat only a small number of Tarrant’s statements, given their highly offensive nature. However, we still advise caution before reading further.

Read more:
Out of the shadows: why making NZ’s security threat assessment public for the first time is the right move

How we found the posts

Because 4chan posts are anonymous, we used a combination of indicators to identify Tarrant. 4chan’s “politically incorrect” board – referred to as /pol/ – provides the time, date and location of each post, allowing us to match this against Tarrant’s travel to numerous countries over five years.

Tarrant also frequently provided personal information in his posts, and he used the same distinctive language. In some cases, he repeated points we know he made elsewhere. He openly and proudly stated his Australian identity, even as he called for violence.

He also often made specific grammatical errors which make his posting stand out. He uses this style in online writing samples as early as 2011, in his 2019 manifesto, and in a great deal of online posting in between. In combination, these indicators identify Tarrant.

Our team of four researchers reviewed thousands of anonymous posts and hundreds of threads on /pol/. We used the platform’s search function for particular words, phrases and images. As a team we carefully evaluated all posts which included several of the above indicators.

We maintained a very high evidence threshold for including posts in our analysis. We excluded some important statements that were almost certainly written by him, but for which only one or two of the above indicators were present.

What we found

By 2015, Tarrant was calling for mass violence against people of colour. Inspired by Dylann Roof’s massacre of nine Black worshippers in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, Tarrant excitedly claimed “violence is the last resort of a cornered animal”, and “it was always going to come to this”.

It was here Tarrant made clear that white nationalist extremists should target innocent victims in locations of “significance”, such as places of worship.

When other posters claimed Roof should have targeted a “ghetto”, Tarrant became frustrated. He explained that attacking unarmed people in a church is a “very simple tactic” necessary to provoke people of colour into retaliating. He used a highly racist phrase common on the /pol/ board to refer to this strategy.

Read more:
Using AI to monitor the internet for terror content is inescapable – but also fraught with pitfalls

For at least four years, then, Tarrant contemplated and planned on killing people in a location of emotional importance such as a school or place of worship.

In fact, he glorified a wide range of violence, including school and public shootings, the perpetrators of which were driven by psychological or other motives rather than white nationalist ideology.

He advocated for and praised the sadistic and brutal killing of innocent civilians. The key for Tarrant was that this violence was perpetrated by white men. For him, any white violence might trigger the race war and segregation he desired.

As he travelled the world between 2014 and 2018, Tarrant became increasingly focused on Muslims. His hatred persisted after arriving in New Zealand. Sometimes it spiralled into unhinged tirades.

Read more:
Can ideology-detecting algorithms catch online extremism before it takes hold?

In one thread, he claimed he would form and fund an armed band of 4chan users to conduct ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. Some of his posting is unusually violent even within the extremism of /pol/. With hindsight at least, it suggests potential opportunities for detection, most obviously by Australian authorities.

For example, in that same thread, he identified himself as Australian four times, and brazenly wrote there was nothing the Australian government could do to stop him.

At the moment of this violent fantasy, he emailed a gun club in Dunedin stating his plans to move to New Zealand. In the same week, he made donations to international far-right leaders.

Operational Security?

The royal commission into the Christchurch terror attacks concluded Tarrant made only “limited lapses” in operational security during his time in New Zealand between late 2017 and March 2019.

This is not the case. He posted regularly on /pol/, which is freely and publicly accessible. His posting was visible to numerous others whose identities he could not possibly know.

Two threads in March and August of 2018 in particular show his hatred of and plans to attack the Muslim community. As such, they presented opportunities for his detection.

In these threads, Tarrant and other users posted angrily about the spread of immigrants in New Zealand, and particularly the presence of mosques in small towns. Very soon, a group of anonymous posters, including Tarrant, discussed violence against the buildings (and the communities that gather in them).

When another user posted an image of a box of matches in reference to the mosques, Tarrant wrote “Soon”.

Revealing he was in Dunedin, Tarrant expressed his anger at the presence of mosques in that city, and in Christchurch and Ashburton to the north, using highly abusive language. When other users called on him to act, he wrote: “I have a plan to stop it. Just hold on.”

Far from maintaining tight operational security as he planned his attack, Tarrant openly (albeit anonymously) discussed violence against mosques in the South Island while in New Zealand.

Read more:
The royal commission report on the Christchurch atrocity is a beginning, not an end

Preventing it happening again

The 4chan community was crucial in Tarrant’s radicalisation (and the examples given here are just a portion of what we have found).

Given what we know about the importance of online environments in the radicalisation of other white nationalist terrorists, it is disturbing this aspect of Tarrant’s path to March 15 has not been investigated more thoroughly.

After all, his final words before the attack were released on the imageboard 8chan, but also intended for 4chan: “It’s been a long ride […] you are all top blokes and the best bunch of cobbers a man could ask for”.

It is hard to imagine a clearer signpost that the real nature of his radicalisation could be found on those forums.

Five years later, it seems we are only beginning to understand why he committed the atrocity, what might have been done to stop it, and how government agencies can work together with specialist extremism researchers to prevent it happening again.

More information about our study will be released at heiaglobal.com. Our research was approved by the University of Auckland Human Participant Ethics Committee. A paper based on this study has been submitted for peer review and publication.

Chris Wilson is the co-founder and director of Hate & Extremism Insights Aotearoa (HEIA).

Ethan Renner, Jack Smylie, and Michal Dziwulski 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. Christchurch terrorist discussed attacks online a year before carrying them out, new research reveals – https://theconversation.com/christchurch-terrorist-discussed-attacks-online-a-year-before-carrying-them-out-new-research-reveals-223955

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

The March 2 byelection in the outer suburban Melbourne seat of Dunkley is the third byelection this term but the first in a Labor-held electorate. It has been caused by the death late last year of Peta Murphy, after a long battle with cancer.

Labor’s margin sits at 6.3% in Dunkley, an electorate that has swung between the major parties.

Labor goes into the byelection as the favourite, as it seeks to sell its changes to the Stage 3 tax cuts. Most voters will be better off under the new package than they would have under the original version, although there will be some losers.

Labor’s candidate is Jodie Belyea, from Frankston, who has extensive experience working in the not-for-profit sector. The Liberals are fielding the Mayor of Frankston, Nathan Conroy.

To talk about the byelection, we are joined by the ABC’s election analyst Antony Green, Kos Samaras from the RedBridge Group, which has conducted research in Dunkley, and Tim Costello, former CEO of World Vision Australia and a Dunkley resident.

There are several measures of swing that can be used for byelections, and participants often adopt whichever suits them. Green says:

The best measure in the end is the average swing of about three and a half to four percent [against a government]. That’s the swing since Federation.

How is the government’s recently-announced reworked tax package going down in Dunkley? Drawing on the focus group RedBridge ran this week, Samaras says:

When it comes to the tax cuts announcement made by the Albanese government [it’s] welcomed but [has] not much of an impact in terms of alleviating some of these some of these […] financial problems. […] Their problem is in the hundreds of dollars every week not in the tens.

On voter engagement in Dunkley Samaras finds little interest:

I think the overwhelming sense is that they’re sick of getting mail in the letterbox and their YouTube feed being riddled with advertisements, and it’s annoying them. It’s perhaps a message to the political class out there.

As a resident observer, Costello says Belyea is

doing very well, particularly with women. There’s a lot of women in the area who’ve known her work. […] But it’s a big step up to federal politics when you haven’t been involved.

Conroy is

a very good campaigner. He is very slick and everywhere. And that ‘send Labor a message’ I think is cutting through.

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Antony Green, Kos Samaras and Tim Costello on Dunkley contest – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-antony-green-kos-samaras-and-tim-costello-on-dunkley-contest-223961

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sanjoy Paul, Associate Professor, UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney

To hear the Woolworths and Coles chief executives speak on Four Corners this week, you’d think their industry was highly competitive.

For instance, Woolies’ chief Brad Banducci said:

this community over here, there will be three Coles stores within two kilometres of it, at least one ALDI store, a series of independents, ability to within 24 hours have a quarter of our store delivered by Amazon – it’s an incredibly competitive market

Meanwhile, Coles’ chief Leah Weckert said:

there are quite often comparisons that are made between the UK and Australia, but Australia has about a third of the population, and we operate stores on a geographic footprint 30 times the size, those considerations need to be taken into account

Between them, Coles and Woolworths control 65% of Australia’s grocery market. Aldi has just 10%, and independents such as IGA have the rest.

Four Corners reported that meant that, on average, for every $10 Australians pay for groceries, $6.50 is spent at Coles and Woolworths, and just $1 at Aldi. In the United Kingdom, there are five major chains vying for a cut of that $10.

But having a large market share isn’t the same as unreasonably using it.

This week’s Four Corners set out eight ways in which Coles and Woolworths are said to use their market power, each of which will be examined by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s inquiry into supermarkets.

Many hurt their suppliers more than their customers.

1. Squeezing farmers

Hundreds of farmers have little choice but to sell their crops to the big two, and little choice but to accept whatever is offered.

One cherry farmer sent 15 tonnes of cherries to Coles – an entire semi-trailer load. He hoped to receive A$90,000.

Instead, he was told the fruit was not up to standard and was only able to get $5,800 on the seconds market.

He said when Coles is dealing with thousands and thousands of pieces of fruit, it can pick out ten pieces and say the consignment is no good.

so that is power, that’s market power when you can simply reject something for no great reason

The behaviour described might amount to “misuse of market power” under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.

2. Demanding money to accept price increases

Four Corners told the story of a supplier who asked to be paid 5% more and was told the request would be approved only if he paid Coles A$25,000.

The lump sum was for promotions.

It said the Coles buyer’s initial desire to keep prices low for the consumer had been “quickly forgotten”.

The supplier said if he wasn’t prepared to do what the supermarket wanted, there was “a lot of intimidation”.

The tools used included deleting suppliers’ products from sale, forcing customers to buy their competitors’ products.

While this behaviour appears not to be illegal, it might worry the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

3. Charging for Coles Radio

Four Corners said suppliers wanting to do business with the big two were asked to pay for in-house advertising.

It quoted the cost of a full-page ad in Woolworths’ Fresh Magazine at $30,000, and the cost of a four-week spot on Coles radio at $28,000.

Suppliers were also expected to meet the cost of special discounts rather than the supermarket. That means suppliers need to set their recommended retail price at a higher level than was needed in order to offer periodic discounts.

While quite legal, this behaviour has the effect of forcing up general prices. It would be illegal if it misrepresented ordinary prices.

4. Matching prices

The supermarket giants monitor each other’s pricing very closely. If one changes its prices, the other follows.

A former category manager for Coles and Woolworths said if one put up a price, the other would quickly follow.

He said if you did five shops in Woolworths and five in Coles and spent around a hundred dollars, there would only be a few cents difference.

The behaviour might be the result of intense price competition of the kind the Commission wants to encourage, or it might be the result of an implicit understanding between the big two not to compete on price, something the Commission will be keen to determine.

5. Blaming inflation

Woolworths’ latest annual report shows its cost of doing business was flat, but its profit margin from selling groceries climbed from 5.3% to 6%, which meant an extra $318 million in profits.

An industry insider told Four Corners that the big two used “the cover of inflation” to raise prices, something each denied.

Woolworths said its price increases were legitimate, pointing to increases in the price of fertiliser, international freight, wages, and the cost of disruptions in obtaining goods.

Even if unjustified, there is nothing illegal about raising prices, unless false representations are made about the reasons, which is something the Commission will want to examine.

6. Banking land

An industry insider told Four Corners the big two buy up “spoiler sites” years before they even get approvals to build.

If they get the green light, it’s a new supermarket. If not, they’ve kept their rivals out.

In one growing community west of Brisbane, Woolworths bought more than 6 hectares of land over 11 years. But a supermarket is still years away.

German supermarket giant Kaufland abandoned plans to enter the Australian market in 2020. Media reports said a lack of suitable sites was one factor.

The Commission would be hard-pressed to find such behaviour was illegal unless it was able to make a case that it significantly lessened competition.

7. Dark stores

Delivery and click-and-collect orders sometimes come from “dark stores” without customers in which stock pickers work at speed in what can be stifling heat.

“There is an industry standard of a pick rate of about 180 items per hour,” one stock picker said. “Our warehouse, particularly during busy periods, will push you to go above and beyond that, which might be 210, 220.”

In the past, the names of pickers who fell behind were displayed in red.

Every summer there’s people who feel dizzy, every summer there’s people whose sweat’s just dripping off them and they want to sit down, but you get a 15-minute break in a five-hour shift

While not infringing on competition law, such behaviour might breach industrial laws. The Commission is likely to find it beyond the scope of its inquiry.

8. A conduct code with no penalty

Former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Chairman Rod Sims, described the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct as a “joke” because it had no penalties.

He said it was like having a speed limit of 60 kilometres an hour with no penalty for driving at 80.

Woolworths conceded it hadn’t received a single complaint under the grocery code of conduct in the past year. Asked why, chief executive Brad Banducci said Four Corners should ask suppliers.

Only one continuing supplier agreed to appear in the program on the condition that the appearance was anonymous.

The Commission is certain to recommend that the code be given teeth.

Over to the Commission

The Competition and Consumer Commission’s investigation is likely to confirm that Australian supermarkets have some of the highest profit margins in the world, deriving in large part from their high market share.

At issue will be what this enables them to do to their suppliers and customers.

The Commission will publish an issues paper this month and report to the government in August.

Read more:
Why prices are so high – 8 ways retail pricing algorithms gouge consumers

Sanjoy Paul 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. 8 ways Woolworths and Coles squeeze their suppliers and their customers – https://theconversation.com/8-ways-woolworths-and-coles-squeeze-their-suppliers-and-their-customers-223857

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Dahlen, Professor of Midwifery, Associate Dean Research and HDR, Midwifery Discipline Leader, Western Sydney University

The death of premature twins in Byron Bay in an apparent “wild birth”, or free birth, last week has prompted fresh concerns about giving birth without a midwife or medical assistance.

This follows another case from Victoria this year, where a baby was born in a critical condition following a reported free birth.

It’s unclear how common free birthing is, as data is not collected, but there is some evidence free births increased during the COVID pandemic.

Planned home births also became more popular during the pandemic, as women preferred to stay away from hospitals and wanted their support people with them.

But while free births and home births might sound similar, they are a very different practice, with free births much riskier. So what’s the difference, and why might people opt for a free birth?

What are home births?

Planned home births involve care from midwives, who are registered experts in childbirth, in a woman’s home.

These registered midwives work privately, or are part of around 20 publicly funded home birth programs nationally that are attached to hospitals.

They provide care during the pregnancy, labour and birth, and in the first six weeks following the birth.

Read more:
Explainer: what are women’s options for giving birth?

The research shows that for women with low risk pregnancies, planned home births attended by competent midwives (with links to a responsive mainstream maternity system) are safe.

Home births result in less intervention than hospital births and women perceive their experience more positively.

What are free births?

A free birth is when a woman chooses to have a baby, usually at home, without a registered health professional such as a midwife or doctor in attendance.

Different terms such as unassisted birth or wild pregnancy or birth are also used to refer to free birth.

The parents may hire a unregulated birth worker or doula to be a support at the birth but they do not have the training or medical equipment needed to manage emergencies.

Women may have limited or no health care antenatally, meaning risk factors such as twins and breech presentations (the baby coming bottom first) are not detected beforehand and given the right kind of specialist care.

Why do some people choose to free birth?

We have been studying the reasons women and their partners choose to free birth for more than a decade. We found a previous traumatic birth and/or feeling coerced into choices that are not what the woman wants were the main drivers for avoiding mainstream maternity care.

Australia’s childbirth intervention rates – for induction or augmentation of labour, episiotomy (cutting the tissue between the vaginal opening and the anus) and caesarean section – are comparatively high.

One in ten women report disrespectful or abusive care in childbirth and some decide to make different choices for future births.

Read more:
More than 6,000 women told us what they wanted for their next pregnancy and birth. Here’s what they said

Lack of options for a natural birth and birth choices such as home birth or birth centre birth also played a major role in women’s decision to free birth.

Publicly funded home birth programs have very strict criteria around who can be accepted into the program, excluding many women.

In other countries such as the United Kingdom, Netherlands and New Zealand, publicly funded home births are easier to access.

Only around 200 midwives provide private midwifery services nationally. Private midwives are yet to obtain insurance for home births, which means they are risking their livelihoods if something goes wrong and they are sued.

The cost of a home birth with a private midwife is not covered by Medicare and only some health funds rebate some of the cost. This means women can be out of pocket A$6-8,000.

Access to home birth is an even greater issue in rural and remote Australia.

How to make mainstream care more inclusive

Many women feel constrained by their birth choices in Australia. After years of research and listening to thousands of women, it’s clear more can be done to reduce the desire to free birth.

As my co-authors and I outline in our book, Birthing Outside the System: The Canary in the Coal Mine, this can be achieved by:

• making respectful care a reality so women aren’t traumatised and alienated by maternity care and want to engage with it

• supporting midwifery care. Women are seeking more physiological and social ways of birthing, minimising birth interventions, and midwives are the experts in this space

• supporting women’s access to their chosen place of birth and model of care and not limiting choice with high out-of-pocket expenses

• providing more flexible, acceptable options for women experiencing risk factors during pregnancy and/or birth, such as having a previous caesarean birth, having twins or having a baby in breech position. Women experiencing these complications experience pressure to have a caesarean section

• getting the framework right with policies, guidelines, education, research, regulation and professional leadership.

Ensuring women’s rights and choices are informed and respected means they’re less likely to feel they’re left with no other option.

Hannah Dahlen receives funding from NHMRC, ARC and MRFF

– ref. ‘Free birthing’ and planned home births might sound similar but the risks are very different – https://theconversation.com/free-birthing-and-planned-home-births-might-sound-similar-but-the-risks-are-very-different-223852

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chiara Palmieri, Professor, The University of Queensland

This week, disturbing news emerged about mulch containing asbestos in parks, schools and homes across New South Wales (and possibly Canberra). So far, the discussion has focused on the risks to human health.

But the incidents have prompted me to worry about the effects on dogs. Dogs love to sniff, dig, lick and roll on the ground. That means dogs in the vicinity of the mulch may have been exposed to asbestos.

I research the environmental causes of cancer in animals. Animal exposure to asbestos is deeply worrying. Long-term exposure, even to low doses, can cause a type of cancer called mesothelioma. The disease also affects humans.

Here, I outline the risks of asbestos exposure in dogs, and what to do if you’re concerned.

Read more:
Asbestos in mulch? Here’s the risk if you’ve been exposed

What do we know about mesothelioma in dogs?

Mesothelioma is an aggressive cancer that affects both animals and humans. It’s typically concentrated in the respiratory tract, but can affect all cells lining body cavities.

The illness is rare in dogs, causing less than 1% of all canine tumours. But it takes years to develop, by which time successful treatment is difficult.

Symptoms in dogs include difficulty breathing, enlarged abdomen and muffled heartbeat. A dog may cough, become lethargic, lose its appetite and become depressed.

In dogs, the incubation time – the period when the cancer is developing, is less than eight years, compared with more than 20 years in humans. So studying cancer in pet dogs can provide important information about similar cancers that might also affect humans.

Dogs can be exposed to asbestos in the same way as humans – for example, during home renovation projects. People can wear protective gear, but animals cannot. Dogs also tend to lick things, which means they may ingest asbestos fibres as well as breathe them in.

Asbestos is more dangerous when it is “friable” or easily crumbled and broken up into smaller pieces, releasing fibres into the air.

One study from the 1980s showed dogs could be exposed to asbestos, through “secondary contact” or the actions of someone else. This may occur, for example, if a dog inhaled asbestos fibres from the clothes of its owner.

So during house renovations, pets may need to stay mostly outside, or at someone else’s house or a boarding kennel.

What about the mulch issue?

At latest count, 47 sites in NSW have tested positive for asbestos in mulch. In the Australian Capital Territory, environment officials are investigating potentially contaminated “cottage mulch” sold to 24 companies and 27 addresses in and around Canberra.

In all but one Sydney case, the asbestos was considered lower-risk as it was mixed with cement or other hard bonding materials. However, “non-friable” or “bonded” asbestos can become friable if damaged or old. Then, asbestos can be released into the air.

The more dangerous friable asbestos was found at a popular public park in Glebe. This is concerning.

The risk of an animal developing cancer is influenced by duration of exposure and the extent of contamination. We don’t know what level of exposure is required to develop mesothelioma in dogs. But in humans, there is no known safe asbestos exposure level.

What to do if you’re concerned

Mesothelioma can progress rapidly in both dogs and humans. Early diagnosis increases the chance of survival.

If you think your dog has been exposed to asbestos, take it to see a vet. The vet may perform an x-ray to check the dog’s lungs and/or abdomen and windpipe. If damage is present, a vet would take samples of tissue and fluids from the thorax or abdomen, for further examination.

So what happens if a dog is diagnosed with mesothelioma?

In some cases, the cancer will be so far progressed that treatment is not an option. In that case, all effort should be made to ensure the dog is as comfortable as possible.

If it’s not too late to start treatment, dogs can undergo chemotherapy, usually in the form of injections. One study suggests chemotherapy increases a dog’s chance of survival.

The duration of treatment and side effects of chemotherapy vary depending on the severity of the dog’s case. Deciding whether or not to proceed with chemotherapy can be difficult and requires weighing up the costs and likely benefits. It is expensive, but many dogs cope remarkably well and rarely lose their hair.

A wake-up call

Cancer in pets doesn’t always develop by chance. It can be caused by the air they breathe, the soil they dig in and the water they drink.

The case of asbestos-contaminated mulch should be a wake-up call for regulators and industry. But it should also remind pet owners to carefully consider the substances their animals might be exposed to, both inside and outside the home.

Gathering data on canine exposure to environmental hazards is crucial to understanding the origin of spontaneous cancers. We’re about to launch a national survey on the topic. If you are interested in participating, please get in touch with me and I will share the survey link as soon as it becomes available.

Read more:
Why does my dog eat grass? And when is it not safe for them?

Chiara Palmieri receives funding from philanthropic donations, ARDC, Perpetual trust, canine research foundation, UQ internal grant schemes, MLA, Agrifutures.

– ref. Did your dog dig in asbestos-laden mulch? Here are the risks – and what to do next – https://theconversation.com/did-your-dog-dig-in-asbestos-laden-mulch-here-are-the-risks-and-what-to-do-next-223862

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University

Australia’s naval surface combatant fleet is in trouble. The eight Anzac frigates are worn out after three decades of Middle Eastern adventures and hard to crew. The Anzac’s replacements, the much-criticised Hunter Class frigates, are late – the first will not enter service until 2032 or so.

The project’s cost has also stunningly risen from A$35 billion in 2018 to $45 billion a couple of years ago to now $65 billion, even before actual ship construction starts.

Adding to the problems, the Navy now dislikes its 12 new offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) currently being built; this seemingly simple project is also late, costly ($3.7 billion overall) and a “project of concern”.

Meanwhile, the Navy’s three brand new Hobart Class destroyers surprisingly need major, costly upgrades that will take two to three years each. With luck, all three will be back in service by 2032.

These numbers are important as the Navy needs three ships in service to reliably maintain one ship deployed on distant operations for an extended period. Across most of the next decade, our current naval surface warship fleet will be able to dependably deploy only two, maybe three, warships simultaneously for extended periods. This is high-input cost for low-output usage.

A consultant-driven solution

That’s the problem. A review undertaken by highly paid, external consultants, led by a retired US Navy admiral, has now provided the solution.

The review released today recommends keeping the three Hobart Class destroyers and six of the aged ANZAC frigates, building only six Hunter Class frigates and stopping the OPV program immediately at six ships.

The big surprise was the recommendation the Navy acquire at least seven – and “optimally” 11 – new general purpose frigates and six large optionally crewed surface vessels (LOSVs). The government agreed with both recommendations.

The new frigates will be a similar size to the Anzacs and effectively a half-size Hunter. Called “Tier 2” ships, they will be designed for anti-submarine warfare and used to secure seaborne trade routes, Australia’s northern maritime approaches and to escort the Navy’s amphibious ships.

They will have an air and missile defence capability and carry several anti-ship and land-attack missiles. Notably, the first three frigates will be built overseas – this will likely draw criticism.

The LOSVs will increase the Navy’s long-range strike capacity and appear to be similar to the US Navy’s planned large uncrewed surface vessels, which will enter service late this decade.

These vessels will mostly operate without a crew, though they may have a small crew embarked for short periods, such as when entering and leaving port or refuelling at sea. The LOSVs are expected to be lower-cost, long-endurance vessels able to carry anti-ship and land-attack missiles.

The review glosses over the serious inability of crewing the current 11-ship surface warship Navy, let alone a 26-vessel one. The Navy is already about 900 people short, equivalent to more than three Anzac ship crews, as it struggles to meet its recruitment goals.

The Department of Defence, however, considers the problem more one of retention than recruitment and is taking steps to slow the personnel loss rate, but it has much ground to make up before it can grow into a much larger force.

The review merely recognised the challenge and simply hoped for the best.

Read more:
The much-anticipated defence review is here. So what does it say, and what does it mean for Australia?

Implications of the review

First, the good news. Much of the money for the new ships will be spent in Australia – not just on sheet metal hull construction, but also on electronics.

For example, the future of the world-leading radar technology company recently purchased by the federal government, appears secure.

There are definite benefits in both creating a more skilled Australian workforce and sustaining a sovereign, Australian naval shipbuilding industry. Critics will correctly argue it’s more expensive than buying from overseas, but given tax claw-backs, maybe not that much.

Even so, the cost-benefit analysis will be hard to calculate – the decision over whether it’s good value for money needs to be a judgement call, not an analysis based on mathematics.

Second, the Albanese government came to office calling for much better “impactful projection” – that is, the ability to apply strategically meaningful military power at great distance from Australia’s shores using missiles.

The new frigates, however, will only carry some additional missiles – not many. As such, the government seems to have changed its earlier intentions and will instead focus more on the submarine threat to Australia’s trade routes.

The only nod to “impactful projection” in the review today is the building of six new LOSVs, each of which will be able to carry 32 missiles to sea. (One LOSV working with a Hobart Class frigate, however, will have around 88 missiles.)

Critics will point to the fact this is fewer than a single US Navy Arleigh Burke destroyer, which carries 96 missiles, and its larger Chinese counterpart, which carries 128.

Read more:
Australia can no longer afford to ignore Russia’s expanding naval power in the Pacific

Third, the review does not call for renewing the Navy’s ageing Anzac flotilla quickly enough. Warship shortages will persist well into the next decade. This is bad news for the short term.

And lastly, the Navy will now have three major ship and submarine projects underway. The new plan to acquire an additional flotilla of frigates will take considerable time, soak up the country’s scarce ship-building workforce and be remarkably costly.

This will adversely impact the Navy operationally and the rest of the Department of Defence, Army and Air Force. As a result, we can likely expect cuts to the Army in the forthcoming budget.

Overall, the review is good for jobs in Adelaide and Perth and will make the Navy significantly larger over the long term. It will also partly placate some government critics who want to buy ships overseas, arguing this will mean faster delivery, and those who believe the government needs “new money” added to currently planned defence budgets.

But the true cost impacts of the reform plan must await the budget. The plan will also take a long time to implement and has ignored the Navy’s chronic shortage of skilled personnel, which is surely most unwise.

Peter Layton 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 government has unveiled its Navy of the future. Will it solve our current problems – or just create new ones? – https://theconversation.com/the-government-has-unveiled-its-navy-of-the-future-will-it-solve-our-current-problems-or-just-create-new-ones-223846

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Dobson, Professor and Dean of Education and the Arts, CQUniversity Australia

Do you remember what it was like to discover the magic of a city for the first time? Do you remember the noises, smells, flashing lights and pulsating crowds? Or do you mostly remember cities through the screen of your phone?

In 1967, French philosopher and filmmaker Guy Debord publicised the need to move away from living our lives as bystanders continually tempted by the power of images. Today, we might see this in a young person flicking from one TikTok to the next – echoing the hold images have on us. But adults aren’t adverse to this window-shopping experience, either.

Debord notes we have a tendency to observe rather than engage. And this is to our detriment. Continually topping-up our image consumption leaves no space for the unplanned – the reveries to break the pattern of an ordered life.

Debord was a member of a group called the Situationist International, dedicated to new ways we could reflect upon and experience our cities. Active for about 15 years, they believed we should experience our cities as an act of resistance, in direct opposition to the (profit-motivated) capitalistic structures that demand our attention and productivity every waking hour.

More than 50 years since the group dissolved, the Situationists’ philosophy points us to a continued need to attune ourselves – through our thoughts and senses – to the world we live in. We might consider them as early eco-warriors. And through better understanding their philosophy, we can develop a new relationship with our cities today.

Understanding the ‘situation’

The Situationist International movement was formed in 1957 in Cosio di Arroscia, Italy, and became active in several European countries. It brought together radical artists inspired by spontaneity, experimentalism, intellectualism, protest and hedonism. Central figures included Danish artist Asger Jorn, French novelist Michèle Bernstein and Italian musician and composer Walter Olmo.

The Situationists were driven by a libertarian form of Marxism that resisted mass consumerism. One of the group’s early terms was “unitary urbanism”, which sought to join avant-garde art with the critique of mass production and technology. They rejected “urbanism’s” conventional emphasis on function, and instead thought about art and the environment as inexorably interrelated.

By rebelling against the invasiveness of consumption, the Situationists proposed a turn towards artistically-inspired individuality and creativity.

Think on your own two feet

According to the 1960 Situationist Manifesto we are all to be artists of our own “situations”, crafting independent identities as we stand on our own two feet. They believed this could be achieved, in part, through “psychogeography”: the idea that geographical locations exert a unique psychological effect on us.

For instance, when you walk down a street, the architecture around you may be deliberately designed to encourage a certain kind of experience. Crossing a vibrant city square on a sunny morning evokes joy and a feeling of connection with others. There’s also usually a public event taking place.

The Situationists valued drift, or dérive in French. This alludes to unplanned movement through a landscape during journeys on foot. By drifting aimlessly, we unintentionally redefine the traditional rules imposed by private or public land owners and property developers. We make ourselves open to the new unexpected and, in doing so, are liberated from the shackles of everyday routine.

In our research, my colleagues and I consider cities as places in which “getting lost” means exposing yourself to discovering the new and taken-for-granted.

Forge your own path

By understanding the Situationists – by looking away from our phones and allowing ourselves to get lost – we can rediscover our cities. We can see them for what they are beneath the blankets of posters, billboards and advertisements. How might we take back the image and make it work for us?

The practise of geo-tagging images on social media, and sharing our location with others, could be considered close to the spirit of the Situationists. Although it’s often met with claims of over-fuelling tourism (especially regarding idyllic or otherwise protected sites), geo-tagging could inspire us to actively seek out new places through visiting the source of an image.

This could lead to culturally respectful engagement, and new-found respect for the rights of traditional custodians as we experience their lands in real life, rather than just through images on our phones.

Then there are uniquely personal and anarchistic forms of resistance, wherein we can learn about the world around us by interweaving ourselves with our histories. In doing so we offer a new meaning to a historical message, and a new purpose. The Situationists called this process détournement, or hijacking.

For instance, from my grandfather I inherited a biscuit tin of black and white photographs I believe were taken in the 1960s. They showed images of parks and wildlife, perhaps even of the same park, and cityscapes of London with people, streets and buildings.

I have spent many hours wandering the London streets tracking down the exact places these images were snapped. I was juxtaposing past with present, and experiencing both continuity and change in the dialogues I had with my grandfather. In this way, I used images to augment (rather than replace) my lived experience of the material world.

Urban art installations can also be examples of detournment as they make us re-think everyday conceptions. Forgotten Songs by Michael Hill is one such example. A canopy of empty birdcages commemorates the songs of 50 different birds once heard in central Sydney, but which are now lost due to habitat removal as a result of urban development.

There are also a number of groups, often with a strong environmental or civic rights focus, that partake in detournment. Reclaim the Streets is a movement with a long history in Australia. The group advocates for communities having ownership of and agency within public spaces. They may, for instance, “invade” a highway to throw a “road rave” as an act of reclamation.

As French avant-garde philosopher Gaston Bachelard might have put it, when we’re bombarded by images there is no space left to daydream. We lose the opportunity to explore and question the world capitalism serves us through images.

Perhaps now is a good time to set down the phone and follow in the Situationists’ footsteps.

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Stephen Dobson 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 art of ‘getting lost’: how re-discovering your city can be an antidote to capitalism – https://theconversation.com/the-art-of-getting-lost-how-re-discovering-your-city-can-be-an-antidote-to-capitalism-221606

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vahid Pooryousef, PhD candidate in Human Computer Interaction, Monash University

Late last week, OpenAI announced a new generative AI system named Sora, which produces short videos from text prompts. While Sora is not yet available to the public, the high quality of the sample outputs published so far has provoked both excited and concerned reactions.

The sample videos published by OpenAI, which the company says were created directly by Sora without modification, show outputs from prompts like “photorealistic closeup video of two pirate ships battling each other as they sail inside a cup of coffee” and “historical footage of California during the gold rush”.

At first glance, it is often hard to tell they are generated by AI, due to the high quality of the videos, textures, dynamics of scenes, camera movements, and a good level of consistency.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman also posted some videos to X (formerly Twitter) generated in response to user-suggested prompts, to demonstrate Sora’s capabilities.

How does Sora work?

Sora combines features of text and image generating tools in what is called a “diffusion transformer model”.

Transformers are a type of neural network first introduced by Google in 2017. They are best known for their use in large language models such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini.

Diffusion models, on the other hand, are the foundation of many AI image generators. They work by starting with random noise and iterating towards a “clean” image that fits an input prompt.

A video can be made from a sequence of such images. However, in a video, coherence and consistency between frames are essential.

Sora uses the transformer architecture to handle how frames relate to one another. While transformers were initially designed to find patterns in tokens representing text, Sora instead uses tokens representing small patches of space and time.

Leading the pack

Sora is not the first text-to-video model. Earlier models include Emu by Meta, Gen-2 by Runway, Stable Video Diffusion by Stability AI, and recently Lumiere by Google.

Lumiere, released just a few weeks ago, claimed to produce better video than its predecessors. But Sora appears to be more powerful than Lumiere in at least some respects.

Sora can generate videos with a resolution of up to 1920 × 1080 pixels, and in a variety of aspect ratios, while Lumiere is limited to 512 × 512 pixels. Lumiere’s videos are around 5 seconds long, while Sora makes videos up to 60 seconds.

Lumiere cannot make videos composed of multiple shots, while Sora can. Sora, like other models, is also reportedly capable of video-editing tasks such as creating videos from images or other videos, combining elements from different videos, and extending videos in time.

Both models generate broadly realistic videos, but may suffer from hallucinations. Lumiere’s videos may be more easily recognised as AI-generated. Sora’s videos look more dynamic, having more interactions between elements.

However, in many of the example videos inconsistencies become apparent on close inspection.

Promising applications

Video content is currently produced either by filming the real world or by using special effects, both of which can be costly and time consuming. If Sora becomes available at a reasonable price, people may start using it as a prototyping software to visualise ideas at a much lower cost.

Based on what we know of Sora’s capabilities it could even be used to create short videos for some applications in entertainment, advertising and education.

OpenAI’s technical paper about Sora is titled “Video generation models as world simulators”. The paper argues that bigger versions of video generators like Sora may be “capable simulators of the physical and digital world, and the objects, animals and people that live within them”.

If this is correct, future versions may have scientific applications for physical, chemical, and even societal experiments. For example, one might be able to test the impact of tsunamis of different sizes on different kinds of infrastructure – and on the physical and mental health of the people nearby.

Achieving this level of simulation is highly challenging, and some experts say a system like Sora is fundamentally incapable of doing it.

A complete simulator would need to calculate physical and chemical reactions at the most detailed levels of the universe. However, simulating a rough approximation of the world and making realistic videos to human eyes might be within reach in the coming years.

Risks and ethical concerns

The main concerns around tools like Sora revolve around their societal and ethical impact. In a world already plagued by disinformation, tools like Sora may make things worse.

It’s easy to see how the ability to generate realistic video of any scene you can describe could be used to spread convincing fake news or throw doubt on real footage. It may endanger public health measures, be used to influence elections, or even burden the justice system with potential fake evidence.

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Video generators may also enable direct threats to targeted individuals, via deepfakes – particularly pornographic ones. These may have terrible repercussions on the lives of the affected individuals and their families.

Beyond these concerns, there are also questions of copyright and intellectual property. Generative AI tools require vast amounts of data for training, and OpenAI has not revealed where Sora’s training data came from.

Large language models and image generators have also been criticised for this reason. In the United States, a group of famous authors have sued OpenAI over a potential misuse of their materials. The case argues that large language models and the companies who use them are stealing the authors’ work to create new content.

Read more:
Two authors are suing OpenAI for training ChatGPT with their books. Could they win?

It is not the first time in recent memory that technology has run ahead of the law. For instance, the question of the obligations of social media platforms in moderating content has created heated debate in the past couple of years – much of it revolving around Section 230 of the US Code.

While these concerns are real, based on past experience we would not expect them to stop the development of video-generating technology. OpenAI says it is “taking several important safety steps” before making Sora available to the public, including working with experts in “misinformation, hateful content, and bias” and “building tools to help detect misleading content”.

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

– ref. What is Sora? A new generative AI tool could transform video production and amplify disinformation risks – https://theconversation.com/what-is-sora-a-new-generative-ai-tool-could-transform-video-production-and-amplify-disinformation-risks-223850

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frédérik Saltré, Research Fellow in Ecology for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University

Australia is home to about one in 12 of the world’s species of animals, birds, plants and insects – between 600,000 and 700,000 species. More than 80% of Australian plants and mammals and just under 50% of our birds are found nowhere else.

But habitat destruction, climate change, and invasive species are wreaking havoc on Earth’s rich biodiversity, and Australia is no exception.

In 2023, the federal government added another 144 plants, animals and ecological communities to the threatened species list – including iconic species such as the pink cockatoo, spiny crayfish and earless dragons.

More and more species stand on the edge of oblivion. That’s just the ones we know enough about to list formally as threatened. Many more are in trouble, especially in the oceans. Change is the new constant. As the world heats up and ecosystems warp, new combinations of species can emerge without an evolutionary connection, creating novel communities.

It is still possible to stop species from dying out. But it will take an unprecedented effort.

Read more:
Explainer: what is biodiversity and why does it matter?

How species end

The modern extinction crisis is quite recent. Between 1970 and 2018, wildlife populations around the world fell by almost 70%. But the collapse of these populations isn’t equal – Latin America and the Caribbean have lost around 94% of the individuals in wild populations. Africa has lost 65%, Asia-Pacific about 45%, while North America and Europe have lost 45% and Central Asia 33%.

In the 250 years since Europeans arrived, at least 100 unique Australian species have gone extinct. That’s about 6% to 10% of all recorded extinctions worldwide since the year 1500. If we look at mammals alone, we have the worst track record of any country.

Extinction doesn’t happen overnight. An abundant species might be exposed to a new predator such as feral cats. Its population could fall to the point where it is listed as threatened, meaning it has a high chance of becoming extinct in the near future.

If the species can’t adapt and if we do nothing, the species can become critically endangered and decline to a few hundred individuals. If pressure continues, it can go extinct in the wild. And if zoos can’t establish breeding populations or we simply don’t know about it, the entire species can wink out of existence.

Tip of the iceberg

Australia’s threatened species list is useful, because it helps us prioritise which species to help. But it does not show the true number of species in danger. There are well known gaps, such as many invertebrates that have gone extinct unnoticed because of their secretive nature and small size.

The list likely misses other lesser-known or hard to research groups such as microorganisms, hard to find marine species, snakes and lizards, and rare plants.

Neither does the list take into account species that depend on each other, such as wasps relying on one species to parasitise and pollinators specialising on a few types of flowers. Yet these complex interactions are essential to healthy functioning of ecosystems.

To list a species as threatened takes work. By the time we have catalogued all species on Earth – estimated to take 100–200 years at current discovery rates – experts estimate most species will have already gone extinct.

Read more:
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Can species come back?

For decades, conservationists have used species recovery programs to try and bring threatened species back from the brink. You need a combination of approaches – there’s no point breeding thousands of endangered woylies if their habitat has been replaced with farmland or plantation.

One measure with good results is to use policy measures to cut forest loss and other habitat destruction. Lost habitat is the main reason more than 85% of our threatened species are on the list in the first place. Invasive species and diseases can worsen damage from habitat loss – or act alone.

Extinction is not inevitable. Between 2000 to 2022, we saw 29 species recover to the point they could be taken off the threatened list.

But the road to recovery is long, complicated, and far from assured for most of our worst-affected species.

Novel ecosystems and climate change

Each species has a climate it prefers and can survive in. But the magnitude of expected future climate change is likely to produce climates without precedent in many regions. We could see the creation of entirely new biological communities and environments, as has happened before.

Read more:
What is a ‘mass extinction’ and are we in one now?

The best-known novel communities emerged at high latitudes mostly between 17,000 and 12,000 years ago. Here, for instance, spruce and ash trees in North America grew side by side – even though they now live far apart – and pines were less common than today.

Unfortunately, the emergence of novel communities often led to an increase in species extinctions.

But the emergence of new types of ecosystems doesn’t mean all species will suffer. For instance, novel habitats in Melbourne’s suburbs have led to a surge in southern brown bandicoots, who find strips of native and introduced plants along roads, canals and railways to their liking.

New ecosystems can sometimes harbour more species and actually be more resilient due to the variety of species traits, behaviours, and genetic diversity. But this is not guaranteed.

Managing these new ecosystems will be challenging. We will have to come up with creative ways to handle these changes by adopting Indigenous practices or applying novel solutions such as genetic rescue, mass reforestation and assisted migration to reduce extinction rates.

With unprecedented climates, novel ecosystems, invasive species, and disruptions to the food chain, we can expect more and more species to be added to the threatened list.

Read more:
Climate-driven species on the move are changing (almost) everything

Frédérik Saltré receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Corey J. A. Bradshaw receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. New ecosystems, unprecedented climates: more Australian species than ever are struggling to survive – https://theconversation.com/new-ecosystems-unprecedented-climates-more-australian-species-than-ever-are-struggling-to-survive-222375

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Wolf, Associate Professor, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Australian National University

Scientists have no reported evidence of the true conditions in Hell, perhaps because no one has ever returned to tell the tale. Hell has been imagined as a supremely uncomfortable place, hot and hostile to bodily forms of human life.

Thanks to a huge astronomical survey of the entire sky, we have now found what may be the most hellish place in the universe.

In a new paper in Nature Astronomy, we describe a black hole surrounded by the largest and brightest disc of captive matter ever discovered. The object, called J0529-4351, is therefore also the brightest object found so far in the universe.

Supermassive black holes

Astronomers have already found around one million fast-growing supermassive black holes across the universe, the kind that sit at the centres of galaxies and are as massive as millions or billions of Suns.

To grow rapidly, they pull stars and gas clouds out of stable orbits and drag them into a ring of orbiting material called an accretion disc. Once there, very little material escapes; the disc is a mere holding pattern for material that will soon be devoured by the black hole.

The disc is heated by friction as the material in it rubs together. Pack in enough material and the glow of the heat gets so bright that it outshines thousands of galaxies and makes the black hole’s feeding frenzy visible to us on Earth, more than 12 billion light years away.

The fastest-growing black hole in the universe

The accretion disc of J0529-4351 emits light that is 500 trillion times more intense than that of our Sun. Such a staggering amount of energy can only be released if the black hole eats about a Sun worth of material every day.

It must also have a large mass already. Our data indicate J0529-4351 is 15 to 20 billion times the mass of our Sun.

There is no need to be afraid of such black holes. The light from this monster has taken more than 12 billion years to reach us, which means it would have stopped growing long ago.

In the nearby universe, we see that supermassive black holes these days are mostly sleeping giants.

Black holes losing their grip

The age of the black hole feeding frenzy is over because the gas floating around in galaxies has mostly been turned into stars. And after billions of years the stars have sorted themselves into orderly patterns: they are mostly on long, neat orbits around the black holes that sleep in the cores of their galaxies.

Even if a star dove suddenly down towards the black hole, it would most likely carry out a slingshot manoeuvre and escape again in a different direction.

Read more:
Why do black holes twinkle? We studied 5,000 star-eating behemoths to find out

Space probes use slingshot manoeuvres like this to get a boost from Jupiter to access hard-to-reach parts of the Solar System. But imagine if space were more crowded, and our probe ran into one coming the other way: the two would crash together and explode into a cloud of debris that would rapidly fall into Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Such collisions between stars were commonplace in the disorder of the young universe, and black holes were the early beneficiaries of the chaos.

Accretion discs – a no-go zone for space travellers

Accretion discs are gateways to a place whence nothing returns, but they are also profoundly unfriendly to life in themselves. They are like giant storm cells, whose clouds glow at temperatures reaching several tens of thousands of degrees Celsius.

The clouds are moving faster and faster as we get closer to the hole, and speeds can reach 100,000 kilometres per second. They move as far in a second as the Earth moves in an hour.

The disc around J0529-4351 is seven light years across. That is one and a half times the distance from the Sun to its nearest neighbour, Alpha Centauri.

Why only now?

If this is the brightest thing in the universe, why has it only been spotted now? In short, it’s because the universe is full of glowing black holes.

The world’s telescopes produce so much data that astronomers use sophisticated machine learning tools to sift through it all. Machine learning, by its nature, tends to find things that are similar to what has been found before.

This makes machine learning excellent at finding run-of-the-mill accretion discs around black holes – roughly a million have been detected so far – but not so good at spotting rare outliers like J0529-4351. In 2015, a Chinese team almost missed a remarkably fast-growing black hole picked out by an algorithm because it seemed too extreme to be real.

Read more:
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In our recent work, we were aiming to find all the most extreme objects, the most luminous and most rapidly growing black holes, so we avoided using machine learning tools that were guided by too much prior knowledge. Instead we used more old-fashioned methods to search through new data covering the entire sky, with excellent results.

Our work also depended on Australia’s current 10-year partnership with the European Southern Observatory, an organisation funded by several European countries with a huge array of astronomical facilities.

Christian Wolf has received funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. The brightest object in the universe is a black hole that eats a star a day – https://theconversation.com/the-brightest-object-in-the-universe-is-a-black-hole-that-eats-a-star-a-day-222612

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Cullen, Adjunct professor, The University of Western Australia

On February 20 and 21, Julian Assange will ask the High Court of England and Wales to reverse a decision from June last year allowing the United Kingdom to extradite him to the United States.

There he faces multiple counts of computer misuse and espionage stemming from his work with WikiLeaks, publishing sensitive US government documents provided by Chelsea Manning. The US government has repeatedly claimed that Assange’s actions risked its national security.

This is the final avenue of appeal in the UK, although Stella Assange, Julian’s wife, has indicated he would seek an order from the European Court of Human Rights if he loses the application for appeal. The European Court, an international court that hears cases under the European Convention on Human Rights, can issue orders that are binding on convention member states. In 2022, an order from the court stopped the UK sending asylum seekers to Rwanda pending a full review of the relevant legislation.

The extradition process has been running for nearly five years. Over such a long time, it’s easy to lose track of the sequence of events that led to this. Here’s how we got here, and what might happen next.

Read more:
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Years-long extradition attempt

From 2012 until May 2019, Assange resided in the Ecuadorian embassy in London after breaching bail on unrelated charges. While he remained in the embassy, the police could not arrest him without the permission of the Ecuadorian government.

In 2019, Ecuador allowed Assange’s arrest. He was then convicted of breaching bail conditions, and imprisoned in Belmarsh Prison, where he’s remained during the extradition proceedings. Shortly after his arrest, the United States laid charges against Assange and requested his extradition from the United Kingdom.

Assange immediately challenged the extradition request. After delays due to COVID, in January 2021, the District Court decided the extradition could not proceed because it would be “oppressive” to Assange.

The ruling was based on the likely conditions that Assange would face in an American prison and the high risk that he would attempt suicide. The court rejected all other arguments against extradition.

The American government appealed the District Court decision. It provided assurances on prison conditions for Assange to overcome the finding that the extradition would be oppressive. Those assurances led to the High Court overturning the order stopping extradition. Then the Supreme Court (the UK’s top court) refused Assange’s request to appeal that ruling.

Read more:
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The extradition request then passed to the home secretary, who approved it. Assange appealed the home secretary’s decision, which a single judge of the High Court rejected in June 2023.

This appeal is against that most recent ruling and will be heard by a two-judge bench. These judges will only decide whether Assange has grounds for appeal. If they decide in his favour, the court will schedule a full hearing of the merits of the appeal. That hearing would come at the cost of further delay in the resolution of his case.

Growing political support

Parallel to the legal challenges, Assange’s supporters have led a political campaign to stop the prosecution and the extradition. One goal of the campaign has been to persuade the Australian government to argue Assange’s case with the American government.

Cross-party support from individual parliamentarians has steadily grown, led by independent MP Andrew Wilkie. Over the past two years, the government, including the foreign minister and the prime minister, have made stronger and clearer statements that the prosecution should end.

On February 14, Wilkie proposed a motion in support of Assange, seconded by Labor MP Josh Wilson. The house was asked to “underline the importance of the UK and USA bringing the matter to a close so that Mr Assange can return home to his family in Australia.” It was passed.

In addition, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus confirmed he had recently raised the Assange prosecution with his American counterpart, who has the authority to end it.

What will Assange’s team argue?

For the High Court appeal, it is expected Assange’s legal team will once again argue the extradition would be oppressive and that the American assurances are inadequate. A recent statement by Alice Edwards, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, supports their argument that extradition could lead to treatment “amounting to torture or other forms of ill-treatment or punishment”. She rejected the adequacy of American assurances, saying:

They are not legally binding, are limited in their scope, and the person the assurances aim to protect may have no recourse if they are violated.

The argument that extradition would be oppressive remains the strongest ground for appeal. However, it is likely Assange’s lawyers will also repeat some of the arguments which were unsuccessful in the District Court proceedings.

One argument is that the charges against Assange, particularly the espionage charges, are political offences. The United States–United Kingdom extradition treaty does not allow either state to extradite for political offences.

Read more:
Explainer: what charges does Julian Assange face, and what’s likely to happen next?

Assange is also likely to re-run the argument that his leaks of classified documents were exercises of his right to freedom of expression under the European Convention on Human Rights. To date, the European Court of Human Rights has never found that an extradition request violates freedom of expression. For the High Court to do so would be an innovative ruling.

The High Court will hear two days of legal argument and might not give its judgement immediately, but it will probably be delivered soon after the hearing. Whatever the decision, Assange’s supporters will continue their political campaign, supported by the Australian government, to stop the prosecution.

Holly Cullen has been a volunteer for the Australian Labor Party, including for Josh Wilson, MP.

– ref. After years of avoiding extradition, Julian Assange’s appeal is likely his last chance. Here’s how it might unfold (and how we got here) – https://theconversation.com/after-years-of-avoiding-extradition-julian-assanges-appeal-is-likely-his-last-chance-heres-how-it-might-unfold-and-how-we-got-here-221217

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert G. Patman, Professor of International Relations, University of Otago

Despite inheriting positive bilateral ties with Australia and the US, New Zealand’s coalition government has indicated it wants an even closer alignment with traditional allies.

In what has been described as “the most challenging strategic environment for decades”, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins held discussions with their Australian counterparts in Melbourne this month.

This was the first time in trans-Tasman relations that ministers in these portfolios have met in such a “two-on-two” format.

A statement issued after the talks said “the two countries share close bonds of history and geography, liberal democratic values, regional and global interests and strategic outlook”.

The statement also agreed the AUKUS security partnership “made a positive contribution toward maintaining peace, security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific”.

These words may have signalled a potentially momentous break with New Zealand’s previous foreign policy.

A distinctive worldview

There has long been bipartisan acknowledgement that Australia is New Zealand’s closest and most important ally. But there appeared to be little recognition at the meeting that New Zealand’s evolving sense of national identity – anchored in the Pacific – has generated a distinctive worldview.

For much of the post-war era, the New Zealand-Australian alliance has been one of unity rather than uniformity. It has accommodated relatively independent New Zealand stances on non-nuclear security, opposition to the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and relations with China.

It may be a stretch to say the alliance promoted a principled, independent New Zealand foreign policy, but it has certainly not proved to be an impediment.

However, those days may now be coming to an end. A tighter alignment with Australia – given Canberra’s own very close relationship with Washington – could make New Zealand itself more reliant on US strategic input.

Read more:
The defence dilemma facing NZ’s next government: stay independent or join ‘pillar 2’ of AUKUS?

China not the only threat

Close ties with Australia do not mean it is necessarily in New Zealand’s strategic interests to join AUKUS.

Established in 2021, the trilateral security pact between Australia, the US and UK purports to defend “a shared commitment to the international rules-based order” in the Indo-Pacific region.

But it is clearly intended to counter the challenge of China’s assertiveness, and consists of two “pillars”.

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Pillar one involves Australia receiving eight to ten nuclear-powered submarines from the US and UK over the next three decades. New Zealand is now actively exploring whether to join pillar two, envisaging the sharing of cutting-edge defence technologies.

According to Collins, New Zealand’s “defence has been absolutely gutted in the last three years and we’ve got to build that back”.

While last year’s national security strategy acknowledged New Zealand’s “stability, security and prosperity” depends critically on an international rules-based order, it is also evident China is not the sole threat to this order.

Gaza and Ukraine

Firstly, there is the unconditional support of the US and UK for the Israeli government’s disproportionate and relentless military response in Gaza to the October 7 terrorist attacks.

An estimated 28,000 Palestinians have been killed, prompting the International Court of Justice to order Israel to prevent acts of genocide there.

New Zealand has voted twice in the UN General Assembly for an immediate humanitarian truce or ceasefire. It also recently joined Australia and Canada in calling for a ceasefire before any ground assault on Rafah.

Read more:
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But the government has nevertheless overlooked US complicity (through military aid and use of its Security Council veto) in the Gaza catastrophe. That complicity has allowed Iran and China to strategically capitalise on global anger over the plight of the Palestinians.

As well, Wellington has accepted a US request to send a Defence Force team to the Red Sea to help repel Houthi attacks on civilian shipping.

New Zealand and Australia have a huge stake in reversing the illegal and brutal Russian attempt to annex parts of Ukraine. The Biden administration, however, has struggled since late 2023 to sustain vital military aid to Kyiv.

Serious opposition within the US Congress from some members of the Republican party raises questions for its allies – including its AUKUS partners – about US commitment to the international rules order.

Read more:
The ‘number 8 wire’ days for NZ’s defence force are over – new priorities will demand bigger budgets

Would AUKUS help or hinder NZ interests?

There is also a concern among Pacific Island and ASEAN states that New Zealand’s possible participation in AUKUS pillar two could heighten great power rivalry.

Elevating a view that only the US and its Anglosphere partners can counter Chinese influence in the vast region carries several risks.

It may undercut regional leadership, and de-emphasise local national security concerns such as climate change. It might also hurt New Zealand’s diplomatic standing as a Pacific nation projecting an independent, rules-based, non-nuclear foreign policy that is distinguishable from its traditional allies.

Read more:
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The current security situation faces multiple challenges – including US exceptionalism, China’s assertiveness, Russian expansionism and UN Security Council dysfunction.

The key question is whether access to the start-of-the-art defence technologies of AUKUS pillar two will help address or aggravate these challenges for a relatively small actor like New Zealand.

On balance, and mindful that AUKUS does not have a monopoly over new defence technologies, there is little evidence that participation in pillar two will significantly advance New Zealand’s distinctive interests and values in the Indo-Pacific region or elsewhere.

And it should certainly not be regarded as a quick fix for under-investment in the country’s defence sector by governments over many years.

Robert G. Patman 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. Moving closer to Australia is in New Zealand’s strategic interest – joining AUKUS is not – https://theconversation.com/moving-closer-to-australia-is-in-new-zealands-strategic-interest-joining-aukus-is-not-223843