Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Miller-Jones, Professor, Curtin University

Some stars just get unlucky. There are billions of stars within a typical galaxy. Yet once every 100,000 years or so, one of those stars will wander too close to the supermassive black hole lurking at the galaxy’s centre and be torn apart. These cosmic behemoths weigh in at millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun, and their immense gravitational force can destroy an unlucky star.

The stellar debris spirals in towards the black hole, which feeds on the remains. However, black holes are messy eaters. In a small fraction of cases, this stellar destruction can power an energetic jet of material that travels outwards at almost the speed of light. If that jet is pointed directly towards us its brightness will be boosted, in much the same way that a police siren seems louder when the car is travelling towards us.

Modern astronomical surveys discover such stellar spaghettifications (known as tidal disruption events) roughly once or twice every month. However, only three of these had previously been seen to produce powerful jets, most recently in 2011.

Earlier this year we were lucky enough to spot another one of these events, more than halfway across the Universe. As we report today in Nature Astronomy, our team watched it with some of the world’s best telescopes for more than three months, getting the best view yet of the birth and development of a black hole jet.

Black holes and jets

Eating stars is an important way for black holes to grow, even more so in the early Universe. We know the supermassive black holes at the heart of today’s galaxies must have grown extremely rapidly when they were young to reach their current sizes.

These cataclysmic events also provide a unique window to the fastest-feeding black holes. We could never reproduce in a laboratory the high energies and strong gravity involved, so these rare occurrences help us to understand astrophysics at its most extreme.

In particular, they allow us to test how jets form. Jets are a natural byproduct of the infall of gas onto a central object. They transport energy from the central object to its surroundings.

The most powerful jets known are launched by the supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies. The matter and energy in these jets can trigger or prevent the formation of stars, and affect the evolution of entire galaxies.

Being so large, supermassive black holes usually change slowly. Tidal disruption events provide an exception to this rule, as a large amount of gas is dumped very close to the black hole.

The black holes then feed rapidly, changing their behaviour over the course of days or months. Dedicated observing campaigns with state-of-the-art telescopes can provide a wealth of data on these exotic phenomena. We can use these data to test our theories for how jets form and evolve.

A burst of light

In February 2022, an optical sky survey discovered a bright burst of light from the centre of a distant galaxy. The light had been travelling to us for over 8.5 billion years – more than half the lifetime of the Universe. Telescopes around the world sprang into action to learn more about this event, which astronomers named AT2022cmc.

This event was extremely bright, particularly at X-ray wavelengths. The X-ray emission gave out more energy in 1 second than the Sun emits in 10 million years.

The X-rays were also highly variable, changing in brightness on timescales as short as 15 minutes. Notably, there was also strong emission at radio and millimetre wavelengths, which got brighter over time.

These properties indicated that AT2022cmc was a new tidal disruption event. It is the most distant found to date, and the first seen to launch a powerful jet in 11 years.

X-rays and radio waves

Over the first 100 days after discovery, our team, led by Dheeraj Pasham from MIT, observed the event with a range of telescopes. Our data covered the radio, optical, ultraviolet and X-ray emission, which arise from different parts of the inflowing and outflowing gas.

Our detailed modelling showed that the majority of the emission arose from the powerful jet launched by the rapidly feeding black hole. The unlucky star that met its demise was likely to be a low-mass dwarf star. At its peak, the black hole was devouring gas at a rate that would consume the entire Sun in just a few years.

Read more:
How we captured first image of the supermassive black hole at centre of the Milky Way

We found that the jet was moving at 99.993% of the speed of light, with most of the energy carried by the particles (ions) in the jet, rather than the magnetic fields. This was unexpected, since most current theories predict that magnetic fields are critically important in jet formation and should carry much of the energy.

New telescopes, better views

With an upgraded suite of telescopes, and more sophisticated theoretical models than a decade ago, our work has provided the most detailed coverage yet of the birth and evolution of a relativistic jet. We have challenged our theoretical expectations and improved our understanding of physics at its most extreme.

Over the coming few years, new facilities such as the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile should discover many more such events, reaching further out into the distant Universe. Powerful new radio telescopes such as the SKA will allow even more detailed follow-up and characterisation of the jets.

Our study has demonstrated the exciting science that will flow from these instruments, opening a new window to some of the most energetic events in our Universe.

Read more:
Astronomers have detected one of the biggest black hole jets in the sky

James Miller-Jones works for ICRAR – Curtin University. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the West Australian State Government.

Adelle Goodwin works for ICRAR – Curtin University. She receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the West Australian State Government.

– ref. Astronomers witness the dying flare of a star torn apart by a black hole halfway across the Universe – https://theconversation.com/astronomers-witness-the-dying-flare-of-a-star-torn-apart-by-a-black-hole-halfway-across-the-universe-195453

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa A Williams, Associate professor, School of Psychology, UNSW Sydney

Although they were only two-and-a-half years ago, the first months of the COVID pandemic and ensuing lockdowns seem like a distant past.

We have – perhaps intentionally – let fade our memories of 5 kilometre-radius travel restrictions, long lines at testing locations, work from home mandates, remote schooling, and border closures. We seem to just not talk about it anymore.

Yet, a fresh wave of cases is here, new variants keep emerging, and we find ourselves navigating a constantly shifting “new normal”.

What have we learnt from our emotional responses during the first waves of the pandemic and the way we shared them? And should this shape how we face the future?

Read more:
Friday essay: COVID in ten photos

It has been real

The pandemic has been poignantly emotional.

We longed for our usual social interaction patterns. Many of us were unwell and/or supporting others who were unwell. These stressors were both acute and ongoing.

It’s no surprise most Australians reported lowered mental wellbeing since the onset of the pandemic.

Evidence of the emotional impact of the pandemic is evident in data from online social networks. Australia saw a 28% increase in Twitter posts expressing anxiety and a 15% increase in posts expressing sadness during the first five weeks of the 2020 outbreak relative to pre-COVID periods.

These broad shifts in emotional tenor were accompanied by “bursts” of emotional activity. For instance, the day of national mourning for COVID victims in China saw a spike in social media language reflecting sadness.

We were also fairly resilient. Tightened restrictions, and the acute effects of the pandemic that drove them, were met with initial stress. But most people showed hedonic adaptation – or a return to baseline emotion levels – over time.

Read more:
The ‘city’ is becoming increasingly digital, forcing us to rethink its role in life and work

Sharing all the feels

As people so often do in emotional situations, we talked about our experiences as COVID became a part of our daily lives – even if we couldn’t do it in person.

Once lockdowns and social distancing restrictions happened, we had to get creative. We phoned friends and loved ones and also attended Zoom parties and online game nights. We posted to social media and digital devices became integral to maintaining contact.

Talking about our experiences and feelings – something researchers call the social sharing of emotion – likely had great benefit.

Belgian researcher Bernard Rimé, whose focus is the social psychology of emotion, argues we mostly feel compelled to discuss our emotional experiences. Friends, spouses, and partners are the main targets of sharing among adults. More intense emotions are shared more often and more quickly. We also tend to share pivotal experiences again and again – in the days, weeks, and months after an event.

So even now, years into the pandemic, there’s value in sharing our feelings.

In general, sharing our emotional experiences carries a range of benefits. When we share positive experiences, we relive the event, capitalising on its benefits again into the future. Sharing inherently involves naming our feelings – a process called affect labelling, which itself kicks off processes that, in particular, bring our negative emotional states back to baseline.

But it’s the communal nature of social sharing that’s really important – and how someone responds is key.

For instance, relationships improve when conversation partners react enthusiastically to positive emotion sharing. Further, we feel better, closer to the target, and less lonely, when others respond empathically and help us reframe negative events.

One caveat is worth noting: there are fewer benefits if sharing extensively focuses on negative feelings and problems. Co-rumination, as it’s termed, does bring people together, but fails to bring about emotional recovery.

A ‘wash of emotions’

It’s clear we can gain a lot out of sharing our personal emotional experiences. But some emotional events impact an entire group, community, or indeed the entire world. The COVID pandemic is a prime example.

Collective emotions are converging responses to an event among members of a group. Discussing collective events and engaging with media coverage serve to create a social narrative and collective memory of what happened, ultimately affording a sense of social belonging and shared beliefs in the group.

This process is accelerated in both pace and reach in online social networks.

Analysis over time of Twitter data shows people who posted frequently online about the pandemic came to express less negativity later on, reinforcing the idea that engaging in the collective emotional response facilitated personal emotional recovery.

Read more:
‘The stories a nation tells itself matter’: how will the COVID generation remember 2020?

Facing the future

What can we learn from all this about facing an ongoing pandemic and other large-scale stressors? Share how you felt and how you feel, both the good and the bad – particularly with close others. Chances are you and those you share with will benefit.

Not on social media? Not a problem. Social sharing of emotions, and the emergence of collective emotions, certainly happens in face-to-face interaction. Worried about lack of face-to-face opportunities? Also not a problem. Computer-mediated and face-to-face communication are remarkably similar in terms of how much emotion is shared. Find the medium that works for you.

If others are sharing with you – especially negative experiences – go further than providing comfort, validation and understanding. Aim to help them cognitively process the event by thinking differently about it. And of course, avoid co-rumination.

Sharing our feelings and processing our collective emotions can be helpful, especially as we step into an uncertain future.

Lisa A. Williams receives funding from the Australian government (Australian Research Council; Department of Industry, Science, and Resources).

– ref. What COVID has taught us about sharing our emotions – and why now’s a good time to share again – https://theconversation.com/what-covid-has-taught-us-about-sharing-our-emotions-and-why-nows-a-good-time-to-share-again-193098

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Connell, Professor of Human Geography, University of Sydney

In 1989, distinguished Australian geographer Gerard Ward wrote that the Pacific was emptying out. As people on smaller islands left to seek opportunity elsewhere, the region risked becoming Earth’s empty quarter. He wrote:

Perhaps 100 years hence, almost all of the descendants of today’s Polynesian or Micronesian islanders will live in Auckland, Sydney, San Francisco and Salt Lake City. Occasionally they may recall that their ancestors once lived on tiny Pacific islands … set in an empty ocean.

Ward’s prediction attracted criticism for its doomsday tone. But was he right?

For some countries, he may have been spot on. Populations are now falling in many of the smallest states. On tiny Pitcairn Island, with a population of fewer than 50, it is well over a decade since the last child was born.

But it’s not the same everywhere in the Pacific – while Micronesia and Polynesia are broadly shrinking, Melanesian nations are booming.

Migration isn’t new, of course. What will be new is the prospect of so many people moving that small nations effectively cease to exist. Climate change will only intensify these shifts.

Who’s leaving – and where are they going?

Just in the past six months, populations have declined in two US territories, American Samoa and the Marshall Islands as well as the French overseas collectivity of New Caledonia.

American Samoa’s population has fallen from around 56,000 in 2010 to less than 50,000 in 2020, according to US census data. This is due in part to younger people moving to the US mainland and having children there. Just 6% of the territory’s population were born in the United States, indicating very few people return once they move.

Populations are falling even faster in the Marshall Islands to the north, down 20% between 2011 and 2021 to around 42,000 people. Where are people going? Predominantly to the US, where Marshall Islanders are scattered from Hawaii to Arkansas.

There are good reasons for people to move. The Marshall Islands’ 2021 census found almost half of all families on the islands worried about not having enough to eat. Islanders are moving to escape poverty.

New Caledonia’s population has now fallen below 270,000. Birth rates have fallen, while COVID drove death rates up. When people migrate, they tend to move to France.

Is the same trend visible elsewhere?

Longer-term declines are visible in the neighbouring Federated States of Micronesia and Palau, although not at such dramatic rates. Following New Caledonia into decline are the Pacific’s other two French territories, French Polynesia, where the population has plateaued, while the population at the much smaller territory known as Wallis and Futuna is steadily declining.

For other states, the major migration has already happened. More than 90% of all Niue residents live in New Zealand, where they hold citizenship, leaving only around 1,600 living on the islands as of 2017. For the people of this isolated, rocky island, migration has become normal, expected and even necessary.

Tokelau, too, has the lion’s share of its people on New Zealand – 7,000, compared with just 1,500 remaining on the islands. It’s the same for the larger Cook Islands, with more than 60,000 in New Zealand and fewer than 15,000 people on the islands. The populations on all three of these island nations are holding relatively steady.

What about the larger states? Long sandwiched between smaller Polynesian and larger Melanesian states, Fiji’s population growth has now slowed dramatically. Many people are moving internally, leaving smaller islands further out in favour of the two main islands.

Both Tonga and Samoa are steadily losing people, many to New Zealand. These nations still have the majority of their population resident on their islands, for now.

Why do people leave even larger island states, where there are better economic opportunities?

One answer is remittances: the money migrants working overseas send back home to support their families. Remittances were particularly important during COVID lockdown periods when tourism collapsed – and even more so for Tonga after this year’s giant eruption of an undersea volcano. On the world stage, Tonga and Samoa are among the top remittance-receiving countries. The World Bank estimates remittance flows are equivalent to 40% of Tonga’s GDP and 25% of Samoa’s.

What about climate change?

Rising sea levels are affecting the lowest-lying nations first, such as the atoll states of Kiribati and Tuvalu, which are only a few metres above sea level.

Already, storm surges have forced people to move to higher ground, while flooding from the sea has made some farmland too salty for crops. That’s why Kiribati’s former president, Anote Tong, has sought “migration with dignity” – essentially, wholesale relocation of all Kiribati people.

You might expect the populations of these threatened nations to be dropping, but they’ve actually grown in recent years. Despite this, people are moving wherever possible – one by one, household by household. A third of all Tuvaluans now live in Auckland.

The exception: Melanesia

Only the independent Melanesian states of Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea are resisting this trend. Here, populations are still growing and few people are leaving permanently.

In part, that’s because their former colonisers aren’t interested in encouraging migration. Australia, which governed Papua New Guinea until 1975, has shown interest mainly in bringing migrants to Australia temporarily, to help with the farm labour shortage.

That means the largest islands in the Pacific – and the islands closest to Australia – will continue to grow, with the attendant pressure on resources.

What does mass emigration do to a country?

Losing skills, farmers and the next generation overseas is not conducive to national development. Remittances are not the same as actual people. Children born overseas often have little interest in “returning” to a home they’ve never seen.

Remarkably, this is happening when the Pacific has become geopolitically crucial, as China and the US vie for influence over a massive and valuable space.

Gerard Ward foresaw what these alarming trends would mean for the blue continent. Even as the world’s population has just shot past eight billion, one part of the world is contracting.

Read more:
Underpaid at home, vulnerable abroad: how seasonal job schemes are draining Pacific nations of vital workers

John Connell 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. ‘Earth’s empty quarter’: many Pacific nations now have falling populations – https://theconversation.com/earths-empty-quarter-many-pacific-nations-now-have-falling-populations-195281

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Stewart, John Bray Professor of Law, University of Adelaide

The Albanese government’s Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill is all set to become law, after Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke revealed amendments to secure the support of the Greens and ACT independent David Pocock in the Senate.

The government and the trade union movement see the bill as crucial to reinvigorating collective bargaining and lifting wages, especially for lower-paid workers.

Much of the debate has focused on what the bill does with multi-employer agreements – and many of the government’s concessions concern that issue.

But if the wage stagnation of the past decade is to be overcome, it will likely be through less-heralded reforms.

Read more:
‘Zombie’ wage deals have hurt Australians for years. Here’s how new industrial relations laws could finally end your wage pain

Multi-enterprise agreements

While there is much to be said for industry or sector-wide wage agreements, the Fair Work Act does not allow them, and that will not change under the bill. Unrelated employers can choose to make a “multi-enterprise agreement”. But they cannot be required to bargain and few such agreements are made.

The bill offers the option of two new types of multi-enterprise agreement: supported bargaining agreements, and single-interest employer agreements. Both will require authorisation from the Fair Work Commission before formal bargaining can commence.

Read more:
A mandate for multi-employer bargaining? Without it, wages for the low paid won’t rise

Supported bargaining

The supported bargaining system will replace the largely unused provisions for “low-paid bargaining”.

It is intended for industries in which (single) enterprise bargaining has proved difficult, such as child care or aged care. The Fair Work Commission must be satisfied it is appropriate for the nominated employers to bargain together, having regard to existing pay and conditions, and any identifiable common interest (for example, being reliant on government funding).

Single-interest bargaining

The single-interest bargaining stream is potentially broader.

It can apply in any sector other than commercial construction (now specifically excluded from all types of multi-enterprise agreement). However, a combination of the original drafting and subsequent concessions will make it difficult for unions to gain a single-interest authorisation.

Unions will not be able to rope in small business employers (to be defined as those with fewer than 20 regular employees) without their consent.

A larger employer can only be included without their consent if a majority of its affected employees want to bargain.

Employers of any size can only participate if they are sufficiently “comparable” to be regarded as having a common interest.

An employer cannot be included if it has a current single-enterprise agreement, or is negotiating a replacement for one that expired in the previous nine months.

No authorisation will be granted unless the Fair Work Commission is satisfied it is in the public interest.

Read more:
Employers say Labor’s new industrial relations bill threatens the economy. Denmark tells a different story

The pathways to agreement

If a union can gain permission to pursue one of the new types of multi-enterprise agreement, it will be able to draw on supports for bargaining that were not there under the current law.

Employers named in a supported bargaining or single-interest authorisation would be obliged to bargain in good faith.

Employees with a bargaining representative could take industrial action – although only if approved in a ballot of represented employees at their workplace.

The Fair Work Commission could assist the parties to reach agreement. In the case of supported bargaining, that might include requiring the involvement of a head contractor or funding body with a “degree of control” over workers’ pay and conditions.

Most significantly – and as with prolonged negotiations for a single-enterprise agreement – the commission could resolve an “intractable” bargaining dispute by arbitration. Just the threat of such intervention should improve the chances of gaining agreement.

This, arguably, is the biggest reform to bargaining in the bill.

So when do the wage rises happen?

It will take time to test out the new provisions.

Meeting the onerous requirements for a single-interest authorisation will be difficult, except for employers already bargaining together (such as franchisees or faith-based schools).

If a union can secure majority support at a particular enterprise, it can probably already bargain there.

Any attempt to let existing deals expire and then shift to multi-employer bargaining may be met by public-interest objections – unless the employers concerned also see value in a more collective approach.

Supported bargaining has a greater chance of taking off, especially in low-paid industries where employers may support higher pay if assured of not being at a competitive disadvantage.

Other pathways

The bill offers other routes to higher wages, through “work value” adjustments to award rates, and improved access to equal remuneration orders. That focus on pay equity, also evident in the bill’s prohibition of pay secrecy clauses, may prove just as useful in delivering wage rises for feminised sectors.

More generally, the bill seeks to simplify the process of making enterprise agreements and getting them approved.

This includes changes to the “better off overall test”, which ensures negotiated pay and conditions are set above the award minimum, not below. (The government has agreed to fix a drafting problem that might have created a loophole for employers to exploit.)

Overall, the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill may speed up some bargaining processes and, over time, help reverse the trend away from agreement-making.

Read more:
There’s one big reason wages are stagnating: the enterprise bargaining system is broken, and in terminal decline

But if real wage rises are to return, it will more likely be because governments are prepared to fund them – and employers are willing to trade some of their profits for economic growth.

Andrew Stewart 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 the compromise IR package means for wage negotiations, and pay rises – https://theconversation.com/what-the-compromise-ir-package-means-for-wage-negotiations-and-pay-rises-195545

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janelle K Johnstone, PhD Candidate, La Trobe University

When I was a kid, my dad Max took me to basketball games at Melbourne’s Entertainment Centre. I’d wait in my plastic bucket chair as the cheerleaders shook their pom poms and the teams did lay ups. The music was loud, and around the time everyone had found their seats, one song would often come on.

It opened with a wailing, single note guitar, followed by a chunky, palm muted riff, driving along until bursting into the chorus when the vocals would demand “Am I ever gonna see your face again?” And as I licked my lemonade icy pole I’d delight as the whole stadium would chant back “No way, get fucked, fuck off.”

I had no idea the band was called The Angels. I didn’t know they were supposed to be the next AC/DC but didn’t quite “make it”. The intense relationships at their core were lost on me. I was just delighted by how wild it felt, this song the audience owned, breaking rules, answering back.

A new documentary, Kickin’ Down the Door chronicles Australian band The Angels across four decades, from suburban Adelaide to the gloss of Albert Studios and beyond.

The classic Oz rock vibe is omnipresent: dudes, riffs, volume.

But this story’s star quality is how hard it works to showcase the band from both front of house and backstage, offering something far more nuanced than the well-thumbed tale of these national music icons.

Finding intensity

The documentary centres on the songwriting team of the Brewster brothers, vocalist Bernard “Doc” Neeson, and a revolving cast of drummers, bass players and producers.

The themes are what you might like in a documentary about Australian rock ‘n’ roll: journeys to adulthood, mateship, resistance, lashings of hope, dollops of luck. Interviews from the band and their nearest and dearest sidle up against archival footage with cute animations bridging scenes.

There’s the ubiquitous drop-in from a couple of international names to provide cred – thankfully a Bono-free endeavour. There’s a slither of pre-hat Molly Meldrum. The eye candy of 70s and 80s Aussie life abounds.

The songs are central to Kickin’ Down the Door, but rock ‘n’ roll has always been about theatre, and front man Doc Neeson’s lead in creating an unsettling intensity at live shows lifted The Angels beyond the meat and potatoes of standard Oz rock.

In one scene, the lighting guy talks about how Doc used silence and darkness as a tool of intensity – the antithesis of rock show bombast.

Read more:
Gibson guitars: sound of rock that will never go out of fashion

A complex portrait

Like The Angels did with rock ‘n’ roll, Kickin’ Down the Door offers a key change in the way it positions the people behind the scenes. Director Madeleine Parry has brought together a complex web of relationships pivoting on creative jubilation, obligation, devotion and estrangement.

At an early gig, the Brewsters’ mother is recalled as dancing on a table in a “sea of blokes”. These were her boys, who could do no wrong.

Mothers, girlfriends, wives and children are elevated close to the story’s centre, anchored within the nostalgic rhythm of white suburban Australian life to contrast with the band’s sprint – then marathon – to rock ‘n’ roll stardom. Beyond the band bubble, everyone’s sacrifice is apparent.

“We all supplied the stability while they chased the dream,” says Neeson’s then partner.

In bringing women to the front, Parry frames the main players as multi-dimensional, emotional and expressive. The intensity of volume, riffage and flamboyance sits in dialogue with each band members’ reflections to present the way that “performance” seamlessly slides across gender and genre.

This deep thoughtfulness shines through the dizzying foray of complex legal and financial arrangements bands can be thrown into, setting them up with lifelong debt.

This is the persistent myth of “luck” in rock ‘n’ roll. This myth grinds against the power imbalance inherent in an incredibly competitive, brutal and sometimes hedonistic global business culture. For decades, rock ‘n’ roll has relied on the exploitation of artists who sacrifice family, health, economic security and friendships to have sustainable careers.

This documentary skilfully weaves the devastation that comes when these pressures evaporate years of work for bands and their teams.

It isn’t so much a story about the big bad music industry swallowing up another Australian wanna be. Rather, it is a well-crafted assemblage of the pervasive way rock ‘n’ roll’s mystique works behind the scenes, prioritising profits over health and wellbeing, and the sustainability of artists and their families.

Read more:
Why artistic differences in a band can be a good thing

The sonic legacy

Undoubtedly the biggest names now in Australian guitar driven music – Amyl and the Sniffers, Courtney Barnett, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Tame Impala – are part of the sonic legacy of bands like The Angels.

But they also show a marked shift in how they do business when courting international markets, maintaining elements of independence and control that The Angels had no blueprint for.

This current crop of bands also show we are on the road to far better gender representation of what contemporary rock music looks and sounds like. And in other genres, artists like Baker Boy, Genesis Owusu, Barkaa and Jaguar Jonze continue to contest and take ownership of “the sound” of Australian music.

Incidentally, I never went on to play basketball. I picked up an electric guitar instead.

The Angels: Kickin’ Down the Door is in Australian cinemas from today.

Janelle K Johnstone receives funding from the Australia Council and Creative Victoria.

– ref. Am I ever gonna see your face again? Nuanced and thoughtful, Kickin’ Down the Door puts The Angels back in the spotlight – https://theconversation.com/am-i-ever-gonna-see-your-face-again-nuanced-and-thoughtful-kickin-down-the-door-puts-the-angels-back-in-the-spotlight-194057

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

As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation politics team.

In this podcast Michelle and politics + society editor Amanda Dunn canvass federal parliament’s final sitting week of the year, including the House of Representatives’ censure of Scott Morrison, and the flurry of legislation.

Meanwhile the Nationals have sparked renewed argument about next year’s Voice referendum, and the Liberals’ trouncing in Victoria at the weekend is reigniting that party’s soul-searching about its future.

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. Word from The Hill: Federal parliament’s ‘salt mines’ final week – https://theconversation.com/word-from-the-hill-federal-parliaments-salt-mines-final-week-195653

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

Among the slew of mostly predictable speeches that culminated in the first-ever House of Representatives censure of a former prime minister, one stood out.

Bridget Archer, Liberal backbencher from Tasmania, was brief and brave, as she told the house she’d vote to censure her former leader.

The point is not diminished by Archer being something of a habitual rebel. This was a situation totally out of the ordinary.

Having “relentlessly advocated for more integrity in politics”, to “sit quietly now would be hypocritical,” Archer said, as the parliament debated Scott Morrison’s unprecedented move to have himself installed, almost entirely in secret, into multiple ministries.

In a few sentences Archer cut to the chase, rejecting Morrison’s actions, explanation and absence of contrition in the speech he had just delivered to the house.

The Australian people had a right to be informed, she said. “What can be more fundamental than this?” She was “deeply disappointed by the lack of genuine apology”. More importantly, by the failure to understand the impact of what he’d done.

This moment sat above the cut and thrust of politics, with the motion going to the system of democracy, Archer said.

“This issue also sits at the heart of the ability of our party to move forward,” she said. “This is a clear opportunity for a line to be drawn and to move in the right direction. We must heed the message sent to us at the May election – learn those lessons, reset and move forward constructively.”

Archer was the only Liberal to vote for the motion. But Karen Andrews, who has previously said Morrison should quit parliament, abstained. Morrison was Andrews’ secret co-partner in home affairs.

Unsurprisingly, the opposition generally did not use this as a moment to reject its former prime minister.

Rather, the Coalition tried to defend – or, more accurately, to at least provide fig leaves for – his indefensible conduct. However, its heart clearly wasn’t in the effort.

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Niki Savva on her book Bulldozed, Scott Morrison and the Liberals’ woes

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton – who has previously criticised Morrison’s behaviour – didn’t even make a token effort, remaining silent. One can see this as squibbing his duty, condemning Morrison by conspicuous silence, or just finding it all too hard.

The censure condemned Morrison for “failing to disclose his appointments to the House of Representatives, the Australian people and the cabinet, which undermined responsible government and eroded public trust in Australia’s democracy”.

Moving the motion, Leader of the House Tony Burke said the multiple ministries had breached “the absolute core” of responsible government.

“That entire concept of responsible government only works if the parliament and, through the parliament, the Australian people know which members of the executive are responsible for what.

“There is no previous Liberal prime minister where this sort of motion would ever be moved,” Burke said.

Morrison, speaking immediately after Burke, gave a defiant response, repeating many of the arguments he has made previously.

He had no intention of “submitting to the political intimidation of this government using its numbers to impose its retribution on its political opponents”.

He argued: “Just because a minister is sworn to administer a department does not mean they ‘hold the office as minister’ for that portfolio. This means it is a falsehood to state that I was the minister for health or any of the other portfolios that were the subject of the Bell Inquiry.”

This sits at odds with his profile on the official parliamentary website, which indeed now records him as “minister for health”, from March 14 2020 until May 23 2022. His other multi-ministries are also listed, with the relevant dates.

Morrison suggested that if anyone had asked at his “numerous press conferences”, he would have “responded truthfully about the arrangements I had put in place”.

The censure motion was “entirely partisan”, he said, but “I will take the instruction of my faith and turn the other cheek”.

Read more:
View from The Hill: The Bell report on Morrison’s multi-ministries provides a bad character reference

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese positioned himself carefully, leaving ministers – including Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who seconded the motion – to carry the debate, but intervening down the list of speakers to deliver an all-round spray against his predecessor.

He said Morrison “owes an apology to the Australian people for the undermining of democracy, and that’s why this motion should be supported by every member of this house”.

There was a note of more-in-sorrow-than-anger in some of the speeches from crossbenchers, but also clear firmness. Integrity had been at the heart of the teal campaigns, a springboard for their arrival in parliament. But, keeping their contributions short, crossbenchers were also aware of the politics being played in this motion, as Labor keeps the spotlight shining on Morrison.

After a three-hour debate the censure was carried 86-50. The Greens voted for it, along with crossbenchers Sophie Scamps, Kylea Tink, Zoe Daniel, Allegra Spender, Monique Ryan, Andrew Wilkie, Helen Haines, Rebekha Sharkie and Zali Steggall.

Morrison’s public trials are far from over. On December 14, the former treasurer and former social services minister will appear before the Robodebt royal commission. As former High Court judge Virginia Bell said in her report, Morrison’s multi-ministry affair had, in practice, limited effect, wrong as his action was. Robodebt, in contrast, had devastating practical implications for a great many people’s lives.

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. View from The Hill: Scott Morrison makes parliamentary history – for the worst of reasons – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-scott-morrison-makes-parliamentary-history-for-the-worst-of-reasons-195648

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Heap, Doctoral Researcher, RMIT University

The fifth national survey on sexual harassment in Australian workplaces, published today, shows little has changed since the last survey in 2018 – or indeed since the first survey in 2003.

It points to the importance of the legislative changes being pursued by the Albanese government, including reforms that passed parliament on Monday.

The survey of 10,000 Australians was commissioned by the Australian Human Rights Commission and conducted by Roy Morgan Research in August and September. It shows 33% of workers were sexually harassed at work in the previous five years – 41% of women and 26% of men.

This compares with 39% of women and 26% of men in 2018, and with 15% of women and 6% of men in 2003 (though these results cannot be easily compared with the latest figures due to changes in survey methodology).

The most common form of sexually harassment were:

• comments or jokes (40% of women, 14% of men)
• intrusive questions about one’s private life or appearance (32% of women, 14% of men)
• inappropriate staring (30% of women, 8% of men)
• unwelcome touching, hugging, cornering or kissing (28% of women, 10% of men)
• inappropriate physical contact (26% of women, 11% of men).

Men were responsible for 91% of harassment of women, and 55% of harassment of men.

Most of those harassed said their harasser also sexually harassed another employee. Just 18% formally reported the harassment. Of those, only 28% said the harassment stopped as a result, while 24% said their harasser faced no consequences.

Slow work on reforms

These results highlight the importance of the reforms now being made by the Albanese government, implementing the recommendations of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2020 Respect@Work report.

That report made 55 recommendations. The Morrison government acted on just a handful.

It amended the Fair Work Act to enable individuals to apply to the Fair Work Commission for a “stop sexual harassment” order, and to make it clear sexual harassment is grounds for dismissal.

But it ignored the key recommendation: placing a positive duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment, requiring them to treat harassment like other work health and safety issues.

Read more:
Sexual harassment at work isn’t just discrimination. It needs to be treated as a health and safety issue

This was needed, the report argued, because treating sexual harassment as being about aberrant individuals led to a workplace focus on individual complaints. It did little to change structural drivers of such behaviour.

Albanese government commitments

On Monday, the Albanese government finally made this pivotal reform, when parliament passed its Respect@Work bill.

It is now no longer enough for employers to have a policy and act on complaints. They must also take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate sex discrimination, sexual harassment and victimisation.

The government has committed to implementing all 55 recommendations. The Respect@Work bill implements seven.

Others should be achieved with the omnibus industrial relations bill now before the Senate. Improving the conditions and bargaining power of those in insecure and low-paid work, and reducing gender inequalities, should lessen the vulnerabilities that enable harassment to flourish.

Read more:
A mandate for multi-employer bargaining? Without it, wages for the low paid won’t rise

Ratifying the ILO convention

Last week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also committed to ratifying the International Labor Organisation’s convention on Eliminating Violence and Harassment in the World of Work.

So far, 22 nations have ratified the treaty. Ratification will oblige Australia to align its laws and regulations with the treaty’s provisions.

This is significant not just because the convention is the first international treaty to enshrine the right to work free from violence and harassment as its focus. It also breaks with the historical framing of sexual harassment as an individual interpersonal conflict.

The convention calls for an integrated approach to eliminating workplace violence and harassment. In Australia’s case, this will require developing approaches that break down the policy and regulatory fences between anti-discrimination measures, and those covering workplace rights and work health and safety.

This could prove challenging – with sexual harassment being only one form of gender-based violence. But implementing all 55 recommendations of the Respect@Work report is a good start.

Hopefully the sixth national workplace survey will have a better story to tell.

Lisa Heap receives scholarship funds from RMIT University and the Commonwealth Government.

– ref. 20 years of tracking sexual harassment at work shows little improvement. But that could be about to change – https://theconversation.com/20-years-of-tracking-sexual-harassment-at-work-shows-little-improvement-but-that-could-be-about-to-change-195554

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mitchell G. Nye-Wood, Research Fellow, Edith Cowan University

What would happen if all animals on Earth were herbivores? – Molly, age 9, Melbourne

Thanks for the great question, Molly!

We hear a lot about how humans eating meat is bad for the planet. That’s because making room for the animals that produce meat leaves less space for us to farm plants, and less natural habitat for wildlife. And when all those farm animals burp, it releases methane into the atmosphere and contributes to climate change.

So it’s natural to wonder if all animals, including humans, should be herbivores – in other words, only eat plants.

To answer this question, we first need to understand a little about animals, and herbivores.

Where do animals fit into life on Earth?

The animal kingdom is one branch of life on Earth, alongside plants, fungi, and two (or three, depending on which textbook you read) types of tiny organisms called bacteria.

Animals can be categorised by the main type of food in their diet. Herbivores eat plants or algae. Carnivores eat other animals. And omnivores eat both plants and animals.

But some omnivores and carnivores would die if they had a completely plant-based diet. For example, cats need meat for the nutrients it contains and because they can’t digest plants well. This is true for all cats, from a terrifying tiger to a teeny tabby cat.

So if all animals on Earth only ate plants, millions of carnivore and omnivore species would die out. That’s a problem, because meat-eating animals play an important role on our planet.

Take, for example, scavengers such as vultures, ravens, dogs and flies. They eat other animals that are already dead – and when they poo it out they put important nutrients into the soil so plants can grow.

Without these scavengers, the job of breaking down dead animals would be left to fungi and bacteria. That would mean a lot of dead animals lying around for a lot longer.

There aren’t many things smellier than dog poo – but a rotting kangaroo is one!

Read more:
How much meat do we eat? New figures show 6 countries have hit their peak

Carnivores actually help the planet – including humans

The absence of carnivores in an ecosystem can also mean herbivores start taking over an area, making it unlivable for other species. This occurred when wolves were removed from Yellowstone National Park in the United States.

Wolves used to eat deer in the wild. When wolves disappeared, deer populations got too big. They ate too many plants near streams, which caused riverbanks to crumble into the water. Deer also damaged trees used by beavers to build dams. This muddied the water even more, and other animals such as fish couldn’t live there any more.

But the absence of meat-eating animals could also bring benefits.

For example, many native species are endangered because they’re being eaten by introduced predators. Without carnivores, these endangered animals would have more of a chance.

The fate of farm animals is less obvious. If all humans were herbivores then there would be no need to raise animals for meat. That would mean we’d only ever see cows, sheep, chickens and pigs at the zoo.

And what about pets? Cats and dogs need meat to survive. So in a world of herbivores, the biggest animal at the pet shop would probably be a plant-eating guinea pig!

Read more:
From foe to friend: how carnivores could help farmers

There are human health aspects to consider, too.

We humans require a few micrograms of vitamin B12 each day, and the best source of this is meat.

If humans only ate plants, we’d need to eat a lot of the primary plant sources of B12 – seaweed, algae and some mushrooms. We’d also probably need to take B12 tablets or other man-made “supplements” containing B12. Making these would require farming a lot more algae and bacteria that naturally produce this essential vitamin.

Of course, many vegans – people who don’t eat animal products – already manage to keep up their B12 levels. But I daresay others would struggle. And a lot of people simply enjoy eating meat. I’d hate to come between a bodybuilder and his or her steak!

Life finds a way

Losing carnivores would clearly have far-reaching consequences. Earth would soon look dramatically different.

But the more I study evolution, the more I realise life finds a way to achieve what seemed impossible.

If all animals on Earth were herbivores, sooner or later a species of herbivore or fungus would evolve into a new form of life that knows how to turn its herbivorous neighbours into a tasty meal.

Read more:
Most large herbivores now face extinction, our study shows

Mitchell G. Nye-Wood works in a lab group that receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Curious Kids: What would happen if all animals on Earth were herbivores? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-what-would-happen-if-all-animals-on-earth-were-herbivores-193458

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Melleuish, Professor, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong

The Nationals have declared they will support the No case for the Voice referendum. This position has not been endorsed by all the Nationals, with the Western Australian Nationals and federal MP Andrew Gee confirming their support for the Voice.

The Nationals’ move is unusual, as we do not know yet know what specific constitutional changes will be proposed by the referendum. It seems to be an “in principle” opposition to the general idea of the Voice, and it would appear to be largely driven by Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

What is the significance of this early decision? And what does it say about the National Party and its relationship to the Liberal Party, which has yet to declare its position on this matter?

The National Party is an independent party that forms a coalition with the Liberal Party. When the two parties are in government together, they would normally agree on policy matters.

In opposition, the Nationals are much freer to diverge from the Liberals on policy. This would seem to be an issue on which they are seeking to assert their independence.

Of course, support by a major political party for a particular case in a referendum matters, because so few referendums have been successful (8 out of 44). It is generally acknowledged that a referendum requires bipartisan support if it is to succeed. This move could be seen as a sort of preemptive strike to bury the referendum.

The reason why it is extremely difficult for a referendum to be successful is because of the double majority; this means both an overall majority of voters and a majority of voters in a majority of states (that is, at least four).

Read more:
Albanese insists Voice will help ‘close the gap’, as divisions flare in Nationals

There have been cases in the past where a constitutional amendment received a majority of the votes but majorities in only three, and in one case two, states. This meant it failed.

Referendums are more likely to succeed if they do not have a major impact on the majority of the people voting for them. The major exception to this rule was the 1946 social services referendum that has had an enormous impact, allowing, for example, Commonwealth intervention in educational matters.

The 1967 referendum, when Australians voted 90% in favour of changing the Constitution to allow Aboriginal people to be counted in the census and the government to make decisions for them, falls into this pattern. It did not directly affect most Australians, but was overwhelmingly successful because most people believe it to be the right thing to do.

The referendum that attracted the next highest approval rating was the 1977 referendum that made High Court judges retire at 70. It attracted 80% of the popular vote, thereby embedding a form of age discrimination into the Constitution.

The 1967 parliament referendum on breaking the “nexus” between the size of the House of Representatives and the Senate indicates how difficult getting a referendum up is, even with bipartisan support. The Constitution states that the size of the Senate should be half that of the House of Representatives.

It had been mooted by Robert Menzies in the early 1960s, but ended up being put to the people by the Holt government in 1967. By this stage, the Country Party (which mater changed its name to the National Party) Federal Council had decided the referendum was unnecessary. But as a member of the ruling coalition, the Country Party fell into line supporting the Yes case, with perhaps diminished enthusiasm.

Read more:
Changing the Australian Constitution is not easy. But we need to stop thinking it’s impossible

Despite massive support from both the government and the opposition, there was a campaign against the change led largely by the Democratic Labor Party and several dissident Liberal and Country Party members. This small group ran an effective populist campaign based on the need to contain costs and stop an increase in the number of politicians.

The referendum failed miserably, only achieving a majority in New South Wales.

The 1967 Parliament referendum indicates the effect that even a small amount of dissidence in the political class can have on the outcome of a referendum. Initially, the Country Party had supported this referendum, then changed its mind as political circumstances changed.

Moreover, the outcome of the referendum indicates how vulnerable any Yes case is to a strongly argued and populist No case.

All referendums in Australia face considerable obstacles because of the double majority. Significant opposition, especially if it can appeal to populist instincts in the Australian population, can easily derail a Yes case.

The crucial factor in the Voice referendum may not be so much that the National Party has come out in opposition to it, but that that opposition has found a passionate voice in Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. She will no doubt run a strong a No case campaign.

Will this cause problems for the Liberal-Nationals relationship? As they are in opposition the relationship is not as close as it would be if they were in government. Certainly, there are strong supporters of the Voice in the Liberal Party such as Julian Leeser. But he may well have his work cut out countering Price.

Gregory Melleuish receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Could the Nationals’ refusal to support a Voice to Parliament derail the referendum? – https://theconversation.com/could-the-nationals-refusal-to-support-a-voice-to-parliament-derail-the-referendum-195552

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Beckett, Senior Lecturer (Food Science and Human Nutrition), School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle

If you follow health trends online, you might have heard about “chlorophyll water”. Claims range from clearing your skin, stopping body odour, increasing energy and oxygen, to detoxing your liver and preventing cancer.

Chlorophyll water is sold as a liquid concentrate or already mixed with water. Numerous TikTok videos claim its health benefits.

Then there are celebrity endorsements for chlorophyll water, including from Kourtney Kardashian on her lifestyle channel.

So, what is chlorophyll water? And is it really a healthy choice?

Read more:
Lemon water won’t detox or energise you. But it may affect your body in other ways

Remind me again, what’s chlorophyll?

What you might remember about chlorophyll from high-school science might sound pretty healthy.

Chlorophyll is the pigment that gives plants (and some algae and bacteria) their green colour. It is vital for photosynthesis, the process that uses sunlight to produce oxygen and chemical energy stored in the sugar glucose.

At the heart of most chlorophyll is magnesium – an essential nutrient for humans – needed for healthy nerves and muscles, regulating blood sugar and blood pressure, and building bones, proteins and DNA.

The chemical structure of chlorophyll looks a bit like protoheme. That’s the red part of our haemoglobin, the part of red blood cells that carries oxygen in our blood.

Read more:
Curious Kids: Why are leaves green?

So, what is chlorophyll water then?

Water plus pigments that keep plants healthy, and that contain nutrients humans need, sounds great. Unfortunately, it’s not so simple.

First, chlorophyll doesn’t dissolve in water. So, what you get in these products isn’t “natural from plants”. It’s the molecule chlorophyllin. Chlorophyllin is made from chlorophyll by a process called saponification.

Essentially, this involves reacting it with sodium hydroxide and making a smaller molecule that is water-friendly. Then, to help it stay bright green, another reaction replaces the magnesium with copper, which is much more stable.

A more accurate name for these products would be “sodium copper chlorophyllin water”. But that’s not quite so marketable.

Read more:
Does TikTok’s chia-lemon ‘internal shower’ really beat constipation? Here’s what science says

But is it healthy?

Just because it’s been converted from its natural form, doesn’t make it automatically unhealthy. So how do the health claims stack up?

There is lots of evidence about diets high in chlorophyll being healthy. But, since evidence is mostly diets high in green plant foods, this can’t be directly translated into water containing a processed derivative of one little part of green plants.

There is some evidence that comes from the extracted, processed form (chlorophyllin). But that’s mostly from animal or lab studies. These involve very high concentrations that would need you to drink dramatic levels of chlorophyll water to match the doses, or to inject it deep into your cells. To be clear, please don’t do either.

Read more:
Science or Snake Oil: can a detox actually cleanse your liver?

There are also some (mostly very small) studies about its impacts on skin and its use as a deodorant, but most of these are about applying chlorophylls and chlorophyllins directly to the skin. You don’t need to be a scientist to know that’s not the same as drinking it in water.

How about boosting your energy and oxygen? It might make sense on simple logic because this is what it does in plants, and the pigment’s similarities to haemoglobin.

But there is no data to support these claims. We do have a small pilot study of wheatgrass and the blood disorder thalassemia. But wheatgrass is much more complex than just chlorophyll and what helps someone with a disorder doesn’t necessarily make the rest of us healthier.

So why do so many people say they feel better?

First, who’s making the testimonials on social media? Do you trust them? Could it be advertising rather than someone’s own personal experience?

Second, it could be the “placebo effect”, where just taking something that feels like a treatment makes you feel better.

But most importantly, the main ingredient in chlorophyll water is water.

This is definitely an essential nutrient, and definitely something we want to encourage people to drink more of.

By turning to chlorophyll water, people may be simply increasing their water intake, and decreasing their intake of sugary drinks or alcohol. Improving hydration alone could explain their reports.

Read more:
Why do I wake up thirsty?

Are there any risks?

Excessive consumption (multiple doses a day) could cause some side effects such as nausea, stomach upsets, discolouring your poo and staining your teeth.

Like all supplements, there is a risk chlorophyll water may interact with medications. And there haven’t been big safety studies in at-risk groups, such as people who are pregnant or breastfeeding. So caution is advised.

But, stop and think about the potential indirect downsides of drinking chlorophyll water. It’s expensive. Chlorophyll concentrate, which you’d dilute with water, costs about A$16 for a 500mL bottle. So it could be an expensive way of increasing your water intake if you think you’re not drinking enough, given tap water is safe and cheap.

Even if there are any benefits, you could get these benefits from eating actual plant foods. So the money and time you spend buying chlorophyll water could be taking money and time away from other food and drink choices that could have much bigger health benefits.

The bottom line

If you like it, can afford it, and don’t have any medication risks, the choice is yours.

You could also try other ways to increase your chlorophyll intake, such as eating more green veggies. You could add cheaper things to water to make it appealing, such as mint, fruit or teas.

These options could be cheaper and have even better health impacts, but probably won’t get as many views on TikTok.

Read more:
Wellness is not women’s friend. It’s a distraction from what really ails us

Emma Beckett has received funding for research or consulting from Mars Foods, Nutrition Research Australia, NHMRC, ARC, AMP Foundation, Kellogg, and the University of Newcastle. She is a member of committees/working groups related to nutrition or the Australian Academy of Science, the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Nutrition Society of Australia.

– ref. Chlorophyll water can’t clear your skin or detox your liver. But this TikTok trend got one thing right – https://theconversation.com/chlorophyll-water-cant-clear-your-skin-or-detox-your-liver-but-this-tiktok-trend-got-one-thing-right-194251

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By A J Brown, Professor of Public Policy & Law, Centre for Governance & Public Policy, Griffith University

Australia’s long-awaited National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) has become a legislative reality, after the House of Representatives today accepted a final amendment imposed by the Senate on Tuesday.

It’s the biggest reform to federal public accountability for over 40 years.

It’s also a historic step internationally. Specialist anti-corruption agencies are now widespread across many Asian, eastern European and developing countries, especially since the UN Convention Against Corruption in 2003.

But Australia is one of the first OECD countries to adopt such a far-reaching model at national level. Most others – like the United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand – still rely on traditional law enforcement agencies to root out official corruption, using just the criminal law.

By contrast, Australia has translated its state-based model of standing royal commissions against corruption to the national level.

Instituted in NSW in 1988 and Queensland in 1991, and since repeated everywhere but South Australia, this model differs from overseas approaches by extending strong inquiry powers to serious corruption risks, even if not necessarily criminal.

So after an 18-year gestation, how does this new national agency measure up against expectations, including other international standards?

Some key final debates of the last week provide the answers.

The best news is that the commission has been born with the unanimous support of all political parties. This multi-partisanship was initially reflected in a Senate Select Committee in 2017. But it disappeared after the Morrison Coalition government was pressured into putting forward, and defending, a deeply flawed model.

Read more:
How does the government’s long-awaited anti-corruption bill rate? An integrity expert breaks it down

Forced to reverse this approach after losing the 2022 election, Coalition MPs contributed to six consensus recommendations from the joint select committee that reviewed the new Labor government’s vastly superior bill.

Accepted by the government, five of these led to positive improvements, from respect for media freedom and secrecy exemptions for health care support, to monitoring powers for the proposed parliamentary inspector.

However, against these “lowest common denominator” improvements, four final controversies raise question marks for the future.

4 controversies raise question marks

1. Public hearings

Most prominently, independent and Green members failed in attempts to either remove, or define, a threshold of “exceptional circumstances” before compulsory public hearing powers can be used by the commission.

Added late, in a relatively naked breach of the government’s pre-election promises, the test copies one used in Victoria. Fortunately, that has not proved fatal to the work of that commission. But almost everyone but the government and Coalition agrees the test is unnecessary and either legally or politically dangerous.

Given wide categories of “sensitive” evidence that the commission can never receive in public, it will have the most restrictive public hearing powers of any Australian anti-corruption body, as shown by a Griffith University and Transparency International Australia analysis (barring South Australia which has no such powers at all).

2. Scope of corruption

The government also slightly walked back the scope of corruption that can be tackled. It resisted cross-bench attempts to ensure corrupt non-government actors are fully covered, along with political “pork barrelling”. It also removed a catch-all that the commission could investigate “corruption of any other kind”.

But while less flexible than originally proposed, the scope remains simpler, less legalistic and uncomplicated compared to most state definitions.

3. Role of the inspector

The only area where the government was forced to accept an amendment by the Senate was a proposal by the Greens, supported by the Coalition, to provide clarity and purpose to the roles of the commission’s inspector.

A victim of the haste with which the government prepared its bill after being elected in May, this key safeguard of the legality and propriety of the commission has now been lifted to the standard of national best practice.

4. True independence?

The fourth and final controversy points to the challenges facing every anti-corruption body, but especially Australia’s outdated federal integrity system as it strives to catch up with the rest of the country.

Will the commission be seen as truly independent, financially and politically? This question lies at the heart of international standards, such as the 2012 Jakarta Principles, backed by the United Nations.

The NACC’s financial independence gets some support from a dedicated parliamentary oversight committee, which can review and support its budget.

But the government rejected cross-bench attempts and expert advice to give the commission the same status and budget support as the federal auditor-general. It also failed to heed the emerging best practice in New Zealand, NSW, Victoria and Queensland of a separate parliamentary budget track for core integrity agencies, which in Victoria are even recognised in the Constitution as independent officers of parliament.

Read more:
Will the National Anti-Corruption Commission actually stamp out corruption in government?

Similarly, the government refused to embed a principle that the government of the day cannot just pick the commissioner all by itself. Cross-bench and Coalition amendments for more than just a government majority vote of the committee, to support or reject the recommended appointment, were vigorously opposed by the government.

By contrast, a requirement for bipartisan support is explicitly recognised in Queensland and Western Australia, and assumed in NSW and Victoria’s arrangements. It’s also often followed overseas. For example, the selection committee for the head of India’s Central Vigilance Commission includes the leader of the opposition.

Transparency International Australia recommended entrenching this principle through a two-thirds majority vote of the committee. In the select committee, and in amendments not ultimately put to a vote, the Coalition proposed an even stronger, three-quarters majority.

After reacting apoplectically to that idea on Tuesday morning, the government refused an attempt by the Greens and independent Senator David Pocock to require even one non-government member of the committee to also support the proposed appointment.

The lack of understanding of this important principle, now left out of the bill, is the clearest reminder that the Commonwealth’s integrity system is built on some shaky, out-of-date ground – even if this new commission itself is otherwise strong.

In fact, the government refused to support any amendments proposed by independent Helen Haines, to bring the government’s bill up to the standard of her own ground-breaking proposal.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus had told voters before the election the government’s package would be “extremely similar” to Haines’. But it has proved not to be, in significant respects.

The fact that Australia will now have a national anti-corruption commission is testament to the attorney-general’s leadership, over more than five years. And its many strong features promise to be a positive game-changer for public integrity in Australia, and likely beyond.

But as always, question marks remain over whether the new commission has been designed sufficiently to weather the future political storms that go with the job.

A J Brown is a board member of Transparency International, globally and in Australia. He has received funding from the Australian Research Council, all of Australia’s Ombudsman offices, most of Australia’s anti-corruption agencies, other Commonwealth and State regulatory agencies, parliaments and private sector peak bodies for his research on integrity, anti-corruption and public interest whistleblowing relevant to this article, including the Australian Research Council Linkage project ‘Strengthening Australia’s National Integrity System: Priorities for Reform’ (https://transparency.org.au/australias-national-integrity-system/)

– ref. Australia’s national anti-corruption agency arrives. Will it stand the test of time? – https://theconversation.com/australias-national-anti-corruption-agency-arrives-will-it-stand-the-test-of-time-195560

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karin Hammarberg, Senior Research Fellow, Global and Women’s Health, School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University

It’s a fact women’s fertility declines as they age. But the common description of fertility decline after age 35 as a “cliff” is more anxiety-provoking than factual.

If you want children, it’s important to understand the biology of fertility. This can help those who have a choice about timing to decide when to start trying for a baby.

And for those who don’t have a choice about timing, knowing what the options are can help make the best possible decisions.

Female ageing, egg numbers and quality

A baby girl is born with about one million eggs in her tiny ovaries, but by the time she reaches puberty there are only about 300,000 eggs left. This is a normal physiological process called atresia.

Of the eggs that remain when a woman starts having periods, only 300-400 will mature and be released in ovulation during the reproductive years. By the time a woman reaches menopause, there are no more functioning eggs in her ovaries.

While women in their mid- to late forties sometimes have “miracle babies”, the chance of pregnancy is minimal in the five to ten years leading up to menopause.

As women age, egg quality declines too. It’s estimated about 20% of all human eggs are “aneuploid”, which means they have the wrong number of chromosomes. This proportion increases as women age.

When an aneuploid egg is fertilised by a sperm it gives rise to an aneuploid embryo – which in most cases stops developing or ends in an early miscarriage.

Read more:
Men’s fertility also declines with age — here’s what to know if you’re planning to wait to have kids

What does this mean for the chance of a baby at different ages?

A woman’s most fertile years are between her late teens and late 20s. By around age 30, fertility starts to slowly decline and by mid-30s the decline speeds up.

But the decrease in chance of pregnancy after age 35 is gradual and more like a slope than a cliff, at least until age 40.

A large study that followed women trying for a baby found the chance of pregnancy after 12 months was 87% for women aged 30-31. This dropped to 76% at age 36-37, and 54% at age 40-41.

So up to age 41, most women who try for a baby will be pregnant after trying for up to 12 months. But the proportion who don’t achieve pregnancy increases with age, and the drop in chance is more noticeable after age 35.

Unfortunately, because the number of chromosomally abnormal (aneuploid) eggs increase with age, the risk of miscarriage increases as women age. For women in their early to mid-30s the risk of miscarriage is about one in ten. This increases to about one in three for women aged 40-44 years.

What about men’s age and fertility?

While it happens later in life than for women, men’s age affects the chance of pregnancy too. Sperm quality and fertility decline around age 45 and pregnancies fathered by men aged 45 or older are almost 50% more likely to miscarry than pregnancies fathered by men aged 25-29.

IVF is not a good plan B

Unfortunately, IVF can’t improve the quality of eggs, and the woman’s age is the biggest determinant of IVF success. Data from Victoria show that after three completed IVF cycles, 61% of women aged 34-35 when they started treatment had a baby.

The chance of a baby after three cycles at age 36-37 was 50% and at age 38-39 it was 38%. But by age 40-41 only 25% of women had a baby after three IVF cycles.

The chance of IVF success is also affected by the male partner’s age. Studies show that live-birth rates are lower in couples where the male partner is aged 45 or older than in couples where the male partner is younger than this.

Read more:
Thinking about freezing your eggs to have a baby later? Here are 3 numbers to help you decide

What are the options?

Life circumstances, including not finding a partner who is willing to commit to parenthood, can prevent people from having children during their most fertile years.

Here are some options if you are worried about how age might affect your chance of having a baby:

• going it alone: if you are single, you can consider joining the growing group of women who use donor sperm to become “solo mums by choice”. The safest option for you and your baby is to find a donor through a fertility clinic.

• freezing eggs for later: while this might seem an attractive option, it’s costly and there is no guarantee of a baby down the track. To help you decide if this is the right option for you, here are some facts about egg freezing.

• having IVF: if you are 35 years or older and have been trying for a baby for six months or more, see your GP for advice and basic fertility tests. Depending on test results, your GP can refer you to a fertility specialist. If you need IVF, sooner is better than later because age affects the chance of IVF success.

• using donor eggs: the chance of a baby with IVF is negligible after age 40 unless you use eggs donated by a younger woman. Studies show after age 40, women using donor eggs are five times more likely to have a baby than women using their own eggs.

Finally, a word of caution. Ovarian reserve testing is often promoted as a way for women to find out their fertility and chance of getting pregnant.

The so called “egg timer” test measures the level of anti-mullerian hormone (AMH) in the blood, a hormone produced by reproductive tissues. The thinking is the more eggs present, the more AMH will be present, so it’s marketed as a type of “egg counting”.

However, research shows the test is not a reliable test of a woman’s fertility. On average, women of the same age have the same monthly chance of getting pregnant, regardless of their AMH level.

Read more:
Women’s fertility: does ‘egg timer’ testing work, and what are the other options?

Karin Hammarberg works for the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority

– ref. Women are often told their fertility ‘falls off a cliff’ at 35, but is that right? – https://theconversation.com/women-are-often-told-their-fertility-falls-off-a-cliff-at-35-but-is-that-right-189978

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University

The Sydney Modern Project had the odds stacked against it since its inception in 2013. It has surely been the most controversial state gallery extension to be built in Australia.

Michael Brand – a Canberra-born, ANU and Harvard trained art historian with an outstanding museum career in Australia and America – was appointed as director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2012. This was on the retirement of Edmund Capon, who held the post for the preceding 33 years.

Brand launched the unfunded plan for a new building in 2013, the Tokyo firm SANAA won the architectural competition in 2015 and construction commenced in 2019 with a budget of A$344 million. The knives were quickly out for Brand and his project.

Some, like Paul Keating, did not like the location and called it a “gigantic spoof”.

Others did not like the design; a book was published by a former gallery employee attacking the project; and the new culture at the gallery. Prominent people in the Sydney art scene lined up to attack the project and the director.

There were some people who simply did not like Brand. He is a reserved, scholarly individual with a brilliant eye, in total contrast with the flamboyant, media savvy Capon.

There were faults with the original architectural design and significant modifications were implemented before construction commenced.

There were also external circumstances that impacted on the project: the murky world of NSW state government politics, bush fires that shrouded Sydney in smoke, COVID-19.

However, Sydney Modern, now that it is open, is a spectacular achievement. The floorspace of the gallery has almost doubled, creating a gallery precinct (Brand prefers to call it a “gallery campus”) with two buildings connected by an art garden.

On one side we have the stately neo-classical building that looks like a traditional 19th century art gallery with a series of extensions by Andrew Anderson, on the other side, a new 21st century structure.

Read more:
‘Like walking into a crystal’: our first preview of the Art Gallery of NSW’s new Sydney Modern

A luminous birdcage

The new building may be described as a three-storey, luminous birdcage with suspended hanging gardens and an extensive crypt below. The main architectural concept is that of three limestone-clad, cascading pavilions leading down towards the water with a huge supporting rammed earth wall.

Below is the crypt, locally called the “tank”, in recognition of its origins as a fuel storage reservoir secretly and speedily constructed at the start of the second world war to store fuel for Allied shipping.

It reminds me of the huge water cisterns in Istanbul constructed by the Byzantines to store water for the city.

The tank is presently occupied by Adrián Villar Rojas’ “time-travelling sculptural forms” dramatically lit by constantly changing light
sources. The smoke and mirrors display is deliberately disorientating, evoking more of a mood than a visual assessment of the artwork.

In the upstairs birdcage, it is very easy to orient yourself and be aware of your location and the various possible exits. In the crypt all is murky and unpredictable as you gradually negotiate the spaces and dodge the pillars and protruding sharp edges of the sculptures.

Indigenous art at the heart

Although there is an emphasis on Indigenous art with the transfer of the Yiribana Gallery from the basement of the old building to the entry gallery of the new one, this is more than simply a symbolic gesture to have Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the heart of the gallery.

Indigenous art is found at all levels of the new building and is integrated into the display of non-Indigenous Australian and international art.

One of the highlights for me are the newly commissioned woven metal pieces by Lorraine Connelly-Northey. Her huge metal handbags made from discarded, well-weathered metal sheets from the outback have a stark sense of presence and are laced with wit.

Her work looks out onto the most ambitious project, the sprawling art garden by Jonathan Jones scheduled to open mid-2023.

Less a deliberate policy and more as part of the process of what Brand describes as selecting the most interesting new art, women artists make up 53% of the 900 exhibitors in the new building.

The major thematic groupings, or exhibitions, in the new building are Dreamhome: Stories of art and shelter, Making worlds, Outlaw and Rojas’s The end of imagination in the crypt. These will remain in place for the next six months before there is a new set of exhibitions.

An elegant build

Despite the slings and arrows, Sydney Modern (now known somewhat unimaginatively as the North Building of the Art Gallery of NSW) has come to fruition.

Possibly not the most magnificent art gallery in the world, as the NSW premier and his arts minister spruiked at the opening, but an elegant, formidable and very functional new building.

Politicians in Australia have always been very good at throwing money at new buildings, the true test will come if this doubling in size of the gallery will be accompanied by a substantial increase to the operating budget of the institution.

With new gallery spaces projected for Melbourne, Adelaide and possibly Canberra, funding is required for more than rammed earth, glass, bricks and mortar. Australia does not need a stampede of white elephants.

Read more:
Eco-activist attacks on museum artwork ask us to figure out what we value

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

– ref. ‘A three-storey, luminous birdcage with suspended hanging gardens and an extensive crypt below’: Sydney Modern is open at last – https://theconversation.com/a-three-storey-luminous-birdcage-with-suspended-hanging-gardens-and-an-extensive-crypt-below-sydney-modern-is-open-at-last-194451

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tayanah O’Donnell, Honorary Associate Professor, Australian National University

Australians’ well-documented affinity with the sun, surf and sand continues to fuel coastal property market growth. This growth defies rising interest rates and growing evidence of the impacts of climate change on people living in vulnerable coastal locations.

People in these areas are finding it harder to insure their properties against these risks. Insurers view the Australian market as sensitive to climate risks, as climate change impacts can trigger large insurance payouts. They are pricing their products accordingly.

Clearly, there is a vast disconnect between the coastal property market and climate change impacts such as increasingly severe storms, tidal surges, coastal erosion and flooding. There is no shortage of reports, studies and analyses confirming the climate risks we are already living with. Yet another alarming State of the Climate report was released last week.

We keep talking about reaching global net-zero emissions. But this “blah blah blah” masks the fact that climate impacts are already with us. Even if we make deeper, faster cuts to emissions, as we must, our world is now warmer. Australians will feel the effects of that warming.

We ultimately cannot afford the price of business as usual, as embodied by so many coastal developments.

Read more:
State of the climate: what Australians need to know about major new report

Risks are worrying banks and insurers

In Australia, the disasters and the environmental collapse we are experiencing will get worse. While a range of businesses see this as opening up new market and product frontiers, the fact is climate change is creating a fundamentally uncertain, unstable and difficult world.

Banks have a central role in addressing climate risks. They are exposed to climate risk through residential lending on properties that are vulnerable to climate impacts and now face insurance pressures.

One in 25 Australian homes are projected to be uninsurable by 2030. The Australian government risks bearing the large costs of supporting the underinsured or uninsured – otherwise known as being “the insurer of last resort”.

This costly legacy shows why planning decisions made now must take account of climate change impacts, and not just in the wake of disasters.

The rapidly escalating impacts and risks across sectors demand that we undertake mitigation and adaptation at the same time, urgently and on a large scale. This means reducing emissions to negative levels – not just reaching net zero and transitioning our energy sector, but also actively removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

We must also respond to climate change risks already locked into the system. We have to make substantial changes in how we think about, treat, price and act on these risks.

Read more:
How insurers can get better at responding to natural disasters

As the climate shifts, so must our coastal dream

The consequences of a warming climate, including reaching and crossing tipping points in the Earth’s weather systems, are occurring sooner than anticipated. The required behavioural, institutional and structural changes are vast and challenging.

People are often attached to places based on historical knowledge of them. These lived experiences, while important, inform a worldview based on an understanding of our environment before the rapid onset of climate change. This can skew our climate risk responses, but compounding climate impacts are outpacing our ability to adapt as we might have in the past.

Institutional signalling, such as warnings by the Reserve Bank, support greater public awareness of climate impacts and risks.

When buying a property, people need to consider these factors more seriously than, say, having an extra bathroom. Obligatory disclosure of regional climate change impacts could inform buyers’ decision-making. The data and models used would have to be clear on the validity and limitations of their scenarios.

Read more:
‘Building too close to the water. It’s ridiculous!’ Talk of buyouts after floods shows need to get serious about climate adaptation

Nature-based and equitable solutions

In recent years there has been an increasing focus on nature-based solutions. This approach uses natural systems and tools for tackling societal issues such as the enormous and complex risks posed by climate change. Indeed, many Indigenous peoples, communities and ways of knowing have long recognised the fundamental role of nature in making good and safe lives possible for people.

Nature-based solutions provide a suite of valuable tools for remedying issues we’re already facing on coasts. For example, in many contexts, building hard seawalls is often a temporary solution, which instils a false sense of security. Planting soft barriers such as mangroves and dense, deep-rooting vegetation can provide a more enduring solution. It also restores fish habitat, purifies water and eases floods.

Acknowledging the well-being of people and nature as interconnected has important implications for decisions about relocating people from high-risk areas. Effective planned retreat strategies must not only get people out of harm’s way, but account for where they will move and how precious ecosystems will be protected as demand for land supply shifts. Nature-based solutions must be built into retreat policies too.

As the Australian Academy of Science’s Strategy for Just Adaptation explains, effective adaptation also embeds equity and justice in the process. Research on historic retreat strategies has shown that a failure to properly consider and respect people’s choices, resources and histories can further entrench inequities. Giving people moving to a new home as much choice as possible helps them work through an emotional and highly political process.

Read more:
After the floods, the distressing but necessary case for managed retreat

We all need to find the courage to have difficult conversations, to seek information to make prudent choices, and to do all we can to respond to the growing climate risks that confront us. As climate activist Greta Thunburg says:

“Hope is not passive. Hope is not blah blah blah. Hope is telling the truth. Hope is taking action. And hope always comes from the people.”

Acting on this kind of hope can put us on an altogether different and more positive path.

Tayanah O’Donnell has previously received research funding from AMP Foundation, the BHP Foundation, the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Trust, the Institute of Australian Geographers, Western Sydney University, the University of Canberra, and state and federal governments. These grants supported over 13 years of research in climate change adaptation and in sustainable development, including managed retreat, climate policy, and climate risk duties and disclosures. She is a Deloitte Australia Climate and Sustainability Partner where she leads the Canberra climate practice. She is also an honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University.

Eleanor Robson is a PhD student at Western Sydney University and a Manager in Deloitte’s Risk Advisory practice. Eleanor has formerly worked for a parliamentarian in the Australian Labor Party.

– ref. Coastal property prices and climate risks are both soaring. We must pull our heads out of the sand – https://theconversation.com/coastal-property-prices-and-climate-risks-are-both-soaring-we-must-pull-our-heads-out-of-the-sand-195357

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aaron J. Snoswell, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Computational Law & AI Accountability, Queensland University of Technology

Earlier this month, Meta announced new AI software called Galactica: “a large language model that can store, combine and reason about scientific knowledge”.

Launched with a public online demo, Galactica lasted only three days before going the way of other AI snafus like Microsoft’s infamous racist chatbot.

The online demo was disabled (though the code for the model is still available for anyone to use), and Meta’s outspoken chief AI scientist complained about the negative public response.

So what was Galactica all about, and what went wrong?

What’s special about Galactica?

Galactica is a language model, a type of AI trained to respond to natural language by repeatedly playing a fill-the-blank word-guessing game.

Most modern language models learn from text scraped from the internet. Galactica also used text from scientific papers uploaded to the (Meta-affiliated) website PapersWithCode. The designers highlighted specialised scientific information like citations, maths, code, chemical structures, and the working-out steps for solving scientific problems.

Read more:
Google’s powerful AI spotlights a human cognitive glitch: Mistaking fluent speech for fluent thought

The preprint paper associated with the project (which is yet to undergo peer review) makes some impressive claims. Galactica apparently outperforms other models at problems like reciting famous equations (“Q: What is Albert Einstein’s famous mass-energy equivalence formula? A: E=mc²”), or predicting the products of chemical reactions (“Q: When sulfuric acid reacts with sodium chloride, what does it produce? A: NaHSO₄ + HCl”).

However, once Galactica was opened up for public experimentation, a deluge of criticism followed. Not only did Galactica reproduce many of the problems of bias and toxicity we have seen in other language models, it also specialised in producing authoritative-sounding scientific nonsense.

Authoritative, but subtly wrong bullshit generator

Galactica’s press release promoted its ability to explain technical scientific papers using general language. However, users quickly noticed that, while the explanations it generates sound authoritative, they are often subtly incorrect, biased, or just plain wrong.

We also asked Galactica to explain technical concepts from our own fields of research. We found it would use all the right buzzwords, but get the actual details wrong – for example, mixing up the details of related but different algorithms.

In practice, Galactica was enabling the generation of misinformation – and this is dangerous precisely because it deploys the tone and structure of authoritative scientific information. If a user already needs to be a subject matter expert in order to check the accuracy of Galactica’s “summaries”, then it has no use as an explanatory tool.

At best, it could provide a fancy autocomplete for people who are already fully competent in the area they’re writing about. At worst, it risks further eroding public trust in scientific research.

A galaxy of deep (science) fakes

Galactica could make it easier for bad actors to mass-produce fake, fraudulent or plagiarised scientific papers. This is to say nothing of exacerbating existing concerns about students using AI systems for plagiarism.

Fake scientific papers are nothing new. However, peer reviewers at academic journals and conferences are already time-poor, and this could make it harder than ever to weed out fake science.

Underlying bias and toxicity

Other critics reported that Galactica, like other language models trained on data from the internet, has a tendency to spit out toxic hate speech while unreflectively censoring politically inflected queries. This reflects the biases lurking in the model’s training data, and Meta’s apparent failure to apply appropriate checks around the responsible AI research.

The risks associated with large language models are well understood. Indeed, an influential paper highlighting these risks prompted Google to fire one of the paper’s authors in 2020, and eventually disband its AI ethics team altogether.

Machine-learning systems infamously exacerbate existing societal biases, and Galactica is no exception. For instance, Galactica can recommend possible citations for scientific concepts by mimicking existing citation patterns (“Q: Is there any research on the effect of climate change on the great barrier reef? A: Try the paper ‘Global warming transforms coral reef assemblages’ by Hughes, et al. in Nature 556 (2018)”).

For better or worse, citations are the currency of science – and by reproducing existing citation trends in its recommendations, Galactica risks reinforcing existing patterns of inequality and disadvantage. (Galactica’s developers acknowledge this risk in their paper.)

Citation bias is already a well-known issue in academic fields ranging from feminist scholarship to physics. However, tools like Galactica could make the problem worse unless they are used with careful guardrails in place.

Read more:
Science is in a reproducibility crisis – how do we resolve it?

A more subtle problem is that the scientific articles on which Galactica is trained are already biased towards certainty and positive results. (This leads to the so-called “replication crisis” and “p-hacking”, where scientists cherry-pick data and analysis techniques to make results appear significant.)

Galactica takes this bias towards certainty, combines it with wrong answers and delivers responses with supreme overconfidence: hardly a recipe for trustworthiness in a scientific information service.

These problems are dramatically heightened when Galactica tries to deal with contentious or harmful social issues, as the screenshot below shows.

Here we go again

Calls for AI research organisations to take the ethical dimensions of their work more seriously are now coming from key research bodies such as the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. Some AI research organisations, like OpenAI, are being more conscientious (though still imperfect).

Meta dissolved its Responsible Innovation team earlier this year. The team was tasked with addressing “potential harms to society” caused by the company’s products. They might have helped the company avoid this clumsy misstep.

Aaron J. Snoswell receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jean Burgess receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada). She has consulted with Facebook (now Meta) in various academic advisory roles.

– ref. The Galactica AI model was trained on scientific knowledge – but it spat out alarmingly plausible nonsense – https://theconversation.com/the-galactica-ai-model-was-trained-on-scientific-knowledge-but-it-spat-out-alarmingly-plausible-nonsense-195445

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Negar Partow, Senior Lecturer in Security Studies, Massey University

The ongoing protests in Iran over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the country’s “Guidance Patrol” (or morality police) have made world headlines. But there is another form of protest that has received less mainstream attention in Western media.

Whereas Amini was arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly”, thereby violating Iran’s mandatory hijab law, this new protest campaign involves another form of headwear – the amameh, or turban, worn by Shi’a clergy. Protesters have been deliberately knocking amameh off the heads of passing clerics.

The movement, known as “amameh parani”, has spread across Iran since early November. It has become particularly popular with young Iranians. Videos posted on twitter under #TurbanTossing and عمامه_پرانی# show amameh being knocked off in streets, cars, buses, metro stations and almost everywhere clergy appear in public.

In less than a month, amameh parani has become the symbol of a national satirical mockery of Shi’a clergy and their legitimacy in Iran, and another face of the global protests against the death of Mahsa Amini.

Clerical rule

By focusing on the significance, symbolism and function of the amameh, the campaign explicitly targets the hegemony of Shi’a clergy over Iranian politics and society.

Clerical attire is composed of three pieces: the amameh, a turban made of 11 metres of thin white or black cotton material; a long cotton garment called a qabā; and the abā, the long open robe worn over it.

Students at Shi’a seminaries are ceremonially crowned with an amameh upon completing the first stage of their theological studies, which typically take three to five years.

Iranian clergy and their institutions view the amameh as sacred. They even use its colours to signify the lineage of a cleric, creating a class-based system both within and outside the clerical institutions. In its contemporary usage, for instance, a black amameh signifies a cleric’s claim of direct lineage to the prophet.

Read more:
The veil in Iran has been an enduring symbol of patriarchal norms – but its use has changed depending on who is in power

Because of this, the amameh is the source of religious legitimacy and implies a sense of infallibility inherent in Shi’a theology. The Islamic Republic has translated this theological model systematically into politics.

The amameh is the only source of political authority in the Islamic Republic. The clergy occupy all positions of power and authority. They have established and protected an exclusive political and economic system.

Iran’s parliament, government, judiciary, military, economy and education system are either directly ruled by a cleric or by a clerical assembly. Candidates in Iran’s elections must be approved by the Guardian Council. The council also warrants all laws passed by the parliament in accordance with Shi’a Shari’a law.

The amameh is no longer a mere sign of religious learning or social status. Rather, it is the symbol of a hegemonic political power. Like defrocking in Christian churches, removing an amameh is synonymous with the removal of its associated rights, authority and prestige.

Crisis of legitimacy

Prior to the Mahsa Amini protests, amameh parani was typically a deliberate cross-party attack at a perceived political opponent. It was typically performed by zealous followers of the conservatives, based on an edict from one of Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolutionary sermons in 1969 to toss the turbans of clergy deemed corrupt.

The current amameh parani campaign employs the same tactic for a different end. Dislodging an amameh in public is a sign of great irreverence and ridicule. It attacks what the attire represents: the Islamic Republic regime.

Read more:
Iran is using every effort to crush protesters intent on a revolution — except hearing them out

Hand in hand with slogans such as “Clerics get lost!”, it’s a form of resistance against discrimination and exclusion, and represents the rejection of clericalism. It is a symbolic act against the entanglement of religion and politics in Iran.

The campaign is also about gender politics and the violent and discriminatory way clothing is used against women. It is common for clergy to verbally abuse women and girls in public for their “inappropriate” hijab . The death of Mahsa Amini highlighted the kind of gender-based abuse Iranian women have been subject to for more than four decades.

From Iranian clergy in parliament saying that tossing the amameh is “playing with the lion’s tail”, to Iraqi Shi’a Sadrist leader Muqtada al-Sadr warning against the spread of amameh parani across the border, it’s clear the symbolic meaning of the act is being felt.

Read more:
Iran: hijab protests reflect society-wide anger at regime which trashes rule of law and human rights

The reaction to protest in general has been typically harsh and violent, including calls for the execution of protesters. Courts have already imposed the death sentence on some. These threats can extend to those who live outside Iran, including the co-author of this article, who has decided to remain anonymous.

Had any influential cleric opposed the killing of Mahsa Amini or other peaceful protesters, campaigns like amameh parani might not have taken off. But the regime’s demand for more brutality and violence has only further angered the public.

The Iranian clergy face a crisis of legitimacy beyond politics. Their challenge is no longer about maintaining hegemony over the country, but whether they will retain the legitimacy to perform their traditional religious roles.

Negar Partow is affiliated with United Nations Association of New Zealand (volunteer).

– ref. Headwear and hegemony: how ‘turban tossing’ protests are threatening Iran’s ruling clergy – https://theconversation.com/headwear-and-hegemony-how-turban-tossing-protests-are-threatening-irans-ruling-clergy-195543

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Hanckel, Senior research fellow, Western Sydney University

Young people experience mental health difficulties at a higher rate than any other age group.

While there’s ongoing discussion about the formal supports they need, young people say they’re most likely to speak with peers and friends – particularly when mental health care is difficult to access.

In partnership with youth mental health charity batyr and clinical expertise, we undertook a national survey and conducted focus groups with young people (aged 16–25 years).

We wanted to understand how young people support each other and what resources they need to keep caring for their friends in safe ways.

Read more:
Research suggests one way to prevent depression and anxiety is a strong sense of connection at high school

A critical resource

Our research included a national survey with 169 young people, as well as focus group discussions with 34 young people from Melbourne and Sydney. We found young people provide on average 3.5 hours per week of support for friends, or about 182 hours each year.

Participants spoke about being there for friends whenever they needed them, and 76% agreed friends provide critical support – often more than mental health professionals and parents or guardians.

Yeah, I think it’s easier and less confrontational talking to friends rather than family or a professional.

– Mackenzie*

This support includes assisting during tough times (such as during a relationship or family breakdown) and support due to health or financial difficulties, exam stress, as well as mental health distress. Almost 95% of young people in our study said they had helped a friend through mental ill-health.

Emotional support means “being there” for a friend, but it includes other assistance too, such as financial help, temporary housing, or connecting friends with professional services.

Young people discussed being able to provide immediate support to each other. This support is ongoing and involves more than just one encounter.

Personalised, dynamic support

All the young people we spoke to said their support changes depending on the friend, time, place and situation. Malis told us:

I think it just depends on the person and sort of like their approach to certain things […] it also just depends on the context.

They emphasised there is not a “one size fits all” approach. As Ari said:

Giving support, it’s not a formulaic thing.

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Tailoring an approach to their friends’ needs

While there is no single approach, there are some common components to how young people support their friends.

A common first step is noticing something is wrong. This might be a mood change observed in person or online.

You know when they’re just not talking as much or they’re not really, you know, interacting with anyone [then] you kind of say ‘Okay, something’s wrong here’.

– Lara

They spoke about carefully and strategically starting conversations to make it easier for their friends to talk. Young people say this requires more than asking “Are you OK?”. Ash told us it was about “being a lot more specific and directing questions with a bit more intent”.

Sometimes friends approach them, and they spoke about being ready for them when and where they were needed; being on “standby”, as Malis put it.

Support takes place in-person and online, and sometimes moves between the two settings. Omar said a friend might start chatting on a train “and then they go online and start talking”.

Read more:
Locking up kids has serious mental health impacts and contributes to further reoffending

Providing the right support 5 ways

Young people say providing the right support and response means working out what their friend needs, whether they want advice (or not), and taking into account their cultural background.

They spoke about taking the following actions:

• sharing their own lived experiences and what worked for them

• finding online resources about the issue a friend was going through and forwarding details to them

• finding lists of accessible professionals and supports

• taking a friend along to a mental health professional, or organising their visit with a mental health professional

• talking to someone in their immediate family or network to get their friend the support they needed, though this was often considered a last resort.

The young people we spoke to said they avoided unnecessary engagements with adults. They felt they’d been entrusted with their friend’s concerns and needs. Adults were frequently seen as not understanding issues around mental health more generally.

However, if they thought a problem was beyond their control or expertise, then they would seek outside help. As Shalani said:

If I feel like it’s out of my area of expertise or something, I would probably think it’s better for them to like go elsewhere.

Read more:
Research suggests one way to prevent depression and anxiety is a strong sense of connection at high school

Helping themselves too

Young people can sometimes take on too much responsibility for their friends. Young people in the study spoke about how they look after themselves to create healthy boundaries. Celine had learnt this the hard way and said:

Ultimately you can help your friend, but then you’ve got to make sure that you’re okay first to do that.

However, sometimes the lines between being a good friend and supporter and maintaining self-care were difficult. As Sam said:

I have found it difficult when I was having a hard day and had to be their support person for the whole day. It’s also difficult when you are out of the house (with family or other friends) and can tell they need you at that moment but you don’t really have the time, but you make time anyway.

Some young people didn’t provide help to a friend because they were worried about saying the wrong thing or putting the friendship at risk by expressing concern.

Read more:
It’s RUOK Day – but ‘how can I help?’ might be a better question to ask

Helping them help each other

This study shows the critical work young people are doing to informally support each other.

We need to recognise the expertise of these young people, particularly when there are difficulties accessing formal mental health support.

We need to think about how we best resource young people in acceptable ways, so they have the tools to continue to support friends and manage feelings of responsibility.

We need to develop services and responses that include friends, and we need to create and foster public and online spaces where young people feel comfortable supporting each other, including on social media.

And ultimately, we need to address many of the underlying fundamental issues that result in tough times for young people – poverty, uncertainty, exclusion and discrimination – the social drivers that lead to and exacerbate tough times.

*Names have been changed to protect participants’ privacy.

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

This project was supported by funding from batyr as well as financial support from the Western Sydney University’s Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowship program.

Amelia Henry, Erin Dolan, and Jasbeer Musthafa Mamalipurath 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. You’ve got a friend: young people help each other with their mental health for 3.5 hours every week – https://theconversation.com/youve-got-a-friend-young-people-help-each-other-with-their-mental-health-for-3-5-hours-every-week-194530

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hamish Clarke, Senior Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Without strong climate action, forests on every continent will be highly flammable for at least 30 extra days per year by the end of the century – and this fire threat is far greater for some forests including the Amazon, according to our new study.

Our research in Nature Communications looked at 20 years of global satellite data to test the link between wildfires and “vapour pressure deficit” – a measure of the atmosphere’s power to suck moisture out of living and dead plants. It can also be thought of as how “thirsty” the air is.

Our results show that forest fire becomes much more likely above a certain threshold of vapour pressure deficit in many regions. This threshold depends on the type of forest.

Alarmingly, climate change is increasing the number of days the planet passes these crucial thresholds. But by urgently bringing global emissions down, we can minimise the number of extra wildfire days.

How a forest becomes flammable

Wildfire is an ancient, highly diverse phenomenon. Four key conditions for a fire are:

1. fuel: the leaves, branches, twigs and everything else that can catch alight in a forest

2. fuel moisture: whether fuel is dry enough to burn

3. ignition: the spark to set things off, such as a lightning strike

4. weather: conditions such as strong winds and high temperatures, which can aid a fire’s spread.

These four processes act as switches. All must be in the “on” position for a fire to take hold.

The drying out of fuel is particularly crucial for making a forest dangerously flammable. Indeed, many researchers are finding links between vapour pressure deficit (VPD) and fire activity.

VPD describes the difference between how much moisture is in the air and how much moisture the air can hold when it’s saturated. Once air becomes saturated, water will condense to form clouds or dew on leaves.

Importantly, warmer air can hold more water, which means VPD increases. We refer to the air being “thirsty” when the gap between full and empty air becomes bigger, meaning there’s a greater demand (thirst) for the water to come out of living and dead plant material, drying it out.

This is a serious issue as climate change leads to rising global temperatures.

Read more:
Global warming puts Arabica coffee at risk, and we’re barrelling towards a crucial threshold

Climate change and fire days

We analysed more than 30 million satellite records and a global climate dataset to find the maximum daily VPD, for each time and place a fire was detected.

We then measured the strength of the relationship between VPD and fire activity for different forest types in each continent. And we showed, for the first time, that in many forests there is a strong link between fire activity and VPD on any given day.

Our results show certain VPD thresholds beyond which forest fire becomes more likely than not.

For example, in boreal forests (predominantly northern European and American coniferous forests), this threshold is 0.7-1.4 kilopascals (a unit of pressure). In subtropical and tropical forests such as the Amazon, the threshold rises dramatically to 1.5-4.0 kilopascals. This means the air must be a lot thirstier to spark fire in the tropical forests of Borneo and Sumatra than in the spruce, pine and larch of Canada.

We looked at both low- and high-emissions scenarios and found the risks are much greater if we fail to curb emissions.

If humanity continues to release greenhouse gas emissions unabated, the planet is expected to warm by around 3.7℃ by the end of the century. Under this high-emissions scenario, our study finds there are forests on every continent that will experience at least 30 extra days per year above critical flammability thresholds.

Under a lower-emissions scenario where global warming is limited to around 1.8℃, each continent will still see at least an extra 15 days per year crossing the threshold.

Parts of tropical South America including the Amazon will see the greatest increases in both scenarios by the end of the century: at least 90 additional days in a low-emissions scenario, and at least 150 extra days in a high-emissions scenario.

Read more:
Climate-fuelled disasters: warning people is good, but stopping the disaster is best. Here are 4 possible ways to do it

What are the risks?

Increasing forest fires will have serious consequences. This includes potentially destabilising patterns of fire and regrowth and disrupting the carbon storage we rely on forests for. Indeed, research last year showed the role of the Amazon rainforest as a “carbon sink” (which absorbs more CO₂ that it releases) may already be in decline.

We can also expect increasing harms to human health from wildfire smoke. It is estimated that around the world, more than 330,000 people die each year from smoke inhalation. This number could increase notably by the turn of the century, particularly in the most populated areas of South Asia and East Africa.

Our next research project will explore the links between fire, VPD and climate change in more detail in Australia, our home country. We’re also interested in the forests and regions where VPD doesn’t seem to be the main driver of fire, such as in Japan and Scandinavia.

Our discovery of reliable links between atmospheric dryness and forest fire risk in many regions means we can now develop better fire predictions, at both seasonal and near-term scales. This could bring significant benefits to those on the frontlines of fighting, managing and coexisting with wildfire.

Read more:
Lula’s victory in Brazil comes just in time to save the Amazon – can he do it?

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Shiva Khanal from Western Sydney University to this article.

Hamish Clarke is funded by a Westpac Research Fellowship. Hamish receives or has previously received funding from Natural Hazards Research Australia, the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre and the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment via the NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub.

Anne Griebel receives funding from an Australian Research Council grant.

Matthias Boer receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Country Fire Authority in Victoria. In the past, he has received funding from the New South Wales Government via the NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub, and the Research Attraction and Acceleration Program; the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Co-operative Research Centre.

Rachael Helene Nolan receives funding from the NSW Rural Fire Service, the NSW Department of Planning and Environment, and the Australian Research Council.

Víctor Resco de Dios receives funding from MICINN and the European Commission.

– ref. Many forests will become highly flammable for at least 30 extra days per year unless we cut emissions, research finds – https://theconversation.com/many-forests-will-become-highly-flammable-for-at-least-30-extra-days-per-year-unless-we-cut-emissions-research-finds-195546

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Teresa Swist, Researcher, University of Sydney

A Sydney high school recently introduced fingerprint technology to “help narrow down” students who were vandalising school toilets.

Under the plan, students needed to to scan their fingerprints to get access to the toilets or pick-up a swipe card if they opted out.

Some parents were supportive, but other parents and digital rights advocates raised privacy and security concerns. The NSW Education Department has since noted the school is still considering how it will handle anti-social behaviour and the community will be “consulted”.

While the fingerprint plan appears to have stalled, it shows how easily biometric technology can be introduced into schools.

This debate may seem new to Australian parents but it is set to become an increasing issue, thanks to a rapidly growing education technology (“edtech”) sector.

How is biometric data being used in schools and what questions do parents need to ask?

Biometric data in schools

Biometrics measure a person’s unique physical or behavioural characteristics to identify them. This could be a fingerprint, face, iris, voice, or the way you walk, type, behave, or express an emotion.

Biometric technology was first introduced in schools in the United Kingdom around 2000. It has since become a routine part of school life. Fingerprints and facial recognition are used for things like the canteen payments, library borrowing, door access, photocopying, locker access, vending machines and laptop access.

It is often argued these technologies save money, time, are efficient and can respond to students’ individual needs.

In the United States, fingerprint technology was introduced in some schools around 2006. Schools also use palm scanning and facial recognition technology, although a small number of states have laws regulating the use of biometric technology in schools and Florida has banned it completely.

We don’t yet have a clear sense about the extent to which biometric data is collected in Australian schools. But in 2018 concerns were raised over trials of facial recognition technology to mark the roll in some Victorian schools. In 2015, parents raised privacy concerns when a South Australian primary school asked students for a fingerprint to “register” for the day.

Why is this a problem?

The UK’s commissioner for biometric material Fraser Sampson is calling for a ban of biometrics in UK schools. As he said in a report this year:

Harm is already very real […] Further risks to the rights and freedoms, and full and free development of the child, may not be fully realised yet.

This is similar to other calls in France and Sweden. We do not have enough independent research or a broad enough understanding of potential harms, which could range from privacy to security, identity theft, and infringements upon children’s rights and freedoms.

The rise of edtechs

Meanwhile, biometrics are part of a booming edtech sector, which is about using technology to improve teaching and learning outcomes. They can be used for school management as well as in the classroom.

According to PwC, edtech is the second largest startup community in Australia (behind financial technology) and has more than doubled since 2017. Globally it is estimated to be worth US$250 billion (A$376 billion).

But while edtech companies collect information about students, we still don’t have a good understanding of how this is then used. Or adequate regulations to protect this information.

Read more:
Edtech is treating students like products. Here’s how we can protect children’s digital rights

Earlier this year in New York, about 820,000 public school students had personal information exposed after a cyber attack on a company that provides software to track grades and attendance.

Biometric technology can easily be integrated into everyday edtech and school operations to manage things like attendance, exams and how students learn.

Reports by the UK Digital Futures Commission highlight the intense pressures and uncertainties schools, students, and parents/caregivers face in a rapidly expanding edtech system. Many school community members struggle to make informed choices.

10 questions to ask about these issues

Australia lags behind other countries in understanding the short and long-term repercussions of biometrics in schools. But we can catch up.

Going forward we need more community education about different biometric technologies and a public register, so there is transparency about where technologies are being used, introduced and refused.

Parents, teachers and school communities need to be better equipped to scrutinise the potential benefits and harms. In most cases this will also need technical, ethical, policy and legal expertise.

During a recent workshop between universities, industry and advocacy groups, we developed information to help parents, schools and policymakers think about these issues and work together to discuss them. Next year we will release a resource for people to learn about edtech, register specific cases across schools, and critically evaluate technologies.

In the meantime, here are some basic questions parents can ask if a biometric technology is being used or proposed in their child’s school:

1. exactly what information is being collected, when and why?

2. how is the data being stored, processed, and analysed?

3. who has access to the system and how will it be maintained over time?

4. what data privacy and security provisions are in place?

5. what happens if I/my child opts out?

6. what implications are there for the time and expertise of teachers, and other school staff?

7. is there enough independent evidence to support claims a new technology will improve learning or school operations?

8. how will funding this technology impact other school budget and resourcing priorities?

9. is there another way to address this issue, rather than using a biometric solution?

10. has my school community had a meaningful opportunity to learn about and discuss this change?

Read more:
Why is tech giant Apple trying to teach our teachers?

Kalervo Gulson receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Terry Flew receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council.

Fiona Suwana and Teresa Swist 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. As more biometric data is collected in schools, parents need to ask these 10 questions – https://theconversation.com/as-more-biometric-data-is-collected-in-schools-parents-need-to-ask-these-10-questions-191263

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

There’s something about the wintry quality of so much Christmas iconography – snow, mistletoe, fireplaces – that just doesn’t gel with the Southern hemisphere. So it’s not really that strange that Australian Christmas films have been so few and far between.

There is, of course, the classic adventure Bush Christmas from 1947, starring Chips Rafferty, its remake from 1983 starring Nicole Kidman, and Crackers from 1998. But until a few years ago, aside from a handful of cartoons and solid Christmas horror thrillers, festive offerings have been rare in Australia.

Stan have been doing something about this, with 2020’s A Sunburnt Christmas followed in 2021 by Christmas on the Farm, and now Christmas Ransom.

Derrick Harrington (Matt Okine) is the proprietor of a toy store that has seen better days.

When crooks Nan (Genevieve Lemon) and Shez (Bridie McKim) hold Derrick and his lead employee Pete (Ed Oxenbould) at gunpoint, demanding a ransom from Derrick’s well-heeled sister Terri (Vivienne Awosoga), it is up to pregnant security guard Gladys (Miranda Tapsell) and shoplifters Brady (Tahlia Sturzaker) and Wombat (Evan Stanhope) to foil their evil plans and save the day.

You can tell from the character names how hard Christmas Ransom strains to seem Australian. The opening sequences involve Santa hat wearing koalas and a giant blow up kangaroo Santa, Christmas letters deposited in her pouch.

There are some quirks about Christmas in Australia and, sure, everyone might have a koala ornament or two, but most of the paraphernalia in Australian Christmases is of the generic Northern hemisphere kind. So the effect seems inauthentic, straining too hard.

This is the film’s major weakness – it just tries too hard. It tries too hard to be funny, to be light-hearted, to be Australian and, most of all, to be a cheesy Christmas film. It’s not particularly effective in any of these aspects.

Read more:
From Love Actually to Christmas On The Farm: how rom-coms became a festive season staple

Straining to be clever

There is something endearingly lame about many of the best Christmas movies. Even critically-acclaimed films like It’s a Wonderful Life and the brilliant 1945 version of Christmas in Connecticut are schmaltzy to a degree that would be seen as a fault in a non-holiday film. The cheesy quality is a major source of their charm.

But it doesn’t work if a film is simultaneously trying to be clever. Christmas Ransom wants to be both a heartfelt cheeseball Christmas film and a witty, knowing take on the Christmas film genre. The mix doesn’t work.

There are numerous “wink-wink” moments to other Christmas films for viewers in the know – Harrington’s father is named Clarence, for example, recalling the angel in the Capra film. But Christmas Ransom feels the need to take things one (irritating) step further, making already obvious references explicit.

At one point, Gladys throws a Santa out the window to get the attention of the fire engine who think they’ve been mistakenly alerted, directly recalling the similar moment in Die Hard. Later, Gladys says “so this is what it means to die hard,” spelling out the reference to the infinitely better Christmas ransom film. It’s hard to understand the point – is this meant to be funny? Clever? Is it being deliberately stupid?

Some of the material would have worked well on paper – it’s Home Alone meets Die Hard with a dash of The Ref, filtered through a daggy Aussie sensibility – and you can understand why the script would have been greenlit.

There are some funny and cute ideas: an assault with a swimming noodle; thieves hiding in a ball pit; hostages tied up with tinsel and Christmas lights. As the camera pulls back to reveal the very ordinary building at the beginning of the film, Gladys’ voiceover tells us Harrington and Sons is “the greatest toy store in the whole wide world – or at least in the greater metropolitan region.”

Christmas Ransom could appear fresh, engaging, sweet but also clever in its approach to the Christmas movie. There’s romance. There’s action. There’s fractured relationships between partners and siblings overcome by the end. There is a general waning of Christmas spirit that is remedied – a common trope of the genre – with the toy store transformed into the kind of thriving wonderland of movie-world (think the toy store in Home Alone 2) in the final sequences.

But it all seems rather forced. The kind of comedic overacting that works in films like the Hulk Hogan-starring Christmas masterpiece Santa With Muscles doesn’t pay off here. The numerous fart jokes may appeal to very young children, but probably not many others. The music labours to keep us engaged, but also seems deliberately hammy and thus pointless in a film that isn’t quite committed to being a spoof.

The good and the bad

This is not to suggest it’s not worth watching. In fact, I quite enjoyed watching this terrible Aussie Christmas film.

For aficionados of Christmas cinema, the good and the bad, Christmas Ransom is light-hearted and silly enough to be bearable. There are some endearingly daggy zany moments and the lameness of much of it isn’t necessarily a problem for this kind of fare. But it just doesn’t work as well when it tries to be clever, because it’s not.

And even if its 83 minute run time seems overlong, it compares favourably with much of the other straight-to-streaming Christmas films – next to Santa Girl it looks like Vertigo – and it’s fun watching a bad Christmas film from Australia for a change.

Christmas Ransom is on Stan from December 1.

Read more:
Christmas movies: that time of year when home is where the heart is

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

– ref. Christmas Ransom: I quite enjoyed watching this (terrible) new Aussie Christmas film – https://theconversation.com/christmas-ransom-i-quite-enjoyed-watching-this-terrible-new-aussie-christmas-film-194515

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Lensen, Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence | Pūkenga, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to its deployment in courtrooms overseas. In China, robot judges decide on small claim cases, while in some Malaysian courts, AI has been used to recommend sentences for offences such as drug possession.

Is it time New Zealand considers AI in its own judicial system?

Intuitively, we do not want to be judged by a computer. And there are good reasons for our reluctance – with valid concerns over the potential for bias and discrimination. But does this mean we should be afraid of any and all use of AI in the courts?

In our current system, a judge sentences a defendant once they have been found guilty. Society trusts judges to hand down fair sentences based on their knowledge and experience.

But sentencing is a task AI may be able to perform instead – after all, AI machines are already used to predict some criminal behaviour, such as financial fraud. Before considering the role of AI in the court room, then, we need a clear understanding of what it actually is.

AI simply refers to a machine behaving in a way that humans identify as “intelligent”. Most modern AI is machine learning, where a computer algorithm learns the patterns within a set of data. For example, a machine learning algorithm could learn the patterns in a database of houses on Trade Me in order to predict house prices.

So, could AI sentencing be a feasible option in New Zealand’s courts? What might it look like? Or could AI at least assist judges in the sentencing process?

Inconsistency in the courts

In New Zealand, judges must weigh a number of mitigating and aggravating variables before deciding on a sentence for a convicted criminal. Each judge uses their discretion in deciding the outcome of a case. At the same time, judges must strive for consistency across the judicial system.

Consistency means similar offences should receive similar penalties in different courts with different judges. To enhance consistency, the higher level courts have prepared guideline judgements that judges refer to during sentencing.

Read more:
Criminal justice algorithms: Being race-neutral doesn’t mean race-blind

But discretion works the opposite way. In our current system, judges should be free to individualise the sentence after a complete evaluation of the case.

Judges need to factor in individual circumstances, societal norms, the human condition and the sense of justice. They can use their experience and sense of humanity, make moral decisions and even sometimes change the law.

In short, there is a “desirable inconsistency” that we cannot currently expect from a computer. But there may also be some “undesirable inconsistency”, such as bias or even extraneous factors like hunger. Research has shown that in some Israeli courts, the percentage of favourable decisions drops to nearly zero before lunch.

The potential role of AI

This is where AI may have a role in sentencing decisions. We set up a machine learning algorithm and trained it using 302 New Zealand assault cases, with sentences between zero and 14.5 years of imprisonment.

Based on this data, the algorithm built a model that can take a new case and predict the length of a sentence.

The beauty of the algorithm we used is that the model can explain why it made certain predictions. Our algorithm quantifies the phrases the model weighs most heavily when calculating the sentence.

Read more:
People are using artificial intelligence to help sort out their divorce. Would you?

To evaluate our model, we fed it 50 new sentencing scenarios it had never seen before. We then compared the model’s predicted sentence length with the actual sentences.

The relatively simple model worked quite well. It predicted sentences with an average error of just under 12 months.

The model learned that words or phrases such as “sexual”, “young person”, “taxi” and “firearm” correlated with longer sentences, while words such as “professional”, “career”, “fire” and “Facebook” correlated with shorter sentences.

Many of the phrases are easily explainable – “sexual” or “firearm” may be linked with aggravated forms of assault. But why does “young person” weigh towards more time in prison and “Facebook” towards less? And how does an average error of 12 months compare to variations in human judges?

The answers to those questions are possible avenues for future research. But it is a useful tool to help us understand sentencing better.

The future of AI in courtrooms

Clearly, we cannot test our model by employing it in the courtroom to deliver sentences. But it gives us an insight into our sentencing process.

Judges could use this type of modelling to understand their sentencing decisions, and perhaps remove extraneous factors. AI models could also be used by lawyers, providers of legal technology and researchers to analyse the sentencing and justice system.

Read more:
From robodebt to racism: what can go wrong when governments let algorithms make the decisions

Maybe the AI model could also help create some transparency around controversial decisions, such as showing the public that seemingly controversial sentences like a rapist receiving home detention may not be particularly unusual.

Most would argue that the final assessments and decisions on justice and punishment should be made by human experts. But the lesson from our experiment is that we should not be afraid of the words “algorithm” or “AI” in the context of our judicial system. Instead, we should be discussing the real (and not imagined) implications of using those tools for the common good.

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. We built an algorithm that predicts the length of court sentences – could AI play a role in the justice system? – https://theconversation.com/we-built-an-algorithm-that-predicts-the-length-of-court-sentences-could-ai-play-a-role-in-the-justice-system-193300

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

As the Indigenous Voice provoked divisions in the Nationals, Anthony Albanese rejected the party’s claim it wouldn’t help “close the gap” for First Nations Australians.

The federal Nationals, announcing this week they’ll oppose the Voice, argued it would not have practical outcomes.

But Albanese said experience showed when people directly affected by an issue were consulted and had a sense of ownership over solutions, “they will be more engaged”.

So gaps in education, health, housing, life expectancy and incarceration rates “will be closed”.

Albanese, speaking at an NBL Indigenous round presentation, repeated that the referendum for the Voice will be held in the next financial year – which means not before June at the earliest.

The Nationals’ decision sparked a vitriolic response on Tuesday from Indigenous leader Noel Pearson, while the Western Australian party dissociated itself from the federal party’s position.

Pearson described the Nationals as a “squalid little party” – while saying previously it had been the most supportive party of the idea of the Voice.

He said its leader, David Littleproud, was “like a kindergarten kid, not a leader.

“The Nationals have foisted the mantle of leadership on a boy,” he told the ABC.

Pearson said the arrival in parliament of Indigenous Nationals Northern Territory senator Jacinta Price, a fierce opponent of the Voice, “has turned everything around”.

Accusing Price of being a puppet of conservative think tanks, he said she was caught up in “a tragic redneck celebrity vortex”.

“It involves right-wing people, particularly the Sydney and Melbourne-based right-wing think tanks, the Institute of Public Affairs and the Centre for Independent Studies.

“They’re the string-pullers – they’re the ones who have lined up behind Jacinta,” he said. “Their strategy was to find a blackfella to punch down on other blackfellas.”

Read more:
Nationals declare they will oppose the ‘Voice’ referendum

In caucus, Albanese denounced Price’s personal swipe on Monday at the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney.

Price said Burney “might be able to take a private jet out into a remote community, dripping with Gucci, and tell people in the dirt what’s good for them”.

Albanese described her comment as “repulsive and absurd”.

The WA Nationals leader Mia Davies on Tuesday said her party would support the Voice.

Davies said she agreed with much of what Littleproud said about practical outcomes and closing the gap.

“Where we part ways here in Western Australia is that I don’t think it’s one or the other. I think we can do both,” she told the ABC. “We can have a conversation about the Voice, and we can also talk about practical and on-ground investment right now to support Aboriginal communities and individuals.”

Federal Nationals MP Andrew Gee, a former minister in the Morrison government, has also rejected the party’s Monday decision.

Gee, who wasn’t at Monday’s meeting, said he had been a long-time supporter of The Voice to parliament.

His position on the Voice hadn’t changed, he said in a Facebook post.

“While I respect the opinions of my colleagues, I’m still a supporter.”

He said the government needed to give more detail on what was proposed. “A number of our local Indigenous groups want this detail as well. because they want to make sure they have a voice within the Voice.

“To achieve a Voice we’ll need that as well as goodwill, open minds and generosity of spirit. Reconciliation in Australia has made significant progress in recent years but there is still a long way for us all to travel,” Gee said.

“Let’s keep working at it and walking down that road. Together we can do it. ”

In question time Burney said “decades of failed government policies have not worked. A voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians is the best chance we have, and perhaps ever will have, to address the injustices of the past and create change that will deliver a better future.”

“This isn’t about dividing people. It is about uniting Australians. Giving First Nations people a say in the matters that affect us. Not being told what is best by bureaucrats.”

Labor MPs gave her a round of applause.

At the Coalition joint parties meeting Peter Dutton said the Liberals were not yet ready to make a decision on their attitude to The Voice.

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. Albanese insists Voice will help ‘close the gap’, as divisions flare in Nationals – https://theconversation.com/albanese-insists-voice-will-help-close-the-gap-as-divisions-flare-in-nationals-195564

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon C. Day, PSM, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University

You might be forgiven for thinking it’s Groundhog Day reading headlines about the Great Barrier Reef potentially being listed on the World Heritage “in danger” list. After all, there have been similar calls in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2017.

Successive federal governments have lobbied hard to keep the largest coral reef in the world off the high-profile list kept by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Only last year, former environment minister Sussan Ley jetted around the world in a successful effort to stave off the inevitable, pointing to hundreds of millions of dollars spent on issues such as water quality. The new minister, Tanya Plibersek, also wants to avoid having the reef “singled out” in this way.

The question is, what does in-danger mean? Everyone knows the reef is in trouble. An in-danger listing is not a sanction or punishment. Rather, it’s a call to the international community that a World Heritage property is under threat, requiring actions to protect it for future generations. In-danger listing is not permanent, nor does it mean the Reef will be permanently removed from the World Heritage list.

The reef faces a multitude of threats. The most significant threats are coral bleaching worsened by climate change, poor water quality from land-based runoff, and unsustainable fishing and coastal development. We already have regulations to tackle many of them – but we need more effective enforcement to ensure compliance.

What just happened?

The Great Barrier Reef has been World Heritage listed since 1981. This means it’s considered an area of outstanding value to humanity. Covering an area the size of Italy, this iconic area includes some 3,000 separate reefs, over 1,000 islands and a variety of other significant habitats.

The latest UN mission has just reported back, finding the reef’s condition is worsening and recommending it be listed as “in danger”. It also offered practical solutions.

Previous governments have fought to ensure the reef is not listed as in-danger despite their own five-yearly reviews demonstrating an obvious decline. In 2009, the reef’s condition was rated poor and declining. In 2014 it was poor and declining and in 2019, very poor and declining.

So the government knows the reef is in danger. We know, and the tourism industry knows. While some tourism operators worry about their business, the opposite appears to be true: more people go, thinking it might be their last chance to see it. And already, operators are adapting by taking tourists to areas still in good condition.

Federal governments just don’t want the reef on the list because of the hit to their international reputation – and to their domestic standing.

If the reef is officially listed as “in danger” next year, it will draw a much greater focus to the reef’s plight. And that may help galvanise effective national and global action.

Take the case of the famous coral reefs of Belize in Central America. When these reefs were listed, the government banned nearby oil exploration and protected mangroves. Belize’s reefs have now been taken off the in-danger list.

Read more:
Does tourism really suffer at sites listed as World Heritage In Danger?

So what has to be done?

The mission’s report lays out what needs to be done for the major issues.

Australia already has a long-term plan aimed at ensuring the reef’s sustainability. There are regulations governing, say, sediment and water quality in run off from agriculture and towns. We have some targets too, particularly around water quality.

The problem is delivery. There is a need to scale up efforts and improve compliance. Regulations mean very little if there’s ineffective enforcement. For example, while most farmers have taken on board the rules around fertiliser use, erosion and run-off, those flouting the rules get only a slap on the wrist. As the state government notes, enforcement is a “last resort”.

The UN mission has called on Australia to improve in four key areas:

1. Look after land and water

When native vegetation is cleared, it makes erosion more likely. Eroded soils are washed downstream and out to sea, where they can settle on coral and seagrass, smothering them. In Queensland, native vegetation is still being cleared at unsustainable levels.

2. Phase out gillnets

These long nets catch fish by their gills. But they also catch dugongs, dolphins and turtles, which then die. The UN mission made a very strong recommendation: phase out gillnets in the marine park.

3. More effective disposal of dredge spoil

Dredging shipping channels and ports produces a lot of silt and sand. If this is dumped in shallow areas, it can also spread to nearby corals and seagrass beds already under stress from climate change. A previous government policy ended the dumping of capital dredge spoil (dredging previously undisturbed areas). But maintenance dredge spoil is still being dumped at sea or used for reclamation, both causing adverse impacts.

4. Tackle climate change

This month, the northern reefs are sweltering in record water temperatures – raising the chance of further bleaching events. The UN report makes it clear that climate change is the biggest threat. Climate change heats up tropical waters, causing coral bleaching and potentially coral death. Australia, as one of the world’s top exporters of fossil fuels gas and coal, has long tried to go slow on climate action. The new government has moved to legislate a stronger 2030 emissions reduction target, but the UN report calls for even more ambition to keep warming under 1.5℃ as this is widely accepted as the critical threshold for reef survival.

The report doesn’t make reference to the impacts of shipping on nearby coral and seagrass areas, such as sediment churned up by propellers of large ships and tankers.

Death by a thousand cuts

If you dive the reef for the first time this year, you might wonder if there really is a problem. After all, there are still fish and coral. When I first dove on the reef more than 35 years ago, it was in much better condition. What you see now may seem okay – but it’s a pale shadow of what it could or should be. It’s death by a thousand cuts.

As reef expert Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg has said:

The reef is in dire trouble, but it’s decades away before it’s no longer worth visiting. That’s the truth. But unless we wake up and deal with climate change sincerely and deeply then we really will have a Great Barrier Reef not worth visiting.

We’re never going to restore the reef to its pre-European conditions. But unless we take real action, future generations will wonder how and why we failed them so badly. We don’t need to wait for the World Heritage Committee to make in-danger listing to know the reef is in real trouble.

Read more:
‘Severely threatened and deteriorating’: global authority on nature lists the Great Barrier Reef as critical

Jon Day previously worked for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority between 1986 and 2014, and was one of the Directors at GBRMPA between 1998 and 2014. He represented Australia as one of the formal delegates to the World Heritage Committee between 2007-2011.

– ref. We all know the Great Barrier Reef is in danger – the UN has just confirmed it. Again – https://theconversation.com/we-all-know-the-great-barrier-reef-is-in-danger-the-un-has-just-confirmed-it-again-195551

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Harcourt, Industry Professor and Chief Economist, University of Technology Sydney

Macquarie University economist Sean Turnell is free and living in Sydney after 650 days of imprisonment in Myanmar, for what appears to be the “crime” of doing an economist’s job, which is trying to make people’s lives better – in this case the lives of the people of Myanmar.

A former Reserve Bank of Australia official, Turnell worked as an economic adviser to the government of Aung San Suu Kyi and continued to advise her after she was overthrown in a coup in February 2021.

He was imprisoned on trumped-up charges over the handling of confidential information – even though the papers he had in his possession were the papers he needed for his role as an economic adviser.

As a family friend and fellow economist, I was part of the campaign to get him released. Here are some personal reflections on Sean and that campaign.

Who is Sean Turnell?

Even before he set foot in Myanmar, Turnell’s story was a remarkable one.

He grew up in a working class family in the south western Sydney suburb of Macquarie Fields in the federal electorate of Werriwa, then represented by Labor’s Gough Whitlam. Sean’s dad, Peter Turnell, scored an invite to Whitlam’s house 50 years ago this week to celebrate Whitlam’s election as prime minister.

Whitlam ensured that Werriwa was sewered (it hadn’t been) and, by making university free, gave Sean the opportunity to go to Macquarie University.

As an academic at Macquarie University, Sean’s interest in Myanmar stemmed from his interest in social justice in general, from his own upbringing, and also getting to know Burmese students as an undergraduate at Macquarie.

Read more:
A sham sentence after a secret trial for Australian Sean Turnell

Myanmar’s economy, after years of military rule (with the population of Canberra in the army despite no external threat) was underperforming. But Sean thought it had the potential of a Thailand or Vietnam with the right economic policies.

Sean established “Burma Watch”, a much-followed publication of economic data and analysis on the Myanmar economy, and then wrote an influential book on Myanmar’s financial system, Fiery Dragons that made him an internationally-recognised expert on the subject.

His reputation gained the interest and confidence of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy. Sean became a trusted adviser of “The Lady” when she was under house arrest and during the short time democracy was restored. He remains loyal to her to this day.

A global network of support

Macquarie University was also where Sean met the love of his life, his wife Ha Vu (also a development economist), who with other Macquarie University staff campaigned tirelessly for his release.

I have spoken to Sean several times since his release, and he has just started to realise how big the campaign to free him was.

He would like to thank the supporters in Australia and internationally who worked tirelessly for his release, among them Macquarie University economists David Throsby and Wylie Bradford, Peter McCawley at the Australian National University and Leanne Ussher of Bard College in New York, and American microfinance economist Curtis Slover, who delivered him food while in prison.

He had help from unexpected quarters. Bruce Wolpe, a former US Congressional aide, offered to enlist former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who had successfully negotiated for the release of US journalist Danny Fenster.

In Australia, Sean’s campaign was assisted by two former ambassadors to Myanmar, Christopher Lamb and Nicholas Coppel. Both provided strategic advice and specific knowledge to the campaign and Lamb’s Australian Myanmar Institute provided resources and networks.

Read more:
Relief as Australian Sean Turnell to be released from prison in Myanmar, but more needs to be done

The union movement helped, as did the Economic Society of Australia, the hard-working officers of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and publications including The Conversation.

The energetic Labor MP for Lismore, Janelle Saffin, used her expertise and links. While having to deal with the Lismore floods at home, she found time to make waves in Myanmar.

The political campaign picked up after the election in May. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong became tireless in their advocacy, raising Sean’s case in international and regional meetings and pulling out all stops for Sean’s release.

Reflection, then a book

What next for Sean and Ha? It is unlikely Sean can ever return to Myanmar, although he says “he will always love the people of Myanmar”.

It might pay for Sean to be an armchair economist, at least for a while. He will be putting his literary skills to good use, writing a book about his ordeal and telling the story from inside and outside the prison’s walls.

And there is time for fun for Ha and Sean too. He is likely to want to see the musical Hamilton as, even before it began, he was fascinated with the life of the first Treasury Secretary of the United States, even visiting his archives in Washington DC in his holidays.

The people of Myanmar and Australia’s Burmese community are extraordinarily grateful. Thi Thi Power, a friend of Sean’s, said in tears when hearing of his release: “The Burmese people owe Sean one thousand times over”.

Tim Harcourt is a friend of Sean Turnell.

– ref. How Australian economist Sean Turnell came to be in and freed from a Myanmar jail – https://theconversation.com/how-australian-economist-sean-turnell-came-to-be-in-and-freed-from-a-myanmar-jail-195419

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

Six months after Scott Morrison was ousted, he remains a centre of attention, with parliament set to censure him on Wednesday over his multi-ministry power grab.

In exquisite timing, journalist Niki Savva’s book Bulldozed is released this week. It documents Morrison’s style, which eventually shocked even those closest to him in government.

“He’s a very secretive character. He’s distrustful. He’s a control freak. He’s a bully. He’s stubborn. He doesn’t listen to anyone,” Savva says. “And he was, as Alex Hawke [former minister and a Morrison numbers man] has said on the record, addicted to executive authority. He liked to be in absolute control, taking every decision but not taking responsibility for every decision.”

Savva says Hawke believed Morrison was frightened of a leadership challenge. “Alex Hawke […] believed Morrison was panic stricken by the thought that both left and right were out to get him. And although he was worried about Frydenberg, he was more worried about Dutton. He thought that there would be a move initiated by Frydenberg and then Dutton would come through the middle.”

Getting people to talk for this sort of book “is a very curious kind of process,” Savva says. “Some people are very keen to tell their story, to give their version of events, and also to set history straight. Other people are a bit more circumspect.”

Savva worked for Peter Costello during the Howard years. Asked how the Liberal Party differs now, she says: “I think a lot of it has to do with leadership. A lot of it has to do with the quality of the people who are actually in parliament now and also with the quality of the staff.”

“Howard had a respect for the Liberal Party and he always called it the ‘broad church’. So he always made sure that the right and the left wings of the Liberal Party always felt as if they had a place at the table and that they would be heard.”

“They don’t have so much a progressive voice inside the Liberal Party now and that’s why they’ve done so badly.”

So what should Peter Dutton’s game plan be, and can he ever win an election?

“Anything is possible in the way that anything is possible. But I don’t think it’s going to happen if he continues as he’s begun. I think he does need to confront, you know, those difficult issues […] He’s been too worried about what the conservative wing might think or what the Nationals might think, when I think he should have been intent on saying what the Liberals think and reshaping the Liberals in those areas.”

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: Niki Savva on her book Bulldozed, Scott Morrison and the Liberals’ woes – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-niki-savva-on-her-book-bulldozed-scott-morrison-and-the-liberals-woes-195562

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Chin, Professor of Asian Studies, University of Tasmania

While a lot of attention has been given to the unprecedented protests in China about the “dynamic zero COVID” policy, not much has been written about the wider political context, and particularly the young people leading the protests.

These young protesters have proven to be agile, and appear to be always a couple of steps ahead of the authorities, who are desperate to keep a lid on any uprising. They particularly do not want the wider world to know the extent of the protests.

There have been reports that at the heart of the protests is a call for greater political freedom, and these young people are using the zero-COVID policy as the platform to seek more openness. This should not come as a surprise to anyone keeping an eye on China since the pandemic measures were first introduced in 2020.

President Xi Jinping has made zero-COVID one of his signature programs, along with the “China Dream”, and used it to get a precedent-breaking third term at the five-yearly Communist Party congress in October. All opposition was crushed, and nothing was allowed to derail his ascendency.

Read more:
Protests against strict COVID-zero policy are sweeping China. It’s anyone’s guess what happens now

Now that Xi has cemented his status as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao, why wouldn’t he relax the zero-COVID policy in line with the rest of the world?

The easy answer would be that he would lose too much “face” if he were to back down. I would suggest Xi is actually more worried that a relaxed policy will lead to more deaths among the elderly.

Close to 20% of China’s population is over 60, and the percentage is higher in rural areas where health services are poor. Most of the COVID deaths this year are associated with old people. The vaccination rates among the old, especially those in the rural areas, are significantly lower than the overall figure.

Latest figures released by the government show that in Shanghai, only 62% of those over 60 are vaccinated, with 38% boosted. But in the most vulnerable over-80 age group, this number fell to just 15% fully vaccinated. You can imagine what the figures would be like for those living in the rural interiors of China.

Xi is simply unwilling to pay the political price for large numbers of elderly Chinese dying. His hold on power may even be affected if there is a sudden spike in deaths due to COVID.

One should not underestimate the political consequences: unlike in the West, many elderly Chinese in rural areas live with their children. Even though large numbers of Chinese clearly want to restrictions lifted, he will be blamed for the opening up leading to more deaths.

So, where does that leave us? On the one hand, it’s clear the young people want more freedom and restrictions lifted, including more political freedom. The zero-COVID policy has turned out to be the most effective platform to get their message out. There is every chance that if the authorities cannot slow down or crush the protests, the next step will be nationwide protests where other dissatisfied groups will join in.

At this stage, Xi will probably have to deploy the full security apparatus, which will likely result in high numbers of protester arrests. China has perfected the art of putting an entire segment of the population under detention for a period to cool the political temperature – the suppression of the Uyghurs is just one example.

Similarities with Iran

One cannot help but see parallels between what is happening in China and the protest movement in Iran.

In Iran, the young people mobilised against the regime over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin. She died in detention three days after she was arrested for allegedly breaching the Islamic dress code for women. The authorities deny she was mistreated, but she died while in custody.

The nationwide protests were led by young people and have now reached a stage where the entire regime is at risk.

At the heart of the protest is politics – Amini’s death was the trigger for young women in particular to take to the streets and call for political freedom from theocracy. It has been more than two months since the protests began, and there is no sign they are slowing down.

Young people in China, like those in Iran, want political freedoms and reforms, and want their voices to be heard and acted on. They were looking for a trigger point and found it in the COVID restrictions.

Where to from here?

It would be foolish to guess what will happen next in China, or even Iran. The inner workings of both regimes are opaque to the outside world. In China, Xi’s formidable political skills may be such that he will be able to find a way out while remaining in power.

The danger is that the longer the protests continue, the more dangerous they become. The security forces in China are brutal, and their actions against the protesters could easily get out control.

Read more:
As APEC winds up, ‘summit season’ brought successes but also revealed the extent of global challenges

The saddest thing about the protests in Iran and China is the inability of the outside world to do anything. In both cases, the regime can completely ignore what the rest of the world thinks. In the meantime, the world can only watch, with horror, and wait to see what happens next.

James Chin 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. Yes, the Chinese protests are about politics and freedom. But they are also about what COVID might do if it is let loose now – https://theconversation.com/yes-the-chinese-protests-are-about-politics-and-freedom-but-they-are-also-about-what-covid-might-do-if-it-is-let-loose-now-195553

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

Imagine you were trying to design a system that would hold back wages. You would design one pretty much like the one we’ve got today.

That’s why the government wants to change it.

Those of us on enterprise bargaining agreements get our wage rises locked in only every three or so years. If we didn’t lock in enough in last year’s agreement to cover this year’s sudden outbreak of inflation, there’s nothing much we can do about it for another two or so years.

It’s a built-in inertia identified by financial services firm JP Morgan in its attempts to explain to foreign clients why Australian wages growth is so low.

Australian enterprise agreements, JP Morgan explains in a note to clients, both delay wages growth and trim its peaks.

Here’s how that came about – and how the Albanese government’s new industrial relations law might finally end Australians’ pay freeze.

Wages used to be mostly set by awards

For nearly a century, Australian wages were generally set by judges in state and federal industrial relations tribunals. They had the power to intervene and set an “award” wage for an industry or occupation in which there was a dispute. And it was easy enough for unions and employers to create disputes.

Because they almost always intervened, the tribunals got to ensure that wages didn’t move too much relative to each other, and it got an insight into the state of the economy from the government, which made submissions.

From one point of view, the strength of this peculiarly Australian system of setting wages was that each employer covered by a decision was compelled to deliver the same increase as its competitors, meaning none were disadvantaged.

From another point of view, this strength was becoming a weakness. The weak firms as well as the strong had to pay the increases, whether it was easy or not.

Enterprise agreements unleashed productivity

In the early 1990s, perhaps with an eye to the possibility that an incoming Coalition government might make even greater changes, the Keating Labor government changed the law to channel the workers and employers within each workplace into enterprise bargaining.

The tribunals would have a more limited role, checking that each enterprise agreement passed a “better off overall” test, and continuing to set awards that became more like backstops, slipping below what most workers (usually through their unions) were able to negotiate with individual employers.

Read more:
Employers say Labor’s new industrial relations bill threatens the economy. Denmark tells a different story

Workers and unions did well at first, because they were able to get together with employers and nut out ways to save money to pay for wage rises – something they had had little incentive to do when wages were set centrally.

And it was something that could only really be done at the level of each enterprise, because each was different, and it was the workers on the ground who knew how to make it better.

Zombie agreements and frozen wages

But productivity couldn’t be unleashed in the same way forever. After a while, the easy gains had been had. Workers got good pay rises in return for streamlining unwieldy processes at the start, then had few unwieldy processes left to streamline.

Productivity surged during the first decade, until the early 2000s. Then employers became more cautious about granting pay rises, and by the 2010s became good at stringing out negotiations or letting agreements expire, which meant they rolled over as “zombie agreements” without an increase.

As the Business Council explained in a report on the state of enterprise bargaining
in 2019, agreements that had lapsed but were still operational came to act “like a wage freeze for some employees”.

With union membership down from 40% of workers when enterprise bargaining began, to just 14% in 2020, there was little workers on frozen agreements could do to get more, other than fall back on awards, which at least usually climbed with inflation.

It means the system has come to work in a way hardly anyone actually intended. It is acting as a brake on pay rises, while becoming more centralised.

The Reserve Bank says it can see some signs that wages growth is picking up, even in new enterprise agreements, but that it will take some time to flow through to all agreements in general because of the “multi-year duration” of the agreements.

How the new law could break the pay freeze

What the Albanese government has proposed – and is about to finally get through the Senate with the help of the Greens and independent David Pocock – is an attempt to bust the inertia.

Expanding multi-employer bargaining will allow employers to bargain knowing their competitors will have to pay what they pay.

Air-conditioning manufacturers have already begun talks with the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union in a bid to drive up workplace standards and pay in a way they know won’t be undercut by cheaper competitors.

Read more:
Government makes concessions on multi-employer bargaining bill

Allowing employers with genuine ongoing enterprise agreements to escape multi-employer bargaining will encourage more genuine agreements.

And loosening the “better off overall” test will make it easier to get agreements of all kinds registered.

Particularly helpful will be “supported bargaining”, in which the Fair Work Commission will sit around the table with workers in fields such as childcare, who have traditionally found it hard to bargain. Where necessary, the commission will pull in outside funders (such as the government for childcare) for talks.

None of it will work miracles. But it should help. And it’s unlikely to hurt.

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

– ref. ‘Zombie’ wage deals have hurt Australians for years. Here’s how new industrial relations laws could finally end your wage pain – https://theconversation.com/zombie-wage-deals-have-hurt-australians-for-years-heres-how-new-industrial-relations-laws-could-finally-end-your-wage-pain-195534

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

Imagine you were trying to design a system that would hold back wages. You would design one pretty much like the one we’ve got today.

That’s why the government wants to change it.

Those of us on enterprise bargaining agreements get our wage rises locked in only every three or so years. If we didn’t lock in enough in last year’s agreement to cover this year’s sudden outbreak of inflation, there’s nothing much we can do about it for another two or so years.

It’s a built-in inertia identified by financial services firm JP Morgan in its attempts to explain to foreign clients why Australian wages growth is so low.

Australian enterprise agreements, JP Morgan explains in a note to clients, both delay wages growth and trim its peaks.

Here’s how that came about – and how the Albanese government’s new industrial relations law might finally end Australians’ pay freeze.

Wages used to be mostly set by awards

For nearly a century, Australian wages were generally set by judges in state and federal industrial relations tribunals. They had the power to intervene and set an “award” wage for an industry or occupation in which there was a dispute. And it was easy enough for unions and employers to create disputes.

Because they almost always intervened, the tribunals got to ensure that wages didn’t move too much relative to each other, and it got an insight into the state of the economy from the government, which made submissions.

From one point of view, the strength of this peculiarly Australian system of setting wages was that each employer covered by a decision was compelled to deliver the same increase as its competitors, meaning none were disadvantaged.

From another point of view, this strength was becoming a weakness. The weak firms as well as the strong had to pay the increases, whether it was easy or not.

Enterprise agreements unleashed productivity

In the early 1990s, perhaps with an eye to the possibility that an incoming Coalition government might make even greater changes, the Keating Labor government changed the law to channel the workers and employers within each workplace into enterprise bargaining.

The tribunals would have a more limited role, checking that each enterprise agreement passed a “better off overall” test, and continuing to set awards that became more like backstops, slipping below what most workers (usually through their unions) were able to negotiate with individual employers.

Read more:
Employers say Labor’s new industrial relations bill threatens the economy. Denmark tells a different story

Workers and unions did well at first, because they were able to get together with employers and nut out ways to save money to pay for wage rises – something they had had little incentive to do when wages were set centrally.

And it was something that could only really be done at the level of each enterprise, because each was different, and it was the workers on the ground who knew how to make it better.

Zombie agreements and frozen wages

But productivity couldn’t be unleashed in the same way forever. After a while, the easy gains had been had. Workers got good pay rises in return for streamlining unwieldy processes at the start, then had few unwieldy processes left to streamline.

Productivity surged during the first decade, until the early 2000s. Then employers became more cautious about granting pay rises, and by the 2010s became good at stringing out negotiations or letting agreements expire, which meant they rolled over as “zombie agreements” without an increase.

As the Business Council explained in a report on the state of enterprise bargaining
in 2019, agreements that had lapsed but were still operational came to act “like a wage freeze for some employees”.

With union membership down from 40% of workers when enterprise bargaining began, to just 14% in 2020, there was little workers on frozen agreements could do to get more, other than fall back on awards, which at least usually climbed with inflation.

It means the system has come to work in a way hardly anyone actually intended. It is acting as a brake on pay rises, while becoming more centralised.

The Reserve Bank says it can see some signs that wages growth is picking up, even in new enterprise agreements, but that it will take some time to flow through to all agreements in general because of the “multi-year duration” of the agreements.

How the new law could break the pay freeze

What the Albanese government has proposed – and is about to finally get through the Senate with the help of the Greens and independent David Pocock – is an attempt to bust the inertia.

Expanding multi-employer bargaining will allow employers to bargain knowing their competitors will have to pay what they pay.

Air-conditioning manufacturers have already begun talks with the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union in a bid to drive up workplace standards and pay in a way they know won’t be undercut by cheaper competitors.

Read more:
Government makes concessions on multi-employer bargaining bill

Allowing employers with genuine ongoing enterprise agreements to escape multi-employer bargaining will encourage more genuine agreements.

And loosening the “better off overall” test will make it easier to get agreements of all kinds registered.

Particularly helpful will be “supported bargaining”, in which the Fair Work Commission will itself sit around the table with workers in fields such as childcare, who have traditionally found it hard to bargain. Where necessary, the commission will pull in outside funders (such as the government for childcare) for talks.

None of it will work miracles. But it should help. And it’s unlikely to hurt.

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

– ref. ‘Zombie’ wage deals have hurt Australians for years. Here’s how new industrial relations law could finally end your wage pain – https://theconversation.com/zombie-wage-deals-have-hurt-australians-for-years-heres-how-new-industrial-relations-law-could-finally-end-your-wage-pain-195534

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andelka M. Phillips, Senior Lecturer in Law, Science and Technology, The University of Queensland

The field of genomic science is rapidly advancing, with commercial genetic tests becoming affordable and popular.

Taking these tests is simple. The company sends you a collection kit. You send it back with a saliva sample or cheek swab. The sample is sequenced and analysed, and before long you have your results.

However, upon a closer look you’ll find commercial genetic tests come with several hidden risks, and consumers often don’t understand what they’re signing up for. Here are some important factors to consider if you’re thinking of getting one.

Ancestry tests

The most common personal genomics tests are ancestry tests, offered by companies including Ancestry, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage.

Ancestry tests are marketed as a way to explore your ancestral origins. But since different companies use different methods, and even different “ethnicity” categorisations, you may get inconsistent results. For example, Kristen V. Brown wrote for Gizmodo about how her saliva sample produced three different results from AncestryDNA, 23andMe and National Geographic.

In another example, a 2019 CBC Marketplace experiment involved sending the DNA of identical twins to five different companies. Each company returned surprisingly different results. Mark Gerstein, a Yale University bioinformatics expert, suspected the differences came down to different algorithms being used to process the raw data.

Health tests

The industry also offers tests for a variety of health conditions. A test may claim to provide you with predictions of your risk of developing breast cancer or Alzheimer’s. Carrier tests indicate whether you’re likely to pass on a particular condition to your child.

But users can get contradictory results here too. One company might indicate you’re at a heightened risk of colon cancer, while another might say you have reduced risk. Not to mention genes are only one factor in most complex diseases.

In an investigation by the US Government Accountability Office, tests from four companies delivered highly varied results. The report concluded:

The test results we received are misleading and of little or no practical use to consumers. […] The experts we spoke with agreed that the companies’ claims and test results are both ambiguous and misleading.

A genetic test in a medical clinic is governed by many rules and laws. A commercial test bought online is mostly subject to the company’s own terms and conditions and privacy policy. And, as we all know, these terms and conditions are often too long and unreadable for most people.

Read more:
Research shows most online consumer contracts are incomprehensible, but still legally binding

Low predictive value

Another type of test is a “talent test”, which purports to tell parents whether their child will have a high IQ, or excel in certain activities such as music or sport. These tests aren’t validated – and for many talents there’s no strong evidence genes play a key role in their development.

Regarding talent tests for “sporting ability,” a consensus statement published in the British Medical Journal of Sports Medicine said:

[…] the consensus is that the predictive value of such tests in the context of training responses or talent identification in sport is virtually zero.

Yet talent tests are growing in popularity, especially in China. What’s particularly concerning is these tests may promote ideas of genetic determinism – a flawed theory that suggests genes are the only reason we have certain abilities.

So-called “infidelity” tests are also highly problematic. With these, users can discreetly send in DNA samples of other people without their consent to supposedly find out whether their partner might be cheating.

Apart from being unethical and illegal in many countries (including Australia), the samples sent in would likely be taken from objects such as bed sheets or wine glasses, and are unlikely to be reliable.

Inaccurate results are just the start of the problem

Once your genetic data are in the hands of a company – with most market leaders based in the US – there’s a good chance they will stay there indefinitely. And unlike a bank PIN, you can’t just change your genetic code if something goes wrong.

Since we share a lot of our DNA with our relatives, disclosing our genomic data can create privacy risks for relatives, too. One 2018 study found many US citizens of European descent could be identified if their third cousin or closer had their DNA on an open-access or commercial database.

Then there’s the risk of data breaches at DNA testing companies. AncestryDNA, MyHeritage and the genetic genealogy site GedMatch have already been afflicted by such attacks.

Genetic information can also be used in criminal investigations, which means your data could be shared with law enforcement agencies. FamilyTreeDNA has shared data with the FBI in the past. Data can also be shared with immigration authorities and other government entities that may use your (or your relative’s) data against you.

Additionally, insurance companies may use someone’s genetic data to determine risks, coverage and premiums. In 2018 US biotech Orig3n partnered with Chinese e-insurance company ZhongAn Insurance.

Similarly, 23andMe has partnered with at least 14 pharmaceutical companies to research a range of diseases and develop new drugs. Through such partnerships, businesses benefit from consumers’ data without compensating them.

6 questions before clicking the purchase button

The lack of regulation in the personal genomics industry means it’s impossible to predict how your genetic data might be used. Before you buy a test, or if you know someone who plans to, consider these questions:

1. Given the sensitivity of the information and the risks involved, are you comfortable accepting the terms and conditions you (probably) haven’t read?

2. Many third parties may be interested in your genetic information. Are you happy for it to be shared with them?

3. Do you realise you don’t have the legal right to decide how long your personal data will be stored?

4. If you’re considering a test because of a health concern, did your doctor recommend it?

5. How would you respond if your ancestry results don’t match your sense of identity?

6. How would you feel if the company changed its policy and restricted your access to your own data?

Read more:
Cousin took a DNA test? Courts could use it to argue you are more likely to commit crimes

Andelka M. Phillips has received funding from the Borrin Foundation to research the legal and policy implications of Consumer Data Rights in the context of genetic testing services. This article represents the authors views; the Borrin Foundation is not responsible for the content of this article and has not endorsed it.

Samuel Becher has received funding from the Borrin Foundation to research the legal and policy implications of Consumer Data Rights in the context of genetic testing services. This article represents the authors views; the Borrin Foundation is not responsible for the content of this article and has not endorsed it.

– ref. At-home DNA tests just aren’t that reliable – and the risks may outweigh the benefits – https://theconversation.com/at-home-dna-tests-just-arent-that-reliable-and-the-risks-may-outweigh-the-benefits-194349

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vincent Ho, Senior Lecturer and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University

It’s two weeks after the birth of your healthy bub and you notice your gut isn’t feeling quite right. Maybe you feel a bit bloated. Maybe you’re farting more than usual.

What’s going on?

Pregnancy changes the structure and function of virtually every organ system, including some big changes to the gut. These changes can explain some common symptoms.

And no, you’re not imagining it. Some gut symptoms, such as constipation and gassiness, can hang around after you’ve given birth.

Read more:
Health Check: what causes bloating and gassiness?

Nausea is common

The most common gut symptom in pregnancy is nausea, which affects up to 85% of women in the first trimester.

This is thought to be largely due to the effects of the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin.

Levels of the hormone are highest at the end of the first trimester and start to level off for the rest of the pregnancy. That explains why nausea tends to become less common as your pregnancy progresses.

Read more:
Health Check: what can you eat to help ease ‘morning’ sickness in pregnancy?

Reflux can be painful

Other hormonal changes can lead you to develop another common symptom, reflux.

Levels of the hormone progesterone, for instance, steadily rise over the course of a pregnancy. This can lead to the oesophageal sphincter muscle – which is at the lower end of your food pipe, before it meets the stomach – to become more lax.

The loosening of this muscle makes it easier for stomach acid to move back up into the food pipe. This can cause a painful burning sensation in the upper part of your abdomen or just behind the breastbone.

Later in the pregnancy, your growing uterus and baby can start to really push up on your stomach.

This can also lead to reflux as direct pressure on the stomach forces stomach acid back into the food pipe.

Read more:
Explainer: what is gastric reflux?

Is constipation normal? And haemorrhoids?

Increased levels of progesterone and the hormone oestrogen lead to a decrease in muscular contractions (peristalsis) throughout the gut.

This means you’re more likely to become constipated during pregnancy. Constipation affects about 40% of pregnant women.

Read more:
Health Check: what causes constipation?

Increased levels of oestrogen also lead to your blood vessels and connective tissue (tissue that connect one type to another, such as ligaments) becoming softer.

This, plus pressure from the growing baby, and increased blood volume and flow, can contribute to the development of haemorrhoids – columns of cushioned tissue and blood vessels found close to the opening of the anus.

Read more:
Explainer: why do people get haemorrhoids and how do you get rid of them?

Your body also needs more water and sodium in pregnancy to help produce amniotic fluid (liquid that surrounds the growing baby in the uterus) and build the blood supply of the growing baby. This necessary water and sodium is absorbed from your intestines and can contribute to constipation, and an increased risk of haemorrhoids.

Haemorrhoids are very common during pregnancy. One study found 86% of pregnant women reported them.

Read more:
Explainer: why do people get haemorrhoids and how do you get rid of them?

No wonder I feel full

Oestrogen is thought to be responsible for decreasing the movement of the stomach in pregnancy, keeping the food in the stomach longer and making it more likely you’ll feel full.

During the third trimester, your growing uterus and baby also start to really push up on the abdominal organs. No wonder you’re likely to feel pressure on your stomach and discomfort the closer you are to the end of your pregnancy.

You can also feel pressure at the other end of the gut. Pressure from the expanding uterus on the end part of the colon (the sigmoid colon) can also make you feel constipated even if you’re not.

Read more:
Mega study confirms pregnant women can reduce risk of stillbirth by sleeping on their side

I have incontinence. Is that because of how I gave birth?

There has been a lot of debate about whether urinary or faecal incontinence is more likely after a vaginal or a caesarean birth.

However, the strongest evidence we have suggests the mode of birth makes no difference. If you’ve had incontinence during pregnancy this is the strongest predictor of having it afterwards.

Urinary incontinence that doesn’t improve within three months of giving birth is more likely to persist. So if you’ve experienced this during pregnancy, you might like to see a pelvic floor physio.

Fortunately, faecal incontinence after pregnancy is very uncommon, affecting only around 3% of women. However if this persists, please seek medical attention.

Why am I still constipated?

A study from Finland on more than 400 women found constipation affected 47% of women in the first few days after a vaginal birth and 57% of women in the first few days after a caesarean.

The researchers suggested this may be caused by too much physical inactivity and insufficient intake of fluids after birth, or the effects of anaesthetic and disturbance to the intestines during surgery.

One month after childbirth, constipation became less common. Some 9% of women were constipated after a vaginal birth and 15% after a caesarean.

Feeling gassy? No, you’re not imaging it

The Finnish study also found excess farting is extremely common a few days after birth. It affected 81% of women but this number dropped to 30% one month after birth.

Bloating is another common symptom found a few days after birth affecting 59% of women, and this decreases to 14% of women one month afterwards.

So why is this happening? We can look to your gut microbiome for clues. This is the unique universe of micro-organisms (bugs), and their genes, that live in your gut.

During and after pregnancy, there are profound changes to the gut microbiome. These may cause an increase in gas production or lead to constipation.

So the good news from the Finnish study is that normal bowel function is restored quickly after childbirth for most women, but might be a touch longer for women after a caesarean.

If you’re concerned about gut symptoms during or after pregnancy, seek advice from a health-care professional, who can discuss treatment and referral options.

Kate Levett receives funding from an NHMRC Early Career Fellowship.

Vincent Ho 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 did pregnancy do to my gut? From nausea to constipation and farting – https://theconversation.com/what-did-pregnancy-do-to-my-gut-from-nausea-to-constipation-and-farting-193012

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Apisalome Movono, Senior Lecturer in Development Studies, Massey University

The economic impact of COVID on Pacific Island states, combined with major labour shortages in Australia and New Zealand, has created a perfect storm. A mass exodus means Pacific nations are now losing crucial workers at such volume that their own development prospects are being undermined.

For 15 years we’ve been told Pacific seasonal labour schemes offer a “triple win” – for Pacific people wanting to earn decent incomes, for their home countries’ revenues and skill base, and for Australian and New Zealand horticulturalists desperate for workers.

Recent developments, however, suggest Pacific labour schemes need a major rethink.

Pacific peoples have long moved across oceans and the world in search of opportunities. But in 2007 New Zealand formalised arrangements with its Recognised Seasonal Employment (RSE) scheme. This was followed by two schemes in Australia, which in 2022 were merged to form the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme.

Both countries target low- to semi-skilled workers, mainly for seasonal agricultural and horticultural work. The PALM scheme has since expanded to include hospitality, age care and tourism jobs. Predictably, supply has followed demand.

Supply and demand

The COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating effect on Pacific Island economies. For example, more than 100,000 Fijians lost their jobs, and the government lost half its tax revenue. Unsurprisingly, when borders began to open from late 2021, Pacific people queued for employment opportunities abroad.

This coincided with a severe labour shortage in a number of sectors in Australia and New Zealand. The New Zealand fruit industry, for example, didn’t meet forecast revenue and production levels in 2021, leading to an urgent call for new intakes of Pacific workers.

Read more:
A New Pacific Reset? Why NZ must prioritise climate change and labour mobility

The subsequent rise in the RSE quota – from 14,400 in 2020-21 to 19,000 in 2022-23 – has seen more Pacific people than ever leave their own countries to work in New Zealand.

The total number of Samoan workers under the Australian and New Zealand work schemes, for example, doubled from 3,114 in 2019-20 to 6,600 in 2021-22. By this September, there were more than 29,000 PALM workers in Australia, with plans to increase this to 35,000 in 2023.

One-way traffic

The flip side is that Pacific Island businesses are now lamenting the loss of experienced and well-trained workers, especially in tourism. Cook Islands faced an acute loss of employees earlier this year, with 700 job vacancies reported in April.

More recently, 20 teachers from Samoa joined the fleet of 3,000 workers in Australian labour programmes. The resulting teacher shortage will be felt most by young people in the small nation. Similarly, Fiji has lost 40 mechanics to Australia’s temporary skilled work visa schemes between 2016 and 2021.

Read more:
Fiji is officially ‘open for happiness’ – will that apply to its tourism workers too?

Vanuatu is also experiencing a labour shortage, with business owners saying they train employees only to see them leave for New Zealand and Australia. A shortage in chefs threatens the viability of restaurants, but picking fruit overseas can be more lucrative than working in hospitality at home.

The same is true in Fiji, which has lost hundreds of front-line tourism workers this year – receptionists, managers and waiters, as well as chefs – which may undermine the country’s efforts to rebuild its tourism industry.

These statistics challenge claims by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs that jobs programmes provide a “skills dividend to Pacific countries”.

Exploitation and poor conditions

The problem is part of a wider concern over Pacific labour schemes. For years, questions have been asked about whether such schemes truly live up to their aim of providing low-skilled workers with training and development opportunities as well as income.

As various commentators have noted, migrant work can have real implications for wellbeing due to long periods of separation from families, as well as mental and physical burnout.

Read more:
Pacific aviation is struggling to take off after the pandemic – how can the ‘blue continent’ stay connected?

With so many Pacific workers now overseas for long periods, these problems can have longer-term social costs. Recent research has detailed extramarital affairs, relationship breakdowns, emotional distress, parenting problems, and child welfare issues.

And while Pacific workers can undoubtedly benefit from seasonal employment overseas, there have been serious allegations in New Zealand this year about unacceptable working and living conditions. As one analysis put it, “Vulnerable workers are at risk of exploitation, underpay, and modern slavery conditions.”

Vanuatu’s government launched an enquiry after widespread complaints about treatment of its workers in Australia. Meanwhile, the Samoan government went so far as to temporarily stop seasonal worker flights after concerns were raised about the wellbeing and treatment of workers in Australia.

Improvement at home

While ensuring workers are properly taken care of under the PALM and RSE schemes, Pacific governments also need to look inwards. Their citizens will continue to seek opportunities abroad if they don’t feel they get a fair deal in their own labour markets.

RSE scheme workers are entitled to New Zealand’s minimum hourly wage of NZ$22.10. By comparison, Pacific wages are shockingly low. After a decade’s stagnation, for instance, Fiji has begun an incremental minimum wage increase – but this will only see the hourly rate rise from FJD$2.68 (NZ$1.96) to FJD$4.00 (NZ$2.92) in 2023.

As well, there are serious concerns about work conditions and employment rights in some countries. Recently, the Fiji Trade Union Congress was denied the right to protest for the fifth time.

These issues – on top of ongoing uncertainty around post-pandemic job security – will have to be addressed if the current cycle of richer economies siphoning off vulnerable workers from the Pacific is to be broken.

Better job opportunities and pathways in Pacific nations are not only vital to their economies, they’re also integral to the development of industries that will be resilient and sustainable in the future.

Apisalome Movono receives funding from the Royal Society Te Aparangi, Marsden Fast Start Grant

Regina Scheyvens receives funding from Royal Society Te Aparangi through a Marsden grant and James Cook Fellowship.

Leilani Faaiuaso 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. Underpaid at home, vulnerable abroad: how seasonal job schemes are draining Pacific nations of vital workers – https://theconversation.com/underpaid-at-home-vulnerable-abroad-how-seasonal-job-schemes-are-draining-pacific-nations-of-vital-workers-194810

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Cowie, Director, WHO Collaborating Centre for Viral Hepatitis, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity

Australia is experiencing the fourth wave of COVID for 2022, with the number of people hospitalised with COVID trending to levels seen in winter and ongoing high levels of deaths. New COVID waves are expected to occur every three to four months for some time.

Earlier in the pandemic, COVID treatments mostly focused on those hospitalised with serious infection. Now, oral antiviral medicines nirmatrelvir/ritonavir (Paxlovid) and molnupiravir (Lagevrio) are largely prescribed by GPs for people who test positive for COVID and are at greater risk of severe illness.

In our roles in Victoria’s Department of Health, we analysed the impact of antivirals on the risk of death and hospitalisation among Victorians aged 70 and over during the winter 2022 COVID wave.

Our analysis, which is yet to be published or independently verified by other scientists, found both Paxlovid and Lagevrio reduced the risk of hospitalisation and death. And the results were better for Paxlovid.

Several previous studies have shown Paxlovid is highly effective at preventing severe illness and death from COVID. It’s currently Australia’s first-line COVID antiviral treatment for early treatment in the community.

However, a recent trial has raised questions about the effectivness of the other antiviral available in Australia, Lagevrio. While there’s evidence it’s effective at treating COVID, it’s no longer recommended in the United Kingdom because it’s not considered cost-effective.

While Australia’s clinical guidelines are yet to change, our analysis suggests both Paxlovid and Lagevrio have a role to play in Australia’s treatment arsenal. Some people who are unable to have Paxlovid will benefit from Lagevrio.

How well do these antivirals work?

Initial clinical trials of Paxlovid and Lagevrio in unvaccinated adults show they significantly reduce the risk of hospitalisation or death from COVID.

Those who took Lagevrio were 30% less likely to be hospitalised or die with COVID.

In a separate trial, those that took Paxlovid were 89% less likely to be hospitalised or die.

Read more:
I have mild COVID – should I take the antiviral Paxlovid?

Recently, a pre-print analysis (which is still undergoing external scientific review) reported on a large clinical trial in the United Kingdom. It found Lagevrio didn’t reduce hospitalisation or the risk of death for vaccinated adults (0.8%) compared to standard care.

It found treatment did reduce recovery time by four days. It also reduced contact with GP services, the time tests remained positive, and the amount of virus detected.

However it’s important to note the population studied in the UK trial were relatively young: 86% were aged 50–70. They were therefore at lower risk of severe COVID than the over-70s age group who represent most of those prescribed Lagevrio in Australia.

So the study may not have adequately demonstrated the potential benefit for older adults who are at higher risk of severe illness from COVID.

On the other hand, real-world (or observational) studies from Hong Kong, Israel and Poland have reported Lagevrio reduces the chance of high-risk patients dying from COVID.

Our analysis

We used our routine data and linkage techniques to examine the risk of hospitalisation in more than 27,000 Victorians aged over 70 years diagnosed with COVID and the risk of death in more than 32,000 people who did and didn’t undergo treatment.

This analysis involved collaboration between the Victorian and Australian government health departments, and linked Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) prescriptions, COVID vaccination, diagnoses, hospitalisation, and death data.

After controlling for various factors influencing the risk of hospitalisation and death (vaccination history, sex, socioeconomic status, hospitalisation history, and aged care residency), we found significant benefits for both drugs.

We found:

• COVID medicines substantially reduced risk of hospitalisation (32% for Paxlovid, 26% for Lagevrio) and risk of death (72% for Paxlovid, 54% for Lagevrio)

• early treatment with a COVID antiviral provided the greatest benefit – treatment with either drug within one day of diagnosis reduced the risk of hospitalisation by 37%, and death by 63%

• the benefits for reducing the risk of hospitalisation were not seen if people were treated two or more days after diagnosis

• the benefits for reducing the risk of death were not seen if treated four or more days after diagnosis.

Read more:
COVID drugs in Australia: what’s available and how to get them

Some important limitations of this analysis are that it’s observational, so we can’t control for a number of factors associated with hospitalisation and death from COVID.

Another limitation is the choice of antiviral medicine by the prescribing GP may be influenced by factors which are also associated with the risk of severe outcomes. This could bias the estimates of the treatment’s effect.

A strength of this analysis is the large size, and the fact it reports on the entire population of Victorians aged 70 years and above diagnosed with COVID during the winter wave.

So what does it mean?

In our analysis, the effect of Paxlovid was greater than that of Lagevrio. This is in keeping with the current available evidence and its recommendation as a first-line therapy.

However, Paxlovid is not safe for people with some underlying conditions, such as severe kidney or liver disease. It also has a number of drug interactions with commonly used medications.

So when Paxlovid is unsuitable or not available, Lagevrio is a suitable option.

Because Lagevrio has fewer interactions and can be used in a wider range of patients, it has been pre-placed in residential aged care, for rapid access.

Australians with lower socioeconomic status are more likely to be hospitalised with or die from COVID. So developing strategies to increase antiviral access for people who face the greatest burden of COVID will help reduce these inequities.

Antivirals are an important additional tool as part of an multi-layered response to COVID. This aims to reduce community transmission and the risk of illness in priority populations, and to protect our health system in the months to come and waves ahead of us.

Read more:
Two years into the pandemic, unequal access to COVID-19 treatments threatens the global recovery

Acknowledgements: The analysis mentioned above includes contributions from Daniel West, Indra Parta, Jose Canevari, Nick Haslett, Dennis Wollersheim, Marcellin Martinie and Rebecca Dawson from the Victorian Department of Health’s Modelling and Analytical Epidemiology team.

Benjamin Cowie is Acting Chief Health Officer at the Victorian Department of Health.

Brett Sutton is Victoria’s Chief Health Officer.

Christina Van Heer is a Senior Analyst at the Victorian Department of Health.

Suman Majumdar is a Deputy Chief Health Officer at the Victorian Department of Health.

– ref. Paxlovid is Australia’s first-line COVID antiviral but Lagevrio also prevents severe disease in over-70s – https://theconversation.com/paxlovid-is-australias-first-line-covid-antiviral-but-lagevrio-also-prevents-severe-disease-in-over-70s-195349

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Smith, Research Fellow, UWA Minderoo Tech & Policy Lab, Law School, The University of Western Australia

In early November, the Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure invited public comment on proposed Australia-wide “drone delivery guidelines” it has been quietly developing with industry stakeholders. A slick new website – drones.gov.au – boasts of the supposed benefits of delivery drones. It claims they will create jobs, provide cost-efficiency and be environmentally sustainable.

The draft guidelines focus on minimal technical considerations concerning land-use planning (suggesting no special accommodations need to be made for drones), and safety and noise issues. These issues matter, but they entirely overlook the stakes of permitting delivery drones to dominate our skies.

Read more:
Privatising the sky: drone delivery promises comfort and speed, but at a cost to workers and communities

Then there’s the question of whether the purported benefits stand up to scrutiny. Our team at the University of Western Australia’s Minderoo Tech & Policy Lab has stress-tested the claims made in the department’s guidelines. This is what you need to know.

Delivery drone networks would be a huge deal

Drones hold a lot of promise in being able to substitute humans in dangerous or otherwise difficult (but important) work, such as emergency relief, aerial mustering and shark patrol. Commercial delivery drones, however, are an entirely different proposition.

The key player behind them is Wing Aviation, a subsidiary of Google’s holding company Alphabet Inc. Wing has selected Australia as its lead test-site for on-demand deliveries of coffee, roast chicken, Coke and chips. This is a public health and environmental catastrophe waiting to happen – not to mention a visceral (even violent) imposition on public space.

Wing has operated in select parts of the ACT since September 2017 and in Logan, Queensland, since September 2019. Despite subsidising every aspect of the operations, creating zero cost for both merchants and consumers, it has not escaped complaints. Concerns have ranged from noise and safety complaints, to impacts on wildlife, pets and privacy.

Wing had to cease operations in Bonython after extensive protest from residents. Residents in Logan have reported being unsettled by neighbours receiving up to eight noisy deliveries per hour.

Cities around the world are seeking alternatives to freeways – acknowledging how road infrastructure contributes to social inequality, pollution and reduced quality of life. Do we want to replicate these problems in our skies?

The benefits of delivery drones are unproven

The guidelines emphasise the economic and eco-promise of a drone-filled future. A projected A$14.5 billion added to Australia’s GDP and 10,000 jobs over the next 20 years is undeniably attractive. But does the evidence add up to this rosy vision?

The numbers cited in the guidelines actually come from an October 2020 report prepared by Deloitte Access Economics for the Department of Infrastructure.

Crucially, the report aggregates multiple markets for drone use, well beyond just delivery. In the Deloitte report, the segment of the drone market for military and industrial applications is estimated to grow to more than $5.5 billion, while the food delivery market, at $0.26 billion, is at best 20 times smaller. It appears military and industrial applications drive the bold economic estimates found in the guidelines – yet the department doesn’t mention them.

Also, the 2020 report caveats if its predictions of market expansion change, so too will its economic analysis. Australia’s highest inflation rate in more than 30 years, coupled with a global economic slowdown, and worsening business confidence suggests Deloitte’s predictions are perhaps on shaky grounds.

The fragility of the economic promise is matched by equally shallow claims of environmental sustainability. There is a shrewd focus on “last-mile delivery emissions” to demonstrate drones’ green credentials. But this ignores the emissions generated along the entire logistics chain of this complex, technology-heavy system.

There are compounding emissions created by additional warehousing and the power needs of drones – and that’s before we even consider the explosion in single-use packaging, as reusable coffee cups and containers languish at the back of the cupboard.

Drones of indulgence, not necessity

The guidelines state drones deliver “on-demand supplies”. This raises the question: demanded by whom? Barely a fortnight ago Deliveroo went into voluntary administration in Australia, citing “challenging economic conditions”.

“On-demand supplies” is a loaded description that conflates necessity with desire – blurring essential medication with donuts. This descriptive sleight of hand casts drones as an all-or-nothing offering, which is of course untrue.

One can support Australia’s only other approved delivery drone operator, the regional medical supplier Swoop Aero, without having to tolerate repeat junk-food deliveries whizzing by to the neighbours down the street.

Citizens’ approval should be essential

In 2002, Australia became the first country to regulate civilian drone use. The intervening 20 years have afforded the drone industry multiple opportunities to influence the regulatory process, mostly beyond the public eye. Delivery drones necessitate an entirely different conversation.

In 2019, some unsuspecting Canberrans only discovered they were guinea pigs in a food delivery drone trial when the drones began to appear on their neighbour’s doorsteps. They then found out the company responsible, Google Wing, also runs the public feedback process on behalf of the government. Such events do not deliver the transparency and impartiality demanded of government decision-making.

Drones demand an open and expansive discussion about the vital, living habitat above our heads. We must resist empty promises and indulgence, and centre the much broader needs of all living things.

Google has an ambition to use Australia as its laboratory to develop the future of drone deliveries, before exporting it abroad. Australians have a chance to turn this plan on its head. Submissions for feedback on the draft guidelines close on December 2. After that, you can have your say here.

Read more:
Drone delivery is a thing now. But how feasible is having it everywhere, and would we even want it?

The UWA Minderoo Tech & Policy Lab receives unrestricted gift funding from Australian charitable foundation, Minderoo Foundation.

– ref. When it comes to delivery drones, the government is selling us a pipe dream. Experts explain the real costs – https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-delivery-drones-the-government-is-selling-us-a-pipe-dream-experts-explain-the-real-costs-195361