Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kirsten Benkendorff, Professor, Southern Cross University

For years, oysters have been lauded as one of the most sustainable and healthy seafood options. But our food is only as healthy as the environment it is grown in.

In new research published in Environmental Pollution, we found something unfortunate. These filter-feeding shellfish eat by straining particles from water. This, alas, makes them very good at soaking up pesticide residue.

When we analysed oysters growing naturally in the Richmond River estuary in New South Wales, we found 21 different pesticides – more than in the water. Each oyster had detectable amounts of nine different pesticides, on average.

We don’t know the full health risks of eating oysters from this river. But we do know five pesticides we found are potentially dangerous – they are not allowed to be present in meat due to the risks.

To be clear: the risk is largely in taking oysters from the wild. Commercially farmed oysters are likely to be safer, as they are regulated by Australia’s shellfish quality assurance program and can only be harvested when water quality is good.

How do pesticides get into oysters?

Oysters pump water through their bodies and eat the bacteria, plankton and other particles they filter out. A single oyster can filter up to five litres of water an hour and over 250,000 litres in their lifetime.

Before colonisation, oyster reefs were everywhere. Most of these reefs were pulled out to use the shells for lime and the meat to eat. In the Richmond River, poor water quality and a disease killed off most oysters until a new, disease-resistant strain emerged.

Filter-feeding works well if you’re just filtering out what’s found naturally. But if the water is contaminated, oysters can end up storing pathogens and pollutants in their bodies.

Oysters prefer brackish water – where fresh meets salt. That’s why they’re intensively farmed in many estuaries. But because many of our coastal catchments now contain farms, towns or cities, the pesticides, herbicides and insecticides we use wash into rivers after rain.

What did we find in these oysters?

Most of the herbicides, insecticides and fungicides we found are used routinely by farmers, land managers and council workers.

But we did find an unwelcome surprise – the fungicide benomyl, which has been illegal in Australia since 2006 due to the high risk to human health and the environment. Detecting this chemical means someone is using it illegally.

Four pesticides – atrazine, diuron, hexazinone and metolachlor – were found in concentrations above safe environmental limits for fresh and marine water.

Atrazine and diuron are among the most commonly used herbicides in Australian farming, but they are not safe chemicals. They’re known to contaminate groundwater and surface water, and have been detected in unsafe levels in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef.

Atrazine is banned in the European Union over concerns about the damage it can do to the environment and the risk of it getting into drinking water.

Diuron has been severely restricted in the EU, but is commonly used by the sugarcane industry in Australia. Like atrazine, diuron can pollute groundwater and kill aquatic species, and is carcinogenic to humans.

Australia’s pesticide authority suspended the use of 63 diuron products in 2011. The ban only lasted a year, following lobbying from sugarcane growers, and diuron is back in use.

What does this mean for oyster eaters?

The sheer number of different pesticides we found in oysters was perhaps the biggest concern for lovers of oysters. Five of these – pebulate, vernolate, fosetyl Al, benomyl and prothiofos – have residue limits set at zero for meat. That is, if you want to sell meat, it cannot have any detectable level of these pesticides. (At present, our food safety guidelines have no specific limits for most pesticides in seafood.)

What about the 16 other pesticides we found? Most were below the allowable residue limits in meat on their own, but we have very little understanding of the combined effects of exposure from multiple pesticides.

Read more:
The real cost of pesticides in Australia’s food boom

What should be done?

The problem for oyster farmers and marine managers is they’re effectively powerless to prevent water pollution entering the river from farms or towns upstream.

The first step is to find out how bad the problem is. We need dedicated pesticide monitoring programs for seafood producers in estuaries to gauge the size of the problem and look for hotspots.

If hotspots are found, the next step is to work with farmers and land managers to collaboratively design solutions.

These could include incentives to cut pesticide use through integrated pest management and precision agriculture as well as the use of tools to decide which pesticide to use and when.

Strategically located wetlands and bacterial bioreactors able to break down pesticides can also stop these chemicals arriving in the river.

Mangrove and shellfish reef restoration could help protect commercial oyster farms and other seafood harvesting areas. Like oysters, mangroves have the ability to remove chemical contaminants from the water and store them internally.

You might be wondering why some of these chemicals are legal to use in the first place. It’s very time consuming to seek review of currently available pesticides in Australia. Scientists or community members have to demonstrate these products cause harm, even if they have been reviewed and banned in many other nations.

Can I still eat oysters?

Yes. To cut your personal risk, buy only from reputable commercial oyster farms. These farms are only allowed to harvest oysters when the water quality is good, which helps remove water soluble pesticides. Given most of us don’t eat oysters daily, the risk is likely to be low.

What you should avoid is harvesting your own oysters in estuaries where there are farms or towns upstream. These may have accumulated pesticides. Leave them where they are – they’re doing a very important job: cleaning the water.

Read more:
Once the fish factories and ‘kidneys’ of colder seas, Australia’s decimated shellfish reefs are coming back

Kirsten Benkendorff receives funding from the NSW Government for other current projects on seafood and water quality.

amanda.reichelt-brushett@scu.edu.au receives funding from the NSW State Government. She is affiliated with the Richmond RiverKeeper Association.

e.jamal.10@student.scu.edu.au receives funding from the Australia Awards Scholarship and postgraduate funding from the Faculty of Science, Southern Cross University.

– ref. Pesticide residue from farms and towns is ending up in fresh oysters – https://theconversation.com/pesticide-residue-from-farms-and-towns-is-ending-up-in-fresh-oysters-219395

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Pomeroy, Senior Lecturer in Teacher Education, University of Canterbury

New Zealand primary and intermediate schools could soon be required to test children’s reading, writing and maths at least twice a year, using a standard template to report results to parents.

The proposal makes up a central part of the National Party’s education policy, but is it the best way to assess student progress? That could depend on how the policy is shaped – and what is done with the test results once they are collected.

But before education minister Erica Sanford completely revamps how students are assessed, she would be wise to learn from Aotearoa New Zealand’s recent history with primary assessment as well as overseas experience.

National standards past and present

Introduced by National in 2010, the National Standards set out levels all children should reach in reading, writing and maths in each of their first eight years of school.

The promise behind the policy was that it would raise achievement across primary and intermediate schools, a goal it failed to achieve.

Read more:
NZ’s key teacher unions now reject classroom streaming. So what’s wrong with grouping kids by perceived ability?

Primary teachers were quick to push back against National Standards, worried that students would be labelled based on performance rather than progress.

Some researchers warned the damage National Standards were doing to school cultures outweighed any gains, while others noted the standards failed to recognise neurodiverse learners and those with socioeconomic barriers.

Labour scrapped National Standards when it came to power in 2017.

Overseas experience of standardised testing

New Zealand will not be the first country to introduce mandatory standardised testing.

In 2007, Australia implemented the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), promising to increase transparency and accountability and improve teaching and learning by measuring school performance. The government of the day also said using national data would help disadvantaged school communities lift their performance.

A public website, MySchool, was created in 2008 to collate NAPLAN data. The website meant NAPLAN was evaluating not only students but also schools and teachers.

This approach drew critical commentary, especially given NAPLAN results were seen to indicate school quality.

The publication of results transformed NAPLAN into a high-stakes test, creating pressure and competition between schools.

Read more:
Teachers need a lot of things right now, but another curriculum ‘rewrite’ isn’t one of them

This pressure led to an intensification of rote learning and “teaching to the test”. English and maths squeezed out other subjects as the curriculum narrowed. And it reduced teacher morale, affected their wellbeing and eroded trust in their professional judgement.

In England, standardised assessment tests (SATs) have long been embedded in primary schools, with similar outcomes. A government website for the public sharing of results enables parents to “compare school and college performance”.

Using test data, successive governments have turned schooling into a marketplace for parents to choose “the best” school. Much like in Australia, this has effectively narrowed the curriculum to just English and maths.

This approach makes sense if you believe comparing schools will raise standards. But the data-driven approach to education is a highly questionable way of understanding child development. And given England’s teacher retention crisis, it does not seem to appeal to teachers.

Government should listen before changing the policy

Notably absent from National’s proposed education policy is an examination of the effects these changes might have on students.

One potential benefit of the policy is a possible improvement in students’ long-term retention of information cultivated by regular testing.

Additionally, student performance is influenced by how they feel, so earlier exposure to standardised testing provides an opportunity for students to gain experience in the process and to become more confident.

Without careful implementation, however, this could have the opposite effect. Negative experiences may result in test anxiety and students disengaging earlier in their education.

Read more:
Curriculum changes must tackle the lifelong consequences of NZ’s alarming literacy and numeracy declines

To combat this, the performance stakes need to be minimised and clearly communicated. The results should not limit future learning opportunities.

Maximising student control over success will support positive test-taking experiences. This requires resources to be available for all students.

National’s election policy reads: “Students deserve equal opportunities to benefit from assessment, regardless of their location, school or teacher”. But there are known gender equity issues in testing. For example, research has shown girls have much lower self-confidence during maths testing than boys, impacting their overall performance in the subject.

A tool, not a stick

Most of the harmful consequences of standardisation are not caused by children sitting tests, but by what the tests come to mean about students, teachers, and schools.

The more they become an indicator of worth or value – because they change a school’s ranking, or label a child as “above” or “below” average – the more likely they are to cause fear, anxiety, risk avoidance, and box-ticking – from children and adults alike.

National has proposed using an existing assessment tool called e-asTTle that many teachers are familiar with. This is good news in terms of teacher workload and a big contrast to National Standards.

Unlike Australia or England, it seems the exact timing of tests will be up to schools, avoiding some of the frenzied collective panic of national test days.

It will be important that tests don’t become a stick to beat schools with. Test results must never be linked to school funding, ERO visit frequency, or official statements about school quality.

The ACT Party’s education policy is to publish schools’ test results online to create choice, a move that has had disastrous consequences overseas. This is not in the party’s coalition agreement with National – it is crucial it stays that way.

David Pomeroy receives funding from the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI).

Nick Pratt is affiliated with the UK Green Party

Jessica Shuker, Kaitlin Riegel, and Rafaan Daliri-Ngametua 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. Standardised testing could be compulsory in NZ primary schools – what can we learn from the past? – https://theconversation.com/standardised-testing-could-be-compulsory-in-nz-primary-schools-what-can-we-learn-from-the-past-217887

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

The United States general election will be held on November 5 2024. In early 2024, there are Democratic and Republican presidential nominating contests that will elect delegates to the parties’ nominating conventions. These conventions, in July (for Republicans) and August (Democrats) officially select their parties’ presidential candidates.

The first contest is the Iowa Republican caucus on January 15, followed by the New Hampshire primary for both parties on January 23. There are several other contests in February before many states vote on “Super Tuesday”, March 5. The early contests account for a low percentage of total delegates, with under 10% of delegates determined by the Michigan primary on February 27.

A “caucus” is managed by the state party, and often requires voters to gather at a particular time. A “primary” is managed by the state’s electoral authority, and is administered in the same way as a general election. Turnout at primaries is much higher than at caucuses. In 2024, the large majority of contests use primaries.

Democratic delegates are allocated proportionally with a 15% threshold. Republican delegate allocation depends on the state: some states allocate delegates proportionally, but many others allocate delegates winner takes all or winner takes most.

In FiveThirtyEight polling aggregates, former president Donald Trump is way ahead in national Republican primary polls with 61.7%, followed by Ron DeSantis at 12.2% and Nikki Haley at 11.3%. Trump is also dominant in Iowa with 46.7%, followed by DeSantis at 19.6% and Haley at 15.0%.

If the election results reflect these national polls, Trump will win a huge majority of delegates.

On the Democratic side, no prominent Democrat has challenged President Joe Biden. Biden has 65.8% nationally with Marianne Williamson on 7.6% and Dean Phillips on 5.4%.

Trump leads in general election polls

In the presidential general election, there are 538 electoral votes and it takes 270 to win. Electoral votes are assigned to states as the sum of their House seats (population based) and senators (always two), so the lowest-population states have three EVs. With two minor exceptions, states award their EVs as winner-takes-all.

Trump won the 2016 election despite losing the national popular vote by 2.1%. In 2020, Biden won the popular vote by 4.5% but only won the state that gave him over 270 EVs by 0.6%. It’s likely Trump will benefit again from the skew in the electoral votes.

Read more:
US 2016 election final results: how Trump won

Biden’s FiveThirtyEight national ratings are 55.6% disapprove, 38.3% approve (net -17.3). His ratings have been sliding since March, when he was at net -7.3. Trump’s ratings are 52.3% unfavourable, 42.3% favourable (net -9.9). His ratings have improved since August when he was at -18.1.

Biden trails Trump by low- to mid-single digits in most national polls, and this doesn’t factor in the likely electoral vote skew. Trump’s margin over Biden increases slightly when third party candidates are included.

By the general election, Biden will be almost 82 and Trump 78. Early November Siena polls for The New York Times gave Trump four-to-ten-point leads in five of the six closest 2020 Biden-won states.

While Trump led overall by five points in the Siena polls, an unnamed generic Democrat led Trump by eight. In a similar exercise a year before the 2020 election, Biden led Trump by two and a generic Democrat led by three. This implies replacing Biden with a far younger Democrat would enhance their hopes of beating Trump.

Economic pessimism is helping Trump

In an early December national Wall Street Journal poll, two-thirds rated the economy poor or not good, and two-thirds said it had become worse in the past two years, during Biden’s tenure. Trump led Biden by 52–35 on best to handle the economy. By 53–23, voters thought Biden’s policies had hurt rather than helped them personally, while they thought Trump’s policies had helped by 49–37.

US headline and core inflation were about 2% annually before COVID, but the headline inflation peaked at 8.9% in June 2022. While inflation has dropped to 3.1% in November, voters still remember that goods and services used to be much cheaper.

Real (inflation-adjusted) wages were up 0.2% in hourly terms or 0.5% in weekly terms in November, and are up 0.8% and 0.5% respectively for the 12 months to November.

The personal savings rate was 3.8% in October. Prior to COVID, savings were over 5%, and they surged to record levels during the pandemic owing to stimulus payments and lack of spending opportunities. But the effects of inflation have eroded those gains.

The US jobs numbers have continued to be solid, with 199,000 jobs added in November and an unemployment rate of 3.7%. The employment population ratio – the percentage of eligible Americans employed – was 60.5% in November. It has nearly returned to where it was before the COVID pandemic began (61.1%).

Can Biden recover?

There are nearly 11 months left before the general election. Economic pessimism may be lifted if there are more months where real wages increase substantially, and this should help Biden if it occurs.

Trump faces four separate court trials over alleged election interference after the 2020 election federally and in Georgia, wrongful retention of classified documents after leaving office and hush money payments to a porn star.

Even if he is convicted, Trump can still run for president. But a conviction may hurt Trump’s standing in the polls. If Trump won, he could pardon himself of federal charges, but not of the Georgia election interference charges or the hush money charges (this is a New York state case).

So the biggest hopes of a Biden recovery are an improvement in economic sentiment before the election and a conviction for Trump. But Biden’s age isn’t going to improve.

Democratic chances of holding the presidency could improve if Biden withdrew and allowed Democrats to select a replacement. For this to happen, Biden would need to withdraw before the Democratic convention on August 19–22 2024.

Adrian Beaumont 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. US elections 2024: a Biden vs Trump rematch is very likely, with Trump leading Biden – https://theconversation.com/us-elections-2024-a-biden-vs-trump-rematch-is-very-likely-with-trump-leading-biden-219093

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland and General Dentist., The University of Queensland

A healthy smile helps us live long, well and happy lives. But just like our bodies, our teeth succumb to age-related changes.

So what happens to teeth as you age? And what can you do to ensure your smile lasts the distance?

First, what are teeth made of?

The tooth crown is covered by a hard enamel coat that surrounds softer, brown dentine, which protects a centrally located pulp.

Enamel is a complex weave of brittle, honeycomb-clustered strands that interact with light to make teeth appear opalescent (a pearly, milky iridescence).

Dentine under enamel forms most of the tooth crown and root, and is made of collagen, mineral, water and proteins. Collagen strands are woven to stretch and spring back, to prevent teeth from cracking and breaking when we grind and chew.

Read more:
Curious Kids: what is inside teeth?

The pulp has blood vessels and nerves that communicate with the rest of your body.

Enmeshed in the dentine mineral and collagen are small, interconnected tubules formed by specialised cells called odontoblasts that settle around the pulp, once our teeth completely form.

Each tooth contains a finite number of odontoblasts, unlike the constantly replenished special bone cells that renew.

How do our teeth change as we age?

Unable to renew, our teeth become brittle, and prone to fracture as dentine loses its spring.

This is more common in teeth with existing crack lines, large fillings or root canal treatments.

With time, the outer surface of enamel thins to reveal the relatively opaque dentine that darkens as we age.

The dentine darkens because the collagen weave stiffens and shrinks, and the fluid in the tubules fills with mineral.

The odontoblasts continue to form dentine inside the tooth to reduce the translucent pulp space. The increase in dentine makes our teeth appear opaque and insulates from hot and cold sensations. This is why X-rays are useful to detect cavities we may not feel.

Food and drink particles fill micro-gaps and age-related fine crack lines that run up and down enamel to discolour and stain. These stains are easily managed by tooth whitening.

How else can you extend the life of your teeth and brighten your smile? Here are seven tips to avoid dental decline:

1. Avoid unnecessary forces

Avoid using your teeth to hold things such as working tools or to open packaging.

Take measures to avoid forces such as grinding or clenching by wearing a night guard.

If you have large fillings or root canal-treated teeth, speak to your dentist about specific filling materials or crowns that can protect your teeth from cracking or breaking.

2. Share the load

If you are missing molars or premolars, distribute chewing forces evenly to prevent overloading your remaining teeth.

Replace missing teeth with bridges, implants or well-fitted dentures to support your bite. Get your dentures checked regularly to ensure they fit and support adequately, and replace them at least every ten years.

3. Preserve your enamel

Reduce further enamel and dentine loss by selecting soft-bristled tooth brushes and non-abrasive toothpastes.

Certain whitening toothpastes can be abrasive, which can roughen and wear the tooth surfaces. If you are unsure, stick with toothpastes that are labelled “sensitive”.

Read more:
How to brush your teeth properly, according to a dentist

Reduce your exposure to acid in food (think lemons or apple cider vinegar) or illness (reflux or vomiting) where possible to maintain enamel and prevent erosion.

4. Enhance your saliva

Saliva protects against acid attacks, flushes our teeth, and has antibacterial properties to reduce erosion and decay (holes forming).

Saliva is also important to help us chew, swallow and speak.

But our saliva quality and quantity reduces because of age-related changes to our salivary glands as well as certain medications prescribed to manage chronic illnesses such as depression and high blood pressure.

Speak to your doctor about other medication options to improve your saliva or manage reflux disease to prevent erosion.

5. Treat gum disease

Aesthetically, treating gum disease (periodontitis) reduces gum shrinkage (recession) that typically exposes the relatively darker tooth roots that are more prone to developing holes.

6. Manage and prevent senescence

Cellular senescence is the process that changes DNA in our cells to reduce our ability to withstand physical, chemical or biological damage.

Cellular senescence enhances new cancer formation, the spread of existing cancers and the onset of chronic illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, osteoporosis and heart disease.

You can prevent cell damage by managing lifestyle factors such as smoking, uncontrolled diabetes and chronic infections such as gum disease.

7. Adapt and ask for help

Ageing can affect our cognition, hand dexterity and eyesight to prevent us from cleaning our teeth and gums as effectively as we once could.

If this describes you, talk to your dental care team. They can help clean your teeth, and recommend products and tools to fit your situation and abilities.

Read more:
Reform delay causes dental decay. It’s time for a national deal to fund dental care

Arosha Weerakoon’s PhD research was funded by the UQ School of Dentistry Research Fund and Colgate Palmolive Australia.

– ref. What happens to teeth as you age? And how can you extend the life of your smile? – https://theconversation.com/what-happens-to-teeth-as-you-age-and-how-can-you-extend-the-life-of-your-smile-215786

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Woodcock, Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney

Christmas, we’re told, is the most wonderful time of the year. For many of us, however, it is preceded by one of the least wonderful times: the awkward social spectacle of the office Secret Santa or Kris Kringle, where employees agree to purchase a gift for a randomly allocated colleague.

As you watch your co-workers unwrap their often wildly inappropriate gifts, each chosen by a office mate they barely know, cast your mind to the sheer statistical improbability of what you’re seeing. The odds of such a combination of these cheaply re-gifted photograph frames, inexplicably scented candles or unwanted Lynx Africa gift sets being passed around your office is, in its own way, truly a Christmas miracle.

The 12! ways of Christmas?

To work out how many possible pairings of buyers and recipients there are, you need to calculate the number of permutations of the people involved.

Consider a workplace with four employees. If there is no rule to prevent people selecting their own names, there are four people who could be selected to buy the first person’s gift.

Once this is decided, there are three remaining choices for the second person, then two choices for the third person. Finally, there is one choice for the last person’s workplace Santa.

This means there are 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 24 possible permutations. Mathematicians write this as 4!, which is pronounced “four factorial”.

However, factorials soon get out of hand. Spare a thought for poor Santa himself. With nine reindeer, there are 9! = 362,880 ways these could be arranged, although perhaps on one foggy Christmas Eve, this number is reduced by the requirement to have a red nose leading his sleigh.

Once the office workforce swells to 20, there are more than 2.4 quintillion permutations. To put this mind-boggling 20! figure into context, that’s more than three times current estimates of the number of grains of sand on Earth.

Yule buy for someone else

Of course, nobody wants to draw themselves in a Secret Santa.

What a Secret Santa really wants is not a permutation of all employees, but instead what mathematicians call a derangement. This is simply a permutation where no element remains in its original position, which means no employee has to buy their own gift.

The calculation is far from simple, but the number of ways n employees can be assigned another unique co-worker is called the n th de Montmort number.

Read more:
The mathematics of Christmas: A review of the Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus

Amazingly, this is equal to n!/e , rounded to the nearest whole number. The e here is one of the most famous numbers in mathematics, Euler’s number, approximately equal to 2.71828, and the bane of anyone whose schooldays involved logarithm tables.

In the 24 permutations of four employees illustrated, there are 9 derangements, which is equal to 24/e rounded to the nearest whole number. For large numbers, approximately 63.2% of possible permutations are not derangements and so would be excluded.

For a 20-employee situation, this cuts the over 2.4 quintillion permutations to a mere 895 quadrillion or so. (This is still more than 100 million times the current global population.)

Uniquely self-Santa-ed?

Another surprising feature of a Secret Santa arises from the number of people who will, on average, be assigned their own name in a random draw.
It doesn’t matter if you have one person (although that is a terribly un-secret and desperately sad Secret Santa) or a billion people, the expected number of people to be allocated to buy their own gift is the same – just one person.

A full proof is a little more complicated than this, but think what happens if you double the number of employees. With twice as many gifts to buy, everybody’s chance of selecting themselves is halved. Twice as many people, each with half the chance of matching, then gives an unchanged average.

Read more:
How to play and win the gift-stealing game Bad Santa, according to a mathematician

For example, of the 24 permutations of four people illustrated, one involves four self-matches, none involve three self-matches, six involve two self matches and eight involve a single self-match. In total, this gives 24 possible self-matches in the 24 permutations, so an average of one each.

Ho Ho Hope for the best

If you do find yourself trapped in the dystopian office whodunit of guessing which of your co-workers gifted a hunky shirtless firefighter calendar to an elderly colleague from human resources, at least hope that the one-in-a-billion or one-in-trillion permutation that was drawn in your office lands you something useful.

Mariah Carey may have assured us of more specific requests, but all I want for Christmas is avoid getting dragged into a workplace Secret Santa in the first place.

Bah humbug indeed.

Stephen Woodcock does not receive funding from Santa Claus or any other relevant external party. He has remained off Santa’s Naughty List for over 40 years.

– ref. 20 people, 2.4 quintillion possibilities: the baffling statistics of Secret Santa – https://theconversation.com/20-people-2-4-quintillion-possibilities-the-baffling-statistics-of-secret-santa-218802

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor emerita, University of Sydney

The release of detainees as a consequence of the High Court’s decision in NZYQ v Minister for Immigration resulted in a frenzy of law-making, which is likely to rebound to the High Court in further constitutional challenges.

What are the issues and the risks?

The constitutional issues

In both the NZYQ case and previous cases, the High Court has held that, apart from some identified exceptions (such as mental health and infectious disease), the involuntary detention of a person amounts to punishment. According to the doctrine of separation of powers, it is exclusively the job of the courts to judge and punish criminal guilt.

However, the executive government, under statutory authority, can validly detain non-citizens for the purpose of processing their claims for entry into Australia and for the purpose of deporting them.

In NZYQ the court decided that if deportation was not “practicable in the reasonably foreseeable future”, then the detention was no longer for this “legitimate non-punitive purpose”. Therefore, it would be treated by default as “punishment”, which only a court can impose.

The High Court made its order to release a detainee, NZYQ, on November 8. In doing so, it declared that certain sections of the Migration Act could not validly support his detention.

This meant these same provisions could no longer support the detention of other detainees in the same position as NZYQ – that is, non-citizens for whom there was no real prospect of being deported in the reasonably foreseeable future.

As governments have to obey the law and cannot unlawfully detain people, the detainees were released.

Read more:
What is the government’s preventative detention bill? Here’s how the laws will work and what they mean for Australia’s detention system

The first response – strict visa conditions

The parliament initially responded by enacting a law to impose very strict visa conditions on this released group of non-citizens. It introduced a new bridging visa, which imposed restrictions on the holder’s movements, work and contact with others. It was rushed through both Houses of Parliament in just one day – November 16.

When it was introduced, the bill permitted the minister, at his or her discretion, to impose curfews on the visa holders and electronic monitoring of them through ankle bracelets.

The minister said a rigorous assessment process would be undertaken to identify those individuals who posed a particular risk to the community. The individual circumstances and risk profile of the visa-holder as well as community safety would be considered.

By the end of the day, this provision was amended so the minister must impose curfews and electronic monitoring “unless the Minister is satisfied that the holder does not pose a risk to the community”. Other changes included imposing mandatory minimum sentences of a year’s imprisonment for breaches of visa conditions, and making separate offences for each day an offence continues.

Criticism of the law

As the bill was introduced and passed so quickly, it was not the subject of serious parliamentary scrutiny. However, a Senate standing committee later published its analysis of the law. This Liberal-chaired committee criticised the speed with which the bill was passed, noting that it impeded the proper scrutiny of the serious impacts of the bill on personal rights and liberties.

The committee also raised concerns about the lack of procedural fairness, proportionality and clarity of the provisions. It pointed out that the automatic imposition of these visa conditions “may prove to be disproportionate responses to community risk in their application to individual circumstances and cases”.

Legal challenges to the new law

At least three challenges to the validity of these visa conditions, including curfews and electronic monitoring, have been initiated in the High Court.

They raise the questions of:

• whether the executive government, rather than a court, can impose these restrictions on a person’s liberty

• whether such restrictions are really for legitimate protective purposes if applied “across the board” with little or no consideration of the risk an individual may pose to the community

• whether the imposition of mandatory restrictions on a person’s liberty, without considering their appropriateness to each individual, amounts to punishment.

The concern that these visa conditions are being applied with little consideration of public risk or the appropriateness of their application is supported by the fact that, as at November 27 2023, 132 of the 138 people released from immigration detention were subject to electronic monitoring.

The minister also said in a press conference that “the curfew and electronic monitoring conditions generally would apply across the board”.

The second response – preventive detention

In its NZYQ judgment, the High Court stated that its order for the release of NZYQ would not prevent his detention “on some other applicable statutory basis, such as under a law providing for preventive detention of a child sex offender who presents an unacceptable risk of reoffending if released from custody”. Such laws already exist in the states.

It is important to note that the court did not say the Commonwealth Parliament has the power to enact such a law. Rather, that will depend on whether the law falls within a constitutional power conferred on the Commonwealth and whether it is consistent with the constitutional separation of powers.

The Commonwealth parliament nonetheless passed a preventive detention regime for non-citizens who have been convicted of a serious violent or sexual offence, and for whom there is no real prospect of deportation in the reasonably foreseeable future.

A state or territory Supreme Court may issue a detention order if it is “satisfied to a high degree of probability, on the basis of admissible evidence, that the offender poses an unacceptable risk of seriously harming the community by committing a serious violent or sexual offence”.

This regime is based on one that already exists in relation to terrorism offenders, and has withstood challenge. It is therefore more likely to survive a challenge based on the separation of powers.

But there are differences between the two regimes.

The terrorism one is supported by the federal parliament’s power to make laws about defence.

The one for non-citizens will have to rely instead on the power to make laws about aliens. This power covers matters such as deporting non-citizens or putting conditions on their entry to Australia. But is is not clear whether it can be used to make laws about criminal matters unrelated to the status of being an “alien”.

Another significant difference is that this preventive detention scheme applies to people who have completed their sentences and been released into the community, possibly for many years. Whether a court would regard this as undermining the “legitimate non-punitive purpose” of the law, or just a factor for consideration in deciding on the level of risk, remains to be seen.

Back to the courts

The great risk of passing legislation in haste in response to a court decision is that one may end up back in court with unconstitutional legislation. This may create a spiral of litigation and legislation.

The fact that the Senate committee could carefully and moderately analyse the problems with such legislation shows there is capacity, outside of the sound and fury of politics, for parliament to operate in a considered and effective manner.

If parliament listened to its committees and focused on the effectiveness, fairness and validity of its laws, rather than point-scoring, the nation would be better served.

Anne Twomey has received funding from the ARC and sometimes does consultancy work for governments, parliaments and inter-governmental bodies. She is also a part-time consultant at Gilbert Tobin lawyers, which does some pro bono work for refugees.

– ref. New laws to deal with immigration detainees were rushed, leading to legal risks – https://theconversation.com/new-laws-to-deal-with-immigration-detainees-were-rushed-leading-to-legal-risks-219384

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Buddhi Wijesiri, Research Associate in Water and Environmental Engineering, Queensland University of Technology

When it rains, stormwater runs down surfaces like streets and parking lots and into drains. Most of the time, we see it as a problem because it can cause floods. Recent storms across eastern Australia created huge amounts of stormwater and flooding.

At such times, stormwater is seen as a problem. But it’s also the last untapped source of water available for cities.

We all know how important it is to have enough water for our needs. But did you know our growing cities might struggle to get enough clean water in future?

Stormwater is a hidden treasure, and we’re not making the most of it.

Read more:
The dams are full for now – but Sydney will need new water supplies as rainfall becomes less reliable

Why do we need to tap stormwater?

More people are moving to cities in Australia and worldwide. They all need clean water. By 2050, 30 million of Australia’s population and 6.6 billion globally will live in urban areas.

But climate change and population growth are making it harder for cities to meet the demand for clean water.

In coming years, Australia’s weather will be a bit strange. We’ll have longer dry periods with brief periods of intense rainfall. It’s like the weather is playing a game of “now you see it, now you don’t” – and it will test our capacity to supply enough clean water for everyone.

To make matters worse, current solutions such as desalination and treating wastewater are very expensive, energy-intensive and are not the greenest options.

Researchers have found a way to collect and clean stormwater without damaging our natural environment or our wallets. They call it “nature-based solutions”. It’s like giving stormwater a makeover.

This approach can not only give us more clean water but also helps stop pollution and flooding. It’s a win for everyone.

Read more:
Desalinating seawater sounds easy, but there are cheaper and more sustainable ways to meet people’s water needs

A lot of water and money at stake

Back in 2015, an Australian Senate report said we should do more research to manage stormwater better.

One reason is that water clean-up is expensive. Australia spends around A$9 billion a year on water and wastewater treatment.

Another reason is the waste of water. We let 3,000 billion litres – that’s a lot of water – of urban stormwater go into rivers and seas without cleaning it. This not only damages our water ecosystems but is throwing away a potentially precious resource.

Read more:
When water is scarce, we can’t afford to neglect the alternatives to desalination

Learning from nature

Nature-based solutions are nature-inspired, engineered systems for tackling water issues in cities.

Natural wetlands, for instance, can hold huge amounts of water, release it slowly, prevent flooding and even make the water cleaner as it works its way through soil and plants. Now cities like Melbourne in Australia, Auckland in New Zealand and so-called “sponge cities” in China have adopted this idea by constructing wetlands in urban areas.

Diving further into how these nature-based solutions can solve stormwater problems, we’re also talking about green walls, bioswales (fancy ditches with plants), green roofs and permeable pavements.

And there’s a star among them – biofiltration systems. Biofilters clean polluted waters by passing it through soil, with plants and microorganisms helping to remove pollutants.

These systems are like water-treatment wizards. They can handle polluted waters in different situations, from regular stormwater to intermittent stormwater and wastewater, even when big storms produce a challenging mix of sewage and stormwater.

Nature-based systems can be designed to clean stormwater and meet various water quality standards. This means we can treat stormwater to meet the strictest standards, like those needed for drinking water (though more work is needed to reach that ambitious goal). Or we can treat it to meet lower standards suitable for other uses such as watering lawns and sports grounds.

In any case, treated stormwater can be safely released into receiving waters without significant risks to aquatic environments.

Read more:
Creating ‘sponge cities’ to cope with more rainfall needn’t cost billions – but NZ has to start now

What challenges remain?

There are still some challenges to overcome.

One big challenge involves figuring out how polluted stormwater is. We’re getting better with sensors that can check water depth and electrical conductivity in stormwater. These help us understand the amount of stormwater we have and get a rough idea of the pollution level.

However, we need to make these sensors even better to detect and measure toxic pollutants such as heavy metals and hydrocarbons, which are commonly found in stormwater. This will help us design treatment systems that really work.

Cleaning stormwater using nature-based methods is good, but some specific pollutants aren’t removed fully. We can make these methods better by changing how we design them. For example, we can improve how we filter pollutants and find better plants and microbes that can absorb and remove more toxic substances from the water.

Besides the usual pollutant removal methods, there are some promising ideas like the Anammox process – short for anaerobic ammonium oxidation – which relies on bacteria to help get rid of nitrogen. We need to figure out how to use these bacteria in nature-based stormwater treatment systems.

Read more:
Stormwater innovations mean cities don’t just flush rainwater down the drain

We also need to know more about how pollution works. The existing tools (mathematical models) aren’t perfect. Modelling tools must be developed so they can consider all the different sources of pollution, estimate how bad it is, and deal with its unpredictability. This will help us use stormwater better, especially with cities growing fast and weird weather happening.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, governments and people need to understand that providing clean water for everyone is essential. But progress is slow, and one reason is we’re not putting enough effort into using stormwater as a solution. Governments need to invest in research and convince the public it’s a smart move.

Buddhi Wijesiri has received funding from Queensland Urban Utilities.

– ref. Our cities will need to harvest stormwater in an affordable and green way – here’s how – https://theconversation.com/our-cities-will-need-to-harvest-stormwater-in-an-affordable-and-green-way-heres-how-216363

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jodi McAlister, Senior Lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture, Deakin University

“I’ve actually never had a girlfriend,” 32-year-old Bachelor Wesley Senna Cortes told contestant Brea Marshall in the second episode of the most recent season of The Bachelors Australia.

Obviously, I grew up with Christian values and trying to do the right thing and not be another reason for girls not to trust men […] I never saw myself as being a one-night-stand guy and, matter of fact, I’ve actually never had sex.

These twin disclosures – of Cortes’ lack of relationships and sexual experience – have formed the foundation of his narrative as one of the three leads in this season of Australia’s longest-running reality romance format.

He is an unusual figure not just in comparison to his fellow leads, Ben Waddell and Luke Bateman, but in reality television more broadly, where adult male virgins – particularly adult male virgins cast as romantic leads – are not commonly seen.

Male virgins in reality romance shows

This is not to say Cortes is a unicorn. There have been other male virgins on Australian reality romance shows and in The Bachelor franchise.

In 2019, then 29-year-old Matthew Bennett was one of the grooms on the sixth season of Married At First Sight. He disclosed to his TV wife, Lauren Huntriss, he was still a virgin, and later lost his virginity to her on their honeymoon.

The poster for the 23rd season of The Bachelor US (also 2019) closely mirrored that of the 2005 film The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and included the tagline, “What does he have to lose?”

Later, in his pointedly titled book The First Time: Finding Myself and Looking for Love on Reality TV, star Colton Underwood disclosed he lost his virginity, like Bennett, under the auspices of the show, sleeping with his eventual partner, Cassie Randolph.

It seems unlikely Cortes’ narrative in The Bachelors Australia will follow the same path.

For one, unlike Married at First Sight and the US iteration of The Bachelor, the Australian Bachelor franchise does not include sex as a narrative milestone (in the US, this is referred to as the “fantasy suite”). Secondly, he appears to embody “virgin” as an identity in a different way.

Read more:
From Bachelor to The Bachelors – why Australia’s longest running dating show has updated the old formula

Ways of being a virgin

Broadly speaking, sociological literature on virginity has identified two key virgin identity types: adamant virgins and potential non-virgins.

Adamant virgins have made an active decision not to have sex (often until marriage). Potential non-virgins, by contrast, have not made this decision, but have not found themselves in an appropriate situation.

Virgins in the first category often make their choice for religious or moral reasons. Those in the second category are often waiting for the right partner.

While their narratives of virginity are not as clear-cut as these two tidy identity categories, arguably both Bennett and Underwood were potential non-virgins.

“It was never a conscious choice to still be a virgin at 29,” Bennett said in his Married at First Sight audition tape.

It was just an unfortunate side effect of walling myself off from any sort of vulnerability, being social and dating.

Underwood, unlike Bennett, is openly Christian, and this was often assumed to be the reason for his maintained virginity. However, he offered a different one after breaking up with Randolph and coming out as gay in 2021:

I could never give anybody a good answer of why I was a virgin. The truth is I was a virgin Bachelor because I was gay, and I didn’t know how to handle it.

Cortes, however, seems to occupy the first category. He is a devout Christian and these religious convictions seem to have underpinned an active choice.

This makes him an adamant virgin – something of a problem for many of the women paired with him on the show.

Virginity loss narratives

Sociologist Laura Carpenter outlines three key ways in which people tend to think about virginity loss: as a gift (something to be valued), as a stigma (something to be disposed of as soon as possible), and as part of a process (a rite of passage in a broader process of sexual maturation).

Many more men than women, she notes, tend to view their virginity in terms of stigma – as something “abnormal and in need of explanation”. This, paired with a widespread toxic assumption that virginity loss can make a boy a man, means male virginity in particular can be pathologised.

Unlike Underwood’s season of The Bachelor US, The Bachelors Australia has not sought to fetishise nor especially belabour Cortes’ virgin identity (unlike the way it approached the narrative of polyamorous contestant Jessica Navin in the previous season). Instead, his lack of relationship and sexual experience has been treated as a problem of compatibility with many of the female contestants.

Both Marshall, to whom he initially disclosed his virginity, and fellow contestant Jade Wilden have asked Cortes how comfortable he would be sexually progressing with a partner.

“I was nervous […] that he might progress too quickly, and […] now I’m nervous he won’t progress at all,” Marshall said. Wilden appeared to share that fear, especially when Cortes stated he would not want to move in with a partner before marriage.

If we think of virginity loss as a step in a process, this compatibility concern arises from a worry from these potential partners that they and Cortes might be at very different – possibly irreconcilable – steps in that process.

In the season premiere, the show teased the strong possibility one of the three Bachelors might end the show heartbroken. It will be interesting to see, given these narratives of potential mismatch developing around Cortes, whether that man will be him.

Read more:
Is The Bachelor anti-feminist, or is conventional heterosexual romance the real problem?

Jodi is the author of Here For The Right Reasons, Can I Steal You For A Second? and Not Here To Make Friends, three novels set on a reality romance show.

– ref. He’s the romantic lead but has never had sex: what The Bachelors has to say about virginity – https://theconversation.com/hes-the-romantic-lead-but-has-never-had-sex-what-the-bachelors-has-to-say-about-virginity-219494

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Veal, Adjunct Professor, Business School, University of Technology Sydney

The federal minister for sport, Anika Wells, recently launched a discussion paper for a new National Plan for Sport, which will be the fourth such plan produced since 2001.

These plans typically have two main goals: to promote success in elite sport, particularly internationally, and to increase grassroots participation in sport by Australian children and adults.

They’re important policy documents because, ideally, they should play a major role in deciding federal sports funding across the country.

But historically, the plans have failed to get more adults into community sport. So how does this one stack up? And will it be any different?

Read more:
Which sports are best for health and long life?

A history of plans with mixed results

Since 2001, governments of the day have released four national plans. All of them have tried to get more people aged 15 and over into sport, but they’ve expressed that aim differently:

In the 2001 plan under the Coalition government, the second goal was to “significantly increase the number of people participating in sport right across Australia”.

A decade later, the Labor government adopted a new plan. Its first objective was to “increase participation in sport and active recreation”.

The Coalition government released the Sport 2030 plan in 2018, wanting “more Australians, more active, more often”. This time there was a target: increase participation by 15% by 2030.

Which brings us to the most recent discussion paper from the current government. It aims to “maximise access and rates of participation and other involvement in sport and physical activity”.

The Australian Sports Commission, the government’s main sports promotion agency, has also published Australia’s Sports Participation Strategy, which speaks of fostering “greater engagement and participation in sport across the nation”.

Read more:
What makes kids want to drop out of sport, and how should parents respond?

Stagnant sporting numbers

While all sound noble in their goals, the plans so far have failed to increase participation.

This is demonstrated in the diagram, which uses data from the Australian Sports Commission’s annual surveys of up to 20,000 adults.

It indicates the proportion of the adult population engaging in sport and physical activity with varying frequency (from three or more times a week to none at all) over the periods 2003–10 and 2016–23 (there were no comparable surveys in 2011-15).

The results for the two periods cannot be directly compared due to differing survey methodologies. However, the trends within each period were similar: no increase in participation.

The question arises: will the outcomes of the new plan be any different? The answer: probably not.

Policy documents lacking in data

There are many reasons why it’s likely this plan won’t fare much better than previous attempts.

First, planning documents produced by ministers and the sports commission typically fail to admit to the central problem: 20 years (and more) of policy effort have failed to move the dial on grassroots sport participation in Australia.

The data showing this does not appear anywhere in the current published planning documents. In fact, despite the commitment to increasing sport participation, neither of the two documents presents any data on current or past adult sport participation rates.

Second, it is not clear what exactly the plan will set out to do. For example, in the diagram, there is a persistent 10–15% of the population who engage in no sport or physical recreation activity at all. Is the aim to reduce the size of this group? The documents don’t say.

Read more:
Many Australian kids abused in sport won’t ever speak up. It’s time we break the silence

On the other hand, the group that participates less than once a week could be targeted to increase the frequency of participation, thus gaining more health benefits.

The emphasis in the documents, however, is on inclusivity, which implies the problem lies with groups being excluded on grounds of such characteristics as ethnicity, disability or gender.

This focus is of course commendable on grounds of equity. However, this policy stance has been in place in sport plans since 2001 but, according to the sports commission’s own survey evidence, overall participation hasn’t budged.

In the case of disability and ethnicity, the various groups’ participation rates have barely changed.

Gender is an exception, with five of the seven surveys since 2016 seeing higher female participation rates than men. However, neither the continuing problems with disability and ethnicity nor the apparent success story in regard to gender is discussed in the current planning documents.

Finally, it is possible governments don’t take sport policy seriously, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the sector by the federal government each year. After all, it’s millions, not billions.

With policies expressed only in general terms and no attempt to measure specific policy outcomes, there is no obligation to assess the collective effects of grants programs on sport participation.

The more cynical among us may think, then, that grants can be allocated to maximise political, rather than sporting benefits. Such allegations have been levelled before, particularly during the sports rorts saga.

As long as the policies remain imprecise and unmeasurable, only the government and the sports commission get to decide whether they’re working. They might well have a different definition of success to the rest of us.

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

– ref. The new national plan for sport has no measurable targets – exactly how politicians like it – https://theconversation.com/the-new-national-plan-for-sport-has-no-measurable-targets-exactly-how-politicians-like-it-219219

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Biles, Associate Dean Indigenous & Senior Scientia Lecturer., UNSW Sydney

For First Nations people, social and emotional wellbeing can depend on connection to land, culture, spirituality and community. Disruption to these values can be harmful.

The most recent data show 24% of First Nations adults have been diagnosed with mental health or behavioural conditions. This is likely due to lasting and intergenerational effects of historical injustices, racial discrimination and cultural displacement.

Through our research we have found First Nations physical activity programs can improve social and emotional wellbeing. These programs enhance confidence and self-esteem, improve community cohesiveness and cultural identity, and deepen connection to Country.

Read more:
First Nations kids are more active when their parents are happy and supported

Physical activity for First Nations people

We know physical activity can improve mental health and wellbeing. It can also prevent and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Cultural physical activity (hunting, gathering, customary activities and connecting with Country) has been a part of First Nations people’s lifestyles for tens of thousands of years. These practices still hold cultural relevance today.

Going on Country has benefits for physical, social, emotional and cultural wellbeing for First Nations people. These include a healthier diet, more frequent exercise, sharing of culture, more family time, and spiritual connection.

A review of physical activity programs for First Nations people identified 110 different programs running between 2012 and 2015. Most of these programs are still running in 2023.

Our recent review found First Nations physical activity programs improved confidence and self-esteem, improved community and cultural connections, and deepened connection to Country. These findings are based on available evidence on the relationship between physical activity and First Nations social and emotional wellbeing. The review examined nine physical activity programs and initiatives which aimed to improve social and emotional wellbeing among First Nations people.

The programs we looked at were First Nations-specific physical activity programs and included women’s programs, camps, sports teams and coaching courses.

What doesn’t work

Programs that do not centre First Nations community involvement and connection are unlikely to be well received or effective. These programs often have barriers to participation such as lack of transport, high program costs, or may clash with family and community commitments.

Racism within programs and services can stop First Nations people accessing them. It can also affect physical and mental health – potentially leading to anxiety, depression, smoking, psychological distress and poor sleeping patterns.

What does work

Culturally safe physical activity programs that are community-led and adopt First Nations values are effective in improving social and emotional wellbeing.

An example of such a program is Dead or Deadly. This program has seen over 648 First Nations women participate in personalised health and wellbeing programs. Women participate in group exercise, health education and camps where they improve fitness, reduce smoking, reduce chronic disease indicators, reduce psychological distress and increase resilience.

A quote from one of the participants highlights the positive effects of the program, which can help participants …

[…] live through anything that is put in front of them. Survive the violence; learn to live through anything. Beauty of being a cultural person; culture makes you stronger.

Another is Deadly Choices, run by the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health. The program started as a social program and included community events which focused on health education and health screening. These include making choices to stop smoking, to eat healthy food and to exercise daily. It helps people improve their knowledge of chronic disease risk factors and encourages engagement with local health services. It has been running since 2010, and programs and events include sport and recreation, cooking programs, and programs to help quit smoking.

Another key part of this program is the Deadly Choices social networking site where First Nations identity and culture is celebrated, and online yarning takes place to create and build an online community to speak about healthy choices.

Support from family and friends and opportunities to connect with community and culture are also essential for programs to work. An example of this is the Fitzroy Stars Football & Netball Club – a First Nations club based in Melbourne. Through football and netball, the club aims to increase health, increase positive parenting and strengthen the First Nations community of Melbourne. This is done through increasing cultural values and strong community connections within the team.

These cultural values include the sharing and representation of cultural knowledge through making sure family and community are at the heart of the club. Some participants spoke about feeling a sense of cultural identity and pride when representing their family groups and saw football as an opportunity to give back to their community.

Development, implementation and evaluation of physical activity programs need to be informed by First Nations people. And First Nations knowledge, cultural beliefs and practices need to be valued. This is the only way to ensure positive changes in social and emotional wellbeing.

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

– ref. When physical activity programs include cultural elements, they are even better for First Nations people – https://theconversation.com/when-physical-activity-programs-include-cultural-elements-they-are-even-better-for-first-nations-people-219108

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

The federal budget is headed for a small $1.1 billion deficit this financial year, according to the update released by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher on Wednesday morning.

This is an improvement of $12.8 billion compared to the deficit forecast in the May budget.

It suggests the final figure for the financial year might end up a surplus. If so, that would be the second year the Albanese government delivered a surplus.

Anxious to continue the fight against inflation, the government has not used the update to provide any cost-of-living relief or make new announcements. It has concentrated on improving the budget bottom line.

It has returned 92% of the upward revisions in revenue since the budget to the bottom line.

The Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) shows deficits across all four years of the forward estimates. But over these years, the forecast underlying cash balance improves by a cumulative $39.5 billion compared to what was projected in the May budget.

Total receipts are projected to be $67.3 billion higher than the budget forecast. A strong labour market and high commodity prices have contributed to the improved revenue.

A further $9.8 billion has been identified in savings and reprioritisations since the budget. This has brought the total to nearly $50 billion since the election.

Net new spending since the budget is $650 million in 2023-24.

Chalmers and Gallagher said in a statement that in face of high but moderating inflation, high interest rates and global uncertainty the Australian economy was slowing.

“Growth is forecast to moderate in the near-term as these pressures weigh on domestic activity.” they said.

The economy is expected to grow by 1.75% in 2023-24 before regaining momentum in 2024-25, when improved real incomes are expected to support a recovery in household consumption.

While global oil prices have put upward pressure on inflation in the near-term, Treasury has not changed its forecast timetable for inflation’s return to the 2-3% target band.

The ministers said: “We know many Australians are doing it very tough, but welcome and encouraging progress is being made […] in the fight against inflation and in the economy more broadly”.

Unemployment, which was 3.7% in October, is forecast to rise to 4.25% by the end of this financial year. The unemployment forecast hasn’t changed since the budget.

Gross debt as a share of GDP is expected to peak at 35.4% of GDP in 2027-28, then decline to 32.1% by the end of the medium term.

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. Budget update forecasts deficit of $1.1 billion this financial year – https://theconversation.com/budget-update-forecasts-deficit-of-1-1-billion-this-financial-year-219799

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Reynolds, Adjunct lecturer and nutritionist, UNSW Sydney

What we eat matters – not just for our health, but for the planet and other living things too.

Most of us know meat consumption contributes to global warming and many of us are aware of animal cruelty and human exploitation in global food supply chains.

So what are some ways we can use our “fork power” to make our Christmas lunch more ethical this year?

Read more:
Stressful Christmas? How meditation can (and can’t) help you through a nightmare lunch

1. Replace your turkey or ham with a vegetarian dish

Vegetarian options are not boring or tasteless — just look at this festive squash and chestnut roast.

A plant-focused diet has strong environmental benefits. Livestock not only produce greenhouse gas when they burp, they take up huge amounts of land and fresh water.

Reducing the number of animal products on your plate also reduces the likelihood you are contributing to the suffering of animals. Even though many countries have ethical standards for the treatment of farm animals, these are not always followed, and many of the practices considered legal still cause pain and suffering to animals.

While cutting out all animal products can be difficult, any reduction in consumption makes a difference. For example, consider swapping out the brie on your Christmas platter for hummus this year.

2. Choose ‘good fish’

Many of us don’t realise fish and other seafood is often sourced unsustainably, negatively impacting ocean ecosystems and wildlife. An Australian organisation called GoodFish produces a Sustainable Seafood Guide, where you can find out how ethical the fish you buy is.

Unfortunately, many salmon products are not as sustainable as companies claim them to be. In comparison, farmed Australian barramundi, Murray cod, prawns, oysters and mussels, and wild-caught Australian Eastern and Western rock lobsters are classified as better choices.

Additionally, an international not-for-profit organisation called the Marine Stewardship Council has an “MSC blue fish tick label” certification scheme, which endorses products from well-managed and sustainable fisheries. Have a look for MSC-certified frozen crumbed fish in your next shop.

Read more:
The psychology of Christmas shopping: how marketers nudge you to buy

3. Choose at least one organic item, such as your roast potatoes

Organic agriculture aims to produce food while establishing an ecological balance to prevent soil infertility or pest problems over the longer term. It strengthens the dynamics and carbon storage of soil, stops freshwater pollution with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, reduces the use of fossil fuels needed to produce these chemicals, and promotes biodiversity.

Yes, organic products are more expensive, but you will hopefully now feel they are worth it (you could also look out for organic produce that is reduced in price during “on special” promotions).

4. Choose Fairtrade chocolate

Of course, humans are heavily involved in the production, packaging and transport of the food we eat every day. Organisations such as Fairtrade Australia and New Zealand and Rainforest Alliance aim to improve the lives of rural farmers and workers in developing countries – who otherwise might get unfair deals for their produce and work (these organisations also target environmental issues).

You can buy Fairtrade- and Rainforest Alliance-certified products in supermarkets (and elsewhere), such as chocolate, coffee, tea – and even ice cream.

Similarly, there are companies called B Corps, or Certified B Corporations. These are organisations that also care about social and environmental issues. B Corp food products can also be found in supermarkets (and elsewhere), and include things like peanut butter and seaweed snacks.

Read more:
Should I lie to my child about Santa?

5. Make friends with your freezer

When we waste food, we are wasting the energy, land, water and chemicals that were used during the long process of getting it into your home.

Lots of us worry at Christmas about “having enough food for everyone”, and consequently buy too much. Why not talk through your menu plan with someone else before you go shopping, to check that you are not anxiety-buying to feed 50 people (instead of your extended family of ten).

But even with calm planning, you may still have leftover food. If this happens, you can get creative with using leftovers on Boxing Day (OzHarvest has some recipes online, including Christmas rockyroad), or you can preserve food to eat at a later date using your cool friend, the freezer.

Rebecca Reynolds owns DrRebeccaReynolds.com, a nutrition consultancy, and is an adjunct lecturer at UNSW Sydney.

– ref. 5 ways to make Christmas lunch more ethical this year – https://theconversation.com/5-ways-to-make-christmas-lunch-more-ethical-this-year-218351

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mattia Saccò, Lecturer in ecology, Curtin University

Groundwater is the world’s largest unfrozen freshwater reserve. Australia’s Great Artesian Basin alone holds enough water to fill Sydney Harbour 130,000 times. Worldwide, groundwater provides drinking water for half the world’s population. Countries like Denmark and Austria rely entirely on it for drinking water.

Globally, we pump almost 1,000 cubic kilometres of this ancient water each year. We’re using it far faster than it can naturally replenish. About a third of the world’s largest groundwater basins are in distress, meaning levels are continuously declining.

That’s bad news for the thousands of species living down there, including the cavefish, blind eels, blind beetles and translucent crustaceans that rely on groundwater.

There’s little to no protection in place for these species globally. But groundwater ecosystems play a vital role in surface ecosystems. Our new research shows groundwater supports areas of high surface biodiversity across one half of the world.

What crawls beneath

Recent estimates put the world’s number of animal species in freshwater and salty groundwater at upwards of 25,000. Most of these live in aquifers, not caves.

They range from microscopic beings to millimetre-long crustaceans to 40cm-long cavefish. We now know there are hotspots of groundwater biodiversity, such as the porous karstic environments of the Krim region in Slovenia and the Edwards aquifer in Texas, as well as three regions of Western Australia – the northwest’s Pilbara and Cape Range, and the Yilgarn region east of Perth.

In the northwest WA hotspots, you can find the blind cave eel (Ophisternon candidum), the longest cavefish in Australia, while the Yilgarn’s naturally cemented calcrete deposits are home to the world’s largest number of subterranean diving beetle species – 91 and counting.

How did these species get here? Some migrated in search of water and over time, evolved to thrive in these lightless conditions. They lose their eyes, drop the skin colour, increase in longevity, get better at finding food and mates using other senses, and become more resistant to starvation. For example, the olm (Proteus anguinus) – a cave salamander – can live beyond 100 years and survive food deprivation for 96 months or more without signs of illness.

Many of these ecosystems rely on microbes as the basic food source, with predators living off bacteriophages (bacteria eaters). These species can also provide essential services to us. Underground aquatic invertebrates – known as the “architects of the underworld” – actually keep aquifers working through their burrowing. Their diet of microbes cleans the water and keeps nutrient levels down.

Read more:
The Nullarbor’s rich cultural history, vast cave systems and unique animals all deserve better protection

Our research found surface ecosystems had a medium-high interconnection with groundwater across 52% of the Earth’s land. That figure rises to 75% when we exclude deserts and high mountains, where groundwater is either scarce or the water table can be very deep. Water can flow from lakes and rivers into groundwater, and groundwater can emerge to top up wetlands, rivers and lakes.

When we mapped groundwater biodiversity based on what we know from sampling as well as predictions based on global modelling, we found an overlap in over half the globe. That is, high surface biodiversity coincides with some degree of groundwater interactions.

Groundwater, for instance, supports huge numbers of above ground species in groundwater-dependent ecosystems such as forests, rivers, wetlands and springs. Underground species can provide nutrients, clean water and trace elements to surface ecosystems, while underground life also relies on water coming down from above.

What should we take from this?

Our research suggests we must not overlook the life beneath our feet. We believe these are keystone ecosystems, providing resources essential for other species.

Underground microbes degrade harmful contaminants, turn over carbon and even regulate dangerous viruses and microorganisms.

As invertebrates move, feed and breed underground, they help mix the water, dirt and rock, boosting nutrient cycling and helping to aerate the groundwater. The combined efforts of microbes and invertebrates act as a natural filtration and purification system, safeguarding the quality of groundwater resources.

That, in turn, means we should be careful about how much groundwater we extract.

In Australia, almost one-third of all our fresh water is pumped up from groundwater – over 5,000 gigalitres every year. This is beyond what nature can replenish in most regions.

In other countries, the problem is even worse – in India, for instance, most water used on farms comes from groundwater.

As the climate changes, rainfall patterns change too. The water doesn’t disappear, but it can move. Some areas will get drier, others hit by intense sudden rains. If rain is no longer reliable in an area, aquifers will not replenish as fast.

At present, the species in our groundwater are worryingly overlooked by environmental protection laws, both in Australia and worldwide. This hidden water is hard to access, and many of us simply don’t know about the life in groundwater – and the life it enables.

To fix it, we can move towards approaches which actively consider the ecological role of groundwater in the global water cycle – and which protect it.

Water, after all, is the basis of life on Earth. If we ignore the ecological integrity of the largest freshwater resource on Earth, we threaten the sustainability of entire ecosystems – and our own societies.

Read more:
Blind shrimps, translucent snails: the 11 mysterious new species we found in potential fracking sites

Mattia Saccò 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.

Stefano Mammola receives funding from Biodiversa+, the European Biodiversity Partnership under the 2021-2022 BiodivProtect joint call for research proposals, co-funded by the European Commission.

Robert Reinecke 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. We rely heavily on groundwater – but pumping too much threatens thousands of underground species – https://theconversation.com/we-rely-heavily-on-groundwater-but-pumping-too-much-threatens-thousands-of-underground-species-218919

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lorinda Cramer, Lecturer, Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies, Deakin University

In 1933, trousers rocked Australia.

They had entered the 20th century as a symbol of masculinity. Essential to the suit, trousers exuded power, professionalism and authority for the men who wore them.

But increasing numbers of Australian women had begun to slip on slacks.

Pants on women were immodest, some shouted. Others shuddered at what they considered unbecoming and unfeminine attire.

At the heart of the concern for women in slacks that rippled around Australia – including parliament where senators deliberated over whether they should be banned from Parliament House that year – was the challenge to gender norms.

(Women in pants would not be banned from entering Parliament House, though the requirement for “proper attire” meant they could be denied admission to the Senate galleries.)

For the women who adopted trousers, they meant something different: freedom of movement and steps towards equality.

Read more:
What is suffragette white? The colour has a 110-year history as a protest tool

1933: the shock of slacks

The month after Australian newspapers reported on the Senate ban, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail printed a slew of letters to the editor. People put pen to paper in horror or support of the wife of Brisbane’s Lord Mayor – the Lady Mayoress, Mrs J. W. Greene – who announced she would wear slacks to the beach. They were “so comfortable and so much the fashion”, she raved.

One writer insisted, however, “slacks are for men only. I say this not because I consider them immodest, but because women look far from attractive in them”. Others thought differently, reasoning that clothing needed to move with the times.

The die had been cast by German screen icon Marlene Dietrich. Three years earlier, Dietrich starred in Morocco, shocking some movie-goers by wearing a man’s tuxedo.

Charismatic, glamourous and androgynous, by the time Dietrich went on holiday in 1933 she packed no dresses in her luggage. She wore a dinner jacket and trousers instead.

As news of this attire rippled around the world, tailors were “rushed with orders for the Dietrich trousers of grey flannel”.

Melbourne department store Myer advertised “Marlene Dietrich slacks” in its mail order catalogue for spring-summer the following year. Offering more than grey flannel, they came in black, saxe (grey-blue), red, bottle (green), white and other colours.

Pushing the boundaries

Trouser-wearing women, however, have a much longer history in Australia. Although women wearing men’s clothes in the 19th century was often framed as a disguise – or worse, deception – they had different reasons for putting on pants.

Pants were practical as white settlers spread through the colonies. Annie Baxter Dawbin resized her husband’s trousers to move more freely on the land than when wearing full skirts.

Pants offered protection. “The female digger” described in 1853 in The Emigrant’s Guide to Australia cut her hair, then donned a broad brimmed hat and trousers. In “parting with my sex” as Harriet – or Mr Harry as she was known in this costume – put it, there was safety on the diggings.

Harriette Walters thought the same. Ellen Clacy described in her gold-rush account how Harriette “disguis[ed] her sex”: by adopting a masculine “colonial costume” that included “loose trowsers [sic]”, she passed as “a young lad”.

At this time, Amelia Bloomer, and her dress reform counterparts in America advocated for the “bloomer costume”. It included full trousers, gathered at the ankle, worn under a shorter skirt. Australian newspapers duly reported on the “novelty” that had “excited some curiosity on this side the Atlantic”.

As the 19th century neared its end, Australian women tested divided skirts for cycling and other activities. It was not until the 20th century, however, that women donned pants in any numbers.

Even in 1922, when the Evening News quizzed Sydney’s police on the law for women walking “the city streets in a pair of pants”, they admitted that while there were no prohibitions on trousers as ordinary street wear they were still a rare sight.

After the 1933 debates

While women in trousers were hotly debated in 1933, it took decades for pants-wearing to reach critical mass.

Some women contributed essential “manpower” to the second world war’s war effort in overalls and trousers.

Attitudes swung from admiration to concern when young women pulled on pants at the war’s end. Widgies, a 1950s youth subculture (with Bodgies their male counterparts), wore pedal-pushers and jeans as part of their “startling fashions” that caused moral panic.

The Mods of the 1960s embraced jeans, too, with some young women buying them from menswear departments or wearing “tomboy” trouser suits.

And slacks in stretch fabrics, for holiday or relaxed wear, rose in popularity that decade. Made from new synthetics, they tapered slimly to the legs and ankles. But even then, women wearing pants could be denied entry to venues with more conservative dress codes.

Trousers gained further ground in the 1970s with the women’s liberation movement. “Dress for comfort not for style”, one placard read at the International Women’s Day March in Melbourne in 1975, as its holder strode the streets in jeans – like many around her.

In the decades that followed, pants eased into popular wear. 90 years on from those 1933 debates, the question is no longer who wears the pants but who doesn’t.

Read more:
Friday essay: will the perfect men’s dress ever exist – and would men wear it?

Lorinda Cramer receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

This research was undertaken as a National Library of Australia Fellow.

– ref. Should women be allowed to wear pants? It was a topic of contention in Australian parliament in 1933 – https://theconversation.com/should-women-be-allowed-to-wear-pants-it-was-a-topic-of-contention-in-australian-parliament-in-1933-212604

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angelo Capuano, Law Lecturer, CQUniversity Australia

Imagine being the most qualified person for a job and not getting a call-back or not being selected for an interview.

As recruitment decisions shift from being based on assessing applicants’ traditional CVs to relying on information gleaned from technology, there is a risk qualified candidates will be filtered out because of their class, background or disability.

And perhaps even more worryingly, in some instances people may never know.

Employers are increasingly using technology to make, or assist with, recruitment decisions. Woolworths, Qantas and Afterpay have been reported to use bots to interview candidates while Hilton Australasia requires some applicants to create a TikTok video.

Other tools being used in modern day hiring include contextual recruitment systems, asynchronous video interviewing, gamification and social media.

Are we expecting too much of algorithms?

In my new book, I expose how some new recruitment technologies create unprecedented risks to equality in the workplace, with potential for discrimination.

Contextual recruitment systems is an algorithm used by a number of major employers, including law firms Allens Linklaters and Herbert Smith Freehills. It mines the demographic data of job candidates in an attempt to develop diverse workplaces. It helps recruiters identify so-called “hidden gems” from less privileged areas.

However, the algorithm can only assess data that is publicly available or volunteered. So it may not get an accurate picture of candidates who are in reality – as opposed to on paper – disadvantaged.

Instead, it may simply favour the stand out performers in settings it determines are less fortunate, to the detriment of those whose disadvantage cannot be measured by an algorithm.

Read more:
A survey of over 17,000 people indicates only half of us are willing to trust AI at work

Replacing face-to-face with face-to-video interviews

Human resources company HireVue’s asynchronous video interviewing tool, which uses AI to automate job interviews, is now being used by more than a hundred employers including Telstra.

Using the tool, prospective employers produce pre-recorded videos with questions for job applicants. Candidates can watch the video and then respond in their own time.

But this interviewing tool may disadvantage job candidates whose manner of speech and choice of words is associated with the working class. This is because the algorithm might favour candidates with cultivated language skills from professional households.

Gamification sounds like fun but can eliminate candidates

Then there is the increasing popularity of gamification, which involves filtering job candidates based on the results they get from playing online games. A number of employers, including ANZ, use this technique as part of the recruiting process.

But there are medical conditions which may affect a person’s ability to complete online games. For example, in the Pymetrics lengths game candidates are shown two similar images which have very subtle differences (for example, one picture of a cat with a short moustache and one picture of a cat with a long moustache). Candidates are asked to press a certain key on their keyboard when they see a particular cat.

This may test for attention to detail as it is intended to do, but it also disadvantages people with disabilities which may hinder their visual perception or their physical or mental reaction speeds.

Given many people with invisible disabilities are unlikely to identify as disabled and to ask for reasonable adjustments, they are unlikely to speak up in this new digitalised environment.

For some job seekers disability and class may also intersect to compound their disadvantage. It’s worth considering whether being able to spot subtle differences in a cat’s moustache is relevant to some jobs such as being a lawyer, accountant or banker (as opposed to a pilot or bus driver).

Read more:
Israel’s AI can produce 100 bombing targets a day in Gaza. Is this the future of war?

Cybervetting gives employers a fuller picture

Social media is also increasingly used by employers to screen or “cybervet” job candidates, enabling both public and private profiles to be screened. In some cases, cybervetting is tantamount to having an employer visit your home to assess your family or determine if you’re a right “cultural fit” before they decide to interview or hire you.

Through cybervetting employers can access “digitised indicators” of a person’s class, social background and family. This makes them vulnerable to powerful cognitive biases which may lead them to discriminate.

Weighing up the benefits of technology

Using technology has many benefits, including automation to produce time and cost savings, but it may also come with a very human cost.

Employers need to take care the technology they are using to automate recruitment decisions does not also create risks of discrimination based on protected attributes.

Many of these technologies are touted on paper to reduce human bias and improve diversity in workplaces. But in practice they may have the opposite effect and create barriers to employment based on “social origin”, disability and age, or at the synergy of these attributes.

This may have scope to irreparably change the composition of our future professional workforce and favour the richer, more cultivated, more able and younger. This would see us move backwards, not forward, in our efforts for workplace equality.

Read more:
A year of ChatGPT: 5 ways the AI marvel has changed the world

Angelo Capuano 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. ‘Computer says no’: more employers are using AI to recruit, increasing the risk of discrimination – https://theconversation.com/computer-says-no-more-employers-are-using-ai-to-recruit-increasing-the-risk-of-discrimination-218598

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Higham, Professor of Tourism, Griffith University

On the same day last week that Air New Zealand announced the purchase of its first fully electric aircraft, Christchurch Airport announced it had reached “a new standard for decarbonisation”. On the face of it, great news for reducing aviation emissions in Aotearoa.

The reality is a little more complex – and risky. As the climate warms, so too is the temperature in boardrooms and courtrooms. The aviation industry is under increasing scrutiny for its sustainability claims, and climate litigation is on the rise.

At the same time, “net zero” strategies in general are being challenged. The United Nations High-Level Expert Group was established at last year’s COP27 summit, as Secretary General António Guterres explained, because “net zero suffers from a surplus of confusion and a deficit of credibility”.

The expert group has put forward a set of net-zero guidelines to put a “red line through greenwashing”. The guidelines underpin the UN’s approach to net zero, which requires corporate entities to advance ambitious climate mitigation actions based on rigorous and comprehensive science-based targets.

Among other things, the targets must include emissions reductions from the entity’s full value chain and activities. These include emissions from sources the entity owns and controls directly (known as scope 1); emissions the entity causes indirectly (scope 2); and emissions not produced by the entity itself, but arising up and down its value chain (scope 3).

The expert group also notes that voluntary carbon credits (offsets) cannot be counted towards interim emissions reductions required on the pathway to Net Zero 2050. This is because carbon offsetting has been shown to be troublesome at best, and in many cases a scam.

Airlines in the firing line

Key players in the global aviation industry that make unsupportable claims have become targets for climate litigation.

A recent greenwashing complaint to the European Commission, for example, was filed by consumer groups in 19 countries against 17 airlines. Virgin Atlantic and British Airways are facing formal complaints filed by a climate charity and law firm over sustainable flight claims.

Read more:
Airlines are being hit by anti-greenwashing litigation – here’s what makes them perfect targets

Advertisements for Air France, Lufthansa and Etihad have been banned in the UK for greenwashing, following complaints to the UK Advertising Standards Board that phrases such as “protecting the future”, “sustainable avitaion” and “low-emissions airline” are misleading consumers.

Delta faces a class action lawsuit for claiming to be “the first carbon neutral airline on a global basis” in a case brought by a California resident claiming the airline has grossly misrepresented its climate impact.

And KLM is being sued for greenwashing by law firm Client Earth, which successfully argued the Dutch airline’s “Fly Responsibly” campaign consitutes misleading advertising under EU law while KLM is growing its number of flights rather than reducing emissions.

Long-haul growth versus decarbonisation

Cases like these raise questions about Air New Zealand’s “Flight NZ0” strategy and marketing, which focuses on sustainable aviation fuel and next-generation aircraft (including its recently bought electric Beta Alia), complemented by carbon offsetting and operational efficiency.

The focus on sustainable fuel will have to overcome significant scientific, energy, scalability and cost barriers. Solutions to these complex problems are likely to be decades away at least.

While Air New Zealand promotes the Beta Alia – with its inherent altitude, payload and range limitations – it also aims to significantly increase its long haul network, and is setting its sights on the “ultra long haul experience”.

The contradiction between long-haul growth and decarbonisation strategies is expressed in the airline’s own 2017 sustainability report, in which the sustainability advisory panel chair wrote:

And that’s the dilemma for anyone who cares passionately about addressing the multiple threats of climate change: either stop flying altogether (the logical but somewhat unworldly idealist’s position), or fly as little and as discriminatingly and responsibly as possible (the often uncomfortable pragmatist’s position).

As consumers and environmentalists focus more on the validity of climate claims and the viability of carbon reduction strategies, Air New Zealand may find it harder to defend its net zero pathway.

Read more:
High Court decision on $125 million fine for Volkswagen is a warning to all greenwashers

Airports on the radar

The environmental claims of other players in the wider aviation system – notably airports – are also likely to attract critical attention.

Airports Council International (ACI) is the global industry body for airports, with over 550 airports taking part in its Airport Carbon Accreditation program, including many in New Zealand (most recently Invercargill Airport).

Christchurch Airport has been in the program for longer, and makes significant climate claims. In April 2022, it announced “another world class sustainability achievement”, going “beyond carbon neutral, to become climate positive”.

But this doesn’t account for scope 3 emissions, mainly associated with flights in and out of the airport, which make up 95.39% of total emissions. Airports can only appear to be climate-neutral by not accounting for the high and growing emissions of the planes that are their core business.

Read more:
‘Boys will be boys’: why consumers don’t punish big polluters for greenwashing lies

Stakeholder reputations on the line

Key stakeholders are also exposed to any potential accusations of greenwashing. Christchurch City Council own 75% of the airport through a holding company, and the government owns 25%. Both have declared climate emergencies and made emissions reduction commitments.

Industry groups are involved, too. Tourism Industry Aotearoa, which represents businesses across the tourism industry, last month announced Christchurch Airport the winner of its Tourism Environment Award.

It cited the airport’s “climate positive” status and hailed it as being “at the forefront of airport environmental initiatives globally”. Such claims can be technically true if one accepts the limited parameters used to measure them.

But the Tourism Industry Aotearoa will need to ensure its environmental awards keep pace with developments in this rapidly changing field – including the increasing risk of litigation over unsustainable claims about sustainability.

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

– ref. The NZ aviation industry is making bold climate claims – and risking anti-greenwashing litigation – https://theconversation.com/the-nz-aviation-industry-is-making-bold-climate-claims-and-risking-anti-greenwashing-litigation-219591

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Pandanus Petter, Research Fellow Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University

When Queensland’s Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk resigned over the weekend, she indicated her preferred successor would be her deputy, Steven Miles.

He promptly nominated for the leadership. He avoided a leadership contest between himself, Health Minister Shannon Fentiman and Treasurer Cameron Dick.

A compromise between Miles’ left faction and Dick’s right has negotiated Miles as Queensland’s 40th Premier and Dick as his Deputy. It’ll be made official when the party caucus meets on Friday.

But who is Steven Miles, and what kind of premier can we expect him to be as Queensland heads toward an election in 2024?

Read more:
With Annastacia Palaszczuk gone, can Labor achieve the unachievable in Queensland?

A union man with a PhD

In some ways, Miles’ journey closely resonates with some broader trends for Queensland Labor in recent years.

Very rarely for a politician, Miles has completed a PhD, seeking to understand how trade unions motivate their memberships through workplace activism.

Following this he worked as a consultant helping improve the campaigns of progressive causes, as state director of a public sector union and as a political advisor to Labor politicians.

Miles fits the mould of someone who has made progressive, union-affiliated politics their career.

However, like many union members in contemporary society, he is a highly educated professional, rather than the blue-collar rabblerouser of yesteryear.

His political ambitions go back to 2009, where he unsuccessfully tried for pre-selection for the state election. He ran at the 2010 federal election for the seat of Ryan, which encompasses the area of Brisbane’s leafy inner-north-west. He fell short again.

Miles’ first success came when he won the state seat of Mt-Cootha for Labor from the LNP in 2015.

However, following a redistribution of boundaries in 2017, he relocated to the outer-metropolitan seat of Murrumba, north of Brisbane. In this way he was like an increasing number of young professionals and working families pushed outward by rising house prices.

With the recent success of the Queensland Greens in inner city electorates, and changing demographics in previously rural areas, Queensland Labor’s heartland and basis of support have moved outward.

The perceived priorities and everyday needs of young families and working people in these areas of population growth will likely guide how he governs and campaigns.

Recognisable, for better or worse

Miles, who has the backing of the powerful United Workers Union, has previously served in a number of ministerial portfolios including state development, environment and heritage protection.

Most famously, he served as health minister in the first year of the COVID pandemic. Given his appearances in daily press conferences, he likely has a high degree of recognition in the electorate.

Whether this is an asset for appealing to a broad cross-section of the Queensland public is debatable, given Miles also has a reputation as a party “attack dog”. He caused controversy by appearing to use uncivil language when criticising former Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Similiarly to Jackie Trad, whom he replaced as deputy premier following her resignation over alleged integrity issues and electoral defeat in 2020, Miles has been an outspoken advocate for progressive causes like the environment and equitable access to education.

Read more:
Even if her leadership is now doomed, Annastacia Palaszczuk will still be a Labor legend in Queensland

A battle on the bread and butter

When declaring his intent to step forward as premier, Miles flagged his desire to address ongoing issues which dominate recent political debate in Queensland.

They’re issues familiar to people across the country, including the need to improve the public health system, addressing a lack of affordable housing for renters and buyers and ongoing problems with the cost of living.

With the 2032 Olympics and Paralympics also in the pipeline, large-scale infrastructure developments will be on the cards.

He will also look to manage the politics and implementation of Queensland’s transition to a low-emmission economy: a potentially fraught process given the power of the mining lobby and concerns over losses of jobs in regional areas.

Interestingly, these are the same issues Opposition Leader David Crisafulli recently laid out as his priorities, bar a couple of exceptions.

Miles will therefore have to manage the tension between defending the Labor government’s record on these “bread and butter” issues, and trying to present as a fresh, new leader who understands the concerns of everyday people.

Also similarly to Crisafulli, who avoided being drawn on conservative social issues like abortion during his campaign launch, Miles will likely downplay more contentious progressive reforms. This may prove a disappointment for left-leaning voters wanting more action on climate change, or the continued concerns around the detention of children and minors in custody.

Instead, for the next year we will likely see a contest based on trust over the basics: economic management and delivery of public services under strain.

Read more:
The myth of ‘the Queensland voter’, Australia’s trust deficit, and the path to Indigenous recognition

His first test as leader comes in the form of a cyclone in the state’s north, which he was keen to address yesterday, rather than speculation about his rise to premier.

His next test may come at the election in 2024 as Labor weathers storms on two fronts. In inner Brisbane, the Greens will be looking to consolidate their recent gains. In the regions and outer metropolitan growth areas, the government will be judged on its ability to address cost of living pressures not necessarily in their power to solve.

Dr Pandanus Petter receives funding for his work from the Australian Research Council as part of the Discovery project Understanding the Antipodean ‘Fair Go’ with Associate Professor Dr. Cosmo Howard, Professor Jennifer Curtin and Professor Juliet Pietsch.

– ref. Who is Queensland’s next premier, Steven Miles? – https://theconversation.com/who-is-queenslands-next-premier-steven-miles-219701

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hayley Cullen, Lecturer, Macquarie University

On a summer’s day in January 1970, three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer was kidnapped from Fairy Meadow Beach in Wollongong, New South Wales. This is the last time Cheryl was seen. Cheryl remains missing, 53 years later. She is one of the 2,500 people considered to be a long-term missing person in Australia.

In 2020, the New South Wales government offered a $1,000,000 reward to anyone who could provide information to help locate and arrest the person who abducted Cheryl. Yet, even with this large reward, witnesses were not forthcoming. The only information witnesses at the beach on that day could provide about the girl’s kidnapper was that they were an unknown male.

In 2022, the BBC released a podcast about Cheryl’s case, “Fairy Meadow”. After listening to the podcast, an anonymous witness has recently come forward with a more detailed description of the unknown male, such as his age, hair and build. This new information may help police to finally find Cheryl’s kidnapper after half a century of searching.

Some might question why the anonymous witness did not come forward sooner with information about Cheryl’s abduction. The witness claimed he clearly remembered seeing a teenage male holding a young child on their hip on that day at Fairy Meadow Beach and moving towards the car park. Even though he reported the child was screaming, he did not think the child was being abducted. It was only when hearing the podcast that the witness became aware of the gravity of what he had seen 50 years before.

Kidnapping is a prime example of an ambiguous crime. Imagine you are shopping at your local mall. You see a young child interacting with an adult. The child and the adult leave together, and the child is calm. You would probably think the child and the adult know each other; perhaps the adult is the child’s parent or carer. Even if the child was distressed, you may still think the child was just having a tantrum with an adult known to them. While these interpretations might be normal or common, they may not always be correct.

Children may leave with strangers who are trying to kidnap them without resisting or struggling. This was true of a Brisbane case in 2019, when Sterling Mervyn Free was able to convince a young child to follow him out of a busy department store. Many people would have been unconcerned when they saw the two leave the store together. Free sexually assaulted the young child before returning her to the store.

Read more:
Cleo Smith case: how ‘cognitive interviewing’ can help police compile the most reliable evidence

Some of Australia’s most terrifying crimes involve children who have been abducted by strangers, such as the tragic case of Daniel Morcombe. Yet, even though kidnappings are often ambiguous and can occur in very public spaces, there has been limited research dedicated to understanding how such crimes are interpreted by witnesses.

Our research team conducted two experiments to explore whether interpreting a kidnapping as a crime would depend upon the level of ambiguity of the kidnap itself. In our experiments, university psychology students watched a video of a bus stop scene. In the video, several people waited for their bus to arrive, including a young female child. The child was sitting at the bus stop by herself. She was approached by a female adult, who started a conversation with her that was not audible to participants.

Participants saw slightly different endings of the bus stop video. In one version, the child and the adult did not leave the bus stop. In a second version, the child and the adult left together without the child resisting. In the third version, the child and the adult left, but the child physically resisted and audibly called out for help.

Later in the experiment, we asked participants whether they believed that what they saw in the video was a crime. Importantly, these students did not know that they would see a crime in the video; we used a cover story to mask our research aims.

In our first experiment, we found that only 34.8% of participants who saw the child leave with the woman without resistance interpreted this as a crime. However, less than half (46.7%) of participants who saw the video where the child struggled and called out for help interpreted this as a crime. Participants in this first experiment were given realistic tasks to complete while they watched the video, such as counting how many buses stopped at the bus stop.

In our second experiment, when we minimised these distracting tasks, closer to three-quarters of participants interpreted both versions of the kidnapping as a crime.

These results tell us a key reason why witnesses do not provide information about child abductions is that they may fail to interpret these events as crimes in the first place. This could be the case even when children show clear signs of distress, just as the anonymous witness claimed Cheryl Grimmer did on that fateful day.

Hayley Cullen 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. Child abductions can be hard to identify, and people may not know they are witnessing a serious crime – https://theconversation.com/child-abductions-can-be-hard-to-identify-and-people-may-not-know-they-are-witnessing-a-serious-crime-219221

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milad Haghani, Senior Lecturer of Public Safety & Disaster Risk, UNSW Sydney

Sydney and other parts of Australia have just experienced a significant heatwave, with temperatures reaching highs of well over 40°C. In Sydney in particular, the extreme heat has coincided with a bustling schedule of live music events, attracting large crowds despite the sweltering conditions.

Drug experts raised concerns ahead of the sold-out Epik festival which took place at Sydney Olympic Park on Saturday, cautioning revellers against the dangers of taking illicit drugs in extreme heat.

Reports have since emerged that four festival patrons were taken to hospital for reasons relating to drugs.

While illicit drug use is dangerous no matter the circumstances, extremely hot weather may make it even more risky.

Read more:
5 reasons why climate change may see more of us turn to alcohol and other drugs

Drug use at festivals

We know the use of recreational drugs is common at live music events such as festivals. Studies have shown people who frequently attend music festivals and dance events tend to have more experience with illegal substances than their counterparts who don’t attend these events.

Wastewater analyses have confirmed the prevalence of drug use at music festivals.

In Australia and overseas, several live music events have been marred by tragedies linked to drug use. As recently as October, two men, aged 21 and 26, died following suspected drug overdoses at the Knockout music festival in Sydney.

At these sorts of events, MDMA (or ecstasy) is among the most commonly used substances. And when taken during extreme heat, the risks could be much greater.

MDMA and hot weather

MDMA triggers the release of substances that interfere with our temperature regulation, leading the body to generate more heat than usual. This effect is known as hyperthermia (as opposed to hypothermia, when the body gets too cold).

This elevation in body temperature happens even if the person using drugs is not exerting themselves and not in a hot environment. In this context, the effect can still cause dehydration.

However, the effects may be greater if a person is exerting themselves in hot, crowded settings. Studies have shown that on average, for a person who takes MDMA somewhere like a dance club, their body temperature can increase by more than 1°C.

Read more:
Taylor Swift’s Brazil concert was hammered by extreme heat. How to protect crowds at the next sweltering gig

In extreme cases, a sharp increase in body temperature can lead to organ failure and even death.

Extreme heat may compound the hyperthermia induced by taking the drug. A study in rats showed a moderate dose of MDMA that is typically non-fatal in cool, quiet environments can be fatal in rats exposed to conditions that mimic the hot, crowded settings where people often use the drug.

What now?

Illicit drugs pose significant dangers to people who use them at music festivals and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, with climate change, we are set to face more frequent and intense heatwaves in the future. So it’s important to better understand how the weather might intensify the risks of drug use.

Read more:
Testing festival goers’ pills isn’t the only way to reduce overdoses. Here’s what else works

The principles of harm reduction recognise that, despite our best efforts to educate people about the risks associated with substance use, some people will continue to experiment with drugs at music festivals. So it becomes essential to minimise potential harms through evidence-based strategies, such as pill testing.

Harm reduction messages play a vital role in educating music festival attendees about the dangers of drug use, especially in hot conditions. These messages must encourage seeking medical help without fear of repercussions, staying hydrated, taking regular breaks, and wearing appropriate clothing for sun protection. Public officials, event organisers, families and friends can all contribute to spreading these messages, though attendees also need to exercise personal responsibility.

Messaging should also stress the importance of patrons looking out for their friends, highlighting everyone has a role in maintaining a safe environment at these events.

Read more:
It’s extremely hot and I’m feeling weak and dizzy. Could I have heat stroke?

Dr Milad Haghani receives funding from the Australian Research Council (Grant No. DE210100440).

Dr Pegah Varamini has received funding from the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Therapeutic Innovation Australia (TIA), Pipeline Accelerator Grant, SPARK Oceania, Tour de Cure, Sydney Catalyst, Controlled Release Society, and Australian Pain Society. She is a lecturer and the head of Breast Cancer Targeting & Drug Delivery laboratory at the University of Sydney Pharmacy School. Pegah is affiliated with the World Health Organisation as a scientific advisor within the Global Breast Cancer Initiative and is the Co-Chair of NanoPharma cluster within NanoHealth Initiative at the Sydney Nano Institute.

– ref. Planning to use drugs at a festival on a scorching summer day? Here’s why extreme heat might make MDMA riskier – https://theconversation.com/planning-to-use-drugs-at-a-festival-on-a-scorching-summer-day-heres-why-extreme-heat-might-make-mdma-riskier-219599

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edward Narayan, Senior Lecturer in Animal Science, The University of Queensland

As we brace for an unusually hot summer, spare a thought for koalas. They will be out and about in search of love, food and water in the searing heat.

Mother koalas with pouch young are especially vulnerable. Many will be killed or injured on our roads as they attempt to cross. Sometimes joeys are orphaned in the process, but even if they make it to one of Australia’s rehabilitation centres these young koalas can be stressed by well-meaning visitors such as potential donors and media.

Hot and dry conditions make gum tree leaves less nutritious, so koalas tend to seek additional water sources. Some diseases can also damage their kidneys, making them drink more.

As habitat loss pushes koalas into our cities, people frequently encounter these wild animals on roads, in parks and sometimes even in their backyards. So it’s worth knowing how to help keep koalas healthy and what to do if you encounter a koala in distress.

Read more:
Koalas can learn to live the city life if we give them the trees and safe spaces they need

What to do if you encounter a sick or injured koala

1. Put clean water out in a shallow bowl such as an ice-cream container at the base of a gum tree. Thirsty koalas will gently lap up the water using their tongue. Never give a koala water from a bottle because koalas can choke if their heads are tilted back while drinking.

2. Avoid any interaction with wild koalas. Leave this to veterinarians, wildlife officers, researchers with permits, and licensed rehabilitators. Koalas have strong arms, sharp claws and a very tight grip. They also find the presence of humans very stressful.

3. If you find a koala on the ground and it lets you approach, there must be a problem. Call your local koala rescue group. The name of the organisation will vary depending on your location. If you don’t know where to begin, Google “wildlife rescue near me”. Dial the number and follow the instructions from the koala rescue team. Do not try to touch, handle or pick up the koala. Also discourage other people from gathering to look on, as it can do more harm. Distressed koalas produce the stress hormone cortisol, which can raise blood pressure, increase heart rate variability and make recovery and rehabilitation more challenging.

4. Keep dogs on a leash when you are out and attend to any barking at home. Train your dog to respect wildlife. Ensure the dog will come to you when called. Reward good behaviour.

5. Koalas can end up in suburban backyards with or without food trees. You might like to install an “escape pole” such as timber log placed vertically against the fence in your yard. Follow these handy koala-sensitive design guidelines.

6. Secure swimming pools so koalas are less likely to fall in and drown. Australia’s largest wildlife rescue organisation, WIRES, suggests draping something over the edge of the pool so animals can climb out. A length of heavy-duty rope or even a bodyboard, secured at one end to something heavy outside the pool, works well because it does not absorb water and provides a platform for an exhausted animal to rest on. You can also place bricks or large stones to the side of each step, to make it easier for animals to gain a foothold and climb out.

Understanding stress in koalas

Koalas are well adapted to life in Australian forests. They have insulating fur and an ability to adjust body posture when exposed to environmental challenges –  such as rolling up in a ball in high wind and covering their ears. They can stay in the trees even in very windy conditions.

If you wander into the bush at night during breeding season – from spring through to autumn – you may hear the deafening bellowing of male koalas trying to attract females.

Breeding season is a stressful time for wild koalas because there is so much activity involved, including energy expended in the search for mate.

Koalas generally keep to their family groups. Mum and joeys usually stay together in the treetops. Adult males father many joeys, sometimes with different females.

The diseases chlamydia and koala retrovirus are among the biggest threats to koalas’ survival. Chlamydia is a bacteria found in many species of bird and mammals worldwide. Koala retrovirus is thought to cause koala immune deficiency syndrome (KIDS), an AIDS-like immunodeficiency that leaves infected koalas more susceptible to infectious disease and cancers.

A lack of appropriate food trees is another source of stress, because koalas rely on fresh gum leaves to maintain their body’s water balance.

Read more:
Testing the stress levels of rescued koalas allows us to tweak their care so more survive in the wild

Be a friend to koalas

Habitat loss, bushfire, drought, heat and pressure to find a mate mean koalas are frequently on the move. Here’s how to help keep them safe and well:

• watch out for koalas on the road and slow down

• put local koala wildlife rescue group contact numbers in your phone so you know whom to call in an emergency

• report urban koala sightings to your local rescue group – it’s likely to indicate an ongoing problem. Well-informed koala rescue groups can better manage the situation and put appropriate action plans in place

• ask your council about programs available for koalas in your local area and volunteer for food tree planting days and other activities

• support local koala hospitals and donate if you can

• share this article with family and friends.

Edward Narayan 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. Koalas suffer in the heat – here’s how to help this summer – https://theconversation.com/koalas-suffer-in-the-heat-heres-how-to-help-this-summer-216435

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Smith-Merry, Director, Centre for Disability Research and Policy, University of Sydney

The review into the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has been released and it recommends some big changes. This is not a report that just moves the deck chairs – it changes the whole layout of the ship, including its approach to psychosocial disability.

The NDIS refers to mental illness as psychosocial disability when it is severe and disabling. Clear definitions point out psychosocial disability is not a diagnosis in itself. It has a functional impact and presents barriers to equality when someone with a mental health condition interacts with a social environment. It can affect their ability to work, learn, socialise or care for themselves.

The National Disability Insurance Agency (which administers the scheme) views it separately to cognitive disability and other specific conditions such as autism.

The mismatch between psychosocial disability and key aspects of the NDIS have been raised over many years. So will the review’s recommendations make a difference?

Read more:
Recommendations to reboot the NDIS have finally been released. 5 experts react

Who gets support?

There are 63,010 people in the NDIS with psychosocial disability, making up around 10% of participants. They are older – 83% are over 35 compared to 32% of other participants. They have half the employment rate of participants aged 15 to 64 (11% compared to 23%) and experience lower social and community engagement. They have different needs but, in the scheme’s ten years, have been largely offered the same supports.

The NDIS review recommends “a new approach to NDIS supports for psychosocial disability, focused on personal recovery” and to develop mental health reforms to better support people with severe mental illness.

These include an early intervention pathway and requiring providers delivering psychosocial supports to be registered and comply with new standards. In line with other review recommendations, the review says all Australian governments should provide foundational supports and improve the interfaces between the NDIS and mental health systems.

Currently, many people with severe mental illness who apply for the NDIS do not get access. And programs they previously received support from were defunded to fund the scheme.

One fundamental issue has been that NDIS access requires disability to be “permanent”. This is at odds with the “recovery” model, which strongly underpins Australian mental health policy. Recovery views mental illness as neither permanent nor static and that supports may therefore be more needed at some times than others.

Making the list

For many people permanent disability has been difficult to demonstrate. No mental illness-specific conditions were included on the list of conditions “likely to meet access requirements” for the scheme. This has led to lower attempts to access the scheme .

The review proposes assessment based on functional needs rather than diagnosis, doing away with access lists. This will remove inequity where people with psychosocial disability must work hard to prove permanent functional impairment, often through multiple attempts.

Experiences on the scheme

Those who do make it into the NDIS have rated their experience of the scheme more poorly than others. Studies have highlighted stigma and disrespectful treatment by staff and providers who do not understand psychosocial disability, which damages wellbeing.

The review says participants should have access to a “navigator” who has expertise in psychosocial supports and is trauma-informed.

The review argues competencies in mental health (such as training) should be linked to the registration of providers offering psychosocial supports.

This registration requirement is the most contentious aspect of the review, with choice over providers – registered or not – viewed as key to attaining participant choice and control.

Unregistered providers have been the choice for most scheme participants (including 87% with psychosocial disability), with registration processes viewed as a burden on providers and offering little additional benefit to participants.

However, this is a failure of the registration model rather than registration per se. Understanding the role of people with disability as co-regulators of their own support will be essential in getting registration right.

Foundational psychosocial support

The number of people entering the scheme over age 35, when most people are likely to be diagnosed with a serious mental illness at a much younger age (14–18 years old), points to failures in support outside of the scheme.

It tells the stories of people with mental illness gradually losing access to formal and informal supports until their illness becomes disabling and they need support from the scheme.

The review repeatedly emphasises the need to improve the operation of supports outside of the scheme, considering that NDIS supports have the best outcomes when broader needs are also met. These “foundational supports” are widely supported by the mental health sector who call for a strong, broad network of supports for people with psychosocial disability.

Read more:
What’s the difference between ‘reasonable and necessary’ and ‘foundational’ supports? Here’s what the NDIS review says

A road to recovery

The review calls for recovery to be re-centred within the operation of the scheme, with increased independence as a desired outcome. Currently providers have no obligation to try to improve a person’s recovery.

People with psychosocial disability who entered the scheme prior to 2021 experienced an increase in social and community engagement of only 4%. Their rate of employment rate did not increase at all. The review’s focus on early intervention and recovery could change this.

All review recommendations are just that. It is now up to the government to enact reforms. In doing so it is important they put the needs and experiences of people with psychosocial disability front and centre .

Read more:
The NDIS promises lifelong support – but what about end-of-life support for people with disability?

Jennifer Smith-Merry receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a fellowship focusing on psychosocial disability and the NDIS. The National Disability Insurance Agency provides in-kind support for that project and funds a project PhD student. She has collaborated with many of the researchers and advocacy groups whose work is cited in the article, including the Australian Psychosocial Alliance and its members.

– ref. More than mental illness. How the NDIS review could help people with psychosocial disability – https://theconversation.com/more-than-mental-illness-how-the-ndis-review-could-help-people-with-psychosocial-disability-219502

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya Latty, Associate professor, University of Sydney

In eastern Australia, the arrival of the summer holidays has traditionally been heralded by big iridescent beetles known as Christmas beetles due to their appearance during the Christmas season.

In recent years, public perception seems to suggest these lovely insects may no longer be arriving in high numbers.

Each year insect scientists like us field questions from the press and public about Christmas beetle populations: where have they gone? Why have their populations shrunk? Is it climate change?

So have Christmas beetles really declined? With the help of people around Australia, we’re working to figure this out.

What are Christmas beetles?

In most of Australia, the term “Christmas beetle” refers to large beetles in the genus Anoplognathus. There are 36 Christmas beetle species, almost all of which are only found in Australia.

Christmas beetles are most common along the east coast and are found over most of the continent, except for a curious absence in the south west.

They emerge in early summer and seek out mates, sometimes pausing to munch on eucalyptus leaves. Females lay their eggs in the soil. After a few weeks, these eggs hatch into chunky white or cream coloured larvae often known as “curl grubs”.

Larvae live in the soil for 1–2 years until forming a pupa and transforming into their final adult form. They then dig their way out of the ground and take to the air, starting the cycle again.

Commonly observed species like the washerwoman (Anoplognathus porosus) and A. olivieri have classic Christmas beetle colouring, with flecks of iridescence across their tawny brown bodies.

But not all Christmas beetles are iridescent. Some, like the Granny Smith beetle (A. prasinus), are a vibrant green, while others look golden (A. aureus and A. parvulus).

To make things more complicated, people in Tasmania tend to use the term “Christmas beetle” to refer to the glorious golden stag beetle (Lamprima aurata). A lovely beetle to be sure – but not the kind we’re talking about.

Christmas beetles are also frequently confused with other scarab beetles, especially Argentinian lawn scarabs (Cyclocephala signaticollis) which are very common in the summer, particularly in cities. Argentinian lawn scarabs are smaller than most Christmas beetles and lack the distinct thickened back legs and scoop-shaped snout.

Native flower chafers such as fiddler beetles (Eupoecila australasiae), punctate flower chafers (Neorrhina punctata) and cowboy beetles (Chondropyga dorsalis) are also commonly mistaken for Christmas beetles. These beautiful summer-active beetles are pollinators of native flowers.

Have Christmas beetles declined?

Unfortunately, we don’t have long term population data for any Christmas beetle species, so we cannot conclusively say if there’s been a decline. However, many people (including some of the authors) remember there being more Christmas beetles in the past.

But memory alone is not strong enough evidence, so we’ve designed a project to help us determine the health of Christmas beetle populations. The Christmas Beetle Count is a community science project led by conservation organisation Invertebrates Australia in collaboration with the University of Sydney.

We are asking the public to submit their sightings of Christmas beetles to the online database iNaturalist. We can then use the data to determine which Christmas beetle species are likely to be at risk of decline or extinction.

So far, the project has been a roaring success. As of December 2023, over 8,000 sightings have been submitted by over 4,000 people across Australia, including photos of four very rare species last sighted decades ago.

For one species (A. vietor), our observers took the first known picture of a living individual – it had previously been known only from a single, dead beetle. This record was 300km away from the only site previously known for this species, suggesting it occupies a larger range than thought.

Sightings like these help us better understand the distribution and population health of Christmas beetles, and anyone can help.

Are Christmas beetles coming back in 2023?

It’s too early to determine if Christmas beetles have made a comeback this year. Between November 1 and December 8 2023, 532 “research grade” sightings of Christmas beetles have been reported, more than double from the same period last year.

Although the rise in reported sightings seems promising, it’s possible this increase is not due to a growing beetle population, but rather because more people are aware of the project and are actively searching for Christmas beetles.

We will need a few more years of data before we can say anything conclusive about Christmas beetle population trends.

Why are Christmas beetles important?

Like many insects, Christmas beetles are likely threatened by habitat loss. We can help by conserving our native bushland – Australia’s pledge to preserve 30% of land is welcome news.

These insects play an important ecological role. Since they emerge at a predictable time of the year when many reptiles, mammals and birds are producing and raising their young, adult Christmas beetles may be an important food source for many animals.

The larvae of Christmas beetles tunnel through the soil helping to aerate it and to recycle organic matter. They likely serve as a protein and fat-rich meal for hungry birds, reptiles and mammals.

Christmas beetles are an iconic part of Australia’s natural heritage, as uniquely Australian as koalas, platypuses and kangaroos.

Read more:
Don’t kill the curl grubs in your garden – they could be native beetle babies

Tanya Latty co-founded and works for conservation organisation Invertebrates Australia, is former president of the Australasian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour and is on the Education committee for the Australian Entomological Society. She receives funding from the Australian Research Council, NSW Saving our Species, and Agrifutures.

Chris Reid received funding from the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS), federal Department of Environment (2016) to produce the Xmas Beetle ID app.

Hauke Koch volunteers as outreach officer for the conservation organization Invertebrates Australia.

Thomas Mesaglio volunteers as outreach officer for the conservation organization Invertebrates Australia.

– ref. People worry Christmas beetles are disappearing. We’re gathering citizen data to see the full picture – https://theconversation.com/people-worry-christmas-beetles-are-disappearing-were-gathering-citizen-data-to-see-the-full-picture-217358

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vera Weisbecker, Associate Professor, Flinders University

A horse walks into a bar and the bartender asks, “why the long face”? It’s one of the oldest puns in the book, and there’s no shortage of entertaining answers.

With our new review we add our own scientific explanation: horses, and many other large mammals, have long faces simply because they can afford to.

While it might seem an unlikely topic, “why the long face?” is an important question in studies of mammal evolution. That’s because long-faced mammals don’t occur at random. Rather, a longer face often coincides with a larger body size within individual animal groups.

We call this effect “craniofacial evolutionary allometry”, or CREA. It has been observed in wildly different mammalian groups such as cats, rodents, deer, kangaroos and some monkeys. You can see CREA in action if you compare a sheep’s face with a cow’s, or a small deer’s with a gigantic moose’s.

Given how common it is, there’s a surprising lack of explanations for CREA. One suggestion is the CREA pattern might be an innate part of skull development, wherein a mammal’s face automatically becomes longer as the animal grows.

The snag with this explanation is the many cases where the CREA pattern doesn’t exist, or is reversed.

Tasmanian devils, sea otters and orcas are all larger than most of their relatives, but have shorter faces. Meanwhile, long-nosed potoroos, honey possums and nectar-feeding bats are small in size but long in the face.

Clearly, a mammal’s large body size doesn’t always dictate its face must be long.

Then why is CREA so common?

We propose the answer lies in the simple biomechanics of how species use their faces to eat. One important observation is that closely related animals tend to eat similar foods.

Read more:
Bones and all: see how the diets of Tasmanian devils can wear down their sharp teeth to blunt nubbins

For example, sheep eat the same grass as cows. However, because sheep are smaller overall, they have to bite harder with their jaws, jaw muscles and teeth (which make up most of their face).

As it happens, shorter faces are more efficient at biting hard. This is because of the smaller distance between the jaw muscles and the teeth. Barbecue tongs work the same way: the closer your hand is to the tips, the stronger your grip on a steak.

The existence of short faces is therefore easily explained. The trickier question is: if short faces are so good at biting hard, why do large mammals have longer faces?

The answer lies in the fact that larger animals naturally have bigger muscles and can bite more easily. They work less hard at biting compared with their smaller relatives.

In other words, larger mammals can “afford” to have longer skulls, which are known to be advantageous in a range of situations. In herbivores, longer faces make it easier to reach more leaves or take larger mouthfuls. In carnivores, a longer face can fit larger fangs in the mouth or help jaws snap shut faster.

An explanation for ‘outliers’

Our proposed explanation for CREA also explains exceptions to it, which almost always involve a big change in diet. The dog family is a great example. This group includes small-prey hunters such as foxes, and large-prey hunters such as wolves.

Both small-prey and large-prey hunters follow CREA within their diet groups. In other words, larger individuals within a group of foxes will have longer faces.

However, even though wolves tend to be larger than foxes, they still have shorter faces than the largest foxes. We suggest this is because they hunt larger prey, and therefore require a stronger bite.

Our explanation also applies in the opposite scenario. For example, honey possums and potoroos can “afford” to have longer faces than their larger relatives because they eat softer foods. A longer face may allow them to hold a longer tongue, or easily sniff through soil for food.

We’d also expect exceptions where a species does not use its snout for capturing or breaking down food. Humans, with their strikingly short faces relative to a huge braincase, are a great example. Our species doesn’t use its face for acquiring food at all; our hands, tools and ability to cook do the job for us.

The long and short of it

Our work provides a new framework for understanding face length across different groups of mammals. We could even use it to gain important insight into the feeding habits of Australia’s extinct megafauna.

As for the horse, the next time the bartender asks “why the long face?” – it ought to reply “because I can afford it” and leave a generous tip.

Read more:
This extinct kangaroo had a branch-crunching bite to rival today’s giant pandas

Vera Weisbecker receives funding from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH; CE170100015) and Future Fellowship FT180100634. She is a member of the Greens Party.

Emma Sherratt receives funding from the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship FT190100803.

D. Rex Mitchell receives funding from Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH).

– ref. Why the long face? Experts provide a new theory for why larger mammals tend to have longer faces – https://theconversation.com/why-the-long-face-experts-provide-a-new-theory-for-why-larger-mammals-tend-to-have-longer-faces-219405

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Strating, Director, La Trobe Asia and Associate Professor, La Trobe University, La Trobe University

Taiwan is gearing up for important presidential and legislative elections next month. How to manage “cross-strait” relations with China is not surprisingly emerging as the critical issue of the campaigns.

Taiwan first held competitive presidential elections in 1996. Democracy has proven popular with the people. In the 2020 elections, voter turnout was nearly 75%, which is high for a system with non-compulsory voting.

Yet, there are concerns about China’s efforts to shape the election result through influencing public opinion. In a recent visit, one representative told me there are actually four parties in the January 13 election: the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the Kuomintang (KMT), Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) – and China.

Who is running?

President Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party cannot run again due to term limits, so the DPP’s presidential candidate is Vice President Lai Ching-te (known also as William Lai).

The election is the DPP’s to lose. While Tsai’s approval ratings have dropped recently, and Lai’s ratings fell below 30% for the first time since entering the presidential race, he is still leading the polls.

His election hopes were boosted when a negotiation between KMT and TPP to establish a unity, “pan-blue” ticket fell through. In a first-past-the-post electoral system, the winner only needs to get the most votes. Now, the “pan-blue” vote – the Kuomintang’s party colour – will split between the KMT and TPP.

It will be a struggle, however, for the DPP to win a majority in the Legislative Yuan, meaning the president might have to negotiate with a potentially hostile legislature.

The main parties’ positions on China

Since Tsai was first elected president in 2016, her administration has sought to prevent China from isolating Taiwan internationally, partly through forging closer relations with the United States and other regional democracies, such as Japan and Australia.

The DPP is now concerned about China’s role in attempting to shape the outcome of the election.

There is growing evidence China has sought to influence Taiwanese public opinion through disinformation campaigns, particularly targeting younger audiences through TikTok. In Taiwan, Chinese-owned TikTok is barred from government-issued devices. This makes countering disinformation challenging, especially when it spreads to more popular social media sites and traditional media.

Read more:
The microchip industry would implode if China invaded Taiwan, and it would affect everyone

For example, a Taiwanese newspaper, United Daily News, published a story based on supposedly leaked government meeting minutes that the US had asked Taiwan to make biological weapons at a lab run by its defence ministry. The minutes, however, contained official-sounding phrases that are used in China, not in Taiwan.

At a recent La Trobe University event, Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, also expressed concern about China’s “grey zone tactics”, such as the use of cognitive and cyber warfare, non-military assets like fishing vessels and the coastguard and economic coercion, to pressure Taiwan and regional countries.

The DPP’s policy platform is centred on building Taiwan’s ability to militarily deter and defend against a potential Chinese invasion, strengthening international partnerships (capitalising on the close coalitions that China does not have) and resisting attempts by China to subordinate Taiwan.

In contrast, the KMT views the current state of tense cross-strait relations as a consequence of DPP policies.

In dealing with China and regional security more broadly, KMT presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih has proposed a “three Ds” strategy: deterrence, dialogue and de-escalation.. He says Taiwan needs to resume cross-strait interaction in a “low-level and stable” way.

The KMT argues that DPP policies are escalating tensions. They also contend the DPP cannot maintain diplomatic relations with China, which is needed to buy time and stabilise cross-strait relations, especially as Taiwan waits for important military capabilities to arrive over the next three years.

According to one CIA report, 2027 is a critical year because Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered the military to be ready by then to invade Taiwan.

Instead, the KMT argues it can lower the temperature and reduce risk. Hou has said that “there will be no war on both sides of the Taiwan Strait” if the KMT is elected.

The DPP views this as an oversimplified “war” versus “peace” narrative. Lai says the presidential election is rather a choice between “democracy and autocracy”.

The TPP’s candidate, Ko Wen-je, meanwhile, has focused on treading a middle path between the two other parties. Its representatives argue the DPP is too hostile and hawkish on China, while the KMT gives the impression they’re too submissive.

Policy-wise, the TPP promises to keep communication channels with Beijing open, viewing the current suspension in high-level talks as unhelpful. While broadly “pan-blue” in nature, the TPP’s position is that younger voters don’t like the KMT.

Who can bring Taiwan economic security?

While Taiwanese people are concerned about potential conflict – one poll finds more than 80% of Taiwanese people believe the China threat is worsening – prospects for peace and stability are also affecting the island’s international business and investment outlook. This has consequences for Taiwan’s economic interests, as well as China’s and the rest of the world.

Read more:
War in Ukraine is a warning to China of the risks in attacking Taiwan

Like many other economies in the region, China is Taiwan’s largest trading partner, accounting for a quarter of total trade in 2021. “De-risking” and diversifying the economy and providing economic security and supply chain stability is viewed as critical by the current government. As is encouraging businesses to see the security imperative in diversifying away from China.

The DPP is also concerned about China’s use of economic activities to affect political outcomes, targeting business people and lower-level political figures and using social, cultural and religious exchanges to influence public opinion in Taiwan. Yet, some of these public diplomacy activities are not unusual and Taiwan itself provides opportunities for similar exchanges.

In contrast to the DPP, the KMT argues it is not so easy to “decouple” Taiwan’s economy from China. There are still strong business links with China, and a democratic country cannot force businesses to pull out of China, particularly if their main competition comes from South Korea or Japan.

The TPP is hoping to capitalise on young voters’ dissatisfaction with the DPP and KMT by focusing on domestic issues such as cost of living, income stagnation and housing affordability. While adopting a pragmatic relationship with Beijing is important given the economic realities, the TPP still views the US as a critical partner for Taiwan.

Ultimately, the DPP advocates for clarity in cross-strait relations. The KMT finds value in maintaining an ambiguous and flexible stance. The relatively new TPP, meanwhile, positions itself somewhere in the middle.

Rebecca Strating received support from the Australian International Institute Affairs to travel to Taiwan in December.

– ref. With Taiwan’s election just a month away, the China threat is emerging as the main talking point – https://theconversation.com/with-taiwans-election-just-a-month-away-the-china-threat-is-emerging-as-the-main-talking-point-216069

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Divna Haslam, Senior Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology

“Do you want a smack?!” This has been a common refrain from many parents across history. Right along with “just wait till your father gets home”. Somehow parents thought this threat of violence would magically improve their child’s behaviour.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child considers smacking and all types of physical punishment, however mild, a violation of child rights. It’s banned in 65 countries.

Yet it remains legal in Australia for parents to use “reasonable force” for discipline. Children are the only group of people it remains legal to hit.

Our new research found one in four Australians still think physical punishment is necessary to “properly raise” children. And half of parents (across all age groups) reported smacking their children.

But attitudes are slowly changing, with newer generations of parents less likely to smack their kids than previous ones.

Read more:
Research shows it’s harmful to smack your child, so what should parents do instead?

What is physical punishment?

Physical or “corporal” punishment is the use of physical force to cause pain, but not injury, to discipline a child for misbehaviour. It’s distinct from physical abuse which is more extreme and not used to correct behaviour.

Physical punishment is the most common type of violence against children. It usually involves smacking, but also includes things like pinching, slapping, or using an implement such as wooden spoon, cane or belt.

Smacking doesn’t actually work and makes behaviour worse over time. And it’s associated with children internalising problems, increased child aggression, poor parent-child relationships, poorer metal heath and more.

In contrast, there are a lot of non-violent parenting strategies that do work.

Assessing the state of smacking in Australia

We conducted the first study to comprehensively assess the state of smacking and physical punishment in Australia. We wanted to determine if smacking was still common and how many Australians believed we need to smack our kids.

We interviewed more than 8,500 Australians aged 16 to 65 years. Our sample was representative of the national population so we can be confident the findings represent the thoughts and experiences of Australians as a nation.

Using such a large age range allowed us to compare people across different age groups to determine if changes are occurring.

What we found

Overall, six in ten (62.5%) Australians between 16–65 years had experienced four or more instances of smacking or physical punishment in childhood. Men were slightly more likely to be physically punished than women (66.3% v 59.1%).

Young people, aged 16–24, reported slightly lower rates (58.4%) than older people suggesting a slight decline over time. But these rates remain unacceptably high.

Overall, one in two (53.7%) Australian parents reported using some type of physical punishment, mostly about once a month.

However, older parents reported on this retrospectively (what they did while raising children) and there were clear age differences:

• 64.2% of parents aged over 65 years had used physical punishment
• 32.8% of parents 25–34 years had used it
• 14.4% of parents under 24 had used it.

So younger generations of parents are substantially less likely to use physical punishment.

Concerningly, one-quarter (26.4%) of all Australians still believe physical punishment is necessary to properly raise children. But the vast majority (73.6%) do not.

And generational change is occurring. Some 37.9% of Australians older than 65 believe physical punishment is necessary compared to 22.9% of those aged 35–44 years, and only 14.8% of people under age 24.

Socioeconomically disadvantaged people are 2.3 times more likely to believe physical punishment is necessary than those with no disadvantage.

Parents who had been physically disciplined when they were children were both more likely to believe it is needed and more likely to use it with their own children. This indicates this form of violence is transmitted across generations.

Read more:
Evidence shows children who are smacked are more likely to be involved in partner violence in adulthood

Time for change

Law reform works best when changes in community attitudes and behaviours are already occurring. So it’s encouraging that younger people are much less likely to believe physical punishment is necessary and are much less likely to use it. This suggests Australians may be open to prohibiting this common form of violence.

All states and territories should immediately enact legal reform to prohibit corporal punishment and protect the rights of Australian children. This should be paired with public health and education campaigns about what parents can do instead.

If you are a parent looking for effective non-violent parenting strategies the government has also made the
Triple P Positive Parenting Program available for free. This online program provides practical strategies parents can use to encourage positive behaviour and calm, alternative discipline techniques that can be used to instead of smacking.

A number of other evidence-based programs, such as Tuning Into Kids, Parents Under Pressure and Parent Child Interaction Therapy, are also available.

Australia has an opportunity to capitalise on naturally occurring societal changes. We can interrupt this cycle of violence and give more Australians a childhood free of violence.

Read more:
Emotional abuse is a pattern of hurtful messages – building parenting skills could help prevent it

Divna Haslam has received funding from a variety of sources including the Australian Government. She is an author of the Triple P Program and receives royalties. She is a board member of the QLD Child Death Review Board and a member of the Parenting and Family Research Alliance.

– ref. 1 in 4 adults think smacking is necessary to ‘properly raise’ kids. But attitudes are changing – https://theconversation.com/1-in-4-adults-think-smacking-is-necessary-to-properly-raise-kids-but-attitudes-are-changing-218837

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jaana Dielenberg, University Fellow, Charles Darwin University

The Australian government has launched a campaign asking people to “switch off light pollution” to protect wildlife. So, what does the science say? Should we rethink Christmas lights?

In our latest report, we reviewed research into the effects of artificial light at night on mammals, frogs, birds and reptiles. We found artificial lights cause problems for a wide range of species, and energy-efficient LED lights often make matters worse.

Most people don’t realise their outdoor lights can harm wildlife. At Christmas the problem grows because many people put up more decorative lights.

Here we offer eight easy ways to reduce light pollution at Christmas while still showing your festive spirit.

Read more:
Getting smarter about city lights is good for us and nature too

Easy ways to help

These eight simple actions will help you support local wildlife while also enjoying festive decorations. Most will save electricity too.

1. Switch to daytime decorations such as big red bows on trees. Better still, plant a garden with festive colour. Bottlebrush, woolly bush, Christmas bush and Christmas bells are all gorgeous native Australian plants that bloom brightly over Christmas.

2. Instead of covering your house and fence, which can also trap animals and block their movement, make your decorative lights window displays. At bedtime, close your curtains so indoor lights cannot disturb either sleeping or active animals outside.

3. Don’t leave lights on all night. Pick a short period, and avoid dusk or dawn when animals can be most active. Timers are helpful.

4. Instead of bright white or blue lights, use warm colours such as amber or red, as they are less harmful to wildlife.

5. Use low-intensity lights – they are supposed to look pretty, not light up a surgery.

6. When using spotlights, keep them angled downward and focused on where you need them. Use shields to stop light shining into the sky or nearby vegetation.

7. Leave your trees and shrubs as dark refuges for nocturnal wildlife – don’t load them up with lights.

8. Camping or travelling? Minimising your light pollution is a great way to help animals in the bush and along the coast. Thousands of young seabirds and baby turtles die on their first trip because artificial lights attract them and cause them to move in the wrong direction.

Read more:
Bright city lights are keeping ocean predators awake and hungry

Why get involved?

Research in Australia and overseas has found artificial light at night has a wide range of harmful effects on many types of animals, from making them stressed and more vulnerable to predators, to changing their reproduction and making migrating birds more likely to crash into windows.

It’s such a significant issue for our wildlife that the Australian government launched the “Let’s switch off light pollution” campaign in November.

You might not realise how important your garden is to wildlife, because most of our mammals and frogs, and many birds and reptiles, are active at night and are great at hiding as they try to stay out of sight of predators.

Depending on where you live, your yard may be visited at night by possums, bats, bettongs, bandicoots, gliders, antechinus, echidnas, koalas, owls, tawny frogmouths, bush stone curlew, frogs, snakes, moths and geckos.

You can help these animals by minimising the amount of artificial light you shine outdoors.

By stopping lights shining up into the sky or out into the distance, you can also help animals further away. Migrating birds flying high overhead, baby sea turtles and even fish in the coast can be disturbed by artificial sky glow, which they see from far away.

Unfortunately, increasingly common energy-efficient LED lights appear to have greater impacts on many animal species than other lighting types because they are rich in short-wavelength white and blue light. That means minimising the amount of scattered light has become more important than ever.

Blue light at night is a problem for humans too and can make it hard to sleep, which is why many mobile phones have a night-light setting that reduces blue light and makes the phone glow appear orange-tinted.

Read more:
Yes, the state of the environment is grim, but you can make a difference, right in your own neighbourhoood

Your lighting choices make a difference

At Christmas and year-round, minimising light pollution is a great way to help wildlife.

Light pollution is not the only problem facing our wildlife, but it can make it much harder for animals to survive other pressures.

For some species, such as seabirds, light pollution is one of the biggest threats to their survival.

Even though urban areas are already bright at night, your actions still make a difference.

Like other types of pollution such as carbon emissions, light pollution adds up. This means every light you can turn off, turn down or stop pointing into nature helps. If many people get involved, the difference we can make will be enormous.

Read more:
Artificial light at night can change the behaviour of all animals, not just humans

Jaana Dielenberg works for the Biodiversity Council. The Biodiversity Council was founded by 11 universities and receives support from The Ian Potter Foundation, The Ross Trust, Trawalla Foundation, The Rendere Trust, Isaacson Davis Foundation, Coniston Charitable Trust and Angela Whitbread. Jaana is employed by The University of Melbourne and is a Charles Darwin University Fellow.

Sarah Bekessy receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation and the European Commission. She is a lead councillor of the Biodiversity Council, a board member of Bush Heritage Australia, a member of WWF’s Eminent Scientists Group and a member of the Advisory Group for Wood for Good.

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

– ref. 8 ways to tone down the Christmas lights to help wildlife – and why we should – https://theconversation.com/8-ways-to-tone-down-the-christmas-lights-to-help-wildlife-and-why-we-should-218931

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carlos Oyarzun, Senior Lecturer, The University of Queensland

You leave your car at the mechanic for a routine service ahead of your summer escape to the coast. When your mobile rings, you are stricken by unwelcome news: the mechanic goes through a list of parts that urgently need replacing to avoid a breakdown in the middle of the freeway. After accepting your fate, you never learn whether you really needed to replace those parts, or if the mechanic has just ripped you off.

Services like these – for which it remains unclear whether the service was really needed – are what economists call “credence goods”. Credence goods markets are a hotbed for questionable practices. The typical advice for consumers is to get a second opinion and check the reviews.

But what if a well-meaning mechanic discovers your car needs a major repair? In this case, the mechanic faces an existential dilemma: if they offer the right repairs, they may appear to be taking advantage when they are just trying to fix your car.

Pandering to customers

Businesses fear of losing their clients may lead to what researchers call “pandering” – offering consumers what they want to hear rather than what they need. They may also opt for costly “over treatment” to avoid being labelled as incompetent.

Read more:
If you want to avoid ‘giving away your first born’ make sure you read the terms and conditions before signing contracts

Our research shows, when consumers can get a second opinion, experts are more likely to overtreat them, anticipating (correctly) the customer will like the extra attention.

It is well documented that when doctors prescribe antibiotics, their patients are more likely to choose them on their next visit. This is consistent with research showing doctors in the United States believe fear of malpractice and patient pressure are the most common reasons for medically unnecessary prescriptions, tests or procedures.

When experts succumb to pressure from consumers, the customers receive less appropriate and more costly services. Worse still, those experts who stand their ground are unlikely to have the customer return. But when no expert dares to offer honest advice, second opinions become useless.

The solution, however, does not involve authoritarian experts and submissive consumers. Rather, it is to use second opinions as clarifications not threats. Second opinions help when they foster honest and useful communication between customer and service provider, enabling consumers to reach an informed decision.

Free quotes can be useful

In Australia (as in many other countries), customers have the right to ask for a free quote.

If the mechanic offers a genuine quote for expensive parts, the customer may walk away believing the mechanic is dodgy. The mechanic may lose the customer and some reputation.

But the reputational damage caused by a genuine quote will eventually be overcome when the customer compares the quotes they receive with other free quotes of a similar amount. When quotes are free and easy to obtain, a range of quotes from the same mechanic will also show the customer the mechanic’s charges vary depending on the job.

Read more:
Airlines are frustrating travelers by changing frequent flyer program rules – here’s why they keep doing it

Even though free quotes are available, if the consumer takes the car to be repaired only when it is essential, they will likely have to go with the first mechanic they approach, irrespective of cost.

It is therefore better to call the mechanic earlier than later, especially if you are unsure of them.

The benefit of online reviews

“Experience goods” are different from credence goods. These are services and products whose quality can be observed after consumption. Think restaurants, accommodation, or a book. Because past consumers have information on the quality of experience goods, consumers can learn about their quality by looking at online reviews.

Unfortunately, rating systems are plagued with fake reviews. Markets where sellers can buy fake reviews are well documented, as is the fact fake reviews are quite effective in raising sellers’ revenues. These reviews are usually extremely positive, when paid by the sellers, or extremely negative when sponsored by competitors. Even when consumers are aware of fake reviews, they inhibit credible communication via the rating system.

Read more:
The battle over right to repair is a fight over your car’s data

There’s plenty of excellent advice about how to spot fake reviews. Filtering out fake reviews is important, because they influence opinions. As in the case of second opinions, reviews are more helpful when they explain the reasons for their recommendations.

The bottom line for consumers is clear: understand why a recommendation is made, not just what it is. We hope this will enable you to drive smoothly to your holiday destination (which you chose carefully after reading the reviews) and enjoy your break.

Lana Friesen receives funding from an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP220100359.

Priscilla Man receives funding from Australia Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE180101452.

Carlos Oyarzun and Metin Uyanik 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. How getting a second opinion can stop you being ripped off – https://theconversation.com/how-getting-a-second-opinion-can-stop-you-being-ripped-off-218349

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joseph Toltz, Honorary Associate, Hebrew, Jewish and Biblical Studies, University of Sydney

“Maestro” is a word that resonates across concert music. From the Italian word for master, it is applied most frequently to a respected and established conductor of operas and orchestras but can also be used to refer to virtuoso instrumentalists.

Despite its gendered form (male), the term has been regularly applied to female conductors, instrumentalists and others who have achieved significant artistic recognition.

Leonard Bernstein, the character at the centre of Maestro, a new film from director (and star) Bradley Cooper, was not just a great conductor. While the word maestro certainly sums up his career, ego and personality, early in the film Lenny (as he was affectionately known) lists all his achievements, then somewhat dryly sums himself up as “a musician”.

The life of ‘a musician’

Bernstein is recognised as one of the most significant forces in 20th century American music. Starting as an accomplished concert pianist, Bernstein reached the pinnacle of success as a brilliant and effulgent conductor, the first American-born to direct the New York Philharmonic, and the first American-born to conduct the London Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras.

Throughout his career, Bernstein championed the work of American composers, including those of his close friend and mentor Aaron Copland, as well as works by Marc Blitzstein, Lukas Foss, Samuel Barber and others. Encouraged by Copland, Bernstein revived interest in the music of Gustav Mahler and restored the Austrian composer as a regular feature on the international concert hall stage.

Bernstein was a successful composer. His styles traversed popular and formal genres, often synthesising traditional Jewish melodic and modal elements with jazz and Latin American rhythms and melodies. He composed to great acclaim for concert, dance and theatre stages.

He was a notable educator. Throughout his life, Bernstein gave regular masterclasses in conducting at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer academy for elite musicians.

In 1954 Bernstein appeared for the first time on Omnibus, an educational entertainment television show on CBS, where he discussed and played diverse musical genres to millions of American homes.

Bernstein’s educational work culminated with the televising of his Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic on CBS in 1964–5, eventually syndicated across 40 countries.

Read more:
Explainer: what exactly do musical conductors do?

A resolutely Jewish artist

Born in Massachusetts in 1918 to Jewish immigrants from Berezdiv and Shepetivka in Western Ukraine, Bernstein entered the hallowed halls of Harvard in 1935. After graduating, he enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, to be supervised by another mentor (and refugee from quasi-fascist Hungary), Fritz Reiner.

Graduating from Curtis in 1941, Bernstein arrived on the American music scene at a time where persecution had caused many Jewish musicians and composers to flee the tentacles of Nazi Germany and its neighbours.

It was also a time of endemic antisemitism throughout American society. At one point in the movie, Serge Koussevitsky, the iconic Russian-born (and formerly Jewish) conductor and music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, suggests to the young Bernstein he change his name to Leonard S. Burns in order to achieve a successful conducting career.

Bernstein refused. Having conquered antisemitism at Harvard and elsewhere by being resolutely himself, Bernstein revealed not only a deep abiding commitment to Judaism, but a desire to forge a path of freedom for Jewish musical artists in the 20th century.

Cooper chooses symbolic representations of Judaism throughout Maestro to reinforce this. What looks like a tallit (a prayer shawl) hangs in Bernstein’s flat in Carnegie Hall. Traditional rye bread is featured on the lunch table with Koussevitsky. When returning to his home in Connecticut after rehearsing a chorus from Candide, Lenny is seen wearing a Harvard sweatshirt, its letters emblazoned in the Hebrew spelling of his Ivy League alma mater.

The music playing over the credits at the end of the film highlight the Jewish aspects of his work. They begin with the Psalm 23 Hebrew words from the second movement of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and conclude with the second movement of his Symphony No. 3, Kaddish. This is a particularly interesting choice, as the narration of this movement invokes the Jewish tradition of a pious individual calling God to account for the suffering of the Jewish people, known as a din torah.

A complicated relationship

Maestro is particularly interested in the relationship between Bernstein and his wife, actor Felicia Montealegre Cohn (Cary Mulligan). She arrives as a young woman in a hauntingly beautiful cinematic moment to the party where she was to meet her future husband. We last see her in her final moments of life with Bernstein and their three children, dancing to the tune of Shirley Ellis’s 1965 hit, The Clapping Song.

Maestro depicts Lenny’s hedonistic whirlwind of a life. Bernstein’s mastery did not extend to human relationships. His bisexuality and its effects on his marriage are more a focus of the film than his Jewishness, but Cooper is at pains to acknowledge that Felicia enters the relationship with eyes wide open – as she says when he proposes to her in a hedge maze, “let’s give it a whirl”.

Anger and frustration rise and fall as Lenny cavorts with impunity, bringing lovers home, lying (on instruction) to his daughter about the nature of his affairs, and generally doing what he wants.

Cooper has brought together many disparate elements to weave a fresh story of the life of Bernstein. Sometimes his use of symbolism is overly obvious, at other times beautifully subtle. Watch it for the cinematography, for the settings, for the music, and especially for the moment where Bernstein is conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 at Ely Cathedral in the United Kingdom. It is an absolute highlight in the two hours.

Read more:
I’m going to a classical music concert for the first time. What should I know?

Joseph Toltz 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. Who was Leonard Bernstein, the man at the centre of Bradley Cooper’s Maestro? – https://theconversation.com/who-was-leonard-bernstein-the-man-at-the-centre-of-bradley-coopers-maestro-219323

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Glenn C Savage, Associate Professor of Education Policy and the Future of Schooling, The University of Melbourne

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare released a major report on schools on Monday.

This will inform the next round of federal funding for schools, as part of the National School Reform Agreement. This is due to start in January 2025.

The report was commissioned off the back of a scathing review by the Productivity Commission in January this year. This found initiatives in the current agreement “have done little, so far, to improve student outcomes”.

Who wrote the report?

In response to the Productivity Commission’s findings, Clare extended the current agreement by 12 months until December 2024 to allow an expert panel to conduct this review.

In March, it was tasked with advising education ministers on “the key targets and specific reforms that should be tied to funding in the next National School Reform Agreement”.

The panel was led by the chair of the Australian Education Research Organisation and former head of the Smith Family, Lisa O’Brien. Along with a survey of students, parents and teachers (with almost 25,000 responses), the panel held 130 meetings with stakeholders and made 92 school visits.

What is the National School Reform Agreement?

The National School Reform Agreement is a joint agreement between the Commonwealth, states and territories designed to improve outcomes in Australian schools. It sets out national reform directions and targets that governments agree to pursue over a set period of time.

The current agreement was five years, extended to six.

While the agreement is not widely known beyond education policy circles, it is crucial for shaping the future of education in Australia.

It is also intimately linked with school funding. The reforms outlined in the agreement inform the conditions of federal funding for state and territory systems.

So, while the agreement does not directly determine the model used to determine federal funding for schools, known as the Schooling Resource Standard, it shapes what states and territories do with money by linking funding to the targets.

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

What does the report say?

The report identifies seven “reform directions” it wants governments to consider in the next agreement.

These are designed to lift student outcomes, improve equity and student wellbeing and attract and retain teachers. They are also geared at enhancing funding transparency, reducing education data gaps and supporting innovation.

There are also 24 recommendations across the reform directions. For example, universal screening for literacy and numeracy in Year 1 and more specific help for students to transition to life after school.

Three big issues

The report outlines three big issues that pose barriers to reform efforts.

First, state and territory governments ultimately retain the power in how money is spent in their schools. This means it can be difficult to maintain a cohesive approach to implementing national reforms across the federation.

Second, there are increasing numbers of students with disabilities and complex needs. This means a “higher workload and mental load” for teachers and can make it harder for schools to teach effectively.

Third, nearly all public schools are not fully funded in line with the recommended Gonski funding model (the Schooling Resource Standard).

What does the report get right?

There is little doubt the seven reform directions speak to crucial issues in Australian schools. The report also makes strong statements about the need to ensure all schools are fully and consistently funded. For example, it notes it is:

critical all schools have access to 100 per cent of Schooling Resource Standard funding as soon as possible.

It’s welcome to see the report endorse collaboration and co-design with First Nations stakeholders, to develop policies to make schools more culturally aware and responsive.

There is also great potential in a recommendation that governments implement “full-service school models” that better connect schools with health, family and disability services. As the panel notes:

such models must be more widely implemented to better meet the needs of students experiencing disadvantage.

What are the report’s limitations?

A major problem with the report is many of its ideas and recommendations are not translated into tangible targets.

The targets that do feature tend to focus on what can be easily measured. This means we will be tracking the symptoms rather than tackling the root causes of educational challenges.

For example, the report repeatedly draws attention to alarming and widening learning gaps in literacy and numeracy between young people from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds. But there is no recommended target to address these gaps.

Instead, the report offers weaker targets to increase the proportion of disadvantaged students who meet minimum proficiency standards for reading and numeracy in NAPLAN. This will do very little to close achievement gaps.

Another target – “equity” – is primarily about creating a way of measuring the differences in outcomes between cohorts by 2029, not outlining measures to address the gap itself.

Targets are the primary mechanism for shaping government efforts, as the targets are what funding is linked to. So a major risk is the strongest ideas of the report will fade into obscurity.

Read more:
Are Australian students really falling behind? It depends which test you look at

Now it’s time to talk about funding

Moving forward, the challenge for federal and state education ministers will be to translate the directions outlined in this report into specific targets and reform initiatives for the upcoming new agreement.

Responding to the report on Monday afternoon, education ministers released a statement suggesting three main themes will inform the next agreement:

• equity and excellence

• wellbeing for learning and engagement

• a strong and sustainable workforce.

While these themes overlap somewhat with the report, ministers were clear to describe the independent report as only “one of a number of inputs to the next agreement”.

The panel was forbidden by its terms of reference from examining the Schooling Resource Standard. For the most part the report is silent on the funding implications of its recommended targets.

In this next round of deliberations it will be impossible to avoid the funding debate. There is no doubt the “funding wars” will be reignited.

A central issue will be whether states and territories have the resourcing capacities to implement the reforms, especially considering how far some jurisdictions are from being fully funded under the so-called Gonski model.

If schooling systems are not fairly placed to achieve targets, then the setting of targets becomes a fool’s game. It’s akin to making elaborate plans for a family reunion in Disneyland, but refusing to discuss how everyone will get there.

Ultimately, how much funding schools get and how they use it are equally important and both will need to be central to the debates that follow.

Glenn C Savage receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jacob Broom receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. A new report wants more funding and better support for Australian schools. But we need a proper plan for how to get there – https://theconversation.com/a-new-report-wants-more-funding-and-better-support-for-australian-schools-but-we-need-a-proper-plan-for-how-to-get-there-219491

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Hurley, Director, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

The Australian government is aiming to rein in the growth of international students in its new migration policy, released on Monday.

This is in response to record levels of international students entering the country once COVID-related border closures were lifted. Current and former international students living in Australia already number 860,000 and are hurtling towards one million people.

As Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil told journalists:

[…] we do not want [the international student population] to grow as fast as it has been growing in the past few year.

The government is relying on tightening of visa regulations, greater integrity measures and increased entry requirements to reduce the number of students.

These reforms target the vocational education and training sector and students who remain in Australia following their course. But the number of international students is set to remain about the same, just with more sustainable levels of growth.

Meanwhile, universities – who are so reliant on international student income – are likely to be less affected.

Read more:
The government is bringing immigration back to ‘normal levels’ but cuts are not as dramatic as they seem

Towards 1 million

Over the past decade, the number of current and international students in Australia has more than doubled. In 2012, there were about 340,000 international students in Australia. The most recent data shows 650,000 are in Australia.

Enrolled international students are just one group of temporary migrants. Some former international students are eligible for post-study work visas of up to six years when they finish their course.

Thanks to border closures, the pandemic caused a major decline in the number of international students living in Australia. To encourage international students to return, the Australian government allowed international students to work more hours and increased post-study visa work rights.

But the rate at which international students have returned has been much quicker than many expected. There have also been several recent reviews into the migration system highlighting problems.

One review found Australia was creating a class of “permanently temporary” migrants in Australia. These are people who have lived in the country for an extended period but have no path to permanent residency or citizenship.

Another review found the migration system, including student visas, was the subject of major abuses.

A targeted clamp down

To lower the growth rate, the government is proposing a series of measures.

These include closing the COVID-related programs that uncapped working hours for international students.

They are also proposing strengthening the integrity and lifting standards in international education. This includes increasing minimum English language requirements for student and graduate visas.

The government is also promising to crack down on unscrupulous education providers who deliver cheap, poor quality courses but offer access to visas with work rights.

To halt the growth in former international students staying on in Australia, the government will shorten graduate visas.

They will also end settings that allow graduates to prolong their stay in Australia by cycling through courses to remain in the country. The number of international students staying in Australia on a second or subsequent student visa grew by more than 30% to more than 150,000 in 2022–23. Students will now need to demonstrate further study is part of career progression.

These are combined with other reforms aimed at making pathways to permanent migration clearer. The government forecast that this package will bring down the growth in net overseas migration.

Universities are set to be spared

This policy is aimed at a major reduction in the rate of growth rather than to reduce the total number of international students.

Of the 860,000 current and former international students in Australia, just under half are currently enrolled in higher education courses. But it is the non-university sector that will be most impacted.

The increase in English language requirements will impact students in the vocational education and training sector, which is dominated by private colleges, as English language requirements for university students are largely unchanged.

Tightening the criteria for enrolments in second and subsequent courses will also impact the vocational sector the most. In 2022–23 almost 69,000 students granted a subsequent student visa in Australia have been in vocational education and training courses where the government claims there is “a lower likelihood of a credible course progression”.

Read more:
Why unis and vocational colleges are key to Australia’s temporary migration challenge

We are not alone

Australia is not the only country winding back post-pandemic policies aimed at boosting international education.

The United Kingdom announced reforms last week aimed at cutting net overseas migration, including restricting some students from bringing family members.

Overall, the Australian? government’s aim is to deliver a more cohesive migration strategy that better aligns international education, labour market needs and pathways to permanent residency.

It is a welcome recognition we need significant improvements to Australia’s migration program if we are also going to make improvements to the international student sector.

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 are hurtling towards a million international students in Australia – migration changes will only slow this growth, not stop it – https://theconversation.com/we-are-hurtling-towards-a-million-international-students-in-australia-migration-changes-will-only-slow-this-growth-not-stop-it-219590

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dion Kagan, Research Officer, Gender, Law and Drugs program, La Trobe University

Hepatitis C is a preventable but potentially life-threatening blood-borne virus. It primarily affects the liver and, if untreated, can lead to cirrhosis (scar damage) and cancer.

When direct-acting antivirals for hepatitis C arrived in 2016, they were described as a game changer. They cured chronic hepatitis C in more than 95% of cases. So Australia adopted the World Health Organization’s target to eliminate hepatitis C by 2030.

More than a billion dollars has been invested in adding direct-acting antivirals to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, making treatment accessible to anyone covered by Medicare. By the end of 2022, about 60% of people living with hepatitis C had been treated.

That’s a remarkable public health achievement. Life-changing for many and for some, literally life-saving. But what is life like for this growing group of people after they’ve been cured? And where are we still lagging in our efforts to combat hepatitis C?

Read more:
Explainer: the A, B, C, D and E of hepatitis

Cure doesn’t always eliminate stigma

The most common way of picking up hepatitis C in Australia is by sharing injecting equipment. As injecting drugs is widely disapproved of, and illegal in most parts of Australia, this has huge implications for people with hepatitis C.

The stigma associated with injecting drugs means people with hepatitis C can experience persistent discrimination – in relationships, at work, and other settings. Research suggests more than half of people with hepatitis C experienced discrimination in a 12-month period.

Such discrimination happens most commonly in health care, when doctors, nurses and others health-care professionals become aware of someone’s hepatitis C status. This can include withholding treatment, diagnostic overshadowing (when workers attribute physical symptoms of illness to mental health issues), rude or unwelcoming behaviour, and excessive infection control like double-gloving. This may lead some people to avoid seeking medical care entirely.

Our recent research found direct-acting antivirals do not necessarily cure these forms of stigma and discrimination. If medical records show a person has a history of hepatitis C, some health-care workers change the way they treat that person.

Their manner can change. The treatments they offer might change – for example, whether they will provide access to painkillers. Sometimes people are treated as if they are infectious, or as if they still have the virus when they don’t.

The law can reinforce stigma and discrimination

Laws and legal practices have been slow to respond to new treatments.

In insurance law, for instance, having once had hepatitis C has been considered a risk to insurance providers. This means affected people may not be approved for travel, health or life insurance. Or, their premiums may be much higher, potentially pricing them out of the market and limiting their ability to travel, access health care or plan for their financial futures.

We would expect to see practices change with more effective treatments. But insurance practices and the actuarial data that insurers use is lagging behind medical developments.

This is just one example of how laws and legal practices can exacerbate stigma and discrimination for people with a history of hepatitis C. Our research found this also occurs in criminal law, privacy law, social security and migration law.

People in prison are being left behind

Prisons have high rates of injecting and hepatitis C transmission has historically been high.

While Australia has had a good track record on reducing some harms associated with drug use in prisons, there is at least one glaring omission: prisons don’t have access to a needle and syringe programs to ensure that people who use drugs can access sterile equipment. This means it’s much harder to prevent the transmission of hepatitis C and other blood-borne viruses in prisons.

Read more:
Sterile needles can stop the spread of disease in prisons – here’s how

Yet current national hepatitis C policy says harm reduction should be available in prisons. And the Mandela Rules – which are a set of international human rights principles – state that prisoners should receive the same standard of health care as those in the wider community.

Without sterile injecting equipment for people in prisons, people who have been cured of hepatitis C are at risk of reinfection. And Australia is less likely to eliminate hepatitis C.

Elimination demands more than just treatment

The world is watching as Australia tries to be one of the first countries in the world to eliminate hepatitis C. The final national hepatitis C health strategy is expected to be released before the end of 2023.

But the number of people coming forward for treatment has dropped significantly. Resources are being marshalled into finding people, and keeping the momentum going on elimination.

It is increasingly clear that we also need to direct resources to what happens “post-cure”, assuring people that stigma-free health care is available to them. We also need to tackle the laws, policies and practices that allow stigma and discrimination to linger in people’s lives.

Finally, we need to ensure people in prisons have access to sterile injecting equipment so they aren’t reinfected.

Kate Seear receives funding from the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Scheme (DP200100941) and the Future Fellowship Scheme (FT200100099).

Dion Kagan, Emily Lenton, and Sean Mulcahy 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’re on track to eliminate hepatitis C, but stigma remains and reinfection is a risk – https://theconversation.com/were-on-track-to-eliminate-hepatitis-c-but-stigma-remains-and-reinfection-is-a-risk-216439

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wes Hill, Associate Professor, art history and visual culture, Southern Cross University

Fairy Tales, the latest exhibition at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), gives off the pleasurable hum of remix culture, artists riffing on a core theme in numerous ways.

Overseen by the gallery’s cinematheque curator Amanda Slack-Smith, Fairy Tales focuses on how artists, designers and filmmakers have taken inspiration from fantasy motifs, adapting the fairy tale vocabulary of extremes (light and dark, good and evil, rich and poor) to their own artistic needs.

Based in handed-down oral traditions, fairy tales share characteristics with all manner of fables, folk stories and mythological narratives throughout the world.

These stories, which were initially rarely intended for children (yet featured them as central characters in easy-to-understand plots), made their way into print from the 17th century.

After the coining of the word “folklore” in 1846, colonisation, advertising and the international spread of mass culture drove folklorists and creatives to praise the authenticity of localised oral traditions.

This seductively designed show at QAGOMA makes clear that, rather than fairy tales being simply preserved, the modern age revived them with new myths, new media and new individualistic quirks, from Hans Christian Andersen to Walt Disney and beyond.

Creatures in the night

Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira sets the mood of the exhibition brilliantly with his gnarled and twisted woodland, Corupira (2023).

The sculpture builds slowly as you enter the corridors of the space and culminates in a meeting of massive tree branches that have burst through the gallery walls. Oliveira’s title refers to a Brazilian folk story about red-haired satyr-like creatures who, living in the Amazon forest, deceive hunters and loggers from the shadows, killing them – or at least putting any potential coloniser off course.

It is a great opener to the show because it metaphorically turns viewers into fairy tale wanderers, and artists into tricksters and spell-makers.

Oliveira’s work chimes perfectly with The Nightwatch (2004) by Belgian artist Francis Alÿs, consisting of surveillance video footage of a fox the artist released into London’s National Portrait Gallery (with the gallery’s permission) during the night. Alÿs’s fox continues the fairy tale tradition of depicting forest animals as actively engaging with human societies.

Alÿs self-consciously titled his work after a 17th century painting by Rembrandt van Rijn in which citizens are depicted serving as defenders and official volunteers for their city. Alÿs might be suggesting the contemporary artist is like a public servant whose job, like the fox in the video, is to intrude on the prized traditions supported by museums.

Australian artist Abdul Abdullah’s provocative photograph Troubling the Margins (from the Interloper series) (2022) follows a similar idea. Abdullah literally shows himself as a fox in a henhouse.

The artist-as-fox smiles maliciously at the viewer as if saying to the art world: “I can’t believe you let me in here.”

Read more:
The amazing NGV Triennial 2023 makes us question our world and forces us to see it differently

Uncanny images

One of many terrific sculptural works in the exhibition, Jana Sterbak’s Inside (1990) is an empty glass coffin seemingly pregnant with a smaller mirrored coffin inside.

A reversed imagining of life in death, the piece responds to the many glass coffins in fairy and folk tales (such as Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Grimm’s Brothers The Glass Coffin), exploring the uncanny idea of death being put on permanent display for the living.

It’s not a coffin but a caravan in Patricia Piccinini’s The Couple (2018), where two realistically rendered hybrid human-animal lovers are frozen in a serene moment cuddling on a fold-out bed, their clawed feet sticking out from under the sheets.

Piccinini’s works often centre on hyperreal figures that look genetically altered. These sculptures are at their most interesting when they make viewers aware of themselves. I felt stupid for it, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty for gawking too long at the sweet-looking couple’s physical deformations.

Projected behind a huge semi-transparent curtain, an exquisitely staged installation of Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film Beauty and the Beast is situated in relation to costumes and props from its production. This and other displays of material from fairy-tale-inspired films Where the Wild Things Are (2009) and The Labyrinth (1986) are among the most engaging cinema-themed pieces in the exhibition.

The capacity of anything to intrigue

In my 2015 publication about the relationship between folk art and fine art, I argued art critics and art historians in the 19th and 20th centuries narrowly discussed oral traditions and amateur cultural creations in anthropological terms.

By their reasoning, these were artefacts that failed to live up to the special insights and feelings expected of fine art.

This school of thought is no longer the case. Fairy Tales is a good example of the recent expansion of art-history-based curating into larger visual culture frameworks. Clothing, relics, paintings, literary documents, installations, videos and filmic props now all cohabit the museum in non-hierarchical ways, staging not the inherent value of specific material so much as the capacity of anything to intrigue.

For a show about timeless human fears and fantasies, Fairy Tales may be curiously timely.

Fairy Tales is at QAGOMA, Brisbane, until April 28, 2024.

Read more:
How the poetically-charged art of Tacita Dean gives its audience a moment for stillness and time

Wes Hill 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. Fairy Tales at QAGOMA: how we revived these stories with new myths, new media and new quirks – https://theconversation.com/fairy-tales-at-qagoma-how-we-revived-these-stories-with-new-myths-new-media-and-new-quirks-219228

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Xu Yi-chong, Professor of Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University

With an energy-hungry economy, an historic reliance on coal and vast manufacturing enterprises, China is the world’s single largest emitter, accounting for 27% of the world’s carbon dioxide and a third of all greenhouse gas emissions.

But China is also the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels
and wind turbines. Domestically, it is installing green power at a rate the world has never seen. This year alone, China built enough solar, wind, hydro and nuclear capacity to cover the entire electricity consumption of France. Next year, we may see something even more remarkable – the population giant’s first ever drop in emissions from the power sector.

The COP28 climate talks began well, buoyed by November’s Sunnyland Statement between China and the United States, the second largest emitter. At previous climate talks, US-China cooperation has been lacking. But this time, they’re largely on the same page.

The statement outlined joint support for global tripling of renewable energy by 2030, tackling methane and plastic pollution, and a transition away from fossil fuels.

The urgency of now

China has been looking for better coordination with the US on climate since US President Joe Biden took office. Climate is an area where these competing major powers can cooperate.

The COP28 talks in Dubai – meant to finish tomorrow – offer a window for joint action. Next year, the US could elect a different president with very different views on climate. China’s well-regarded veteran special climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, is about to retire.

Read more:
Why renewed China-US cooperation bodes well for climate action

In these talks, China – the world’s top oil importer – is looking for a compromise solution on the tense debate over fossil fuels. The world’s cartel of oil producing countries, OPEC, has called for focusing on emissions reduction rather than fossil-fuel phase out in the declaration. Xie and his team are trying to find a middle ground to ensure a final deal.

China has long been criticised for its continuing coal-fired power plant expansion. It has the world’s largest coal power fleet, and approved another 106 gigawatts worth of new coal plants just last year – the equivalent of two a week. But the five major state-owned power companies are already burdened by heavy financial losses.

Why build dirty and clean? It’s a longstanding national policy: build sufficient baseload supply first while expanding renewable capacities. But at COP28, Xie said something new:

[China will] strive to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy in a gradual manner.

A country of engineers

In developed countries, much clean energy work is driven by energy economists, who use incentives to change behaviour.

China is a country of engineers, who see these challenges as technical rather than economic.

In 2007, China released a national action plan on climate, calling for technological solutions to the climate problem. Private and state-owned companies responded strongly.

Fifteen years later, China is in the lead in every low-carbon category. Its total installed renewable capacity is staggering, accounting for a third of the world’s total, and it is leading in electric vehicle production and sales.

In the first three quarters of 2023, over 53% of China’s electricity came from low-carbon sources: hydro, wind, solar, bioenergy and nuclear.

How did China boost clean energy so fast?

China’s huge domestic market and large-scale deployment of wind and solar contribute greatly to plummeting renewable costs. Steadily lowering costs means green energy becomes viable for developing countries.

In 2012, a large team from China Power Investment Corporation arrived in the high desert in Qinghai province and began building 15.7 GW worth of solar across 345 square kilometres.

It was here that China first figured out how to make intermittent power reliable. Excess power was sent to a hydropower station 40km away and used to pump water uphill. At night, the water would flow back down through the turbines. Technologies developed here are now being used in other large-scale hybrid projects, such as hydro-solar, wind-solar and wind-solar-hydro projects.

In 2022, the government announced plans to install 500 GW worth of solar, onshore and offshore wind projects in the Gobi Desert across Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Gansu provinces.

These are intended to not only supercharge China’s clean energy supply, but to tackle desert expansion. Solar panels stabilise the movement of sand and absorb sunlight, reducing evaporation of scarce water and giving plants a better chance at survival. This knowledge, too, came from the Qinghai solar farms, where plants began growing in the shade.

China’s focus on technology has given it combined solar and salt farms, floating solar power plants and energy storage ranging from batteries to compressed air to kinetic flywheels and hydrogen.

While the US and China cooperate at COP28, competition is not far away. China already dominates many clean energy technologies, but the US is trying to catch up through the massive green spend in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

According to the International Energy Agency, half of all emissions cuts needed to achieve net-zero by 2050 will come from technologies currently at demonstration or prototype phase. These include cheap green hydrogen, next generation nuclear, next generation solar and wind, and functioning carbon capture and storage for remaining fossil fuel use.

What has China achieved at COP28?

China is backing global calls to triple renewable capacity by 2030 and has agreed to tackle methane emissions, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.

China is far behind energy efficiency – it uses about 50% more per unit of GDP than in the US, and double that of Japan. It has not invested in energy efficiency as it has in other low-carbon areas.

This could change. US and China agreed in November to restart joint energy efficiency work on industry, buildings, transportation, and equipment, seen as harder areas to cut emissions.

At COP28, we will likely see states agree to double the rate of energy efficiency improvement from 2% to 4% a year by 2030. It remains to be seen whether China will join them.

Read more:
‘Matter of national destiny’: China’s energy crisis sees the world’s top emitter investing in more coal

Xu Yi-chong 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. COP28: Why China’s clean energy boom matters for global climate action – https://theconversation.com/cop28-why-chinas-clean-energy-boom-matters-for-global-climate-action-218825

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

Infertility is often thought of as a female problem but one in three IVF cycles in Australia involve male infertility.

We recently published a review of the literature on whether men diagnosed with male factor infertility experience greater psychological distress than fertile men or men with an infertile partner. We found irrespective of the cause of infertility, men in couples with infertility have more symptoms of depression, anxiety and general psychological distress, worse quality of some aspects of life, and lower self-esteem than fertile men.

Research also shows sperm counts are declining worldwide, and that lifestyle and environmental factors can reduce male fertility.

While most male causes of infertility are not preventable, it’s important to know how to keep your sperm as healthy as possible. Here are five things men can do to boost their fertility.

1. Try to be in the healthy weight range

Obesity causes hormonal changes that have negative effects on semen, including the total number of sperm, the ability of the sperm to move, the number of live sperm, and the number of sperm with a normal shape.

These reduce the chance of both spontaneous and IVF conception.

The good news is the adverse effects on fertility caused by excess weight in men are reversible. Regular exercise and a healthy diet can help reduce weight and improve sperm quality.

There is strong evidence a healthy diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, low-fat dairy, and seafood, and low in red and processed meats, sweets, and sweetened beverages is linked to better sperm quality.

Read more:
Problems conceiving are not just about women. Male infertility is behind 1 in 3 IVF cycles

2. Avoid recreational drugs

Recreational drug use is associated with poorer reproductive health. Psychoactive drugs such as cocaine, benzodiazepines, heroin, methamphetamine, oxycodone and ecstasy negatively affect male reproductive functions including sexual urge, testosterone production, sperm production and sperm quality.

While research on the link between marijuana use and sperm quality is inconclusive, some evidence suggests frequent marijuana use can reduce sperm quality and is a risk factor for testicular cancer.

3. Stay clear of anabolic steroids

Some men use anabolic steroids to enhance their physical performance and appearance. Globally, it’s estimated about one in 16 men (6.4%) use anabolic steroids sometime during their life. Male weightlifters aged 20-39 years, fighters, and security personnel are among the most common users of anabolic steroids.

Anabolic steroids contribute to muscle growth and fat loss, but they also affect sexual function, including by reducing the size of testicles, reducing or stopping sperm production, and causing impotence and infertility.

Studies show most men start producing sperm again within a year of stopping anabolic steroids. But a recent study of men who became infertile as a result of anabolic steroids found that for some there is long-term damage to sperm production.

In this study of men who had stopped using anabolic steroids and had a six-month course of hormone treatment to improve sperm production, more than half still produced no sperm at all or very few sperm after six months.

Read more:
Science or Snake Oil: do men need sperm health supplements?

4. Quit smoking and vaping

We all know tobacco smoking is terrible for our general health but there is now evidence it’s also bad for male fertility and reproductive outcomes.

In the past decade, vaping has become increasingly popular, especially among young adults. More than 500 e-cigarette brands and 8,000 flavours have been commercialised. There is now growing evidence from animal studies that vaping can harm male reproductive health and experts recommend avoiding vaping when trying to conceive.

5. Reduce exposure to environmental chemicals

In our everyday lives we are exposed to many different environmental chemicals – through the products we use, the food we eat, and the air we breathe. So-called endocrine-disrupting chemicals can reduce the quality of sperm and cause problems with fertility because they can mimic or block male sex hormones.

It’s impossible to avoid these chemicals completely, because they are all around us. But you can take some simple steps to reduce your exposure, including:

• washing fruit and vegetables

• eating fewer processed, canned or pre-packaged foods

• drinking from glass or hard plastic bottles, rather than soft plastic bottles

• heating food in a china or glass bowl covered with paper towel or a plate rather than using plastic takeaway containers or those covered with cling wrap.

To inform men about how to look after their sperm, Your Fertility, a fertility health promotion program delivered by the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority, teamed up with Melbourne comedian Michael Shafar to create some helpful educational videos.

Read more:
Considering using IVF to have a baby? Here’s what you need to know

Karin Hammarberg works for the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority which manages the Your Fertility program.

– ref. Male infertility is more common than you may think. Here are 5 ways to protect your sperm – https://theconversation.com/male-infertility-is-more-common-than-you-may-think-here-are-5-ways-to-protect-your-sperm-217787

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Stevens, Research fellow, Australian Catholic University

On Monday, the federal government announced plans to fix Australia’s “broken migration system” and to “bring migration back to sustainable, normal levels”.

Its long-awaited migration strategy aims “to build a migration system that earns the trust and confidence of our citizens”, or what the government calls, “rebuilding the social licence”.

The government says these changes are the “biggest reforms in a generation”. It’s been reported the reforms will “dramatically cut”“ the immigration intake. But don’t be fooled by the hyperbole.

Instead of thinking of the strategy as a complete overhaul, the reforms are a number of long overdue remedies dealing with migrant worker exploitation, misuse of international student visas and an overly complex and inefficient bureaucracy.

The intake cuts are overstated and will largely be the result of a natural evening out of migration patterns in the post-pandemic world. Even the Department of Immigration acknowledges the spike in arrivals is “temporary”, a phenomenon labelled as “the catch-up effect” by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. If the current circumstances are only transitory, one wonders why the government is so keen to cut numbers.

It is important to look at how the department plans to reform immigration policy.

The policy document is 100 pages with much detail on the minutiae of immigration procedures. The broad areas covered are revising temporary skilled migration, cracking down on alleged rorting of the international education system, replacing annual migration plans with longer-term forecasting and getting the states and territories, which bear most of the resettling costs, more involved.

Temporary skilled migration

There are more than two million Australian residents on temporary visas, most of whom are New Zealand citizens, international students and graduates. Since coming to power the Albanese government has made no secret of its plan to end Australia’s reliance on temporary migrant workers and offer them achievable pathways to permanent residency.

It has already made a start: in April the government made it easier for eligible New Zealand nationals, to obtain Australian citizenship.

Last month, it introduced improved access to permanent residency for temporary skilled migrants and unveiled a Skills in Demand visa link?, to help obtain permanency.

These are all welcome – if overdue – reforms. Commentators have long criticised Australia’s over-reliance on temporary migrants who are denied the security to build a new life in Australia.

The reforms will also decouple a migrant’s visa from their sponsoring employer, allowing the migrant 180 days to find a new visa sponsor (up from 60 days). Importantly, they can continue to work during these six months. Severing the visa link between migrant and employer, will empower more migrant workers to leave exploitative conditions without fear of deportation.

The government is committed to improving conditions and prospects for temporary migrants, yet the 38,000 Pacific Islanders entering each year on the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme will not benefit from these reforms.

Read more:
Government to toughen scrutiny of international students as it slashes net migration over two years

Despite worker exploitation, even workplace deaths, within the scheme, the program will continue and indeed be promoted as evidence of Australia’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific. The inherent contradiction between reforming the temporary migration system while sustaining the Pacific labour scheme seems lost on the government.

International education

Earlier this year the government committed to closing loopholes and cracking down on “unscrupulous” education providers. Home Affairs minister Clare O’Neil and Immigration minister Andrew Giles say would-be migrants are securing student visas to gain a back door entry into Australia.

The political rhetoric on international students and their alleged misuse of the visa system is incendiary and may foster a public backlash, as we witnessed in the 2009 violence against Indian students.

It is important to remember most of the recent growth in international enrolments is in the higher education sector not the vocational education and training sector that is so often maligned.

Measures to reduce the number of international students, such as increasing English language proficiency, have been overstated in the media. The new migration strategy will only increase the International English Language Testing System requirement for a student visa from a score of 5.5 to 6.0.

Besides, the government can’t have it both ways: for years it has been under funding universities. It cannot expect universities to turn off the revenue tap of international students when there are no alternative funding sources available.

For international students, the reforms listed in the strategy are troubling. The pandemic concession of uncapped hours of paid work is gone in favour of a 48 hour per fortnight limit. The argument here is that international students are in Australia to study, so they must study.

But during a cost-of-living crisis, international students may struggle to make ends meet with restrictions on the number of hours they can work. The government also plans to reduce the temporary graduate visa by one year for masters by coursework and PhD students. It will also reduce the maximum eligible age from 50 to 35.

Read more:
What is the government’s preventative detention bill? Here’s how the laws will work and what they mean for Australia’s detention system

It is important to remember our universities are in competition with many more prestigious universities in North America and Europe for international students. Restricting the duration and eligibility requirements of temporary graduate visas may reduce the appeal of studying in Australia, which will affect higher education funding.

Long-term planning and cooperation

Historically, the migration program is revised annually and done so by the federal bureaucracy. The migration strategy wants to change this and “plan migration over a longer-term horizon” yet it does not spell out the new time frame.

In a standard three-year election cycle, it is hard to imagine how longer-term planning would work. The scant details in this section of the policy document indicate the writers themselves were not sure of how to implement this reform.

Additionally, the migration strategy recommends including states and territories in information sharing and in the decision-making process. Again, in theory, this is a good idea. Even though the Commonwealth determines who can enter Australia, it is often left up to the states to bear the cost of resettlement and integration.

But if our experience of COVID is any indication, then collaboration across jurisdictions is far from guaranteed, particularly on a contentious and politicised issue such as immigration.

Read more:
High Court reasons on immigration ruling pave way for further legislation

While the policy blueprint may seem comprehensive, it is important to note what is not covered in any depth.

Family reunification is given four short paragraphs and includes no policy recommendations. This will be particularly heart breaking for those with elderly parents overseas. Discussion on humanitarian entrants is also brief. Again, it makes no new announcements and repeats an August statement that the government intends to increase the refugee intake from 17,875 to 20,000 places each year.

With the United Nations estimating there are more than 110 million people currently displaced across the world, Australia’s paltry humanitarian intake will continue to be a source of shame for this country.

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

– ref. The government is bringing immigration back to ‘normal levels’ but cuts are not as dramatic as they seem – https://theconversation.com/the-government-is-bringing-immigration-back-to-normal-levels-but-cuts-are-not-as-dramatic-as-they-seem-219501

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Donna West Brett, Associate Professor in Art History, University of Sydney

The first time I saw one of Tacita Dean’s monumental film-works it was by chance.

Soaring the heights of the Tate’s Turbine Hall, FILM 2011 was an entrancing visual elegy to art, nature and time.

My second chance encounter was in 2018 at the Royal Academy where Dean’s exhibition Landscape was on show. Cooling off on a rare London summer’s day watching the hour-long Antigone I drifted in out of a strange sense of euphoria.

The idea of coincidence and “chance” drove much of the Surrealists’ work from literature to the visual arts and is also at the centre of Dean’s artistic process. At the opening night of a new major exhibition of her work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Dean described the Surrealist concept of “objective chance” in action.

As an artist in residence at the Getty Research Centre across 2014 and 2015, she randomly pointed to a box from the centre’s archive. On opening the box, she found the key to the studio of 19th century French artist Auguste Rodin, famous for his sculpture The Thinker (1904).

This chance encounter was the start of an extensive project, Monet Hates Me (2021), an exhibition in a box that contains 50 objects and ephemera that reflect the history of art, produced during one of the long COVID-19 lockdowns with her collaborator Martyn Ridgewell.

Read more:
The amazing NGV Triennial 2023 makes us question our world and forces us to see it differently

From Rodin to Dante

Born in Canterbury, the United Kingdom, in 1965, Dean works across film, photography, drawing, printmaking, immersive installations and more recently set designs and costumes created for The Dante Project, a ballet at the Royal Opera House, captured by Dean in the 35mm film Paradise (2021).

Paradise is a mesmeric, vibrantly coloured abstract film with an exquisite soundtrack, inspired by Dante Alighieri’s poem The Divine Comedy (1321) and the work of British artist William Blake, who created a series of watercolour illustrations based on the poem in 1824. Drawn from his bed during a fortnight of illness that led to Blake’s death, the drawings wield a fevered fascination with the grotesque.

Several works in the exhibition form conversations with artists. The film Buon Fresco (2014) shows exquisite details of Giotto’s Renaissance fresco (a wall painting) in the Upper Basilica of St Francis of Assisi in Italy.

One “film portrait” captures Claes Oldenburg, known for his enormous sculptures of everyday objects such as a clothes-peg, as he drew in his studio.

One Hundred and Fifty Years of Painting (2021) features Ethiopian-American contemporary painter Julie Mehretu in conversation with the 99-year-old Venezuelan-born artist Luchita Hurtado shortly before her death.

Born exactly 50 years apart, the two artists are captured here over the course of a day as the winter light caresses the scene as if bringing a still picture to life.

Dean’s films are poetically charged with impressions of stillness and time offering the viewer a deep sense of contemplation in stark contrast to the fervour of Circular Quay in the full swing of summer.

Nature and time

Another theme that runs through Dean’s prolific career is nature and deep time.

One room in the exhibition features two large-scale drawings and a photograph in conversation with each other to create a fragile rhythm as a reminder of the temporal nature of all things.

Chalk Fall (2018) and The Wreck of Hope (2022), referencing the romantic German painter Caspar David Friedrich, hang on opposing walls, as majestic drawings in chalk on blackboards.

One features a cliff face; the other a receding glacier. It is a stark reminder of our fragile environment, constantly subject to change. Time is embedded in these drawings both in the meticulous, laborious processes of drawing at such a scale, and in the sense of geological time that sits outside the feeble imaginings of our own mortality.

At the end of this gallery is a large, evocative photograph overdrawn in colour pencil, featuring a 2,000-year-old cherry blossom tree in the Japanese prefecture of Yamanashi.

There is an inherent tension in this nature-portrait between the efforts to support the tree’s ancient limbs with wooden crutches, and the persistence of its blossoms that sweep up in a jewel-like majesty against the subtle pink sky.

Known for using analogue film, Dean’s film installation Geography Biography (2023) characterises her methodical, material approach to artmaking.

Bringing together chance encounters, obsolete materials and old film footage, Dean considers this work to be an “accidental self-portrait”. Accompanied only by the machinic projector noise, this filmic collage over two screens provides a mesmerising insight into the artist’s life and ways of making art.

Dean’s works are incredibly labour intensive. From filming the frescoes of Giotto hovering on a scissor lift or drawing large-scale renditions of glaciers, to editing endless rolls of film, this exhibition gives us pause to embrace the ephemeral nature of time itself.

Tacita Dean is at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, until March 3.

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‘A deeply thoughtful and sensuous show’: a rarely experienced intimacy with Louise Bourgeois

Donna West Brett received funding from the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford as a Sloan Fellow in Photography 2024.

– ref. How the poetically-charged art of Tacita Dean gives its audience a moment for stillness and time – https://theconversation.com/how-the-poetically-charged-art-of-tacita-dean-gives-its-audience-a-moment-for-stillness-and-time-219485

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shaun Brooks, Fieldwork Coordinator/Research Technician, CSIRO

Scientific research in Antarctica has played a key role in many important discoveries of the past century. But it has also come at a considerable cost to the environment.

Science in Antarctica is typically based at one of the 77 research stations. While their role is to support science, their isolation means they need to provide the infrastructure of a town.

As well as the local impacts of these stations, the Antarctic environment is facing massive challenges from external pressures such as climate change. The loss of sea ice could mean some of the continent’s most iconic wildlife face extinction this century. For example, the early melting of sea ice recently led to complete breeding failure at several emperor penguin colonies.

So how can we keep doing research in Antarctica while minimising our impact on the environment? This question led to our new research published in the Journal of Environmental Management.

We found little evidence of conservation planning and few limits on permissible activities such as building new stations, despite Antarctica being declared a natural reserve. This has left plenty of room to improve planning, technology and research methods to reduce impacts on the fragile Antarctic environment.

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What are the impacts of all these stations?

The majority of stations were built before the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty took effect in the late 1990s. These older stations were established during an era when environmental protection was a lower priority.

As a result, some stations were located in the most rare and sensitive ice-free areas. They probably would not be built there today, but only a few have been removed. Most old stations continue to operate.

At the larger stations, in addition to living quarters and laboratories, facilities include sewage and power plants, bulk fuel tanks and handling, roads, workshops, helipads, runways, wharfs, quarries, fire stations and even one short-lived nuclear reactor.

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Adding to the impacts are ongoing demands to expand stations. This might be to provide new scientific apparatus to answer new questions, house more people, improve logistical capacity, or increase the safety of ageing infrastructure.

This background means research stations are often industrial-looking sites, with industrial-scale environmental impacts. It’s a stark contrast to the near-pristine natural reserve they are situated in.

The stations that support science to help understand Antarctica have created the most intense human impacts on the place. These impacts include:

• a growing disturbance footprint on rare but vital ice-free areas

• marine contamination that rivals the most polluted harbours in the world

• fuel spills

• non-native species introductions, including weeds and invertebrates

• disturbance to wildlife.

Many stations have displaced some of the best areas of habitat for plants and animals.

Environmental management and impact assessments are now routine practice in Antarctica, and do curtail impacts. However, these practices do not stop the footprint of stations from continuing to spread.

In a case study of a long-established Antarctic station, Australia’s Casey, we found the area of heavy disturbance expanded by 18% and the area of medium disturbance by 42% over a 16-year period. This growth has encroached on one of the most important areas of vegetation in Antarctica.

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So what are the answers?

Using better technology is one option. This can include installing cleaner sewage treatment to reduce contamination of the marine environment. And using passive design and renewable energy can reduce fuel handling and storage.

Similarly, substituting harmful research practices with techniques that have fewer impacts is another option. Researchers have, for example, determined the prey species of penguins from poo, rather than handling the birds.

As well as better technology and different research methods, a systematic approach to conservation planning, which identifies the best ways to protect the environment, will help.

Our international team looked into best-practice conservation planning for reserves elsewhere in the world. We adapted these approaches to the unique characteristics of each region of Antarctica and to the various ways in which stations operate.

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We deliberately designed our conservation planning approach to support station operators to continue to provide new science capabilities. However, we did it in a way that minimises long-term environmental impacts.

For conservation planning to work properly, we need more environmental monitoring data. And data collection must be sustained over a long time.

In the absence of legal limits, we also encourage station operators to set their own self-imposed limits on their footprint and restore degraded areas no longer used. The less area we impact, the more room it gives Antarctic species to shift and adapt to a changing climate.

This work was funded and supported by the Australian Antarctic Division, Australian Antarctic Science project 4565.

– ref. Doing science in Antarctica has harmed an environment under great pressure. Here’s how we can do better – https://theconversation.com/doing-science-in-antarctica-has-harmed-an-environment-under-great-pressure-heres-how-we-can-do-better-211616

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbara Allen, Senior Lecturer in Public Management, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

It has been clear that change is coming to the New Zealand public service since the election campaign. Just what impact that change will have is less easy to predict now the new government is installed.

As part of its hundred-day action plan, the National Party initially pledged to “start reducing public sector expenditure by 6.5% on average” by cutting “back-office spending not critical to frontline services”.

While the phrase “start reducing” was ambiguous, one estimate put likely losses at around 6,500 full-time jobs. ACT Party leader David Seymour was more forthright, declaring an “absolute top” figure of 15,000 public service jobs could be at risk.

The final coalition government plan seems to have changed considerably, however, with the policy being to “start reducing public sector expenditure, including consultant and contractor expenditure”.

While the scale is considerably less clear, now is the time to ask what the effects of these potentially drastic cuts might be. History and overseas experience suggests they will not necessarily lead to the outcomes the government intends, for a number of reasons.

Job cuts don’t cut costs

Firstly, there is no simple, direct correlation between numbers of public service jobs and the public purse. As one former senior civil servant and now expert guide to the British civil service has put it:

Changes in civil service numbers do not necessarily translate into parallel increases [or] decreases in public expenditure, nor in the size of the state.

Partly this is because job numbers are at the whim of other government policies. Brexit, for example, saw a massive increase in full-time equivalent (FTE) public service jobs from 375,000 in 2016 to 475,000 by 2021.

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More importantly, jobs can be reclassified rather than removed. For evidence of this we need look no further than Aotearoa New Zealand.

In 2009, John Key’s National-led government capped the growth in public service staffing. The then State Services Commission was tasked with monitoring this, and departmental chief executives were expected to actively keep numbers down.

The initial cap of 38,859 FTE positions set in 2009 was reset to 36,475 in 2012. There was also a special focus on reducing the number of communications and public relations advisers.

The Labour government removed the cap in 2018. This followed a review that concluded the policy had led to the “gaming” of jobs through reclassification, a massive loss of institutional knowledge, and too much focus by managers on staffing levels rather than service delivery.

Rise of the ‘consultocracy’

Perhaps most tellingly, while the Key government’s cap did reduce the number of public service jobs, it didn’t reduce the number of jobs being paid for by the public purse.

Instead, the cap simply contributed to a new “consultocracy” culture, a phenomenon well established in public policy research.

Between 2007 and 2017, shortly before the cap was lifted, the use of contractors and consultants increased by nearly 200%. This contributed to an overall wage and salary increase of 50%.

Cutting jobs did not cut public spending on salaries – quite the opposite. There is no reason to expect today’s proposed cuts will not simply create the same perverse incentives as before.

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We should also ask who and what the term “back-office spending” refers to. Does it include legal, finance and human resources professionals? These currently make up a mere 5% of the total public service. Or perhaps it refers to clerical and administrative staff. They comprise 9% of the public service.

Definitions of “back-room” or “administrative” staff often lean towards simplistic dichotomies between “real” frontline workers and “made-up” office jobs.

But no organisation, private or public, can operate without administrative support provided by office managers, accountants, call centre operators, cleaners and security staff, advisers and policy analysts.

There is a choice between keeping these functions in-house or outsourcing them. Either way, there is no point pretending they don’t exist.

High trust and low morale

We might also ask who (outside of the government) is calling for a cull of public servants.

New Zealanders have a high level of trust in their public service: “80% […] trust public services based on their personal experience”, according to September figures from the Public Service Commission.

Indeed, the New Zealand public service stands out globally for trust and integrity. It consistently ranks highly in Transparency International’s corruption perception index.

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Finally, the effects of the cuts could have a chilling effect on public service motivation. People tend to join and remain in public service to contribute to society. Few enter for personal enrichment or even long-term career advancement.

There is no doubt the public service can be made more efficient, and that saving public money is a good idea. But drastic job cuts will almost certainly not achieve this.

History shows it has the opposite effect, increasing spending through the use of consultants and contractors while demoralising those who remain. It would serve the new government well to remember this, before it ends up paying the private sector to provide public services.

Karl Lofgren receives funding from the Swedish Research Council.

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

– ref. Return of the ‘consultocracy’ – how cutting public service jobs to save costs usually backfires – https://theconversation.com/return-of-the-consultocracy-how-cutting-public-service-jobs-to-save-costs-usually-backfires-218990

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edward Santow, Professor & Co-Director, Human Technology Institute, University of Technology Sydney

In a world promising self-driving cars and artificial general intelligence, the prospect of a new form of digital identity verification can feel … less than exciting.

And yet digital identity is about to be unleashed in Australia and around the world. In 2024, many years before most of us experience the joy of commuting in our fully autonomous car, new forms of digital ID will profoundly change how we engage with government and business. For example, digital ID may remove the pain of handing over physical copies of your driver’s licence, passport and birth certificate when renewing your Working with Children Check or setting up a new bank account.

How can we gain the benefits of digital ID – convenience, efficiency, lower risk of cybercrime – while minimising the attendant risks, such as privacy leaks, data misuse, and reduced trust in government?

In a new paper released today by the Human Technology Institute, we propose legal and policy guardrails to improve user safeguards and build community trust for the rollout of digital ID in New South Wales. While the paper focuses on NSW, it contains ten principles to support the development of any safe, reliable and responsible digital identity system.

Across Australia, governments are kickstarting digital identity initiatives

Some forms of digital identification already operate in Australia at scale. For example, the Document Verification Service was introduced as early as 2009 to automate checking of important documents such as passports.

Last year this service was used more than 140 million times by roughly 2,700 government and private sector organisations. A limited form of facial verification technology was used well over a million times.

A key problem, however, is that Australia has not had an effective legal framework to govern even the existing digital ID system. This is starting to change.

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In June this year, the federal government released a national strategy for digital identity resilience. In its final sittings for 2023, the Australian Parliament passed the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023, which provides some important protections for privacy and other rights.

Also in December, the government proposed a second law, the Digital ID Bill 2023. This bill would provide rules for a major expansion of Australia’s system of digital identification.

Notwithstanding this recent flurry of activity in the federal government, NSW has long been Australia’s leading jurisdiction in this area. It announced its Digital ID program in April 2022 and has quietly worked to put in place the key elements of what could become a world-leading digital ID system, with strong community safeguards.

What is a ‘digital identity’, and what are the risks?

The technologies at the heart of digital ID are powerful and carry risks.

In particular, facial verification technology matches an individual’s face data against a recorded reference image. It may also incorporate “liveness detection”, which checks that the face to be verified belongs to a genuine individual requesting a service in real time (as opposed to a photograph, for example).

NSW’s digital identity initiative uses both these technologies.

Overall, digital identity should mean less of our personal information is collected and used by third parties. For example, when someone enters a pub and a bouncer asks for ID, the only information the bouncer needs to know is that the patron is over 18. The bouncer doesn’t need other personal information on their licence, such as their address or organ donor status.

Good design and regulation would ensure the digital ID service can verify someone’s age without disclosing other sensitive data.

On the other hand, these technologies use sensitive personal information and this brings risks when they are used to make decisions that affect people’s rights. Errors may result in an individual being denied an essential government service.

Because a digital ID system would by its nature collect sensitive personal information, it also poses risks of identity fraud or hacking of personal information.

Making digital ID safe

There must be robust safeguards in place to address these risks.

Accountable digital identity systems should be voluntary, not compulsory. They need to ensure citizens have options for choice and consent, and should be usable and accessible for everyone.

Digital ID also needs to be safe. It should protect the sensitive personal information of users and make sure this data is not used for other, unintended purposes like law enforcement.

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To achieve these aims, we recommend that NSW Digital ID be grounded in legislation that enshrines:

• user protections, including providing for privacy and data security of all users

• performance standards, ensuring that digital identity performs to a high standard of accuracy and be fit for purpose, with public reporting by the responsible government agency or department on relevant independent benchmarking and technical standards compliance

• oversight and accountability, with both internal and external monitoring, and clear redress mechanisms

• interoperability with other government systems.

These principles are not specific to NSW. They are relevant and transferable to other jurisdictions looking to develop digital identity systems.

Whether Australia’s digital identity transformation is a success depends on how digital identity systems are established in law and practice. It is crucial that robust governance mechanisms are in place to ensure digital identity systems are safe, secure and accountable. Only then will Australians embrace and trust the digital transformation that is afoot.

Edward Santow works for the UTS Human Technology Institute. The Institute has received a funding grant from the James Martin Institute for Public Policy to support the project mentioned in this article. Prof Santow also serves as an independent member of the NSW Government’s AI Review Committee, which has provided some advice on the NSW Government’s use of digital identification.

Lauren Perry works for the UTS Human Technology Institute. The Institute has received a funding grant from the James Martin Institute for Public Policy to support the project mentioned in this article

Sophie Farthing works for the UTS Human Technology Institute. The Institute has received a funding grant from the James Martin Institute for Public Policy to support the project mentioned in this article.

– ref. Digital ID will go mainstream across Australia in 2024. Here’s how it can work for everyone – https://theconversation.com/digital-id-will-go-mainstream-across-australia-in-2024-heres-how-it-can-work-for-everyone-219406